A Year of Deep Listening concluded May 30, 2023, celebrating what would have been Pauline Oliveros’ ninetieth year by publishing a text score from numerous contributors daily, all of which remain browseable at the archive. 

Over at MUSEXPLAT Maxi Mas talked with Malala Lekander, presented in Spanish-language audio. 

Over at Foxy Digitalis Jim Haynes talked with Cheryl Leonard and Wobbly about their recent release, Multiple Park.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider a one-time or recurring donation. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $1.95 to $5.19 for April and $6.04 to $8.05 for May. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Craig Pedersen - [text scores] (2019-)

Craig Pedersen is a trumpeter, improviser, interpreter, and composer. Some recurring collaborators include: Elizabeth Millar as Sound of the Mountain; Thierry Amar, Bennett Bedoukian, and Mark Molnar in the current iteration of The Craig Pedersen Quartet; and Ensemble SuperMusique, a new music ensemble created and directed by Joane Hétu and Danielle Palardy Roger and dedicated to performance of graphic and conceptual scores. Some recent releases as performer include Charm Point with Millar and Tim Olive and amplified clarinet and trumpet, guitars, nimb with Tetuzi Akiyama, Millar, and Toshimaru Nakamura though most recent releases feature others performing selections from these text scores, including Zhu Wenbo on the concert document of miji 66 and Plays Craig & Noah and Julián Galay on Eine Stadt, Ein Haus. Pedersen also recently directed, composed, arranged, and conducted music for strings and voices in the production of Creation Destruction for dance and music. Pedersen operates the Mystery & Wonder label with Millar.

These text scores are an iterative process initiated in 2019 and, though paused since January 2023, continuing to the present for various durations, often undefined instrumentation, and a flexible number of players. Originally a loop of expression, reflection, and revision for personal development, Pedersen asked seven friends, including Gudinni Cortina, Galay, Shakoor Hakeem, Millar, Molnar, Heather Roche, Zhao Cong, and Zhu, with mentorship from Ryoko Akama and Manfred Werder, to realize and record nine selections so far as well as attach words, images, or videos they felt relevant to their realization. Some of these realizations, additional context, and more scores can be browsed on Pedersen’s webpage for this project. Each score is handwritten on a notecard housed in a recipe box with the others and shared through photos and handwritten copies. Many feature location, duration, and a gossamer kind of prescriptive and descriptive direction in language and structure but the aspects common to all are the date of writing and a text which may or may not fit into these other categories and can appear only obliquely related to sound.

Whatever other context, such as a composer sharing with other musicians for performance, perhaps the texts most tenuously tied to sound still feel like scores because they are placed in time by way of: dating in series, tethering one to others with more musical qualities of structure and language and reflecting the iterative revision associated with creative development; duration, delineating an attention towards performance and thus listening somewhat similarly to 4’33”; and sometimes time markers in the text, such as “Autumn” in October 24, 2022, often loaded with sensory recall, including sound. From an understanding that sound physically is a function of time and inescapably intertwined with it from rhythm to the uncountable contingent events converging to make a moment in a silent piece and that plastic and semantic arts aren’t necessarily bound to it in the same ways. Though some scores are vague in what should occur in the duration, the undercurrent of intimacy in creation, construction, archiving, and sharing with just a few friends chosen for a great trust fosters a special care in their realization. Indeed the overarching shift from some specific listening observations to more generalized writing seems to indicate an openness was found to be a more fertile foundation for creation, or at least for sharing the creative vision. And through the development towards less determined aspects and the multi-faceted perspectives interpreting and sharing themselves, this process seems to find a path towards a personal relationship with sound, what it carries and what someone could carry through it. 

reviews

Antoine Beuger/Anastassis Philippakopoulos - floating by (Erstwhile Records, 2023)

Antoine Beuger and Anastassis Philippakopoulos arrange one 74’ environment for voice and breath on floating by. 

Eight three-minute melodies hummed among intimate breath windy in its modulating sustain whooshing channeled through the changing landscape of the mouth with intermittent dental clicks and purrs. The way of humming, more heet than hmmm, seems distinctive enough to want a reason. Maybe physiologically it’s easier to modulate the resonant low tones of the voice a bit further back in the throat. Maybe it mirrors the discrete clink of piano keys as best voice can. Though the duration begins and ends with sung piano pieces and wind sounds occur continuously the brevity of melody in relation to breath creates a sense of separation between the two that can feel like a kind of call and response. And while the body does not sustain the same as wood would to conjure the characteristic polyphony from the monophony the long duration of breath between brief melodies verticalizes them in relation for a proximate feeling. Contextually and intuitively there is something of Greece in these songs. I have only ever visited the Cyclades but one of my more deeply rooted memories from it is that the growers on Thera planted their tomatoes some depth below surface level to shield them from the coastal winds that whip the ear as they shear across the island. I imagine this is a commonly shared impression in a nation of so many islands and coasts. I like to think that click like the piano key clink from both breath and voice is as if the melody crystallized out of and in response to the wind, both in practice and here poetically, the vibrations of the cords in the throat converging on the note like the roots are the reverse of the rich harmony branching out from the tree of a piano key.

- Keith Prosk 

Charles Curtis - Éliane Radigue: Naldjorlak (Saltern, 2023)

Two hourlong performances of Éliane Radigue’s composition for Charles Curtis and solo cello, the composer’s first for an acoustic instrument, separated by fifteen years. 

A kind of analytical approach to the faces of a particular harmonic interaction through distinct movements. Textural arcs of sonorous bowings, a buzzing fly cresting into and out of audibility, bouncing transverse to a rotational surface, bellowing distortions that I imagine are the classic expression of the wolf tone, ululating spirits, beeping beatings, low oms from a vacuum, and subway rail squeal mark the movements but within them the rhythm is consistently mercurial in the depth and lively instability of the harmony. The presentation of two performances separated by some time showcases the variability of time and place and an appropriate response to them but also the continuing work of the interpreter, who has a reputation to sit with things for some time - such as releasing a realization of Terry Jenning’s Piece for Cello and Saxophone after a quarter decade of performing it - and so draws particular attention to the progression of performance. After minute differences in the duration of movements and moment to moment decisions, the most recent set generally carries a clarity that might suggest a greater intimacy and ability in dancing with this instability native to the tone that for example reveals itself in accentuating the yawning maw of the rousing howl. And compared to the younger performance or older recording, textures cluster tighter together so that while movements remains clear a subtle homogeneity in that area emphasizes the heterogeneity of behavior within the harmonic interactions to truly celebrate the subject.

- Keith Prosk 

Ben Roidl-Ward and Ben Llewellyn - Moonhead (Records to Burn, 2023)

Ben Roidl-Ward performs nine songs for solo bassoon developmentally intertwined with visuals from Ben Llewellyn on the 30’ Moonhead. 

Songs are short and varied. Flying whorls of triadic spirals brimming with skronking harmonics clip to two tones tossed to and fro to coax out odd harmonics between them and then intermittently slowed to splay the tone with slower tempos in a way that could be confused for saxophone. Sonorous long tones distort, discretize, and disintegrate in train horn hollers that draw the ear to the illusion of line for its many points. To be smoothed and resume again elsewhere in knotty and energetic melodies. Shifts in pressure act like areas of greater color intensity. Hear the breath behind hoot owl beats, purrs, and raspberries, the performer always present in key clicks and saliva sounds too. Difficult to tell how the sounds relate to the visuals when connections like line and color could be generalizations but in just the suggestion it illuminates the cycle of abstraction and relation that draws the ear to the plastic qualities of sound and the eye to the time-based qualities of visuals, their performance, aura, and movement. 

- Keith Prosk 

Tongue Depressor and John McCowen - Blame Tuning (Full Spectrum Records, 2023)

Henry Birdsey, John McCowen, and Zach Rowden play two tracks for pedal steel and lap steel, contrabass clarinet, and contrabass on the 46’ Blame Tuning. 

Each environment a substrate of sustain to cultivate the consistent movement of chaotic harmonics, a stable scape of instability. Crosscutting relationships of distortions from the stuttering friction of strings or the stridulating calls of clarinet like flickering light from the depth of the low end cycles with the relatively smoothed swells of sinister purrs, snarling growls, and dinosaur roars. But it’s all dark and stormy, turning motor chugs and cracked ship masts tossed into the maelstrom to drown in a pool of infinitely mirrored reverb out of a raga twang from radiating steel, harsh hooting birdsong and saran wrap slashes. An everpresent beat of wub wub bass resonance and the violence of movement feel aggressive and visceral, a crucible of harmonics in the throws. 

- Keith Prosk 

Dafne Vicente-Sandoval - Minos Circuit (Portraits GRM, 2023)

Dafne Vicente-Sandoval sounds an environment for feedback, voice, and bassoon on the 22’ Minos Circuit. 

Whether the bassoon is played, held, or even assembled is ambiguous and while corporeal rumbles recall the register of it the texture here is mostly feedback whether mediated through the instrument or not. Feedback in a relatively stable dynamic ebb and flow of troughs and crests that reflect, refract, and amplify towards a dynamic equilibrium for subtle interventions like humming, tapping, and probably other anonymous movement to just offset the system into transitory strata of myriad waveforms in alien interaction like a kind of cascading morning birdsong in biomorphic coos and then begin again towards equilibrium.

- Keith Prosk 

Thank you so much for sharing time with harmonic series.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider a one-time or recurring donation. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $1.95 to $5.19 for April and $6.04 to $8.05 for May. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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IM-OS, Issue #10 is available, featuring notation from Henrik Ehland Rasmussen and Laura Toxværd and the essay Rating Degrees Of Openness In Experimental Repertory, Part I from Carl Bergstroem-Nielsen.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider a one-time or recurring donation. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $4.42 to $5.89 for March and $1.95 to $5.19 for April. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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conversations

Jessica Pavone and I talk over video chat about writing for solo and for ensemble, different kinds of time, feeling good and sounding good, resonances, current interests and future work. 

Some recent releases include Images of One with Tristan Kasten-Krause, …of Late with the J. Pavone String Ensemble, and the solo When No One Around You is There but Nowhere to be Found. 

Jessica Pavone: Hi!

Keith Prosk: Hey! Good morning. How're you doing?

JP: Good, how're you? It took me a second, I don’t use Skype really so it took me a second.

KP: No worries, sorry. I mean, I was using Zoom but then they started charging for meetings over forty minutes so… I'm cheap like that [laughs]

JP: I wonder if I should use… cause I use Zoom to teach and most of my lessons are half an hour but some are longer and usually if Zoom cuts us off we just relog in.

KP: Oh gotcha.

JP: I wonder how this is with audio though. The reason why I use Zoom is I teach piano, the audio is better.

KP: Ah yeah I mean I don’t have to deal with actually good sound. I just have to catch your voice.

JP: Yeah. Facetime actually works really good with audio for some reason. I use that sometimes if Zoom isn’t working. Anyhow… I've used this like twice this year. Well here we are…

KP: So you’re a piano teacher as well, are those still mostly… I don’t know if New York has mostly returned to normal… are those still mostly on Zoom?

JP: Well what happened with me is I had a combination of people. I was traveling to their homes, I was traveling to people’s homes for lessons before the pandemic and then so when the pandemic happened I taught on Zoom for two years. And in that time my business just built up so much and also I got more students that lived closer to me through advertising and stuff that I got to the point that I'm not traveling. You either come to me or… stay on Zoom or quit. So a lot of the people that I was traveling to just stayed on Zoom. They’d rather not come to my house. I would say I teach like twenty students and maybe five come over and fifteen are on Zoom. And the ones who come over are the ones that… once everything opened up I started getting new students last fall. New students that I acquired since things opened up have been coming in person who were never on Zoom but the ones who did Zoom for two years just stayed on Zoom cause honestly it works fine and I think they don’t wanna go anywhere and it’s also a lot to have someone come into your house. Like it’s disruptive, I'm coming into your house and there’s small talk and all that shit. I just got it to work so well that a lot of people just stayed on it. 

KP: Yeah there’s definitely that efficiency around the commute and small talk and stuff but do you find that there’s something missing at all there?

JP: Well I mean I did it for two years straight so I'm able to adjust my language… like I learned how to teach differently. I do think that there are some students that would benefit from being in person but I'm just teaching beginner piano it’s not like advanced shit. It’s just for the kids to have something to do after school, a lot of it, not all. A lot of it is just parents want to keep their kids occupied. Yeah it can be frustrating sometimes but I've really learned how to change my language to make it work. And I kind of like not having to… like I can do a workout and not have to shower and just hop right on the Zoom and teach, you know what I mean [laughs] I like it. I don’t like being stuck in the house all the time. I feel like the world opened up and I'm still living in my covid life. 

KP: Yeah especially with Amazon being a thing now, you can just get everything delivered. 

JP: Yeah yeah yeah and I never really got anything delivered before, that was like a whole new thing and I started doing that during the pandemic. I was like, wow this makes everything so much easier. I feel like I have a lot more free time cause I don't commute everywhere but I also live alone so I have to change my disciplines and change my habits to make it feel less covidy, like get out and take a walk first thing in the morning or get dressed. I make myself get dressed now which I wasn't doing before [laughs]

KP: Yeah yeah. I feel like students… one of my nephews, he started kindergarten on an ipad, getting taught digitally during the pandemic. I feel like one of the headscratchers there is that sometimes learning is so tactile like between writing or moving things or being with other people… something’s lost but I guess with piano they’ve still got their hands on the keys just the voice is somewhere else. 

JP: Yeah and like if anything it gives them more independence because I'm not there to move their hand for them. They have to find the keys themselves and if I want to make sure they know I'll say like, point in the music where we are, we’re in measure five, point to measure five. I just have all these different techniques that I use now. 

KP: Nice nice. Well yeah I mean I've got some things lined up… I apologize I feel like I've been especially scatterbrained lately so I might be looking down at my cheat sheet a little more than usual… but at any point please feel free to take it in any direction that you want. But yeah thanks so much for taking some time to talk a bit…

JP: Where are you located?

KP: Austin. Texas. We’ve actually got a very similar day to y’all, very grey and dreary, maybe ten degrees warmer but that’s about it. So, yeah, I feel like the two big threads in what you’re doing recently are the solo series on Relative Pitch [Records] and then the string ensemble stuff. And I think I've seen you say that you think of your ensemble stuff as an extension of your solo work and I'm assuming this kind of means that the kinds of things that you’re interested in doing with multiple voices on delay pedals, now you have the agency of people behind each voice…

JP: It’s more actually… oh sorry, finish…

KP: Oh, I guess I was saying how these solo and ensemble efforts are different for you, or how do you work with yourself and multiple voices on pedals versus multiple voices with people type of thing?

JP: I feel like it’s less about what I can do with pedals and more about how I write. I kind of really focused on solo music for a good five or six years and before that in writing music I notated music. I mean I do notate music but more traditional, with meter, more through-composed. The way I wrote music was more traditional and when I was working really intensely on solo music I'd kind of find a sound that I'd like to be in for awhile and figure out how to move to the next sound and I would use a clock. During solo performances I would use a clock and I would kind of have a series of… and when I do solo music I don’t write music I just write notes to myself… actually I can show you cause I have them right here because I'm preparing for a solo set. This is kind of what a solo score looks like I mean it’s scribble on a notebook for a long time but once I finish it… I know what that means, nobody else knows what that means, that’s like my little code but that’s the timeframe to move between these things, those are the pedal settings if I need them, and those are the timeframes. So what I really got from the solo music that I transfer… and I can show you some string ensemble scores because I think that’d explain it easier… is moving through the space not in metered time. So when I started writing for the string ensemble I kind of started approaching it that way, where I would make a time-based score and it’ll be like… there’s no way to screenshare here is there…

KP: I’m very technologically illiterate, I'm not sure.

JP: I have it printed out. I have scores. I know where they are. So but with the string ensemble music I kind of intersperse that with meter to give form. Also when you work with other people… for me I can give myself these directions and know exactly what I’m talking about so it’s kind of like, how can I take this but make it into ensemble compositions where I have to be more specific, so other people understand what I'm doing. Here’s just like an example, I don’t know if you can see it, this is the middle of the piece. There’s no meter, here we’re just cueing each other to play these clusters. See so this is not using the clock, sometimes it’s just cueing, sometimes it’s the clock, and sometimes it’s notation, and actually this is a good piece because it has all of it. So in this one we’re cueing each other so I take the bar lines out, right. And then here, see how we have these dotted barlines, so they’re holding a pitch while this person’s slightly pulsing and I write a note here like, it’s not metric just make slight pulses, and this measure can last as long as we want it to because I designate who’s gonna cue into the next one. Because the way the solo music sounds, it’s just moving through, so I kind of want the ensemble to just move through a sound. So we’re just moving through with these cues and then we get to the next page and we turn the clock on and then the clock is the conductor. This is something I do a lot. So here the violins come in at zero, viola doesn’t come in til... I usually give a time frame so that it’s like I can come in between 0:10 and 0:20, you know, so I can choose when to come in. And basically we’re in this cell and there’s a repeat sign but we’re just alternating freely between these pitches at our own rate and that’s how I get this swarmy kind of like long tone oscillating thing. So that’s what’s happening here. So I use notation in a sense, like here these are whole notes, these are half notes, these are quarter notes, but I wrote in the score, time values are relative and decided independently. So that just means you count to four in your head, like whatever this was, and all our whole notes are different lengths. And then we get here, it’s not necessarily a half note but half as long as the last one you did. So this just feels like it’s gradually getting faster, the oscillations are gradually getting faster and that’s my way of communicating. When working with other musicians they understand that half note is less than a whole and a quarter’s less than a half. So I had to figure out a way to mix notation with what I was doing with the solo music… and even you see here I give time frames, like 1:00 to 1:15, this one’s 1:40 to 1:50, so we’re not all changing to the next cell, so it gives it a gradual shift, you know. And then actually this piece goes from we’re cueing each other to this open-ended measure to just being in the time. So we’re in time-based score and then the next page I have these cues of these whole notes to get us back together… Yeah, there’s no bar lines in this it just says, rhythm reminiscent of rain falling. So the violinist is just playing around with these pitches and then these two come in and then we each come in, like we’re not together and we’re just sort of like playing. But there’s other times where I will… here’s one where I will be in that open space and then we’ll go into meter, like I'll put quarter note equals fifty and the clock, we can tell the tempo by the clock. And then like this isn’t a time-based score it’s more of an open-ended score but you see in the end we come together. I mix the two. I do have one, I'm trying to think, where we go between the two where we start metered, we open up, and we go back to metered, I use both in combination. Yeah, here’s one where we’re just in time-based in the beginning, just doing these glissandos, and then here we go into notated music to take it out. 

KP: Nice. So when you say ensemble… Or, I guess your ensemble and solo kind of relate less with anything that’s in the sound but more so the kinds of ways that you play. 

JP: Yeah. I'm not trying to recreate what I can do with pedals, I'm trying to open up what I can do with notation. Kind of figuring out a way to notate this, so that other people can play it. Cause really with pedals I try to use them sparsely. I'm trying to not actually layer myself, I'm trying to add another sound so I have something to play with, you know. I don’t know if that whole thing was confusing or if that made sense…

KP: Yeah, that all works out. And maybe this is a different flavor of the same question but I saw that on the recent Spam Likely there’s some electric stuff but a lot of times I feel like the electric stuff is kept solo and the ensemble stuff is kept acoustic, is there an actual divide there and is there a reason for that divide if it is there?

JP: Why Spam... oh I see…

KP: I guess solo and electric are kind of together and ensemble and acoustic are kind of together…

JP: Yeah. I don’t love working with pedals. I don’t love it. I kind of just do it to add something to solo music, just to… although lately I've been playing some solo sets without the pedals at all. Spam Likely, that was just kind of like we were fucking around. I think I did one side with pedals, one side without, I can’t remember, we did that so long ago. I generally don’t use pedals unless it’s in my solo music. I think maybe Matt [Mottel] was like, bring your… I feel like I only ever bring my pedals to play with other people when it's requested. I generally don’t… like if I'm gonna do an improv set with people I don’t bring them. Maybe I have in the past but I kind of use them less. Yeah, I'm just really interested in acoustic music right now. I feel like electronics adds a whole fuckin headache. But there’s also so many… I found that just doing solo music sometimes you can get the craziest sound acoustically on your instrument that you could with your pedals too. I like finding the crazy sound naturally. I’m kind of on the fence for my next solo record whether I'm gonna use pedals or not. I've used them in every one, I'm not sure. I'll probably end up… cause I have a very simple setup too, there’s not very much you can do with it. I feel like I've exhausted the possibilities. But I wanted that to be that way, how much can I get out of so little. Something else about the ensemble music, part of why I like writing in this way, where it's just like you have a timeframe and each person alternates notes in between, you’re gonna get some crazy rhythms and polyrhythms that if you wrote it out and you had to count it it’d be so fuckin exhausting. I have a thing against music where it’s counting like crazy to get this crazy sound and I feel like a big part of my music is that I want it to feel good for the players, I want it to feel good to play, I don’t want it to feel stressful to play, just because playing a string instrument alone is stressful. So I feel like when you’re alternating pitches and there’s almost no rules… it’s almost like putting structure to improvisation. The thing that’s great about improvisation is that things that you don’t know could happen will happen and with this clusters that I would never think to put together will happen and the rhythm… like if you tried to actually transcribe the rhythms that come out and you saw it on paper probably some pretty complex rhythms would come out and I prefer doing it this way than actually writing out complicated rhythms because you’re just counting and that’s stressful and you’re not in your body, you know what I mean. I’m trying to get the music out of the head and more in the body. And I think that’s another reason I write that way.

KP: Nice. It also seems like it’s really harmony-based and my sense is that whenever you’re dealing with stuff like that it’s nice to give a little bit of leeway to each personal clock as well as how the location feels, how people feel in that moment, if something nice is happening that hasn’t been possible before somehow then it’s given time to kind of dwell there. 

JP: Yeah absolutely absolutely. And then the problem that I have with improvisation as amazing as improvisation is sometimes I'm just like, where are we going. Do we know what we’re doing. So it’s kind of a way for me to merge the two interests. Maybe indeterminate is a good way to describe it but I think of it more, because I come from an improvising background, how can we structure improvisation so we have the freedom of improvisation but it knows where it’s going.

KP: Yeah. I feel like a lot of the people that I talk to they don’t necessarily see that divide. A lot of what they deal with is kind of structured improv or maybe there’s flavors of both. Do you feel like there’s a culture in New York City or that you’re in touch with where there’s kind of that strict divide between the free improv crowd and the through-composed crowd? 

JP: I don’t know, I don’t think so. I think it’s more just my different disciplines coming together, you know. Yeah it’s the things that I'm interested in. Cause I think composition can be really restricting and I think improvisation can be a little bit unwieldy. You know it’s more just via my background, I think I came to composition through improvisation

KP: So then going from solo to ensemble… in another interview you mentioned that you like to blow things up, I think do it the Braxton way was said…

JP: What do you mean by blow things up?

KP: Whenever it’s possible, and funding I guess is an issue but… kind of think of it in an orchestral way and I feel like we got a taste of that with Lull with the soloists and stuff…

JP: I just did another one of those.

KP: Oh nice.

JP: So you were saying that my two things that I do are solo and ensemble but that’s kind of the third thing. That’s something I want to do more of and that’s something that just takes longer because it costs money. But I did that piece, Lull, and I just did one I recorded in January it will come out in the fall. It’s for string sextet and improvising bassoonist and that’s another way of encapsulating people who improvise in that form but I cut you off but yeah that’s another… I would do more of that if it wasn’t so laborious and intense. I mean, I'm planning on doing it, I already have the idea in mind, I want to continue doing that as my larger ensemble work. Lull isn’t like a one-off; Lull is like the next thread of work that I wanna continue with.

KP: Nice. Can you mention the bassoonist?

JP: Yeah, Katie Young. She lives in Atlanta, she lived in Chicago for awhile.

KP: Oh perfect, yeah, makes a lot of sense…

JP: What’d you say?

KP: I said that makes a lot of sense, right, cause y’all probably met through the Braxton stuff…

JP: I actually met her before, I met Katie before she even went to Wesleyan. I met Katie in like 2004. I was on tour, I was actually on tour with the Dirty Projectors, and I played in Chicago and I had to get away from the tour and I met her with a friend and she let me stay at her house. Yeah, she was living in Chicago then. I just stayed at her house. And then she was on tour with her friends and they stayed at my house in New York around then. Yeah, I don’t know, we just kind of stayed in touch between Chicago and New York and then she went to Wesleyan. I met her before, before that but I've known Katie for… yeah my whole idea with that is like working with people who have really established solo languages, kind of like concerto for improviser. And so far all of the improvisers I've worked with are people I have real history with, like I've known for twenty years, so I know their language pretty well. 

KP: Yeah so my hunch with Lull was that it was as much a playing with friends type of thing, with Nate [Wooley] and Brian [Chase], than anything necessarily sound result-oriented and I know you’ve played with a lot of different groups with a lot of different kinds of instrumentation, like Army of Strangers or something, but were the drums and trumpet more of a textural decision or partly a textural decision and more just having two people that you trust to invite in to this environment type of thing?

JP: I think when I was thinking about that piece those were two of my favorite solo improvisers at the time and I think I was also thinking a lot about drone and I don’t know if you know Brian’s Drums and Drones series… he’s done a lot with drone…

KP: I don’t.

JP: And actually the piece that I ended up writing for him wasn’t very drone-oriented. But for Nate it was. It was more just like… it was so long ago when I first decided it, I'm trying to think what I was thinking when I chose them... I don’t remember but I just really really like their solo music. At first I was thinking drone and I was thinking of Brian’s Drums and Drones. And Nate, I thought they would complement each other well… Brian’s piece kind of went in a less drone way. But yeah the piece with Katie, I wasn’t specifically thinking drone, I was just thinking… and maybe from the experience of working on Lull and seeing how that worked, it was more just what are your favorite… and that’s also how I approached Nate and Brian. I just said, Nate what’s your favorite note to play on trumpet. Like I said, a big part of my philosophy in writing music is I want it to feel good, I want the musicians to enjoy it, you know. So he told me his favorite note and I was like, how long can you comfortably play that note, and he’s like, eight, nine, ten minutes, if I push it I could do twelve. I was like, nope, no one’s pushing anything, I want it to feel good, eight minutes, that’s it, you know. There’s no reason to push ourselves. And then I just put it through a series… I just took that one pitch and put it through a series of techniques that he showed me that he likes to do. And then I just decided what the strings were gonna play around it. And then Brian, the same thing. I know Brian’s music a lot better. I went to his studio and he gave me a couple samples of things and I chose what I wanted to use. And with Katie, Katie was in Atlanta so, I mean we talk all the time, she just sent me videos. Also Katie and I did like a double solo tour together in 2013 and have played on bills together a lot so I kind of already knew what she does. But she just sent me a bunch of videos of things that she likes to do and I just chose the things I wanted and wrote the string music. That’s kind of my favorite thing to do right now, like when I write those pieces I write… like both of them have been four-movement works and the first and last movement are strings-only and the two middle movements are the soloists but I kinda maybe wanna do one that’s just all soloists because those pieces are so fun to write. But I'm such a form person I need to frame it [laughs] The record with Katie, the second movement is her solo and the third movement we both solo cause that’s what someone said to me after Lull. They were like, how come you’re not a soloist on this, and I was like, oh yeah. So the next one is called Clamor and movement two is just Katie and movement three is the both of us kind of in dialogue with each other. 

KP: That’s awesome. As you start to move towards this more concerto, orchestral thing and making it a bit bigger than just the string ensemble what do you feel like that opens up that you can’t do solo or with the string ensemble other than just like adding colors?

JP: I mean the more voices the more… when I was working with the string ensemble I was like, oh I want to do this with lots of string players. I want bigger and bigger and bigger and it's just not financially feasible so I just took a chance and tried to get an octet together. The next one I did was a sextet, they’re getting smaller. But yeah I was like, this is crazy, what you can do if you layer four voices, what if you layered ten voices. Yeah that’s where the Braxton comes in I was like, more bigger bigger, I want one hundred violins [laughs] Someday I want to have a hundred-person string ensemble to write for, I think that would be amazing. And that’s also what comes from Braxton, the more I work with the bigger groups the more I notice how… I mean obviously influenced by Braxton but the thing that is influenced is that I like to give agency to all the performers, like Anthony. I mean obviously I wrote the music but particularly in this piece where basically we’re just cueing each other through clusters, I could have cued every single one but instead I assigned different people in the ensemble to choose. Clearly it’s my piece but I want them to be involved in the creating within a parameter, within a boundary, kind of the way Braxton does that. It’s like you have all of his music to work with but you get to choose how you wanna do it, that’s heavily influenced by him yeah. And I just enjoyed playing that music. 

KP: Yeah. And you mentioned with the soloist music that you kind of let them do their thing or decide their thing and then put the string music around it, do you find that facilitates a different creative direction than having to come up with everything on its own? I guess… like the string ensemble music, you have something to build around rather than from the ground up. 

JP: Yeah, it’s totally different, it’s totally different, yeah. I can show you one of those scores too. Yeah it’s really fun. Maybe it does make it easier because it does like… but also cause I have to think about… like Katie’s playing some crazy thing on the bassoon and what I'm doing is like, how can I notate something to the string players that echoes that sound. I'll show you that score, it’s not all written over like this one is all crazy, I think I know where it is. I grabbed Lull also. This is Lull and this is Clamor, they live in the bags so I don’t lose them [laughs] they each have their own bag.

KP: Yeah it’s just a folio folded in a different way right [laughs]

JP: Yeah I had a composition student come over and I was trying… she was just laughing. It’s not disorganized but just trying to find my files in my computer. Also young kids know how to use computers better and she’s like, I don’t understand how you find anything. OK so, oh boy. OK here’s Katie’s movements. So you know with the soloists, the solo is on top, she’s just blowing a multiphonic. This is a time-based score. She’s blowing a multiphonic. These two musicians come in at 0:45, kind of accompany her, so I kind of gradually introduce… this is totally time-based, this is her doing the microtones, the strings aren’t doing anything crazy here they’re just slowly coming in with pitches but then on this page because we start to get into um… oh because she’s doing these microtonal tremolos here so it goes from her blowing a multiphonic, the strings gradually come in so that we’re all in a sonic space, she starts to move to playing multiphonic tremolos… I invented this, I don’t know if anyone... and I had to write instructions too… so this is just like play this note and gradually get slower, this tremolo gets slower, and I wrote, start at the tip and work your way… just gradually go from a tremolo to a single pitch. So she’s playing tremolo and then the string players pick up on her tremolo and then she drops out and then they gradually slow down and then they start ping ponging with these pitches, you know. 

KP: Nice.

JP: And then she comes in blowing over her bocal and then we’re playing these harmonics like right next to the finger, you know. Sorry I feel like a crazy person. 

KP: No [laughs]

JP: At this point she takes her reed out and her next sound is her whistling over the bocal, so for me to get the strings… so she gets that… there’s a lot of cross fading in this, the string players come in and I'm not sure how much you know about string playing but they're playing harmonics but they’re putting their bow on the fingerboard so it kind of sounds like whispering. So I was trying to get the string players to imitate her sound. It was cool for me to be like, OK what can I do on my viola that imitates Katie blowing her bocal, oh I can do this, how can I notate that for strings, I'm just gonna make this shit up… and a lot of it too we discuss it in rehearsal, like their input… I wrote this music but a lot of… I work with the same musicians all the time, their input comes into it. Like sometimes they’ll have better ideas how to execute something or we should make this section longer, I take their input. And then she’s just rattling her keys. And then this one, this one’s not a time-based score, it’s more we’re just going through cues and this is where her and I are soloing together. She’s doing a trill and I’m doing a glissando thing with going between the pitch and the harmonic back and forth. And so then we’re in this space, we start out but then we just open up, it opens up, and I put an arrow here like we start to improvise, so Katie and I are improvising together. And then the string players adopt what I was doing, so they start to echo me. And then the next thing Katie does, so Katie and I do this glissy thing together but then the next thing I want Katie to do, she uses pedals on this one, she has this crazy popping sound that she can do with the pedal. So before she came in with her popping sound I had the string players come in with these like muted pizzes to anticipate what Katie was doing. So I invented this, this isn't a real notation, I invented this, I just took an image and I write little words to explain what to do. Yeah, I don’t know, and then, yeah… I don’t know if it’s helpful or more confusing to look at the scores. These are Brian and Nate’s. I mean Nate’s is very simple, Nate’s is just a time-based score and we just move through, nothing, it’s really simple. But Brian’s, he taps on the drumhead so he’s tapping on the drumhead and then I have them doing like a col legno to a tapping, right, to imitate him. I don’t know, this one is also time-based. That’s a lot of information. I don’t know if you even read music, if it even makes sense. Do you? 

KP: Eh, so I can typically tell what’s going on but I can’t read pitches. 

JP: OK. But you can maybe see how textures are changing?

KP: Yeah yeah yeah. 

JP: I think I'm a visual person, it’s hard for me to explain things without showing.

KP: No, no worries. So I know that some of your stuff is based on sympathetic resonances across strings, like your solo stuff. When you blow up to a string ensemble are you carrying that over, trying to find some overlap between like violin and bass? And I guess, furthering that, as you start introducing these new instruments you mentioned imitation but… maybe not a direct sympathetic resonance but is there some kind of resonance that needs to be there for you?

JP: Not as much, not as much. I definitely… I mean all of those solo records, all of the solo music is based on the notes of the open strings. Almost every piece is based on the notes C G D and A for those reasons. That’s another really strict parameter I put on myself, like how much can I get out of this one idea. It’s crazy, I don’t know how much more I can do of it. But I don’t think about that as much with the string ensemble stuff. I don’t think about the sympathetic vibration being one of the more important things. I think more about form and creating weird sound worlds. That doesn’t really carry over, that part about it. It’s more just opening up how I write. 

KP: And then you also kind of sing and hum, so how do you feel about how those vibrations interact with those of your viola? I guess all sound is a bit locational in a way but voice is a little special in that what you're hearing inside your head is super different than what people are hearing outside of your head.

JP: What are you referring to specifically? I'm just curious.

KP: Maybe some of your solo stuff for instance, where your singing, or there’s a humming section on Lull…

JP: There’s a humming?

KP: I think so…

JP: There’s a string ensemble piece where there’s humming.

KP: Oh maybe it’s on …of Late.

JP: Yes.

KP: Oh OK [laughs]

JP: Yeah cause, yeah, earlier solo records I would have like one song where I would sing on. I don’t do that any more, I don’t like singing, I don’t like singing, I don’t like it. But the humming, Hidden Voices is the name of that piece, yeah, I thought it would add an element of… add to the timbre but I also do… and we’re humming we’re not singing cause that’s also just kind of vibration, you know, that mirrors the strings. But I'm not sure what your question was now that we’ve figured out what we were talking about, what’s the actual question?

KP: Yeah I guess were you just trying to add another color or…

JP: There’s two things. I'm trying to add another color but I'm also interested in how we use our bodies when we play instruments, so like body practice. My two big practices are music and body work basically, so I wanted to incorporate the two. I also think that they’re very similar. And just breathing when you’re playing. I breathe when I play. I feel like a lot of time playing an instrument is just being a dancer, you know, so I was thinking about the body, how we can use the body, and that is a way to use the body that also added a timbral texture but also like a harmonic texture.

KP: Yeah and I guess how does that interact with the vibrations under your chin from the viola?

JP: Yeah, right, I don’t know, I'm just trying to make sure I can hum the right pitch [laughs] I think it’s also a way for us just all to be calm. We’re just all calm and then the music feels calm but I'm not really thinking about how it interacts with the viola, I'm more thinking about how the body feels when you're playing the instrument. 

KP: Oh OK. And then yeah particularly some promo material around one of the ensemble releases mentioned cymatics and sound therapies but maybe sometimes there’s a disconnect between something that does… I've heard you say that you want things to sound good but maybe sometimes there’s a disconnect between something that sounds good and something that feels good, vibrationally…

JP: I want it to feel good, I want it all… I'm trying to have it be like more of a tactile experience but I'm not gonna do that compromising what I'm trying to make compositionally. That is a priority but ultimately I'm a composer and I'm not gonna sacrifice something sounding good for the sake of like introducing some sort of tactile element, you know what I mean. I’m not gonna make something that sounds shitty but feels good for us to play because that’s just self-indulgent. So it’s like a balance between those.

KP: Yeah. So there’s a concern for the audience?

JP: Cause I want them to be part of it, I also kind of want to create vibrations that feel good for them too, which is when I was studying the waves and stuff yeah. But then I backed off on that cause it gets a little too new agey and weird. Also like I'm not a scientist, I'm not gonna pretend to be a scientist. But I'm very interested in that, in how sound affects our bodies, for sure. And then the deeper I got into it the more I just started to feel inadequate. I was like, I don’t really know. But I do think it's interesting. I’m very interested in the things we can’t see. You can’t see sound vibrations, we can’t see it, but they’re affecting us and I think that there’s a lot more in this world that we can’t see that’s affecting us. I mean it’s no secret that I'm really into astrology. There’s so much energy and force, I mean we get gut instincts, we get feelings, I just think a lot about what’s not visible to the eye and how it affects us and music really kind of falls in line with all of that, you know. So that’s kind of why I was thinking a lot about, well the vibrations are moving the water in your body, like what’s that doing to you, and I just wanted to understand how to manipulate that but I just don't necessarily... I’m kind of working more on instinct than science, that's what I reserve myself to.

KP: Yeah that’s kind of what it has to be. But that makes sense, you know, if the moon is strong enough to pull up a whole ocean day after day then… yeah. So I guess on one level this kind of seems like dumb obvious but I feel like a lot of your music does deal with waveforms. Maybe there’s a bit of the delay stuff in your solo music where it feels like your placing yourself in like a pool of interference and a lot of the repetition, it doesn’t feel like a linear dot dot dot it almost seems more cyclical. A lot of the string ensemble stuff, there’s a lot of phasing relationships, you mentioned there’s a lot of those trills, I get the sensation with a lot of it that I'm kind of Zooming in and out of waves as you shorten and extend tones where I'm kind of feeling like a long undulating wave and then coming out and seeing like a quick little squiggle type of thing. And of course there’s some beating patterns. So I guess is this kind of a conscious thing, like you’ve got the sound wave waves like the beating patterns and stuff and then you’ve got some composed, structural waves, is that like a conscious mimickry there?

JP: You talking about the string ensemble music?

KP: Yeah or maybe even some of the solo stuff when you’re playing with delay.

JP: I mean I just love the way that sounds, you know, I like the way that sounds. I like playing with those sorts of things but I don’t really understand the question, like is it deliberate? I'm literally mixing textures like that with form, yeah. I mean when I wrote these pitches for us I chose pitches that clash to create beating patterns for sure.

KP: So I feel like a lot of music is very comfortable just dwelling in that beating pattern area but you do a lot more, is there something that keeps you from just making like singing bowl music with your viola?

JP: Yeah yeah, absolutely, I like that but I also like melody, I like tonality, that’s not the only thing I'm interested in. So another thing I think about too is like creating music that kind of errs on the side of drone. I want there to be more, I can’t just… that’s just a little bit… as much as I enjoy that, I want there to be more to it than that. I want there to be a form. I'm also happy to incorporate melodic material. That, on its own, just one thing on its own, start to finish, one thing. Cool, a little boring to me. I think I can do a little bit more. I can incorporate it with something else. I can interweave it with something else because I'm interested in more than just that, you know.

KP: Yeah yeah yeah. And I guess you mentioned the different ways that you deal with time, the metered time, the clock time, the cues, I feel like a lot of times… this may be on the more meditative side of music… particularly with wavy music it can create this kind of sensation where your sensation of the time that’s elapsed is wildly different than the actual clock time played and I guess is there something in these different ways that you’re using time that facilitates that or is that more of just an attention-based thing for you?

JP: I like that idea of not realizing how much time has passed. I’m interested in that, not realizing. Or something’s changing and you're not realizing it's changing til it's changed or… and again, what’s the question?

KP: That sensation of the time that’s elapsed is mismatched from the time played, is that more of an attention thing for you or do you think that’s facilitated by the way you make music?

JP: I kind of openly want that, I want someone to get lost and not realize, I want someone to get lost in it. In a way not that’s boring but it's captivating and you're not thinking about… that’s why a lot of the music’s not metered. I remember when I first was working on Lull thinking I want to make time feel like a rubber band. That’s what we’re doing as musicians, we’re manipulating time. So yeah it's interesting you picked up on that. Yeah I kind of want that, what is time, how can we change how it feels. And I do think that sitting in a sound and slightly altering it can kind of facilitate that feeling.

KP: Have you found that you achieve that through similar strategies or…

JP: I think using time-based scores kind of helps with that. 

KP: Have you talked to your other ensemble members, do they get kind of similar sensations working with your music?

JP: Yeah I have gotten feedback like that yeah, for sure.

KP: We’ve kind of talked about a few things framing them against a couple poles, either tensions or concepts and the titling of a lot of your ensemble pieces, it’s always like blank and blank. I have a sense that it’s coming from that place but where does that titling come from and why… well I guess you’ve mentioned that the concertos are a third thing… but I guess why for instance does like Lull not follow what the other string ensemble stuff is doing?

JP: Yeah again, having two-word titles, that’s again just giving myself another parameter, like how many of these can you come up with [laughs] 

KP: Gotcha [laughs]

JP: I don’t know where that started but I got obsessive with it. And then yeah the concertos are a different project and those have been one word titles. It’s not the same group, you know, it’s a third project. But yeah I think that that will be an identity probably for the string ensemble project, is that all the titles will be two words if I can keep it going. And Lull and Clamor, they’re both one word titles. And actually, Lull and Clamor, the meanings are opposite, you know, like lull is calm and clamor is an uprising and I kind of try to portray that in the music. Lull is meant to be more of a drone and meditative and Clamor is not, Clamor’s meant to kind of ramp it up a little bit. So maybe the concerto pieces will all have one word titles, I don’t know. But yeah that’s why, the two words are just for the string ensemble. And I kind of set all kinds of weird parameters like that with the solo music. I feel like I got into this thing of doing… at least the last two records, having four pieces and having one be totally acoustic, one be totally electric, and two be a combination of the two. I just like form and parameter, I feel like it just gives… so I come up with these rules for myself to work with. 

KP: Yeah now that you mentioned it too I feel like a lot of your records are four tracks, like even the concerto stuff, you mentioned two solos sandwiched in between two string ensembles. 

JP: I think some of the solo records might be five tracks but the last two might’ve been four I can’t remember. I’ve done four records, I can’t remember, but I definitely feel like the four tracks might’ve been the last two.

KP: Nice. Is that like an astrological thing?

JP: No it doesn’t have anything to do with that. I don’t know, one of the first records I made too was this piece called Quotidian which actually Katie played on which was four. I like the idea of a suite. I also like the idea of thinking as pieces as a collection of poems. They’re not, they’re similar. Like all the pieces on my string ensemble record are similar but they’re different. If you listen to one of those pieces and you listen to Army of Strangers, totally different. It’s similar, it’s same instrumentation, similar kind of writing but they're totally different pieces but they're related so I've kind of always thought of… whenever I make an album I always think of it as like they’re a collection of poems and they’re each kind of saying something different but they’re related to each other. So I always think that the pieces are sort of related in some way. And a suite is kind of traditionally a form of work and I think that that's subconsciously in my head. 

KP: Nice. I’m less familiar with your earlier stuff outside of Braxton but I do spend quite a bit of time with the string ensemble and solo stuff. 

JP: I feel like this is where I found my voice. I feel like a lot of earlier stuff was me just trying things out. I feel like I found my voice now and this is what’s relevant right now. 

KP: Nice. So maybe this is too personal so feel free to shoot it down but in some other interviews you mentioned an injury and do you think that injury is related to finding…

JP: Yeah.

KP: I feel like usually, like physiological things, you kind of have to be broken down to get stronger, you know, whether it’s addiction or working out or anything.

JP: Absolutely, yeah, totally, like everything kind of changed after that. It was like a rehabilitation and just everything changed after that. So after that injury I only did solo music and from there is where I kind of found the voice where I am now. I feel like everything before that was me trying things out. Yep.

annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Sylvain Levier & Nebel Lang - Korf ar son (2019-)

Sylvain Levier is a visual artist that currently focuses on drawing to craft compositions that play with visual sound and silence and blur the line between mechanical and manual. His artwork has appeared on the covers of Melaine Dalibert’s Piano Loop and Maelstr​ö​m and Reinier van Houdt and Dante Boon’s realization of Jürg Frey’s l'air, l'instant - deux pianos, with another cover planned for Bruno Duplant’s forthcoming Chance. Korf ar son is Levier’s collaboration with sound artist Nebel Lang, in which the latter provides recordings of improvisations on different pianos in different spaces encountered during his labor as a piano tuner for the former to realize in images. Levier collaborated with Nebel Lang previously in providing the cover for Eskern from Und Ne, another alias. Korf ar son has so far released Wilhelm Schimmel 40445, Wilh. Hauschildt, F. Rösener Berlin 25194, Euterpe 88120, and Doutreligne 2179, each available as prints with a download code. 

The original images are a faithful transcription of the sounds, each horizontal axis a minute duration with soundings in white, silence in black, and the resonance and decay in between in grays. They convey no pitch information but rhythm is indicated in spacing, placing, and width of white, curves and uneven verticality might suggest intonation and dynamics, some coarse draftsmanship and relicts of copying lend a sense of texture, and its minimalism seems to offer a cool expressivity. Some early representations more profoundly played at the perceptions or illusions of sound and silence but for their absence of time in relation to the sound so otherwise specific to it they were abandoned. As prints, the subtle variability of their reproducibility inspired a set of studies that present a kind of detail of the original transcription, in different dissections and orientations. 

These images are not explicitly scored sound but that they convey musical information seems to ask them to be. In some ways they contain as much or more information as other non-standard scores, even nearly representing the piano keyboard with white notes and in some senses what is between the notes with black. The specificity of piano, tuning, and the place that relates them at the heart of the project and perhaps the impracticality of making minute fragments continuous discourages further realizations; that they are transcriptions and reproduced to share musical information seems to encourage it. The context of a composer associated with visual art making a possible sound art object is just the other side of one associated with sound art making a possible visual art object. 

reviews

Antoine Beuger/Anastassis Philippakopoulos - floating by (Erstwhile Records, 2023)

Something about communication without information appeals to me very much. floating by is a duo of voice and breath and plays out like a conversation that’s been distilled and decayed to it’s maximum extent, dwindled to a cryptic echo. It’s a meeting between friends with the words erased, with everything that’s been shared discarded, leaving behind just a hollow silhouette as evidence of the wonderful exchange that had happened there. Like eavesdropping on phantoms, what exists here requires effort and attention to be felt, otherwise it will joyfully dissolve into the air with such weightlessness, opacity and tranquility that it will float by unnoticed.

Anastassis’s voice carries some clear warmth with it. Even without words it exhales humanity. He sings in short phrases that straddle a line between sounding like sentences in a foreign language and sequenced meaningless mouth sounds. These phrases are released in small melodies that feel careful and controlled, demonstrating the understated aestheticism that makes this music so attractive, but also awkward and weak. There’s an audible difficulty in the vocal sliding between deep notes – fully controlling one’s own voice and creating a sonic consistency with it is difficult, and few of us have perfect pitch. I find it comforting to hear human frailty interrupting, but not entirely disrupting, vocal aesthetics in this way.

Meanwhile, Antoine performs using just the sounds of his breath rather than a sung voice. It sounds like a soft, fluctuating gust of air. There’s a surprising amount of timbral variety that he achieves with this technique, but it always sounds like what it is – a man breathing into a microphone, a soft and intimate sound that’s been amplified into audibility. Even more than Anastassis’s performance, it sounds refreshingly natural, but that naturalism is largely ruptured by the aesthetic control that Antoine holds over his own breath – mainly by his pacing and pitches. As much as my gut tells me to perceive the breath as an involuntary sign of life, it’s obvious that Antoine’s performance here is just as voluntary as Anastassis’s was – he’s just stripped his vocal approach down even further.

There’s an element of call-and-response within floating by, like there is whenever two people are talking with each other, but I have a hard time telling whether it’s something really there or something I’ve imagined. Perhaps the ghost of communication is what it is – even with the words removed, the music is still sucked into the everyday concept that two people can share ideas, thoughts and feelings using just their mouths. It makes listening a little difficult, almost disappointing, because I can’t crack the code that will allow me to understand what it is that these two are sharing. I can’t help wondering what it is that they’re trying to say.

But maybe I’m looking at it wrong. Maybe they’re not trying to say anything at all. I can imagine this album as the sounds of two men in a canoe amateurishly singing together as they paddle, as a simple way to kill the time and enjoy each other’s company and nothing more. They aren’t paddling anywhere specific, just deeper into the water, and for no purpose other than to paddle, enjoy each other’s company and sing to themselves. There’s no objective to the song except for singing it, no beginning or end except for when they feel like starting and stopping, guided by nothing except for theirs shared sensibilities – it’s just two voices finding tranquility within a shared aural space as they float by.

- Connor Kurtz

Composition and improvisation were once closely related. Improvisation was a benchmark for testing the theoretic and practical preparation of a musician until the romantic era, where improvisation became somewhat tied to spectacle thanks to composers/interpreters like Liszt, and by late XIX century and early XX it was actively frowned upon by the musical establishment, probably due to these associations with crass showbiz. I have come to believe that improvisation and composition are complementary, and the vast grey area between the two is and always have been ripe for exploration and heuristic development. 

While neither Beuger nor Philippakopoulos are known for their improvising skills, their respective practices can be quite illuminating; both are very economical with their material, denying adornment or rhetoric to highlight the material and let it present itself without explanation in order to be perceived as a phenomenon, uncluttered by extraneous reasons or motivations. When they operate at this bare minimum it can be easy to assume that a clear distinction between composition and improvisation should allow the listener to tell one from the other right away, and this may not be quite as clear as it may seem on paper. Another element that renders the distinction between the two even harder is the fact that the album features no actual musical instruments apart from the voice of each composer; Beuger has made use of this many times, including the previous Erst duo with Christian Wolff, but here he chooses to go beyond the tone ambiguity he displays in works like Keinen Fernen Mehr, where he employs whistling as sole medium for the music. The sound produced is far more difficult to relate to pitch structures, being closer to musical breathing than anything else, though the shadow of melody hovers around much of his interventions. Philippakopoulos, on the other hand, avoids improvisation completely, choosing to hum his recent piano pieces, one at a time. My ears were tricked into believing he was somewhat telling us about his composition process, which often takes him out of the studio and into nature, where he hums his melodies and fine tune them until they're ready, by follow fleeting inspiration and somehow composing on the spot, but this turns out to be an illusion: he's simply singing his piano pieces, but the effect is quite startling in a quiet and understated way. Few Erstwhile releases have a cover art that actually represents quite accurately what's going on with the music. The painting depicting two persons on a boat is as accurate as anyone will get to describe the music herein; as I play the album, I can't help but feel that I, the listener, am the body of water on which the boat and the two composers are making the music. The sounds of my listening environment give life to the surface in which the music is happening, and because the sounds made are made by bodies and not by musical instruments as machine extensions of the body the limits of the boat, the artists or the water seem both fragile and sturdy, a beautiful and understated paradox that's present throughout the album. The paradox doesn't end there: this album is both quite radical but also very inviting. I stated that as a listener I felt as I was part of the water. This doesn't mean that I don't feel like I'm in the boat with them, as quiet observer. At some point I discover they are, in their non verbal way, also talking about me.

- Gil Sansón

Alan Courtis and Ben Owen - Environmental Conditions (Park 70, 2023)

Alan Courtis and Ben Owen present six tracks utilizing contact mics, electronics, mixer, speaker, and duplex machine on the 31’ Environmental Conditions. 

Each track features similar rhythms and though their textures are distinct the indefatigable rattle seems to convey they share a source in the duplex cleaning machine. Some textures sound more water shower or jingle bells or lotto machine than cleaning machine. Some center the low bands of hearing and some the squealing. The extended tracks sandwiching the others insert cuts of silence, voices, electric pulses, radio, and other incidental and supplemental sounds. To take the title at its face a change in the rhythmic texture would indicate a change in environmental conditions but these other sounds that both sometimes provide a sense of stable place and appear less changing or manipulated seem to question what’s really changing. Maybe it’s the material the machine is on or the location and direction of it in a room. Maybe it’s those same parameters but for the recording equipment. Either way it draws the ear to wonder on the role of space and place in experience and the narration of recording and recording equipment. 

- Keith Prosk

Sergio Merce - Traslasierra (expanded landscape) (Hitorri, 2023)

Sergio Merce realizes the eponymous piece for ewi, virtual instruments mediated via ewi, field recordings, and synthesizer on the 27’ Traslasierra (expanded landscape). 

Overlapping layers of waves of various periodicities and frequencies. The sine tone whine and low turning motor could be confused for microtonal saxophone and orchestral swells of winds and strings disguise their virtual sources. Sounds like birdsong, cicada chittering, and flowing water feel real but something nebulously strange in their timbral character or the ease with which they extend into synthetic sounds casts doubt on their source. Textural surfaces recur but continuously expand to unravel like a wave from a circle. Long rests as weighty as the sounds themselves, the tinnitus of digital silence alongside teeming environmental stillness. Through mimickry and collage it plays at the interfaces of electric and acoustic, digital and physical, fantasy and real, repetition and progression, sound and silence for a kind of transcendental dream space. 

- Keith Prosk

Quatuor Bozzini / Konus Quartett - Jürg Frey: Continuit​é​, fragilit​é​, r​é​sonance (elsewhere, 2023)

Isabelle Bozzini, Stéphanie Bozzini, Alissa Cheung, and Clemens Merkel and Christian Kobi, Fabio Oehrli, Stefan Rolli, and Jonas Tschanz perform the Jürg Frey composition for string and saxophone quartets on the 51’ Continuit​é​, fragilit​é​, r​é​sonance. 

Clear thematic segments transition from one to the next seamlessly. Voices enter staggered and drift to sound all together, flowing and ebbing between a melodic propulsion and harmonic gyre. Beats of discrete tones root sustained ones, beating, and this recurring pairing lends a sense of circularity to sounds’ unfolding. Sound and silence sometimes reverse roles and the former assumes the stasis and depth of the latter with sustain. Even the two disparate quartet textures can blur like the cover watercolor could play at the simultaneous bucketing of yellow and green and their contiguous relationship on the visible spectrum. Always a dynamic equilibrium between two limits and at their tipping and intertonguing generate moments of stirring emotivity. 

- Keith Prosk

Germaine Sijstermans / Koen Nutters / Reinier van Houdt - Circles, Reeds, and Memories (elsewhere, 2023)

Germaine Sijstermans, Koen Nutters, and Reinier van Houdt perform a sidelong composition from each with clarinets, electric organ, harmonium, voice, objects, sine tones, recordings, and tape on the 60’ Circles, Reeds, and Memories. 

In its odd harmonics the clarinet can assume a texture similar to synthesizer that in turn blends with the respiration of harmonium and beyond these three blurring sonically the compositions of mostly sustained tones of comparable pacing could blur the works too. But “Linden” has many moments of blooming melodies and maybe its textures recall the material in its title, the nasal expansion of harmonium like the crack and creak of wood, something akin to stick clicks along a fence from objects, and pops, thresholds of vibrational excitation in breath tones, and chirping that draw attention to the reed. The long soundings of “A Piece with Memories” overlay in such a way to disorient my listening memory and though spoken word would tether moments to a clearer sequence its sparsity, my ignorance of its meaning, and its seemingly intentional obfuscation in barely audible volumes only teases a trail. And “Harmonic Circles” seems sisyphean cycles of beats and beating tones snowballing and bursting into swells of deep harmonies. Distinctive effects from shades.  

- Keith Prosk

Taku Sugimoto - Manfred Werder: ein​(​e) ausf​ü​hrende​(​r​)​, seiten 977 bis 982 (self-released, 2023)

Taku Sugimoto performs six pages from Manfred Werder’s ein​(​e) ausf​ü​hrende​(​r​) with guitar on this 47’ recording.

Footsteps, birdsong, auto traffic, and the rest occur in plazas, parks, underpasses, and other places. I say these things like all feet fall the same, all birds sing the same song, or the coughing jalopy is close enough to the whisper of an electric engine. Every sound is as divisible as not and the unique entourage of others in the moment that color them only accentuates the singularity of them even from the same source. The presentation of video alongside the blind recording emphasizes this essence of place and time at the heart of it. The choice of performer sounds, that themselves could be said to be as much the same in the same way as the others and that balance sound and silence, asks what they share with these other sounds, what sound shares with silence. And like a chick’s chirp is not a mature call or a child’s run is not a caned creep even coming from the same thing sounds can share less with themselves than they do with the rest in the moments they occur. That silence is as close to sound as sound and vice versa. 

- Keith Prosk

For additional words around the piece and a realization of other pages, see Yuko Zama’s Silence, Environment, Performer from surround, issue 1. 

Nate Wooley - Christian Wolff: For Trumpet Player (Tisser Tissu Editions, 2023)

Nate Wooley performs a Christian Wolff composition for solo trumpet player on the 22’ For Trumpet Player. 

As with all Tisser Tissu Editions releases, For Trumpet Player presents the sound alongside direct and indirect context, in this case a conversation between performer and composer, a linguistic translation of the score, and an essay on aspects of interpreting the music from the performer, the first and last with details of the notation. 

Indeterminate rhythm and intonation lends a sense of cadence akin to stream-of-consciousness, the perception of the continuity of the melody shifting with shifting speed and duration of sounding, illuminating the player in choice and also in breath and buzzing and spitting - with distinct moments of somber textures and muted colors that could be more player choice, or referential material, or sectional material - like text on the page assumes nuanced meanings through the reader’s speaking, that can make repeating phrases hit different with a transposition in intonation. As the context guides towards, it appears clear the piece makes playing as special as speaking, and that it would change as the player changes with the temperament of the time. 

- Keith Prosk

Thank you so much for sharing time with harmonic series.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider a one-time or recurring donation. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $4.42 to $5.89 for March and $1.95 to $5.19 for April. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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Point of Departure 82 is available, featuring: Brent Hayes Edwards in conversation with Bill Shoemaker; Patricia Brennan in conversation with Troy Collins; Stuart Broomer on Seppe Gebruers' Playing with Standards; Daniel Barbiero on Gerry Hemingway's Kwambe; Kevin Whitehead on Sonny Rollins and Sam Rivers; excerpts from the books Holy Ghost and Saxophone Colossus; and Chris Robinson on recordings of Zoh Amba.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider a one-time or recurring donation. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $6.35 to $8.47 for February and $4.42 to $5.89 for March. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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conversations

Zheng Hao and I speak over video chat about deformation, professionalism, illusion, mischief, sensitivity, and control. 

Recent releases include A Clipping Isle with Crimson Chaos, Another Time with Sun Yizhou, once upon a time there was a mountain and three mixes with Ren Shang as Oishi, the solos Harmonium and Last Day of the Cold, and contributions to the compilations Electronic Induction 2022 and Skronk #121. 

Keith Prosk: Hey! How’re you doing today?

Zheng Hao: Good. The weather’s been very kind of cloudy so I just stayed in, working for this, trying to prepare better for this conversation.

KP: Oh, nice. No need to prepare, it’s usually just an informal chat but yeah I actually looked up London weather, we have very similar weather today. We’re also kind of cloudy and about the same temperature as well. Y’all are closer to the ocean so you’ve got a little bit more humidity than we do and we’ve got a little bit more wind but yeah how’s it going?

ZH: Yeah good. Should we follow the questions that you sent over to me?

KP: Yeah for sure we can follow that general map. So you are in London right now?

ZH: Yeah.

KP: Nice. Are you originally from Beijing? 

ZH: No, I'm from Wuhan.

KP: Oh nice. How’d you get into this area of music?

ZH: I was trying to pass the exam of CAFA in Beijing when I was a high school student - that’s when I first knew Sun Yizhou - and then I didn’t really do well in exam and I didn't want to do a gap year so I started to apply to go abroad for studies. Around that period I was still doing fine arts but after further research in fine arts I kind of realized that I'm not really interested in this. I also play some instruments so I thought that I could try to apply to some music related course. And then I saw this course name called electronic music and computing technology at Goldsmiths, which is the course I'm doing now. And so when I was preparing for this I kind of get to know computer and electronic music more properly and then I get reconnected to Sun Yizhou and that’s how we made the album Another Time.

KP: Nice. Since you mentioned that you came up through visual art, just to give people a sense, what was your visual art like? Is it related to what you’re doing in sound? 

ZH: It has some changes in the process but originally I was doing text and poem related stuff which, through all these changes that I was doing, I am still doing the text thing. I was doing some drawing in the middle which associates with geometry, optical illusion things. And then after that I kind of fall back to text. Well, this is kind of related to those graphics and text on my website. I have this strong aesthetic or obsession in the idea of topology, which doesn’t necessarily have to be so mathematic or maybe poetic related but essentially the idea is that the graphics are still recognizable after a certain amount of distortion through time. So that’s why I do those on my website, trying to approach this topology idea. Say the quads for example it actually comes after the experience that I played with other musicians that I realize there is this kind of… I guess we could say this is kind of social relation related but it’s also, say, in the quartets that people are playing together, if you think about each musician as a point and then start to consider the distance between those different musicians and who has more words to say, if I want to keep a balance should I be more quiet which means listen more. These might not be scores I would say but it’s kind of related to expressions and extractions from experience. Yeah. I actually do have a lot of things that I wanted to say for the last bit, what might a bad interpretation look like for the writings and the ideas around notation, but I think it might be better if I write it to you cause I don’t know if I could express this as expressive as I want it to be. I was writing down lots of ideas from the beginning, which I feel more confident to talk about those, so I might write to you about the last bit. 

KP: Yeah, that’s perfect. But just before I forget, since you mentioned with your visual art you were interested in a topological deformation over time, does that relate to what you’re doing with Ren Shang, in Oishi in any way, where you have this source material and sometimes it’s raw where it’s very recognizable sometimes it’s overdone to where it’s not recognizable. 

ZH: Yeah. I was surprised and also very happy that you immediately understand what we are doing, that some source material is recognizable and the overmix means that it’s unrecognizable. Yes. It’s getting more and more complicated over time because at the beginning we were just kind of having fun sampling other people’s music but we’ve developed the idea of, is it just slightly a bit of a mix, that we are just being the effects like guitar pedals, that we just process it a little bit? Or that we get to be more conceptual, that we would mix a classical music and a rock n roll album together? And then I guess even more and more conceptual that we actually… there was one time we sampled John Cage but it’s just for fun, we didn’t really play the sample and we didn’t really do nothing, we actually sampled ourselves but we kind of inherited the idea from John Cage. But yeah it becomes more and more complicated after we realize that we can sample ourselves because it becomes a stage where we were thinking about how much do we want the audience to recognize, or how do we want to develop the ability to represent the same thing. Because there were a number of the audience that they are actually, they’re pretty satisfied about the album that we did when we were sampling ourselves. That’s when we got to play for the first few times in London. And then we start at a point of how do we represent the idea of… how do we represent the same thing, how do we represent that people would know that we are doing the same kind of in between unrecognizable and recognizable music and how do we both be the sample at same time but also chop ourself up in performance. So yeah we’re kind of stuck at this stage for a bit and now it’s getting fine because, to the question you asked, we get to the original point where we should not consider about what shape that the audience will actually recognize, because the shape will always exist there, that the audience could extract themselves, rather than us trying to pass this information to them again and again. Cause that just would make the journey of making music together a bit more painful because we have too many presets for ourselves. But now it’s fine because it becomes more and more simple, about just preparing this surprise for each other, to bring new sound in. So yeah I guess it’s maybe not that much related to topology graphics.

KP: Yeah so in the recordings with Shang the mixes are kind of set, like you have a raw recording or you have an overdone recording, but in your performances have y’all considered showing the progress of deformation, or is that the part that’s too weighty that you’re talking about where you just feel like you’re locked in? Like a guitarist doesn’t have to be like… like Derek Bailey doesn’t have to play chord progressions and then go, OK and now I’m gonna play like Derek Bailey, he just went straight there you know.

ZH: Yeah, exactly, that’s the idea. That’s why we prefer to talk less but more directly just play. So now we’ve got to a stage where if there’s a live performance we might not practice, we just know what each other might play, might bring, the soundtrack. Now it has become all about the energy. We just confirm that the energy is right and then we will be confident about the performance. 

KP: Yeah. And then some of those overdone mixes too, the way there is super different but the sound result could be similar to what you might do with a laptop or a no input mixing board. How do you view what separates those two ways of making music?

ZH: I think it has different orientation. Because when we just started doing the sample music I was still using mixing board for samples, although now I have stopped it. But there is definitely this technique shifting where when I was playing no input it’s more like a closed logic, that it’s looping in between this mixing board, but then when I start sampling, when I have a channel that’s open for sound materials, then the technique had changed. Essentially it just made me realize that I want to have more and more control. Because playing with no input, you always only have fifty percent of control I would say, I feel like I get properly trained to be a reactive musician. I kind of want to have more control and that's why I started using samples. I would say maybe the result, the musical output is the same but it’s definitely… I mean, talking about musical output is essentially talking about music genre, which you can use different instruments to produce sound that sounds the same but the aesthetics and the gestures could be very different and it kind of actually means personality changes as a musician too, I guess. Because it’s too easy to be either a very reactive musician on no input mixing board or be a proper noise musician cause no input mixing board just has the proper characteristic for you to be a noise musician. Also I feel like after I learned more about electronics and computing, this more technical knowledge, I feel like if I could do better, if I could do something that’s more complicated, maybe I won’t be satisfied just playing a certain sound. I feel like there’s a limitation on no input mixing board, where once after you've played with it for awhile you kind of realize it can only produce this many sounds and then that’s why people started using guitar effects pedals. Then the gesture changes from you use the nobs on the no input mixing board to you use the nob on the guitar effect pedals and then musicians become very droney musicians and then they play slowly. Yes it sounds good but I feel like if it’s an improvisation, if you're a performer, the complexity, the challenge for yourself has become less. So I would like something that’s more tricky and you could be more professional, I guess. Also more and more people are using no input mixing board… and I think it’s a good thing. Of course you can take that as a sound source and you subtract it or add it with different filters but then why not build everything from zero. Cause that’s the thing I am doing now, I am now playing with modular synthesis. It became another way to build things from scratch. I might still play it but it’s just not… I guess it’s less attractive to me than it was before. 

KP: Yeah, yeah. You use quite a few instruments, at least from the few recordings I've seen. You mentioned pedals, no input mixing board, I've seen bass, cd player, voice. Is that coming from this place of you don’t want to be locked in by one instrument’s tools or set of sounds that it can make, you want a broader palette? Also, following the map a little bit, is there a particular reason why you might choose one set of tools over another for a particular scenario, since you do seem able to choose from so many?

ZH: Well first I would say it’s great to have a slightly larger repository in terms of instrument. Because I was playing strings when I was younger. For me it’s more like musicians have different experiences on different instruments which is somehow similar to learning a language, it always associates with memory and feelings. So if I were to have the idea of, I must use this instrument for this session, it's more intuitive feeling because it’s the imagination of this concept. In Another Time I used bass and voice and cd players but I didn't really use no input and I didn't make very noisy sounds because the idea is to have this home feeling. Immediately for me I would not choose no input, I would imagine, OK I want this to be warmer so I would only go for these two directions and the limitation comes from the imagination for concept. And then in the limitation it could be maybe as colorful as possible. For harmonica, I got the C major tremolo harmonica when I was in high school and I tried to learn it on my own but didn’t end up continuing. But when I was packing up the luggage for London, I still put it into the case. Almost six months later, I was trying things out with a contact microphone and I found the sustaining highest pitch on harmonica sounded really like electronic feedback - so I immediately started playing like that, then I recorded the Last Day of the Cold. In that album, the idea of harmonica being a sustaining instrument had become a feature for me, because when the silence happens, it was nice when it’s blank. So, yeah.

KP: Nice. Yeah and I guess… so a lot of the instrumentation that you do use, it seems to be a medium for feedback. I know you just kind of mentioned the reactivity that feedback requires is maybe something that you're becoming slightly less interested in but what do those different mediums, like no input mixing board or pedals or your harmonica setup or just microphones, what kind of effects do those have on the character or behaviors of feedback?

ZH: Yeah. So no input mixing board, it's a method which you can generate sound through a feedback loop with its built-in amplifier, I would say. And then why no input mixing board is pretty special is because, just physically speaking, in the components, it’s pretty sensitive. Even just subtle changes on the nobs the sound can result in very significant changes, in rhythm and pitch. That’s why it has this really conversational tension if you were to play with it. So that's why as I said generally there can be two ways to play with it. One is you could just press the button or twist the nob in this very aggressive gesture without really listening and trying to make a further decision and it matches the noisy characteristic anyway but if you were to play slower, which this would be the way if I were to play it again, play it slower and listen to the sound carefully, it feels like you get to decide. You have the realization that you get to decide almost every step of the gesture but still there’s always the possibility that it will generate completely different sound than what you expected. And this is great. This is amazing. It can even jump into silence. That's no input, and that's great. And pedals, I guess pedals it's always this in between thing which you use as a tool to subtract or add to the sound from a sound source. It could be guitar, it could be no input, it's like an expansion with which you have more control and prediction. If you are only playing with the guitar pedals, that it’s mixing this only one sound that generates from a mixing board, I guess people would have different preference regarding to this kind of balance. Cause some people will play no input without any pedals, or some people will play no input with a lot of pedals and only try to adjust the nobs on the pedals, and maybe some people have fifty fifty. I guess this is another more interesting path, pedals. And microphones, microphones are great. It's so different to play with microphones if you use it for sound source or instrument. I have this recorder, which is Zoom H6, it generates really interesting feedback sounds. It’s almost like FM synthesis. But other uses such as using air microphone as amplifier for feedback… it’s sometimes tricky because it’s a problem of adjusting the gain volume. One time I did this show where I had another air mic pointed to my desk and I think there’s some misunderstanding in the soundcheck where the sound engineer accidentally turned my gain too loud. I was playing contact mic with harmonicas and when I sat down once I put my hand on the harmonica it started causing this piercing loud feedback and then I was thinking, ah I didn't expect this but OK I guess this will have to be a noise show [laughs] Yeah, so that’s fun too but that’s the problem of air microphone, I guess. It will make the whole room reverb, very reverby, especially playing at small venues, it's just endless. But it could be a very good thing. So, yeah, I guess working with feedback is really relying on gestures and reactions.

KP: Yeah. And so the difference between them is maybe more a question of sensitivity than tone?

ZH: Yes. It’s more about the sensitivity and the frequency of air, like resonations. Which is why it’s actually important to choose microphones for feedback because I would say the two harmonicas, the Harmonium that I did, I think it wouldn't really work with air microphones because it won’t resonate with the harmonicas. The reeds of harmonicas resonate through the contact mics with speakers. Comparing to air mics, the contact mics need to be pressed tightly against the harmonicas/objects to resonate. So the sensitivity, it's very important. And sensitivities could lead to directions and distance.

KP: Nice. Yeah, so let’s talk about the harmonica setup. I kind of fell in love with Harmonium and then I know at least “long breath” off of Last Day of the Cold… yeah. So I know at least on Harmonium you mentioned that your setup includes two harmonicas in different tunings and, just to get some technical stuff out of the way because I'm curious, do those different tuned harmonics, like slightly offset tuning, does that allow for more beatings or for more instability to easily modulate feedback?

ZH: Yeah. I was going to talk about this. I think in my setup, it doesn't really matter about the offset tuning. The offset tuning works like presets, that it generates the more interesting intervals and maybe compositional ideas as well as the musical output. But the beating patterns, yes, it’s a very important process in this track. Because the second track of Harmonium, I think as I remembered it's the only track that has two different channels, the left channel and right channel are different. It’s because I recorded the left channel b flat major harmonica first and then I listened to the left channel when I recorded the right channel with c major harmonica. So there were some binaural beats generated in the first two minutes. That’s the beating patterns. And in my experience and, well… I was very interested in these binaural beats generated so I actually wrote a simple application in javascript to run it because it just works so good in a music therapy way. And also scientifically binaural beats will generate when there’s a difference between two frequencies in the left and right channel when it’s less than 20hz. Usually people would say 3hz is the difference, and then 5hz, 8hz, and 13hz… but anyway the smaller the difference the more intense the beats can be. But how the beating patterns come from is determined by the live equalizing I was doing on the mixing board. That’s what I did when I listened to the other channel when recording. Cause by eq’ing it I get to… yeah, cause I hear the beating patterns directly when I was recording and then I thought, this is great I will keep it. And then the destabilization for modulation is also coming from this equalization. It’s because if you try to adjust the beating patterns you get too lost in it, you twist either of the button nobs too far that you could slide to the distorted noise so immediately. That’s something that I wouldn’t want it to happen but it happens all the time so I can only record twenty minutes per day when I was recording it cause otherwise I would get too anxious. The extremely high frequency is just not good for mental health anyway I guess.

KP: Yeah. So I'm curious too whenever you do get a beating going are you able to stay in that place or is it just a transitional thing for a few seconds before the feedback stabilizes to a new frequency?

ZH: Um, well, there’s two ways of changing the feedback. One is if I change the equalization but the other thing is if I just let this feedback go and I keep… I don’t move at all, I don’t put my hand on the desk, it could stay longer. But of course psychologically speaking your ear might generate another illusion through that difference. But the setup is because the two harmonicas are placed horizontally on the desk and the contact mics, I stick them on the metal part which, when they’re horizontal, it turns the entire desk to a feedback desk too. So when I put my hand on the desk I can feel the resonation through my finger. If I put two of my hands on the desk it changes the pitch sometimes or sometimes it will just stop the feedback. So that’s part of the reason why this album is less sustain. It’s more a lot of changes than sustain. 

KP: Nice. Yeah. And just being completely ignorant about harmonicas, when harmonicas are tuned is it just the reeds that are tuned or the whole body?

ZH: I think it’s just the reeds that are tuned.

KP: So whenever you’re using a contact mic is that actually registering the tuning or is it registering that you have a resonant material there?

ZH: Yeah it registers the tuning. Well, it registers the structure. But when I don’t blow the harmonica, when there’s no air cycle through the harmonica, then the harmonica won’t really make a sound because it has this different air path. When it changes the air through the air path it changes the frequency of the air and that’s why harmonica makes sound. But how I make the harmonica make sound this time, the contact mic, it’s feeding back with the speaker which resonates with the reeds. I actually played, in the fifth track, I actually had wind blow through the harmonicas so there was actually a change where it was feedback and then it recorded the sound from the harmonica and then they come together. The textures are pretty different. It’s slightly a bit more fuzzy if I have air through the harmonica. And it’s much more like a sine wave if it’s just feedback from the contact mics. 

KP: Mmhmm, yeah. I guess, is there anywhere else that you wanted to go as far as allowing people to imagine what this harmonica setup looks like?

ZH: Yeah. This is where it will go kind of funny, that it almost gets kind of fantasy because there’s actually a story behind why this was called Harmonium. So when I received commission from Jack [Chuter], who’s the label runner of Hard Return, it was in July, I just bought a new harmonica, I started recording in the first week of August, and I decided to experiment with two contact mics on them. But I was also reading this scifi fiction recommended by a friend and it's called The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut and in chapter eight he wrote about the only known form of life on the planet Mercury and it’s called harmonium. And harmoniums live in a cave and they take food by the vibrations and they only have one sense which is touch. And Mercury is in tension because of the great temperature difference in the northern and southern planet which makes Mercury sing all the time and each note can last a thousand years and this sound then communicates to the harmoniums through the sense of touch. So that’s harmonium. It’s like this existence where they take the energy from the resonation for food and it’s very simple and pure and it’s also just such a coincidence that it makes it almost like a fantasy. It has this natural fantasy. And then everything became natural, OK this is gonna be named Harmonium and I am gonna use resonations. That is confirmed yes, I just continue this plan, I must continue to use contact mic to record these resonations between two harmonicas. And also Harmonium because it’s the name of harmonica, so… yeah. 

KP: That’s awesome. 

ZH: Although I didn’t really include this in the bio because… that’s the other thing that I do realize and I do kind of have it for my preference, is to try to not have a concept in a bio when I release music. To make it more like pure listening, that you’re here for the music. Maybe less for composition or the conceptual ideas behind it. But still the story was great so I thought that I had to tell someone at least. 

KP: Yeah yeah yeah that’s awesome. Do you see yourself continuing to explore your harmonica setup for a bit?

ZH: Yes. I think I would do a volume two actually but I haven't thought about the setup yet because I think I will need further research in either psychoacoustics or maybe a more involved proper sine wave into this harmonica setup so the sound can be more complicated. So I need to think about it.

KP: You also mentioned a little bit… the therapeutic effects of beating patters, which might imply… something being therapeutic might imply it’s desirable. So compared to some of your we’ll just say noisier stuff do you see yourself gravitating a little more towards this beating music?

ZH: I think I would say yes. It is more the Harmonium release, it is something that is kind of the stage that the music had become more serious in a way, than those releases that I did as Oishi. I think they are, this Harmonium thing, it’s more serious and more confident in a way because it has scientific practice to support the idea of, yes there are these binaural beats… because people have done a lot of scientific research on it. But apart from that I think doing sample music, doing Oishi music, it’s still… I actually find that weirdly more like music than Harmonium because you would question yourself or try to be more professional in musical way. Because you would consider the sound texture more, you would consider if I want to produce more unpredictable sound, or if I want to do sound collage then I should listen to more music, I should have better skills in playing synthesizers and also practice more. But the kind of practice as Harmonium, it feels like it's something that… it’s kind of like a steady practice that doesn’t really affect its pathway, which direction it's gonna go by what I am listening to. Because I would say Oishi’s style that, yes, the style won’t be changing all the time but Oishi’s I would say is changing all the time by the music that we’re listening to at different periods. In that regard I would say, yes, this Harmonium may be more music therapy practice. They don’t change the path, or also probably because I already determined that its genre will stay there, that it won’t involve with any other fusion elements. Say OK yeah I won’t play bass, I might won’t use noise stuff in Harmonium one and two because it’s more like a study. It’s made to show people the study you have done. I won’t say it’s academic but it's definitely more formal for sure.

KP: Yeah. So it sounds like there’s a little bit of tension between… well, you mentioned that Oishi started out as kind of like a fun project, around the Yizhou duo when you have a lot more instruments you mentioned intuition, and then with the harmonica setup you’re mentioning study and professionalism. Is there a tension between this fun side and this serious side that you feel?

ZH: Yes. I would say just in general even the fun side I wish it shows somehow that we are not just messing around, that we are actually professional musicians. That’s why I said yeah we would question ourselves as musicians, like, yeah, you should practice harder or you should not…. even if this is for fun but you shouldn't really just stop practicing, you shouldn’t just bring random instruments into the session or random ideas into the session. But what makes it fun is also considering the audience, that I want to have that kind of comedic element. They are both for audience in some way but as Oishi, the comedic feeling, it’s mischievous. You think about mischievous, you then imagine immediately, yeah I'm playing this kind of music consistently and then all of the sudden I change the texture and then I collage or I have weird voice or I have different kinds of elements pasting together. That’s why this is comedic. And it can even be offensive. That’s why it could be noisier. But it doesn’t mean that we should do things without considerations because I’ve heard about a few musicians, they do live shows say, for example, they use a sampler and then they just play random noise. No rhythm. Nothing that’s analyzable for this entire forty minutes. They just play randomly with no aesthetic that you can tell in their live performance. I've never seen that live before so I couldn't say if that’s a good thing or a bad thing but then I would think about if I wanted to do that kind of music. I would say maybe not. Because it's still more about control. And also about if you are doing this kind of thing yourself it's a very huge difference between you are doing this kind of music with other people. Because if you are determining yourself with a strong aesthetic, you’re only performing this without considering anyone, then there’s no conversation between you and other musicians. And I found that very important in a music practice, where you should think, well I should…. I think I would focus more on a conversational level than have this certain analyzable structure. Because even people, audience now they might seek this certain level of balance between conversation. Where people might say, yeah I just seen your performance and you are much more expressive than the other person, or you listen less. And I would think about, is this a bad thing, are there still structures for you to follow improvisations. Possibly not. So then what do you need to consider. That becomes a problem where it's comedic but it's professional and it might be even more difficult to practice than do more say scientific logic compositional based work. 

KP: Yeah yeah yeah. Are you into theater at all [laughs] like comedy and drama, that separation?

ZH: Well I like that kind of collage, the texture changing all of the sudden. It could be as simple as you were walking on the street and the window just changes or the wall just changes. I find that very funny, but in a very simple way. That kind of comedy doesn’t really offend anyone but it's just funny in its own simple and silly way. And I'm hoping the things that I'm doing are somehow similar to that. Which the patterns on the wall could still be very good looking or needs this certain amount of technique to draw those patterns but just the violent cut or something like that could make it very funny. Then it also means people could enjoy it easily. And it's also… I guess I like to see or hear people laugh when I’m playing as Oishi.

KP: Oh nice. So there’s, just going back a bit to the map, I noticed that what you've released so far is mostly solos and duos, and I think I’m just now realizing that these maybe intuitive comedic projects are your duos and these more professional projects are your solos…. I guess, is there something that draws you to smaller groups over larger groups and do you further separate what you want to do with another person versus what you want to do solo? 

ZH: Mmmm, yes. I would say in solo I probably won’t do very comedic work. Because that’s… it could be such a simple reason because, say you’re being mischievous, it wouldn't really be fun or you would feel nervous if you’re being mischievous alone but if there is always someone that’s being mischievous with you there would be less pressure and you would do better too. But, speaking of larger groups, I played recently in this ensemble. It started to make experimental jazz. Me and Shang went together actually and she was doing vocals and I was doing electronics and all the other people are instrumentalists and they are kind of really strictly trained I would say. They have to do all this sight reading when we were doing the ensemble. During the practice I do realize that there is always a leader in a larger group, where people listen to this person and they will push things… well it's a good thing because you will get to properly rehearse, you will know how to play this song with a larger group but then it means… I don't know, maybe for me, I'm too mischievous. It's a new experience, that everyone listen to one person in this ensemble. But it’s an experience because I wont say I enjoy listening to a leader or I want to be a leader in a larger group. And another experience of playing larger groups is I actually play in a band but there is still a kind of person leading it. Sometimes we also improvise. It makes me start thinking about compositions and structures cause we’ll listen to jazz music or say bop music where they have these structures where they play things and then they start solo and then they improvise a little bit or maybe further to improvisations. It makes me weirdly think about composition because I’ve never actually really worked with compositions in a bigger than two people group. But when playing in a band I feel like it's somehow similar to roleplaying which I didn’t really have fun but I guess it's just that I feel too nervous when improvising with more than two people. And it's also the lines between different points can get more complicated because it feels like there’s always people who should be listening and people should be taking care of another musician that made a mistake or there’s other musicians follow. Or maybe all these are just illusions that improvisations should just go naturally. But, yeah, I guess I'm just not used to the tension that’s more than two people yet. For me it’s hard to manage. 

KP: Yeah. As a listener I super prefer solos and duos because I can actually focus. Once it gets more than five kind of independent voices, yeah, I just start to lose focus.

ZH: Yeah. Also I forgot to say this but, yeah, doing duo and solo are great because it’s focused and you, it’s somehow similar to playing slower, that you are very conscious. I think only playing with one person makes you more conscious in a way. Makes you calmer. It’s easier to manage so you can make more decisions. It’s less sociable in a way too, in the conversations, that you don’t have to take care of too many peoples’ sound.

KP: Yeah. Are you an introvert?

ZH: Introvert?

KP: Do you tend to be a quiet person generally?

ZH: Um I don’t think I am. I think the problem is I am too expressive in improvisations. Sometimes maybe I just couldn’t stop and that’s why me and Shang sometimes work so well because when I don’t stop she don’t stop, she doesn’t care either. But when playing with maybe other people they would stop, they would think about, oh if you are playing maybe I should listen to you and play something that sounds good. 

KP: Mmhmm nice. So coming back around to those graphics on your site with the kind of aphoristic writings associated with them, are those scores? And if so, when do you decide to make a score? What might a ‘bad’ interpretation look like, since the don’t have much information around time or sound? 

ZH: These are part of my practices in approach to topology - where the minimal graphics are still recognisable after a certain amount of distortion and deformation through time, the graphics and writings are interpretations of each other. A few of them come from the experience after playing with other musicians, for example the quads, and some of them are observations of visuals such as the window one. All of them either contain the potential process of shape deforming or the minimal shape to begin with. I think those texts and graphics are parallel to graphic scoring as they are more like structuring the tension between musicians in the whole improvisation after it ends. It perceives more relations, distances rather than symbols and directions, more like something that distracts you and brings you to a abstract degree when you are looking at the scoring during the performance.

This could come from a literature structure in terms of the shape of content (leading principles/synopsis). For example, in Hong Sang-Soo’s film Right Now, Wrong Then, it was about a romantic story between two characters, and he filmed it twice. The direction of the story was almost the same, but the elements were subtly different as well as the end. And the structure of the film in my eyes would look like (left):

If I’m analysing the film in a linear way, then the twist would be the core structure of the film where, with this light twist, the story could end differently with mostly the same elements. And I can think about if the structure will loop back to itself like a Möbius ring. How long is the distance between the two ends under the Möbius ring in the graph? In this structure, you can reverse the order of reality, concept and fiction at your will. There’s definitely a lot more to talk about regarding that film but I seemed to be always more interested in discovering how a director/author tells a story, and this had become a playful hobby and has definitely influenced my perspective on making music.

In the text called conversation on my website, it was something that I used to think about when playing with other musicians as well as talking to other people (above right), that ‘conversation to some extent is very close to ball sports.’ In badminton, a high toss seems to make it easier for the opponent to catch the shuttlecock. With careful attention, it may be possible to prevent the shuttlecock from landing. In baseball, the ball seems to travel in a more direct manner. What factors affect power and speed in this sport? In a simple back-and-forth motion, time appears to be related only to physical stamina and the size of the shape. Well, I’m getting a bit over excited about mapping the elements of the sports and conversational interactions to each other.

I think there is similarity in recognition between these and graphic scoring, where you always seem to have to register yourself or your instrument as a point, symbol or initiate yourself before developing to any more complicated stage - graphic scorings are more like a preset for understanding or more like reference rather than the topographic structure I was trying to write about, which happens more naturally in a intuitive way after the improvisation, and it doesn’t come up all the time. The funny fact is I never ran into any graphical intuition when I was playing with Shang as Oishi, the reason could be our music is changing all the time, or maybe I can actually summarise our ‘structure’ as white noise, which is apparently still recognisable after deformation [laughs]

KP: Yeah. So along the way you mentioned even more instruments than what I saw, you've mentioned strings, guitar, is there something that you’ve been searching for as you move through these instruments? Is there something of a throughline that you see through them? 

ZH: I think they are now partially like my kind of language system in terms of instrument but I'm still practicing them as for example, I also want to do jazz improvisation and I think they require a certain amount of techniques or certain amount of experience to play with other people without explaining too much. Just generally I don’t think I could be as expressive on traditional instruments than on electronics. And I sometimes found that limitation for playing with other people too. In my experience when playing with other people, sometimes people are very expressive, then I found myself lack of the ability to be as expressive as I wanted to be in the same harmonic language on say guitars and bass guitars… it’s a frustration that I'm facing. And maybe that’s somehow part of the larger reason why it stopped me to play with a larger group. I wish to have the full experience of the enjoyments in different perspectives as well as the challenges. And this expectation could probably be the throughline. Which is why I'm still practicing because I also wish to be able to select what to play in both texture and musical way. Also if I were to start playing with other people in this way it would be another new practice, apart from kind of professional music therapies and Oishi sample collage. It would be another side of a musician I guess.

KP: Yeah, and there can only be so many sides. Yeah I guess, just wrapping back around, since you're making music right now in London, you have made music in China, would you compare the two communities in any way, as far as being good for your musical development? Like what are some things the UK gets wrong, gets right, China gets wrong, gets right?

ZH: I think because I wasn't very active when I was in China and I only played a few gigs before I left for London but… what I immediately feel in London it's… you get to choose so many different ways to play music where the audience is same level of critic. Say I play at Cafe OTO, you get the most serious and critical audience in the world, in a good way. But I think the experience in China is they’re more like a group of people, which I feel like is always the same group of people. In London there’s endless musicians where you can see them every night with different people and they have different connections. In this regard I would say the style, or the style that’s more popular in China, seems a bit less diverse than it is in London and somehow it’s only when I came to London that I feel like I could use so many different materials or express in so many other ways. Or maybe that is just in general that I didn’t really have enough experience before. That this would eventually come if I were to develop my experience as a musician. The ideas of the Beijing scene, I think it's a bit hard for me to answer that question, cause, yeah… I would maybe prefer not to comment on that.

KP: Yeah yeah yeah. Well is there anywhere else that you wanted to go, anything else that you wanted to talk about? I guess, other than the harmonica setup and other stuff we talked about, are there some directions in sound that your interested in right now that we haven't touched on?

ZH: Currently my practice is for the kind of music psychoacoustic pathway, I kind of wanted to go a bit further than harmonium, so I was trying to do this duo project with Li Song, if you know him - I think he was from Beijing but he has now been in London for four or five years - he’s a computer musician. We had recently started a duo, essentially trying to explore something related to binaural beats as well but I played strings and he actually played snare drums with a sine wave and laptop. Doing binaural beats. The idea is to have some simple… maybe I would just play like three notes but the sine wave would have this difference, 5hz difference from the frequency that I played on guitar and we might continue that for like forty minutes as a recording. So that’s the thing that I did for the psychoacoustic. I think other than that I am now playing modular synthesis to try to more build things from scratch. I've been kind of getting to the idea of… cause it's sometimes when people make music there might be judgment from other people saying, ah you are just making music in this genre. And then I would think about, OK what if I see myself from scratch. That I start to explore my music from zero. And then even though I still go to that music genre I can say these things are mine. Because I am not that interested in making new music or making really experimental music at the moment. I won’t call myself that, I'm not doing that. It's more about if I could I would definitely like to find this genre that I could stick to and play music or make music for that genre or for that style and maybe the music I make might be a bit different or the genre will change over time but I think it's always important to rethink about things. That’s also the things that I did with Shang as well is too try to be a someone that uses more languages, less concept. I think that’s working. Yeah, I think that’s everything that I'm doing now. 

KP: So you mentioned that you’re doing beating music in an acoustic way with guitar and drums and you of course also have your electronic beating music. Do those feel different when you experience them?

ZH: It is different. The timbre is different but my preference, it’s to try to not have that much effects so the feedback guitar or the strings that I'm playing, it's always somehow similar to electronics. Why I started using harmonica for Last Day of the Cold, for example, I found that if I play the highest pitch that I could play on harmonica consistently it actually sounds like a continuous sine wave, or feedback. I found that very interesting. It’s also the idea of, if the sound could sound beautiful or the sound could sound good why not use it. Why not continuously use it, as part of the repository? That’s how I started harmonicas. And that’s why so far I haven’t found that the electronics that I use are against the texture of my acoustic instruments. In a minimal way, if the output, they are both minimal, it would be the same thing. It could sound the same thing, as sine waves.

annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Ben Zucker - Repersonal Territories (Commonplace Collage No. 2) (2021)

Ben Zucker is a composer, performer, and audiovisual artist seeking new experiences through material mélanges who often plays percussion, electronics, and trumpet. Some recurring collaborators include Mabel Kwan, Eli Namay, and Adam Shead as Fifth Season. Recent releases include Semiterritory with Fifth Season, Vitamalisms​/​Revitalism with Third Coast Percussion, and the solos having becames and Aeroliths. 

Repersonal Territories is a 2021 composition for saxophone or similar wind instruments and guitar or similar instruments with an open number of performers and duration. Each page maps regions of standard notation, fantasticized notation, realistic illustration, other symbols, and text both directly and obliquely directional. The border of each region features an arrow the kind of which determines the expression of transition between regions. The symbolic maps and the topographic maps they they overlay are unique to each page. Performers decide together where to start and how to end. 

Whether players remain in comparable areas of the page or choose another path, the symbols and distribution of arrows unique to each page would seem to ensure interactions more complementary than corresponding. Each player must choose their instrument and how to interpret their page through that instrument independently though certainly with influence from the other, negotiating only when it begins and when it ends. The strong presence of dualisms - in standard and non-standard notation, realistic and fantastical symbols, direct and oblique direction - and an emphasis on transitions centers communication between two things. It all sounds like a healthy personal relationship, moving together and freely no matter where each is or is going until each decides it ends. Because when standardization collapses and expectation relaxes music and relationships are both just sharing and shaping time with each other. 

Repersonal Territories was commissioned by Brian Ellis and Jonathan Hostottle. Here Ellis and Nathan Smith perform distinct realizations of two possible pathways with guitar and bass clarinet below.

reviews

Andrea Belfi - Eternally Frozen (Maple Death Records/Bow, 2023)

Andrea Belfi, Robin Hayward, Elena Kakaliagou, and Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø perform five Belfi compositions for percussion and synthesizer, tuba, horn, and trombone on the 36' Eternally Frozen. 

A monkish vocal chorus anchors the opening "Pastorale" and its poignant intonation heralds a bittersweet emotivity brass carries throughout. Synthesizer as well, often an extension of the horns. Variations on canon form expand, reduce, and rearrange the echo of the trio with different effects on mood too: amassing in resounding triumphant fanfare; fading to leave the last voice forlorn; or a less linear assembly that can lend a sense of simultaneous stasis and drift. Percussion colors to complement the rest, as in shimmering cymbals alongside radiating brass, but more often lays a foundation of mesozoic rhythmic loops from low skins that lends weight to winds' bellows and volume to the canon constructions. The heart of it seems to be an earnest exploration of the effect of different voices' placement on each other and the effect of their sum on the listener, discreetly wrapped in a kind of song.  

- Keith Prosk

Ensemble Dedalus / Ryoko Akama - ELIANE RADIGUE (Montagne Noire, 2023)

Didier Aschour, Cyprien Busolini, Thierry Madiot, Pierre-Stéphane Meugé, Christian Pruvost, Silvia Tarozzi, and Deborah Walker perform their hepta for guitar, viola, trombone, saxophone, trumpet, violin, and cello and Ryoko Akama performs their occam for ems synthesizer from Éliane Radigue's Occam Ocean on this hourlong record. 

To repeat it in another way, the rhizomatic system of Occam Ocean often seems much the same, long performances of long tones to cultivate harmonic interactions, and always different, in how each piece expresses the limits of the instrumentalist, instrument, and their relationship. This is the first release of a hepta that, while the orchestral Occam Ocean exists, carries a special density compared to the often smaller groupings of the system. And Akama's Occam XX is a singularly electric entry in the otherwise acoustic system. An explicit goal of this record is to contrast and indicate the breadth and the depth of the system. 

In the austere architecture of a single crested orchestral swell from seven, infinite laminae, teeming beatings, and psychedelic textures. Low oms. Wah wah. Yawning tanpura. Punctuated by brass yawps and the valve release of circular breathing. Towards the center of the structure's curved profile at the confluence of their movement they suspend a single sidewinding stream among them in their interaction, to return to something similar as the beginning in the end in deltaic diffusion. 

Played in a minimal way the modulating synthesizer seems a faithful translation of electricity itself, the rhythm of current. Maybe my ear silos sound or maybe its a common human illusion but its layers appear in three distinct bands. Rolling low. Something in between. Siren high. Subtle movements shift the behaviors of bands and even appear to reverse the relative periodicities of them, low as fast as what high was before and in the suite of them shifting together the high so fast as to smooth towards an undulating curve. Punctuated by a kind of sonar blip, perhaps wave turned click, teasing the limits of audibility like the bands, breaching only for a beat. 

The hepta shows the one of many; the occam shows the many of one.

- Keith Prosk 

Francisco López’ 1981 through 1989 (self released, 2023)

"For nearly a decade, starting in 1980, I worked almost exclusively with walkman recorders and cheap cassette players. From the beginning, sound recordings were intuitively for me "worlds in themselves," always markedly different from the original "reality," always full of their own thrilling features. I developed my own, very simple -but very efficient- techniques for sound transformation using only cassettes. I couldn't afford the prototypical "experimental" tools of those times: reel-to-reel recorders, synthesizers, rhythm boxes and the like. With hindsight, this limitation turned out to be a great advantage and an important lesson, that has remained vividly present for me until today: the most essential tools are spiritual, not technical." - Francisco López 

Although Francisco López recorded and created quite a lot of music through the 1980s, not much of it saw its way into the light until recently. As of 2023, releases spanning every year from 1980-1989 exists on the artist's Bandcamp, each release re-edited and re-mastered for modern ears. They're intriguing on their own, as obscure outsider primitive tape experiments that seem to have a totally different identity to the rest of the era's tape culture. But they're even more exciting when viewed together. They present the sonic story of a truly original artist finding himself, growing, experimenting, and creating an aesthetic that would become the blueprint for his next 3+ decades of work. It makes it clear that some ideas were found along the way, while others were there all along.

1981-83

1981-1983 collects five barely audible spaces. It's the sound of interior ventilation, of soft wind, of humming refrigerators, of static left in the tape machine, of something larger and fuller that's been near-entirely erased. Each piece has a slightly different soft, zen charm. They are uncompromisingly minimal, but not off-putting, comforting actually. It's like a single element of a room's soundscape zeroed in on, something you'd barely even notice given full focus. When listening with headphones it can feel kind of wrong for this reason, like these sounds should have been left in the background of wherever they were found, but at the same time it's this extreme focus on very little which is responsible for that lovely, warm, curious, meditative effect that leaks out from the speakers.

There isn't much variety to these pieces, they all share a focus while presenting their own hidden soundscape. But the tracks are remarkably ahead of their time – this type of sonic, pure, non-performative minimalism had no precedent in 1981, and these tracks laid out subtle sonic ambitions that López would continue to follow for the rest of his career.

1983

1983 starts loud, with the sounds of bleeping and crunching radios, malfunctioning recorders and immense, swirling background static. It feels complex and paranoid, like a massive early communications system that's failing to operate during a blistering winter storm, that's passing through harsh squelching and static blurs instead of the intended messages. There's twirling high-end frequencies which are almost beautiful, but the fragmented, ruined voices that rest underneath obliterate any feeling of comfort. It has some progression and clicks and twists, but it never strays from that bleak, claustrophobic sensation.

The second track is softer and more mellow, but that claustrophobic sensation remains. This time I'm hidden under floorboards while something terrifying stomps overhead, or I'm stashed away inside a creaking metal drum that's been loaded into the back of a van. Either way, 1983 presents the most evocative music López had made yet. It showed that now that he had learned how to manufacture sonic realities, it was time to fill them with emotions and personality.

