Playlist

Recorded

February 17, 2018
You'll Do - Rachel Harrington [from Celilo Falls]

a hook
upon which to hang lines
lines that point to the hook
that point to the hook and riff around it
that's what

Gradus 286 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 2016]

particular qualities of otherness
not that other
but how other

an interval set is a set of ways that two pitches can sound when compared

odd how suddenly it now sounds like parts of triads
as though a new layer had appeared from where?

applying precise oomph to these notes can effect a sense of modulation
one key sense to another among just only these 3 or 4 pitch classes

merged voices: played voice / space voice

February 18, 2018
Will Yow Walke the Woods Soe Wylde - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

the keyboard setting of a song becomes a staged dialogue of the song it sets
virginal: lute simulator

Black Bottom Stomp - Jelly Roll Morton [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

circus clown juggle act

End of My Line - Woody Guthrie [from Columbia River Collection]

a scene from the electrification of the rural West (recent then and not yet 100 years done)

Mine Or Yours - Chet Baker and Art Pepper [from Playboys]

selling cool elegance
up-to-the-minute expertise

Cry For a Shadow - The Beatles [from The Beatles Anthology Volume 1]

an audition tape instrumental
would you hire this band behind your singer?

Lake Hills ca 1971

Scarborough Fair - Canticle - Simon & Garfunkle [from Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme]

How very English! To what extent was folk rock's influence on rock in general a bulwark against African-American culture, and to what extent was it an implicit, but near silent, acknowledgement of it? I suppose it would take some subtle tweezers to determine.

Unnamed Track 4 - Tillicum Junior High School Band, Bob Runyan, director [from my mom's tape of a concert given on March 3, 1971]

the muscular West
triumphalist tales we teach our teens

The Sheltering Sky - King Crimson [from Discipline]

a silent journey into the wilderness
a soundtrack
as it passes over the horizon the drum remains last seen
the tallest mast

Spirit In The Night - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen Live 1975-1985]

Mock Myth Romantic Days of Freedom
but sincere, as though everyone was exactly there
sharing shared experience exactly
each desiring so strenuously to be larger than life could be

February 19, 2018

Banned Rehearsal 260 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [June 1991]

at Toad Hall, an echo place

reading from On The Road (Ezekiel vision of Wrath to the West)
cosplaying literarily as angels

Aaron at Toad Hall ca 1991

make sounds like snoring

plunk plunk mbira plunk

not energetic
importing sounds doesn't change that - still not energetic

drunken spouting
each on their own bar stool
into feedback coda

Happy Happy Happy We!

Handel and Shakespeare duel it out powerless
exit clown into my grave
Kerouac returns to close

Gonna Have Fun - The Boss Martians [from 13 Evil Tales]

neo Sun Records sound

February 20, 2018
Ariel - Greg Sinibaldi - Greg Sinibaldi, ewi/electronics; Ryan Ferriera, guitar; Ted Poor, drums

I'll be writing a review of this album soon I hope. These are from my notes of a second listen.

breathing in dense atmosphere or liquisphere deep ocean saturn exhalation bubbles rise irretrievable The Monster caged rattles something in the room [did the first time around too, the shades?] 1st cut has lots of power rock vibe to it downbeats seem clear until you try to latch on

roles: of ewi || of drums || of guitar

or: when it does resolve into power repetitions it doesn't last, it dissolves or just falls apart glueless

chopped sound like dicing attitude-challenging fleas

the stage moves around us to a different room
not moving forward through time from then to now and beyond
sense of looping back without repeating cyclic drones notwithstanding
GS has come stuck in untime

what remains unprocessed the substrate of real life or the encrustation of it upon

certainly nothing light about it nor glib

cats are going a bit bonkers

Ruggles monumentality? hm.

a homogeneity: same? amp system; same? guitar; same? drums? for each cut
has always seemed an alien mindset (my problem though I guess)
or rather: the space is so repletely filled at all moments that we are thrown upon variations in viscosity as a lifeline

ends with gentle quiet

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 19, 2018
Gradus 328 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

quite the list of notes to begin with, taking up a considerable time in telling them

first sounds all thick close
close wound ivy vines
thick and woody

each either new or a reference or mathematically postulated
folded into the crumple of crumpling time
the exactly knife edged →there←

a compositional stance earnedly arising within a weberberance of further indextualization

