Playlist

Preface

". . . what is the 'music-ontological core' of musical experience, and how do we reach it? The answer resists discursive felicity; it is a multiplicity, always in motion, involving flows of intensities between experiencer and experienced object—as experienced, but in a way that is sensitive both to the kinds of meaning-generative flows from the object (as both a temporally-constituted and -constituting musical reality), and to the knowledge that one's experience is situated and incomplete, that every effort to contact the music in its putative wholeness only reveals new transcendental lines and new epistemological possibilities."
- Chris Stover "Walking Up and Over, Approaching Boretz's Qixingshan" Open Space Magazine issue 19/20 fall 2015/spring 2016

Texts

Recorded

Maryhill Stonehenge

March 30, 2019
Cheyenne's Song - Dean Evenson [from Native Healing]

from under the warm snug blanket
release tension release ease
tummy full

Liebeslied (Amended) - Keith Eisenbrey [from a home recording of 3/1/2007]

my bits (added to Ben's now withdrawn solo piano piece Liebeslied (for a pianist alone))
schematically interlaced with his bits
in order to underline the schematic image within his bits as my bits unlace them

for me: it gave me a performance version (for a pianist among others)
this was a pretty strong performance, one of the last I made on the 6' Yamaha my folks bought for me when I was in high school
necessary time is given
but it doesn't lag either

Light It Up - High Class Wreckage [from a pre-release copy of High Class Wreckage]


pumped for mayhem

Loser - St. Rage [June 2016]


St. Rage is a fictional band in my wife's novel The Gospel According to St. Rage (soon to be re-published by Not A Pipe Publishing). They are played here, as always, by Your Mother Should Know, which is my wife, Karen Eisenbrey, and her brother, Neal Kosály-Meyer. I did the honors behind the recording device and final mix.

nice job guys!

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Taxman - The Beatles [from Anthology Vol. 2]

once each track could be recorded clean the parts could be treated as replaceable, optional, swappable. ultimately, it swaps the compositional focus from an arrangement of chords and tunes performed by folks to an arrangement of tracks laid atop chords and tunes

Nutty (take 2) - Thelonious Monk [from The London Collection]

loose and playful

Some Other Time - X [from Wild Gift]

expression on face: grim, stiff, determined

Radio Head - Talking Heads [from True Stories]

toy orchestra in lego land

Make You Come - Kicking Giants [from Kill Rock Stars]

we do love our guitar players round these here parts

Track 3 - Seattle Chamber Music Festival [July 2001]

artifacts of nasty splatters
nothing like digital to point out its own flaws
made me jump every time

No Condemnation - Thee Emergency [from Can You Dig It]

just the blues
the blues almighty
and with a bonus song as part of the track

Sow Took The Measles (A Reverb) - Train Case [June 2011]

If I did put any reverb in there it is nicely minimal
Train Case is also Karen and Neal, in a more acoustic homegrown idiom

Wave, Beach, Pebbles Large, Close Extreme, Surf, Storm, Foam, Ocean Roar, Intense, Sizzle, Crash, Impact Puff - Pete Comley [from Ocean Ambience Rocky Coastline Vol 1_1]

This was all of 2" long. I'll need to rethink how to listen to this album so that I actually have time to sit down after pushing play.

March 31, 2019
Little Lamb Who Made Thee - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, director [April 1966]

Baker City, Oregon

a really nice setting of Blake's poem
it captures some of its divine innocence
even in its Hollywood style

Ruby My Dear - Thelonious Monk [from The London Collection]

superb brushwork back there on the skins and pans Mr. Blakey!

Planet Earth - Duran Duran [from Duran Duran]

the eighties
when they manufactured a sound
to be an image of blatantly manufactured sound
robotics

Banned Rehearsal 99 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [June 1986]

Petrushka country fair in the Horse Heaven Hills
we are recording on a boom box at the Bickleton Pioneer Picnic and Rodeo
mostly, in intent, to memorialize the calliope of Meyer family legend, the calliope reborn from recalcitrant scrap, its erstwhile melodies having been re- and re- permuted into a gleeful quilt of melody parts set free of their prior moorings

tape is running
you have been immortalized

Carousel of the Calliope of Legend

that calliope, it explains so much

oh no, we're staying in Seattle for ever
giddy with penultimatricidal tendencies
Carny Vater of the Prankmaker
shacks and bunkers
but honestly, what gender is any of this?

to correct the calliope
is to silence the oracle
chaos divine incipit
how it Klings and Klangs
Kling Klang
(I guess this fits, do as well as any)
getting some pie on tape
by laws
in the sense that there are none

April 4, 2019
My Red Self - Heavens to Betsy [from Kill Rock Stars]

flipside or formerside or pastside or stillinside
of Kaley Lynn Eaton's Poem in Praise of Menstruation as heard recently at Salon
attitudes surrounding the cultural taboo received slapback into culture's face
strong and straight with a no nonsense blatancy to it like my friend Jill Borner's My Baby Left Me

Cedar Flute Love Song - Dean Evenson [from Native Healing]

It is required that it be muddied by loop echo and smudged with bird song.
Do they make flutes with cedar? Wouldn't it be splintery? Dunno.