1984

The first track of 1984 dips into slightly more obvious environmental material, but at the same time further strips it from any reality. There's the sound of wind, water, cars, lots of easily recognizable elements of day-to-day life, but their assemblage is completely bizarre – and the fact that they're so recognizable just makes it worse because it leaves us with an alarming sensation where sounds we know are heard existing in a context that's thoroughly unknown.

Other tracks fixate on a single, manufactured, unplaceable hum that land in similar conceptual water as the early compositions from 1981-1983 – but this time there's more complexity to their soundscapes. They feel structured and layered, taking deeper advantage of the artificial nature of the recordings to make a more deeply artificial environment. Rather than sounding like an AC unit or wind, it sounds more like... well, it doesn't really sound like anything, nothing that exists on our world at least.

These tracks are another significant step up for Francisco López – there's aesthetic innovation, but advancements being made in the conceptual territory as well. The soundscapes are more richly fabricated than ever, they're surreal and inexplicable, and the "worlds in themselves" that they present are becoming full of strange and exciting characteristics.

1985

The compositions of 1985 are bleak and singular. The album opener is another frozen soundscape, but this time overflowing with deep bass and sonic dread. The effect is even more powerful when the second track kicks in with a dense wall of uncontrolled distortion. It's not completely unlike other rudimentary noise music from the time, but it maintains this pseudo-natural sensation of environmental chaos, of real-world hellishness. It makes the music off-putting and affecting.

The lengthy final track is a stand-out, a slow-moving and slow-growing drone of bassy winds that interfere and show their true colours with time. There's a deep thud that underpins it that sounds electronic, like a controlled crunching. As I focus on that I begin to question the higher register sounds, they hang still like involuntary tape static. Soon enough, without the track having even particularly changed, I've lost that wind sound I've heard before and I've realized I'm somewhere completely artificial and unknown. It's one of his more remarkable and successful experiments with duration from this era.

1986

The first half of 1986 is a rich, dynamic field of noise. It presents screeching winds and animals and maybe even people side-by-side into a meticulously shared cacophony that's as expressive as it is strange. Like in 1984 there are recognizable sounds forced into an unrecognizable context, but this time instead of being accomplished through a sporadic assemblage they all exist in a unified environment that continuously bends and shifts as elements come and go. On the surface level it may sound like a single mammoth of bassy static, but with attention all these little real-not-real nuances shine through.

The second half is a relative opposite, it's soft and mysterious with its subtleties laid out plainly. It's a delicate wall of bass with a trebly gust of air that perpetually sounds. The bass grows, becomes huge, arresting, all-encompassing. It reminds me of that claustrophobia felt on 1983 but now he's captured similar feelings with much less. Even when the track begins to remain still the bass still feels as if it's in constant growth – it's an effect that comes from the precision of certain sounds and the evocative juxtapositions which come from the other elements within the soundscape, something that López was getting better and better at during this period.

1987

1987 is arguably the strongest and most cohesive of Francisco López's 80s work – making it not a big surprise that it's received a CD release by the Dutch 'Universaal Kunst' imprint. 1987 presents a single, long, enigmatic track that demonstrates the earliest stage of López's fascination with extensive durations which has played into many of his compositions since.

The piece delicately juggles a large array of decontextualized environmental material. As the piece spends its first several minutes expanding, growing layers, and morphing into a large-scale impossible environment, it asserts early on that to guess at the source of these materials is neither worthwhile nor the point of this music. Rather than just gradually growing and losing layers, which it does do, the piece also features some stark and sudden changes, such as a moment where the high-ends cut out entirely after the piece had become somewhat comfortable – a harsh reminder of the artifice of the environment and of the artist's control over it.

The second half of the piece is largely about its descent. It slowly strips itself of its clearest and most defining elements before leaving a soft, bassy husk to decay even more slowly. It's careful and intricate, and evocative in how it strips something large and dense into a cold monotony before eroding it completely. It's also predictive of the radical long-form music and slow-fades he'd incorporate into compositions over the next couple decades.

1988

1988 was one of Francisco López's most minimal outings yet and laid out some early groundwork and ambitions for the ultraminimal electronic, or lowercase, scene of music that would start growing a few years later. It approached this idea of sonic lessness from a different direction on each track, both carrying an innovative new approach that would become a major part of his aesthetic into the future.

The first track makes use of extremely limited and specific dynamics. Almost all of the sound is within the sub-bass region, pushing a bulk of the sound into an inaudible range that can be felt but not heard. Higher register crackling sounds play out like accidental run-off from the throbbing wall of deep bass and will vary greatly based on listening device – carrying the effect that maybe the speaker is generating them solely because it's failing to reproduce the rest of the soundscape accurately. A tone enters and exits this piece, again using a limited dynamic range that has it float not-so-high above the rest of the sounds. It's a beautiful, single, elongated moment that pulls the whole piece together, makes it into more than just a semi-audible stagnation.

The second track focuses on sonic decay and degradation, honing in on this concept even more than the second half of 1987 did. It begins with the sounds of popping, degraded tapes that fail to pass through any information, and they slowly but surely ruin themselves until only a frail hum remains. Like in the first track, this one also makes room for a soft drone towards the middle, but this time it feels more like an element of the amorphic decay than a pleasant surprise, especially considering the stagnant near-nothing that exists on the other end.

1989

1989 presents one last significant leap forward in Francisco López's aesthetic for the 80s. This one includes denser, more dynamic, and more processed sounds than ever. The first track begins with richly reverberating percussive timbres, like a pulsating machine in a large concert hall. The reverberation twists and grows, the processing of the sounds shifts and settles into softer territory as the throb dissipates into the air. But the machine stays softly present until the end of the piece, even as its form completely changes.

The second track is a final meticulously rendered bassy throb that shakes though a gentle wind. Conceptually it's not so unlike some previous tracks, but this time the sounds all feel so careful and precise and clean. It's more calculated and ultimately more effective. It's not exactly crushingly dark but it's not so pretty either, it just exists as a harsh kind of environment, a recording of an uncanny phenomena from an imaginary place. Again, that's not a new concept for López at this point, but this is one of his most believable attempts at it yet.

1989 is a strong end-cap to Francisco López's 80s work and a clear aesthetic end to an era. At this point his tools and technologies are evolving, and his early primitive phase is wrapping up. In just a few years he'd begin releasing some of his most notable and influential CDs, such as 1993's Azoic Zone and 1995's Warszawa Restaurant. These early releases may not have left a string of influence like those did, they weren't even readily available until recently, but what's exciting about them is that you can see the obsessions and fascinations that made those later albums possible already on display here: the disconnect between recordings and reality, the constructed sonic worlds, the experiments with duration and stillness, the limited frequencies and elaborate filtering. But even despite that, these early works make for strange, evocative and thought-provoking listens – there's much to enjoy in this sparse, primitive, low fidelity strangeness. 

- Connor Kurtz

Gabi Losoncy - Lieutenant (self-released, 2023)

"I want you to tell me what you think about. I want you to tell me what you think about me but also what you think about other things, and anything that you think about that you don't think to tell other people, and I want to know how you feel."

Ever since I was a child I had an intrinsic knowledge that the world centres around me. How couldn't it? Everything I've ever experienced has revolved around me, everything I've ever perceived has been seen through my eyes and heard by my ears. It's my own emotions that shape how I respond to the world around me, not anyone else's. And I don't have to put in thought or rely on clues to understand how I feel or what I'm thinking, I just know these things. I feel how I feel and I'm thinking what I'm thinking. I can't say the same about anybody else however.

A lot of my adult life was spent trying to forget this, to think less selfishly, to listen to and observe others and to understand their thoughts and wants and how they relate to mine. I remember being taught to treat others the way I'd like to be treated myself, but eventually I learned that that wasn't quite right – the way I'd like to be treated isn't necessarily the way you'd like to be treated, the way I react to things isn't necessarily the way you would. So in reality it's more like – treat others the way they'd like to be treated. It's something that requires attention and understanding, to know what someone else thinks and to know how someone else feels.

Gabi Losoncy's new record, allegedly her final record, begins with a plea to understand another human being – maybe a loved one, maybe not. She understand how she feels and she knows what she's thinking fully, like we all do, but for this other person she can only see or understand a fragment of them, the thoughts that they've shared and the feelings she's observed through clues like words, body languages, gestures and actions. It's a plea for a total understanding, to know the entirety of someone else's thoughts and feelings in the same way that she has total access to hers or that I have total access to mine.

I understand and admire this plea. It sounds modest but it's anything but, it's the biggest thing you can ask of someone, the purest intimacy. I'm not sure it's even a real possibility. But I too would like to bridge this emotional gap that separates us. I want to know what you think and how you feel – not just about me, about everything. I already know how I feel about all of these things, but knowing how I feel isn't so exciting for me. I don't like being the centre of my world, I don't think I deserve to be – I want you to be there too. I want everyone to be.

The music that's present on Lieutenant isn't going to surprise any fans of Gabi Losoncy's work. It's like posting yet another selfie to Instagram – it still looks like the same person, they're just a little older now. I'm not even sure what can be said about the music, it's all a seemingly careless rumbling, like a microphone left in a pocket while the artist walks and moves, the amplified sounds of a shaking purse, or a contact mic attached to a bed sheet during a sex act. It's kind of inexplicable, but it feels to me like this is Gabi answering her own prompt – this is her sharing her thoughts and her feelings using an aesthetic that makes sense to her and that she can express herself honestly within. The catch is that even when laying it out like this, I still don't know how she feels or what she's thinking. I think that's just how it is though, maybe we aren't meant to fully understand anyone other than ourselves, maybe the way we think is so different that even if you did tell me every last thought I still wouldn't have access to the full picture in the same way that you do.

So we rely on clues and on words. We ask questions and we observe reactions in an attempt to understand. "Do you like it?", Gabi asks towards the end of the single-sided LP. I don't think it's a question for me, and I'm not sure what "it" is, but it's a question that runs much deeper than simple curiosity. It's another plea for understanding, to truly understand how someone else feels, to hear what they're thinking. If we're unable to connect our brains to another human being so thoroughly that the full extent of their thoughts are immediately clear to us, this communication is the next best thing. So I'll continue to look for the signs, listen to your words, and observe the context clues that tell me how you feel and what you're thinking and who and how you really are. Even if my world is stuck revolving around myself, it doesn't mean that with some effort I can't see your world as well.

- Connor Kurtz

Lionel Marchetti & Decibel - Inland Lake (le lac int​é​rieur) (Room40, 2023)

Louise Devenish, Cat Hope, Stuart James, Lionel Marchetti, Tristen Parr, Lindsay Vickery, and Aaron Wyatt perform two collaborative compositions for percussion, flute & ocarina, piano, electronics, cello, bass clarinet, viola & violin, and radio on the 38' Inland Lake (le lac int​é​rieur).

A sound narrative seems to take the lead-footed diver's path, rim to rim along the lacustrine profile. From crystalline resonances and quavering breath, the glinting surface water and the fetch that ripples it, some insect hovering over it in coarse nasal buzzing. To synthesizer's abyssal atmospheres, sonar songs and morse beats, radio transmissions clipped in the deep as if picked up in outer space, darting strings like fish unwittingly caught in light that shouldn't be there, seismic rumbles, moments of stillness as settled as silt. Its narrative circle and trough recalling the waves its more resonant sounds do, two forms of the same thing like the blurring of acoustic and electric, natural and constructed, ensemble and composer, the surface and the deep. 

The brief epilogue a reflective glimpse in chirping dyad against a celestial backdrop. 

- Keith Prosk

oishi - once upon a time there was a mountain (Bezirk Tapes, 2023)

Ren Shang and Zheng Hao play two tracks with sampler, recordings, and other electronics on the 30' once upon a time there was a mountain. 

Leveraging the cassette format, the presentation suggests a continuity and divide as alike as walking up and down a mountain, on different faces or even with the new view of what was behind you before ahead of you now. One is hum, whirr, chitter, crackle, clips of radio, impressions of concrete scenarios in voice, footfall, and wind. One revs and rumbles like an unmuffled combustion engine, with country western crooners cutting in. While the second evokes it the first references the more rural Illinois in its recordings for a kind of road story, the mundane modern odyssey in search of identity, fit for a debut. Bucolic signposts in original audio and obliquely associated mimickry color the minimal sounds around them, that could carry any meaning. What was next to nothing before reinforces the fantasy only in juxtaposition to the brokedown building blocks of concrete and musical sources. Once upon a time there was a mountain but the weather wore it to dirt to be a bed for cultivation where before it would not grow. 

- Keith Prosk

Thank you so much for sharing time with harmonic series.

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New Recordedness interviews are available, featuring: Jozef Dumoulin in conversation with Flin van Hemmen; Luciano Maggiore with Nick Hoffman; Matt Robidoux with Yutaka Hirose; Kenny Warren with Joanna Mattrey; Frantz Loriot with Silvia Tarozzi & Deborah Walker; and Frantz Loriot with Theresa Wong.

MUSEXPLAT continues its interview series featuring Maxi Mas, Emi Bahamonde Noriega, and other contributors in conversation with Ana G. Gamboa, Alma Laprida, Daniel Bruno, and several others. 

Jaap Blonk recently released the book AsemiQuads, featuring his recent, always distinctive visual poetry. See 1/18 again for a sampling of Blonk’s notation.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider a one-time or recurring donation. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $1.25 to $3.36 for January and $6.35 to $8.47 for February. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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conversations

Anastassis Philippakopoulos is a composer and pianist. Over a video chat edited for concision we talk about Greece and America, monophony and polyphony, composition and improvisation, rumination and intuition. 

Recent releases include piano 1 piano 2 piano 3 performed by Teodora Stepančić.

Anastassis Philippakopoulos: Hello, Keith.

Keith Prosk: Hey, Anastassis. How’re you? Thank you for taking a call so late at night.

AP: Yes, yes. I'm very happy to talk with you.

KP: Well I've got some questions planned out but feel free to take it in any direction you like. 

AP: Exactly, that’s the improvisatory process, which could be interesting… maybe sometimes I also ask you something. 

KP: Oh yeah, of course, always feel free to. I imagine a lot of musicians spend quite a bit of time thinking about what they do and maybe why they do it so sometimes it's a little nice to switch it up and think about it on your feet maybe. 

AP: For me it is very interesting how this music talks to you so this will help me also to react. I prefer having dialogue, not monologue. So you can ask me whatever you want.

KP: Perfect. So a lot of your ewr catalog pieces are for piano, the traditional composer’s instrument, and then quite a bit are for flute and clarinet - a lot on the low end, bass flute, bass clarinet… though maybe some of those songs in clarinet in a might recall its prominent place in Greek folk musics - but for a relatively large catalog your instrument selection is relatively narrow, so I guess I wonder what draws you to these instruments. And with those associations of the piano and clarinet in a is there a way that you consciously use them as a kind of springboard off of tradition?

AP: Well, first of all I find it very interesting that you start with this question. I will say that not only my instrumentation is very narrow but something more than that. The majority of my pieces, with the sole exception of three pieces for string orchestra that I composed between 2007 and 2012, are for solo instrument. Piano is the instrument I learned to play as a child. I feel that I'm not the kind of composer who will very intellectually orchestrate, but I prefer to be connected with one instrument, and this instrument is the piano. And there are also many other reasons why I love it. For example, Satie and Feldman are two good reasons, I guess. For my monophonic melodies, clarinet has also a special importance because as you very well said it is connected with Balkan folk music, Greek folk music. At the same time it is a very beautiful western instrument, if we listen to Mozart’s and Brahms’ clarinet quintets or the way that the second Viennese school made use of it. The colorations are subtle, introverted and somehow “shadowy” in clarinet. 

KP: So the solo aspect certainly seems to feed into this ruminative feel that your music can have and…

AP: Can you explain to me what ruminative means, I have a vague impression…

KP: Yeah, kind of reflective or meditative maybe…

AP: Yes, thinking inwardly.

KP: Yeah. And then definitely overcrowding would dash or get rid of the character of what a lot of your pieces seem to have but is there a reason why you’re drawn to solo instruments? 

AP: So your question goes to monophony maybe? Or we can talk also about the piano pieces which are polyphonic somehow?

KP: Yeah, both. I guess, what draws you to just a single performer rather than multiple performers?

AP: Yes. That’s a very good question. I think you answered that before in a way and we can continue in this direction. I have a necessity for my music to be ruminative, as you said. If I can convey my thoughts through one instrument, that means I don’t need a second instrument. It seems that through the choice of one instrument I wanted to secure a kind of “unity” which was always important for me. Then, having this “unity” I could proceed to other questions of form and expression. 

KP: Yeah. Maybe seems a bit circular but it seems like you’re concerned with individual expression and for that to be possible the expression needs to come from an individual type of thing.

AP: For me, as someone who comes from south eastern Europe, the music of the eastern Mediterranean became increasingly important. Ancient greek music - the very few examples we have from it - Byzantine music, Arab music, the music generally of Middle East is monophonic. So I have found myself in this dual position, from the one side to love and to study the western tradition and from the other side to discover a special beauty in the monophonic melody of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. I don’t want to make the mistake - because in my opinion it would be a mistake - to take melodic elements from eastern traditions, to orchestrate them and to make a kind of counterpoint on these elements. I want to have my music somehow naked. 

KP: Yeah. Since you mentioned the Near Eastern or Greek folk music, whenever we go to a Greek service at a church over here, it’s all monophonic chants, so I can see that playing a huge part… 

AP: Most of my recent piano pieces, if we listen for example piano works with Melaine Dalibert, are monophonic…

KP: Yeah. So even though most of your music is monophonic melodies I think when we first started talking I mentioned that I almost didn’t recognize… or, I put on Melaine’s realization and I later recognized the piece while listening to your realization not by the melody but by the harmonic behaviors happening in between the notes, in the overlapping decay. And you mentioned that you weight these behaviors as much as the notes when thinking about a piece. But, yeah, I guess, how do you think of that happening with your piano pieces but not necessarily with your wind pieces. In a way it kind of asks you to listen to the space in between the flute and clarinet notes a little differently than the piano notes when those two kinds of pieces are juxtaposed but how do you think of that space in between notes when you’re using different instruments?

AP: From the one side, at the clarinet and flute pieces we have total silence between the phrases, whereas in the piano pieces we have this - let’s say - cloud of harmonics, this resonance who dies away. These are two different worlds for me. Through this differentiation we can see that for me polyphony somehow exists in monophony because in the piano pieces when we have this small cluster inside the tetrachord then we have a kind of polyphony. So this is maybe why I tend to write in the recent years my melodies for the piano. I love this cloud, this resonance that stays there in the air and gradually fades away. Sometimes I think that maybe the melody itself is simply the preparation for this cloud. You have said to me something similar in the recent past. 

KP: Yeah. I have a bad ear for pitch but whenever you sent me the scores I saw the branching pathways the melodies take, where they frequently start from a similar point and move through similar points, so it makes sense that that’s happening. But yeah I recognize it less from the melody and more from the harmonic interaction, or that kind of cloud. So between your realization and Melaine’s realization, those behaviors were similar enough for me to pick up on it, and I imagine those are somewhat determined by the pitches, but your pieces also allow for a variable time or a variable shape…

AP: Ah, Melaine played the pieces slightly faster as I do. And he gave to the resonance slightly less time than I do. I think that his interpretation is more communicative and more extroverted, something which I find very positive. I let more time and maybe sometimes the pieces become slower and slower. It is like a slow movement you know, where one conductor plays it a little bit like andante and the other like adagio.

KP: Ah, OK. But are those kinds of harmonic behaviors a key to a realization of your piece? Because I noticed they aren’t explicitly talked about in your direction other than maybe implied through legato.

AP: The most important thing is the formation of the melody. Very often my recent pieces are written in the space of only one tetrachord. So the most important thing is to find a lively world inside this tetrachord, how the melodic phrases will move inside this space of a perfect fourth, or sometimes a diminished fourth, or sometimes an augmented fourth. I search to find expressive curves for the melody to go inwards and outwards and to overlap. I expect the sustain pedal to be down all the time and this is something that I learned from Morton Feldman whose music I discovered when I was a student. And then I expect a soft dynamic. I wouldn't say, you know, “four pianos” and “five pianos” and “three and a half pianos,” no, I don’t like that. Just “pianissimo” or “piano” is written, and hopefully the performer will understand. I don’t want the score to be too dense in information. Sometimes a “quasi-legato” is written because I want the melody to be connected but also every tone can be clearly itself. Diminuendos, crescendos and also complex rhythmical values are avoided. A “poco-rubato” is written and hopefully the instrumentalist will somehow get into the climate of the piece. I want the score to convey a clarity, a meditative tranquility and a friendliness. It is just a melody, a slow taqsim.

KP: Mmhmm. Nice. So some time ago whenever… I think it was probably for wind and light, in an interview with Yuko Zama, you mentioned that you mull over or work through these melodies on walks. Is that still mostly true? 

AP: It is mostly true. Through walking my thoughts become slower and more relaxed and I also observe fine things at the outside world and also inside me. Walking helps me feel and think of my melodic phrases with more clarity. But at this period I try another way of creating music, I mean improvisation. Just to sit at the piano, record an improvisation and see if this talks to me. 

KP: Nice. Because we were kind of talking about that harmonic cloud it seems like whenever you’re on a walk working through the pitches it would be easy to imagine the pitch information but difficult to imagine the harmonic interaction whereas with the improvisation, when you’re at the piano, you can feel that in real time, the harmonic interaction. 

AP: If the composed melody functions well, if it is well crafted, then the cloud afterwards will be also satisfactory. The cloud contains the essence of the melody. Maybe with improvisation I will gain something else which for me is still unknown. A kind of freedom to accept more of my intuitive self.

KP: Yeah, just always trying new things. And I guess between with at least the walking method of working through music and… for me it's difficult for me to think of traditional Greek music without dance. I guess music is movement, time is a measure of movement, so…

AP: Maybe a slow dance then…

KP: [laughs] yeah. Is there a consciously kinetic component to your music?

AP: Yes there is. Melody is from its origins a means for movement. Monophonic melody moves – the way I feel it – with much freedom. 

KP: Mmhmm. Yeah your piano melodies definitely seem to be a little wandering, almost branching where a lot of the chords might start in the same place and then they’ll go a slightly different way in each line. Specifically the one that you sent me, 2019, where a lot of the melodic lines, they start on the same pitch and they’re kind of variations on each other. I don’t know, it kind of feels like you’re lost on a walk because you’re seeing similar vegetation but feel you’re in a different place type of thing.

AP: As you mentioned before that piece, 2019, the three first phrases start from the same tone and they go down. Each time they move with different skips and steps. Did you know that in ancient Greece the natural movement of the modes was downwards? I find this very inspiring… So from the one side the tetrachord I use at this piece is very often found in the music of the Middle East, and from the other side the analytic process of the relations between the tones is certainly influenced from my studies on western music. 

KP: Yeah. Do you feel any tension at all between this eastern and western approach?

AP: There is a tension but there is also the beauty of it. If you would ask me what kind of music I'm listening to during the last months, there is a musician, his name is Munir Bashir, he plays the oud. A great musician from Iraq. And at the same day I could listen to chamber music by Joseph Haydn or Robert Schumann or Jürg Frey’s string quartets, or Antoine Beuger’s jankelevitch sextets, or piano music from the earth and the sky by Michael Pisaro. So there is a beautiful tension, which brings all this music together. 

KP: Yeah. I feel like tension and ambiguity is where the beautiful stuff lies. So to maybe talk about another tension, you spend a lot of time analyzing the melodies, working on the melodies. I've also noticed that outside of maybe some early pieces there’s no revisions of your pieces. So it seems like there’s a lot of time really grappling with something and then it just rests…

AP: Thank god [laughs]

KP: [laughs] I guess, is there something conscious that allows a piece to rest after so much time working it? And do you have urges to revise that you have to resist?

AP: It is true that each one of the pieces takes many months to be composed. And if a melody wants to remain “unsolved” for years, it is not a surprise. I don’t work with deadlines and don’t take commissions. I let the piece work with me as much as the piece wants. The good news is that there is a moment where I find the melody, and I feel a deep satisfaction when this moment comes. Then I can continue singing or playing the melody but I don’t search any more. 

KP: So just an intuitive feeling.

AP: Very intuitive, yes. 

KP: And then going back to the Yuko interview, another tension as well, you mentioned when you’re walking around Athens you kind of see the seat of western civilization along with modern buildings that are much more ephemeral. Are there some ways that that filters down into your music? 

AP: Although I studied composition in Berlin, I didn’t stay in Berlin. Afterwards I decided to live in Greece because I wanted to communicate with this dimension of time which goes back for many hundreds of years or even thousands of years. I can feel it here. It’s not only Athens, it’s also Crete, where my mother’s family comes from, and also many small islands. Living in Greece possibly did not help me create an academic development. I didn’t become a university composer. But I prefer that I stayed here and worked more personally with my music, always in a creative dialogue with many composers and performers coming from other countries. Certainly I would have more chances to develop an academic career if I was living in western Europe or in the States. But I didn’t follow this way.

KP: I’d do the same thing if presented with the choice. Preserve my sanity and keep my love away from business and career. 

AP: Yes, that’s very nice, what you’re saying. For me it would probably be a burden to be a full time academic teacher and to write my music. I prefer to work in a more poetic way. But this is a subjective decision. Other colleagues could certainly manage in a beautiful way to be academic teachers and great composers. 

KP: Mmhmm. Interestingly too you make a slow music and if you think of that way of life as well it’s also slower. Just kind of mimics it. 

AP: I’m trying to keep my everyday life at a slow pace but it is not easy. 

KP: Yeah. Makes you wonder if people who live faster lives make faster music [laughs]

AP: Normally somebody would expect that American people work fast and hard and not have free time. But you seem to have time, that’s very beautiful. 

KP: Yeah I try to go against that norm. I definitely enjoy a slower life. I think most people do. Just particularly over here I think it’s very engrained to want to appear busy and moving and working. 

AP: Same here in Greece. 

KP: Yeah it really seems to be a capitalist culture, you know. You just have to always be producing something, you have to always be growing and it’s rough.

AP: That’s rough.

KP: Yeah. I think it’s just a lot more fulfilling to live a life where you can take the time to breathe and you can have your own personal communion with nature or whatever it is that allows you to rest so you can give yourself to others. There’s no giving to others if you’ve been drained of all you can give. 

AP: I agree so much with that.

KP: Yeah. So I guess when you’re… just returning to the allusion that you sing your melodies as you develop them, when you sing it’s in your whole body, you feel it in your chest. When you transfer that to a piano, how much of that is lost or how much of that feeling do you try to preserve as it moves to piano?

AP: That’s a good question. I guess that the qualities I subjectively choose in my singing, I also try to put them in the piano score. The “singing” of the melody at the piano can also be humble and discrete, not with too much expression but also not cold. 

KP: Mmhmm and I mean of course the movements you’re making with your humming translate to the pitches on the piano but would you say that the vibrations that you feel in your chest, is that conveyed in the harmonic clouds on the piano at all?

AP: I enjoy both ways. Through singing I have this vibration in the chest as you said, and you have also the silence afterwards. The total silence, the absence of the voice. At the piano you have the cloud of the harmonics. I feel that both ways are good. So maybe through the piano I discover again polyphony as a second step of composition. The polyphony behind the obvious monophony. 

KP: Nice. So we've been dancing around maybe some stereotypical characteristics of music that’s associated with wandelweiser like silence and time, flexible time. Historically… I've heard on the grapevine, I think it was Gil, I think he was saying whenever you first joined the collective that some people were a bit shocked that someone who composed these very beautiful melodies had found their way to the collective.

AP: Antoine was from the beginning positive with my melodies. He has explained to me that my music is somehow connected to John Cage’s music. I can understand that some people were shocked. But it was a creative exchange of music, the composers in the wandelweiser circle were always open to listen to each other’s works.

KP: Mmhmm. Yeah so your flexible time reminded me of Cage. It looks differently on something like his number pieces where he has time brackets but that people are allowed to determine the shape of things… similarly it seems you give quite a bit of flexibility on how the shape of your melodies actually come out. I think a lot of times in your direction you mention that the last note with the fermata should be two to three times as long and of course you could play all these notes relatively quickly but that would probably be a bad interpretation…

AP: There is an (approximate) tempo indicator in the piece which helps. 

KP: Oh, yes. But I guess you could also see the maximum possible length that you could sustain the note and then divide it by two or three and figure out your melody that way but then you’re so locked in that that seems like a bad interpretation too. So it encourages performers to actually play with time… You know now that we’ve talked about singing a bit the wind instruments don’t have that resonance in between just like the voice loses resonance very quickly. You might have mentioned this in the very beginning of the talk, but for something like the resonant clouds being so important for the piano music how do you think of the silence in between the notes for the wind pieces?

AP: This is an other world. I learned much about the experience of silence at the summer wandelweiser concerts in Dusseldorf. I gradually incorporated more silence in my melodies for flute or clarinet. If you compare for example onissia from 2002 and song 10 from 2016 you could see this change.

KP: And going back to improvisation, does that coincide with any other changes in your musical interests? 

AP: The interest for improvisation is related with the need to take some distance from the analytical process of composing my melodies and trust my intuition more. To allow more freedom.

KP: Yeah and do you find… so a lot of times I guess improvisers, they might maneuver with intuition because of a familiarity with their instrument but…

AP: There is a danger there… 

KP: What have you found?

AP: I think it's a danger if I improvise with my fingers. That would be very boring. And I would be the first one to be disappointed with that. I would like to improvise without any need to be virtuosic. I wonder what kind of music will come out if I stop thinking. And at the same time, feeling more, listening deeply what comes out simultaneously during improvising. Keith, I wonder, are you connected with other composers of the wandelweiser circle? Music that you know well?

KP: So, my listening, I really sort of started out listening to rock and then jazz and only really within the past few years have I really started digging into this area of music so some of the larger pieces from the past I'm aware of but a lot of my listening is very recent. So with the wandelweiser composers I've heard some stuff from uh… obviously all of your stuff, Jürg, Michael, Eva Maria, Burkhard… and André Möller is another favorite… but I'm not aware of everyone and the farther back I go the more that becomes true. 

AP: There are so many great CDs in the ewr catalogue..

KP: So Gil has actually completed an interview with Michael that’s going to publish in a few days. That was an interesting interview, it was a little more… I feel like I have to be more from the heart and Gil and Michael know the names of philosophers and stuff like that [laughs]

AP: It’s good that you’re from the heart, it helped me share thoughts.

KP: Yeah. But other than that a lot of the younger people I'm more familiar with. We published an interview with Kevin Good recently, who studied under Michael for a bit, he’s a vibraphone player. And Sergio Merce and Cristián Alvear were other early interviews in the newsletter. 

AP: Yes. It’s interesting that people who are attracted to the wandelweiser often come from rock, jazz, etc. 

KP: Mmhmm it’s difficult to say but listening to like Nirvana as a teen and stuff… [laughs]

AP: I was listening to The Doors at my early teens.

KP: Yeah, yeah, but what I was always most drawn to was the extended technique stuff anyways. Like it was the feedback solo that interested me or the character of the distortion. So I think it makes sense that I eventually found my way towards stuff that really mostly dealt with non-traditional techniques or approaches.

AP: Yes, you see for example my music has nothing to do with extended techniques. I go back to the very basics. But maybe my approach.

KP: Yeah. And there’s definitely… it’s come back around. There was probably a period in my life where I was a little angrier, edgier and I wanted something loud and something noisy but it’s come back around to where I really enjoy something that just sounds beautiful too and I think what particularly draws me to you compared to some other wandelweiser catalog composers in particular is that harmonic interaction between the piano notes. I think a lot of the music that I try to write some words for, it’s often all a very very narrow strain of music dealing with harmonic interaction [laughs]

AP: Thank you so much for your interest in my music!

KP: That’s all that I had mapped out but did you have anywhere else that you wanted to go?

AP: If you are OK with it I am also OK with it. 

KP: Well, have a good night and thank you so much.

AP: Have a good day with your son!

KP: Yes. Hopefully at this point he’s napping. I will say, sorry to keep you, one thing that I've found that’s super interesting is that my relationship with sound has been completely turned upside down with a newborn. Because your ears always have to be available and aware, you can’t listen to stuff all the time or for long. A lot of the time we have on white noise for soothing. We have played him a lot of music but it generally has to be soft. I typically listen on headphones but my ears have to be available. Not that I always have music going anyways, I treasure silence, but it’s been a drastic change to… it’s constant awareness of listening without listening to anything in particular and then it’s a lot of white noise [laughs]

AP: Beautiful, a very deep experience! 

KP. Yes. Well, good night.

annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Julián Galay - Casa (2018)

Julián Galay is a composer that works with sound, moving image and language through experimental film, performance, installation and edition. Between sound spaces, places and personal relationships, often utilizing field recording, tuning forks and sine tones for instruments. Some recurring collaborators include Javier Bustos, Craig Pedersen, and Ángeles Rojas. Some recent releases include ɣ and breathe into the forest, into the bird, into the song with Ángeles Rojas and Eine Stadt, Ein Haus. Julián operates the SELLO POSTAL label with Nacho Castillo. 

Casa is a 2018 composition commissioned by and site-specific to Centro de Experimentación del Teatro Colón for Javier Bustos, Joaquín Chibán, Bruno D'Ambrosio, Juan Denari, Manuel Rodríguez Riva, and Bárbara Togander who perform with electronics and non-conventional instruments, expanded violin and viola, expanded cello and contrabass, percussion and objects, modified clarinet, alto sax and bass clarinet, and voice. A four-act sound play, the first three pages carry a narrative text and performance objects include glass cases displaying vegetation and miniature buildings in states of destruction. The final act combines the contents of the previous three. The score, charcoal on tracing paper for easy overlay, contains an absolute timeline, traditional dynamics indicators, and embedded textual direction for instrument, technique, and expressivity but its splintered staves contain beamed stems, diagonally flowing lines, and percussive marks more gestural than pitch information. 

The sometimes dreamlike text seems to explore when a house is not a home and shelter betrays its purpose through illuminating the destruction inherent to its creation. A great tree is felled for lumber, a soul decays in an infirmary, a house encroaches on tiger territory. These stories amass for a babbling narrative in the end. An explicit theme of the piece is this destruction of language and like globalization kills local dialects a new whole is created but at the cost of its individual components. The distinctly structural interlock of parts in various orientations of the final minutes, made possible through these gestural marks and their overlay, mimics the motif of the text and constructs a kind of wall both on the page and perhaps sonically the density of which seems likely to be more baffling than comforting, a feeling more trapped than kept. Its designation of parts by performer over instrument on a shared page distinguishes the right kind of collectivity from assimilation, its site-specificity places the local over the global, and its particular notation sets it apart from the kind of standardization it might critique. 

reviews

Beliah / Heilbron / Majkowski / Shirley - Bertrand Denzler: Low Strings (Confront Recordings, 2023)

Sébastien Beliah, Jon Heilbron, Mike Majkowski, and Derek Shirley perform two Bertrand Denzler compositions for Beliah and three other contrabassists from the titular series on the 40’ Low Strings. 

The guttural groan and growl of these strings sustain for the duration and from them comes a catalog, a menagerie of harmonic interaction. Hoot owl beats. Wind buffeting. Singing sirens. Doppler whirr. War drum thrums. Turning motors. Celestial wobbles. A turbulent flood of musical movement from what seems minimal manual motion. But the subtle variation of bowing action still audibly tethers itself to the behaviors of beatings. The relatively stable periodicity of players sounding in tandem or the volatile excitation of broken, offset overlapping relationships. The sense of harmonic expansion with increasing volume under greater pressures. The rolling undulations of slower bowing and frenetic vibrations of quicker action. Sometimes multiple beatings appear simultaneously, rippling through one another as in a pool of reflection and interference. Low waves slow the others down; high ones send a swiftness through them. Composed around the same time as the suite of bass explorations for Félicie Bazelaire, Basse seule, of which the shared continuousness of sounding conveys a kind of systematic searching of harmonic possibilities, with changes made more apparent in their proximity, compared to the more free yet disorienting expressivity - and deeper timbral palette - of the cellular structures and silences of developments like the Arc series for CoÔ. 

- Keith Prosk

Bertrand Denzler / Jason Kahn - Translations (Potlatch, 2022)

Bertrand Denzler and Jason Kahn play a 35’ set with tenor saxophone and electronics on Translations, their first meeting

Some moments approach textural and gestural mimickry, that one could become the other. Electronics accommodate saxophone by not sustaining inhumanly and maybe saxophone meets electronics in not moving too swiftly. Static crash abuts breathy friction. Clicks juxtapose popping tongue techniques. Beeping feedback squeals with shrill trills. Arced coos alongside gliss. But timbres never blur. Maybe they even diverge, more normative sax tones and the distinct noise in the ballpark of radio-like static and feedback of this setup in increasing frequency toward the end. Saxophone doesn’t follow electronics as closely in frequency as it probably could and electronics don’t engage in overt rhythms with saxophone though they probably could. Mimicking but seemingly purposefully refraining from the areas of the instruments at the points closest to the other to underline the boundaries and the choice of the player, the heart of improvisatory contexts. Or maybe it was a wish for a few moments but perfect alignment is not possible so soon. Either way, it sounds the social negotiations, the tensions and the happy affinities, of a first meeting with rare clarity. 

- Keith Prosk

Preview and purchase Translations at Potlatch.

Tristan Kasten-Krause and Jessica Pavone - Images of One (Relative Pitch Records, 2023)

Tristan Kasten-Krause and Jessica Pavone play four suites of harmonies on the 38’ Images of One. 

One of two they move between resonant unity and more polar play. Drifting apart and rejoining in phasing relationships in gliss as easy as the concavely meniscused waltz of falling leaves or the more angular staccato zip of herringbone. Across motivic gaps, to join and drift again in other material. Even their frequency ranges appear to often overlap, though the different bodies and their strings’ sympathetic resonances amongst their neighbors always conveys the distinctive timbres of each. To beat sweetly or for sour harmonies like alarm sirens. Zooming in and out of sounds in slowing and hastening time. In alternating tension and calm. High and low two sounding the tide between them that connects them, relates them. 

- Keith Prosk

Quatuor Bozzini - Éliane Radigue: Occam Delta XV (Collection QB, 2023)

Isabelle Bozzini, Stéphanie Bozzini, Alissa Cheung, and Clemens Merkel perform two 37’ realizations of their delta from Éliane Radigue’s Occam Ocean across consecutive dates on Occam Delta XV. 

If it were only the numbered series of releases from shiiin, that each Occam recording introduces something special could be considered a conscious aspect of presentation but as this characteristic continues through independent presentations too it might illuminate the naturalistic diversity inherent to a system whose foundation begins with the foundation of life. Recordings have seemed to so far systematically introduced occam, river, delta, and ocean forms, traced one performer through them, provoked comparison of behaviors in instrumentation with all strings or all winds. Always each showcases the relationship of the performer to their instrument and the limit of each. This delta feels special in that while other ensembles - Zinc & Copper, Decibel, Onceim - are anchored by a chevalier with an occam Quatuor Bozzini stands without as a kind of unit unto itself. This is also the first presentation to provide two recordings together, across consecutive nights and, though it’s ambiguous, I assume the same place.

And it is the first delta to sound deltaic to me. The quartet begins closer to unison than it ends, with the gradual recognition that bowing cadences seem to have drifted towards their instruments’ natural frequencies, twin violins in relative ecstatic excitation over low and slow cello, having got there by a meandering way that felt in the moment to be suspended, slow bowings’ strokes carving bank and bar in epochal time, a rise in volume splaying harmonics like the channel widens at the space it splits, the intuition and the information of never stepping in the same river twice. In between always a world of harmonics like life under a microscope, teeming. A few provide markers across evenings as fossils would. A kind of high-tension tanpura buzz. A dancing satyr fluting. The differences are subtle but tangible, felt more than known and ineffable. Perhaps the satyr’s bolder on the first night and the tanpura on the second. But it lights the imagination to wonder the minute physical parameters that would change the sound, the pressure and the temperature of the room one night or another, beyond the infinite variations in the performers’ hands. 

- Keith Prosk

Biliana Voutchkova & Sarah Davachi - Slow poem for Stiebler (Another Timbre, 2023)

Sarah Davachi and Biliana Voutchkova arrange and perform the Ernstalbrecht Stiebler composition dedicated to Voutchkova, F​ü​r Biliana, with reed organ, violin, and voice on the 49’ Slow poem for Stiebler. 

The further away from the current moment the more the sands beneath my words shift but back when I tried to write some words for F​ü​r Biliana it’s interesting to read that I could have confused the solo for a duo and some sounds for organ. So though the duration expands eight times and the progression of tones modularize into sometimes unrecognizable combinations the extension feels natural, accentuating the sustain, sonority, and movement of the original. Slow speed, sustain, and states of repetition shape a sense of suspension. Oscillating rhythms and circular structures sound the space shared between these two states. The sound mimics the form as closely as water would. In floating, bobbing upon a swaying sea of tender ether desublimated from hymnic beatings in quavering tremolo that hastens and slows and sings. Living and listening for the moment and so laboring to extend it. Letting sound shape shape time as much as the arrangement. With more mutualism manifested in the harmonic interaction between these two performers and even reflected at the title level between composer and dedicatee.

- Keith Prosk

Thank you so much for sharing time with harmonic series.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider a one-time or recurring donation. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $1.25 to $3.36 for January and $6.35 to $8.47 for February. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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Queer Percussion Research Group published its first zine, featuring scores and sharp writings and conversations from contributors Amadeus Julian Regucera, Andy Meyerson, Bent Duo, Bill Solomon, Caitlyn Cawley, JC, Jerry Pergolesi, Jennifer Torrence, Matt LeVeque, Myles McLean, Noah D., Sarah Hennies, ToastMasx x Mascaroni, edited and published by Bill Solomon. 

Mark van Tongeren recently published the book Overtone Singing, with ethnomusicological, physical, and practical perspectives.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider a one-time or recurring donation. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $0.85 to $4.52 for December and $1.25 to $3.36 for January. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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conversations

Gil Sansón: The essay you wrote to deal with the subject of Wandelweiser is very much essential as an introduction, and in it you describe how the composers who are now seen as the main figures of Wandelweiser came to meet each other and realise the potential for musical and social advance within a new relationship between sound and silence, between time perceived and time quantified. I'm particularly interested in how you came to this paradigm before meeting Antoine Beuger or the other founding figures of Wandelweiser, and to what degree the common references (Cage, Wolff, Fluxus, etc.) made evident that there was a group of composers who were mining the same territory, so to speak, without being aware of each other. The question here would be how did you come to be so that your musical interests aligned so harmoniously with these composers from Europe?

Michael Pisaro-Liu: I think it’s one of those things where preparation is only a part of it. I must have been primed a bit by my background. In Chicago I studied with George Flynn (who had been simultaneously part of the uptown and downtown scenes in NY in the 1960s), Ben Johnston (who had worked with Partch and Cage) and Alan Stout (who was a student of Wallingford Riegger and Henry Cowell). I was very inspired by the music of Charles Ives. When I was in my early twenties, we had a group that played Feldman, Wolff, Cage, Haubenstock-Ramati, and so on. So although experimental music was out of fashion in classical music circles in the 80s when I was a student, I was actually never far from it. However it really was out-of-fashion in the US in the 80s and for some time thereafter. The other plus of being in Chicago was that the AACM was there. I loved all of it - Art Ensemble, Braxton, Muhal Richard Abrams, and though he was not in AACM, Cecil Taylor - not that I knew what to do with it as a composer who was pretty far removed from the jazz tradition. (In retrospect it’s obviously foundational to any contemporary conception of experimental music.)

In my first 12 or so years of writing music, I had written in all kinds of different styles, seemingly searching for something. I liked the European avant-garde (especially Ligeti, Lutoslawski and Berio), but it didn’t feel like something I could honestly work with as a composer from the US (and from the midwest at that). Increasingly, and perhaps like the rest of the people in Wandelweiser, I was attempting to find something that spoke a completely different language. In around 1990 or so I put a long silence in a piece, with no clear reason why. There were tentative steps in that direction for a few years in the early ‘90s. I would not say that I'd found the Wandelweiser paradigm yet. It was more like seeing the fin of a shark moving quickly across the water without knowing what was beneath.

The “alignment,” as you call it, felt like it was instantaneous. More or less as soon as I heard Kunsu Shim’s music, and then shortly thereafter, Antoine and Jürg’s - I absolutely knew that was what I had been searching for. They were bolder - especially Antoine. And they seemed to be able to do more with their music in the European environment. Perhaps because Cage, Feldman, Lucier, Wolff and so on were still pretty central to Europe’s conception of the American avant-garde? But for me Kunsu, Antoine and Jürg were miles ahead of that, and lighted the way forward. I stepped on the gas to try to catch up.

GS: You used the term singularity to describe Wandelweiser. I think it's very accurate. An event from which a number of trajectories emerge, that regardless of how far they may stretch from each other they can always be traced back to this singular event. Now more than 20 years after, the Wandelweiser network has grown considerably and the map of the network finds many overlapping vectors encompassing many types of music making, complicating the issue of what is the sound of Wandelweiser to a high degree. At the same time, if we make the analogy to that other singularity (The Big Bang) it was to be expected that some bodies would generate more gravity, one evidence of this being your Gravity Wave label. My question is this: Did you feel in any way limited by the Wandelweiser record label regarding the way you feel your music should be presented, or was there simply a need to express yourself artistically in every aspect of record production? Maybe a mix of factors including these? Your CDs on Wandelweiser seem to have a different attitude compared to the ones on Gravity Wave, in which there are artistic statements that seem to push the limits of what's commonly known as Wandelweiser music, yet at the same time retain the same sensibility. Some of them have a closed form appearance, in that they are fully formed artistic statements and not so much recordings of your scores as finished electroacoustic pieces. It all seems to point at a wish to test personal boundaries in a more controlled editorial environment, completely devoted to a singular vision. 

MP-L: The analogy with a singularity (or “event”) is, in my opinion, correct. I refer back to this beginning all the time. My belief that the consequences of this event should be explored and tested to their furthest limits has definitely led me in directions I wouldn’t have anticipated 30 years ago. But it really hasn’t been so calculated. I never thought about what I could or could not release on Wandelweiser, in terms of the actual music. Aside from some practical considerations, including the idea of starting Gravity Wave being suggested by Jon Abbey, with the generous offer that he and Yuko Zama would help me run it. I think it (i.e., GW)  turned into something like what you said: an exploration of the recording as a fixed or in some ways, closed, work. For me there’s no getting around that fact, so I thought: why not embrace it? After all, my scored works often continue to deal with openness and indeterminacy, in situations where the creativity of the performer in the moment accounts for so much of what we enjoy about the music. Musical performance in the live situation is like theater, whereas fixed works are like film. So, over time, I’m less interested in using the label to record scored pieces than to explore ideas that come up in a fixed, clearly finite medium. If I were to try to summarize, looking back at the series of 20 discs, and in particular Continuum Unbound and Nature Denatured and Found Again, it has something to do with how a sense of the infinite can be touched in situations where there are clear limits. The formal possibilities for exploring this continue to fascinate me. 

The image I have of Wandelweiser is an exploding star-plant, casting embers in just about any direction, and then encouraging these fire-seeds to grow in ways that are conducive to the local environment. There’s something ineffable in the “whatever” of Wandelweiser, as it was and is. I’ve never accepted stylistic descriptions as what it was all about, even if, especially at the beginning, one could have described the similarities between the work of the various composers more easily. Rather than individual works then, it is these collectively explored trajectories in what is still a kind of world or community, that continues to fascinate and inspire me. 

GS: The view you describe is the one that feels closer to reality in my encounters with Wandelweiser. If I could summarize it in one simple notion, I would say that it is an invitation, a very open invitation without a goal in sight, but with an inclusiveness that seems to imply a tacit understatement about what Wandelweiser offers, which doesn't need to be explained and the certainty that whatever results from this encounter you will still recognize yourself in it, and that this voluntary rejection of the impulse to define and set limits for this greater collective body of work is, in fact, a big plus that stimulates experimentation. I would also add that there's also an awareness of the lessons of past experiences as ethical guidelines that smartly avoids confrontation and stimulates civilized discussion, which has prevented the typical splintering into subgroups according to ideological or political divides.

My next question has to do with style and form. I've noticed in your work a strong affinity towards the grid, and while thinking deeper about it I've noticed that it is one of the key aspects that has enabled you to retain stylistic consistency when dealing with the very wide array of sound present in your work, from white noise to highly charged with content samples of soul music or location specific field recordings. This makes me wonder, do you work with a continuum between aspects of sound (from fully neutral to highly charged in terms of content, from pure noise to pure tone, and so on) to generate material (and perhaps to ensure dynamic variety) and then decide on the proper length units of each block of the grid? Or does a previous notion already narrow down the possibilities?

MP-L: I think you’ve put that very well and completely agree.

That’s a challenging question! I’d have to say that I do not have just one working method. I’m not working towards a kind of unified theory, and don’t see my work as needing to demonstrate obvious sonic continuity along a single trajectory. It is the ineffable continuities that interest me. Each new piece or project feels like a beginning. Its source is in an impulse that genuinely stirs or disorients me. This can be almost anything.  I’m interested in things that I perceive to be outside myself, as things that feel strange or unknown. So a work starts as an encounter with this foreign matter, which could be an untraceable feeling, a sonic disturbance, a speculative idea, the odd sensibility of another musician (or some combination of these) – or a word, a sentence, an image, a wave, a road or a river. Most of the time it takes me a long time to tease out the implications of this impulse. A lot of trial and error. Believe it or not, I’m not interested in formal ideas or musical processes for their own sake. The technical materials have to grow from this impulse, not vice versa. So having said all that, I have to recognize that certain things (like the grid) do come back again and again. Perhaps there is, after all, a deep need to put the chaos of an encounter into some kind of order. But I’m not obsessed with order - in fact I’m more drawn to things that feel errant and unpredictable (in small or large ways) than to things that seem to follow logically. So I guess maybe a grid (or some of the other schemes I’ve used in the past) is a rather simple way to give some kind of order to situations that I will (hopefully) allow to retain a sense of contingent, organic growth and decay.  But I feel I’m describing more of my working process than the actual pieces, which in the end somehow all do feel to me like they belong in the same family. 

GS: Indeed, your music can be all over the place in stylistic terms, and yet it retains enough characteristics to be recognized as your music. One example is Melody, Silence for solo guitar: very removed from a lot of your music in terms of structure, which is very loose compared to most of your pieces. The chaos you mention seems to get in here by way of odd modulations and voicings that seem to have no other reason than chance or whim, but at the same time you do have a "style" of guitar, it's easily recognizable. 

What you say about the spark that lightens a project being something as small as a phrase or a quotation is quite interesting. Your collaboration with Graham Lambkin seems a case in point, it all sprang out of a line from Pierrot lunaire, am I correct? Also, I want to talk about Revolution Shuffle: here the grid is very much in evidence and the effect is that of a colossal mosaic, a giant object to be observed following a type of attention span that Stockhausen would have called moment form, the type of listening that's not looking for development of themes but who's attention is focused on the moment by moment basis of the music. Needless to say, it's your most political work, capturing an urgency and a sense of rage that's uncommon in people's perception of what Wandelweiser music is. Now, people who have been paying attention to the words of Antoine Beuger will not see this piece as an oddity, as he said that for him a piece like Non consumiamo Marx by Luigi Nono is as current today for him as it was when it was released, meaning he doesn't see it as far away or antithetical to what Wandelweiser stands for. In that sense, Revolution Shuffle is, perhaps, not unlike Non consumiamo Marx for the XXI century. In a way, it seems that other pieces of yours prepared the terrain for this one, I'm thinking about Étant donnés, in which you include samples loaded with semantic and cultural content. Is Revolution Shuffle a personal milestone in that sense?

MP-L: “Indeed, your music can be all over the place in stylistic terms, and yet it retains enough characteristics to be recognized as your music. One example is Melody, Silence for solo guitar: very removed from a lot of your music in terms of structure, which is very loose compared to most of your pieces. The chaos you mention seems to get in here by way of odd modulations and voicings that seem to have no other reason than chance or whim, but at the same time you do have a "style" of guitar, it's easily recognizable.”

That’s interesting to hear you say. In fact the piece began as a transcription of an improvisation. The modulations, voices and other odd turns of phrase must connect to my unconscious, deeply buried sense of melody and harmony. My inner ear tells me where to go. In the process of refining the transcription into the piece into the final structures, I tried to preserve the freshness of those choices.

“What you say about the spark that lightens a project being something as small as a phrase or a quotation is quite interesting. Your collaboration with Graham Lambkin seems a case in point, it all sprang out of a line from Pierrot Lunaire, am I correct?”

Actually it was the other way around. Graham and I began working together on the pieces in a different way. I composed and recorded a set of short piano pieces which I sent to him with the idea that he could do whatever he wanted to with them. The pieces I wrote were (in my mind) by an imaginary composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, perhaps an acquaintance of Schoenberg’s. There was perhaps also a touch of Lovecraft. As our collaboration developed from Graham’s reworking of that music, and with many additions of his own, this character got even stronger. When he asked about the titles I went into the German translation of Albert Giraud’s Pierrot lunaire looking for funny phrases - and of course had always loved that one. For the other titles, there are a couple of the images I just made up (and translated into German) and a couple from Georg Trakl. (So the titles came very much after the fact.)

“Also, I want to talk about Revolution Shuffle: here the grid is very much in evidence and the effect is that of a colossal mosaic, a giant object to be observed following a type of attention span that Stockhausen would have called momente form, the type of listening that's not looking for development of themes but who's attention is focused on the moment by moment basis of the music. Needless to say, it's your most political work, capturing an urgency and a sense of rage that's uncommon in people's perception of what Wandelweiser music is. Now, people who have been paying attention to the words of Antoine Beuger will not see this piece as an oddity, as he said that for him a piece like Non consumiamo Marx by Luigi Nono is as current today for him as it was when it was released, meaning he doesn't see it as far away or antithetical to what Wandelweiser stands for. In that sense, Revolution Shuffle is, perhaps, not unlike Non consumiamo Marx for the XXI century. In a way, it seems that other pieces of yours prepared the terrain for this one, I'm thinking about Étant donnés, in which you include samples loaded with semantic and cultural content. Is Revolution Shuffle a personal milestone in that sense?”

Yes. As must be obvious, my creative imagination is a bit restless. I love venturing into new territory (even if that means approaching “old” territory as if it were new, as is the case with Schwarze Riesenfalter). But my interest in sampling actually goes back pretty far. I made a sampling piece in the early 1990s (before I joined Wandelweiser) that used a lot of punk music (that piece was called The Voter Registration Act). It’s not something I include in my works list now, but it sometimes resurfaces. (Incidentally, in another work I don’t share often anymore, for choir, I also used some of the Paris 1968 texts like those Nono used in Non consumiamo Marx.)

I got the itch to use the technique again in response to Duchamp’s Étant donnés, which I finally saw in Philadelphia in 2013 after only seeing photos of it before. (Photos absolutely do not do justice to the installation.) So the sampling is a bit of a pun on the word “given” and perhaps includes the concept of the readymade in some sense. My disc of the same name was largely built from samples and then fleshed out with recorded additions.

Jon Abbey was pleasantly surprised by the pieces that used Curtis Mayfield samples and asked if I’d consider making a whole disc (for erstwhile) using similar kinds of samples. But I felt ultimately that I should draw on as wide a range of reference as I felt the desire to include. A lot of the work got started in the early part of the pandemic and during the George Floyd protests (which were very strong in LA, as elsewhere). We were living then (as we still are now) though a time when it seemed that something radical needed to change, but in which the means to do this seem blocked or at least unclear. For me it was also a case of summoning the courage to make this feeling a part of a musical piece. How to do that?

So I started thinking about the power of revolutionary movements: how they both express the vitality and passion of an uprising and then, as stories, as legends, as histories, become a reservoir of hope for future movements. (The Paris Commune was a failure as a revolution, but its power to stimulate future revolutionary momentum seems to have been very large.) The piece was my attempt to capture some of the leftist revolutionary spirit, as preserved in sound from a variety of movements across the 20th and 21st centuries. It’s more allusive than specific (though there certainly are a few moments of specificity). There is an undeniable heroism in the radicals of the Civil Rights movement in the US, in the Paris ’68 revolts and the Sunflower Student Movement in Taiwan, and so on. But it’s this elusive “spirit” that I tried to touch in the piece, rather than any particular ideology. (The voices of Lenin, Trotsky and Mandelstam all appear in one section of the piece, for example.) The proximity of leftist political revolt to stirring music is remarkable. But there are lots of other things in there, some cryptic, some personal, some suggestions even. I suppose there’s a lot more I could say, but I’m more interested in the stories that listeners have in hearing the piece, than in my own ideas. But yes, it’s a passion project. 

GS: This political dimension of music goes beyond the artistic statement into actual social commitment in your teaching, it seems. CalArts, from what I've heard, is closer in spirit to the Scratch Orchestra than to, say, Juilliard, coming across as utopian in spirit and pragmatic in practice. In that sense, it appears to be a great match for the experimental tradition you're part of. The West Coast approach to teaching arts has a very different attitude to the "sink or swim" ethos of Boston and New York, probably better suited for the brand of experimentalism that your music stands for, which doesn't want to shock or break boundaries but at the same time remains uncompromising in all key aspects. Can you elaborate a bit on the dynamics of the back and forth feedback between teacher and student?  

MP-L: CalArts is a lot of things! The year 2000, when I started there, was also the first year of James Tenney (after a long period of his teaching at York University in Toronto). Mort Subotnick, Mark Trayle, Lucky Mosko and Art Jarvinen were all still teaching there, and David Rosenboom was Dean. So I came into a situation where experimental music was already very strong. I was encouraged to teach a class called Experimental Music Workshop (a name I stole from Christian Wolff, with his permission) - which I had started at Northwestern five years before. There are elements of that class (which I still teach) and of other aspects of the school that have something of the Scratch Orchestra spirit. 

I have always enjoyed teaching artists. I view my role as being the student of my student. I want them to tell me, to show me and to explain to me what they are doing and why they think they are doing it. In a way I’m teaching them how to teach me. (I try to be a good student too!) As I come to understand their work and ideas better, I reflect my understanding back to them, that is, re-describe it in my own terms and with references to other music, art and even politics, that I think apply. I want us to get to a point where we are able to dive deep into their work and their ideas. My students know that I’m no fan of “corrective” criticism. I do not want to compose their music for them. I’m drawn to what seems to me to be unique, something that only they could think of. My basic philosophy is that an artist grows best by being in a creatively stimulating, challenging, but fundamentally positive and supportive environment. 

GS: Young artists, especially in experimental music, need to experiment and thus often fail but come out of it wiser and focused. Your approach seems to encourage this and not advancing an aesthetic agenda with your students as pawns, which is still common practice in many conservatory institutions. I wonder if the competitive nature of so called classical music is behind this, and it must be refreshing to teach music on a one to one basis, working with each student to better formulate questions or helping them to develop their own heuristic tools. Does philosophy play a role here as well? I've noticed an interest in philosophy in your work (we did collaborate on a score that was directly inspired by Deleuze and his notion of the field of immanence), and you have shown interest in thinkers like Deleuze and Badiou, offering interesting insights on the subject in conversation and social media posting. Would you elaborate a bit on the role of philosophy as foundation in your work and general attitude? It seems to me that one of the great maladies of our time is the assumption that philosophy is somehow expendable and a poor career choice, when in fact philosophy is essential in everyday life, and you can see its trace everywhere. In a way I'm somewhat surprised that no one has noticed the relation between Wandelweiser and stoicism, for example.

MP-L: I agree with you that philosophy, in the sense of formulating the premises of thought, is everywhere - and that this is mostly unacknowledged. (We use the concepts without realizing where they come from.)  My interest began from that - to probe and also develop the assumptions of my own thinking as best I can, using some of the conceptual tools philosophers have created. 

I’m interested in all of it, but my education is largely informal and scattershot. Starting in high school and through college I just read more or less randomly, or by suggestion (Sartre-Camus-Beckett, Benjamin-Adorno, Rorty, Foucault, the Situationists …). I think the genealogy of Deleuze’s interests was the first thing that provided any rigor to my reading, some 30 years ago. It led me to Leibnitz, Spinoza, Bergson, Nietzsche, Foucault, Kant, Hume and so on. Discovering Badiou by the late ‘90s led me in other directions - to Plato, Descartes, Lacan, a bit of Hegel, Marx, and eventually to Meillassoux (one of Badiou’s former students). In the past few years I’ve engaged more seriously with ancient Chinese philosophy - the I Ching and Taoism - in ways that have taken me far beyond anything I would have picked up from Cage. (Francois Jullien was a good guide for some of this.) I spent a lot of time reading Bernard Stieger this summer. Plenty of lesser known writers too, often in conversation with Antoine (who has a knack for finding fascinating, more obscure thinkers): Alexius Meinong, Nelson Goodman, Anne Duformantelle, Vladimir Jankelevitch, John Holloway (this list could go on). I realize it seems eclectic - but perhaps that’s a bit of a luxury in being a non-professional: to not have to resolve the contradictory threads, or rather, to allow the contradictions to continue to generate meaningful thought. But I continue to believe that somewhere between Deleuze and Badiou there is a real theory of experimental music.

Throughout I’ve also been looking for ways that these concepts can help in my work. And I think they help a lot! Sometimes it's hard to say exactly how they help though. Maybe it’s the mental exercise ... But sometimes I have the feeling that there are more direct connections between philosophical concepts (like Immanence, as you mentioned) and what I do, and this keeps me on track. Reading Spinoza is a piece that deals directly with a philosophical text and what I considered to be the immanent formal methods that would follow from it. But perhaps the best example is in Continuum Unbound, where thoughts about the limits to human understanding from direct experience (Meillassoux’s idea of the correlation) led to a set of hypotheticals about how to construct a music beyond conventional models of nature.

But it’s also good to know where conscious thought leaves off. A lot of what I do as a musician goes by intuition, and somehow the exposure to rigorous thinking also has the effect of making me know when to trust my instincts.

You might be right about the connection between Wandelweiser and Stoicism, but personally I haven’t spent much time reading them.

GS: I'm a lot like you in that I felt that I would have do develop my own relationship towards the classics, and in fact I trusted my instincts and avoided Hegel for a long time (still find that his system is much too compromised by Christianism and metaphysics, and especially by the insistence on the tree as general model of organization, which simply I can no longer relate to after being exposed to the rhizome; there are no trees independent from each other and we have learned that they do in fact form a rhizome in the mycelium network that communicates between the trees underground), though now that I approach him with this caveat I find much to explain the current world, in particular the limitations of the world, that likely spring from this incomplete picture that reveals a mirage that fools the observer. To give you one example, Anti-Oedipus came into my life by chance, the girlfriend of a friend handed me her well worn copy, which I read by turns, doing exactly what Deleuze and Guattari suggested in A Thousand Plateaus instinctively. Of course I couldn't say that I understood everything at first, but I distinctly remember feeling the gears in my mind set in motion due to the stimulus of the book. Deleuze was also my introduction to Hume, Bergson and Spinoza (his book on Spinoza is particularly revealing and illuminating), and I already had a hold on Nietzsche and his view of philosophical problems as psychological problems has been with me ever since. I don't think it's as easy as to cite a philosopher in the title of a piece in order to establish a connection, but at the same time my instinct detects a lot of Spinoza in Antoine Beuger's music (or the influence of Morandi on Jürg Frey's music). As for your work, the field of immanence was crucial when engaging with your Continuum Unbound, that can give the impression of several maps superimposed on top of each other. 

And there's another text that I find essential to understand what Wandelweiser is about, Debord's The Society of the Spectacle. In Wandelweiser music I see a conscious effort to avoid the commodification that can turn even silence into part of the spectacle. There's no active resistance against the spectacle (stoicism) but also there's something of a Bartleby stance that ensures the music effectively resists the commodification that other musics superficially related have experienced. There's also the type of joy in creation as an affirmative notion, not as a reaction against the world but as a way to see what are the limits, a very Nietzschean idea. 

This also can be found in the formal aspect. If, say, sonata form is perfectly suited to express Hegelian ideas, then new forms of organizing sound should exemplify the concepts that have been proposed as alternative. Sonata form suits the tree model very well, but makes little sense as part of a rhizome. At the same time, and this is something I discussed with Jürg, music history seems to exert a lot of gravitational pull on occasion, and this could lead to very interesting connections and actualization of paradigms, like you did with the music of Couperin. An essence seems present, only operating in a context far different from Couperin's time.

MP-L: I think we take bits of language, concepts, and then of course, images and sounds and reassemble them in our brains. There’s a plasticity (to reference Hegel and Malabou) in this process that I trust. We’re recreating a world in our own thoughts and actions. There are embedded structures there (the concepts that we learn that do tend to structure our thinking to some extent), but there’s also much room for creative assemblage if one works at it. So the references are re-embedded hopefully in new contexts and more importantly, in new works. For me there’s more Antoine than Spinoza (in his Spinoza pieces) and more Jürg than Morandi in his work. But the satellites (i.e., references) are helpful in extending my relationship with their work(s).

Funny that you mentioned it: I just rewatched The Society of the Spectacle this summer. (I watched all the films by Debord I could find, actually - an incredible body of work.)

It’s especially the case with “early” Wandelweiser that it attempts to derail the spectacle, I agree with that. Maybe in a pretty radical way. (To some extent though all critical or underground, experimental, whatever we want to call it, art does that, don’t you think?) In any case, from my experience there was (or needed to be) active resistance to the spectacle. But also in early Wandelweiser, I felt there was a risk of “monumentalizing” silence, which would amount to turning it back into a “spectacle” - something impenetrable, rather than something one actively absorbed or actively engaged. But as you indicate, it’s not simple and maybe silence is one of the best examples of a true contradiction. Perhaps there were these kinds of differences “within” Wandelweiser. What silence as material started to reveal to me was the “transparent” layers of reality, which I see (actually, hear) as invisible curtains, arrayed one after another in any situation. There is something labyrinthine in this silence which I feel like I’ve been exploring ever since. It’s not exactly full, this emptiness, but it is also not the “void” (for me at least).

For any of us who studied music (which I guess is any musician), the genealogy of what we resonated with will play a role. These forces are basically always there, and there’s no point in trying to escape them. (This aspect of European musical modernism of the mid-20th century, the idea that there’s a need to escape from the past, has never appealed to me. I think because I do not view time as linear and don’t believe in progress, at least in the 20th century modernist orientation within the industrial-capitalist-technological landscape.) There’s no repetition in art, really. The fascinating question to me, is rather, what can happen when some part of that genealogy is activated. This is contingent, woven into our lives, as we all know. In Barricades, for example, it was the inclusion of Les Barricades Mystérieuses amongst the pieces that Shira Legmann sent me from her repertoire, that brought that era (and that music) back alive to me. I had played the piece very often on guitar when I was first studying. It, along with the preludes of Villa-Lobos and the transcriptions of the Satie Gymnopédies, were my favorite guitar pieces when I started learning classical in ca. 1976 or so. The ornamentation in the French Baroque always fascinated me - and in some way connected to the way I had learned and understood jazz (where “solos” ornament harmony and/or melody). But also, as I’ve come to realize since, this music wanders. It’s not obsessed with recapitulation (which drives me crazy sometimes in Germanic music of the Classic period). I think this has always been somewhere in my aesthetic interests, but not so conscious.

When Greg Stuart and I were working on side by side last year, he sent me a wonderful article by Susan McClary, where she discusses, amongst other things, Jean Henry D’Anglebert’s Tombeau de Mr de Chambonnières from 1689 (“Temporality and Ideology: Qualities of Motion in Seventeenth-Century French Music”). She’s interested in “absorption” or, as she calls it "a quality of stillness in which consciousness hovers suspended outside linear time.” Sounds like Wandelweiser, doesn’t it? Indirectly, through a totally different era, she discuss something that I could immediately relate to the work I was doing with Greg at the time, but also back to pieces like Barricades, or stem flower root or a lot of the music I love by Jürg, Antoine, Anastassis Philippakopoulos, Walter Marchetti, Satie, Cage’s Cheap Imitation, and so on. I think the word is really just “melody.” In an interview somewhere, Christian Wolff says (something like) any succession of events becomes melody once your ears find the continuity in it (which is basically always there to find). I take that to mean the continuity (in music) takes care of itself. The obsession with “unity” is misplaced - because, for one thing, in the Deleuzian/Spinozan universe it’s already there (univocality). But also, not to put too sharp a point on it, it’s boring. The embrace of the contingent, the multiple, the monadology, the paths with simultaneously infinite directions is so much more interesting. 

I don’t know how related this is, but I love the tendency of the late variations of Beethoven to spiral out of control. His mind is so fecund that he can’t reign the invention in. The Grosse Fuge is the paradigmatic example: it draws ever widening circles for over 500 bars, and then, perhaps realizing there was no way to finish what he started he writes, with an increasingly frantic intensity, over 200 bars of final cadence. It’s hilarious. (At the end of Embryons desseches I’m sure that Satie is parodying Germanic cadential mania with his “Cadence obligée”.) You need herbicide to stop the rhizome from spreading.

GS: Funny you mention late Beethoven, the Grosse Fugue and the Diabelli variations are never far away from my mind, the latter being a treatise on variation form of sorts and the former this almost fractal development that threatens to derail the music with its complexity, like magma erupting, only with almost mathematical logic, one gets the feeling that the composer is riding a tiger. Also, that insight from Wolff about any sequence of sounds becoming melody once repeated has always struck me as spot on. Even if there's no pitch involved the ear will treat some sounds as a tonic, so to speak. Wolff was the most Webernian of the New York School in many ways, it's probable that the way Webern explored the klangfarben melody led him to extrapolate this notion beyond pitch, focusing on timbre, though I feel this has more to do with the act of listening that with any theoretical certainty. 

What you say about the natural impulse of capitalism to conquer new territory in relation to the silence in Wandelweiser is quite interesting. There was an attempt to engulf it, but silence, at least the inquiry into silence that characterized early Wandelweiser proved to be an actual limit to capital expansion in the spectacular sense. It can't even be an adversary to capitalism in the sense that it doesn't have an interest in managing expansion and it's seemingly content with doing its own thing at its own pace, happy to play for an audience of one. 

It does seem absurd, this idea of progress like a straight line pointing up into the future, right? I am quite invested in the music avant-garde of the second half of the XX century but a lot of it is a cautionary tale for me, with a nasty tendency to throw the baby along with the bath water. And yet I feel that music took giant leaps during that era and to dismiss the many lessons (and fantastic music) of the era is also throwing the baby with the water, to sweep it under the rug and pretend it didn't happen. With so much revisionism in our time I don't think we can afford to paint this period with a large brush. We simply have no more time for the type of agogic of the era, with the dialectical scaffolding so overemphasized that sounds so forced today, but all the new sounds and processes are still ripe for exploration. I mean, you just can't write a piece like Gruppen in 2023, but many timbres and sounds from the piece can still, moments that seem to exist without the need to fit a grand design, sometimes these isolated moments are the key to open a box that used to be hermetic before. After all, when Mozart studied the fugues of J.S. Bach he took what he thought he could use and discarded the rest, this dialogue between composers outside of time has always been there as one of the things that nurture tradition. I often see it in terms of gravity and physics: if you swim against the main current you will spend your energy quickly; if you swim against the current but near the borders, where the current is less strong, you will have a better chance of beating the odds. Applied to music history, this sort of entails a shift in emphasis from the vertical to the horizontal, or even the plane of immanence, with all these figures from the past existing at a more or less levelled plane, at least with regard to this dialogue between composers of different ages, like that feeling of absence Feldman felt with Schubert, the way he worded it, "Schubert leaving me", it's very revealing of his non hierarchical relation to music history.

My last question has to do with improvisation. For a composer improvisation can be liberating, freeing one from the need to control the outcome and also having the function of testing materials in a live setting or discovering them in the act of improvising. It's also interesting to see how flexible the personal heuristic can be in different contexts. It also allows composers to relate to each other musically without micromanaging things and make music in a more instinctive way. I'm thinking of the album you made with Wolff: it doesn't sound like any of the two is trying to make a point, though there are times in which one is content simply listening to the other. There's also this inherent contradiction to releasing documents of improvisation, divorced from "the room", to paraphrase Keith Rowe, where repeated listening allows the listener the chance to contextualize the sound that the actual performers are unable to do while making the music. At the same time we have the example of the cinema of Abbas Kiarostami, that expects the viewer to complete the picture using one's own imagination and engagement. Does this dialogue between improvisation and composition play a role in your mind when thinking about music? I don't mean it in the dialectical sense, mind you.

MP-L: I also love a lot of the music of what we used to call the “Post-War European Avant-Garde”, Gruppen included. Since I was educated in that era, I think I’m responding more to (what I perceived as) the ideology of that music than the actual music. In terms of the actual music it’s nice now to be able to pick and choose and see it in a broader perspective. I still enjoy a few pieces from the central figures, but spend more of my time at the edges of that (post-)serial dream (and still happily play Xenakis, Ustvolskaya, Messiaen, and Parmegiani in particular). Last year during the height of Covid, I felt the need to hear Roberto Gerhard’s The Plague again – it is fantastic. As we discussed, Nono’s music of his Communist era is still very interesting (at this moment I’d much rather hear that than anything by Berio). Also fascinating, for example, that Shostakovich was still composing through some of that period (and, following Keith, I still listen to his music frequently). Not to mention Stravinsky’s great serial music of that era (Agon, Threni, Requiem Canticles.). One doesn’t have to choose between X-Ray Spex and Matthias Spahlinger, fortunately. Also the reflections of that avant-garde in the US were way less interesting than their European inspirations. Contemporary (post-War) “Classical” music in the US in the post-War era is pretty much a wasteland in my book. Thankfully, experimental music in all of its forms was exploding in that period and that has kept me and a lot of other people busy. 

I’ve been thinking that not only is the improvisation-composition dyad not dialectical, to me these two terms seem more and more inadequate as the only choices we seem to have. It’s like there is a dimension missing, with points off that particular chart. Lately I’ve been thinking that Deleuze’s Plane of Immanence is a much better way to conceptualize this space - infinite arrays of points, mostly invisible, but scattered in all directions. We only recognize a point when we are on it or pass by it on a particular trajectory (“line of flight”). In the sequence of thought and action that is experimentation, you put your marker down somewhere that appears to you in that moment to be compelling. It is often hard to say why. Maybe some invisible object (in another dimension?) has crossed your path and flashed an infinitesimal light on the situation (i.e., situation being what Keith calls "the room”). What speaks to me now in this place? Sometimes that now is “the time Christian and I have to make music together.” Sometimes that now is "however long it takes to write a piece for these musicians.” There is a logic, and I am actually trying to follow it, but also realize it will be seen mostly in retrospect. 

We are looking for processes that keep us engaged, especially now when it seems like we’re constantly being told to live with diminished or even no expectations for the future. (John Holloway’s new book Hope in Hopeless Times speaks to this.) We’ve seen only the smallest bit of what’s “out there”, and therefore need whatever tools we can find to poke and probe at the invisible, inaudible things right next to us, until the disturbance this makes leads us to discover that there’s something else there.

annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Bryan Eubanks - Spectral Pattern (2012/2013)

Bryan Eubanks is a composer, interpreter, improviser who develops his work through solo and collaborative contexts and plays soprano saxophone, computers, and other (often homemade) electronics. Some recurring collaborators include: Don Brown, Joe Foster, and Dan Reynolds; Todd Capp and Andrew Lafkas as Ocean’s Roar; and fellow Sacred Realism artists Lafkas, Catherine Lamb, Rebecca Lane, and Xavier Lopez. Recent releases include: for four double basses, performed by Jonathan Heilbron, Mike Majkowski, Lafkas, and Koen Nutters; Natural Realms with Lopez; and Lamb’s Prisma Interius IV, performed with Lamb and Lane. 

Spectral Pattern is a 2012/2013 composition for soprano saxophone and/or other instruments, tuned pulse, sine tone, and white noise, an open number of players, and a 30’ duration. An aphorism introduces the score: 

transformation in time

time in transformation

transformation is time

time is transformation

The score includes a description and diagram of the set up outlining the custom software and equipment that generates the sine tone, tuned pulse, and noise as well as their spatial relations with the performer, with notes that sounds should blend and volume should not be so loud as to distort sounds. Plain instructions detail the limits of sine tone and pitch behaviors the performer may choose relative to each other and to the determined behaviors of tuned pulse and noise. There is an explicit goal of modulating the noise with beating phenomena from sine tone and instrument harmonic interactions, whose periodicity should approach the 5Hz periodicity of the noise towards the end of the performance. A diagram references relations along an absolute timeline, including the development of noise towards a 5Hz pulse, the fading behaviors of tuned pulse and noise, the simultaneous sounding of sine tone and instruments, and the narrowing intervals of instrumental pitch towards their dynamic equilibrium with the sine tone. Spectral Pattern is one of the inspirations cited for Lamb’s Pulse / Shade. 

Plain language, supplementary diagrammatic reinforcement, and even suggestions for pitch intervals and sounding placement within minutes focus the performer on the task at hand, the intense concentration required to cultivate precise beating behaviors. The transformation of the noise at the end towards the same periodicity as the tuned pulse at the beginning, as well as an untethering from unison after 15’, suggests a cyclicity on a larger scale than the 30’ duration that might color interpretations. A reading of the aphorism might too, its mirrored balance reflecting the relativity and interdependence inherent in the piece and the synonymity of time as a measure of spatial change, its use of in/is drawing attention towards the spatial relations and states of being upon which the music might hinge, and perhaps its four lines could be tied to its four elements of noise, tuned pulse, sine tone, and instrument. In some way the aphorism, instructions, and diagram are shades of the same information that overlay to convey the color of the piece. The interpretation below is realized alongside Johnny Chang and Lamb on violas.

reviews

Julián Galay - Eine Stadt, Ein Haus (presses précaires, 2022)

Julián Galay realizes two directions from Craig Pedersen with recordings, tuning forks, and sine tones on the 24’ Eine Stadt, Ein Haus. 

In the city sines swell with rail squeals stuttering while braking as waves undulate, in anticipation, in synchronicity, in response, mimicking a machinic rhythm in juxtaposition to the natural accidentals of children playing and birds singing. In the house tapped tuning forks and sine tones appear alone, sonorous resonance seemingly free from the contingencies of the environment. But the sustain and stability of sines and tuning forks flow according to the container of the room with clarity and carry the subtle ripples of the moment more plainly than most instruments so to see time as a function of space, music as a function of place. One searches for an accord in relation to the environment; one recognizes the tacit presence of the space in the sound necessarily. That the accord was always there.

- Keith Prosk

Alma Laprida - ensayos baschet (presses précaires, 2022)

Alma Laprida plays seven solos for cristal baschet on the 26’ ensayos baschet. 

The recording captures mass chatter reverberating in what appears through a kind of dulled distance to be a large hardwalled space, with intermittent elevator beeping and phone ringing. The subaqueous moo of this lost instrument’s glass material massaged with wet hands a sort of ghost among these living in its glowing resonance, haunting repetition, and cadential suspension. Subtle intuitive tone shifts yield dramatic expansive effects in the amassing of waves in between soundings bounced back from the wall and back again or in a splayed spectra of sound responding to changes in speed and pressure of touch. Less through progression or propulsion than a stubborn stasis its sound blooms in the substrate of this location physically and in spirit. 

- Keith Prosk

Ángeles Rojas - breathe into the forest, into the bird, into the song (Sawyer Editions, 2023)

Julián Galay, Guido Kohn, Gustavo Obligado, Ángeles Rojas, Sofia Salvo, and Emiliano Salvatore perform a Rojas composition for open ensemble with tuning forks, cello, alto saxophone, shruti box, baritone saxophone, and electric guitar on the 38’ breathe into the forest, into the bird, into the song. 

Nasal shruti sounds rippling strata in infinite sustain as a springboard for the contrapuntal periodicities of other instruments in durational soundings creating a turbulent shear of sound at these instruments’ confluence whose many timbres blur together through overlapping relationships in the calm thrum of breath and beat. They overlay for more activity in sensations of impossible extension and expansion eddying and ebbing, their gossamer harmonics dancing in the open air of the forest. Many and one and long and longer, off the shelf the body can’t discern the difference between the surface and the tsunami. It ends with breathy bowing in breathing cadences sounding the movement of the cathedral of the ribs, with the sighing subtones of saxophone, with the electric pulse that recalls the breath the beating heart requires. A living music in its motifs and the lives of harmonics it cultivates to move within their own wills. 

- Keith Prosk

Masahide Tokunaga - Masahide Tokunaga (hitorri, 2022)

Masahide Tokunaga performs a composition with Fumi Endo on piano and Tomoki Tai on viola da gamba and two alto saxophone solos on this 57’ eponymous record. 

In the solos sustained tones smooth as sines rise and subside in doppler alternations that complement and weave with overtone oscillations. In “Observer” the domed decay of a single struck piano note and frictional swells of viola da gamba arrange in slow spacious overlapping relationships with the long tones of alto. The tenuous interactions of individual overtones occasionally fishtail through as the performers appear to play with how the shape and color of tone changes with the shifting relative locations of soundings. The observation of harmonic shape and color in relation to location lends a new lens on the solos, to try to hear how adjacent morphologies affect the perceptions of their neighbors, how these sort of wave behaviors and parameters relate to those that illuminate the interactions of the trio. 

- Keith Prosk

Various - PP-01 (Party Perfect!!!, 2022)

The debut release from new Chicago/Queens based computer music label Party Perfect!!! feels like the modern, digital equivalent of an independent music zine, one with some tapes or cdrs from local artists and bands. The release includes four albums that span different corners of contemporary electronic music as well as a lengthy, quirkily-formatted pdf including discussions on the music and shared recipes. A physical copy does exist – but it’s just of the booklet, not the music.

Aesthetically there is not so much to tie together the four albums that make up PP-01, except for occupying a shared, uncanny middle-ground between academic coldness and expressive abstraction. They’re rich with complexity both in their compositions and sounds, but never come off as impersonal – there’s so much curiosity, style, feeling, fury, fascination and psychoacoustic excitement to be heard in these pieces.

Each of the four albums included in PP-01 is strong in its own way, they all have their own ideas and vibes to them. They’re worth hearing on their own, but come together like a joyous meeting between a group of people with different but complementary personalities – it’s a perfect party!!!

Michelle Lou – Untitled

The first word that comes to mind when I hear or think about Michelle Lou’s Untitled is ‘violence’. The sounds are aggressive and bombastic but it goes beyond that. Computer tones pulse, shake and contort in stereo, distorting and tearing at each other in unexpected rhythms. The thick, distorted haze doesn’t let up, it’s a constant assault, a violence that won’t go away.

Untitled is gleefully violent towards its listeners. The album opens with thick, speaker-blowing pulses of over-distorted dread, so compressed that even the soft, bassy moments between pulses carry explosive weight. All Night Long introduces a high-pitched sine tone that becomes increasingly uncomfortable on the ears the longer it stagnates. The screeching rhythms of No you’re not dreaming are nightmarish and The End of the World sounds like a proper doomsday alarm that builds into electric apocalypse. It’s a harsh, disorienting, demanding listen to say the least.

A substantial amount of the violence of Untitled is also directed inwards. Through excessive use of distortion and digital clipping, self-destruction becomes one of the album’s major themes and instruments. In very practical ways we can hear electric frequencies combat each other here, or hear programmed music fail to be properly rendered as its crushed beneath its own amplitude. It’s exciting how, while obliterating certain sonic traits that were planned and composed, the clipping both expresses subtle traits that were hidden within those sounds as well as creates new ones – be it repetitive clicks, digital cracks, immersive fuzz or ultrahigh (or ultralow) pressures.

Through the sequencing and indulgence in clipped sound comes some comfort. Catharsis is healthy, it’s even kind of fun. I’m not sure why Michelle Lou decided to make such an angry work here – perhaps it’s a reaction to something external or a reflection of something internal. Either way, Untitled is a massively compelling and affecting album that manages to use the computer in an expressive, heartfelt and genuinely experimental way.

Stefan Maier – The Arranger (Live at HKW)

The Arranger is a live performance for modular synthesizer, machine listening software, sound system and radio-transmission headsets. It’s beautiful, psychedelic and technically precise. High-pitched drones, deep throbs, soft statics and careful clicks grow, pulse and flow through each other in a manner that feels meticulously engineered to stay engaging. Saying “to stay engaging” even feels like undermining what The Arranger accomplishes – it casts binaural hooks into my ears with its opening frequencies that aren’t even momentarily loosened until it’s finished.

It’s all a bit of a charade though. Stefan Maier did compose original music for The Arranger, but much of what we hear is a computer reading and rendering it, trying to understand and reproduce this very precise digital music. And that’s of course, somewhat, a failure. It results in indeterminate attempts at recreation, the genesis of sounds that are similar but not-quite-identical to the planned sounds, making the performance not as tightly-controlled as it initially seems. 

A computer is able to parse and create sounds, but what it fails to do is understand the aesthetics or reason behind them, making the music it produces hollow and meaningless. It’s like writing out a sentence with letters from a language you don’t understand – the shapes are there, but it doesn’t mean anything. So the computer may be singing an empty language, but something exciting that happens is that, largely through its own imperfections, the computer manages to find its own aesthetics. There’s certain swirling sounds and chaotic progressions that feel emblematic of the machine learning synthesizer, this becomes clearer as it reads and interprets more information and we hear and perceive more of its sounds. Listening to these computer aesthetics for long enough might even bring one to wonder if the computer could have its own personality – perhaps a trivial question.

I’ve heard this piece a few times now and it’s been very difficult for me to determine which of these contrasted sounds were already presented in Stefan Maier’s composition and which were added by machine synthesis. It does feel like a work of two personalities that constantly butt heads, but it all meshes together into a single, extremely immersive, digital haze. By the time it’s over and the haze lifts it’s almost unbelievable how much sonic ground the performance has covered.

The Arranger comes in two forms – a loudspeaker diffusion and a headphone diffusion. Rather than them being different mixes of the same material, the headphone diffusion is a completely original machine resynthesis of the loudspeaker diffusion – another computer-rendered revision of music made from computer-rendered revisions. It’s a new product that resembles the original work near-perfectly in waveform and spectrogram, but differentiates entirely in timber and sensation, making it worthwhile as both a practical and a conceptual addition to the album.

Michael Flora – Emergent Spectra

Emergent Spectra is both the most direct and the most puzzling of the four albums included in PP-01. The sonic material is confounding and abstract, and the tracks last just enough to thoroughly explore their sound system. It’s quick and vigorous in its execution of ideas.

The first half of this album is comprised of the 6 short Emergent Spectra tracks that all sound like sonic excavations of single concepts: On 001 it’s densely layered bassy tones which activate and deactivate to create shifting dissonances, on 002 it’s rapid-paced stereophonic synthesis, on 003 it’s the pairing of high and low pure tones, on 004 it’s crunching binaural noise, on 005 it’s growing high-pitch frequencies, and on 006 it’s a compressed, swirling digital sound blob of ascending and descending synthesis.

Emergent Spectra could be looked as a study of different types of synthesis or an exploration of different styles of computer music, but it’s also very interested in the psychological and physical effects on the listener of the sounds it’s making. Some of these tracks are completely intoxicating and surreal, Emergent Spectra 001 particularly makes my head swirl. Others make me feel anxiety and claustrophobia, making their short durations feel long, such as 002 and 006. 003 achieves an awkward state of pulsating bliss while 005 elevates me into trebly ecstasy. I’m sure the effects of the music can vary from listener to listener, but that’s part of what makes these psychoacoustic experiments interesting – they present entirely abstract sonic material which has been specifically engineered to work as a physical stimulus for the listener, rather than just something to hear and feel, and the listener’s listening conditions and body biases can play a large role in the effects that that stimulus rouses.

The second half of the album is a single track titled Folded Spectra, which combines a lot of the ideas present in the first 6 tracks into a more linear, captivating composition. It’s exciting to hear these sounds given more space to develop and grow, such as the tones of the first half which are locked in a state of constant ascent, or the sustained insect frequencies, harmonized drones and ripping static noise of the second half. Again the track is indebted to the effects of its sounds, but this time it runs through a range of sensations and feelings that is far too wide to describe.

Other Plastics – almost leisure

Other Plastics is the duo of Hunter Brown and Dominic Coles. It’s the most varied of the four albums that make up PP-01, starting fully digital before moving towards field recorded material and finally a stunning hybrid.

pt1 is soft and beautiful. Computer textures open and close, click and clack, and delicately float around in time and space. Despite their sharpness and unpredictability, they’re seldom harsh – it’s a carefully controlled chaos. Empty space accentuates the musical sequences and surrounds them like picture frames. The hard cuts between sound and silence are like a temporal lapse while the computer considers its next move, the sonic equivalent of browsing the web with spotty internet. It’s hard to detect a logic to the piece’s progression, but there’s something natural about it, like looking at a shuffled Rubik’s Cube that shows all it’s colours on one face.

pt2 is a recording of a party. It starts with the interior, with a conversation about media. It feels equally voyeuristic and comfortable. As the track goes along it starts to cut itself up and become abstract. Sounds filter, accelerate, repeat and shuffle around in stereo. Conversations cut off and pick back up, voices enter and exit – it’s a heavily fragmented party, like the whole night was thrown into a technological black hole and this 8-minute remembering of it was spit out. There’s a clear aesthetic to the sequencing too, a surreal fascination in the scrambling and processing of its sounds, giving it a vibe that’s surprisingly similar to pt1.

pt3 begins with environmental sounds – the low-end sounds of a distant but living city paired with the high-end sounds of numerous singing insects. Natural rhythms are found in the music that flows out from the city – or is that sound computer-generated? Increasingly clear digital sounds enter the mix and intermingle with the acoustic ones. They combine and mutate each other, gradually creating a climate where the computer world and the real world’s sounds can co-exist as elements of the same system.

Despite each track featuring its own ideas and palette, they fit together comfortably. An aesthetic line is tied between computer music and field recording, and they’re held close enough to make the difference feel insignificant. It could be argued that what’s displayed here is that digital sounds are alive, or that real sounds are artificial, or that both share the same murky middle-territory. Either way, the music present on almost leisure is as beautiful as it is hypnotic.

–

Something admirable about the artists on PP-01 is how they deal with and situate themselves within the history of computer music. On the topic of stochastic synthesis, which is often considered old-hat as Iannis Xenakis was using it decades ago, Michael Flora rivals this notion by stating that guitars have been used for centuries and still are. The truth is that, as far as genres go, computer music is a young one.

The objective of these computer musicians isn’t necessarily to innovate or to push new ground, it’s to express something with these tools and styles that already exist. It’s not about making music that Xenakis couldn’t have made 30 years ago, it’s about making music that Xenakis wouldn’t have made, because as abstract as these computer pieces are they are absolutely indebted to their composer’s individual attitudes and personalities. There’s still so much to try, to explore, to hear. That’s why these four albums all manage to excite in entirely different ways despite occupying the same genre and using the same tools.

PP-01 is a very impressive, creative and inspiring release, both in it’s music and in the manner it was released. It rests on the current cutting-edge of electronic music, but feels sentimental and personal rather than just challenging and clever. All of these albums have been enjoyable to revisit, both on speakers and headphones, and I am very much looking forward to hearing what Party Perfect!!! releases into the future.

- Connor Kurtz

Zheng Hao - Harmonium (Hard Return, 2022)

Zheng Hao performs five scenarios for two contact microphones and two harmonicas in C major and B flat major on the 18’ Harmonium. 

At the edge of cacophony at the limit of control a digest of feedback modulation behavior tuned to the receptive and sensitive clang of harmonica metal bodies and metal reeds. Soft sinusoidal squeals break silence. The twitch of fingers just overcoming friction an abrupt enough shift to wake the system in whistles and coos. The slow undulations of a low hum that could fall into clicking without a moment’s notice. Stridulatory honk calmed into a whirring singing. The imagined moans of manatees and a squeaking closer to what they really voice. The care required of the body reflected in slow speed and sufficient space conveys a tenderness no matter how wild the sound and can cultivate complexly braided deltas of branching harmonic behaviors in between tone transitions, sounding the spectral gradient between two things. 

- Keith Prosk

Thank you so much for sharing time with harmonic series.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider a one-time or recurring donation. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $0.85 to $4.52 for December and $1.25 to $3.36 for January. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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Kyle Motl recently published Bells Plucked From Air: a guide to (mostly) pizzicato harmonic techniques for the double bass to words of praise and anticipation from Mark Dresser, Olie Brice, and Louis-michel Marion among many others. 

Issue 81 of Point of Departure is available, featuring Bill Shoemaker on George Lewis’ “New Music Decolonization in Eight Difficult Steps,” Troy Collins in conversation with Thumbscrew, Stuart Broomer on Mosaic’s Classic Black & White Jazz Sessions, Evan Parker in appreciation of Gerd Dudek, Kevin Whitehead on Mal Waldron, Ed Hazell on baritone saxophone repertoire, Greg Buium on Paul Bley, excerpts of books Improvising the Score and Sound Experiments, and reviews of The African OmniDevelopment Space Complex and The Cricket: Black Music in Evolution 1968-69. 

Daniel Barbiero recently published “Earle Brown: The Poltergeist in the Machine” over at Perfect Sound Forever, on open scores, chance, and failure.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider a one-time or recurring donation. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $0.78 to $6.21 for November and $0.85 to $4.52 for December. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

Donate via PayPal

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award

harmonic series offers a share of all donations received to the musicians and related folk that make each issue possible through their communication, editing, and generosity. But there is always a choice to not receive it. These funds accrued in a pot to be awarded with inspiration from Pauline Oliveros, who in the preface to Deep Listening reflected, “Validation by peers and critics and the small cash prize from Pacifica Foundation were encouraging and appreciated by me. I was no longer alone with my passion to compose, and I continued.” If we could only hope to provide such support to such a one. So we try.

Beyond the small cash prize, which this time was a bit less than $200, the award in this particular instance is also an attempt at wider advocacy and recognition of appreciation from a broader audience. The regular contributors to harmonic series composed a short list upon which just shy of fifty musicians that gave to the pot were invited to vote. We are thrilled to announce the first recipient of the harmonic series award is 

Natalia Pérez Turner

Natalia Pérez Turner is a cellist, interpreter, and improviser based in Mexico City. A regular member of the ensemble Liminar, some recurring collaborators include ensemble colleagues Omar López and Wilfrido Terrazas. Few recordings are widely available and activity is largely localized but what is available is profound. Through an email Q&A we talk about challenges, different ways of thinking, intuition, and dogs and cats. 

Keith Prosk: Are there some recurring qualities that draw you towards pieces to perform, like something in the imagined sound, a certain field of interpretive tensions, or something else?

Natalia Pérez Turner: I think it is something that has been changing with time… Firstly, I don't choose to play music that I'm not really interested in playing, either because I've listened to it or because, for one thing or another, there's something in it that really draws my attention to it (it's usually very instinctive, I think it's the first time I'm actually looking for a reason to choose to play a certain piece of music) or because I'm interested in a composer, on trying to learn about his/her music and creative procedures. For example, there was a moment I was really interested in learning as much as possible on extended techniques so working on Xenakis' Nomos Alpha some time ago, which is a piece I've always loved, helped me develop certain techniques, extended my knowledge of the instrument and helped me to learn about Xenakis' thought and creative processes. I have friends who say they don't want to work on written music, or in music by anyone else, but their own. I can't remember who it was, but I remember reading about a writer who said he had started to write because he didn't find anything he wanted to read anymore. I'm not there yet. I feel that, as in good improvisation, playing a piece by someone else can be like a rich conversation with the music, with the composer, with my instrument, and also with the place I'm performing and the way sounds carry in there. I still like to do both, improvise, do my own stuff and play other people's music. And I like to be challenged, to be taken to places where I might feel uncomfortable, and although that can happen in an improvisational situation, I feel it happens a lot more when playing written music. Obviously there's lots of challenging music that I'm not interested in playing. I've worked Julián Carrillo's sonatas because I'm interested in microtonality and wanted to work his approach to it, but I'm not very keen on his musical ideas, and in the way he structures his pieces, so I work on them for myself and if one day I find something in them that makes the music exciting enough to perform any of them, besides the fact there's only one recording of the full set, the music is hard to get and they're very rarely performed, something exciting for me in the music itself, I will… I suppose, in the end, what draws me towards certain music is its sound and musical ideas. The composer's creative process and the creative possibilities as a performer are very important, but if the sounding result of a piece doesn't resonate with my interests I'd find it very hard to choose to perform it.  

KP: I've read that at least Marcela Rodriguez developed a piece for you and that there are pieces you've developed collaboratively with composers. When a composer creates or co-creates a piece for you, what are some qualities they've tried to express in your approach to sound and/or your cello? 

NPT: I think it's mostly a matter of flexibility, I'm not a virtuoso player, but I'm willing to try stuff and suggest sounds, techniques or musical ideas once I understand what the composer is looking for. Some people have said that they like my sound or my approach to music. 

KP: I'm sure there's a bit in both, but how does your performance practice complement your play (stuff that leans more improvised) and vice versa? 

NPT: There's a continuous feedback between my improvised music practice and everything else. If I'm writing music for a film, once I've seen it, and seen a particular sequence several times imagining sound or music, I sit and improvise with that. There's a dance piece, the music started as an improvisation and then certain ideas got grounded and I worked on from there. I think improvising has helped me develop musical intuition, a musical and technical freedom that I was a bit afraid of when I first started to play solo. At the same time, playing written music gives me not only the enjoyment of discovering different musical universes, different ways of thinking about music, but also broadens and enriches my approach to the instrument and sound itself. Sometimes by chance, I've found ideas I'd like to follow, for example, one day, in a recording gig, while the people in the studio were talking about what to record first or something like that, I started to explore tiny gestures, which would be almost soundless if there wasn't a microphone there and that opened two paths, one, without the microphone almost completely soundless, and the other one, amplifying these almost soundless gestures. 

KP: Are there throughlines or motifs you find yourself returning to in sound, whether that's textures, tones, feelings, techniques, ideas, so on? 

NPT: Of course. I think everyone has a certain language, sounds, ideas, etc. that make a sort of a "musical self.” Sometimes I try to forbid myself to use certain sound material, or ideas, in order to explore my instrument further, sometimes I discover things I want to explore further, and become part of my language. As a listener I love to listen to how people develop ideas and sounds through time, how they construct a language, how it becomes more and more unique and, at the same time, it can be surprising, fresh and moving. 

