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

Playlist

Preface

"Somewhere, metabounded nowhere,
there may arise
a language which might be a music
a music which might be a language:"
- Benjamin Boretz "Language, as a music"

Texts

Recorded

May 3, 2020
15xxoxooxoxoooxo - Paul Rubinstein [from Solo Trios]



it might be about its microtonal type mode
in a familiar sense to which any other music might be
or it might be its microtonal type mode
in order to more distinctly separate the voices from each other

Banned Rehearsal 925 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy [December 2016]



free reeds reach
along the coast

through the course of a session
we adjust to each other's intensity of engagement
so that risks can be taken to expand the frame of engagement

{note to self: Anchorage is more present, when present, than in 924,
but it could be spread throughout by looping}

{{they came such a long way after all}}

What Good Am I To You Now? - Curtains for You [from After Nights Without Sleep]

the ordering of song parts
can also shuffle the sense of what a chorus means
or approach it from other angles

Be Free - No Rey [from Contradictions]

The backup singers sound like The Fleetwoods, down to the riff and balance of voices.

The Phone Message - Full Toilet [from Full Toilet 7"]

drums and prevocal gruntings

Aokigahara - Arbor Towers [from In Transit EP]



slowly accumulating interlocking containers
succession matters

rudimental drumming marches on!

Song from the Storms and the Winds (underlying electronic track) - S. Eric Scribner [from The Storm Sound Cycle]

a steady tone interacts with the recorded sound of thunder

Above - India Glover [from Pup Demo]



This recording allows, amplifies, the narrowness of the distance between me, listening, and her, singing, and strumming, with her finger nails.

Brimstone - High Class Wreckage [from High Class Wreckage]



most righteous ride at the fair
ever

Bearded Lady - Bicycle Face [from The Wonders of Female Strength]

[pronoun] doesn't need to be a

lovely actually

Mistress of the Stone - Courtney Marie Andrews [from No One's Slate is Clean]

complaint poem
accusation poem
goes deeper than you want

Killer's Moon - Ancient Warlocks [from Ancient Warlocks Live]



melter of walls
more of the most righteous

Flour - Whitney Ballen [from White Feathers, White Linens]




tempting spider
un self a ware

spider
aware
(sents)
((scents))
(((cents)))

Rose - Ease [from Roots]

working on a morbidly particular terroir of technologically weirded sound space image
a pathology

Where I Wanna Be - SmokeStack and the Foothill Fury [from America's Freedom Death March]



trope: I'm proud of where I'm from :: You aren't :: Take it back
class distinctions at ground level

Jealousy - Choke the Pope [from Emotional Material]



This could be a song in Inside Out Two

May 5, 2020
Dead Moons - Yuni in Taxco [from Sanpaku]



for an actor
singing to an actor
on a stage
who ya wanna be?

congealed mass
manufactured real space

I'm not sure I entirely believe that the snare drum's sympathetic acoustic response wasn't added later

Come On Friends - Robber's Roost [from Swallow Your Fears]



yee haw!

happy happenstance that found Karen and me on the same street corner as a busking Mark Paschen in Ellensburg on that strangely windless night these years ago

Beloved - Shelby Earl [from Burn The Boats]



so many mirrored texts
the tune goes by so easy

FFFA - Tyler Daniel Bean [from On Days Soon to Pass]



epistolary line
fill in the details of your situation
moodish
aiming for a bit part in a soundtrack
(not so distracting as to frighten a director)

Different Peoples' Perception of The Same Thing - Operation ID [from Legs]



there is no thing to be the same as
(no location where comparison can occur)

Blast Off - Lunas [from Over Me]



isolation ward cell wall rage

Wonderful - White Orange [from White Orange]



narrating its own power stasis brick wall
it's all in my head

Along the Tay - SeaStar [from Never Go Back]



(looking back) (having gone back) (borrow history) (hitch a ride)

Slow Charade - Yuni in Taxco [from Slow Charade]



lots of strumming

Waiting - Ancient Warlocks [from Ancient Warlocks II]



transparently heavy
massive dense

mountain sized elephant seal

Twang - Jim Knodle - Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble [from Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble Volume 1]



clown march!
through the decades
party on!
clowns!

a flirty wave
from behind the curtain

out

Degradation - Robber's Roost [from Live in Minneapolis]



The problem with protesting everybody is that the crossfire can't be dodged
especially if you pay attention

