Playlist

Live

January 19, 2018
Triptet - with guest Stuart Dempster
Gallery 1412, Seattle
Greg Campbell, Michael Monhart, Tom Baker

Grows from the center out

Triptet with Stuart in carefully matched tops

and a rhythm of beards

successively shedding each past against chronospheric abrasian inexorably
seasonal dormancy
alien body antibodies
Stuart joins! late night FM station sea shore sea shell show
bouy bell
kalimba magma man
electronic squeezy wormhole to outer sci fi
Punch (sans Judy) in space toy time

Recorded

January 13, 2018
Jacob's Ladder - arr. Ernest Kenwal - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, Joanne Deacon [from my mom's tape of April 11, 1961]

Each verse is arranged to do exactly the same thing in a slightly differently arranged way. He could do this all day. To anything.

Hastings River, New South Wales

Just Like A Woman - Bob Dylan [from Biograph]

A song all scrubbed up and shiny for public consumption, just rightly arranged. Syllables are not set to notes, but to pitch vectors, pitch curves.

Behind Blue Eyes - The Who [from Who's Next]

The Romantic imagination mythologizes itself in order to imagine growing up. No Drums! (til later). The songwriting is blatant in the songwriting.

Stay - David Bowie [from Station to Station]

A careful slicing into a funky rhythm hoping to find whom? James Brown? His solo vocal is a collection of overlays, each complete, each integral to itself and complete. Together they form a composite reading of how the song might be sung. Bowie thinking.

You'll Never Be a Man - Elvis Costello [from Trust]

A simpler version of the same (Bowie) idea. Simpler not in the bad stupid sense, but in the clarified pointy sense. Or, how a single song can render Billy Joel entirely unnecessary.

Banned Rehearsal 69 Part 2 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 1986]

starts out somewhere in Late Beethoven Slow Movement Serious Mode, until it gets just out of sight around the corner. An internal psychic anatomy. Back to LBSMSM, i.e. sustained harmony with inner energy that feels as though at any moment it is about to become . . . [never complete] [refrains from] [rather, it slowly deconstructs] its sense of self into another and runneth then over [repeat ] drumming does a number on the clock chime - oh that Bickleton clock chime! - long dim.
My Sweet Euchabibilla Baboo, Electric Garbage, then the Aaronsbundler March in all its pomp triumphal and glory grandiose

nobody, but nobody
pomps triumphally and grandiosally like we does

Territorial Pissings - Nirvana [from Nevermind]

slides knife into its groove

Banned Rehearsal 435 - Isaac E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, and Neal Kosály-Meyer [September 1996]

Even in the decade of chaos we make a remarkable sound. Keeping the rhythm lively - and all while

Karen was nursing the baby right there. Familial. Banned Rehearsal lullaby.

January 15, 2018
Embryonic in the Same Traditions - Dale Lloyd [from Sonicabal 2001]

the human mouth is the cavernmyth of language, dragon's lair.

Banned Rehearsal 699 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 2006]

Incongruities joined by a near-common pitch
or by cooperative winding entwining
on the down low barest smallest of sounds
muttering with exactness into the big space around small sounds
guitar (neal) kicking the sound around on the floor
into hot spots where it glows in feedbacklight
improvisation: helping each other's sounds out.

The Chronicles of Dirty Dick Part 2 - Antique Scream [from The Chronicles of Dirty Dick]

Beat invention. Beat elaboration. Part 2 is in Two Movements.

Selections from Music for Wallace - Aaron Keyt [from my recording - Seattle Composers' Salon, January 5, 2018]

I'm coming at these pieces, in part, in my guise as pianist who has read through them often and who plans to work them all up in the next year or so. Clearly they are music. Just as clearly they are poems, thorny poems. Think a Dada Ezra Pound. thinkadada thinkadada thinkadada thinkadada POUND!

January 16, 2018

The Seventh Pavian - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

How many voices can be got to be seeming to be doing exactly the same thing, while all the while always doing entirely different things actually?

Birth of the Blues - Paul Whiteman, Ray Henderson, B.G. DeSylva, Lew Brown [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

The Official Whiteman Tour Guide to Rhapsody in Blue, with favorite bits!

Grand Coulee Dam - Woody Guthrie [from Columbia River Collection]

In celebration of the industrialization of the West. "prancin' dancin' stallion". poet he was at that.

Jezebel: Overture - Benjamin Boretz [midi realization]

intimations of repetitions
that never
quite
get repeating
right
before
they make
you wonder
if you
heard it right
the first time

Great Day - Vincent Youmans - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, Joanne Deacon [from my mom's tape of April 11, 1961]

Intricate rhythms nearly obscured by the boomy old tape sound.

Let Her Dance - The Bobby Fuller 4 [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Wisely does not make the song much more than a vehicle for the rhythm. In which the guitar riff neatly invokes a subtle cross-meter in 3.

Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who [from Who's Next]

There are some words in there inside the emphatic locution. How the words are spoken, not what the words speak.

Wild Is The Wind - David Bowie [from Station to Station]

Picture an awful movie, just dreadful
the credits roll disconsolate
past the first credit roll song
everybody leaves
just then is where this song belongs
brilliant unexpected brilliance
"you touch me I hear the sound of mandolins" barfy song lyric lifted into incandescence.
I know he's just showing off, but this is one of my favorites.