Listen to “Duo 1” from Christopher A. Williams & Liminar’s On Perpetual (Musical) Peace?

KP: I feel like there are few recordings of amazing CDMX players, yourself included, and when I might stumble across a release title it's often difficult to locate the audio. Whether that's due to limited access to recording and distribution, cultural leanings towards accentuating the ephemerality of sound, inattention from the rest of the west, or something else, what do you feel contributes towards this? 

NPT: I suppose it's a bit of everything, there are recordings that are no longer available, that were made in a small batch of CDs, for example, the master got lost and because of one reason or another it hasn't gone on to streaming platforms. When a recording is released on CD, cassette or even vinyl, they are usually sold in concerts or in small independent venues (concert venues, book shops, etc.), some also go on to bandcamp or other digital platforms, for example, but not all. I do see lots more recordings coming out both in streaming or physical formats from musicians elsewhere. I suppose there's something cultural there, although I'm not quite sure of what it is. Maybe it would be easier to understand it by taking some distance. 

Although it is easier to produce recordings now than 10-20 years ago, and there's people playing every week, it's easier to find things in video format of their work. Is it to do with ephemerality? I don't think so, maybe in some cases, but if that was the reason you wouldn't be able to find anything at all. This is just a theory, but maybe the fact that we don't travel as easily outside the borders with personal projects (for economic reasons or visa related reasons) makes the world smaller in a way. People are playing for more or less the same audiences all the time, it can be lots of fun and there can be great music coming out of there but it might not be very attractive to make a recording of that because it can also get a bit repetitive. So maybe making a recording is a way of going out of this circle, for me, that's a reason to start a recording project, but… we shall see. So far, my personal experience is a mix of recordings of concerts or recording sessions that got lost, or that never got anywhere because time goes by and the excitement for the project might not be there anymore, or after listening to it again, it's not as good as we first thought, either because the music is not as good or because the recording itself is not very good. 

KP: I understand you're a dog lover, contribute towards humane efforts for dogs, and care for a few of your own. What do you think your dogs think of your playing? Do they ever comment or play along?

NPT: I love dogs, but I haven't had one for quite a while, even though I'd love one. When my last dog died, I was so heart broken that I decided to take a break. Now I live with cats, stray ones that decided they wanted to live here, and I've adopted. One of them is very old and not very friendly, timid and nervous, she doesn't like the other cats, so, maybe when she's gone, I can start to think again about bringing a dog into the mix. I don't know if they like my playing, I think the youngest one doesn't like high pitched sounds very much, but both like to sleep near when I'm practising, even a stray cat that comes for food or to sleep in a sunny spot doesn't leave when I practice or play near him. Same thing happened with the dogs I've had. There was one that really hated recorded saxophones. He'd start howling and I never thought of it as singing, it sounded more distress, so I never rehearsed with sax, flute or clarinet players at home when he was alive. 

annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Catherine Lamb - overlays transparent/opaque (2013/2022)

Catherine Lamb is a composer and interpreter concerned with the color, shape, and perception of sound and plays viola and synthesizer. Some recurring collaborators include: fellow Sacred Realism artists Bryan Eubanks, Andrew Lafkas, Rebecca Lane, and Xavier Lopez; fellow Harmonic Space Orchestra artists M.O. Abbott, Sam Dunscombe, Judith Hamann, Jonathan Heilbron, Lane, Thomas Nicholson, Michiko Ogawa, Lucy Railton, Fredrik Rasten, Marc Sabat, Sarah Saviet, and Chiyoko Szlavnics; and Johnny Chang as Viola Torros. Recent releases include: Muto Infinitas, performed by Heilbron and Lane; Aggregate Forms, performed by JACK Quartet; the secondary rainbow synthesizer solo Inter-sum; Prisma Interius IV, performed alongside Eubanks and Lane; Yannick Guédon’s a s p e _, performed alongside Guédon and Lane; and (in) tone, performed by String Noise.

overlays transparent/opaque is a series of seven arrangements for six musicians with instruments of subtle contrast. The 2022 revision for Ensemble Mosaik allows for moderately more malleable durations which, besides different instruments, might be the most noticeable change in instructions from the 2-3’ suggestion of the 2013 and 2018 versions for Ensemble Dedalus, who perform the sample realizations. The score contains scordatura for applicable instruments and a key to its Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation and other tuning information on the page. Beyond the structural choices around selecting, ordering, and separating arrangements, instructions indicate relative height means timbral presence and an example realization of an arc suggests techniques and textures for the roots and apex. Arcs are of different thicknesses, intensities, and radii relative to other arcs and some parameters might change within an arc. Sometimes arcs of the same instrument overlap. Each arc is one tone. There is an explicit goal to explore relationships between individual and collective tones. Like the color paper exercises of Josef Albers’ Interaction of Color, each arrangement explores the interaction of tone, their illusions and listener perceptions.

And like Albers’ exercises, practice doesn’t often manifest expectations, so these are certainly better listened to or better yet performed than imagined. In the pedagogical spirit of that inspiration, an order of arrangements might begin with those containing distinct arcs or clusters of arcs before moving towards arrangements with even more complex overlapping relationships. Perhaps more than a relatively static image, the time-flexible medium of sound and the phasing relationships of arcs closely approximate Albers’ moveable color paper exercises to explore the shades created between two colors in different placings and spacings. The slightly shortened or extended durations the 2022 revision allows might influence perceptual effects in nuanced ways, perhaps similar to how canvasses of different sizes featuring similar material would.

reviews

Jessica Ackerley - Wave: Volume I (self-released, 2022)

Jessica Ackerley realizes aspects of the ocean in a four-track suite for solo electric guitar on the half-hour Wave: Volume I. 

Electric waves in so many ways convey the flux of the ocean surface. Voluminous swells, arced slides, trance pulses, and the long sustain of undulating decay in overlapping relationships phase and synthesize. Effervescent arpeggiations, glistening melodies, and the tempestuous turbulence of a stuttering distorted chord baffled and broken by the bars stir the calm of the long tones like the land, stars, and air work the water. It effects a comfort similar to soothing sound machines in the mimicked movement of the subject even with waves’ strata of noise depicted in thinner lines. 

- Keith Prosk

Marja Ahti & Judith Hamann - A coincidence is perfect, intimate attunement (Second Editions, 2022)

Marja Ahti and Judith Hamann arrange two sidelong sound plays for recordings, synthesizer, organ, piano, and cello on the 34’ A coincidence is perfect, intimate attunement. 

More than a tower of babbling superpositions sounds arrange in series of lateral facies changes inviting the ear to hear resonances across environments in literal and literary senses. The reverberations of spaces are felt, in churches and hallways, maybe the hard walls of truck bays. Timbres blur together, snoring or string or old wood housing, and even composers’ contributions could not be discerned but for piano and cello. The beat of electric current and the period of sine waves are not so different. Things vibrating and shaking. In harmony from afar just for the contingency of sharing time. 

- Keith Prosk

Nick Ashwood - Transparent Forms (caterpillar, 2022)

Laura Altman, Nick Ashwood, and Jim Denley perform an Ashwood composition with clarinet, acoustic guitar, and flute on the 29’ Transparent Forms. 

Guitar’s slow bowed tones’ tanpura blends with winds’ long tones long enough to fetch waves spilling beatings between the three. The rolling curves of the frictional bounce of string and fragile shake of breath intertwine too. There’s a sensation that rather than emerging from the drone the winds subside into it to become one. But their shifting overlays are not so much a convergence as the neighboring components of the same light split into timbres that color the perception of each other and blend in their shared spectrum. Six or seven segments signaled by significant silences seem to sound the rainbow, each of them as subtly distinct and distinctly dimensional yet fading into one another just as the violet that needs the red on the other end of its flat representation. 

- Keith Prosk

Bryn Harrison - A Coiled Form (Another Timbre, 2022)

Sarah Saviet performs a Bryn Harrison composition for solo violin on the 56’ A Coiled Form. 

A barrelled and variably pitched springing spiral curve of a knotty step function melody the fast flowing surface of which glints fragmented with details of its larger structure in nauseous repetition and suspension sounding the double helix dynamism of kinetic and potential energies along an elastic and extended duration. The same things that no doubt make it manually fatiguing make it aurally fatiguing, speed, density, repetition, duration, so while glimpses of recurring events or those similar enough to trick memory and their expansions manifest the essence of the structure it is difficult to track its actual shape with the ear and so appears an ouroboros run through the hands searching for an end only to look and see it tangled again.

- Keith Prosk

Clara Levy - 13 Visions (Discreet Editions, 2022)

Clara Levy performs Pauline Oliveros’ Thirteen Changes for solo violin with possible harmonizations for selected Hildegard von Bingen chants on the 80’ 13 Visions. 

As harmonic substrates for Bingen’s relative pitch melodies there’s a sense of stillness but in seemingly assuming chants’ unmetered time there’s also a sense of movement. Oliveros’ text reflects this dialectic too. The ebb and flow of the moonlight tide of the baptism of the music is a constant of change. Atomic solar systems’ electron clouds corral what is there that could be anywhere and is not there. The repetition of a comet’s orbit shifting in each iteration from the gradual loss of material and tacitly its relation to the other celestial bodies that must also shift between visits. Scale is inversely related to perspective and a reduction in the former yields an expansion of the latter. With her the impossible is as easy as play. And the range where audibility fades to feeling is met with a complement to unheard melodies. Rich multiphonic harmonies whose singings are as florid as the winds’ turbulent eddies. An intuitively happy pairing thanks to the performer’s vision. 

- Keith Prosk

Misaki Motofuji - Yagateyamu (Hitorri, 2022)

Misaki Motofuji plays a multi-movement solo set for baritone saxophone, clarinet, electronics, recordings, and whistle on the 45’ Yageteyamu. 

The fricative hiss of only breath through the bore sounds like a storm just outside yet distant from which breach overtones which branch into more with more forceful breath. Saturn missile whistles overlay to the point their density blends with long tones that beat and stridulate. Breaking waves of breath and key clicks like drip drops locate themselves alongside recordings of water. Bellicose baritone train horn bellows, textures shifting towards bass drum rounded on the skin around its rim or visceral contrabass arco. Ending with water and breath again. A mercurial music, in its incorporation and mimickry of air and water, flowing transitions across the spectrum of its cadre of instrumentation and smoothed movement from discrete tones to long ones to the swift beats of overtones, the interchangeable timbral identities of water and much of its instrumentation. Like water or air it does not stop moving but only cycles again. 

- Keith Prosk

Eli Wallace - pieces & interludes (Infrequent Seams, 2022)

Eli Wallace creates four pieces with three interludes across two sidelong tracks for solo prepared piano on the 47’ pieces & interludes. 

A menagerie of textures without borders. Though time marks interludes of piano as tuned percussion the boundaries are as fuzzy and incidental as those in the dialectic of composition and improvisation. Roulette pills. Celestial wobbles. Fluted strings’ exotic birdsongs. Sorting lentils. Funhouse hyperpiano. Floor drum churn. The characteristic key tones of piano are unrecognizable and only the rich reverberation of its so many neighboring strings alludes to it. Thunderous harmonies come from rhythms determined by the decay and character of clusters of textures in turn determined by the material components of the piano. A small revelation that material as foundation for music is as intuitive as material as the foundation of sound to write a love letter embracing of the whole instrument. 

- Keith Prosk

Sam Weinberg - An Afternoon Solo, 2022 (self-released, 2022)

Sam Weinberg plays six saxophone solos on the 26’ An Afternoon Solo, 2022. 

Two standards, 40 I, from the time when Braxton’s compositions were rendered in alphanumeric strings and geometric schematics, and Keith Jarrett’s Mandala, whose sound celebrates the complex repeating forms of its title’s subject, clue to the thrust of the rest. Sets of discrete tones permutate across cells in similar cadences to create a sense of shifting repetition. Like irregular tesselations. The infinitely branching tree of life from a few nucleobases. The kaleidoscope of a Rubik’s cube’s rotating constellation of colors whose changing combinations necessarily affect the perception of their neighbors while the whole could be said to remain as much the same. And while staccato soundings make for a distinctly structural feel the juxtaposition of different colors and shapes of pitch sequences conveys vibrant if tacit textures. The momentum of the tension between change and same is also carried by a sense of firm precision from a kind of mathematical intention abutting against the contingencies of dogs barking, beer cans cracking, and motorcycles passing as well as the rougher edges of play, the spherical cow and the physical real. 

- Keith Prosk

Yan Jun - 51’28” (Firework Edition, 2022)

51'28" follows up Yan Jun’s previous untitled album for Firework Edition which, as far as I can tell, was a 53-minute recording of the artist taking a nap. It’s possible that he wasn’t asleep at all and was actually in complete control of his breath, it’s hard to tell. 51’28” follows the extreme minimalism and singularity of that album, but does away with the ambiguity – he even states exactly what is happening on this album in the description: leg-shaking, recorded during one day in Finland. It’s obvious when you listen too – this album really is 51 minutes and 28 seconds of leg-shaking.

However, as Yan points, out, “leg shaking is not an easy action”. It requires patience, concentration and stamina – both from the performer and the listener. As Yan focuses on his shaking legs and the sounds they make, he invites us to join him. It feels very intimate for this reason, listening feels like sharing a body with the performer – I can even feel my own leg shaking to the rhythm.

It’s such a natural performance – controlled by the body’s own rhythm, the power and position of one’s joints and muscles. This plays a big role in that intimacy. It’s a completely organic musical language, fully honest and transparent, yet it expresses nothing at all – or rather, nothing more than “I’m here, I’m alive, and my legs are shaking.” So rather than just sharing musical ideas, this release shares specific attributes of the body – insignificant non-actions that typically go undiscussed, and are usually only observed at length by loved ones or close friends.

There is also a more literal natural element here in the sounds of birds and wind that generously make up the background of recording. It’s soft and comfortable, like sitting outside on a park bench, or maybe on a porch with a cup of tea. But again it adds to the intimacy of the recording, because the longer this soft background drags on, the more convincing it becomes as part of my own. So it’s not just an invitation to share a body, but one to share a space as well.

This album probably comes the closest to the quote Yan Jun’s been using for a long time, “I wish I was a piece of field recording.” If he didn’t openly state what was happening here, I’d probably assume this whole thing was a field recording, and that the leg shaking was something natural to that environment – but who’s to say it isn’t, or that the leg shaking sounds can’t become part of their environment? If bird chirps and buzzing bugs can be considered natural to that environment, then why can’t a human shaking their legs? Why can’t Yan Jun’s human presence in that space be a piece of field recording?

Despite all the concepts, 51’28” is a surprisingly easy listen, like the previous untitled album was. It doesn’t demand much or carry any surprises, it doesn’t provoke feelings or anxieties. It just, for the duration listed in the title, exists. And when it ends it feels as if a certain tension has been lifted – it’s not just that the leg-shaking affliction has dissipated, but the entire environment has. It makes me want to immediately put it back on again, to bring the whole thing back to life.

- Connor Kurtz

Yan Jun - hongkong (No Rent, 2022)

hongkong is the finale to a trilogy of releases (also including europe and Lanzhou) made by Yan Jun for No Rent Records over a five year period. The music is primarily performed with feedback, and achieves a remarkable aesthetic that falls somewhere between contemporary EAI minimalism and classic, cathartic, screeching noise – a style that very much feels Yan’s own.

Through these three releases, the progress of Yan Jun’s style can be clearly felt. Where europe was uncomfortable, surreal and harsh, and Lanzhou found and honed into a meditative calm within the bleeding feedback, hongkong manages to combined both worlds and present something both aggressive and peaceful, evocative and stoic. It feels more refined than ever too, with rigidly structured songs and consistently excellent sound design.

The feedback performances are consistently on the edge of technical mastery and sonic unpredictability. There’s a clear attention to detail and frequent attempts to make specific sounds, to express specific ideas, to generate patterns, but the feedback system always, at least somewhat, speaks for itself. And while Yan tries to control and guide it, there’s also an essential acceptance of this, even a glamorization of it in sustained sections of uncontrolled feedback tones or eruptive clipping.

Because of this unpredictable nature of the instrument, the performer is always both on the inside and the outside of these sounds, playing both the designer and the observer. It turns the performances into something simultaneously explorative and expressive, where sonic introspection is met with somewhat failed results. There’s a constant tension because of this, as Yan Jun perpetually attempts to shape the sound into an ineffable goal – as the perfect sound is polluted by an electric squelch or clicking, and that new sound is honed into instead, making for another perfect sound.

On top of this sonic tension, there’s some emotional or political tension here too. It’s hard to explain exactly why or how or what is being expressed, but these decadent walls of self-destructive feedback give me images of urban decay and cultural collapse, with speakers and mixing boards stacked in a trash heap, and these modern technologies only being salvaged to be presented as archaic and impractical sound devices. I can imagine it as the sounds still present in the now-useless technology left behind after human apocalypse, or the amplified electric sounds of a contemporary tech-infested apartment, suggesting that the era of technological abundance, electric cacophony and industrial waste is both a futuristic concern and already here.

Beneath and within the pure feedback stoicism is a cautious, worried personality. I’m sure the emotional takeaways of a work like this are largely in the ears of the listener, but I feel a massive anxious tension here. It’s in the performance, there’s both joy and anxiety in the erratic instrument – indulgent excitement and nervous restraint in each gesture, creating an air of caution that surrounds the performative curiosity. This feels perfectly reflective of the potential political and cultural anxieties that can come from observing industrial decay, of worrying for the future or even the present, or of witnessing culture mutate and sound on its own, possibly under the guiding pressure of invisible hands.

This is an album for people who lean in to listen to clicking computer hard drives or buzzing outlets, who enjoy the imagery of urban decay and industrial nonsense as nature, or who gain a perverse excitement from when their audio equipment malfunctions. It’s extreme in a unique way – it’s piercing and uncomfortable, patient and claustrophobic, cryptic and raw, harsh in sensibilities but restrained in approach. Maybe what’s most exciting and extreme is the purity of it – that Yan Jun was able to find such a single, powerful, potentially off-putting aesthetic, that he’s been able to refine it to such a degree without losing its edge, and that he was able to fully excavate it into such a cohesive and subtly varied album.

- Connor Kurtz

Zhu Wenbo - Four Lines and Improvisation (Aloe Records, 2022)

Zhu Wenbo performs a solo composition and a solo improvisation for sine tones, voice, microphones, clarinet, and snare drum on the 33’ Four Lines and Improvisation. 

Sustained slow vocal hums that could at times be confused for electronic modulations move alongside sine tones that beat as both approach unison, the perception of space reflected through the hiss of recorded silence changing with changes in each from which the crunch and crackle of sensitive microphones also emerge. Long shrill clarinet tones gradually appear closer to the dulled roar of feedback distorted through snare drum whose modulations fishtail towards new equilibria. The two seem hues of the other despite differences of instrumentation and composition. And within them there’s also a sense that the sound sources blend and converge and collapse into each other. The reduction of things doesn’t isolate them but illuminates the relationships of its many and disparate components. 

- Keith Prosk

lists

Celebrating 2022 recordings.

Connor Kurtz

Mark Vernon – Time Deferred (Gagarin Records). I fell in love with this the first time I heard it. Mark had sent me an early copy after I reviewed two of his recent albums (In the Throat of the Machine & Magneto Mori: Vienna) in 2021, but I had a hard time finding a way to review it. The previous albums were both easy for me because they relied on specific concepts and clear ideas, but Time Deferred contained neither – instead, this album is held together by a vague feeling.

It’s a cryptic sense of dread, something personal but twisted into a fragmented, Picasso-esque face. It’s a series of audio-dreams and nightmares that are built from dissected memories and subconscious emotions. Each track is rich with something ineffable – be it an ethereal nostalgia, an anxious terror, an unrequited longing, a temporal confusion, or a bitter regret.

In Time Deferred, the concept of ‘time’ contorts into itself – memories and recordings get laid out on a flat plain together like they do in the resting subconscious. Tapes being sped or slowed reflect a mind obsessing on ideas or feelings, while their processed and twisted nature reflects the mutated, stylized way an uneasy mind remembers and feels.

It’s a powerful, cohesive and intricate album that could probably mean something different to anyone who hears it, as they attempt to understand its emotions and experiences with their own. If there is one album I’d like to recommend from this year, it’s this.

death’s dynamic shroud – Darklife (100% ELECTRONICA). A joyfully bastardized chimera of a pop album, degenerated, degenred and degendered as if rendered by imperfect AI. There’s moments of human emotion played against moments of superficial ecstasy or dysfunctioning surrealism and the production is a disjointed but engaging mesh of aesthetics, both exaggerated and nuanced. It’s catchy, complex, so creative – a really fun listen.

Bruno Duplant – Le jour d’après (Sublime Retreat). There’s a specific sound on this album that really appealed to me, it’s a soft high-end scratching – it could be a tape-head failing to read dirty media, or a repetitive scratch, or a glitching effect left behind by the temporal rift that was opened to make this album. Le jour d’après is a single half-hour ambient piece built from dusty tapes, discarded memories and forgotten musics – it’s nostalgic, bittersweet, and gorgeous.

Jürg Frey / Reinier van Houdt – lieues d’ombres (elsewhere). Jürg Frey’s compositions are patient, imaginative and beautiful, and Reinier van Houdt plays with the perfect restrained sentimentality for the part. There’s a musicality in these pieces that makes it stand out from other Wandelweiser music  – the sparse, soft melodies, the momentary lushness, the comforting repetitions, the beauty – but it has thorns too, as introduced by its opening dissonant chords. For fans of Wandelweiser music or contemporary piano music, this is probably essential.

Reinier van Houdt – drift nowhere past / the adventure of sleep (elsewhere). Two excellent albums – one comprising Reinier’s 6 monthly tracks made for the online AMPLIFY 2020 festival, one all new. Reinier’s compositions are so cool – there’s clear inspirations from the various artists he’s collaborated with or interpreted, but the results as a whole sound nothing like them, it’s very much in a hard-to-define style of Reinier’s own. The songs are linear collages, typically with a dreamy narrative flow. It’s evocative, mysterious, thoughtful and very creative.

Annette Krebs – Six sonic movements through amplified metal pieces, paper noises, strings, sine waves, plastic animals, objects, voice, a quietly beeping heating system and street noises (Graphit). For an album with such a long and specific title, it’s surprising just how surreal and unpredictable this is. It’s an elaborate mess of pops and pangs and clunks and clangs that hints at a reason to its madness which it never gives away. It has a strong aesthetic that’s consistent throughout, but there’s constant variation and nuance enough to keep it exciting and unknown.

Francisco López / Reinier van Houdt – Untitled #400 (i dischi di angelica). The first track is a composition for stringless piano – I had to read that a couple of times before realizing how strange it was. It’s all expertly recorded wooden, percussive thuds soaked in the vague notion of tone. The sonic options are limited, so it feels like they thoroughly exploit the instrument for all its worth on this track. The second track remixes the first one, mutating the piano thuds and tremors into fully unrecognizable electric artifice. They’re exciting tracks to compare as a two-movement composition.

The Gerogerigegege – >(decrescendo) Final Chapter (Inundow). >(decrescendo) was originally released as a cassette in 2019 and features the enigmatic Japanese noise icon playing ambient hapi drum outside. It’s beautiful, soft, meditative, but lonely and mysterious. The new CD release includes a second disc which presents a deteriorated successor to the first one, burying the hapi drum and captured environment in distortion and soil, leaving nothing but an overamplified shell behind. It’s harsh but empty and contains all the emotions of watching a loved one deliberately self-destruct. 

Yan Jun – hongkong (No Rent Records). 9 tracks of buzzing and bumping feedback, piercing tones, electric crunching and sporadic chaos. It’s noisy in sensibilities and ripe with expressionist frustration but favours nuance to pure catharsis, instead letting the electric fury out gradually through soft blasts of precise noise and carefully erupting electronics.

Klara Lewis – Live in Montreal 2018 (Editions Mego). This live performance takes the shape of a long, slow, noisy, triumphant ambient piece that slowly drifts between tape loops, moods and sensibilities. It evokes a cold but dense environment that is exciting to hear develop and mutate, leading to several powerful moments.

Tony Lugo – Synthetic Percussion Music (ETAT). ETAT has been releasing some of the most exciting and extreme electronic music of recent years, and Synthetic Percussion Music is their most intense release yet. It’s entirely sourced from percussion performances, digitally dissected and resynthesized into massive grotesque noise masses. Each track uses different effects and sources, so they all offer a different breed of stereosynthetic ferocity.

https://etat.xyz/release/SyntheticPercussionWorks

Lasse Marhaug & Jérôme Noetinger – Top (Erstwhile Records). Listening to Top is like being transported back in time to a strange Viennese club and hearing an ear-shredding, mind-blowingly bizarre concert, the type you wouldn’t even be sure how to put into words. Both artist bring plenty originality to their performances, but there’s also a nostalgic look back in this tribute to Pita that makes for a chaotic but warm listen.

Jérôme Noetinger – Sur quelques mondes étranges (Gagarin Records). This album collects one-take performances by reel-to-reel maestro Jérôme Noetinger and has him sounding incredibly refined, more exciting as a solo artist than I’ve heard before. There’s an improvised spontaneity to them but they still manage to play out as thematically-rich and complex mini-narratives, each evoking its own uniquely disjointed atmosphere. The highlight is the 18-minute ‘Eine andere magische Stadt’, a slow and dynamic drone piece full of buzzing statics and spinning tapes.

Chiho Oka & Aoi Tagami – The Best Concert Ever by Chiho Oka and Aoi Tagami (Ftarri). The first half is a duo improvisation of abstract voice, processed but melodic guitar, and occasionally explosive laptop sounds. It’s strange yet comfortable, patient yet primal. This doesn’t really reveal itself to be the best concert ever (by Chiho Oka and Aoi Tagami) until the second track, which is a game that has the duo drawing cards to prompt their next song. The result is a playful combination of improvised electronics and soft folk song. It’s awkward and charming in the best of ways – as pleasant and sweet as it is disorienting and harsh.

Patient K – Piss Artist (4iB Records). Since Sutcliffe Jügend “broke up” in 2019, the duo has been starting new projects to advance and diversify their contemporary power electronics sound even further. The songs of Piss Artist are full of industrial rhythms and oppressive distortion, but with a surprising attention to melody. The aesthetic is grotesque and shameful, making the warmest moments feel perverse and the bleakest feel hellish, but there’s a sick, liberated joy in its cathartic self-expression that keeps me coming back to this.

The Rita – Her Shell, The Chute (Scream & Writhe). The Rita is best known as an innovator for the harsh noise wall genre, but over recent years he’s been innovating a new style that’s somehow even more difficult and alienating. It’s a harsh and indulgent mess of clicks and clips, in this case made from “working a Lange XT 130 LV ski boot”. It doesn’t go anywhere, it doesn’t change, it just crackles and crackles and crackles, bridging an aesthetic gap between pure noise wall and Sachiko M. The atmosphere on this one is so cold and bleak though – capturing the sensation of being buried beneath an avalanche or lost in a ski accident perfectly.

Vanessa Rossetto – The Actress (Erstwhile Records). Vanessa Rossetto has been becoming an increasingly significant and exciting name in the field recordings/sound collage world for years, and this is good enough to be the album it was all building up to. Each track is a complex, dynamic, full narrative, rich with memories and ideas. What I find most wonderful about The Actress is how every track feels like it’s based on specific thoughts, feelings and events, but they’re things only the artist properly understands – we as listeners just listen along and find our own interpretations.

Germaine Sijstermans – Betula (elsewhere). Once again, my most listened album of the year comes from elsewhere. The chamber compositions on Betula are soft, lush and sweet, full of sustained tones that delicately hang in the air and harmonize. It makes for such an easy, calming listen, but there’s no shortage of nuanced creativity here – both in composition and performances. 

Taku Sugimoto / Cristián Alvear, Santiago Blanco & Nicolás Carrasco – Mada (Modern Concern). Although this is the second realization of Mada that Cristián Alvear has released, there is a shocking difference in realization and aesthetics between the two versions. The new Mada is primarily electronic, with pulsing synthesizers and electronic noises that make the loud moments beautiful, the soft moments surreal and the silent moments uncanny. It’s a bit of a twist on the aesthetics expected from this type of ultraminimal composed music, but it works very well.

Philip Sulidae – Slí Skala (Self-Released). Philip Sulidae’s Bandcamp subscriber series has been a thrill to follow, with 20 releases out since 2021. They’re all based on recent field recordings made in his home of Hobart, Tasmania, with liberal use of EQ, filtering and computer sounds. The result is a fictional Tasmania that’s controlled by Sulidae’s rigid aesthetics, and the releases add together into a two-year document of this fascinating, fake place. Slí Skala has been my favourite of these releases – 4 tracks of gorgeous, strange, soft commotion surrounded in electric and insect hums.

Mark Vernon – A World Behind This World (Persistence of Sound). A World Behind This World is a lot more specific than Time Deferred is – it’s less vibe-heavy, and more focused on twisting and creating environments. The recordings are all made from in and around a sculpture workshop but are presented in an abstracted state, turning the ambiguous factory cacophony into a controlled composition, or an investigation of a fictional world.

Iannis Xenakis – Electroacoustic Works (Karlrecords). This set collects four hours of Xenakis’s electroacoustic and tape works, all remixed and remastered to sound remarkably fresh. The earliest tracks from the 50s already feel otherworldly, and the new mix of Persepolis sounds absolutely huge and cacophonous, but 1978’s La Légende d'Eer is the highlight for me – a surreal masterpiece of sound exploration and mythological abstraction. His late-era computer works are exceptional too – absolutely bizarre, dissonant, ugly, and wonderful.

Sun Yizhou – Ruin (Brachliegen Tapes). Ruin is an album of unpredictable, spastic, raging noise built from pure electricity. It’s full of soft static and aggressive, crunching feedback shouts and bleeding high-end tones. The sounds are raw and the structures are wonderfully impulsive – holding on to textures for as long as it likes and interrupting them with abrupt chaos. With so much clean, refined, pretty improvisation around these days, it’s exciting to hear a musician making such rough, ugly, powerful music.

Keith Prosk

There are so many more wonderful listening or otherwise musical experiences that I will carry forward but these are the recordings released in 2022 to which I compulsively returned most in 2022. I’d also like to acknowledge Bertrand Gauguet, Yannick Guédon, and Carol Robinson’s performances of Éliane Radigue’s Occam pieces on Occam Ocean 4 and DesoDuo’s performances of Eva-Maria Houben’s john muir trails as 2021 releases that shipped out a little later with which I shared quite a bit of time too. And also M.O. Abbott, Microtub, Henrik Nørstebø, and Rage Thormbones’ performance of Catherine Lamb’s inter-spatia, Talea Ensemble’s performance of Sarah Hennies’ Clock Dies, and Zinc & Copper’s performance of Éliane Radigue’s Occam Delta X as 2022 recordings I thoroughly enjoyed but imagine will receive a more normative presentation on the horizon. 

Cristián Alvear & Diego Castro - Alvin Lucier: Criss-Cross for Two Electric Guitars (2013) (self-released)

Nick Ashwood, Laura Altman, Jim Denley - Transparent Forms (caterpillar)

mattie barbier - threads (Sofa Music)

Pascal Battus - Cymbale ouverte (Akousis Records)

Frédéric Blondy - Éliane Radigue: Occam XXV (Organ Reframed)

Charles Curtis - Terry Jennings (arr. La Monte Young): Piece for Cello and Saxophone (Saltern)

DesoDuo - Songs for Two (self-released)

Julián Galay, Ángeles Rojas - ɣ (SELLO POSTAL)

Jonathan Heilbron, Andrew Lafkas, Mike Majkowski, Koen Nutters - Bryan Eubanks: for four double basses (INSUB.)

Alma Laprida - ensayos baschet (presses précaires)

John McCowen - Models of Duration (Astral Spirits / Dinzu Artefacts)

Misaki Motofuji - Yagateyamu (Hitorri)

Nabelóse - OMOKENTRO (bohemian drips)

Michiko Ogawa, Sam Dunscombe, Jonathan Heilbron, Catherine Lamb, Rebecca Lane, Lucy Railton, Fredrik Rasten, Sarah Saviet - Junkan (2020) (Marginal Frequency)

Kaori Suzuki - Music for Modified Melodica (Moving Furniture Records)

Masahide Tokunaga - Leverages 杠杆 (Zoomin’ Night)

Zinc & Copper + Leonor Antunes - discrepancies with F​.​H. (#1#2#3#4#5#6) (Pirelli HangarBicocca)

Thank you so much for sharing time with harmonic series. We hope you have a happy new year.

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Sound American 29: The Roscoe Mitchell Issue is available for preorder, with conversations between Mitchell and David Brown & Tomeka Reid, John Corbett, Phillip Greenlief, and John McCowen and writings from Jessie Cox, James Fei, Darius Jones, Zeena Parkins, Tyshawn Sorey, Ken Vandermark, and Sam Weinberg. 

The first Molten Plains Fest happens December 9 & 10, 2022 in Denton, TX for those nearby or available to travel, featuring Susan Alcorn, Ka Baird, Bitches Set Traps, Henna Chou, CNCPCN, Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez, Princess Haultaine III, Alma Laprida, Rob Mazurek, Christian Mirande, Monte Espina, Bill Nace, Warren Realrider, Kory Reeder, Luke Stewart, Marshall Trammell, Weasel Walter, and Andrew Weathers. 

The Catalytic Sound Festival happens December 1-11, 2022 with streaming available for performances in Chicago, Asheville, Trondheim, Washington D.C., Hartford, New York City, and Wormer, featuring Jaap Blonk, Chris Corsano, Tashi Dorji, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Bonnie Jones, Lia Kohl, Brandon L​ó​pez, Cecilia L​ó​pez, Joe McPhee, Ikue Mori, Paal Nilssen-Love, Patrick Shiroishi, Luke Stewart, Ken Vandermark, Nate Wooley, Min Xiao-Fen, and many more. Streaming available for members only, with rates of $10 and $25. 

harmonic series now offers paid subscriptions. Free subscribers, unsubscribed readers, and paid subscribers receive the same access; a paid subscription is just another, recurring way to regularly support the efforts around the newsletter. One-time donations donations via PayPal remain as another way. The rate will be $5 per month but this month a reduced rate of $4 per month is available for the duration of subscriptions started by December 31, 2021. A founding member subscription allows you to set the rate to anything greater than $5 per month. Please feel free to reach out at harmonicseries21@gmail.com for any questions. 

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$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider donating. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $1.31 to $6.98 for October and $0.78 to $6.21 for November. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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conversations

Biliana Voutchkova is an interdisciplinary artist, violinist, composer-performer, improviser and curator who uses violin, voice, and field recordings to approach new ways of expression. Over video chat we talk about intuition, sharing, personal associations, depth, and time. 

Biliana is engaged with her year long project DUOS2022 and as part of it she has released a series of digital albums with Relative Pitch Records, so far including collaborators Michael Zerang, Leila Bordreuil, Susana Santos Silva, Joanna Mattrey, and Tomeka Reid. 

Complementing the conversation here, Paul Acquaro, Matthew Banash, and Nick Ostrum review the iterations of the DUOS2022 series released so far over at The Free Jazz Collective.

Keith Prosk: So how’s Paris treating you?

Biliana Voutchkova: Oh, it’s good. I mean, I'm not here that long yet. I had already a few nice meetings. I met Joëlle Léandre and we’re thinking of doing something together. And then I met this other violinist, Lucia Peralta, who has a new music ensemble (Ensemble Itinéraire), so there are already possibilities for new things, it’s good.

KP: That’s perfect. Yeah I understand you have a six month city des arts residency?

BV: Yeah.

KP: Nice. Is there kind of like a deliverable at the end of that or is it just "hey come in and enrich our city with your music"?

BV: Well, I think they’re more interested in providing space for you to just work peacefully. It's a Berlin-related residency, the flat and the stipend, everything is from Berlin. So I just can do what I want. I mean I’m doing the duo project here now, meeting a lot of people and just doing one-on-one work. So we’ll see. But also open to things I can not yet know. I have already one concert scheduled on Nov. 13th with cellist Séverine Ballon, so it will be… we will see how it goes. It’s very nice to be here because France is one of these countries where I almost never come, very rarely. And also a lot of musicians that work here, they don’t travel as much. So you actually end up meeting many people you wouldn't know about unless you come. 

KP: Nice. Well, I've got a little map going from some of your solo stuff and working up to the duos, but at any time if you want to take it in another direction I'm glad to go there. Is there anything that you want to start off with?

BV: I think let’s just do what you want to do, and then I think at the end if there is anything I really want to say that we haven’t said. It's good like that. 

KP: Yeah. So let’s start with your voice. When I think of strings and voice, some of the other players that might come to mind are like gabby fluke-mogul and Charlotte Hug and a lot of times their voice can appear almost as an extension of the strings. I liken it to a karate chop, where the vocal energy is almost aligned with what is perceived as the energy of the music. But with your voice I feel that you’re using it in a bit of a different way, almost contrapuntally in line and texture. So one of the sounds that I think about a lot from you is that groaning gnawing sound, which is quite a bit different than the shriller sustain that might characterize a bit of your violin sounds. But of course I think you think of your violin and voice as one so, I guess… in what ways do you approach incorporating voice into your string practice, or how do those two talk to each other?

BV: It’s interesting actually that you say that, because a lot of people tell me my voice feels like an extension of my violin. Like many, many people. And they usually address it as it is just an enriching color palette of my violin colors. But I can tell you how I see it. First of all, it started appearing very organically without necessarily a conscious decision to start using the voice. So it did come out as an extension, searching for new sounds, which of course is an ongoing practice (to search for new sounds). And I remember that it was quite intuitive. This was when I recorded my first solo, Modus of Raw. I was at a residency in Switzerland in the Alps, in a little town called Poschiavo, where I had three weeks. I remember what happened is that I was already using the voice a little bit, but not much, it came organically here and there in my performances. In Poschiavo I had a kind of a small studio set up and I went hiking in the mountains a lot, like almost everyday, maybe six to eight hours, with a few free days in between. So I did these really big nature hikes and then I came back to my place and I recorded in the studio pretty much every night after that. There was a kind of connection to nature and physical activity, and just intuition. And often at night I was quite exhausted, but that even put me in a better state to play because I just didn’t think, I just played whatever. And that was the time when the voice came a lot, more and more and more. And I just noticed it. Usually that’s how things work. I notice I'm doing something, I give it more attention, and then I let it happen more and more. It’s also sometimes with certain techniques or whatever, they appear a little bit and then I just shift my focus that way. That happened with the voice. So I started consciously using it and saying "OK, that’s coming, let’s see what happens… " So that was the three weeks intense period of using it more and more, and since then I've been using it pretty much always when I improvise. It’s part of my vocabulary now. 

KP: Yeah. And so you mentioned Modus of Raw and that’s kind of what introduced the world to your voice and violin together and then the next solo, Seeds of Songs, added field recordings on top of that. And with Seeds of Songs it kind of seems like they’re there because those sounds had become such a central part of your experience while you were locked down during Covid. But then they pop up more. They pop up recently in the duo with Joanna Mattrey and there they seem to have a little more utility, where they provide a more constant contrast to the more spontaneous string playing. So how has incorporating field recordings been developing, or are there some goals in mind with incorporating field recordings?

BV: Yeah. Actually I don’t know if it's goals, but it's definitely kind of the next thing that’s appearing more and more organically in my work. I just mentioned how the voice came, and in a similar manner, I started using field recordings for the first time a couple of years ago. And again, the first kind of milestone and public presentation of that is this Seeds of Songs solo album. For me these two solo albums are landmarks: the first one, Modus of Raw, is where I first officially introduced the voice. And then the Seeds of Songs, a landmark of a completely different process, using field recordings and unrelated material as a starting point, rather than organically seeking, playing and just putting it out as it is, which is the case with Modus of Raw. Seeds of Songs is pretty much a composed piece, where I have taken material from various locations or moments, and that happened throughout these Corona times obviously, and I edited the material in a totally artificial manner in a way. But for me it's really… I find complete logic, everything belongs together for me. So it is still an organic process. From the point of view of someone outside it may not be, because these things are coming from random times and random places. So the Seeds of Songs is somehow the landmark and the first official milestone of my work with field recordings. Which, again, is more and more coming into my practice. I have been recording a lot, but I have not used any of the material until that point. So I started using it and finding ways to work with it a few months before Seeds of Songs came up, and continuing until now actually. Joanna’s recording is a good example of that. I also had an exhibition last year where I used the field recordings for some of the installations. And I also have another new solo project where I use a mini-speaker installation. I have ten very small speakers, I use between five and ten of them. Usually I prepare a soundtrack with a combination of field recordings, sometimes violin and voice, any of these, and I play with it. So it's a very spatial solo because the speakers are completely autonomous and I can put them anywhere in the space. In the case of the gallery where I had the exhibition last year, they were used for one of my installations and I played with them. That is how it started. This is the way that I'm more and more incorporating the field recordings in my solo performances now. 

KP: Nice. You mentioned a logic that is there for you, but might not necessarily be there for outsiders. Say, for instance, the sounds in Seeds of Songs. Are those connected sonically to you or is it more of a spatial or experiential connection or a mix of those and other things?

BV: It varies, really. Some of them are associated with a person or a place. Which is completely personal and of course nobody can know that. And it's not relevant for people, but for me they connect to a certain experience or certain state of mind that I'm in, and I feel like "oh now I'm gonna record that". And also it’s not really again a conscious… I'm interested in the subconscious, the kind of dreamlands and otherworldly levels of expression which can come to the surface. I noticed that certain times what I do with the voice resembles a song. And that again has not been much the case before, because I use the voice a lot in terms of just sonic expression, it’s not really songlike, very often it's really sound work. For Seeds of Songs, it's really singing in a way. It’s not really developed songs, but that’s why I called it Seeds of Songs, it's really like little motifs of something that is songlike. And that’s how I connected the various recordings for that particular release, because they have these kind of songlike qualities for me. That was my logic behind it. For the one for Joanna, again it's a field recording from a particular place where I was with a particular person for a longer amount of time. There was a garden there where I spent quite a lot of time, so I started noticing certain details and they all connected for me. Then there is one recording on that album which is not from the garden, but it's from the moment that I left. And I started listening to these birds just before I took my flight, and it was just somehow like, wow these birds are kind of like saying goodbye or something. I don’t know, again it was very personal, but I notice those things and they connect for me, so that's why I put them together. So yeah. And I called it Like thoughts coming because certain thoughts were related to these recordings and they were also related to the way that we played with Joanna. Again, something that I connect for me and it makes complete sense, but maybe not for anybody else. For Joanna M., thank god! it did, because of course we work together. She loved it! And there’s also a little moment where there is a cat coming. You hear this little cat moment and Joanna adores cats, we were even thinking of putting a cat on the cover. So there are all these things which completely connect and make sense, and that’s how I present them to the world. 

KP: Perfect. So you do also have Amati Lenta which… I understand you previously did some work with Olivia Block and there’s a future series on the horizon around that kind of work. And that’s when you’re in duo with a field recordist. So do you find that you feel a difference between working with your own field recordings and working with someone else’s field recordings, when that connection might not necessarily be there? 

BV: Yeah, yeah of course it's different and that's why I do it. Because I like difference. So the way that this particular piece works is that I actually work with mini tape recorders. I have five dictaphones and there are particular modules that I recorded on all of them, where I play certain material. It is a kind of a piece that has a couple of modules which can come at any time in any way, but they are recorded on all of the five dictaphones and because of the essence of these little dictaphones they sound completely different [laughs]. Sometimes the same material is unrecognisable as such, but I recorded it on all of them simultaneously and they just sound like nothing else. So this first performance of Amati Lenta was with Olivia Block. When I do a collaboration we always do it in a way that the person I work with makes their own decision how and what to use, they add their own material too. So there is like a little melody that is always the same, there are certain sections that have harmonics, one that is more percussive and then at the end there is a section with a waterphone. So all of these components are always present in each variation. For example with Olivia, she wanted me to actually record a digital version of what I had done with the mini tape recorders. We recorded it and then she used also that to process for her own sounds. There is also a solo version of this piece, but I have to admit I really quite like to collaborate with others for it, because the piece becomes something very different and at the same time the essence of it, the core is the same. You hear it and you just get to hear these little glimpses of the modules, but everything else is completely different. Maybe I should mention the collaborators that I have for next year when we will releases a tape series of Amati Lenta. I already did the first recording, it’s with Svetlana Maraš, I don’t know if you're familiar with her work. She’s Serbian, but she is now the head of the electronic studio in Basel, Hochschule für Musik. She’s moved to Basel I think a year ago and we did a recording at the studio there. The way that she chose to work is to use the big magnetic tape machines and rerecorded material from the dictaphones on those big tapes, and then she only used these sounds to play with. She worked with changes of speed and eq’ing, no processing, and she did not use any other sounds that she normally uses. So that was her take on the piece, to actually use the… lenta in Bulgarian means tape, so she only used the actual tape and she only used physical tape which she cut and did loops and all kinds of things. It was really a very different working process, very physical and tactile somehow. And then I am planning to… so there are going to be three collaborations, one was with Svetlana, one will be with Marta Zapparoli from Berlin, she works with tapes a lot, of course. We are in touch and planning that next year. And the last one will be with Angélica Castelló from Vienna who of course also uses recordings and tapes in her work, we will be meeting  and recording in December. She will be my guest for the last DUOS2022 concert in Berlin. And so we will also use the time to work on Amati Lenta. Then the plan is to release these albums on cassettes and digital, in collaboration with Shameless records, an Austrian record label run by a colleague of mine, Boris Hauf, who lives in Berlin. And he invited me… he really wanted to do it with Olivia, to do the original work, but she is in Chicago and we’re not able to schedule this right now. I suggested the multi releases, I'm really looking into possibilities of ongoing projects which develop over time. So that’s why I suggested three colleagues for now, and it could be that it becomes four or five, it depends on what possibilities we have. But for now with these three we will definitely do it. It’s kind of a DUOS2022 extension really, but it's for me very different because it's an actual piece and there’s an actual core material for it, so it's not completely improvised and so, yeah, that’s for next year. 

KP: Yeah it sounds like you sit with things or ideas for quite awhile right because we were talking about the progression from Modus of Raw to Seeds of Songs, there’s this iterative process of duos, and now this tape project as well. So Boris reached out to you initially? 

BV: Boris reached out to me when he found out that I worked with Olivia Block because he really loves Olivia’s work. I was in Chicago, and Chicago is also a very special place for him, his wife worked there and they have a very special connection to the city, so he really wanted to do something. It’s still possible, it could be that we end up recording with Olivia at some point, but somehow not now and yeah, he really was excited about it. And then when we talked about other people he was just like "ah you know what, let’s just do it like that." 

KP: Nice. So we’ve talked a bit about voice and field recordings, but people probably consider you more of a violin player. You’ve got at any one time a lot of different kinds of projects going on, anything from the more traditional sounding notated stuff with Ernstalbrecht Stiebler to a lot of the more textural free play that's going on with the DUOS series or even Jane In Ether, but do you see a throughline with your violin work, or are there some ideas or actions that you find yourself returning to all the time? 

BV: Yeah. So I’ll separate a little bit the question. The first thing that people do associate me with is the violin of course, mostly because that’s my main instrument. That’s a thread since I was four years old, no wonder that's how people think of me. I do want to shift this perception though because, especially around the last ten years, I have done so much more than just playing the violin. I've done a lot with the voice. And I've done a lot of performative work, also with dance, I had a dance and music group for ten years called Grapeshade. So many, many different things. And I do like to be treated as an overall artist, musician, because my work is going through waves of interests and the violin is always present, but I am not only a violinist. As I said, my work goes through waves of interest and at the moment I am very much inspired by the connection between people, people and places, places and places, and as a result the working with field recordings appeared. And also I'm very much interested in other visual work and in general visual inputs. I like to work with visual art, with video or with images as an input, maybe even graphic scores, taking the visual in a broad sense... again, it's not something that has to be visible for others, but for me it's the next wave somehow. It’s working with installations, making my own installations, having this first exhibition performance last year where I use the installations as part of the overall composition, where I play with them, this is kind of the next chapter that is interesting for me. And this connection between places and people that I mentioned is also very much connected to the duo project because the people I connect with, they come from various places and they somehow infect the way that I create, make me do things differently, because I am a very responsive player. I am usually responding to something when I improvise. So this is to say that I don’t necessarily want to be connected to the violin only, but it still is a very main part of all my work, it's one part of everything that I do regardless of the shifts that the work takes. And then you said, is there something that I return to. I mean, I have created a certain language that I use and I think I kind of make an analogue, well, to language in general. We have a language and we use the same language and the same words, but we say different things. And it's a similar situation with the way that I play. I have created a certain language and I use it to say different things. Obviously, consciously and subconsciously, I do return to things, but at the same time I am trying to find ways that provoke me to do different things and also to surprise myself. That is why the whole duo project came, the whole interest in visual input is also very present right now, the field recordings, all these things are coming because I long for finding ways to make me respond differently and eventually find something new. So far it has been efficient, I believe it will continue being efficient for the future [laughs] And the other thing I want to say, because I also play written music, it's a similar wish. I like to work with composers. I'm more and more interested in dropping out of already-written pieces and creating pieces with composers that are written for/with me. Like the collaboration with Ernstalbrecht Stiebler that you mentioned, we have known each other for over thirteen years, ever since I moved to Berlin, and there has been a lot of exchange. We also improvise together sometimes, and so the pieces that he writes are really written for me after knowing me. This is a different way of playing written music as it would be a piece that I just get the score for. Recently I also commissioned a piece by Anna Korsun which is for violin and voice, and I love it because she uses the voice in a way that I can totally relate to. Another recent piece by Peter Ablinger, which is also a release called An den Mond - same thing. We had two weeks time together to create something. And so this is definitely different because this is composed music by someone else, but it is at the same time a shared collaborative process, what he calls “al-fresco composition”, and it makes me do things that I could not think of by myself, they come from outside. This I really like. Everything that I do with the improvised or composed music is definitely beneficial to the other. It’s always enriching. 

KP: Yeah there’s always that nice feedback where not only do, say, different kinds of making music feedback to each other, but interacting with different mediums of art or forms of art or even sciences or different activities, kinetic activities you said were feeding back into how you make your music with the Swiss hikes… 

BV: Yes, completely, I am a nature lover, so I am in nature a lot. I think I even want to be more in nature and almost never in cities any more, but we’ll see about that [laughs] My work is related to cities and to these very vibrant artistic scenes that you find in cities and big metropoles like Berlin. I mean, that’s the reason I'm in Berlin. I cannot be the person and artist I am if I am all the time living in the mountains by myself. It’s also about sharing. A big part of the work is really about sharing and if I don’t have that I don't think I can create. Sharing is important. 

KP: Yeah you mentioned that these duos are infecting your play. You also mentioned you kind of like to work in series because it's tracking changes, pushing you to different things. So with the DUOS2022 series, one of the things that I picked up on is that I very much hear the characteristic of both players, and I also hear how they’re kind of blending or meshing as well. So sometimes this happens very texturally, like your breathier bridge bowing works perfectly with Leila’s subway rail squealing strings or Joanna’s really rough sawing, but also of course listening to each other through dynamics and densities and stuff like that. So that exchange feels like a core part of why DUOS is happening. But are there some other goals going on with the project?

BV: Yeah. Well, as I said, the project came first as a wish for very direct communication in a creative sharing world. I find it very special to share with one person, so that was the first idea, I wanted to do that for a long time with different people. The goal is to bring out the different qualities of the way that I create in response, in relation to my partner. And I think this is becoming evident by listening to all the records, because you see how all these differences are coming out and they’re definitely related to the personality of the person I am playing with. I mean, I am the same player and again, I probably use a language that is similar, but in context and in relationship to the different partners that I invited, it’s just a completely different sound world, and I love that. I love to see how this transition is happening and how much individuality and personality matters in the way that we play and in the way that we create when improvising. For me it's fascinating, it's magic, you know. It's the same instrument, but with different people completely different music comes out of it. Some tracks are thirty minutes long, some tracks are snippets from couple minutes from here, couple minutes from there, with connecting to field recordings and things like that. For me it's fascinating, I love it because, again, I have this project for a long time and I can get into the details of the differences, follow them and create that way. And you know, I have worked like crazy for many, many years and the kind of way that I worked was that I jumped from project to project a lot. And that’s related to lifestyle. I'm a single mother of two children, I'm a freelancer, and I had to do that. So there has been a lot of projects in my life where I jumped from playing contemporary music theatre to improvising the next day and the next day I play with my new music group a hardcore Pierre Boulez piece and then I don’t know what, and this has been happening for twenty five years, and I have enough of it. I want to have longer times to focus on one thing. This longing for dedicating time to one project and going much more into detail and depth with that project ended up with the DUOS2022 project for this whole year, with the wish to have residencies as I have the residency in Paris now for six months, where I can really take the time to focus on less things and on my own work. So that's how it came.

KP: Yeah. So somewhat similarly, a duo that you've had for a very long time is Michael Thieke. But how might that kind of long, developed relationship compare to these duos, which sometimes are first meetings?

BV: No, right, it's a very different process because we have grown together and played together so many times that we know each other’s language. There are not so many surprises in terms of like… I mean, of course things are always different and surprising in some way, but I know his vocabulary. The reason that the interest in this long-going one-on-one work with one person is also there because we can go into depth in a different way. For example, we start working with collaborations of all kinds, like we did a project for our tenth anniversary called it Materiality & Sound, where we worked with a furniture designer Rainer Spehl in his atelier. We recorded the sounds from his machines in his working space and connected to the materiality because he works a lot with wood, and our instruments are both wooden. And so there was this connection between the way that wood transforms, then we took the sounds and used them with our Blurred Music concept, so we created again a long durational piece. It was a five hour long piece and we played it two days in a row. So we played for ten hours for our tenth anniversary. We add an element of surprise by thinking of ways to complement our playing and to shift the focus to the details, to add something external, something that we have not done yet. It’s fascinating because the reaction and the sensitivity is so deep by now that we can grow on top of that with adding additional elements.

KP: So you've kind of implied that with the sharing there might be a certain kind of intimacy when it's just between two people. But is there something that the duo format kind of makes possible that a trio or even larger, like your stuff with Splitter [Orchester], it's just not there?

BV: Yeah well it's of course very, very different, especially with a large groups like the Splitter. Splitter is all surprises, always, even though we know each other super well. And also I have to say I think in duos you can understand the other very exactly. For example, let me see how I can explain that... it’s a very fast process, so it doesn't go through thinking and saying, “oh I know what she’s going to do” or “I know where we are going". The brain cannot follow that fast, it's very intuitive. But we know or at least I think we know the other person’s intentions and wishes and decision making instantly. So if I play with one person, I would know that now is the end of the piece in an instant, maybe even before it comes, but I'm like, “OK we are at the end in one second”, and it comes in one second. The decisions are made simultaneously by both with no room for misunderstanding. With a group that is bigger you may think you know, but you don't know, you have no capacity to follow everyone, because then there will be one person that decides, “yeah, well I don't want it to be the end”, and then it's not. When it's a duo I think you are more going into depth by risking more and trusting more. And in bigger groups, first of all you take yourself away much more often. There are a lot of other people in Splitter and you often don't need to contribute in any way, so it's better to give space. It’s more that you are locating how the whole strange apparatus and soundscape functions and then you only initiate when you need to and you are most of the time just sensing. And I think in duos, you read it so fast that you can take shifts like this [snaps] and you know the other person will follow. I don’t know, it's just a different process. I'm in general a person that likes the small, I like the minutiae of life. I like this word. Two people is enough, small place is enough, playing for one person, great. Small spaces, I don’t necessarily love to play in a hall of three thousand people. I like it in some ways sometimes but, you know, I like the small. So it's natural I'm drawn to a duo or trio because these are the smallest ensembles possible. 

KP: Nice. So now you've had quite some time that you have been sharing with all these different duos, since DUOS2022 has been going on, how have you found that’s impacted your approaches when you go back home, away from the duo?

BV: Yeah. Well I think it's curious to follow how each one is shaping because they’re all very different. For example, the one that I think I’ll release as last is a collaboration with Charmaine Lee from New York. And with her we will not meet and we will not record together. I gave her some images to look at and respond to them soundwise, and she sent me some recordings, so it's more like exchanging and creating a piece out of this. It has not happened that way with the other albums. Somehow I thought it will be more often that I work this way, with sharing files long distance, but actually I ended up meeting and playing with all the other people. And again, I like these little switches, little differences. The way we recorded with Joanna, we recorded shorter tracks and they really were like some thought is coming and then we follow like little birds, and we did that. With Leila, it's completely the opposite, it's long graduating transformation of material that kind of shifts, but it's kind of progressive and slowly developing. And so I come home and I listen to the material and the interesting work for me is to edit it. To see what is it that's different from the other and do I keep the original, or do I hear things differently. Sometimes I edit things completely and compose with a whole other palette of material, like the record with Joanna with the filed recordings. And sometimes I let it stay just as it is, like the one with Susana Santos [Silva]. There’s nothing touched there except the few reverb parts. But again, we recorded in a way that there were so many close-up mics and you hear the sounds really like it's in your head, and I thought it would be nice to have sections where suddenly it's like you go out. Every one of them gives a hint of what could happen and then I catch this hint and I go that way. They definitely give me an input, the music itself, the personality of my colleagues and the way that we play together gives me an input of what will come out as a result with the album. 

KP: So you mentioned with the Amati Lenta series that Boris contacted you but how did you connect with Kevin [Reilly] at Relative Pitch [Records] for the DUOS series, publishing that, if you're willing to share? 

BV: Yeah. Kevin is someone that supports the whole improvised scene worldwide as much as he can. I have to tell you, we are all so grateful to have a Kevin and to have this label. He is so incredibly supportive. And so he knew my work, he actually helped me to connect to Leila at first. We played a concert in New York a few years ago and it was because he connected us. He was interested in putting out a record that is not digital, an actual CD release, but I am a little bit starting to doubt how much of CD's I want to put out in the world. I do like physical objects, but I think this format is somehow questionable. Also I had the idea of doing this DUOS2022 project with the live concerts and then also having multiple albums released and I just asked him, you know, instead of releasing CD's can we do a series of digital albums. He normally doesn’t do that. And so this was actually a suggestion, an idea that I had, and he embraced it, he said, sure if that's what you want to do let’s do it. As I said, he’s just supportive to each individual and to the way that we want to work and be creative. So he embraced the idea and he said, let’s do it, and he’s putting it all out and he’s an amazing and wonderful collaborator. 

KP: Has there been any kind of method to how you're selecting people to play and release duos with or has it just been people you've enjoyed playing with over the past year or so?

BV: It's more like people that I would have liked to play with, but I haven't. Or sometimes, like in the case with Michael Zerang or Susana Santos, we played in bigger groups and we had other things happening, but just to play duo with them. And some of them, like Joanna or Charmaine, that was a first time meeting. So it's always different. The selection is simply based on the wish to play with musicians who I admire. 

KP: Yeah, and did Leila and Tomeka’s happen during DARA [String Festival]?

BV: Yeah this was also a kind of coincidence. The next release is with Tomeka actually. I didn't plan it that way, but I was invited by the Goethe-Institut in Chicago to do a collaboration with Tomeka online during Corona. There was a series called Bricolage, curated by Magda Mayas and Dave Rempis, and they each invited an artist from their respective city and decided how to match them. So they invited Tomeka and me for a match to do an online project basically. And then the whole thing became very interesting because that same year Tomeka invited me to participate at her string festival, the [Chicago Jazz] String Summit, which was an online edition of the festival. And then I invited her to my festival (DARA String Festival) and we didn't know if my festival would be online or if it would be live because it was a Corona year. It ended up that actually for the summer months in Berlin the concerts were happening and so I had the festival live and then she actually came to Berlin. So we were together and we thought, well c'mon, we are together now, we are not gonna do an online presentation when we are in the same room, we can just play together. And so we recorded together, then she left and then the online presentation which was the format for Bricolage was actually a film that I created. It was my first self-edited film, so this will come out together with the release. The image material was when we actually did the long distance exchange. And at the same time it happened that Leila was already going to be a part of my festival, so I just thought, OK then I have two cellists and it's fine, and then I recorded with both of them. 

KP: Yeah are there some goals of the festival beyond presenting string music, like if you're focused on premieres or first meetings or advocacy?

BV: I'm focused on all of that [laughs] The main focus is to mix the people from the different scenes. Obviously the festival theme is string instruments, but also the main reason to do it is to mix musicians from different backgrounds. Some people come from self-taught background with self-made instruments, some people come from heavily classically-trained background and their most adventurous playing is contemporary music, that is kind of not even nowadays contemporary music, others come from complete experimental noise background etc. My wish is first of all to create a possibility to exchange between us. It's not only about presenting to an audience, but it's also about us meeting. And that's why for me it's important that everybody is together and plays on both days of the festival, and everybody presents their solo so all of us can hear each other. And then play in different groups. I curate it in way that people which come from different backgrounds can actually meet and play a piece together in some way. Like in the case with Susan Alcorn and Mari Sawada who would normally not have a meeting point to play together. It was a commissioned piece by Clara de Asís for two violins and a pedal steel guitar written for three of us. I am focused on all of that, creating new pieces, new relationships, new groups, giving a chance to people to play a solo for each other so the other musicians which don’t know much about certain kind of music get to hear it in it's best :) I'm very happy to say that the feedback I have gotten from all the participants is amazing. They write me such incredible letters, I tell you, it's so touching! All of them have been extremely happy, nobody ever complains and everybody encourages me to go on. And this is for me the reason to keep doing it. I started with the idea of doing it one time, I wasn’t necessarily thinking to go on. If there is a goal for the festival it is to do guest editions in different cities & countries. We did first time guest edition in Köln and in Wuppertal last year and it was beautiful. So there are thoughts about doing a guest edition in New York, co-curated with Leila. We actually had this idea two years ago, but then it was Corona and everything fell apart… 

KP: Nice. So you've mentioned a lot of exchange and the love for strings in your life is obvious and I imagine that exchange maybe can happen… a little more transposes across strings, but is there another reason it's very specifically a string festival?

BV: Again, I just want to focus on details and go into depth in general with my work. I like string instruments, I am a string player, I'm curious what kind of possibilities there are when consistently engaged with the topic. I discover things myself. So this is just going into depth with what is possible, what kind of string instrument music can be there and who are the people creating this music, which may not be the first ones that come to your mind. Like Annette Krebs whom I invited, she made a self-made instrument called Konstruktion#4 and there is a certain part of it that has strings. You wouldn't necessarily think of it as a string instrument, but I see it that way.  

KP: Perfect. That’s all I had mapped out, but did you want to go anywhere else?

BV: I think that’s it. As a final, I'd like to underline again that I have worked so much jumping from project to project and it's really exciting to have consistency in some of my work now. I really love it. I think I almost want to drop out of occasional playings except, you know, I will not completely, of course. I'll keep on some of it because it's also exciting to do a great project that is unexpected and it's happening one time only. But not all the time, definitely not. I would like to focus more on ongoing projects. My ideas and my wishes are very ripe now, I know what I want to do, and it's the time to dedicate myself to that. I go for it and I find a way. Berlin is very good place, very supportive for the work of individuals and the freelance scene. And also I would like my work to be more visible at least in the European scene. Because of my life circumstances I wasn’t able to travel as much in the past. It’s possible to do it now and that's why I would like to be more mobile and to share my work more widely. 

annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Davíð Brynjar Franzson - violin fragments (2019)

Davíð Brynjar Franzson is a composer. Some collaborations include The Negotiation of Context with Yarn/Wire, On Repetition And Reappearances with Mivos Quartet, The Cartography of Time with Vicky Chow, Mariel Roberts, and others, an Urban Archive as an English Garden with mattie barbier, Russell Greenberg, Ryan Muncy, Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir, and others, voice fragments with Stephanie Aston, and strengur with Stefánsdóttir, in which a realization of violin fragments appears. Davíð is part of the Icelandic composers collective S.L.Á.T.U.R. and co-runs Carrier Records with Sam Pluta and Jeff Snyder. 

violin fragments is a 2019 composition for solo violin, twenty artificial intelligence voices, and live electronics with a duration of fifteen minutes. Performance direction is communicated verbally. Floating pitch material appears to be arranged on the page so that height correlates with relative pitch. Numbers arranged left to right and their corresponding timings indicate sequence and their associated arcs umbrella possible pitch material, e.g. the ninth element can include the three rightmost pitches under its arc. Shaded circles also indicate the groupings of possible pitch material in each element. Standard brackets invite repetition for some pitches. And while the electronic environment reacts to all sounding, the two pitches floating below the cloud of the eighth element indicate pitches of the electronic environment that activate upon registering the corresponding pitches played by the violin as designated by the dotted lines. 

The clock time, numbered sequencing, height signaling relative pitch, and shaded circles seem like logical signposts for the performer. The latter illuminates the structure and provides a visual reference for the expansion and contraction of material in the first set and contraction in the second. Breaking the staff, retiring tempo, and respatializing pitch into clouds drives home the choice of shape, or how a performer might arrange the available material in the time block allotted. And the aforementioned clarity of presentation allows the performer to focus on this task of shape. Sound material exists in the blank space but it is not for the performer and could be considered rest. While two sets of overlapping clouds might suggest a separation and rest, I imagine the electronic environment can be excited in ways that bridges the two sets if silence is not settled upon. The final minutes too, though that would seem to unbalance an otherwise very symmetrical structure when no play in the first minutes means no sound, unless it’s decided upon that the contraction of material can be associated with decay. 

It is an uncommon treat to present sketches on the path to a current version of a composition. The relationships are more mysterious but it feels like a more personal notation towards figuring out desired groupings via circles and lines and sequences via arrows. Circles in particular appear to assume new meaning as seemingly connected pitches don’t fall within overlapping circles or, in the case of the sketch above, all pitches are contained within each of the larger circles, which suggests location within circles contains meaning. While circles within the current version have more clearly defined functions, maybe something gleaned from the sketches in relation to the number of circles a pitch falls in or their proximity to an edge or center can be reconciled between the two to color an interpretation. 

reviews

Léo Dupleix - Pr​é​ludes non mesur​é​s (albertineeditions/nunc., 2022)

Clara de Asís, Richard Comte, Lauri Hyvärinen, Fredrik Rasten, and Denis Sorokin perform selections from fourteen Léo Dupleix compositions for solo guitar on the nineteen-track, 54’ Pr​é​ludes non mesur​é​s. 

Melodies of deliberately paced and deliberately placed tones and chords of tones occasionally combine at the overlay of their attack and decay for singing harmonies. Of the fourteen pieces the performers realize seven, only one of which would not allow comparison across performers and only one of each acoustic and electric that would not allow comparison across kinds of guitars. Mélange sequencing makes disorienting straight-through listens possible alongside those by piece and by performer. More than the melodies hear performer personalities and signatures in articulation, speed, spacing, and instrumentation. Fredrik’s breath and deep-chested guitar resonance. Denis’ muddy, bluesy sound. Lauri’s arachnid dissonance. Richard’s clarity. And Clara’s bold attack, string buzz, contingent sounds, and extended durations. Making time malleable makes the performers audible.  

- Keith Prosk

Eventless Plot - Memory Loss (Moving Furniture Records, 2022)

Chris Cundy, Aris Giatas, Vasilis Liolios, and Yiannis Tsirikoglou realize two reflective forms for bass clarinet, piano, psaltery, tapes, synthesizers, and programming on the 32’ Memory Loss. 

Warms swells in overlapping relationships of labyrinthine sequencing in permutating repetitions of slow celerity disorient the listening memory to whether a moment is past or present. Layered like leaves sounds choke silence like the mind manifests curvilinear surfaces for memory from its fragments. The two structures feel similar enough to wonder whether they’re transposed across textures as confused contexts, iron lung rhythms and biomorphic clarinet forms for organ throbs and water whose character is more soothing sound machine than field recording and melancholy piano melodies. Both lend a sense of swaddling nostalgia equal parts nursery and hospital recalling that those who live long enough would have a memory as much as the day they were born, and these pieces’ ends are not so different than their beginning. 

- Keith Prosk

Jason Kahn - Soundings (Editions, 2022)

Jason Kahn reflects through text on seventy-seven minute snippets of urban field recordings on Soundings. 

An impression of plain language in terse and earnest diarism makes it difficult to tell whether words’ consonance is accidental or intentional and relatedly the columned layout might manually redistribute the weight of words’ cadence to mimic the broken percussion of natural sound or emphasize words and clusters of words if not simply an automatic product of the format just as the framing of the recordings - titles, durations, presentation - accidentally or not coaxes the ear to see meaning in otherwise unedited urban noisescapes. The semi-poetic text doesn’t illuminate the specific context of sounds so much as the complex web of associations of location the author recognizes. The recordings are dense and muddy and ordinary. Recurring events like church bells, trams and trains, and salsas, magnetisms toward the om drone of refrigerator hum, industrial facilities’ churn, and hvac units’ thrum might manifest a sense of place in another listener. When the author says something like they can tell the age of the trains by the creak in their bones I think I can too. There is an empathy for timbral information and maybe a transference of their personal associations. The author mentions a memorial resonance and while this surficially refers to a personal experiential sustain it could also mean across minds in the shared memory of a globalized people with an urban condition.

- Keith Prosk

Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø - DYSTOPIAN DANCING (MADE NOW MUSIC, 2022)

Henrik Nørstebø plays a sidelong track for trombone, amplification, mutes, and plastic reed and arranges its remix with additional accompaniments on the 39’ DYSTOPIAN DANCING. 

High gain close up microphone placement desublimates the ghost in the air for dark, cold atmospheres that complement a multi-movement menagerie of visceral, hostile sounds, piercing stridulations, low growls, racked gasps, baleful purrs. But the dominant movement is a rhythmic sputtering in envelopes of action at the lips, through the breath, and in the structure the texture of which shifts among effervescent, metronomic, organic, machinic. A heightened consciousness around a kind of beat based on variations in mouth morphology, pressure, and capacity ties time to the body, ups the stakes, and feedbacks into its violent undertones. A wide rhythmic palette provides much material for its reworking, which adds eerie noir and air raid sirens, glassy sines, and the ubiquitous clicking of an object orchestra, and the rhythmic raspberries blend with bumps that could come from programming as much as the mouth for a kind of breath-based dub techno. 

- Keith Prosk

Guilherme Rodrigues - Acoustic Reverb (Creative Sources, 2022)

Guilherme Rodrigues sounds the spaces of eleven churches across fifty-eight vignettes in nearly as many minutes on Acoustic Reverb. 

Herringbone bowings and dulcet pizzicato surround silences spacious enough to hear sounds’ delay, decay, and interplay within and with the architecture. A keen ear could parse damping, room size, and other parameters but even generally the characters of each space convey themselves in the differences felt in their reverberations. The space seems to color the cardinal sounding though, even with a wheelhouse of technique, unsystematic sounding makes it hard to examine particulars of the space and location within the space. Regardless, the rich reverb of every room ripples to realize the fluid that fills its container and what is a cup but for its contents. 

- Keith Prosk

Masahide Tokunaga - Leverages 杠杆 (Zoomin’ Night, 2022)

Masahide Tokunaga breaths to life two 25’ realizations of a composition for alto saxophone on Leverages 杠杆. 

Long soundings as long as deep breathing swell in organic intervals. Breathy subtones stir beatings of variable properties. More than saxophone it sounds like feedback, smooth and squealing. Parabolic arcs alternate with linear curves that in turn furcate into resonating harmonics to lend a sense the sound zooms in and out of different scales. The smooth pleura of the lungs and the rough edge of alveoli. Inhalation and exhalation and the ordinary irregularity of them. Open and at attention. One bustles with water, anonymous movement, and knocks and beatings and one with the quiet night and multiphonic furcations, the breath and the body seemingly mirroring the activity of the day. 

- Keith Prosk

Biliana Voutchkova, Tomeka Reid - Bricolage III (Relative Pitch Records, 2022)

Tomeka Reid and Biliana Voutchkova play three communications for cello, violin, and voice on the 28’ Bricolage III. 

A distanced pandemic commission of the eponymous series, the music contains tethers to a visual component as part of its presentation. A desaturated film reduces scope from clouded sky to forest canopy to molting tree and pans across the detritus of the forest floor towards the performers’ fists tight as acorns opening across and alongside each other in a gesture of exchange and growth. And then the vibrancy of foliage resounds in clusters of red, yellow, green, magenta flowers so intense their colors could be treated and then their overlapping hands open to bloom alongside the sound. The sound reflects this kind of cross-pollination in a dynamic equilibrium of the two through texture, speed, density, and dynamics in which each keeps their individual characters and also converge for profound moments, like the gaseous overture unveiling ghostly voices, a swarming hive of gliss, and train horn cello echoing fiddled harmonica. 

- Keith Prosk

Thank you so much for sharing time with harmonic series.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider donating. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $1.31 to $6.98 for October and $0.78 to $6.21 for November. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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The second volume of Graph​è​me, the print publication for non-standard notation, is available, featuring scores from Christine Abdelnour, Burkhard Beins, Rhodri Davies, Clara de Asís, Emilio Gordoa, Tomás Gubbins, Hanna Hartman, Bonnie Jones, Raymond MacDonald & Jo Ganter, Montenegrofisher, Anna Pangalou, and Gino Robair

No Idea Festival continues its 2022 program of streamable video presentations. A Spanish-language subtitling of Derek Bailey & Jeremy Marre’s On The Edge: Improvisation in Music series is available through November 30 as are original audio-video works from Ernesto Montiel, Gil Sansón & Aquiles Hadjis and Bani Khoshnoudi & Christine Abdelnour through November 9. Consider donating to No Idea if you choose to view a stream. 

The first Molten Plains Fest happens December 9 & 10, 2022 in Denton, TX for those nearby or available to travel, featuring Susan Alcorn, Ka Baird, Bitches Set Traps, Henna Chou, CNCPCN, Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez, Princess Haultaine III, Alma Laprida, Rob Mazurek, Christian Mirande, Monte Espina, Bill Nace, Warren Realrider, Kory Reeder, Luke Stewart, Marshall Trammell, Weasel Walter, and Andrew Weathers. 

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider donating. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $0.65 to $1.94 for September and $1.31 to $6.98 for October. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

Donate via PayPal

conversations

Kevin Good is a composer and percussionist whose music explores silence, durations, and personal experiences. Over video chat we talk about percussion, places, people, change, and memory. 

Recent releases include the field recording-based arrangements Where We Once Were I and Where We Once Were II and the percussion duos Songs for Two and Eva Maria Houben’s John Muir Trails with Katie Eikam as DesoDuo. 

Kevin Good: Morning. How’s it going?

Keith Prosk: Good. How’re you?

KG: I’m good, a little tired [laughs]

KP: Yeah I saw that you - sorry I don’t know if this is creepy or not [laughs]...

KG: [laughs] …not at all.

KP: …but on Facebook I saw that you went to The Bad Plus last night, right?

KG: Yeah, it was Bad Plus and Julian Lage Trio. I was working it as my day job for LA Percussion Rentals so a bit of a late night bringing stuff back afterwards as well.

KP: Oh nice. I forget his first name but King was playing on one of your sets or kits?

KG: Yeah, Dave King. Actually he played both sets, it was pretty great.

KP: Nice. Very awesome. I think I’ve only… I don’t think I’ve ever actually listened to Bad Plus, I’ve just heard Broken Shadows, the Hemphill stuff that they did, but, yeah. Are you aware of Monday Evening Concerts in LA?

KG: I am. I kind of work for them [laughs] 

KP: Oh nice.

KG: Yeah, it’s been awhile. I’m on their website still, I think. But Jonathan [Hepfer] was Katie [Eikam] and I’s percussion instructor. When we were at CalArts he was the interim person before Tim Feeney started there. So when I was doing composition with [Michael] Pisaro[-Liu] I had my lessons with Jonathan. He had us start essentially just doing tickets and interning but we’ve played with him a couple times, that kind of thing. But I couldn’t make it out to the Éliane Radigue stuff, which I’m super bummed about because it looked great.

KP: Yeah, I’m super jealous. Texas just doesn’t have… well we actually got a great Radigue concert over in Houston with Dave Dove’s organization but, yeah, Austin and San Antonio don’t really have an audience for Louis-Michel Marion and Carol Robinson and Radigue.

KG: Right [laughs] yeah I know Jonathan had been working on that for quite awhile. I think it was planned pre-pandemic and obviously it just took a lot of rescheduling and things like that but I know he’s visited Éliane Radigue at least a few times and done some interviews with her. It was a big thing he’d been wanting to get going here so I was glad he was able to finally do it. 

KP: Oh nice. Well, I’ve got some stuff mapped out but at any point if you want to take it in another direction I’m happy to go there. Is there anything that you wanted to start off with?

KG: Not in particular, no. I’m happy to start and go wherever you want.

KP: Nice. So the other day I was listening to both Where We Once Were - thank you so much by the way - and the thing that stuck out to me was how the played sounds so seamlessly blended with environmental sounds. You’ve got like shimmering cymbals with waves and casino chimes with malleted bar melodies. A little diversion but some writing that I return to a bit is Sarah Hennies’ Queer Percussion and there’s a lot of obvious but really profound observations in there and one is that everything that’s not defined is defined as percussion. So in a way in my mind it sets up this thing that percussion, or an area of it, can be one of the most analogous musical sounds to what is considered natural sounds. And going the other way a lot of times people think about natural sounds as percussive, like rain or saltating sand or gravel in air or water. And then I know in slow, silent, singing you use duration and sustain to kind of blend sound and silence to where silences aren’t silences but they’re more rest or quiet. But going back to Where We Once Were after all that [laughs] this blend of played and environmental sounds, taking all that other stuff into account, strikes me as another way to engage with silence, by blending the music or what is the normative focus and non-music or background sounds. Is this recurring conscious behavior when you incorporate field recordings, or are there some other goals when you incorporate field recordings so closely into your more musical stuff?

KG: Yeah. I think it’s very conscious. I think you’re right on the money. It’s funny, I don’t remember Sarah’s writing that much, it’s been quite awhile since I looked at it, but especially her definition of percussion, as a side note, is also pretty accurate to how I think of being a percussionist. Like if percussion is all non-defined things I always think of being a percussionist as the practice of discovering practices. For me it’s always like, if something is undefined and it’s a percussion instrument by that nature that means I have to be able to translate the undefined and sometimes that means finding things that are undefined. And so maybe this is a little bit of that but I think it just means I kind of always feel a sense of being open to everything both ways, whether it’s musical or non-musical, and finding those timbral ties. So Listen, the first wandelweiser album, is probably the first tangible moment of that, which hilariously I think was actually a final project in undergrad for Matt Sargent’s logic class [laughs] not the most innovative use of logic but I think it worked out well. But the main parameters of that piece are essentially my house in Avon, Connecticut at the time, I did like a fifteen-minute field recording in each direction of the house, stitched them together, and then listened to them to find what I thought were the most naturally percussive sounds, or at least stuck out of the texture. So obviously there’s just sort of the ambient sound, leaves rustling, things like this, and then there were things… I didn’t want to remove the human element so there’s my partner at the time walking out the door and the door slamming, there’s our dog barking, the sink going on, the neighbors talking, things like that. The idea was to create a sound source or a list of these kinds of textures that stick out and to figure out beyond volume and more so timbrally what makes them stick out and then kind of recreate them. One of the elements of that is essentially you hear a couple door slams and things like that but they’re brought out of the texture further not by like turning the volume up but rather by later making a field recording specifically of me making that sound and then inserting it in. And then the third step to that process - this is all beyond the voices saying ‘listen’ in different languages, those are obviously what they are - was translating those into a more literal musical instrument and then mixing that down super low. I’m pretty confident most of the instrument things are inaudible, and sort of by design. They’re mostly on bass drum actually and they’re mixed almost inaudibly, like to a literal point. But for the leaf ruffling sound I added some textures of just rubbing my hand on the bass drum. There’s a couple of rim hits that are meant to kind of articulate the door slamming sound. So I think that’s a big part of it for me, kind of what you were saying with Sarah’s thing, that I think of everything timbrally being valid, both as percussion and just as an instrument in general, so a lot of that comes up in that regard. I think there’s a lot of, I would say, mimicking of natural sounds, you know, like rain is a percussive sound to begin with so I can emulate rain via this percussive technique or if I play crotales really softly and sporadically it can achieve a similar effect to rain. But I think what I’m more interested in is, how can I make this sound of rain continue along its extreme. Like if I were able to give rain sustain timbrally, what would that be like? Or if I could accentuate the harmonics of whatever is blowing in the wind, how would I do that? And I think especially with a lot of the Where We Once Were stuff, a lot of that is - at least in the first one with the waves and the bird sounds - a lot of that is kind of, to me, easy to extend with these closer to pure pitch and pure almost-sine tones without actually being sine tones, like all the bowed metallic instruments. Or in the example of the second one, having the piano with a little bit higher range and a little less sustain. Kind of creating this similar casinoesque sound.

KP: Yeah I guess that was piano, not mallets [laughs]

KG: Yeah I think it was altered a little bit so it was a little deceptive and I think there might be some mallets, I can’t remember. It had some at some point. 

KP: On Listen I didn’t necessarily pick up the complements mixed in that you’re talking about but there was that metronomic sound that I figured was instrumental but could also have been a, you know, wiggling laundry dryer or something like that. One thing that stuck out to me there too - I don’t know if they’re phonemes or one or two parts - the kind of isolated speech, in Listen. A lot of what I think about when I think about words is the cadence of them and usually that’s established along a sentence or something like that but isolating little phonemes is kind of like a single hit. 

KG: Yeah that’s a good point. I didn’t think of it that way consciously but I totally agree. I think it’s super interesting when you take just the single word or phonemes out of context.

KP: Yeah. So I guess if field recordings can be so close to percussion, is there something that makes field recordings not percussion?

KG: Oh man…

KP: One thing that comes to mind is, does it make a difference whether it’s played or passive?

KG: You mean the field recording itself?

KP: Yeah, does it make a difference whether a sound is played or made by something that wasn’t necessarily intending to play?

KG: Not really, for me at least. And I think so far, with these pieces, I think a lot of the excitement is… OK, if field recording is not percussion for me, then it is transcription for me. Because I think a lot of the fun is defining parameters of what I’m trying to get a recording of and for what reason. For example in the second Where We Once Were, when I recorded a bunch of casino stuff, obviously the goal here was to get human sounds. So people talking, not a disturbance of the environment or anything like that, it’s preferred. I think I had struggled with that piece for awhile. I had many, many iterations of that particular one. And by that I mostly just mean a piece that uses a lot of field recordings I had made from casinos in Vegas. And I think a lot of the issue was what I wanted to add to that, if anything. This is kind of a joke actually that Matt has said to me in that class I did Listen, he mentioned it must be hard for me to do electronic music because I think everything I do is starting with something whole and then reducing it as much as I can, or at least as much as I’m interested in, and electronic-based composition, even if it’s just field recording, is naturally an additive process. And he’s right, that is a big thing for me. With those field recordings it was really hard to decide if I needed anything other than the sounds of the casino. And so initially the main thing I wanted to do… essentially all the Where We Once Were are places that I have some form of nostalgic tie to. So the first one is mostly field recorded in Hawaii, which is where my mom is from and where I was born, and then Vegas is where I was raised. So a little bit of site-specific nostalgia was playing into that. And the main contrast I wanted to have with Vegas is the inescapability of all the casino sounds and how repetitive and normalized they are to someone who spends time there and Red Rock Canyon, the state park there, because it’s incredible, I spent a bunch of time hiking there as a kid and an adult and I’ve used those for these pieces I call trails which are essentially I go for a hike and I’ll write a short melody based kind of on the hike. A lot of the times it will have some sort of marker in terms of… there’s nothing really set or defined but a lot of the times the weaving of the melody will be reflective or if it’s a loop sometimes the melody will be written in a way where it’s a repetitious loop. Things like this. And so the thing that was really tricky for a long time was that I wanted to just have a field recording of the casinos and the field recording of being out in Red Rock. The issue being, part of the greatness of Red Rock is that it’s nothing. You can go like twenty minutes away from these inescapable slot machine sounds and music pumping through everything to pretty much silence. And it’s far enough away that you really can’t hear the highways or anything like that but it’s also a desert so at least in an audible level there’s not that much wildlife going on, there’s a couple birds here or there but it’s pretty much stillness. And I think that is really great when you’re there but that’s really hard to evoke through a field recording because it’s not necessarily defining of the place as much as the absence of sound. The piano sample is from a recording of a piece called Three Casinos in Las Vegas and I used a lot of really basic harmonic things in high registers, really fast, essentially emulating slot machine sounds. There’s kind of a question to me of, do those actually relate in the way I want them to, and I think - obviously since I put them in there - the answer is yes. But I think both of those things happened separately, meaning one is just the pure sound - and this is much more defined in the first piece, which I think extends the natural sounds via these bowed instruments - this process is much more of, these field recordings exist and can exist on their own and then this other piece that kind of happened separately is a non-committal transcription of those and just by the nature of being a transcription overlaid and put next to them, I think, works. But in that case it’s almost like the field recordings could have been left alone. I just think trying to contrast that desert part, it doesn’t come across unless you’re there.

KP: So you talked a bit about isolating things and how that’s kind of a goal, whether that’s the harmonics blowing in the wind or particular things out of a field recording. One thing that I felt is that the way you isolate things still maintains a sense of place. Kind of like a fossil can tell someone a lot about the kind of environment it was deposited in, a particular type of bird or casino chime is gonna tell people exactly what kind of environment they’re in. But are there any ethical considerations that you navigate as you isolate things? And I know this is more art than science, but do you feel that there are dangers in isolating things from their entourage of associated sounds… but if you do want it to be on the table, questions about recording voices without consent and stuff like that too. 

KG: That’s a good question. So there's a couple thoughts with that. I think the for isolating in particular I do all of my field recordings with just a zoom recorder that I sit with… though I was making the third Where We Once Were and it got stolen [laughs]

KP: Oh no. In a park?

KG: Yeah it was basically in a bush.

KP: What! Who steals things in a park?

KG: Yeah, I was pretty surprised about it. I super didn’t expect it. I think I had joked to Katie right beforehand like, if it happens it’s part of the cost, whatever and then it happened and then I was like, I wish I was not so casual about it being part of the cost I just didn’t think it would happen [laughs] It’s certainly something I wouldn’t say I grapple with but I do think about how things are and how I’m going to affect the environment. And so for me it’s like, in the case of the first Where We Once Were, a lot of that isolating idea and finding these sounds is done as inconspicuously or non-disruptively as possible. Like that piece’s recordings are all from two places, one is just a beach in Hawaii on Maui - I forget which beach - and rather than trying to run in and record the waves and stuff there’s a spot where the waves break on the rocks really loudly and really nicely and it was a super thundery rainstorm kind of day. And so there’s that and then actually the area Katie’s dad lives in, in Maui, who we were staying with, has a lot of birdlife and wildlife in general. I wanted to get recordings of that without entering the environment more than it has been so I just put a zoom on his porch and grabbed from there. Any of the isolated sounds, I think that mostly happens in Listen and I think my… I don’t think I’ve really hit the isolating of a sound so much so that I’ve consciously thought about it being disruptive. More so that I have to think about it, meaning for the starting process I try to begin in a place where I’m getting an overall effect. And I think if I do something, even like in Listen, recreating the bass drum sounds, I don’t tend to do those in the environment. I think when I was nineteen or twenty I did a snare drum piece in Red Rock Canyon that was really loud and I wanted to hear the bounce of the canyons… that felt really weird, I very much wish I didn’t…

KP: [laughs] Am I the asshole?

KG: Yeah [laughs] it was like I really wish I didn’t do that, that feels weird. So I've kind of just stayed away from that kind of stuff. But more on the ethics of recording people and consent and things like that, I haven’t found a good solution, but it is something I think about a lot. Because obviously if I'm just walking around the casino with a recorder, I'm not going up to every single person and getting their permission and asking them what’s going on but I'm also not invasively going up to someone and showing the zoom in their face [laughs] but it is a weird thing and we don’t have to necessarily go here but I had mentioned the piece, The Chords In My Life.

KP: Oh, we’ll go there.

KG: Cool [laughs] it’s a really cool piece. I really like it in terms of its concept which I honestly don’t remember how I Came up with it but it’s maybe a lack of harmonic fundamentals being an interest to me… but I came up with this idea of each person I meet I create a small chord for. It can be separated hands, it can be any range, whatever, but it’s meant to be reflective of that person, obviously not defining, you can’t define a person with a single chord, but something that evokes them or makes me think of them. And so the only parameters - it’s kind of intuitive based - but the only real parameters are if I think of people together, like if they’re two friends I met at the same time or we’re all in a book club together or something like that, then there might be some kind of common tone or idea between us. A lot of times people that are related, like my family, pretty much all have the same chord voiced differently. There’s lots of things like this. If they’re people I met playing music and there’s a particular piece we were playing together when we met that kind of plays into it a lot of the times. Like Richard [An], the pianist that played in Quartet Friends with Katie and I, we all met playing [Luciano] Berio’s Linea so that C# and E that starts the piece is in both of their chords. I kind of define whether or not someone should have a chord as if they've made an impact on me and if we’ve had a meaningful conversation. Again it’s super intuitive but if I consider them someone that has even in a very small way made an impact on me, though obviously enough to remember their name, then I might consider giving them a chord. Which I think gets really complicated because a lot of times they’re people I'll meet and it will be a day where we've had a nice conversion, maybe I met them in a coffee shop, blah blah blah but we don’t exchange information, and then I want to make a chord, and then it becomes this whole thing for me like, would they care, would they mind, am I being intrusive. And it’s never happened but there is also the idea of if someone doesn’t want a chord certainly they should have the option to not be included. I kind of set a rule to not alter them which was intended to be a good thing so I'm not doing any revision of people that would maybe make it seem like I'm changing my view of them.

KP: Yeah. First impressions.

KG: Yeah, exactly. The only change that really occurs is if someone passes away I will change the noteheads to be diamond-shaped as a way of indicating that. Obviously I started this not when I was born so there are a lot of people that passed but made a huge impact on me when I started this piece, friends and family, so I wanted to have a way of denoting them as well. Oh and then a lot of the times with these chords, I've never really had a way that I'm happy with as a performance of them, especially as they’re always growing. So I just keep them as… I think I have one around here somewhere…

KP: Just like laminated cards?

KG: Yeah. But for me it gets complicated in terms of whether or not to talk to people about them and whether or not they want them and what they are. I mean, there's not really a performance of them frankly. I tend to give them or give a copy to people if they want it. Or if they’re musicians a lot of the times I've had people ask for their chord and then do an improv or some kind of realization of the chord. I know Erik Carlson did one for one of his home concerts. Beyond that they’re often used as source material in pieces. A lot of the times if I'm writing a piece for Quartet Friends, for example, I'll use some material, though varying it, from Katie’s, Richard’s, and Wells [Leng’s] chords as kind of our harmonic basis. Just a way of incorporating them almost as a source material for our harmonic language. But I think the closest I've ever had to really rethinking things about it is my friend Justin was talking to me about it and I was like, yeah so I made your chord, and we had been playing in a bunch of ensembles when we were at CalArts together and I play in his large improv group and he just said a very simple sentence of like, how come if we’re musicians you don’t ask us what we want our chords to be. Even that I just had not thought of. His whole thing was like, well I could just tell you what my favorite chord is.

KP: Well, sometimes the way people perceive themselves is not how they are perceived, yeah?

KG: Exactly, yeah. I was gonna say, and I think that was kind of my immediate answer, is that I think of the chords as my perception and my first impression of you, not necessarily as yourself. And it’s also musically not necessarily your favorite chord. Just because you have the ability to know a chord doesn’t mean it would be your favorite kind of thing. But it did really make me think like I wonder what people think and how much I should factor in the consent and ethics of how people feel about having a chord in general and also what their chord is. Like I know my mom would not care, both of my parents are not very musically inclined and especially on the experimental side, so I know I've shown her her chord and she was very supportive but also like, cool I don’t know sounds weird. There is part of me that’s like even something as simple as if a person is upset that their chord is dissonant or if that is enough of a deterrent that they don’t want a chord, how do I deal with that? On the other hand, if I’m thinking of it as a standard piece of music and someone tells me I don’t really like this chord ‘cause it’s dissonant then I'm like, OK well I don’t know how much I'm gonna factor that in. But obviously it’s much more than that because it is reflective of that person. I don’t really have a good way of dealing with it except I've tried to have more of a conversation with people. And I don’t really do anything that public with them, if that makes sense. They exist in pieces and typically I will talk to the people involved if they want to know where their chords are in pieces or I'll tell them like, hey I wrote this piece for us it uses your chord, that kind of thing. And when I make a chord for someone I'll try to talk to them as much as I can. It’s hard when it’s a person I don’t have any contact with or that kind of thing - so I will try usually to the best of my ability to mention it to them. As I said it’s never happened where someone’s been like, I don't really want a chord and I don’t want to be involved in this, but if it did happen I would totally be fine not including them. Which is kind of weird.

KP: Yeah that seems like a strange point of contention. It's not like you’re writing diss tracks. And dedications happen all the time. I doubt Ken Vandermark or Anthony Braxton are asking like, hey can I put your name as a dedication. It's a gift and you can take it or leave it. 

KG: Yeah, exactly. That’s a good way of looking at it.

KP: So there are no directions attached to them beyond the pitch information, right?

KG: Yeah, exactly. It’s just that and then the diamondheads indicating if a person has passed. Other than that it’s just a single chord on a page.

KP: And you mentioned some contextual information, like if y’all met while performing a piece together you might pull a reference from that, but is there something in pitch that might remind you of someone, whether that’s harmonic interaction behaviors or, and I know instruments aren’t specified, but maybe like the color of a chord or something like that?

KG: Yes, a lot of that thing, a lot of those kinds of parameters exist. For example, string players, a lot of their chords will be based on one or more of the open strings of whatever string instrument they play as kind of like the pedal tone or fundamental lowest root note, that idea comes up a lot. And there are certain things that are harmonically tied and linked, it’s not super set in stone. Like I know my family has a lot of fifths - I think in general there’s a lot of fifths - but overtly I use a lot of fifths… I'm trying to remember, there’s a couple chords I don’t have memorized, most of them actually, but I think my mom’s is based on A and E and then my dad’s is an octave lower, something to that effect. But something usually intervallically. With family it’s fifths, for me fifths and fourths are just that warm, nice, comfort, home kind of feeling. And that is similar to Where We Once Were, like a nostalgic and restful place. I think using that to describe my parents is accurate, it makes a lot of sense. They’re a good example because, starting with them and that fifth and knowing that I want to keep relations as much as possible, that fifth kind of permeates throughout my family. And so you can hear common ideas like that that exist beyond that point. And another interesting thing that I'm sure has happened but I haven't really thought of is I think I’m in the five-hundreds right now and so there are enough chords, and it is hard for me to not view them because I obviously know all of the relations between everyone or how one person might know another person or how these people have never met kind of things, so it’s always really weird and interesting to me in that I'm sure there’s a good chance I have unintentionally had some defining characteristic that people might then think… like, if they looked at all of them, that fifth probably shows up in the exact same way with someone that has nothing to do with my family. So there is a bit of an interest in that happening naturally. I am not consciously going back and trying to pinpoint and make sure none of that happens. I've kind of set a few rules for myself that prevent me from unintentionally making the exact same chord as someone else, for now.

KP: Almost as much memory related as it’s music related, yeah? Actually while you were talking about field recordings I kind of thought about isolating things from their entourage is almost like memory anyways, right. You just have a few flashbulbs and smooth things between those flashbulb points and sometimes they align with the truth and sometimes they don’t. So you talked a bit about the interconnectedness or the interdependency of the people in your life with the chords in your life as well as that interdependency of sounds in field recordings, which is kind of ecological. And then in your presentation of things, everything is handmade, everything appears - not to be meant as an insult - with an almost childlike simplicity, which to me has connotations of a sustainability, like living simply, and of course there’s the field recordings, sometimes of very natural places, so do you view your music as a kind of environmental music?

KG: Yeah, I think so. I would say more than anything else that could be… well I don’t want to necessarily say it, that ‘environmental’ has to be a political stance though maybe it does now, but I think it’s the most conscious idea outside of… lemme rephrase… it’s probably the most conscious issue or problem that I try to address and I think I do it from a stance of just observing different environments, it’s that kind of idea. I certainly don’t take the childlike idea as a negative, I think it’s dead on the money. That’s partially why the Songs for Two CD is totally written with a crayon [laughs] it is obviously conscious. But I think for me a lot of it is a process that is reflective of how I view the environment of being a watchful observer and trying to keep a focus on these things. And I think a lot of it is also just what’s good for my mental health, meaning for me I think as a composer I like reducing things as much as possible. Maybe not every time I'm trying to reduce it to the smallest thing but as far as I think the piece can go I would rather just pull back as much as possible. And I think as a result there’s a lot of my practice that’s built more into the idea of sitting with something and really engaging with it almost where it’s more about the sitting time that creates the space to observe. So a lot of writing everything by hand and handmaking things is part of that. It’s partially that it’s just a task that is really valuable to me in terms of just being able to sit, whether outside or on a hike or inside listening to some music while drawing some lines to eventually be staffs, that feels really good to me. I think Songs for Two is a great example of when I really felt like I captured that feeling because the “Together” piece in that is just literally a fifth and I think I would feel weird for so many reasons, just putting a fifth infinitely and calling it a day [laughs] I think part of that is because I want it to feel non-intrusive and kind of natural. And so I think a lot of that is… I wouldn’t say I'm anti-technology or anything because I'm not, but I think a lot of nice things can really get lost just forgetting about them. For me, finding this practice of writing by hand, which is certainly not what I always did, but at some point I just felt better about all of the material I wrote by hand. I think it’s just a reflection of that process that lets me sit and think about what I'm doing and how much I really wanna commit to each piece and each note. I think a lot of that is for me processes that also exist in the environment. I think the trails piece is a pretty good version of that to where, yeah, it’s very easy that I could have just written these melodies based on trails and also not hiked them or I could just write little melodies as a book but for me the act of engaging in the environment and engaging in the trail both as a mental health practice for myself and also just to be conscious and aware of how things have changed is important to me. That’s why I think it’s clear on a couple of the trails melodies …I'll have to go back but I think at least a few of them I've done multiple times so I've specified the trail name and the date I hiked it and in some ways they are almost a melodic version of the Chords In My Life. And along that line of thinking, that one has conscious change. Where the chords I'm sticking with, not altering it because it’s a person, the trail I want to emphasize if it’s changed in some way. Which does happen. The trail by my house is severely different, where it used to be super green and lovely and now is mostly burnt from wildfires and things like this. I think for me it’s more of, I might not necessarily be saying anything in any direction about the environment so much as observing that it exists and encouraging others to also make this observation and consciously find a way to deal with that. 

