Showing posts with label Michael Owcharuk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Owcharuk. Show all posts

Saturday, May 16, 2020

Playlist

Preface



"
contraponderables , parablisms , allelomorphs [:imaged:] implode ;
designanda , mined , scrunch -- & [ , transhewn ] quicken , take life .

"
- J.K. Randall "provoked your majesty" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Recorded

May 10, 2020
Lost - Smokestack and the Foothill Fury [from America's Freedom Death March]



banjo solo
whittle out of a stick

Side Effects - Lunas [from Over Me]



solid core riffing song with coda in a different sound world: first fuzzed then ringy

Stiff Joints - Yuni in Taxco [from Sanpaku]



old fashioned (60s?) room feel
neo psychedelic

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



projecting the guitar figure into the greater arrangement
the band is a bigger guitar

modest fuzz
turn off the amps
close the door

May 11, 2020
Made Of Sand - Shelby Earl [from Burn the Boats]



a mixed message
solid, firm
utterance of nonsubstance

unmeasured space between slow curving beats

Airstrip Timber Sale - Bicycle Face [from The Wonders of Female Strength]



tree hugging message on good enough music

The Muse - Operation ID [from Legs]



barking mad
then falls away by a long ellipsoidal curve

unstable orbit

worry heats up to start over
having come back around

Last Call - No Rey [from Contradictions]

attributed thoughts
the music is competent enough
in a stripped down REM sort of way
not to challenge
but to comfort with familiarity

Broken Heart - Eddie Vedder [from Ukulele Songs]

the intonation of the ukulele's sound box pulls the octaves tight

A Line - Arbor Towers [from In Transit EP]



begins like a story teller
but loses a grip on his saying of what he's saying

relies on the languishing mood to hold us
not so danceable that we don't wonder when it will be over
stops sudden

Kill the Kids - White Orange [from White Orange]



fill every molecule with sound
the moshers are bobbing in it
like ducks
this is so quack!

engineer can have 7 seconds at the end to play
no more

Our Heads Split Us Apart - India Glover [from Pup Demo]



diary entry or epistle or practice for a conversation
India leaves in the do-overs
bravely done
those redone do-overs!

song structural elements
verse chorus bridge for example
as tarot to organize the circling obsession of what to say

Wooden Hands - Yuni in Taxco [from Slow Charade]



not filling the room tight
as White Orange does

always an equal distance to each of its moments
never gets closer

White Dwarf - Ancient Warlocks [from Ancient Warlocks Live]



fantasy heroic
the line can only be held aloft a few syllables at a time

instrumental gravity
surface of center mass
feel it press upon you

Echolocation Song - Triptet [from Imaginary Perspective]



invents itself from the sound of itself
life inside the bell

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



speak slow
for attracting girls
is the line we hear

be the strong silent romantical type

back to the journal entry epistolary poem heartfelt note plea

Henry Darger - Michael Owcharuk [from Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble Volume 1]



What is it that makes this so instantly and clearly a theater pit composition? Nothing is left to chance. The composed-ahead-of-time synchronized tunes.

(helluva pit orchestra though!)

a fire escape quiet evening movie melody
3 scenes

and that playing it together live room they are in that is clearly there with you.
Here.

Brauerhaus - Three Fingers [from Go Deep]



pop punk shows its roots
a love song fantasy memoir

Gold and Silver - Star Anna and The Laughing Dogs [from Alone in This Together]

cleaning up
emptying after
a house
vacant of its curator

Luaidh Mo Chèile - SeaStar [from Never Go Back]



purposeful mis-accentuation to imitate a translation
or a tune inflicted: find the first tune, find the last

Track 5 - High Class Wreckage [Live at The Funhouse, July 2011]

I was recording these on a DAT, re-using media (it was getting hard to find and expensive) - never convinced that the recording wouldn't be totally overdriven and a waste. Looking back it is quite a nice little time capsule.