Liebeslied (Amended) - Keith Eisenbrey [from Preludes in Seattle Part 2, March 2007]

see above and elsewhere for what this is
I didn't manage to improve it (nor play it very well for that matter) so much as point out some if its, and my, problems. A project far more essential to me to have done than to do for any else

Hendrixesque - Henry Guiazda - Nathan Davis, cello [from Hendrix Uncovered - New Music Inspired by Jimi Hendrix]

more loops for repeating with
mirrored halls
distant doors
hidden
(locked anyway)

The Drink I Didn't Have Last Night - St. Rage [June 2016]


Here they are again.
late night rough
wrinkled plenty

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 31, 2019
"Mrs. Ramsay rose. Lily rose." - Keith Eisenbrey " [assembled from parts recorded March 29]

I wrote Mrs. Ramsay, its title taken from Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse (I liked how she framed

your blogger ca 2001

Lily with roses), in 2001. It was my first large-scale composition since Slow Blues. Slow Blues was structured like a set of variations, each iteration exactly 12 bars long in a slow 4/4 meter, and each successive variation based on the same sequence of mod-17 pitch sets arcanely related to the bare-bones blues sequence I I I I | IV IV I I | V V I I, cycling through the 17 M-transforms available in mod-17. For Mrs. Ramsay I played a similar game, but the structural segments aren't all the same size or shape, vary more widely in affect, and, if I recall correctly, the various M-transforms are re-ordered according to some rule I have long since forgotten. I performed this just once, at an early Seattle Composers' Salon back when they were held at the Mennonite Church in Lake City. Tom Baker may have a dub of that performance, but until I recorded it last Friday I did not have any recording of it for my own reference. In practice this means that I really didn't know how it went from outside of playing it. And so I am ever so glad to finally make its acquaintance.

Frankie and Johnny - Keith Eisenbrey [assembled from parts recorded March 29]

Karen under Jail

For several years now, and interrupted by a self-imposed indifferently observed sabbatical, I have been working on a sequence of etudes. Big surprise: there will probably be 17 of them all together, if I should be so fortunate as to finish. Frankie and Johnny is the 13th and most recently completed. I think of it as an opera, an opera in which the main character is the traditional song itself, which is written in the score with approximate, unstaved, pitches. The piano part is a sequence of 3-note groups written as, but not intended to be played as, whole-note simultaneities. I had been practicing for about a month, trying on all sorts of voices to sing with and tinkering with various schemes of approaching the projection into figuration space of the 3-note groups. In the end I sang it in a nearly straight folk style, and improvised the figuration in the real time of the recording. Since I stopped to shuffle pages between each verse I had to piece together the takes of them, but even with that, first take best take.

April 1, 2019
Gradus 345 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

development, as a received notion, is a sequence or group of varied but related ideas
related by repetition of some kind of some aspect or set of aspects

we pick up a thought and turn it over in our ears :: of as many aspects as can be held in mind, while following the variations
it is where our focus shrinks to the immediate

Playlist

Recorded

March 24, 2019

Puyallup, WA ca 1966

The Witch (Live) - The Sonics [from Boom]

somewhere in the back of the palate of those wailing shrills is an emulation of Screamin' Jay

Nice Work If You Can Get It - Thelonious Monk [from The London Collection]

so he's a singer at one with rhythm

a Satie-esque end game

New Lace Sleeves - Elvis Costello [from Trust]

this song's kind of all over the map

Fire - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band Live 1975-1985]

odd bridge

an out of affect experience

briefly

it jars a bit I think

Immediate Impact Zone - Infamous Menagerie [from Kill Rock Stars]

its implied architecture

repetition structures

social inventions

mini ritual

about as great a thing as it could be

Dudley's Song - Dean Evenson [from Native Healing]

not completely without merit in the pitch play department

though rather enclosed, as in a vitrine

Sweat Sex - Thee Emergency [from Can You Dig It]

comin' on like The Who and all

full stadium roar

an altar call

Sow Took The Measles - Train Case [June 2011]

I take pride in the fact that I convinced Karen and Neal to record the songs they were playing for their Mom. 

Opus - Jon Forshee - Joshua Charney, piano [from Open Space CD 36]

playful figurations

downright melodramatic!

all riled up

a really tremendous solo piano piece, probably some several gradations over my technical abilities. {frowny face}

Mt. Rainier National Park

March 26, 2019

Got To Get You Into My Life - The Beatles [from Anthology Vol. 2]

bared of orchestra

organ, bass, drums, vocals

lifted from the mix

or the rest of the mix leached away

how ideas are tried

Child of Heaven - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, director [December 1971]

from my Mom's private tape

Track 8 - Empire Brass Quintet [from American Brass Band Journal Revisited]

another unnamed track that came into the mix through Karen's family

Banned Rehearsal 97 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [June 1986]

chorale tune is the thing

shabby by this time with no rehab done

correcting part work or grading

we spin some disks

let's shout

sight singin'

somewhere in this book is a good chord

sorry

false alarm

March 28, 2019

Laugh or Cry - The Vagabonds [a Rescued Record]

somewhere between the Buzzcocks and Simon & Garfunkel

this 45 was found in a box

Lost Tracks - Dean Evenson [from Native Healing]

Mt. Rainier National Park

piety without content

mood mix

so seeming mistrustful of what it could be

of what any bit could be

form lines reverberated out, dissipated

Liebeslied (Amended) - Keith Eisenbrey [Chapel Performance Space June 5, 2010]

When I returned to Seattle in 1984 Ben Boretz gave me the original pencil score of his (now withdrawn) unfinished composition Liebeslied (for a pianist alone) - composed in the early 70's. I copied it (in ink on vellum, and later with engraving software) and performed it several times over the next couple of decades. At some point Ben suggested that I re-compose it. Liebeslied (Amended) was my first go at it, my amendments consist of making a half-hearted but personally intriguing stab at drawing out the opening section, and revoicing a few of the big chords in the middle. This was not a particularly successful performance, due to my usual chronic rushing - and I still have trouble getting my paws around those big crashy chords.

