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Monthly Archives: October 2009
Kamelmauz – Slidemare & bonus ‘Under the Forest’
Slidemare (2009)
I’ve posted the entirety of the new Kamelmauz dream, Slidemare. Each track can be auditioned, and, for the ambitious who know their way around iTunes, the recording may be downloaded as Apple-lossless files, burned onto a CD and listened to on one of those antique stereo systems–highly recommended. Not recommended: ear buds.
Slidemare isn’t intended to please any audience; in fact, it’s intended to please just me. All outside sympathy or antipathy, attraction or repulsion, are frosting. The genre is: experimental strange ambient, so my latest soundplay cannot be a common cup o’ tea.
Half a dozen tracks didn’t make the cut, and half of those simply need to be completed; in due time. Here’s one that didn’t make the cut:
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KAMELMAUZ-Under the Forest
I didn’t document my workflow, so about all that can be said is that Slidemare was lashed together from three years of on and off experimenting. I don’t do much post-processing. The delays and the what-not are almost always part of the live recording chain. The assembly of individual tracks is a matter of review, pulling each apart, flinging them like darts onto the track mixer, moving clips around, and, ending the process far short of obsession or perfectionism. As always from beginning to the end the process is: naive, intuitive, painterly, and a heck of a lot of fun.
listen | download: Kamelmauz-Slidemare
Inner Squall
VI. Noise. In terms of music, personally, it’s not a mean distinction. It was 30+ years ago that I heard very late period Coltrane. At the time I didn’t understand, nor do I today, why it was termed free jazz. Then came Evan Parker and Peter Brotzmann. Sonny Sharrock. It goes on. Peter’s son, Caspar Brotzmann. Mersbow. Charles Gayle.
It goes on: over there. Actually, when I hear the word ‘noise,’ I think of Jacques Attali; Noise: The Political Economy of Music. It’s one of the essential books about music, but it’s not about noise, really.
What is noise? One can’t say, ‘I know it when I hear it.’ This doesn’t make sense as a report about a coherent act of listening. Still, the actual received—heard—bandwidth, streamed into cognitive apparatus, then inferentially extracted to either ‘feel’ or (some) named perception, is variable “in the subject” but defines nothing more than the available slice. This slice is allowed by the consequence of evolution. Listening is actually very hard to do.
The extremes of this slice might hold some fascination.
quiet becomes
lifeless, short
of this, thumping
passes over
silence
The most intense noise I ever heard was the sound world available while floating in an isolation tank. Beautiful.
SunnO))) Wikipedia
About Sunn O)))
SUNN 0))) is the heavy rock equivalent of an institutional-size dose of Largactyl; when you finally get down, you stay down. SUNN 0))) makes sounds of weather formation size meditations, as monolithic as a brick of monosludge. SUNN 0))) music is huge and simple, like a future race of technologists who forgot how to build microchips so had to return to factory-sized computers. Its shamanic appeal is considerably enlivened by the sub-bass disfigurations caused to all bowels in the immediate proximity, whilst the lead guitar clings to your torso like a butter knife spreading Philly Lite first on a piece of toast, then on the bread board, then across the counter over the fridge and up the walls into adjacent rooms.
Ha ha. . .Philly Lite? I guess lava would hurt. Anyway, SunnO))) and Double Leopards figure into my sense, although, the heaviest drone I’ve churned through and out, Low Mera, didn’t make Slidemare.
Primordial Dank
V. Lustmord, aka Brian Williams, (Wikipedia) comes into view as Robert Rich’s collaborator on the essential Stalker disc. His ambient vision is vitalized in his career-spanning effort to have his music identified with the dark current of the human shadow. This emphasis poses an opposition to the tribal, mystical, “outer space,” aesthetic and does so by amplifying (what I term) the “demonic ominous omen.” He does this, usually, by creating very slow, cavernous drones, with thundering rhythmic strikes and alien-sounding vocalizations and chants, all sluggishly spiraling around a subterranean ritualistic core. At its darkest, Lustmord’s soundworld is seriously creepy, and at times horrific. Although, its scary effectiveness diminishes with repeated listening!