KP: Yeah. You mentioned forgetting and just going back to the memory thing, writing things down or being there, walking something it makes it not just a cognitive thing but a kinetic thing and activates that part of the memory as well, definitely a good reinforcement. So a lot of the kind of percussive materials that you use, I feel like they’re almost always metal, whether it’s glockenspiel or vibraphone, cymbals, and a lot of the time that is pitched material. So with all the percussive materials available to you, including field recordings, what draws you particularly to resonant metals and pitch?

KG: That’s a good question…

KP: ‘Cause usually when people think of percussion… probably classical percussionists first think of pitched percussion… but for people that grew up on rock, they probably don’t so much think of pitch with percussion first.

KG: There’s a couple things that immediately come to mind. The first is it’s an interesting point that you brought up that I hadn't thought of in this particular context because I was just thinking of someone like John Luther Adams who obviously does a lot of environmentally-based work in terms of compositionally having that part of his process and practice and also being heavily involved in percussion in that he kind of does the opposite, they’re all really big drum pieces, thinking of like Inuksuit and these kinds of things. But I think I have some of that that hasn’t been performed that are really drum-based things and non-pitched percussion but I think a lot of the times for me those feel… there’s probably something there to growing up playing rock drum sets before becoming a classical percussionist and mostly doing that by myself but the drums to me don’t reflect a lot of the natural world that I'm interested in on a timbral level. They feel less like an extension of the environmental sounds and more like evoking environmental sounds. I wrote this piece while I was at CalArts called The Culture of Sound which I haven't really stood by as a piece but the idea that I did really like in it was thinking of color theory, being each color contains a certain amount of each other color and its just this kind of meshing. That piece was intended to explore everything in that same kind of theory but as like a timbral theory…

KP: Sorry to interrupt but are you a Catherine Lamb fan? 

KG: Yes.

KP: Her kind of riff off of [Josef] Albers’ Interaction of Color?

KG: Yeah, yeah I know a little bit of that, probably should know more but yeah. That piece, it was specifically because I was dealing with the fact that I have a lot of non-western percussion playing that I’ve done growing up and going through school. So I’ve done a lot of West African, Ghanian drumming and studied in Ghana for three weeks and done some Middle Eastern drumming and these kinds of things and it’s always felt super separate from everything else. So there was this idea for awhile of like, well there’s like gyil or balafon that are basically xylophones and vice versa, they are literally constructed in the same way, they are wooden bars that are assigned to a pitch, why is this one being used over this one and do they relate. And then that expanded into the idea of every instrument having some kind of timbral relation to one another and I think some of that still holds true for me. So for me I think a lot of the pitched material makes it easier to think of this timbral quality between things as an extension, whereas a lot of the non-pitched or even wooden instruments like marimba and xylophone feel more difficult to deal with as an extension of either environment or other timbres. It’s not necessarily that I’m less interested in that it’s more, to put it in a very simplistic way… if I think of everything as like a big spectrum of sound to me there’s a certain point where it’s standard low G whatever bowed note and then that can extend to the metal wire of a string that eventually starts to sound like a mallet instrument and you can exploit how similar those two sound to each other via using the same implement, such as a bow, and then extending up past that both in range and in timbre would be like glockenspiel and then crotales after that. And then extending beyond those things to me, kind of in a way cyclically wrapping around into noise, we create like non-pitched resonant metals, to me those are the next step in that band, so that’s when we enter cymbals and triangles territory and that bands back to noise which then backs into drums and things like this and then wraps around itself. And so I think I have a tendency, if I’m trying to do something environmentally or do something that is more field recording based or these kinds of ideas, I tend to lean on that band more. Whereas if I’m using the non-pitched percussion a lot of the times I’m using it as its own thing, like a solo piece or something like that because I’m not necessarily placing it next to a sound that already exists. Or, I like that they sustain [laughs]

KP: Yeah that can be a powerful tool. So you mentioned… did you say Arabic drumming? I know you said West African. 

KG: Yeah, I’ve done a little bit of Arabic drumming, Middle Eastern drumming in general. I haven't done any Persian drumming but a lot of frame drum kind of ideas and Egyptian riq, that kind of stuff.

KP: Nice. I’m not as familiar with the North African, Arabian Peninsula stuff but in a lot of West African cultures there’s no boundary between the performers and the audience, right? So the audience kind of comes in and they can drum. And I imagine when you’re performing this music maybe it was in a western setting so that boundary was there… and of course whenever you’re field recording you’re embedding yourself in the environment so maybe everything’s all together. I guess, do you find that that kind of dissolution of boundaries that you might’ve been exposed to as you grew up plays into your music, as far as performances?

KG: Yeah so I think it’s kind of a question of community for me. Because you're right in terms of a lot of that drumming, especially when I was in Ghana everyone knows how to do everything at least to some extent. Anyone who’s like five can just walk up and start to play an accompaniment pattern that they know and one it’s totally cool and two they totally know it. But that’s built into the community and the use and idea of the music. I’ve done also a lot of performed versions in a western setting where it’s not that, it’s the ensemble on a stage and everyone watching. I actually went to CalArts at a very unique time for their African program because with the two different teaching schools they had transitioning, one was more of the making it western and having that boundary exist and the other group didn’t want that and so there was a conscious dismantling of that barrier. There was a lot of having a couple people that they knew that were from Ghana or people that were private students before going to CalArts, they would try to break that barrier and invite people in. So dealing with the conscious setting of the barrier between me and the audience with like the western classical and contemporary style of performance, that certainly is a thing that exists for me and I’m trying to think… I feel like I have something I’ve done in the past that invites the audience in, maybe I haven’t. But I like the idea of engaging the audience in a communal way and when I was in undergrad my primary teacher was David McBride and he is really big on this idea. He has a bunch of pieces that involve audience participation. He has a whole piece that the percussion ensemble did the year before I got there called Percussion Park and they’re each pieces that are short percussion pieces based on activities you would do in the park. So there’s “Swinging in the Park” and it has all these broken triplet rhythms, ideas like that. There’s “Talking in the Park” which is like a lion’s roar and cuica conversation duet. But then there’s also pieces like “Noise in the Park” which are just suspended cymbals set up around the hall and people are encouraged at any point to just walk up and roll on a cymbal. It’s interesting because the other thing he really specializes in is percussion music, he writes a ton of percussion music, that is part of the reason I was inclined to study with him. And so I think to me its not unrelated that he’s interested in percussion and that leads to a lot of community-based ideas. And obviously the West African music is heavily percussion based. I really like this idea of percussion being inviting in some way. I think Steve Schick talks about this, like if you leave a trumpet in the middle of the street no one’s gonna want to touch it, there’s totally like a barrier between that and a person, at least in comparison to if you put a drum somewhere. Actually I was just dropping off a tam tam for the rental company and someone asked me if they could hit it and it’s like, totally go for it.

KP: Yeah there’s also the mouthpiece situation though.

KG: That’s true [laughs] that’s a good point. So I think I haven't really dealt with that barrier on my own consciously but I really like the idea of doing something more involving of a community or with the audience as a community because that’s also how I tend to listen to music. I mean I’m totally happy to listen on my own but the activity I enjoy is playing a recording for someone and talking about it with them. And so I don't know that I have explicitly said this but with my field recording pieces a lot of the times, I mean I don't really listen to my music that much, but if I’m listening to a field recording piece I will tend to do it on lesser headphones going for a walk outside because I want to bridge that gap between what’s actually out in the field and what’s being played via the recording. And I also don’t care how people in the audience engage with the performance in nondisruptive ways. Like I super don’t care if someone is reading a book during a concert. I’ve always thought that to be totally cool and really great. And I think a large part of that is because the writing process for me a lot of times is pretty reflective of the sound that comes out and is a good way to help my mental health and, I really hesitate to use the word meditative practice because it’s not and can get a little beside the point, but this idea of having a place that I can sit and be restful in a way that feels good is ultimately what I want. So if having this music play while you’re an audience member is putting you in that place and reading a book helps with that place then great. That’s not really dealing with the barrier but there’s at least this idea of the audience as part of the performance and part of the community whether or not they’re actively engaging in a direct way with the performance or if they're kind of silently engaging with the performance in whatever way works for them.

KP: Yeah. Along the way I was reminded, I’ve heard about claire rousay, who of course started out as a straight kit player, I’ve heard of her doing shows where she’s incorporating sounds from the audience into mixes of her recordings.

KG: Yeah. I haven’t seen her shows but I’ve seen her talk about that on Twitter.

KP: Yeah, yeah. That kind of strikes me as a way where you don’t put up the performative barrier for the audience with an instrument but you can invite them to make rhythmic sounds to be incorporated into what is understood as the performance. 

KG: Yeah. I also just realized another way we do this which also does incorporate some unintended sound is… well we haven’t really done a performance since covid in this kind of setting but Katie and I often for DesoDuo concerts, in part because those concerts tend to be really long, I think this started when we did Kunshu Shim’s Marimba, bow, stone, player which is like four hours, we often set a table and a hot water heater and a bunch of tea and coffee mugs. That’s partially why we made coffee mugs. So the idea is just like, I think even engaging in that way of being able to have a comforting tea or… the water heater we have is pretty loud so especially at the premier of slow, silent, singing that was a barrier that people didn’t want to cross, so I did, since Mike [Jones] was playing and I didn’t have to, I made tea. And as soon as that barrier opened, sonically speaking, more people were inclined to grab some tea and sit and engage in that way. And I think just even having something like that set up throughout the performance and allowing the audience the permission to go for it makes them active and makes it more engaging. Even though, you know, you can obviously argue that they're making tea and not paying attention to the performance. To me that doesn't matter, you're in the space and we’re all experiencing the same events. It’s just another way of actively engaging. 

KP: So you finally brought up DesoDuo and I imagine DesoDuo started just because you and Katie are friends but is there a goal of the group that y’all are trying to make possible with the duo that y’all don’t necessarily pursue with your practices apart?

KG: That’s a good question…

KP: ‘Cause I feel like, you know, we just recently spent some time with Katie’s Desert Flower Diaries which have a similar aesthetic to yours in feeling very natural, simple, handmade, so it seems like y’all share a lot of aesthetics but where do y’all diverge?

KG: Yeah that’s a good question. It’s funny, you are right, we just started as friends and played some duo stuff together. The first duo we ever played together was Andrew McIntosh’s We See the Flying Bird and that was something that I think is more notated and more traditionally contemporary classical than we’ve tended to do with the duo. And that was more of us just getting together and starting to play outside of Quartet Friends, which started first. And both were basically for Katie’s recital. So I think since then it’s been both of us kind of discovering things together and showing each other things and finding ways of moving through materials that we’ve liked and have common interest in. There is not a lot of things we don't overlap in interest-wise, musically we are kind of on the same page. And so I think the big thing, as you've kind of already said, is the handmade thing. My arriving at that point we've already discussed, it just feels better to me, it’s much more natural to write things by hand, and it’s just a process that’s kind of tedious in a way I enjoy. For Katie, she has much more of a visual arts background than I do. She grew up in Tahoe and her mom is a visual artist, she’s actually the one who designed the DesoDuo mugs we have. Katie’s always grown up being a really creative person and having a lot of general, like all kinds of artistic backgrounds whereas I kind of fell into music in fourth grade because my mom asked me whether I wanted to play piano or drums and I said drums and then that’s that. As a result one of the main artistic practices that Katie has is she is much more interested in graphic scores and I think a lot of that came, particularly with Desert Flower Diaries, during the pandemic when we were both with my parents in Las Vegas. You'd have to ask her but I don't even necessarily know if the first one was created with the intention of a graphic score. It might have been. But I know for sure that it was just we were kind of isolated, we couldn't really perform and she wanted to do something creative. She has an incredible creative drive and just wants to always be making something. And so I think it started from that place and then she kind of workshopped it with me. That’s kind of a good descriptor for… I think Deso kind of lives in two places, the first is there’s just something really wonderful about playing together that we both love and it’s just kind of enjoyable to work as a duo and play with each other and enjoy each other’s company in a way… like the John Muir Trails pieces we did or Kunshu Shim’s marimba piece, things like that where it’s more of just wanting to perform. In an ideal world we perform together as a duo, so that performance base thing is really nice. And then the other side of that is both of us essentially have our own artistic practices that are super similar but will often work as like a feedback loop. A lot of the time when Katie is making these graphic scores she'll bring them to me to play, often as a solo, and that will help her inform how she wants to make the next one. In a lot of ways, I think we've talked about that together, I think we view that as a DesoDuo thing, meaning… like right now I’m doing a bunch of recordings of the desert pieces, the forest pieces, and a few other series she’s done as vibraphone pieces and we wanted to set that parameter in particular ‘cause I've done the recording for the desert pieces as percussion pieces with non-pitched things and we had talked about the idea of performing them as duos using objects that are evocative of the material, so wooden objects, things that are plant based like pod rattles, things like this, so we thought it would be interesting by having something like solo vibraphone, which other than hand-drawn lines doesn’t really reflect the flowers, at least on first impression, in a way that forces me to engage with it differently. So even though that is like Katie composer / Kevin performer, that is to us still a DesoDuo thing and will help her move forward into how she wants to develop that piece or develop the next series. Sometimes that process is just asking me what I think of it and what is interesting as a performer or as a composer and sometimes it is just, here play this what do you think. And we do the same the other way around, where I’ll show her what I’m working on notationally and she’ll play through sections of it. Or we tried recently, just for the sake of playing the trails pieces, where Katie used her chord as a harmonic grounding and then played the trails as melodies and then I improvised with some non-pitched percussion, drum set. And so part of it is just kind of coming together with new ideas and having the idea of playing together for the sake of playing. I think both of us feel like it’s really easy to get caught up in the stuff we’re doing outside of music or at least outside of performing, that it’s hard to keep up our performative practice and it’s a lot easier to just come together to do it. In some ways our goal is just to be doing that as much as possible, and in other ways we don’t have any goals intentionally. It’s more of in a similar way to writing, being a thing that makes me feel good. Playing with Katie and playing in Deso just feels good and is something we continue to do because we enjoy it so much. In terms of literal goals we have a couple recordings and people we like working with that we’re doing. I mentioned the vibraphone set of recordings we’re doing and then our friend Gillian Perry who is in Chicago now is writing a piece that I think - we’ll see what it sounds like - but it’s for two percussionists on one vibraphone so I think it might pair pretty nicely with something by Sarah like Flourish. So we’ll see but, yeah, rather than a set goal we’re more interested in doing project by project and as much as possible not setting deadlines for them so they can happen as naturally as possible. And it’s also, you know, a foolproof way of dealing with the fact that we’re pretty busy outside of it.

KP: Yeah. Well I’ve been absolutely obsessed with John Muir Trails and Songs for Two lately. 

KG: Thanks.

KP: Thank you. That’s kind of all that I had lined up, did you want to go anywhere else?

KG: I think I'm good.

annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Jessie Cox - Enter the Impossible (2022)

Enter the Impossible premieres November 5, 2022 at the DiMenna Center in New York City, featuring Jessie Cox, Laura Cocks, Sam Yulsman, Tyler J. Borden, eddy kwon, Pauline Kim Harris, Conrad Harris, and the Sun Ra Arkestra. 

Jessie Cox is a scholar, composer, drummer, and educator exploring imagined futures and new worlds. Some recurring collaborators include Ensemble Modern, String Noise, and Sam Yulsman. Some recent releases include: When You’re a Star; Alien Stories, performed by String Noise; Space Travel from Someplace Else, performed by Wavefield Ensemble; Spiritus, performed by Laura Cocks; and Nachklang, performed by Kyle Motl. 

Enter the Impossible is a 2022 composition of flexible duration for drums, cymbals, and bow, contrabass flute, string quartet, and large improvising ensemble, specifically the Sun Ra Arkestra. The score includes movements in standard notation, particularly for flute and string quartet, but the bulk of the work is in three-dimensional planetary spaces navigable through a videogame. Possible focal pitches - some with cents deviation - to improvise upon pepper planetary surfaces, which a member of the Arkestra may rotate, as do occasional invitations to depart in standard notation that allow variations. Graphics upon staves in the bottom right corner of videogame pages indicate the gestural feel of a planet. Physical and biological parameters provided on the left of videogame pages influence musical parameters, such as gravity and atmosphere for speed and density, though the character of life, the influence of suns seen around the planets, and the interdependency of all these parameters are indeterminate. Each planet corresponds to a drum (LBD:large bass drum; LBD moon:snare drum; RT:rack tom; FT:floor tom; BD:bass drum), each of which are spatially distributed around the Arkestra in a way recalling a constellation or planetary system, acting as resonators activated by bowed cymbals through string like tin can telephones. Beyond planets there are special cases in this space travel, a black hole background screen indicating a string quartet movement and a planetary collision to showcase the sum and difference tones possible among large bass drum, snare drum, bass drum, and the pitch spaces related to those planets. Performances end by referencing material from “Space is the Place” and played previously from Enter the Impossible.

Navigate the videogame here.

Thematically Enter the Impossible engages with the Sun Ra Arkestra’s Afrofuturism, in which Black prosperity on the temporal horizon is realized by traveling there through space. It might also recall Anthony Braxton’s timebending worldbuilding, its videogame actualizing composed geographies, its floating notation like accelerator-class wormholes to material of another time, the spatialization of its drums perhaps similar to the Sonic Genome. And spatially-distributed drums’ acoustic ambisonics could evoke George Lewis’ multi-channel setups that are key to blurring reality and virtual reality, or realizing the imagined. In an expansive personal synthesis of these elements, Enter the Impossible locates itself as a recent point in the rich arc of Black art developed in combination with science fiction and extends it by creating a tangible pitch space as an ingenious visualization of more-dimensional microtonal music and new realization of an imagined world. 

reviews

mattie barbier - threads (Sofa, 2022)

mattie barbier performs five solos for euphonium and trombone in The Tank on the 45’ threads. See the score for “untitled i” in 1/5.

The long delay of the space extends soundings and their decay sings. Brass melodies, fanfares, elegies spill from the brim and fill the room with a refracting pool of self-accompanied harmonies. The swelling domes of soundings’ tapered dynamics interact at their overlap and bounce back to accumulate and break in great waves amplifying spectral expression. The tremors and snarls of unstable techniques and fragile harmonics ripple through for gaseous forms, textures like heat distortion but from variations of pressure rather than temperature. It is as if by extending sounds horizontally they keep their scale and grow vertically as well. 

- Keith Prosk

Lisa Cameron/Damon Smith/Alex Cunningham - Time Without Hours (Storm Cellar, 2022)

Lisa Cameron, Damon Smith, and Alex Cunningham freely play five tracks for percussion & feedback, contrabass, violin, and objects. 

They play directly complementary and contrapuntal lines, speeds, volumes, densities. Lock into grooves of circus romp rhythms and shimmering cymbals, plucked pointillism and bowed strokes, plastic wrap melodies and more somber tunes. Bring out their toys together in preparations and objects, other objects on the drumhead, things between strings, the rake of something else along violin. And they sing together, in feedback roars, deep bass resonance, and divebombing glissandos. Apparently always attuned to the others, they convey the familiarity of continued play. 

- Keith Prosk

Greg Davis - new primes (greyfade, 2022)

Greg Davis constructs six harmonic spaces in Max/MSP on the 39’ new primes. 

Track titles signal the mathematicians whose prime number series inform the foundation of each rational intonation harmonic space. From the narrow latitudes of sine tones’ ascetic textures and limited movements come complex polyrhythms with orchestral range, from corporeal lows to ethereal highs, that intertongue and interact in criss cross psychoacoustics, simultaneously in stasis and spiraling. While a series of similar material, tracks might be remembered for the behaviors they engender, like the call-and-response seesaw beating of “cullen” or the sonic rivers of “sophie germain” where curves converge and bloom again into deltaic rivulets. 

- Keith Prosk

Tim Feeney - Flint and Tinder (Falt, 2022)

Tim Feeney sounds two environments for percussion on the 44’ Flint and Tinder. 

The notes relay some sounded objects, flowerpot shards, rusted fence, transmission tower and high-tension wires, air and ground traffic, people. The location of recording in Los Angeles county suffers drought and record high temperatures and fires raze the area. Timbral information and alternately violent and desolate density and cadence convey this apocalypse. The everpresent electric crackle of high-tension wires recalls the carbon that probably powers it. As does the ceaseless vacuum gliss of airplanes and the ominous pulse of looming helicopter purr, the latter of which is perhaps associated with fire control or rescue in this context, the former a more purposeful carbon burn and polluter of the air both occupy. The rust roughly sloughed off reminds of the essential element consumed to oxidize it. Scratched and saltated ceramic shards sound like sorting pieces of Pompeii artifacts where fire too stole the air and choked with smoke the lungs of those whose homes did not become kilns. Though likely ranch fence, a sound similar to a swivel peal against a flagpole could tie in the poor environmental leadership of nations, a sound again carried through the wind. Sounds of less resonant materials hang still in the air as if it weren’t there to carry them. Everything seems to cycle back to air and the crisis currently surrounding it. The record ends with hollow metal hit hard in funereal bell tolls that - though the object is likely ranch fence or transmission tower again - sounds like an empty water tank, another lifespring this heat takes. 

- Keith Prosk

Sunik Kim - Raid on the White Tiger Regiment (Notice Recordings, 2022)

Sunik Kim arranges three scenarios - two studio, one live spliced from two performances - for Max/MSP and SuperCollider on the 53’ Raid on the White Tiger Regiment. 

A rolling thunder of orchestral clusters, casino songs, circus screamers, crystalline synth squalls. Rapid speed, dense weaves, prog swings, loud sounds, petulant textures, flickering glitch gorge the ear and melt normative cognition. The music aligns with the end of time, namely decay, and that mutual deconstruction forms a crucible ooze from which new models may rise, probably political given the context of the opera with which this dialogues and shares a name. 

- Keith Prosk

Hannes Lingens - Nachthund (Umlaut Records, 2022)

Hannes Lingens plays three solos for percussion on the 49’ Nachthund. 

Sounds scale up from close mic’ing and high-gain recording requires night-time taping, picks up dogs in the distance and the dopey manatee moans of otherwise low-audibility harmonies, lends the inspiration to titles. “Nacht” is a multi-movement arrangement of sustained layers of fluttering, apoplectic pulses of rolls and brushes. Symphonic polyrhythms of discrete hits and resonance periodicities through skin, metal, and wood. A quiet moment with staccato wood block taps activates the whole kit in a similar, subtler way to the stippling hits surrounding it. “Hund” and “Manatee” are sister songs, for malleted and bowed cymbal. The former shimmers, sings, cultivates beatings through its shivering rhythms with the character of a club-footed growling rock riff locked in a groove. The latter is slower, quieter, lower, warmer, wobblier, darker, in multiphonic strata. The differences between the two link parameters like attack and volume to harmonic behaviors. 

- Keith Prosk

Nabelóse - OMOKENTRO (bohemian drips, 2022)

Elena Kakaliagou and Ingrid Schmoliner play five songs for horn, piano, and voice on the 46’ OMOKENTRO. 

The space amplifies the already rich reverberation of piano’s whole harp and the radiating glow of brass tones to further volumize each instrument’s presence for a tactile, swaddling sound. Something sounding like rain on the structure lends a warmth similar to vinyl crackle. Steel-wound strings of plucked prepared piano coo and ripple, growl in tanpura, twang like zither, and mark the time with grandfather clock chimes. Blustery breath tones, babbling sounds that carry their protolinguistic morphologies, and foghorn blows blur with voice. Like the structure they sound in rings, keyboard cross-sections, valved extensions, chest, throat, nose, resonating bodies orbiting in gravities harmonic for an interdependent system in euphonious equilibrium. 

- Keith Prosk

Anastassis Philippakopoulos - piano 1 piano 2 piano 3 (Edition Wandelweiser Records, 2022)

Teodora Stepančić performs three early, multi-movement Anastassis Philippakopoulos compositions for piano on the eight-track, 69’ piano 1 piano 2 piano 3. 

As the earliest available works in the composer’s catalog, I felt a comparative listen to these three pieces and more recent recordings like wind and light, piano works, and hannesson . boon . philippakopoulos might illuminate salient characteristics of these as well as the core that remains through them. In recent pieces I recall slow, soft, quiet, clean monophonic melodies whose spaciousness balances the potency of tone with the harmony of decay, the signature behaviors of which carry across performers to the extent that the pieces become more recognizable by their rest than their sounding. Pieces are short. And the next tone tends to catch the one before it just as it fades into inaudibility. 

These are not those. Longer durations and multiple movements appear as multifaceted approaches to formal elements compared to the seemingly more intuitive distillation of melodies sung on long walks. Chords, sometimes their hastening accrual for harmonic excitation. Repetition, sometimes a consistent rhythmic line a bed for a melodic one, which is probably present in recent works’ melodic motifs but not reliably recognized in their speed and space. Volume, jarring dynamic spikes that excite the decay. 

These elements grade in increasing delicacy through the piano pieces presented on solo pieces and songs and piano pieces, and shorter lengths and greater languor intimate an infinitesimal approach to the essence of something more of the ether than the sounds themselves. So what remains is the efficacy of decay, its signature found in “piano 3” from solo pieces and this recent realization. 

- Keith Prosk

Preview piano 1 piano 2 piano 3 here. 

RUBBISH MUSIC - Upcycling (Flaming Pines, 2022)

Kate Carr and Iain Chambers arrange three environments for discarded objects on the 40’ Upcycling.

Aerosol peals, splashed water, creaking cupboards, flapping paperboard. The high-floor dynamics of recycling center machinery and its concomitant metal and glass crash and shouts cut and recomposed. Anonymous friction, deformation, and turbulence, glimpses of squeaker, metal, compressed air. Sounds become increasingly acousmatic as the acoustic properties of trash transmogrify into something as synthetic as the plastics much of them might be, blending into the monkish ambience in the background, heavily delayed for cavernous auras as if the creation of a new world out of anthropogenic material manifested a new Cro-Magnon. It’s difficult to place whether sound rejoices in reuse and recycling or tolls for the mounds of material humans have buried themselves in but a darker palette suggests doom. 

- Keith Prosk

Greg Stuart - subtractions (New Focus Recordings, 2022)

Greg Stuart performs two liminal compositions for solo percussion from Sarah Hennies and Michael Pisaro-Liu on the 52’ subtractions. 

Sarah Hennies’ “Border Loss” is a multi-movement suite but, unlike the hard lines of something like Spectral Malsconcities or Clock Dies, diffuse transitions between movements blend them. Many-limbed nervous polyrhythms subtly shift materials and techniques by keeping some parameters the same while others change. Small dense soundings like shakers question bucketing individual sounds into larger gestures. The interdependency of limb-independent rhythms comes not just from shared time or a shared body but shared material for a feeling of sound, and the sociopolitical contexts it could signify, as spectrum. 

“side by side” is a two part piece for bass drum & cymbals and vibraphone & glockenspiel. The composing and performance practice occurred side by side and the sound follows. The twinned instruments of the first part juxtapose polar play, parallel strokes and perpendicular strikes, the action curve of the former’s periodicity and the line of the latter’s and the inverse of that behavior in their dynamics, high and low registers, organic and inorganic materials, discrete hits and sustain, silence and sound, the low moan roar of skin and shrill yell of metal. Part two contrasts the first in pitched material that appears to blur the poles. A music box melody with singing decay cultivates harmony and illuminates the notion of silence as only rest and similarly the instruments’ registers, attacks, and textures often overlap so as to become closer to a shared spectrum of sound than anything discrete.  

- Keith Prosk

Thank you so much for stopping by.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider donating. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $0.65 to $1.94 for September and $1.31 to $6.98 for October. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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No Idea Festival has announced its 2022 program for September and October, including windows for streaming its video presentations. A Spanish-subtitled edition of Derek Bailey & Jeremy Marre’s On The Edge: Improvisation in Music and original works from Patrick Danse and Gustavo Nandayapa & Rhizomes Films are streaming right now. Original works from Iván Naranjo and Jim Denley will begin streaming later this month. Consider donating to No Idea if you choose to view a stream. 

A new issue of Point of Departure is available, featuring: words on Wadada Leo Smith’s string quartets, Cecil Taylor’s Akisakila and its recent reflection in Pat Thomas + XT’s “Akisakila”: Attitudes of Preparation (Mountains, Ocean, Trees), and Eddie Prévost’s Bright Nowhere festival; a conversation with Gordon Grdina; excerpts from Lauren Newton’s VOCAL Adventures book; and reviews of recent Peter Brötzmann releases. 

I was recently apprised of Ear | Wave | Event, a periodical of creative and critical writings around sound organized by Bill Dietz and Woody Sullender. The theme of its most recent issue is notations. The site has been added to our resource roll.

I was also recently apprised of The Light of Lost Words, an infrequent blog concerned with several media including music, most recently Christof Kurzmann on Erstwhile Records and The Tsunoda-Unami Collaborations. The blog’s music category has been added to our resource roll.

The Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc. has begun reissuing the Composers Recording, Inc. catalog digitally on bandcamp. Selections from the catalog will be reissued with newly commissioned essays and compositions to enrich the context of the original work; the first is Harry Partch: The Bewitched / Taylor Brook: Block, with an essay from Marc Sabat and a new composition from Taylor Brook.

If you’re interested in sharing a thread of thought prompted by something in our conversations, annotations, or reviews, we encourage you to leave a comment. We’re always glad to receive messages at harmonicseries21@gmail.com but if you leave a comment other readers can chime in too.

Leave a comment

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider donating. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $0.74 to $3.93 for August and $0.65 to $1.94 for September. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

Donate via PayPal

conversations

Elizabeth Millar is an experimental musician, sound-artist and composer perhaps most associated with amplified clarinet and sound sculptures. Over video chat we talk about travels, handmade things, air and other materials, humans and machines, methods of organizing play, collaboration, and duration. 

Some current collaborations include video integration of artificial field recordings with Allison Moore, in which sound objects might begin to be considered for their visual aesthetics, and the continuation of sharing work with a.hop. Recent releases include rare entertainment with Christof Kurzmann and AFR3. Elizabeth also runs Mystery & Wonder Records with Craig Pedersen. 

Keith Prosk: Hey, how’s it going today?

Elizabeth Millar: Good, thanks, how are you?

KP: Good, good. Are you in Montreal?

EM: Yeah, Montreal. Where are you?

KP: Austin, Texas.

EM: Right, obviously.

KP: [laughs] Are things already kind of turning cold for you?

EM: Not really it’s kind of a… have you been to Montreal before?

KP: I haven’t, no.

EM: It gets really humid in the summer and today it’s one of those days where the humidity builds up until it eventually thunderstorms and we’re just waiting for that to happen to break the humidity. So, yeah, it still feels like summer. I think we’ll have a bit more of summer before things get cold.

KP: Nice. Yeah we’re still… it’s not like 100F here anymore but it’s still pretty brutal.

EM: Yeah, it gets hot in Austin, right?

KP: Yeah and we’ve got… well, Austin is a little higher off the coast, like right off our coastal escarpment, but we are still pretty close to the Gulf of Mexico so we’ve got the humidity and the heat.

EM: Oh fun. Yeah, people always say to me, oh my gosh how can you live in Montreal it gets so cold, and I’m like, yeah it also gets really hot. With the humidity it gets up to 40C sometimes. So extreme, so extreme.

KP: I understand you and Craig [Pedersen, the other half of Sound of the Mountain] traveled quite a bit together before covid, has that resumed at all or…?

EM: Yeah, we went to Australia this year but we haven’t done any other big trips. Craig’s going to France for a tour in November but we’re actually planning to relocate to Perth, Western Australia. Next year maybe, or coming up soon. I think we’re doing what lots of people are doing post-covid, making these big decisions and moving locations, so… that’s where I grew up, in Western Australia.

KP: Yeah, you’re from Perth, right?

EM: Yeah, yeah I grew up in the southwest and Perth is kind of the closest city to that area.

KP: Is Craig from there as well?

EM: Craig’s from out west, he’s from BC, British Columbia, western Canada.

KP: And is that like a cost of living decision or closer to family decision?

EM: A bit of everything, cost of living, family, climate, ease of lifestyle maybe. I mean I love Montreal, I’ve been here for fourteen years, but I think we just felt like a big change and we also have a kid now who was born last year so… he’s twenty months and, yeah, I think now that there’s three of us to consider family does start to be a bit more of a consideration, you know. And we have always gravitated in our travels to Asia, so even though we’ll be moving to a more isolated place we’ll still be close to, you know, Japan and Malaysia. Even Europe’s not that far away but Canada is far from Australia. It’s kind of the furthest you can go, which is kind of crazy.

KP: Yeah I heard that you got into instrument building or the sound sculptures through seeing - and I’m going to butcher the pronunciation - suzueri and [Junji] Hirose concerts, right?

EM: Yeah, yeah. So I was in Japan with Craig in 2017 for three months and we just saw shows four or five times a week. Completely busted our budget, went into debt just going to see all these shows, all kinds of shows, there’s so many venues and just so much going on. When I was watching these people make their sound art and their music and watching them perform I didn’t think consciously, oh this is something I need to do. But after spending time in Japan we traveled through southeast Asia and spent two weeks in Kuala Lumpur and everywhere we went we connected with other experimental musicians and we played shows as Sound of the Mountain. Then we went to Australia and we had a residency there and we just sort of stumbled across this maker’s space and we collected some small electronics and we started to use them during our residency, even though we were there as an amplified clarinet and trumpet duo. And so I think, yeah, that influence sort of subconsciously worked itself in and it was just sort of the right timing because we had this week in this empty space and we had all this extra gear and we started to use it. And also Sound of the Mountain had been on tour since we left Montreal in July, we toured across Canada, we spent three months in Japan, southeast Asia a month, so Sound of the Mountain was kind of at its peak in a way and we were ready to introduce new elements because we played so many shows together and were just pushing the boundaries of what we could do with the amplified clarinet and trumpet sounds. I wish we had gone into the studio then because it would be cool to have a proper document of where we were at with that, with that project, at that time. We have some live recordings and stuff but…

KP: The Tetuzi [Akiyama and] Toshi[maru Nakamura] recording isn’t from that time?

EM: Yeah, it is. That’s true, there is that, but we don’t have anything of just the duo. But that’s a good point, we have that one. Yeah, that was 2017 when that was recorded and then in 2018 they came to Canada and we toured that record around Canada. I think they came in 2019, yeah, just getting my [ducks in a row gesture] ‘cause we went back to Japan in 2018 but I think the recording was done in 2017.

KP: When did y’all start Mystery & Wonder?

EM: That was in 2017 also, around the same time. We had three records ready to put out and we got on the road in our van with all the merch underneath the bed and just sort of drove across and that was the beginning of the record label and then that big tour that we did.

KP: Yeah it kind of struck me as related just because Mystery & Wonder started out as a handcrafted sound object label, right, so it almost seems like a progression to go from recorded sound objects to performance sound objects with the sculptures maybe…

EM: Yeah, yeah there’s always been a sort of focus on manual handmade things and the sound sculptures are very direct and physical objects that you can see making the sound so, yeah, I think there is a connection there that’s part of the aesthetic of the label, for sure.

KP: Yeah, yeah. So I guess - and feel free at any point to take it any direction that you want - but I kind of got a sense that Craig ended up becoming not so much a fan of the sound sculpture stuff and then I know it probably makes sense in a group like a.hop to lean into the sound sculptures. But on your own or in a more general context, what are some of the decisions behind picking up the clarinet or crafting a sculpture at a given time? And maybe how do those approaches talk to each other? 

EM: Going back to that residency in Perth in 2017, we were just working with a lot of amplified breath sounds and other close-mic’d sounds on the trumpet and clarinet so the use of fans was a way of automating the air and doing more things, being able to generate more than one sound, because when you’ve got the wind instrument it’s just that one sound source. And actually we were in Japan in 2017 and we saw Junji Hirose, who is a great saxophone player, but he did this performance at GOK Sound studio, where we recorded with Toshi and Tetuzi, where he had two air compressors and two microphones and he was basically pulling the trigger on the air compressor and blowing the air into the microphones and so it’s just like this avalanche of white noise. It was amazing. And he had the air compressors in another room and he just was piping the air through onto the stage. And so that was very funny because we had just been spending all this time trying to perfect blowing air through our instruments onto the microphone and he was automating it through these air compressors. So then, yeah, we got these little computer ventilation fans, we started amplifying them, and that was the connection with the amplified clarinet I guess. But then when we were back in Montreal with our friend anne-f jacques, who I know you know, we started this Piles Picnic series where we would go to outdoor spaces and do battery-powered shows and the sound objects lent themselves really well to that. Little battery-powered things that we could amplify and small amps that we used to just turn the sound into the space and it mixed with the surrounding sounds and we’d have a picnic. So I started to work with those sound objects in that way. And I always like to have my clarinet with me on stage but I don’t always pick it up. If I’m playing with someone else, I like to have it as an option, just as another avenue that I can take depending on what the other person is doing. If I’m playing solo, I often find that I bring the clarinet and I never pick it up and I’m just working with amplifying stuff on the table. But because they are kind of semi-automated objects generating sound I can create layers in ways that I couldn’t do on the clarinet. And also my mixing console is very much a part of the setup, where I can change volumes and I have three-band eq and I can mute things and I really find that’s where I control all of the layers and bring them in and out. Like this most recent release with Christof Kurzmann, that was recorded in 2019 and that was doing a lot of working with the mixing console, bringing out different layers of sound. But there is some amplified clarinet on that one as well.

KP: Nice. Yeah so just as a blind listener sometimes it’s kind of hard to tell. Particularly the fans, both fans and clarinets are dealing with air - I guess all sound is - but they’re pretty obviously channeled air. And some of the key clicks and fingering pops and frictional air notes or just the amplified air, that kind of percussion and friction of the clarinet can almost become indistinguishable from some of the sounds of the machines. Another thing too I think I saw in a different conversation that you had is that sometimes you set a machine and you come back an hour later and it’s kind of broken down. So it’s almost like some of these machines, you’d think that… I guess clarinet performance brings out human variation, but it seems like some of these machines break down more quickly than a human might fatigue. So if the textures can be similar, beyond the multiphonic possibilities how do you find yourself viewing the differences between those two systems and maybe how do you play to them?

EM: Yeah that’s really one of the core considerations, I think, of this work, with both acoustic instrument, the clarinet, and the sound objects. And I think it can really be a place that generates a lot of momentum and energy in the music because they both have these similarities, like you said, and they are unstable systems, maybe at different rates of change but they still are. But they can also be very long, like long durations of generating the same kinds of sounds and the same kinds of textures and they can be confused for each other. So the thing about the sound sculptures, I got the chance during the pandemic to work with really long durations because there was a lot of time and I would set something up and leave the room and come back like an hour later and see how this sculpture that I had built had become unstable and sort of changed, evolved, or broken down. And there were a lot of uninteresting results and a few interesting ones [laughs] Yeah, but just that conceiving of that evolution or deterioration in the sound as one sound event that takes place over 55’ for example, which is something I put out on cassette, because someone asked me to do a 55’ side of a cassette. But I’ve also played amplified clarinet for an hour or two on a radio show and it’s definitely possible to continue to play for those kinds of durations as well. But, yeah, what I like about them is that mixing of amplified sound and acoustic sound and the crossover in texture as well, and the ability to kind of layer those textures in at different times, bring some textures forward or back, to kind of create a longer progression of sound… I don’t know if that makes sense…

KP: No, yeah, for sure.

EM: The sound sculptures themselves, often it’s gravity that will throw them out so that’s where the instability is coming from because obviously the machine itself, the only instability within that is the battery, running out of battery. So sometimes I will use a low charge on a battery and as the machine slows down it will create change but also often the structures themselves are quite unstable and the whole system changes over time. 

KP: Yeah so I saw a video of you and anne-f on a porch playing with sound sculptures and it does look like some found materials. Definitely unstable. Do you tend to search out materials, maybe with a sound in mind, or do you tend to accumulate materials and maybe a sounds comes later?

EM: I don’t know. I don’t really direct that collection of sound object materials, they just kind of come into my work… let me think…

KP: I guess, real quick, sorry, just to interrupt, say maybe you’re on a tour and you do want to do a sound sculpture set, have you brought most of what you’re going to use with you or do you tend to find it there and leave it when you go?

EM: I tend to bring stuff with me, yeah, like pieces of metal. A lot of what I use I’ve had for a long time and I still find new ways of making them sound and configuring them but, yeah, I guess I’m mostly concerned with their sound properties rather than their physical appearance. Sometimes I’ll see something and pick it up off the street like a piece of metal or a brush from a street sweeper. Or sometimes I just think, why don’t I empty an egg and put that over a piece of moving tissue paper… I don’t know where that’s coming from. It’s an interesting question I haven’t really thought about. And I never actively sort of seek out new things or feel I need to find new things, they just accumulate around me somehow [laughs] which isn’t great, you can see behind me I have lots of boxes of stuff but a few days ago this was very messy.

KP: Well it looks very organized right now. 

EM: Yeah, it’s not going to stay that way [laughs]

KP: In my conversation with anne-f, she mentioned she very intentionally goes for less resonant materials whereas you, particularly with the fans, seem to go towards more resonant materials. I guess are there any kind of thoughts behind that, or maybe that kind of draws from growing up with the rich tone of the clarinet?

EM: Oh maybe, maybe could be. Although anne-f - maybe she doesn’t want you to know this - but she also played clarinet.

KP: Oh! OK. 

EM: Way back, way back. But I think, well, at least up until quite recently anne-f was using pretty much only contact mics and she’s only recently started to use some dynamic mics in her live set to amplify, whereas I’ve always used mics, usually they’re small diaphragm condenser mics, so it’s a different requirement for the materials because she’s wanting to capture the sound through the materials and I’m capturing the sound through the air. I’m capturing the air in many cases, and with the fans I’m also capturing the sound of the mechanical mechanism within the fan and sometimes I can isolate that pitch and use that as a tone but also when I use the air coming off the fan that’s a bassy sound. And then I add other objects in on that, resonant pieces of metal or wood, or I use different surfaces like sand paper and tissue paper and wood and cardboard. So I think a lot of the reason why I’m choosing the materials I’m choosing is connected to the way I’m amplifying and capturing those sounds.

KP: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And when I think of the recordings that I’ve heard, I definitely do think of the fan and it strikes me as something that can be super resonant - it’s almost like the blades are kind of an amplifier for the motor. A lot you can do with it, at least I think I’ve heard you taking a stick or rod to it for percussion or you can attach paper to it for that crinkling sound. You mentioned you were originally drawn to it to automate air flow compared to the clarinet and that you use it for that kind of layering but are there some other reasons why fans might seem to be such a key part of what you’re doing?

EM: Well, they’re very prolific, these little DC computer ventilation fans and in any junk shop there’s lots of them. They’re easy to carry around, you can just clip a battery to them so that helps. And I also have done a little bit with motors as well and attaching tape to them to make them into propellors and using them in a similar way to fans, to just drive air onto a microphone or as some kind of activator for another surface so it’s very similar. So those two kind of DC components, they’re easy to use, they’re low voltage, and they’re very common. Other than that I think they just sort of came into my practice, in a way, and they’ve stayed.

KP: Yeah… rotational surfaces, I guess there are a lot of possibilities there, like turntables, or you can create the kind of periodicity of a wave or something…

EM: For sure. I’m often using the fans at quite high speeds compared to maybe some of the people, like anne-f will slow down the motors quite a bit, although she’s doing all kinds of things. And then a friend gave me to borrow an old medical centrifuge from like the 1930s or something which was pretty cool because it was metal and I could capture a really nice bass fan sound from both the motor and the air and it had a really nice motor controller so I could control the speed of it. But that got so fast that it was kind of scary to have the lid open and have a mic on it because it was just so fast [laughs] I did use it live a few times but it’s also very heavy to carry and once I plugged it in at a show and it blew the power on the whole block [laughs] And luckily it came back on in time for the show but it’s not the kind of thing you can tour with, it’s way too heavy. So fans are really good for that, you just pop some of them in a box and a few other objects and can take them anywhere. They also are very unassuming objects to just have with you, although sometimes a bit strange looking when customs…

KP: “Why do you have ten fans” [laughs]

EM: [laughs] Yeah I just label the box ‘hobby electronics’ and hope they don’t ask any questions, that’s my strategy. 

KP: I guess the sound sculpture part of the practice as well implies a tinkering spirit, have you modified your clarinet at all or is it just a pretty normal clarinet?

EM: It’s pretty normal but, you know, I can play just the mouthpiece, the mouthpiece and the barrel, or just the first joint and I also sometimes use a funnel and a mute. So I can do some prepared clarinet and add other things to it to get different sounds. But, yeah, I haven’t done any hard modifications to it. Maybe I should get an old one and try drilling some extra holes into it or something [laughs]

KP: Yeah for that kind of stuff my mind always goes to Sergio Merce, who is a saxophonist in Buenos Aires who has attached like gas valves to the saxophone for something like multiple sustained partial fingerings.

EM: Yeah there’s lots to do and people will build these kinds of reed wind instruments from pvc and you can get attachments to get the instrument much longer and bassy sounding. I’ve never taken the clarinet in that direction and… I probably never will [laughs] who knows.

KP: I guess - it might have been your words, it might have been the words of people you were having conversations with - but I think I saw that you approached some interactions leaning towards improvisation and others maybe leaning towards a little more direction, whether that means sharing a text score or a photograph or other graphic. I think you mentioned that maybe scores are helpful for larger groups, but are there some other decisions behind choosing to lean one route or another? I know things are probably always a bit mixed.

EM: Yeah it’s always a bit mixed. So if I’m playing with regular collaborators, then both work really well because if we know each other really well it’s quite easy to get into an improvisation. I mean obviously within that term, improvisation, there’s a lot fixed because there’s already a sound world and an unspoken agreement knowing each other’s work that it’s gonna sound in a particular corner of sound art or music. So it’s improvised to a point but there’s already a large chunk that’s implicitly present before you start. So it’s nice to just improvise with regular collaborators. But also sometimes a text score can just push things a little bit further or take you in a different direction that otherwise wouldn’t have necessarily arisen, if there's like direct instructions in that text score or structural directions. And so that’s always really nice and surprising and it’s nice to take what might be a regular interaction to a different place. Then when it’s playing with people that I haven’t played with before, well, both work too because improvising just allows you to get to know what the other person is doing and to just really have fun. Not everyone wants to play a text score so if I haven’t played with a person before I probably would just improvise with them and often just have a little conversation beforehand about maybe, I’m gonna sound a little bit like this, and maybe, we’ll play about half an hour or forty five minutes, so there’s already a little bit of discussion but otherwise there’s no decisions made beforehand. And then if I’m playing solo, I don’t know, I would say both. I would do just open improvisation, working with the room and bouncing off the audience or, yeah, I probably wouldn't use a text score to play solo. Or I don’t think I’ve done that before but I’d be open to it. Sometimes I’ll have my watch and I’ll just check how long but often I just play and stop when it’s ready to stop. 

KP: Yeah. Yeah yeah. So for you scores are more of a social or group thing than… you don’t really compose those fields of action for yourself? Or are you interested - I know for instance like the a.hop members, Ryoko [Akama] and anne-f sharing those text scores with each other - would you be interested in performing something like that solo?

EM: In performing, when there’s an audience, I’m open to it for sure. But generally there’s already enough going on in the space with a live audience that I don’t need or I haven’t felt the need up ‘til the present to have an extra layer of structure or definition because I can work with what’s in the space, the sound in the space, the people in the space, and that feedback. The work with a.hop is unique because we are all collaborating at a distance so we do need… well the scores themselves give us a basis on which to work and then the materials that everyone creates are edited together to produce a final sound or sound & video or sound & photo piece. Every member of a.hop contributes scores. And then in terms of the sound sculpture work, like the kind of more studio stuff, studio recordings, sometimes I conceive of the sculpture themselves almost as the compositions because they contain that inherent instability that dictates what happens to the sound. So they’re like physical constructions of composition and then I just sort of let them go and see what they produce in terms of sound and momentum and evolution of the piece, whether I decide it’s interesting in the end or not. 

KP: Yeah, like the little machines, they kind of do one thing, right, so it’s not like you can direct them to do something else [laughs]

EM: Yeah, yeah, well they’re the embodiment of the eventual composition when they’re semi-autonomous. When I play live I’m constantly manipulating them, changing them, and making decisions about them. Whereas in the studio I don’t have to play that way, I can let them play themselves, they’re self-playing instruments. 

KP: Yeah. I saw the score for envelopes and I guess that struck me as a little direct. Do most of your text directions tend to be direct, or do you sometimes lean a little more poetic? And I also think I saw for a residency you shared forest photographs, which strike me as a little more poetic - likewise have you gone the graphic route but maybe leaned a little more diagrammatic? How do you use the different mediums to convey ideas?

EM: Right, what are you referring to with the forest photos?

KP: I’m actually not 100% sure, I wanna say it was probably your interview with Julián Galay or something, where a residency and using some photographs, sharing those for a performance might have been mentioned.

Read Sound of the Mountain in conversation with Julián Galay here.

EM: So envelopes was a text score for a.hop and I just recently sent a.hop three more scores, one of which is a video score, one is a photo score, and one is an audio score. So a text score, yeah, you can be really direct, you can set a duration, you can set periods of sound or silence, you can specify particular sound worlds. Which can be interesting because everyone realizes the score separately and those materials can be overlaid or edited together or put sequentially and often the results are really beautiful and also surprising and that’s why we use scores, to take sound to a different place. Than if we all just improvised a recording and sent it to the person who was putting the material together. But the video, audio, and photo scores, I sent them and in this case just asked them to interpret the image or the sound through their sound art practice and I set a duration. And because the other members of a.hop all have very active practices, I envisage them making a recording using whatever it is that they’re interested in, working on at the time whilst also being somehow influenced by the visual or the audio in the score. It can either be a very obvious influence or it can be something very subconscious. They might see the video and think of a sound or a place that they want to record or they might see a photo and make some measurements on the photo and use that to program a patch that they use to generate sounds through their laptop, so it’s very open. And there’s a great trust within the… kind of a blind trust, that everyone knows what they’re doing, and it always works out. You know, it’s always amazing to work with those people, it’s quite remarkable that it’s worked so well and most of us have never met each other.

KP: Yeah, it’s pretty awesome. It’s kind of a supergroup. 

EM: [laughs] Yeah, well, I mean they’re really wonderful people.

KP: A little earlier you brushed on the duration aspect and that that’s kind of been something you’ve been interested in, maybe the experience of duration. So in what ways have you played around with that, or what have you found affects the experience of duration with what you do? I don’t necessarily stand by what I wrote four or five years ago [laughs] but when I first heard no instrument machine, air the thing that struck me was how essential or distilled it was, how it was such a compact statement. And in some prep for this, I found that I wasn’t necessarily the only one who thought that, that some of the early Mystery & Wonder records were also considered so. I just think it’s interesting to go from something that seems like a kind of digest to maybe starting to work with things that are a little more naturally sprawled out.

EM: Yeah, that’s really interesting to think about. no instrument machine, air is a very compact, I think, record, album. And I made that doing quite a lot of overdubs, like that’s how I recorded it. I recorded layers and overdubs, improvising over each layer, but I didn’t use that many layers in each track, maybe three or four maximum. But the more durational stuff that I’ve been interested in is still just using one sound sculpture and recording just it and seeing what happens to it, so one texture or one set of textures and seeing how that evolves. So in a way that’s also kind of compact. It’s not going around to a whole bunch of different sounds but it’s using time and momentum and gravity as the drivers whereas the no instrument machine, air album, I was very much controlling and making decisions and bringing sounds in and out. So with the durational pieces, the structure decides, well, it’s built into the structure, the structure doesn’t decide, it’s built in but we discover it at the end, how long that sculpture generated sound. And I just like how when you have quite a repetitive textural sound that is slowly evolving, listening to it you sort of start to really notice the small details of the sound and the small variations within each cycle because often it’s a cyclic sound, like you said, with the fan or the motor. There’s that repetition but there’s also that spiraling change. It can play with our perception of time. Yeah, so in a way they are quite different, this recording, no instrument machine, air, maybe sounds a bit more dynamic ‘cause there’s hard lines and changes and it’s direct whereas the sound sculpture pieces… some of the ones on the cassette that’s called AFR3, that’s out on presses précaires, they were longer recordings and I just took excerpts and put them together. And then there’s AFR2, that’s the 55’ sound sculpture piece, they are not so much directed by me, I just chose the recordings that I liked from a larger body of durational pieces that I made mostly in 2020 but also in 2021. The challenge now is because I’m starting to play live again I got so used to being able to capture sound in the studio very cleanly and use high gain condenser mics and they don’t translate very well into a live show because of feedback issues and other things, other ambient sound in the space, if the mics are really hot they’ll pick up the sound. So that’s my latest challenge, is now taking those sounds that I got really interested in in the studio and taking them into a live setting and thinking really closely about mic placement and object placement, and how many mics and which channels and getting the gain staging really right because it’s a very different … yeah, no instrument machine, air is coming out of more of a live set, even though it was made in the studio it’s coming out of a live style of playing, and then the more recent stuff is coming out of a studio setting of no audience, just getting sounds and immediately putting them onto a medium for other people to listen to in their own spaces. 

KP: Do you find that even without an audience maybe during a sound check or something and what I’m assuming is a pretty directed microphone towards the sculptures that the shape of the room affects the sounds you’re picking up?

EM: Yeah, for sure, the surfaces in the room, the floor, the size of the room. It’s really a huge consideration and sometimes there’s not enough time at soundcheck to get really comfortable so I have to be strategic about which mics I use, which objects I choose to amplify, how many different sounds I can combine at different times. And usually that gets figured out while the performance is happening and usually it’s pretty good. It often takes me in new directions as well. But it does require, particularly now because I’m using different kinds of sounds and sounds that I haven’t previously used in a live setting, it just requires a bit of figuring out beforehand, a bit of preparation. But yeah I’ve got the console, I’ve got my own mixing console, so I’m in control if something’s feeding, you just need the sound tech to set the levels and then everything else is good. I can generally contain anything that goes wild [laughs] ‘cause I like to play loud, I like these loud bass frequencies. 

KP: Nice. That’s all the general directions that I had mapped out, did you want to go anywhere or have anything that you wanted to shout out? 

EM: No, it’s been really interesting to talk to you, thank you so much for your discussion and questions. I don’t often have to put everything into words in this way so it often helps me to get my ideas together.

KP: Yeah, thank you so much. I think it’s always awesome to hear how people approach or think about things… I don’t know, I feel like a lot of what I ask isn’t super different person to person - it’s a little catered - but every answer is wildly different.

EM: Yeah, yeah.

annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Eli Wallace - Waves, Spikes, Road, Wall (2021)

Eli Wallace is a pianist, improviser, and composer whose work might focus on the methods of sound creation, such as use of preparations and interaction between players. Some recurring collaborators include: Sean Ali, Michael Foster, and Cecilia Lopez as The Inflatable Leviathan; Jessica Ackerley and Frank Meadows as MAW; and Deric Dickens, Aaron Quinn, Karen Ng, and Nolan Tsang as Laundry Day. And recent recordings include The Inflatable Leviathan with the eponymous group, A Maneuver Within with MAW, Laundry Day II with the eponymous group, and Precepts, a realization of another graphic score from Wallace with Ali, Erica Dicker, and Lester St. Louis.

Waves, Spikes, Road, Wall is a 2021 composition for any number of performers with open instrumentation and open duration. The work was a bitácora donated to Casa Wabi during Wallace’s 2021 artist residence there to remain in their collection. It features four segments, each with their own directions, with the directions for the whole indicating that each segment can be played any number of times in any order as well as how to signal a section is about to be played, all on a single page. Two segments ask for interpretations of the shape of lines, and two for interpretations of complex forms. Directions of at least two segments, at least one of lines and one of complex forms, explicitly contain directions around silence. 

I cannot shake that the complex forms look like bivalve shells or algal mats and branching bryozoa or coral fossils. While it appears possible to interpret the filled shape in (B) as sound, the relation to filled shapes’ explicit silence in (A) suggests it is also silence, and the variability of filled shapes within (A) and between (A) and (B) seems to ask performers to consider the shape of silence. Preserved ages in stone and the recognition of silence as material draws my mind towards time, and I think this composition calls for its serious consideration. The linearity of (A) and (B) surely affects a different, momentous sense of time than the vertically-stacked or spatially-dispersed structure of (C); the total structure reflects this too, which can be played linearly/alphabetically or in a varied distribution with intermittent repetitions. Graphic harmonic strategies likely induce different times too, and I imagine the crowded overlapping relationships of (A) compared to (B) will slow down the performer, as will the enlarged details of the complex forms in (D). And of course an ensemble must negotiate and navigate their individual clocks through cues.

Accompanying a consideration of time is one of space. The dispersed structures of (C) and of the total score lend this sense. As do the complex forms which seem like two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional things. But even the lines in (A) are not segregated like notes and staves on a page but intertwine and ask for their relations to each other to be considered even if the directions don’t. Spatial relationships are relative relationships and the ensemble might recognize this and its translation through them through this graphic representation, particularly when they navigate (B) in which the ensemble must think through whether top to bottom means the page or to the core of the filled shape, and whether that changes to side to side on the bend. 

reviews

Cyprien Busolini / Bertrand Gauguet - MIROIR (AKOUSIS RECORDS, 2022)

Cyprien Busolini and Bertrand Gauguet play two scenarios for viola and alto saxophone on the 53’ MIROIR. 

True to titles the tracks are nearly reflections of each other, with similar durations, dynamics, pacing, sounding. Sounds as tender as a whisper, drawn out long like sighs. “Oscillation” is more breathy bowing and tremulous breath for beating effects, harsher harmonics in swells of stridulations, ebbing together in dynamic waves. And “Vacillation” is all unstable, its beatings infrequent, fleeting, but palpable and the two phase through dynamics though each remains sounding in the wings as if to cultivate beatings at a moment’s notice, an axial wobble aligning for magnetic textures.

- Keith Prosk

Verónica Cerrotta - Camadas verticales (SELLO POSTAL, 2022)

Verónica Cerrotta arranges an environment from recordings on the 19’ Camadas verticales. 

Quotidian moments folded for imaginary narratives, impossible cooccurrences, and arcane harmonies. A chime choir and the talking tabla of dripping water on metal. A soundwalk polyrhythm of night bug chittering and crunching gravel underfoot and what sounds like the creaking pump of an organ in a reverberant space. The wind and waves of the shore, shells sifted through hands as sand, and circular ceramics spinning on their edge over a hard surface. Shoveled gravel and swarming flies, dropped marbles percussive on different surfaces. Footfalls on old wood floors and cow crows closeby. Sounds and their sources are loud and clear, focusing attention towards their invisible relationships. 

- Keith Prosk

Sarah Davachi - Two Sisters (Late Music, 2022)

Two Sisters presents nine harmonies from Sarah Davachi for keyboards, voice, strings, flutes, brass, and bell plates performed by Mattie Barbier, Mira Benjamin, Dorothy Berry, Bridget Carey, Johnny Chang, Davachi, Judith Hamann, Jessika Kenney, Rebecca Lane, Anton Lukoszevieze, Gordon MacKay, Andrew McIntosh, and Tiffany Ng.

Songs sit with a sound and shift slowly, often only modestly adding complementary elements for bold changes in texture or color. Evoke brass not just from hymnic fanfares for four trombones but the radiating waves of organ solo, compared to a nearby green that perhaps matches its color by feeling more blooming. Subtle shades for illusory fields in which sines blend with bells, voice rises relative out of hypnotic chant, and the channeled air of flute and organ blur. I wonder if the lush “Icon Studies” recall the ecstatic harmonic music of Rădulescu’s sound icon, given the context of composer as keyboardist, the contributions of Lane and Sam Dunscombe, and their spirited overtone activity. The globe-scattered collaborators and site-specificity of organ and carillon converge space and shatter time, which reamasses and flows fluid again like mercury in these colorful harmonies that convey the care and well-attuned ears in their creation. 

- Keith Prosk

Violeta Garcia - FOBIA (Relative Pitch, 2022)

Violeta Garcia freely plays fifteen phobias for cello on 39’ FOBIA. 

Textures reflect their titles, the insistent ticking of “EL PASO DEL TIEMPO,” the fast fiddling of “laburaHOLIc,” the growling wood of “LOBO.” Violent attacks, string flaying, and nervous pacing conjure dark moods, compounded by quick tracks’ breakneck procession. Wood and hair beat and scratched raw creak, eek, hiss under styrofoam, and scream in swings in volume. Resonant moments and purring beatings crepuscular light in an otherwise chaotic rhythmic cloud of crosshatched and stippled sound that hangs in the air with the weight of fear in obsessive compulsive percussive repetitions that both change and stay the same like the unreasonable realities of living with phobias. 

- Keith Prosk

Junji Hirose / Otomo Yoshihide - DUO-1 (Ftarri, 2022)

Junji Hirose and Otomo Yoshihide play three scenarios for self-made sound instruments and turntables on the 64’ DUO-1. 

Different tracks feature different self-made sound instruments, or semi-automated sounding sculptures. “First Scene” is metallic jangle, electric scratch, junk crash. Cymballic noises from rotational surfaces. Reverbed exclamations spiraling in dynamically inverse-logarithmic repetitions echoing the energy escaping the self-made sound systems. A primal resonance spun out from the periodicity of the maelstrom. “Second Scene” is machinic raspberries and vacuum suck, crackling purr an propeller percussion, electric groans and motor revs. And “Third Scene” is the grained screams of a wind-whipped mic, though the shear of still and accelerated air yet conveys a wave. The repetitions of automated mechanisms cannot escape a wave in the periodicity of their noise; despite subversions of staccato soundings turntables cannot escape the circularity at their center. Between the band of noise and waves, distilled from a diversity of discordant discarded objects, there is a sense of purity or essence in the sound. 

- Keith Prosk

Austin Larkin - Violin Liquid Phases (Memory of a Past Heat, 2022)

Eight violin solos from 5’ to 15’.

Something terrifyingly elusive here in the combinations of almost-patterns/repetitions/structures not so much deliberately occluded or interrupted as ‘always already’ too-much or too-little for mechanical or mathematical regularity, or, if at all mathematical, perhaps in the spinning out of their interactions adjacent to ‘chaos’ in the ‘high degree of sensitivity to initial conditions’ sense, therefore relentlessly polyphonic across multiply-complex axes... An awareness here of the insufficiency of explanation, the dumbfounded gap between motion of fingers/hands and not-quite-architectural (because always-excessive, ‘unsound’) sonic corollary, cf., for example, the tendency, noted by Scherzinger and others, for master mbirists to cultivate finger-patterns apparently simpler than and/or irrelevant to audible result, facilitated by complexities of overtone structure and key layout... in Larkin something of this form of mystery, which is coterminous with the mystery of ‘frozen time’ or of a ‘moment’ that can be ‘stretched,’ overlaps also with a mystery like that of the shō in the gagaku ensemble, in which ‘new’ harmonic spaces can be perceived only as ratcheting up ‘tension’ which is really ‘height,’ outside of actual pitch content, a basically spiritual ascent across functionally-undifferentiated levels, emphasizing therefore only the motion itself, in other words the “ceaseless becoming” of Larkin's notes. Reductively, then, violin-as-between-mbira-and-shō, those latter two instruments not simply as decontextualized objects but rather already suggesting specific practices and understandings. Less reductively - and probably also less inaccurately, since, though “court music” appears as a point of reference in press materials for this recording, there’s nothing more specific within that field - a more firmly-grounded and indefinably ‘real’-feeling set of new ideas than I have heard in a long time.

- Ellie Kerry

Jon Lipscomb - Conscious Without Function (Relative Pitch Records, 2022)

Jon Lipscomb plays six solo guitar improvisations on the 36’ Conscious Without Function. 

Free association’s abrupt juxtaposition. Rapidfire fingerings and faster flourishes emit bright spidery pops in percussive polyrhythms next to shredding surf tremolo and growling metal riffage. Nervous step pattern blasts and breakneck smooth noodling glimpsing jazz and blues through an electric flood of clean tone. Harmonic twinkles in whammied fade and palmed chimes whose decay undulates. Quick repetitions that change quickly. Swiping, wobbling gestures and textures. Blustery distortions. Fluid play fitting to the flitting container of the brain. 

- Keith Prosk

Maxi Mas - Maine (Ramble Records, 2022)

Maxi Mas translates three Philip Guston paintings through lute and then overlays them on the 25’ Maine.

Hear the wood. Hear the room. Warm reverberation as rich as a piano. Full body massage for a palette of viol friction. Overbowed roars that thwack the neck. Saran wrap raspberries. Accumulating chords cultivating harmonic interactions in decay in between. Like the paintings they represent, tones are abstracted through extended techniques. The overlaid lines of each painting mixed manually in movements around the mic. Their raw superposition produces a volumizing effect unlike to the flattening of most studio multitracks. And like the cover could be confused for a true Guston painting, this sound space could be confused for several lutists in the same circle at the same time. 

- Keith Prosk

John McCowen - Models of Duration (Astral Spirits/Dinzu Artefacts, 2022)

John McCowen plays four contrabass clarinet solos on the 51’ Models of Duration. 

Subtle structures and ascetic sustain extend the experience of digestible clock durations. Protean, shifting and static multiphonic harmonic interactions draw the ear towards microscale textural nuances like a monochrome. And similarly tracks start at the edge of the canvas, immediately beating. Smooth waves breach like lens flares of harmonic eclipse from corporeal wobbles with planetary gravity. Sines sing hymnic choruses. Motor purr and rev and helicopter whirr like the Helmholtz resonance of racing with the windows down. Deep yawps. Tectonic stridulations. Sink disposals. Death squalls. Dub hum. A journey through the contra register to the depths of low end that illuminates the vitality and violence in its heavy gravity. 

- Keith Prosk

Sachiko M - I’m Here -Short Stay- (self released, 2022)

Sachiko M presents four tracks for traveling installation on the 70’ I’m Here -Short Stay-. 

As pictured on the cover, four portable CD players play back Sachiko’s signature sines through four sets of headphones in different environments. Supplemental, site-specific context for the seven locations the installation stayed between 2011 and 2014 is available here. I’m unclear whether tracks are selections or arrangements but I imagine the former. 

The sounds are expected for the initiated. Piercing sines, purring skips, and suck teeth glitches. Broad swaths of silence. Perhaps a mild groan from the CD player. And similar to the stability of silence and sines in previous pieces, the recorded and playback environments converge, the character of air in each embedding themselves in the other, contingent sounds of the listening environment easily inserting themselves into that of the playback, and changes in listening location and sinus and skull position changing the perception of the recorded sound. The context of an installation draws the mind towards the interaction of sounds and spaces too. 

The difference is duration. Otherwise each track is structurally similar, with around 5’ of sustained sines in the 15’ and 20’ tracks, a couple more in 25’, a couple less in 10’, all distributed across three or four events, and then around a dozen instances of glitched scratch. So silence decrease a little. I think rather than listen to the four tracks as a whole the experiential effect of duration would be best experienced with some separation. Either way, even with shorter stays, the baggage of memory informs the most recent listen, just like the installation carries forward mementos of previous performances to the next. The sensation might be akin to how a holiday that lasts a week and a holiday that lasts a weekend feel when all else remains the same. 

- Keith Prosk

Michiko Ogawa - Junkan (2020) (Marginal Frequency, 2022)

The 69’ Junkan (2020) presents two versions of the eponymous Michiko Ogawa composition for octet, one alongside Harmonic Space Orchestra associates Sam Dunscombe (bass clarinet), Jonathan Heilbron (double bass), Catherine Lamb (viola), Rebecca Lane (flute), Lucy Railton (cello), Fredrik Rasten (guitar), and Sarah Saviet (violin) and one with eight overlaid clarinet solos. 

Harmonies begin on a bed of sonorous bass. Amass and ebb their sustained soundings cooperatively. Quickly finding quavering beating. Criss-crossing movements and waves’ tremulousness summon tension. Suspension amongst them as they all alternately buoy the harmony. Gutturally deep oms and singing celestial. Cyclical in revolving dynamics, seemingly iterative structures, and shifting harmonic constellations. Combinations for moments of euphonious elation and consonant frisson. 

The second version feels similar. Structurally silences are a little longer. Texturally a saturation of odd harmonics lends a warm distortion to its glow and its overtones chirp more than sing. I originally mistook the second version for the wind trio with a synthesizer and assumed a doubling effect for octet. I might need to get my ears checked and assess any biases around performance readiness but I also think this speaks to the manifold faces of clarinet, whose character is the basis of the octet. 

- Keith Prosk

Sun Yizhou & Zhu Wenbo - Responses (zappak, 2022)

When I listen to abstract improvised music like this, I often find myself wondering exactly what’s going on or what it is that I’m hearing. I’m not usually looking for an accurate answer, just one that can help me understand and appreciate the music. When I was listening to the fifth track of this album, I found that Sun Yizhou and Zhu Wenbo had come together in a nice electroacoustic harmony, I felt a sense of oneness. I wondered how they accomplished this – I saw that Zhu Wenbo had played a cassette player on this track, so I thought that perhaps he had recorded Sun Yizhou’s performance and was now playing it back alongside it. I found this to be an interesting answer that my brain came up with, because I was already aware that it couldn’t possibly be the case.

Responses wasn’t recorded live, they took turns. The recording session went like this: one of them performed a brief improvisation, and then the other one performed their own improvisation in response to that, and then the other one performed their own improvisation in response to that one, and etc. Each improvisation was about seven minutes, so one by each performer was selected and they were then layered to make each of this album’s six tracks. This duo isn’t the first to do a “blind improvisation duo” by pairing up recordings, but their response-based system pushes their sound a bit closer, but also further, from a traditional live recording.

In a live performance, the musicians usually respond to each other. A sound made by Performer A might trigger a sound in Performer B. Performers pay attention to each other’s performances so they can complement one another and co-steer the performance, it’s a non-stop conversation of gestures and responses. A blind duo can be interesting because it detaches from that – it features two performers both doing their own thing, responding to nothing, so rather than coming together as a conversation it comes together as two overlaid monologues. Responses manages to find a third perspective though, or perhaps somewhere in between. In Responses, each performer listens to their pair’s entire performance before giving theirs, allowing them to respond to the performance as a whole rather than to individual moments of it.

There is no live musical communication between performers here. There can’t be, it would be a temporal impossibility. Instead, there’s understanding in between them. The performers take their time to listen and appreciate their partner’s music while they consider their own performance and how they should respond, rather than using their partners sounds as instant musical prompts. Instead of being a conversation of sounds, it’s an interaction made from mutual understanding of each other’s personalities and aesthetic practices, and instead of live reactions, it’s thoughtful responses compressed together in time.

One important piece of information regarding this recording practice was left out though – it’s not stated in which order any of this was recorded, so the listener is unaware which performer is responding to which. The only solution that has made sense to me is to assume another impossibility – both performers are responding to each other, they’re both the second performer. In each of these tracks they come together so comfortably that I really don’t have a better guess. I think that a lot of what makes their recordings fuse so well is that that shared understanding that came from this recording project goes beyond the responses – a knowledge of their partner’s previous performance grants some clairvoyance into their next performance by offering an understanding of their way of working as well as their way of responding. In this sense, there kind of is a communication between performers like there would be in a live setting, it’s just been stretched and dissected.

On each of the six tracks, Sun Yizhou plays the no-input preamp. Even moreso than other no-input and feedback musicians, he plays with an extremely limited palette primarily consisting of pitched statics, electric bumps and line noise – but to me he feels fully in control of these sounds, like the small palette and limited options of the instrument allow him to perfectly refine his sounds. They’re splendid performances of soft noise, threatening but not aggressive. This precise style of playing also creates some uniformity between the tracks which makes the various responses interesting to compare – both because they let Zhu Wenbo try responding to similar sounds in several ways, and because they let Sun Yizhou respond to several different sounds in similar ways.

Zhu Wenbo plays a few different instruments depending on the track, including clarinet, toy piano, transducers and more, but somehow his performances never feel so different from each other. I think this is because every one, despite being performed differently, was a response to the same performer using the same instrument – on every instrument he picks up, Zhu Wenbo tries his best to channel Sun Yizhou’s no-input preamp, and it works! It’s remarkable to hear a clarinet or a snare drum so naturally sit alongside improvised electric fuzz, but every time they feel like multiple elements of the same musical system, like they really do belong together.

Responses is an album that I’ve enjoyed a little more every time I listen to it. It’s refreshing to hear two musicians understanding and appreciating each other so well, and to start their music project from that. It makes for music that contains a lot of both personalities without feeling self-indulgent. However, I wonder how much of this mutual understanding is inside my own head – can’t the human brain see any two things together and imagine them as connected? Isn’t it natural to look for coherence when none exist? Can’t it see chaos and perceive unity, or hear two overlaid recordings as one? Possibly, but none of those questions make me appreciate this music less because I do feel oneness here, and in my ears these performers come together like two peas in a pod, like a chemical reaction where two bodies are fused and a single electroacoustic spirit, held together by their mutual understanding, is formed.

- Connor Kurtz

suzueri & fumi endo - toy​-​piano sokubaikai / ト​イ​ピ​ア​ノ​即​売​会 (zappak, 2022)

There’s something immediately surreal about this improvised piano duet, if you’d like to call it that. It has a remarkable trait of being able to simultaneously lean into and out of one’s expectations of what a piano duet should, or even could, sound like. We hear the regular pings of pianos, as keys are swiftly struck to create sounds that quickly decay as we expect them to – but the soundworld has been subtly cluttered with elements that don’t quite fit in, that confuse or disorient and create uncomfortable dissonance. These elements include: devices, motors, fumbling, toy pianos and a melodica. What’s really exciting about this, and perhaps what makes it feel so surreal to me, is that each of these elements manages to be subversive, complementary and remarkable in an entirely different way.

The devices and the motors are likely elements of suzueri’s performance. On top of playing the piano herself, suzueri creates home-made electric devices that are capable of sounding or triggering the piano on their own, whether it be by pressing the keys in a regular rate or by interacting with the instrument’s strings. The result of this, from the CD listener’s perspective, is an absolute uncertainty on which sounds are the product of machines and which are the immediate outcome of human decisions or creative urges. The mentality of the devices and the performers become interlinked, giving the live recording a string of human-machine logic which is as strange as it is exciting to follow.

The clearest evidence that these devices or that this human-machine combined logic even exists comes from the steady hum of motors. They’re already activated when the recording begins, so instead of initially standing out or indicating something musical, it feels like a natural element of the room, like it could simply be Ftarri’s AC unit. What lets this effect work particularly well is that the hum relaxes, unchanging, in the background of nearly the entire recording. The pianos are soft and sparse enough that they don’t overwhelm this hum either – how it feels is that the pianos are actually playing with the hum, that they’re following its non-rhythm and attempting to harmonize with it.

By the end of the album, the hum sounds so natural and comfortable that when the motor is suddenly deactivated it feels alarming. It feels like all of the natural sounds in a space inexplicably vanishing without you leaving that space. It feels wrong. What feels even more wrong are the next few minutes, while the pianos keys continue to be struck. My first thoughts are – how can these pianos continue to make sounds with their motors powered down? How can these performers continue playing with their machine brain switched off? Of course neither question makes sense – pianos aren’t controlled by motors and the performers aren’t androids – but it’s remarkable how this recording gets me into a headspace where I believe that that could be the case, and it’s distressing to feel the moment where the effect is proven artificial.

In contrast to the devices and motors that remove or hide some humanity from the project, but likely as a result of them, is an element that has the exact opposite effect: the sound of performers fumbling, awkwardly digging through boxes of stuff, setting up things and making alterations. It’s surprisingly prominent throughout this recording, perhaps due to the low volume level of the performance. Without visuals we can’t tell exactly what is happening, who is trying to set up what, and I can’t follow the sound to decipher what changes have been made just by listening either. But there’s something entirely natural and human about these sounds – they’re the incidental sounds of creativity and experimentation. Where otherwise the performers disappear behind the devices, it’s in this fumbling that they feel especially alive and present. Because of that, even if these occasional bumping sounds were accidental, they feel just as essential and attention-worthy as anything else here.

In addition to the two upright pianos used for this performance, smaller toy pianos were used as well. The toy pianos are primarily, or possibly exclusively, struck by suzueri’s keystroke devices, but that isn’t really something that can be felt – as I said before, rather than these different pianos and sounds feeling individual or disconnected, they all feel the result of the same human-machine logic. The toy pianos have a completely different timbre to the actual ones, they stand out from each other and always fail to harmonize. The ring of the actual pianos sound soft and sophisticated while the toy pianos feel harsh, metallic and clunky. It could make for an ugly contrast, but more than contrasting they feel more like two separate elements, one could even imagine it as two separate recordings, placed on top of each other. In this recording where performers become linked, where machine and human logic become intermixed, where instruments are literally connected to one another, it’s captivating how the upright and toy pianos still feel distinct, how they both have their own sounds and personalities – so even if it’s hard to understand this performance as a traditional duo, it can still be understood as a duo between upright and toy pianos.

One last element that feels important to me is something specific to Fumi Endo’s performance – the use of melodica. It’s one thing that stands out from the rest of the music as unique and recognizable, even feeling like it might not belong. Soft tones from the blown piano-like instrument glimmer in the background, harmonize and inflate the motor buzz and provide sparse melodic footing for the piano. It’s a live, clear, human instrument that could have been one of the most significant and affecting elements, but its played with such restraint that it’s pushed into the edge of noticeability. I like listening and being aware of this hardly used ingredient, seeing it as a controlled nuance that threatens to overthrow the logic of the entire performance, which it never does – it just sits comfortably, like a sore thumb hidden from sight. 

It’s how all of these ideas and dualities come together that makes toy-piano sokubaikai such an exciting, surreal listen. None of them can easily sit together, instead these multiple threads of logic all pull at each other and make this minimalist piano improvisation into a strangely complex listening experience, one that’s difficult to judge or to understand how to appreciate. There is a surprisingly beautiful climax though – where a few piano keys are finally played in a sequence and a short but lovely melody is established. I’m not sure what I can say about it except for calling it lovely – but after 40 minutes of sporadic human- mechanical piano exploration, after hearing the piano and its performers be recontextualized by their own performance, after reconsidering the piano and how it should be enjoyed, it’s really wonderful to hear this brief, beautiful phrase that’s so easy to enjoy and finally matches my expectations of the piano, as an instrument that’s played with human hands to perform an arresting, alluring, intimate melody. It’s just really lovely.

- Connor Kurtz

Biliana Voutchkova - Joanna Mattrey - Like thoughts coming (Relative Pitch Records, 2022)

Biliana Voutchkova and Joanna Mattrey freely play five environments for violin and viola arranged with field recordings on the 45’ Like thoughts coming. 

Continuing what has come to characterize the DUOS2022 series, Like thoughts coming expresses an interdependent combination out of listening to each other and concomitant play. Whether focused through Aikido, Yoga, and Alexander Technique or a heightened consciousness and incorporation of sounds found around the home, both attune deeply to the current moment. Whether a fiddling rustic roughness analogous to the abrasion of stroh or daxophone or frictional textural techniques as emotive as breath can be, both markedly manifest the material of hair and wood in their communications. Unsurprisingly they blend seamlessly, moving together through sustained soundings and percussive pizzicato, quieter textures and noisy frenzies, even their voices appear to emerge from their instruments and it can be difficult to discern whether the wood is what’s groaning or if that breath is bridge bowing. To convey the comfort of finding fast friends that their excitement and intensity might not, field recordings from the garden keep a calm constant environment. 

- Keith Prosk

Biliana Voutchkova - Susana Santos Silva - Bagra (Relative Pitch Records, 2022)

Biliana Voutchkova and Susana Santos Silva play two improvisations for violin, trumpet, piano, voice, and objects on the 56’ Bagra. 

Moments of profound resonance in activated piano reverberations, billowing breath and beating bowings but even less sonorous color combinations find a kind of harmony. Mutes and bow orientation and location change shades. Rougher textures of saliva and sawing pair. Air notes and bridge bowing both breathy. Object tapping and trumpet pops for effervescent cadences. Music box melody for glossolalia. My ear is drawn to the power of pressure on sound, in the speed of channeled air and fingers mediated through the bow. As the two move through the palettes of their different instruments, it’s their similarities that are uncanny, which in turn highlights the subtler shades of each that make them distinctive.   

- Keith Prosk

Theresa Wong - Practicing Sands (fo’c’sle, 2022)

Theresa Wong performs ten songs with cello and voice on the 41’ Practicing Sands. See this 15 questions feature for more technical information. 

Percussive plucked melodies less like partitioning a string than illuminating the corners of the resonator. A volumizing spatiality through harmonies that excite the body, glissandos and slides that create a gyre of doppler whirrs, knocking the body like tapping to sound the room, and the expert microphone placement conveyed in the context. Textures that could at times be confused for starlings or marimbas provide a springboard for voice in sung elegy to match the melancholy sonority of cello, or in abstract vocals to extend techniques like flutter tongue for strums. Plucking prominent enough that the bed of bowed growl in the closer sounds richer for it, from which criss cross gliss from voice and cello intertwine and the whole system appears to harmonize. 

- Keith Prosk

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider donating. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $0.74 to $3.93 for August and $0.65 to $1.94 for September. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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harmonic series is now located at harmonicseries.org. Everything should redirect seamlessly from what you were navigating through before. We’re still hosted by Substack. We’re still not a non-profit, but .com was taken and peers like freejazzblog, pointofdeparture, and recordedness use .org so it seems fine. Search results for things only we have reviewed or featured were not readily returning; the newsletter format isn't necessarily great for seo anyway but it needed to be addressed and this is a step in that direction.

No Idea Festival will make six audio/video commissions available online between September and November 2022, featuring Christine Abdelnour, Tim Barnes, Patrick Danse, Jim Denley, Aquiles Hadjis, Jeph Jerman, Bani Khoshnoudi, Ernesto Montiel, Gustavo Nandayapa, Iván Naranjo, Rhizomes Films, and Gil Sansón. Program to be announced September 5. 

IM-OS #9 is available, featuring a call for interpretations of a graphic score from Nolan Hildebrand, scores from Fernando Palacios and Maria Sappho, improvisation exercises for large groups from Matthias Schwabe, writings from Carl Bergstroem-Nielsen, and Bergstroem-Nielsen in conversation with Anton Lukoszevieze.

August 29, 2022 marked the 70th anniversary of the premiere of John Cage’s 4’33” by David Tudor. Some briefer readings to celebrate the occasion might include Daniel Barbiero’s From Silence to Time, Antoine Beuger’s Grundsätzliche Entscheidungen, and Taku Sugimoto’s A Philosophical Approach to Silence. Unrelatedly, The Atlantic published Why Do Rich People Love Quiet? this month too. 

I recently stumbled upon The Experimental Music Yearbook, a currently dormant but awesome resource for composition and performance approaches edited by Casey Anderson and friends that includes notations. It’s now on our resource roll. 

Similarly, I recently found out about Lateral Addition, where Eric Laska presents sound-based intermedia, often with commentary from the contributing performers. It’s now on our resource roll. 

If you’re interested in sharing a thread of thought prompted by something in our conversations, annotations, or reviews, we encourage you to leave a comment. We’re always glad to receive messages at harmonicseries21@gmail.com but if you leave a comment other readers can chime in too.

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$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider donating. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $1.01 to $4.04 for July and $0.74 to $3.93 for August. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Lance Austin Olsen - A Night On The Veldt (2019-2020)

Lance Austin Olsen is a painter and composer whose work explores the interactions between its visual and sonic components with many objects but especially amplification, recordings, guitar, and voice for sound. Some frequent collaborators include Bruno Duplant, Lee Noyes, Gil Sansón, and Jamie Drouin, with whom he organizes the Infrequency Arts label. Recent sound releases include the solos fukushima rising, Sure Is A Good Hamburger, and polishing the mirrors of psychosis, A field of wildflowers for our lost souls with Barry Chabala, and nattinsektor with Terje Paulsen, a realization of A Night On The Veldt, the full score of which can be viewed alongside other select Olsen sound compositions here. 

A Night On The Veldt is a 2019-2020 score for open instrumentation, an open number of performers, and open duration. The score features fourteen sets of journal pages depicting staves or something similar, arrows, text, and other markings in blue and black inks, with textual performance direction that might appear both poetic and more traditionally descriptive. However, the poetry appears to contain significant sound information and the more traditional description summons sounds from moods and images as much as standard musical language. There is no total duration but a note that each image should last one to three minutes with as much silence between them, though each image can be the contents of a whole page or set of pages, a gestalt within a page, or a single marking or text direction, and the perception of that relationship likely changes across sets of pages. While not forwardly modular, there is an invitation to tiptoe around sounds a performer would rather not meet on foot in the night. Forms like staves might contain more or less than five lines, which break into points, become broken by other forms, bleed across a set of pages, or flow like a stream. Points, lines, and other markings that might assume characters of rainclouds, spotted or striped skins, ears, radiating stars or the radially growing nodules, and jars or beehives or morels surround the staff forms, as well as text that conveys durations, directions, dynamics, tempo, and the title with other unknown numerical inclusions. Ink progresses from fine black to fine blue to bold black and forms appear increasingly natural. Though a relict image of another composition on the first page might suggest the effect is not totally intentional, what came before and what is to come remains visible on each page and sometimes makes for interesting interactions. It is a visibility beyond expectations for the page and so might invite play with listening memory, but its fadedness might also mimic the decreased visible distance of the night. 

With limits only around sounding as often as sound is received and sounding soft, clean, simple tones, interpretations are nearly as many as the imagination can muster. I am drawn to the strong sound associations of its images and the environments conveyed in the text. Pointillistic sounds for these percussive marks, whose spattering across staves seem to imply a natural sound mass over what would be impossible pitch lines. The rattle of dry grass, the crunch of gravel under foot, chittering night bugs, raindrop impacts, the whipping gusts of the coming storm, swarms of flying critters, the roil of water over imbricated river stones all enter my mind. My focus cycles through groupings on the page and their interactions on the page, across pages, and with the pages behind and before like paring back layers to focus on a sound amongst the symphony of the night to zoom out again in awe of its whole stratum. The progression of inks might provoke a change in color, texture, biome, or something else. The increasing prevalence of what I perceive as ear forms and the progressive abstraction of staff forms seems to signal a shift from searching for musical framing towards just listening, and while instrumental tones are possible perhaps the presence of footsteps or broken twigs in moving between sound spaces is enough for the performer. 

In the realization below from the composer and Terje Paulsen, the performers use some instruments and amplified objects to complement the sounds of night bugs. 

reviews

Cristián Alvear & Diego Castro - Alvin Lucier: Criss​-​Cross for Two Electric Guitars (self-released, 2022)

Cristián Alvear and Diego Castro perform the titular Alvin Lucier composition on the 14’ Criss-Cross for Two Electric Guitars. 

Passersby on a semitone. A demonstration of beating pattern behavior as two approach and leave unison, hastening with distance. But though the structure would suggest a symmetry, a point equidistant from unison after is not quite like the one before, conveying the construction of harmonic interaction, or that such things do not just occur but are cultivated. The realization from Oren Ambarchi and Stephen O’Malley, for whom the piece was originally composed, featured a comparatively uniform tone that accentuated a spinning stereo sensation, or the feeling that the depth of the wave had become recognized and was closer to a spiral, springing with distance to unison. The realization from Alvear and Castro is more texturally heterogenous and I hear at least three dominant bands of ringing, humming, and jangling. Aesthetically this addresses a common criticism of sterility in some Lucier compositions by offering some diversity in tactility. But it also illuminates other harmonic behaviors by allowing changes to ripple through its different textural surfaces, sparking imaginations of where and how wave action happens when a low band barely responds to what excites a high band, and by sounding with clarity the progression towards unison as the character and number of bands combine and collapse towards the center in the manner of a gravitational singularity. 

- Keith Prosk

Clara de Asís/Ryoko Akama - sisbiosis (Erstwhile Records, 2022)

Ryoko Akama and Clara de Asís each arrange half of six tracks for electronics, percussion, field recordings, and amplified objects on the 49’ sisbiosis. 

I first played sisbiosis back while cooking. For a moment I forgot I put anything on and looked outside the window to see if I heard rain before recognizing “Destiny.” My rhythmic chopping, popping oil, and other percussion from the kitchen blended well with what I heard. Shortly after I was asked if I had thoughts on the record and reported that I was struck by its distinct yet similarly textured surfaces. I usually rely on this setting as a subconscious primer for closer listens later that often drastically change what I might recognize but something from this one stuck. 

“Destiny” begins as a crackling, spitting static with interludes of effervescent clicks like details of the whole squall, foregrounded against an out-of-focus noise wall. Bells and chimes, fluid sounds, and oscillations that were maybe always there slowly substitute the static by the end of the track as if an adjustment in resolution revealed smooth lines from the snow of discrete points. What happens here appears to occur within tracks and their sets of materials as well as across the total record. Analogous textures from disparate sources surreptitiously smooth from discrete points towards line like seeing shifting pinscreens for their gestalts. 

Within tracks night bugs blend with electric stridulations, stick clicks glitched pops, scraped stone recorded silence. Across tracks pointillistic noise carries through stone friction, the flame-like flickering of a windy recording, the machachara between radio broadcasts, fricative hisses. High tension wire wobbles and other waves seem to emerge from bells and percussive electronics, melodic lines from staccato toms, synth stabs, morse-like talk. Textures appear rhythmically stable, though the ear no doubt glosses over the finer divisions of denser noises. Though the sources change there is a sense many sounds are analogous to each other. 

These mottled field of monochromes draw the ear to the material, draw the ear to how sound could communicate whether it comes from air or something more viscous, wood or metal or skin or stone, something natural or something engineered, something specific as sounds can often seem. In parallel I hear language bubbling up from the babbling noise, an evolution of clicks, fricative phonemes, something similar to morse, and spoken word. I imagine how the ear gleans meaning from sound is different than how we do from language but both seem to create something from nearly nothing like the lines conjured from noise. While sound seems more individually experiential or primal, culling language from a palette of noise requires interdependent exchange, a symbiosis not unlike this collaboration. 

- Keith Prosk

Webb Crawford - Joiners (Tripticks Tapes, 2022)

13 solo electric guitar improvisations from Webb Crawford, totalling 40’.

Alternating, for the most part, between short-ish explorations of more- and less-distorted timbres, Crawford presents here what strikes me as a sort of sketchbook or toolbox of approaches, ideas, insights, techniques, and ‘vibes’ of particular (i.e. repeated) focus - harmonically- and rhythmically-sophisticated fingerpicking patterns moving unexpectedly in different directions; distorted tones at the highest or lowest ends of the instrument's range bent to beat against near-neighbors, where ‘consonance’ and ‘dissonance’ dissolve into ‘texture;’ and, through it all, a sense of grounding in the materiality of the instrument which refuses rigorous or artificial separation of those two ‘styles’ from each other. Crucially, though (for me), Crawford’s relationship to their guitar seems based not in ‘forgetting’ contingent histories to arrive at it ‘naively’ as a ‘found object,’ but rather in freely and non-discretely superimposing the many ultimately- always-contingent material and historical specificities which can ‘become audible’ between performer and instrument - histories, for example, of the North American lumber industry, as referenced in track titles, or of Piedmont-style fingerpicking, per Crawford’s bio. In other words what can be listened for here is a critique of a still-hegemonic modernity valorizing ‘autonomy’ for art and artist, and a turn, instead, towards a more ecological or sustainability-minded aesthetics, an embedded and embodied ‘language’ already in a process of ‘organic’ growth. This perhaps returns me to why, without any concrete indication, I persist in hearing these recordings as non-exhaustive guidelines for future delving, as introducing something to be developed further later - without, at the same time, feeling like there is anything ‘incomplete’ about what’s already here. Regardless of possibilities for eventual contextualizations - reductively, perhaps, as ‘experiment’ or as ‘language,’ though of course inevitably always as both and more - this remains an aesthetically engaging and nuanced document in itself.

- Ellie Kerry

Giacomo Fiore - turntable drawing no. 16 (self-released, 2022)

Giacomo Fiore presents two realizations of Danny Clay’s composition for electric guitar and three turntables, a studio version arranged by Clay and a live version performed by Fiore with a synthesizer patch as a proxy for record playback, on the 41’ turntable drawing no. 16. It is part of a series in collaboration with Jon Fischer, who handmakes the records. 

Record loops whirr, buzz, and sigh. Their playback populated by a polyrhythm of pops and crackle and static evoking comforts similar to TV snow, white noise machines, and their electric waves. Chordal fragments from guitar swell as easy as breathing deeply. And together they make for a pleasant ambiance and feel-good vibes, calm undulations in parallel through sustained durations. But after some time the guitar awakens, turns up the gain, and plays an unabashed retro solo that might seem silly if not so sincere and so seems uplifting. Between the two, the studio version opts for softer guitar attacks and gentler record sounds, a hastier arrival to the guitar melody, and an addition of Ovalesque skipping melodies to its mille feuille. The live version opts for a crunchier, dynamic sound bed and plays with the shape of chords, changing how each fades into the electric environment, shifting between crisp attack and subtler materializations, and accentuating the palette of fragmentation in a way as broad as the records’ glitched material. 

- Keith Prosk

Part of an ongoing series, the collaboration between Clay and printmaker Jon Fischer, this project takes the mediums of turntablism and printmaking and fuses them into art objects that are playable as records. Fittingly, the work is presented in LP format in limited edition. Turntable Drawing No. 16 takes three of these prints/records in locked grooves along with a score for electric guitar, likely with Fiore in mind. The sounds of the records, deliberately lo-fi in their character, aren’t just surface noise, though, and include fairly melodic bits imbued in the ghostly quality of well worn vinyl sound. The LP presents a studio version, created by Clay, and a live version featuring Fiore’s live performance, who takes fragments of the studio version as well as the original records and manipulates them in real time along with his guitar playing, in essence turning the original, that remains fixed as an object, into a living entity, tied to space and time, fleeting but embodying and enhancing the essence of the original. The guitar chords, appearing softly for the most part, appear to have a function akin to color and mood, and their relative softness may bring associations to ambient music, though the grit in the sound stays far away from the shiny colors and textures of most ambient music. This is most evident in the live recording, when Fiore sometimes lets his guitar roar on top of the sound, reminding this listener of guitarists that are both rough in sound as they are elegant in the placement of said sound, like the late Robert Quine. The spirit of the music is closer to, say, Loren Connors, than to Fripp & Eno: rustic, rough, but also warm and inviting.

- Gil Sansón

Julián Galay - ɣ (SELLO POSTAL, 2022)

Julián Galay and Ángeles Rojas perform a Galay composition for twenty-seven tuning forks in a room on the 99’ ɣ. 

Other than what is by that time a startling disturbance from a tapped tuning fork closer to the end, the duration is one of constant vibration without discrete activation of its instruments. Hear three bands. One of static noise whose gradations are as tactile as Juan S. Pinkus’ designs for the label, which could be the typical hiss of recorded silence but in this context assumes a character of information too complex to hear, intricate wave action baffled, made turbulent, and mistranslated across the equipment or the ear. One of low end hum that remains continuous and continuously changes shape in the combinatory synthesis of other unheard vibrations. And one of singing resonances, refractory, ephemeral, whose parabolic forms flit out of audibility and fade totally as the environment moves towards quiescency. As in similarly minimal and constant environments, the perception of waveforms’ shape and color changes with changes in skull or sinus shape and location in the playback space. Which in turn interacts with the perception of shifting dynamics among bands and their own movement across stereo space in the recording. So concurring with the notes, it draws attention towards the convergence of the listening space and the recorded space and their times, to the interactivity of everything even through what might seem like a simple sound. 

- Keith Prosk

Violaine Gestalder / Louis-Michel Marion - MARGES (Creative Sources, 2021)

Violaine Gestalder and Louis-Michel Marion freely play five communications for saxophones and contrabass on the 79’ MARGES. 

Textures accentuate mechanisms. Key clicks and metallic taps sound the sax body. Saxophone sprouts overtones from a bed of breath. Saliva gurgling and air notes recall the body behind them that might be missed in clean tones. Contrabass’ earthquaking strings buzz and thwack against the neck in corporeal wobble. Arco emits overtones like guttural chants. Circular massage, plucked harmonics, and big body bass resonance sound their vessel. And the physicality of its attacks remind of the body behind it too. The two expand and contract together through dynamics, speed, pitch clarity, texture. Bass climbing towards shrill sax yells, the shear of breath of the latter meeting the string friction of the former, arco and subtones beating together. It conveys the kind of conversation that improvisation can, through bodies, complementary action, and a stream-of-consciousness flow of textural themes. 

- Keith Prosk

Andrew Greenwald - A Thing Made Whole (KAIROS, 2022)

Violinist Austin Wulliman, the ensembles Wild Up and Pamplemouse, and various configurations of the ensemble Contemporary Insights perform seven iterations from the eponymous series of Andrew Greenwald compositions on the 72’ A Thing Made Whole. 

General material recurs across iterations. Mellifluous protean melodies, percussive and frictional scratches, and more continuous textural surfaces like noise. Each translates across instruments, the breath of a performer in one becomes winds’ air notes in another, sawing strings become a scratchy guitar attack in another, a purer silence in one becomes chair squeaks, page turns, and traffic in another. And out of this noise appears hymnic and elegiac melodies in a string and brass fanfare, piano chords, or reverberant vibraphone. Cells separated by significant silences seem to rearrange similar material within compositions. Through this the sound conveys the community it takes to make a music, that the composer approaches each iteration for a different ensemble with a different perspective, the ensemble necessarily approaches their iteration with a different perspective than the composer, and within each iteration the ensemble rearranges material suprematically to provide different perspectives of similar material too. A ceaseless shifting of irregular tessellatory patterns to find something that sings. 

- Keith Prosk

Preview A Thing Made Whole here.

e millar and christof kurzmann - rare entertainment (Mystery & Wonder, 2022)

e millar and christof kurzmann craft two multi-movement suites for amplified clarinet, fans, motors, objects, lloopp, and voice on the seven-track, 49’ rare entertainment. 

The first suite is speckled by glitched chitter and bleep bloop tunes, string twangs and sonic drawing, but nearly everything else is airy. A muted yet oppressive presence like a whipping wind rumbles. A motor purrs and chokes. Clarinet’s air notes and quavering voice undulate and fade as if caught and carried away by the wind. The lisp and wisp of fricatives in the voice accentuates the breath. Fan hum changes color with the interference of objects around its blades. Dynamics and speed become audibly tied to pressure. And in this context the beating of lloopp sines and fan resonance visualize the air waves they are. The second suite is all alarm clock from fan blade, looped scream, knocks and clacks and bell tolls like some dystopian worksong which fades to a faint ticking alongside a somber melody and song as if to underline the labor of the motor and the body behind the lighter material of air. 