Hammer in a Bag - Pouch

Sean Delaney's go to move is a Godzilla shriek 

containing multitudes

as shrieks go, high class indeed

Huge Guy in the Mosh Pit - St. Rage [June 25, 2016]

And it's Neal and Karen again! Your Mother Should Know impersonates Karen's fictional high school garage rock band. This recording benefits from being turned up loud. Sloppy but earnest.

March 29, 2019

Hear Us - Era of Peace - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, director [April 1966]

the choral first person

as an operatic invention

derived from the congregational first person

the creepy politics of combinations

subversive anti-individualist propaganda

Nutty (take 1) - Thelonious Monk [from The London Sessions]

playing a polyvocal game with a sensibility that concerns where within phrase length spans one can play loose and off and where one is to play flat and plain

in order to play at platformers or web slinging

on the audio grid

The Emerald City (from a broomstick)

Forest Fire - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters - In God We Trust]

grown men impersonating 10 year old boys

as they thought themselves 

bethinking themselves

besmirched

This Is My Day - Julian Lennon [from The Secret Value of Daydreaming]

this arrangement is crying just crying for a big orchestra and a 100 voice backing choir

those synths just don't quite cut it

Loch Ness - The Velvet Sidewalk [from Kill Rock Stars]

some musics are sudden floriations

others are the belowground parts of the soil fungus

we rot music

Track 2 - The Seattle Chamber Music Festival [July 2001]

oh such glorioso amateur intonations! so robust! spritus maximus.

discointonations

dis-co-intonations

disco into nations

a half reeler silent accompaniment

morally upliftingly 

Workin' Man's Blues - Bob Dylan [Key Arena, 2006]

playin' the old guy 

playin' the old tunes

does anybody believe in this anymore, what he's saying?

Sow Took The Measles A - Train Case

When I first started recording them I kept a bunch of versions. this is one.

Karen has a superpower. She can sing.

The Ship - Brian Eno [from The Ship]

the soundtrack

to the film

of the finding

of the ship

das Rheingold's anacrusis

instrument of death to all

its sepulchral nature even at birth

vowels shaped at liminal register deep

epitaphony 

reverberance plucked by cotton candy tongue out

the after wave

And Your Bird Can Sing - The Beatles [from Anthology Vol. 2]

you can't see me

the poster child of isolation recording

Echo Song - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, director [December 1971]

works it out nice

within its chamber 

the layers of media transfer 

as they successively disengage

Untitled Track - Throbbing Gristle [from Greatest Hits]

like something Pete Comley might have said

Banned Rehearsal 98 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [June 1986]

heart felt cry of bluesy oh city to ope

sprite at its funmaker makiest

"It Hurts" - Neal's sudden song

when we aim we are dead on laser bent

we are the generatoration 

that shreds the past

we are the past shredders

Port Macquarie, New South Wales, 1986

"this is banned rehearsal number ninety eight / the last banned rehearsal in this house for a long time"

actually probably the last ever full session

karen and I made some assembly rechoireds and some telepaths, but by the time there was a quorum again we had moved to the Front House, in front of the Half House, Greenwood, where we were

this hits on a large quantity of cylinders heretofore never known

intervals energize persistence

a sister worthy shaman fellow

accuracy presumes rectitude

precision does not

we dredge down

on

one 

to

one

(funny that karen should worry about echoing in her books the girl boy boy dynamic of Harry Potter plots, when banned rehearsal was all of that long beforetimes)

Love's a Hard Game to Play - Stevie Nicks [from Timespace]

a sexy viola register there Stevie

pretty hot

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 25, 2019

Banned Rehearsal 978 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

I played piano because I just had it tuned and because it's fun

March 29, 2019

"Mrs. Ramsay rose, Lily rose." - Keith Eisenbrey

Frankie and Johnnie [from Études d'exécution imminent] - Keith Eisenbrey

Port Macquarie, New South Wales, 1986

Karen has been in Portland for a conference since Wednesday, so Friday morning I took advantage of the relative quiet of a morning with nobody else up and about to record some takes and tests. Mrs. Ramsay (yes, it's from Virginia Woolf) is a piece I wrote shortly after Slow Blues and that I don't have a solid studio recording of yet. Frankie is an opera that comprises the 13th Etude of my work in progress Études d'exécution imminent. I hope to work on patching these together tomorrow to see if they tick. 

Playlist

Recorded

March 10, 2019

Volta I/Volta II - Thomas Simpson - The King's Noyse, David Douglass [from Mascharada - Music at the Bückeburg Court of Ernst III]

The game here isn't fancy imitation, it is the play of motions at each moment.