Undifferentiated Functions - University of Washington Contemporary Group Improvisation Ensemble [live at Brechemin Auditorium May 1981]

Now with tape wobble! Me, in closet, gaveling.

January 18, 2018
I Know What I Know - Paul Simon [from Graceland]

Third verse wraps the first around crazy high backup singers.

Banned Rehearsal 258 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [June 1991]

All tapes begin with fuss
quite thin the sound of rattling big red bag of fun
with pre-recorded music layered in: My Chart, my Sonatina, Cantus
gentle sounds then the rhythm band cymbals
an apparent harmonic tendency upwards or not downwards
Toad Hall? probably. We'll say so.
my Sonata in 2 Movements
Such Words (must have been Neal's)
we all sing to baby

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 15, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 950 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Recorded

June 25, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 611 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [July 2001]



Even as it has been recently, my 1981 synclavier piece Aku, then, was upfront in my thinking-about. Here it is again: playing in the background, an articulate teapot whistle, sizzling along with an occasional recorded pronouncement [from my 2001 text piece Confessions of a Polyphonist]. But again, all in the background. Presence and balance. Balancing presence to those present. Bells pick up pitch material or project their pitches into the prerecorded space || of course it's all prerecorded now || teapots and kazoos comment: a group composition discussing the brought in sound on its own terms,  double sudden amp feedback.

A Choice of Weapons - The Sermon [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

Action movie scene: the guy off the street hero being introduced to the weapons cabinet. This is that music, and it's not just the title.

Banned Rehearsal 784 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2011]



Tinclatsky puppet theater music. Don't know where that word came from, but I wrote it in my journal

so I thought I'd share it. The Mighty W in its latter days of glorious to the end. Melody in extremis, avoiding exit lingering long on the sense of ending soon.

June 27, 2017
Suspended - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

The rhythmic sense plays with the difference between mass and weight. The mass is clearly present, everything is affected by it. It wheels in Kubrik-ian grandeur, there is simply no earth to which it is bound.

Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus XI - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

Forward at all moments. Forward within all moments. Dogged. Imperative. The cathedral organ just eats this music up, or is it the other way around?

Quartet in G Major opus 76 #1 Hob. III:75 - Haydn

Nothing is hidden, it is all made plain. Life is rich! Enjoy!

Don't Forget To Mess Around - Louis Armstrong [from Hot Fives & Sevens]

Packed in a poke.

Hell And What It Is - Rev. Emmett Dickinson [from Goodbye Babylon]

Murmur like bees beneath singing low murmuring hymns, burners lit.

I'll Be Rested (When The Roll Is Called) - Roosevelt Graves and Brother [from Goodbye Babylon]

Just two voices I think, but each so distinctly rich with formants they frequently confound numbering. A shaker. A guitar.

Thermodynamics - Howard McGhee [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Fleet and light, pedal to the metal just to the moment before entropy might kick in.

Criss-Cross - Thelonius Monk [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

Ah. Room to breathe! A little english with the hips, airborne.

I Didn't Know What Time It Was - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

The very model of a through-composed performance. She picks you up at the start and plops you down at the end. You have been taken for a ride and never knew it 'til you woke in the ditch.

Running Scared - Roy Orbison [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Probably should have studied more how Peggy did it before he tried that trick. He's got a certain amount of power and range, but finesse? Whazzat?

Just Like A Woman - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Is it just me or does he spend an awful lot of time telling you who you are? Turn the mirror around Bob.

Winterwood - Don McLean [from American Pie]

A pretty voice, but it gets old fast.

Fame - David Bowie [from Changes One]

A cage of rhythm locked down tight, dried vine vocals entwining.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond / Wish You Were  Here - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

Utterly without hurry :: an aspect of PF that continues to endear.

June 28, 2017

Thanks to Steve Kennedy for the images

Banned Sectional 5 AK NWM - Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 1986]

Yowl and hiss. Subtle flange (equipment issue) like wind several walls away. Consistently not leisurely. Busy, but unhurried, intent, methodical, keeping at it, focused. Happy to be a fly on the wall even these 30+ years later.

My Home - Infamous Menagerie

Sample hyper-slowed, joined occasionally by drumming. On some edge between a what-happens-if-we-play-along-with-that and a truly weird-ass instrumental you hear the next morning and wonder what you were thinking. My people!

Banned Rehearsal 423 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Holden K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1996]

Recalibrations and re-collaborations, divergent but mutually visible threads. Wonderful as a struggle, but still a bit of a struggle.

June 29, 2017
Barbara H (cover of Fountains of Wayne song) - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey,  Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [July 2001]

Put a push-pin here, partway between drop of a hat covers of Wild Thing to full on full on Your Mother Should Know rock and roll.

Two-Part Invention - Gavin Borchert - Keith Eisenbrey

Gavin's piano music somehow seems conscious of itself, or perhaps its voices are conscious both of each other and of their own processes. Old-soul music.

The Way West - Brian Cobb [from Campfire Songs]

. . . is to regiment forward, to prolong the day ever so incrementally. Sun Chaser.

This Little Light of Mine (Autoheterophony) - Keith Eisenbrey


What is the question to ask of this? What itch does it scratch? Cram the familiar together, wad it up tight, press it hard. Hope to find some aspect of it that is elicited only so. In a sense it's like Lucier's I am sitting in a room, except that the room in this case is a space composed of my music ear and the recording device.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 26, 2018
Gradus 314 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

I got to thinking about perfect pitch (I don't have it). Even here where the pitches are few (just four pitch-classes to choose from, named up front) I have to calculate what any particular instance is from the nearby intervals. I can't imagine what it might be like to know a pitch by a name directly, instantly (and I allow how I might be (probably am) completely misunderstanding what having it is like). Plus side: I can hear pitches just fine, but I hear them without name, without category, can divvy them up however ad lib.

