Playlist

Preface

"'. . . We are despised: Minerva and Diana
Are in revolt against me; Ceres' daughter
Will remain virgin, if we let her have
Her present affectations. For both our sakes,
Join the young goddess with her loving uncle.'
And Cupid, searching through this quiver, found
The sharpest shaft of all, and sent it flying
From the bow bent at his knee, and the barb struck deep
In Pluto's heart."
-Ovid "Metamorphoses" (translated by Rolfe Humphries)

Texts

Streamed

Wayward in Limbo

"With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series now moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is curating and commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of exclusive material. Many of these will be essentially 'live' performances recorded at home for this occasion. Others may create a mix of pre-recorded material that has not been previously released elsewhere."
- from the Wayward Music Series website at https://www.waywardmusic.org/.

June 20, 2020
Marina Albero
solo piano and hammer dulcimer improvisations

tethered continuities
arrived at by another experience
without question

world without meta-thought or reflection
prior to or innocent of

these are water colors of musics
deflected from wandering outside
by rutted roads
letting feeling flow wistful and placid

all bounds firmly in place
time is left behind

June 21, 2020
Beth Fleenor (Crystal Beth)
Inside Outside

let us breathe

(that's easy)

long comfort loops cushion our floating
incense and fabric hangings
soul masseuse

let go what may be held tight
there's the spot

the ape aggression
channel it for focus
(Beth boxing)

we are brought back down

undoes itself
to close

benedictus

June 25, 2020
Lori Goldston
Yellowstone Score

impressions (like Rich Little):
but here:
im-instrumentations of:
a circle of didjeridus all being played by Jimi Hendrix

inflections
where the flux flexes
or inflects or fluctuates

the stones that shape the surface shift in their beds

magmatic flow
ooze hum

the river of plastic mineral beneath
plays a planettheremin

the age of resin spheres

the core is an open string

Recorded

June 20, 2020
Polonaise in B-flat Major, op. posth - Frédéric Chopin - Peter Katin

composed at the age of seven or so (1817)
one might guess Schubert
music for home use, elegant but not ornate

Symphony in D minor (#7) - Felix Mendelssohn - English Bach Festival Orchestra, William Boughton

polyphony reflowers
firmly enlightened

These string symphonies are often compared to Beethoven because of the counterpoint, but Mendelssohn was more fluent in imitating counterpoint than Beethoven was. This is music for musicians, for sure. The last movement has a great opening moment: something is about to happen! A fugue of course. Once fugue infiltrates a piece it gets everywhere.

Impromptu in F minor, Op. 142 #1 - Franz Schubert - Murray Perahia

That guitar-string-plucking-like undulation in the middle register must be a bear to control. Lovely modulations.

6 Studies on Caprices by Paganani, Op. 3 - Robert Schumann - Peter Frankl

fingery at a prestidigitous rate

The practioners of pianism were starting to find where they could push their newly fangled thingumabob. First they discover mimicry, a comic routine, a puppet show. Eusebius takes over. The use of all the registers is spectacular.

Grande Messe des Morts, Op. 5 - Hector Berlioz - London Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Chorus, Wandsworth School Boys' Choir, Colin Davis, Ronald Dowd

There is no wasted sound in this. Berlioz rethought each instrument afresh.

When I was at the University of Washington I sang first tenor in the chorus for a performance of this piece. There are moments listening now I find myself thinking along with my old part.

If you are going to commit word painting then be as blatantly literal as you possibly can. There is no sense trying to hide what you're doing.

Why were Requiems such an idée fixe for the Romantics? Was it the death thing or the Mozart thing? Were they all trying to finish Mozart's?

What a megalomaniac this guy was.

Frère Jacques in funeral tones, what Mahler borrowed in his first symphony.

Political satire? Rex Tremendae? in 1837? in Paris? Who would that have been?

The size of the forces forces the slow rate of affect drama and the massive granularity of the details. He pushes it as far as he can. These massive productions with hundreds of people involved must have been important to the revolutionary survivors - morale boost? regicidal remorse?

The famous trombones and flutes in the Hostias are trying to imitate, or create anew, the image of a pre-Gothic soundworld. Then he freakyweirds it.

Overture to Russlan and Ludmilla - Mikhail Glinka - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner

a little opera complete

June 21, 2020
Tannhäuser, Act I - Richard Wagner - Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Josef Greindl, Wolfgang Windgassen, Eberhard, Waechter, Gerhard Stolze, Franz Crass, Georg Paskuda, Gerd Nienstedt, Anja Silja, Grace Bumbry, Else-Margrete Gardelli, Chor der Bayreuther Festspiele, Wilhelm Pitz

He's not exactly the master of transitions, or of timing.

when you open your opera in Orgy-Central
where you gonna go?