The Witch (alternate take) - The Sonics [from Boom]

here was raised their Ebenezer

Misterioso - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

ticking sixths
and sets of trichords

little diatonic bits at top and bottom
of each ticking sixth
tempo play of ticking
within the ostensible beat

With a Shout - U2 [from October]

call to arms
drums to introduce it

they mean it
all of them

Banned Rehearsal 95 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer


we discuss the immensity of 95
ocarina duet or trio
ocarina, flute (2 of), and conch shell

Liberated Intonation: staking a claim for most particular as to pitch but not shackled by any rationalist strictures
nor Partch nor Rameau nor Schenker

shamanrite
crow spread
intonation of mouth shape congruence
MOWTH

the trick is this:
to be gloriously dissonant
and resplendent in consonance
at once

intonation so pointed as to allow the wobble as an equal partner
as so as
so to as
to as to

hello?!

(gets to places I wish Aku had got to)

I will speak truth
the greatest sci fi score maker sound ever is the Wurlitzer Funmaker Sprite in the hands of Banned Rehearsal

tarry the twice told tale

this ceremony is to purge the rational

and throughout: the terroir of background furnace noise

Hum Bom - Allen Ginsberg [from Holy Soul Jelly Roll]

rhyme and rhythm

Le Tombeau de Couperin - Maurice Ravel - W.A. Mozart - Philharmonia Northwest, Roupen Shakarian

effortless butterfly flying
it flits
then more frogs
then flowers

neo-classical is its own exoticism

Track 1 - Seattle Chamber Music Festival 2001 [from my mom's private collection]

robustly recorded

wrassled!

a epic battle ballad in 16mm

Total Energy - Thee Emergency [from Can You Dig It]

strobe effect badge: achieved!

March 14, 2019
Banned Rehearsal 793 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer


we are quiet
the familiar entertainer acts as a decoy
we are led by the familiar into peril
it, the familiar, drifts off
we remain

alien worlds leak through from distant wave planes
what counts as big is so so gently, so with such color
what presses in, what pokes in, what washes through

and their proportional irrations

Johnny Law - Robbers' Roost [from Live in Minneapolis]

interaction: the banished meets the banisher

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 11, 2019
Banned Rehearsal 977 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt

Neal had a work thing, but we carried on

Playlist

Preface

So creativity isn't a compliment, a valorization, it's an analysis of the state of things; and the realization that music creates its object on that ontological level liberates composition and redefines analysis as creative rather than exegetic, and certainly as not authoritative ("persuasive") or coercive. 

- Benjamin Boretz "Unconnecting the Dots" Open Space Magazine issue 19/20 fall 2015/spring 2016

Texts

Live

March 1, 2019
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Poem in Praise of Menstruation - Kaley Lane Eaton - Kaley Lane Eaton, voice; Ha-Yang Kim, cello

orbital cello intones ellipticals 'round its open strings
naiad voice sings its river

Is It Pretty Enough? - Lily Shabbabi

for electric bass, played by a young gentleman whose name I didn't catch but who bore an uncanny resemblance to a young Marlon Brando - the bass's sound fed through a software gizmo that made me lust after a more intricately contrapted sostenuto pedal on grand pianos, lifting individual resonances at will (if only there was no need to filter it through loudspeakers).

This Is The Understanding That The Self Is Time - Liam Harbison - Liam Harbison and Matt Walker, electric guitars

granular intonation oh so exquisitely just off - I want it
fragile acoustic prefigurements

Carolina - Ha-Yang Kim - Ha-Yang Kim, piano

joined at wrist and ankle
in difficult cooperation

[NB - I didn't catch the title, if there was one] - Blake Degraw

I didn't catch the names of the performers either, but I think there were two Jeffs and a Noel, who played a viola with 7 league boots (impersonated by 16 loopers on a synthesizer)

Tracks - Neil Welch - Neil Welch, tenor saxophone

high speed reedless hypertravel
oncoming outgoing sidewhipping flutterweight
rip your face off if you're not careful

Recorded

February 24, 2019

Swiftly But Gently - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

the title is one third of the poem
reluctant to fade out
but it must

O - Benjamin Boretz - Keith Eisenbrey [from Preludes in Seattle, June 2006]

dyads together mark
or can mark
group units
parentheses made of notes
as punctuation made of words stop
raptured in the middle of its making

a thought about scores and intention and liberty to transgress:

Who is a score for?

hint: us

If I intend to take a score as seriously as the score takes me

as a heartfelt, fully considered utterance

in the form of an invitation to engage

and I do so take it

then it behooves me to engage it likewise heartfelt 

and likewise fully considered

and

with equal freedom to create as had the composer

and so

it is not morally possible to perform any score as the composer intended.

