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There was a time in the early noughties when a little bar in Troy, New York played home to some of the most bleeding edge computer music and video work being done anywhere. Late Tuesday nights at Positively Fourth Street were a swirl of hypnotic visuals, experimental beats, and a crowd of local artists and software developers who performed for each other, trotting out their latest creations and upping the ante with every show. The event was the weekly public manifestation of an arts and technology collective called Goodship that spawned, among other things, the popular video performance software VDMX.

Sound artists Stephan Moore and Scott Smallwood's Evidence were regular performers at Goodship Tuesdays. This record is a pristine recording of their final performance at Positively 4th Street in 2004, at the top of their game as improvisors of unplanned sonic textures and abstract beat constructions. Evidence has gone on to perform internationally using objects, homemade electronics and radio broadcast equipment, with a specialization in non-traditional venues and circumstances, but this recording captures the essence of their work in a venue as comfortable as home.

"Smallwood and Moore make highly effective use of the world as instrument ... the contours of actual locations melt down to a distillation of their sounding properties. [Out of Town] finds cosmic and glacial evocations in the everyday, celestial vistas in the heart of banality. First and foremost, though, it's about hearing what's actually there and opening that out to a deeper listening." -- The Wire 236 - Oct. 2003

"Out of Town is filled with magical moments as the world transforms itself in the listeners ears." -- Signal to Noise 32, winter 2004

"If you ever heard the sound of lightbulb that is near the end of its life, you may have any idea how this release sounds: the sound static electricity. That may sound simple, but Smallwood knows how to craft a very fine piece of music. Some of these pieces are downright 'industrial' - and I mean industrial in the sense of industry, not the musical term - and 'noise coming from a factory' like in 'Energex', but in other instances the statics are cut up into rhythms and even music, like in 'Sunkraft' or in 'Ropiquet'. Here Smallwood creates zombie-like techno music, more electric than Pan Sonic. Especially in these two tracks, Smallwood shows us the potential of creating 'music' out of 'noise' - and I see even possibilities of a remix project there."
---Frans de Waard, Vital Newsletter.

Each track negotiates a balance between acoustic sound sources and electronics, live performance and studio composition, and human vs. algorithmic control of sound materials. Time is continually bent into new shapes, challenging the listener, and his collaborators, to think beyond the easy comforts of a regular tempo, and confront rhythm as texture instead of a reliable grid. Brooklyn-based sound artist Stephan Moore's recent musical work centers around the collection and use of real-world sound, the creation and perception of sonic environments, and technological manifestations of improvisation and interactivity. He develops his own performance software and builds point-source loudspeakers for use in his performances and sound installation work. His current ongoing collaborations include the Xenolinguistics performance project with visionary video artist Diana Reed Slattery, projects with choreographers Yanira Castro and Kimberly Young and performance artist Kyle DeCamp, sound design for the Nerve Tank theater collective, and the performing/recording duo Evidence with sound artist Scott Smallwood. He curates a concert series at the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio called Experiments in the Studio, and co-curates an annual month-long Floating Points festival of performances and sound installations at the ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn, pairing the permanent sixteen-channel installation of his Hemisphere speakers there with diverse artists."

On the Deep Listening Label