Playlist

Recorded

February 10, 2018
Government Flu - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters/In God We Trust]

fancy guitar (learned to play with the ventures?) patter lyrics spat out

Banned Rehearsal 71 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 1986]

roll roll roll roll
N&A's wedding announcement

that this rhythm is unsubtle is a stance
something is going to break I know it
hammering man dueling flootle tootles
pitch talking across the degrees of recordedness
melodies not strictly imitative
self-contained multi-media portable sound projection devices boom boxes yeah!
behind of us the specter of Wozzeck
the passage narrows in on us alarmingly the walls close
sinuously slow into a swimmy sort of place
I do not recognize the tape that is on the playback in the wayback
arriving in another land caught in the act of invention
dulcim dulcimer dulcimest

Ariel - Greg Sinibaldi - Greg Sinibaldi, ewi/electronics; Ryan Ferriera, guitar; Ted Poor, drums

Greg has asked for a review of this fine album, so these are from my notes on my first listen through

clear melodic speaking saturated harmony embracing
dig that crazy rhythm
earns its moments compositionally
chattery chopped
form is onward leading guiding pulling along, compels, breathes
calm this morning at the beach
composed with the structural tokens of jazz arrangement (heads, solos, changes, (or changes-like))
rather than rock arrangement (verse chorus bridge)
and yet the power entrances come on like Pete & Keith if Pete & Keith were Fripp & Co
howling at the moon isn't about the moon
echoes recede, bending like mermaid hair
really lovely playing golly!

February 11, 2018
Structure - Infamous Menagerie

rhythm scrims
crossing several generations of media
an installation

Banned Rehearsal 438 - Isaac E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [November 1996]

hm. essentially the same scrimmy idea, but not an installation exactly

more like a junkyard clown act
handpuppet battles Punch and Judy style
into a different ecology of din
a roaring roar for roaring recedes into the past from the past at its distance
what it sounds like it is it probably is
enter the bee hive
righteous pedal tone from the Mighty W
a continuous sense in process
but noting the inventory of instruments in play, of layers in evidence, pulls one out of the time of the continuity
weirds it
pedal still hanging in there growing dire
guitar too big in the mix but, in general, conscientiously allowing space

Gongalong - Steve Barsotti, Dave Knott [from Sonicabal 2001]

surgically careful application of sound
it'll be there for aye better get it right
and with great imagination
some serious work down there in the pianississimo

Banned Rehearsal 700 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 2006]

hm. essentially the same careful application as above

but we are more reckless with our space and size
what comes next is a pleasurable anxiety
similar mixtures of same as and different as a midden-tation session
Funmaker late in life (best drummer we ever had)
midden-session sensibility but loosened
snare drum sounds fab
clear, picks up its pitch variability
I recognize my piano playing by my ear
ideas unfold from inside
switches gears almost instantaneously
no fuss

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 12, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 952 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer
I spent some time digging about in the big red bag of fun. Aaron played viola.

February 13, 2018
Fish Distributor - Your Mother Should Know - Karen Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

We recorded tracks for this YMSK song: acoustic guitar, drums, lead and backing vocals

February 15, 2018

Fish Distributor - Your Mother Should Know - Karen Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

More for the same: tambourine, electric six and twelve string guitars
bass tracks to follow

Playlist

Recorded

February 4, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 437 - Isaac E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [November 1996]

waiting for the right door to come around

Neal, ca 1996

so that we can step in and do that dance

Neal Sax Keith Guitar Aaron Violin or Anna Violin
big squeeeeeek toy wailing and shredding (shredding in our own way)
big sax sound we hack at and scrape at

rather a battlefield of standing waves
(more a working-at-things session than a presentation-ready session)

First: ascertain the exact contours of our present argument
Next: compose together a chord - for want of a better word - a harmony perhaps - precisely in the
temperament of the contours of our present argument

gets quiet down to the hiss
and moving about put the baby on the back
barely whistling

Banned Rehearsal 625 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [December 2001]

the differences in distance between the senses of presence is a thicket
frog marimba wash tub bass piano tiny plunk
discuss in prose paragraphs amidst all these drums

but because it was a thicket of distances these new ones enfold the old ones
layered pasts layered in layered presence

zither drone drumming AM radio am speaking to you from a great distance
FM radio am here with you in your room

drum beating makes a name for itself in this rather hot playback

Isabel protospeaks

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

an opera or the entracte for the Hyperprog Band of LEGEND!
wanders close to Nancarrow through the basement watercloset back of a famous minimalist's seedy beginnings