*see below*

fingertips - Paul Lansky - Mihae Lee, piano [from Milton Babbit: A Composers' Memorial]

many masks
many thoughts
about many masks

Banned Rehearsal 911 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [assembled from Telepaths 49, June 2016]

one of us - Steve, I think - finds toontown sounds and brings them into our world

faustforest bansheewhale
a bar walks into a banned rehearsal

*composer has a thought of how the score goes

but has no certainty that that thought

is the score's clear intention

anymore than we the performer can

in intention's reverse*

and here it is
delicious placements with recorded space

on banjo - me, I think - I never tire of playing with number
tambourine playing
fully part of the melodic and liquid planes in tonal games

a giant in the grass

Paduana IX and Galliard IX - William Brade - The King's Noyse, David Douglass [from Mascharada - Music at the Bückeburg Court of Ernst III]

instruments arose as intermediaries between song and dance
between sung and danced
singing and dancing
the voice to dance and the feet to sing
body to singing dance and dancing sing
or so the story has been told

Minuet in C Major Wq. 116/5 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

rhythms cross so awkwardly
I surmise that forte piano is using a literal "una corda" effect
old man B was an architect and craftsman nonpareil
young dude B was a molecular physicist and
a prodderpoker into dark corners

Shot Down - The Sonics [from Boom]

ringy snare
the quintessential punk drum solo

Loverman - Thelonius Monk [from The London Sessions]

hang on, I'll catch up
not to worry

left-hand voicings to die for

BuzzBomb - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters / In God We Trust]

BB, flight of the

Underneath The Bunker - REM [from Life's Rich Pageant]

tango time
waddayknow! he's sayin' words back under there

Ever Since My Accident - Melvins [from Kill Rock Stars]

ratio: crazy drum / sticky tongue vocals

Sugar - Thee Emergency [from Can You Dig It]

precise vocal pitch
gospel joy of pain

February 26, 2019
Spherics - S. Eric Scribner [from Storm Sound Cycle, May 2011]

amplified sounds of sounds of a distance

in elsewhere's elsewhere
the near presence of distance accumulates

February 28, 2019
Home - Bicycle Face [from The Wonders of Female Strength]

---- is where . . .

cat does something on your zafu (turn it over)

---- is how
----'s a place

around you 

inside

with ukulele

Paduana XI and Galliard XI - William Brade - The King's Noyse, David Douglass [from Mascharada - Music at the Bückeburg Court of Ernst III]

fanfares and responses lyric and profligate
rhythm fixe and the rhyme of its reception laid bare
an event mis-heard corporately

Minuet in F Major Wq. 116/7 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

the small rooms
the rooms with queer corners

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 25, 2019
Banned Rehearsal 976 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt

Playlist

Recorded

February 9, 2019
Male Content - Thomas Simpson - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

empty set?

an ordered texture of durations
several orders of embedded ordered textures of durations

Alla Polacca in G, Wq. 116/8 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

scraps cut to not fit quite just so

The City Never Sleeps at Night - Nancy Sinatra [a Rescued Record]

wide-eyed cinematic distance

I Mean You - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

a pickup of three eighth-notes and a downbeat played as
a pickup of three quarter-note triplets and a downbeat, all offset by half of a quarter-note triplet
or fairly like that

October - U2 [from October]

brief
the piano figuration could turn in upon itself intriguingly
but won't

Banned Rehearsal 90 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Doug Haire, Neal Kosály-Meyer, Wally Shoup [June 1986]

the third of seven sessions made on June 7, 1986, in the attempt (successful) to get to 100 by the time Neal left for San Diego later that month

back at the half house

microphone placement
tape to the window
sacrifice the television

Wally is reading from my listening journal which I had been keeping for 3 months at that time and of which this blog is an extension 33 years later
working backwards bloglike

instructions for the Realistic mixer
Karen's going to make cookies
run the output through the ox
back in time we are in two
at once of times
time travel
time's return

sounds of us recording sounds
life within the veil
all the objects this signal has passed through
as it passes from skull to skull

mix thoroughly
combine ingredients

Salute to John Philip Sousa - The Canadian Brass [from Red, White & Brass]

what was the first military force to have a band?
or has music always lured us off to war

you can almost smell the outdoor air

On/Off - Tom Baker - Tom Baker, Keith Eisenbrey [from Preludes in Seattle, May 2006]

in which
I perform on piano
exciting its harp and board
by amplifying recorded other musics
into its underparts

by signaling to Tom
who operated the ingoing sounds
with my hat
on the music rack

February 10, 2019
Dhunki - Mere Brothers Ki Dulhan [from Bollygood Vol. 1]

with so much money evident in the production the question of heartfeltness seems inappropriate
like one of JKR's "farts in church"

Banned Telepath 49 Mississippi River Brewery - Aaron Keyt [June 2016]

sounds glinting off the echo shiny walls
a box of jewels flashing

Mascharada - Nicolaus Blyer -  - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

the multiple tempo changes make this seem a much bigger piece than can quite fit in a minute twenty four

Fantasia in G minor, Wq. 117/13 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

fabulous instrument (fortepiano?) seems to have a damper pedal
Bach the J.S. used music to exert intellectual control
Bach the C.P.E. used music to consider music

or
given the tremendous gifts of B the C.P.E.
personal, peculiar
what must it have been like to have B the J.S. as dad?

Hitch Hike - The Sonics [from Boom]

rhythmhornB3 has a luscious fuzz all through it

Introspection (take 1) - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

the melody
within itself
loses itself in itself
finds within itself
melody itself

February 12, 2019
Wild Wild Life - Talking Heads [from True Stories]

it's so clean!
so clean the words don't even register
except as placeholders within the songwritery songwriting

Can You Dig It? - Thee Emergency [from Can You Dig It]

showcase: I'm what you got left (all of it)

Time Stratifications I Through a Glass Darkly - S. Eric Scribner [from Stormsound Cycle, May 2011]

sounds recur
flirt with adding

up to a sequence
resist

congealing into
a texture might be

commentary mostly
mutter art

Tetua (Jai Gangaajal) - Sukhwinder Singh, Salim- Salaiman [from Bollygood Vol. 1]

mid
distant
too close

February 13, 2019
Mascharada der Edel Frawen - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

a genteel quicker but not really quick bit
a breathtaking slow few phrases
rounded by quick slowing to slow

Keyboard Sonata in A Major, Wq. 65/43 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

master of do-overs and sharp turns
sudden shade

in this music the weather changes always

I Met Him On A Sunday - The Shirelles [from The Shirelles Anthology]

cycling through voices
one for each day
great clapping part!