Goodbye - Eddie Vedder [from Ukulele Songs]

plays all his tricks with tunes and words
but didn't finish

Crage Against - Chaotic Noise Marching Corps [from Zero to Lizard Man]



brand name hullabaloo

May 6, 2020
Imaginary Perspective - Triptet [from Imaginary Perspective]



sustained tones on sax and electric guitar move in breath shaped flanges
utterly remaking the percussion chatter into quasi-breath shaped flanges
as they themselves are minutely measured by its various articulations

sinews and vertebrae

Diaper Bitch - Three Fingers [from Go Deep]


short line bare
statements of fate

late fetish Velvet U

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

absolute internally intimate aggressive empathy as a starting point

the room
is small

you are
in it

with this

Celilo Falls - Bicycle Face [from The Wonders of Female Strength]



the message as told from outside the story
as though we weren't part of it
not our story to tell as though from outside of its benefits and debts
educational diversion from our ugly part

Track 4 - High Class Wreckage [Live at the Funhouse, July 2011]

some sort of cover as drunkenly announced
slow jammish
then explodes furious at its own weakness
rage rage
but tired
slack

Plastic Ducks - No Rey [from Contradictions]

epistle in relationship extremis
gone off the poetic rails
admirably non global
non universal
too much underlining

Track 4 - Pouch [Live at the Funhouse, July 2011]

how to score the opening of a Jarmusch movie
speeding through Manville
early AM ghost town
camera aimed rearwards

Histrionic - Arbor Towers [from In Transit EP]



as though the sound has all been soaking in the same brine too long
no effect will ever correct a flaw
like wearing the wrong clothes for you
1/2 a song at most

Always On - High Class Wreckage [from High Class Wreckage]


moment freak

cliche
if it weren't for the gut suck hollow micromoments
catching on the ribs ahead of breath

They Say - India Glover [from Pup Demo]




finding or exploring ways through a text
provisional
toe in water here then there

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



recorded in a large, distant acoustic
microphones placed exactly 1.3 meters in
from the point where the sound mushes entirely
the sense of the sound is all that's left
reverb demo

Superwizard - Ancient Warlocks [from Ancient Warlocks Live]



from outer space
character assertion
like a costume
piercings tattoos
preened feathers
Papageno

May 7, 2020
Here and Heaven - Goat Rodeo [from The Goat Rodeo Sessions]

Its relation to, say, bluegrass, is like that of jazz choir arrangement  to Duke Ellington

Outro - Ease [from Roots]

because song cycle?
so that, smart?

The Great War - Curtains For You [from After Nights Without Sleep]

a pleasingly shapely song
the pregnant 18th Century sudden pause is alive and well

My Car - Choke The Pope [from Emotional Material]



lame statement lifted into a song
though lifted may be overstating the case

the interval from the statement's bare bones lameness
to the particular lackadaisical song affect
is a half-assed humor of the novelty song type
straight from the dropout corps

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

underneath awareness by design
what does not demand attention loses attention
unless you hold on
intently

all brought low
baring the mechanism's deaf spot
evacuating into the void of aesthetic chaos

where we would listen from
is gone

Nineteen - SeaStar [from Never Go Back]



price paid
worker lost blues
nineteen souls
ghost wail
hand stones and head songs
cost paid
we owe them

13xoxxoxooxoxxo - Paul Rubinstein [from Solo Trios]



(blogger listening with headphones)
each ear is severed from the other
split head
and the ear in the middle
also
from the other two

unfinessed
an experimental control

hard global distancing

neither of the three has an effect upon any other of the either two

no help from me
you've got to put it together yourself

reveals negatively the degree to which our human-stereo audition helps ontologize the cross-sequencing of disparate parts,

as though a part of our experiencing was set to zero, turned off

Mystery 7 (now "Benediction"? - Ancient Warlocks [from Ancient Warlocks II]



like an extracted voice from Scarlatti
it has a similar flavor of pattern play
wordless

Pist Office - Full Toilet [from Full Toilet 7"]

parts compressed and curtailed
28 seconds

This Year - Robber's Roost [from Live in Minneapolis]



(it's about last year)
everything is nothing
as it seems

Ballad of a Home Once Left - Courtney Marie Andrews [from No One's Slate is Clean]

a parent's letter to a leaving leaver

advice
hope

small intimate
full
but not inflated

Perry Mason - Chaotic Noise Marching Corps [from Zero to Lizard Man]



from the playlist of any 1975 middle school band concert
with enthusiasm!

