‘MACHINE’S SONG’ is the latest installment of music and sound from multi-instrumentalist/composer Robert Stillman. The album presents Stillman’s self-described ‘archaeo-futuristic’ sound in all of its ragged glory: a varied musical territory of fairground organs, marching band percussion, piano rags, and ticking mechanical music, all in various states of construction/deconstruction. Bearing audible influences of Kurt Weill, John Fahey, and Jelly Roll Morton, Stillman’s music moves fluidly between Americana-infused song and 1950′s style sound-collage, emerging from a tape-hiss canvas like a broadcast from sometime between 1878 and 2078.

Produced over the course of 4 years, MACHINE’S SONG is based on repertoire Stillman composed for performance as a ‘one-man-band’, a format combining piano and foot-operated drums in a fully manual rig (with no looper pedals in sight). More than a simple recording of this music, ‘Machine’s Song’, (to quote Stillman’s liner notes) is an attempt to ‘document his mind’ during a solo performance in which ‘the performer himself plays perhaps four sounds, but in his head, imagines many’. Thus, his production augments the piano and drums with layers of organs, percussion, woodwinds, and brass (all, except trumpet, played by Stillman). The result is a music filled with off-kilter minimalist structures, machine-like clangs, and ticking rhythms portraying the aesthetic of ‘man-machine merger in which device inherits breath.’

Each composition is presented in two forms (one preceding the other), the ‘Song’, and it’s dream- counterpart, the ‘Collage’. Though wordless, the music evokes vivid imagery, filled with subtle detail that reveals itself gradually over repeated listens.

The music on this release (Stillman’s third) is characterized both by lyrical, filmic qualities of his 2005 debut, ‘Robert Stillman’s Horses’, as well as by energetic sonic experimentation of last year’s ‘Master Box.’ His uncategorizable sound is no doubt a reflection of his omnivorous musical career, which has seen him collaborating with Here We Go Magic and Kurt Weisman (Feathers) as well as playing drums for noise-rock outfit ‘The End of the World’ and sharing stages with acts as diverse as Dirty Projectors, Hauschka, Deerhoof, and Casiotone for the Painfully Alone.

Machine’s Song comes housed in a reverse-board untreated card spined sleeve, the physical CD comes in a paper inner alongside a 10”X15” digital print poster of the experimental, printing block, collage-style imagery of Alan Brignull, created using metal foundry type and old printing blocks, letterpress printed on an Adana ‘8-5’ platen press; this imagery is then brought to life by the Dada-inspired text design of Anna Fewster, together creating the perfect visual accompaniment to Stillman’s music.