Playlist

Preface

"And so let us now, with the aid of such wisdom as we may command, return forthwith to the place of our adventure, not dallying overlong in speculative digression lest, in musing the while upon the perils of unscientifically grounded conjecture, we unduly exaggerate the risk that happenings of some considerable moment may pass unobserved before our preoccupied sense."
- Benjamin Boretz "Language, as a Music"

Texts

Recorded

April 11, 2020
War - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live 1975-1985]

lesson and carol
cover of course

As a song it suffers from an irrecoverable opening whammy, much as does Also sprach Zarathustra.

Who Cares About You - Full Toilet [from Full Toilet 7"]

a great trip actually
It has that opening whammy thing down and then stops.

Pledge Allegiance - Robber's Roost [from Live in Minneapolis]



political?
add to the right left margin lists of Boretz's I/O

Winners - Manfriday [a Rescued Record]

manufactured live feel
hey kids
do it yourself
without leaving the house

sampled sound feel
no reason for instrumental intervals
if none are strutting
hey kids
insert your righteous strut solo here

push button for cheering multitude sound sample

When the Darkness Comes Out at Night - Whitney Ballen [from White Feathers/White Linen]



a sweet song sung with joy
playful
down with how unimportant it is to be taking it seriously

a strenuous joy

April 12, 2020
Banned Rehearsal 921 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [October 2016]



the need:
a place to stand
: could be a score
: could be a habit
: could be a rut or a phone booth or a wood box
: could be a vehicle
: could be a room or the past or our conjointed experience together

? how comfortable do we need to be with our bona fides ?
? our imprimatur ?
? does our place to stand allow adequate liberty to each others' places to stand ?
? does our place to stand disappear in the experience of the moment, become transparent to it ?
? are we now the center of attention ?

The house of Atreus has fallen in the dust. Pastichery has a similar problem.

a magnum mysterium - Boston Camerata [from A Renaissance Christmas]

see?

if you don't mess with it so much it's lovely!

Monkey on a Chain - Courtney Marie Andrews [from No One's Slate Is Clean]

big arrangement of small sounds made bigger in perspective
big voice saying things to you holds its own
plenty big

I'm Set Free - Brian Eno [from The Ship]

slow moving rise of pitch level into choral harmony
like any another choir anthem might do has done

You Can Call Me Al - Paul Simon [from The Essential Paul Simon]

staccato talk-o
urban tales
told quick

Desert Bloom  (underlying electronic track) - Steve Scribner

a chorale underneath the yet dark sky
commendable intonation doing
no fade out on that
no sir just cut it off
yes

lovely understated it-ness

April 14, 2020
Gradus 302 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [November 2016]

we listen for paths to follow and then we have followed
calls into question the tense of listening
a fluid multi-morphing attitude to the sense of experience of what might as well be called now
bending sequential experience to follow the path we have formed to be on

[aside: music is often composed so that sequence matters to its image of comprehensibility. It can't be mixed or shuffled in our experiencing of it and still be recognizably it.]

this
shit
isn't

radical content determinacy writ so large as to be ungraspable as experience

Darlington County - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live 1975-1985]

or Klickitat County
as Karen sings it

the better life elsewhere
the myths of worker migrant america
the allure of the south

whips his big man out
sax, right

Dust and Dirt - Smokestack and the Foothill Fury [from America's Freedom Death March]



a report from the grit road
DIY blues hillbilly perfection
last red cent shiny dime
and time in time

Ocean Ambience Rocky Coastline (Volume 3) - Pete Comley

a list of sounds
arcanely catalogued and sequenced
for real

a drawer of specimens
of such beetle-like things
alike and not the same
a memento of eternity
that will persist beyond and without regard for our time of woe
and even these not eternal
all of it that we can be conscious of is limited to that of which our consciousness is capable
no more

April 15, 2020
Singet und klinget, ihr Kindelein - Boston Camerata [from A Renaissance Christmas]

instrumental parts and vocal parts of essentially identical, interchangeable, double-able

does it mean that they were intended to be infinitely arrangeable,
or that these were the sorts of lines composers knew how to work with and were acceptable in polite paying company
and that they intended these pieces for the particular forces available to the instant occasion for which it was written
nor to be ever after considered