Jeff Buckley - Whitney Ballen [from White Feathers, White Linens]


stays small
in its room
takes a look at the window
returns

Only The Weakest - Robber's Roost [from Swallow Your Fears]



will prevail
persona as ethos

In Session at the Tintinabulary and Outposts

May 4, 2020
Bannedecameron 200504 Maple Leaf Lake City - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer



STE-023 200504 - Aaron Keyt

Karen and I are back in the studio
the porch being chilly that night
Neal dials in
Aaron downloads us
and plays along

Postscripts

in person fetched away h'm said hans

behind the scenes then yes for the most part

but possibly might now you the thing to

time

blunders ahead

clouds arrive

Playlist

Preface

"But we are complacent about the colorlessness of our talk, of our linguafrancic rhetoric of discourse, because we know it is neutral and innocuous. And we never claimed to capture all that we might perceive, in our descriptions, nor all that we might have sensed, in our analyses. What we communicate is what is communicable, leaving the rest for higher sensitivities of pure intuition. I have been thinking that we are deceived in this belief, that while we may not speak as we perceive, we will soon enough be perceiving as we have spoken. For the rhetoric of discourse is coercive on our senses, as is any mode of description or thought: description transforms the described - else why would we believe that we can influence the perceptions and awarenesses of others by its means, however much we may have failed to consider whether our influence is likely to inspire those higher sensitivities on which our rhetoric of discourse so crucially relies to supply intuitively what it leaves cognitively undescribed? And if we so influence the perceptions and awarenesses of others by how we speak, descriptively, by the same route we must be even more profoundly influencing our own."
- Benjamin Boretz "Language, as a music"

Texts

Live Streaming

April 29, 2020
The Music of Henry Eichheim
Peter Nelson-King, piano and voice

Seven Songs (1910)
I. The Heart of a Woman (Yeats)
II. When the Dew is Falling (MacLeod)
III. The Undersong (MacLeod)
IV. Across the Silent Stream (MacLeod)
V. Autumn Song (D.G. Rossetti)
VI. The Lament of Ian the Proud (MacLeod)
VII. Aedh Wishes His Beloved Were Dead (Yeats)

Oriental Impressions (1919)
I. Japanese Sketch
II. Japanese Nocturne
III. Korean Sketch
IV. Nocturnal Impressions of Peking
V. Chinese Sketch

In his discussion Peter raised two issues that are salient to this music and its continued cultural value.

First, cultural appropriation rears its ugly head. Eichheim's obvious influences are European and Asian, the European manifesting itself in his fairly sophisticated derivations of "Impressionist" sensibilities, and the Asian in his less sophisticated but not overtly unfriendly use of Asian folk-like material and "Oriental" modes. From this end, the European influence is clearly aspirational - until the mass exodus of European composers later in the century, Americans seeking to establish high-culture on their own turf borrowed extensively from what they could pick up from the only high culture they recognized, and/or they traveled back to Europe to learn at the feet of the masters. The Asian influence, however friendly, comes across as another color of exoticism - and joins the likes of Ravel's "jazz" influenced works, Stravinsky's "ragtime" and "jazz" pieces, Debussy's deeply unfortunate "Golliwogg's Cakewalk," and of course Puccini's flatfooted ventures into Japan, Persia, and the American West, among countless others. Seen in this light, it is yet another species of European stylistic affectation.

The other issue is anyone's cultural standing. Peter often wonders why, or is disappointed that, some music or other isn't as well known as it might deserve to be. Now I am far from thinking that the popularity, as such, of a thing among my peers has any particular relation to that thing's meaning or importance to me. The accidents of history, personality, the shifting economics of patronage, publishing, concertizing and (in the last century or so) that of the recording industry, as well as the ever shifting sands of polemic and cultural popularity leave few survivors. Peter's various antiquarian projects, for me, serve a vital service: they remind us just how rich and problematic our culture has actually been. Those we are more familiar with, Griffes and MacDowell, for instance, were parts of a larger community of voices. As too are we. Thank you!

Recorded

April 25, 2020
Teddybear - Steven Mackey, J.K. Randall (from Inter/Play - July 1986)

It is parse-able in theory
(they play notes after all)
but is it likely that doping out a deep structure
by parsing it
would help?

It gives the image of being understandable in all its parts.
There are all these parts right there laid out in lines.
Need more?

The sounds are pushing this around quasi-cooperatively. Where it goes only matters as to where it is when more pushing at it is happening. how does where we come from sound where we are now? We get to where we are and look around.

The point of all these notes in rows is to point out how notes sound if their pitch doesn't matter more than a few places back or forth. Notes are things we can share doing.

