Bluetung - Eternity by the Stars [Theory Therapy]

Eternity by the Stars is the new album by Sydney-based sound artist Bluetung aka Mitchell J.G. Reynolds.

There is a limited run of 50 cassettes. In addition to Bluetung's album, anyone who purchases a tape will also receive a private digital download to a bonus release, featuring 8 remixes by 𝒃𝒂𝒅 𝒍𝒔𝒅 𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒑𝒔, 𝑭𝒍𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑻 𝑴 𝒁𝒆𝒊𝒔𝒊𝒈, 𝑯𝒂𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒕 𝑱𝒐𝒏𝒆𝒔, 𝑵𝒊𝒄𝒐 𝑵𝒊𝒒𝒖𝒐, 𝑶𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝑱𝒐𝒆, 𝑻𝒓𝒐𝒕𝒉, 𝑾𝒂?𝒔𝒕𝒆 and 𝑾𝒚𝒕𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔. Keep an eye on your inbox. The bonus album will be emailed to you within 48 hours (pre-orders will receive it after June 30th).

“In conversation, Bluetung mentions Blanqui’s 1872 𝙀𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙨, a soft reference for this album. A prison text of left-wing melancholy, Blanqui’s is a severely romantic and silly and tender cosmology, wherein the fix-ed stars themselves, ruled by a Principle of Plenitude, evidence the eternal task of revolutionary communism against a universe filled with 19th century suffering.

At the turn of the century, Russian cosmist Fyodorovich Fyodorov worried that Capitalism might ‘transfer to heaven the imperfections of the Earth.’ In contrast, Blanqui writes of a universe already filled with worlds like ours. A firmament of our Earth’s past and future 𝑡𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑠 —of offworld parallel timelines (do we live in the worst of all timelines?)—our extraterrestrial comrades ‘dressed in in pants and cardigan, in crinoline and in chignon’ may be more or less tormented or more or less basking in an alternate world saved by the breaking of chains.

Not to juxtapose Bluetung’s guitar playing entirely to Blanqui’s lovely and tragic vision… but maybe it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that if you squinted your ear, the guitar on this album might be heard to speak the same conflicted language of simultaneous alternatives: sad when it is Major; optimistic when it is Minor. These melodies are poignant, like the 1968 invention of a phaser guitar pedal, when the folk-riff, on electric guitar, proposed in its lead lines that an endlessly repeated song could capture a possible world presenced by and through eternal struggle.

It seems quite right to hear such referential chorusing on Bluetung’s album. One instrument, played tragically alone, is given the effect of being a group of people playing in tandem, slightly delayed, gracefully detuned, shifted along in oscillation and then combined together. Bluetung achieves this effect in I’m sure quite a complex and sophisticated manner, and importantly, the guitar isn’t the only sound to be minutely and intricately mingled with twins of its own delay. When I played the album loudly, what I mistook as a background of highly textured ornaments of whitish noise, I noticed instead to be the rustle of distinct, individually voiced and almost giddy gestures.

Taking a hint from Blanqui… is the ever moving up and down frequency of a flanger applied to the foreground and background of a song not at all indicative of the starry thing or fix-ed circlet (celestial body :’’)) which flickers by the grey stretch of night, by the Starlink satellites all in line, reminding whatever looks up that there are unknowable infinities in this great nothing?”
－ Emile Frankel

We acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the traditional custodians of the Country upon which Theory Therapy and Low End Theorists was founded, and recognise that sovereignty has not been ceded. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and emerging.
---
Mitchell J.G. Reynolds: Guitars, Synthesisers, Homemade Serge Voltron panel, Treatments & Mixing
Cameron Arden: Ciat-Lonbarde Cocoquantus on 3, 6 and 8
Mara Schwerdtfeger: Viola and Arrangements on ‘Province Céleste’
Butcherbird at Kings Billabong, Mildura: Solo on ‘Seafroth’
Joseph Buchan: Mastering
Artwork: Kata Szász

Recorded on Wurundjeri land, at the Myrtle Academy for Physics & Sonics, 2022.

Dearest thanks and love to Krishtie, Joe (.jpeg Artefacts), Hattie, Ella, Harry (Club Moss), Mara, Nico, Justin Daisart, Emile, Cooper AST, Jim Yunzero, Jordan OBA and anyone listening.