Playlist

Recorded

June 11, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus X - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

Sequences establish a rhythm of (usually) stepwise motion, allowing cross-rhythms of modulations and quasi-modulations - as though another music were going by in the background at a different tempo.

I love how the grandness of the denouement is fully established within what is really a quite thin texture. We hear it as grand because, in order to hear its logic, we imagine each note as sustaining at full volume - virtual grandiosity with virtual sustain.

Quartet in E-flat Major, opus 76 #6 - Haydn - Amadeus Quartet

Not sure this is really what's happening, but what I wanted to be happening is a sequence of variations occurring within single iterations of a larger theme and variations - both T and V constructed out of shorter Ts and Vs.

June 14, 2017
Birdwell Blues - Nolan Welsh, Louis Armstrong [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

A tale: police harassment. "You know I been here before." Truth.

Don Redman

Trouble Why Pick On Me - Don Redman, Red Allen [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Unexpected wonders: that voice, those perfectly executed parallel trills thrown in just for fun, showy tonguing, a tightly organized arrangement.

Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind On Jesus) - Roosevelt Graves and Brother [from Goodbye Babylon]

Keeping it lively, everything is slap. Slap guitar slap vocal.

I'm Through With Love - Sarah Vaughan [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

Nothing wrong with this performance (it's flawless) but it fails to convince me, it never lifts off.

Walking My Lord Up Calvary Hill - Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper [from Goodbye Babylon]

The Passion according to just folks.

A Woman Alone With The Blues - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

Sung as a single thought, a through-composed line. Tubular bells!

Now Is The Hour - Leo Diamond [a Rescued Record]

Rather bizarre, but it sounds like he was quite an interesting guy - trying to make the harmonica acceptable for the hi-fi crowd. The 45 that found me had suffered considerably, with much of the fi scuffed off the top.

Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Kind of a mean-spirited blues when it comes right down to it.

Everybody Loves Me Baby - Don McLean [from American Pie]

In spite of his apparent attempt at humorous self-laceration, this still comes across as narrow and airless.

Young Americans - David Bowie [from Changes One]

Thick and taut, a line pulled past where it ought to break but that just won't.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 12, 2017
Gradus 313 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

June 15, 2017
Etudes - Keith Eisenbrey

These are five little pieces from 2000 that started life as clarinet duets: "Coiled", "Fragment", "Dance" "Air", and "Misterioso". I arranged them later as piano fingering puzzles. I was in the early stages of working with mod-17 pitch sets, essentially asking myself the question "What would regular music sound like if the modular interval were 17 instead of 12?" So, yes, this is what I think regular music is like.

Jerseyville Illinois - Your Mother Should Know [Karen Eisenbrey, drums; Neal Kosály-Meyer, vocal and piano]

In anticipation of a hoped-for pro-studio recording project I recorded three demo takes.

Playlist

Recorded

May 9, 2017
The Stampede - Fletcher Henderson [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

The rhythm of our focus is composed into the arrangement - long solos, quick breaks, choruses flipping from instrument group to instrument group (changing channels).

A Lazy Farmer Boy - Buster Carter and Preston Young [from Anthology of American Folk Music]

Drawing attention to our internal presumptions of imminent profanity by the oh so clever near misses. An old trick, still works.

Two Old Maids - Billy Mitchell [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Among many, another low point in public discourse about sexual orientation: deriding the other as an obscenity.

When Was Jesus Born? - Heavenly Gospel Singers [from Goodbye Babylon]

Mel Powell

Rehearsed so as to sound invented on the spot, but is caught going round and round until it doesn't.

Lover Man - Mel Powell [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

French film noir score, a tone poem with hints of Ellington, Gershwin, or Paul Whiteman.

The Happening - Paul Gonsalvez [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Nothing fancy in the arrangement, just solo over accompaniment.

Easy Living - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

Wish fulfillment for the 50's man.

February Piece 1961 - Cornelius Cardew - John Tilbury

Cornelius Cardew

I kept thinking how melodious this was, though made of sharp edged sweepings.

Visions of Johanna - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

As in Paul Gonsalvez above, nothing really but poetvoice solo above an accompaniment. Our focus is not to waver.

May 11, 2017
Till Tomorrow - Don MacLean [from American Pie]

Not a horrible song, but would benefit greatly by stripping off the strings and stuff, dialing back the reverb.

Suffragette City - David Bowie [from Changes One]

This plays a kind of strip tease with itself, shedding song parts along the way until it's nothing more than its own hook.

AKU (midi) - Keith Eisenbrey


In 2004 I made this midi version of my 1981 synclavier piece. There are a couple three glitches in the sound - alas, I no longer have that midi box to try and fix it. This version preserves the pitch and time schemes, instrument differentiation, and, at times, the curiously uneven way the sound hangs in the room - move your head ever so slightly and the sound shifts dramatically. Something about standing waves, I presume. It loses some of the subtle envelope and overtone differentials that were in the original (though they didn't really come across all that well anyhow). And I suppose the moment in the original where the sci-fi tanks blast through the church walls is (unfortunately) rather more elegant and nuanced here. The balance is not optimal, but it does gain some sparseness and clarity.