Daisy - Curtains For You [from After Nights Without Sleep]

Let's have a parade!
with fancy drumming
and fancy tune-smithing

Regulars - Your Mother Should Know

recorded on Karen's phone in December of 2016
Neal gets his chops on
playing guitar
the song parts go along easily
no flashing lights
BRIDGE AHEAD BRIDGE AHEAD
just goes where it goes

No Surrender - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live 1975-1985]

hymn tune clarity
fine indeed

Oh Maan - Full Toilet [from Full Toilet 7"]

broken song parts
ripped out
song book parts

Between - Ease [from Roots]

a typography
this music is a style of lettering
calligraphed

April 26, 2020
Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes - Paul Simon [from The Essential Paul Simon]

a song and another song that riffs on the words of the first
it continues to riff on riffing

Winter - Whitney Ballen [from White Feathers, White Linens]



circling lazily in bed for the day

Banned Telepath 51 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy [December 2016]

speaking in cartoonish slide speak
otamatone (I want to spell it starting with an a)
and groan tube
that's me on the Silvertone
begin to make amends too soon

neither competitive nor cooperative nor unhearing either
lesson: adjust one's relative output to the size of one's charisma
proportion yourself inversely for social balance

Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live 1975-1985]

preacher talkin' testimony confessional hallelujah song

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

the sound that circles pulses the partitions of their circle in an unstable tune whose shifting are pulsations, organically passing person to person
pulsing dance

Motorcycle Blues - Low Hums [from Shine Rock]

yup
that's exactly what it is

Graceland - Paul Simon [from The Essential Paul Simon]

at heart Paul was a studio musician
(a master and a compadre of)
he puts together a band that will make the engineers look really good to the other engineers
the record and the song become confused as to their birth order
I have an appointment over Jordan

Songs for Tourists - Courtney Marie Andrews [from No One's Slate is Clean]



the patterns animated within the guitar figuration
as characters
match the story teller's sophistication
introversion runaway

Kyuu - Paul Kikuchi [from Autonomic]



as it ascends
counterpoints arise
some persist not at all past
passed on persisting
others more so and exact
the swamp fills more slowly the more slowly we enter
strangely seamless

Jersey Girl - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live 1975-1985]

this one's for the ladies
I've been on the shore
it ain't all right
though I do remember a nice smile
sunburn
white wine dinner
string weave swim suit
dancing wild life refuge
rebirth
or
remember your baptism
of or on or by

Make My Pay - SmokeStack and the Foothill Fury [from America's Freedom Death March]



3 unique letters: k e P

3 sets of duplicates: M M :: a a :: y y
in skewed symmetry: MaMyay

Banned Telepath 51 Anchorage - Aaron Keyt [December 2016]

toy piano in deep think mode
always a roar

invent a sound that we might do that this I invent would be a part of
retreat into the can
the can to which you have accustomed us

tonal implications rely
for their  clothing
on their temporal nearness to those who will not disclose them
this is naked music
clunks and other ornaments

April 27, 2020
Grass - XTC [from Fossil Fuel]

groovy possibly coy or ironic mood I suppose

Don't Wanna Go Home - High Class Wreckage [from High Class Wreckage]



shoutsing
to get over what isn't there yet but will be
song structure is, here, a box of tools with possible word-blurb name-tokens only

Grey T-Shirt - Choke The Pope [from Emotional Material]



solid song with all the parts
lacks pretense

FS 1986 - [from a private tape]

Another set of students that Neal passed along to me. This might have arisen from either or both of our respective tenures.

familiarity with music can be a hindrance to invention
if one knows a desired outcome that's where the path will lead
has heard some lounge and some boogie woogie and some Joplin
then there is a story told to some kids, which is fun.

Somnambulismo - Yuni in Taxco [from Sanpaku]



big bright acoustic guitar sound dissolved into voices of stuff

Banned Rehearsal 924 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt [December 2016]

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Rehearsal 924 161213

Aaron will join us from the outer darkness
(Anchorage in December)
while my otamatone prattles on
the secret weapon
a guitar
has
is the intimacy with which everything played is referenced to the open strings
whether those are allowed open or not
they are always there
and must be considered
Anchorage could be pulled up into the mix more, I think
I might I should redo this

April 28, 2020
Everyone Belongs to Someone - Shelby Earl [from Burn The Boats]



this here's your slow dance
star eyed
world vanishing

Rock Bottom - Robber's Roost [from Swallow Your Fears]



thudpucking done right
tempo control

Seal Your Sight So Your Body Is Gone - Operation ID [from Legs]



goes all crashing down
victory dance
way King Crimson

Gradus 304 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [December 2016]

