1. The Americanization of Shmuel (20:55) Eli Neuman-Hammond

2. But a storm is blowing from Paradise (19:45) Ella Heron and Eli Neuman-Hammond

“The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.” -Walter Benjamin, 1940

A family sings and listens together, trying to remember lullabies–lost, teetering on the edge of memory and language.

An old man recollects moments in his life from before and after World War II.

The wind ebbs and flows, shifting and eroding syllables.

An artist plays with time in his studio.

The Americanization of Shmuel is a historical sound work trying to make small bits of meaning from the debris that the angel of history leaves in its wake. It’s a polyphonic, multilingual map of songs, places, movements, and assimilation, made in eighteen sections There are recorded fragments. And then there is the wind, the noise, an inverted floor, at times the tide, a valley, snow, sleep–and always a screen, which both masks and becomes a surface of projection.

In But a storm is blowing from Paradise, Ella Heron works with the structure and meaning of the first piece to make a scaffolding for improvised saxophone.

Recorded by Eli Neuman-Hammond 2019-2025. Mastered by Sean McCann. Released on El Gallo de Oro in 2025, elgallo1.

The Americanization of Shmuel (20:55) - mp3 sample

But a storm is blowing from Paradise (19:45) - mp3 sample