Its internal sense of what it becomes as it goes along is cumulative, like the Sibelius of Tapiola, but a better way to put it is that, it isn't entirely unlike that. It is this aspect of it that I, as its composer, find most gratifying.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

May 8, 2017
Banned Telepath 55 170508 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Rumor has been floated that Aaron will send some sound from Anchorage, so the full version of Banned Rehearsal 934 will have to wait. Our local sound is here for all it's worth.

Playlist

Live

April 18, 2017
Strange Like Us, Your Mother Should Know, Mud On My Bra
Sunset Tavern, Seattle

Strange Like Us consists of: Kyle Sturner, vocals, guitar; Sadie Alley, vocals, keys; and Arna Garcia, drums, vocals. Darling synth sounds and solid playing all around provide a potent platform for Kyle's weaponized trans girl baritone. Add Sadie in parallel octaves for the KO.

Your Mother Should Know is, of course, Neal Kosály-Meyer and his sister (and my spouse) Karen Eisenbrey. This was their first electric show in quite a while. There were some shaky spots here and there, but they pushed through them. Karen got to try out her new headset microphone, and this may have been the first time I remember being able to really hear her vocals clearly.

We have heard Mud On My Bra (Myla and Aria Mud) before, and were eager to do so again. Aside from their stunningly tight ensemble (at the service of some fancy rhythmic games, I might add) I was able this time to attend more to the songs themselves, and to Aria's voice, within the ping of which I noted a hint of Jad Fair.

All that and our parking karma could hardly have been better: practically right outside the door, and free. Thank you so much to the woman who saw us trying to disgorge drums from the car and let us have her space when she left. And we got home before 11!

Recorded

April 15, 2017
A Matter of Trust - Billy Joel [from The Essential Billy Joel]

BJ has great control, just no range, or sense of timing. Even the count-off is performed, tamed.

Banned Rehearsal 244 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, January 1991


Consisting largely of a reading of A Cat's Life, accompanied by violin scribbles and quiet ocarinal hootings. Aaron provides extensive, if eccentric, marginal commentary. As much as I enjoy listening to my own music, and I do, inserting such a constructed form into an improvisation is an error. It remains, especially in my ear, separate from the on-progressing activity of making it up as we go along. It is persistently deaf to the other people in the room. When I get done Aaron takes over on the piano (or joins me for a 4-hands improv - recollection fails), and a truly awfully awesome sound ensues. Far superior as a part of the activity than my composition could ever hope to be.

Sunset's Wall

April 18, 2017
Taste Test - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Rotating pitch collections.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [from Jack Straw recording session May of 2005, take 1]

Each assay of the tune finds a new place within the harmonic-contrapuntal thicket.

10 Penny - Repeat Offenders [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

Attention is paid to the hollow moment just ahead of the downbeat.

Isaiah 60:1-5 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [recorded in September, 2013]

This piece demands a more reverberant space to live in than is given here. It needs stone walls and a dome.

Musica Ficta - Sascia Pellegrini - Sascia Pellegrini

It is unclear from the program notes who is playing piano, but I presume Sascia is on the vibraphone. It is striking how 'on stage' the characters are, as they mimic and join, hide and seek, meld and face off.

April 19, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus 8 - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

a broad gentle downward slope
another
a grand mansion overlooking

Symphony in G (#94) - Haydn - Austro Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, Adam Fischer

Cracks in the façade, but not endangering. Rising waters, but not alarming. Yet.

String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130 - Beethoven - Quartetto Italiano

Sunset's Floor

If a quartet is both a unified thing and a suite of several differing things, then disparities of style, affect, and key can participate in a unified thing, and the same techniques with which the participants of a suite of several things can be said to become unified can be said to unify other orders of disparate parts, and each individual participant of a suite can be made of deeply disparate parts. How far can the parts be sundered and yet remain parts of a thing, not alien to it?

Katya Kabanova Act 3 - Janácek - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Mackeras, Gabriela Benacková, Dagmar Pecková, Erika Bauerová, Dana Buresová, Eva Randová, Miroslav Kopp, Jozef Kundlák, Peter Straka, Zdenek Harvánek; Czech Philharmonic; Prague National Theatre Chorus;

Ritualized sacrifice, as demanded.

April 20, 2017
Got The Blues - Blind Lemon Jefferson [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

Among many other things, the blues are a medium by which life advice is passed, and the forms and texts are entwined with the society of their arising.

Brown Baby - Eddie Edinborough, Bobby Leecan [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

It's difficult for me to hear what exactly those instruments are. Guitar? If so then it really loves those lower strings. Kazoo? If so, then just possibly the most magnificent kazoo playing ever.

I Don't Want to Make History - Stuff Smith, Johan Jones [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

It isn't just that the singers have been listening to the instrumentalists and vice versa, but they each have also been watching the dancers, and translating the dance into the sung parts of song, and the instrumental parts of song, as well.

Embraceable You - Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra, Jo Stafford and The Pied Pipers

Lights down low. Something more comfortable.

China Boy - Frankie Trumbauer [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

This one is for the dance floor.