The Monstrous Soul, is the highlight of his output. web site
The dark ambient genre has an interesting history because it’s complete lack of even modest commercial potential meant that in the early eighties it arose as a DIY effort centered on one-of cassettes, and, compilations. It was one of the first such efforts too. Even today, as a mature genre, it remains focused on etching the ‘sub’ in sub-culture. Dark ambient, being a kind of a bastard offspring of the industrial music genre, isn’t easily differentiated when its sonic world crosses back-over to via metallic machine textures. Lustmord often has one foot in his ‘other world’ and one foot back in the industrial family.
Lustmord does duty as influence mostly for his approach to delays and crawling sense of development. Also, Lustmord, here, stands in for other, lesser influences, especially Coil, Current 93, Paul Schutze, and Bill Laswell.
Devilish effects aren’t at all a goal in Slidemare. Still, if a listener is creeped out for some reason, it might be at moments in the ambient stream where Lustmord was in the back, unconscious, of the designer’s mind.
Posted in inspiration, video
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Vibrations Slowing But Not Resting
Robert Rich, serious auralnaut
Part IV. Initially I acquainted myself with the artistry of Robert Rich via his collaborating with Steve Roach on the superb Strata from 1991; but, probably I got to hear it sometime in 1993. By 1993 Rich had released ten records. Yet, at the time, I didn’t seek to unravel the Rich strand in Strata, and so he wasn’t on my radar screen. This all changed the first year working back in a record store. It was 1995 and my very hip assistant manager Chris (aka DJ Weirton,) hipped me to illbient and other urban electronic music. To make a short story shorter, both of us were all over certain labels, so when Asphodel dropped the two sets, A Swarm of Drones, and A Storm of Drones, that year, each slid into the CD player in the store pronto.
The compilations spread a massive exhalation of drones over seven sides. There, amongst tracks by Steve Roach, Ellen Fullman, Stuart Dempster, DJ Spooky, Robert Fripp and Robert Rich–those being the the only participants I was familiar with–were a host of new lights about to shine in my deep space cosmos.
Yet it was Rich and his tracks Bouyant On a Motionless Deluge, and and an excerpt from The Smorgh Sleeps On Velvet Tongues, that leaped out. I jumped on two records released the previous year, Propagation and Rainforest. Wow. Robert Rich’s ambient vision was, at that time, a bit more advanced than that of Steve Roach. His music was more diverse and the tribal elements more organic. I wouldn’t make this distinction about their relative standing today; after all, to me Roach and Rich are the equivalent of Miles Davis and John Coltrane in ambient music. But, back then, Rich’s mellow, exotic, shapely and spacy music drew me to it with an even greater siren song.
Alas, his older records were hard to get. A compilation drawn from those older records, A Troubled Resting Place, helped my investigation. I was restless, and, then excited to learn Rich had a new record finished, a collaboration, with one B. Lustmord.
Stalker. I will say this: it’s the ambient music that had the most far-reaching impact on me. It is in the same esteemed place with respect to my appreciation of ambient artistry as Mingus’s The Black Saint & the Sinner Lady is in with respect to my appreciation of jazz artistry. This is to suggest that it was through dealing with Stalker, that I began to intuit how deep was the craft and technique involved in etching sound worlds where events could be said to happen slowly.
Not as prolific as his peer Steve Roach, Rich continues to present a masterpiece every so often. Although Rich’s tribal ambient style is sustained these days in various collaborations, when left to only his own devices he seems to be recently zeroing in on a simmering, very slow, mellow dark ambient sonic vision. He’s got no competition as a drone-maker.
Deep Sonic Space
Pioneering and stellar ambient music creator, Steve Roach
Part III. Here is where my recollection of musical influence and inspiration gets interesting–to me. When I returned to Cleveland in 1992, one of the first resources I tapped into was the two fabulous library systems. This happens before the internet, and even commenced about a year before Cleveland Public Library got rid of their vinyl records. Also, this era (of my listening,) in Cleveland was greatly advantaged by the local used record and CD scene. (I obviously didn’t know at the time record retail would implode in Cleveland within 10 years.) But, at the time almost all my listening time was invested in jazz.
