The Californian project that turned harsh noise into a study in contrast: Jonathan Borges's crude electronics set, from 2008, against Shannon Kennedy's handmade, bowed acoustic instruments.
Pedestrian Deposit is the American experimental project the Bureau files at Tier ∅ as a distinctive voice in 2000s noise and a connector through its own label. Jonathan Borges began it in the winter of 2000, in the relative isolation of California's Central San Joaquin Valley and while still a teenager, on a simple idea: layer unrelated electronic sounds together with no predetermined relation until they were mixed. The first tapes appeared on his own Monorail Trespassing label from 2001, and the early material was fairly straightforward harsh noise.
What lifted it out of the harsh-noise crowd was a steady move toward composition. Borges routed his crude electronics, tape loops, field recordings and controlled feedback through the formal discipline of musique concrète and a strong streak of emotional intent, and across a prolific few years he released on Hospital Productions, Hanson Records and his own imprint. The album Fatale (2006), a Hospital and Hanson co-release, is widely held the high point of the solo phase, after which the project went quiet for two years.
It returned in 2008 as a duo, and this is the decisive change. The cellist and multimedia artist Shannon Kennedy joined, bringing self-designed instruments: bowed and amplified metal frames, violins built from tree branches, physically activated apparatus made of wood, metal, water and ice. Her arrival steered the project away from sheer harshness toward a more meditative, sculptural sound, built on the contrast between Borges's raw electronics and Kennedy's refined, often beautiful acoustic textures. The live performances became physical and durational, the handmade instruments as much sculpture as sound source.
The Monorail Trespassing label is part of the story. Active since 2001, it has been a steady California outlet for harsh noise, drone and experimental sound, with releases by Aaron Dilloway, Werewolf Jerusalem and Shredded Nerve among many others, making Borges a connector node in the American underground as well as a maker within it.
The Bureau's reading. Pedestrian Deposit is filed at Tier ∅ as a distinctive American experimental project, notable for turning harsh noise into a music of extreme contrast and for the sculptural, handmade instrumentation of its duo phase, and as a connector through the Monorail Trespassing label.
Filed by Bureau editor · VAGO · c. the Anthropocene · last revised c. the Anthropocene