I Will - High Class Wreckage [from High Class Wreckage]



your evil ways
yeah I like 'em

the increments are extraordinarily narrow
but carefully prepared to inhabit the package they are packed in
with only just the bare necessity of protrusion

Banned Rehearsal 922 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer [November 2016]



"Bickleton Burger" for Aaron's birthday
shades of Aaronsbundler wheezing on the pump organ
trigger alert: metal on metal squeaking

out loud
reading from a score
of any kind
is
to some extent
a cop-out
a dis-engagement
a breach of social contract

or

success at engagement involves disappearance as a clearly independent activity agent
one's part comes apart
joins collectivity

the undigested past
disgorged
use fresh water

April 16, 2020
You Make My Tremolo - Sun Sect [a Rescued Record]

The band plays in another room, early DIY? Demo-ish frog croak
record me! I wanna be a paperback writer
bluesy bland guitar hook

What Love Will Provide - Yuni [formerly in Taxco?] [from Sanpaku]



late surf pop in a big can

Austin - SeaStar [from Never Go Back]



the power of a melody sung alone
still does it for me
all one ever really needs

Working On The Highway - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live 1975-1985]

all he really needed here
was a set of spoons

Smoke Goes Clearing - Shelby Earl [from Burn The Boats]



teaching one's self's mirror's you

who comfort
him or her

me you I

Gradus 303 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [November 2016]

rung one:
the nearly replete
rung two:
the replete
{of the collection so far}

this is not counting in the sequential manner, i.e.

0 - 0
1 - 1
10 - 2
11 - 3
100 - 4
101 - 5
110 - 6
111 - 7
1000 - 8
1001 - 9
1010 - 10
1100 - 12
1011 - 11
1101 - 13
1110 - 14
1111 - 15

it is out of order as counting
and will continue to scatter as time goes on
that is, taken as an expression of quantity in base 2
increment becomes confused or refracted
and that refraction is a figure
writ upon time

any segment of a rung might express a number in base 2
and any number can be placed in a hypothetical time point
so that composition can be time travel

{{having grown old with tape bleed it is easy for me to hear a PPP pitch instance followed by a the same pitch played F as just that: tape bleed
though here, that's just how he plunked it}}

and partitions of rungs played together
(think Babbitt's arrays)
are different quantities or quantity numbers nobbing hob together in a counterpoint of time travelings
extending beyond the universe

like tapes played together
as tape bleed made big

Bransle de poictou - La bona novella - Boston Camerata [from A Renaissance Christmas]

The Renaissancy in all its jingle bell hoary glory
so quaint

--- Warning - Operation ID [from Legs]



a ringtone to riff under
push it around if you can
holds together under pressure
not immovable
but moves as a thing

Go Fast - Crystal Beth and the Boom Boom Band [from Yugen 3]



create a rhythmic environment
like a room to be in
of one's own
as it were

decorative impulse
in a non bull-shit way
throw some posters on the wall
what you might want to see
to reflect memory and aspiration and attitude

Postscripts

(-)ture he has labored at this and to be

complete monicker means a year at harvard

without music the only reward he

hung there from another mind

dyes dray violet

blows on the bass drum

Playlist

Preface

karen's deconstructed apple cranberry pie

"And terror
Is doubled, tripled, as he sees around him
Strange figures in the sky and savage beasts,
The Scorpion, for instance, arms outreaching
In two half-circles, and the other members
Spread over infinite acres, and black poison
Stinking and rank, and the threatening curved stinger.
Out of his senses, with cold fear upon him,
Phaethon dropped the reins."
- Ovid "Metamorphoses" (translated by Rolfe Humphries)

Texts

Recorded

February 9, 2020
Sonata in F Major, K. 78 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

The first impacts set the increment and the focus, the remainder of the figure establishes the tools and rates of embellishment.

There is a tiny little coda.

Let Me Fly - Sister Fleeta Mitchell, Rev. Nathaniel Mitchell, Lucy Barnes [from Art of Field Recording Volume 1]

Witness.

unfussy piano playing, but it holds the tempo and the swing of it

3 part vocals arranged for a clearly structured variety
clearly structured but not four square constricted

the persons of each voice are distinct
blending at the dialect

Clarinet Concerto : Fire Dances - Deborah Drattell - Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz, David Shifrin

fraught moments
each juiced with fraughtness

starts in the high shrills
drops slowly
into stasis

this is orchestrated
you
can
tell

late model expressionism

once a passage is orchestrated it stays put

it has a cadenza
because concertos do
it's in the book

Before The Beginning - Robert Tree Cody, Will Clipman [from Heart of the Wind]

more like Scarlatti in its thinking
than like Drattell

why?: because it doesn't have moving from itself eventually to be a consideration in what it is building.

