...i listen to the wind that obliterates my traces by Steve Roden

The rub between visual and aural lends the package its uneasy, but nonetheless intoxicating, strangeness. The collection’s photographs offer no sense of context other than “antique.” By contrast, the music, which is annotated inside the book, is situated inside particularly American frameworks - from folk and blues music to vaudeville and traditional pop. This is all annotated by a lengthy poetic essay by Roden that attempts to create a social and poetic context from the ephemeral, and is underscored by epigraphs from writers from James Agee, Joseph Roth, and William Wordsworth to Pär Lagerqvist and Gerhart Hauptmann. The music ranges from the well known - Bradley Kincaid's 1928 recording of 'Froggie Went A-Courtin' and Ukulele Ike's '(I'm Cryin' 'Cause I Know I'm) Losing You' - to virtually unknown sides taken from home recordings. This beautifully hardbound book also contains two CDs containing 51 songs recorded between approximately 1914-1955, taken from 78s and acetates.

It contains a book of photographs of musicians - mostly unknown - and others related to the hearing of music. The label's latest chapter, however familiar its sonic contents may be, is one of its most mysterious, mercurial offerings yet.I Listen to the Wind That Obliterates My Traces: Music in Vernacular Photographs 1880-1955 is compiled from the personal collection of interdisciplinary sound and visual artist Steve Roden. Devotees of both the music and its fetishistic packaging have grown exponentially.

Hardcore fans of 20th century music, be it gospel, blues, old-timey, sermons, folk, country, African, Asian, etc., have always been drawn to the Dust-to-Digital imprint since the label's first box set, Goodbye, Babylon, issued in 2004 it consists of five CDs containing 135 religious songs recorded between 1902-1960, and another disc of 25 sermons cut between 1926-1940, all packaged in a wooden coffin-like box containing a 200-page book and cotton bolls for packing.

...i listen to the wind that obliterates my traces by Steve Roden