Playlist

Preface

"Here matter is not what matters, but instead 'mattering' as inter active processes that take place between a diversity of matters, human beings in interactions with other human beings, human beings interacting with other non-human beings, including inert things, producing a diversity of situations in sounds, words, gestures, dances, visual traces, acts, ... Each time the complex layering of active material elements that influence each other in conflicting multidimensional intercourses, gives rise to the emergence of a peculiar situation that can never be exactly repeated, due to different circumstances and agencies. And therefore mattering, even if a stable instituted disposition will be the guaranty that something of importance can emerge, has to do with ephemeral forms of experience, with work in progress without progress, in which matter is continuously revived, far removed from definitive immutable truths." Jean-Charles François "What Matters" Open Space Magazine Issue 21 spring 2018

Texts

Recorded

August 21, 2018
MASS: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers - Leonard Bernstein -  Alan Titus (Celebrant), Norman Scribner Choir, Berkshire Boy Choir, Studio Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein (Conductor)

It was not my intention to be blogging about this piece on LB's birthday, it just worked out that way. I spent a certain amount of time with this back in the day, and it ends up, frankly, leaving a bad taste. What isn't cribbed from others undermines itself irremediably. And he keeps hammering the Author's Message home. Hammer Hammer Hammer. Then some more hammering. The rotting corpse of Big-Tune Romantic Triumphalism on obscene display. Every possible end point strung together end to end without purpose. It won't help. Larded with ear worms and sodden with gaudily lit up irony. Slightly higher brow Andrew Lloyd Weber. Ugh.

August 22, 2018
Stray Bits - Keith Eisenbrey, Dave Jones, Aaron Keyt [November? 1981]

the tail end of something lame from 1981, left over at the end of a tape re-used to capture something else.

Baby Grand - Billy Joel with Ray Charles [from The Essential Billy Joel]

Bad Bernstein, lame bits, and now Billy Joel. I was not expecting anything remotely as fabulous as this is. BJ does a creditable RC impression both singing and playing - I don't think I could reliably pick out which was which without seeing it done. It's as though Ray were teaching Billy how to sing his own song. So far, hands down, this is my favorite cut on this album.

Banned Rehearsal 270 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [October 2001]

gently begun til bowing takes off and opens up though never not gentle
spring in a tube
inaverse to playing out loud shaking scraping backforth rhythms restless sleep
JJumpUp?
Ring the Bells! Ring the Bells! Jingle Bong HOI!
oh dear we woke the sprite
eruption of radio
Aaronsbundler shatters apart slipjointedly
someone pitched 104 pitches
back to gently restful with guitar and bells and strikes upon the imperturbable going
on tribes of drums ongoing
we return to spring in a tube

August 24, 2018
Eight Pieces for Violin and Cello - Handel - Philharmonia Virtuosi

starts honestly, tuning up
just enough substance to allow music to be made of it, almost Couperinish, but less overtly sophisticated
bending toward neo-classical phrasing rather than wallowing in baroque interweaving
concerns balance bald - almost Randallian
by the book balance of phrase disturbed by inner disconsistences
or
we deafen ourselves to many things by applying, as the whole point, balance, rather than using it as only a frame of reference within a more twisted aesthetic
how many ways can the utterly stable be not at all stable not at all
within these balanced boxes metrical hefts shift in close pre-Copernicusian dance

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 20, 2018
Figure Study 180820 - Keith Eisenbrey

Neal couldn't come over for Gradus so I flailed away on the keyboard for awhile.

Playlist

Preface

"So an activist doesn't transcend time, it invents a new time, in each new now. If each present is an expression of its past - of its histories - then opening-onto-future, as a radical reinscription of the past, is exactly what marks the end of history. Music, for Sun Ra, takes on a heuristic value here. My role as a music scholar as well: there is a great deal of research on Sun Ra, from the perspectives of literary theory, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, and more, but little of it touches Sun Ra's music. Music theory and analysis, conversely, continue to privilege things like coherence and connection and what we might call 'hearing-as' as its disciplinary/disciplining projects. I'm interested in what can we learn specifically from Sun Ra's music; its materiality, its matter(ing) - or from the activist now of any improvised musical expression, or from the relations between musicking human subjects and post-or trans-human sonorous bodies - that can be of value beyond the hermetic world of music analysis. I'm interested, in short, in the ways that music theory - and the ways that it can imagine or reveal relationships between musicking human and sonorous bodies, relationships that, necessarily, transform those bodies through the very acts of relating - might matter."
Chris Stover "Sun Ra's Mystical Time" Open Space Magazine Issue 21 spring 2018

Texts

Recorded

August 11, 2018

For Unto Us A Child Is Born - Handel - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Richard Condi, cond. [from Handel's Greatest Hits]

royal triumphalism
utterly misses the insurrectionary tone implied by the list of and he shall be called