If you aren't entirely there
how can you mess around?

Loaded Gun, Loaded Youth - Full Toilet [from Full Toilet 7"]

also, for same reason, more like Scarlatti
and also for its delight in rhythm play

Corollaries (Down's Down) "161011" - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

matter of fact version
What we have here, friends,
is a list of notes,
crisp and clear.

Sonata in G Major, K. 79 & 80 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

The harmony changes.
The harmonies change
in order for us to be where we are
with a different view.

composition in the small

Herzgewachse, op. 20 - Arnold Schönberg - Twentieth Century Classics Ensemble, Robert Craft, Eileen Hulse, John Alley, Sioned Williams, Tim Carey

short form operatic fiction thingy
with a truly remarkable high note in it

Sleeping Angel (alternate version) - Stevie Nicks [from Bella Donna]

small collection of pitches (5?)
two over
three

I must say she does seem to be getting a sensual kick out of filling herself with her own head resonance.

You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch) - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live 1975-1985]

He's telling a story in a noisy room, and bringing the noise of the noisy room along with the story. Plot points get lost in the noise of the noisy room in which a story is told.

My Prayer for Bella - J. K. Randall [from Open Space 39]

breath breaking
heart taking

Preludes in C Major, A minor, G Major, E minor, and A Major - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

When I played my C Major Prelude for Ben Boretz a few years ago he commented, after the first measure, "Liebeslied" - that is, acknowledging that this is yet another of my pieces that sprang from his unfinished solo piano "Liebeslied." And of course it's more than the springing from of it. It tracks Ben's  Partial piece (the whole of it) rather well, in miniature. Condensed re-composition.

These selections formed the prelude to a service at Langley United Methodist Church in August of 2015.

Why Was I Born - Mark Paschen & Robber's Roost [from Cuatro]



cars come and go like the ocean tide
and singing saw

Sonata in E minor, K. 81 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

This one has violin and continuo too
and a quick second movement

from when what a Sonata was was more fluid, invented

for this one you will need to seek assistance

say hey
write something for us to play together

larger scale: I wrote a bunch of them
We'll be a hit!

a perfectly balanced ensemble, like bluegrass string band

American Waste - Black Flag [from The First Four Years]

duality is destiny
virtual contrary motion
always

the center point is the point
the shaking laser point
of it all

Dirty Money - Swing Out Sister [a Rescued Record]

machine ensemble
nothing real but the flashing lights that flash
and her rather attractive alto voice
imitatio madonna

Sonata in G major, op. 100 II Larghetto - Antonín Leopold Dvořák [from Naxos The Very Best of Dvorak]

for violin and piano. this is really nice stuff!

Introduction - Your Mother Should Know [Live at Sky Church, November 2011]

traditional and customary
brings up all the
family business

Corollaries (Down's Up) "161021" - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey

to alphabetize is to shuffle
alphabetize is shuffle to to

the time should flex with pitch !
! flex pitch should the time with

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 10, 2020
Banned Rehearsal 1001 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer



We discussed, among other items, how long it might take us to get to 2000, and how old we might be. Perhaps after we retire we can speed production.

Postscripts

to a lack of the consolation to

enough of counsels or spiritual

books about them doing this to which they

(*)*(*)

of such murders

I do not scream

twice

Playlist

Live

October 2, 2015
Macefield Music Festival
Seattle

at Conor Byrne Pub

Scott

Scott Yoder has a lovely acoustic 12 string and a pleasing baritone voice that veers more toward a dylanesque than a country twang. In contrast to some he-minstrels he seems to have picked up strength in a shared vulnerability that is more commonly the province of she-minstrels, such as

Shannon

Shannon Stephens, (nice boots!) whose lightly wrought alto/mezzo vocals never soar to anthemic heights, but are always finding exquisite paths through the transparent open weave of sound provided by her ever so musicianly band, reminding us not to be blinded to what is there by what we think ought to be there, or such as