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



keep appearances up
he talks even faster than he sings or strums

Track 5 - Pouch [Live at The Funhouse, July 2011]

mathematics of what fits in four and how,
emphatic
it lets us in briefly,
so that we are the cadenza

The Motherfucking Bus (Part II) - Chaotic Noise Marching Corps [from Zero to Lizard Man]


and its qualities
how it sounds
as it goes
and where

Empires Ending (Side A) - Koko and the Sweetmeats [from Sacrifice]



what is it that, socially, holds a sound, like this, together? Are all of them, really, personally, into it? Or is this just, sadly, resignedly, close enough?

bang the tambourine desultory

I'm Perverted - Choke The Pope [from Emotional Material]



takes more than that

May 12, 2020
Cold Wind - Curtains For You [from After Nights Without Sleep]



this beat bounces
nothing is so massive
as can't be maneuvered
or respun
while up in air

No Jobs - Robber's Roost [from Swallow Your Fears]



hermetic seal
|:|fear|:|
safer there than here

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

presence with minimal activity
steady slow flow
and our ears in their respective location to it

Relief - Lunas [from Over Me]



compressed right up to the speaker cone
somebody's singshouting something back there somewhere
it even sounds like it might be an interesting vocal, so why is it buried? is it too particular?

slow down quiet coda
no vocal

13xxooxoxxoxoox - Paul Rubenstein [from Solo Trios]



playing with an invented tuning
invented being my theory for what this project uses to find places within it that will articulate

attractive trio
mbira of some kind
a monochord?
and a sound I don't recognize, but has a bit of a celeste or toy piano sound to it, lower pitched though, almost sustained

If It'd Rain - SeaStar [from Never Go Back]



a chord figure is a way for hands to behave so as to support the voice, like audible hand talking, enfolding voice in a bodily embrace of suggestion or precision

Franz and the Eagle - Goat Rodeo [from The Goat Rodeo Sessions]

all the burrs filed off and polished so it won't hurt easy listening very tasteful

Wildflowers - Bicycle Face [from The Wonders of Female Strength]



single location mic recording is enough information to construct a believable space in which the musicians are
i can almost tell how mussed the bed is she is sitting on

May 13, 2020
The Short Answer - Full Toilet [from Full Toilet 7"]

meta raw
nothing left but what abrades

Cemetery Girls - Chaotic Noise Marching Corps [from Zero to Lizard Man]



no room left for pretty moments
blast filled

{the kind of energy that, quite frankly, made me quit band back in HS}

Sex Dreams - Courtney Marie Andrews [from No One's Slate Is Clean]

perpetual parting words
music box sounds sound like memory (a trope)

Exes R Us - No Rey [from Contradictions]

heartfelt?? not really
comfort after severance? hm
the clever title gives it away

In Place of Time - Whitney Ballen [from White Feathers, White Linens]



noisy motor sounds in the left channel
reverbed up for mood lighting

Love In the Way We Wanted - India Glover [from Pup Demo]



all sorts of b'bye songs this afternoon

Attitude Adjustment Stations - Yuni in Taxco [from Sanpaku]



backing vocals hiding in the metallic reverb
it is hard to hear
so shiny!

Terrible Touch - Ancient Warlocks [from Ancient Warlocks Live]



instrumentalists in touch with their slow slow tempo
they know exactly where it is

and the value of a strong vocal delivery
though buried in this live recording

Distant Rooms - Shelby Earl [from Burn the Boats]



she is not an alto profundo
nor a mezzo soprano
her voice is someplace that is all of each of those

or
it inhabits each place clearly and wholly

a difficult voice to forget

Seattle, CA - Choke The Pope [from Emotional Material]



adenoidal lesser Seattle novelty song
good for a lame laugh

Where Are You? - Operation ID [from Legs]



meter patchwork hip hop quick change pulsethread sensibility

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



There is a brief (single bar?) drum tempo intro to the whole which otherwise has nothing to do with the rest of it - though I could hear it as an index point for section-to-section affect relation, i.e. the feel of that intro to what ensues
in relation to the relation between what then ensued and what next ensued.
a key to allow a certain nothingness or transparence to stand alone

Satellite - Eddie Vedder [from Ukulele Songs]

uke holds its own against a well carved lyric baritone

what is the difference between songwritering and tunesmithering?