- Keith Prosk

Grisha Shakhnes - Brass (presses précaires, 2022)

Grisha Shakhnes works a type of concrete music informed by noise aesthetics, attuned to the sounds of tape machine mechanisms, often rough and with seemingly unpolished surfaces. This somewhat crude aesthetic exists in the same plane with a very subtle and considered approach, non demonstrative and leisurely paced, befitting of an artist who trusts his materials. To be more precise, there's a warmth to his music that contrasts with the rusty exterior for an often moving listening experience, a paradox that resolves in the music with no explanation, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, and that's where most of the magic seems to reside here. The listener can even forget for a second that the sound is not a badly recorded machinery equipment but a very sensitive musical statement, in a way similar to the uncertainty principle of Werner Heisenberg: you have to apply your listening intention for the music to reveal its beauty and sense. Listen to it passively and it will blend with the sounds of your environment; listen closely in good faith and the rustic appeal of the music becomes evident. It’s somewhat understandable that some pundits view this body of work as related to drone aesthetics, but in my opinion they're missing the point: there are many extraneous noises that just happen to be there as result of a mic placed near a window, like voices from the street, for example, and these bring with them an openness that is not frequent in drone music, which on the contrary is very focused in creating an object that's independent from broader contexts. Also, in Shakhnes’ work one can detect an underlying narrative element, understated but clearly felt: these are sounds made by people, not just the embodiment of an idea, and Shakhnes seems to want to honor the humble origins of the sound by turning them into music without embellishment or streamlining. It’s a wise choice and the source of the appeal of his music. What makes this release different from the rest of his catalog? It’s hard to say. He tends to exploit the tape medium and many of his works are released as cassette tapes, and he sticks to his guns in terms of sound, so there’s no break here, only the same careful and deliberate focus to his craft that has endeared his work to those with ears attuned to it.

- Gil Sansón

Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir - strengur (Carrier Records, 2022)

Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir presents collaborative compositions and performances with Halla Lovísa Loftsdóttir, Davíð Brynjar Franzson, Lương Huệ Trinh, Kent Olofsson, and Mirjam Tally for mostly violin, electronics, and voice across five three-track EPs on the 141’ strengur. 

All the composers perform and performers compose, and three of five EPs include collaborators outside of their showcased duo. The sound reflects this ecological reciprocity in the distinctiveness of each EP and the accord of the whole. In interaction with field recordings and ethereal AI atmospheres that respond to what’s sounded. In the series of titular scores crafted by the wind’s hand and the ground beneath the page. It evokes simple materials in woody sawing and hairy friction and especially air in breath, wind, and the lift beneath bird’s wings in divebombing gliss. It expresses the everpresent tension in living and the calmness of a landscape’s long timescales. 

- Keith Prosk

Thank you so much for stopping by.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider donating. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $1.01 to $4.04 for July and $0.74 to $3.93 for August. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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harmonic series welcomes a new regular contributor in Gil Sansón, who appears in the reviews this month. 

Michiko Ogawa recently published The Cosmic Music of Teiji Ito in the form of an essay and a short film, the latter in collaboration with Manuel Pessoa de Lima. 

Rishin Singh recently talked with Brad Rose over at Foxy Digitalis.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider donating. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $0.35 to $1.40 for June and $1.01 to $4.04 for July. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

Donate via PayPal

conversations

The New York City-based TAK Ensemble is Laura Cocks (flutes), Madison Greenstone (clarinets), Charlotte Mundy (voice), Marina Kifferstein (violin), and Ellery Trafford (percussion). Over video chat, I talk with Laura, Madison, and Charlotte about utopic intentions, mutual care, ensemble mechanics, embodied sound, and the personality of TAK. 

The ensemble recently released Love, Crystal and Stone with composer Ashkan Behzadi and the ensemble label, TAK Editions, recently presented Studio Session from Ensemble Interactivo de La Habana. The TAK Editions Podcast also features conversations with friends of the ensemble. 

Keith Prosk: Hey, how’s it going?

Madison Greenstone: It’s going well. Looks like I’m the first one on the call.

KP: Ah, yeah. Are y’all joining from separate rooms?

MG: Separate locations, yeah.

KP: Hey, Laura, how are you?

Laura Cocks: I’m great. How are you doing, Keith?

KP: Doing well. Thank you both for taking some time to chat for a bit about what y’all do.

LC: Absolutely, yeah. And I think Charlotte’s due to join us as well. Thanks for chatting with us. I’m excited to have this conversation.

KP: Of course. Is Charlotte, is she currently in New York with y’all too, or is she back in Canada?

LC: She’s just thirty minutes up the road walking… yeah. We all have really good light in our homes today, look at that. 

KP: Well I’ve got a couple of threads that I’m thinking about but at any time please feel free to take it in any direction that y’all want to and anything is honestly free game, whether y’all want to talk about things within the scope of the ensemble or what y’all do with your solo stuff or on the side, privately. So I guess whenever I emailed you I kind of talked about responsibility or ethics or political perspectives in what TAK does. In the notes for the most recently released stuff, for Love, Crystal and Stone, the book talked about the political potentiality of Lorca and Shamlou. Some of the excerpts from Star Maker Fragments that y’all did with Taylor Brook a bit ago struck me as describing some of the more hellish aspects of capitalism. Even something like what you did with Brandon [Lopez], just the collectivity of that approach, and even requesting a collective call for this kind of indicates a certain compass. So is there a conscious curation towards the political or moral stories with what TAK does? 

LC: I think that, as an ensemble, the interpersonal relationships that we have with each other are incredibly important. And, of course, these interpersonal relationships are not just political, but opportunities to actualize the politic of worlds that you want to see. And, certainly within the microcosm of the chamber ensemble, you have a lot of power with that. You can make things very collective. You can really sit down with the group and talk about what everybody wants to see inf how people interact in the world, and the kinds of community responsibilities that are exciting and important to us and that we think are ethical, and then do our best to model those within our small-scale social community of the chamber group. And then, of course, that extends to folks that we bring in as a collaborator in any sense. So, I think that the folks that we end up working with, we’re bringing them into this little world that’s really like inviting them into our family. And, so, anyone that we work with, I think, Mad and Char y’all should weigh in on this too, I hope, feels the space to collaborate really intentionally with us, as part of this little family unit. And I think that that, it’s apparent in the work with Brandon that you mention. Taylor [Brook] we’ve been working with since our very first concert and we’ve done several collaborations together, from large-scale multi-week theater productions to ten-minute chamber pieces. So, certainly, there’s a lot of those threads in Taylor’s work and our combined work that kind of bring our shared political and ethical feelings to the fore, because that space for conversation and mutual trust has been really thoughtfully established. 

MG: Yeah, something I was thinking about, Laura, while you were talking and, Keith, while you were formulating your question was kind of the importance of process and the real care paid to… not the integrity of the process but… well, yeah, the integrity of the process. And that all these collaborations and things you’ve listed off, CDs, tapes, performances, I think they all are kind of this massive accretion of sometimes years-long processes of dialog and making sure that in the moment every aspect of the dialog is right and representing people’s perspectives along the way. And I think this also trickles down into rehearsal strategy and the process of rehearsing, making sure that there are always times to tap in and see how other people are feeling, check in about who’s feeling what, who has a thought that they might not be expressing. And I think that this structure of care within the process creates this upsurgence where what’s produced by TAK or the kind of objects that are made for the public consumption kind of concretize this sometimes years-long process of mutual care for collaborators, for the ensemble. So, it’s interesting to think about what’s in progress and in process right now and the kind of timescales that those are allowed to expand into. 

Charlotte Mundy: For me, part of what comes up in reaction to your question is that I think that the fact that a lot of our work does feel political, I think it, actually, comes from us being really honest and reflective about what is most interesting to us personally and as artists. And I think when we ask, “what ideas do we have that are actually kind of scary,” or, “what do we want to see that we don’t see in the musical field,” when we try to answer those kinds of questions, it just ends up being kind of a collective creation. Trying to create worlds that we want to exist but don’t quite exist yet. And, of course, we do think deeply about it and we do also, I think, feel ethical responsibility or whatever but for me it feels like the core of what we do is actually just kind of honestly what we want to see, what we’re most excited about as artists

KP: Yeah and I think I understand that TAK started just ‘cause you had a performance and y’all hit it off as friends, right? So it’s not necessarily that you’re here for some ethical goal or something but you work with each other because you like each other, which I guess is common sense. So if there is an ethics or any consideration of it in what y’all do, that kind of equitable representation of perspectives or collectivity, I mean, that’s it, that’s at the forefront?

LC: I think it’s beyond being at the forefront, I think it’s like the ground. It’s not as though we’re looking at it but we’re walking on it. And I think what Charlotte’s saying about honesty, it’s like we’re all really good pals too so we talk about things that are interesting to us when we’re hanging out, which is basically all the time. We’re talking about these threads of aesthetic and artistic and ethical. We’ve had reading groups where people are bringing in readings to do and stuff like that. It’s just how we interact with each other I think, it’s just the mycelium. 

KP: Nice. Love that concept of the mycelium. So you also have TAK Editions where you’re letting other people do their thing, with Ensemble Interactivo [de La Habana] or Lizard Tongue, so is there… what’s kind of the mission behind that? Or is that also just a, hey we’re friends with these people, they’re good people, we wanna give them a platform type of thing?

CM: I would say certainly the people that, the projects that are on TAK Editions are personal connections with us as well as being artists that we really respect. But I think the mission behind TAK Editions is just wanting to support our broader community and create connections across our community. Yeah, said very broadly, kind of the mission.

LC: And I think also we’re really lucky to be an ensemble that’s been around for as long as we have. We just celebrated our ninth birthday. And with that kind of longevity there’s a slightly different degree of institutional support, whether that comes in the form of funding - and we continue to be pretty underfunded - or comes in the form of long-built relationships with folks that might be helpful in supporting the sharing of music. So,I think we really owe it to our community to contribute what we can in terms of platforms for sharing their work.

KP: Yeah, how did y’all find Ensemble Interactivo? 

LC: Well we found them by playing with them. They’re fuckin’ amazing players and just brilliant musical thinkers. I think in 2017 I went to Cuba with Hajnal Pivnick, Dorian Wallace, and Eric Umble under the auspices of Hajnal and Dorian’s project called Tenth Intervention. And we performed a concert at a Festival that Ensemble Interactivo performed at and then ended up playing together and all just becoming really close. Then, the following year, year and a half later or something, Charlotte also came with us, and it was a similar model, we played a concert, they played a concert, we played two concerts together, one at this great bar called La Casa de la bombadilla verde and one at the Fabrica De Arte in Habana and we just kind of stayed in touch over the years. And when we were thinking about what we wanted to release that year on TAK Editions we reached out to the group and they had actually just recorded something, and it was like the first thing that they had been able to record since the pandemic started, in November 2020 when they were finally able to come together and record. So, it felt like a really magical thing to be able to be trusted with something that these colleagues that we’ve really cherished for so long made, in that context especially. 

CM: I’m really grateful to the groundwork that Tenth Intervention did to make that connection because it’s difficult for American artists to make connections with Cuban artists for logistical and political reasons. And so it felt really cool to get to know these musicians a little bit and get to play with them and get to present their work to more people in America who might not be able to access it in other ways.

KP: That’s awesome. Definitely whenever I saw that y’all were presenting artists from Cuba, that was my first thought too is that, you know, from the first statement, lumping everything together under a political umbrella, that definitely seemed like a fuck the embargo type of move.

LC: Fuck the embargo! 

KP: [laughs] yeah, exactly. So some of what I like to ask too are just nuts and bolts questions, because sometimes it feels like there’s a bit of mystery behind the way that things work for people that are on the outside. I know for some of the big New York City ensembles, they have boards and there’s this whole insane corporate architecture. But when I look at y’all, I know that you have David [Bird] and Taylor [Brook] working with some of the more logistical or technical aspects, but at least in the information about you I don’t see this huge corporate thing going on. So, yeah, I guess what’s going on there? Is there a greater responsibility for what you choose, not having that outside party there? And I guess are there some difficulties in that? As you can see I don’t know how ensembles work [laughs] 

LC: [laughs] no that’s a great question and as you can see we’re all cracking up because it’s something we’ve been talking about in the last few weeks in a really concerted way and so it’s funny that you ask this. Does anybody else want to answer this otherwise I’ll just, you know…

CM: I think go for it, Laura, and maybe we’ll add stuff.

LC: Cool. So, yeah, we have never had a board and we have been, in the eyes of the New York state government, a for-profit institution which basically just means it was gonna be logistically and financially challenging for us to figure out how to become a nonprofit for the last many years, so we didn’t [laughs], but we’ve over the last few years realized the necessity of changing that financial model within the group, so that we have essentially just access to more grants so that we can get more money and spread it around more. What that does mean though is for the first time in our existence we are required to assemble a board. And, as of last week, we have a board! So our board is, I won’t name names ‘cause it’s not public yet, we haven’t even had our first meeting, but it’s basically just three friends. And what was important to us with the establishment of this board was basically that it was just people whose artistic vision we really value and who we have a really, really long working relationship with. We wanted to make sure that in getting folks together we wouldn’t put ourselves or our board members or our artistic community in a position where folks are having to get on their hands and knees and ask for the space to be creative and ethical. What’s important to us with this is that things, for all intents and purposes, as a baseline, continue functioning in a weird, fucked-up, creative, exciting way and that with the development of the board and change-over into actually being a nonprofit, we can actually figure out some more sustainable and equitable financial systems and see where there are holes in the way that we operate and what we can do to patch those up. But in terms of decision-making and stuff like that, the way that we work inside the group - and I imagine that this will continue to be the case even when the financial system shifts into being a nonprofit with an actually active board - is basically we talk about everything all the time and everyone has equal weight and if one person doesn’t want to do something we don’t do it. That said people are friends and are excited by what other people are excited by. Like, if Charlotte was like, “I really wanna do this project,” and I’m like, “well that sounds like something I’m not really sure I’m into but Charlotte’s so into it that I’m into it now,” [laughs] there’s a lot of discussion and there’s a lot of care and everything’s made with collective unanimous decisions. 

MG: Yeah. What I was gonna say kind of in that realm and also relating to your question is that that sounds like a question about self-determinism and decision-making, like if the board has any sort of artistic influence over what we would do as players or human musicians or as like a kind of collective of creative individuals and I just kind of wanted to relate that to the political thing you were talking about earlier. That there is an enormous amount of self-determinism, as a chamber music ensemble, as individuals, and as platforms to present other peoples’ music. And what Laura was saying, what I find really, really beautiful about TAK, is that if folks have an idea it’s on their onus to bring it to fruition. And there is a real flexibility from the members and from the group to try to perceive and inhabit these multiple perspectives that make all these kinds of things possible. Something that comes to mind immediately is the podcast and maybe Charlotte you can say some things about that and kind of like how the TAK Editions podcast came to be?

CM: Yeah and I think the fact that we have a relatively light administrative structure does make our operations kind of, I forget what Laura said, fucked-up and chaotic or something, but it also means that we don’t just go on and keep doing the same thing but we do keep thinking about what would be a cool new thing to do and we do have to make it happen ourselves if we want it to happen. So Marina [Kifferstein] and I started TAK Editions Podcast and everyone in the ensemble has contributed by cohosting and giving ideas for guests. That is a good example really of something that she and I wanted to do and not everyone in the group loves podcasts as much as the two of us do, but they were like, yeah do it, and I think it has really allowed us to have a lot of really cool conversations that we wouldn’t have otherwise had and we’re gonna keep doing it. But it is also a lot of work.

Listen to the TAK Editions Podcast on soundcloud here, or find it wherever you listen to your podcasts

KP: I believe it. Y’all do a lot of - I just checked into it - and y’all do a lot of audio editing on the podcast, it’s not just the straight file. 

CM: Yeah that’s important to us because I try to think of it like an audio magazine, like you wouldn’t just put a raw first draft of something into a magazine, you would edit it, right, depending on the magazine maybe. I want it to be presentable enough that maybe people that don’t already deeply love and care about TAK might still listen to it and get something out of it. 

KP: I did want to ask, what are some of the choices behind using audio, other than transcribing sucks? Like is there a conscious decision to make it a podcast instead of relaying it some other way? 

CM: One, nice thing about a podcast is it’s an excuse to get together and have a conversation. And I think even when it’s edited after the fact you get different kinds of information from hearing people speak than you do from reading a transcript or reading what they chose to put on a page. So that medium, I just find it really… in my life, listening to radio and podcasts has been a big part of my personal development. A big part of me feeling like I found my community and whatever so, yeah, I love the medium of podcasting for those reasons.

MG: Yeah there’s also a beautiful hybrid media thing you can do. With sound - we’re all kind of sound workers - you can play the person’s music concurrently with when they’re speaking so it’s really easy to just have audio examples or things that they might be referencing there immediately for the person to listen to. And, I don’t know, when I was listening to the TAK Editions Podcast I think there’s something so amazing about just hearing your friends’ voices and just hearing the voices of people they’re talking to. You know, hearing the style of banter or where someone takes a pause or whatever, just all these little details that, like in chamber music, carry an enormous amount of meaning also carry so much meaning in these human to human conversations. I think it’s lovely.

LC: Podcasts are just chamber music, baby [laughs]

KP: [laughs] Yeah, definitely. You definitely get a lot more information with intonation. And even so… I feel like so much of the information about this music is on the page that I was listening to your podcast with Weston [Olencki] the other day and I didn’t know know their name was pronounced Olen[skEE] for instance, I kept on saying Olen[KEE] when talking about them. So it’s always interesting to actually hear how people say what they do and how their names are pronounced. 

LC: It’s also just an artifact of time, like everybody’s voice sounds different on different days or different conditions. Then you have these little postcards

KP: mmhmm. One of the contributors to the newsletter, he does a longform audio thing and is trying to get the newsletter to do an audio version of the transcripts as well. But usually the things that people want to edit, they’re substitutive or additive instead of just subtractive, so still thinking about that. 

LC: Can I ask you a question, is that appropriate? 

KP: One hundred percent.

LC: How do you deal with the transcripts? What is the process of turning a conversation like this into what folks end up getting in their inbox?

KP: Yeah, well, y’all will experience this first hand. I’m aware that there are things like otter.ai or whatever that auto-transcribe it and then you can go through and check but I haven’t used those yet because every single time someone says, hey this is pretty good, in the same breath they also say, hey it’s pretty shit. So I just listen back and hand-transcribe it. So that takes some time but I try to turn back transcripts usually in a week or two. And I include some links, whether there’s a dissertation floating around or some videos, audio links, pepper those in, hotlinks, write a little intro, hand it over to the people and then from there it’s their choice. I accept everything, you know. If they don’t want something that they said in there ‘cause they were accidentally shit-talking something or if they decide that they wanna shout someone out and add that little bit of information at that point I feel like the edits are out of my hands and it’s up to them. 

LC: That’s really cool so you really spend an intimate amount of time with each conversation that comes to our inboxes. You’ve spent hours and hours just to do the hand transcription, I imagine. That’s really neat. 

KP: mmhmm. Definitely get used to a lot of people’s voices. And, you know, I don’t know, it is a lot of fun. The interview that I did with John McCowen this past month, I was just upstairs laughing to myself the entire time between his bigfoot comments and stuff. He’s hilarious. 

MG: Shout out to John! 

KP: Yeah. Particularly when there’s... It’s fun for me to listen back to them, it’s not necessarily fun transcribing, but the people make it fun. So a little earlier it was mentioned like, hey if Charlotte’s into this but I’m not really into it but because she’s so into it I want to be into it. I guess, are there… y’all all have individual practices, y’all are all composers on top of performers, I guess, what are some ways that the ensemble and your individual practices talk to each other and are there things… I get the sense that everything is on the table or good to go… but are there some things you do individually that might not necessarily feel appropriate for presenting through TAK?

LC: I just wanna clarify one thing, is that usually if Charlotte’s into something I’m probably into it. Charlotte’s deeply curious and creative and everything that Charlotte gets stoked on excited about the prospect of getting stoked on. But yeah, sometimes it takes, you know, we all have different things that bubble up in different ways.

CM: Yeah. I think we all have slightly different frames of reference so sometimes someone will bring an idea and someone… you’ll just be like, I never considered that so I don’t know how I feel about that. It’s usually more that than like, ugh that’s a bad idea. 

LC: But as far as stuff that’s really individual to folks’ practices outside of TAK that doesn’t happen in TAK, what would y’all say?

CM: Sometimes I still work on more standard voice repertoire. Sometimes I take on projects or pursue projects that are a little bit prettier, a little closer to like a sort of New Amsterdam aesthetic. Occasionally I do stuff like that, that I probably would not bring to TAK. And that’s not because I think TAK wouldn’t do a good job but I do have an idea of a sort of… like the personality of TAK…and I am sometimes interested in doing stuff outside of that personality because I like doing a lot of different stuff. But I’m curious what Laura and Madison have to say about it, for them.

MG: I don’t know [laughs] I genuinely don’t know. I think it’s hard to answer that question because I’m kind of the newest member of TAK. Everyone has been in this group nine, going on ten years and I just wrapped up my third season. So there was a long period of, you know, a lot of time where I was in grad school, I was writing, I was doing other music, working on other stuff, but joining TAK and trying to find ways to bring my own frame of references, my own perspectives, my own practices just felt very natural and I felt very welcomed within that. I guess on a nuts and bolts level I do a bit of writing as well. I don’t think I bring that to TAK because it’s just a separate medium or a separate structure of working. I’ve been doing a little bit of breadboarding stuff like DIY electronics and I haven’t brought that to TAK because, I don’t know, there just hasn’t been the right time or opportunity but it doesn’t feel like it wouldn’t be welcomed. I feel like… like we all have such varied and heterogenous practices but it doesn’t feel like there’s aggressive border policing of what is TAK and what isn’t TAK. And because we all have these hybrid and multifarious practices that also on a kind of subconscious level imbues what we bring to TAK, because it’s just part of us, we can’t help it. I don’t know Laura, you go.

LC: I was gonna say the same thing. I mean, y’all know what I was gonna say, I was gonna say it’s all goo. It’s all goo and I have no idea where the lines are.

MG: Mycelium.

KP: Yeah it is pretty nebulous but I feel like I do hear a common thread between y’alls solo practices. This might’ve been Weston’s piece but just LARUS LARUS, the multimedia inclusion of it, or like with [Morton] Feldman’s Three Voices, singing with yourself, or I know Aurora had a fixed media aspect, right, which goes back to the interest in multimedia that you were talking about with the podcast and it’s capabilities. It definitely seems like there’s an interest in collage and bringing things together. Yeah, Madison I feel like your interest in mechanical instruments would go really well with like the prosthetic stuff of Laura or even like your writing with text for Charlotte. And I guess… yeah, are there some - we touched on some political stuff a little bit - but are there some decisions behind like whether or not you choose to use text or more abstract vocals - which I guess text is its own kind of multimedia inclusion…

CM: I mean often we’re performing pieces that have been pretty fully notated and so the composer has kind of made that choice, often we’ve let the composer make that choice, if we’re doing that kind of project where it’s composers and performers. Yeah I think I don’t often consciously make that choice. I like in TAK how the voice often can just be another instrument and there doesn’t have to be text. So I think usually I tend away from text for that reason unless the composer, there’s some really strong reason for using a particular text. But yeah it’s an intuitive choice, I guess. When I have the freedom to use text I just kind of choose intuitively. 

KP: Yeah, I know a lot of your, just going back to the composers’ decision part, I know some of your stuff is pretty collaborative, I guess whenever you do have a more collaborative thing what are some of the things that y’all are workshopping together? Say on one side of the spectrum is something like Brandon’s, that looked more like a collective improvisation thing, and then maybe something that is more through-composed but you’re still talking about like, what are the boundaries of the ensemble, what are the boundaries of the composer, type of thing?

LC: Well, one example of that, that kind of presents another way of what that deep collaboration and conversation looks like, is a piece that we just gave kind of a premiere of two weeks ago, three weeks ago, is a piece by Eric Wubbels called interbeing. It’s kind of this folio that is comprised of multiple chamber music movements that are discrete quintets, gestures that we make with our bodies, audience participation, video elements, et cetera, there’s a lot of different things. Basically you open up this dream-folio and you pull things out and you can construct a piece from it. We gave the premiere of one iteration of it which probably comprised about between a quarter and a third of the actual material that Eric’s written or is writing. And that’s a project that we actually began with Eric in 2017, so, there’s been five years of communication, conversation, and collaboration around that prior to even just giving this first iteration of a premiere. And when we first started that project it wasn’t just like Eric’s giving us material and we’re reading through it but we actually took two full days and carved them all out and camped out at Marina’s parents’ house. We were all there and Eric had one-on-one conversations with us just about music and politics and creative envisioning, et cetera and then we tried out some things and then it has kind of moved from there. 

One thing that I always think with these projects that take a long time is how beautiful it is to move at the speed of collaborative care, to move at that speed of creative trust, of really working together. It’s really gratifying when that happens. Then to kind of prepare for this year, in which we knew that we were going to give one of the premieres of this first iteration of interbeing here, we spent about four or five days at Eric and his partner’s place up in Greenfield, Mass., living on their floor and in their rooms and workshopping everyday and taking swims together and just kind of really fusing our brains and talking about crap all the time. And, on the other, other side of that spectrum we’re making our first piece, our first significant piece, significant in terms of scope, as a collective, that we’re collaboratively composing, and stuff like that. We’re in the process of working on that, so that is another mode of collaboration from within the group at play there.

KP: Oh, awesome. Very cool. So I guess we’ve stepped around maybe what you sound like or what you’re drawn towards but is there a sound character that the ensemble is drawn towards or do y’all consider yourselves pretty open? 

MG: The sound of a vortex [laughs]

LC: Hell yeah, Madison, sound of a vortex.

KP: Charlotte, do you concur with the vortex?

CM: Yeah, for sure. I’m trying to think about what other words we can add to that.

LC: I gotta be honest I don’t really know what a vortex is.

KP: It’s like… think of like a drain maybe, or a hurricane.

LC: Yeah I just googled it, that’s pretty cool. It is what I thought it was, I just wasn’t sure. I think the sound of chaos is really important to me. Breaking shit.

CM: Yeah I think we’re drawn to sounds where the boundaries are not clear but it’s also not so completely chaotic that the listener… like the listener still has expectations and those expectations are sometimes subverted.

MG: Yeah I think definitely velocity plays into it. Like I remember first learning how to play with TAK and just having this sense of overwhelming velocity. Things move in really, really amazing ways that I haven’t felt with other chamber music groups. I don’t know, I also know there have been some conversations floating around like, what is the color of TAK’s timbre, or the ideal color of TAK’s timbre. We all have really different answers.

CM: Also, we try to make music in a very embodied way. It’s gotta be music that comes from bodies.

LC: Absolutely. I think in terms of sound as aesthetic it gets confused because I think, at the core of TAK, what we are trying to do is to problematize things that become convention. And even an aesthetic that poses a newness then becomes convention. And, so, when I say chaos, too much chaos or chaos as aesthetic just becomes another series of boundaries and that’s bullshit. And I think that that’s how we approach this stuff, which is like, what are we problematizing, what are these systems that are in place, and what does it look like to engage with them in a way that changes them. Or looks at them as like, what do we do with it, how do we deal with it, what do we actually want. And so in some ways I feel like at its core, what I think, or what I dream of TAK’s aesthetic is that it’s utopic. And that it brings folks together and we have fucking discussions about what we want and what we need, and we listen. We listen to each other and we listen to the music that we’re making. And I think the other thing is, as Charlotte said, it’s very embodied, and if you’re in the practice of trying to problematize a type of boundary or trying to create a different type of working relationship or social system you have to throw down. You can’t do that with a little bit. You can’t just like, oh that’s a thing, what a nice thing that is. You have to fucking show up for it. And I feel like to me that’s the thing that unifies TAK’s sound certainly more than aesthetic, than anything else, which is that I love playing with my friends in TAK because everyone fucking throws down, physically, sonically, these are the same. But, yeah, that’s TAK’s sound to me. 

KP: Yeah, so tying this all together I would say that I definitely feel that velocity. Considering a lot of the stuff that I listen to is usually super silent or drone based, I feel that chaos. And if I had to pick like a timbral color for TAK it wouldn’t necessarily even be like a colorfield or one color it’s more a firework of like fruity pebbles explosion…

LC: Fruity pebbles explosion, wow!

KP: [laughs] And part of that has to do with the ensemble, right, like your different instruments and there might be different colors associated with those timbres but a lot of it because y’all are stretching the boundaries of those textures sometimes. So I do… there definitely is an intensity. And a lot of that comes back to the body aspect that you were talking about. Like I know with your solo stuff, it was in the notes for field anatomies, but I don’t think I saw a review where someone didn’t talk about the physicality of it, and I know you go over some of that in your dissertation, and stripping the mucus membrane as part of Atolls, how intense and demanding that is physically. Madison, when I was talking to John, he mentioned you recently did Ferneyhough’s clarinet concerto which I’m not super familiar with but I do know that part of Ferneyhough’s reputation is one of introducing performative impossibilities. And then Charlotte, I’m a little less familiar with your individual work but every time I hear your voice I get almost like an unembarrassed engagement kind of like… the person that I’d compare it to is almost like Jaap Blonk, it can be almost uncomfortable and comedic at the same time because it’s so absurd.

CM: Thank you.

KP: So I definitely get that intensity and I think that all comes from that body aspect. And I guess it’s like virtuosity… not in the sense - like I get the hunch that none of you are interested in acrobatics alone, right, or anything like that - but is there something that draws you… I guess kind of you answered it but are there some roots that draws you towards a music that engages the body in a very demanding way? 

CM: That’s a really good question. My first thought that’s coming up is like, isn’t that why anyone makes music. Don’t we all want it to be in our bodies and move in our bodies. But maybe that’s an assumption. I’m gonna think more about that, where did I come up with that assumption.

KP: No I super agree that it always leverages the body or perception or the mind in some way but I feel like with say, some of the silent stuff or durational stuff, sometimes I feel like the intensity is in the material, whereas with y’all I feel like the intensity is in y’all.

LC: One way I was thinking about recently was the other day, is that I went for a run as part of my practice for a duo set Madison and I were playing later that night—I was like, OK so I know that I’m going to be running for X miles, so in my head I have to play a X mile duo set with Madison on this run. When you’re practicing while running, you’re breathing hard, because running is physically intensive. So, what happens is, when you’re audiating in this physically demanding situation, you’re so tied in with your breath because your breath is literally sustaining your body through this kind of challenging thing that it’s doing, that the music really… it just clarifies. The breath and the line are so clearly and intensely linked. Line, and scope of line, and duration of line, and how the line really comes from your body. And it’s vital to me to witness that, and feel that when a body is being pushed in that kind of way. I think the concept of phrasing and line which to me is what so much music is about - even if it’s durational, it’s just a different mode of phrasing, it’s a different type of line - but yeah when you’re putting your body through something that’s challenging like that, you have to become really in touch with its various systems of sustenance and then the line itself comes from that system of sustenance so you actually are creating a type of music that at its very foundational aspects both becomes and comes from systems of bodily sustenance. I don’t know, that’s underfleshed, but there we are.

MG: Yeah, I mean, kind of this is also a little… I’m gonna use TAK’s favorite word right now, scoobied. But I think there’s something really contingent and inexorable about us all performing acoustically and us all engaging in musical or instrumental practices that come from gesture and come from the body’s engagement, whether it’s singing or playing clarinet or breathing or it’s like through the arms and the back but it’s all sound that is occasioned by knowledge of the body and by acting with real creative intention. And not creative as in the way we’ve been using it but creative as in, this will create something with intention and you’re making a future possible with your intention. And I think we all have a really heightened perceptual awareness of that contingency, linking the sound that we create with the dynamism and the metabolism or, Laura, you said sustenance with the body, so it feels like with how, I don’t know, maybe I’m just speaking for myself, but it feels like with sound there actually really is something at stake rather than like, and this isn’t a dig, but a kind of observational practice of like make a sound, observe it, set a synthesizer, observe it, you know. Yeah this is also kind of underfleshed but... the person embodying the sound, the person behind the sound, or who is the sound is just as present as the motility of what sound we do make. I don’t want to say also “the sound itself” because it’s not separate. It’s the room, it’s us, it’s everything situated and embedded in that way.

CM: Yeah I’m enjoying thinking about this question and one part of the answer for me is like our interest in embodiment is related to our interest in utopia. Because if you’re trying to create something new and you stay in your head, I think you’re more likely to replicate the problems of your current situation. Like I get confused all the time, constantly by ideas in my head and I find getting into my body… not just me, everybody, it’s therapeutic to get in your body and just be there and go there for your answers and I think that’s part of why I like embodied music so much is because it feels like it sort of helps me access a sort of truth [Laura types ‘the body knows’ in the chat] yes, the body knows… access a kind of truth that you can’t quite access just from your head on its own. 

KP: Yeah one hundred percent it feels like a… just the mind-body different feel you’re talking about it almost feels like an upper management versus ground floor relationship type of thing where the people on the floor actually doing the thing know a lot more about like the details of the work or whatever, they know a lot more about what’s possible than someone just thinking about it. 

[Madison types ‘yay Cartesian divides’ in the chat]

KP: I don’t know what those are. What are Cartesian divides?

MG: I’m just bullshitting like, you know, the separation between mind and body.

KP: Oh, OK. And yeah, I guess, just towards the intensity part, while y’all where talking I was just thinking about where I enjoy hiking and I really enjoy the desert, for a variety of reasons but also because it doesn’t matter how many calories or how much water you take or if you know the trail or if you’re wearing the right hat and clothes, climbing out of a valley in desert weather is gonna kick your ass and could kill you even if you think you’re prepared. And because of that, I feel like, compared to other places that I’ve hiked, that might have a bigger slope or maybe they have a better view, they just don’t compare to the high stakes, kind of like what y’all were talking about, just putting the body through the paces. So we’ve talked a bit about some ethics behind TAK and maybe what you’re drawn to in sound, drawn towards in thinking about sound whether its coming from the body or how it relates to the body, but are there some things missing that puts together the nebulous idea of TAK that you want to get out there? 

MG: I was just thinking about the riff, the special sauce. I don’t know, that’s what immediately comes to mind. It will probably lead somewhere much more insightful. 

LC: It’s funny you say that, Mad, because, yeah, what I was gonna say is, I just love these people and I respect them so much and that is so much of TAK to me—coming together with these people that are family and hearing their thoughts and hearing their craft and getting to make things with them. Like that’s a fucked up privilege and that to me is the most thing of TAK. Yeah, basically we get to hang out together and make music, it’s so dope.

CM: Yeah I agree I was just thinking along the lines of like fun and play. I think that’s an important part of what we do and it’s related to stuff we’ve already talked about but we do it because it’s fun. We’re trying to have fun. It’s also a lot of work and sometimes it’s hard but fun is important.

LC: Sometimes that work is really fun, like being in the desert and having to climb out of a valley like that’s some type two fun, but it’s fun.

CM: Yeah exactly yes, like you’re fearing for your life and having fun at the same time.

LC: The best combination! [laughs] TAK’s all about that, we do like to have fear while having fun in various outstretches of our relationships as well.

MG: And also what’s missing is Ellery [Trafford] and Marina aren’t here.

CM: Yeah, they are missing.

LC: We miss you!

KP: Yeah. This goes back to, you know, it’s all kind of based on your personal connections, which is how got started, sounds like its the foundation of the group and what y’all do, but there’s a concept that I think about a lot, escalation with dinosaurs. It’s like more food was available so the plant eaters got bigger so the carnivores had more food so they got bigger and then the plant eaters continued to get bigger… but not in a competition sense, more in like a rising tide raises all ships type of sense. 

LC: What happened to the plants, Keith?

KP: Uh, this is from a long time ago so probably more rain from climate change, or more CO2 in the atmosphere too, right. Plants love that, it’s not great for us but…

LC: More dinosaurs breathing out more CO2 means more plants breathing in maybe?

KP: I think whenever the dinosaurs are on the earth we didn’t have icecaps so there was more CO2 just floating around, it wasn’t locked away, so that would’ve provided more food for the plants. So this is not the point but I guess just by being around someone else that wants to grow you’re able to escalate each other and reach new heights together, that’s the point, not so much the accuracy about the dinosaurs [laughs]

LC: Oh no, I was just super excited, I just wanted to know.

KP: That’s kind of what I had lined up but did y’all have anywhere else that you wanted to go, talk about, shout out? I don’t know if this was a deep conversation, if you had prepared some stuff if you wanted to get it out there…

MG: What is deep?

KP: Uh, I guess it depends on the person and how tall they are and how far they can reach…

CM: How long they can hold their breath.

KP: I guess, would y’all rather white water raft together or start a book club together?

MG: This is something we play at the end of the podcast together, right?

KP: Exactly.

LC: I feel like you could have a book club while you white water raft. Very gemini answer, I don’t know if it counts. 

CM: I think if we had to choose one and we could not do the other one, I might choose book club because I would like to do things with lots of adrenaline and fun with TAK but book club seems more important some how, I don’t know.

LC: We went rafting last summer, Char, it wasn’t very fun. 

CM: Well we didn’t go white water rafting but true, it was not great, it was overrated.

KP: What about, would you rather run a facepainting booth or caricature booth at the carnival?

CM: I mean, definitely facepainting, oh Mad…

MG: No, we just said the same thing.

LC: One hundred percent... painting on someone’s body!

CM: Yeah one is all about like intimacy and elevating someone’s self-image and the other one is just about being kind of mean usually. I guess you could probably make really kind, glorifying caricatures but, yeah, facepainting.

annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Katie Eikam - Desert Flower Diaries (2020)

Katie Eikam is a composer, performer, percussionist. Collaborations include DesoDuo with Kevin Good (to which Desert Flower Diaries is dedicated) and Quartet Friends with Richard An, Good, and Wells Leng. Recent releases include realizations of Eva-Maria Houben’s john muir trails and Kevin Good’s Songs for Two, both as part of DesoDuo, at whose merch page entries of Desert Flower Diaries may be viewed and their prints purchased. 

Desert Flower Diaries is a collection of ten 2020 compositions for an open number of performers with open instrumentation and a duration of less than five minutes each. Each piece may be performed in any page direction. Its numbered entries feature color photographs of unpressed, freshly-picked flowers on paper with hand-drawn lines and forms in black ink. 

With duration as the only limit, each pieces’ short time recalling flowers’ brief life when picked, interpretive possibilities appear daunting. But page orientation and the contrasts of color and black & white, three-dimensional and two-dimensional, and natural and more narrowly anthropogenic each feel important to focus on. Drawn lines and forms themselves often seem like interpretations of the flowers they accompany in translation or reflection; a realization might express the spirit of their relation in response to the environment performers find themselves, sounding lines lightly mimicking and parallel and perpendicular to natural forms in the space surrounding them. Page direction can color perception, like whether a flower appears to be growing or dying or the movement of line, but perhaps also dynamics, not just from the forms on the page but the page itself, turned to its corner its angular swell signifying lower-volume soundings or more contingent sounds towards its peak. Color, shadow, natural textures, and irregular lines would seem to encourage non-standard timbres. Whatever interpretation I gravitate towards, I find the relation between a human construction and natural structure at the center of it. 

reviews

Dante Boon, Seamus Cater, Heather Frasch, Gabi Losoncy, Koen Nutters, the same ensemble, Germaine Sijstermans, Rishin Singh - amsterdam . berlin . moscow losoncy (Edition Wandelweiser Records, 2021)

The term artistic movement doesn’t fit Wandelweiser. There’s no agenda, no manifesto. Rather, a clear intention to avoid convenient classification, this being one among many strategies employed to operate in ways that hopefully prevent the music to become easily codified and pre packaged for consumption. It would be more appropriate to talk about a network of artists with an interest in non demonstrative sounds, avoidance of conventional narrative, questioning basic assumptions regarding time, musical time and music in situ. As with any rhizome, this larger network is made of many smaller networks, each of them a miniature version of the larger one, sharing most of its traits but adapted to specifics depending on the case. amsterdam . berlin . moscow losoncy is, in part, a map of Dante Boon’s network: he’s the common denominator and producer, gathering artists in the Wandelweiser orbit in a display of ideas that illustrates this ferment of activity that refuses to waste energy in classification or codification, working to proliferate ideas and unexpected connections between seemingly disparate paths. Reviewing this album I get the feeling that maybe the basic notion of a concept album is being questioned here: no liner notes, no heads up, no justification for any of the sounds in it. To the question “why Losoncy?” the answer appears to be “why not?”

In this collection we find pieces that will conform to most people’s expectations of how a Wandelweiser piece of music should sound, like Germaine Sijstermans’ “M,” carefully blended harmonies presented in long tones and shorter values on the piano. Antoine Beuger has said that one aspect that differentiates Wandelweiser from most contemporary music circles is that they play the number pieces by Cage as if each note was deliberately chosen, that is, the fact that they were randomly chosen by a computer program doesn’t mean they are to be played without intention or love. “M” shows this perfectly, each sound feels essential, the tones breathed rather than executed, with understated tenderness and charm.

The voice plays a large role in the program, being the medium to explore non musical ideas. “tree space: the trees they do grow high,” by Seamus Cater, shows how Wandelweiser approaches song forms; voice and accompaniment at their bare minimum, so that a single chord on the piano after a handful of single notes feels like a standpoint, musically and structurally speaking. One could say that the key to a successful Wandelweiser piece of music is the trust placed on the relatively limited amount of materials, which carry the weight of the composition when conventional drama, pathos, tension and release are eliminated from the equation.

Dante Boon’s “depression (herbeck)” hints at a larger context. Depression, lack of motivation. Our post pandemic times charge a large toll on our psyche, and artists are forced to confront this sooner or later. In this relatively brief song the listener finds a female voice singing a tender melody, seemingly independent from the piano, who seems to encounter a surprising difficulty in playing a simple major scale, perhaps being forced to examine its validity in this context. In this type of music, something as simple and basic as a major scale can be a disruptive element, adding tension to the whole. “trauermusik” by Rishin Singh does sound like the title implies, with a ceremonial quality that revels in its lack of harmonic resolution, placing the tension on this static quality that despite being insisted upon never becomes too comfortable or familiar. It might be something as old as Bach’s dissonances, used to enhance the pathos of the text, and here the music blends the somber mood with a harmony that savors small intervals and the poignancy they can elicit. “for what,” by Boon, is a piano piece made out of simple chords giving way to dyads and single notes. As often with this music, the simplicity hides all the work that has to be made to reach this level of economy of means. In very subtle ways the music evidences that it was written by a pianist composer. Gabi Losoncy is the wild card in this collection. Her work quite deliberately avoids music, or even the more aesthetically minded noise art of most. She presents us with a sound as it is, with a title (“tighter”), and it’s up to the listener to connect the sound to the rest of the program. To these ears, Losoncy’s track both evidences the strong artistic personality that merits her inclusion in the title (as if it was a capital city) and serves as a palate cleanser for the rest of the program. Simply put, after Losoncy’s track everything has changed, hers is the elephant in the room and again, this seems to be a welcomed disruption, an object that shares the space with you, forcing the listener to make some sense out of it, with no easy answers in evidence. Kirill Shirokov takes a piece by Josef Matthias Hauer and interprets it by taking some great liberties with the text, all while managing to stay true to the music in a rather oblique and charming way. Wandelweiser comes from the experimental music tradition of the XX century and one of its characteristics is the way in which it deals with music history. Shirokov’s next piece, “2019IX26 (quintet),” takes Walt Whitman’s “The Song of Myself” as subject matter. Deliberately or not, this subtle way in which an author is perceived by another from a different time and different culture becomes a field of possibility well worth exploring. The restricted pitch content is lovingly displayed and the music doesn’t feel contrived, on the contrary, the sensation that the music requires this concentrated exploration of a relatively short space is very much present. The instrumentation hints at jazz (plucked double bass), with the inclusion of that most humble of instruments, the melodica, in equal standing as the piano or any other instrument. William Blake is the writer on the next piece by Shirokov. There’s a quirky quality to Shirokov’s music, at times giving hints of some sort of modernist cabaret of the earliest period of the Soviet revolution, with a sort of inquiry into basic assumptions of the bourgeoisie, without the pointing finger or the lecturing. One can feel the philosophical underpinnings behind the music without necessarily being dragged into it, just enough to know that there’s more than meets the eye. Samuel Vriezen’s linking closes the program fittingly. Again, the deceivingly simple surface hides a carefully chosen system (implied by the title). Vriezen’s music often pushes the envelope regarding what’s expected of Wandelweiser music, but here the music fits the criteria perfectly, and it has to be said that Boon’s distinctive playing highlights the more poetic aspects of the compositions.

The album has the merit of offering a map of Boon’s network (at least a possible one among many), a collection of quite different views and ideas by composers that may not be the first ones to come to mind when thinking about this thing called Wandelweiser (the principal names, those belonging to the first few composers associated with the Wandelweiser tag, Beuger, Frey, Pisaro, Werder, Houben, have all evolved in sometimes wildly unpredictable ways, but are experiencing the validation from the larger contemporary classical establishment with high profile commissions in at least a few cases), but that only shows that in this rhizome the vitality of the less explored areas is just as rich as in the more celebrated works of the core of artists of what could be labelled as the first wave of Wandelweiser composers.

- Gil Sansón

Lydia Winsor Brindamour - empty spaces (Sawyer Editions, 2022)

The 51’ composer portrait empty spaces features four Lydia Winsor Brindamour pieces for small groups and solo. 

Single soundings surrounded by silence characterize two short duos from the composer’s empty room series for clarinet & violin and bass flute & violin. Their staccato relations suspend movement yet imply it in phasing overlappings, vibrato, and the reverberatory presence of space for a series of sound images like stills from film. But even with these sort of photographs the memory of soundings’ personalities changes unreliably the longer silence separates them just as absence would that of a person. Two longer pieces play at the complex textures of tam tam and piano, the latter accompanied by violin and cello that interblend and extend the interactions of a chord across the whole harp from each strokes’ tolls, the former malleted, brushed, and struck to brighten the corners of its timbral spaces. Piano and tam tam decay as intricately as they sound, layers of their spectra fading staggered into inaudibility. Such that an afterimage of what is gone might remain to frame absence as an unsound perception of silence. A ghost. 

- Keith Prosk

The performers on this recording include: Kyle Adam Blair (piano); James Beauton (tam tam); Erik Carlson (violin); Madison Greenstone (clarinet); Myra Hinrichs (violin); Peter Ko (cello); and Michael Matsuno (bass flute).

Lucio Capece, Katie Porter - Phase to Phase (Ftarri, 2022)

Lucio Capece and Katie Porter perform two compositions for bass clarinets and contrabass clarinet on the 46’ Phase to Phase. 

Subtone soundings swell from silence, fetch breath along the bore like seafoam up the shore, split tone spectra to best express their combinations in a rich depth of harmonic interactions. They phase in alternating shifting attacks and on a smaller scale in beating patterns. Fishtailing waves with each sounding as if they were the wake with each breaching. The second composition is supposed to be stricter in timing than the first but nearly seems a continuation of similar patterns whose most noticeable difference is the new register of contrabass clarinet. But maybe that its half-length feels as expansive as the first means its dilation of the experience of time is not lost. 

- Keith Prosk

Sam Dunscombe, Rebecca Lane, Horațiu Rădulescu - Horațiu Rădulescu: Plasmatic Music, Vol. 1 (Mode, 2022)

Sam Dunscombe realizes three or four Horațiu Rădulescu compositions with clarinets, synthesis, tape, Romanian flutes, and sound icon, with contributions from Rebecca Lane on flutes and recorded contributions from the composer on pipe organ and synthesis on the 64’ Plasmatic Music, Vol. 1. 

Dunscombe’s notes describe what’s happening in each track - pulses of pulses, the breadth and depth of one tone, deconstruction and reconstruction of harmonics and its overlaid inversion - in just enough detail to maintain some mystery yet focus listening attention towards the experience of it. The persistent repetition of relatively simple structures, the extended duration of ecstatically dense textures, and the ascetic constraint of parameters like pulse and pitch to paradoxically explode their expressivity guides towards a sense of psychedelia. As does a similar liminality in contemporaneous poles like the mimickry of nature in crickets with the synthetic textures of clarinets’ odd harmonics or the simultaneously sinister and comic warped carnival organ of overlaid winds. And from the ether between all these strange partners emerges imagined sounds, not just singing beatings but other phenomena like the guttural chant towards the end of Opus 42. Conjuring an awesome spiritual experience from the revelation of music’s animism. 

- Keith Prosk

Cenk Ergün - Inseln (Sacred Realism, 2022)

Cenk Ergün arranges layers of voicings from Rupert Enticknap, presented twice in different locations, on the 87’ Inseln. 

Sounded islands sit in a sea of silence. The voice is the bar that breaks the air. Laminar spillings from longer singings lapped over by layered others amass, interfere, wash, and beat. Undulating, pulsing, throbbing, singing. Uniform, syncopated. Melodic fragments and multi-track layers lend more shore for wave action. Compared to the stillness of the recording at Andreaskirche, the recording of the original installation at Zionskirche features a richer silence of cracking pews, infant coos, chattering birds and persons, and rail whistles. A big church door slams shut like a tome during an angelic chorus for a serendipitous complement. But beyond these happy accidents the presentation of a relatively exact copy allows the listener to hear the space. Not just a greater reverberation but other intangibles that manifest in different beating behaviors at comparable moments across the two recordings. And without access to the two spaces to tether these sounds to shapes it alights the imagination to wonder what part of a sound is ethereally stable and what part delights in interaction with the room. 

- Keith Prosk

Bryan Eubanks - for four double basses (INSUB., 2022)

Jonathan Heilbron, Andrew Lafkas, Mike Majkowski, and Koen Nutters perform two sidelong iterations of the titular Bryan Eubanks composition. 

Arco ebbs and flows in molasses turbulence, phasing for accidental harmonies, spilling beatings. Players hasten or slow sequences but the crystallized meter within sequences seems to ensure a gentle arrhythmia expressing the fickle unique clock of each. Comparative listening between the two iterations doesn’t produce acute contrasts, the body still moves similarly despite individual variation in the way the four could be said to move as one instrument. What does change is time, the material the players manipulate is time, the music is time. And the reduction of variables towards time illustrates its potentiality as a material by itself. A synchronic approach maybe difficult to track but for the number and location of singing harmonic interactions. 

- Keith Prosk

Terry Jennings - Piece for Cello and Saxophone (Saltern, 2022)

Charles Curtis performs an 85’ realization for solo cello of a La Monte Young arrangement of the Terry Jennings composition, Piece for Cello and Saxophone. 

Matrices of melodic patternings on droning prismatic surfaces. For the duration a purring tanpura fades to begin and end like the tinnitus about us out of a heightened consciousness. In the arc of a spiral of expanding segments that could perhaps continue forever, a rhythm of transitions at intervals around 17’-6’-6’-10’-10’-25’-6’-6’ that each mark a change in chord and surface by slowing and folding the melody into the droning harmony. Surfaces sound sonorous to tinny, frictional like tectonics or as expansive as breath, as strata or a shaggy unit, and each maintains its character in dynamic equilibrium for the duration of the segment. Upon them dance melodies of melancholy serenity that appear to be similar material or permutations of a set. The extended total duration and shear of droning monotony with endlessly shifting melody (which sometimes makes what’s happening seem like a performative impossibility for a soloist) disintegrates memory. So the melody seems difficult to track, and comparing the interaction of tone across surfaces doesn’t readily happen directly but in its manifestation as beatings. Which breach and dive into audibility or sustain a presence, maintain constant speed or flit in giddy arrhythmias, sing and hum, alone or in throngs, all depending on the pairings of chord and melody. It sounds the scaffolding of rational lattices to visualize the dimensionality of harmonic space to a substantial degree. 

- Keith Prosk

Sylvia Lim - sounds which grow richer as they decay (Sawyer Editions, 2022)

The 43’ composer portrait sounds which grow richer as they decay features four Sylvia Lim compositions for small groups and solo. 

Some of Lim’s music draws from decay, the biological process, which can present in unstable techniques, slowing speeds, fuzzying pitch clarity, expanding material, decreasing density, softening volume, and decay, the acoustic process. That which might not, like the progressive elongation of tone from malleting to rolling to bowing in the multi-movement “Piece for three tuned cowbells” or the monochrome series of clarinet multiphonics in “Colour Catalogue: Whites,” still feels similar though maybe more topological transformation in their shifting parameters. Instruments often come in pairs as if to provide markers of change and illuminate the complex processes between two states, like the two trombones of the title track moving out of unison for beating harmonic interaction. And as something moldy is immediately identified by its texture and color, those aspects are accentuated through preparations, mutes, extended techniques, tactile timbres, and rougher textural surfaces. Decay betrays some truths of a material and a sound is laid bare as its pieces dim to silence one after another. 

- Keith Prosk

The performers on this recording include: Christopher Brown (cello); Ian Calhoun (trombone); Ben Clark (percussion); Evie Coplan (cello); Antonin Granier (percussion); Zachary Johnson (trombone); Alvin Leung (piano); Katie Macdonald (flute); Kaitlin Miller (harp); Heather Ryall (bass clarinet); Fiona Sweeney (flute); and Natasha Zielazinski (cello).

Maxi Mas - Lo que se esconde entre las notas II (Rumiarec, 2022)

Jorge Consigo, Laura Fainstein, Daniel Gómez, Julián LaRosa, Andrés Ortiz Mendez, and Lucía Raimundi perform a Maximiliano Mas composition for acoustic guitar on the 14’ Lo que se esconde entre las notas II. 

The guitarists sit in a circle strumming chords and picking melodies and bowing drones in and out of unison through movements. Sometimes a guitarist alone as a kind of control for the harmony of the group. Which sounds their halo in deep breathing and chair creaking to place their beatings between resonant bodies and visualize their circular auroras. And in this way what is between the notes clearly becomes what is between the people, which is harmonic interaction and space, unveiling the intimate connections between them. 

- Keith Prosk

Sean Meehan - Magazine (Sacred Realism, 2022)

Sean Meehan sounds a cowbell in the powder magazine of Fort Jay on the two-track, 62’ Magazine. 

The notes relay the chamber occupies non-parallel stone walls and arched ceilings. It manifests in sharp strikes and quick decay. Echo flashes from percussive clusters but there’s as many solitary soundings as not and as many minutes of silence as those. A still silence. Void of anything but hushed rustling from movement about the room. For an hour. Tapping. Empathy for muting, force, and location along the bell though the lapse of memory in long pauses together with blind listening obscures any systematic approach. Staccato soundings so surrounded by silence repetitions within them even seem non-repetitive. Each an assault, a jolt of volume. After so little in so long, the 4’ salvo of dinner bell tolls induces a perception of chittering rhythms from which an aura of harmonics arises. After the location a demonstration of power, of silence, of sound, of time, of space. 

- Keith Prosk

Vanessa Rossetto - The Actress (Erstwhile Records, 2022)

Writing about the music of Vanessa Rossetto can be quite difficult. A descriptive approach doesn’t work. She’s doing what practitioners of concrete music have been doing from day one, selecting sounds from everyday life and recombining them in pieces that seem to be about something. If anything, her approach seems closer to Ferrari than to Henry: she doesn’t push sounds around, to quote Feldman’s famous retort to Stockhausen. Rather, she allows for grey type sounds to linger for as long as deemed necessary, often in ways that seem more structural and related to pace and agogic than to any sort of sound portrait of an environment. Over time her work is shown to require large canvases of sound, and here the double CD format feels like a personal conquest, and the music validates it. Splitting the whole into chapters, so to speak, the listener is able to listen in smaller chunks, and all the tracks have a definitive character while being perceived as parts of a whole. Can we speak of a single to extract? Probably not, though pieces like “Early Girl” or “Instagram Famous Cat” do give the impression of a self contained piece, with different parts on a given structure. Rosetto’s work revels in the everyday sounds you get by simply placing a microphone outside your door, in references of forgotten cultural items, in the sound and patterns of speech, prosody of language and the sounds that can be encountered in common households. Again, methodologically speaking nothing new under the Sun, but done in a way that keeps the listener constantly engaged, avoiding tricks or jump scares and focusing primarily on flow. Is there a story being told here? Perhaps, but not in any traditional, narrative sense. The actress seems to be witnessing events, not commenting on them or driving any action, but we hear people talking, knocking on doors, movie dialogue. She seems to enjoy her invisibility, as the cover art implies. At some points, electronic sound is employed to act as bookmarks of sorts, and this is especially noticeable in the way disc one ends and disc two begins. Each disc has a particular quality that in retrospect makes the two volume format not only necessary but essential, as the emotional gravitas seems to gather momentum as the album progresses to its ultimate conclusion. Over time, the listener’s mind can’t help but detect patterns, the way certain sounds seem associated with certain emotions and how these experience subtle alterations and shifts in color or mood. It is here, perhaps, where we can make our own associations and attempt to guess the narrative with the sonic clues given as a guide. Or not.

- Gil Sansón

Grisha Shakhnes - Brass (presses précaires, 2022)

Two pieces, totaling 28’, “recorded at home, Tel Aviv,” by Grisha Shakhnes.

Between the recording’s title and art, my own memories of Tel Aviv’s heat and humidity, and maybe something in the audio itself, a yellowish haze seems to me to hang audibly over these two pieces, contextualized as foreboding rather than simply present, especially on the first track, by irregular taps or clicks alongside unclear ‘rough-textured heavy object dragging on rough-textured surface.’ When these more concrète elements are interrupted by seemingly unprocessed sounds of children playing or cars going by in the distance, the effect is quietly surreal, suggesting something hidden underneath or within the cityscape’s normalcy. Also cutting through this thick atmosphere are the late intrusions of a muffled gamelan ensemble followed by agitated flute (though I think it’s not, as might be suspected, a suling), which ironically dispel the tension by communicating a similarly ‘mysterious’ mood but in much more conventionally ‘musical’ terms, to gently humorous effect. Altogether a beguiling soundscape.

- Ellie Kerry

Germaine Sijstermans - Betula (elsewhere, 2022)

Antoine Beuger, Johnny Chang, Fredrik Rasten, Germaine Sijstermans, Rishin Singh, and Leo Svirsky play seven Sijstermans compositions for concert flute, viola, guitar & ebow, clarinet, trombone, and accordion on the 102’ Betula. 

Soft soundings slowly unfurl for sustained durations, individually and aggregately. Limited sound shapes and textures lend a sense of similitude across compositions but for their shifting structures. As if each is just a different perspective of the same environment. Half of the recorded time inhabits two pieces as sensual as their aromatic titles. “Jasminum” sounding curved lines like vines in varied densities impressing the depths of its bushy mass whose outward bound apogees bloom beatings. And the staggered spirited soundings of “Lavendula” like its longer stalks in strands swaying in winds. Cultivating a botanical or environmental feel, the longer silences of “untitled” become a clear mind against efficient soundings’ moments of clarity like the smooth monochrome of a clear sky behind the texture of the treeline. The undulating harmonics of others extending that of the trombone in “call, there” seem to model a voice floating in the wind. And “M” carries forward the chord of guitar and accordion through a collectivity of monophony from the rest. So though the sound shapes and textures might appear limited they flower through a moving togetherness and harmony. And the two songs show how players might choose to buoy each other up, the simple melody of each soloist complemented in turns by others. More than sound the interaction of people is the material.

- Keith Prosk

Sophie Stone - amalgamations (Sawyer Editions, 2022)

Peter Falconer, Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, Peter Nagle, and Lauren Redhead each perform an iteration from a series of Sophie Stone compositions for solo piano, viola, cello, and organ on the 75’ amalgamations.

The ear attunes to the moment. Careful soundings ask to be received with care. Cellular structures wander with abandon of what came and what is to come. Longer durations lapse memory to the current experience. Repetition focuses every variation, and instruments of analogous texture or mechanism might do so on a larger scale. Long silence makes the ear hang on every sound. Contingent events captured through open windows and doors - rail squeals, seagulls, ringtones, dog barks - mark the time in unique collections of occurrences. The listener attunes to the tactility and sensuality of every sound. 

- Keith Prosk

Mark Vernon - A World Behind This World (Persistence of Sound, 2022)

Right after high school I spent a summer working in an automotive factory. I was working in one of the loudest sections of the factory allegedly, where massive machines pressed sheets of metal into the shapes of doors and hoods. My first few days were spent away from the machines though, in the close but muted breakroom while I read a lengthy book full of security protocols. I was fascinated by the sounds of the machines though – a large, but limited, variety of thuds, crashes and hisses, an organized cacophony performed by unknown processes. I even tried recording those sounds one time, just by leaving my phone near one of the machines. I never did anything with those recordings though. The problem was that within a few weeks of working with those machines and hearing and, even worse, understanding those processes, I had lost interest in their sounds entirely. It had turned from a gorgeous, inexplicable, industrial orchestra to a repetitive, mechanical, corporate beating that required uncomfortable earplugs to endure without developing a headache or hearing loss.

To be clear, the problem with these sounds wasn’t just that they had become linked to my employment and my daily labour, it’s that they no longer surprised me – they were demystified by my understanding of their processes, and that spoiled my fetishization of those sounds. The harsh metallic clang that sounded like the smack of a gong, the stomp of a giant and a car crash all at once had become the generic sounds of ‘Press 2’ in operation. Now that I had an explanation in my head, my mind was no longer free to perceive these sounds however it liked, my fascinated curiosity was gone. But luckily for me, what Mark Vernon’s latest album offers is a whole factory (well, a workshop, but I’ll get back to that) full of unexplained sounds – sonic evidence of various machines, tools and processes that I’ll never understand – and again, I’ve been captivated by the mysterious incidental industrial orchestra.

Much of this mystifying effect comes from intrinsic qualities of the recording process. When an event is recorded, the sound is extracted but the context is left behind. To return to my auto factory example, I think it’s fair to say that if I quit that job the day I made those recordings I wouldn’t have become bored of them. They would have been able to exist in my mind as decontextualized sound matter, as abstract, meaningless, metallic thuds, but they lost that ability once my mind began to focus on the cause-and-effect operations that were responsible for their soundings. Meanwhile the workshop that’s been captured on A World Behind This World has been recorded as audio rather than as impressions in my memory, and any understanding of these sounds has been left behind at the factory. As there’s no way of knowing what is being produced by these processes or how, the listener is forced to address these sounds as-is and to permit them to act as their own context.

What this results in is a massive shift in perspective between what was recorded and what is heard. What Mark Vernon recorded was various operations being executed, all with a specific meaning and goal: the production of something. The sounds that came from these machines and devices were like the heat that comes from incandescent light bulbs – accidental, likely even unwanted, but essential to the process. But Mark hasn’t shared with us the items that these processes were made to produce, there’s no included photos of the final products for example. All he’s shared is the sounds – items made from the production process which are not what the machine was made to create. That’s where the twist in perspective takes place – Mark Vernon may have made recordings of a factory that produces physical items, but he left with recordings of a factory which merely produces sound.

At this point I’d like to note that the ‘factory’ that’s been recorded here was quite different from the auto factory that I once worked at – A World Behind This World was recorded at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop in Lumsden. By recording both in and around the workshop and mixing these indoor and outdoor perspectives together, the pieces takes on an imaginary, impossible perspective which leads to moments as surreal as grinders and saws seemingly being ran by birds and sheep. It also interests me that he chose a sculpture workshop, rather than an auto factory for example, because it means that what’s being produced isn’t just a commercial product but a work of art, the same thing this album is, and the recorded processes are creative ones, not unlike Mark Vernon’s own creative processes used to make this music. One could even take it as far as to say that these are recordings of performances by an artist, and in the album’s credits, workshop technician Eden Jolly has in fact been credited as a ‘performer’. From the opening moments as Eden tightens a bolt or rotates a hinge or kicks a stuttering engine into action to the closing moments of roaring machinery being deactivated by trained hands, practical moments of the technician’s performance have been deeply baked into this soundworld, but the specifics and the extent of it is another question with an answer that’s been left behind in the workshop.

The other part of the mystification process that makes this album so enjoyable to me comes from performance and processing. There’s no implication that what’s heard on this album is what was heard in the workshop, and there’s no saying how far from the truth each sound is or isn’t. Elements are sped or slowed, sequences are dissembled and constructed into imaginary processes, and the steady rhythm of tape loops allows for the creation of new sonic machines. Clearly structured melodies and patterns bring a momentary sense of artifice, but there’s a remarkable trait to the assembly of these compositions that makes it all flow and feel so right – it’s as if they’re following the natural logic of another world, of a world behind this world, perhaps.

I’m sure it could be read in a bunch of ways, but to me the title of this album refers to a world within the artist, the world they create in their mind which exists in the space behind the world in which we all take part in. And I think it follows that that’s the world where this natural logic exists, that this album is how the Scottish Sculpture Workshop sounds in the imaginary world behind this one, the one that exists in Mark Vernon’s mind and is released through his music. That idea is a big part of why I love music like this – it’s a glimpse at my own world through someone else’s ears, mutated by someone else’s creative perception, understood by somebody who isn’t me and an unanswerable mystery to me. This isn’t something specific to artists or field recordists though – I think everyone with a brain has access to a world behind this world, specifically catered to their own unique mind, imagination, memories, fantasies and perception. The most significant thing that Mark’s done here, really, is share his.

As I’m writing this I can hear the sounds of power tools from the floor above my head. It could be a recently emptied apartment being renovated or a tenant constructing a table or maintenance of heating or plumbing processes. It interests me how the electric tools have their own specific frequency that they operate at, which makes different sounds as it resonates against different materials, as its applied with different pressures for different durations. I also like the uncertain gaps in time between these sounds, the sporadic bumping and chatter while they presumably do work that’s less loud. I’ve started recording these sounds again too. I could probably go up there right now and ask what they’re doing and find an answer, maybe they’d even show me around what’s being worked on, but I’d rather not know. I’d rather let them to continue to exist in my mind as unknowable sounds captured in a world behind this one.

- Connor Kurtz

Thank you so much for stopping by.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider donating. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $0.35 to $1.40 for June and $1.01 to $4.04 for July. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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A Year of Deep Listening is in motion, celebrating what would have been Pauline Oliveros’ 90th year through sharing text scores.

Point of Departure’s 79th issue is available, featuring columns on Vinny Golia and saxophonists in isolated environments, an interview with Tomas Fujiwara, musings on the prose of Tristan Honsinger, reviews of John Butcher and Albert Ayler, and more.

crow with no mouth radio episode #52 is available, presenting a couple recordings of Terry Jennings’ music including the recently released realization of Piece for Cello and Saxophone with Charles Curtis, with whom Foxy Digitalis recently had an interview surrounding the same subject.

An intermittent reminder that we welcome composers to reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for more information if they’re interested in featuring their non-standard notation in this newsletter. We offer payment for pages.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate our efforts, please consider donating. Your contributions support not only the writers but the musicians that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the participating writing team, and distributes 40% to contributing musicmakers (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised us of their project that we reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. harmonic series was able to offer musicians and other contributors $2.15 to $11.49 for May and $0.35 to $1.40 for June. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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conversations

Lisa Cameron is an improviser and rock drummer based in Austin and perhaps most associated with percussion, feedback, and homemade instruments. Over some dolmas and drinks we talk about those homemade instruments, imagining sound, practical boundaries, ritual, psychedelia, approaches to improvising, differences among improvising and rock, and Texas. 

Recent releases include See Creatures Too with Sandy Ewen and Window To The Spheres with Suspirians. Place is the Space with Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Jonathan Horne, and Joshua Thomson will release shortly.

Lisa Cameron: So what do you want to start with?

Keith Prosk: I’ve got a couple threads that I’m thinking about but always feel free to take it any direction that you want. So I guess one of the first is that you… so you do a lot. There are some people that know you as a percussionist, a drummer in both rock settings like ST 37 and Suspirians and stuff but also your different improv groups. And I know you play some lap steel. But there’s also this whole world of created instruments, repurposing the kit for feedback systems, or the berimbauophone, or the mortal coil. So what are some of the motivations behind creating new instruments?

LC: Well that is an interesting question. I’m always on the lookout for ways to make new sounds, so I figure that just making a new instrument is the best way for me to customize it the way I want it. I’ve been working a lot with resonant surfaces. Before I was working a lot with resonant frequencies and rooms and now I’m working on resonant surfaces and how they react with each other like, say, drum heads, pieces of glass, steel string, springs, wood, metal. I’m starting to look into different types of mylar, how that might work being stretched like a drumhead.

KP: What is mylar again?

LC: It’s this really strong metal that’s… it’s like aluminum foil but it’s really strong so you can stretch it out a lot and you could probably use it as like a drum head or something like that.

KP: Is that like Tyvek type stuff?

LC: No it’s a thin membrane. It’s used in… I think it came out of aerospace technology. It was a big thing for awhile, you know, ah mylar. I think it’s still around in science equipment houses, you can get a lot of really neat stuff there. So the main thing that I’m trying to do… I’m trying to do two things now. How to make drones acoustically, and I’ve been kind of pursuing that for a long time. And then what I want to do is try and use all these different textures and weights to make drum heads and see how that affects the resonant quality of it. ‘Cause if you can tighten down a drum head really tightly you’ve got a certain amount of bounce there when you start something vibrating but there’s also a looseness to where it catches in or does the right amount or the most amount of oscillation… we’ll put it that way. So I’m just looking for different ways to do that.

KP: That’s awesome. Are you still using like a drum structure, like a circular drum?

LC: Probably. I haven’t actually started doing it yet but that’s kind of my next project. And the thing that I’m working on now is taking the mortal coil on the road somewhere and I have a possibility of an installation in New York this Fall. I’m gonna try to pursue that.

KP: So what is exactly the mortal coil?

LC: OK so that’s a thing that Brian Johnson from Cloud Tree Studios… he’s an artist and a jeweler and a woodworker, he can do anything… so he commissioned me to do a performance with him together on something that we collaborated on. So we collaborated together on making it and he pretty much knew all the physics involved and then I applied it with electronics. And we did a show at his gallery about four years ago, something like that. So we made a twenty foot long piece of conduit about an inch in diameter with ball bearings inside. And what I did is just stretch that out because conduit comes in a spiral or a coil, so I just pulled the coil out and I attached two different pieces so it was twenty foot tall and I just bent it out and attached it to the wall. And then I was thinking of using compressed air to make the ball bearings go all the way up to the top and then come back down twenty feet. Brian got the idea to use a garden timer to time it so the compressor would cut on at just the right time and it would blow everything up to the top with the compressed air and then the compressor would cut off and the ball bearing would fall back down. The falling is tracked by all these different contact mics that were attached to the coil. And then I put the contact mics and sent feeds through a mixer and had speakers in each corner of the room. That was pretty amazing. I got some really good sounds out of it. It sounds kind of like breathing… like a dragon breathing or something like that. I tried it out different ways, soft, loud, changing the pressure so it took more time to go up. And then Brian helped me with this, he helped me figure out how to time it, how to even attach a timer, a garden timer to a compressor, which I had no idea so… he really helped out with that. 

KP: And you said it sounds like inhalation exhalation, so it just sounds like a really deep glissando going up and down and then you’re kind of making waves on the mixer? 

LC: Yeah so just like [swooshing sounds] and I had it to where it would come down faster at the top and then go slower because I had it going down more to a cone, so that changed the descending speed of the ball bearings. I want to investigate that again but I really haven’t had time for the last couple years, or I’ve been so busy with other things. So that’s the next thing I want to put my attention on, is trying to make that more of a mobile type situation.

KP: Yeah. Have you envisioned a portable version or is it almost required to be an installation instrument like Ellen Fullman’s Long String Instrument? 

LC: My plan is to do a table top version with it this Fall. And maybe if I can do some shows with Sandy [Ewen] maybe I’ll include that. Because what I do, I make these instruments and then I move on to the next thing so I think I’ve used the berimbauophone as much as I want to. Right now I’m just using the resonator and putting different things on it but I want also to move on to this pneumatic stuff that I’m just scratching the surface with. 

KP: That’s awesome. And with at least the couple of records that you’ve got with Sandy, you have used the berimbauophone. So what is the berimbauophone and is there a particular reason why you’ve decided to bring that to your duos with Sandy instead of your kit or feedback systems? 

LC: The berimbauophone has an interesting backstory. One day my partner Lee Ann came home with a wooden box that she had found on the side of the road that was made out of nice resonant wood, I think birch. I first began using it as a type of cajon, and then started noticing that the surfaces picked up sounds quickly and began to place contact mics on it. Then I decided to somehow attach a berimbau, which is a Brazilian instrument used by Amazon shamans in the bush to catch spirits, as well as being used as background for a martial art known as Capoeira Voila, the berimbauophone! I only recently have used a kit or percussion to record with Sandy. The only released things that I’ve done with Sandy were done with the berimbauophone basically. When we did a short tour earlier this year, we did a little tour and I just used the resonator and percussion because the berimbauophone, well, it was inconsistent from day to day depending on the type of room I played it in. Instead of going to what the berimbauophone was about I just wanted to go to the phone [laughs] so I took the berimbau out of the equation so then currently I’m just using the phone and… you know what I mean by phone?

KP: Yeah the membrane, so the box. 

LC: Yeah it’s an idiophone which is a stretched string attached to a resonator box that’s used. Like the guitar is an idiophone or, say, a gutbucket bass is an idiophone.

KP: Yeah I feel like the berimbauophone… it actually reminds me of a boy scout bass, like where you attach a stick to a bucket and put a string tying them…

LC: It’s very much like that. But I was just thinking… you know, I was having trouble actually using the bow as much because it would fall down for one thing. It’s just held up by this elastic string and I’d tighten those down with cleats to where the cleat keeps the constant tension but I’d be setting up for a show and then something wasn’t working and I couldn’t get it to work. I just didn’t have enough time to do it so I thought, well I’ll just take the resonator. So what I do is put different weights on it and move the weights around. Contact mics are attached to the box with C-clamps or different types of clamps that I have. And then the actual pressure on the contact mic makes a difference, the placement of where the contact mic is on the surface makes a difference, whether it’s on top, on bottom, or the sides makes a difference. You can put the contact mic onto the C-clamp and push enough gain into it to where you get a sound. And then you put small objects on top and then those start making their own harmonics…

KP: Didn’t you… did you have a streamed performance in the past year or so that showed this?

LC: Yeah, with Sandy.

KP: That wasn’t the New Music Circle one was it?

LC: ESS. The New Music Circle one, that was pretty much when I was doing drum feedback in combination with the berimbauophone. Because the drum feedback sounds good with that as well. So you know I’ve just kind of… it’s just like, take this and take that and see what works, what combination. I like to change the combination because I get different sounds. So nothing ever sounds the same. I just did a show in San Antonio using that and it went pretty well, just moving objects around on top or inside the box. And you know playing them or moving them around, sometimes you can just move them around and cause huge shifts in the harmonics, just by moving one object to another. And also the weights, the different weights you know are interesting. I have light things like shells or heavier things like a glass candle holder. I have a lap steel bar they use to play on a lap steel, those are pretty heavy and they’re also concentrated, it’s a piece of steel so you can move it around and, say, move this piece of steel here and move this other thing at the same time or at other times, just depending on what I’m hearing. Since I’ve been doing this a long time I tend to react pretty quickly.

KP: That’s awesome. I feel like whenever I envision music I envision a two-dimensional thing, like a string going up and down in a wave, but it feels like with the tabletop it’s more of a dimensional thing and I’m kind of envisioning like, you know, all those figures that explain Einstein’s theory of relativity or something where it’s a suspended blanket and you have a big weight over here and a small weight over here and how that changes the surface shape, not reflected physically but reflected sonically. I guess you mentioned… I was kind of aware of it with your drum feedback but you mentioned it with the mortal coil and other things as well, you mentioned finding resonances in the room. So I know that’s a big concern, is finding what works in a room, what doesn’t, the natural resonance of a room. Once you find the natural resonance of a room are there some ways that you tend to go from there? And also are there some special concerns that you play around with or adapt to as far as the shape of the room, the material of the room, the size of the audience and how many water bags are gonna be in there [laughs]

LC: [laughs] Yes, all of that. Well when I first started I was super primitive and I just used an amp and a contact mic and a snare drum and I became really obsessed with how to… harness a sixty cycle hum of an amp and I’d be using that to excite the drum head and the problem there is you excite the drumhead… or you get the sixty cycle hum and then there’s a threshold. And if you go past that threshold it just makes a hideous squealing sound. It’s a threshold, it just can’t go any further and it just squeals. And that’s, you know, if you do feedback like a feedback guitarist or something it’s just gonna do too much and you’ll lose whatever nuances you’re trying to get. So with the snare drum it was pretty difficult just to sit there and use the amp to control the snare drum without… making it sound interesting and at the same time not sending it into that squealing mode, which was always very embarrassing. Because you know you’re sitting there, the audience, people are looking at you, this thing’s squealing and you have to wait… it’s destroyed every place that you’ve gone. But I developed that technique doing a lot of noise shows and in noise shows it was kind of like hanging ten on a surfboard. It’s about how far can you go before making it squeal. And I would definitely have people waiting for it to happen and could hold it back from doing that.

KP: I guess the way I’ve envisioned it, but I haven’t messed around with things enough to actually get a good sense of it, was kind of what you alluded to with ruining everything before, is that in order to get to a certain place you can’t just turn your knobs or whatever to a certain direction and it always happens, there’s a sequence of actions that you have to do to get there and you have to layer things a certain way to get to a place.

LC: Yeah. And then as you said before another thing was the structure of the room, how many people were in it. It would always work better when I was just using an amp to use some place that had a wood floor. But that’s pretty hard to find, especially these days. You know, you’re touring, you’re going to different places.

KP: The expense now. Now it’s all like composite ‘wood.’

LC: Yeah, so… enter the mixer. I started using the mixer. And that took care of those problems because I could set up the eq to where I could make sure that those things would happen. That freed me to be more attentive to what was going on instead of just trying to hold back, I mean, the inevitable [laughs] That’s kind of weird I guess but the kind of things that go on in my mind. I have no idea why I do this, I just started doing it…

KP: Yeah, there doesn’t necessarily have to be a why. I guess when you do approach a new situation or a performance, how much is planned ahead? Like do you write anything down as far as directions or structures…

LC: Absolutely nothing. And that’s how I always improvise too. I don’t talk with the person that I’m improvising with about what we’re gonna play. And that seems to work out better for me that way.

KP: And then with your improv groups like, I don't know, the Tom Carter / Ingebrigt [Håker Flaten] one, do y’all jam at all and coalesce towards some tunes or it’s all just straight improv…

LC: [shakes head] like the new one that I’m working on that we recorded last year, it’s amazing. But we just went in and we did an hour and a half. We got a place in Denton, went in, did an hour and a half straight. Didn’t even talk about it. That's pretty much how I improvise. I remember seeing Jack Wright play here in Austin in the eighties and it really impressed me that he just played completely in the moment. And Ingebrigt was over here a week or so to take care of some business from when he lived here so I said, OK let’s do this tour. So Tom and I and Ingebrigt, we played a couple of shows. We didn’t play a show here, I don’t think. Yeah, we played in Dallas, Shreveport, and Houston. And so now I’m editing those files right now and it’s due to come out as a vinyl record on Astral Spirits some time next year. But it’s very good. It’s very different than the last time we played together.

KP: Yeah I imagine so if you, you know, don’t talk about it.

LC: Yeah we don’t talk about it. And it seems to me that’s how, everyone that I do things with, that’s how it is. I was just reading the new article, the interview you did with the contrabass clarinet person…

KP: Yeah, John McCowen.

LC: John, yeah. That was really interesting because he talked about how Roscoe Mitchell improvises and then transcribes it. And I didn’t know that. Actually just read that this morning. Maybe I’ll do that, I don’t know. I don’t really transcribe things, and I don’t know how I would transcribe stuff that I do but you know it’s a possibility. So far I’ve been able to just walk into a situation like, say, when I recorded with Damon Smith and Alex Cunningham, it was the same thing. I was terrified because I’d never played with… I had played with Alex a little bit… 

KP: Oh interesting, you never played with Damon when he was in Texas?

LC: Never played with Damon before but always loved what he did. And I was just terrified like, I can’t believe I’m playing this. And we didn’t even set anything up and we just went into the studio completely cold and we hadn’t even played yet, at all. That actually came out pretty good, that was Dawn Throws Its First Knife. That came out really good but listening back to it I was kind of bewildered… but I think it came out well. We recorded again a couple of years ago and that one’s going to come out I think on Alex’s tape label [Storm Cellar]. That one’s really good. Since we had had a history of doing a few gigs and playing in the studio, it worked out well. 

KP: So I imagine that kind of approach is not what ST 37 does [laughs] Are there ways in which the more rock way of doing things communicates with the improv way of doing things that you wouldn’t expect and also ways that they clash where you expect they would not?

LC: Well I’ve been in ST 37 for longer than any other group and we just know each other really well and we have a knack for… I mean, we’re trying to extend the language on space rock, you know, envisioned by Chrome or Hawkwind or Can or Ash Ra Tempel or whatever. That usually involves, as far as I’m concerned, keeping a motorik beat or some sort of pulse that they can do whatever with. So that’s a totally different thing because I don't play beats with these improv groups, I try to avoid them. The more I can avoid them the better. And certain things like, say, The Suspirians or ST 37, those are based on traditional rock beats. I always try to think like, what would Damon Edge play or what would Jaki Liebezeit play on this song or, you know…

KP: Double kicks [laughs]

LC: [laughs] I don’t have any double kicks. But you know a lot of that stuff still works really well in the framework of ST 37 because it’s mostly about the guitars and not really about the drums but with the improv stuff it’s more like a equal footing type of thing. And in Suspirians we’re doing a lot of improvising now so I play a lot of electronics and drones in Suspirians and Marisa is playing guitar and electronics and Stephanie is playing bass and electronics and she’s branching out into prepared guitar and things. That somehow translates into a nineties kind of rock thing too. That’s a group that is kind of even less tangible than ST 37. When ST 37 gets together we know pretty much what we’re gonna play like, OK they take off on the guitars, I provide this fat beat that they can play on, you know. So I’m OK with that it’s just, you know, it all has to do with how well the musicians get along and how they work together. ‘Cause I don’t like to work with people that aren’t good to work with. I had a history of that where before I started doing improv or this kind of thing I would get in bands where there was a lot of top-down ordering like, you play this, this is what we need to play here, this is what’s gonna work in this song. I don’t do that at all. I suppose if somebody gave me, you know, $500 to do a recording session and told me what to play I’d probably do it but that doesn’t ever happen so… not that I’m saying I have to get paid to do that but that’s just not what I like to do. 

KP: Yeah. So if I look at some of your collaborators it’s like a roster of excellent central Texas based musicians, like Tom Carter, Ingebrigt, claire [rousay], Lee [Dockery], so I guess you answered one part of what I had in mind, like it’s more about the people than anything else, playing with cool people, but is there a conscious decision to keep it local in like an Eddie Prévost way or is that more of a circumstance thing like travel is costly?

LC: Circumstance. No I’d love to do more traveling but I mean right now in Texas it seems like… the most interesting music right now seems to be going on in Denton and Houston.

KP: Rubber Gloves, yeah, and MECA and everything Dave Dove is connected with, yeah.

LC: Yeah those two. Right now in Austin there’s Melissa Seely's Me Mer Mo Monday and Epistrophy Arts just did a very well attended show with Andrew Cyrille and Billy Harper. San Antonio is beginning to do more improv or noise shows there as well.

KP: I guess this is circling back around to the instrument building part. I think I’ve heard that you actually do handy work right like home maintenance…

LC: Yes, but what even relates more though to my soundmaking is my experience doing body work and massage. I’ve had a practice for twenty something years doing body work and massage and I have really put a lot of impetus into that.

KP: Nice and that feeds into the instrument building?

LC: Because, well, I work with changing fluid pressure in the body. There’s a technique called craniosacral therapy and I do that and I also do these other things that are related and they’re all about changing pressure in parts of the body. And it’s a three dimensional thing. Body work goes through the body. We’re a sac of water basically. And that’s resonant, it goes through the whole body. So say there’s a… you know, the law of hydraulics says you press in here into a body of water it’s going to displace just that amount in another area.

KP: Yeah it’s incompressible.

LC: So I learned through that, just working with people. And seeing how this worked I thought, well maybe this would work with sound. 

KP: Yeah it almost sounds like the box, table.

LC: Mmhmm it’s all about sound pressure, pressure of the waves.

KP: I mean I guess sound waves are pressure waves too [laughs]

LC: Yeah I did an experiment one time where I had these amps - it was Church of the Friendly Ghost - and I had these amps, I had these blankets over the amps, and I just had them feedbacking and I would gently lift the blanket and it started changing as I lifted the blanket, because the amount of air pressure coming out was changing and that changed the sound. That was pretty interesting. So I did that a long time ago and that’s when I first started using my body work skills connected with my music.

KP: That’s awesome. It’s almost like the body is the room. That’s the container, right, just displacing waves through it.

LC: Uh huh [laugh] never really thought about that but I guess so. I always like this legend, there’s a Navajo legend about the two twins at each edge of the world who keep a vibrational continuity. One is the south pole and one is the north pole and they’re connected with this vibrational field. Keeps everything humming on the earth. I kind of resonated with that. 

KP: So I guess whenever we talked about a year ago you mentioned a bit about ritual and I remember Changó for instance was brought up but how do you think of ritual when you’re playing?

LC: Oh god [chuckle] you know, everything that I do is a ritual, I think. I’ve kind of immersed myself into that world where I don’t think about it anymore, it just happens. And I think that has more to do with my body work abilities. But then that carries over into everyday life. And for a long time I did qigong and tai chi and I found that tai chi isn’t just a physical thing it goes through your entire being, consciousness, the way you approach things. The way you shift your weight has to do with the way you shift your mental weight, or your emotional weight, or your physical weight, or your artistic weight, any number of things. I just stopped trying to cut off ritual from being at a certain place, so for me almost everything is. 

KP: It’s just there.

LC: Mmhmm I’ve done a lot of reading about different things like thelema and voodoo and gnosticism. It all ties together. 

KP: Yeah. So this is gonna be a bit of a rant… not rant… so when I think of ritual it’s kind of like an inbetween space where certain actions are happening to get from one state to another and I feel like that’s very similar… and that can be quinceañera or funeral or whatever but a lot of times it’s portrayed or sometimes even carried out through a very psychedelic means. And you know just coming from ST 37 which has its place in Texas’ noisy strain of psychedelic rock with like Butthole Surfers and Charalambides…

LC: Yeah we used to play shows with Charalambides back in the day. I remember seeing Tom Carter playing at Sound Exchange with Mike Gunn. He was probably eighteen when I first saw Tom play. So it’s been a long relationship yeah…

KP: Yeah but I guess even though… and I mean in a certain way feedback stuff, what you do with the drums, if it’s a long enough duration you can kind of sink into it, or if sometimes the beatings and the harmonics are so complex it invites enough focus to where people can forget themselves, be outside of there bodies…

LC: It’s psychoactive.

KP: Yeah, so is psychedelia a conscious part of what you do?

LC: Yes, definitely. I’ve done my share of hallucinogens. Everybody in ST 37 has. Tom has. Not everybody that I work with has though. You know it’s not a focus, the door’s already open. When I was in Denton in the seventies that’s when that was like pretty focused and that’s when I started listening to that type of music. Particularly Art Ensemble of Chicago or Sun Ra or Terry Riley or Steve Reich or La Monte Young. Been listening to a lot of La Monte Young lately because I went to see the Velvet Underground documentary and he was in it and I was like, oh I need to listen to more of his stuff again. So I have like, The Well-Tuned Piano. To me it’s just amazing. A lot of people would just say, well that’s like listening to paint dry. Well maybe so [laughs]

KP: Well maybe that’s interesting [laughs] I feel like you’ve mentioned the John Cale and Sterling Morrison reissues on Table of the Elements too, their feedback stuff.

LC: That was what got me doing Venison Whirled. ‘Cause I heard that and I just thought I wanna do something like that in that context, where it comes from the sixties context of using a crude amplifier or microphone and instead of doing it with a guitar though doing it with a drum. I guess in Denton I was doing a lot of experimenting with sounds when I was in college. And I put a contact mic on a bass drum and I got this hum and I was like, wow if I push this up and down it changes the pitch. So I started doing that with different drums and cymbals and you know I would do this thing where I would put a contact mic on a metal shaker and then put it through a giant Sunn amp and just turn it up and it would sound like a space ship [laughs] I was like, wow what is this. And of course coupled with just the time, you know, in the seventies when you didn’t have to do much work and you could live off barely anything. I was just playing gigs with Brave Combo, doing that to make money, and then the rest of the time just experimenting with sound. It was great. I don’t really have time to do that much anymore. I have been some like during the pandemic I was able to do a little sound experimentation. But hopefully that’s coming up soon too, where I can do more of it. 

KP: Yeah and you said it’s in everything you do but I imagine building new instruments and finding those new sounds also carries along with it some of the strangeness that’s required for a psychedelic experience whereas sometimes the kit, it feels too familiar to really take you outside of yourself maybe…

LC: Uh huh. Well, I’m trying to get to where the kit will do that. Right now I’ve also been going back and listening to my drum heroes and just finding the magic that happened with like Max Roach or like Andrew Cyrille or Kenny Clarke, you know, Baby Dodds, the list goes on and on and to me they were doing a ritual, it was a ritual. Because it was so concentrated of an energy. I don’t know if they realized they were doing it…

KP: There’s definitely certain moments… like you mentioned Liebezeit, “Halleluhwah,” just that whole track, or something that I always think about a lot when it comes to the drums is the cymbal crash on Sly and the Family Stone’s “(You Caught Me) Smilin.’” There’s something about that crash that for those few seconds it takes you to a place that the rest of the song doesn’t.

LC: I love those Sly and the Family Stone records. One of my favorite records is There’s A Riot Goin’ On and I think that’s a record where the drums are almost perfect. They’re almost perfect. The drummer was the guy who used to play with Santana. He played keyboards with Santana but I think he played drums with Sly, and I think Sly played drums on it too. And so I remember when that record came out I was like, wow this is so good. And I still listen to it and I still marvel at the drum tracks. There’s a lot of that in r&b. I’m a big New Orleans r&b fan and some of my favorite drummers are r&b drummers, blues drummers, just all kinds of drummers.

KP: I mean I can’t think of a drummer off the top of my head but just those studio players like James Jamerson, it’s hard to beat. 

LC: Yeah that’s some insane stuff. That’s really… there’s a magic there. And so I want to reconnect with that just playing the drums. And so I’ve started to do that. I’m trying to focus more on just playing drums. I’m also wanting to do the other stuff too. But you know there’s time for everything. I guess the main thing now is that I want to get the mortal coil portable so I can take it on the road. I don’t know how that’s gonna work out but it might. It might work out great. I could have two of them going or three of them, I don’t know. I just wish I could get some money to do it… I’m kind of excited that I’ve been invited to do this possible installation. That might be possible in New York this coming Fall.

KP: Nice. I’ve heard that Austin just restructured its arts funding but have you ever… I don’t know how easy that is to get, I know that Bob and Chris and Ingebrigt have gotten it but is that possible for musicians or is it mostly for presenters?

LC: It is and I keep toying with the idea of getting involved in that, I just haven’t done it yet.

KP: Forms [laughs] 

LC: I know Chris is good at it, so I’ll probably be talking to him about it. But I’ve heard that there’s less money now because of the pandemic and the city doesn’t have as much money as it did. Just the Austin gentrification blues shuffle. That seems to be what’s going on. Now I may have to leave Austin just because it’s getting so expensive. I may have to sell my house, you know. Since I bought a house twenty years ago, I have lots of equity, I might start losing it if the bubble bursts or whatever, who knows.

KP: Yeah the same friend I was talking to last night said that he got his house I think in 2006 for like the 200K area and now a house by him just sold for four times that it’s just like [laughs] can’t keep up.

LC: It’s kind of hard to ignore it. I mean, I bought this house for a hundred and nine thousand in 1996. It’s worth like… I could possibly get a million dollars for it. But should I just sit on it, I mean, I need money to live there. It’s almost like they’re forcing me to sell it because if I don’t then I have to pay these exorbitant property taxes.

KP: It’s just hitting that 10% cap every year.

LC: It gets higher and higher and then once you get to ten thousand dollars then you don’t get a deduction on it.

KP: Oh I did not know that.

LC: Thanks to Donald Trump. That was a little thing he put in the IRS.

KP: That seems like it would hurt the rich more than help it which seems odd for him.

LC: But yeah so that’s kind of my future is like well, am I gonna leave Austin. OK if I leave Austin where am I gonna go.

KP: Denton [laughs]

LC: Denton, well we’ve talked about it. San Antonio, Elgin, St. Louis, Tucson, Silver City, I mean I just don’t know. And also the fact that it’s getting hot here. It’s gonna be 104F this week. 

KP: Yeah just the variability. I feel like last year it was super wet, this year’s bone dry. We’ve had snow the past three winters whereas before I saw snow maybe once in my life [laughs] the variability is hard to deny as far the climate change. Texas is getting wild and not just in the weather.

LC: Ah yeah there’s that too. I think it all depends on the November elections for me, which way it goes in November. If it continues where it’s going, where it’s been, I may just have to leave because I can’t live in a state where they treat people like that.

KP: Yeah, just hopefully enough people vote to not have [Dan] Patrick and [Greg] Abbott.

LC: Who are basically minority rule. I mean it’s a feudalist society that we have here and they’ve just kind of done it through stealth.

KP: Yeah, gerrymandering for the rural minority… I guess that’s all the directions I laid out but did you want to go anywhere else?

LC: Sure I guess I can talk about some projects that I have coming up. Well, let’s see, I have a tape coming out next month on Personal Archives, which is Bob Bucko’s label, and its called Place is the Space, and it’s Ingebrigt, Jonathan Horne, Joshua Thomson and I. We just got together at a studio during the pandemic and just recorded and it sounded great. You know what I thought was gonna come out was a lot of anger and intensity and energy but what came out was just really nice kind of even tone, almost calm. There’s a little bit of energy on it but it’s not like screaming for help. I think we were using the music to just kind of calm things down and reassure ourselves and whoever hears this that, you know, things are rough and it’s easy to get angry about it but it’s also good to keep an even temper about it. You know there are a lot of people doing energetic stuff now. I was kind of surprised that that’s where it went but it was really nice. I have a new recording with Ernesto Diaz-Infante that will be released on Loma Editions, a new all percussion tape on Weird Cry with Raquel Bell and Jared Marshall, also about to work on a new Ganjisland recording with Raquel that we recorded last year. ST 37 is working on a new album and it’s a tribute to J.G. Ballard. Because we’re all science fiction fans so every song is related to a J.G. Ballard story or book.

KP: Literally space music [laughs]

LC: [laughs] So that should be good. We’re gonna finish that up pretty soon and then who knows what’s next. I’ve been doing doing some shows with Danny Kamins and Thomas Helton. We’re supposed to do some recording, and I'm soon recording with Aaron Gonzalez and Rick Eye. We have a no wave noise trio called Unrelenting Psoriasis [laughs] and then I’m doing a trio with Jessica Ackerley and Eli Wallace in the Fall. We’re recording and doing a short tour here in Texas. I’m real happy about that and I’m real happy that she still wants to come here and do this but it’s only for a couple of days. I think it’s four shows and then we’re supposed to record in Denton. That and then, let’s see, hoping to do some more shows with Sandy in the Fall in the northeast, and possibly more with Drew Wesley, Seth Davis...

KP: And with the coil.

LC: And with the coil, maybe. Hopefully some more shows with Alex and Damon. And I don’t know if we can get Ingebrigt over here or not, he lives in Norway now.

KP: Is he permanently back in Trondheim?

LC: Pretty much yeah. I think he’s doing well over there. Just played this crazy thing with Joe McPhee and Jeff Parker and just playing with all these different people, it’s amazing. 

KP: Nice. I saw Sonic Transmissions, one of their records got featured by Peter Margasak somewhere in, I don’t know, quietus or bandcamp or something. 

LC: Oh, great. Recently?

KP: Yeah I thought I followed Sonic Transmissions but I guess I missed it. But yeah it was nice to see Ingebrigt’s label getting some recognition internationally… not that he’s not an international player, he’s all over the place, but [laughs] I don’t know…

LC: He just keeps… his star just keeps going up and up, it’s great. I hope to be just staying busy wherever I am. I’m sure I will be. And I have other ideas for things I wanna build that are a little bit more daunting to try to figure out how to do it but I have some great ideas for things involving snare drum feedback. 

KP: Yeah just keep on chipping away at finding new sounds, new territories… sonic frontiers.

LC: Yeah what I’ve always done is I’ve tried to just keep doing that. Never get too comfortable, never fall into a niche, never actually let people know what I’m actually doing. Because once you define it then you have to move on, or I do anyway. That’s how I feel, once I’ve done something I want to move on and do something else. I’m not somebody who just goes and listens to what I’ve done hardly at all. But I just feel really blessed that I’m working with such an amazing pool of talent of all types. I’m sure that some of them would be like oil and water but they all fit together in my particular sphere. Works out that way. Just like being able to play these incredible things with Sandy and just… we do this music and then we try to figure out what it sounds like. So we thought, well it sounds like creatures so we made up these creatures. The first one they were actual creatures and then the second one well the whole thing is a play on words, See Creatures, and so we see these creatures while we’re playing the music. 

KP: You’re telling me there’s not a bananasaurus [laughs]

LC: [laughs] maybe. In some dimension somewhere there’s a bananasaurus. Sandy thought that one up, I thought that was cute. She’s so playful with her sense of humor, she’s really fun to work with. I should mention my son, Dylan Cameron, a fantastic modular synth player. He is really good at playing synth live in real time, and he also masters, records, and mixes music in his studio. He's been working for the Holodeck label for a long time and he mixed and mastered a lot of their releases. He’s mastered just about everything that I've released and he’s working on mixing the upcoming thing that I did with Ingebrigt and Tom.

