Academy Records and Matt Hanner

Steve Lacy: The Specter is the title of the piece. I’m working with an artist who has passed away. I knew Matt; he was a very close friend of mine.

Narrator: Steve Lacy, the founder of Academy Records, an organization that provides a platform for performances, exhibitions, and sound works, collaborated with Hanner. 

Steve Lacy: The audio recording on vinyl record is Matt’s, and the wall drawing and the film will be mine. The piece was recorded in Chicago on 9/11, 2001, right after the government had grounded all flights. So Matt at the time was living on a flight path to O’Hare, and it was not uncommon to hear these jets. 

And so Matt just had the wherewithal to record the sound of his backyard with this sound of no jets. And when you listen to the piece there’s long minutes where you don’t hear anything except maybe the sound of the recording device. And then you’ll hear a dog bark in the background, or you’ll hear a car door, then you’ll hear a neighbor walking down the sidewalk or something. So it is a very minimal piece that plays with your attention, I guess. It begs your attention. Cause it could be easily dismissed. So even that piece itself, I thought, because it’s the sound of—the sound of absence, that it could make its presence known as this physical vinyl record.