Sorry ma'am, I want to marry a nice girl.
that'll go well

The style of singing, as a thing in itself, is crude and unattractive. It does fill a big space bigger than life.

In these pre-leitmotif days he makes whole swaths of music stand for broad ideas - like immovable stage sets. They are too unwieldy to penetrate the drama, so he uses filler scrubbing. He is obsessed with enunciating his words, the music tags along stiffly.

Now he sets them all singing all manly, the Romantic ideal of brotherhood. Women are not a part of this, not even the nice girls.

So the act starts with an onstage (actual) orgy and ends with a vocal (projected) orgy. He did know how to story-board.

Es muss ein Wunderbares sein - Franz Liszt - Thomas Quasthoff, Justus Zeyen

Harmonic shifts are controlled so that each note within them is essential.

Where are you, little star? - Modest Mussorgsky - Benjamin Luxon, David Willison

each note, like Liszt above, is planned so that the harmonies go to the wrong inversion and spacing, in just the right way to ring like a bell.

June 22, 2020
Quartet in A, op. 26 - Johannes Brahms - Eastman Quartet

passionate utterances kept within bounds of contrapuntal comportment
drawing room social

Scherzo a la Russe, Op. 1#1 - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Ramzi Yassa

concert piece for large audience with piano virtuoso obbligato

June 23, 2020
Messe in F minor - Anton Bruckner - Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Eugen Jochum, Maria Stader, Claudia Hellmann, Ernst Haefliger, Kim Borg, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Kurt Prestel

reaching without
ever reaching

holding patterns
can't hold

Kyrie as a piece
is never a piece
it is an image of experiencing a piece

what it is of the Haydnesque model:
not the outlines
but the flesh
outside the lines

processes the text
with us
activating liturgy

pert little hosanna entrance
leads into a massive sound
and goes out before we can grasp
how it doesn't fit
like everything else

we are within a space
in which Mass is being

Symphonic Variations on an Original Theme - Antonín Dvořák - London Symphony Orchestra, Istvan Kertesz

The short tripartite theme imparts a Chaconne or Passacaglia playfulness and wit to the enterprise. The oddly balanced phrase lengths keep it moving, spilling over itself, or pausing for breath.

More costume changes than Cher could shake a stick at.

fugue de rigeur and stretto dire
everybody POLKA!
flash finish
the crowd goes wild

Capriccio espagnol, Op. 34 - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Jarvi

imperial spectacle
we bring it all to you
right here in sunny St. Petersburg

June 24, 2020
Symphony in G minor (#1) - Carl Nielsen - London Symphony Orchestra, Ole Schmidt

Outer Europe promotes its own National Composers and they are ever after cast in that role leading to guys like Shostakovitch being political prisoners in their own home. I wonder if some of the urgency in their music is the friction between a musical and a nationalist ambition.

Nielsen improves on Brahms in his willingness to work honestly with twisted chromatic knots, not putting bows on them and dressing them up all pious. He doesn't seem interested in big tune excrescence. His material is concerned with itself, not the impression it will make on a popular audience - a distinctly modern sensibility. Its undergirdings are part of the show. Fierce and taut.

In Session at the Tintinabulary and Outposts

June 15, 2020
STE-026 200615 - Aaron Keyt

Aaron forwarded his contribution this past week so I was able to assemble:

Banned Quarantiniad 200615 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Quarantiniad 200615

June 27, 2020
Maple Leaf 200627 - Keith Eisenbrey

Keith Eisenbrey · Maple Leaf 200627

I was hoping to capture the dawn chorus this morning, but the birds were shy - possibly due to the cloudy weather. Here is an hour plus of our local outdoor sound starting at about 4:15 AM.

Postscripts

woman forgot the water god's flame in

which about saying that it enjoys

eternal life yet it does not work thus

of grid mounted objects

an owl with scrolled eyes

a crone on a hill

Playlist

Preface

"......... although music stands alone, I don't mean that it is defenseless, --- that it can be interpreted freely. It is necessary to stipulate          that each music puts forth its own language.          It is necessary to stipulate         that each music desires its own context.          It is necessary to stipulate         that each music prepares its own ground from which all external articulation becomes possible."
- J. K. Randall "ADVT.: Repeat After Me" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts 

Streamed

June 13, 2020
Your Mother Should Know (Neal Kosály-Meyer)

Performance! Art!

Karen sings along to the computer image, since she couldn't be there. The lighting is harsh and abstracts the image to match the abstraction of the sound that comes through the stream.

Yellow shirt: Mr. Mustard in the library.

Wayward in Limbo

"With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series now moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is curating and commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of exclusive material. Many of these will be essentially 'live' performances recorded at home for this occasion. Others may create a mix of pre-recorded material that has not been previously released elsewhere."
- from the Wayward Music Series website at https://www.waywardmusic.org/.