Godchild - Red Norvo [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Ken Benshoof had a theory about jazz harmony treatises. The puzzlement was that you could read what a practitioner wrote about what they were doing, but it never quite lined up with what they seemed to actually be doing. His theory was that jazz players always played "off" of something: "off" a beat, "off" a chord, "off" a tune. The treatises can only describe beats, chords, and tunes, not the nature of the "off". This is a prime example of the importance of "off" precisely calibrated.

Peggy Lee

I've Got You Under My Skin - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

Skates on the thin ice of a sensibility. The rhythm of her vocals is almost just simply saying the words. There's that ever so precise "off" again. Peggy Lee genius.

Bewildered - James Brown [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart Of Rock & Soul]

A parody of teen crooner delivery taken so far over the top as to enter a new land. Those breaks toward the end are composed just to hear the reverb the engineer let loose around it.

Pledging My Time - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Another parody of sorts, this time of delta blues. Of sorts because also a pastiche of sorts. Of sorts because also a submission, a sacrifice. The long-held harmonica notes toward the end are straight out of Louis Armstrong's toolshed. Then he does his best to conjure a synthesizer with it.

American Pie - Don MacLean [from American Pie]

This was the first record I owned, a gift from my brothers. Having ripped this from my own vinyl copy, it still has all the familiar pops on it. I find it curious, after all these years, that the first popular music song I took to independently of my parents, and that wasn't by Simon & Garfunkle, concerned itself with the past. The music of my time was the music of a past time.

Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie [from Changes One]

And of course, DB presents nostalgia as a point of view, in order to invent a fictional past.

One Of These Days - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

There is, or was, a class of youth, and I imagine they are, or were, mostly boys, for whom these crazy long spacy tracks were "so much better than that pop crap all my friends listen to" that they truly longed to infiltrate the dance mix at the sock hop with one of these behemoths. To that class of youth, these were indeed "great dance songs", and Pink Floyd was by far the best of their purveyors. In that sense this otherwise incomprehensibly titled Best Of Collection could be considered as perhaps their most archly meta of concept albums.

Banned Rehearsal 62A - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 1986]


We are being vewy qwiet. Cassette machines sound like ammo lock and load. Gradations of multiple media transference terroir. Literally, mediations. A chorus awakens beneath waters. A cranky slide viewer. How quick the generations to the alien? One? None? The darkly glass. The layered hollows of wind. Crackly undulations. Flames of the fiery furnace. Gloriously spacious, the underlying is revealed. Remove masks. Pluck tendrils. We breathe and allow discussion.

This was side one of a two sided session as we prepared for our third Brechemin outing the next evening. My recollection is that Aaron might have been around, but didn't participate in the concert because he felt that in his absence in Berkeley he hadn't had a chance to properly rehearse. Karen was still living in Tacoma at the time, and wasn't able to come up either. Our second Brechemin show was called "A Short and Simple Concert", and the first part of this new show was essentially a repeat of that one, re-titled as "3 Compositions No Breaks". And that is what you hear on this rehearsal. First, Neal's Hunting and Gathering, then my Trance Butchered Knight for Wurlitzer Funmaker Sprite and tape, finishing with some plucking and singing.

feast on my car - Infamous Menagerie

I'm pretty sure that's the title of the song, but what is sung is clearly "feast on my heart". A manual? A labeled diagram? Every time I hear something by IM they become my absolute favorite band of the 90's.

Banned Rehearsal 421 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 1996]

The Funmaker 10 years later (we start in with what we have at hand and see what it makes) up to its old tricks again. Its cruddy reverb is lustworthy. And the Mighty Wurlitzer at its Wurlitzeriest. This sort of lava is hard on the feet. A near unanimity of purpose among some members is narrowly averted.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

April 17, 2017
Gradus 310 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Fog dark densely grown. (We may not have enough bread crumbs.)
At sea. Billows, birds, whales. Beacon. Stars. Moon. Phosphor.

Playlist

Recorded

April 9, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus 7 - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

This is a plug

All about the fugal entrances, and how each one opens a new window.

Symphony in D (93) - Haydn - Austro Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, Adam Fischer

Dramatic pauses and uneasy balances. The fart joke falls flat because it only points out what was obvious throughout anyway: dramatic pauses are the subject matter.

Grosse Fuge in B-flat - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

A fugue we enter through a hall of inward facing windows.

April 11, 2017
Katya Kabanova Act II - Leoš Janáček - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Mackeras, Gabriela Benacková, Dagmar Pecková, Erika Bauerová, Dana Buresová, Eva Randová, Miroslav Kopp, Jozef Kundlák, Peter Straka, Zdenek Harvánek; Czech Philharmonic; Prague National Theatre Chorus

Listening to this music is like reading the expression of an open-book face.

Chock House Blues - Blind Lemon Jefferson [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

I kept wondering if, as has been suggested of the contemporaneous recordings of Robert Johnson, this was recorded at a slower rpm than we hear as playback. There is probably no way to know for sure, but the possibility of it might be determined by a comparison of other recordings. Did his voice always sound so weirdly high? If you bring it down a step or so does his voice sound more like it does in other recordings? Is it a likely guitar key? Can the probable tuning of the guitar be ascertained by figuring out which notes are on open strings? Are there other recordings of the period that we know were sped up, i.e., might it have been a common practice? Is the weirdness confined to this time period (ca 1926)?

Hard Times Stomp - Red Perkins [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Sheik of Araby - Milt Brown [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Lovely, fat, almost clarinet-like guitar sound.