Head - Three Fingers [from Go Deep]



1st measure (the standard)
2nd measure (the incremental instability)
--
repeat (hold the standard)
repeat (as new increment or as increment of increment)

Under The Surface of Saturn - Triptet [from Imaginary Perspective]



right there where your face is

Galway Bay - SeaStar [from Never Go Back]



the grass grows greener
back there

Wolves In Disguise - Star Anna and The Laughing Dogs [from Alone in This Together]

we've all heard the song of the siren blues
beware

Families - Bicycle Face [from The Wonders of Female Strength]



recognizably sized people singing

May 14, 2020
Track 6 - Pouch [Live at The Funhouse, July 2011]

full body rock breaking hammer drive
cut short ? string breaking hammer drive ?

Sharlet's Rag - Robber's Roost [from Swallow Your Fears]



song for the little dog who leaps for tossed toys

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

holds steady rushing forward
trips over its feet

To Find Sense In Freedom - Lunas [from Over Me]



another fast part slow part song
in play: bass as line, as rhythm

as rhythm drum as pulse as polymeter
polymeter yes, even though in lock step

rhythm guitar as chord as fuzz
as polymetric glue

lead guitar as voice:
voice elaboration avatar
rides atop or within

Sunspots - White Orange [from White Orange]




markers have been removed or obscured

you are in the song but the terrain barely changes

an engineering feat to make any of it audible above any of it

Giant - SeaStar [from Never Go Back]



old prophetical tales

Idlers - Yuni in Taxco [from Slow Charade]



vocal, languidly, finds spots within the changes to arrive at so that the whole might circle with working hard at it
slow bit faster bit song

Lucretia, We Need Ya! - Bicycle Face [from The Wonders of Female Strength]



heroes of old battles
history for the sistery
just voices and clapping

Will We Ever Make It To the Ocean (B-side) - Koko and the Sweetmeats [from Sacrifice]



tambourine ring
choral harmonic phrases

Threads - No Rey [from Contradictions]

professionally done
brand applied

Milky Shakes - Samantha Boshnack [from Seattle Jazz Composers Ensemble Volume 1]



slow intro
like Haydn
movement doesn't build complexity energy
more of a heat up energy to boil over
send in the drummer to cool things off
or bring out a new dancer
back into the night air with bass and flugel
suite-like

Dying Stoned And Alone - Choke The Pope [from Emotional Material]



fast bit slow bit for the moral of the story
play it some more with cymbal spray
back to fast bit to repeat it out
slow moral again

Innocent Love - Smokestack and the Foothill Fury [from America's Freedom Death March]



the cussedly independent being
whose sole song
is their cussed independence

is a clown type

When I Think Too Much - Tyler Daniel Bean [from On Days Soon to Pass]



you can just taste the swimmy light show

is it about
or is it like
depression?

(probably) not performed from a depressed place
but finding the heaviness of it
its comfort

Eduardo Kac's Dream Song - Yuni in Taxco [from Sanpaku]



I am frustrated in my desire to hear them singing. What seems to be happening behind the engineered scrim gauze is more interesting than any effect that the scrim gauze could ever have.

Ghost Town - Three Fingers [from Go Deep]



you got scared
and left me here
guess I'll have
another beer

[two syllable beer: bee'-ə]

who is the ghost,
the absent one
or the fright that scared the absent one away?


