Hallock Hill

Kyle Bobby Dunn, “Promenade,” A Young Person’s...

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:22:00 -0400

Kyle Bobby Dunn, “Promenade,” A Young Person’s Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn (Low Point, 2010)

A single note cast out against a canvas stretches and twists, sometimes over, sometimes under itself. Others weave, or are woven, into these stretches of sound, and careen round the landscape. What are you feeling? It might be peace, which is momentary, or conflict, which is slight and usually only base and elemental. The landscape is without rhythm, in the same way that a river, or passing clouds, are without rhythm. Yet. They have design.

What comes to you might be said to come through you, and you can choose to focus on it, let it inhabit you, or not. It will still be there, like the waves breaking against the beach. They don’t need to be listened to. One might sense a certain intelligence of sound, or of sounds, an intuitive grasp of one for the other, a familiarity of one slightly contorted.

People don’t talk about beauty nearly enough. These twelve discrete beautiful objects will care for you, if you let them. And if you don’t, they will still be beautiful. But let them care for you.

You will struggle to categorize these sounds, ask yourself what you are hearing, remember a distant day when you had some peace in your life and you were able to think, unfettered. Is that a trombone? A guitar? Is that organic or synthesized? As these questions disappear, and I hope they do, you’ll have an opportunity. Opportunity to find different states of being. Some might be coincident with one’s temperament. Some might chop at it, and the joint might be irreparable.

These work by incremental building and rebuilding. Recycling. Revisioning. The whole shows a multiple of moods and emotions, crafted by a caring ear that clearly points towards the variety of experience. The waves on the shore. Snowflakes. Fingerprints. Tree roots.

The next time you pick up a familiar object, one you’ve had nearly all your life, find one thing you never noticed about it. All those things are there, whether you look for them or not.

_____________________________________

These pieces were recorded over several years in North Carolina, New York, New Jersey and Alberta, Canada. This album takes four pieces from last year’s Fervency, expands on them and adds material across 2 CDs. Soundscapes can be meticulously created. And these are.

Order from Low-Point.

Kyle Bobby Dunn on MySpace.

Clouds

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:15:00 -0400

Sometimes it is good to just watch the clouds.

"I am well aware not only of the importance of children — whom we naturally cherish and who we..."

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:15:00 -0400

“I am well aware not only of the importance of children — whom we naturally cherish and...

Arto Monaco and the Land of Makebelieve

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:15:00 -0400

And last but most importantly, Monaco’s ‘Saga of Cactus...

"You have tracks inside a city. You build from wherever your center is. Wherever you sit your ass,..."

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:00:00 -0400

“You have tracks inside a city. You build from wherever your center is. Wherever you sit your...

Master Musicians of Bukkake, “Circular and Made of the ...

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:00:00 -0400

Master Musicians of Bukkake, “Circular and Made of the Earth,” The Visible Sign of the Invisible Order (Important 2010 repressing, originally issued by Abduction 2004)

The idea of slowing all breath down to near nothingness save a sync with ebbing thought, tending towards thoughtlessness. Unison of voice and carriage, tone drawn together, and apart, safety in each.

The fan oscillates, wind blows the lilac bush outside. Cold inside and scorching out, but here without climate, sound overtaken. The fern undulate beyond the glass. Leaves wisp.

If I planted a seed in my mind would it grow, and if more seeds what garden could I make to tend. I will take care of it and it will take care of me. You might say my broken train of thought is what this is all about, and it a glue to remake me. Who will not say that might be so, or wish it otherwise?

______________________________________________________________

The superb liner notes:

“An opening gong signals the interface between collective ceremony and individualistic expression. This is the surviving carnival of creation from the frigid nights beyond a blistering hell to come. Out of neccessity, a pack of wild solo predators assembles for the purpose of creating a larger and much more efficient hunting party. Creatures of like minds produce unlimited energy fields largely uncontrollable yet focused on an elusive chasm between desire and need. The choice is clear: Predator or Prey. By scattering the collective into individual identification snares, wardens of hypnosis domesticate confused souls relocating them to dry islands of servitude or stark pastures of the harvest. Bloodline or benefits claimed by slave masters and their operatives are not sufficient justification to remain among their rans for all wardens and their masters will be eliminated by a billion ghosts sailing the winds of death when filthy truths are revealed.

