Playlist

Preface

"Permission to entertain alternative experiences is neither granted nor denied."
J. K. Randall "Concerning Birds by JKR and AM:" - Open Space Magazine Issue 11 Fall 2009

Texts

Live

November 5, 2016

Darrell's Tavern, Shoreline

Deadrones

strangely joyless, as though playing for their own heads

Power Skeleton

How can you not have fun if you wear a cat mask?

The Sun Giants

Has all the parts of a standard 4-piece, drums, bass, lead and rhythm guitars w/vocals. But here it's all about the bass and her wicked quick fingers.

Recorded

November 5, 2016
Variations for Piano op. 27 - Webern - Charles Rosen

It stands right up to your eyeballs, studying your every blink.

Melancholy Baby - Earl Hines [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Something about the sforzando pokes into new registers that comes across as distinctly Webernian. Well yes, see above. By the end he's got that tune dancing quickstep backwards across the tables in 8-inch heels.

'Tain't Nobody's Business If I Do - George Lewis and The Original Zenith Brass Band [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Here's the shot: a circular bar, the camera aimed inward on an extracircumferential track whipping around, projected several frames per second too fast, multiple bartenders mixing drinks rapid fire, all the while juggling flaming swords.

November 6, 2016
The Rake's Progress Act I - Stravinsky - Orchestra of St. Luke's, Robert Craft, Jayne West, Jon Garrison, Arthur Woodley, John Cheek, Shirley Love, Wendy White, Melvin Lowery, Jeffrey Johnson, Gregg Smith Singers

Each ointment has its particular fly in't. Technicolor sound and stage apparatus plainly in view. It almost wears a neon sign: Caution! Ironic Remove At Work!

November 8, 2016
I'm Not A Juvenile Delinquent - Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Rides happily through the clumsy engineering on stupid charm alone. I love the variations played on where exactly in the measure "No I'm not a juvenile" enters. All those "no no no no no no no's" were oddly timely.

Stand By Me - Ben E. King [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

As was this. But: Triangle! Sandblock!

Adieu - Karlheinz Stockhausen - London Sinfonietta

I still remember Benjamin Boretz's comment about this: "when he runs out of ideas he lets Krenek write a measure" (paraphrase from a conversation in about 1983) - both funny and dead on as to how the affective disjuncture feels going down.

November 10, 2016
Evil Woman - The Electric Light Orchestra [Rescued Record]

Since the hook is pretty much all one can hear clearly as words, the song comes across as, effectively, a pure expression of misogyny. Yes I can look up the lyrics (I did), and yes it falls in a long tradition of vindictive breakup songs from all skews of gender and orientation, but really, the only thing that gets through is the bald brainwashing repetition: "Evil Woman Evil Woman Evil Woman . . ." Sorry guys, it's just icky.

The Montreux Berlin Concerts Cuts 5 and 6 - Anthony Braxton, George Lewis, Dave Holland, Barry Altschul

Partly a celebration of flights of improvisatory fancy, partly an indulgence of collective intricacy - precisely executed fugal scribbling.

Indiscipline - King Crimson [from Discipline]

A music reporting back on the reaction of its perpetrator. "I like it! I wish you were here to see it!"

Live To Tell - Madonna - [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

I was amused to discover that I could sing along with her in her own register - and my upper range isn't all that high.

Breed - Nirvana [from Nevermind]

Love the way KC's vocals imitate the guitar's downstrokes in a kind of record stuck record stuck power play. Stravinskian, perhaps.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 7, 2016
Gradus 302 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Live

October 17, 2014
Sun Giants, Power Skeleton, Ancient Warlocks
Darrell's Tavern, Shoreline

plastic glow skull - and it makes noise!

The tiny hollow moment just before the heavy downbeat determines its exact character - its bounce, heft, and chutzpah. Sun Giants (bass, drums, and guitar/vocals) aims the rest of the rhythm at getting that hollow moment exactly right.

