Playlist

Recorded

December 26, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 69 Part One - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 1986]


From the Bickleton Outpost, with piano in it and the Meyer family electric organ. The parts resist

I.O.O.F. Cemetery, Bickleton, WA 1986

integration, strain at their harnesses, pull the buggy toward alternate landscapes. At first the noodling on the piano takes over the sound - partly a fault of the instrument. Big soundboards command attention, often undue. Over time the organ settles into a shimmery surface in dimensions worth exploring, a slow build applies a squeeze play. Scattered herds thunder by. No one times the ends of things to match the doings of things, valiantly prolonging the build until breaking off into plangent lugubriety, a simulacrum of emotingness. Boards creek beneath our shifting weights.

This was a two-sided cassette session. Part Two will follow in the next weeks.

Spit - Infamous Menagerie

Distorted depth
each part occupies a unique warp

Something about the slow rolling of it reminded me of Neal Kosály-Meyer's long-ago tape piece Ecclesiastical Musings.

December 27, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 434 - Isaac E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [September 1996]

Marilyn and Bill Meyer, Whidbey Island, WA 1996

Sounds are crowded onto the tape.
O the Mighty W!
The stage is thick with scrims.
Counting layers is a fool's game.
Skewing the rhyme of pulse and meter shishy hiss of amplifier turned up! up! Up! morph into traffic.
The wah wah is working.
From one pulse/metric locale to other pulse/metric locale a long long modulation winding among the modulations of the polyvocal scrims.
Bits strip off.
No level places, we transmogrify perpetually.
Flow, change, vector: complex curves of intention and attention. Intent. Attent.
Sound in your face deal with it.
Stu says cleaning out your ears.
Matt says when nothing else will do.
We hold our own onslought sound the alarm never let up.

Edge Saturation - Mutant Data Orchestra [from Sonicabal 2001]

This piece is like a satisfying rub down with a towel. All the dead is scoured off and your skin glows.

December 28, 2017
Gradus 95 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 2006]

Much of it takes place elsewhere, at various distances, around corners, in other glades, as though our position weren't privileged, Sternklang-ische. In the long silent bits we are sitting in a place where it isn't.

Lift - Shaprece [from Scatterbrain]

Backing: as thick and layered as it is, and as fluidly as it is allowed to interincorporate with the solo vocal, it is always exactly an accompaniment. No question.

Banned Telepath 45 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 2016]

We strive mightily to find a fertile seam in the collision of word sound and not-word sound. Neither

does each other any favors. Not-word sound in all its richness of timbre and rhythm and pitch and myriad other invented on the fly qualities shine a harsh light on the monotony of word sound's carrier wave, forwards its inescapable dullness. Word sound ineluctably cues up our minds' language receiving propensities, bloats itself over the top of not-word sound. Topsy turvy, the least interesting sound blots out the richness of everything else. Words often deafen us to music. A longstanding pet peeve of mine. Of course, it being a personal peeve I am aware that my take on the issue is just one of several.

A note on nomenclature: The Telepath project began in our collective history as a way of making a tape when we weren't all in the same place. Telepaths 1 date from August of 1984. Neal was in Bickleton and made a tape there. Karen makes her first sonic appearance in the canon, as does the rest of his family. Aaron and I got together and made tape at my folks' house in Bellevue. Later we mixed the two together and called it Banned Rehearsal 7.

In the instant case, Aaron made a tape where he was living in Somerville, MA, and the two combine to form Banned Rehearsal 906.

Playlist

Live

December 16, 2017
Neal Kosály-Meyer recites Finnegans Wake Chapter 4
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Karen and I had small parts to play (Karen on bodhrán, me on a venerable complex of lighting equipment). Neal proceeded, in this fourth chapter, to, as the book says, murder all the English he knows.

Recorded

December 17, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 788 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 2011]

First a Visitor Services Song sung by Neal

then a delicately clackety sound with bell kit

we have wandered together into a huge dark chamber
our soundlights don't reach the roof or walls

long loose strings shine zither and washtubbass

loverly piano tune

apparitional abidingness
repetitionness

poking the imperturbable

poke

poke

Mirzya - Daler Mehndi, Sain Zahoor, Akhtar Chanl Zahri [from BollyGood Volume 1]

multi-voiced like hip hop collabs
made of parts with cleverly revealed seams

The Fourth Pavian and The Galliarde to The Fourth Pavian - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

Not a polyphony of voices but of time planes
polytemporalplanar

immense pieces despite appearances

String Band Blues - Kansas City Blues Strummers [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

low overhead for a travelling crew
some folks and their easily transportable instruments
and of course some singin'