June 13, 2020
Cruel Diagonals (Megan Mitchell)

Groups of like sounds are the matter, and they are spacious. Pressure from nothing sustains them, tatters them. Vocal sound group orients us to our ground, our stand spot, our place from which. Drum sound groups are the other bodies. Electric humming (sinister) is sealed off, malevolent. Industrial voices, cloistered, scene by scene, room by room, in a mechanized process.

June 14, 2020
Kole Galbraith "Kennewick Man"

at first we were going there on foot
we may now be there
a low tone throbs
a white noise also throbs, but goes
other tones are here now

so far everything comes in from inaudible in a slow fade
. . . there, ictuses
but only in re-iteration of an already present tone
the differently paced throbbings of tones allow various groups of tones to shift their balance in respect of each other - a kind of melodic motion in which we can choose our path with minimal coercion
radiochatter choppiness in some tones
an outside is incoming
it vanishes, except the low throb, which is now a faster constant pulse, an engine below
another group of throbbing sounds throbs
our rate of passage is constant, inexorable
long waves on a low slant shore
we are moving but not by foot nor in any direction

except now that we have moved we find where we had been headed
back into the space of a room with synthesizers in it
or perhaps in a small boat in a quiet spot
shovel in loam

June 16, 2020
Paul Kikuchi
Paul Kikuchi, Miuri Remi, Nakamura Hitomi, Christopher Yomei Bladsel, Tajima Kazue

a succession of layered removes all at the same remove
filmlike - flat screen

now we may be outside in a quiet space
then quieter

inside surrounds us with long bowed string tones

we wander to holler into echoes halloo!
the halloo!ed hollers

Recorded

June 13, 2020
Missa Pape Marcelli - Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina - King's College Choir, Cambridge, David Wilcocks

the uniformity of script
hold the book quietly

the language of this is for study, it is studying its text, shaping it as it goes

plastic polyphony
his lump of clay

cathedrals are for singing in
they are made to sing by singing in them

Mass for Four Voices - William Byrd - BBC Singers, Bo Holton

turbulent

a voice, a part of a counterpoint, can be realized by a single voice, sung by one

or can be realized by a group of such, who thus, share a voice

tempo change sneaks in through clever quasi hemiolas

The poetic patterning of the liturgy helped shape the later forms of classical European art music, the looping and staggered entrances of imitative counterpoint

June 14, 2020
L'Orfeo, Act I - Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi - Ensemble La Venexiana, Claudio Cavina

so hopeful!

the structure of this narrative:
tiny scenes like sentences
promenade-ritornello
larger scenes like paragraphs
so artificial, this structure
so mannered
but that just makes it more believable as a story

opera began as a literary conceit
and never budged

Passameze, Gaillarde - Michael Praetorius - New London Consort, Philip Pickett [from Dances from Terpsichore]

uplifting
triumphal
fit for a king

Two Noels - Nicolas Lebègue - Marie-Claire Alain

organ music is always in a dialog with its space
space talks back

Praeludium in G minor - Dieterich Buxtehude - Simone Stella

a long tale with subplots
before the talkies
melodramatic
and funny too

Come, Redeemer of Mankind - Johann Pachelbel - Howard Wolvington [recorded during service at the University Temple United Methodist Church, December 8, 2019]

building these monumental technologies to serve the word, in the guise of the verses behind the chorale tune, monumenting scripture

La Descente d'Orphee aux Enfers, Act I - Marc-Antoine Charpentier - Les Arts Florissants, William Christie, Patricia Petibon, Monique Zanetti, Katalin Karolyi, Sophie Daneman, Paul Agnew, Jean-Francois Gardeil, Steve Dugardin, Francois Piolino, Fernand Bernadi

refined
never before more so or since
Baroque: another service economy (heads rolled) it sparkles!
rolling heads sparkle

when operas were tone paintings
they are even named that way, as if they were a painting
not the whole myth, just the one scene
music is color time
revolutionary creativity would not be tolerated
it was necessary to practice subterfuge
suddenly these cardboard cutouts came to life on stage
we have been sucked in
the power of myth and drama: formidable

the history of record keeping and record retrieving - of scholarship - is ripe with regicide

Bach (JS) is the wrong lens through which to understand the Baroque
He was looking forward, as should we

Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir BWV 131 - Johann Sebastian Bach - Gächinger Kantorei, Helmuth Rilling, Kathrin Graf, Arleen Auger, Gabriele Schnaut, Helen Watts, Adalbert Kraus, Kurt Equiluz, Wolfgang Schone, Figuralchor der Gedachtniskirche Stuttgart, Bach-Collegium Stuttgart

The BWV folks should have bent and called this one 130.