These songs were siphoned from flying graveyards and fed through fiant funnels as navigatory spirits and sprayed in the haunted outskirts of behavior and its rickety platforms. Spreading as aggressive invasion in a mist of self-motivated obsessive defense mechanisms, this anti-virus of sparkling plasma glows as illuminated orb amdst the enemy’s elite shadows of deceptive, inferior energies which continually pollute the dimensions of all accessible realitites. Within this illumination are gateways to new realities where the enemy fears to tread.

A clever, weirder America is on the rise. One that won’t give up their guns or their souls to the agencies trained to occupy them.Those who can speak outside the language and direct energy on the inside are the only valid resistance to the creeping tumors of controlled humanity. Conceptual movement, intellectual logic, and “reasonable alternatives” are not factors in decision making. Decisions are instantaneous judgements as perfection. The deciders who used to roam the universe in large numbers are almost extinct.

The Master Musicians Of Bukkake are among the last bastion of entities capable of deciding which vapors of truth shall manifest and who shall breathe these truths.” Alan Bishop December 2009

Image via Important Records. The Master Musicians of Bukkake at MySpace.

Andrew Pekler, from Entanglements In the Orthopedic Sensorium...

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:37:00 -0400

Andrew Pekler, from Entanglements In the Orthopedic Sensorium (Schoolmap, 2009). “A short clip documenting the tragic discovery and ritual burial of a pterodactyl deity by a group of telepathic sea nymphs. ‘Waltz For Minor Planets’ plays in the background.” A superb album.

Three improvisational pieces laced over a video of this...

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 08:49:27 -0400

Three improvisational pieces laced over a video of this year’s Independence Day parade in Jay, NY.

Mike Shiflet, excerpt from split LP with Keith Fullerton Whitman...

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 10:15:00 -0400

Mike Shiflet, excerpt from split LP with Keith Fullerton Whitman (Amethyst Sunset, 2010)

At the very top of the tree some small bird perched alone. Wind makes sound and often gets louder the more one hears it, crescendo, an orchestra tuning up gaining focus. That bird. Too many leaves. What part of a tree is hollow? Or hallow?

The bird blurred a line from there to the small fence next to the lean-to where no one almost never sleeps. Save an occasional bat. It has been a hot summer with endless days of rain, just a few hundred miles north of the city island, century’s boat just found there, skeletal hull linings bearing time and life. The skyline’s gone but the port is open and people are still sailing.

A cricket relentlessly embraces the heat with drone, pitch consistent but the wind and distance deflect it and it bends. The pitch twists. It pitches. Like the boat, despite the boat’s growth into the earth, the earth’s growth into sky. Someone said that if the sun had hit the wood it would have immediately disintegrated.

As things grow silent the bird still flutters. Twittering anew against the cricket’s field. They both relate to their distance. A shape persists in the sky of clouds and rocking tree tops, which though they always seem to be there show different colors every day.

If the bird closes its eye, will it still see the shapes, and what spots of light will splay across its darkened screen?

(Limited LP release. Find it directly from Amethyst Sunset or Mike Shiflet.)

Side 1: Keith Fullerton Whitman: live analog synthesizer
Side 2: Mike Shiflet: live guitar and oscillator

A follow-up to yesterday’s reaction to Keith Fullerton Whitman’s side.

…Like a frozen explosion.. Working in the past tense of...

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 19:15:00 -0400

…Like a frozen explosion.. Working in the past tense of music… Farming lots and lots of material… Live music is about developing systems… Room tone… Huge standing wave… Computationally cheap way of getting masses of sound… Music as a whole sensory experience… Immersive… It’s a good time for music… Healthy cross pollinization… Everything be synthesis… No field recordings… Exploring purely analog sounds…

Keith Fullerton Whitman, excerpt from split LP with Mike Shiflet...

