Dust-to-Digital hosts 7-inch release party tonight at Contemporary Art Center

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Au Clair de la Lune from Dust-to-Digital on Vimeo.-

This week Parlortone Records, the vinyl imprint of Dust-to-Digital debuted with the release of “Au Clair de la Lune” a one-sided 7-inch that features a 20-second recording of what the label calls the earliest intelligible recording of the human voice. The record captures a recording made in France on April 9, 1860 — 17 years before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph.-

To celebrate Dust-to-Digital is hosting a release party at The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center tonight as part of the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center’s monthly Avant Garden series.-

The recording was captured by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, who invented a very strange process by which a tuning fork was affixed to a piece of paper that was suspended over an oil lamp. Vibrations on the paper recorded patterns in the smoke which were then turned into sound.-

It’s a gorgeous and noisy record that clouds the haunting voice of a young woman singing somewhere beneath a din of dust, crackle and hiss — it’s not unlike listening to the voice of a ghost.-

The Contemporary Arts Center will have a camera set up and will be asking people “if their voice was going to be the first thing ever recorded, what would they say?”-

FREE. 6 p.m. First listening of the record starts at 6:30 p.m. Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. 535 Means St. 404.688.1970.