There are quite a few more little effects devices in Power Skeleton than people. They are also distinguished by having two drummers and by their assertion that they never play the same song twice. They use rock rhythm centered improvisation as an alternative method of determining time with amplified particulars.

I think my ears have finally recovered from Ancient Warlock's massive sound. Inside the collisions of feedbacks twisting through the space a further music emerges - as ephemeral and lyrical as the explicit music is granitic. The guys on stage, playing their instruments through their stacks of amps, create a sound, and that sound plays a music on the shape and substance of the space. We're in the thick.

Recorded

October 13, 2014
Imagine - John Lennon

Essentially an album of slightly tidied demos (just add some strings and it will sound OK) with one strong song (I Don't Wanna Be a Soldier Mama I Don't Wanna Die), otherwise populated by an uncomfortable mix of idealism, bitterness, alienation, and the bad taste to air dirty laundry in public. 

Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion - Paul Lansky

The smooth gradations of the early 17th Century pulled apart fantasy by fantasy. A concerto for modified voice and its pre- and re- verberations.

October 14, 2014
See Jungle! (Jungle Boy) - Bow Wow Wow

Part of the '80's reset of rock&roll: back to fun, back to competence, back to the self-obsessed myopia of teendom.

Eye Music - Stuart Dempster and William O. Smith [from Perspectives of New Music, vol. 24 #2]

Stu and Bill seem to be playing the audience response as much as trombone and clarinet, the sound and rhythm of collective laughter being an integral part of how the episode goes as music.

Delicacies of Molten Horror Synapse - Stan Brakhage

What is seen only when eyes are closed: inverted color schemes, oddly drifting weightless formations. Flashes (we blink) - flow (our eyes attempt to track what moves with our tracking). Not dreamlike, but the visual matrix from which dreams are configured.

Guitar Hell - Fragmented Brain Solos - Pete Comley

The sound is squeezed out through filters like pastry dough. The lyricism is reminiscent of Fripp, but with a distinct narrative flow. No objects are created, instead trajectories are followed.

Mike Marlin

Banjoology - Mike Marlin

A scrapbook of sounds without any pretense of song-hood. Completely endearing. I had the distinct pleasure of improvising with Mike several times. Here's hoping he comes back to Seattle someday!

The Kinks Say Fuck You - Pulses [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

A tightly packed and weighty solid, fit for throwing.

Four Songs - Spinning Whips

This was a small-issue CD I picked up when we heard them play at the Columbia City Theater several years ago. Their fat guitar sounds have more than a proggy hint of King Crimson.

October 16, 2014
Correte, amanti, a prova - Gesualdo - Consort of Musicke, Anthony Rooley

Conversational flow, from glib and quick of wit to focused and precise. One moment we are listening to three or four sides of a conversation. Suddenly we are the object of singular attention.

Konzert in F Major, BWV 1046 - J. S. Bach - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan

The placid and broad are played up to such an extent that the whole thing falls asleep.

Sonata in D Major, Wq. 137 - C. P. E. Bach - Charles Medlam, William Hunt, Richard Eggar
Quartet in C Major, Op. 1 #6 Hob.III:6 - Haydn

They sure loved their Menuets back then.

Symphony in F Major K112(112) - Mozart
Sonata in A-flat major, Op. 26 - Beethoven

Part of what distinguished Beethoven's piano writing is the degree to which the accompanimental figurations take on a life of their own, demanding their own resolutions and workings out - as though they are musical material as much as the tune is. In this early work the relations among the parts are still relatively polite.

October 17, 2014
Symphony in C minor (String Symphony #4) - Mendelssohn

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 13, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 871 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosàly-Meyer

October 16, 2014

As Yet Unnamed Song - Keith Eisenbrey

Recorded drums, bass, guitar, and vocal tracks. Discarded the guitar and vocals.

October 17, 2014

As Yet Unnamed Song - Keith Eisenbrey

Tried again for guitar and vocals. I'm happier with it but want to sit on it for a few weeks.

Fox Spit 141017 - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvisation on acoustic steel string guitar.