Playlist

Recorded

April 2, 2017
(I'm A) Road Runner - Junior Walker and The All Stars [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

A giant tambourine fronts a precisely on the beat rhythm bunch, around which JW slips.

10538 Overture - The Electric Light Orchestra [a Rescued Record]

Half trying to be artsy, half trying to be dancy. Pseudo-Prog-Pop. I may be wrong, but I imagine it was mostly the backing sound for some kind of stage spectacular.

Anarchy in the U.K. - The Sex Pistols [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

The best part of this is the huge massed sound of the band. As for the preening edge lord, he's best taken in small doses.

(I'm A) TV Savage - Bow Wow Wow [from Love, Peace & Harmony - The Best of Bow Wow Wow]

Begging for an MTV type video. Why else would it be at all?

Banned Sectional 6 KEE AK - Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [January 1986]

train whistle high rustling springiness moves to frontal attack pushing hard in magnificent rolling time spans

some Tibetans hang out next door

obo roi

we were never shy about pinning the needles

unrecoverable synth patches

a break :: they return (the Tibetans)

slower mood relaxed, intimate

tune accidentally extracted from music box innards (just the tones that happen to over-resonate)

the Tibetans utterly transformed into another species of other entirely

funmaker in top form

takes its time getting into any spot, but once there it is well and truly in that spot

another break :: for a moaningsoftly drone solo

we re-enter the regular world

Drunken Boat - Infamous Menagerie

Rubberband guitar sound matches the pots&pans drums. An effect akin to that of a toy symphony, but here without any sense of archness or spoof.

April 4, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 420 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 1996]

Image: tuning up, but nothing like actually tuning up.

Neal and Karen, Bickleton, WA 1996

Image: climbing a rocky snow-blown pitch at high-altitude, footing treacherous, air thin, inches gained in triumph. Each sound without tincture of technique. We hunker into camp while the storm rides us out. Something profoundly heavy about how we feel. The earth pulls in sodden gusts. Morning dawns oppressively, but struggle on we must with Mighty Wurlitzer Hero to pull us on and break us through. We feel lighter somehow, the atmosphere fresh and clear, the scene of troubles fades from beneath us.

April 6, 2017
Jeremiah 17:5-8 (midi) - Keith Eisenbrey

The keyboard part taken by midi harphsichord, the voice by midi flute. It is fascinating how midi de-mediates sounds. The layers are not softened by our mutual bodies' compassions.

Gradus 90 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

After a long wait, a few pokes poke. (twice). Quietly responded to, then conjoined. A hint now and then of presence in silence. 3 notes! Such a richness! Low notes fade into the upper partials echoing the quiet iteration of the higher. It doesn't fade into nothing. It is nothing. Then it is not.

Joys of the Trail - Brian Cobb [from Campfire Songs]

A Rhythm Fight Club. Ends with laughter but not happy. Into the future comrades!

Jesus Loves Me (Autoheterophony) - Keith Eisenbrey

Eight of me singing around an old hymn tune/text. I love the play of sibilance, undulating harmony, and the substrate of breath. Stacking the same voice over itself, here, allows the parts of the voice sound to precipitate - or operates like a centrifuge to separate factors.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

April 3, 2017

Gradus 309 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Bright lights (just a few) across the moggy gloom.
Rung 2 takes time to put things together, but by the end it is clear that it, time that is, was not together before it got put there.

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