Eggs Over Toast - Curtains For You [from After Nights Without Sleep]



bacon grease
cooking life
in every way whimsified

First of Seven - The Sun Giants [from 7" Split with Deadrones]



a rhythm section on the make
I remember in hearing them live how fine the bass player is

a band is a thing people are in

Assembled in Quarantine at the Tintinabulary and Outposts

Since the middle of March Banned Rehearsal has been making recordings from our holed-up locations and sharing those sounds among us. I have assembled here each bi-week's individual files by layering them together. This is the same practice I have followed for the Banned Telepaths, of which the first were made in our first year. It isn't a new practice for us, just a special name for solidarity.

March 22-24, 2020

Banned Quarantiniad 200322 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt



April 6, 2020
Banned Quarantiniad 200406 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer



April 20, 2020
Banned Quarantiniad 200420 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer



May 4, 2020
Banned Quarantiniad 200504 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer



Postscripts

twig hairs ruffled up and with open eyes
and few words unhoped-for but when she
invited me to take the place next to

***

iris ask'd
solstice into
open olive lakes

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Playlist

Live

September 4, 2015
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Michael Owcharuk
3 Pieces - That Light, Your Sunny Day, Just The Way It Has To Be

Michael expresses an understandable and common frustration with the analytically derived construction of musical processes as a personally productive mode of creative activity, but I remain unconvinced that his proposed solution of attempting a more direct evocation of human emotions has resulted here in anything much more than an evocation of other musics. He is obviously completely engaged in his music, and so I want to be also. But as much as I love the models, I would rather hear less Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans and a lot more of something undeniably, strangely, unfamiliarly, his own.

Jeremy Shaskus
Selections from a 10 Piece Suite - Untitled Prelude, HHCO, Pew Tang (please excuse my spelling, I hear what I hear)

Working with an attractive sounding ensemble of trumpet, soprano sax, flute, and bass clarinet, we hear three brief and theatrical pieces that, to my ears, were less redolent of hip hop than of 1950's American neo-classical music - like Arthur Berger on the sunniest day ever. Everything ends on the up.

Matthew James Briggs
Radiant Light

A string trio's long quiet tones and a recording of South Dakota prairie bird sounds, barely processed, mesmerate 7 minutes into one.

Jay Hamilton
Nothing Is What It Seems (selections)

Jay's absurdist folk band, The Turtling Dithers, is a Seattle treasure. Where else would you hear a player alternate clackamore, jew's harp, and bibliographical data points? This is all part of a theater piece held together, apparently, by a concern with libraries. What's not to like?

Recorded

September 1, 2015
Concerto in E-flat (#4) K. 495- Mozart - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, John Cerminaro

It isn't simply that the solo horn line is blatantly singably operatic, but that it is throughout the believably singable melody of a single fully fleshed out character. One could imagine it as an intermezzo, with a story line about whether the weather will be fine or not.

September 2, 2015
Quartet in C (#9) op. 59 #3 - Beethoven - Budapest Quartet

Listening first while reading along with the score, I wondered what the score would look like if not just each instrument, but each string had its own line. It seems clear that Beethoven was deeply aware of which string each instrument was playing, and of how the open strings affect the sound - or, at least, an experienced quartet would make it seem so.

Listening next without the score: stray thoughts - silent as a first ending not taken - dancing weights of figures conjoined in meter, centers of gravity shift from foot to foot, hip to hip - wherever sunny place we may be we are a shift of balance away from darkest shade.

September 3, 2015
12 Etudes op. 25 - Chopin - Alfred Cortot (1934)

Tunes of fiddly bits making malleable meter among the octaves among the figurations offset the teeniest of timespans finding threads of passing through permeable layers of swaths of sound.

Overture, Scherzo, and Finale - Schumann - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

A group of movements tightly bound by affinities among their melodies' construction.

So that's how he does it all!
Concerto in B-flat (#2) op. 83 - Brahms - RCA Symphony Orchestra, Josef Krips, Anton Rubinstein

Taking every opportunity to extend the complexities of the pianist's figurations into the orchestra and back again, reflecting and feeding on each other into what becomes in the process more symphony than concerto, or rather a symphony constructed out of a concerto.

