STEVE JANSEN & MAIYA HERSHEY SHARE NEW ALBUM 'NEITHER PRESENT NOR ABSENT'
RELEASED BY THE STATE51 CONSPIRACY 

 

After musical paths crossed between London based Steve Jansen and Portugal based Maiya Hershey,
both artists set to explore the space haunted by the aesthetic of the past, creating sonic works inspired by
fragile themes and distillations over the course of
one year.

 

Steve Jansen, the English multi-instrumentalist, composer and record producer, is best known for his
work with the art pop band, Japan and subsequent solo works. Maiya Hershey is an audiovisual artist
and sound designer whose interest in anthropologyand philosophy forms part of her creative process.
The duo's musical collaboration and the accompanying album expands upon it's title and their mutual
interest in experimenting with sonic techniques and exploring their connectedness with identity and the past.

 

During the course of the year, Steve and Maiya experimented with piano loops and the direct manipulation of
sound sources in an attempt to parse out new sonically-based compositional forms. With their debut record,
'Neither Present Nor Absent', both artists explore ghost stories over a collection of five drone-based, ambient
works.

 

 

The state51 Conspiracy release is a welcome rendering of 'Neither Present Nor Absent' as a physical artefact,
with James Ginzburg of Emptyset and other projects remastering it for vinyl.

'Neither Present Nor Absent' is available on a limited run of 12” heavyweight black vinyl.