the text has seeped into the frame
it fairly drips with it
chorale melodies float through like ghosts

text includes commentary in poly-directional text space
mash up of mix and mash parts until it moves like a body

Sonata in A minor - George Frideric Handel - Michala Petri, Keith Jarrett

recorder and harpsichord

Duets are about the right size of thing for Handel. In close quarters the energetic folk element can activate.

virtuosic displays :: in the royal era :: see what fine talent I command :: show off for my friends, low clown

June 16, 2020
Dixieme Ordre - François Couperin - Kenneth Gilbert

Each thought is given its just proportion
celebration of rectitude
no innocents led astray
stay put or move by step
by step
by step
tyranny of the barline is addressed with playful repetitions and immovables
clever mechanicals

June 17, 2020
Die Wohltemperierte Klavier, Band I, Prelude and Fugue in C Major - Johann Sebastian Bach - Christiane Jaccottet

the unsustained arpeggiations above the sustained notes keep those lower strings vibrating and lively

fugue cadence: arrival at tonic area - chromatic cadenza - resolution

Sonata in C Major - Georg Philipp Telemann - Michala Petri, Elisabeth Selin

two recorders

the super power of recorders is their precision of intonation
there is no mistaking it
and no fudging
merciless

Sonata in A Major Wq 48.6 - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Bob van Asperen

harpsichord

grinds to halts
doubles backs
abouts faces
misses entirelies
forgets whereabouts

several time schemes competing for space
packed

June 18, 2020
Symphony in A Major (#14) - Franz Joseph Haydn - Hanover Band, Roy Goodman

how corners are turned and where they hide
I guess we're exploring
politely domestic
paternal calm decorum
how to be a good servant
do not disturb
do not observe
nor let in

Symphony in F (#6) K. 43 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Academy of Ancient Music, Jaap Schröder, Christopher Hogwood

scrubby energy standing in for what he hadn't thought of yet, or couldn't
laden with tasteful balance

Sonata in C Major, Op. 10#1 - Ludwig van Beethoven - Artur Schnabel

impatient
all the same material
all the same figures
but nothing will be the same ever again

the balance is implied, but not explicit
no need nor time for that

slow movement sneak attack
hints of keys like show of dagger from under cloak
the violence inherent in the system
affect riot

ends in sullen smolder

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 15, 2020
Bannedecameron 200615 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

Keith Eisenbrey · Bannedecameron 200615

We had hoped for Neal to call, but there were communication issues that day so it was just Karen and me on the porch at the Tintinabulary.

Postscripts

the always seemed so suited to the flock

friend brick factory had a stained a grimy

was copper in back the tin minister's

increment

through matrix

trace result

Playlist

Preface

"From darkened rooms there are those
who peer out through glass more than
half-masked by blinds or shades and
I from a different vantage point
wonder what I wonder at."
- J. K. Randall "ADVT.: Repeat After Me" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streamed

Wayward in Limbo

"With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series now moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is curating and commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of exclusive material. Many of these will be essentially 'live' performances recorded at home for this occasion. Others may create a mix of pre-recorded material that has not been previously released elsewhere."
- from the Wayward Music Series website at https://www.waywardmusic.org/

June 6, 2020
Noel Brass Jr. - Quarantine Dreams

gentle from the inside and throughout (floats like motes)
finds darker moments embedded in still moving comfort
keeps hold of gentle from outside and through-in

"Jazz-chordal sensibility," if I may be allowed the expression:
::
stacked thirds freely inverted
or with degrees of third-ness invertible
or thirds-degree functionality (as might be scale degree function on a scale of thirds)
with relation to its key
being at a more distant conceptual remove than in classical tendency
its a long way back to tetrachords
::

these chords slip through each other

June 7, 2020
Amy Denio

1. Improvisation #2
2. Improvisation #3
3. New York City
4. New Jersey
5. Roma Italia
6. Connecticut
7. Improvisation #8
8. Detroit
9. Improvisation #7

mouth shapes

vowel blends

cords reeds loops

syllables

melody plays breakdance diphthongs
buoyantly agile in her mouth

June 11, 2020
Bill Horist - Reverse Transcriptase – Bite the Hand that Feeds the Gift Horse in the Mouth (parts I-V)

taut wires whose vibrations
as excited by the guitarist
translated into electromagnetic signals
as input to signal modifiers
controlled by algorithms
manipulated by the algorithm manipulatist
to produce a complex electromagnetic signal
to excite mechanical devices
that produce sound based on those signals
which sound is interpreted
by us
as music

(and quite successfully too)

multiple interweaving parts like voices might imitate mouth cavern shape shifts or drums in rooms
pulse patterns bump against each other

all the parts are gathered in a room
layers of parts come and go
rooms are differently sized from each angle
a sense of templedom prevails

Recorded

June 6, 2020
Track 10 - High Class Wreckage [Live at The Funhouse July 2011]

The guys kept this one together long enough for the guitar solo and all the verses. Drum and bass are the responsible parties.