The Biggest Thing That Man Has Ever Done - Woody Guthrie [from Columbia River Collection]

The Great Historical Bum,
Woody's nom de plume,
his actorly persona
his literary conceit

Jerry Lee Lewis

Hound Dog - Jerry Lee Lewis [from Sun Record's Definitive Hits]

Those words those near nonsense barely an excuse for a rhythm and a rhyme of improvisatory lyric emphasis

December 19, 2017
Breakers Off Baranquilla - Joseph W. Clokey [?] - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, Joanne Deacon [from my mom's private tape]

suitably plangent
drifts away

I'm Your Puppet - James and Bobby Purify [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock and Soul]

on a virtual stage constructed out of reverb
also, in the mechanically presented herky jerky, a hint of Devo

Bernard Purdie - Aretha's master drummer

Rock Steady - Aretha Franklin [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock and Soul]

The drummer here is not "a drummer" in the Keith Moon Animal take it all over sense, but only an essential part of the percussion portion of the rhythm track.

The bass player is killing it.

Word on a Wing - David Bowie [from Station to Station]

open: synth tone || piano finger drawing
new || old

pacing vocal affect
pacing arrangement affect
his scheme of things
his own vocals standing in his own light

Don't Let Go The Coat - The Who [from Face Dances]

light on its feet: a bit earlier than, but of a piece with Graceland, or True Stories.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 18, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 948 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt

Playlist

Recorded

December 9, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 256 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [May 1991]

We have a baby at Toad Hall
We play Mario 3
Rondo loop vid game tune bits
In my future life I want to be an Anarchymedian Scholar

December 12, 2017
Who Are You - Pearl Jam [from Rearviewwindow]

Neo Eno Floyd
Mid 90s psychedelia

Banned Rehearsal 622 - Isaac E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [November 2001]

Isaac asks
how the pedal works
leverage
lugubrious wafts around impervious worlds
into the funks

the maltempered electric guitar and zither
we have trouble with intergenerational assimilation/incorporation
so much of what we do is predicated on long intracultural history
what we do is
I imagine
incomprehensible to many if not most or would be
why would we presume that a child would get it?
of course a child would not necessarily regard it as odd behavior
surely all families make noise and record it

John Henry - Bruce Springsteen [from The Seeger Sessions]

JH's Hammer
vs
BS's Compression

Even money

Playlist

Live

December 5, 2017
UW Modern Music Ensemble, Cristina L. Valdés, Director
Brechemin Auditorium, Seattle

Tierkreis - Karlheinz Stockhausen - Caitlin Beare, Emily Acri, Chris Young, Abbey Blackwell, Hexin Qiao, Edward Cunneen

Dual-faced rather than two part, the counterpoints shadow behind as though further behind in the shadows of the shadows behind. Where is the light placed to cast these exact shadows thusly?

(Stray thoughts: rhythms of the outer (outré?) Brubeck (that is, kind of jazzy at times); Looney Tunes Back in Action (another take on the two shadowing worlds of The Tune and The Counter Tune)).

Music in Similar Motion - Phillip Glass -Caitlin Beare, Emily Acri, Chris Young, Hexin Qiao,

Duck Island and Duck. Green Lake, Seattle, December 9, 2017

Edward Cunneen

How like machines we can be
if we allow it.
Nothing disturbs its shiny surface. All the parts fit. Nothing disturbs. Bots may safely sleep.

(I must admit to not being a big PG fan).

Quartet for the End of Time - Olivier Messiaen -Caitlin Beare, Emily Acri, Chris Young, Hexin Qiao

at any one time
all aim similarly
circumscription
confinement
phrased in single times
dissentless

I don't recall ever having heard this piece all the way through before. Messiaen somehow never came up for me as a student and these last 3 decades I've had so many other irons in the fire listening-wise that my experience with his music is quite limited. I was glad, at long last, to have been introduced to this piece by such a fabulous, musical, and completely engaged young crew! I love it when everybody is all in. I do indeed.

Recorded

December 3, 2017
Love Princess 1 - Isabel K, Anna K, Keith Eisenbrey [March 2006]

My 6 year-old nibling, going by Isabel at the time, wanted to make a recording so we did. The payoff? I can hear the invention of pulse and pattern in real time, the basic units of compositional form. "Do it again!" is a mythic desire. See what I'm doing this arm then this arm then this arm then this arm and the wonderful words of the names of the things that make music. Ukulele. Drum. Cymbal.