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 10:42:41 -0400

Keith Fullerton Whitman, excerpt from split LP with Mike Shiflet (Amethyst Sunset, 2010)

Her eyes looked like woodsmoke. Shoeless. A waving shock of hair uncontrived and yet purposeful and in her the sounds of as many trees and waves as I could hold in my head. Woodsmoke eyes. Alighted. Dark ombre of twisting color ribboned upwards, as she looked upwards, away from me I must admit and towards a lost thought. I could only imagine.

When I took her hand and she curled her fingers round mine I was instantly absent minded and my own eyes surely wilted. Nonsense. Or at least nonsensical. We both quickly smiled. We were standing in a hot puddle behind the cemetery where the teachers couldn’t find us. Or at least, wouldn’t.

I can remember the way the sun looked that day and the monument of humidity that was around us. Questions about dinner time and what we would eat and who we would sit with and were we going to go to the library and thank god there’s only two more weeks of school and then what. God it was hot and filled with an unbinding confusion.

Ultimately the sand in the base of that puddle, which was really a shallow tributary of a stream behind the school, got to us and we realized we had to leave. Walk back down the hill to the buildings and landscaping and curbs and sidewalks and fences.

We met sitting in a windowless room reading short stories. Her roommate told me to love her in a darkroom. She told me in a darkroom.

That day ended and ended, I’m not sure now. Who can expect me to know which day was the one I’ve been thinking about? Or you’ve been thinking about? All these sounds and silences, wrapped in tissues of time and guarded by wrinkled memories of her, each other, one’s self.

(Limited LP release. Find it directly from Amethyst Sunset or Mike Shiflet.)

Side 1: Keith Fullerton Whitman: live analog synthesizer
Side 2: Mike Shiflet: live guitar and oscillator

The above was written as I listened to Whitman’s piece for the first time. The first sentence was generated when I first saw the cover.

These Feathers Have Plumes, “Vortex,” Corvidae...

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:30:00 -0400

These Feathers Have Plumes, “Vortex,” Corvidae (Tartaruga Records, 2010)

Close to the pleasures of the world, under a glossy black sky. Slack clouds hang within the silence of the space. With this, it could sacrifice itself, or rub against its own ardent desire, if only so it may then die. It could even smack against the very purpose of its being and still not reveal the full pleasure of just knowing it is there. Seeking this absolute advantage, to hoist a flag and let it stand for the power to prey upon its own energy. Even the machinist, whose smock is dirtied in the practice of craft, could not touch its energy, which is past and incomplete. Its energy began operating in the depths of its desperation, devouring and seizing all that it could. Such was the shock of touching it. The results came at any cost and so it consumed itself. It shook. A self-consuming artifact, made possible by a chance, a glimpse into a spire that rotated around a central axis, as if stalking the flesh of the carrion that lived within its spiral. The other axes shoot in four directions, perpendicular to the center. Its pomp and riches could not succeed, for its image, hoisted upon the flag, became the image of improvidence. In its short life, its pleasures, the ways of its operation, eyes fell into this grave mechanism and found the secret there. The gears that warped its axis existed solely to betray the fact of its self-betrayal. The sky once hit the shore and betrayed the boundary. The betrayal was betrayed. Not as if some whore came into the fray and twisted it around her body; the actual event was much more subtle. Its corroded operations seized up and drank no more, as if the oasis of its desperation was nothing other than an emergence into consciousness. The whole of its living slipped into another space, yet linked with that sky that seemed the only constant. Perhaps, though, it failed because it was wrapped around the occupation of robbing that which had animated it. And while what is made can be seen, the making is never revealed. Made desirous, it peered through a slit in the perspective, made an attempt at measuring and annotating every other procedure that was at play. It could not find the white envelope that supposedly contained the secrets of its existence. The pleasures of the world, fortunately they were simple. Love could not be measured and it was sure love was there. It had learned to speak and utter that inexhaustible breath. And though its words were to stand in a lone hollow, amidst the dale they took shape and said something. The breath spiraled about the wondrous economy of its design. The lane formed by the twisted axes remained, if only for an instant, whole. And yet it was spent. It was late and past the time to find the envelope. The sky betrayed the constellation, disrupting the glossy black. Its hate was a thing, enclosed in a parcel of betrayal. Its speech obscured by the inability to begin. The secret, like the grail itself, kept eluding its gaze. Its operation sacrificed, exaggerated in its suspension. Every grain was lost. And as it shattered, there was the ineffable modal sound of existence surging out through the cracks. In the workings of its brain, there was the final peace of knowing it had been. Glossy under the word, the sky, close to the black pleasures, took the form of a transparent envelope.