Track 10 - Pouch [Live at The Funhouse July 2011]

that so useful Batman motif
budubudubudubudu

Chronic Guilt - Vision - Yuni in Taxco [from Slow Charade]


filters out
for presentability
to match the color of the sofa
the song wanders around
he had more words to say
not that he's letting on what many of them are
or why they belong together
poetic rhetoric rubbed smooth
grooving on their own emanations

Human Connection (B Side) - Koko and the Sweetmeats [from Sacrifice]


could be re-arranged into a believable
American Folk Songs for Psychedelicized Youth
underlying blues sensibility to the guitar playing and vocal
one could even image Smokestack doing this (see below)

Wanna Go Home - Smokestack and The Foothill Fury [from America's Freedom Death March]


isometer
so the parts fit together

Photographic Memory - Curtains For You [from After Nights Without Sleep]


going for the full McCartney
with a Grofé clip clop hidden in the backstory
g'night guys campfire on the Alki beach singalong

Night Signals - Journey to the Sea (underlying electronic track) [begin] - S. Eric Scribner [from The Storm Sound Cycle]

The initial motion is ours.
We move into it.

We begin to  hear through the thick distant frogghosts the sounds of shorebirds or barking seals. Temples mark the milestones along the pilgrim paths. The frogghost hiss is nearer as our steed snorts and snuffles. The niche temples progress. Each nearness new. Shaker frogghosts. It breathes! Or air moves through across the lip of it. A journey but not in a straight line nor a temporally sequential one.

||: here then here then back :|

Stations we pass
(the listening ear's we)
I listen in that person

to be continued . . .

June 7, 2020
Night Signals - Journey to the Sea (underlying electronic track) [finish] - S. Eric Scribner [from The Storm Sound Cycle]

. . . continued:
passage from what might be bird song and what might be sea mammal song
above and below the surface
to what might be ours

distant and low
just catching on awareness

Some sound in the right speaker is disturbing our cat, Ibb. She came right up to it to investigate. Ears nose whiskers eyes.

Sleepless Nights - Eddie Vedder [from Ukulele Songs]

verses : statements and pleas
chorus: questions

Goat Rodeo - Goat Rodeo [from The Goat Rodeo Sessions]

rootless

contains stylistic elements

Keys, Wallet, Phone, Gun - Full Toilet [from Full Toilet 7"]

brilliance in bursts of bullets

Magician's Best Trick - Courtney Marie Andrews [from No One's Slate Is Clean]

repentance unspooled
waltz over talk field

unilateral negotiation for
a hypothetical return

but the door shuts

Track 11 - High Class Wreckage [Live at The Funhouse July 2011]

thrill ride
rocket powered downhill surfing

a whole mini-set at the end of the set
with a big fat cadence to close

thanks guys!

Empire's Ending (B Side) - Koko and the Sweetmeats [from Sacrifice]


distant
behind screens of strums and reverbs

Maybe - Smokestack and The Foothill Fury [from America's Freedom Death March]


vocal line traces an articulated mark without lifting its finger from paper. (Harold and the Purple Crayon)

Soundform III (underlying electronic track) - S. Eric Scribner [from The Storm Sound Cycle]

forcing open old doors

Once In a While - Eddie Vedder [from Ukulele Songs]

a knack for threading the needle
sailing the exact course
through Scylla and Charybdis

Ten Dead - Full Toilet [from Full Toilet 7"]

packed in a narrow crate

Dust and Dirt (bonus) - Smokestack and The Foothill Fury [from America's Freedom Death March]


rooted in personal concerns
one to one social
immediately understandable concerns

June 8, 2020
Through a Glass Darkly (underlying electronic track) - S. Eric Scribner [from The Storm Sound Cycle]

It is raining in the sound on the recording.

It starts as naturalistic, a sound field recording with cracks and chinks through which poke glimpses of music. The thunder made the cat run off. As it gets going the set of music bits has similarities to some aspects of Group Variations - its particular flavor of synthesizer sound and rhythm.

Waving Palms - Eddie Vedder [from Ukulele Songs]

a figure study

He's Dead - Full Toilet [from Full Toilet 7"]

slow in comparison to the other cuts, and longer - a whole 1'13"

held by tongs
at a distant
don't let go of it
drop it in the bucket

Music is a Weapon Worth Using - Smokestack and The Foothill Fury [from America's Freedom Death March]


a figure study with doubles

Song from Deep Silence (underlying electronic track) - S. Eric Scribner [from The Storm Sound Cycle]

recorded piano offset tunings
grouped figures by types of offset and vectors of tuning
post-prepared piano

inside the piano the old-fashioned way
inside like inside its head
messing with it

Tonight You Belong To Me - Eddie Vedder [from Ukulele Songs]

fireside song for share a song sing along
here's one I know
shall we do?