Mindie

Mindie Lind, with her face's active performance role, commenting on the songs in progress with a leer or a wink, edging cabaret-ward, her forward voice given plenty of space, her deftly composed set beginning with just her and her keyboard, after a few songs adding an understated electric bass, then a backing vocal, and ending with an a cappella duet. Music for grown-ups, in some (unfair) contrast to

at The Sunset Tavern
Full Toilet, who were just finishing their last song as we forced our way into the swampy press, and whom we had heard several years ago, or in contrast to

Gaytheist, who, judging from the knuckle tats on a nearby fan must be "prog-core", are a three piece Portland gang of mostly brawny 30 somethings whose very fast, very loud, and, admittedly, ably accomplished set triggered all sorts of pathologizing impulses in me. To be fair, their reasons for doing what they do are likely so alien to the reasons I might do a thing myself as to be outside my critical ambit. But if there is a crack through which I might begin to hear this music sympathetically I imagine it lies in its very narrowness, in the tightness of its expressive corset. There are only so many moves possible here, and it is yet to be discovered whether the possible resultant configurations of those moves are swiftly exhausted or might yield to the infinite.

Recorded

September 29, 2015
Banned Rehearsal 412 - January 1996 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Some of my favorite moments in BR sessions are those that shift between getting ready to prepare to do and spilling over the edge into doing.

These sounds are not made, they are released, making themselves if given half a chance.
energies of the body's muscles || energies of harnessed industry

At first it is an essay in reed harps.

The sound not so much recorded onto tape as stuffed into every cranny of magnetic media, the drums overcramming the violin scribble until it sounds like it is coming over a bad radio connection.

At nearly our noisiest, full of episodes variously narrated or chaperoned by electric guitar, each episode worked at intently even if not (though often) successfully.

As though collectively arranging massive objects on the floor.

Falling Still - Emily Doolittle - Seattle Chamber Players (Maria Mannisto, Paul Taub, Laura DeLuca, Matthew Kocmieroski, Mikhail Schmidt, Joe Kaufman)

A vertical sonority appears, suggested by a single tone, a vertical sonority flowers, allowing melodic prolongation, spilling out in a narration of a flowered vertically suggested sonority.

Santa Claus - Freak Outs [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

". . . is gonna eat your brain."

for Milton - Christian Carey - John McMuretry, Ashlee Mack

a careful arrangement of fractured stones, garlands of lichen and dried grasses, ramekins of brimming liquids. Love the hints of walking bass, and how the tones of flute and piano wrap around each other or fling themselves apart across their own discoveries.

October 1, 2015
Deh, coprite il bel seno - Gesualdo - Academy of Musicke, Anthony Rooley

So many sides and asides, so many second thoughts, so many testings of tensile strength. He pokes and prods his own creation.

Konzert in G BWV 1049 - Bach - Festival Strings Lucerne, Rudolf Baumgartner

One imagines the glee with which he seems to be inventing or re-imagining composition as a learned profession rather than as a merely tasteful servanthood.

Petites Pieces "La Journaliere" Wq. 117 #32 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

Late in the evening enchambered diversions for cultured friends. One could imagine 4 in the room, but not 6.

Keyboard Sonata in G Hob. XVI:8 - Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

In contrast, Haydn sounds like he might have been out-of-doors now and then, understands sunshine.

Symphony in D K. 504 (#38) "Prague" - Mozart - Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter

Starts cloaked, hidden in shadow. His second thoughts are spun out over great distances within a world that holds them steady in social community. We know where we. Our ideas can spread out safely among the parts. For now.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 24, 2015 (inadvertantly missing from last post)
Demo Sessions 150924 - Your Mother Should Know (Karen Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Acoustic takes of 8 songs so that their new bass player can practice remotely: Distracted Driver, Don't Black Out, Quiet Girl, Rebecca Marina, See You At The Next Show, Shed a Tear, Yellow Line, You Ruined It. 4 tracks: an old Sony dynamic mic inside the kick drum, a horizontally aligned stereo condenser mic to pick up Karen's vocal in one track and her drums in the other, and a mono condenser to pick up Neal's vocal. I figured the guitar would show up on everything anyway.

September 27, 2015
Trio 150927 - Keith Eisenbrey
Three overdubbed tracks: autoharp, snare drum, transverse flute.

September 28, 2015
Banned Telepath 37 150928 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer
Aaron intimates that his portion will arrive anon.