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.