Apollo Jump - Luck Millinder [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Children's Dances - Zoltán Kodály - Jenö Jandó

Classy teaching pieces. The lesson hidden under the fingerwork is about the deftly shifting attention's focus from one voice to another.

April 13, 2017
Just One Of Those Things - Charlie Parker [from The Cole Porter Songbook]

Breathless momentum, stripped down arrangement.

John Verrall

Autumn Sketches - John Verrall - Kimberly Davenport

The ground is solid rock, but neither level nor even. Up is on a different slant than Down. Any attempt at parallel is doomed from the get go.

Ain't No Use - Sarah Vaughan [from The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

Precise placement of voice. She dances inside her instrument.

19th Nervous Breakdown - The Rolling Stones [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

An instrumental with a backing vocal for an excuse.

99 Lbs - Ann Peebles [from Original Funk Soul Sister The Best of Ann Peebles]

In the same sub-genre as 60 Minute Man. The song is so brief as to barely get started. Perfect at every moment.

Changes - David Bowie [from Changes One]

An assemblage in lieu of a song. Tactic: garble the narrative.

AKU (cassette version) - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey, Christopher Mehrens

Realized on Synclavier, courtesy of the University of Washington Department of Systematic Musicology. Chris and I spent hours and hours laying down these tracks. The reel to reel master tape deteriorated into something else entirely, so this is the "safety" copy I kept on cassette tape. There was a certain amount of institutional grief involved trying to schedule a time to play this for the composition faculty at our weekly Friday department workshop. Looking back on it now, I have to wonder what I was thinking, to play this for exactly that group of people? Over 30 minutes long, it pretty much forgoes anything like regular musicality in favor of design. The synclavier could only play 8 sounds at the same time, so in a fit of maximization I decided to base the whole thing on a sequence of 8 numbers. This sequence (I've forgotten what it was) determined the relative amount of time each patch would be present in the mix, the relative density of notes within each patch-track, various settings of complexity of wave form and envelope for each patch, and (my favorite) the relative amount of time from the end of each patch-track to the end of the piece. The notes were a hodgepodge of things, quotes of myself and others, "that'll do" doodles, and carefully stacked pitch piles. And then I had to arrange it so that there were never more than 8 sounds playing at once. I had charts all over the place.

In Session at the Tintinabulary
April 10, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 932 170410 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy

Steve brought over a little purple guitar and played it.

Playlist

Recorded

January 14, 2017
I Fought The Law - Bobby Fuller Four [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Nice triplets in there. I love the dipthong on "law", curling back on itself as though hitting resistance. Almost appropriate: Karen and I recently watched "I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang", which has some truly amazing sound events in it, as well as a fascinating view of the connection between the penal system and slavery.

Samuel Barber

Prayers of Kierkegaard - Samuel Barber - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Schenck

The solid tonal sensibility loses grip in places, it works to break free, struggling slowly, manages to unsettle the more settled.

John, I'm Only Dancing - David Bowie [from Changes One]

Technically perfect song-writing. The voice pushes at the instrumentals, as though it were trapped in their cage.

You Better You Bet - The Who [from Face Dances]

Postural pullback, only to return to full frontal, hiding the low point of tenderness from prying eyes. Or letting it hang.

Violin Concerto - Henri Lazarof - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, Yukiko Kamei

Icy spreads its arms and twists 

acrobatique 

aerialesque 

orchestral circus stage 

big top fire breathing peril 

here come the clowns sardonic 

self regarding self 

chatty nervous

Janaury 16, 2017
Adagio (3rd Movement from 11th Symphony) - David Diamond - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

Triumphal weariness, as settling to the ocean floor's deepest trench, through its subtle gradations of dark.

Good Things - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Held close, stiffly still, simmering under pressure.

Work Architecture Unity And The ("17 Crags" 010511) - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Anna K, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Second go at it. A sense of enforced singularity of event, severing any particular participant's interest or curiosity. Salutary to the extent we find a way to do what we always do but spread over thinner space. Or: an exercise in leaving space so that we can't always fall into the always-going-on-ness, leaving space for sharper corners?

Judith Shatin

Homemade Music - Judith Shatin [from Open Space 21]

Intervals Between Events: A Study.
Intersections of sets of distances between events as motivic cells. Clearly, so as to index the sets.

The Dancer - Patrick Marland [from Hendrix Uncovered]

Easily lovely. the bass is subtly amped, close the fingerboard.

January 17, 2017
Finnegans Wake Chapter 1.3 - Steve Gregoropoulos [from Waywords and Meansigns]

Spoken with attitude. 'scuse, with AttiTude. The music allowed to attempt to overpower, the vocal imitating the lingo of partisan journalism. Drunken sbrawling squalities. Text just one ring of a circus co-occupied by dueling Captain Beefheart Impersonators, infiltrated by multiple iterations of the Chaotic Noise Marching Corps. Babble of neverending political speech. Each music change: to enter a new room.

January 19, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus V - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

How they do crowd upon each other! At the end (and this is frequent in these fugues) there is the sense of "OK, now we're ready to really dive in, now that the preliminaries are over."

Alla Polacca in C Major Wq. 116/4 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

The purpose of ornamentation is to skew counting, to turn tables on the concept of number. These little pieces are about meter in a way that little else is again until Chopin's Mazurkas.