Gradus 191 - Neal Kosály-Meyer - Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 2011]

dynamic range and its echoes
watch your fingers
might get chopped

Arsenic & Lace - Strange Like Us [from Strange Peeps]

Mixed thick with snarl and c'mere baby
freak flag freakflagfly freak flag freakflagfly (repeat)

February 6, 2018

A Voluntarie, "For My Ladye Nevell" - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

Ornamentfarbenmelodien

each and every element of texture both homogeneous - to easily fit together - and granular, specific, high-definition - to curve just so
on multiple scales

Partita in B-flat Major - J. S. Bach - Gunther Hasselmann

proceeds in a series of direct lines
only wending with friction or drag of mode and dissonance
living to break free

offset lines drag each other
but still direct
looking ahead

the Sarabande's stumbling ornaments balance perfectly

O Death Where Is Thy Sting - Rev. J. M. Gates [from Anthology of American Folk Music]

near to singing in tongues
cooperating independencies

Pastures of Plenty - Woody Guthrie [from Columbia River Collection]

us migrants. US migrants.
must always be free (not the migrants, the pastures)
more land reform propoganda
yowza!

Mine - The Voices of Walter Schumann [a Rescued Record]

for choreographed singing
as for Broadway, or as a demo for a Variety TV Spectacular


Ain't She Sweet - The Beatles [from Beatles Anthology Volume 1]

eyes on the prize burning bright

Ninety-Nine And A Half Won't Do - Wilson Pickett [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

the pitch qualia of the bass line is obscured, or given a specific index, by the kick drum (which is huge)

Unnamed Track 3 - Tillicum Junior High School Band, Bob Runyan, director [on March 3, 1971, from my mom's tape]

pretty sweet horn solo. cornet, trumpet, flugel?

February 8, 2018

Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (#3) - Gorecki - Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Antoni Wit

count to 3
nest it
slow and fugueish

A.H. in the dark
or a clownless Shostakovitch
Pachelbel's Canon with depression

narrow, bound
the voice enters singing what might be, might as well be, partitions of the identical close stepwise counterpointing texture stuff

all frame
no mona lisa

why do I so mistrust the politics of this?
Is it possible to hire people to put themselves through this?

interminabularity to the max, man
grinding to an eternal halt

oh boy a coda

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 5, 2018
Gradus 257 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

distances unbridged
left distant
drift off

singular light source
like morning

Playlist

Live

February 2, 2018
Capella Romana, with guest conductor Marcel Pérès
St. James Cathedral, Seattle

Messe de Nostre Dame (with propers for the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple and

the Purification of the Virgin Mary) - Guillaume de Machaut

The class in Ancient Music History that I took as, I think, a Sophomore, at the UW, was humming along without making much impact until the prof dropped the needle on this 14th Century wonder. My ears perked right up. A few weeks later Ockeghem produced a similar effect, but that's another story. I don't really know where to start, but even more so live than recorded (and I do have M. Pérès's Ensemble Organum recording) this is some seriously weird shit.

Unimaginably consonant spaces open up suddenly, like frozen dragons or sci-fi time bubbles. Beneath, in the murmur, multiple layers of articulate thinking, in scholastic process. Invention inventing itself anew.

Or: With one voice these ten men speak with all possible readings of meanings, a synthetic poly-voice, beyond any individual's utterance. A sense of meaning that only ten voices speaking as parts of one voice can speak. One thinks forward to Schoenberg's polyphonic voice of God in Moses und Aron, or (now bear with me here) to a completely integrated version of what David Bowie was up to with his multiply layered lead vocal tracks on "Stay".

Recorded

January 28, 2018
Rebreather goes octophonic at the Seattle Art Museum - Rebreather [from Sonicabal 2001]

sci-fi highway traffic, signal interceptions.

Gradus 96 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 2006]

The choosing of the particular distinction we make between 'the music' and 'the noise outside the music' as being the most problematic, or, that this is the distinction of all others that is the most virtuous to not make, but, leaving all the others, presumably, intact, becomes less a spiritual mode and more a cheap parlor game mind trick, like somersaults. That is, which part of the complex of which that complex distinction is made is it important to somehow not make? And how could I know if I were successful in not making that distinction, if I couldn't somehow specify the nature of the distinction I was not making - thus somehow putting myself in the position of focusing on the distinction that I must, virtuously, force myself not to make. To not make the distinction is to posit that music, all of it, is noise, and that noise, all of it, is music, neither of which positions I choose to hold. Neither music nor noise benefits from the nullity of the distinction. For me it is no either/or case between them. It will always be an open question, with ramified implications.

