Text by CLOT Magazine
Since 1991, Tresor has provided a home for artists to germinate their ideas for advanced new sounds and broadcast them to the world. The pioneers that first traversed the Detroit-Berlin connection and were at the forefront of a new cultural movement gave to Tresor its original and continuing mission: community, resistance and reshaping the world to come.
Tresor has launched a compilation box for their 30th anniversary, TRESOR 30, representing a major landmark in this continuing history of electronic music. The collection profiles some of the artists that gave the previous three decades of Tresor its sound and foundation, but it also casts its gaze forward.
Today they launch a new single from the compilation by Tbilisi-born, Philadelphia-based Sophia Saze with an accompanying video by British artist Simon Faithfull. Saze is known for her events and label in Brooklyn called Dusk & Haze.
Beginning her creative journey with classical music and dance training, Sophia would later become engulfed by electronic rhythm. As a producer, her musical versatility draws from a wide array of shapes and expressions, from electro to krautrock, ambient to industrial, and acid to garage – embracing the drifting range in the waves of emotional fluidity.
Her contribution to TRESOR 30 ‘Curtains’ utilises detuned synth pads that shine through gnarly acid lines when a massive garage beat erupts out of nowhere. For the video, Tresor sourced a collaboration with Simon Faithfull, whose work combines nature and human experience, often tackling environmental issues and risk.
Water and fire are ongoing features and aspects of his subject matter. For Curtains, he prepared a video with extracts taken from his project Escape Vehicle no.6 (2004), originally commissioned by Arts Catalyst. Escape Vehicle No. 6 started as a live event developed from the artist’s previous balloon film 30km.
The live audience first witnessed a weather balloon launching with a domestic chair dangling in space beneath it. Once the apparatus had disappeared into the sky, they then watched a live video relay from the weather balloon as it journeyed from the ground to the edge of space (30km up).
