S13 / Release
TIESEEx Nullo
Our first cassette release: hardware improvisation by TIESE, mastered by Daniele Antezza and closing with an Inner8 remix. S13001 · Edition of 100.
Ex Nullo is Secret Thirteen’s first release, an album by TIESE born of hardware-based improvisation. This tape and digital release has churning industrial beats, an otherworldly laser-saw racket, playful and intricate distorted dubwise, refined ambience over screeching, cathartic noise, and even something that may as well be a field recording of non-carbon-based lifeforms performing a baleful ritual.
Released on 28 October 2019 as S13001, Ex Nullo brings together six TIESE pieces and a closing Inner8 remix. The cassette was issued in an edition of 100, alongside the digital album.
01Sound and process
Tiese’s music can be described by referring to the name of the project, which is the misspelled Lithuanian word for tangent or straight line. The deliberate mistake, aside from being there to annoy pedantic guardians of language, implies further transformations – truth (tiesa), for example.
The creative process of Vilius Šiaulys and Antanas Dombrovskij (Tiese) involves submitting to the chaos of razor-sharp noise, abyssal drone, or spasmodic glitch, and improvising a way to draw a tangent or find the truth that connects the dots into a loose narrative.
In the case of Ex Nullo, the narrative ends in a violent and melancholic gauntlet of mechanical monotony, bringing about a perfect tabula rasa. We knew it was like nothing else long before it got the title Ex Nullo.
While Tiese was formed sometime around 2009, the duo had been working together since quite a bit earlier – going back at least to their work as part of Twentytwentyone. This ‘laptop quartet’ was a deeply conceptual project and perhaps an uneasy marriage of the cerebral and the intuitive. Vilius and Antanas, who shared a more like-minded, intuitive approach, went on to form Tiese.
02The cassette
The subtleties of this homemade record were accentuated through the mastering of our friend Daniele Antezza of Dadub, aka Inner8. He took this rough single-track recording and made it radiate life throughout every inch of the soundwave – one of his three major contributions to this process. The second was a vicious analog Inner8 remix, which can be heard at the end of the tape.
The third was the introduction to Daniele De Santis at Dromoscope, who adapted the mastering for the tape and used his vintage gear to do the dubbing.
The physical edition pairs a monochrome cassette with su-y’s analog photographic cover. The fine horizontal lines and crossing stems are part of the original image; the black shell carries a spare botanical mark. The cassette purchase includes the digital album.
03Tracklist and credits
Seven tracks
- EX NULLO #1 · 08:09
- EX NULLO #2 · 09:09
- EX NULLO #3 · 02:58
- EX NULLO #4 · 02:37
- EX NULLO #5 · 06:06
- EX NULLO #6 · 09:15
- EX NULLO #7 (INNER8 Remix) · 07:40
S13001
Music
Vilius Šiaulys & Antanas Dombrovskij
Inner8 remix & mastering
Daniele Antezza
Cassette mastering adaptation & dubbing
Daniele De Santis / Dromoscope
Cover art & press photographs
su-y
Photograph inside the tape booklet
Laima Stasiulionytė
Sources and image credits
- Release, tracklist and credits S13 / Bandcamp.
- Cover artwork and press photographs: su-y.
- Photograph inside the tape booklet: Laima Stasiulionytė.