Frogscape (underlying electronic track) - S. Eric Scribner [from The Storm Sound Cycle]

guiro scrape guitar in several directions
attempts to stand upright

Dream a Little Dream - Eddie Vedder [from Ukulele Songs]

a cover I presume
g'nighty night lullaby

Blinding Light (demo) - Stephanie

recorded from the drum throne?
mostly the cymbal of which there is plenty
appealing though, I wish I could hear better what they're singing

June 9, 2020
Day Signals - Sonic Nebula (underlying electronic track) - S. Eric Scribner [from The Storm Sound Cycle]

Its cloudness is more than just the fuzzy fade in fade out (-ness)

more than the textural staticality, more than the uncertainty
(of what is that?)

we are in a tank or culvert

more than all the elements comprising, more than their ionic potentials swarming

more than all it occludes
more than all it pursues
more than all it reveals

than its aimless rage
its flame

this cloud talks
its unvoiced syllables
occupy tongued caverns

more than all it engulfs

Twist 'Til Death - The Downstrokes



twist party cardio workout song

Soundform IV (underlying electronic track) - S. Eric Scribner [from The Storm Sound Cycle]

a spot to stop and rest
view from a distance above

Nobody - Pouch

strictly carved

Consort of Voices (underlying electronic track) - S. Eric Scribner [from The Storm Sound Cycle]

I remember, as to The Storm Sound Cycle, something about a chord derived from some sound that was part of the basis for much of it. One of the pieces came closest to simply being that chord, composed out in a more blatant way, and this last may be that piece. Even so there is care taken not to push it to the foreground. Its elucidation as itself insists on subterfugal means. It is underneath where it can't be heard. Its loftiest partials being barely audible at our lowest range.

scan of a still land
alien earth
bells and birds and rumbling

June 10, 2020
Sound Scrolls 7 Four Places on Planet Earth - S. Eric Scribner

frogs birds body bumping hum fire or water hoot wood cracking thunder like an epilogue

Can we be four places at once?

If
one is of two minds
each place at once
need only be
in two for
the two
to be
in four.

frogs in channels
fade out on the squawk bird

June 11, 2020
Pental - Bruce Hamilton

The path is, it seems, made difficult to follow, clever fox, or follows the path of most resistance.
Trace the scent of look elsewhere.

cartoon fish swimming through a bleep bloop level

how did we end up at a Pink Floyd type recorded party-sound party?

Quixingshan - String Quartet 2 (midi version) -  Benjamin Boretz

start here

split here

from here

start here

again

step back

start here

split here back

start

St. Andrews Night Recovered - Benjamin Boretz, Dorota Czerner

spooling and spool

no part of this is part of this

spool

there is no piece

perpetual dissolution

dis-spooling

step

by

step

A Special Note from Your Blogger

Soon after I began collecting recorded music I began to catalog it. At first this was done on 3x5 note cards. Early in the 90's I moved the catalog to computer, using a database program that my brother Paul wrote. Later I moved it to Paradox, briefly to the Open Office database, and finally to Excel where it currently resides. One of the fields, without being overly fussy about it, is the date of composition or release.

Being a systematic fellow I started listening through the collection chronologically - in groups of years. At first I was incrementing by 50 years, i.e., I might be listing to all the recorded music I have from the years 1750, 1800, 1850, etc. For a decade or more now, I have been using a 5 year increment. Since February of 2014 I have been listening through that portion of the collection indexed to years that end in "1" or "6."

This last Thursday, the 11th, that set of years was exhausted. Next week it is on to the years ending in "2" and "7." Careful readers will notice a sudden influx of older music. I peeked ahead. There is great stuff out there. I look forward to enjoying it with you.

In Session at the Tintinabulary and Outposts

June 1-2, 2020
Banned Quarantiniad 200601-02 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Quarantiniad 200601-02

I assembled the recordings we made on the first and second. I piled them high.

Postscripts

any was hooked fingers through the mesh big
mcmurphy he with his lady bell's he
said the least black let girl onto behind

circle voice
more than one
monologue in the world

Playlist

Preface

"What a word means is probabilistic contingent on the historical fortuity of its entry point into the language-world experience, equi-valently noded infinitely universalizing hairy tangled network of its everaccumulating meaning-range in everunrolling speakwordtime."
- Benjamin Boretz "two notebook entries 1981" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streamed

May 30, 2020
Cait and Locke Live

Our friend Caitlin Olive and two young gentlemen with full righteous beards played and sang some fun songs on guitar and violin and shakers in a living room. This was quite enjoyable low-key informal stuff, and clearly all concerned were having a blast.