Introspection (take 3) - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

recorded to make you feel like you're in the keyboard seat

low left
high right

Playlist

Live

February 7, 2019
Nonsequitur presents the 34th annual
Seattle Improvised Music Festival
Hollow Earth Radio, Seattle

CK Barlow electronics / Ambrosia Bardos voice & electronics ||

ceiling pizza

Bryan Lineberry sax / Schraepfer Harvey drums / China Faith Star sax ||
Banned Rehearsal (Pete Comley, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer) ||
Andria Nicodemou vibraphone / Chris Icasiano drums

First of all, the Banned sends a sloppy big "thank you!" to Steve Peters, Nonsequitur, and the multitudes who have kept this festival going for 34 years. I have been much remiss over the years in not getting to many of its events. Thank you for inviting Banned Rehearsal to join in this time! We were all of us excited to be there, and I hope everyone there in the hollow of the earth at Hollow Earth Radio found us at least puzzling, if not as all sorts of magnificent as I honestly think we were, having heard the recording now several times. But enough of us.

CK Barlow and Ambrosia Bardos play loud electronics splayed out on a table. Their sounds push back like firehoses, scour like sandblasters. No fooling around here, you will be cleansed up raw near bloody.

Bryan Lineberry, Schraepfer Harvey, and China Faith Star live to go lickety split, or to lay it out sweet and true, or somehow both at once.

We started out quiet and scribbly. Then we got more so.


Andria Nicodemou and Chris Icasiano do density and having done density density is done for true

Recorded

February 2, 2019
Six Six Sixties - Throbbing Gristle [from Greatest Hits]

wearing de rigueur wrath on his disgusted sleeve
another know it all

Banned Rehearsal 89 - Karen (Meyer) Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Doug Haire, Neal Kosály-Meyer, Wally Shoup [June 1986]

all previous banned rehearsals are hereby
rendered
the circumambulation of Green Lake
continued

must have been a second tape player being played into the microphone of the recording device from which the artifact arose

What explanation do the passers by explain to themselves us passing by by?

in recording our walk we are the noisiest of what we hear

visit the nature mall
looking for Neal's old place

the same few feet of tape replay are played and replayed at irregular intervals and in irregular scraps
a bit like a toddler game see my toy into your face over and over yes I saw it

Oregon Trail, near Baker City, Oregon

Westward Ho - The Canadian Brass [from Red, White & Brass]

brass playing is all about tonguing
as string playing is all about bowing, and hence arms
the audible tongue
scenes of the mythic west

Patti's Parlour Pieces 1-4 - Ken Benshoof - Keith Eisenbrey [from Preludes in Seattle, June 2016]

How did I accidentally luck into studying with such an elegant pianistic magician?
If you play with ears open the music takes care of itself.

February 3, 2019
Compulsive Loves - John Aylward - Mary Joy Patchett, alto sax, John McDonald, piano [from Milton Babbitt: A Composer's Memorial]

completely lovely
tender playful
gentle
but that doesn't capture the wide embrace of it well into the night

Gradus 290 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 2016]

music is thinking in the sense that it is a medium within which we can hear each other think
a concretion of thinking like as to language
but a different medium than language
though both ride on the same carrier wave of sound
let us then listen to each other think

(if the silences in Gradus are intended to be taken as Cage-an silences then I have a confession to make
I have been grossly abusing them)

I wonder, has there ever been a launched-themselves-upon-a-project pianist with such patient insouciance?
so you say this is going to take more orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude of sessions than there are particles in the universe to complete?
well, we'd best get started

the magic though is that as vast as it is
the infinitesimally tiny time we have to consider it is rich in melody
such a tiny thing
strand of mere magic

it's snowing outside as I listen, but on the tape's outside are the birds of a Spring past

a combination (rung) can be a simultaneity extended varietously
or a melody matrix spontaneously permuting all its orders
and everything that might be imagined in between

Der Satyrn Tanz - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

almost any style can be a carrier wave for music thinking itself out loud

Since I Fell For You - The Sonics [from Boom]

their slow dance number
best use of the B3 4ever
YMSK should do this as a cover

Hackensack (take 2) - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

his fingers is all elbows

rhythm is a body

comin' through the rye

rock on your haunches

side to side

don't rinse, repeat

It's Who You Know - X [from Wild Gift]

anxiety paranoiamal
all your lipstick shows
little Satie jape to end it there

Seeing and Believing - Screaming Trees [from Clairvoyance]

a distinct hit of a subset of west coast 60s psychedelia synthesized in situ

Evening - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

a power surf take on what should be a romantic ♥♥♥♥ slow dance (moi!)
strange little tag for fans only

Get It Up - Thee Emergency [from Can You Dig It]

virgin boot camp

February 4, 2019
The Songbird Flies Unhindered Through  Storm and Violence - S. Eric Scribner [from Storm Sound Cycle, May 2011]

coming to terms with what isn't about us
finding rhythm or sense in it is our pretence not its

Finnegans Wake Part 4 Chapter 1 - James Joyce - Graziana Galatti [from Waywords and Meansigns]

calling all
hear ye
cemetery insomnia
he voice it whispers
where did thoughts come from?