KP: So did he master like the Stranger Things theme? The group that did that, they came from Holodeck but I imagine everything else was not in their hands…

LC: No, I don’t think he mastered that one. He did master quite a few other artists on Holodeck and they've released some great records of his. He also works with different rappers from Europe, you know, he just likes to keep moving like me. I have one that I’m still trying to work with, it’s just a few modules that I like to use, but he has one of those giant setups. And he collects keyboards and synthesizers. Pretty interesting guy. He’s a lot like me, as in dealing with what’s next in Austin, trying to navigate the fantastic sea of music that it's always been, and pay the exorbitant rent, which is always keeping you on your toes here. I like to call it the "Austin shuffle.”

annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in harmonic series are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this presentation only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in harmonic series, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Jaap Blonk, five samples

Jaap Blonk is a composer, performer, and poet perhaps most associated with voice, live electronics, and visual work, whose music plays at the limits of vocalization, communication, and translation. Some recent collaborations include: Jaap Blonk’s Retirement Overdue with Miguel Petruccelli, Frank Rosaly, and Jasper Stadhouders; JeJaWeDa with Jeb Bishop, Weasel Walter, and Damon Smith; a duo with Terrie Ex; and various constellations with Udo Schindler, including the duos Hillside Talks and Lakefront Discussions and The MunichSoundStudies Vol. 2&3 with Damon Smith and arToxin_08062018 ‎with Elliot Sharp. Recent releases also include the solo Ingletwist Fragments, released through the Catalytic Sound Collective of which Blonk is a member, and contributions to Elisabeth Harnik & Didi Kern’s Steamology. Blonk runs the Kontrans label too. 

I think together these scores convey a playful approach that when performed are often humorous, sometimes absurd. The building blocks of language, principles of translation, and the vocalizing entourage of intonations and gestures blend into a musical babble, their abstractions often reinforcing their power, or the malleability and complexity of communication. Wordplay is everywhere, literally, and in the polysemy of open scores’ ample choice, and in the synonymity of structures and meanings across sonic, textual, and visual mediums. Jaap Blonk directly provided directions for these scores. You can explore more at his website.  

Frictional

Frictional is a 1991 composition for solo voice and undefined duration. One of a series of phonetic études, it focuses on fricatives, or the hissing sounds created by the friction of air against surfaces of the throat and mouth. International Phonetic Alphabet symbols represent where the sound occurs, from lips to glottis top to bottom. Left-right and right-left arrows indicate inhalation and exhalation respectively. The red box invites manipulations on the mouth, throat, and face for rhythmic variation. And the right-most section is a coda, read bottom to top as indicated by an arrow, where inhalation and exhalation alternate with each sound.

True to études, it is a systematic exercise. But the isolation of fricatives to inhalation or exhalation and the invitation for free manipulation of the facial vessel no doubt nudges performers to discover new possibilities at the limits of their vocalizing morphologies and to attune the nuances of their body to those of their sounds. The clash of inhalation and exhalation and shear of the bilabial-to-glottal body with the glottal-to-bilabial coda structurally echoes the friction of the sounds. 

Tapwriting

Tapwriting is one of a nine-part 2015 composition cycle, Vibrant Islands, for solo vocalist with a duration of 18-45’ for the entire cycle. Performers may island-hop as they choose and revisit islands too. The shapes of their coastlines indicate their sonic character. And they contain gestural prompts and symbols from Blonk’s own International Phonetic Alphabet extensions, BLIPAX. Tapwriting in particular features percussive sounds, different islands presenting different approaches like, from left to right, hitting the cheek and skull, outward and inward plosives, inward plosives with short vowel sounds after South African click languages, and plosives prolonged into lip or throat sounds.

Like real islands in the same chain are usually geologically or structurally related, so too these islands can be bucketed in percussive structures. And like real islands beget different ecologies, cultures, and dialects in their relative isolation, so too these islands are sonically distinct from one another. Culture often reflects the land, so the similar kinds of sounds find themselves in similar coastlines, their wrench or mitten shapes warped rotations of each other through their translations. I imagine a performer’s island hopping elucidates the local differences from the larger scale. True to its name the series is visually engaging too, reminding me of something like Theodoros Stamos’ Jerusalem series.  

Triangle Story 23a

Triangle Stories is a series of 2016 compositions for small ensemble with open instrumentation and undefined durations. Performers choose spaces to visit, which may be revisited or visited not at all. Colored triangles are long-held sounds and colors can be interpreted as timbres, but if they are then a timbre should be associated with a color. The numbers indicate the number of syllables or other unbroken sounds to be performed there. The protagonists of the story are written in the non-triangular polygons, and they can be named or associated with a sound. Open shapes require a sound to be invented that should be faithfully reproduced each time that space is revisited. It is important to strive for a mood of storytelling.

In this and other iterations of the series, triangles can begin to appear as reflections and translations of each other, in dimensions, color, context. Performers have to keep their stories straight, remembering and reproducing sounds they’ve associated with colors or open shapes. With each performer of the small ensemble interpreting the same open score whose rules and symmetries test the memory, it can assume a kind of rashomon effect. Or maybe something like how the performance of language, in its intonation and gesture, engenders divergent interpretations from the same words. 

Kterg

Kterg is a 2019 composition for ensemble with open instrumentation and undefined duration. Performers may receive different arrangements of discs and boxes. It includes its instruction on the page, which provides guidance towards interpreting disc parameters within the selectable cellular structures of boxes. Discs’ height within a box as relative pitch, their relative size as dynamics, and their colors as different textures. The textured background may be played, and performers must incorporate silence for a duration greater than or equal to their interventions. 

Colors’ shades are subtle, and the perception of them could be colored by their proximity to differently sized discs and similar colors. Similarly the sense of size between adjacent discs seems clear but becomes less so across a box or the page. Variable heights within the box further the blur of colors and sizes. And boxes’ offset placements can make consistency tricky across the page - a disc of the same size and color and height on the page could be interpreted as different pitches due to different heights in their respective boxes. The score’s emphasis on subtlety and relativity would seem to encourage those qualities from its performers while they navigate its open possibilities, which might require careful listening for an appropriate response to what they and perhaps others just sounded. And they are required to take ample silence to do so, though silence per sound or silence per box each both appear possible. So it assumes a conversational character. That the beige background - which, though textured here, is often associated with a matrix of silence - can be played presents some conundrums, but even someone silent is still present in the conversation, sometimes more so than those talking. 

Two Abstruse Questions 1 

One half of a pair, Two Abstruse Questions 1 is a 2019 composition for open instrumentation and undefined duration. It translates a question about life into tablature, standard notation, and other musical fonts with additional hand-drawn forms and colors. It comes with no direction other than that it allows for a lot of improvisation. 

A kind of multilingual cryptogram whose branching lines lend a crazy wall feel and prismatic circles recall Kandinsky, whose work is perhaps inseparable from synaesthesia or the translation of air to light. Its hand-drawn forms and colors require a kind of poesy to convey, amplifying the translational aspect of playing music from the page. So like translators of text, performers might relay the character of the question more than any direct decoding. Present to a degree in a few of these scores, its funneling of textual, sonic, and visual information into potentially just sound accentuates the inadequacies of any medium alone in relating experience. And in doing so reinforces the diversity and complexity of communication, an endless font for Blonk’s work.

reviews

Pedro Chambel & Ferran Fages - Os passos seguem como um espelho (Fractal Sources, 2022)

Pedro Chambel and Ferran Fages craft three environments for turntable, electronics, alto saxophone, and voice on the 38’ Os passos seguem como um espelho.

Each theme seems to be three textures, two relatively constant, one changing, and all timbrally ambiguous. Extended techniques and electronic treatments blur sources. A pulse might come from the periodicity of a rotating surface or a beating resonance. And following the title textures appear to mimic others, a metallic chirp could also be effervescent electronics, an alternating beeping a modulating wailing, ptyalistic utterances electric sputtering or frictional turntable that itself seemed like the fetch of dewy breath along the bore. One among them drifts significantly, a resonant howl becomes stridulating static becomes dinosaur roars, an anonymous circular scraping to fan resonance, irregular rustlings to growls, groans, sucks. But though one changes more noticeably in relation to the others all are always changing. Regular soundings occurring not rhythmically but in constrained ranges of texture and time. At the thresholds of identity, texturally, through repetition, follower and followee. 

- Keith Prosk

Johnny Chang & Keir GoGwilt - hope lies fallow (Another Timbre, 2022)

Johnny Chang and Keir GoGwilt play six arrangements from the medieval and Renaissance compositions of Hildegard von Bingen and Orlande de Lassus with violins, with Celeste Oram contributing voice to three tracks, on the 75’ hope lies fallow. 

Violins move to unmetered spaces, intertwine and stretch time like dough. Flowery melodies might repeat in slowing velocities but more often the path towards ornamental asides feels natural, unconscious. Alternating sustained soundings buoy harmonies whose beatings bear their own time. Ethereal chorals float around instruments’ harmonic auras in resonant accord. Little material in lengthier durations drowns thinking into being. Whiplashed from these flowing sinuous curves, melodic phrases pronounce themselves plainly before these extensions begin again. 

- Keith Prosk

Bryan Eubanks - for four double basses (INSUB., 2022)

Jonathan Heilbron, Mike Majkowski, Andrew Lafkas, and Koen Nutters perform Bryan Eubanks’ titular composition twice, totaling 47'.

There is something undeniably lulling, hypnotic, about the sound of four double basses quietly repeating, at slightly different tempi and pitches, an identical ‘melody’ in natural harmonics. But what is most striking here is a sense of continuously unresolved disruption: as the four ‘voices’ seem to phase in and out of sync with each other, they reframe into new configurations, retroactively exposed as illusory byproducts of hocketing overtone combinatorics; and the resultant sense of 'pseudo-tonal' harmonic motion, registering dejected resignation or even sorrow, seems always not quite right, just out of reach, as though produced accidentally by something like wind chimes. There is thus an almost circular neatness to the piece, a rather understated thematic relationship to or interrogation of the affect of ‘failure’ - the no-longer-really-four voices seem stuck repetitively trying and not-quite-succeeding to more cleanly or forcefully express a chordal sequence itself suggesting response to or acceptance of failure, and, in so failing, they of course only convey that feeling even more strongly.

- Ellie Kerry

Savvas Metaxas - Magnetic Loops II (LINE, 2022)

Savvas Metaxas arranges three reel-to-reel tape loops with some additional sounds on the 41’ Magnetic Loops II. 

Pleasant melodies’ stretched spectra revel in the imperfections of their medium. Hiccuping clicks and static hiss, warped curvatures, rattles. Echoes of themselves overlap, compound and amplify modulations to change character in series. One loop appears to rearrange its inner sequence as if it were pinched and twisted into a Möbius strip, as if the end had become the beginning. What sounds like knocks on the box and synth swells blend with skips and warps. Something remains the same but it’s never static. 

- Keith Prosk

Silvia Tarozzi & Deborah Walker - Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d‘amore (Unseen Worlds, 2022)

Silvia Tarozzi and Deborah Walker sing twelve Italian songs of war, work, and love with violin and cello and contributions from grandmothers Anna and Lina, Maria Grillini, and Ola Obasi Nnanna with voice and Andrea Rovacchi with mbira on the 53’ Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d‘amore. 

The music often follows the text, strings support words’ melodic lines, instruments manifest narrative elements, and harmony on many fronts represents the collectivity of a community in resistance. Some of the same bowing techniques that lend a rustic roughness split sound spectra for a tactile field upon which refined harmonic work can occur that in turn allows sound to convey the complex emotions these simple songs can carry like the grief-stricken exultation of the partisan who died free amongst their mountains. Of course Tarozzi and Walker are the core of the project but bringing others together - the audible contributors double their number, the inspiration of Giovanna Marini, recording and arrangement from Mondine di Bentivoglio and Mondine di Trino Vercellese -  focuses the folk of the music. Original instrumentals assume a narrative symbolism, a cloud of nervous fiddling flashed with crosscutting cello, sustained alarm whorls and wailing gliss divebombs, bowed bodies sawing and stick clicks like labor’s percussion, as other sounds might throughout, like mbira evoking falling arrows plinking. But of the many approaches portraying the oral history of Emilia, the multi-track remixes build heartening harmonies, a hair-raising emotivity in a bell choir of bicycle chimes behind a lullaby and a chorus in staggered canons exploding in number until uniting to exclaim, we want freedom. 

- Keith Prosk

Martin Taxt - Second Room (Sofa, 2022)

Inga Margrete Aas, Rolf Erik Nystrøm, Laura Marie Rueslåtten, Peder Simonsen, and Martin Taxt perform three paths and one free roam in a cartographic Taxt composition with contrabass, alto saxophone, organ, tubas, synthesizer, and handbells on the 45’ Second Room. 

Moving along a grid of points, staccato soundings stretched to sustain seem to illuminate the lines between them. Handbells too in their decay and its reverberant glow. Like lanterns in a chain of cave explorers. From a yawning cloud of following sounds they sometimes converge in a pitch space to together reveal the extent of it. And the corporeal vibrations of the largely low-end ensemble make the space feel real. After some time adapting to a model of a natural space, the ensemble finds a home in nuanced harmonies, everything resonating together.

- Keith Prosk

Trio Amos & Klaus Lang - Tehran Dust (Another Timbre, 2022)

Sylvie Lacroix, Klaus Lang, Michael Moser, and Krassimir Sterev perform three Lang compositions and two Lang arrangements of Renaissance compositions from Johannes Ockeghem and Pierre de la Rue with flute, organ, cello, and accordion on the 61’ Tehran Dust. 

Organ and accordion’s nasal heralds sustain sounds while cello and flute’s swarm of flies unfolds for billowing laminations from all four, radiating beatings from mellifluous harmonies in “origami.” In the eponymous composition, a succession of soundings’ decay just overlay like beacons in a darkness, swelling gradations lending a miragelike tactility to the air that refracts sound like dust does light to produce stunning colors. A kind of dualism in “darkness and freedom,” harmonies bloom towards discord to recoil back to beating beauty, also alternating between a more unified choral and splits of high register howl and rumbling low. The Renaissance songs root the others, as if their flourishes were just stretched and their tremulant articulation moved from the fingers to the natural quavering of frequencies. 

- Keith Prosk

Toshiya Tsunoda - Landscape and Voice (Black Truffle, 2022)

Toshiya Tsunoda arranges three environments for recordings and voice on the 25’ Landscape and Voice. 

A fluid soundscape and its interplay with the living, the looming presence of air in audible silence and the swash and bubble and drip of water at its boundary, agitated by birdsong, transportation, barking, children. Glitchy events interrupt it, short cuts - like camera shutter click bursts capture movement - of the environment paired with a phoneme in repetitions from different voices in different cadences and durations and rising volume and clarity. There is a heightened sense of how fractured perception and memory of the surrounding complexity shapes a voice. “Studies” isolates sounds to click events, environments only present in cuts, as if to illustrate the enduring effects of an environment past its immediate presence. While the birdsongs that might serve as markers are replaced with others on “In the grass,” something intangible makes me suspect a location nearby “At the port” and bug sounds lend a sonic impressionism in their evening associations. It conveys the mutual coloring of everything, through time, place, and the contingent events that share them.

- Keith Prosk

UNIONBLOCK - Thetford (Lobby Art, 2022)

Jack Langdon and Weston Olencki play a long, decoupled suite with a brief interlude for mechanical tracker organ and electromagnetic banjo on the 55’ Thetford. 

Instruments tend toward stranger timbres. Organ more whistle and howl or growling seismicity than anything warm. Banjo barely recognizable but for the vestiges of strings in the baffling static of industrial looms, electric tanpura, slurred rolls of ebbing thrums, and high-tension twang. Sustained for duration, they commune through a polyrhythm of pulse, club throbs, meditative waves, and stuttering phasing, finding harmony together through faith in an unseen nature. The violent “Brick Whittle” burns the acoustic space, organ stabs, scratched necks and thwacked heads on the tabletop banjo, discrete dynamics shocks that lick the walls and quickly void the air around them. TO rebuild their wholly enfolding harmonies again. 

- Keith Prosk

Thank you so much for stopping by.

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$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate this newsletter and have the means, please consider donating to it. Your contributions support not only the regular writers but the musicians and other contributors that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the regular writers, and distributes 40% to musicians and other contributors (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised the newsletter of work it reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. The newsletter was able to offer musicians and other contributors $2.27 to $6.06 for April and $2.15 to $11.49 for May. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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conversations

John McCowen is a composer, performer, improviser based in Reykjavík and perhaps most associated with the clarinet family. Over video chat we talk about cars, rivers, Reykjavík, the sound in your head, bass, silence, teachers and teaching, shitty flutes and recorders, and recording and records.

Recent releases include Bitter Desert with Jeremiah Cymerman and the solo Robeson Formants. A video of a recent duo with Roscoe Mitchell is available here. 

JM: Keith, can you hear me?

KP: Yeah. Can you hear me? 

JM: Yeah, yeah.

KP: Perfect. How’s it going today?

JM: Good. So where are you at?

KP: Uh, in Austin, yeah. So I think we share a little Carbondale history but I’m certainly not from Carbondale. I’m from San Antonio. And then after my two year sentence in Carbondale I decided to move back to central Texas. 

JM: [laughs] I remember, I think you said you were studying geology in Carbondale?

KP: I was, but that went down south. I went to Carbondale for a master’s in the geology of rivers but I kind of went… it was just offered to me after being rejected at the places I actually wanted to go. So instead of studying the types of rivers that I wanted to, I was studying bigger rivers like the Mississippi. And without really realizing it, I got into this game of being a cog in an ideological battle against the US Army Corps of Engineers’ flood policies, which I can support but I didn’t really want to be a part of. You probably caught this too but the people at the university were also very partnered up, so going from an undergrad environment where everyone does everything together to a graduate environment where everyone goes home to their families in a new town was also kind of tough.

JM: Yeah, but then I guess maybe you get the kind of situations where sometimes people don’t want to go home to their families so then you end up at like Hangar 9 or something like that [laughs] The rivers thing is interesting because my dad grew up in Cairo.

KP: Oh, yeah, the first time I saw Cairo I was like, what is going on, ‘cause it’s literally an iron curtain around the city. 

JM: Yeah, yeah, so my dad’s dad operated a crane on the Ohio River. And the first time - I think I was eight - my dad took me down to see the house that he grew up in, it’s just burnt in my memory. It’s like what you think when an older generation takes you to see their home. Like some little one bedroom house and I’m like, wait you had four brothers and sisters and an uncle that lived with you, and he’s like, well you know we just slept wherever [laughs] But then you look in the back yard and there’s just a giant hill, and at the top of that hill, I saw a tugboat going by. And I was like, wait what’s going on, what is this. And he was like, oh well the river’s high. So their back yard was the levee wall and just to be able to sleep in that house knowing that the river is thirty feet above you, it’s crazy. 

KP: Yeah, I guess a lot of what I was dealing with… you know the New Madrid spillway? It’s kind of more in Missouri…

JM: mmhmm

KP: So whenever the river gets high, that’s a designated flood zone. They open that up and it’s pretty much Missoula in that little spot. And farmers love that spot because it’s great fertile land, but you can’t live there. So I was dealing with trying to model that, get people to realize like, yo your life is literally ruined by living here. And something like that has to exist because the way the Mississippi is treated in that area is… I guess it’s a little disrespectful. Like living fifteen feet under the water. 

JM: Did you ever go west of Carbondale to areas like Grand Tower, LaRue-Pine Hills, those areas? 

KP: No.

JM: Grand Tower is this tiny town on the Mississippi River that has gas lines going across the river, so they look like these tiny bridges, suspension bridges, but they’re just gas pipelines. And it’s one of these towns that just gets flooded, all around it, every year, and the town is just used to it, you know, it’s a town of like five hundred. And then LaRue-Pine Hills is right above it, and… you ever heard of Inspiration Point? It’s like the high point in southern Illinois and in the Fall and Spring - I might have my times wrong - but they close off the roads for this giant snake migration. You can’t drive through this area because the roads are absolutely covered in copperheads, rattlesnakes…

KP: [laughs] what?! Just fleeing the river, the flood?

JM: Yeah, I’m not exactly sure. It was this terrifying thing as a kid and we would go out there and just see it, the road literally covered in snakes.

KP: Oh my god that’s terrifying. Well, how’s Reykjavík treating you? [laughs]

JM: [laughs] Reykjavík is good. I’m at my studio space out here which is really nice. I mean it’s just a whole different world out here. Compared to living in the US, everything is just at a totally different pace.

KP: Yeah, a lot slower and chiller…

JM: Yeah. And it can be aggravating, as an American. Because people aren’t very direct here. Like people will drop subtle cues about what they’re trying to convey to you and expect you to pick up on these cues instead of telling you, this is what I want you to do. And Americans, we just want directness. Like say, hey get out of my way, instead of just slowly pushing into me for like fifteen seconds [laughs] Or just say, excuse me. But yeah, it’s great. I’m teaching here, teaching improvisation at the Iceland University of the Arts. And another course that I designed in the Fall. In that respect, if I was still living in New York City, I wouldn’t be teaching at a university. 

KP: Yeah, I just recently got around to your interview with Jeremiah Cymerman from like 2017 and in that you actually mention that you and Bergrún [Snæbjörnsdóttir] are already thinking of moving to Reykjavík. 

Listen to John’s conversation with Jeremiah Cymerman here

JM: It’s kind of been something… well, she’s from here. So it’s something that had always been talked about and I think it was about four months into COVID the conversation kind of took on a certain seriousness. I mean everybody had lost their jobs, I was getting unemployment checks, and all that kind of stuff but, talking with coworkers of mine back in New York, the future didn’t look very good for where I was working. Also, on top of that, in New York I was working building stained glass windows as one of my jobs and the other job I was teaching at a school, like a very expensive school in Brooklyn. And before the pandemic at my job at the school I was making $25/hour. And I mainly worked in the after school program. I’d go to the stained glass shop and then I’d go to the school and work from like 2:30 to 6:00. So when they decided to bring the school back, like months into COVID, I get an email being like, well you know we’d like you to come back to work, and all of the sudden my pay dropped $10. Like this is a school that has a $100K tuition for kindergarten. And they’re taking some of their lowest level workers and going like, hey we need you on the frontlines of the pandemic with these kids will you take the same wage as McDonald’s down the street. And so yeah that was kind of like, I think this is the direction we’re going in, maybe I need to try something new. 

KP: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, labor’s not a pretty picture here. So that was in the middle of your ISSUE residency too, were you a little tied down with that? Like did you have to wrap that up before you were able to move?

JM: Uh, I mean ISSUE was pretty quick to move everything online. And they were very open for dealing with the situation however we could. I mean, I recorded the little EP I released, Two Energy Cops at 3AM, I recorded that in the ISSUE space like 20 days into the COVID lockdown. ‘Cause the ISSUE space was just empty and nobody was in or out but, looking back at twenty days into the pandemic, I was entering that space and I had a box of latex gloves, not touching anything [laughs] I have a respirator I use for soldering and I’m going in there and making… I mean no one else was using it but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t screwing things up for anybody. 

KP: Nice. And have you found a good group to play with in Reykjavík? I imagine you work some with Bergrún but other players? 

JM: Um, mainly there’s… Iceland has a lot of really great artists. I mean, their government’s fucked up, too. Their government kind of looks to America for the model for how they want to operate in late capitalism. It’s a little shaky but also, you know, the far right side of their government is more like our center left. Visual artists, designers, sculptors, that’s what’s been nice about here. I look at who I interact with and it’s not just musicians, it’s people from all different kinds of fields of art, which is really nice. And also makes for conversations that kind of have this endless blooming to them. ‘Cause if I’m talking about music, the viewpoints I get from people from different fields are nothing like I would get from just talking to musicians. But when it comes to improvisers, teaching the improvisation course I teach has been really interesting. I’ve been teaching it for two years now, so just seeing how these students change. Because in the course everybody plays every day the class meets. And so just seeing these people develop their own language has been really exciting. And I don’t play in class, mainly because I don’t want to influence the students. Like I want them to really deal with what their own personal language is. And I don’t want someone who just might not know what’s going on to be like, oh I guess this is just how I’m supposed to improvise. 

KP: And, I guess… in your conversation with Sean Meehan in Sound American you kind of mention… and I mean it’s mostly Sean, but there’s a couple points where you talk about your thoughts too and one of them is kind of finding your voice through rejection as much as acceptance. In that context you’re talking about Ayler mimickry as the example but in what other ways or in what overarching ways is rejection still shaping your voice?

Read John’s conversation with Sean Meehan here

JM: Well, I just try to… I tell my students this, that the only thing you have is what you hear in your head. What you hear in your head is the purest thing you have. So to hear somebody else do something and go, that’s what I want to do, that’s not your voice. That’s just you connecting with something and taking that. And I think it’s much more productive to, say, go to a concert and though you may appreciate it, you may enjoy it, you may hear things going on and go, oh that’s something I don’t want to do. It’s very important to know what you don’t want to do. I think it’s more important than knowing what you do want to do, because you’re getting closer to your own voice. Like I said if you hear people doing something and you like it there’s a higher chance that you just copy what you heard as opposed to sitting with that sound and trying to hear it in your own mind. And I’m kind of concerned, as things speed up in this day and age, I feel like engagement with music is much faster. I’m afraid that people don’t sit with music long enough, that they just take it on an aesthetic level and run with it. Music, it’s just important. I mean, I don’t know if that answered your question.

KP: No, that’s perfect.

JM: For example, when I was a clarinet student as SIU, I started out transcribing Benny Goodman solos, because that’s what a good clarinet player does, you want to figure out what he’s doing. And very quickly I realized that it would be better for me to actually transcribe Lionel Hampton’s vibraphone solos and adapt those to the clarinet as opposed to transcribing Benny Goodman and just sounding like every other clarinet player that’s already existed. You know, that’s no good for anybody. Where’s your own voice. You need to look outside of your own instrument. Like if I was a clarinet player only listening to other clarinet players I would just sound like other clarinet players, and that’s no good for anybody.

KP: [laughs] Yeah. It kind of reminds me of what the guitarist, Cristián Alvear… I might be misrepresenting his thoughts a bit here, but whenever we’re talking about interpreting notation he always mentions not just to see what’s on the page as a call to action but interpret it as a limit of what you can’t do. I guess in other words by defining what something isn’t not from what it is but from how it’s incompatible with what is you’re opening up the field of what you see as possibilities. 

JM: Oh yeah, absolutely. I think it makes it more streamlined for the brain to know what can’t be done. 

KP: Yeah. I guess kind of going back to the sculpture bit, I imagine talking to some sculpture artists is funner for you based on your ideas of dimensionality in your music?

JM: I don’t know… not really. 

KP: They’re not that out there?

JM: When it comes to that kind of thing… there’s this thing about being an artist in Iceland where you know there is this whole world of music here which is like straight-to-Spotify chill-music-to-listen-to type of stuff that gets churned out. And it’s frustrating for me to see geography and nature represented under such a narrow lens. To see a majority of music coming out of this country that is influenced by nature - and maybe this is a bit fucked up for me to say as an American living here, not being from here - is that most art in the field of music from Iceland being represented under this guise as like the harmonic language of the 18th and 19th century is crazy for me because when the volcano is going off who’s making like Ana Maria Avram type stuff. But all that said, the music scene in Reykjavik is really booming. A lot of honest experimentation happening and cross pollination between worlds. We have Dark Music Days, Raflost Festival, Mengi, Post-Husíð, etc. Post Dreifing is a young collective of artists under the mindset of “do it together.” These young artists are incredible. They’ve inhaled everything from Stockhausen and Björk to hyper pop and trap. It’s really exciting here. And we have amazing contemporary composers like Bergrún Snæbjornsdottir, Thrainn Hjalmarsson, Ulfur Hansson, Bara Gisladottir, and a whole lot more. I mean there’s a lot of people doing amazing stuff here, but also there’s a lot of mediocre shit [laughs]

KP: [laughs] Yeah, going back to finding people to play with, you mentioned a kind of relative isolation to Roscoe [Mitchell] in your conversation at Borealis, and that because of that you’re diving into your work. What are some of the directions that you’re diving into?

JM: Well it’s just been this long process of trying to get what I hear in my head out of my instrument. And usually the sound that I hear is very undefined. Like to pick up the contrabass clarinet and find some sound that I can tell is something I’ve heard in my head and then to sit with it, to just sit with it for an extended period of time, and just watch it kind of show me how it wants to be developed. And you know the longer you sit with it, the sound, the more it will tell you. And you kind of develop that form. And that’s something Roscoe and I have talked about a lot. He’s into this thing of, you know, you have one thing and then all of a sudden you have two, just this constant development of material. But when it comes to my work here, the latest stuff I’ve been developing, I haven’t really sat down with it. It’s mainly in my head. You know a lot of the solo work I do is drone based, durational. And the new album… I have a new solo album coming out this Fall which is a full-length solo record which is extremely droney and I think it’s like me going off the deep end in that kind of thing because I recorded it in Brooklyn right before I moved to Iceland, so it was the music that I had been developing in New York. And now I’m just kind of taking what I’ve done and seeing how I can interrupt it. And that’s where I’m at with it, kind of trying to fuck myself up on purpose. 

KP: [laughs] Yeah the piece you played with Roscoe was pretty melodic compared to what I guess I would otherwise characterize some of your stuff as.

JM: Yeah, well, I like to be able to do all kinds of things, you know. I practice a lot of Baroque music. I have like the first four minutes of Eric Dolphy’s God Bless the Child memorized, I love to play that. I just love to be able to develop whatever I can and working with Roscoe like that, he’s very similar. Me and him, when we would get together, it was like… like going to Borealis with him, I think it was the first time we ever improvised together. And we had played together for years but mainly it was like Handel, CPE Bach, old Art Ensemble [of Chicago] tunes rearranged for recorder, it was whatever music was on paper in his house that had more than one stave on it, we were playing it together and then breaking it down and talking about it. So going to Borealis with him, I mean we played together for six days before the concert, you know, 10AM to 5PM, and we developed the piece we played over the course of those days. And I probably learned more about music in that week than I have in the past decade.

KP: Nice. So I was listening to the talk in the car with a bad reception but I think I heard a bit where you were kind of amazed by his compositional approach. And I think it’s said that he improvises something, transcribes it, and then builds an arrangement from that transcription, which seems like the way that I hear about the most, so it got me interested in what your approaches are. Since you just mentioned that you like to sit with things as well. Is it like a  - particularly working with a lot of harmonic interactions - is it a more calculated approach or more play and then coming back to something…

JM: Well when I’m working on a solo piece it usually starts from just me playing something and having a connection with it. And when I notice that connection I don’t have… when I have that connection I realize in that moment, OK this is gonna take a lot of time. And then every day after that connection point, I have to be there every day to see what comes next. It’s just playing playing playing playing until I get to a point - and I’m recording demos the whole time - until I get to a point where I think the form is finalized. And then what’s interesting is that when I get to that point  where I think the form is finalized then I need to spend more time just practicing that form. And then I might start performing it in solo concerts. And the next thing I know, after I’ve performed it in front of people, the form has changed. So there is the form of the piece in isolation, then the form changed when I have taken it to an audience, and then the form will continue to change for as long as I play it. So it’s always changing. It can be extremely hard to figure out when to record something. Because I’ve recorded a lot of solo pieces of mine where I’ve gone, oh well I should’ve waited a couple of months because this cool thing happened at this show and I wanted to develop that. 

KP: Yeah, and I’m assuming a bit of that is dependent on space too, right, not just what you’re doing on the instrument?

JM: Uh, certain resonant spaces will allow me to hear more high harmonics or so on so forth and then I can really kind of know where those harmonics are coming from in my throat and my oral cavity and then be able to work with those or freeze them in places so they interact with other tones… yeah. But for the most part the instrument is in my face [laughs] so I’m always hearing that sound first. Which kind of sucks sometimes because I know that I might be doing a concert and all the interactions I’m hearing right in my forehead the person in the back row is probably hearing like one high pitch. And it took me awhile to realize that. ‘Cause I was like, alright there’s all this stuff happening I hope this is interesting, and then I put a zoom recorder in the back of the room and it comes back like [test tone sound] and I’m like, ugh what the fuck. 

KP: [laughs] Yeah, have you had some trouble recording… or I guess you mentioned that the form changes after you take it to an audience and after you record, so is that some of the feedback, that you do recognize that that’s happening and then you slightly adjust things to make it where something interesting is happening away from your face? 

JM: Yeah I mean that’s been a lot of what it’s been. And recently I’ve started to consider… you know, I work with amplification these days where I have a microphone inside the instrument… ‘cause it’s been this long process of getting what I hear right against my face out into the audience. And to also allow the audience to hear the minute changes that are happening. And this microphone works really well for that. But lately I’ve been finding myself wanting to play concerts to like eight people seated inches away from me to just really get that… like I want people to hear what I’m hearing so this is the purest way to do that, to get as close to me as you can. But we’ll see. I might try doing some solo concerts in my studio space here or something. 

KP: Yeah one of the caveats that I see on a lot of your recorded stuff is, hey this is not… there are no electronics here, this is acoustic phenomena. Is there a special concern with whatever microphone you’re using, filtering out… or filtering the acoustic phenomena in a way that doesn’t feel right? 

JM: I mean, sounds checks are important. I need to make sure everything’s working correctly. But for the most part 

the mic has been pretty honest. The main reason I put that kind of disclaimer on everything is the amount of people that come up to me and ask me, where’s the laptop, where’s the pedals, how are you doing that feedback, how are you controlling that feedback, and it’s like, nah it’s nothing. 

KP: Yeah at first I interpreted it as a kind of aversion to electronics but then you got the sine wave study and the sine wave on Robeson Formants. I know you play with electronic players… Oh, so when you were having your conversation with Roscoe at Borealis, I had recently had a conversation with gabby fluke-mogul, who is also a Mills alum and they also happened to mention Roscoe’s recurring phrase “silence is perfect” which I kind of interpreted as, what you’re doing better be good because you’re messing up something that’s already good. But I wanted to ask how you think about the phrase and, larger, how you think about how your music interacts with silence.

JM: It’s mainly about not being lazy. Like I said earlier, all you have is what you’re hearing in your head so to you that’s the most honest thing, that’s the most perfect thing you can do. Because everything you've ever heard is being smashed together and allowing you to come up with something. And you have to be tapped into that because that’s as perfect as you can get. If you’re not thinking and you’re in an improv situation and you hear somebody playing something and you’re kind of not present and you just latch on to that person you’re pretty much a leech, you’re a parasite to the improvisational situation where you’re dragging that person down ‘cause you’re cornering them and cornering them and not allowing them to do what they want to do. And you’re not helping them in that situation, you’re literally sucking the life from their musical ideas. So that disclaimer of Roscoe’s is like, yeah silence is perfect so if you’re gonna break that silence you better come in with something just as perfect. And Roscoe’s whole thing is improvisation is composition in real time. He said something that really stuck with me when we were rehearsing in Norway, when we were rehearsing the composition we were developing. And at that point we had about ten minutes fixed. And we were getting ready to run it and I said, OK well we’ll run ten minutes and then we’ll just see what happens, and he looked at me and was just like, I’m not interested in not knowing what’s gonna happen I wanna know exactly. And it was in that moment that I was like, well we are gonna improvise, but.. yeah. So it is absolutely composition in real time. The way he thinks about composition in real time is extremely akin to like flute and recorder players, soloists of the Baroque era, where you might get… you’re never gonna play the same thing twice. You’re gonna ornament it this way, you’re gonna use this kind of articulation. It used to be a thing where you could tell a flute soloist simply by their articulation. And they were improvisers, they were master improvisers, and they could take a small amount of material and blow it up into this huge composition. You know I’m not trying to speak for Roscoe, but that’s where he’s at with it. We’re not just making shit up on the spot [laughs] that’s not a thing. 

KP: Yeah, and for the latter part I know there’s some parts where you do stay silent with the Roscoe piece or the trio segments in LOW QUARTET but a lot of your stuff is kind of sustained sounding I guess to buoy up those harmonic interactions but when you’re thinking of stuff, how do you think of silence or deal with silence? In the other sense not so much it better be good sense. 

JM: Well silence is something that… like when I was speaking earlier about dealing with the solo piece and that taking the form from isolation to an audience changes the form, one of the main things that changes about it is silence. If you want to circular breathe something forever, that is a strong decision. And you have to make sure that the musical information in that is strong enough to be sustained for that long. But also one of my favorite things in performance is when you’re in a room let’s say with like, when the room is full, and you’re at a performance, full house, and the performers choose to have this long silence and all the sudden you find yourself in a room with sixty or a hundred other people and everybody is just absolutely silent. That’s just one of my favorite things in the world. And then it’s something I learned from Sean, you know in the interview I did with him when we were talking about silence, you really have to feel the room and be engaged… when you engage with that silence you have to be extremely present with that silence and when you hear the room start to say like, alright this is enough, you have to find that comfort point with the audience. You know, some audiences might be so engaged let’s say you were planning on doing a thirty second silence and everybody was so comfortable that next thing you know you were silent for two minutes. A new piece I’m working on, a solo contrabass piece I have, there’s no circular breathing. And it’s because these silences - this is something I’ve pretty much taken from Sean, or learned it from Sean - is that silence makes the material so much more potent. If you have the same thing going forever and ever, yeah, you can kind of sink into the music and it becomes this universe that you can kind of float in. But if you really want it to punch you in the face, you need silence. 

KP: Yeah to kind of hang on the notes, the tones, the sounds. I saw Sean I think five, six years ago, maybe seven, and yeah I wasn’t ready for it then [laughs] But even though I wasn’t necessarily ready for it it was still a powerful enough experience that it’s stuck with me five, six, seven years later and I haven’t been able to see him since then but now I love his recorded stuff….

JM: When’d you see him?

KP: No Idea here in Austin.

JM: Oh, in Austin.

KP: Yeah, yeah I think he’s come down here a few times but I really only moved to Austin in 2014 and started getting into this music then too. He ended up doing a solo cowbell set. And everyone’s kind of… it’s seated and everyone’s looking at the stage and then after a long quiet - and I guess people were aware something had started but I was not - he’s in a corner in the back and just starts hammering a cowbell creating these beautiful harmonics that I’m not super attuned to at the time and at the end it’s a very long silence. And at the time I was like, well this is kind of like a performance art thing, but I think gutturally the impact was enough to stick with me. 

JM: Yeah that record of the cowbell music he’s been developing is coming out next month on I think Sacred Realism.

KP: Oh nice, looking forward to it. I’ll be able to finally reengage when hopefully I’m a little more ready [laughs]

JM: Yeah. Something I’ve learned from… two good friends of mine are Sean and Theresa Wong, the cellist, and they’re both so into microphones, well Theresa and Ellen Fullman as well. I’m always hearing about microphones and placement and rooms and all this stuff and it’s just things I never really spent much time thinking about. And now hearing… you know Theresa has an amazing solo record that’s gonna come out soon, she recorded a solo cello record that sounds incredible and then Sean’s cowbell record sounds amazing. So hearing those records after all this microphone talk I was like, OK I have to get my shit together [laughs] Because also it’s like if you’re gonna make a solo record, yeah, one way to do it is to go to a studio and book four days but if you’ve been developing something for months is one day really good enough to capture what you want to capture. It might be better to just get your own microphones and just record it a hundred times.

KP: mmhmm. Yeah the newsletter actually presented the notation for Harbors, Theresa and Ellen’s piece, and it was as much - and this is a bit of an exaggeration - but it was as much about speaker placement as it was about what’s happening on the instruments for those interactions to happen.

JM: Yeah they’re so into detail that it makes me feel like a caveman [laughs]

KP: [laughs] I’ve heard… the bassoonist Dafne Vicente-Sandoval is where I first heard about the microphones in the instrument, I don’t know, it’s always seemed super cool, also, very technical.

JM: Yeah, with the microphones and stuff like that I get a lot of Colin Stetson comparisons and stuff like that and it’s like, no this ain’t that.

KP: Yeah, there’s other people.

JM: Yeah, other people put microphones on wind instruments.

KP: I guess you’ve been talking about hearing what’s in your head and kind of thinking about Dafne, and I’ve been listening to a bit of Cat Hope lately too, who’s super into subtones, plays contrabass and bass flute, and both of them have worked with [Éliane] Radigue, who I know you’re a fan of, and I recently came across - I think it might’ve been her interview with Julia Eckhardt - but I came across some words from Éliane Radigue where she mentioned kind of like a preference for low tones. And I wonder if - I know you play a whole range, I know you play the clarinet family, I’ve seen some other winds popping up - but when you hear things in your head, does it tend to be those low tones, or is it easier to pick up on those interactions you’re dealing with in low tones?

JM: I don’t know what it is but I’ve always been drawn to bass. Always. Like my studio here is actually… this is like some picturesque Iceland bullshit but the ocean is right there. That’s right outside the studio doors. It’s a warehouse on a deadend road that sits next to the regional airport and so sometimes these big I don’t know carrier planes come in and just shake the building and it’s my favorite thing in the world. When I was teenager I bought a Pontiac Grand Am off my cousin. My cousin, he had a body shop so he was constantly like new cars, coming in and out. And I bought like a ‘98 Pontiac Grand Am or Prix, I can’t remember, I think it was the Prix, off of him. And it was lowered. All the windows were like illegally tinted. And the trunk was full of subs. And my cousin was like, I don’t know what I'm gonna do with this. And he gave it to me for like $1800. And it was the best time of my life driving around. I think at the time I remember listening to a ton of Outkast. The first big record for me, when I was a kid, was Aquemini, the Outkast record. And that blew my world open so big. I remember buying the CD from Target when I was in the fourth grade and the track “Rosa Parks” was big at the time. So fast forward I was always a big Outkast fan. In this car I have, you know, a stack of Outkast records and the first track from Speakerboxxx, the Big Boi solo record - it was the one where André 3000 and Big Boi did their own solo records together - the first track on Big Boi’s is made for like test-your-car-sound-system kind of thing. A few friends of mine would ride with me, you know we were teenagers and stuff, I had friends that were into tripping pretty hard, and they’d be tripping and would be like, can I ride with you. And I was delivering pizza at the time so I had friends that would ride in my backseat with me just to be sound massaged. And then I blew that speaker system with a Sunn record. 

KP: Sun Ra? Oh, Sunn O))).

JM: I can’t remember which one, it might’ve been Dømkirke. No, yeah, I can’t remember which one but I turned it up as loud as it could and the tones are so [jamming interlocking fingers together] against each other that it fried the whole system. But yeah some of my favorite sounds in the world… like if you ever listen to… you know the Bob Marley and the Wailers album Babylon by Bus?

KP: I know it but I’m not familiar with it.

JM: Yeah so the version of “Concrete Jungle” on Babylon by Bus, Bob Marley’s bass player Aston Barrett on “Concrete Jungle,” that is the best bass sound that has ever happened as far as I’m concerned [laughs] And you know like Jamaican soundsystem culture is the coolest thing in the world. As much as I love low sounds, I wish I could go play through soundsystems in Kingston. 

KP: Yeah the one time I saw… yeah Sunn O))) was not a comfortable experience for me [laughs] I was at least prepared with ear plugs, but the cartilage on my nose wouldn’t stop tickling because it was just shaking the whole time. 

JM: Yeah, seeing Sunn… like I remember one time I saw Sunn at a small rock club in St. Louis, Missouri and I had ate mushrooms and you know they did the thing where like forty minutes before they play they fill the club with smoke. And this was a funny time seeing them because I was tripping but I couldn’t stop laughing the entire time, the whole performance was hilarious to me. And I remember seeing all these metal dudes holding up their phones and trying to take photos - and it was flip phones at the time - trying to take photos of them and everything is just coming back grey and I just remember laughing at that so hard like, what the fuck is the matter with these people. And the band that I was in, Tweak Bird, we did a tour of Europe one time where we were opening shows for Lightning Bolt, but this tour had the same booking agent as Sunn, so every venue we played we were a night after Sunn. So we would come to venues for soundchecks and they’d be cleaning up from the Sunn show the night before. And I remember playing in Manchester, England and we pulled up to this warehouse where the show was gonna be and you look up into this old warehouse and there’s giant orange Xs on all the windows. And I remember asking the sound guy like, did you guys just get new windows installed, and he was like, no Sunn played here last night. So they taped all the windows in the warehouse. And then I saw them in Oakland, that was the last time I saw them, in Oakland, California, and this time I knew what to… like I had high tech earplugs and I was up front ‘cause I wanted the whole experience and I remember walking out of, I forget what that place was called, I think the Metro Operahouse or something in west Oakland, and I took the earplugs out and it was the first time I had low ringing in my ears. Like a had a ringing in my ears of a low frequency and it scared the shit out of me. And I mentioned that to their sound engineer, and he’s like, yeah that’s not good [laughs]

KP: [laughs] Yeah that’s permanent damage. Unfortunately when I saw them it was outdoors, so I feel like I didn’t get the full experience of everything bouncing off walls.

JM: Yeah they’re definitely something to be seen inside, especially with all the smoke and stuff like that.

KP: When I saw them - I forget his name, but Agarth or Agartha or something [it’s Attila Csihar] - he was dressed in his robe and crown of mirrors.

JM: Yeah that shit is awesome.

KP: Yeah so I’m just imagining all your flip phone picture takers just getting reflections off that [laughs]

JM: You could wait twenty years and put that on a message board and be like, I saw this in the woods what is this [laughs]

KP: [laughs] I guess Sunn O))) is not a silent music but going back a bit to the silence bit - and Sean doesn’t do this - but there’s a portion of silent music where the stereotype is that there’s a lot of birdsong in it, field recordings, which I know you don’t have, but I feel like there’s a lot of birdlike sounds in the music. With your cupping technique, I wanna say you were actually using a birdcall with Roscoe…

JM: Yeah I used some birdcalls I have yeah

KP: Yeah and I know there’s also a bird tradition coming from jazz - and earlier in the conversation you mentioned tying music to geography so I wonder if it’s almost like a natural thing - but do you consciously involve birds in your music?

JM: Ah… what’s funny about those birdcalls when Roscoe and I played in Borealis was I think like a half hour before we played I was digging through my contra case and I was just like, oh Roscoe check these out, and he was like, oh nice. And I just kind of… I didn’t realize I brought them with me, they were just in my case and I was like, maybe these will be useful, and I just kind of sat them off to the side and then at a certain point in the set it was close to what I was hearing with what Roscoe was doing so I was like, yeah go ahead and do it. But I just got this, I’ll show this thing to you, hang on… you ever heard of a Garklein?

KP: No.

JM: Yeah, so, Garklein. A Garklein is a sopranissimo recorder. So this is a professional instrument [holds up recorder to show it’s the length of his palm] and it’s an octave above the piccolo flute. And I have like basketball player hands so this is bad but [blows some high frequency notes] you know, that’s the range of that. 

KP: [laughs] And was that… it almost kind of looked like a jointed flute or something… that was a recorder as well at the Borealis show? 

JM: Yeah are you talking about the bass recorder?

KP: Yeah it was angled…

JM: Yeah. It’s called a knick, like that’s what they call the angle. Bass recorder, yeah.

KP: A knick with a k? Like the basketball team?

JM: Yeah, I don’t know what it means.

KP: In rivers, waterfalls are technically called knicks. Bringing it back around to the beginning [laughs]

JM: Yeah I mean recorders are like this. Like sometimes like right now - you familiar with the guitarist Brandon Seabrook?

KP: mmhmm

JM: So I’m getting ready to go to New York for two weeks. I’m playing shows but mainly while I’m there, why I’m there is recording this album of Brandon’s compositions and I’m playing recorders and like all my instruments is what he wrote for. So I have some like virtuosic recorder parts and you know sometimes when I’m struggling… what’s really funny is when you’re fucking up practicing the recorder… dude…

KP: Still sounds great [laughs]

JM: No! You sound the most possible like a child like if you’re practicing and you mess something up it’s like, oh my god what the fuck did I take up the recorder as a joke? [laughs] But I really love the instrument because the reason I started playing them I think was that the amount of control and technique that the clarinet requires, the recorder requires just as much technique but it’s not as much the actual embouchure. Cause with the clarinet it’s all about like how you form your lips and all this stuff to get resonant sound and with the recorder mainly the technique is in the hands so I started playing as a kind of vacation from embouchure hell. And then you don’t get as tired playing it, so I would find myself playing Handel for pages and pages and pages and it just stuck.

KP: Whenever you brought up the bad recorder sounds, one of the songs that probably gets stuck in my head the most is the meme with the guy doing the Titanic song with the recorder [laughs]

JM: [laughs] There’s a whole Youtube page... I remember a band I used to be in, I remember we were coming home from a tour, we had played Lafayette, Indiana and were driving back to Chicago and one of us discovered I think it was called like shittyflute was the name of the Youtube page and so it was like “Toxicity” by System of a Down for like multitracked shitty recorders and yeah we were crying laughing going through… so yeah the Titanic version was like this shittyflute page. 

KP: [laughs] So a few years ago it seemed like you were pretty honed in on the clarinet family but now you’re expanding out to recorders, is that just to give your lips a little reprieve or are there some other goals in expanding your toolset?

JM: I have no idea. But I’m an insane practicer. Like I don’t usually ever go a day without practicing unless it’s like Christmas or a travel day. So I practice the contrabass clarinet everyday because I have to always be moving forward with the instrument, you know what I play the night before the next day I have to revisit that and see what’s new. But recently with practicing all this Brandon music my practice sessions have gotten a lot longer and when I’m done I look around and all my instruments are out and on stands, like I’ve played every instrument I own. And I used to not do that a lot and now that I do it feels really nice, it’s almost like every instrument is like a friend of yours and you’re like, hey man what’s up what’s been going on. And so to… it’s just fun to play all the instruments. But yeah the contrabass clarinet, that’s my baby. I’m trying to talk to this German company… you know, the guy who designed the paperclip contrabass clarinet, he was a Belgian engineer, he did some math and just bumped it down an octave and so there are two octocontrabass clarinets that exist in the world, that are an octave lower than the contrabass I play. So I’m trying to talk to this German company who’s doing a lot with 3D printing and all that technology and I gotta try to find a way to get an octo contra. 

KP: [laughs] nice

JM: Yeah the lowest notes on the instrument are felt not heard.

KP: So I’m aware that there’s the paperclip but then there’s also some straight contra clarinets. I’m not quite sure what the tunings are but does that do anything other than kind of lengthen the tube and lower the octave in a shorter way?

JM: All it was was a different way of designing the instrument. They just took a straight tube and wrapped it around itself to make it kind of easier, maybe for like marching bands or something I’m not exactly sure. 

KP: Yeah and you just prefer that to the straight one?

JM: Yeah it’s just easier to play. You can sit down with it. And I mean also it’s really the only contrabass clarinet I’ve ever played. When I was doing my bachelor’s degree, I was in the clarinet studio at SIU and we had the clarinet choir which I think… I’ll go on record and say that the clarinet choir is the worst ensemble that has ever existed. Clarinet choirs need to be stopped. And so I had to play in this clarinet choir and the school had a contrabass clarinet that nobody wanted to touch and I was a big bass clarinet player at the time. That was kind of where I started, was bass clarinet. And then I just picked it up and never wanted to put it down. And also I had no interest in… you know there were so many clarinet players around me that wanted to be like first chair virtuoso traditional soprano clarinet ripping Mozart kind of stuff and I didn’t have much interest in that, so just looking at whole notes for pages where I could just sit in the low frequency, like my old grand prix with the Outkast record [laughs], I was like, oh alright yeah I’d rather do this.

KP: [laughs] Nice. That’s kind of what I had lined up but is there anywhere else you wanted to go?

JM: Lemme think. Yeah, new record coming out in the Fall, excited for it to be released. Some new stuff cooking up. Theresa Wong and I have been talking about doing a duo record for a long time. Oh, there’s another mundanas record that is finished… or it’s like I wrote all the music, composed it, recorded demos of it, and now it’s just a matter of me and Madison [Greenstone] figuring out when we can get together and have enough time to record it ‘cause it’s like an hour and twenty minutes worth of contra duos. It’s all contra and like an hour and twenty minutes worth of mundanas music.

KP: That’s awesome.

JM: Yeah I think it’s… you know I usually hate everything I record and I haven’t recorded this with Madison yet but this is kind of the most where I’ve been like, yeah I think I might like this.

KP: Well, yeah, the first set, was that with Madison in mind? Whereas with this it seems like Madison is in mind.

JM: Well, it was kind of half and half. I think I wanted to do clarinet duos and I think I had written maybe two or three at the time and I was trying to figure out… you know I needed to find a clarinet player that was a perfect kind of companion for the music. Because there was a lot of circular breathing technique, multiphonic technique, I needed somebody that was into this, I needed somebody that was a little bit of a glutton for pain because of the duration of it and stuff. And so I went to a concert in Oakland that was pieces by Jessie Marino, Natacha Diels, and Bryan Jacobs and Madison was performing duos with Bryan Jacobs, these pieces that Bryan did for mechanical clarinets that have like hydraulic pistons in 3D printed clarinets so they’re pretty much just blowing into them and the clarinet is just [mouths industrial noises] incredible. I met Madison there and I was like, alright yeah this is the clarinet player.

KP: Nice, yeah I was introduced to her through the first mundanas record but I’ve been paying attention to her with TAK [Ensemble] since then, she’s done some super cool parts there, and then I saw that she composed a piece that was played on some compilation recently.

JM: Yeah and if you want to check something out that’s really killer she just did Brian Ferneyhough’s clarinet concerto with the new music ensemble at University of San Diego with [Steven] Schick conducting. And it shouldn’t be humanly possible, it is for Madison. That’s how Madison and I differ, is that she can kind of do anything [laughs]

KP: [laughs] And I guess some time ago did you mention that you had some stuff coming out with Sean and Ryan Packard too?

JM: Uh, this is like the shit of being an improviser, is that there’s always records somewhere on a harddrive and you forget about them or… It’s something I’m trying to transition out of, yeah let’s get together and record, yeah let’s make an album that we’re really psyched about right now and then we’ll forget about it in a month. I’m really tired of that kind of world of improvised music. It’s one thing to be like, OK let’s make a record together. But this, hey let’s get together on Sunday and knock one out, I’m not about it. But there’s a number of improv records somewhere in my harddrive. Like yeah there was a record, actually really thorough, there’s a trio record with Sean and Barry Weisblatt that we did at ISSUE Project Room where we took… I think we did like four days in a row in the ISSUE space and left everything set up and I think we recorded like three or four hours of music and it’s just been extremely long email chains. This is the thing about improv records, this is the part that I hate the most, you will get to a point in an email chain where it’s like, alright yeah I think this is good, and then one person doesn’t respond. Seriously a year and a half later you get an email being like, oh just missed this yeah let’s do this. Like fuckin’ seriously? The window is gone. This music is too old now [laughs] And so that’s always bound to happen but that record will come out. I think Ryan and I have made like six records together with other people like Rob Lundberg, Andrew Clinkman that are somewhere on his harddrive and you know after a certain amount of time you just say, ah fuck it whatever. There’s also a duo record with Carlos Costa, the percussionist in New York, me and him made a duo record before I left New York. Like the last week before I moved out of New York I think I made like three or four duo records with people. The record with Jeremiah was one of those. 

KP: Yeah, I’ve been enjoying that.

JM: That was a unique thing because we were at Pioneer Works and everything’s so streamlined and Jeremiah doesn’t fuck around with records, like he’s with it until it’s done. And it was one of those sessions that just felt really natural like it was one of those things where it felt like we couldn’t do anything wrong, it just felt natural and was flowing. So that was one of those where when we got done it was like you had a feeling about it like, yeah this should be an album so…

KP: Nice. I guess you said you mostly work at night, are you pretty much in your practice room from now ‘til evening?

JM: No, depending on if I’m not teaching I’ll do two sessions. I’ll come here during the day and do more focused, attentive work, like detail work. And then at night I’ll come back and kind of let the creativity flow. But yeah I’m here every night. I’m pretty much a nocturnal person. Roscoe put it a good way once. You know he practices in the early morning and I practice late at night and he was saying, yeah it’s perfect because no one’s up clouding the air with their thoughts. 

KP: [laughs] Yeah he was an army player too right so I guess he got used to that routine, early rise.

JM: Yeah that’s something I hear a lot like when we were rehearsing and he was telling me something that he thought I needed to listen to he would say, John you gotta remember I’m an army man. 

KP: Yeah, still an army man sixty years later [laughs]

JM: Yeah I grew up with a lot of army men so it’s not really anything new to me. So there was something I wanted to ask you, how’d you get into all this music? Are you a musician?

KP: Eh, I don’t have the rigor to put that title on myself. I played around with bass guitar as a kid but the structures, like learning how to read music, I just wasn’t into at all. Only honestly within the past couple of years… my wife… from the Jeremiah interview, she’s the opposite of Jeremiah, she loves shitty instruments and loves the variety, so she’s got lots of instruments lying around, and I’ve been messing around with her amplifier that has built in eq. And if I half-plug it’s input from it’s own output it creates a feedback tone that I can manipulate with the eq and volume and stuff. And that has no structure right, so I’ve been really enjoying messing around with that. But yeah not really a musician. I’ve always been into music, all my sisters were in their teens in the early ‘90s, and we kind of joke around that it was really kind of life or death for musicians in the ‘90s like if you look at radio music with all the ODs and suicides and stuff it seemed super serious on top of actually enjoying the sound, so just always taken music seriously. And I mean in college I listened to some stuff, like started with Kind of Blue, Coltrane, moved on to Sun Ra and stuff like that but when I moved to Austin in 2014 my wife took me to a Fred Frith solo. And just kind of seeing the music live and outside of the inside-outside paradigm of the ‘60s is what blew my world open and just started listening to more recent, more improvised stuff. And probably around the time we talked for freejazzblog my perceptions were so off I thought what you were doing was still pretty close to like free improvisation so I was in the deep end of the pool. Always in the deep end of the pool… 

Read John’s first conversation with me here

JM: Yeah you were going whole hog. 

KP: I think slowly I started to realize that a lot of what I was listening to was a bit of both, you know composition and improvisation, so then I started digging into more composer names, almost like networking in a jazz way right like hearing a player you like on a recording and then searching them out. I guess people tend to network in similar ways. So yeah just kind of found my way there.

JM: And yeah like maybe something about… I don’t know why that reminded me of that, but a foundational aspect of what I do now I’ve been able to… like the solo works for contrabass clarinet I’ve been able to link to my childhood 100% with how I lived with these acoustic phenomena in my childhood where I lived outside of a small town, I lived on a state highway leaving the small town. And my dad had his body shop, his autoshop, which was, you know, the garage was bigger than our house, and he specialized in muscle cars, he was a drag racer, so all these big American engines, that’s all I heard was just… I was outside all the time as a kid and in the garage so all I heard was the idling of these giant engines. And when you’re up next to ‘em or crawling up under the car as a kid and stuff it’s just [deep chugging sound] you know. And then also another cool aspect of this that I remember is laying in bed at night, and so the road as it came out of town went from like a 35mph road to a 65mph road and as it went out of town there was like a 90° curve right before our house. So I’d be laying in bed at night and you could hear a motorcycle leaving a bar at 2AM or something accelerating towards you. All you hear from far away is only part of the harmonic picture of the sound of that motorcycle. And as the motorcycle accelerates and gets closer and closer you’re getting the full spectral picture of the sound of that engine. And then as it passes it compresses again. You know, you get all the high overtones when it’s far away and then as it gets closer the bass tone creeps in, creeps in, creeps in, gets louder, hear the whole thing, and then it does the same way as its driving past. And so that’s all my music is [laughs]

KP: [laughs] So I've already written a draft of some of my thoughts for the Cymerman record and I think there’s a sound I recognize from your solo stuff too, or at least it’s similar, but there’s definitely something I’m hearing that I compare to a turning motor. 

JM: Yeah and also when Jeremiah and I did that record, the solo record I have coming out in the Fall with Randall Dunn… yeah I didn’t even talk about that, you know who Randall is? 

KP: Yeah the Sunn O))) engineer?

JM: Yeah. So to do a record with him I was like, yeah he knows exactly what to do with what I’m doing on this instrument. So when Jeremiah and I did the record together - and I met Randall through Jeremiah - I think I had finished recording the record with Randall like a day before the session with Jeremiah, so I was still in that soundworld. And I remember picking up the Bb clarinet for that session and being like, I haven’t played this instrument in like two weeks, this is stupid for me to be playing it. But yeah, you know, it was cool because Jeremiah has always been a big supporter of me and what I do so when I would lay down my thing he would know what to do with it. 

KP: Yeah, that’s awesome. You were talking about motorcycles and I didn’t grow up by a highway but - people are probably familiar with it through Pauline Oliveros recordings or something, the cicadas in Texas - they tend to sing from tree strand to tree strand to you get like cycles of cicadas going through back and forth rattling for a bit and get that similar doppler effect. But yeah I don’t know if I can pin down in my childhood where I found an interest for sine waves [laughs]

JM: Yeah it’s just something about growing up in a rural area where as a kid when you find something interesting, I mean, that’s what you’ve got. 

KP: Yeah. I do remember… my grandmother had a ranch and I’ve heard that La Monte Young listened to high tension wires a bit and got some inspiration from those and definitely when there’s the rare moment that you don’t hear birds or wind that’s definitely all you hear out there, that high tension hum.

JM: Yeah, and I think the most amazing musicians we have in the world are probably starlings.

KP: Uh… oh, yeah yeah.

JM: Yeah, the bird species. It’s like Peter Evans sped up eight times, that’s what starlings are… 

Lemme see, I just wanna make sure that there’s not maybe something I wanted to talk about that I’m forgetting about. Just finished a new arrangement of a Roscoe piece for an improvisers orchestra in Prague that’ll be premiered next month. That’s another part of my work that has been happening a lot lately, is doing new arrangements and new orchestrations of preexisting works by Roscoe Mitchell. And it’s a really interesting way to do it because the piece is, Wha-Wha is the name of the piece. And so Wha-Wha was a track from Roscoe’s record Conversations, which was a trio with Craig Taborn and Kikanju Baku. So Wha-Wha was an improvisation, composition in real time, and then Roscoe had a former student of his, I believe his name was Stephen Harvey, transcribe Wha-Wha, and then Roscoe took that transcription and did a version of Wha-Wha for orchestra, which I believe had an improvising soloist. And then he got approached by this ensemble called PMP Ensemble in Prague and they just recently did a version of Anthony Braxton’s Diamond Curtain Wall Music. So they recently commissioned Roscoe and then I was given the task of taking the version of Wha-Wha for orchestra that was ten minutes and making it a thirty minute piece. So what’s interesting about this, you know I expand, and thankfully I have Roscoe’s trust, that he’s willing to trust me to expand this music. And then, like we did this with the piece for navy band, the Nonaah for concert band that we did in Norway is a similar thing. Where I took his version of Nonaah for orchestra, which you know you can take back to a solo piece for saxophone. And then afterwards you know Roscoe and I are talking after the Nonaah premiere and he’s talking to me about the ideas that he has for the next version of Nonaah. He got ideas from hearing the version we had just done. So it’s kind of the same way for this version for PMP Ensemble, is that I’m sure Roscoe will take this thirty minute version, which has an improvising soloist, Jon Irabagon, a great saxophone player is the improvising soloist on this version of Wha-Wha, I’m sure Roscoe will get ideas for the next version of Wha-Wha. So it’s always this constantly expanding… like you know the kind of phrase of the Art Ensemble of Chicago was this thing of ancient, present, future. Roscoe has this amazing ability to always exist simultaneously in the past and the future. He’s a remarkable guy. 

KP: Yeah the Borealis thing was him playing with videos of his past, right?

JM: Oh his, yeah, and that was a learning experience for him. He talked to me about that, that he found himself following himself and would then have to restructure how he was approaching everything. And also playing with his dog, Shuggie, which I think is this remarkable thing because I used to have a black lab that would sing when I would play clarinet, only certain notes though, and you know he’s got this thing with Shuggie going on. And it’s this complicated thing because to me it’s an extremely interesting thing, to be improvising with, you know, not a human. For Roscoe it’s been improvising with people, then improvising with musicians like David Wessel and Richard Teitelbaum and George Lewis’ Voyager program and all this stuff, and then fast forward like thirty, forty years and you get him improvising with his dog. 

KP: [laughs]

JM: Yeah and it’s this hard thing to talk about because I find it absolutely fascinating but you can’t talk about it without laughing. When we did the interview I tried to speak to him about it because I was genuinely… like when he started doing it he called me one night and he’s like, John listen to this, and he puts his phone down and he’s playing sopranino and I’m hearing like [dog moaning sound] and it was shortly after he had gotten Shuggie. And he was talking about how good of an improviser Shuggie was and so yeah I was fascinated. In the interview I wanted to talk to him about it but I could tell the audience was laughing as I was asking him about it so I don’t think he was too psyched to talk about it if it was being treated as humorous or something.

KP: Yeah I think that’s an amazing opportunity to have an animal that can do that. We have a dog but whenever my wife plays music she doesn’t interact. Sometimes we’ll put something on the speakers and if there are long silences in between sounds she’ll look up to see what caused that but she’s not vocal about it. I think so often, like when you get really deep into things… almost like me with Sean Meehan and being like, well this is performance art, and five years later being like, this is actually really amazing music… maybe a similar thing where if they go down that rabbit hole and start thinking about Shuggie again they’ll come back around to it.

JM: Yeah music is amazing like that. Sometimes you have to have a little more information. I remember hearing some Impulse era fire music from the ‘60s and thinking like, oh jesus christ, and years later coming back and having an understanding of it. To have a full understanding of the structures and forms and to know what’s going on and all that stuff… oh yeah, speaking of Roscoe the next issue of Sound American is The Roscoe Issue. 

KP: Oh nice, well, uh have you been commissioned for an article?

JM: I’m… there’s gonna be multiple interviews with him and I don’t know who’s signed on but I’m gonna do one of the interviews with him and I’m gonna work it out with the other interviewer so we don’t have much crossover. ‘Cause there’s a lot of his career that doesn’t get talked about, you know. His interviews are all around like what is the AACM, what was it like when the Art Ensemble moved to Paris, and Nonaah. That’s what he gets asked about and he’s eighty-one years old and has done so much. So there’s so much to talk about with him. 

KP: Nice, looking forward to that.

JM: Yeah and the music I make is directly linked to what he does. The long durational stuff. It’s like yeah I learned that… I was developing this before I came to him but hearing him and how he deals with music… yeah, I owe a lot to that guy. 

KP: Yeah… I actually saw Eric Mandat play a New Music Circle show in St. Louis earlier this year.

JM: Oh, Eric Mandat. Wait, you were there?

KP: No, it was like a streamed show.

JM: Yeah he was playing with that pianist friend of his, I forget his name.

KP: Yeah I forgot his name too [it’s Greg Mills].

JM: Yeah Mandat and I, we have a solo/solo/duo show at Roulette in New York in October, so I’ll play solo and then Eric plays solo and then we’ll play duo. And I mean you were talking about like, when you were talking about your own musical trajectory and finding reading music intimidating and that kind of thing, that’s how Dr. Mandat hooked me up. I had recordings of bass clarinet solo pieces I was working on and he transcribed them for me to show me how notation worked. So I had an ear reference for like, yeah you wrote this so you should know how this works. He pretty much taught me to read music as like a twenty-one year old or however old I was. 

KP: Yeah I heard y’all touch on that in the Cymerman interview with the wrecked bass clarinet. 

JM: Yeah that was... when you don’t know then you don’t know. It’s broke so you better fix it. It’s not just like, oh get a new one. What do I have around to fix this. But yeah that’s about all I know.

KP: A lot of fun stuff on the horizon.

JM: Yeah because of the record coming out in the Fall I’ll be doing a lot of touring around. That’s also a nice thing about living in Iceland… you know, living in New York City has its pitfalls, which is you don’t leave… or its hard to leave because people are so financially strapped living in that city. But here it’s nicer to kind of be like, oh OK let’s see what’s happening in Copenhagen, OK let’s see what’s happening in Stockholm, let’s see what’s happening in Bergen. All that kind of stuff so you can actually go and be in different scenes instead of like, OK tonight I’m going to go play in Ridgewood, tomorrow I’m gonna play in Bushwick, you know [laughs] Yeah, it’s a benefit. But hopefully I’ll come to Austin at some point. I was there for SXSW before the pandemic hit. 

KP: Oh OK, yeah, please do. Lemme know if I can help in anyway. I’m not really an organizer but I can try and hook you up with actual organizers. 

JM: You guys got Nate Cross down there.

KP: Yeah Nate’s here and then Nate works with a couple of local organizers too pretty frequently but yeah… I forgot that you released some stuff with Nate so I’m sure he would be glad to have you down.

JM: Yeah the new record is co-released by Astral Spirits. It’s a split between Astral Spirits and Dinzu Artefacts that new label out of LA that released the Jeremiah record. So it’s a split between them and then the art for the record was done by this incredible Icelandic photographer named Vidar Logi, he’s mainly like a fashion photographer but what we did for the cover, I’m excited about it. 

KP: Nice. Well, I’m excited to hear it.

JM: Yeah this is the most contra it gets I think.

KP: Any time someone says that they’ve gone off the deep end that’s my cue to listen. 

JM: This record is like… stepping away from it I was like, alright, it’s too deep [laughs] I sent it to a friend of mine, actually sent it to two friends of mine who were like, John I’m gonna be honest with you it felt paralyzing. I was like, I don’t know if that’s good or not. But it’s something.

annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Hannes Lingens - Five Pieces for Quintet (2013)

Hannes Lingens is a composer, performer, improviser, percussionist, and accordionist whose music might focus on choice at the convergence of interpretation and improvisation and group dynamics, not just of performers but composers, listeners, and others too. Among shared projects and named groups like Konzert Minimal, OBLIQ, Die Hochstapler, and Musaeum Clausum, some frequent collaborators include Félicie Bazelaire, Sébastien Beliah, Pierre Borel, Antonio Borghini, Louis Laurain, and Derek Shirley. And some recent releases include Music for Strings with Bazelaire and ensemble CoÔ, Riebeckplatz with Borel, Borghini, and Laurain, and contributions to Borghini and Alexis Baskind’s When Will Never Meet. Lingens is also part of the Umlaut Collective, associated with Umlaut Records. 

Five Pieces for Quintet is a 2013 series of compositions. Beyond specifying five musicians in the title, it comes with no instruction. Duration, instrumentation, pitch, and other materials are open. Each graphic is five rectangles of equal width segmented into one of five lengths filled with one of five solid colors (not including white). Each piece includes four of five colors. Segments of the same length or same color frequently abut horizontally and vertically. 

Perhaps each musician plays a horizontal and the group chooses sound material with similar pitch, texture, or cadence for color signifiers and relative sounding duration for segment length. Or plays a color, overlapping rectangles of the same color indicating relative pitches on a chord, segment length again sounding duration, and a fifth player can mime the void spaces if the group feels everyone should play each piece. Or plays a segment length, placing time on the y-axis, setting united sounding durations, and again choosing material corresponding to colors. Perhaps each musician interprets the whole graphic of a piece for the performance of that piece. Perhaps each musician interprets a separate piece so the quintet may play the whole series at once. The possibilities are as limitless as the imagination of the musicians. In indicating only that five people come together to realize it, Five Pieces for Quintet requires the creation of a shared language together and prioritizes the process of exploring personal relationships and community coding over any sound result. But choices have consequences. And the group must navigate not only the changing interdependence of musical parameters in their chosen set of interpretive rules but whether it is possible to realize those rules with the instruments they use. In this way it encourages a mutual care during preliminary decision-making and its unfixed, relative color and shape relationships encourages that care during play, necessitating active listening and interaction to stay true to its largely open form.

The realization below features the composer on accordion with Johnny Chang on viola, Koen Nutters and Derek Shirley on contrabasses, and Michael Thieke on clarinet, who have chosen to continue the motif of fives through piece durations. The notation and an insightful interview with Lingens on his approach to composition and realization accompanies physical and digital copies. 

reviews

Ryoko Akama & d’incise - No register No declare (INSUB., 2022)

Ryoko Akama and d’incise perform an Akama composition with recordings, EMS synth, and no-input mixer on the 18’ No register No declare. 

Overlapping alternating relationships of similar timbres. Dripping water blends with frying oil, a metronome blurs towards tapping, electric hum or feedback, a plastic crackling from static, clicks and bumps, recorded time and time recording. Silences whisper sounds. The lisps of air indicate spaces but their parameters, shapes, material, moisture, temperature, entire characters remain mysteries. Ambiguities reveal the unreliable narrator of the inner ear. A tactile experience out of reach. It ends like it continues and maybe it started that way too, a moment of heightened awareness of the everything in the nothing around you. 

- Keith Prosk

Leila Bordreuil, Biliana Voutchkova - The Seventh Water (Relative Pitch Records, 2022)

Leila Bordreuil and Biliana Voutchkova play four duologues for cello and violin on the 35’ The Seventh Water. 

Through counterflows, longer and shorter durations, viscous gliss in reflected directions, low and high registers, polyrhythm, strings expand similar textures together for engagingly strange harmonies. Train horn harmonies with rail squeals. Barely-there breath of bowed bridges and massaged bodies. Birdsong in chirruping screech and divebombing bowings. Taps and pizz ring like bells and shells in webweaving arpeggios. Convergence only occurs through difference. And I hear the textural techniques and noise of each conjoined for a shared communication. 

- Keith Prosk

Jeremiah Cymerman & John McCowen - Bitter Desert (Dinzu Artefacts, 2022)

Jeremiah Cymerman and John McCowen play eight tracks for Bb and contrabass clarinets on the 39’ Bitter Desert. 

Cymerman’s skill for conjuring bleak moods through somber sound but context too - these titles might suggest darker corners of NYC history - has an apposite foil in McCowen’s bone-rattling drones and hostile textures. They move in contrapuntal coils, leveraging their divergent registers and wavelengths, the jokulhlaups ripples of contra and ululating undulating of Bb, through smoothed and distorted tone surfaces and complementary spatial placements. Slower circular Bb melodies accentuate the slinking slurred articulation clarinets can have. And Bb duos imagine intertwined snakes in their charmed movements. From an otherwise austere languor emerges other voices from the menagerie, stridulating harmonics, turning-motor purring, an exotic aviary of multiphonic chirpings and cupped hand calls. The apoplectic panic of arhythmic fingerings, death gurgle glissandos, overblown squalls. Like animals twisted by the soundscape around them. 

- Keith Prosk

gabby fluke-mogul - LOVE SONGS (Relative Pitch Records, 2022)

gabby fluke-mogul fiddles sixteen solos for violin and voice on the 35’ LOVE SONGS. 

Along with songs’ short lengths, melodies of a fuzzy familiarity form an impression of tunes, a nagging feeling say “IIIII” or “IIIIIII” is just out of recall’s reach when “you are my sunshine” reveals itself from “IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII.” Cadences kneaded like clay. Fragments repeated not with systematic variation but the natural rejuvenation of their relation to each other in series. Twisting bow and playful pressures explode pitch clarity for emotively expansive textural spectra. Extensions of resonant arco, pizz with its bent notes and sunny strums is rings deep too in its decay and the yawp of voice complements the coarse chords of violin, even beating together in true harmony at the end. There is a sense of joy because there is a sense of play, and all together it reminds me of the spirit of Ayler. 

- Keith Prosk

Cat Hope - Decibel (ezz-thetics, 2022)

The Decibel ensemble performs five Cat Hope compositions with viola, cello, contrabass, flutes, reeds, piano, percussion, feedback, and subtone on the 51’ Decibel.

“Majority of One” is strings and winds sustaining states of strange suspension in gliss that emit turbine beats in deep harmony whose rhythm and melody is a function of breath and bow more than any other material. The gatling dexterity of piano player and player piano can blur together in “Chunk” but more than the inhuman endurance and speed of the latter the former’s human articulation in finessed pressures delineates the two. Silence separates bars of chaotic action, strings’ seismographic squiggles and stippling pizz on a canvas of reverberant piano glow and heavy metal electric tone, a kind of density that feels like finding meaning in abstract expressionism, in “Juanita Nielson.” Among body sounds and plucked interludes, the cello arco of “Shadow of Mill” beats and drips and ripples within a quaking subtone whose contours seem to conform to those of the cello, their interference wrinkling perception. And “Wanderlust” is a sound walk with steps in steady cadence, rhythmic winds, bird song, conversation, motors, and wheels in which patterned moments reveal patterns in other material that might otherwise feel aleatoric. While these touch on the composer’s chosen materials - aleatoric elements, drone, noise, glissandi, and low frequency sound - each also focuses their human element, locating the limits of the body or the mind. 

- Keith Prosk

Decibel on this recording is: Louise Devenish (percussion); Cat Hope (flute, contrabass, composition, artistic director); Stuart James (piano, composition, programming, sound design); Tristen Parr (cello, production); Lindsay Vickery (reeds, composition, programming); and Aaron Wyatt (viola, IOS programming). 

Jason Kahn - Lacunae (a wave press, 2022)

Jason Kahn plays two short sets, one show, one studio, with modular synthesizer, mixing board, voice, electromagnetic inductor, piezo microphone, radio, and environmental recordings on the 50’ Lacunae. 

Anonymous nervous movements. Crackling static. Clipped transmissions. Knobs modulating electric whoops and hollers. Talking intonations from pinched and pulled wires. Feedback click tracks in phasing galloping and screaming sonar songs. Beep melodies and morse beats. Jolts in volume and frequency. The airwaves carry the symphony, pop pulses, radio drama. In hushed moments hear current hum, feet across the floor, creaking chair. The instrumentation is a complex system that nearly realizes an illusion of being just radio, something familiar and unpredictable, local and global, abstruse and vulgar, a copy of a copier, doubling down on its interesting ambiguities.

- Keith Prosk

Phil Maguire - Rainsweet Stillness (Minimal Resource Manipulation, 2022)

There were a couple things that stuck out to me as interesting from the bandcamp description for this album. The first is largely what inspired me to review this release – a quote pointing the album’s inspirations towards the early music of Richard Chartier and his LINE imprint. In the early 2000s LINE was publishing some of the most exciting and radical music in digital minimalism – slow works exploring silence, limited frequencies and the various limits of aural perception. On top of the innovation, it’s some of my favourite and most replayed music. I would have been content to hear an uninspired homage to this music that I love, but on Rainsweet Stillness I was happy to find much more (or perhaps less?) than that.

The tools used on Rainsweet Stillness are largely the ones I’ve already mentioned: stretched silences, controlled frequencies, the limits of perception; but their implementation feels like something entirely original, like something that couldn’t possibly have been released back in the early days of LINE. While those releases tended to focus on small and discreet sounds that emerge from silence or struggle to fill it, Rainsweet Stillness shifts its focus to the lack of sounds, to the silence itself which dominates this release. There’s large stretches of it between each sound, while the sounds themselves hang around just for fractions of moments, never long enough to make themselves clear or demanding. Returns to pure silence come so quickly that they don’t provide suspense towards the next sound or relief from the last one, instead these inevitable returns are just a return to the continuous, silent atmosphere.

To phrase this composition as a metaphor, it’s like a piece of paper with a few specks of dirt on it, or a screen with some sparse smudges. Yes, the impurities are visible, but do they really detract from the contents of the paper or the screen? I don’t think they do, and I don’t think that the sparse squelches of sound that accompany Rainsweet Stillness detract from its silence either. Where the metaphor falls apart is that these aural smudges and specks weren’t just found there, but were all created and composed to suit an aesthetic. They could be beautiful, emotive, distressing or symbolic, but the truth of these micro-fragments, subdued textures and fractured recordings is that they pass by me before I can really tell, they’re gone before they can be considered, and I stay focused on the silence – in that sense, maybe my metaphor hasn’t failed.

The second note from the bandcamp description that interested me was this last line: “Headphones are recommended for this release.” To be clear, I do like it when artists specify these thing because the effects can be quite different: While speakers breathe the music into the air and allow you to breathe it in alongside the remainder of the air’s contents, headphones send the sound directly to your head, allowing them to be excellent for attentive listening, for mentally dissecting and comparing multiple layers of sound, for tuning out the outside world and getting lost in the sonic atmosphere what you’re listening to. But there’s no sonic atmosphere to get lost in with Rainsweet Stillness. It’s silent.

I only tried the album once through headphones. It was a difficult but worthwhile experience. It’s a lie to say that headphones cut out all surrounding sounds – maybe they do when you’re listening to loud music, but not during silence. For the album’s half hour duration I sat and listened to the accidental sounds which made it through my headphone cups: the static sound of my apartment, the movements of the rubber cups themselves against my ears and hair, how the headphone wire would sometimes rub along my desk or my arm, the creeks of my chair, the fabrics of my clothing, the computer’s spinning hard drive as it reads this file, my breath and even the inaudible pressures within my own head. The pops and cracks that came from the music seemed of no higher significance than any of these sounds, and aesthetically they weren’t so different. If anything they played off each other.

My next few listens of the album have been over speakers. This is a lovely work to allow into a space. Rather than filling the air with sound it just offers some sparse sonic additions to the already existing silence of that place. And like that already existing silence and the various sonic events that could occur within it, these are sounds that neither distract or demand – they just exist. The result of playback in this way is a combination of real-world, unplanned, uncontrolled silence with controlled, planned, highly aestheticized sound events. From this perspective, through multiple listens, it becomes increasingly clear that what I expected about this release ever since my first listen was true: that each and every sound present on Rainsweet Stillness, each speck or smudge, is one of abstract, personalized, indescribable beauty. 

- Connor Kurtz

Weston Olencki - Old Time Music (Tripticks Tapes, 2022)

Weston Olencki arranges three pieces for tenor sax, banjo, and pump organ with voice and electronics and contributions from Anna Weber and Charlotte Mundy on the six-track, 67’ Old Time Music. 

Whirring swarms and roaring squalls of tenor sax grafted from three hundred blowing sessions still feels human and blurs with Weber’s input among glitched bumps’ primal beats and electronic splicing’s spluttering artifacts in “Tenor Madness.” Hear someone swimming through the southern night saturated with wings, their big foot falls coming down the hall, taking a glass from the cupboard to fill from the tap, and sit and switch through machachara radio limin punctuating another inhuman amalgam of old weird america and the whole multi-movement “a vine that grew over the city and no one noticed” for banjo. Its cascading cataract of three-fingerpicking rolls, spoon castanet rhythms, and steam train horn hollers, its ghostly-grained chant in makam cadences, its corrugated buzz, tapped head, grandfather clock chimes, and crashing outpouring of rim and hoop percussion likewise a hillbilly frankenstein. And then the cold wind of nasal chords and suck-teeth gasp of a pump worked like whetstone a beating chorus with country croon of “Charon guiding the weary 'cross the Long River.” Each piece a gestalt of a history but whereas the warp of memory blots out the strange interstices they appear here naked to witness.

- Keith Prosk

J. Pavone String Ensemble - …of Late (Astral Spirits, 2022)

Aimée Niemann, Jessica Pavone, and Abby Swidler perform five Pavone compositions with violins, violas, and voices on the 38’ …of Late. 

Of a kind with other iterations of the ensemble, the trio floats through movements with grace. Coalescing and dispersing, finding and going, interweaving together in contrapuntal double helices spiraling towards a sort of unity in warm arco glow for swaddling harmonies. Long tones and short, low register and high, simultaneous soundings and asynchronous, downward glissando and upward, warp and weft loosened and tightened to beat among strings, cherubic humming, or harmonics fishtailing from bowings ends. The nearness of differences bends perceptions and the ensemble always has the uncanny ability to make time feel fluid, tensive calm, melancholy joy.

- Keith Prosk

Kory Reeder - Codex Symphonia (self-released, 2022)

Kory Reeder conducts a symphony for an 83’ dissertation performance of his eight-movement composition, Codex Symphonia. 

A kind of digest compendium of the composer’s catalog to a point, it synthesizes threads of silence, choice, and personal relationships in musicmaking with a sound leaden yet light, a prudent use of material, and a soft spot for mellifluous melody. Cells of long silences in “Grid: Strings” give way to total silence in the fixed media of birdsong and anthropogenic sound - from the recording and this recording - in “Pause: Somewhere Else” for orchestra to become audience and reveal with dramatic clarity the shared experience of performance. Then the shifting constellations of concerto, trio, and so on through the changing methods of each movement also reveal themselves not as genre sampling but the harmonious arrangement of people as material. Though an orchestra is at hand it hardly ever seems so. And the weight of individuals is more than the mass. The recoiling dyad and trembling vibrato of viola a labored breath between waves of orchestral swells in “Prologue: Viola Concerto,” the musicbox mallet melody an almost anonymous soloist blending with a cadence carried across booming bass beats, staccato strings, shimmering cymbals, and the klang of a kind of kitchen pot percussion ensemble in “Pulse: Concerto,” the plaintive piano of “Solo: Epigraph” following the all-together-now, pull-out-all-the-stops climactic density and angelic libretto of “Tutti: Song,” the depth of the individual always a goliath even next to the orchestra. A postlude before an epigraph might suggest a fluidity of time like what can be induced by silence and which mirrors the fluidity of constellations and methods. 

- Keith Prosk

The orchestra on this recording is: Aleyna Ashenfarb (trumpet); Claire Bradley (horn); Trenton Carr (horn); Alaina Clarice (flute); Nico Clarke (cello); Jùlia Coelho (soprano); Kathleen Crabtree (viola); Zoe Czarnecki (contrabass); Daniel Davidson (contrabass); Paulina Degadillo (harp); Brian De Stefano (bass); Brian Do (clarinet); Connor Fallon (trombone); Elizabeth Fleissner (oboe); Garrison Gerard (piano); Zac Gilbertson (tuba); Pak Hei (Alvin) Leung (organ); Noah Leiva (cello); Anne Dearth Maker (flute); Delane Marsh (violin); Marjin Meijer (violin); Brooke Miller (clarinet); Michael Moore (viola); Joseph Reding (violin); Kory Reeder (conductor); Grace Remmer (viola); Caden Ridge (bassoon); Conner Simmons (contrabass); J. Andrew Smith (tenor); Melody Stephens (violin); Graham Viegut (percussion); Becca Walther (soprano); Brandon Waters (percussion); Jade Wesley (violin); Luke Wild (bass); and Clayton Yoshifuku (trombone).

TAK ensemble & Ashkan Behzadi - Love, Crystal and Stone (TAK Editions, 2022)

TAK Ensemble performs a seven song cycle composed by Ashkan Behzadi with inspiration from Ahmad Shamlou’s Farsi translations of Federico García Lorca’s poetry on the 41’ Love, Crystal and Stone. 

Voice recites the titular works in Lorca’s native language - or if it blurs to Farsi I don’t have an ear for it - extruding writing through the die of speech and song to unveil novel meaning via sonic aspects of its poesy and translate the page in its own way. Instruments attendant upon voice, staccato sounds cloud around words, directly accenting songs’ content in space and texture. Chirping flute as nightingale, clarinet flared for confounding doves or slurred for sneaking archers, violin wailing with tears or beating with screaming, twinkling metals’ starry night or percussive pops’ small hail of arrows against castles, silence the breaks on the page. Their translation animates the animism and animalism of the words. Their space the nocturnal mysticism, their articulation its sensuality, their romanticism a quotidian violence.

- Keith Prosk

A book with the selected poems in Spanish and Farsi, plates of visual art inspired by Lorca from Mehrdad Jafari, and a kind of analysis from Saharnaz Samaeinejad accompanies the recording. 

TAK Ensemble on this recording is: Laura Cocks (flutes); Madison Greenstone (clarinets); Marina Kifferstein (violin); Charlotte Mundy (voice); and Ellery Trafford (percussion). 

Thank you so much for stopping by.

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Thanks to Kevin Good’s Songs for Two I recently stumbled across B-Journal, a periodical for writing and visual art that might include scores or something like it among its volumes, organized by Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu. It has been added to our resource roll.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate this newsletter and have the means, please consider donating to it. Your contributions support not only the regular writers but the musicians and other contributors that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the regular writers, and distributes 40% to musicians and other contributors (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised the newsletter of work it reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. The newsletter was able to offer musicians and other contributors $0.00 for March (no donations received) and $2.27 to $6.06 for April. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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conversations

Maximiliano Mas is a composer, performer, and improviser born and based in Buenos Aires and perhaps most associated with guitar and lute. Over video chat we talk about space, time, sound images, art, mimickry, synthesis, growth, and experimental music. 

Recent releases include Sombra acústica with Mariano Balestena, Iván Consorte, and Catriel Nievas, Linde with Hernán Vives, La escena circular, and Lo que se esconde entre las notas. Maxi runs the label Rumiarec. 

A Spanish-language translation of this conversation by Maxi is available on MUSEXPLAT, a network for experimental music from Latin America.

MM: Hi, Keith.

KP: Hey, good morning. Can you hear me?

MM: Yes. You can hear me too?

KP: Yes. How're you doing today?

MM: Fine, fine. I just left my little daughter with her grandparents so they can take care of her. 

KP: Nice.

MM: Yes. Because I love to have her around here but she’s quite noisy, so to be more relaxed I prefer to leave her there. 

KP: Yeah. Have y’all been relatively locked down the past couple of years too? So you’ve maybe had her in the house quite a bit, or more than you usually would. 

MM: Yes. It was weird because she was one year and a half and she had already been to baby kindergarten, so she was really used to being with other kids. And when lockdown started it was, awesome I can be with my family all day, and after two months it was like, oh my god I have to be with my family all day. You live that too, no? You’ve been on a lockdown?

KP: Yeah, the states right now are kind of exiting out of it, I think, I don’t know. But I don’t have any kids yet, so I haven’t had to deal with at-home teaching or at-home care yet. 

MM: OK, OK. Well, in a way I like it too. In a certain way I used that to get inside the music because during the lockdown I made a record, and it was here in my house. The whole time I was recording, I could hear my daughter running around, and my wife talking to her, and my cats. So I use it like, well it’s gonna be like this. I have to make a record here in my house. So I didn’t fight with those things. I let them get inside the music. And now everything that I’m making, if I’m going to make a home recording, I wait until they come back from school, from work and I start rec’ing when they are around so you can feel that because… I don’t know, I like it. When I’m listening to some music and I listen to her voice, it’s… because I think, when she is twenty and she listens to that it will be cool, oh I can hear my voice when I was a baby with my father’s music. 

KP: Yeah, it’s like another form of a family photograph. 

MM: Yeah.

KP: Which album are you referring to?

MM: It’s an album called La escena circular. There’s a moviemaker here from Argentina called Cardini, and he was like the first experimental filmmaker from the ‘70s here. And he has a short movie called that, and I took that name from it. And it’s the first album that I rec with my lute. The one that you listened to, called Lo que se esconde entre las notas, that I did with the electric guitar and the acoustic guitar, that one I went to a studio and I did it super clean. The other one I played this instrument [holds up lute].

KP: Nice, OK. Yeah I was gonna ask… I had seen some pictures floating around with you and something else and I was gonna ask if you also played lute or rebec or something.

MM: Yes, it’s a lute. It’s a Renaissance lute, basically. But in the Baroque era, about two hundred and fifty years ago in Italy, they started adding basses so they could use it with the singers. So at the beginning the instrument was with only these seven strings and it’s like a regular lute, yes. But they start adding the [plucks low register strings].

KP: Yeah, it’s got like a whole other peg board. 

MM: Yes but this was.. the basses they are only open strings, you can’t push a note. So what I do with this, I use the bow of a violin and basically I make a lot of things with the bow, like noises like this [plays buzzing low tone]. Now it’s like my living instrument, I use it all the time. And the music that I’m making now, I’m recording a new album with this and the groups that I’m playing are using this too. I like it. 

KP: Nice, perfect. Going back a bit to the lockdown, pandemic bit I did notice between the records that you’ve got going on and your SoundCloud activity that it seems like things have picked up in the past year or so. Is the catalyst for that being locked down, or is there something else?

MM: Yes, yes, because since I’ve been here in lockdown I started making an album with Hernán Vives. I study improvisation with him and he also plays these kinds of instruments. He plays Baroque and Renaissance music but he also plays contemporary music and that kind of stuff. And during the lockdown we started coworking because we started making meetings every Sunday and we called for different artists and friends that we know. We made zoom meetings for two or three hours and we started sharing the music and the art things that we’ve been making. So we started a really close relationship with Hernán and ended up making an album together called Linde. And after that we say, OK now we have to look for a label to publish the album. And I started sending mails to different labels and we started talking, well if nobody wants to publish it we can do it ourselves. And that was his idea at the beginning. And that reminds me, when I was young, I started music at seventeen, playing like punk rock music. And it was really common that you release an album and you put a name for a label that didn’t exist. So you say, OK this was on the Satan Claus label. But after two or three records you can say that you have a label and it was really common that a friend says, hey can I put my record on Satan Claus label. Yeah, right. So we start modelling that idea to create a label of our own. And that’s Rumiarec. So we call up our friends, hey you have an album that you want to publish. Yeah, right, OK, send it. So we start doing that. After awhile, after these first four records that we have on the label, I was all the time looking for places that can make a review of the record, like you do. So I start sending mails to people that I know, and it was really hard. And I saw on Instagram, the people from MUSEXPLAT - that means Latin American experimental music - that they were looking for people to collaborate, so I sent them a message and they say, yeah sure we want you to give us a hand because there’s nobody in Argentina collaborating with us…

KP: Isn’t Hernán part of it as well?

MM: No no no no, it’s just me. So I send them a mail and they told me, OK send us an interview that you make to anyone you know and you have to send at least one interview per month or a review. So I was like, sure I can send you ten… ‘cause I know a lot of people. All my friends are musicians. All of them would be more than glad to have an interview or a review. So that was how it started because we had a meeting where they introduced me to the staff, of MUSEXPLAT, and they told me, well what do you want from this? I told them, OK I want you to make reviews of the records on my label, oh sure yeah of course we’d be more than glad. It was a win-win.

KP: Yeah, yeah, that’s very cool. Going back just a bit to the story of Rumiarec. Your motivations were to self-release and it just grew from there or was it a larger thing, wanting to advocate for your friends and your local group on a larger level?

MM: It’s a little bit of both, you know. Basically… Hernán is older than me, he’s like fifty-three, I’m thirty-seven. He has a really large career because he started his career in experimental music and Baroque music when he was about twenty years old so when I was really really really young he was already on the scene of the music. So for me it’s like a way to make my way in the music world and for him it’s like… I don’t know, we should ask him. When we talk about this he has an idea like - I really like it - he thinks about Rumiarec like a tree, and every record is like a leaf. So after ten years, this is gonna be really great. And at the beginning if you start looking day by day, it’s gonna be really hard and really boring. But if you look at it with some distance it’s gonna be really great. And he’s right because we started with Rumia in July of last year and we have four records, we sold a few, we have some reviews, we met new people. If i have to make a balance, it’s positive, it’s really good. 

KP: Yeah, I think it’s badass. You mentioned MUSEXPLAT as well. I’ve kind of been looking through it recently and I did see that it’s kind of reviews, interviews… is it also a social network in way?

MM: Yes, yes. It’s really crazy because when I had that staff meeting there were like twenty guys and girls there and they all know each other but they were from Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and me from Argentina, and I think there was a girl from Ecuador. And I said like, fuck it’s like really huge. Because there are guys from Mexico about… I think they are no older than 30, and they built all this in three years and it really works. There’s only one leader, Emi[lia Bahamonde Noriega], she’s like the general, I don’t know how to say it. And she’s there all the time. She loves this project. She told us that you have to tell the people to subscribe to this, because it’s like a social network. You can like a friend of a friend here and you can send messages, you can subscribe and they send you the last review that everybody makes, they make workshops. Like in the last days of January they did the WASI FEST, and there were people from all of Latin America sending videos of their music and workshops - we gave the workshops, for example I did one of writing on experimental music. There were a lot of workshops. And it was really good. 

KP: And what it’s trying to do… is it trying to advocate for Latin American music between Latin American nations or expand as outward as possible as well? 

MM: They are trying to expand it all the time. All the time trying to find new people to start coworking and there’s a part on the website that when you subscribe you can put where you are from and there’s a map where you can see where all the collaborating people are located in the world. Because it’s for Latin American music but there’s a lot of Latin American musicians in Europe, the United States. It’s nice.

KP: Nice. I feel like I picked up on quite a few different kinds of music too. A little left field but dance music and also experimental… or, not to say that dance music can’t be experimental but closer to what you’re doing. Is there something that ties the group together other than geography, as far as musical throughlines, commonalities?

MM: I don’t know. Because what do we think is experimental music? It’s like, why can you say something is or is not experimental? I have a personal idea but I started checking the site and the canon that they put for something to be experimental or not, it’s really huge or it’s really flexible. Because if you ask me, OK Max what is experimental music to you, I cannot put it in words maybe but I can say, OK Sergio Merce is experimental music. I think that is experimental music. Because there’s no sense of any other music, it’s really experimental. If you can say, oh this sounds like this, this sounds like rock, this sounds like that, it’s weird music but they have a lot of essence of different kinds of music, it’s experimental music but it’s like… I don’t know how to say it… it’s difficult for me to say it in english because I don’t have the words… but if you try to say it accurately, what is experimental music, it’s not that easy. You can commit a really huge mistake. I thought that experimental music, it’s only the music that didn’t have any kind of reminiscence… when you listen to something and it’s like, oh this is blues, this kind of sound is Pink Floyd, they remind you of certain music. There’s a kind of standard, you can say this is from this kind of music, this is from there. When you listen to a record of experimental music and say, this is a blues thing, this is a Pink Floyd thing, this sounds like Jimmy Page, Hendrix… at the beginning I thought that that can’t be experimental music. Because it’s like a collage, a puzzle. But on MUSEXPLAT, they agree with that. They say, no no no that is experimental music too. Experimental music is just not regular music so it can be dance music, it can be post rock music, it can be weird tango music, it doesn't have to be European minimalism to be experimental music. 

KP: So MUSEXPLAT is dedicated to experimental, whatever it calls that?

MM: Yes, but they have a really flexible way to say, this is experimental music. The other day I was writing a review of a friend’s record that is really really good but it’s like you can listen to Floyd music, Frank Zappa music on the record. It’s not like this pure experimental music. It has a lot of reminiscences of rock, jazz. I wrote the review and I told my friend, let me ask if they want to put it on MUSEXPLAT because I don’t know if they will consider this experimental music or not. And I sent it to Emi, the girl that coordinates all the activities, and she’s like, yes this is really good, yes you can put the review on MUSEXPLAT. OK, good. So I was happy for that.

KP: Nice. Yeah, experimental music, I… I try to stay away from the word unless other people are using it, just because the meaning can be so fluid. But yeah I guess it did seem maybe a little wider than my conception of it on the site. Just because you mentioned it, would you be willing to narrow down what you view as experimental music a little bit? [laughs]

MM: [laughs] Yes. What it is for me, what I think is experimental music… what I’m gonna say is how I do experimental music. I don’t want to say what is experimental or not because I don’t want anybody to crucify me, you know. For me experimental music, it’s like it’s a game of words. Instead of saying experimental music I say experiment with music. So what I do is find something that I want to experiment with. For example, the record you reviewed, it’s a gameplay of the harmonics. You know James Tenney?

