© 2001

Nothing To See Here was a special release in 2001 by Manifold Records label owner Vince Harrigan for his sub label Desolat Recordings. Vince collected boxes of old photographs at estate sales and flea markets that were "old somber black and whites from long-forgotten people, landscapes and blurry places". He wanted to create a CD cover and design where each cover would be like a small photo album with a single photograph affixed to the front with old-timey picture corners. "A strange family album full of ghosts and sad noise". Every CD had its own unique photo mounted on it. Vince asked 310 if they would like to put together some beatless dark ambient style music for the CD.

310 had been designing their CD's with an old photograph on the cover up until that point and this design idea was taking that concept to a whole new level with each CD having an actual photograph attached. 310 dove in and came up with 15 short dark ambient tracks that they called Short Stories and had no song titles on the CD. The title for the CD was Nothing To See Here - Short Stories by 310.

Vince says, "In much the same way that I believe that records are actually time machines, I also believe that photographs are as close to being haunted by ghosts as a thing can get."

For this new download release 310 have collected fifteen of the covers and embedded an individual cover photo to each of the fifteen tracks for the mp3 version. All of the tracks are numbered Nothing To See Here 01-15. As a bonus with the download, a video for the first Nothing To See Here track is included as an mp4 file.


Milkfactory Review from 2001 by Bruno Lasnier:

Nothing To See Here comes as a very limited edition CD only album. Each copy is presented in a specially designed packaging fronted by an authentic black and white photograph. Manifold Records boss Vince Harrigan got the idea after he started collecting photographs found in diverse flea markets, and asked 310's Tim Donovan and Joseph Dierker to collaborate on a new ambient project to kick off Manifold's sister label Desolat Recordings.

Subtitled Short Stories By 310, Nothing To See Here is a collection of fifteen untitled tracks built around disembodied samples taken from old black and white movies. Moving away from their urban constructions, the duo present here a much darker set of abstract atmospheres, where excerpts of conversations, decontextualized environmental noises and scraps of more elaborated musical structures tirelessly cross the spectrum without apparent motive. Donovan and Dierker create dense, magmatic soundscapes, reminiscent of Biosphere's Substrata expeditions. Here though, the open spaces are replaced by less polished, more disquieting ambiences, suggesting confined environments and claustrophobic situations. Nothing To See Here opens with the sound of running water, and as the track slowly evolves into a sonic clockwork mechanism, counting down seconds of passed moments, the album leaps into sculptural impressions of isolationist worlds. The impressive consistency of sound achieved by the duo all the way through this album means that nothing comes to disturb the inherent nature of the tracks, even when human interferences seem to drag the listener back to reality. The treatments applied on voices especially are more intricate than in the band's previous work. Not only do 310 intentionally extract words from conversations to serve their purpose, but they also distract their audience from any possible context by inserting other vital elements of human life. Only towards the end of the album a rational question is thrown as an invitation to relive or pursue the experience, depending on your frame of mind.

Nothing To See Here is an ambitious record, and one that only 310 could manage to keep on track without indulging in useless sonic landscaping. The duo go back to the source of their music, as they abandon for a moment beats and urban references to explore new grounds.


Vince Harrigan's story about how old photographs came
to be on the cover of Nothing To See Here:

I loved sorting through old pictures. I'd go to estate sales and buy all I could with absolutely no plan. I'd just sit and sort through them, looking, reading any scribbles on the back. One day I scored this absolutely gigantic set of photographs, and I was so excited. This was thousands of pictures of one family spanning almost a hundred years, heavy on 60s ending in the 1980's. But after months of looking at all these strange people in unknown rooms, the changes of years and decades showing on the faces as the images moved from black & white to gaudy Polaroid and on to slick colored matte finish, I started to feel guilty - and a little haunted.

Some family had lost a priceless treasure, purchased for next to nothing by some random person. I felt compelled to return them somehow. It wasn't easy. I guess families fall apart and drift away. The fact that some stranger ends up with your families memories kinda proves it. After years of looking I found a relation. She said it was weird that I'd finally found her when I did, because her father, the son of the elderly couple whose estate sale I got the pictures from, was in the process of dying. He was featured in many of the pictures. I rushed this gigantic box to her and heard nothing. Silence. For months. I couldn't stand it, I needed to know. I'd lived with these pictures for years. There were pictures from someone being in prison. There were 1970's prom pictures. Christmas trees. A vacation to Hawaii in the 1960's. I felt like I knew the people in them and I needed to know something. I don't know what that something was but I was still haunted. So I reached out. She said her father had died, but that before he did he got to look through all those pictures and remember. Some of the pictures he had never seen, and some he hadn't seen in decades but she said that it was a very nice thing for him to get to do.  I sure hope it was.

I don't buy old photographs anymore, as a rule. If I did, it would only ever be ones that didn't feature people in them. No faces and no more strangers. Just landscapes, buildings and empty rooms. I don't want to be responsible for anyone else's ghosts again.