BRIAN HARNETTY — NOISY MEMORY: MUSIC FROM THE BOOK — EPK
“Reflective, vulnerable, melancholic and hypnotic, this is a record for times of solace, companionship and escape. 5/5 stars.”
“Harnetty frames Merton’s humane eloquence with discreet and dignified music… The monk’s voice remains vital and apt; the settings are just right.”
“Musically adept and emotionally and spiritually resonant. Brilliant. 4.5/5 stars.”
“A meditation and refuge from the incessant noise of modernity, the record offers harmonious balance between distinct spiritual forces, at work both individually and in multi-layered conversation.”
“Working like a novelist, [Harnetty] has immersed himself in an archive of field recordings – slices of past lives – and now emerges to create a new text, breathing new life into old chunks of sound by radically recontextualising them.”
“Brilliant, maddening, addictive....Harnetty has proved that one way to preserve history is to weave it into the moment and let it vanish in our midst while echoing forever its truths, aphorisms, superstitions, and lies. 4.5/5 STARS.”
“I am so moved by this music and these visuals… A masterclass.”
“The more I feel unable to figure it out, the more I like the work... Harnetty’s created modern art out of regional history.”
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Over the past two decades, Columbus, Ohio based artist and composer Brian Harnetty has been lost in sound: archives, field recordings, turntables, tape machines, radios, orchestras, toy and junk instruments, and his own chamber ensemble have all been featured in his work. At the same time, he has used the practice of listening as a way to foster social change, and as a means to understand places and people from Appalachia and the Midwest.
After completing his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, Harnetty returned to his native Ohio to explore local and regional issues there, including place, labor, memory, energy use, extraction, and environmental justice. The result is music that goes both deep and wide: celebrating everyday and marginalized people, spending up to a decade collaborating with rural Appalachian communities, and helping these communities work toward social and environmental justice.
Noisy Memory: Recording Sound, Performing Archives is Harnetty’s first book (published with the University of North Carolina Press). It explores the remarkable everyday stories of sound recordings and shows us a new way to listen to the past. It shares murder ballads and oral histories from Appalachia, the Afrofuturistic music of Sun Ra in Chicago, and the inner thoughts of monk and writer Thomas Merton in Kentucky. Each chapter reveals rich historical contexts of the recordings, and introduces us to people and places connected to them. The result is a new, interdisciplinary approach to sound archives, listening, music composition, creative practice, and community engagement.
Drawing upon Harnetty’s two-decade career as an artist and researcher, Noisy Memory builds upon and expands the tradition of composers and artists writing about their work. A unique combination of ethnography, memoir, philosophical text, and creative process book, it presents both scholarly and creative approaches to ethically working with sound archives.
In the compilation Noisy Memory: Music from the Book, you’ll find tracks from each of the albums discussed in the book. You’ll also find several recordings from the Berea Appalachian Sound Archives in Kentucky, recordings that inspired the projects that came out of Harnetty’s time there.
The albums that this compilation draws from:
American Winter (2007)
Silent City (2009)
Rawhead and Bloodybones (2015)
The Star Faced One: From the Sun Ra/El Saturn Archives (2013)
Shawnee, Ohio (2019)
Words and Silences (2022)
The Workbench (2024)
TRACKS:
Boy (from Shawnee, Ohio)
He Is Knocking - The Pritchard Quartet (from the Berea Archives)
Sleeping In the Driveway (from Silent City)
I’ll Cross the Briny Ocean, I’ll Cross the Deep Blue Sea (from American Winter)
Girl I Left Behind - Walter McNew (from the Berea Archives)
Merrywise (from Rawhead and Bloodybones)
Sound of an Unperplexed Wren (from Words and Silences)
Tarry With Me - Chalmer Howard (from the Berea Archives)
That’s Drunkard’s Dream, Nearly Everybody Knows It (from American Winter)
Greedy Bear (from Rawhead and Bloodybones)
Marshall (from The Star-Faced One)
Breath, Water, Silence (from Words and Silences)
Neva (from Shawnee, Ohio)
The Workbench (from The Workbench)
Some Glad Day (from Silent City)
For a more in-depth look into all of the recordings from the book, alongside the lyrics, images, videos, and scores, you can find them in this media companion here:
ALBUM COVER
MORE INFO
Label: Winesap Records
Release date: 8/26/2025
Format: Digital
Total Time: 1:10:55
Genre: Archival chamber music
Hometown: Columbus, Ohio
Influences: Michael Finnissy, Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros, Moondog, Charles Ives, Sun Ra, Harry Partch, Frederic Rzewski
SOCIAL
CONTACT/WEBSITE
brian@brianharnetty.com
www.brianharnetty.com
CREDITS
Mastering: Cauliflower Audio
Catalog #: Winesap 010