This would change very quickly because the cost of a music trial via borrowing from the library was minimal, and, the potential for a rewarding listening experience was great. For the next ten years, including my five year stint in record retail, I set in motion a huge process of discovery that roamed over the world of music. Whilst I had scratched the surface–outside of rock–in all sorts of locations, (ie. genres,) for the previous decade, upon returning to Cleveland, it was on.
Except, not everything hits one’s aural radar screen. Until you take a flyer. The flyer in this case was taken on a CD by the American instrumentalist, composer and sound designer Steve Roach. It’s spoke to me from the rank it occupied on a to-be-shelved cart at the Mayfield Heights Branch. I pulled it out. Its cover was intriguing.
Listening to Roach (Wikipedia) for the first time, I was amazed. On one hand, here was sound akin to my favored The Deep Listening Band, on the other hand here was also something unhinged from new age music. (I did not like new age music!) Familiar as I was with Stockhausen and Ligeti and Vetter and Hykes and others, Dreamtime Return seemed to me to be experimental and ambitious. And, I really like ambitious experiments!
In my estimation Dreamtime Return, four years past its release by the time I heard it in 1992, is Roach’s first complete masterwork. Although working backward through his discography circa 1992 was enjoyable enough, as it happened, Steve Roach was about to go on a roll, one that continues to this day. He’s made a mountain of brilliant music and produced many other masterworks. His collaborations with Vidna Obmana and Vir Unis opened the door to a huge wellspring of deep ambient music from Europe.
A huge influence is putting it mildly. One more thing, Steve Roach is equally accomplished as a 21st century entrepreneur, nailing down an enlightening web presence and a DIY ethos years before the scramble along the same lines was unleashed.
Steve Roach – The Magnificent Void – desert island disc for me – hard to pick just one – steveroach.com
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Over the Tones
Part II. influences. Stuart Dempster, colleague with Ms. Oliveros in The Deep Listening Band, is heard, but not seen, in this video in what I will term ‘the cistern series.’ There should be enough clues here to figure out what’s going on. (If not, see his page at epitonic. There, should you register, two free-legal, superb examples of his music are available.
The music of David Hykes, the composer and singer, stormed into the room widened by my encounter with The Deep Listening Band. Singing that left me speechless.
David Kykes has a great youtube channel.
Listen From Where You Are
Maybe/hoping, by Sunday, I’ll post mp3′s and downloadable Apple lossless tracks from my completed recording, Slidemare. (Tonight I’ve posted the track list and credits, and will post track notes with the tracks.) To build up to this, I’m going to provide context by exemplifying the most important influences for my first new recording in 8 years. There are four tracks that didn’t make the cut, so I’ll post at least two of those, too.
These masterful influences also provide a portent of the kinds of sound worlds I design in a painterly way. The genre conventions I have one foot in are several: drones, dark ambient, and, noise. My play-in-sound is intended only to please me, so, tis not likely to be universally palatable! My music, for the daring listener, hopefully warrants excursions through its strange sonic worlds.
I’ll present examples in the order the various exemplars flowed into my own sound field. First up, Pauline Oliveros. She’s, firstly, a genius in many dimensions–as composer and instrumentalist, as educator, as philosopher, and as inspiratrix. It is enough to say that her Deep Listening Band provided a startling initiation when I first heard their self-titled recording on New Albion almost twenty years ago. Her deep listening philosophy has been very influential for my sense of the total experience of sound.
What is Deep Listening?
Deep Listening® is a philosophy and practice developed by Pauline Oliveros that distinguishes the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the voluntary selective nature of listening. The result of the practice cultivates appreciation of sounds on a heightened level, expanding the potential for connection and interaction with one’s environment, technology and performance with others in music and related arts. (src=deeplistening.org
An interesting report about Deep listening from a sensitive neophyte:
Talking Steel Guitar – Pete Drake’s “Forever”
Legendary pedal steel guitarist Pete Drake demonstrates ‘talking steel guitar’ on a magically real clip. Thanks to the superb culture blog, Naturalismo. (The album track for Forever is available there.)
excerpt, interview with Douglas Green, Guitar Player, unknown date
How did your “Talking Guitar” thing come about?