KP: mmhmm

MM: Well I took the Koan piece for violin, basically it’s a really long glissando. So he put a note and then the same note so he started to make a gliss. So that record, Lo que se esconde entre las notas, the first piece, it’s like my version of Koan. I start making a melody with some harmonics and I start making the gliss with the tuning and start playing in the meaning of it like a game, no. How that note starts going down and making new harmonies with the other harmonics that keep ringing. And that was the idea. Playing with how a harmony can change because one note is moving. On the new album that I’m making with the lute, I’m making a tribute for a different composer, an Argentinian composer called Gerardo Gandini. 

KP: Hmm, I’m not familiar with him.

MM: He already died. He’s really famous. Do you know Piazzolla, Astor Piazzolla?

KP: Yeah

MM: He plays the piano with Piazzolla. He is, in Argentina, after Alberto Ginastera, the biggest contemporary music composer, so he’s… wow. He has a piece that is called Eusebius, it’s a nocturno, it’s four nocturnos for one piano or one nocturno for four pianos. So basically it’s a piece that you can play it one by one or you can play it with other guys all at the same time. And actually the music sounds when you play it with the four pianos. But if you want you can do it alone one by one. He took the music from Schumann, the Carnaval, and he started taking out, well I’ll use this note and this note and this note for the first part of the piano, for piano two this this this, and he made a collage like that. And when you play it all at the same time, you can feel the Carnaval of Schumann in a contemporary way, it’s not exactly right. So I made that with the lute, just took the idea. I made three pieces for the lute that when you play it all together it’s like, wow that’s the piece. And the experimental part, it’s that every piece I record seven different lutes, OK. I put my recorder, I have a TASCAM that has two microphones so you have the pan, you can start panning the sound. So I put it in the middle of my living room and I start playing, I stand up, and I start moving, and I play all the crescendos and the diminuendos by approaching or getting away from the microphone. I make the mix in real time. When I play I make the mix. So the first track, it’s seven lutes, six minutes, six minutes, six minutes. I put them all together on the DAW and I just press play, I don’t touch anything about the volumes or the panning. You can also listen when I press play or in the record press stop, you can listen to my neighbors dog yelling, so when you listen to the pieces it’s like you can start feeling all the lutes moving and that’s my way of experimenting. This is my new experiment, make a real time mix. It’s also a way to play… I take Philip Guston… do you know him, the painter?

KP: mmhmm

MM: I take four paintings of Philip Guston from his abstract period. One is called Attar, one is called Painting. And I took those paintings to make the music score. I think I have one here to show you what I mean… so basically they are like doodles. Those paintings they are like these forms, really weird forms. With space. They are white on the back and these forms are pink and red in the middle, and they have different shapes. So the idea was to try to recreate those paintings with sound and mix that with the idea of Gandini’s Eusebius. So basically what I did is put one painting and then I put the other painting on top, on top, on top. And that is like a really red glob thing and that’s basically the last track of the album where you can listen to all the pieces together. It’s not already… I sent the tracks to a guy to clean them up of the space noise and that kind of thing… he does the mastering. I am really happy with this one because… I don’t know. I feel that it’s like… it’s warm. Because when you’re listening to it, you can listen to the wood of the instrument, and you can feel the space. Because when I went to different studios what happens to me I feel like the music it’s not… it doesn’t have the space, it’s weird. It’s not three-dimensional, it’s two-dimensional. And it’s like it’s not real. We are all the time listening to something that’s not real. You go to a concert hall, it’s three-dimensional music. You have someone that’s singing or playing any instrument, you can feel the space. Maybe there’s people that don’t care but if you want you can start listening to the sounds that are going to the wall and have come back, or you can start paying attention to that. And it’s weird because when you listen to recorded music it’s like, fuck, it’s like the Egyptians. We are like this all the time [strikes a “Walk Like an Egyptian” pose]. We have really advanced technology to do these kinds of things but we are pushing really hard not to do it. You take the guitar, you rec, you put in on the console, and then let’s put some reverb, let’s put some chamber effect, let’s put some spacing effect and it’s like, guy why don’t you go to a fucking church and rec there, it’s going to be much easier, no? I don’t know if it’s gonna be easier but it’s gonna be more realistic. We push all the time to do something that is not realistic. I started noticing that when I started getting involved with early music. Because my wife, she plays early music, that’s why I play this instrument. When we started dating, she used to come to my apartment with a theorbo or with a Baroque guitar and so I started improvising with those instruments. Later on I bought my lute, right. But every time I went to a masterclass of early music, they talk a lot about if you play with the nails or without the nails, it was something really important for them. I used to play classical guitar so we use the fingernails, long nails to play that guitar. And on the lute, the strings are double strings, like on the 12-string guitar, so they don’t use the fingernails, they use the finger. And I remember one guy, he was giving the class and he said, the concept of the sound is a social construction and social constructions change all the time. I think that if someone played the lute in the same way that they played in the baroque time, we would consider that to sound really fucking awful because the time changed, the material that they used to make the strings changed, the idea of what is beautiful or not changed, everything changed. And you can’t rec a lute in a studio because it doesn’t sound like that. He was really provocative, he was trying to push us a little bit, and I think that I started listening to records in a different way when I listened to that. And I started to listen to a lot of albums that were recorded in a real church. In the beginning I said, this is fucking awful, I can’t listen to this. And with time and practice, I started listening to something else behind the notes, no. I started paying more attention to the place that sounds on the record instead of the song that they were playing, right. And it’s like I don’t know now when I play if I pay more attention to how the place sounds than what I’m gonna play. It’s like, oh this place sounds really good, I’m gonna play like shit but this place sounds really good. I worry about that. I like to think about that.

KP: Yeah it’s interesting that you mention the two-dimensional aspect. I feel like something I hear quite a bit around this kind of music is the concept of a sound image, or the recording is like a photograph, particularly with the music really dependent upon people hearing those harmonic interactions. What you perceive or what you capture really changes based on not just whether the players change their relation in the space, or the microphone changes their relation in the space, but whether there’s a humidity drop, or a temperature drop. So I feel like in those kinds of recordings you definitely get something like a crosssection of a whole or a still of something moving. It’s interesting too that you mention James Tenney because I feel like - going back to the experimental music bit - he had a super… I don’t wanna put words in his mouth, but it seems like he had a super specific approach of what he thought might be experimental music and it was kind of in line with a scientific approach, of trying things out. To redirect a little, you mentioned that you started out playing punk rock, and I noticed that there are some tracks on your SoundCloud like TOP MODEL and CAMPANAS that maybe are a little more on the rock side so I guess what brought you to this kind of music, what are some touchstones along your path?

Mm: [laughs] First of all, I’m gonna say something. That SoundCloud, I only use it… I study with Julián Galay, I started composition with him in 2019 and he’s living in Germany, in Berlin since 2020 so all our classes are virtual classes, so to show him what I’m doing, my work in progress of every week, I use the SoundCloud. Every time you go to SoundCloud - we have our meetings on Fridays - if you go there every Saturday it’s really probable that you can listen to the last thing that I did. I never promote my SoundCloud because I just use it for that, so it’s really funny you went there. On that SoundCloud, all the music you can find there, like TOP MODEL, I used to have a band, a rock band, we split in 2013, and it was a really good band and at that moment I was really influenced by rock, like Luis Alberto Spinetta and Daniel Melingo from here in Argentina and tango too. So how I got to playing this music that I am playing now… it’s like a really long journey but making it short I studied guitar with a guy called Omar Cyrulnik from 2010 to 2015, -14 and he played a lot of contemporary music. At the beginning when I started playing guitar I really hated contemporary music because I thought it was too snobby or something like that. But I really liked how it was written, you know. I started seeing all those doodles, like lines, arrows. I was like, that is super cool. And I started getting involved with that. In 2015 he went to Italy because he started working there and I was in Europe too on vacation and my wife starts talking a lot about this lute professor that - it was Hernán Vives - and it was like a month and a half only talking about baroque music baroque music baroque music. So when we came back Hernán invited her to his house in the countryside and I went there with her and he told me - he didn’t know me - and he says, tomorrow I play, I don’t know, a pub. And I said, well I’m gonna go. Because I thought he was gonna play like Bach on the lute but when I went there he takes out a classical guitar and he put clips, paper clips, metal on the strings and he started playing like that and I said, this guy has something special, I like this guy. And then he pulled out a lute, this same kind that I have, and he started making noises with the lute and I said, this is like punk rock music with early instruments with contemporary music. He was perfect. All the things that I love in music in a really synthetic way. I remember that the guy who makes his lute - I knew him because he is a friend of my wife - he was there at that concert and I told him, hey start preparing one for me because I want one. And he made my lute. It’s the same that Hernán has. It’s really cool. The same day, when I arrived home I took my cell and sent a message to Hernán via facebook and was like, I don’t know what I want to do with you but I really feel something so I wanna go to your house and, I don’t know, do something. And I went to his house and he takes out the guitar and he starts playing like a mad [blargh blargh sounds] and I was with my guitar, frozen and he stopped playing, he looked at me, and he said, do I need to say something, you’re gonna play or what. I said, OK [blargh blargh sounds] we start playing free improvisation and it was really good and we did that for one year. It was really good.

KP: Nice. You studied improvisation with him and then you’re studying composition with Julián?

MM: Yes. I don’t go to any institution at the moment. It’s like I feel more comfortable studying with people. I can use the time better in that way.

KP: Yeah. And you mentioned at one point you were influenced by tango. So when I think of Argentinian music, I feel like there’s a very strong association with the guitar - though it might seem like you’re moving a little more towards lute - but with the music you’re making now, is there a connection with the history of the music that’s there, whether that’s on the classical side like Piazzola or something like tango or milonga?

MM: No. I don’t think so. No. Not at all. Because tango music, it’s a rhythm, you know. It’s not about the melody, it’s about the rhythm and the color of the instrument because you can be playing any kind of music but if you’re using a bandoneon it’s gonna sound like tango or if you do the rhythm then it’s gonna sound like tango too. It’s like if you’re gonna make something using that material, in my way of seeing things you have to jump into that swimming pool and go really really really deep. Because if you are only going to do the rhythm, it’s like what the fuck are you trying to do. There’s a really good composer called Roland Dyens, do you know him? 

KP: mmmm

MM: He died a few years ago, he was French, he writes a lot of music for guitar and he was like [explosion exhalation] really good. And he used to do that kind of thing. OK, Tango en skai, it’s like tango but full of common places, OK, or bossa, whatever, and full of [mouths rhythm] and I think that kind of use of the materials, it’s plastic, you know, it’s not real. I can’t do that kind of stuff. He did it because he’s really great and if you listen to his music it’s gonna blow your mind but I’m not Roland Dyens and if I try to do that it’s gonna be a mimic of something. It’s gonna be really plastic. I prefer not to do any reference of that. Actually, now that you mention it, I was rec’ing the other day and there was one moment that I was playing with the bow and I was doing something like [mouths beat] and one moment [tango beat] and I was like no. A red light saying no no no no no. And at that moment I changed it because I didn’t want to have any reference of that. 

KP: Yeah, I’m almost imagining a harmonic music and you’re somehow able to sync the beatings to where they’re in a tango beat or something [laughs] So I guess getting a little more into what you personally do, I feel like we’ve kind of danced around it a bit, but if I had some snapshots of what I’m picking up on in what you do, I definitely hear the environmental sounds peak through occasionally. I feel like it’s generally relaxed but not afraid of speed. Kind of soft but not afraid of volume or dense clusters. Definitely enjoy melodies. But I feel the biggest thing I’m drawn to is that some of your stuff has super pronounced silences and then on the other side sustained sounding where that harmonic stuff comes from whether it is beatings or a kind of tanpura sound like on Linde or Maine. But what would you say are some ideas or approaches that you find yourself returning to lately?

MM: It’s like I have two main works. One about the lute, more like going to noise music but not noise music using a pedal, trying to be gentle. And there’s the other work with electric guitar that’s even more clean. So when I work with the lute I work with the space and the noises of the environment and the noise that I can make with the lute. And when I go with the electric guitar I play with the harmonics. I’m writing a new piece for the guitar like going deeper on Koan - remember that I told you that the album of electric guitar was like James Tenney’s Koan - I go deep with that using the loop and ebow and the slide. So what I did, I rec a C-note, pure, with the lute for about ten seconds with the slide and then I press overdub and I leave the overdub running all the time so it’s all the time rec’ing and playing what I’m rec’ing and it’s making the accumulation of sounds. The piece lasts ten minutes, so in those ten minutes basically it’s going from the C to the D and that’s it. It’s a really really really slow glissando. So the loop station, it’s rec’ing and playing those micro- uber- microtones and starts making a beat [mouths beat] and that starts growing. So basically when I play the guitar it’s about the glissando and harmonics. And when I play the lute it’s about the space and the noise. Just being like really accurate. All the time I am working like this [climbing steps with hands] but I know they are separate because all the things that I play on the lute are… I don’t play live with the lute. I play here, rec’ing for example. If they call me tomorrow and say, OK there’s a gig you wanna go, I go with the guitar because I can plug it and I can put really high volume. With the lute I go if it’s a really small gig, like five people, and I can play it quietly. Because it’s an acoustic instrument and every time that I try to plug a microphone… I put two different microphones on the lute, but it’s not the same because this instrument has really really really good reverb sound because all the strings that you can press they play the role of the harp on the piano, you know, if you leave the pedal open and you play a note, you can hear all the notes ringing [taps the lute to resonate like a piano] so if there’s ten people breathing and opening a candy it’s like I can’t play. It’s not gonna be heard. And when I use the microphones, I use these kinds of microphones that I make myself that you can stick to the lute. Basically I put one on the body and one on the neck and I make a mix on a little mixer and I did that for a while and after awhile I decided I wanted just acoustic, not with the mics. 

KP: Yeah. I don’t wanna go against what you’re saying but it seems like they’re not so separate, that there is a little bit of each in each other. Like on the lute you actually are paying attention to harmonics quite a bit and on the electric guitar, harmonics being so space dependent, you’re really paying attention to space too.

MM: [laughs] yeah, totally, totally. It’s like I can’t stop being me, I can’t split myself OK so it’s all the time like this. But I’m trying to not make like this [overlapping hands] I like the idea of having two different trees that are growing. Actually now on the lute what I do on these strings that you can press is tune them in Just Intonation and I play with the bow and when you start pressing with the bow they… you know about this, you’re a musician right?

KP: I’m not.

MM: The tuning of the strings it’s like a scale, it’s a regular scale OK. From E to F. When I tune them with Just Intonation it’s not like the regular intonation, the notes are not 440 for example for the A, it’s 443, 442, something like it… I do it with the phone. When you play with the bow on that cluster, a new note rings that is not a note that is tuned there. So you can feel the seven notes of the cluster plus the note that comes out as a result of all the harmonics that are playing on the other strings. So yes I work a lot with the harmonics here on the lute. 

KP: Nice. I guess are there… do you think about silence a lot in your music?

MM: Yes. On this new record, yes. Because I told you that I go for seven tracks so if I play a lot on each the result is gonna be like [blob sounds] so when I start rec’ing I put the phone with the clock and it’s like, OK I have to wait one minute, OK I stay still or I walk really silently. I start making those silences because I consider the time like a space for this album. I told you that I used the paintings of Philip Guston and I started thinking of time as the space. It’s crazy because I use the time like a space that I have to walk through, not something that is coming. When I play classical music or contemporary music, I used to use counting on headphones because it’s weird, it’s hard, you’re playing with electronics, so you have to be counting or you can put the count on a different track. And all the time when I play that, the feeling that I have it’s like I’m sitting still with the instrument and the time was coming towards me. It’s not like I was moving through time it was the other way. I was still and the time was going through me. And with this new material that I am doing I have the opposite feeling. It’s like the time is there and I am walking through time. Because when you have this huge silence, like one minute of silence, it’s not coming, you are going. You are going to the next sound, so it’s something that you are walking through all the time. It’s a really nice feeling for me. 

KP: That’s super interesting. Do you think that comes from - with the contemporary music with the counter - that it’s almost more of a task thing whereas what you’re doing when you’re walking through time you’re in the moment listening and creating? 

MM: No, no because our brains, it’s super cool, we can do a lot of multitasking but our perception is not that multitasking. For example now I’m thinking that I have to do this, that but I’m paying attention to what you’re saying so I’m not paying attention to the motorbike that just passed. I listen to it but I’m not putting my heart in that. For example if I wasn’t paying attention to you I could say that bike was a small motorbike or the wheels were not that huge for example [listens] that one was bigger than the other one, because I was paying attention to that one. When I was playing that kind of contemporary music with the counter with electronics and with the guitar it was like I can’t be paying attention to this and to the electronics, my fingers on this hand, my fingers on this hand, and producing like a really good art material or sound quality. I think it was more like, survive through this. It’s like, it’s making music or it’s playing music, because it’s not the same thing you know. I was playing music, I wasn’t making music in that moment. It’s really different. Because you can, I don’t know, make a mistake on a note, whatever, but you are making music, you are putting all of your being there. When you are playing music, you are putting your fingers, you are putting something else, and maybe you don’t miss any note but it’s like you don’t move something inside anyone. It’s like this guy that taught me how to play the guitar, he all the time made the - because he was a really badass guy - he says all the time that, in english the words for playing music in the way of making it of rules it’s more clear, you are playing. So the way that a kid is playing. In spanish we have different words for that. When we say that a kid is playing with his toys we say he is jugarndo but when you play an instrument we say he is tocarndo so they are two different words and each word has different meaning. He all the time said stop touching - tocarndo is to touch - stop touching the instrument, start playing the music, start playing with the music, start making music. So that was something interesting. And the other thing he always said is that emotion in english, you can start playing with the word until you say motion, to move something, so you have to move something. Emotion in spanish is emoción, it doesn’t have any relation with the word of movement. So he said to make some emotion you have to move something and to move something you have to start playing with that something. So to produce an emotion with the music you have to start playing with the music, move the sound, play with the sound. This kind of play, wordplay was really inspiring. When I studied with him I didn’t understand that. I understand those things now. He has a lot to do with Pauline Oliveros. Do you know her? 

KP: Of course.

MM: Every summer he made like a retirement to the countryside and we would play music - we went with a guitar to a place - we used to be like ten, thirteen, twenty guys. We did like tai chi. It’s one week that you don’t have computer, you don’t have a cell phone. You have to wake up in the moring, do tai chi. Then you have chamber music. Then you have guitar class. Then you have chamber music. Then you have tai chi. Then you have dinner. Then you go to sleep. For a week. Those retirements changed my life in a way of saying. And when I was in lockdown, I bought a book of Pauline Oliveros called Deep Listening, and I was reading through it and it’s like, wow man that’s like what we did in those places. And I sent him a message and I said, gee Omar I have a book that I want to give you, do you know Pauline Oliveros and Deep Listening. And he was like, no. And I was like, fuck you’re doing exactly the same. And he was like, OK send me the book I will read it. I never sent him the book, but he didn’t need it. So it’s like I’m all the time coexisting with my different Maxis, with the punk rock, the rock, Deep Listening, classical, contemporary, experimental. It’s like different guys that coexist. 

KP: Yeah, yeah. Would you say that maybe what you’re interested in now lately too is smaller, with a fewer number of people, like solos, duos instead of large ensemble maybe to help with that listening?

MM: Yes. I’m listening to a lot of solo music and I laugh because I wrote a piece that’s for a guitar ensemble, for seven guitars, but the way I wrote it down it’s like it’s one huge guitar. Seven guys but they end up being one guitar. For example there’s a part that’s like polyphonic counterpoint. So I wrote it and then to make it more easy to play it every guy plays only one string. It’s like a huge guitar but played by seven guys. That kind of stuff. I think that it’s because all the music that I make, that I compose, I have to be able to play it, even if it’s for an ensemble. So I am doing like solo music but for seven guys. And I wrote down another piece for ensemble and it was really hard, I worked a lot on that piece, it’s for cello, a drum, a flute, a saxophone, two acoustic guitars, and me with the lute. I was struggling a lot with, what can they play. I start thinking about different harmonies, different kinds of stuff. Later on I started making doodles of the music and, OK I don’t want to struggle with the notes, they are all gonna play the same note, and that’s it. So the music is only one note, we are all playing the same note. And I say, OK how is this gonna be interesting if they are all playing the same note. So I start making the idea of a universe and how the planets move around the universe. The sun, it’s the microphone so we are all planets that move in different directions around the microphone and it’s all again working with the space. 

KP: [laughs] space in two senses

MM: Si si si si si. This is a work for Rumia because with Hernán we decided to make a disc that’s gonna be a collaboration with different composers and we made this ensemble and this is my collaboration for the ensemble. It’s gonna be, I don’t know, we didn’t even start rec’ing so I don’t know when it’s gonna be out. But I want to show you one of the drawings [holds up drawing of instrumental orbits] the cello and the drum are gonna be steady and then we all move around them. 

KP: That’s awesome.

MM: Si. I hope this works, I don’t know. It’s again me playing with space, I think that is my - going back to when you asked what is experimental for me - I think that the space is the way to make experimental music for me. 

KP: Yeah like you were saying earlier with the hieroglyphics, space is so often neglected in popular music… it’s almost like it’s in relation to popular music, like because it’s neglected there to experiment is to play with space. 

MM: Yeah, yeah. And it’s funny because now you have microphones that are really cheap that are three-dimensional that you put on the floor and you start playing and it’s gonna be like, wow. But I think it’s like what I said before, it’s something cultural. If you rec an album for like a punk rock band that is about the space, I don’t think that people are gonna like it. I think people need to have the one guitar here, the bass here, the drum in the middle. It’s like I really like the Rolling Stones and I really like Prince, I really like them at the level that I listen to them like every day when I go to work and I’m on the bike. And I think if you put that on, if the guitar is like, I don’t know, five meters away it’s not gonna be the same. But it’s something that we make in that way and we are the ones that can change it. It’s like a construction. When Elvis Presley or even The Beatles made their first album, they were all playing together in the same place and there was one microphone in the middle and they were all playing. That is working with space. Then with time we end up putting the microphone on one guitar, so it was like it was on purpose, that they tried to sound like that. It wasn’t like, OK we couldn’t do it better. Actually they tried to do it like that but I don’t know if the people that came after them tried to do it like that because they have a sound idea, an artistic idea like, OK they do it like that so we have to do it like that, you know what I mean. They didn’t take the responsibility of doing something genuine. They tried to emulate the sound. When I rec’d that album that you hear on SoundCloud, the TOP MODEL track, it was the first time that I worked with a music producer and for me it was like, why in the fucking hell do we have to do all the time… he said, OK the two guitars are playing the same thing, one of you has to change. You’re making one chorus with the voice, let’s make three. Let’s put another keyboard here. And the feeling that I had - I really love the guy and I really learned a lot - but the feeling that I had when I talked with the other members of the band was that the texture of the… if you think of it like a painting, all of the painting is full of something, you don’t have even one moment to say [breathes] and it’s all here [hands on forehead] and I think I can’t do that kind of music. It’s not something that I enjoy. I don’t enjoy making it, I enjoy listening to it. The Rolling Stones do that. Prince does that. But I always have the idea that you should be able to play what you write, OK. It’s something that I overwrite when I make the lute play seven times, right, but the idea that you can do something really fancy and then go with the band and try to play… you make a lot of fireworks in the studio and then you go to the stage with the band and you can’t do that because you don’t have enough members. You can’t put a trumpet there because you don’t have a trumpet in real life so why did you put a trumpet on the record. I know that sax sounds really good OK but there’s not gonna be anyone on stage playing the sax so why do I have to put a sax there, huh. Well it’s something that I always think about. You have to do something that’s genuine, you don’t have to lie. It’s like art. The art, it’s something you can like or not but it’s not artificial, it’s genuine art, it’s not the same thing for me. 

KP: Kind of going back to playing with space a bit, when you incorporate environmental sounds like birds or your daughter playing around the house is that consciously playing with the space?

MM: Yeah, of course. But it’s not that I have a track that has those sounds, they are there.

KP: Yeah, yeah, just like the sax you’re not gonna go and add some birds to a track. 

MM: Yeah, yeah. I saw a video when I was younger and it was John Cage and I think he was in an apartment and he was playing the piano with the window open and a car crossed the street, something like that, and he says, you realize I can’t play this piece again ever right. And at the moment I thought that, well this guy is really eccentric. I knew him because I read about 4’33” and it was like, OK this guy is not a musician, it’s something else. But later on I was like, of course you can’t play this again because it’s not the same. If you think about us like painters it’s not the same. You can’t duplicate the color you make if you are making the colors. If you are making the pink, mixing the red and the white, it’s not possible that you arrive at the same pink tomorrow. You have to enjoy the pink that you have today. Because if you’re struggling with doing the same pink, you’re gonna be there for awhile because it’s not possible, sorry baby, it doesn’t work like that. You are working with a material, OK. With music sometimes we forget about that because we play the C and we play the C and we play the C and it’s always the C and we forget about how this C is connected with the place where you are playing it. And when you add the recorder it’s like, OK you are taking a snapshot of that C moving on the space. I think it’s magical, no. So I start rec’ing all the time, everything. Everywhere I go, I go with my recorder. I laugh because last winter we went to Iguazu Falls here in Argentina and I was with the recorder and we went on the tour - it was twenty guys - and I was talking with the guide and said, is there any way you can make them hold there for five minutes so I can rec this without their voices. And I ran like twenty meters and started rec’ing. And she was really really happy. My wife told me later she said he’s making the recording of how the water is falling here. And now it’s a part of my life. Everywhere I go I go with a rec. And I try to put the environment like a snapshot. In the summer I was in Bariloche, it’s in the mountains. And I was staying with my family close to a little river and my friend Catriel Nievas, do you know him? 

KP: Yeah

MM: He stayed with us for two days there and I said before he left Buenos Aires - we had already been there - I told him, hey bring a recorder and let’s make an experimental duet of recorders. And he said, oh no no I borrowed mine to a friend so I’m coming just with a harmonica. OK, bring the harmonica. And my wife, she went with her theorbo because she has a concert that she’s studying all the time. So when Catriel arrives to Bariloche I say, OK let’s go to the - it was late at night - let’s go to the river and let’s rec. And he told me, well what are you goin to play, and I show him the theorbo and he was like, oh fuck yeah let’s do it. So we rec there, we do an improvisation and all the time we interact with the river. So it was like us playing, throwing stones to the river, playing with the stones, smashing stones, that kind of playing with the environment. It’s like everywhere I go I go with a recorder and rec things. I understand later on what John Cage said, right. And I use the recorder like if it was a snapshot all the time. My wife is taking photos, I am recording. 

KP: Nice. That’s what I had lined up but did you want to go any other directions? 

MM: No, no.

KP: Along the way we’ve mentioned quite a few people, Hernán [Vives], Julián [Galay], Sergio [Merce], Catriel [Nievas], and then I’m also aware of in your loose circle of musical friends Tomás Cabado and Nacho Castillo over at SELLO POSTAL…

MM: Yes, I don’t know Nacho Castillo. I talk with him by phone or messages but if you put two different peoples on the street I don’t know which one is him, but he’s a really good guy. Yes, Tomás Cabado, he’s a really good friend of mine. He wrote a piece for me, for the lute. The first album that I made on the lute that I told you that I rec here in the house I rec a piece from Catriel, a piece from Hernán, the last piece is mine, and Tomás wrote me a piece for lute but it was a really large piece and it wasn’t as experimental as I thought. It was a more traditional piece. I had to study a lot. He told me that he wants to rec, but I’m not gonna put it on my record, it’s gonna be a record of music that he’s making for different instruments, for theorbo for Hernán he wrote one, for cello, for the lute. 

KP: Nice. Beyond them is there anyone else that you wanted to shout out or anyone else you play with frequently in Buenos Aires?

MM: Yes, I have a group here. Remember that album that you reviewed, Atractor?

KP: Ah yeah, Silvio [Moiz] too. 

MM: I have a group with him, a guy that sings called Mariano Llere - he’s the guy that made that album that I reviewed recently - and a girl that plays the violin called Corina Guerrero, the name of the group is ENTE. It’s like free improvisation but we use a tale from Borges. We do a performance with the text, we all read the text at the same time, different parts of the text, you know that Borges loved labyrinths so we do like a labyrinth of words all the time. Really crazy and we’re working really hard with that. Ah, there’s a group that you should dig, they’re super super cool. It’s a duet called UDLI, la utilidad de lo inútil. They are two guys, a boy and a girl, they play with objects, they do things like [clinks coffee cup], they do the gigs in the place they rehearse. It’s an old house - [laughs] they are fucking crazy - and they say, OK the concert is gonna begin when you listen to this noise, and when you listen to this noise if you want you can get inside or not. But if you’re gonna get inside, you have to be really careful because you can hurt yourself with the broken glass on the floor, with the nails on the wall, you get inside a room with a broken piano with a lot of things hanging from the ceiling, a lot of things on the floor, and the concert is a performance that we all play. It’s like a huge improvisation. They are really good, because they play with space. They start playing with walls, on the floor, on the ceiling. It’s really really good, you should check them out. I think that I really like them because I think they are really genuine. They are not inventing, creating something new it’s like if you start digging you can find Mauricio Kagel, he used to do something close to that. But it takes a lot of work to do what they do and it’s not like a mimic. It’s not like it’s easy to do, like German minimalism, I’m going to play one note. I’m not saying that it’s easy to do that but I think that the amount of time that you need to prepare an entire room with things hanging, the idea that, OK my piece it’s my creation it’s the room, the sound it’s gonna be free. How you can give your music to others. The credit, it’s not mine, it’s the people that are playing, I’m just hanging things here. I think there’s a lot of art there. To play one note and everything just… eh I don’t know there’s people that they do that really really good. For example I know you know Fredrik Rasten?

KP: mmhmm

MM: Well, I love him. He’s like really really fucking good. I write them all the time saying, wow wow I really love this, I really love that. And I send my music to him to get feedback, something like that. And he does a lot of that one note stuff. But he has something. You don’t feel like plastic there. You feel like really huge substance in what he does. He does a lot of things. He inspires me in a lot of things. There’s a piece - remember that I told you I wrote a piece for seven guitars - when we recorded that I rec’d it with a microphone in the middle and we sat in a circle because I didn’t want to mix it and I took that from an idea of his, Six Moving Guitars. And I took that idea again for that piece that I told you about, the ensemble where we all play the same note and we move around the microphone. Those ideas, I didn’t steal them but he’s the first guy that I saw doing something similar, so he’s a huge inspiration for me. I told it to him because I admire him. 

KP: Yeah it seems like even though what’s heard is quite different between maybe the duo with the house and Fredrik, they’re really both playing with something that’s important to you, which is the space, in different ways.

MM: Yeah, yeah, totally. So now that we talk about it, if I have to say something about me, it’s that I like to play with space. That’s it.

annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Cat Hope - Black Tide (2017)

Cat Hope is a composer, performer, improviser, sound installation artist, and scholar perhaps most associated with flute, bass guitar, and contrabass, whose music often embraces aleatoric elements, drone, noise, glissandi, and low frequency sound. Some collaborations include: Decibel with Louise Devenish, Stuart James, Tristen Parr, Lindsay Vickery, and Aaron Wyatt; Super Luminum with Lisa MacKinney; HzHzHz with Tristen Parr; Candied Limbs with Lindsay Vickery; as well as various film and art projects with Erin Coates & Anna Nazzari, Tracey Moffatt, and Kate McMillan. Some recent releases include Works for Travelled Pianos, performed by Gabriella Smart, and Decibel with the eponymous ensemble; Hope also maintains a running reference of several realizations on her site and on bandcamp.

Black Tide is a 2017 composition for double-bell trumpet, subtone, and electronic playback. The work recalls the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and the consequent heightened consciousness around the vitalness of unpolluted waters, like Lake Biwa, which is featured in the score and finds a mirrored reference in the modified, prepared, and amplified biwa performed by Mitsuaki Matsumoto in the fixed playback. The notes indicate the meanings of its shapes and colors - including opacity - through mixed symbols and text as well as just text. Words on the score signal dynamics and remind of techniques or equipment associated with some shapes, “softly,” “very soft,” “superball stick on bell,” “practice mute.” An elevation map of Lake Biwa and its tributaries overlays the final moments of the score. And, characteristic of Hope’s compositions, the score is in motion, with a vertical line indicating time. Hope’s video scores can be synchronously played through the Decibel ScorePlayer app for iPad and all of their associated files can be found in the appropriate DOI links on her compositions page.

The score determines overlapping relationships of techniques, their sequence, and the general means of producing sound but allows wide latitudes in the sound itself. Not just an alternative to flipping pages in the way digital tablets are often used, the score is intended to be interpreted in motion. Its frame-by-frame presentation undercuts the synchrony scores foster and places the interpreter in time, in the concerns of the moment. This diachronic approach might underscore that interpreters adapt appropriately within the field of the score based on listening to previous soundings, which feeds back into the flexibility of sounds allowed by the score and the greater emphasis on process over specific result in the instructions. In relating the score to its context, maybe the volatile, mixed technique of trumpet is polluted ocean to the serenity of the biwa subtone and Biwa Lake, or maybe the upper volatility and lower serenity symbolize the usual activity of a water column, like a lake, compared to the upheaval from the depths of Tōhoku. Breath could indicate a vitalness or wind fetching surface waters. Tongue rams pop like bubbles which might be associated with water, particularly near an interface with air. How interpreters choose to relate the symbols to the context likely colors their interpretations. But how to interpret the elevation map? Maybe it reinforces an imagination of the score as depth or water column and its movement as walking a cross-section, or maybe in providing dimension into the page it tacitly asks to accentuate its spatiality (which the instructions for speaker routing might also hint towards). Lastly, interestingly, the vertical line appears to indicate time only in the sense that it is a contingent collection of events rather than something on the clock. There is no duration written in the score materials, only provided by the default duration of the video software, the speed of which can be adjusted.

The realization below is performed by Callum G'Froerer, who also commissioned the work. 

reviews

Alvear / Blanco / Carrasco - Mada (Modern Concern, 2022)

Cristián Alvear, Santiago Blanco, and Nicolás Carrasco perform a Taku Sugimoto composition with electric guitar, sampled guitar, and synthesizers on the 35’ Mada. 

Some significant silences spot an otherwise bustling environment, twin synths an organic electronic hecatoncheires barrage reminding me of Ikue Mori’s instrumentation, splashed with guitar. Enough to recognize repetition reveals a relatively minimal selection of material. The quick attack and cut decay of guitar beeps. Discordant chords ringing. Propulsive trills. Eerie glassy swells. Stuttering sputtering feedback clicks. A rising reverbed melody refracting. Gravitational bass drops like dub techno double kicks. Cavernous dripping synths glitch. A slurred ghostly ambiance. Their arrangement appears random, disjointed. Though I have a hunch more careful construction repeats no combination to focus the nuances of color each material assumes in relation to others in each new combination. Or if a combination is repeated it is at least enveloped with previously distanced combinations whose new juxtaposition would recolor the perception of it. So something seemingly both repeated and random. Sometimes material shifts, gain climbs on guitar chords, bleep bloop parameters turn down reverb and turn up density, and while there are thresholds of plain change it asks to return to materials’ previous iterations to see if they were really changing all along. And like the eye drifts toward intriguing corners of an action painting there are similar fascinations in this abstraction that draw the ear, the strange harmony of guitar chords and eerie swells, the infectious off-kilter rhythm of click, trill, and bass beats, the chorus of a gain-forward chord and EVP whirr. 

- Keith Prosk

Previous recordings of Mada include one from Ryoko Akama, Alvear, Cyril Bondi, and d’incise and one from Sugimoto and Stefan Thut. 

Daniel Barbiero - …for double bass & prerecorded electronics (EndTitles, 2022)

Daniel Barbiero plays contrabass compositions and improvisations with fixed-media tracks of analog synthesizer realized by Ken Moore on the eight-track, 39’ …for double bass & prerecorded electronics.

The synthesizer sounds unfashionable, with an aura of seventies sci-fi spacestation bridge tracks, looped or played like loops through shifting parameters and textures or affecting aleatoricism through dramatic shifts in space and jumps in timbre. Stark contrast to the warmth and depth of acoustic contrabass. Which complements and presents counterpoint to the electronics through various methods. Rumbling vibrato for hashy crackle. Winding arcs bowed for buzzing bee paths. Staccato for stippling beeps. Something like the theme of Psycho for sirens. Hoarse nervous sawing and cascading pizzicato for electric sputtering. Matching texture, movement, relative register, speed, space to make this couple less odd. In a way it replicates the response required from acoustic musicians to early electronics and in doing so revisits the fundamentals of adaptive communication. Demonstrated vividly through three iterations of response to one electronic track, moving from melody bowed over it, to mixing in arco rhythmic repetitions eddying like electronics loops, to a plucked scalular lyricism with rhythmic eddies that synchronize with the bubbling electric beat. 

- Keith Prosk

Pascal Battus - Cymbale Ouverte (Akousis Records, 2022)

Pascal Battus plays four pieces for cymbals and rotating surfaces on the 64’ Cymbale Ouverte. 

The mechanism accentuates the action attached to sound, like a circular saw, attuned to the materials added to the system and their shape. Muting holding-releasing and tapping induce beats beyond resonant waves and various touchpoints generate distinct frequencies for tenuous melodies. As glass is viscous at certain scales, touching cymbals to the grindstone can nearly stress the liquidity of metal, shedding stridulations and harsh roars for warm purrs and clean singing. Sounds like sine waves seem to translate the periodicity of the mechanism transverse to the surface for ursounds in atomic orbital forms. Their rhythms transition like feedback, flashing a depth of complexity understood as distortion between dominant waveforms. But more often than this it is subtle shifts in noise, though a steady hand stays the kickback to conduct a symphony in the cacophony. 

- Keith Prosk

DesoDuo - Songs for Two (self-released, 2022)

Katie Eikam and Kevin Good perform eleven companion compositions from Good on one vibraphone for the 60’ Songs for Two. 

Their dynamics, tempo, and articulation are tender, gentle, and careful. Aspects especially emotive alongside shared resonances, dulcet melodies, and narrative structures and titles that convey the relationship of the two in tonal and physical space. “Finding” reflects “Going,” bowings converging to the same bar. “Sharing” means each mallets the same bar while one goes high, one goes low. A broken struck melody drifts from a steady stationary bowed drone in “Leaving.” The two move across the scale to nearly end where the other began in “Interweaving.” Effervescent mallets buoy each other, moving down the rail piecewise together, “Sustaining.” The long pauses punctuating “Waiting” find them further apart when they sound together again. “Following” finds one placing tones around - beside, before, just after - the other melody until it leads. “Forgiving” needs time alone as much as time together. “Trust” puts the performers close, shoulder to shoulder, crossing sticks even. And “Together” is one note bowed together for the duration. Structural simplicity evokes an earnestness in the emotion. Melodies on the metallic material given time to decay grant the comfort of music boxes or reverence of bells. Hammerings and bowings both cultivate complex harmonic relationships that reinforce the narratives, resonating together and beating as one in warm soft glows when in accord, leaden silent and cold when far apart in body and soul. 

- Keith Prosk

Beyond the first frames in each video below, the scores can be viewed in the second volume of B-Journal.

David Friend & Jerome Begin - Post- (New Amsterdam Records, 2022)

David Friend and Jerome Begin perform eight Begin compositions for piano and its electronic processing on the 49’ Post-.

Dizzying dazzling phasing canons of cascading arpeggiated chords, mellifluous, flowing, amassing and dissipating like rolling thunder or in some limitless ascending spiral of accumulation make a kind of water music, momentous, turbulent, effervescent, at moments rippled through with tender twinkling melodies and hammered key plinks. Electronic processing usually subtly enhances organic aspects of piano, perhaps sounding something more than two hands can handle, accentuating harmonic glints, weighting piano’s low register rumbling for thunder with little celestial bolts of static, small squalls of clashing harmonics, a chorus of echoes intimating an impossible space for any piano studio. But sometimes its inorganic mechanisms manifest obviously, in effects too far from inputs, sustained for supernatural durations, with timbres totally immaterial to the piano. Contextually an argument for musicmaking tools as technology and vice versa, which seems obvious when said, but its implementation can recall cyborgs and then perhaps their potential pitfalls, though often villainous aspects of these beings are just code for other in science fiction. A call for open horizons on a few levels.  

- Keith Prosk

Annette Krebs - Six sonic movements through amplified metal pieces, paper noises, strings, sine waves, plastic animals, objects, voice, a quietly beeping heating system and street noises (Graphit, 2022)

The most recent solo releases by Annette Krebs have been a treat to hear, each offering a new glimpse into a meticulously refined and impressively distinct aesthetic. Through years of experience and experimentation with elaborate electroacoustic systems she has managed to hone her sound with microscopic precision without detracting any of the improvised music’s instantaneous, spontaneous beauty. The sounds still all feel linked to gestures, and the gestures still all feel linked to an intent. What comes with this maturity is that that intent is not just that of a performer’s impulses and whims, it follows a plan, a process, a sophisticated intuition to arrive at its peculiar style and to paint its environment. The sterile, pristine, monochromatic atmosphere allows me to imagine that process as a dynamic medical operation in a science fiction hospital.

The sparse clanging, pops and fumbles that open the first movement remind me of equipment being set up and prepared. Ambiguous devices cling together as they’re dropped onto metal trays, cables and tools are organized, obscure equipment is turned on, initialized and tested, awkward pauses occur between each step. It feels anxious, uncomfortable, confusing, almost threatening. Metallic swipes and crunching textures enter from silence and leave reversed echoes, immediately deforming time in their absence, helping conjure an atmosphere of immaculate, high-tech surrealism.

The second movement is exquisitely soft. Faint, reassuring, non-threatening textures hang in the air and depart. Perhaps at this point an anaesthetic has kicked in. The unknown machines and gadgets still exist but are clouded by gentle static blurs, obscuring their nature and sanding off the sharp edges. The gestures sound professional now, rehearsed and precise. The elements stack into a decisive, blissful ambience that alleviates all tension and lures the patient into a controlled slumber.

In the third movement, the operation is finally underway. Sustained and repeated notes bleed over from the last movement’s therapeutic daydream fuzz and drill into my subconscious. At first its peaceful and comforting, the tones feel discreet and decisive enough to reach the cause of my anguish and pure and potent enough to cleanse it. The patient tones exchange between a human, emotional warmth and a mechanical, scientific cold, making for a realistic aura of healing. But as sounds repeat, cut out and restart, grow dissonant and distort, it starts to feel like this aura might not be working. It tries, it tries again, but it’s just not working, and what was once confident and alluring begins to feel feeble and ugly.

An aggressive thud ushers in the fourth movement, which plays out as a second, more aggressive operation. Metallic scrapes, smacks and cracks again invoke the preparation of unknown equipment, but a hurried pace plus a lack of compression cause the section to double down on the anxious, threatening vibe from before. The second operation begins with obscure electronics, clicking gadgets, a plethora of small, abstract sounds. This time it feels like several procedures at once, all with their own independent tools, procedures, objectives and sounds. It’s subtly overbearing. Layered, repeated sounds scrape and warp the brain, eroding anguish alongside all else and leaving an absolute mental null in its moments of silence.

The fifth movement is a recovery. After this rough, second operation, the soft tones from the first have returned, and are perhaps more sincerely comforting now than they were then. The initial section is drenched in dreamy surrealism, with rotating tones and processed voices that surround the listener and inaudibly deep bass that suspends them. Perhaps another anaesthetic has been administered. It’s a gentle world of rehabilitation, rest and observation. Slowly the hypnagogic atmosphere lets up and the listener awakens into a world of concrete, squelching sounds and tangible textures.

The final movement could be a return home. It begins with a tonal, technical descent, mirroring a nostalgic return trip from a future operating table which drops the patient off into playful, abstract vocalizations. Deconstructed speech showcases an idiosyncratic, personal style of communication that expresses its beauty and restored health with pleasant hums. This could be the patient back home, healthy, enjoying life, talking to themself, singing to themself – it’s a delightfully warm, human conclusion to a delightfully cold, alien performance.

I don’t want to imply that Annette Krebs intended this album as an analogy for a science fiction hospital visit. I think that is almost certainly not the case. I bring it up to demonstrate what I find so exciting about the abstract, sonic storytelling that can be found in this music. It follows emotional, thematic and sonic currents without ever suggesting a proper way to read them. It calls forth feelings and signals ideas that transcend easy explanations. It leaves me with thoughts and sensations that I can best understand with elaborate fantasies and unspeakable sentiments.

- Connor Kurtz

Jesse Kudler & Graham Stephenson - Apposite Rejoinder (JMY, 2022)

Jesse Kudler and Graham Stephenson combine amplified trumpet with guitar, radios, transmitters, tapes, and electronics on four improvisations totaling 35’.

Stephenson and Kudler remain committed, for the duration of this recording, to the overcast grayness on which they open, but what they seem to reveal, in the course of doing so, is the sheer kaleidoscopic depth and breadth of hue within that environment. It’s difficult for me not to hear the squeaked hyperactivity (almost ‘balloon rubbing’) of the trumpet(?) as a kind of ‘protagonist’ wandering through a ‘landscape’ gradating from windy or stormy weather to radio or TV static to industrial or mechanical sound. After an affectively resonant moment of respite suggested by stably-pitched and vaguely ‘minor-key’ tones near the beginning of the second track, we are thrust back into a world of ‘noise,’ navigating both sudden ‘turns’ and subtle ‘developments’ of complexly overlapping textures. What seems to be a final return to undifferentiated grayness near the end of the fourth track is undercut by the understated shock of seemingly-untreated human voices (and then maybe traffic?), reorienting my listening back to the concrete reality of live performance. Fittingly, after this refusal of perceptual stability, the recording ends not with calm mirroring its beginning but rather with a new variety of heavily-reverbed noisiness. As many moments of this recording trouble my perhaps too-‘classical’ narrativization as may seem to support it, but, regardless, what’s clear here is a particular density - not of sound, per se, but of ideas and of motion.

- Ellie Kerry

MAW - A Maneuver Within (Atlantic Rhythms, 2022)

Frank Meadows, Jessica Ackerley, and Eli Wallace freely play six environments for contrabass, electric guitar, and piano on the 43’ A Maneuver Within. 

The stages of mitosis title five brief pieces followed by the sidelong “Decay,” suggesting a relation to the thought that all that lives is born to die, perhaps a nod to the geographic distance between the players after this session as a solid unit. Perhaps to its fluid musical character. It is an ooze. Timbres are as often anonymous as attributable through preparations, alternative approaches, and muting aspects of instruments’ harmonic profiles. Labyrinthine melodic lines muffled like monochromes of analytical cubism in propulsive strokes as gestural as musical lean discrete, angular, rhythmic. Sometimes supplemented with finger drumming, knocking, and other percussion. Despite this always a bed of deep harmony from double bass’ big body, the electric presence of amplification, and the reverberant harp. Sounds’ rings flare in this otherwise dampened atmosphere, selected harmonics bright like high tension steel cable or the imagined sound design of an arachnid crawl across its loom from inside-piano and electric guitar tone. Though their core remains, timbres appear progressively identifiable in the sequencing - walking basslines, clean riffs, conventional piano notes - coalescing. Perhaps to signal that the development of traditional technique is the death of sound. 

- Keith Prosk

RLW - Tunnel (Sonoris, 2022)

Tunnel only mentions a single credited instrument: the voice of Annette Krebs. Via electronic transformation and virtuosic recomposition, RLW has successfully turned humanity’s most natural instrument into something wholly unnatural. The frequencies of the voice are scrambled and reassembled, syllables and words are tangled and contorted in time, and our primary source of communication is mutated into incomprehensible abstraction.

This concept is handled at its purest on the Voix pure tracks which book-end the album, two tracks made entirely of processed voice. RLW elegantly rolls Annette’s voice into an indescribable je-ne-sais-quois, tearing out all recognizable elements in favour of a mass of shifting textures – for the most part its unimaginable how these sounds could even relate to their source. It’s about 6 minutes into the piece that I can hear anything I can decipher as a voice. Annette is saying something, communicating something, but due to RLW’s aesthetic interventions it’s decontextualized and transferred into a new communication: from communication via words to communication via sound. The piece then finds a cautious balance of the two, where words might just be sounds and sounds might just be words.

The Sans voix tracks I find more difficult. On an album that only credits voice, on a song which promises to use no voice, it leaves me wondering what’s left for it to use? Nothing? The tracks are defined by undefinable textures, mysterious human presence and a lack of natural progression. They recall the most abstract moments of Voix pure, the moments that recalled the voice the least, effectively creating an aesthetic that can fairly be considered voix sans voix, a reimagined abstraction that houses the specter of communication. The aesthetic is both dense and hollow, it’s a complex, unfollowable exchange between voiceless entities. At times it pushes beyond the limits of voice by recalling deteriorated melodies and esoteric percussion, perhaps reaching past speech and towards a greater, more direct method of aural communication.

Album centerpiece Instrumental avec voix delivers on the combined climax that its titled suggests. Through the combination of destructed, abstracted voice and constructed, imagined voice, RLW has created an immensely surreal atmosphere here. It’s an atmosphere of constant conflict, where layers of manufactured conversations with their meanings either unknown or undefined can coexist as elements of a greater musical expression, of an artist sharing a remarkable aesthetic with a listener. That conflict is a communication too, an internal one between competing ideas and concepts that ultimately settle on collaboration, blending together to form the track’s strongest moments.

Album closer, Voix pure again, wraps things up with hard-hitting elegance. The voice is thoroughly excavated for each sonic element, blended and resynthesized to create new, artificial voices. Organic and impossible environments and textures are juggled in a way that creates an illusion of the real in communication with artifice, where one prompts the other and information is continually interchanged between fiction and actuality, between imagination and inspiration, between processed sound and its own source. The listener exists on the other side of this transfer, like a ghost observing a human conversation, or a human observing a ghost one.

On each of the album’s five tracks, even those sans voix, Tunnel finds a captivating way to take influence from human speech to conjure a ghost world of ethereal chatter. Despite sounding more like occult ambience, hungover electricities or the throats of growling animals, the aesthetic is always indebted to the human voice and its applications, whether it be literally, conceptually or both. That consistent source of inspiration helps keep Tunnel compelling and cohesive, and that on top of RLW’s massive imagination and masterful sound design makes for an experience captivating, challenging and highly rewarding.

- Connor Kurtz

https://www.sonoris.org/product/rlw-tunnel/

Quentin Tolimieri - Monochromes (elsewhere, 2022)

Quentin Tolimieri performs fifteen works for solo piano on the 189’ Monochromes.

As the title suggests, each track concentrates on one technique, to attenuate structures and to attune to textures. Silences zip modified melodies or rhythmic bars transpose octaves but more than any note monotony focuses the ear to hear harmonics’ spectral auroras. The seemingly autonomous lives of waves, in between in long decay or aggravated out of sustained stippling. Assuming various characters of starry twinkling, whale song breaching under rolling thunder, or morse chirps. Sometimes siloed in such a way to convey not the total mechanism of the piano but one material of it, the wood, the key, the string. And while approaches could be divided into shades of slow melodies and of driving rhythms, textures within that range can change from classical clarity to thudded plinks and from giant mbira to hammered timber. Colorfields can leverage size too, evoking the local acuity of open desert and vast sea that comes from a search for meaning in an enveloping nothing. Larger durations yield similar effects. And putting your nose to a tree with an eye for the forest induces a kind of vertigo. In this movement from nonmovement from nonstructural framing the material soul of the instrument is illustrated by the instrumentalist. 

- Keith Prosk

what - the unconscious is a machine for operating an animal (Eiderdown Records, 2022)

Dave Abramson and Alan F. Jones play five movements for percussion, pedal steel guitar, and test equipment across two sidelong tracks on the 37’ the unconscious is a machine for operating an animal. 

The contextual onus of the guitar’s character conveys a country-western impressionism together with the curt tact invoked from Cormac McCarthy references and reflected in instruments’ phrasing. Miragelike pedal steel swells crag-crowned domes of exhumed igneous diapirs glowing devil’s red against the malevolent pulsing sun of relentless low end electric hum. Reverbed picking cavernous bat speak. Dreamhaze arpeggios and ghostly tremolos death cult icons contra the clarity of living consciousness. In relation to this crashes’ splashes begin to recall the tidal flats from reptilian dominion. Reinforced with rolling marches and primal kick beats and drumheads worked like whetstones. At some point, a graveled voice or something like it in distorted glossolalia. A languorous celerity and desert density further folds into these feelings of a psychedelic western soundscape. 

- Keith Prosk

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Christopher A. Williams, Caroline Gatt, and Joshua Bergamin recently announced (Musical) Improvisation and Ethics, a project to develop an understanding of its titular subject through collaborations with the klingt collective, Splitter Orchester, and Trondheim Jazz Orchestra. Similar to Williams’ Tactile Paths, it will have its own site for exploration and interaction along the way.

April 15 is the last day to answer the call for text scores from The Center For Deep Listening, which will be published one a day for 365 days starting May 30 to celebrate what would be Pauline Oliveros’ 90th year. 

The Spring issue of Point of Departure is available. With an emphasis on large ensembles, it features: Bill Shoemaker on Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra and Lennie Tristano’s Personal Recordings 1946-1970; Troy Collins in conversation with Ohad Talmor; Stuart Broomer on Cecil Taylor Ensemble’s Göttingen and Umlaut Big Band’s Mary’s Ideas; Werner Herbers on Floris Nico Bunink; David Grundy in conversation with Dave Burrell; and excerpts from Daniel Barbiero’s As Within So Without and Karl Berger’s The Music Mind Experience.

An intermittent reminder that this newsletter welcomes feedback of any kind at harmonicseries21@gmail.com. Especially now, we are seeking feedback on ways that might encourage you to sometimes contribute a donation when you can if you appreciate the efforts of the newsletter. We treasure the kind words we’ve received but donations make this a slightly more sustainable project and allow us to offer something back to the musicmaking contributors that make the newsletter possible.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate this newsletter and have the means, please consider donating to it. Your contributions support not only the regular writers but the musicians and other contributors that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the regular writers, and distributes 40% to musicians and other contributors (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised the newsletter of work it reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. The newsletter was able to offer musicians and other contributors $1.57 to $2.10 for February and $0.00 for March (no donations received). Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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conversations

gabby fluke-mogul is a New York based improviser, composer, and educator. Over video chat we talk about places, spaces, relational experiences, listening, playing, violin, voice, text, words, duration, ritual, and Flora the cat. 

Forthcoming projects include RUE for solo, duo, and trio with Nava Dunkelman, Ava Mendoza, and Zeena Parkins, commissioned by Roulette and scheduled for a May 18 premiere that will be available to stream. 

KP: Hey! Can you hear me? 

GF: Yeah. Can you hear me, Keith?

KP: Yeah, perfect. Good morning, good morning.

GF: Good morning, how you doin’?

KP: Good, how’re you? 

GF: I’m good [laughs] yeah. 

KP: Nice. Do you like your new place?

GF: I do, yeah. I love it actually. I feel super, super thankful to be here. I’m like three blocks from the ocean and, yeah, it feels really good.

KP: Awesome. Do you like to take ocean walks since moving out there? 

GF: Yeah, I’ve been going at night actually. Especially with the full moon the past few days, it’s super beautiful.

KP: Very nice. It’s good to hear it was a good move. I couldn’t tell if it was a good move or a, yo-I-hate-this-landlord type of move or something.

GF: Yeah, for sure. No it was… I moved to New York March 2020 and I had been living at the same apartment that I had moved into since then, for two years. It’ll almost be two years in two weeks or so. Which is pretty wild, to say the very least. So yeah it was time for a big shift for me… it kind of happened very quickly and fortuitously and I decided to go for it. 

KP: Good. I know you moved to NYC at a strange time, or a strange moment. I know you’ve got a good group of friends in both the Bay Area and NYC, but have you noticed anything between the two locales that makes musicmaking feel a bit different? Whether that’s the funding that’s available or rent or even the landscape or the weather? 

GF: Totally. All of the above. I think improvising or being a musician or making music with other people is so deeply relational. Whether on a global or a local level or perception. Whether it’s the landscape, the land, the indigenous land that you’re in relation to, or just the geography, the city, how things are laid out, how you transit, how you get place to place. I think that all deeply impacts how you relate with other people and other musicians and then that also impacts the spaces you play in, if they exist, what those look like, how accessible they are. And, yeah, the Bay and New York are incredibly different places. I feel like they just move at super different paces. Time is very different, at least in my experience, between the west coast and the east coast and I guess that’s a cliche thing to say or whatever - the west coast is slower - but it kind of is, in a way. Or at least my experience. When I lived there and with the communities that I was part of, there was less of an urgency to make music in the ways I was interested in. Most folks around me were kind of settling and were heavily partnered and were either done with touring or taking a breather and were kind of fine, stable financially or et cetera et cetera and I was none of those [laughs] and just really wanted more community and more energy around being an improviser and meeting new people and playing with new people and wanting to tour and wanting to record. 

KP: Yeah. I guess if I had to place the talking fast caricature I would also say the west is known for its big spaces and I would imagine - this is probably not true but - hopefully more natural spaces and a little less urban noise. Or at least you’re able to find spaces with a little less urban noise. Do you find that living in such a noisy city like NYC has impacted you at all?

GF: Yeah, it’s funny you say that, I was just… I’ve been thinking this past week, on the train… like I never wear headphones, and I remember having a conversation with Pauline Oliveros years ago and she was like, why would anyone wear headphones on the train or in transit, there’s so much to listen to already. And I’ve always felt that way, I just never heard anyone else say it. To me, yeah, I’m already so saturated in sound that is awesome, terrible, painful, bizarro, whether it’s human conversation or tiny squeaks from a loose screw on something but, yeah, I’m always interested in taking it in because it impacts me in some way, whether it’s conscious or unconscious. The Bay has its own soundscape and noise in a big way. I lived in Oakland for six years. I moved every year I think to a different kind of zone but, yeah, I think no matter where I live just organically I’m gonna be impacted by the noise.

KP: Yeah, I mean - you were saying it earlier - the environment, whether it’s natural, societal, whatever else, that creates its impression on the mind and the body and I imagine that’s impossible to not filter consciously or not through an instrument while you’re playing, it just depends on whether or not you’re keeping an ear out for it... I guess this might kind of sound so obvious it’s silly, but in some of our back-and-forths I got the sense that listening consciously while performing is a big part of what you do. And I think you mentioned in particular communication between your body and your violin body. But I was wondering if there are other things that you consciously try to listen to while you’re playing, whether that’s the audience or the space, and whether you try to incorporate that in the conversation, if you try to feed off the audience sounds, the vibe, the resonances of the space. I guess to bring that a little narrower [laughs] whenever you’re playing, what are some things that you’re consciously listening for? 

GF: Well, everything [laughs] yeah, I feel like when I’m in a flow state, when I’m in it, whether I’m alone or playing with other people, the body and bodies I think are always consciously or unconsciously - whether you have an awareness of the unconscious listening is a whole different thing and whatever that really means or looks like… I’m kind of more interested in the, you know, psychoacoustic, spiritual nature of that all and I guess, yeah, of course that intersects with Deep Listening and it intersects with so many people’s thoughts and ideas throughout history and time of what it means to listen. It’s so deeply cultural and so deeply personal. But yeah I’m listening to the space, I’m listening to the physical architectural space, to the energy in the space, and I think in some ways the past, present, and future of the space, like what has been there before and what’s there now and perhaps what’s the potentiality of what comes next. And of course the other people I’m making music with. The bodies, if there are, of the audience who is there as well. I think there’s a lot of unconscious listening, or global listening, that’s happening for me and my body. And then there’s stuff that comes more forward, like someone’s cough or the slight squeak of someone’s chair or the floorboard or I was playing the other night in Queens at Outpost Artist Resources and it started to rain and it was amazing [laughs] I was playing solo and I’m not sure what the roof is made out of or whatever but there are also glass windows and super high ceilings and the rain was just fucking amazing. How could that not impact what I’m playing, or how I am present in the experience. I actually immediately became… I stopped playing for a minute and immediately remembered something that Roscoe Mitchell had said when I was at Mills… or said often I guess [laughs] he always said that nature and silence are perfect. And I was just… yeah, of course I think about that all the time but it was just one of those strikingly powerful moments where I was like, what could I have to say or play that could be more perfect than this. Or more sublime. But I guess I decided to speak to the rain and the way that made sense to me in the moment. But, yeah, I think I’m always listening to what’s going on. 

KP: Yeah, yeah, and I don’t know if this is weird or not but when you are in that mode, does it feel more like you’re juggling those experiences or does it feel like you’re going from one place to the next, kind of like on a map or something, having known where you were and having a view of where you’re going. 

GF: Hopefully and ideally I’m not thinking. About anything. Any cognitive processes that are happening when I’m improvising are hopefully very quiet or in the way background of my body. This past solo set that I played I decided to structure very specifically, compositionally for myself. Sometimes I do that for solo work, sometimes I don’t. There’s always some kind of thread of composition going on of course but this was a more concrete and specifically structured set that I wanted to play. So for example that, structurally and cognitively quote unquote, I felt in the back of my body. Just kind of like the bones of the house, you know. It’s just like, OK, this is how I’ll move. But other than that I’m just taking things in as I go. Occasionally something will become more in the foreground I guess, like if someone's phone goes off it’ll kind of take me out of the moment…or I’m still in the moment but it becomes more forward. And then I can make a choice of how I wanna deal with that or not. They’re all choices, whether I’m consciously, cognitively thinking about them or not. They’re always gonna be happening. They’re always in the flow. But it’s not like I’m like, oh I’m listening to the audience right now and I’m just gonna respond or make choices based on how they’re sounding. Now I’m gonna listen to the cars outside and respond… I mean I think those are awesome choices if that’s what you’re interested in doing, but that’s just not how I roll [laughs]

KP: Yeah, and in those moments where there is a step back and you’re kind of pulled out of, I guess for lack of a better term like a singularity or something, is there any time at which you become aware of the violin as something else, something that’s a filter for your own expression? Or are y’all always a duo, a dyad?

GF: I guess I think of us less as a duo and we’re just us [laughs] We translate through one another. I speak through violin; violin speaks through me. That’s how we do this life together. I mean, yeah, sometimes I am taken aback by certain things, like my bow gets caught, stupidly, in between my bridge and my tailpiece, or I’ve hit the instrument in a way where… like this happened where my bow wedged itself in a weird way and I was just like, damn [laughs] that’s really dumb [laughs] but then I’m like, huh, I wonder what’s happening there. Or, wow, that’s a sound I didn’t expect to hear and now I have to deal with that and maybe that is now pushing me in a way that I really needed to go, in a way that’s gonna shift what’s happening, musically, like what’s gonna come out of that. And something always does. I guess it’s also a translation of… that impacts my whole body when things like that happen. I can feel it in my stomach and my chest and then of course that feeds back into the instrument and how I interact with it. It’s not a feedback… it’s just we’re always translating to and from one another.

KP: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I’m sure at this point you’re tired of hearing about it but I feel like one thing everyone picks up on in the sounds we’ve heard from you, at least within the past year or two, is a kind of physicality. And I think one of the things that strikes me about what I’ve heard is how dynamic it is but there are moments of intensity, whether that’s through speed, volume, noise and I feel like there’s maybe a biased association of that real-time listening and response being associated with a slower or quieter music and I wonder if in those more intense moments there’s a fluctuation of listening or a fluctuation of consciousness or if you ever have to take a step back and calm things down… I guess, yeah, how are you feeling about that [laughs]

GF: [laughs] I think there’s so many processes always going on in my body. Period. Always. Whether I’m playing or not. And I don’t think it’s dissimilar when I’m improvising. I mean we’re all improvising bodies. The context, the language, time is always changing and is always different, I feel. And so, yeah, there are always quote unquote compositional processes happening for me whether I’m playing or not. I’m always thinking about shit. Or narrative or song or noise. These are such huge words that mean completely different things. But I think the more I live my life in those ways, just always moving through life thinking and feeling about these things, it translates into how I play. It’s like I can be full of a surge or a big wave of something that perhaps is perceived as intense or visceral, corporeal, physical, all these words that people have been describing my playing by. And for me that’s just my experience of my body [laughs] and who I am internally. But of course in a musical context I think then there are issues at play of like what comes next. What comes after that climax, if that’s perceived as a climax. There are so many choices that could be made, decisions, you know. I know those are processes that are happening for me when I’m in those moments. Sometimes something really conscious-forward, structural will come into play for me and I’m like, OK, you know, now I’m gonna make this choice. But I think, regardless of whether it’s a super conscious thing, I am always making those choices when I play.

KP: Yeah, perfect. And I guess another one of those things that might convey that physicality to me, probably because it’s recognized as from the body, is your voice in something like threshold. It kind of reminds me of Charlotte Hug, her exclamations, but even more on the side of a redirection of energy, like a yell during a karate chop or something. But I wonder if there’s a particular way that you think about the voice or approach the voice when you’re playing. 

GF: Yeah. I grew up singing in a children’s choir. And those were some of my earliest memories of music and being in my body in a way that I felt like I had agency over. Or that I felt like, oh I’m a child but I have power or I can be part of something… or I’m part of something bigger and spiritual and energetic and I’m respected in this way and I can feel quote unquote safe or seen in this way, which all of those things… that was kind of the only place that I felt any of those things as a child, for lack of going down a whole rabbit hole [laughs] of, uh… of trauma. But I think having those super early experiences at like four or five years old of connecting with my voice and body in that way was transformative and so essential to who I am and how I experience quote unquote vulnerability. I feel like that’s also a word I hear describing my work. It’s interesting. I’m super aware, somatically, of my chest and the vibration of my vocal chords and what I hold in my throat and my chest specifically throughout time whether it’s… it just has such a direct relationship for me to a lot of really intense things [laughs] My vocalization or my use of voice or audible sounds that come out of my throat and my chest and my mouth and my lips are pretty much involuntary. Those are not… I don’t have a lot of… I have some control over… I guess, yeah, I don’t have any control over when they happen or what triggers them or how they’re expressing themselves. Of course once they are happening I sometimes make choices, again whether it’s a very structural choice or not. I mean a lot of the time it’s just another part of translating my body through my violin body. We can be similar in those tones or sounds, we can be different, we share language, like I recognize so much of my… so much of the sounds I make as a body are such translations to where I am on the instrument or how I use my bow in certain ways, whether it’s emotionally or just my experience. Like if I’m in pain or if I’m experiencing pleasure or whatever hue of intimacy I’m experiencing it’s so sometimes in the moment. Or afterwards I’m like, oh, that’s so interesting, that feeling, I totally know what that sounds like when I’m playing and vice versa. And I can sometimes just have the auditory experience whether it’s huahuahua whether you wanna call it a hallucination or not, I can hear that when I’m away from my instrument. But I think for a long time I… that part… like my voice and my vocal cords were super closed when I played and it wasn’t until a few years ago that that shifted for me and it was a huge life-changing shift in my playing and my life. It’s such a deep part of my experience of what I do and how I do it.

KP: Yeah definitely. I mean it’s the first way of musickmaking that we’ve got, right. And it’s not just felt through the fingers or the lips or something, it’s felt inside our bodies. You mentioned composition a little earlier and, maybe sitting next to the voice, I understand you use text scores sometimes?

GF: Yeah.

KP: So what are some of the decisions that might go behind writing something down or using a text score versus not doing so?

GF: Sure. I think I’m interested in how text can create different experiences for improvisers to interact. I came into text scores through Pauline’s work, kind of in my super early twenties, and I had never seen that before, and I had never encountered text as composition as a form of notation. And I got into the whole… did the deep dive of - and still am in it - of alternative, experimental, non-western notation. And for awhile I was interested in - and I still am - a hybrid, using western notation, graphic, text. I’m curious about those intersections or how people encounter multiple languages. But I guess at the time I found Pauline’s work, I was really interested in how improvising can be accessible to children - and to older folks too - who don’t necessarily encounter being part of musical spaces in the ways that I do. Like how can text create a world for people to feel like they can come into making sound without the gatekeepers of traditional notation, or stuff like that. And I started composing text scores for young people, for toddlers and elementary folks who I worked with in schools, after school, and in community spaces and whether it was using body and voice or if we had access to egg shakers, anything really. Or violins. Or with older folks, their own instruments, et cetera et cetera. I’m curious how people embody, or internalize, just think about words [laughs] and how words or directives or just asking, making very clear compositional choices, but through text, how people respond to that. And how that shifts the quote unquote composer/musician dynamic, if that’s possible, in terms of power, quote unquote hierarchy, you know, all of those questions that are always being talked about and shit, you know, very intentionally and intensely examined. Mad respect to everyone who’s doing that work, don’t get me wrong. And, yeah, I’ve moved through phases of time where I’m like, wow, no [laughs] that didn’t work for me. Or maybe this was just an ensemble or a group of people that this doesn’t make sense with. And I think that’s no different than any other type of composer’s relationship to an ensemble or a group of people or a band playing their work. Sometimes the personnel doesn’t work out. Or sometimes you just need a different drummer, due to feel, due to… all of the things. But that’s been really good for me too, throughout the years, and it’s really shifted the way that I think about composing with text. Like how to ask for what I want but also… or what I’m hoping to hear, or the space that I am imagining. Of course, I don’t know how it will be filled because the scores that I compose are mostly compositions for improvisers so who knows what will happen. But at least I know what color the floorboards are [laughs] 

KP: Yeah yeah. I’m kind of getting the sense that what you do write tends to be more a kind of very general direction for action more than something that leans more poetic with an implied translation to music…

GF: Actually, mostly the latter. 

KP: Oh, nice, OK.

GF: Yeah I compose mostly for internal processes that then get translated to the external. Or work that deals with… I’m really interested in duration. Like duration over… a score starting day one and on day thirty-six it’s performed. And the text will often involve some type of process throughout that time. It isn’t necessarily an interaction with your instrument, or with the other people involved, but I’m curious how interacting with text or words imbues the body. Like how people hold certain types of asks around a process, whether it’s encountering a poem or poems for thirty-six days or trying to find the spaces in your body where you hold certain experiences or trying to really connect the threads of experiences you have in your life in relationship to how you encounter your instrument. And then what happens when you perform that, being witnessed if there’s an audience involved, or how you perform that then in relationship to the other improvisers involved. Like with these super intimate individual experiences, how do you then be in relationship to other people and to the audience, to the space, to the present moment, after a long duration. I guess I’m mostly interested in the relational. And that goes back to the beginning of our conversation. Improvisation is deeply relational to me, and so I’m curious about really emphasizing and exposing certain processes for individuals and what happens individually and then collectively when everyone comes together through text. 

KP: Yeah I think… there’s the I Care If You Listen interview where you talk about duration and time a little bit and I've been thinking about it and music is always put in relation to time, right, whether it’s standardized meter or clock time or something. And it struck me that, similar to what it sounds like you’re trying to achieve, if you think about the time of words, to me it implies like you’re almost kind of speaking them, like your cadence. These interviews are always weird because people can’t hear how we’re talking, right, it’s all transcribed. Compared to most of the people that I talk to, the speed of my talking is like molasses and when I say one word it might be much slower than when someone else says the word. So it kind of emphasizes people’s relative time whenever people are performing, or rather digesting, that text score. Just some thoughts. I guess when you are thinking about words and what they convey to people, do you tend to lean more into the meanings of words or is it more the kind of rhyme, cadence, and poesy of words, or a mix?

GF: I think it’s a mix. And I think it’s so much based on the experience of audiation or hearing the words or the sounds in your head. I think so much of it is about the remembering of the words or of the text or the directive or what I’m asking myself and/or other people to think about or encounter or experience. I hold so many… like I can hear the timbre and the tone and the texture of so many voices, phrases, things people have said to me, things I’ve heard, things I’ve said. I think about those things a lot. I’m always holding them. They’re always with me. Sometimes I play them and sometimes I don’t. But I guess that’s my relationship to when I compose with text. I can hear myself in my head speaking those words and where they sit in my body and then I’m curious how other people experience and hear them in their own and then how they translate through their own instrument body and what that sounds like. And of course everyone experiences time, like you said, in such different ways. And, yeah, I’m interested in that. And sometimes that is really a mess [laughs] Sometimes it’s really a failure, like yikes, shit, oh no, man, wow, that is so different than my experience of these words, my voice, time, painfully so compared to the other people I’m playing with if I’m playing my own score or if I’m working with a band or group of people who are playing my music and I’m witnessing as a composer and I’m like, wow that is just so different than what I expected. But for me on one hand that is such great information and am I OK with that? With how… as a composer, composing for improvisers in this way, yeah, this is an interpretation. This is the process. This is how these folks are playing this score and interacting with one another in these super relational and intimate ways. And then on the other hand it’s like, huh, do I need to shift the way I write these scores. Maybe, huh, that doesn’t work for me in a way that really doesn’t work for me. And that really makes me think about Stockhausen’s text scores or Pauline’s work or text scores that I really admire that are really consistent. At least in my experience, in my listening of recordings or my experience of performing them or witnessing people perform them, they’re really consistent and they always conjure an experience or a quote unquote result - which is a terrible word that I’m gonna use - that is powerful or really compelling in a way that when I think about traditional notation et cetera et cetera, yeah, I mean some things don’t turn out like that no matter how you compose them, and that’s the craft of composing or the work of composing. But I guess when I think about hearing text scores throughout time, the ones that I’m really compelled by, I go back to them like, what’s happening here that this is composed in a way that elicits such a specific engagement from the musicians that consistently creates this music. And I try to really learn from that and be curious about it. Yeah, so again, on one hand I’m open to people’s interpretations of course and on the other hand I’m like, huh, how can I keep working on this? How can I keep being curious and experimenting with this type of composition that hopefully… yeah, period. 

KP: Yeah that can be tricky too ‘cause… I’m not familiar particularly what you’re talking about but already I’m questioning whether or not that consistency would come from something in the score or whether, sometimes, especially with recorded music, a recording of a particular performance gets enough power and applause behind it it almost becomes a paradigm. People put their own spin on it but it’s almost copied in a way. That’s a trap to be aware of, but not sure if it applies. 

GF: Yeah, I guess the text scores that I’m really inspired by and affected by are the ones that are able to consistently create space for a very specific gestalt. Like for the experience of improvisers, it’s a specific world created, and specific to how improvisers relate to one another in the gestalt of the moment. And with whatever is present of course but is held by this compositional experience of people encountering text in this way. It involves them interacting with themselves and the processes that come up with them, for them through this text and then with one another in the moment. And the scores that I find really compelling are, again, the ones that consistently happens, that gestalt is there, that relational ability happens organically. So I’m curious and I’m interested in that.

KP: Nice. And beyond score writing, do you like to just write creatively for fun, poetry or prose or…

GF: Yeah I do. I’m trying to get back into… or I guess the past couple months I’ve been trying to get back into my writing, both poetry and prose. For awhile that was a really big part of my life and I think it’s something… it’s good for me. And I’m trying to get back into it. There’s a lot of resistance I feel, from myself, to write for myself. I feel very stubborn about it often, I don’t want to do this, no, no I do not want to sit down and write in this way, no. And then I do and I’m like, oh [laughs] that brought something interesting up for me or I didn’t realize I was carrying… you know my pockets were full of rocks [laughs] like, oh yeah these rocks were pretty heavy. I finally stopped being so goddamned stubborn with myself and was like, huh, I should probably empty my pockets.

KP: Yeah yeah and sometimes almost - I don’t know, maybe not similar to what we were talking about with the gestalt thing but - sometimes you have an idea that feels so firm in your head, you maybe even have word choices and the cadence of things going on in there, and then that firm feeling is the resistance to do anything because it feels done. But when it comes out on the page, it actually comes out so differently. 

GF: Totally. I think I struggle with that, because I do hear, as I said, so much in my head. And I have a really loud critic that comes into play that stops me from writing but once I start [laugh] if I can fucking get there and actually allow myself, give myself some slowness, give myself some, I don’t know, the permission to just start or say something then it often starts [laughs] I can often be in flow. But I definitely get into arguments with myself about it. 

KP: Yeah, and not to get too hung upon words but because you strike me as someone who chooses their words carefully, again in that I Care If You Listen interview and then with Brad Rose over at Foxy Digitalis, you mention I think in both the ritual of performance and I wonder if that has a special meaning to you… I guess everyone has their own associations with words and my association with ritual in particular kind of implies a volatile space inbetween a couple of states and if you think of weddings or quinceañeras or something it’s always on the backdrop of a cultural tradition, and there’s a right and a wrong way to do things to get to the other state. So I guess, is there tidbits of that in your sense of the meaning? And if so, if there are right or wrong things to do in a performance, is there a tradition in mind?

GF: I guess when I think of ritual I think of liminal space. Or I think of like the air between worlds, whether they’re past, present, future, living or dead, and then all the inbetween. And all the timelines that are inbetween, whether I have words for that or not. And about the hue, the sensation and the sensualness of it all. I think that’s, whether it’s coded or codified in a certain way or… it’s more about the intimacy for me than anything being right or wrong. It’s all very fucking queer [laughs] you know. Yeah. And it’s expansive and it doesn’t for me… I’m open to it all. I mean, I’m not gonna set my violin on fire any time soon [laughs] I know my lines. I know them very well. I know them in my bones. And I know them in my blood. So I’m not worried about that. And if there are times where I feel like I don’t have a knowing or something is shifting or my lines are being pushed in a certain way by something or somebody, I know that that’s when I need to take a minute. And sometimes that happens to me when I’m playing and of course it happens to me in life. And that within itself is a ritual. I think ritual can be micro, tiny moments, whether they’re of breath or they’re of a cultural tradition or something really concrete or a practice that you or many people or your family or your people have done for generations. I think, yeah, who am I to say what a ritual is but for me the ritual of being with my instrument, of being with my violin, and whether I’m alone or if I’m playing with other people, it’s always there, you know. It’s always there and I know it’ll always be there. 

KP: It was kind of cropping up just then and it’s been cropping up throughout the conversation, but the difference between solo playing and a group context. Are there some, beyond having more information to listen to and to react to and also the relationship with the actual people that you’re playing with, are there some things that you like or dislike of one of the other that is exclusive to that context, group or solo?

GF: I kind of love it all. I love meeting folks for the first time and playing a gig or getting together and figuring that out. That’s super exciting and awesome to me, that kind of… how do you speak to one another, how do you move together, how do you be together. And what comes of that. That’s something I love and then I also love working with people over time. My dear friend Nava Dunkelman comes to mind, who I’ve had the pleasure of playing with since 2014, and just the extreme privilege of working with someone over time and developing and deepening, all of those processes mentioned previously… not saying that… I mean I think also when I’ve toured or when I have played with folks for the first time, I think that can always happen, it can always just be right there. You know, so deep and so just killing like, dang, this is happening. But then, yeah, being able to develop language or how we move over time is awesome. And then I also like the ritual of getting together [laughs] when that’s possible in this pandemic. Of meeting up weekly or regularly to play. I guess it’s different than a super longitudinal, long term thing. I think it could also get that way or be that but, huh, how do we interact each week, how do we develop language, or work on tunes, songs, structures, come up with things together. I love that too. 

KP: Nice. Well that’s most of what I think I had lined up, did you have any direction that you wanted to go? Or any direction that you wanted to shout out?

GF: I guess I’m curious what brings you to this music? Not necessarily mine but where’s… when did you or how did you start wanting to do interviews like these? 

KP: Uh, I think like most people’s paths, it’s been a slow, windy one, but I probably found my way to…I mean I was listening to some free jazz from the 60s and 70s beforehand but my now partner introduced me to more modern improvised music in 2014 and it kind of took off from there. And at some point - actually since I’ve picked up that you’re a fan - there was a Leroy Jenkins recording, it was his Driftwood ensemble minus Min Xiao-Fen, they released an old archival thing from like 2008 and I just had this urge of, you know, this is something I know that no one else is going to talk about, so I want to talk about it, to just share this experience. So I found a blog that would take amateurs. And the words have not been kind all the time, my outlooks have changed, but I think I got to this path wanting to approach music in a way that I wanted to see it approached. With a little curiosity towards the details. A little more open without so many assumptions. With a little bit of the evaluation stripped away. As far as the specific interview style, I really ripped it off of this blog called Tone Glow. Their review side can be a little harsh sometimes but their interviews are quite personal and presented raw. And I think… I had done a couple interviews before, and for one I approached three musicians, Sarah Hennies, Lisa Cameron, and Claire Rousay, and I just approached it from a bad point of view. I have things that I go for in these interviews but I was very specifically approaching those interviews from the perspective that they all happen to be trans percussionists and queer percussion instead of as individual practices and I found out through that process that I’m just incredibly uncomfortable embedding someone else’s words in mine like in features you usually see. Whenever I saw Tone Glow I thought, this is great, this is something that I’m comfortable with, just having a conversation and presenting it raw. It’s been super interesting. Sometimes there are hangups about wanting to write for clarity and stuff, many people bring that up, but I find that in conversation sometimes people are talking a little past each other and it’s hard to deal with some of these headier things on the fly but what comes out is usually super interesting and telling of the kernel of what they’re trying to get at in its own way. Sorry, that’s a long answer [laughs] but that’s how I came to these interviews. But yeah, just really trying to approach it with a little more attention to detail and care in a rawer way. But, yeah, anything else? 

GF: hmmm, I don’t think so. I’m getting a cat today.

KP: Oh nice.

GF:: Yeah, I’m very excited.

KP: A rescue or a kitty?

GF: A rescue. Yeah, this has been the longest time period of my life where I’ve lived without a creature, the past two years. And I’m really looking froward to playing violin for a cat every day [laughs] we’ll see how she feels about it.

KP: Yeah you can interact with the meows.

GF: Yeah you might be hearing some more meowing and chirping from me in the near soon.

KP: We’ve got a dog, like a big one, a 100lb dog, and the past couple years in particular would be even rougher without being able to hug an animal. Humans are great too, but there’s something special about something fuzzy. 

GF: Totally. I’ve really missed living, sharing life and a home with a creature. That’s something that comes very organically to me. I had been living with a giant rabbit in Oakland before I moved to New York named Cardamom. I’ve never quite met a creature like her. Very demanding. Had a lot of very big feelings. And ate an entire piece of drywall out of my wall when I told her I was going to move to New York. She was gonna live with a friend, an ex-student of mine. I came home around 2AM from a gig and found that hole in my wall and was like, holy shit. So yeah Cardamom didn’t join me in New York. She is still living her best life in California but I think it’ll be really great to live with a fuzzy friend again.

KP: Yeah and luckily cats don’t really… well your furniture might be an issue but probably not the walls.

GF: Yeah we hope not. I don’t know what could surprise me anymore in this life but definitely a cat eating through drywall might be something that would get me. Fingers crossed, bottoms up that that’s not gonna happen. 

KP: Do you have a name picked out?

GF: Yeah, her name is Flora. After Alejandra Pizarnik, the poet. Her first name was Flora but she went by Alejandra. Yeah, Flora the cat. 

annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Mira Martin-Gray - music for two friends who haven’t seen each other in a long time (2021)

Mira Martin-Gray is an improvising musician, producer, composer, sound artist, and multi-instrumentalist who frequently works with feedback, voice, and percussion and whose work also appears under the monikers Tendencyitis and Cypro. Some working groups include Overleaf with Heidi Chan and Kayla Milmine, 3M with Mark Zurawinski and Mike Lynn, and Quartz Ibex with Kurt Newman and Olivia Shortt, the latter of which appears on her label, cette records. Some recent releases include I Have Eaten From The Timbrel I Have Drunk From The Cymbal (as Cypro), Stick Control for the Air Drummer, and, particularly pertinent here, socks and sandals with Germaine Liu. 

music for two friends who haven’t seen each other in a long time was written specifically for Martin-Gray and Liu to perform at The Guelph Jazz Festival’s Autumn Echoes Series, though is adaptable for others. For two performers on drum kit, drum machine, and no-input mixer, it presents text direction and word cues for feel alongside corresponding graphics whose interpretations should have a maximum duration of 10 minutes and segue into each other. It contains standard notation for repetition and indicators for percussion and mixer parts, but the orange notes during small talk and other symbols signify improvisation.

In so many ways the score conveys the comfort of catching up with an old friend. My eye is drawn to the laughing emoji and the smiley above that, each suggesting mutual exchange in spatial balance and venn convergence. Comparatively, the irregular figures of small talk indicate the awkwardness of finding footing when first meeting after so long. Beyond the titles, some phrases in the descriptions do more to develop the feel of the music than any words about the mechanics, “awkward,” “finding common ground,” “screaming and laughing like a tickled saxophone or an electric hyena.” Interestingly, the two find their groove when their parts separate, as if to show that a good conversation with a good friend entails being able to be yourself. And while the standard symbol for repetition doesn’t change, its effect in these non-standard contexts might, the rote catchup of small talk, the rolling laughter of something that hits just right. While other means of notation might provoke a similar narrative, I doubt its fun and its friendliness would be as infectiously instilled in the call for performance as it is here.

- Keith Prosk

reviews

Alvear-Bondi - Latidométrica [Bárbara González Barrera] / Definite body, at sea [Mara Winter] (INSUB, 2022)

Cristián Alvear and Cyril Bondi perform a Bárbara González Barrera composition with electric guitar and percussion and a Mara Winter composition with electric guitar and bowls on the 43’ Latidométrica / Definite body, at sea. It is the third in a series of three recordings showcasing performances of compositions from Chile and Switzerland commissioned by Alvear-Bondi, preceded by performances of pieces from Santiago Astaburuaga, Nicolás Carrasco, d’incise, and Anna-Kaisa Meklin.

Listen to “Latidométrica” like a heartbeat. A woody click and short tone mark the minutes. In between, severe silence makes each sounding bear more gravity. The cadence of guitar tone, with quick attack and clipped decay, might shift but only rarely does it ring out or sound a chord stroke, like a leaky valve or an arresting arrhythmia. The timbre of percussion is comparatively varied, wobbling skin like fluttering, circular cymbalwork flowing, big bass drum contractions. They are just out of time with each other. Perhaps it’s just the kind of variations someone attuned to their heartbeat is sensitive towards. Until the minute pacemaker misses its mark. There is a minute of nothing but silence. But then the most lively chord and lub dub drum yet seem to reawaken the beat. It is a terminal rally. And the guitar tone becomes the beeping life support song of vital monitors. More than a minute of silence signals death. And it was not meant to be like ours but another’s life whose sounds we were hanging on. A crushing narrative from silence. 

And again following the title, “Definite body, at sea” appears to be a broken chord tossed among bowls’ waves. The chord changes its shape. Times its movement around crests or on top of crests. Cannot find its footing among bowls’ rogues and refractions. Loses and regains pieces of itself but remains the chord. But by the end it finds its sea legs, and sounds steady, resounding its own wave to resonate with the others. 

- Keith Prosk

Nat Baldwin - Blind Field (Dinzu Artefacts, 2022) 

Nat Baldwin arranges three solos for multitracked contrabass and voice on the 26’ Blind Field. 

Sounds seem closer to rubbing cellophane with a dry thumb, ripping polypropylene tape from plastic, or a quick unzipping, frictional textures that express strings’ corrugations and creak the bones of the bass, crosshatched tensive bowings suspended in vertigo, glissandos or the illusions of them, a throbbing polyrhythm of pulse. A tender choir in delay, trumpeting cherubic ah-ahs into humming, harmonizing, beating together, amid a field stippled with harmonic plucks, and close mic’d mouth sounds with saliva. A sandy woodworking and a quavering whimpering expand into heavy scraping like dragging wood furniture in fits across a wood floor or a draining whirlpool yawning and sonorous arco radiating beatings, freckled with shimmering crepuscules in fitful music box cadences. Always a pulse with interdependent interventions, something gentle and something brutal, in tempestuous harmonies. 

- Keith Prosk

gabby fluke-mogul, Amanda Irarrázabal - Rayas (self-released, 2022)

gabby fluke-mogul and Amanda Irarrázabal - with violin, contrabass, and voice - play and record their first meeting on the four-track, 43’ Rayas. 

The two move together through motifs, stay close in momentum and texture and share a comfort to independently stray towards something new too to nudge each other elsewhere. Bass as drum and tapping violin. Hard plucks that thwack the neck from each. Low end elephant roars for violin’s squeaky trumpet (and at another moment bass might mimic trombone). Rubbing plastic and squeegeeing glass. Airy whispers with kettle whistles. Scratch and saw. Scrub and scrape. Voice emerges from strings like extensions of them, wails from whines blurred until one pauses. Complementary communication and contrapuntal too. Bowing especially sometimes foregrounds register differentials and the possible speed associated with them, the two feeling like the columned shear of a stream surprisingly powerful for its depth in the difficulty of finding footing in its bed. And they differentiate themselves in glimpses of folk tunes and romantic swings, shifting sub-bass clouds more felt than heard. Hear phone tones and sneezes but I don’t think the duo responds to these contingencies. 

- Keith Prosk

Takumi Ikeda - Musical Procedure (Ftarri, 2022)

Fumi Endo, Takumi Ikeda, and Kokichi Yanagisawa perform four Ikeda compositions for solo, duo, and trio with piano, electric percussion & objects, and electric guitar on the eight-track, hour-long Musical Procedure. 

The three “Delimiter” versions for paper score and piano play with similar material, a broken dyad with variations on a third tone, a dyad with variations on a third tone, a broken dyad with variations on a third chord. Though these are significant differences they are iterative in themselves and iterations of each other but each also cultivates a harmonic aura fluctuating and stable, at the boundary of repetition and change at every level. A linchpin of this portrait, in Ikeda’s words, is that “an awareness of patterns precedes sound image,” weighting the process more than result. An openness in result paired with recognizable direction through repetition no doubt develops an informed manipulation of the musical material available to performers, creating new pathways towards interactions either could not compose on their own. 

The other five pieces are all for video score. A frame-by-frame presentation might undercut the synchrony paper scores can foster and puts the interpreter in the moment. This diachronic approach underscores that interpreters adapt appropriately based on listening to previous soundings and, from these recognizable patterns, what they know will need to happen, which feeds back into the flexibility of sounds allowed by the score and the greater emphasis on process over result. Some games are at play here, and among them speed determines shape, sequence determines speed, and ex machina indicators determine speed while it also gradually increases. It can feel repetitive, random, rigid, playful, like a systematic experimentation of harmonic, melodic, and dynamic juxtaposition but with an artful sensitivity towards sound placement that might coalesce into whimsical romps and erratic dance. 

- Keith Prosk

Annette Krebs - Six sonic movements… (Graphit, 2022) 

Annette Krebs performs a 37’ realization of a composition in the Konstruktion#4 configuration on Six sonic movements through amplified metal pieces, paper noises, strings, sine waves, plastic animals, objects, voice, a quietly beeping heating system and street noises. Similar to the previous presentation of Konstruktion#4, it offers alternate mixes illuminating the relation of its sounds to the tones of home, namely the heating system. 

Those familiar with the series will recognize some core aspects. Movement, textures, sources metamorphosed into nuanced disorienting meanings, lynchian, strange. My ear is drawn to the presentation of mixes. Traffic is easy but while I can decipher an anonymous hum too constant to be traffic I cannot hear the beeping the title references. Maybe a sine relates to a siren or the heater frequency, maybe quiet electric utterances find spaces in the roomsound, maybe I imagine these things because I’ve been told to hear them. My pitch poor ear is unsure of how the musical system incorporates the heating system. But the traffic effects a tangible change. Whereas before silence amplified its weirdness, these odd morphologies appearing and as quickly disappearing from the void like alien objects arced through space, now its aura is grounded and mundane. It reminds that this is a person performing, not a phenomena. It transposes the sound from an imagined space to the real one. It puts the personal relation between them into the construction, which is perhaps why parts of this system are subtitled Corona Variations, not only for their coincidence but because the pandemic instilled a hyperawareness of our bodies and space - in distance and our homes - that could only communicate with our creative works. 

- Keith Prosk

Charmaine Lee/Fred Lonberg-Holm/Gabby Fluke-Mogul/Joanna Mattrey/Weston Olencki - Live in Accord (Notice Recordings, 2022)

Live in Accord documents four roughly quarter-hour sets from a summer afternoon event organized by the label, including: Charmaine Lee with voice and electronics; Lee and Weston Olencki with voice and electronics; gabby fluke-mogul, Fred Lonberg-Holm, and Joanna Mattrey with violin, cello, and viola; and Lonberg-Holm and Olencki with cello and trombone. Sienna Blaw, Chelsea Enjer Hecht, and Emily Kessler joined the latter two sets in dance. 

Find Lee’s fast cut feel. Flapping. Fluttering. Groaning. Coos. Stressed respirations. Muted screams and babbled phonemes. Random-noise bursts with radio live transmissions. Dreamy EVP interference. Swinging grooves from twisting feedback. Arcade falls and failures intoned. Clipped glitch shear a strange turntablism. Glottal beats like ventricular claps and a galloping, distorted, like a horseman of the apocalypse in this context. Strings rip, saw, whinny, scratch as a turbulent unit, a cacophonous chorus, contrapuntal plucking a bed for arco monologues, though not too fast for the cadence of the dance. Vulgar trombone meets cello creaks and groans, equine raspberries, tragicomic slides, lispy sustain, and a gurgling yawning vocal multiphonic meet two stabs at throbbing double stop harmonies and twinning glissandi. Beyond its noisier corners a throughline is their tether to the moment, birdsong and cock’s crow, the crunch and shake of passersby on grass. The internal rhythms of the dancers imagined to complement those from the sounds in their footfalls. Like three sirens anthropomorphised from the birds and cunningly close, or three graces a balancing beauty into this cacophony, or three furies driving the passion of the instrumentalists. 

- Keith Prosk

Alvin Lucier & Jordan Dykstra - Out of Our Hands (Editions Verde / Important Records, 2022)

The ensemble Ordinary Affects perform sidelong realizations of an Alvin Lucier composition and a Jordan Dykstra composition with cello, viola, violin, and percussion on the 39’ Out of Our Hands.  

“Corner Church and High” is endless gliss so slow its movements feel ambiguous. A kind of koan. Strings’ beatings establish shortly and vibraphones’ measured march’s decay ripples through them like drops in a pool. Harmonic interactions carve out ethereal streams, glow thrummingly, sing like sirens. 

“32 Middle Tones” feels similar but cellular. Packets of sustained sounding with walls of silence. Cello tones combine in string trio chords for revolving harmonies, textures. Assorted percussion adding depth of field in jingling shaking, winding scraping, some kind of rolling thunder, and bowed metal. Harmonica too. And sometimes a sung tone so pure it blends with the beatings. Its serial structure highlights its textural nature. Not just the nuances of sounded harmonies - isolated enough to cleanse the palate but not enough to foster forgetfulness - but the character of beatings each emits. 

- Keith Prosk

Ordinary Affects on this recording is: Laura Cetilia (cello); Luke Damrosch (percussion); Jordan Dykstra (viola); Morgan Evans-Weiler (violin); and J. P. A. Falzone (percussion).

Éliane Radigue & Frédéric Blondy - Occam XXV (Organ Reframed, 2022)

Frédéric Blondy performs the Éliane Radigue composition Occam XXV for organ on this 44’ recording. 

As each occam ocean recording illuminates the limits of its instruments, this one might draw attention towards the installation of its instrument. And whereas others tend to exhibit the bond between an instrumentalist and their instrument, this one seems as if it could be particularly contingent upon changing specifications and spaces. Interestingly, Blondy directed another occam subject to similar shifts - if changing personnel of an orchestra could be imagined as changing the instrument - in Occam Ocean for Onceim. But maybe Onceim has yet to have to change personnel to perform their piece, and maybe Occam XXV could be considered site-specific to the Union Chapel organ. 

It begins not so much as something heard but something felt. The absorbing ambiance of its architecture a seismic shaking settling into shifting bellicose beatings. Whether it’s sighing bellows, pumping hydraulics, or the nearby tube, tunnel whooshes with hissing whispers like rails seem to slowly unfurl an invisible chord. The latter scenario would be unlikely in other occam recordings, but fitting here alongside later moments of emergency vehicle sirens just outside whose doppler songs complement hastening and slowing beating patterns. A kind of humming harmonic breath between bass throbs. And at last something understood as more sound than earth rises and blooms. The embracing warmth of organ pulse. Fields of waves refracting among each other. In the wind, dancing, two pronounced beatings in counterpoint yet not canceling. Hear new tones send apoplectic murmurs through pulses. Complexity and beauty. Angelic radiance. And in the end, a celestial twinkling. As if more than any inspiration from water under the sovereignty of gravity, this piece has pulled light, water, and air from the ether to grow like a tree from earthly low register to heavenly high. 

- Keith Prosk

The Rhythm Method - The Rhythm Method (Gold Bolus Recordings, 2022)

The string quartet Leah Asher, Meaghan Burke, Carrie Frey, and Marina Kifferstein perform four of each others’ compositions and three improvisations on the 51’ The Rhythm Method. 

An ongoing goal of the quartet is to provide a nurturing space for each of its players. Reflected in each contributing one composition. And an echo of this self-similar moral is in the music. They stay together, attendant, ready to buoy each other up yet stay true to their internal cadences. Whether that’s frenzied bowing in turns or vocalizing a word of “Che Si Può Fare?” each. Endless glissandi in and out of unison and diffusion for an uneasy harmony or bowings punctuating gliss for the meniscused meandering of forest’s falling leaves from desiccating autumn. Spiccato fluttering butterfly kisses, hushed rubbing, gentle humming, all in pizzicato like rain on shelter, and other textures together. Forceful and noisy but tender, with care. A sounded sisterhood like eddies braided between the curl of cutbank and bar to together make the mighty river. 

- Keith Prosk

Kaori Suzuki - Music For Modified Melodica (Moving Furniture Records, 2022)

Kaori Suzuki performs one 26’ realization for a retuned melodica with foot pumps on Music For Modified Melodica. 

Sustained and overblown, the shrill nasal drone like cousins harmonica, shō, bagpipe. A deep harmonic profile widened by the expansion of its chord, now flanked with low om and high whine. A saturated field of waves, refracting, shifting. Shimmering harmonics’ glistening sheen celestial twinkling. Enrapturing, ensconcing. Ecstatic radiations call forth auditory hallucinations from cicada tanpura. Waves and their automatic interactions surface into and subside from consciousness from it’s shifting chord. So much movement from so little action. Despite its haze something piercing. Like its waves summoned from nothing its singing stays in the ears, ringing, after its end, even at low volume playback. 

- Keith Prosk

Lisa Ullén/Elsa Bergman/Anna Lund - Space (Relative Pitch Records, 2022)

Lisa Ullén, Elsa Bergman, and Anna Lund play five energetic environments for piano, contrabass, and drums on the 39’ Space. 