Symphony in E-flat Major (#76) - Haydn - Hanover Band, Roy Goodman

It is not simply that he moves in the unexpected way (surprise!) but that he gauges each unexpectedness so carefully, veering just so far along the circle of fifths, just so much further at the structural hingepoints: Where we have gotten to determines the depth and yaw of the veer. The slow movement has a focus that allows a huge dynamic range (a model for Schubert's late sonatas?) Then an extra fancy last movement.

Ave Verum Corpus - Mozart - University Temple Chancel Choir, Keith Eisenbrey, director, Howard Wolvington, organ

Last Fall our choir director, Chris Vincent, was in Italy and kindly allowed me to take the choir for a few weeks. He even let me conduct this justly famed anthem from late in Mozart's short life, for which I remain ever so thankful. What a pleasure! Listening one becomes so rapt that it is not until it winds down into the cadential trill that one realizes what a ride one has been on. A bit like life that way.

Sonata in A-flat Major Op. 110 - Beethoven - Rudolf Serkin

An earnest attempt to clearly play what is clearly there. He makes some interesting connections among the tempi in the fugal bits.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 16, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 927 170116 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Aaron is back from the far north for a few weeks. Hurrah!

Playlist

Preface

"And lady stardust sang his songs
Of darkness and disgrace"

David Bowie, "Lady Stardust" The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

Texts

Live

January 8, 2017

Star Anna & Synergia NW Orchestra perform Ziggy Stardust

Neptune Theatre, Seattle

My introduction to David Bowie was his amazing performance of "Life on Mars" and "Ashes to Ashes" on The Tonight Show in 1980. Scary Monsters is still, for me, the gold standard of all things Bowie. As I write these words I had to find the clip online to listen. 37 years ago. Still a knockout.

Star takes back orange hair

Being somewhat obsessive about collecting music, under the general theory that if I like one thing somebody does I'll probably like everything, I quickly amassed most of the existing vinyl releases. Ziggy, of course, came up early on, and its iconic status is easy to understand on several levels. The song writing is strong throughout, and though the musicianship is as superb as one expects from DB he hasn't yet got to the point where the image of hyper-professionalism is so upfront as to be a smokescreen. This, as intricately thought out as it is, is personal. My interest, at the time, was mostly in the clockwork of his performance - in how each line is sung as though from an entirely different persona, the lyrics not spelling out a clear narrative but acting more like a scrapbook, each song being a page of scattered thoughts / quotes / comments / overheard conversations and the like. There is no single voice that talks to us, but a multitude of voices, most of them, it would seem, not Bowie's, but ours.

Until, that is, at the end of "Rock and Roll Suicide", he reaches out his hand to those voices, most of them ours, in what may be pop music's most sincere attempt at rescue.

Star Anna's voice sits a little lower than DB's, and she chose not to take some of the higher full power notes, but on a few remarkable occasions she moved to a light high falsetto that took my gasp away. (More please.) She also chose to use her prodigious vocal charisma to bind all the disparate voices that Bowie commanded into single, extraordinarily rich and supple presence. By her own admission she had been working toward this performance for the last 24 years. It showed. This was personal. This was for family. For all of us in the road of salvation, we have each other.

She gathered a fine orchestra, warmed us up with a short set of her own, and followed the album's tracks with encores, including "Changes" and "Rebel Rebel". The costumes were great. My phone pictures from the Neptune's balcony only capture the glow.

Recorded

January 10, 2017

I Guess I'll Have to Dream the Rest- Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers, Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra

Sleep and dream as a stand-in for sexual surrender, played from the outside. Teasing by accusing the teased of teasing. Kind of a dicky move Frank.

Hollywood Hi Hat - Tommy Dorsey [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

In its light tight staccato, a precursor to James Brown.

Early Spring - Miles Davis, The Metronome All Stars [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Everybody checks in with a quick solo. Is it just me or had Miles heard a little Tommy Dorsey in his day?

January 12, 2017

Ooby Dooby - Roy Orbison [from Sun Records Definitive Hits]

A question for my sound engineer friends: Was the fingerboard of the upright bass mic'd separately? Is that the clicky sound I'm hearing that more or less tracks the rhythm section? What is that?

Rotate the Body in All Its Planes - Harry Partch - Freda Pierce, John Garvey

No effort is made to obscure the fact of its assemblage, in production, from individually recorded snippets, discrete sets of moments. I am reminded of J. K. Randall's recording of his some old troubador songs collected from around 1200 with interludes, including his in your face low-fi announcements of the titles.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 9, 2017

Banned Telepath 53 In Flight 010917

Banned Telepath 53 Seattle 010917

Banned Telepath 53 Tucson 010917

Banned Rehearsal 926 010917 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer (Seattle); Steve Kennedy (Tucson); Aaron Keyt (In Flight)

A first! Sound from midair!

Playlist

Recorded

November 9, 2015
Homesickness Blues - Nora Bayes [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Orchestrated and arranged, done-up all proper, but not so tightly bolted together that it doesn't allow lots of give.

Marche Triomphale du Centenaire de Napoleon I - Louis Vierne - Auburn Symphony Orchestra,

Albert Dieudonné

Stewart Kershaw, David Di Fiore

I kept thinking of the scene in Abel Gance's Napoleon where Napoleon (Albert Dieudonné) visits, at midnight, the assembly room where the great figures of the revolution argued. Their ghosts appear one after the other bidding Napoleon to take up the mantel of the revolution for them - the spectral-heroic.