(Absolutely gorgeous packaging, an edition of 100, and a very fine sound world : Tartaruga Records / These Feathers Have Plumes.)

The Caretaker, “False Memory Syndrome,” Persistent...

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:07:00 -0400

The Caretaker, “False Memory Syndrome,” Persistent Repetition of Phrases (History Always Favours the Winners, 2010 reissue, originally released by Install, 2008)

I dip my toe into the stream and in that moment when the water parts and diverts round my skin I hear a distant echo of the past. I feel it too, in the coolness of the water, and see a reflection of the tree behind me, warped by the undulations of the water and the complicated visual field of the rocks at riverbed.

Finding it difficult to merely experience the moment, with thoughts creating to-do lists and recalling doings forgotten, I stare intently at just the tip of my toe, now submerged. I take out a leaf I’d put in my pocket earlier and toss it into the rushing water. Gone. It is a past thought now gone, I can hear it float away.

My sons are downstream in the swimming hole. I am above the light run of rapids, shallow water defined by larger rocks that form the orchestra of this place. Their intermittent hollers percuss the air, piping exclamations of life within the endless flow of time that rolls over my toe, quickly, and past them, slowly. It is the same river, but no drop of it the same as any other.

I try and imagine imaginary origins of words, place names. The while my toe punctures the surface of the water. Alive. My grandparents are dead. I can hear them laughing at my sons. My great aunt is standing across the river with a drink in her hand and she’s asking them if the water is cold. And they answer her. Nothing is cold.

This all happens in the wink of an eye, an eye I am not sure is mine.

(A new approach to reacting to music, perhaps.)

Craig Colorusso Sun Boxes On Sunday, Dan Bodah played this...

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:41:33 -0400

Craig Colorusso Sun Boxes

On Sunday, Dan Bodah played this remarkable track on his Airborne Event on WFMU. He encouraged listeners to watch the video, where one could find a description of the composition:

“Sun Boxes is an experimentation with sound and solar energy. 20 Sun boxes constructed with wood and equipped with solar panels, speakers, amplifiers and electronic sound modules were placed in the Desert as part of the Off The Grid exhibition at the Goldwell Residency in Rhyolite Nevada in June 2009. Each box emitted a singular sound at a specific interval, the sound composition is generated when the sun rises and ends when the sun falls. Using solar power allows the composition to vary infinitely depending on the clouds, the amount of sun, and the shadows of the spectator.”

This coming Saturday, June 26, Sound Boxes will be installed at the Important Records Compound in Ware, Massachusetts (http://importantrecords.com/sunboxes). It is a good possibility I will be found there.

For more on Chris Colorusso, seek here:

Mark McGuire is one third of Cleveland’s magical Emeralds....

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 07:05:09 -0400

Mark McGuire is one third of Cleveland’s magical Emeralds. I’ve been low on words lately, but high on listening and McGuire’s playing has really grabbed me. This solo piece shows how he stacks layers of loops and builds a piece live. His use of effects is deep, but subtle, relying on delay and loop rather than heavy modulation of sound. This is whirling, moving music.

Goodbye, David Markson

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 20:51:43 -0400

I learned today, through his one-time publisher Dalkey Archive, that David Markson has died within...

Now playing.

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 12:15:13 -0400

Now playing.

Time out

Fri, 28 May 2010 08:30:06 -0400

For thinking and discovery. See you soon.

African Brothers Dance Band (International), “Abusua Nnye ...

Sat, 22 May 2010 18:05:22 -0400

African Brothers Dance Band (International), “Abusua Nnye Asafo,” Self-titled (Afribos, 1970)

A great Saturday night tune for you. Remember what I wrote here.

"I’m trying to get close to the language of thought. It’s hard to put into words what the mind does,..."

Thu, 20 May 2010 09:30:00 -0400

“I’m trying to get close to the language of thought. It’s hard to put into words what the mind...