From artists Elizabeth Veldon and Sean Derrick Cooper Marquardt comes For Chelsea Manning, a tribute in drone to the recently-convicted Army leaker. “Chelsea Manning is a queer hero,” reads the description of the album by Veldon’s record label, Queering the Black Circle. “She is a role model for socially and politically engaged queer people.”
The two-track album opens with “Beauty So Difficult Chelsea” by Marquardt, a burbling, amorphous landscape, and closes with “For Chelsea Manning,” a 35-minute drone from Veldon. The extreme duration of “For Chelsea Manning,” which mostly sits on a single note and its overtones, manages to alternately express quiet, sedate comfort and creeping dread, while the granual rumble of “Beauty So Difficult” continually recedes and reemerges, evoking a slowly ebbing tide.
Stream and download the album here.