Well, everybody wanted this style of mine, but I sort of got tired of it. I’d say, “Hey, let me try and come up with something new,” and they’d say, “Naw, I want you to do what you did on So-and-so’s record.” Now, I’d been trying to make something for people who couldn’t talk, who’d lost their voice. I had some neighbors who were deaf and dumb, and I thought it would be nice if they could talk. So I saw this old Kay Kayser movie, and Alvino Rey was playing the talking guitar. I thought, “Man, if he can make a guitar talk, surely I can make people talk.” So I worked on it for about five years, and it was so simple that I went all around it, you know, like we usually do.
How did the talking guitar work?
You play the notes on the guitar and it goes through the amplifier. I have a driver system so that you disconnect the speakers and the sound goes through the driver into a plastic tube. You put the tube in the side of your mouth then form the words with your mouth as you play them. You don’t actually say a word: The guitar is your vocal chords, and your mouth is the amplifier. It’s amplified by a microphone.
When did you first use it on records?
With Roger Miller. He had a record called “Lock, Stock And Teardrops,” on RCA Victor, but it didn’t hit. Then I used it on Jim Reeves’ “I’ve Enjoyed As Much Of This As I Can Stand.” I really thought I’d used the gimmick up by the time Shelby Singleton and Jerry Kennedy of Mercury Records wanted to record me. I had already recorded for Starday [a Mercury label] some straight steel things like “For Pete’s Sake,” but I went ahead and cut a song called “Forever” on the talking thing. It came out, and for about two months didn’t do a thing; then, all of a sudden, it cut loose and sold a million. So then I was known as the “Talking Steel Guitar Man,” and did several albums for Smash, which is a subsidiary of Mercury.
Posted in lap steel & pedal steel guitar, video
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The Song Is Your Own, You Know?
Happy 75th birthday, Abdullah.
Although the number of musicians I favor is many, many, it is easy enough to sort out the echelon of those who deeply figure into my personal culture, into the brightest stars of my inner sound universe. Abdullah Ibrahim, for me the most important musician South Africa, (and Africa!) has produced, is at the top of this rarefied, personal list.
So are Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Duke Ellington and several others. But, then, I never could have gained the–with them–the chance to in effect sit right next to their artistry in real time. After Abdullah’s wife, the singer/songwriter, Sathima Bea Benjamin, provided the introduction in 1987, I came to just such a chance and gained also the experience of a lifetime. There’s lots I could report, but suffice to say, it all boils down to a point of contact for which his music provided the nexus, and his profound human being provided the praxis!
He’s been making his extraordinary music for over five decades. The web site I built to celebrate his artistry is inactive, yet its a treasure trove of my views about his music. Check it out. (Probably, I should move it over here. )
I would urge most anybody to dip into Ibrahim’s musical waters; waters from, as a title of a composition put it, an ancient well.
He’s made over 75 recordings. There are no clunkers and each one on their own way is for me essential. This noted, my answer were someone to ask me which five to start with, would be:
1. The Mountain (RCA Camden) reissues the lion’s share of two famous records of Ekaya from the 80′s
2. Zimbabwe (Enja) quartet session with Carlos Ward on reeds. A stirring set oriented to the star of John Coltrane.
3. African Dawn (Enja) solo piano jewels
4. African Magic (Enja) equal to other trio sessions recorded for Enja, this is for me the best example of his trio approach
5. Township One More Time (al-Shams) the first recording made in South Africa after his return. rare in the sense that you have to purchase it online from a South African vendor.
Then, after dealing with some of these, you’d be hooked and soon enough you’d be winding your way down the jacaranda road of immense riches. Ibrahim continues to record, tour, and educate and mentor musicians. His most recent record is a solo piano set, Senzo. It’s stellar.
If you get a chance to see Ibrahim perform, you should run and take it up. Sit close. Pay attention. Breath with intention. Enjoy.
Posted in Africa, masters, video
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