(flips back around and goes through Part I Chapter 1 also, but that's it)

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 4, 2019

312 Bus - Keith Eisenbrey

on the bus home from work one of the tire chains had come loose and made sweet whap whap whap whap whap with the wheel well
I recorded on my phone

Playlist

Recorded

January 26, 2019

George M. Cohan on Broadway - The Canadian Brass [from Red, White & Brass]

medley hit
corporate drop the needle
oh I remember that song
it sounds like I ought to remember that song
oh that song is by the same?

souvenir
once emerged
never comfortable

Another Sad Song Littering the Highway of Life - Doug Palmer - Keith Eisenbrey [from my recital Preludes in Seattle, June 2006]

I love how the melody emerges from the chord voices
and perches on them
and complains to them

Clusters - Hubert S. Howe [from Milton Babbitt: A Composer's Memorial]

mouth shapes like pipe organ music with full, muscular, control of the pipe shapes
mouth shapes evoking bell decay in immaculate motions

cuts off sharply
can't stay gotta go

Banned Telepath 48 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 2016]

bells and gongs and mostly metal sounds scrambling around the Joyce worm, and guitar
and wooden train whistle

one is concerned with the ceasing of doing anything
that the ceasing be not too artful
nor too lazy
as though already on to the next thing
through the side of one's mind
offhandedly

metal on metal squeal talk and rasper rasping sweet nothings into the dragon's ear
declamation
can ring Morse taps
guitar elegy
scrape chatters on
coexistent doings

January 27, 2019
Der dritten Mascharada - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

distinct strands of thinking
structure: cadence point sequence
fanciful: interior phrase shape conversation

Cinq Mélodies populaires grecques - Maurice Ravel - Frederica von Stade, Martin Katz [from Voyage a Paris]

accompaniment not an equal partner (as in Schumann) but every detail counts as much as anything sung
since I don't understand French I am not disturbed by any wordpainting that might be there
which seems mostly intent on capturing the mood of the persona singing this song
rather than the meanings of the words lifted out of the song's context

Louie Louie - The Sonics [from Boom]

as packed as packed can be

Evidence (take 2) - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

interjectionary left hand blats

Well Paid Scientist - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters/In God We Trust]

a certain proto hip hop structure in the sense that any new affect segment sounds dropped in as from a tone arm

Coward Till The End - Julian Lennon [from The Secret Value of Daydreaming]

You :: Me
a complaint
when out of ideas throw a bridge away
more than a little Sting-y
warm wash synth rinse
(fade out long? really?)

Tomorrow's Gone (And So Are You) - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

song for kiss off

Holding On - Thee Emergency [from Can You Dig It]

punk attitude about what? getting through it
for battle within the way it is

The Field of Arbol II Magnetic Fields - S. Eric Scribner [from Stormsound Cycle (live) May 2011]

de-peopled
unobserved
plain

a distant world in a fictional universe, not where the action is
not even in the same galaxy cluster over from where the action is

Finnegans Wake Part 3 Chapter 4 - James Joyce - Conspirators of Pleasure [from Waywords and Meansigns]

The reason we don't think of English as a tonal language is because we are all deaf.
The speaker is using their voice pitch reverberance to sever the parts of the adherent puncrustaceana from the next deeper encrustacean of adherent puncrustaceana. In short, it's puncrustaceana all the way down.

like unto a decorated psalm tone, it would make a remarkably strong password
not an exercise in declamation
perhaps in acting
as though any bit could have been heard as a could have been heard out in Dublin wild.

We see or hear these words as the pulsing of a vessel of flowing wordery
lexicon only viewed through a microscope and delicately held open (the tissue of the vessel) above scalpeled through
three weeks to heal

January 29, 2019
Der Pilligrienen Tanz - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

short phrases with clear countable beats
within which cage
the action is

Trois Mélodies - Eric Satie - Frederica von Stade, Martin Katz [from Voyage a Paris]

The plain and square is foregrounded
or would be
if it were
actually
plain
or square

Wichita Vortex Sutra Part 3 - Allen Ginsberg [from Holy Soul, Jelly Roll]

joy covered with ash
give up your desire
this vortex named

Hackensack (take 1) - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

the image of: tempi of LH and RH going off, slipping away from each other in cogjolty syncopation
but each always right with it
can seem several beats or measures off, but ain't
so: the sense of having awkward joints, or celebrating them

Here drums, have it.

In Session at the Tintinabulary
(and beyond)

January 28, 2019
Banned Rehearsal 974 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Our last good chance to not rehearse for our upcoming gig at Hollow Earth Radio on Thursday, February 7, as part of the Seattle Improvised Music Festival. We are excited and thrilled to have been invited!

January 31, 2019
Piano Gusting - Aaron Keyt - Jennifer Chung, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [at Jack Straw Productions, Seattle]

Aaron is participating in Jack Straw's celebration of the piano they (Jack Straw/KRAB Radio) dropped from a helicopter some decades ago. There the harp lay, many ranks of strings still intact. His score is for piano four straws, amplified by little contact microphones and tiny amplifiers. We blew in the straws, remembering the rush of winds as the soft plummeted home.