Interesting item to note: a tendency to play to (presumably) one's image on the screen rather than to the (very tiny) camera. This skews eye contact in a way that makes the audience out in streamed-to land seem to themselves invisible or absent. I'm not sure the MTV always-stare-unblinking-right-into-the-camera solution is any better - it is certainly more heavy handed - just slightly less disconcerting.

Caitlin's 6 year-old nibling, making their on-line premiere, had no such problem. They looked right at us. I suggested in the remarks that they ought to grab a tambourine - which they did - and stole the show. But hey, shows are meant to be stolen.

Thanks guys!!

Wayward in Limbo

"With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series now moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is curating and commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of exclusive material. Many of these will be essentially 'live' performances recorded at home for this occasion. Others may create a mix of pre-recorded material that has not been previously released elsewhere."
- from the Wayward Music Series website at https://www.waywardmusic.org/

May 30, 2020
Dale Lloyd

liquid dripping into liquid in a long tube space
a still texture

pitched bells approach each tone
repeating at a constant interval
stimulating the accumulation of sense
the assertion of presence

the liquid dripping into liquid
does not assert
so we don't invent a person behind it
only ourselves in front of it

then we are aloft but apart
winged
shoulders adjusting to passing currents to stay aloft

the bells return
each in tri-iterant  presentation

hide us as we sough over wavelets on the hard shore
where bells blend
and undulate

May 31, 2020
Kate Olson "KO Solo"
prompts from Brian Eno's and Peter Schmidt's "Oblique Strategies"

1 "Emphasize Flaws"
sanctuary copse for peace mind
remain long enough
for play mind to emerge

2 "Short Circuit"
patchwork patch work
variously layered transparencies accumulating in a sequence
amply paced so that each new patch layer is explored before moving on to the layering on of the next

where it is going and where it gets to
is not part of this
any more than it would be of a quilt

3 "Look at the Order in Which You Do Things"
the classically oriented composer in me brings a complaint:
essentially, they are so much the same as each other, they don't consider how they make themselves from within themselves.

but that is likely the wrong stance from which to consider these.
admirably, they are not masterwork art pieces
they are constructed spaces for enclosing us
shaped with care
and some playfulness
to be friendly and comforting
healing perhaps

June 4, 2020
noisepoetnobody (Casey Chittenden Jones)

waters flowing distant explosives somewhere a hum soughing comes and goes gentle rasp bilabial unvoiced

when did the brook burble go electric?

boot squeaks in magnetospheric snow fall
the hum constant
slowly cauterizes even electric footfall

a room has been entered

Recorded

May 30, 2020
Bronx Zoo Hobo - Curtains For You [from After Nights Without Sleep]



bounces and floats along
like a hum for walking
that sort of hum

Track 8 - High Class Wreckage [Live at The Funhouse July 2011]

digs in

Track 8 - Pouch [Live at The Funhouse July 2011]

chugs with discipline
3 moments the same
one moment lifted
falls back on the same
chug chug chug chug power suit

Sigourney Weaver - White Orange [from White Orange]

getting a load of that swimmy flange
it must have been a real thing back in the elevens

and might one wonder if it is intended or understood to be intended to invoke some particular drug effect - like the instantly recognizable LSD trip film montages, that old Easy Rider trope.

Peaceful Man - Yuni in Taxco [from Slow Charade]



I'm real calm
on a level of chill

My Brain Came From a Factory (B Side) - Koko and the Sweetmeats [from Sacrifice]



along with the rest of my anatomy
life in the Brave New World
going to the desert once again

to be malleable
I learn
is to be hammerable
shapeable without breaking

Winds of the Sun (underlying electronic track) - S. Eric Scribner [from The Storm Sound Cycle]

throbbing below humming below thorax
extremely careful shift of weight
from part of tone to part of tone

the sound is a body and the sound body has massive plates in plastic balance

Long Lonesome Road - Smokestack and The Foothill Fury [from America's Freedom Death March]



blues voice:
a. proportion of and differentiation between the nodes of voice
b. where it rings at each register
c. high mid low

May 31, 2020
At The Start - Shelby Earl [from Burn The Boats]



song parts (verse chorus bridge) have a typical size to them
even though the specific terminology of a culture might differ
and though the patterning of those parts may be other than ours

then a mix of loop mash to finish

You're True - Eddie Vedder [from Ukulele Songs]

the ukulele is pressed into heroic service
to support such a wide ranging song and large voice

it doesn't inflate the song
it only just holds it up
revealing the song's weight

High Water - Star Anna and The Laughing Dogs [from Alone In This Together]

not
a memory of a regret

but
regretting a memory

Flat Bars - Paul Rubenstein [from Solo Trios]



a yarn
strands wound around each other
each strand is homogeneous to itself
and congruent with the others