Your blogger, battling driftwood dragons

Very Nice Things - Youth Rescue Mission [from Youth Rescue Mission]

A recitation of privilege and grace, a self esteem bolsterer that veers, oddly, into humility, or, perhaps, satire of subtle sort.

Jerseyville Illinois (demo 160310) - Your Mother Should Know

Over there, in paradise.

January 30, 2018
The Passing Mesures, "The Ninthe Pavian" and The Galliarde to the Ninthe Pavian - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

Each voice is an independent elaboration of exploratory elaboration. Query: did the notion of 'full score' arise out of the keyboardists' imitation of vocal counterpoint? I love the non-functional pitched sounds of harpsichords' releases at the ends of things. The Galliarde is a page of time spans crammed with curlicues.

Must Be Born Again - Rev. J. M. Gates [from Anthology of American Folk Music]

elbows all in

Ramblin' Round - Woody Guthrie [from Columbia River Collection]

The concept of gleaning and the mythos of the migrant worker, of internal refugees. Political note: Is it not ironic how the anti-immigrant rhetoric currently rampant among us fails so utterly to remember that, we are and always have been a nation of internal immigrants, and of internal refugees?

Matchbox - Carl Perkins [from Sun Records Definitive Hits]

Early electronic music, as practiced outside of academic journals

Big Leg Women - James Easley, Guitar Pete Franklin, Raymond Holloway [from The Art of Field Recording Volume 1]

A part (a big part) of what the blues always was: bend it up, bend it down. An improvisation-bent rhythm sculpture.

Mexico - Allen Toussaint [a Rescued Record]

Circling arrangement, a novelty riff that could go on forever, were we drunk enough.

Track 2 - Tillicum Junior High School Band [from my mom's tape of a concert given on March 3, 1971]

A march, sprightly!

Father Death Blues - Allen Ginsberg [from Holy Soul Jelly Roll]

No more tune than necessary to transform either poem or song out of either poem or song. Depends on where you start.

February 1, 2018
Seventeen Prepuntal Contraludes - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey (recorded January 2010)

I wrote this set of tiny little pieces in 1981, while studying with John Rahn at the UW. They became,

Your blogger, in the past

after a fashion, my parting shot to undergraduate study. They are serial, being based on 5 note segments of a 10-tone row, and (if I remember rightly) quasi-Stravinskian rotational arrays. It was a 10-tone row, rather than 12, because I left two pitch-classes out entirely, creating a lumpy (or hole-some) aggregate. They were the first pieces I had presented in a while that came across like regular music: witty, melodic, full of stylistic references. Some members of the faculty at the time, who seemed (to me) to be regarding what I had been doing with increasing dismay, approved of my new-found musicality with relief. John couldn't, I think, resist the moment and announced that they were "probably the most sophisticated serial work any of his students had ever written." I don't think he really thought that at the time, but it was a pretty funny line, and I appreciated his support. Systems aside, I got quite a bit right in these: scale, proportion, lyrical wit. I will be performing them as part of my recital in February.

Hey Mr. Rain (version 2) - The Velvet Underground [from Another View]

Perfect title for a damp February evening. Mr. Cale's scribbling can't avoid sounding, occasionally, like it's about to go all concert virtuoso on us.

Banned Rehearsal 259 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [June 1991]

Stand back! It's right there big in your face when you push play. No intro. Then ultra-delicate sensations of reverb. Un-on-going flatly presented. Wurlitzer Funmaker Sprite was no Hammond B3 but it had a sexy charm about it. Daddy's going to read Dante. Parenthood is an improvisatory art form. The concept of 'whole', i.e. completeness, as in beginning, middle, and end, is an unnecessary construct, an infliction upon music, alien to it. Activities can abort with salutory abruptness. Amid the reed and bow the quiet of nursing baby breathing. Contrasts made big with tape. Motto rhythm. Be wary of: It could have been done better. Often a hidden way of saying it could have been done so that it sounds more ordinary, or more professional. gag.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 29, 2018
Banned Telepath 59 Maple Leaf - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer

January 30, 2018
Banned Telepath 59 Lake City- Aaron Keyt
Banned Rehearsal 951 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt Neal Kosály-Meyer

Those are Aaron's crows, in mid murder.