On the origins of 7.10.12
Within Milorad Pavić’s ‘Dictionary of the Khazars’ there is a reproduction of the illustrated title page from the original Joannes Daubmannus editon of the ‘Lexicon Cosri’ (Khazar Dictionary). Within that title page is the publication date, 1691, which is a rotational ambigram, or vertical palindrome.
The recordings that make up the album, ‘7.10.12’, were originally intended to be released as a trilogy of 12-inch singles, one every few months. While the mastering process was underway for this, the vinyl record format was, naturally, very much in our thinking. The chance encounter with 1691 led to a wider consideration of the significance that some dates attract due to their numerical sequence and the realisation that the date 7 October 2012, when expressed numerically in the Gregorian little-endian format, is 7.10.12 – the three diameter sizes, in inches, in which vinyl records are manufactured.
Within 24 hours of the 1691 encounter, we were able to convince alt.vinyl to completely change the concept of the project from three 12-inch singles to a boxed set, equivalent to an album, containing a 7-inch, a 10-inch and a 12-inch record, and for it to be released on the seventh day of the tenth month in the twelfth year.
Why Daubmannus chose to publish his lexicon in 1691, a date that remains the same when turned upside down, is unknown to us.
:zoviet*france:
Newcastle upon Tyne, January 2013
Limited to 250 copies.
“Devoid of any pictorial imagery or narrative text, this is a set of three label-less heavy weight translucent records – a 7-inch, 10-inch and 12-inch – housed (suspended and separated) in a custom made heavy textured card archive clam shell lined box along with traces of the area’s unfathomable prehistory: a blind rubbing – a paper impression – taken from one of the neolithic cup and ring carved stones that pepper the region and a vial containing dried hawthorn berries, a tree with imbued with much pre-Christian metaphysical meaning.” – Label press release
Nothing can be opened unless it has first been closed (Lamargi)
conceived and designed by :zoviet*france:
mastered for vinyl by Patrick Klem at Klemflastic Sound
alt.vinyl av040/av041/av042
altvinyl.com
© 2012 copyright control :zoviet*france:
Disc 1: 45rpm; Discs 2 & 3: 33rpm
