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ILLUSION OF SAFETY & Z'EV

by ILLUSION OF SAFETY & Z'EV

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Pro CD-R. Full B/W art in a jewel case with on-disc printing, shrink-wrapped.

    Includes unlimited streaming of ILLUSION OF SAFETY & Z'EV via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Included with the new IOS/Z'EV CD-r edition & digital download. Plus the 7" vinyl picture disc released by Syntactic in a numbered edition of 111 in 1995 (#8, #7, #28, #13). Comes in a clear sleeve with a folded 2 sided and hand-numbered cover sheet by Kurt Griesch & butterfly collage on each side of the record by Daniel Burke. Limited to 111 hand-numbered copies. Contains live fragments from a performance at Bach, Vienna, Austria on 5/23/95 by Burke & Griesch.

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  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 43 Illusion of Safety releases available on Bandcamp and save 50%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Pastoral, IOS40, Live @No Fun 2008, Hz, Frontal, Longform One, ORGAN CHOIR DRONE, Schmetterling Ep, and 35 more. , and , .

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  • 12" Black Vinyl edition Illusion of Safety & Z'EV
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    12" Vinyl pressed at Monotype Poland. Mastered by Zach Adams. comes with a double-sided full color foldout insert/poster with gold foil print. The jacket is full color, as are the labels. 140 gram vinyl. edition of 250 black, 100 clear. Beautiful artwork by Bradley Kokay.

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  • Z'EV/IOS black vinyl edition + Digital + IOS LIVE & HOLEIST 12" Vinyl LP Bundle
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Included with the new IOS/Z'EV LP black Vinyl edition & digital download is our 2nd Vinyl 12" record record released in 1989 on our own label Complacency. Illusion of Safety LIVE from 3 performances in 1989 includes the former members Mitch Enderle (Dead Tech), Mark Klein, & one Jim O'Rourke although he will deny it! Side 2 is HOLEIST project Jeph Jerman (Hands To) Eric Lunde (Boy Dirt Car) and Dan Burke (IOS). Recorded in the comfort of Lunde's living room using the new Mirage sampler. This is old/new stock, they were never shrink wrapped the jackets do show some signs of wear. Vinyl is unplayed, i copy is unsealed the other is sealed with the sticker

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  • Z'EV/IOS black vinyl edition + Digital + More Violence and Geography 12" Vinyl LP Bundle
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Included with the new IOS/Z'EV LP black Vinyl edition & digital download is our first record released in 1988 on our own label Complacency. This is old/new stock, they were never shrink wrapped so the jacket may show some minimal signs of wear and I suspect the record may have been played once or twice but these are copies were held by Mark since back in the day and I have a few extra. Black Vinyl 12" Complacency Productions CPD01001

    Includes unlimited streaming of ILLUSION OF SAFETY & Z'EV via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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  • Clear Vinyl edition
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Edition of 100 clear vinyl copies, full color labels, black poly-lined sleeves, printed spines on full color jackets. 140 gram vinyl.

    Includes unlimited streaming of ILLUSION OF SAFETY & Z'EV via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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about

Notes from the desk of Arvo Zylo:
I had been riding Daniel Burke for probably eight years about this release. For some time, it had been finished, and it was said that Z'ev had a label who was releasing it. It came to be that Z'ev had sent a lot of things to a lot of labels, and this one fell through the cracks somehow.

Since then, of course, Z'ev has passed on (2017, R.I.P.), and Illusion of Safety had ceased operations (2014), at least under that moniker. Daniel Burke now operates under the name "Soundoferror", and has reinvigorated Illusion of Safety after a (nother) 7+ year hiatus, and a 30+ year long run and a rotating cast of talented contributors. Through this process of evolution, Illusion of Safety helped shape the various nondenominational movements within the annals of 1980s cassette culture, as well as industrial / experimental / noise / ambient music on the whole. This is to say, releases under the name "Illusion of Safety" have been scarce for some time, and it is never known how scarce they will continue to be.

As for Z'ev, it's hard to imagine anyone reading this to fall short of knowing how immense his influence was. Active since the 70s, and highly instrumental in the development of metal percussion within the context of industrial, experimental, & noise music, and later to some extent, hardcore/gabber music, Z'ev created instruments out of discarded industrial materials, and that process evolved into structures that can be swung back and forth like marionettes, or in some cases were self-operable devices. Later on, he grew to embrace drone and ambient music in addition to continuing his works for percussion until his passing in 2017.

What we have here is a potent cocktail of scrap metal, processed field recordings, modular synthesis, and plenty of aptly placed intermittent percussive clatter. The overall impression I'm left with is a very calculated sound collage that still feels like the sonic equivalent of a deep epiphany, or maybe a catalyst for one. What seems like a casual interweaving of a wide range of unexpected elements slowly becomes sewn together into a journey that makes perfect sense, but leaves the listener wanting more at the same time. Both of these intensely driven characters continued to evolve and change creatively over decades, into new and challenging directions, while others have come and gone, and still more continue to be one-trick-ponies. That Daniel Burke and Z'ev did collude during our short tenure on this earth is certainly a matter worthy of applause, and simply could not sit on the shelf any longer.

The art for the jacket, labels, and insert is by Bradley Kokay, who does xerox collage work in real time, but sometimes also in public, in addition to other styles of art with gel transfers and things. The insert image is taken from an 8 foot collage created live.



MASTERED BY ZACH ADAMS
ART BY BRADLEY KOKAY•LAYOUT BY ARVO ZYLO
GRAPHICS ASSISTANT: DON HAUGEN•
PECIAL THANKS TO TERRY FOLDENAUER
CO-RELEASED BY: NO PART OF IT, FEAST OF HATE AND FEAR, CIPHER PRODUCTIONS, OXIDATION, KORM PLASTICS, DRONE RECORDS, PERSONAL ARCHIVES, PUBLIC EYESORE, TRIBE TAPES, LIQUID DEATH RECORD

credits

released November 28, 2022

All sound by Daniel Burke & Z'EV.
A mail collaboration begun in 2008 finalized in 2012.
At the conclusion of the Z'EV & Illusion of Safety performance at Enemy in Chicago in 2007, Z'EV approached me to work together on a release. In 2008 he provided me with a number of short recordings (half of which are yet to be used) of acoustic sources which like his live performance sounded very rich and surprisingly electronic (and not much in the way of percussive). With his source material I structured the album sides adding field recordings, sampling, electro-acoustics, and Eurorack modular synth, before returning to him for additional treatments. It should be noted that although there is a fair amount of field recordings and the newly arrived Eurorack modular present on these recordings Z'EV's sounds are fully present and are very much at the forefront of this record. He was not only about banging and clanging, seeing him perform live it was an eye opener to the subtleties and seeming electronic nature of bowing, dragging, & caressing metal. -D.b.

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Illusion of Safety Elgin, Illinois

Since 1983, Burke and his many conspirators under the IOS banner have over the course of 40+ releases traversed most every facet of the avant sound plane, from early industrial pop deconstruction to blindingly minimal sound art to densely surreal found-sound collage, creating uneasy music that is dense and dystopian and yet also beautiful. ... more

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