Serenata Notturna - Mozart - Capella Istropolitania, Wolfgang Sobotka

a certain amount of bombast must be necessary to wake them up
graciousness propped on sturdy stilts
playful sequence of tempi in the final

Aria "A un dotter della mia sorte" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), William Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

the expression is always clearly drawn
the comic stance allows anything to get thrown into the stewpot

I'll Be Rested - Roosevelt Graves and Brother [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

great recorded sound of tambourine for 1926

You Ain't Nothing But A Hound Dog - Elvis Presley [from First Live Recordings]

drumbreak biddabiddabiddabiddabidda
stops
returns in stripper tempo
twice
thrice
shrieks are loving it

Big John - The Shirelles [from The Shirelles Anthology]

lots of airspace
you could walk around in there
an actual stage sized sound

Summertime - Billy Stewart [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

extra syllables pile in through the rhythm section and Billy offers no resistance
ends with a lullaby holler

Pacific High Studio Mantras - Alan Ginsberg [from Holy Soul Jelly Roll]

to have been Ginsberg
having become Ginsberg
required playing Ginsberg
as Ginsberg
at all moments

The Quiet One - The Who [from Face Dances]

something in the engineering is off
heavy on the bass strangely thin everything else
they play energetically but some edge of it is blunted

Banned Rehearsal 80 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1986]

a session of Sudden Songs: This Time of Night (Kosály-Meyer), Hey Hey Hey (Eisenbrey) - robust guitar tunin' pretty lick -  I Believe I'll Have Another Cup of Coffee Sir (Kosály-Meyer) - then playing with self narration of intention as subjunctive suggestions taunt - also the string's a might loose - mighty stirrin' sound though - This Here Tunin' Mechanism's All Busted (Eisenbrey), I Was Sittin' In The Car (Kosály-Meyer) - thoughts about strummy type rhythms and plucks 3 clear sounds steadying each other - Hollywood, here I come! - If I Were To Learn (Kosály-Meyer) - the reason BR never resolved in a rock & roll band or jazz band or ought other genre band that plays songs is because when we started to put together songs seriously, that is right away, we already had each one down in all its perfection of momenthood. There was nowhere further to go to resolve. Can't get better than perfect. Wild Thing (a cover of course), Amazing Grace to a Louie Louie beat (we had some discussion the other night about the difference between a cover and a performance - theory: one covers a recording, one performs a chart), Tell Me Lord (Eisenbrey), If You Find an Alligator In Your Bed Tonight (Kosály-Meyer), I Got Dust In My Nose (Meyer) - that is, Karen before we got hitched. This string's beginnin' to peel a bit here.

August 12, 2018

On a Plain - Nirvana [from Nevermind]

short feet face each other
across a break
a list of them with
bits that repeat

(intro and outro thingies are wrong)

Sonata in D Major - Bocherini - Philharmonia Virtuosi

violin and cello duetting demonstrating cooperation to demonstrate how pleasant a thing it is
domestic intimate for family public
not every household could afford Haydn so there was a market for fully realized home sized music

Sunshine Music - Love Princess (Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K-M [May 2006])

some question as to whether the personnel is listed correctly in my index

in which: the young'n age 6 is given an electric guitar to strum
we should get
a taiko drum
refrain boomboom boomboom boomboom BASH!
alto horn and trombone on one set of lips

Monday Boy - Shaprece [from Scatterbrain]

expensive sounding sound
haute couture construction
music as a kind of clothing self presentation
then there is another song after the song

Banned Rehearsal 909 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 2016]

we do the things that make the sounds
not expensive sounding at all
not expensive but occasionally puzzling in the sense of how are we making that sound?
what are we doing as we do those things that make those sounds?
drumming cooperative
low piano crossroads ahead
train whistle sucked into synthesizer

August 15, 2018
Hallelujah Chorus - Handel - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Richard Condi, cond. [from Handel's Greatest Hits]

excessively beat-y
as a break from beating us over the head
more beating us over the head

Divertimento in F K247 - Mozart - Capella Istropolitania, Wolfgang Sobotka

dreary lackluster
he could churn out reams of this
statement answer
statement non seq
answer

though the moment between statement and non is lively

all about phrase balance
fails to get anywhere in the operatic way he can have
in short the balance between balanced and unbalanced is skewed too heavily toward the balanced

but overnight I had second thoughts

long static stretches of balanced thinking
come in anywhere leave any time
rewards attention without drama
very like high-toned background music
ambient music of another time long past

August 16, 2018
Act I Finale "Fredda ed immobile" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), William Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

rolled R's answered by vocal rrrrruns
go!
farce allows a wide range of affectual granularity
effective piccolo use
triangle glitter to close

Le Vieux Soulard et sa Femme - Blind Lemon Jefferson [from Anthology of American Folk Music]

strumbox and squeezebox
free reeds now!