Improvisation - Paul Kikuchi [from Portable Sanctuary Vol. 1]

Signals
insect buzz flap
bbbbblapp through the air
upper edges of short waves
out at their short wave stone henge
dancing naked on the stars

Banned Telepath 45 Somerville - Aaron Keyt [March 2016]

Spinets undo pretense. Essentially a fancy toy piano, in careful hands entirely its own instrument with its own relation of energy input to dynamic output, box, range, quality, degree of clunk. There is a quivering in its reverberance, shaking in its boots.

December 7, 2017
The Third Pavian and The Galliarde to the Third Pavian - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

The Pavian is, for the most part, a set of detailed solutions to the problems raised in the gap between the 1st and 2nd thing happening of anything happening. The Galliard rocks between upper and lower hemiolas. Hemiolan hula dance.

Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XIX - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

I understand there is some small controversy as to whether this incomplete quadruple fugue belongs in the set at all because it doesn't have the main fugue subject announced in Contrapunctus I. I have no particular opinion on that score, but I do note that if you fold the Contrapunctus I subject over, creasing at the 3rd note, you get the first subject of this - sort of. And parts of the other subjects also include parts of the CI subject. In the lost or unfinished portion at the end, perhaps the idea was to create that CI subject by fitting together the bits of these subjects - a new fugue arising amidst the counterpoints, a music within a music. I can't imagine it was beyond his capability.

Old Man Blues - Jimmie Blythe [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Quick alteration of just-barely-contained and not-hardly-at-all-contained.

Hard Travelin' - Woody Guthrie [from Columbia River Collection]

Our internal migratory patterns. "I thought you knowed." Woody's collective I is in democratic opposition to the royal we.

Honey Don't - Carl Perkins [from Sun's Definitive Hits]

Word count economy. Leaning forward with a different bounce, but not so far from scat as all that.

Autumn - Edmund Rubbra - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, Joanne Deacon [from my mom's tape of April 1961]

Mood interleaved.

I'm Living in Two Worlds - Bonnie Guitar [from Dark Moon and Other Country Favorites]

Listen to her long vowel-y syllables and the rhythm of their drawings out. Rounding diphthongs in the leisurely open air.

Get It While You Can - Janis Joplin [from Pearl]

She turns on a dime to sweet
and every elsewhere in like coin

Golden Years - David Bowie [from Station to Station]

A comfy complex groove || jump cut to anguish pronouncement || then back to comfy complex.

Piano Variations - Webern - Neal Kosály [from Neal's Recital Tape May 1981]

The tape, having cooked some decades before I transferred it to digital, left ghosts of notes scattered in Webern space.

Do You Hear What I Hear - [from Hallmark's Listen to the Joy]

Those boys really worked at rounding their vowels. Completely drowned in sentimental familiarity.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 4, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 947 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt


We haven't played much in this configuration since the early '90s, 700 odd Banned Rehearsals ago.

December 9, 2017
Tweety Bird - Keith Eisenbrey

As Karen and I were walking around Green Lake this morning we heard this group of pootootweeters pootootweeting.

Playlist

Recorded

November 25, 2017
Off He Goes - Pearl Jam [from Rearviewmirror]

chords are ledges
we tumble off or clamber on

Tom The Toad - Banned Rehearsal [Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer, November 2011]

Karen was laughing so hard at the beginning that it almost didn't get going. Finally Neal lays out the

the decade of chaos

camp favorite as a punk song quick.

Loki - Brad Anderson [from Dark Energy - Interstellar Pianos]

Satie with cyborgs
being to space transparent
battle!
architecture abides

Gradus 189 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 2011]

Paths of thought looping through both thought as action and thought as decision, instant will.
In the long quiet stretches where Neal is not operating the piano to make sound the recording appears to have a subtle wash to it my ear follows from left to right unable to quite catch it tricked by traffic without.
These various tones ventriloquize each other in relation to written music's syncreticalistical-kabbalistical roots.
Tiny pianississimo short wide interval dyads over so quickly and so gently that one can hear the sequence of one's thoughts as to just what that was as it was: tiny, then pianississimo, then short, then wide, then intervaled, then dyadic, then over so quickly that one can . . .
Tone: flesh of it, ghost of it.

Kaun Tujhe - Palak Muchchai, Amaal Mallik [from Bollygood Volume 1]

Pachelbel Canon type harmonic scheme. Particular about their reverb. Does better when the big orchestra stuff doesn't take over - its entrance is generally not finessed to nearly the degree that every other sonorous movement is, which makes them jar. Missed opportunities.