Playlist

Live

January 25, 2019
Mike Marlin and Friends: Purging Demons Through Sonic Oversight
Jesse Canterbury, Eric Dahlman, Keith Eisenbrey, Carl Juarez, Jim Knodle, Mike Marlin, Moonshadow, Deb Scott, Tari Nelson Zagar, Vivaldi
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Oh my.

tools of the trade

Mike was in Seattle for a welcome visit, and I was delighted to receive an invitation to join in this re-union show. I met Mike back in the days of The Tentacle, a local new music newspaper he helped found that had a glorious few years back in the last decade. I had joined him and Deb in a couple of free-improv events back then, one at the Odd-Fellows Hall, and one at Gallery 1412 at which Jim had also participated. Jesse, (back in town!) I have known for a while, but had never had the pleasure of playing together with him until last night. Eric was known to me only through sound (as Mike's cohort in Dubious Duo), but both Tari and Carl were newly met with. Moonshadow and Vivaldi are Mike and Deb's service dogs, and they joined us both as singers and leash shakers. ("the rest of you just rattle your jewelry.")

Equipped with a handwritten set list and a few quick words of instruction, we gathered in sub-committees of three or four to hash out introductions, swap yarns, and to enjoy the necessary preliminaries and hobnobberations, upon which being accomplished we gathered in plenary session to bring the powers that be to naught. A highlight was Aria 45, based on a sequence of words spewed by Old Orange Hair in Montana sometime last year. I have no organ. Indeed.

Demons duly purged. Ya coulda been there.

Recorded

January 20, 2019
Girl You Should Have Known - Thee Emergency [from Can You Dig It]

hazing ritual, front lines, songs of the

The Field of Arbol I Winds of the Sun - S. Eric Scribner - Dale Speicher, percussion [from Storm

Jim Knodle

Sound Cycle, May 2011]

Dale made thunderrumble in the space of thunderrumble in space
distant
crackless
massive

Finnegans Wake Part 3 Chapter 3 - James Joyce - Hinson Calabrese [from Waywords and Meansigns]

question of: which interests in music might be intrigued by such a sprawling text: ambientists? (why?) || if true, might it be?

the text is focused on the present moment, no glaring trajectory of drama
long looping jammers
each statement made by a different voice
(statement quantity equals voice quantity)
in each case no matter where one enters nor where one leaves
carrying my dragon man

Stand Back! It's ProgRog!

We hear this language go by as though we did not understand a word of it, but as though the fabric of the thought containing our least understanding of where it is at is in familiar-like words

collector of plain language parts transcribed through a filter (Prog!!)
a steady stream of Irishness inscribed upon battlefelled parchmeant

January 22, 2019
Der ander Mascharada - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

middlest of three
riddle me this

Fétes galantes (Set 1) - Claude Debussy - Frederica von Stade, Martin Katz [from Voyage a Paris]

impersonation of the poem's speaker
the someone who sings this thus
song and singer conspire to emerge as an unstable unity
an appearing person
a vanishing person

Ben Boretz

A Question, A Rose - Benjamin Boretz - Scot Moore

a matter of nearness
two (or more) violin parts played by solo violin

nearness of co-emergence
or between the actual duet (or x-tet) and us

a quartet for G, D, A, and E strings, played solo for keeps, all humming the same box
finishes with not ending, after not ending

as though parts had spilled out onto the not ever ending
after not ever after

Ben was kind enough to share this hot-off-the-press recording of this hot-off-the-press solo violin piece. When he shared a midi version recently I surmised to myself that hearing the parts played on real strings, with a real bow, resonating a single soundbox, and performed by a human person, would lift the image from fascinating to lively. I had no idea.

January 24, 2019
He's Waitin' - The Sonics [from Boom]

(for you)
more threats
was the idea this: that men thought women would like men who were pathologically jealous?
was the idea this: that men needed to express their deepest and ugliest as an antidote to it? (spurious)
was the idea this: that men thought men needed to threaten their women, in order for women to be their women, in order themselves to be men?
was the idea this: that no thought was involved?

The Sonics are a fabulous band, but the prevailing public ethos of the era (mid 60's) is more than worth unpacking in order to examine our own selves and ethos.

Evidence (take 1) - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

a random-ish sequence of Monk-ish bits is all there is for what there is for what to work with
transparent pitchwork can play unfenced

I admire TM's articulative manner, in that it allows what could be an overbearing piano part to float among his fellows. It respects.

Track 6 - Empire Brass Quintet [from American Brass Band Journal Revisited]

polka oom pah done to a crisp

Banned Rehearsal 88 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Doug Haire, Neal Kosály-Meyer, Wally Shoup [June 1986]

This was the first of six sessions we made on June 7, 1986. We were intent on getting to 100 before Neal left for San Diego later that month. Doug and Wally had come over and we set off from the Greenwood Half House toward and partly around Green Lake. Any theory of what we think we are or were doing or might or could be about is quickly outrun by the practice of doing whatever it is we were doing or just did do. The conversation of ducks is passed by but lingered at. Toy piano plucks and bird calls.

duckkind, the tugboat nature of

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 21, 2019
Gradus 344 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

My recording failed due to user error, but I made a picture.