You'll Wonder Where the Yellow Went - The Jumpin' Jacks [a Rescued Record]

mustard in your chili pie
crazy man slang as many as can be got
like patter, man

Telemusik - Karlheinz Stockhausen

a poly-layered list
everything in its order
a study or chamber version of Hymnen
directionality metaphorized into leftrightness
doesn't come across as all that subtle in the end
though: in '66 stereo  play was relatively a new face
tuple channels
the play of filters and presence is better
music for loudspeakers

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 13, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 964 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt

Once again on the porch, features a new ukelele and an old autoharp

Playlist

Live

August 4, 2018
Forest Show - music by John Teske and Neil Welch
Ravenna Park, Seattle

John Teske, bass
Neil Welch, tenor and C soprano saxophone
Samantha Boshnack, trumpet
Ebony, cello
Noel Kennon, violin
Greg Campbell, drums

it is a rare thing

not Ravenna Park

- if one is not engaged at that moment in the performative mode of Choral Singing
just then -
to experience the same
precise
blending sense
of being a proper part of this activity we are doing together

I have been conscripted to battle
that much is clear

(flash scene)
(Gangs of New York)
(Dead Rabbits emerge)

warriors of cosmic conscience and little bells
now relics on the table

battle whom? what?

the clear co-association of each of us with the march, the us, the procession, was enough
we are us
we are the knights who process with bells

fear us

but seriously folks

there was a call, a gathering, a procession, and an anthem
there was preaching and a rite
as though
the blood of prophets
grows up
through us
church arising
through cracks in the pavement

fall you will rise you must

dust of priests fear not tidings
so loved the world
in own image

us

--- Thank you John and Neil and your superb cohort! Joy is a pleasure and joy in music is a particular pleasure.

Recorded

August 4, 2018
Duetto "Donque io son . . . tu non minganni" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), Will Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

dumb fun yes
also no moment like any other
conversations and coils and negotiations and journeys

I Want Jesus to Walk With Me - Homer Quincy Smith [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

reed organ and tenor sweet

Why Do Fools Fall In Love - Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

before band-ness became what it came to be
as: who and what did that
is: when the group was a group of singers first, accompanying themselves perhaps

Baby It's You - The Shirelles [from Shirelles Anthology]

alarming dynamic contrast in the mix
gives the singer's voice room to get low and sexy

Substitute - The Who [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

mixed blatant so that
what is front is front
what's back is back

The Journeyman's Grace - Fairport Convention [from Meet on the Ledge]

the word "I" has almost an "oh" sound to start: "oh-EE" rather than "ah-EE"
an accent that was near to that that returned in the heydays of Brit Punk
England land of diphthongs

Strawberry - Keith Eisenbrey, Dave Jones, Aaron Keyt [November 1981]

one side of a conversation
telepathic feelers
you enjoy your dinner

NB - this is one of the very few bits of recorded sound left over from that proto Banned Rehearsal time

I've Seen Your Face - Julian Lennon [from The Secret Value of Daydreaming]

suffocation saturation sound

August 7, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 269 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [September 1991]

Toad Hall and its intonation of doom and destiny

do not adjust, listen instead
you will have to listen to what this little bird says in order to construe oneself
boogah! boo-gah-loo!
a unique compositional challenge: engage with a protoverbal sentience
nailed it
(easier than with a verbal sentience, especially than with a neoverbal)
a seminar open table conference hearing congress convention
of rhythmic inflection
from inside the tape, any input from outside the tape serves to shrink, diminish, circumscribe
the challenge of any sound is to be more than its fact

August 8, 2018
Caress Me Down - Sublime [from a private mix CD]

a sex brag weaving between Spanish and English
little bit of a Bo Diddley beat

I Love You - 260000 Volts [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

urge mindless
certainly does not overstay

Nature Lives in Motion Part 1 - S. Eric Scribner - S. Eric Scribner, Mike Sentkewitz [from Storm Sound Cycle, Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, May 2011]

how it begins
cetacean siren keen feline yowl caw

limn of sky and ocean
was not

a long process begins here
utterly without hurry

time to enter an impersonal space completely progressing clearly in imperceptible increment to space-alien cricket field

never clear whether bird sound is from the can or from the out
disbalanced
what is in the room barely registers over what already persists
our world matters so little

what of it is the use of it as over above what is the other of it, the it of it

the passing squalls have carved the landscape into passing squall impervious hollows
little can happen except in the eddies where flotsam collects

a corner is turned around a ridge line into a furtherscape where we sit and say what we did and what we heard

best get on up the trail

!fun fact: my laptop was used to play back the canned bits

syncretic land/sea/jungle/alpine could be all at once or
rigging creak on ocean ship