G5 measured down
A5 measured up
the extent to which it then presents itself as a sequence of tones set into a time
is a problem
due to uncertainties about the various aspects of a tone and fuzzy boundaries between presence and not presence of it
the pitchness of a tone is like unto the wordness of spoken words
we are wired to hear it
with trainable ultra precision
more malleable than wordness of language though
less loud
infinitely more transparence
14 semitones of separate
number proportion pattern

Dinosaur Bones - White Orange [from White Orange]



the guitar figure features
in the opening 2 notes
closely intervalled alternating high low high low high low
with no duration identical among the six
except the first two

hi lo
hilo.
hi. lo...

everthing else hangs from this
rondo-ish-ly

Willow II - Tyler Daniel Bean [from On Days Soon to Pass]



||: [flat mi] [re] [do] :||
offsets grow from the shoot

Salty Baby - Yuni in Taxco [from Slow Charade]



empty room
at the far end of it

UTUMC - MCC Coffee Makers - Keith Eisenbrey [December 2016]

Keith Eisenbrey · UTUMC - MCC Coffee Makers 161225

37 seconds of that Christmas morning in our church's basement

Invaders - Michael Cotts [from Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble Volume 1]



post Mancini credit music
without need of animated visual aids
stops on the verge of kaPOW!

Images - Lunas [from Over Me]



complaint
you you you
accusatory repetition
flangey film over it all
why? so that it can be excused as dream?

April 29, 2020
More Than You Know - Eddie Vedder [from Ukulele Songs]

line repetition and near repetition both within and between stanzas
an old trick, structural
blues does it
distancing? or leaving space for something else more slippery underneath?

Banned Telepath 52 Anchorage - Aaron Keyt [December 2016]

like clavichord this free reed instrument brings us into the intimacy of the sound maker's breath
we are near them
they are near us
this is is with us
immediate

the image of physical activity of making this sound
is naked to us
(poetry as I need it)
{{physical nakedness, due to taboos, distracts from its own face}}

April 30, 2020
Bird Without Wings - Star Anna and The Laughing Dogs [from Alone In This Together]

cyclic rhythm
cyclic changes
and their changes
operate as supplements to the unseen line breaks

Banned Telepath 52 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy [December 2016]

excelsior intently breathing
piano even slower
light percussion in its wristy time
strings reeds and taps: an ecology, a sentient (partially?) economy

the flow of ambiance
but pulling inward
we are carried forward on our own river without hurry
will be 925 with Aaron's own reeds joining

excelsior, observing, breathes
luscious bells multiresonant incipits
we finish our year with tambourines
how fine!

Track 3 - High Class Wreckage [Live at the Funhouse - July 2011]

live punk tends to lean toward open insurrection against the vocalist, perhaps in order to offset the perception that everyone is looking at him (him here)

for example:
that guy (guy there) who talked into the recording mike at the Sealth v Stadium HS football game I recorded back in 1984
unaware of the particularly private use to which his emanation (some obscenity if I recall) would be put: engaged, but baffled.

The Sun, At The Final Rise - Ancient Warlocks [from Ancient Warlocks II]



same vocalist of course, Aaron Krause, but allowed here, among the skillful, to eloquize, be more overtly musical
a bit like an 18th Century Adagio movement
not hurried
but energetically decorative
every iteration inflected

Track 3 - Pouch [Live at the Funhouse - July 2011]

just the two of them, Sean Delaney and Jake Thompson
in control of what they're doing
almost demonstrating for educational purposes

MILF - Three Fingers [from Go Deep]



competitive bad girl
(I wanna be a)
novelty song

Flesh and Blood - Tyrannosaurus Grace [from E.P. 1]

the intro is where the composition is trotted out
showing each of all the parts of it in turn
its boots and hats and pants and top
vocalists match well, the female voice a bit more up front, takes the lead (she has the more interesting timbre)
any band is a negotiation in progress

No Jobs - Robber's Roost [from Live in Minneapolis]



not disaffected
never affected

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



Allegretto
about its configuration
between instruments and voice
not like Haydn but like Haydn is

Never Go Back - SeaStar [from Never Go Back]



grease of the world
the rural and semi-rural maritime
long tendrils

the impulse to have another go at it,
where the it of it is just the it we have an impulse to take another go at

Where's My Bow - Goat Rodeo [from The Goat Rodeo Sessions]

To whom is this addressed? A fan base? The uptightly mobile?

Dia De Los Mortos - Chaotic Noise Marching Corps [from Zero to Lizardman]



pep band gone feral
they are,
by God,
here.

Postscripts

these things must be uprooted i took

it from her and I saw beads made out of

bones spine of a fish reason in sight neither

*******

the world is figment of music

pitch in a swamp is a bird on a cattail
an embodiment of the absence of itself