Jeremiah M. Carter & Chelsea Bridge
The Way it Pours Into Itself is a collaboration between Brooklyn, NY based guitarist Jeremiah M. Carter and Chicago-based violinist and experimental artist Chelsea Bridge (aka Mallory LInehan). The two have collaborated with one another over the years, resulting in sporadic recordings. Over the course of the quarantine, the two struck a deeper, long distance collaborative relationship with Mallory sending Jeremiah recordings of violin, voice and toy piano. Carter would then layer atop his contributions and processing. The result, while created hundreds of miles apart and in some of the deepest moments of isolation, sound immediate and incredibly close. Like one of those magical nights watching two friends improvise while cozied up in a well-maintained house venue, back against the couch or the legs of a friend, eyes tightly closed as the sound reverberates off the wooden floor.
The title of the three compositions, "The Ten Stages (I-XXII)", "Tower" and "Of Babel" are taken from the Tarot De Marseille and each longform piece feels like a musical companion while trekking through the deck. These sounds contain the same microcosm of mystery, meaning and sacred chance that accompany the lucid visuals of Tarot De Marseille.
Musically, the concept of the trek seems to take on special meaning. The two explore vast valleys of liminal space between the sonorous and the dissonant, often meeting in the middle where the Linehan's violin and vocals take on alchemical transformation as they meet billowing drones and processing from Carter, the two bursting into some kind of beautiful, non-destructive fire, the line between reality and non-reality a bit more blurred.
Linehan plays violin in the Chicago based experimental trio Desert Liminal. Her solo work under Chelsea Bridge has often taken on dissonant and beautiful shapes. With this collaboration with Jeremiah M. Carter, the two seem to have an intuitive sense collaborative purpose and timing that demands repeated listens.