Alleluja-Vers "Virga Jesse" - Bruckner - Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Eugen Jochum, Wolfgang Schubert

Monumentally personally, intimately cosmic.

7 Preludes, op. 17 - Scriabin - Michael Ponti

Solid, but as if somehow they weren't complete in themselves. What they are preludes of is what has been left out from inside them, is what they are bereft of.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 31, 2015
Banned Telepath 35 150831 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer
Banned Telepath 35 150831 Somerville - Aaron Keyt
Banned Rehearsal 893 150831 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Back in the studio after a summer of porch sessions. The breakout moment for me was bowing the lowest string of the antique zither with a souvenir miniature Mariners bat and unearthing an unexpected wealth of quietly subtle melodic overtones. Once again we straddle the continent, Aaron chiming in from Somerville.

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Playlist

Live

May 2, 2014
Ariadne auf Naxos - Strauss - Seattle Opera
McCaw Hall, Seattle

May 6, 2014
Machinations Musical, Divers & Sundry
Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Iriviskia - Ewa Trębacz
marble maze | performers visibile and present but effectively inaudible | a battle overhead

3 Short Improvisations - Donald Craig (on a 19-tone electric guitar)
images evaporate quickly | delicate | a subtle can into which he plays

Passacaglia - Joshua Parmenter
access to cello interior allowed | source and effect not recognizable cello but audibly arising from

Inflection, Cadence, Rhythm, Pain - Inmi Lee
personal / intimate detection instrument as theater | stillness and inner motion

isolated-disintegrated - Anna Stachurska
accumulation | foil and reminder | an echo

Twitity Twixt Audity - Douglas Niemela and Donald Craig
one 2 one spinning \ d . . . {my pen tip malfunctioned, and I can't remember the word I was writing}

It was dark and the program on which I was making notes was a saturated blue. With my old eyes I was unable to make out the marks of my writing. The little notes above are what I can read of what I wrote down. However, I was deeply moved by these performances, especially by their thoughtful, mutually considerate struggle to bring what could have been merely cerebral down (or up or in or out) into a human scale, to make certain, with dead aim, that this is about us, here. Thank you!

May 7, 2014
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Krzeminski's Star - Matthew James Briggs - Matthew James Briggs, percussion; Candice Chin, violin

Mimetics of wonder and curiosity, to which the response is (first) dance and (later) awe.

Toad Song - Jessi Harvey

A most enjoyable and recommendable children's illustrated book. Spot on.

Reborn in Flame, The Death and Rebirth of a Phoenix - Ian McKnight

Literalist program music, as though it were a sound track to an educational film - except I don't remember those being so carefully considered.

Two Collaborative Works In Progress - Michael Owcharuk, piano; Karin Stevens, dance

Weight and work sinks into and sags the floor.

Recorded

March 5, 2015
Banned Rehearsal 598 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Anna K, Isabel Kosály-Meyer, Neal Kosály-Meyer - January 2001


Melody beguiles us. Where it doesn't appear we will seek it out. This one gathers slowly, picking up its pieces, cleaning up the morning after a mess of music.

Uspavansky (Lullabies) - Jan Vicar - Karen Bentley Pollick, Ivan Sokolov [from Amberwood]

Made of parts hesitant (to coalesce), it is at its strongest when most hesitant (to coalesce). It is sheer, unrepentant sensibility. No goal but refinement.

Quattro per Quattro - Robert Morris - Momenta Quartet [from Open Space 32]

Forest's chest expanding slowly as it respires. Giants and gnats breathe a day of breezes. Densities emerge in multiple guises.

In Session in the Tintinabulary

May 3, 2015
Troll 150503 Instrumental - Keith Eisenbrey

I'm taking a short break from my duets project to work on something close but a little different. It may or may not come to anything. Not ready for public yet.

May 4, 2015
Gradus 265 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

whisperbrush
dust from artifact
or chisel bite

what is is what isn't played
what is is matrix

**

an eyes lifted sound
face turned upward