70 minutes in a dynamic event with bird tweet or not

August 9-10, 2018
Finnegans Wake Chapter 6 - James Joyce - Maharadja Sweets [from Waywords and Meansigns]

comedy show
from space!
each line a separate dream full formed
folk strum recitativo psalmtone focus
the finessed intervals between each end of line spokesung and guitar refrainingcommentary
as though this were simply sung for y'all to hear
!to Anna Livia!
is each
things enumerated here
focus: size of
riddle me this: range of
reading with specs :|| answer ||: rank of
!! Finn Mc Cool !!
sees of
another silent hiatus
after which the tune bends downward not this not that game show !!! ANSWER !!!
sub basement ward
FIVE
fragmentsed fastjumbleforwardthroughawesomeheap
MS SAM!??? almost
teachermaster filtertransformuliterates into dialogue reported
sequentiated logo layers
the linguas distracted
each from their each
quiver against each other in layerous words

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 6, 2018
Gradus 337 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Every piano composition performance should announce itself with equal forthright-ery and detail.

If this is melody
what is the exact nature of it? exact to the absolute? notes emerging into consciousness
after all these years it is easily as much about teaching me to hear piano music one note at a time
as Neal learning to play so
an interview question (hear below)
Do you, when moving from one rung to another during a single double 40 minute session,
think: this is a new thing entirely wipe the slate clean of rung before just preceding
or: now I'm just gonna move some notes around
or: something else entirely?
gap between what it says and what it is
transformation through filter of availability (as a compositional strategy)
downright narrative

Interview Question - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

I was so tickled to come up with an actual question that I asked it. Neal answers immediately.

August 7, 2018
Oak Harbor 180807 - Glen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

I was in Oak Harbor, Washington, on Tuesday, with my brother Glen, who decided to give his car an automatic bath. I recorded it with a phone app.

Playlist

Recorded

July 29, 2018

Finnegans Wake Chapter 5 - James Joyce - Neil Campbell [from Waywords and Meansigns]

as from in a swivelorbiting teacup ride
the fellows of which filled with pulsing square wave glowers

quiet enough suburban sounds around oblivious
lore is rich with long loops backdrops cranky go round

here's the motor at the heart chugging chug chug tip
under the waves it goes

July 31, 2018
Aria "La callania è un venticello" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), Will Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

snark within form
form lights fuse
fuse polite tunes
tunes turned to
to revolution

Get With - Ben Pollack / The Readheads [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

that guitar sounds amplified
as richly detailed as the trumpet
the drums must have been two blocks west
instrumental dance for dancing instrumentals

Who Do You Love - Bo Diddley [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

same deal
but the drums moved back in
trumpet replaced by loudspeakered voice
beautiful virtual space of recorded sound
cut to fit to the two minutes thirty or so

Symphony in D minor (The Year 1917) (#12) - Shostakovich - Leningrad Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, Yevgeny Mravinsky

soundtrack for which visuals are superfluous
(panoplepticon)

circling lost in the orders of its circling figures
somebody keeps turning the frenetic up

meanwhile in the simple hearts of the proletariat
history's burden bestowed
distant doings afoot

Stop Her On Sight - Edwin Starr [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

power coloratenor
barely a song before it's gone

Don't Let Nobody Turn You 'Round - Silver Light Gospel Singers [from The Art of Field Recording, Vol. 1]

tempos within voice
genders of tempos
held together at the tap tap tap tap tap tap

Fire - U2 [from October]

kind of a mess, drifts off in a Pink Floyd haze

August 1, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 79 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1986]

Neal

merge! yield!
recounts a story of the container of stuff they had brought with them from back home
Karen clears her throat
Keith recites in whale a sixty cent bus trip

time and a consideration of decision making
measuring regret and loss
Orpheus and Eurydice perhaps, in another guise

Harry and Maude hoot hoot hoot hoot hoot hoot

remember! merge! forces beyond their con|||| . . .

August 2, 2018
Once in a While - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

for those paying close attention, I blogged about this one just last May.
punctuated by insert beats and relax chorus a BRIDGE!!
Big Punkt
to guitar solo Haydnesque affect-thinking translated to song structure
finishes in punctuation mode

The Teen Thing - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

so I listened to the next track too
clever filler bit of song for between

"...woe my road is spoken..." (second midi draft of May 29, 2006) - Keith Eisenbrey

still messing with tempos and pace, dynamics
seeding ideas into cloud forms
chains and links and daisies

Pretty Saro - Rachel Harrington [from Celilo Falls]

precise pitch articulation
essential inflections

masterful

no song needs to be
or could be
more than this

as good as it gets

10 Minutes for Aaron - Keith Eisenbrey [April 2016]

loose hi hat cymbal inverted on antique milk can with mallets (various)
all its sounds' parts and their lastings

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 30 2018
Banned Rehearsal 963 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt