Propeller

Propeller is a Vancouver based collective of no fixed membership save the hands of Mark Spybey. Spybey is known for his work as Dead Voices On Air, who have released several albums for Invisible Records. He also worked with Download and Zoviet France.
Propeller started it's life in England, 1992. It was there that Spybey recorded with his childhood friend Richard Sanderson, who is a mainstay of London's vibrant free improvisational scene. The pair recorded versions of songs that they had worked on in the late '70's, as well as numerous pieces inspired by their fascination with spontaneous composition and noisy improvisational music. It is hoped that these recordings will be cleaned up and released.

Rame 1996


The first album, Rame, released early in 1996, was a 34 track collage of sounds, youth songs and sooth sayings. It was packaged cryptically in a stained copper sleeve. It sold out quickly.Rame was a quick fire collection of sonic fragments, isolationist doodles, half truths, archived recordings and low fi ambience. Oro is a more coherent sophomore. It features processed electric and acoustic guitars. Pulsed beats made from acoustic sources. Drones made from electric objects. Chants and vocal improvisations by Eric Pounder, a long time collaborator plays on the CD. He was a member of Chicago's Lab Report and now simply works under the name "Pounder."

"This was a labour of love conceived with some Vancouver friends.None of whom had made any commercial recordings before or since.More so,it was a major logistic undertaking due to our use of copper.Poor Keith of Scratch Records and Superconductor.One memorable moment came when we visited a metal supplier in Richmond,BC.We were entertained by a craggy salesman who regailed us with stories of worldwide copper politics and recipes for staining the metal.In the absence of horse urine,we used my own organic-vegetarian brand refined through the consumption of wine.We had a human conveyer belt production system down at
Scratch to make the sleeves. I conservatively estimate that by the time it was finished,around 30 people had worked on producing the package."
Mark

Oro 1998

Oro comes packaged in a cardboard envelope designed by The Climax Golden Twins, embossed with gold lettering.


Spybey resurrected Propeller's Do It Yourself Disposable Music ethos when he was invited to submit a 30 second piece for a CD Rom project in 1995. Why become so fascinated by first take spontaneity? Propeller seeks to create compact music. Music that expressively captures a moment in time or a dynamic (between the musicians, between the musicians and their instruments and between the music and the listener ). It's deliberately ambiguous in intent. You won't find deceptive melodies or catchy hooks here. It's not gratuitous noise either. It's carefully sculpted once recorded and laid out for the listener to play with. To explore.