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra - Copland - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, Lorin Hollander

Lorin Hollander

This is among my favorite recordings of Copland, right up there with Bernstein's Billy The Kid. What takes it over the top is Lorin Hollander's unhinged swing, as though Robert Johnson's poly-tempi had been wound up way too tight. The piano could shatter at any moment.

Bacchus et Ariane - Albert Roussel - Orchestre National de France, Georges Pretre

Program music has become illustration, in the sense that the style of the music is more important to the sense of what is happening than the story - you buy this book for the pictures, not the words.

November 10, 2015
Variations for Piano, op. 27 - Webern - Peter Serkin

A blank, a void of perception, every tune an attempt to enlighten, but the void is always just to the side, inaudible.

Suite 8 - Artie Shaw [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Movie credit music, after which we find ourselves in a hoppin' joint for the first scene.

Dodo's Bounce - Dodo Marmarosa [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

The piano solo has a swing that's like steady eighths swerving wide in a fast turn, just this side of disaster.

Music of Changes - Cage - Herbert Henck

Herbert Henck

Narrow focus, nose to the page, a feat of concentration. The relations among what is within the immediate juxtapositional neighborhood of gesture are so complex as to make larger frame structures extremely problematic - hard to see the jungle as an organism when we can only see three or four leaves at a time. Large structures, if there are any, become objects of statistical perception. Come in anywhere. Leave any time. Or: stick it out, hang in there, participate in its feat-ness. Aside: writing music that only an expert could play, one assures oneself of being limited to only those sounds that an expert would play. One can not unlearn how to play piano. There will be no sound that doesn't project precisely, because expertise can make one incapable of anything less (and reinforces the notion that anything other than precise is less, rather than simply other.)

(I'll Remember) In the Still of the Nite - The Five Satins [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Floating a tune around a circulating pattern.

Crying - Roy Orbison [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

An object lesson in vocal production - he can float that high falsetto D out there perfectly in tune, but the last A, being pushed in full voice, is way out of whack.

November 12, 2015
Revolver - The Beatles

If I had to pick a favorite Beatles album this would probably be it. It isn't that my favorite songs are on it (they're not), but that the songs are so varied, that they don't do each other any harm moving from one to the next, and that it doesn't try to be anything other than a bunch of songs. I love that the last sung word is "beginning."

Hunky Dory - David Bowie

Tries on every hat he can find. Some of them are genuinely icky-creepy. Ever the arch-projectionist, he veers just away from the pastiche-play of Billy Joel and into something more like a critical memoir. He doesn't just 'do' Cat Stevens, for instance, his performance is a commentary from within the persona.

Darlin' Corey - Shorty Ralph Reynolds [from Art Rosenbaum's The Art of Field Recording Volume 1]

Fancy banjo time, after which he explains his tuning. Art asks him if there are any other songs that use that tuning. Apparently not. That tuning and that tune are one and the same.

Prince of Darkness (Sinner, Sinner) - Bow Wow Wow

Spawn of Thriller.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 8, 2015
Trio 151108 - Keith Eisenbrey

Back to the trio project after several busy weekends, this comprises three tracks on a suspended plow disk, two gears from a tractor clutch (hanging from a two-by-four A-frame), and a tenor banjo.

Banned Telepath 40 Somerville 151108 - Aaron Keyt

November 9, 2015
Banned Telepath 40 Seattle 151109 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer
Banned Rehearsal 898 151109 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Tambourines across the continent! Shake it!

Playlist

Recorded

2/12/2011
Young Americans - David Bowie

Especially on the first side, the song-ness of these songs are subsumed in the engineering of the ultra-sophisticated arrangements. Of course, that's the point.

2/13/2011
Sonata 1980 - Keith Eisenbrey
Pastorale 850113A - Keith Eisenbrey - The Fehrwood Ensemble

2/15/2011
Banned Rehearsal #209 - Banned Rehearsal

This recording was made in 1990, at a time when the active band was Karen, Aaron, and me. Neal and Anna were in California, and the kids had not yet arrived. The sessions from this time are occasionally haphazard, low-energy affairs veering into a giggly cleverness. This session, however, is tight as tight for a full 40 minutes. It withers just a bit but then settles into a nicely drummy groove to the end.

grey angel - Christopher DeLaurenti - Michael Nicolella

Bathyspheric and supraspheric at once.

The Abyss - Keith Eisenbrey

recorded "live" at a performance in 2006 at our church.

Extracts 7 - Keith Eisenbrey

A thin set with holes. Artifacts: the residue of intention - interesting because I read into them my ideas about my intention in making them, and also discover in listening to them an image of their own intention.

Live

2/14/2011
Gradus 187 - Neal Meyer

2/17/2011
The Threepenny Opera - Kurt Weill - Bertolt Brecht - English adaption by Marc Blitzstein, directed by Stephanie Shine
The Seattle Shakespeare Company at Intiman Theatre, Seattle

A far more interesting piece than pleasing. For three acts we are berated bluntly and harshly with a disillusioning moral Realpolitik, propounded by demons. There is little here by which we can redeem our humanity, except the occasional deeply anxious pause of an actor as he lets the sound of marching fascists pass in the street. The play itself is a reworking of Don Giovanni twisted upside down. We watch a charismatic male lead, accustomed to being above the law, as he repeatedly fails, losing his grip at the hands of three female revenge seekers, only to be snatched away at the gallows. But rather than being pulled into hell by demons he is plucked into a Victorian materialist's heaven.