Norman W. Long – BLACK BROWN GRAY GREEN


To be released on CD, cassette, and digitally on 09/10/21. Clear black tape with white imprints. CD packaged in a mini-LP jacket. Artwork by HausMo Max. This is the catalog page with album information and artwork. To view the store page, click here.

Norman W. Long is a Chicago-based sound artist. His practice involves walking, listening, improvising, performing, recording and composing to create environments and situations in which he and the audience are engaged in dialogues about memory space, value, silence and the invisible. Long has performed and toured as a member of Angel Bat Dawid and Tha Brothahood, and has collaborated with Dan Bitney and John Herndon (Tortoise), Standing On the Corner, Damon Locks (Black Monument Ensemble, The Eternals), Lia Kohl, and Sara Zalek, among many other artists. BLACK BROWN GRAY GREEN, Long’s first album released on Hausu Mountain, follows releases on Reserve Matinee. The album compiles two years of recording soundscapes from the post-industrial sites and urban areas of Chicago’s southeast side, presented along with a live pre-pandemic performance recorded at Experimental Sound Studio in 2019.

On BLACK BROWN GRAY GREEN, Norman W. Long presents dense collages that highlight the pure textural qualities of the environmental sound he captures: insects and birds chirping, the distant hum of machinery, the resonance of the open space around him, the muted burble of a hydrophone submerged in water. Long manipulates and processes his field recordings with a semi-modular analog synth and effects units, transforming familiar sounds into abstracted dollops of pointillist synthesis, abrasive volleys of noise, and stochastic grooves made up of elliptical percussive bursts. While some of his sessions flow through diverse narratives marked by regular introductions of contrasting tones, rhythmic figures, and mix-consuming washes of texture, other pieces draw their power from presenting the natural environment without any obvious human manipulation, beyond the subtle murmur of his electronic processing somewhere in the background. The balance between Long’s active recontextualization of his field recordings and his decisions to let them breathe in their unmodulated forms casts BLACK BROWN GRAY GREEN as a meditation on the relationship between humanity and the forces of nature present in post-industrial urban environments within Chicago’s Black and Brown communities.

Norman W. Long’s own statement about BLACK BROWN GRAY GREEN, written in March, 2021:

“I do not know what it means to listen now. But it is a good question as I sit and listen to a community isolated from the rest of the city of Chicago. I live in South Deering, a community on the south-east side of Chicago. It is a majority Black and Brown community that straddles residential, industrial, and wasted space. Single family homes surrounded by land fills, factories, rail yards, brown fields, and un/underused industrial structures. Most work sites are still open (if they haven’t been abandoned due to disinvestment). Many in the community have been given essential (sacrificial) worker status leaving themselves vulnerable to COVID-19 while many others are unemployed due to work stoppages and lay-offs. During the isolation order, I was able to walk and record my local nature trail. This trail opened in my neighborhood last fall. It was converted from an open space wetland/prairie with no community access to Marian R. Byrnes Park on the south-east side of Chicago with walking trails. The prairie is located between a residential neighborhood and a large rail yard. It was my intention along with my creative partner Sara Zalek to lead a soundwalk at Byrnes Park before the stay at home order was implemented. I’ve led several soundwalks here in Chicago and elsewhere. One of the exercises I introduce to the group before we start our walk is a breathing exercise where we focus on our breath by concentrating on our inhalations and exhalations. Before I did any walking meditation or performing, I started with breathing exercises. That was the foundation for my practice of self-care, listening, composing and performing. Disconnection is a process. That process is fueled by white supremacy and capitalism. African Americans experience and witness this disconnection to our environment, economy, sense of self and place. With these walks we are brought back to our bodies, our time and our space. I invite you to listen as part of the collective field because as we listen and sound we expand our awareness of our connection and disconnection.

This mindfulness practice of breathing brought me back to the COVID-19 respiratory virus, and the murder of George Floyd. In both of these instances, African Americans are more vulnerable to contract the virus and more likely to be murdered by police. There is also the fact that most areas with high rates of air pollution and toxicity are overwhelmingly poor and African-American or Latinx. When we breathe we are mindful of our mind/body/land connection, our connection to each other and our connection to those who cannot breathe. We can breathe for them and listen to the streets, the noises and disruptions and join in the chorus that demands justice for Black and Brown people all over the world.”

Norman W. Long has performed and exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center, Experimental Sound Studio, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Links Hall, Elastic Arts, Chicago Humanities Festival, Chicago Cultural Center and 2017 PRIZM Art Fair (Miami). Long has received 3Arts Award for Visual Art in 2011, 3Arts Djerassi (Woodside, CA) Artists Residency Fellowship in 2014, BOLT Artist in Residence at the Chicago Artists Coalition in 2014-2015, 3Arts Fellowship for AS220 (Providence, RI) 2017 Artist in Residence program, Three Walls RaD Lab and Outside the walls Fellow for 2017-2019 and Guest Composer at EMS Elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm, Sweden made possible in part by the City of Chicago’s DCASE grant. Norman was named one of Chicago’s Top 50 artists by New City Chicago in 2020.