| Profile: Ashley/Story | |
 | Based in Ohio, Dwight Ashley and Tim Story have each on their own amassed a significant collection of unique and interesting work. Dwight Ashley's frostbound expressionism is both familiar and new, while Tim Story composes music that is open and elegant. By working together as the collective Ashley/Story, their music has progressed into areas neither could have reached individually. |
| For Dwight Ashley & Tim Story, the mutual concern is finding and exploring aural space. Their interest reflects a fundamental curiosity not only in the process of discovery, but in the spaces they ultimately find themselves in. Although their pieces often begin as an exploration of sound and texture, the music is not aimless. With most of the experimentation carried out in the early stages, each piece evolves its own particular structure and form over a period of time. | 
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This duo thinks of music as Organized Sound and spends a significant amount of time in the assembly phase where musical elements are meticulously conceived and composed in hopes of creating a pre-determined emotional or aesthetic effect.
Prior to their performance at The Gatherings Concert Series on 19 November 2005, Ashley/Story existed solely as a studio project. Their three albums A Desperate Serenity (1991), Drop (1998) and Standing + Falling (2005) lead the listener on a journey from the irrational to the fantastic while exploring the dark beauty of dread, obsession and sublime ambiguity. Their work is a fascinating mix of intriguing textures, dark ambience and curious melodies. | |
 | On their albums, Ashley/Story have achieved a careful blend of melody, atmosphere and mystery. They produce unusual and disquieting releases; something beyond Ambient. The mood on their albums effortlessly sways from the sincerely beautiful to the haunting and discordant, without the cliches used by most. The manipulation of sound varies, from reverberant grand piano, to tremulous tape loops and restrained, subtly altered electronics, processed or enhanced as conflicting, shifting moods are evoked. Their works develop a subtle tension which makes for bracing listening. |
 New Album Info : Standing and Falling by Ashley/Story:
Recording artists Tim Story and Dwight Ashley are known for creating introspective albums that probe the more shadowy side of the human psyche. But with their latest collaboration, Standing + Falling, the Ashley/Story perspective turns outward, exploring a curious, color-soaked soundscape replete with surprising twists and turns. Produced over the span of eight years, Standing + Falling evokes a corresponding sense of time and space, like a slow, sonic ride on an otherworldly Orient Express, with scenery that grows more exotic from track to track. Real-world audio textures suggest a sense of place - but Ashley/Story's idiosyncratic electronic orchestration renders that place unlike any we've seen or visited. Listeners familiar with Story's taut, haunting melodies or Ashley's dark, guitar-soaked drones may be surprised at a distinctly different element on this album: humor. Track titles like "Ohmen," "Chicken Pot Pie," and "The Curve of Spee" give clue to the listener that even the darker tracks on Standing and Falling are punctuated with witty compositional elements that give the album a wryly cheerful character. Standing + Falling is an inventive collection of electronic tone poems, arguably the most programmatic Ashley/Story effort to date. Artifacts in a sonic curiosity shop... audio postcards from an alternate universe... pictures at an exhibition of subatomic worlds... whatever one sees in the mind's eye, Standing and Falling will take the listener on a richly textured voyage between the ears. - http://www.ashleystory.com Available 30 August 2005 | |
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| Following his upcoming performance at The Gatherings, Dwight Ashley will transfer over to STAR'S END Ambient Radio for a live in-studio radio concert of all new original Ambient material. Tune in to the 11.16.08 broadcast of STAR'S END for the live on-air in-studio radio concert beginning at 1:00am at 88.5fm WXPN in Philadelphia or access the live webcast. For details, please access the Update page | |
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