November 26, 2017
The Seconde Pavian and The Galliarde to the Seconde Pavian - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

Shift from voice to voice is relaxed, courtly, full of politesse. The rhythm of shift from voice to voice is not to lead on but to graciously uncover. A pleasant company to hang with.

Die Kunst der Fuge, Canon in Hypodiatessaran al rovescio e per augmentationem perpetuus - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

Its attractiveness as a sound, as a music, is a deception, or is so not the point. Plays for thought's keeps.

Woody Guthrie

Creep Along, Moses - Taskiana Four [from Goodbye, Babylon]

Timbral intonation and a lesson in internal metrics: each harmony each song segment each breath given ample time without overbearing override of beat in your face.

It Takes A Married Man to Sing a Worried Song - Woody Guthrie [from Columbia River Collection]

He got off topic here from strictly river songs.
Or: a married man's advice to one of his past selves: Bloom to Dedalus.
A gentle and unpretentious arrangement of it though, a lovely performance direct on point.

Gesang der Jünglinge - Stockhausen

Disp- and Simil-arities of scale and/or presence, dynamic, direction, conjointure. Alienation (from us) (from each other). Some are alone in themselves some irrevocably bundled no matter to where they are sent spinning: music, noise, language, voice.

One wonders at the experience of the boy whose voice we hear. I could imagine stodgy classical music parents hearing the finished result and complaining "He sang his heart out for you and then you put the whole thing in a blender?!"

When Children Pray - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, Joanne Deacon [April 11, 1961]

Sentimental triumphalism. Sampler: (illustrated needlework saying picture).

I Want You - Bob Dylan [from Biograph]

Karen operates a pink balloon

Creating a persona for listeners to want to be, or several, open-ended enough to be serviceable in nearly any situation.

Gettin' In Tune - The Who [from Who's Next]

Going Pop to invent Power Pop. I'm growing up! See!
Makes it sound pretty good.

Station to Station - David Bowie [from Station to Station]

Train chug (fast) on flange (slow) as though standing in for rolling echoes of bridges and hills. Every
moment of the instrumental buildup is composed as to newness and stasis. Bridge follows bridge follows bridge. A platformer.

I Threw A Brick Through A Window - U2 [from October]

Window: a thing that is there but is invisible
Brick: a thing that is there that can be seen
Window: hidden fact
Brick: disclosed fact
Window: secret
Brick: known
I threw a discoverer through a secret.

A new theory about my general bad attitude about Bono: His voice is phenomenal, no question, but its affective range is narrow (though not as egregiously so as Billy Joel's), it can really only do what it has already always done. This tends to come across to me as overly sincere and insufferable. However, that is simply the voice he has to work with and he has managed to find ways to make it work to its limits.

November 28, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 68 "Spring Equinox" - [Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer, March 1986]


Having moved up north Karen (she was still a Meyer then) has become a regular.
Thumping.
Balloons are held between hands and their surfaces transtrude each other.
Pitchy rhythm of texture differentials (or rhythmy pitch of).
Farty.
Significant portions of this are not apparent.
We hear hints of goings on but not all makes it out to us.
Soundtrack to an unfathomable irrecoverable scene.
That is: Sound made in the image that: the sound of made sound is not the show.
Probably the session with Karen playing balloons. I have some pictures.
Finally! The dulcimer!
Eventually in a remarkable space, Funmaker folding much of us inside.

Looking Around - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

Not a completeness, a transient recurring mood.

November 30, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 433 - [Isaac E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer, August 1996]

Karen, Whidbey Island, WA, ca. 1996

dive right in.
we are drilling and grinding sounding stone
unyielding yanking at defenses
cornet violin guitar drums
right up front
clarinet
open up relax grip
beat on our flabby belly drums
turn a corner down to inside at furioso galloping in bits and pieces
evening campfire harmonica plaint (too much guitar - my fault)
filling crannies seagull-toned reeds and tambourine jackhammer banjo chisel
regrets have no place in listening learn lesson and move on
omnipresence of distorted tambourine shake sound a surface rough and broken
roof or ceiling stubborn
whoever was doing it was really into it
baked on hard, mineral

Agatha Reads a Letter - Meri von Kleinsmid [from Sonicabal 2001]

Melody in richly overtoned synth sound. Swarmy. Goose sized bees.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 27, 2017
Gradus 325 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

I am sitting in a rocking chair
short bursts in figures of two to five or so
thinking about thinking about
tiny spider (on my book then)
gradual plethorization of sonorities groups object sound groups broken discontinuity
archipelago in a low tide shallow sea