Born in 1954 in Boston, Speare’s trajectory takes in composition study, acoustic communication, ecology and design, hearing conservation, photography, film, historical research, alliances with text-sound poets, and writing, among others. He’s multimedia avant la letter, insofar as when listening to this disc, or reading the liner notes, Speare comes across as an artist who thinks first, acts second, and doesn’t necessarily give a damn about where his productions might be placed within any putative field. On Sound Works: 1982-1987, you primarily hear Speare the magnetic reel cadet, as it collects tape compositions from that most inauspicious of decades, some of which were constructed with collaborations and performances in mind.
Speare’s tape pieces are concrète in the most literal, tactile sense. He privileges dislocation from acoustic origin via analogue means and hand-cranked manipulation. This means his sounds carry the ghost presence of the familiar within their mutant genes. For 1982’s At the Falls, an attempt to create “an ambience like water” without using “any water sounds,” this means the displaced source material goes through a sequence of abstractions only to be called to attention as an imitation, or approximation, of nature at its least abstract.
Speare’s tape pieces are concrète in the most literal, tactile sense. He privileges dislocation from acoustic origin via analogue means and hand-cranked manipulation. This means his sounds carry the ghost presence of the familiar within their mutant genes. For 1982’s At the Falls, an attempt to create “an ambience like water” without using “any water sounds,” this means the displaced source material goes through a sequence of abstractions only to be called to attention as an imitation, or approximation, of nature at its least abstract.
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