No One But You - Goat Rodeo [from The Goat Rodeo Sessions]

with a vocal and harmony
played in that this is a Serious Movie tempo
no laughs here
the mood of serious Hallmark adulting

WYPL / Shut Up - Full Toilet [from Full Toilet 7"]

more song parts
whose size
is calipered for effect

the cleverly humorous lyrics don't detract much from the clarity of how it goes

Georgia Guilt - Courtney Marie Andrews [from No One's Slate Is Clean]

the self aware heartbreaker
thrives on heartbreak
(rough life)

Friends - Yuni in Taxco [from Sanpaku]



the purpose of the feedback opening is like that of a calling card's typescript

this song uses its sound technology
considerately with the tempo of its argument as a song

Past Lives - Whitney Ballen [from White Feathers, White Linens]



in the roar of traffic
a little pick-up line

The Day I Stole Your Car - Curtains For You [from After Nights Without Sleep]



collaborations find a weight of sound and tensile bounce
earthbound bounce

Magnetic Fields (underlying electronic track) - S. Eric Scribner [from The Storm Sound Cycle]

billows without edges
limits and curves come back around

June 2, 2020
Track 9 - High Class Wreckage [Live at The Funhouse July 2011]

ready to fall apart any moment because it pretty much is falling apart
a string must have broken

Track 9 - Pouch [Live at The Funhouse July 2011]

whereas
these guys
have it together

All Seems Fair - Yuni in Taxco [from Slow Charade]



relies on special effects when it shouldn't need to
its clothes don't fit

Outer Space, Beyond the Sun (B Side) - Koko and the Sweetmeats [from Sacrifice]



same problem
maybe a bit smarter as a song
but essentially as monochromatic as an effects film

Against the Wall - Smokestack and The Foothill Fury [from America's Freedom Death March]



yes
banjo sticks and voice
nothing in the way
doesn't hide
what they are doing in the world

Burn the Boats (Part 1) - Shelby Earl [from Burn The Boats]



epilogue

Nightmare Town - The Downstrokes

horror film as novelty punk song
innocuously unpretentious

Open Your Eyes - Curtains For You [from After Nights Without Sleep]



musicianly arrangement
lots going on but always clear

Malacandra (underlying electronic track) - S. Eric Scribner [from The Storm Sound Cycle]

undulating drones
protective layers
to the (from the)
molten core of gooey stone bubbling further in
slower than consciousness can keep up with
nor grasp

ascending from the deep
must be done slowly

descending from the surface even more so
inverting descent
to the crystal gates

June 4, 2020
Light Today - Eddie Vedder [from Ukulele Songs]

tetrachordal stepwise from top to bottom

Alone In This Together (Radio Edition) - Star Anna and The Laughing Dogs [from Alone In This Together]

a slow tumbling tune

9xxoxxoxx - Paul Rubenstein [from Solo Trios]



thin violin
stumbling figures
polyproportional overlaps
ends in a moment
unlikely
together

13:8 - Goat Rodeo [from The Goat Rodeo Sessions]

how fast
why

aptitude as an end

Hotel Five-Star - Full Toilet [from Full Toilet 7"]

no welcome to overstay

Dear Sister - Courtney Marie Andrews [from No One's Slate Is Clean]

can't leave dysfunctionality
the warm sound of guitars keep hold
plead

The End - Whitney Ballen [from White Feathers, White Linens]



music boxes and winding them up

In the Last of Your Light - Curtains For You [from After Nights Without Sleep]



lots of music box and kalimba tonight

tune and harmony lounge over the keyboard figures
(I'm not convinced by the bridge)
why this isn't a hemiola: a hemiola goes into 2 (or 3) from 3 (or 2)
this never leaves 3

Soundform II (underlying electronic track) - S. Eric Scribner [from The Storm Sound Cycle]

the phantoms are thick here
limbs crack
under them
to ease their weight

kindling sparks
abiding by winter

an omen

In Session at the Tintinabulary and Outposts

June 1, 2020
Bannedecameron 200601 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Keith Eisenbrey · Bannedecameron 200601

Karen and I were on the porch at the Tintinabulary, Neal joined us by phone from Lake City Outpost.

socially distant BR bit 6-01-20 - Steve Kennedy

Steve sent some sound from South Outpost.


June 2, 2020
STE-025 200602 - Aaron Keyt

Aaron howls in protest from Toad Hall Outpost.

I'll be putting these all together soon, to be posted by next week.

Postscripts

her out to be guy in jail with me made
me think of the warnings turning cash
area gilded lets caleb off in

stinging distinct chord

crushing with my shoe

a such beetle like thing