Keys’ dizzying flurries slurring, galloping bass, and skittering kit lay down dense loud lines at a quick clip for a nervous effervescence. Free form discrete staccato soundings confer a certain angularity but group momentum can blur it smooth. At their intersection, cymbals’ crash saturates space like piano’s glowing clusters of collateral harmonics cresting miraged melodies, step-pattern bass expansions a contrapuntal companion to piano’s fitful and fiery explorations, and kick drums’ long waves meeting bass’ halfway, tethered together thus. And sometimes in texture too, piano preparations or percussive knocking mimicking a woodpecker with drums’ stick clicks, high register plinks from both bass and piano, or bass’ distressed strings creaking alongside crackling percussion and keys’ crunchy chords.

- Keith Prosk

Biliana Voutchkova - Michael Zerang - The Emerald Figurines (Relative Pitch Records, 2022) 

Biliana Voutchkova and Michael Zerang play four scenarios for violin, voice, and percussion on the 54’ The Emerald Figurines. It is the first in a series of duos Voutchkova intends to release with Relative Pitch Records in 2022.

There is always a focused attention towards communication between improvisers. The ear tethers their actions, the mind finds patterns. It’s probably not imagined either. Like in verbal conversation, people absorb pieces of each other, their phrases, their mannerisms, quite quickly. This sense is heightened in duologue, in directness between players but also in details that ears might gloss over in larger contexts. The notes prime expectations towards a responsive relationship between the duo. So like many able improvisers, they deepen and shallow, expand and contract together through volume, speed, texture. Spiraling bowing and friction drum maelstrom. Violin’s saturn missiles and thinner sticks’ acidic attack. Saltating sounds as each overcomes friction together. Seafaring sounds of creaking wood and boisterous canvas. Violin as lamellophone for bells and chimes. Lion’s roars and coyote calls and distorted respiration. Voice extends frictional groans with its own, mousy squeaks with its hiss. And beyond the frictional gyre from these techniques, voice is central to the duo’s grooves, a strange turntablistic scratching between them met with contorted pseudophonemes, or snarling glossolalia chanting over chimes and beat violin. But something about this recording conveys that it is not just about salient highlights but the entourage of the conversation, not just about cool sounds but finding the way to new expressions of yourself through each other. This is also framed as a kind of pandemic initiative and I think that latter connection to others, something sometimes missed these past few years, is what the series intends to showcase. 

- Keith Prosk

Nate Wooley - Experiment Three for Untrained Voice (PLAYNEUTRAL, 2022)

Nate Wooley arranges a 25’ track for voice and sine tone on Experiment Three for Untrained Voice, one from a group of nine etudes in the Mutual Aid Music ecosystem. 

The score was presented in the first volume of Graphème. Its words come from Moby-Dick, just before the narrator recounts legendary whalemen like Perseus, the first, and then finagles St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo into the club through various dubious means. Maybe there are different manuscripts, but my copy has “enterprises” instead of “endeavors” and I wonder if Wooley changed this to provide a median syllable and symmetry to the composition. But syllables on the page are grouped not equidistantly or radially but to reveal the words they come from, offsetting any symmetry (though interestingly this realization has nearly as many minutes as phonemes). The first sign of its messy complexity or careful disorderliness.

This despite the instruction that it “should not be sung with the intention of making the sentence legible to the listener.” Similarly, that performers should not attempt “to control the attack or decay of the voice in a ‘musical’ way.” But this recording is not a straight interpretation, overlaying what appears to be additional phonemes without distinctive consonants and maybe mixing the sine tone in and out of audibility for something that feels more musical. And some phonemes are perfect cairns in tracing the sentence, the diphonic approach of -vors or the hiss of which and dis-. 

It makes for an impactful listening experience. Guttural groans and slow chants. Voice wavering in sustain and grained like a wicking flame. A kind of trilling illusion that could be the sine, the interaction of the sine with the voice, or some uncovered alcove in the profile of the voice. A quiet chorus warbles when voices overlap. Harmonies seem to sound the relational interdependence of rational intonation, not just in the choice of frequency from perception but their mutual interaction. Language begins to change its meaning to be just sound. 

- Keith Prosk

Zinc & Copper - Discrepancies with F.H. (#1#2#3#4#5#6) (Pirelli HangarBicocca, 2022)

Robin Hayward, Hilary Jeffery, and Elena Kakaliagou perform their composition for tuba, trombone, and horn inspired by a collection of sculptures from Leonor Antunes on the 26’ Discrepancies with F.H. (#1#2#3#4#5#6). 

The sculptures, from which the music receives its name but extend to #8, featured as part of Antunes’ 2018 exhibition at HangarBicocca in Milan, the last days in Galliate, during which this recording occurred. Its forms are an abstracting rescaling and isolation of those that might be found in Franca Helg’s rattan furniture designs. Its material is brass, which along with the natural lighting of the exhibition that changes the experience with the passing of the day might accentuate the material of time in its oxidation. The form and material make them rather resemble a trombone slide. The work is a cluster of works. And they suspend in clusters distributed in space among other similarly clustered clusters of work. Which might recall that a sound is a cluster of sounds that can not only be imagined three-dimensionally in relation to each other but is. 

And like art suggests rhythm, music suggests shape. The shape of the room, the shape of the ensemble, the shape of their instruments. The musicians move about the room in various constellations. Sounds pan, get close, feel further. They accumulate in the corners to accentuate the beating patterns. My pitch poor ear can’t tell for certain but it seems as if they stay in similar sound spaces to underscore the effect of space on sound. A warbling call echoes through one side. Or a cloud of pointillistic repetition. And I have a hunch these are a kind of deconstructed ruins of an unseen melody, part of the performance but not featured on this release, an elegiac fanfare recycled ad nauseum. Hard blows swell in a way that conveys changing shape more than changing velocity in Bernoulli’s principle. In these ways it resists the flattening of recording.

- Keith Prosk

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate this newsletter and have the means, please consider donating to it. Your contributions support not only the regular writers but the musicians and other contributors that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the regular writers, and distributes 40% to musicians and other contributors (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised the newsletter of work it reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. The newsletter was able to offer musicians and other contributors $1.57 to $2.10 for February and $0.00 for March (no donations received). Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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Borealis Festival happens March 16-20. Some of its discussion panels will be streamed on the festival site, including Yulan Grant on mythmaking and remix culture, Khyam Allami, mattie barbier, Catherine Lamb, and Weston Olencki on rational intonation, and John McCowen and Roscoe Mitchell in conversation. Some of its performances will also be streamed on the festival site, including Ensemble neoN/Far East Network/Lasse Marhaug and Roscoe Mitchell/John McCowen.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate this newsletter and have the means, please consider donating to it. Your contributions support not only the regular writers but the musicians and other contributors that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the regular writers, and distributes 40% to musicians and other contributors (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised the newsletter of work it reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. The newsletter was able to offer musicians and other contributors $2.90 to $7.74 for January and $1.57 to $2.10 for February. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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conversations

Christina Carter plays with voice, visual art, and poetry. Over video chat we talk about her voice, the body, rigor, money, art, complexity, changeability, relational experiences, and words. 

Christina recently released Offer and Two Times and reissued tongue and Seals. The accompanying watercolor booklets we talk about in this conversation can be purchased on her merch page. 

Christina Carter: Hi. Can you hear me?

Keith Prosk: Yeah! Can you hear me?

CC: Yeah.

KP: Nice. How’re you doing?

CC: I’m alright. How’re you?

KP: Good. It’s been a long time.

CC: Yeah, a couple of years. Unbelievably, right?

KP: Yeah. Have there been some musical upsides in the last couple years or…? I know Me Mer Mo started back up but it seems like things have been pretty quiet. 

CC: Musical upsides… I guess it was inevitable but maybe it sort of like pushed me a little bit further to - sorry my chair’s really squeaky - to start putting older music that I’ve done online, on bandcamp.

KP: Yeah I saw that you’re putting some mid-2000s, small run CDrs up on bandcamp?

CC: Yeah. Basically my plan is to put up one older release per month for the rest of the year. 

KP: Nice.

CC: So those will span 2003ish to 2013ish, and then, yeah…

KP: And are those… at that point is it mixed guitar and songs or what are you doing on a lot of those?

CC: Yeah. There are some that are just voice, some that are extended pieces with guitar, some that are songs, so all of it. I’m trying to think…. there’s some live recordings maybe… I haven’t decided entirely what will be put up and what won’t. Or if all of it will eventually, or… I’m kind of doing everything by feel as it goes.

KP: Yeah. Would you say that with the music you’re making now, do you tend to focus on voice? Or at least is it in a more vocal part in the cycle right now?

CC: Yes. I’ve been focusing on voice probably since 2015 at least. I mean for solo stuff. Of course I’m still playing with Tom [Carter in Charalambides]. I’ve been doing just voice in that too. I haven’t been playing guitar at least for awhile live. And even on our last recording. 

KP: Yeah I was gonna say… I just moved to Austin in 2014 and the one time that I saw you perform it was solo voice, and then I heard maybe a phone recording with Alex [my spouse] and it was voice, and then you just put out Offer and Two Times, which are voice as well, so I kind of got that feeling that this was what you were interested in working with at the moment. That’s kind of why - and I’m glad to take it in any direction you want to - but I wanted to learn a little bit more about how you approach voice too, with this convo. 

CC: Yeah, sure. I’ve been thinking of the last time I played guitar live... I don’t write anything down really or save records of what day I played, what shows, flyers, I don’t have a list, it’s all by memory, so I’ll probably get some stuff wrong. I think the last time I played guitar live was opening, playing a show with Michael Morley and I had decided to do half voice and guitar, half voice only. I think that was around 2015, -14, -16, something like that. And based on that experience I just was so happy to do the voice half more so than the guitar half. I was struggling with playing guitar live the whole time, or had major ambivalent feelings about it, so I decided I’ll just leave it behind for awhile. 

KP: Yeah, until you’re ready to go back to it… 

CC: [winces]

KP: or maybe not [laughs] 

CC: I don’t know. I mean things are so up in the air in every single way as far as doing music now. I don’t know what will happen. Just recording is in question, playing live is in question, how to continue any of it. I think not just for me but for a lot of people. 

KP: mmhmm. Do you still play guitar? Or do you still own a guitar and play privately? 

CC: I don’t play. I do own guitars. I never was a practicer. I’m not a practicer. So that’s not in and of itself unusual. After a certain point… when I first started playing guitar I played, for me, kind of a lot, regularly, but I got to a point where I didn’t want to anymore, so I stopped.

KP: Are you comfortable with sharing the reasons why you’re more comfortable with voice over guitar? 

CC: Yeah, there are multiple really. Everything from really silly kind of just, you know, inconvenience…

KP: [laughs] carrying amps 

CC: Yeah, all the way to like social reasons and et cetera. I don’t have this music work ethic. All that like, ah I’ll carry my own stuff, show how strong I am, all that kind of thing, I don’t care about that. But it’s your instrument so you want it with you, well there’s people who really want it with them and that’s great for them, I don’t have any problem with that, but personally I don’t like… it kind of gets in the way for me, like of my mind, the whole get the gear together, set it up, do the sound check, on and on. It gets in the way for me. Sometimes it’s tolerable for me and sometimes it’s not. I just go with how I feel. So it’s more than just like they’re heavy; they take a certain kind of mindset to engage with them. I don’t know, there’s people who just love doing all those things. Great, I don’t. All that string changing, tuning, paying attention, all that gear, knowledge that’s good to have. I mean, it goes all kinds of ways, it’s so intense and ridiculous at times, but there’s truth to it, knowing those things, it’s helpful, the reality about equipment, knowing it, what’s good equipment, there’s a reality to it, not that it’s not based on nothing, it just gets in the way for me. 

KP: Yeah, I imagine too, being someone who is attuned to using their voice as an instrument, instead of coming directly from the body you now have this filter with its own set of limitations and everything too with a guitar set up.

CC: Right, there is that. It makes you conscious of something else that’s on you, around you. It makes me feel like I’m interacting with the sound people in a different way. There’s a certain amount of uncomfortability with the tension of performing in front of people where I lose… it’s like what are you dedicated to, you know… I lose my confidence about playing guitar with people staring at me. Can’t do things that I can do in private in public. Unless there’s been various times, on tour maybe, getting to play night after night, but then I ask questions of myself like, is that worth it for me. I don’t consider myself a musician in the same way that other people do, at the same time I don’t consider myself… it’s not that I think musicianship is bad or that no one should have that pursuit, I’m just not that. That’s not my primary desire, to master the guitar, in any kind of way besides how I want to reflect my inner feelings. It’s hard to explain, and I could have that conversation for like five hours, to get into all the fine details of thought or whatever. But I don’t like the idea of people saying that I have no care for technique, that’s not true, at the same time that’s not where I’m going with it. 

KP: Yeah, there’s other techniques than dexterity, right.

CC: Dexterity, theory, composition, et cetera, learning those things in a systematic way and wanting to… I admire people that can do that for sure, it’s just not me. I can’t, I don’t want to, I don’t want to because I can’t. I don’t know, it’s been that way since I was a child. And then I didn’t have much opportunity for lessons, so there was that, but also I didn’t want them. I mean I’ve said it before, I had one guitar lesson and I walked out on it. I guess everything… like swimming, I didn’t want swimming lessons, I was just like let me get in the pool I don’t want to learn how to swim I just want to be in there. 

KP: [laughs] yeah, just that structure, or overstructuring. 

CC: So anyways it’s like guitar, well I miss it sometimes, but also there’s all kinds of things that go into it, like money. I’ve never had money to buy a lot of equipment. I don’t want to. But at the same time, just the guitar setup and taking care of it and having a place to play it - I live with other people all the time, so…

KP: Well, we’ll leave guitar behind and if it’s alright with you…

CC: Well there’s no end so it’s not like, oh now I’m never gonna do guitar anymore, I don’t know, maybe I will.

KP: Yeah, yeah, just I’ll switch over to voice and not bother you with guitar anymore. So one of the things I felt with the two most recent ones - Offer and Two Times - was that it was kind of iterative. Not just that one was recorded right after the other, even though they’re quite distinct, but that within each they’re progressing through repetition. I feel like there’s a kind of empathy because the voice might be such a familiar instrument to others that there’s a kind of understanding in the listener that even though sounds could be intended to come out the same they feel different in the throat and come out differently. And then maybe going back to what I’ve heard of Charalambides with psychedelic tinges, there’s a hint of psychedelia in that inbetween state of something that feels continuous because it’s repeated but also recognized as discontinuous because it’s discrete soundings that are changing. But is repetition or iteration a conscious aspect of what you do with your voice? 

CC: I was thinking about having this conversation with you and you were saying up front you wanted to concentrate on voice so I was trying to think about like, OK well it’s not like I’ve done a whole lot of interviews recently but I’ve been doing them for a long time so how can I talk about this differently this time. I was thinking about how the whole thing about the voice being integrated… your instrument is your body. It’s something that’s so fundamental it’s overlooked a lot. Like what is there interesting to say about that, yeah, it’s your body. I don’t even know if this answers your question, but I was thinking about how my weird relationship to it… you said empathy, or sympathy?

KP: Yeah, empathy…

CC: …and I wanted to ask you what you meant. I was thinking about how it’s such a weird thing that I - again it’s not that I think other people don’t have legitimate ways of doing it although I do question a lot of overemphasis on the technical aspects of singing - I don’t do any of that stuff. I don’t come from a musical background, my family didn’t do things. I didn’t have this kind of childhood maybe a lot of people a little bit younger than me are used to with a lot of hobbies, you know, you’re made to do a lot of things and learn a lot of things and be a multifaceted person. I never had voice lessons. I don’t do exercises. I was thinking, OK I’ve talked about that before. I think people get…I worry sometimes that some people who maybe would feel really great about singing don’t believe they are capable or they need supervision and lessons and a plan and a linear path. First you do this kind of singing and then you do that kind of singing and then you learn these kind of exercises and then when you’re ready you practice a lot at home by yourself and make sure you have a good enough voice and then you go out in front of people and then… that kind of thing. I don’t believe any of that is necessary. Maybe it is for some people. Maybe people feel good when they do that. I don’t. Never did. My thing is so weirdly internal and I was thinking why is that. And it made me think about how the body is such a place of contradiction. For me it represented a lot of pain and difficulty. My mom was an asthmatic, she was allergic to almost everything. I saw her get ill to the point of fear quite a lot. This was before inhalers and before modern asthmatic treatment, and I know it’s still bad. This was like breathing into a paper bag and hoping there’s no trip to the hospital and that kind of thing. My dad was also kind of ill, in a way. He had a lot of health problems, though he was better at hiding them. And I had, when I was younger, had endometriosis. Horrible pain every month, for years and years and years. 

KP: Sorry, what is that?

CC: It’s a reproductive system… when you get your period you get horrible pain. Coincidentally my mom also had this and she had a hysterectomy, and that’s why she had to adopt me, because she couldn’t have kids. Also my mom struggled with her weight quite a bit, and we didn’t have physical activity as a family or anything. So, I think a lot… I found this other, this realm inside of the mind instead of in the actual physical body to be way more attractive and way more compelling, way more less problematic. And then appearance and all of that and that whole struggle with being a performer and being on stage. When I was a child I adored Judy Garland and one of the first things I wanted to do was be an entertainer and I use that word, and that’s such a funny thing to think about. But then when you go along or I went along, when I started singing first with Tom - I mean I was singing all along as a child by myself but - there’s a whole struggle involved with it that your ingenuity, your creativity… how to confront and deal with all the challenges of being a human being, creative human being, that’s what guides me so… once you start applying conscious or philosophical thinking to singing and all of these issues and then that adds another layer over all of the instinctual things, the feeling of singing. To me it feels very strange to sing, but also I felt very driven to do it from a very young age.

KP: mmhmm. So I guess with the… you’re not consciously trying things out when you’re singing, you’re really just going by the feel of the moment? 

CC: I would say it’s intertwined. There’s a feeling of the moment, there’s that part. And then there’s an observer, who is evaluating and kind of thinking about it. There’s a multilayer thing right. There’s a receptive aspect. What’s gonna happen, I wonder, I don’t know. Wherever you are there’s a feeling in the room around you. There’s a feeling of the structure, the room, there’s a feeling of the air, all the objects inside of it, your memories when you look around, if it’s a new place then there’s your first impressions. There’s that part, that’s very receptive. Then there’s the desire part of wanting to interact with that, with those impressions. This active feeling of what do I want to do with this on a really kind of… you know it’s almost kind of an animal feeling, like when you’re hungry and want to eat something. An energy that draws you toward doing something.

KP: mmhmm kind of look in the fridge and piece together a meal based on what you’re feeling at the moment…

CC: Then there’s another level of evaluation, while it’s happening. OK what is going on, what is my desire leading me to do right now, what do I think about that? Do I find it compelling to go further in that direction? Do I need to find some other path? Do I need to make a turn? Am I going to continue? And so those three things - at least - are happening all the time. So it’s not random. There’s an intellectual component. There’s two kinds of intellectual components too, like the in-time evaluation about what’s actually happening and then the more aesthetic interpretation of like, OK maybe this seems like, I’m reacting to this feeling, I’m liking how this feels, I’m liking what it sounds like, but do I really agree with it aesthetically.

KP: On that observation side, do you find yourself returning to ideas or wanting to go back to ideas and wanting to explore them a little more, not necessarily in one performance but across time?

CC: Yeah, absolutely. I consider it like, and maybe it’s a cliche way of describing it, but it’s kind of like a map, or a larger image. And then maybe, you know, well I wanna go here for awhile, really close in, now let me look back at the bigger picture, now maybe over here. It’s all interconnected. But you think about things in different senses of time and space. And sometimes you take a more radical move, from one edge to the other maybe.

KP: Yeah, a little reactionary…

CC: Well, no, nothing wrong with it. Just instead of traversing the surface slowly and taking small shifts maybe sometimes you take big shifts.

KP: I guess in returning to some of that stuff or exploring it a little more, are you able to nail down some of those interests that you do return to?

CC: I hope not. I don’t ever want to really nail anything down. I don’t, you know… Sometimes it’s easier for me to write things, because I can think and evaluate what I’m saying, does it really explain what I mean, are these words the right ones. What I really want to do is reflect the truth, that’s it. So in other words, that my music reflects everything possible, considering the medium, that it can express about what it is really like to be a human being. As an approximation it’s impossible but I don’t want to convince anybody about anything or present an argument for one particular aesthetic sound or view or whatever, one type of music. I want when somebody hears what I’m doing for them to feel complexity. You know I was thinking about this earlier, sometimes you need to make a clear statement in your life, yes or no, about certain things. It’s necessary and it’s a good thing to do and that’s part of the complexity, right. But much of the time of being alive is grey, like happiness. Unadulterated happiness, no other shade of any other emotion in there, how often… I mean at least me, I don’t experience that very often. I have, but usually there’s a lot of other feelings wrapped up with it. Even if they’re just different shades of similar emotions like excitement. Excitement’s not quite the same as happiness, so… that’s the kind of ideal to me about doing music. And has always been. And always is. Even when I’m doing things that other people call whatever, psychedelic rock, psych folk, whatever other name it’s been called. That was a big turning point for me… and also it’s not biographical, I… Everything I think about is a combination, so… in that sense I never want to nail anything down. I’m trying to make something much larger than any one thing.

KP: Yeah, I agree that we’re all more or less spectrums and walking ambiguities and that sometimes just expressing the body expresses a complexity that is… I don’t want to say effortless to put it down but there’s so much complexity within us that if it’s just expressed then that can be complex in itself. One of the other things I picked up on is there are moments in Offer and Two Times that are very quiet. And when it is quiet you hear breath and cheek sounds and saliva and stuff like that. It makes it very clear that it is the body of a performer, that it is not a disembodied sound. Is that a conscious inclusion as part of that complexity, or is there a particular reason that you’re drawn to including that spectrum of the voice?

CC: Well because not including it would entail one of a few things. It would entail either having certain kinds of equipment, setting up the equipment in a certain way, doing the recording a certain way. Or it entails going behind it and editing it out. Both of which I don’t… most of the time I don’t want to do.

KP: Yeah, the first is that kind of gear filter like the guitar and the second is that untruth that you were talking about earlier in a way. 

CC: Yeah. I mean there are certain things, like really egregious things, that I might think about removing maybe. I think on… I can’t remember which one but there was one sound that was edited out, but it wasn’t my body sound, it was something else in the room. That question about returning to different things, it’s not that… like the idea of repetition and variation and distinction between sounds is important to me. I am in fact trying, particularly in these two recordings, trying execution of similar sounds with slight variations in the shape of the mouth and things like that. I didn’t think about doing that before I started recording though, it started to happen, then I noticed it, then consciously began playing with it. That’s the thing, a lot of this is kind of play. As in, you know, like manipulating something, right. Like if people, when people throw a ball, they don’t throw it in exactly… maybe…

KP: [laughs] expert ball thrower

CC: Yeah, like super expert pitchers or something. Maybe they don’t though, I don’t know…

KP: No, they’ve got the box, right.

CC: Part of the amazement of it comes from this super attention to slight differences and what they convey. Because it’s not like to me, oh that’s cool it’s a different sound, I’m like a machine, look at the different sounds I can produce. They all convey something slightly different emotionally, or a slightly different concept. But then that gets into the realm of what I was talking about, evaluating it on a philosophical or an aesthetic agreement kind of level. On the one hand I think all of those kinds of things are interesting and on the other hand I think I never want what I do to be focused on those types of issues or ideas or techniques to the exclusion of what’s important to me, which is the emotional and intellectual content, intellectual as in thinking, as in human, reaching another person. Or reaching another… like contact. Relational. It’s not a display. Or a performance for people. It’s relational. It’s contact based. And changeable. And is meant to convey the idea of changeability. Not here’s a display of my abilities, sit back and passively judge them, or passively appreciate them.

KP: Yeah, of course not. And kind of getting into… you mentioned something like intonation and emotional content. I mean that comes in different forms… I guess do you have thoughts and feelings behind why you might choose lyrics or words in one thing and non-textual vocal sounds in another? 

CC: Sometimes when I was doing live performances I was bringing some preselected texts. Most of the time my own or occasionally things other people had written. So occasionally there’s that decision made beforehand. Other times there would be… it would be open in my mind. I just started doing this thing where before I was playing live I would  be thinking… the entirety of my preparation would be thinking about maybe a set of ideas or feelings or topics or something kind of like in a circular way. And then getting to the venue, whatever place I was playing, and then seeing how I felt there, and then seeing which of those feelings or ideas made sense or seemed to apply to the situation that I was presently in, and then leaving it open as to whether or not I would use any of those phrases, words, or just sounds, in a given performance. Those two things, Offer and Two Times, are the first things I had recorded on my own since 2017, really since 2013 or -14. But the words, the short phrases came out completely spontaneously.

KP: Yeah, I think “I’d like to walk to you” is one of them?

CC: “I’m going to to walk to you,” I think [laughs] I’d have to go back. I think it’s “I’m going to walk to you.”

KP: Do you ever feel like words’ sometimes fixed meanings or relatively rigid definitions are a barrier to their use beyond not necessarily vibing with the environment that you’re singing in, like the way they sound?

CC: I guess the main thing I do with words or lyrics, on the one hand I tend to use things that are super open-ended, and that’s how I really started writing. And my conception of writing… when I was young, the very first thing I wanted to be, there were two things that I very first wanted to be as a child, one was a novelist and the other was an entertainer and then later shortly after that I wanted to be a visual artist. The whole issue of writing has been there from the very beginning. And impatience with detail. In high school when I was really thinking about writing I was conceiving of trying to write without detail. Extended things, like short stories and novels. But never really did that. Just this concept of how can generality or ambiguity be maintained and so I play around with that a lot. On the other hand I became fascinated with this idea about kind of the opposite, of super detailed… or details that you wouldn’t ordinarily think of being worthy of being in songs but minus a kind of narrative, like short story telling in a song, not that. So how do you incorporate all of these details… it’s more like a kind of poetry idea. I don’t think it’s a - your original question, is it a block, is it an impediment?

KP: Yeah, are the meanings of words sometimes an impediment to using them if they’re clashing with the space that you’re singing in?

CC: mmm, no. They’re my words, so no. There’s an impediment to singing other people’s songs, for sure, on top of the other impediment of I’m not good at it. Having to execute someone else’s melodic structure, note structure, how it goes from place to place, it’s not easy and I’m not good at it. Not an interpreter of songs. But if I was trying to do that then that would definitely be an impediment to me and things where I have used other people’s lyrics I’ve purposefully chosen those where I can say that I feel that I understand them. 

KP: Kind of on the flip side, for the non-verbal vocal sounds, the information in intonation, do you feel like that… or in what ways might you play with that? Or is that ever an impediment somewhat similar to the definitions of words? Like I know Alex will tell me, your voice went up and down this way and this is how I’m interpreting that and I’m like, that wasn’t what I was thinking at all, this is how I meant it.

CC: I don’t understand.

KP: So similar to how words carry meaning through definition, non verbal sounds carry some information through intonation and I guess if the associations that we have with some intonations, if that sours some combinations for you. 

CC: I mean immediately I think of something really easy, like certain sounds may be conveying emotional content to people like anger…

KP: Exactly, like if there might be something associated with anger but you wanted to explore it just for the sound, does stuff like that clash?

CC: I don’t think I ever go into something with a preplanned, I want to express anger, joy, whatever. The main things for me, the two main things that are challenging to deal with - but I also try not to let myself worry about them too much, because why, it’s self-defeating - is what I was talking about earlier, not sounding mechanical, not sounding like I’m performing a bunch of cool sounds, or here’s a series of wow I can’t believe someone can do that with a human voice. That’s antithetical to what I want to do. Like, oh wow crazy sounds, amazing, one after another, can’t believe a person can do that. In fact I would much rather, if I had to side with one way, I would much rather side with, oh wow it’s so interesting, those rather normal sounding sounds, how odd they can become or how strange they can make me feel, I can imagine anyone making those sounds, it doesn’t take some special ability or some special singing technique to pull them off. The other thing that’s challenging for me is the aspect of unintentional imitation or sounding like another vocalist who I admire, who was before me, who I listen to. Examples would be Julie Driscoll, or Julie Tippetts as she is now known, or Yoko Ono, or Patty Waters, or Linda Sharrock, and others that are lesser known, who shouldn’t be. Sheila Jordan, on and on. Jeanne Lee, huge. So I recently heard - I can’t remember what it’s from and I can’t remember what it’s called, so I can’t tell you so that people can hear it if they wanted to but - this recording where I really went, oh my god it’s so similar, I’ve done something so similar to that, before hearing it. I was like, oh that’s really weird, it’s almost like I absorbed the implications of her singing and approached something with the same idea. And so that, I’ve heard things where I’ve been like, oh yeah that sounded like Patty Waters, or that sounded like Julie Tippetts, that sounded like Linda Sharrock for a little bit there. On one level it bothers me and on the other hand it’s interesting. It’s like being resolute on the side of practicality, right. Because what’s the point of… you just become aware of that possibility and I try to integrate that understanding. I definitely want to find my own voice, and I think I’ve succeeded at times. It’s like accepting… some people might choose the word failure or weakness of your body of work, while keeping going forward and recognizing, I mean objectively recognizing where you are unique and trying to go further in those things. So those are the two main things for me.

KP: I guess since we’ve talked about how the voice is part of the body, very embedded in it, and just with the daily familiarity of it too, I feel like it feels, more than other instruments or tools, it feels very close to the self than others so if you are using the voice that is so close to you, whenever you feel like there is a failure - whatever that may mean in the moment - or perhaps unintended sounds, does that tend to sting a little more than say something like guitar?

CC: No, it’s not like it stings it just…

KP: acknowledge and move on

CC: Yeah, be aware of it. There’s no perfection, it’s not a competition to see who can be the most original vocalist ever in the history of time or in a decade or even whatever, it’s just a sincerity about… it’s about finding out about myself and kind of relating that to other people as a shared thing that we all do. So then it becomes more than just about myself, about finding out about myself, this is what we do as people, is find out about ourselves and find out about others.

KP: and often through vocalization too

CC: Right. So finding out, oh sometimes I sound like somebody else and now I’m aware of that and that’s not really something I want to do. But I’m not going to then flip to this opposite concept that would be just as restricting, now I have to make sure I only sound like myself, I will never do certain sounds, I will never sing a certain way, I will never… now no more, whatever it is… that would be a false dilemma. Either/or. 

KP: Yeah, it’s that complexity that you were talking about earlier, never poles, always a mix. And for similar reasons with the voice being associated with the body, is there an inherent intimacy in using the voice for music and is that sometimes something that you wish you could escape?

CC: I was thinking of something else, before I answer that question. I think really where I feel that I’ve done the most to… one of the things that’s most interesting to me is where the idea of wordless and words comes together and that’s when I feel like I sound most only like myself, when those two approaches kind of meet. There’s, to me anyway, unexpected phrasing and unexpected emphasis on certain words and the way they sound and the emotional quality they’re putting across to where… and so, do you know what I mean, the practice of separating those two things out, wordless and words, as a way of examining both of them, feeling them out, and then putting them together for me is maybe the ultimate experience. 

KP: I feel like I can hear that happen. I’m not sure if it does happen with “I’m going to walk to you,” but at some point you begin with a phrase and then it slowly transforms into something that’s not words with changing emotion but it’s still understood as that phrase, and those steps in between is what makes it amazing.

CC: It feels like a… I don’t know it feels like an amazing kind of, yeah, I don’t know how to describe it. Playing a game in these kinds of things can have a connotation as too mundane. It’s like a spiritual game, or a spiritual challenge or something, an adventure. For intimacy, no I don’t ever wish to escape it. I think intimacy is one of the most important things about music. It’s difficult sometimes in the whole context of the entertainment industry, music business, whatever how it’s set up and how people think about it and how people talk about it and approach me about it with certain kinds of concepts… there’s a whole lot of implicit assumptions that happen quite a bit. And being on stage and things like that, and what people think about it. The challenge of really showing… it’s impossible right, when I sing in front of people it’s not ever really 100% the entirety of my intimate self, that’s impossible. There’s always an aspect of it that’s… and that’s a whole other factor we could bring in, which is the idea of performance and acting and how that integrates with concepts I was talking about like truth. But the concept of intimacy is really important. And no it’s not something I dislike. Sometimes it’s something that I didn’t want to play live at first, it was way too much, the energy was way too much, it’s just something I had to learn how to control better.

KP: I’m visualizing one of those triangles where you get to pick two of three or whatever and if you want to maintain your sanity with that intimacy you can’t go with the “productivity” levels that go with “career” musicians, so you approach performance on your own terms. 

CC: Yeah I don’t think…. The whole idea of the productivity and work ethic like that, I don’t agree with it on any level, even regardless of that concept of intimacy. I just don’t. It’s totally against what I think and what I want to do and how I want to participate in it. Album cycles, tours supporting albums, all of that music business stuff. Have I ever toured on an album? Yes I have. On the other hand I haven’t several times. It’s not that I think I would rule it out in every instance, but in general I don’t believe in forcing what I do into somebody else’s time schedule or pattern or demand for…. I don’t like the idea on any kind of level of this is just what you do. You’re a musician. If you’re in a band, this is just what you do. Xyz, and you better get used to it. And no matter how you feel about it, no matter what it does to you, no matter what it does to your life otherwise, no matter what it does to your emotional and mental health, no matter if you philosophically disagree with it, well it’s just what you do, you gotta do it. No way. No how. One of the points of being an artist is to get away from all of those things, to me. If I wanted productivity schedules I would have been, I don't know, whatever. I would have chosen to do something else.

KP: And I guess with not just being one thing and also you mentioned your early interest in writing and art earlier too, I know you do poetry as well and some watercolors and I guess just starting with the poetry, is there a difference between lyrics and poetry to you?

CC: Yeah there is, and especially if one is approaching it like a songwriter. I think there is but it’s hard to explain what it is and there’s all kinds of caveats but on the other hand I don’t write songs so to me maybe it’s a little bit less… it’s all a big blur with me. I mean I can look at something that I’ve written down and know whether or not I want to sing it, to a certain extent. There’s things that you can manipulate like, if this is going to be on the page I would leave it this way, I would leave these words in and this is the way it would look. If I was going to sing it, I would extract certain word groups and maybe change words or whatever. Everything I do is like a pool of resources and then moving them around. Allocating the resources to use an economic phrase [laughs] I’m laughing because our society is so absurd, right? Everything that we do, all the ways that we do things, most of it is so absurd, it’s horrifying and also funny and depressing at the same time. It’s not cause I think it’s not cool, I just hate the language of economics. I don’t like referring to what I do with that language but then it just comes out because everybody talks like that. That’s one thing which is more problematic to me, which is how artists are talked about or how I talk about it myself and I hear myself saying things in certain ways that I don’t like, I don’t appreciate, and I wish I wouldn't talk that way ever. 

KP: Yeah there’s kind of like an entrepreneurial vocabulary that’s leaked in. I think some of that’s old too, like the way music reviews - and there are people that still do this as well - view themselves as a consumer guide. They’re not really there for the music in some cases. 

CC: Yeah it’s an industry catalog or whatever. It’s all about what we’ll put in front of you for you to consider buying as opposed to an exploration of possibilities. Of just, wow this is all really incredible. Isn’t this amazing. But what people do it’s more like a catalog, an advertising catalog. I don’t know, I don’t read any music magazines like that anymore. I did when I was a kid for sure. Partly just because I’m such a reader. If put in the circumstance I will literally read anything.

KP: [laughs] nice. Going back a little bit to the visual art bit and specifically the booklets that you offer with Offer and Two Times, I found that they were super tactile. I feel like people talk about the texture of strokes and stuff like that, but it was refreshing to have a booklet context where you can actually feel the strokes. I dug that some images are pressed into the other side and because they’re flowers it’s like pressed flowers. And also because of the pressing there’s a lot of almost-duplication on sides but other pages where it looks like there’s a continuation but it’s actually painted that way. All of that is to say, are there ways in which your visual art and your singing communicate to each other?

CC: I really started doing art before I started doing music. I don’t know. In a way, I haven’t really thought it all out, how it all relates to each other. Part of that is that I don’t like to explicitly say a lot of things to people about how I think they should receive my music or my releases but part of the intention of the CDrs that I did and the artwork that came with them and these booklets and all this sort of thing is that they’re changeable. You could if you wanted to cut the string that holds that booklet together and re-sort the pages. You could take them and use them for other things. You could whatever. For the CDrs it was like that too. A lot of them were wrapped. You could wrap them differently. They weren’t intended to be these hands-off art objects or anything. I was thinking about it like a combination of what people do when they have keepsakes, like birthday cards or christmas cards or something that they have kept over time and that stay in boxes and maybe get all smushed down and weird. Or even though it’s an important thing they cut it up and make a bookmark out of it or something. Because it’s an important thing they make a bookmark out of it that they can actually use all the time. And it eventually gets lost… something along that order. They’re a representation of this contradiction between these lasting and ephemeral things.

KP: Kind of fitting with your music too it felt… I mean, I know it was actually intended for Alex, but it feels more than just a CD in a jewel case, it feels like an intimate exchange, probably because it’s more of a shared experience rather than just a mass produced thing.

CC: Yeah and not a mass produced thing but also not a collectible art object. They’re not meant to increase in value because they’re art or whatever. 

KP: Yeah, not getting into the nft space [laughs]

CC: I have no… I don’t know anything about it besides these weird things I see. I have no interest in all that stuff. I’m sure eventually I’ll be forced to learn more to a certain extent, just with it increasingly being around me, nft, blockchain, whatever. It very little applies to my life. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know whether this is ridiculous on my part but increasingly I find it more and more important to tell people musicmaking and artmaking isn’t necessarily a pursuit of the well-heeled… like I’ve never made a lot of money from music, even on the labels that people think you make a living on, I never have. I don’t own a house, I never will. I don’t own a car, I probably never will. I don’t have assets - I have a three-thousand dollar ira and that’s not even… because I’m in debt. All this weird zone of financial stuff, manipulation, monetizing things, and all this, I just don’t know, I never wanted to deal with any of it. I had to finally figure out that it was really dumb that I wasn’t participating in my work’s ira because I was basically just turning down wages. Up until I realized that I was just like I don’t even want to know, I don’t want to figure it out.

KP: Just getting wrapped up in the whole financial web. But yeah, I think it’s important for people to hear, you do it because you want to do it, not because you want it as a platform to make a lot of money.

CC: But also there’s the opposite side of that which is this idea that, well people do it because they want to do it and they’ll continue to do it no matter the circumstances, no matter how they’re treated… and that’s the other side of it that’s wrong also, because I have almost stopped doing it many times because of how hard it is to do because of still having to work a job in which, you know, whatever. I am better off than a lot of people in this country because the minimum wage is so incredibly low and people are so exploited that it’s just unbelievable and disgusting, but it’s still hard. I don’t know. That whole side to it, what do we… what kind of society do we expect to have and want and what are the messages that we give people about what artmaking is and why people do it and why they pursue it and why they shouldn’t and what’s the role of the community around it. All those things are complex, it’s fraught, it can get really argumentative. But my main thing is I feel like that people who are outside of it, who aren’t involved in any day to day way as far as being somehow connected with people who do it personally or somehow work in some capacity within it is that from the outside it may look as if there’s a lot of money involved but most of the time there isn’t and a lot of people are struggling within it. Feel driven to do it and still struggle within it. A lot of people don’t. A lot of people drop out. I’m aware on the other hand though that compared to other problems people have maybe that’s, you know… I don’t know, it’s complicated. But where there is a lot of money involved in it, that’s also obscured. Where there is the corporate stuff involved, that is obscured as well. The lack of money and the presence of money.

KP: Just the concentration that you see, like political systems, capitalist systems, it just gets concentrated in a few hands…

CC: Yeah. But I don’t know. For a long time for lots of other reasons that have nothing to do with any of this stuff just… it’s hard, this society is difficult, for a lot of reasons, and then you add financial stuff. I questioned for a long time of whether or not to put… for me to be the person who’s putting my music online and where. And had questions about every single platform. And it’s fallen out that bandcamp is the best option that there is, so that’s what I started doing. In the hopes too that maybe in another five years I won’t be working full time. Maybe I will go back… I mean I had a five year period out of thirty where I wasn’t working another job. I’m getting older. These are all considerations for artists. Aging is a big one.

KP: Yeah, just to wrap it back around to the voice, a viola or something might age like wine but the body does not, right. We age degeneratively after a time, we get sick, we suffer injury, our weight fluctuates. If you would be comfortable with it, in what ways has your voice changed through the decades that you have been singing and in what ways have you changed the way that you approach using the voice with those changes?

CC: No that’s not bad to ask at all. That’s interesting, I’ve been thinking about aging a lot. I’m 53, I’ll be 54 in November. Well there’s a whole bunch of different things. Its funny because I used to smoke and I used to smoke on stage while performing back when you could still smoke in clubs all over the country. I try to put myself back… there was a place in Memphis, somehow you can still smoke inside of it, and they were going to agree to have us play at a point in which there wouldn’t be enough people there to have it be that smoky inside, but I couldn’t even stay in the room because of the smoke just in the furniture, and the drapes, and the carpet. It’s unbelievable, you could smoke inside of clubs and I used to smoke when I was singing. I stopped smoking for good about eight years ago, ten years ago. I wish honestly I could say there was a huge difference and how my voice feels to me and what I can do between those two things, being a smoker and not, but no, oddly, weirdly. Not an endorsement of smoking at all, you can fool yourself into thinking it’s not doing anything bad to you if you rely on certain effects, or lack of effect. I don’t think… I’m looking forward to finding out how it goes. I’m looking forward to the whole experience of getting older and older and older and continuing to sing and seeing what that’s like. So far, I don’t think… I’m starting to be more in touch, but I have been really out of touch with the whole concept of aging because for a lot of different reasons I’ve always looked younger than I am. I was just looking at a picture someone sent me and I’m thirty… almost forty in it and I really look like a teenager still. Or early twenties, you know. And I don’t have kids, so I haven’t seen aging up close like that. Witnessing somebody else dependent on me or extremely close to me also getting older and how obvious it is, a child’s aging. But I’m starting to notice it in myself. Weird how parts of your body age faster than others. Although I’m not interested in the classical repertoire at all, but somebody said to me well you could have been an opera singer and I was like, no I couldn’t because I don’t have interest at all in that whole extremely difficult process. But I’ve read about how in that kind of singing you get to a point where there’s certain things you just can’t do any more and it really impacts what you’re able to do. Since my thing is so organic I imagine it’ll just take me, it’ll lead me, it’ll be a cooperative journey between my body and my mind as to what happens, what I’ll do. 

KP: Yeah. I’m trying to think of singers and people like Joanna Newsom and Nina Simone and Nahawa Doumbia are coming to mind as singers who I’ve noticeably heard age across record and it’s always a fascinating journey. To put an aesthetic evaluation on it, I always feel like there’s a certain richness to the aged voices that’s embraced.

CC: Yeah, I love that. I mean someone like Billie Holiday, where I prefer the older so called… I don’t know if there’s a reevaluation but whenever I started listening to Billie Holiday the old line was always, her voice got bad as she got older, the jazz point of view or whatever. Which I never agreed with. The mind does so many things… I feel much more able to deal with the world, physically, older, like I feel much more stamina, I was much less strong when I was young.

KP: Yeah, I was horribly coordinated as a kid and I feel like that’s come with age. 

CC: Same. In fact I got a report card that said I had poor motor control and I was taken… I don’t know if it was my parents’ idea or if they were advised to take me to a place, like a medical expert, specialist, to go through a series of tests to figure out whether I was “normal.” As far as I know I was quote unquote normal. But it was like, why can’t she tie her shoes and why can’t she hit the ball. Maybe why isn’t she interested in even doing any of those things. But when I was earlier, getting up in the morning, being at work, standing up all day, it was really difficult and I think touring helped a lot with that too. But anyways, so, looking forward to that. I think it’s gonna be super interesting. I haven't gotten to the point yet where I consider or I worry about what about the time when I am physically unable to sing or play.

KP: Not even halfway there yet hopefully…

CC: I keep telling people I had a dream that I was… I don’t know, there’s a party or some kind of celebration and I, me, now was standing on the side watching this event and I figured out it was me receiving some kind of card or award, something to do with turning 104 years old. And I was like, oh that’s a good age to live until. So hopefully I’ll get there. In that case it is about half. Probably not. I don’t know, it’s bizarre, because most likely… I don’t know, biologically, I’m adopted, so I don’t know the age of any of my biological relatives, what their age is when they died, I don’t have any kind of information like that. But just thinking about how I was a smoker and just, whatever, all of my drinking and eating meat, all those different health factors, knock on wood I’ve got maybe like twenty, twenty-five, thirty years if I’m lucky. And that’s like, the past twenty-five years have passed so quickly. So that’s pretty wild and I’m conscious of it. But I’m still not to the point where I think…. Maybe I won’t, maybe I will never stop, I don’t know. Somebody like Chavela Vargas, she performed into her, I wanna say, nineties. 

KP: I think you’ll be pleased to know the oldest woman that I’m aware of was a French woman who enjoyed daily cigarillos and swore by her daily thimble of whiskey so you should be alright.

CC: That’s good. I’ve just gotta get certain things in line with my life like I said. It’s just a fact and there’s a lot of people in my situation. I’m economically insecure and I have no family, zero, I’m not going to inherit anything, so I’ve gotta figure out some things that are extremely practical while at the same time being an extremely not practical person. I've always been not very… on the one hand… on the other hand here I am and I’m OK so I must be able to cope with reality to enough of an extent to get by.

KP: Well, did you wanna talk about anything else, about your vocal practice, total practice, or any other direction that you wanted to go in?

CC: I don’t know. I guess one of the main things that I think has affected me a lot is the sort of bifurcation between somewhat serious and pop music and I’ve never considered what I’m doing to exclude either or be… you know, I’m not just saying pop songs or whatever but the whole realm…. I’ve just never… it’s been a challenge to be understood for that reason. I don’t really fit into either world completely, if we can simplify it into two main worlds of whatever, high art, low art, academic, non-academic, experimental, popular, classical, popular, sound art, music, whatever, you know, the split. And even then, on the ground to me it seems like, where I came up on the ground it was always blurred and non-distinct with people going back and forth and taking inspiration from both, all different kinds of worlds and levels and whatever. But it seems to me there’s still a line and it’s still a barrier and it’s still I don’t know… so I don’t think of myself as having a practice, exactly. I feel like I do a lot of it in my mind, where there’s no explanation necessary for me and there’s no reason to parse it out into a regimen. In a lot of ways, to enter into the worlds in a deeper way of… outside of the whatever, underground clubs or whatever you want to say, you have to have explanations and you have to have a regimen and a rationale and a blueprint and a way of talking about things that I never… I just don’t… like even when I used to keep a diary I was so bored with the whole idea of, you write on page one and then you write on page two about what happened today and then you write on page three about what happened on the third day. I started skipping around in the book so if you read it from front to back it would be nonlinear. However long it was, say five months, you wouldn’t be able to tell what happened from day to day, you would only be able to tell the totality of those five months rather than… and it’s just so much more interesting for things that I do, to me, it’s more interesting for me for things that I do to be open in every way. I’ll go months without singing. All the while, thinking about it. On the other hand there was a place that I was living that had a really cool back yard that was surrounded by trees and there was owls and I used to go in the back yard and sing every night…

KP: Screech owls?

CC: I don’t know, owls. They made owl sounds. I never really saw them, it was dark and they were in the trees. I just heard them and I knew that they were there. They would just talk to you. I used to sing there every night but then I moved and there wasn’t that place anymore so it’s not like I’m still going to try to sing every night in a place where the neighboring house is like three feet over and there’s no place that makes me feel that way. So, so much is dependent upon reality. And unfortunately, or fortunately, I don’t control my reality to the extent that people with more money do. 

KP: Yeah. I guess from an outsider’s perspectives it’s not about the frequency of performance or the frequency of releases or whether you’re in NYC and have performed at such and such a place. You strike me as a person that has strong thoughts and feelings about what they do and that’s taking it seriously enough. That’s all that needs to happen. That’s it. And then it’s on the listener... I don’t know…

CC: I would like for listeners to approach it with an open mind. And I would really like for writers, listeners, anyone who’s thinking about it, to really approach it with an open mind and realize that the categories that maybe they've been told things are or go into aren’t necessarily accurate, or don’t reflect necessarily what the person feels. 

KP: In this case categories are usually sales things right.

CC: Usually, usually. I think there’s a little bit more to do with it but usually they’re about marketing. But my point is that there’s people who swear up and down that its absolutely 100% necessary to have a daily practice, to have a practice regime, to kind of put your body, and your instrument, through these paces consistently. And if you don’t do that then you’re either not serious, or you’re not going to be good, or you’re not dedicated, or you’re not going to accomplish anything, and that’s absolutely false. There’s all kinds of ways to go about being an artist. And there’s nothing wrong with being an artist. There’s this other weird push to completely, I don’t know, denigrate it as a category, or to make it seem not useful to people. You’re a technician or you’re a…

KP: content creator

CC: Yes or you have a skillset and the most important thing is to develop your physical skillset and put over that skillset and as it seems from the concept of the artist which encompasses that but isn’t only that. I mean there’s an intangible aspect to it that sort of like a yearning or a reaching aspect that I think a lot of people are very cynical about. A transformative aspect. A lot of people I think are distrustful of those kinds of ideas. But without them, I don’t know. At least not taking into consideration that they’re part of it leaves something very important out.

annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Bruce Friedman - O.P.T.I.O.N.S. (2004-)

Essential considerations

1. The O.P.T.I.O.N.S. Graphic Musical Symbols (cards) can be arranged in any order.

2. A card is a musical event. It can be played through once or any number of times. Once through a card would have a ‘linear’ effect. Many times through could result in a textural sounding event. 

3. Card events can be repeated in a score if preferred.

4. Cards can be ‘overlaid’ for simultaneous performance.

5. Rules for interpretation of each card symbol are up to the musicians at hand (or instructor). It is perhaps not advisable to have two differing interpretations for the same card in the same compositional improvisation. 

6. Durations and tempos for each card ‘event’ are up to the musicians at hand. 

7. Cards with rhythms are not to be interpreted literally, but rather as a suggested rhythmic unit, freely placed in sonic space according to preference. The rhythmic order is not flexible, but pitches applied to the rhythms are flexible. That the notes may appear upward or downward is not important. Repeating pitches may or may not be effective. 

8. Cards do not have to be interpreted literally but could be a ‘jumping off’ place for improvisation. 

9. Sometimes a conductor is useful if only to cue card changes. Or perhaps finer musical considerations such as dynamics. 

10. The + and - symbols are for expansion and contraction, or elongation and diminution. For example, a repeated motive could be broadened by adding notes or length to already existing pitches. 

11. Many of the cards are similar. Select any of those that are musically intriguing. Feel free to design your own additional symbols also.

12. The ‘scales’ card is simply a suggestion to incorporate traditional Jazz or Classical approaches as pitch sources.

Bruce Friedman is a trumpeter, performer, improviser, and composer based in Los Angeles. His working groups have included: Surrealestate with Jonathon Grasse, Ken Luey, David Martinelli, Jeff Schwartz, and Charles Sharp; Decisive Instant, an ensemble focused on music with non-traditional notation, with David Adler, Derek Bomback, Alicia Byer, Jonathon Grasse, Bill Harrington, Robert F. Leng, Ken Luey, Jeff Schwartz, Charles Sharp, Breeze Smith, Tom Steck, and Douglas Wadle; Hyperbolic Quartet with Haskel Joseph, Breeze Smith, and Darryl Tewes; Coldwater Trio with Haskel Joseph and Michael Intriere; duos with Motoko Honda and Scott Fraser; and other frequent collaborations in various constellations with Rich West, Ben Rosenbloom, and Alan Cook, among others. Forthcoming projects include an adaptation of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Tierkreis for trumpet and two guitars on MINUS ZERO, a second duo with Scott Fraser, and another interpretation of O.P.T.I.O.N.S. with Derek Bomback and others. For additional listening samples, please visit Friedman’s webpage for recordings or bandcamp. For additional information, please visit his website or facebook. 

O.P.T.I.O.N.S., or Optional Parameters To Improvise Organized Nascent Sounds, is a collection of over fifty cards containing standard and non-standard notation to be arranged and interpreted with substantial latitude according to the considerations above. Perhaps the strictest is the seventh consideration, dictating that rhythms are not to be interpreted literally and that their order is not flexible. But more often the considerations guide towards freedom in interpretation, going so far as to suggest a card can serve as inspiration for improvisation or that new cards can be invented. Friedman’s webpage for O.P.T.I.O.N.S. generates a random arrangement of twelve cards from a subset of the full suite for a readymade score. Daniel Barbiero’s interpretation for contrabass and preparations composites scores created using this method. Photocopies of the full suite of cards by the composer are available by contacting the composer. A recording guided by Friedman and performed by Emily Beezhold (keyboard synthesizer), Ellen Burr (flutes), Jeremy Drake (electric guitar), Friedman (trumpet), Michael Intriere (cello), Lynn Johnston (clarinets), Haskel Joseph (guitar), Richard Kim (violin), Andrea Lieberherr (violin), Eric Sbar (euphonium), and Rich West (percussion) documents the system in an ensemble context with space for improvised solos and can be previewed and ordered here. O.P.T.I.O.N.S. is featured in Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21.

The soul of O.P.T.I.O.N.S. is in its permeating mutability. Card arrangements can be prescribed via the random generator or built out in infinite custom formations. Organized according to the comforts of the performers or to purposefully subvert them. Unbound by any sound result, realizable as a slow and silent classical music or a swinging and dense jazz or something else. With an eye towards the changing spatial relations of sound in arrangers’ ability to fluidly shape the composition itself. In suggesting interpreters create their own cards, the ideals of the composer and the work-object diffuse into others as the system expands. And though it is suggested an ensemble converges on a shared interpretation of a given card for a performance, interpretation is not necessarily fixed. Indeed, the interpretation of a card might necessarily change contingent upon the card with which it is stacked, the cards temporally before and after it, or whether it is alone. Unfixing or unstandardizing standard notation by underscoring its shifting relations to surrounding actions or to tensions in directions for a given composition might cultivate a diachronic, listening-focused approach to performance. 

reviews

Alvear-Bondi - sin título #26 [Nicolás Carrasco] / Ground in Cis [Anna​​-​​Kaisa Meklin] (INSUB, 2022)

Cristián Alvear and Cyril Bondi perform a Nicolás Carrasco composition with electric guitar, percussion, and pitch pipes and an Anna​​-​​Kaisa Meklin composition with electric guitar and harmonium, joined by the composer on viola da gamba, on the 51’ sin título #26 / Ground in Cis. It is the second in a series of three recordings showcasing performances of compositions from Chile and Switzerland commissioned by Alvear-Bondi, preceded by performances of pieces from d’incise and Santiago Astaburuaga and with a forthcoming release featuring pieces from Bárbara González and Mara Winter. 

Guitar and percussion move through motifs together yet separately, as if in their own times though trying to relate, one lingering awhile longer while the other goes elsewhere, close but out of unison in some secret rhythm on the half-hour “sin título #26.” A structure sounds might mimic, staccato tones for staccato tones, or more complex chords for percussive systems like something sounding like a rotational shaker, or these complex systems for harmonic depth in singing metal and resonant guitar, together in feel but distant this time in timbre or provenance. Like their movement is just mismatched, so too they never foster beating patterns together though the phenomenon is not rare here, ones luster dulled by truncated decay or muted material while the other’s ringing, and this sense of missed harmony recalls the distance between the performers if the desynced cadences did not already. Two hearts beating as one at different times, in different places. One motif I keep thinking about sounds like a slowed and subdued “Ascension Day” climax of crashing chords with the resolute hammering of metal. 

The 19’ “Ground in Cis” is a mellow guitar melody trilling among the balmy harmony of viola da gamba and harmonium beating, seeming to push and pull to break into braiding melodies, followed by guitar following viola da gamba in its melody, quickening, tumbling together, while the harmonium solos, deflating, creaking. Reminds me of a kind of love triangle narrative. 

- Keith Prosk

Ilia Belorukov - A Fluteophone In The Forest (Raw Tonk, 2022)

Ilia Belorukov performs on the alto flutophone alongside environmental noise in the forest of Vologodskaya Oblast.

“A Fluteophone [sic?] In The Forest” - indeed, no more and no less - a variety of sounds more ‘in’ or more ‘out’ - screeches, skronks, exploratory snatches of melodiousness - and then, of course, the forest: resonance affecting the sound of the flutophone; wind rustling through trees, maybe a bug flying close to the recording equipment. It’s perhaps trite to highlight the ‘juxtaposition’ of plastic instrument with ‘natural’ environment, but among the cheekily narrative track titles I can’t help but read “The Forest Echoes With The Sound Of Woodwind” with a sense of irony, especially after, in “The Forest Shelters The Breeze” and “The Forest Lets The Wind Whisper,” we really do hear the sound of wind on wood, rather than just this small pseudo-woodwind. The hyperactive flutophone does seem perhaps uncomfortable, overawed, in the context of the forest’s slow music, retaining a sort of dry sound in spite of the natural reverb, navigating its relationship to its newfound acoustic environment - a relationship to be understood, perhaps, in terms of a ‘return’ to a state of ‘child-like’ wonder (or complementary ‘silence’)? And the forest here feels less like a location than like a musical partner in Belorukov’s improvisations - or is it the flutophone telling a story about the forest, or even imitating or embodying the forest? 

- Ellie Kerry

Laura Cocks - field anatomies (Carrier Records, 2022)

Laura Cocks performs five flute solos, with electronics and other objects, from composers David Bird, Jessie Cox, Joan Arnau Pàmies, DM R, and Bethany Younge - those from the last and first commissioned by Cocks - on the 74’ field anatomies. 

Sounds elicit lucid images of tracks’ themes. “Atolls” a teeming ecosystem of SCUBA breath, scuffling crustacean key clicks, bubbling flute pizz pops, swift flights of chirps, and sines or perhaps undulating wind with this animalized flute to feel like a natural resonance with the environment, then densely overlaid flutes’ sour harmony, and screeching cries, and erratic last gasp spasms, and stabbing electric tones to seemingly signal the death of the reef. A balloon fitted to the flute interferes with the air of the performer on “Oxygen and Reality” for elephant roars, strained air grained like static, choked vocal multiphonics, breathless silent dream screams, gasping, and glimpses of some spoken space horror narrative in which there is no hope for more air. “Spiritus” recalls the ghost of the instrument in sonically blurring tremolo, ethereal harmonics, humming multiphonics, essences of the flute outside of the flute, like breath. “You’ll see me return to the city of fury” blustery hiss and heavy blow. And “Produktionsmittel I” a work of quickness and dexterity in an unsustainable technical whirlpool devolving into gasping, groaning, horrified sighs and tortured utterances among electric hum, industrial noise, some digitized datasong twinkling to an end only to begin again as if some poor soul passed by the expired one stumbling into the grinder of capitalist labor. Always a throughline foregrounding the relationship between breath as a mechanism for flute and for life. And in line with their direction of TAK Ensemble and TAK Editions, this portrait of the performer showcases tendencies toward the technical - kaleidoscopic in the colors Cocks can coax from the flute and the body - and the thematically political.

- Keith Prosk

Sam Dunscombe - First Study in Mass Plasma Synthesis (self-released, 2022)

Sam Dunscombe presents a 45’ track of thousands of sine wave oscillators tuned in just relationship and drifting. 

Layers and volume might build and diminish but the density soon approaches saturation and confusion. Loud static dynamics and static texture. But there is rhythm in the swarm like phosphenes in the loud dark and while the abrasive overload never relinquishes singing sonic hallucinations sublimate from its ether. Drifting. Dancing. In flux. The complex beats of a barely there polyrhythm subtly shifting like an imagined community cultivating civilizations upon its creation by the musicmaker.

- Keith Prosk

Eva-Maria Houben - john muir trails (edition wandelweiser, 2021) 

Percussion duo Katie Eikam and Kevin Good perform four Eva-Maria Houben compositions, with two versions of one, on the 38’ john muir trails.

All as soft and tender as percussion can be. For a third of an hour “in the fullness of time” alternates noise and silence, noises alternating a shimmering cymbal breaching singing sines, a ringing frictional metal twinkling like a bell and silence full of conspicuous birdsong, here small, sparse, more searching watching than abundant aviary, chirping in their own intervals. Its anthropogenic waves finding some natural resonance with wilder spaces. Evoking a feeling of the reception of nature’s wonder interrupted by consciousness and action. “no evil from ‘waste of time’” is a metallic clink and woody pop synced, just out of unison, small variations of an inner time, surrounded by silence, larger crows and owls or something like them. The two 1’ “so little a time” the clink and pop too, the larger birds too, but soundings are distanced and silences are impressionistic, the latter losing some songs presumably due to the time of day. “among flowers and sunshine,” its title now out of time, is a 10’ solo for marimba/vibraphone combination, taking the bee’s path among pages like flowers, in indeterminate order, not as the crow flies, which coincidentally is absent along with all the other songs for sirens, a kind of bird in its own way, alternating simple timekeeping with flowing mellifluous melodies, timeless. Like the watch to Quentin - “I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it” - this music is given. 

- Keith Prosk

https://www.wandelweiser.de/_e-w-records/_ewr-catalogue/ewr2117.html

Eva-Maria Houben - together on the way (Another Timbre, 2022)

George Barton, Eva-Maria Houben, and Siwan Rhys perform a Houben composition for percussion, organ, and piano on the 67’ together on the way. 

An organ so low, calm, and consistent its ambient hum appears to fade into the very walls save for the slow deconstruction of its chord, muted howling emissions from some forlorn herald undulating within the wind. Generous in their spaciousness, rippling decays resonating among the faint pulse of the organ, blending, piano and percussion seem to move through motifs, exploring themselves and their relation to each other and to the organ in keys’ slow melodies, fluttering trills, inside-piano paw strikes, soundboard tapping, sonorous sinestral chords, thumps and knocks of various materials and ringing metals, each sounding illuminating the quiet like recalled forgotten memories reshaping a space to make their relation make sense, the moss on the stone, the dust in the light, the must of the air, distinct but in some seemingly synchronous waveform harmony, not what one or the other was, is, or will be but the convergence of them, together on the way.

- Keith Prosk 

Masamichi Kinoshita - Ftarri’s Harmonium, Vols. 6 & 7 (Ftarri, 2022)

Kei Kondo and Tomoko Tai join composer Masamichi Kinoshita to perform two versions of Fierce Exchange and Accord III and Study in Fifths with natural horn, viola da gamba, and harmonium on the hour-and-a-half Ftarri’s Harmonium, Vol. 6. The twin trombones of Hiromune Ishii and Marika Tadokoro join the composer on harmonium to perform Count to 11!!, Fierce Exchange and Accord IV, and Study in Fifths on the one-and-a-quarter-hour Ftarri’s Harmonium, Vol. 7. 

There is something special in listening to iterations of compositions, that makes them human more than some lithified thing. Makes me maybe more surprised than I should be to see how changing the instrumentation changes these compositions’ characters and, at least in the case of Fierce Exchange and Accord, how changing the structure appears to affect relatively imperceptible changes in the sound. Compared to the blending and mirrored gagaku/western instrumentation of shō and biwa/harmonium and guitar from the second concert which complemented the tricksterish spirit of Kinoshita’s clever number games, this performance with two trombones, shorter yet stretched in sustain, inverted to disintegrate towards silence rather than amass in density, lends an air of eerie alarm a la Grachan Moncur III’s most tensive environments. Similar changes in Study in Fifths, first presented at the fifth concert, convey shifts in feel and effect. The piercing and quavering twin flutes of I recalled traditional Japanese musics while the natural horn and viola da gamba of II lend a rustic rawness to their errant wandering - untwinned instrumentation further disconnecting the melodies even though they were always independent - and the clumsily sultry sliding of twin trombones’ farty deflation cannot escape the tragicomic tone of the instrument in III. And whereas the tremulous winds of I appeared to harmonize and beat with the revolving electronic tones’ waves, these instruments do not. The numbering of Study in Fifths might imply small structural changes beyond transposition but I cannot hear them yet, at least compared to the changes effected through instrument selection, which probably conveys more about my biases and failings than anything in the music. 

Fierce Exchange and Accord presents a new composition among the series’ recordings and two performances of III and a structural extension in IV already allows comparative listening. It is silence separating staccato cells of brilliantly-colored and variously-shaped phrases in a membrane of sustained harmonium. Feels serial. Binary. Discrete. Not just in the sharp demarcations of sounding and silence but in the alternating approach to sounds that collide and sounds that accord. But like Study in Fifths, my ear loses the structural subtleties for the curious colors of the instruments. 

- Keith Prosk

Petar Klanac & ensemble 0 - Pozgarria da (Belarri, 2021)

ensemble 0 realize a half-hour performance of the Petar Klanac composition, Pozgarria da, for eclectic instrumentation and four poems from Father Bitoriano Gandiaga. 

Interludes a dialogue between a chorus of organs’ array of timbres’ radiant pulses and gamelan bell choir, harmonics throbbing together among them. Recitations of the Father’s Basque poems of gratitude flanked by flute strokes and string plucks and the frictional roar of hurdy gurdy alternate with interludes. In the quarter hour climax, spry organ motifs’ dancing melodies weave and refrain, with whimsy and with gravity, resound together, speckled by ejaculatory flourishes, arm in arm with hammered woody percussion and poetic interludes, ending in a dyad seesawed playfully with some timpani. It is a music that conveys the warmth of the sun in its pulse, the exaltation of life in its song, the refreshing smell and feel of earth in its calm pastoral. A musical translation of the Father’s words shamelessly expressive of beauty’s unbridled ecstacy, grateful for the joy in the easter of every day, spreading like a smile. 

- Keith Prosk

ensemble 0 on this recording is: Fanny Chatelain (voice); Sylvain Chauveau; Denis Chouillet (organ); Melaine Dalibert (organ); Philippe Daoulas (rebec, nyckelharpa); Jozef Dumoulin (organ); Julien Garin (percussion); Stéphane Garin (gamelan selunding, hurdy-gurdy, tromba marina); Agnès Houlez (organ); Mark Lockett (gamelan selunding); Joël Mérah; Júlia Gállego Ronda (flutes).

Anna Lerchbaumer - Love, Lullabies & Sleeplessness (Eminent Observer, 2022)

Anna Lerchbaumer arranges two 15’ tracks for voice and objects on Love, Lullabies & Sleeplessness. 

“No More Weekend (Sounds of Twins)” is two babies’ coos, coughs, cries, crawling, congested breathing, sneezes, squelches, spitups, hiccups, and panting collaged to sound naturally but also chopped and repeated rhythmically or overlaid for a harmony of cries. Briefly hear an older woman’s voice. There might be a division in understanding infant sounds as just something annoying and understanding them as a language of care, conveying information that might require various interventions for the vulnerable, and this track might further add an understanding of them as some musical language too. “Noisy Lullabies for All Ages (0–99)” appears to arrange the sounds of home appliances, button and switch clicks, wobbling, bubbling, humming, alternating, fanning, draining, vacuuming, vacuum-cord rewinding. The loud and ubiquitous drone of the modern home. Like the infant sounds I found myself keenly aware of the kinds of information with which each timbre is associated. Together these two tracks might present the musicality of domesticity. But the latter is not constructed to be overtly musical and might communicate, among these sounds of labor for the house spouse, a certain joy in the human that is not in the machine.

- Keith Prosk

Gabi Losoncy - Monday February 7 2022 (self-released, 2022)

The delicate clamor of whatever, of things hitting and rubbing off things. Soft gestures with stuff, and the effect of not much. It’s meaningless mundanities like this – “whatever”, “stuff”, “things”, “not much” – that first come to mind when I hear these sounds, far before anything concrete. Like the bravest surrealism it avoids identification, definition or categorization, but at the same time surrealism is exactly what these everyday sounds deny – they’re so real, so raw.

It could be a single recording made on the titled date of keys, clothespins, clips, fabrics and various small percussive metals clung to a metal fence, maybe. An inaudible wind rushes through and shakes the fence and its many bounded objects, causing a continuously sounding rattle powered by vibration powered by environment, a single but multiphonic rattle of miscellaneous material. Through the lengthy three-hour recording the weather changes slightly and gradually, and it can be heard through the vibration growing or fading, the inconsistent volume of the inconsistent rustling and the shifting soundscape. Slightly different objects produce slightly different timbres giving sonic variety moment by moment but allow just a small list of sounds into the recording, enforcing a uniformity that makes the idea of significant change seem like an impossibility.

I think more likely than that is that it’s something of a percussion performance – a long, single recording in which the artist rubs an assortment of small objects together with her hands. Rubbing slightly different objects together at slightly different angles produces slightly different timbres, and she leans into this in her performance, taking time to move through sounds, repeating and revisiting them, creating a modest improvisation which follows her performative curiosity and stagnating emotional state as she focuses on the materials and sounds that fascinate her.

Maybe it’s multi-tracked or assembled. Maybe several recordings, perhaps of vibrating fences or gentle improvisations or both, all with their own specific timbres, were collaged together, composed. She could have carefully listened back to her recordings to determine which sounds should go where, when it was time to amplify or pull back, how the piece should progress and which structures it should follow – because as organic as this music feels, structures do exist in my perception: patterns, call-backs, cues. Sometimes it’s the quick, meditative repetition of a strike that dissipates into a softer, lower-pitched clicking, triggering a sense of attentive relief, or it’s a continuous rubbing that comes and goes, or an out of place, aggressive click or tap or pop that segues from one sound to the next. Structures and logics, ideas and movements, exist here, but be those coming from the mind of a composer, the instincts of an improviser, or the orchestrated spontaneity of nature, or if it’s simply the brain searching for reason where none exists, I am unsure.

The most concrete, certain thing I can feel in the music of Gabi Losoncy is an unashamedly sincere fascination with her materials and sounds, even in their mundanity – actually, especially in their mundanity. As a listener, I have a difficult enough time considering what these sounds are that it feels outlandish to guess at why I’m hearing them, but hearing several of her releases has left me with one theory: Because Gabi likes them. Does it have to be more complicated than that? Why should it be? Everyday we take in millions of sounds and it’s absolutely subjective which attract us and which don’t, which trigger an effect in our brains and which we write off as the sonic, static background, and I think that Gabi’s greatest ambition on this multi-hour work may be nothing more than to share the sounds that she likes.

Monday February 7 2022 is the first release on Gabi Losoncy’s new website, where she sells descriptionless tracks for five dollars each. Previously she was releasing audio to YouTube and declaring it music simply by writing “Album” in the video description. Now she’s careful not to even call it music – “a very long audio file” is all she promises to deliver to the purchaser. It makes me wonder how I should consider what I’m listening to – if not even the artist is calling this music, why should I, and what does that change? If I listen to this file through my speakers, or if I walk past a vibrating fence or a woman sat on a floor shuffling around seashells and stones, I could be greeted with essentially the same sounds, but would they still catch my interest in the same way as they did on this file which I paid for and then deliberately played? I cannot be sure whether I’d perceive them as a music worthy of my attention or if I’d write them off as unimportant sounds, but I suspect the latter. By taking seemingly background sounds and forcing them into focus listeners are made to confront what they might otherwise ignore, to creatively assess what they might otherwise deem incidental, to consider the relationship between this audio file which they’ve deemed worthy of their attention and the many everyday sounds they’ve subconsciously deemed otherwise. This illuminates the subjectivity of our aural perception, and in doing so it renders the question of is this music? into an unanswerable, arbitrary curiosity.

Ahead of the Files section on her website, where this recording can be purchased, is the Cute Gabi section – a single page with a single photo of the artist smiling in a bathroom mirror alongside multiple signs reminding employees to wash their hands. She smiles and holds her phone – it’s likely the device that captured both that photo and this recording. She could have even set up her website and sent me this file with that phone, after confirming the transaction in her mobile banking app. For another musician this would seem like an absurd inclusion, but for this one it fits right in. In both her recordings and photographs there exists a blurring effect that dissipates the line between body and phone, artist and recording device, The Music of Gabi Losoncy and Gabi Losoncy, allowing recordings to be perceived as works of pure attitude and solidified emotion, as a person and their feelings flattened into monaural recordings. It’s true self-indulgence that only needs to make sense in the mind of the artist which it reflects like a mirror, showing an accurate reversal of the self while revealing nothing that exists inside. It’s the musical equivalent of a bathroom selfie.

But why is it so long? What died after three hours and eighteen minutes – her fascination with these sounds, her will and strength to perform, or her phone battery? Particularly on the internet it’s expected that ideas won’t stagnate like this, and that personal content should reveal something of the self. Despite being such an internet-focused musician, all of the internet’s recent trends seem to act in direction opposition towards Gabi’s mysteriously introspective aesthetic: non-stop acceleration, the erosion of attention and the incessant onslaught of information. Even YouTube, Gabi’s prior home, has recently opened a new feature titled YouTube Shorts, allowing its users to take in more content than ever in even less time, following the trend of nearly every other social media empire. The overbearing mass of information made available by the internet, muddied by dueling ideologies, politics, lies and advertisement agencies, is trampled into confusion under its own weight. Excess results in mundanity and content loses meaning. When I see a friend’s social media post I might have my takeaway, but the emotional truth, how that friend really felt, why they really made that post, is only known to them – in the same sense, the purpose of this very long audio file is known only to the artist.

Gabi Losoncy’s music offers an alternative to this accelerated internet culture, a slowing and stagnation of the action of posting something to the internet, that renders the experience of being presented with one piece of digital information into over three hours of audio which promises to go nowhere and do nothing, illuminating the simultaneous complexity, fascination and intangibility that exists within each and every post on the internet. And like how that wealth of information often fails to catch the active scroller’s interest, so too can this music. It will just sit in the background if you give it the chance, hiding from the listener’s conscious perception and becoming the ineffable nothingness it always set out to be. It’s with time and attention that this lengthy audio file reveals itself, proving it to be a nothingness that’s positively rich with character, spirit and personality – the thoughts, feelings, ideas and sensibilities of Gabi Losoncy.

- Connor Kurtz

https://www.gabriellelosoncy.com/

Jessica Pavone - When No One Around You is There but Nowhere to be Found (Relative Pitch Records, 2022)

Jessica Pavone plays four pieces for viola with voice and electronics on the 31’ When No One Around You is There but Nowhere to be Found. 

Levels of resonance. A high whine sustained in extruded durations repeated but with cadence and pitch variations quickens to a frenetic fiddling - double stops shimmering harmonies - to extend again and reveal screaming overtones that ring even when the bow leaves the string. Reverbed plucks and taps refract to beat before a woody sonorous melody solos to be joined again by electronics for a glimmering pool of harmonic interaction. A sung narrative - its text sometimes unfortunate events but delivered light-hearted - and its plucked accompaniment finds a rhythmic partner in reverbed voice, clipped as if to emphasize phonetic stresses and their percussive aspects. And viola that appears to activate a feedback environment, a depth of dancing harmonics’ waves dipping so deep into each others’ tones to distort each others’ tones. Always in relation to sympathetic vibration, the solo viola finds friends in voice, in the echoes of itself, in the ghosts of its harmonics. 

- Keith Prosk

Éliane Radigue - Occam Ocean 4 (shiiin, 2021)

As has each prior entry in the series, this fourth set of Occam Ocean recordings not only ‘offers something new’ but, in its engagement with and contribution to the increasingly dense web of sonic signifiers constituting the Occam Ocean project, significantly re-inflects my understanding of what's come before it. Given previous records’ focus on ‘single-digit’ Occams from earlier in the series, the remaining 40 or so works have felt, to me, enticingly mysterious, especially as they begin to involve increasingly (seemingly!) ‘unlikely’ instrumentation - and, suddenly, here we find ourselves much further along in the series, but, in accordance with the sense of ‘reverse-’ or ‘future-archaeology’ engendered by the way these releases happen, we can only guess at the nature of the development connecting what we heard last time to what we hear now. Of course this is still clearly recognizable as Occam Ocean music - the specific relationship to overtone production, the way the instruments ‘breathe’ in and out - but... I never imagined I would hear so much ‘space’ on an Occam Ocean recording, so much non-continuous sound, instruments ‘pulsing’ rather than combining into sustained harmonic whole. Sounds don’t tend to ‘meld’ here, there is little ambiguity surrounding what harmonic comes from what source; instead they remain relatively ‘discrete,’ even as they cycle between adjacency and simultaneity. Instrumental parts still continuously change, avoiding exact repetition, but those changes have become so subtle as to be almost undetectable for certain stretches of the recording. And Yannick Guédon spends the better part of his Occam XXII ‘simply’ sliding higher and higher, at mostly regular intervals, the fundamental pitch on which he builds overtones, resulting in a piece with a clear structural identity dramatically at odds with Occams’ usual long-term unpredictability. In retrospect, I begin to feel like previous Occam Ocean recordings, in comparison, were ‘holding my hand’ - making sure to give me a long time to sit with the full effect of interacting harmonics, without gaps to disrupt the sonic ‘narrative;’ making sure that ‘progress’ over the course of a piece was gradual but noticeable. Here, instead, and specifically because of that prior ‘education,’ I find myself even more attentive to smaller changes over time, even more attentive to any overtone-interplay lasting even a short time, ‘reading into’ each piece the ‘implied drone’ which it does not fully supply. In other words Radigue’s disciplined application of Occam’s razor comes to seem, itself, necessarily perpetually mobile, as her audience - perhaps just she herself - increasingly attunes to the world she and her community have built.

- Ellie Kerry

Bertrand Gauguet, Yannick Guédon, and Carol Robinson perform the Éliane Radigue compositions Occam Delta XIX for alto saxophone, voice, viola da gamba, and birbynė, Occam XXII for voice, and Occam River XXII for alto saxophone and bass clarinet on the 68’ Occam Ocean 4. 

Living outside the cities of the chevaliers’ premieres and performances, listening only through recordings, the space between volumes one, two, and three gave enough rest for me to grow and to renew the wonder of its ethereal beating patterns. Not that that’s lost, just that the immersion of the relatively condensed releases of volumes three and four, Zinc & Copper’s Occam Delta X video, and the forthcoming Occam XXV from Frédéric Blondy (and hopefully more to celebrate the composer’s ninetieth birthday this year) draw the ear to wander elsewhere from fear of retreading ground so thoroughly it compacts into a predictable path. I find myself thinking more and more about how this music of essence seems to reveal the mechanical limits the performers, their instruments, and their sounds. In Robinson’s conversation for Sound American no. 26, she talks about choosing basset horn for Naldjorlak not just for aesthetic reasons but for those “of endurance” and choosing two bassett hornists - in a synchronized passing game - to provide relief from extended sounding. I suspect something similar is happening here, the two reeds sounding undulating swells in complementary turns to suspend harmonic interactions, in contrast to the relatively static sustain characteristic of other occams, a contrast realized during a long silence in Occam River XXII long enough in the context of this music to feel like a false end. And as microstructures reflect macrostructures in the mise en abyme complexity of life which this music appears to capture so well, so their harmonics are also complementary, the rich woody timbre of cylindrical bore, the bright cone, the warm glow of the inbetween birbynė. And beyond the structure of the sounds the listener is reminded of the limit of breath in its prevalent presence, inhalation, exhalation, hushed sniffs, the shuffling shear of air through the bore like seafoam incrementally nudged up shore downwind. And of course in the approach to voice in relation to reed, its alternating soundings and silences - again striking in comparison to the sustain of previously released recordings of occams - recalling that the sounding mechanism is below the loop of mouth and nose that makes circular breathing possible for other winds. As if the voice intends to test the mettle of a fundamental’s harmonics as much as it has been tested, passages of increasing intensity only reveal the harmonics’ collective strength. Like the phenomenon of cultivating harmonics, these volumes tend to gradually build from solo to delta, like the system grew from solos outwards, and this follows that. But what is surprising here is that the delta is the first occam I am aware of in which someone plays two parts at once and I wonder about the impact playing both viola da gamba and voice might have on concentration when this music’s intensity otherwise seems so consuming. 

- Keith Prosk

http://www.shiiin.com/shiiineer4.php

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate this newsletter and have the means, please consider donating to it. Your contributions support not only the regular writers but the musicians and other contributors that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the regular writers, and distributes 40% to musicians and other contributors (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised the newsletter of work it reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. The newsletter was able to offer musicians and other contributors $2.90 to $7.74 for January and $1.57 to $2.10 for February. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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IM-OS recently published Issue #8 (Spring 2022), with a focus on open scores for large groups of improvisors and contributions from Carl Bergstroem-Nielsen, Carl Ludwig Hübsch, Una McGlone, The Noisebringers (Maria Sappho, Brice Catherin, Henry McPherson), and Etienne Rolin.

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate this newsletter and have the means, please consider donating to it. Your contributions support not only the regular writers but the musicians and other contributors that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the regular writers, and distributes 40% to musicians and other contributors (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised the newsletter of work it reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. The newsletter was able to offer musicians and other contributors $1.99 to $4.64 for December and $2.90 to $7.74 for January. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

Donate via PayPal

conversations

A.F. Jones is a mastering engineer, sound designer, composer, and performer based in the Pacific Northwest whose experience in acoustics and audio engineering informs his musical practice and vice versa. Over video chat we talk about mastering, ethics, phonography, ecology, and musicians’ grind by way of Marilyn Crispell. 

Alan is the chief mastering engineer at Laminal Audio. He also operates the Marginal Frequency record label, which has recently released untitled (2020) from Francisco Lopez and Final Embers of Sunlight from Necking. Alan himself has most recently released pirate evangelism with Gabi Losoncy and has a new release coming soon of his duo, what, with Dave Abramson (Seattle, WA) on Eiderdown Records, entitled the unconscious is a machine for operating an animal. His film with Bob Burnett, “What Is Man and What Is Guitar?,” about the legendary Keith Rowe of AMM, continues its festival run and will be available soon in subtitled form for Japanese-language audiences.

AJ: Keith! Can you hear me?

KP: Yeah, can you hear me? 

AJ: Yeah, I can hear you. I can see your face too.

KP: Oh, perfect. There you are.

AJ: Yeah, hey.

KP: How’re you today?

AJ: I’m good. How’re you doin’?

KP: Nice. Doin’ alright. It’s actually super cold here right now, which is unusual in November for us.

AJ: Oh yeah? What’s the temperature there?

KP: Uh, it’s only around 50F outside but we’re kind of wusses and anything below 65F brings out the sweaters so…

AJ: It’s cold, so cold. It’s good to see your face. We talked on the phone a few times, this is even better. 

KP: Yeah, yeah to actually kind of get some of the body language cues going with it.

AJ: Yeah, yeah like that [flapping hand] body language.

KP: [laughs] yeah, slight movement of the shoulders, yeah.

AJ: [hunches and groans]

KP: [laughs] but yeah I’ve got a couple threads of things that I wanted to hit up but always feel free to take it in any direction that you want to as well.

AJ: Sure. Thank you.

KP: Ready to get started?

AJ: Yeah, absolutely.

KP: Cool. So one of the things that I’m kind of interested in is learning about some of the mechanics around music, whether that’s organizing or running a label or other stuff. So since you run Laminal Audio for mastering I wanted to start off with what is mastering to you? 

AJ: Yeah, that’s a good question. Really what it comes down to is what does the music itself need in order to be heard the way that the artist or the musician needs it to be on the final medium, be that streaming content or on vinyl, cassette, or CD, whatever. And so I kind of work as… a friend of mine calls me a midwife for a lot of musicians and I chuckle at that but I accept that. I like having that responsibility, which is a big one. It’s a challenging one. But it’s also one that I feel I’m pretty good at, walking a project down it’s final couple of processes to where it’s going to finally be on some kind of medium to exist forever and ever. So, it’s not really a technical answer, but it’s certainly a driving force behind why I do it and what gives me more kicks about mastering than any other part of the production process. Ensuring that the music meets the technical requirements of the medium while maintaining the aesthetic requirements of the musicians. Advising is sometimes the case in the area of music that I like to work in. Which I guess you could say is pretty far out there, abstract, most often not based in things like metre, cadence, any kind of tonality with respect to scales... more abstract kind of music.  

KP: mmhmm. You mentioned different formats; I understand that there’s maybe a different approach, say, for digital and CD versus LP or maybe even tape. Do you have to navigate those, the capabilities of the medium as well. I guess mediating for the medium...

AJ: Yeah that’s one of the entry points to discussion when going into a project with someone, is ‘where do you hear this being or what has the label decided is going to be the ultimate format?’ Most of what any of us do these days is digital in some capacity. There are very few services or studios out there that offer a purely analog, start to finish, kind of process. While I have the capability to do everything in analog, it requires that I first receive tapes, rather of pristinely resolved digital mixes at the highest resolution possible. You transfer the audio from tape through processors and unique signal chains. Ultimately what you end up with for just about every label that’s in operation is in some sort of digital form, even when mastering in analog. You get the highest resolution off of certain types of digital files formats, so I master to those, at whatever the native resolution is that the mixes were sent to me. So those then become archival masters, which are the basis for anything that you would ever do with them, be it stick it in your archives or if you want to modify them ultimately for vinyl. I don’t make aesthetic decisions in mastering, that’s for the musicians to make those decisions. I work with them to realize those aesthetic decisions which are ultimately realized in digital form. When you get to the stage that the masters are being prepared for cassette or vinyl, there are certain adjustments that are going to need to be made to that final digital form in order for it to sit comfortably on the analog medium. And this has a lot to do with imaging, certain frequency bandwidths, amplitudes in higher and lower regions and more. Once all adjustments are made I communicate with them, letting them know that every one of the requirements have been met. Communication can be either through the label or through the musicians or directly with the cutter in the case of vinyl, depending on who the client is. In the case of vinyl mastering my objective is to relieve the cutter and the cutting engineers of additional work that could, in worst case scenarios, alter in some way the intent of the musicians, say in how high they wanted certain frequencies to be and sit against everything else in the mix. Does that help? 

KP: Ah yeah, of course.

AJ: Good.

KP: I know some musicians can have a hands on or hands off approach, but do you encourage any particular approach, or what does the collaboration with musicians usually look like? 

AJ: You can usually tell in the entering discussion but, usually there’s an inquiry about how far they are in the process, all the way out to naming titles. I mention that because sequencing is incredibly important, at least for me. I go into a musician’s recording not expecting to just get knocked out by one track and just go to that one track over and over; I want to listen to the entire album. And the expectation often is that the musicians or the composers have sequenced the record in a certain way that it plays almost thematically, like an album. Sometimes that is not the case, so I don’t always like to assume that. I like to have a little bit of discussion about the musicianship that was involved, if there are other band members or musicians or soundmakers that were involved in the process, and then we go from there. Often it will start with me taking one track, sometimes it’s the most difficult track for me to attack because of different types of events or episodes that are happening across a long piece of music with a lot of dynamic range to it. And those are the ones that I’ll like to jump into first and then send it back to the musicians for their takes on the direction I’m going in. And I may give them a little bit of instruction if needed on the best place to listen if necessary if there’s a lot of bass or subregion, just that kind of discussion. And then usually it’s a thumbs up. Sometimes it’s not, little tweaks are made here and there, we make it through that, and the nice thing about this process is that it kind of sets the tone for the whole communication process throughout the whole project. And it gets pretty easy from there. 

KP: And just since you mentioned instructions for environment, is your listening environment usually over the ear or in the air? 

AJ: Oh, in the air. I also do what I call a forensic kind of listening, which definitely requires headphones, because I like to listen for maybe splice points that are happening that the musician or the mixing engineer maybe didn’t get to or they couldn’t resolve somehow. I like to listen for those points, make notes of, “OK that’s definitely going to require some treatment,” beyond the basic parts of mastering like eq and compression. I make notes of those instances through headphone listening. But really what I first like to do is just listen in an open room, be it in my living room on my listening system that I like to listen to just about anything on or in a more sterile environment like here in the studio and just go through it and capture my own thoughts about it and ask questions as needed. 

KP: Yeah. So I’ve heard - I’m not quite sure if I have the ear for it - but I’ve heard people say like, oh the music was good but this was a bad master. So how might the listener perceive the difference between a good master and a bad master, or a master done with care versus one that wasn’t mastered. 

AJ: To me that’s a stretch. I hear that language quite a bit and having sat in this chair now for several years I don’t know that I’ve ever been on that end of that kind of criticism, at least that I know of, but it’s certainly possible. But being in this chair and having I guess the requisite amount of empathy for the so many hands that can be involved in this process…. how does one come to that conclusion or make that judgement? Because saying something is a bad master, that’s assuming a lot of knowledge on intent, and the intentions specifically of the musicians, because they do have the final say, always with my technical concurrence. But yeah that makes a lot of assumptions about the intentions of the musicians themselves, the record label, the mixing engineer, the mastering engineer, about that entire process. So I don’t know. 

I can think of one example. I don’t know if I would call it bad but say like, that master is questionable. And I was listening to it just the other day and I remember there even being some discussion about it on message boards where a lot of casual listeners came to the same conclusion about this one recording. It was the Anthony Braxton Quartet, and I think this was the Mark Dresser days if I’m not mistaken, but it was Live at Yoshi’s In Oakland and the album, the CD itself is incredibly quiet. And that was the one point of feedback that everybody including myself kind of discussed at that moment back then, kind of agreed about like, yeah you really have to turn up your headphones or your stereo to get it at the level of presence as you would most CDs. Now I know that that was, number one, that that was the responsibility of the mastering engineer in such situations to get those levels where they need to be. Also what I’ve learned is that it may be jumping to a bad conclusion, the intentions of the mastering engineer. The mastering engineer may have had it completely correct, it got sent off to a CD pressing plant, who knows what plant they use - by the way that’s a crapshoot in today’s environment, which is pretty saturated - but they sent it off to the pressing plant and the pressing plant levels were off, maybe they had a 6dB pad on their final output channels onto the CD or something and it made it that way. So it’s kind of hard to say it was a bad master or not. It certainly was a print that didn’t meet the requirements of what you would expect from even classical music levels, right.

KP: Yeah, was this the ninetet recording? 

AJ: No it was a quartet.

KP: Oh right, you said that, my bad.

AJ: That quartet, you know, Gerry Hemingway, Marilyn Crispell, I’m trying to remember what year that was, it’s been a long time, ‘92? I can’t remember. 

KP: Yeah, I don’t know if I’ve heard that. I remember the ninetet at Yoshi’s was late ‘90s, early ‘00s or something. 

AJ: Yeah. But it’s good. It’s an amazing record. And by the way if you turn it up you’re not saturating it or anything, you’re just turning it up to good levels and it sounds really really great. It’s one of my favorite recordings by that quartet, yeah.

KP: Oh nice. OK. I’ll have to check it out. I’m a Braxton fan as well and listened to some of the like ‘85 bootlegs and Willisau and Santa Cruz but I didn’t even know about that one. So much Braxton. 

AJ: There is, there’s a lot.

KP: I guess since you’ve been mentioning intent and aesthetics and maybe trying to shy away from having a little aesthetic input but is there an ethics around mastering or critical perspectives around mastering or decisions that you have to navigate?

AJ: Quite a bit. And what can make it challenging is that expectations vary from one musician or composer to the next, as does experience. You know, you may have a well-renowned musician whose reputation is evident in all of their works that they have on CD and vinyl or whatever but they come to you and it’s their first time ever working directly with a mastering engineer because they’ve always had the label doing it for them, taking care of that process for them. So you are seeing a different set of expectations from that person, between them and someone else who might only like to work directly with the mastering engineers because they like to be in absolute control of every part of the process and truly be the final person to sign off. So the ethics therein are very simple, you know, it’s having some respect for that and having an understanding that every situation is going to be different and doing a lot of listening to what someone is requiring of their work.

KP: I wonder in your practice, that doesn’t necessarily deal with people a lot but environments and animals, what kind of considerations you’re making, or are there ethical issues that you’re aware of whenever you’re doing your phonography? For instance, with your AMPLIFY 2020 piece, the Bainbridge site, it’s a sensitive topic, right. So I guess whenever you would be putting together something like that, what decisions are behind what you’re doing to give it the respect that you think it requires? Or likewise how do those situations maybe translate to the video you shared where you’re recording salmon? What are those kinds of decisions behind your different phonography processes?

AJ: There’s a lot of appropriation going on in people’s music, whether it be outright borrowing to theft to virtue signaling through a person’s art. Those are the kinds of things that I think about when you ask about ethics in one’s own work. I didn’t have to think too long about the project that I did at this memorial on Bainbridge Island here in Washington State, which is a memorial dedicated to Japanese-Americans who suffered through the whole internment process. Number one it’s a beautiful site. There had been probably two or three years that I had in mind, wouldn’t it be cool to go out to this place which is pretty remote, it’s away from a lot of anthropogenic noise or man-made noise, and just feel that space out acoustically. The opportunity came by way of AMPLIFY and foremost by way of the pandemic because that place was barren just as any other place was in the month of March in 2020. So I can’t imagine being able to do this today where you would go out to such a site and not see another human for the entire three hours that you’re out there. Just uninterrupted solace while you’re there. Which allows a lot of free-thinking and choices to be made, about how you want to record the piece and then, in the post-part, about how you overall wanted it to be produced. So the decisions I make are sometimes thought out on a internal spectrogram, from 0 to 30,000hz, which, if there are interesting enough things in just about every possible bandwidth - you know, the lows, the highs, the high-mids - do what you can to capture those. Probe around for a different positioning of whatever capturing device or sensor that you’re using. In this case I was using open-air microphones and a geophone - which is a seismic detection device that’s been retrofitted to record - audio and contact microphones and a stethoscope mic. And sometimes a repositioning of any one of those things by just a centimeter would result in different timbres. Having three hours in that spot, to walk around and probe around on different parts of an iron gate or a big slab of concrete or jade through which a distant ship horn was transmitting … because the medium of the jade or the stone was between the origin of the sound and the receiving devices, you know, probing around with those things I was able to bring home with me a whole lot of options. And then the composing part of it came very quickly. It had to say one thing specifically in an episodic type of format to which anybody’s imagination could be applied and maybe take something away with on their own without being too deliberate with what it was that you’re trying to record. 

KP: So whenever you are doing ecological recordings, what are some of the considerations that you have to make there? 

AJ: I spent a lot of time documenting a salmon stream and the local ecology in the riparian area in a place called Port Orchard, Washington. In what a lot of people call field recording there’s always the potential that your recorded information can be sent off to the science community or to undergrad or grad students at Washington State University for their bioacoustics department to chip away at. The idea is to have recordings that best replicate the environment that you’re in and that you’re trying to document by way of audio. You are considering post-production even as you are recording in real time. And physical boundaries not unlike the type of filters that you might use with a camera or f-stop settings or whatever. Often you end up with something - all this goes into an archive - that is just so unique and sometimes maybe even unidentifiable in terms of its source and you may or may not be inspired at that time to use that as the basis for a larger piece of music that ends up in a compositional work or improvised recordings. This is the way I like to work most of the time. 

KP: Is there a threshold between the arts and the sciences for this kind of recording work?

AJ: If you’re talking acoustic ecology, I don’t see one. I see debate about what it is. And it’s necessary debate. But as far as the threshold, not so much. I once recorded a ferry that was pulling into port in Port Townsend, and this was in the context of raising awareness for the gray whale population that lives up in that area, and it became a good project for me to get out in front of people who might be willing to listen to that type of thing and read about it, noise pollution. I kept no secrets about how the recordings were obtained or what the actual sounds were… in fact I wanted listeners - ideally after the fact - to be able to read through what is happening in linear time over the process of this recording. And what you learn while listening to it is that a ferry’s propulsion train operates in different modes and one of them, which is its most commonly operating mode, is extremely loud. Especially when the propulsion train - which is the propeller, the shaft that goes into the inboard part into the engine room, and the engine room itself - if those things aren’t maintained very regularly - to the degree that fishing nets or rope or steel cables ends up around the propeller - it can raise decibel levels by about 70dB at their worst, compared to what they would be if they were properly maintained. Well that additional noise that gets put out by the ferries when they are not properly maintained - or any fishing vessel or seagoing vessel for that matter - has disastrous effects in the marine community, particularly with marine mammals and their prey species and the prey species of the prey of marine mammals and so on and so on. So I wanted to be very up front about exactly what those recordings were. It turns out that after the fact - to my ears at least - there’s some very musical aspects of that recording which gave me kicks as well. So it kind of tickled both regions of my own interest in that one little piece.

KP: Yeah I feel like I have read about not necessarily that project but the effect of anthropogenic noise on whale populations and I think it has some interesting implications for humans, right. Like humans that are living in very noisy cities and humans that are living in less noisy rural areas and what psychological effects those may have. I think I was kind of interested in the science and art threshold question only because I feel like there’s a boundary of rigor, where maybe whenever you’re coming at it from an aesthetic point of view, maybe just capturing it once causes that inspiration but coming from a scientific perspective you usually want a data set, right, something that you can run some statistical analysis on and find some throughlines, some trends. And I feel like the arts thrive on ambiguity and you can’t have that in a scientific process, you have to be very clear about what your methods are, what your biases are, the processes you took to combat your biases. 

AJ: Yeah it all comes back to the intent of the work, I think.

KP: Yeah yeah. Say, if you were to have a scientific data set of say fish sounds or something to the right ears it can be very musical...

AJ: Yeah and I suppose if you’re inclined to listen to it that way, right. I’m sure there are those in the science community that heard nothing of the sort. That heard nothing goddamn musical about it [laughs]

KP: [laughs] they just run it through a program and look at the frequency ranges or something... I don’t know, I guess any documentation is important. In your communication with the scientific community or even just on your own, have you found something that sonic markers can convey that maybe other markers can’t, like population studies or visual markers?

AJ: So you’re talking about something that is very important to me right now which is noise pollution, effectively. And what I’ve learned in the process is there are too many hats to wear to solve the issue. Focusing on what you’re good at and why you’re doing it and the why you’re doing it will reinforce the product. And in this case, for me, it’s recording. It’s having very specific ideas or at least a specific framework of ideas to go out and record a site or things within a specific site that is out there in the world. It’s not just, “oh I hope I can get some really cool sounds out of this building.” There can also be a secondary purpose, such as having those recordings on hand for others who might need it for their work or my own work in sound design, for working in film. The too many hats part comes in when you’re getting too deep into… “oh shit that’s a spotted owl, I thought there were only barred owls in this region, I wonder if this is a protected area.” And it’s a very satisfying path to go down. And then, “OK that definitely was a spotted owl because of these timbres and because of these rhythms and percussive kind of sounds that were at the trailing edge of its call. Oh that was a mating call or just a ‘I’m here’ kind of call.” But ultimately that is just functional knowledge of an environment, which can be very useful in your own empathy for the environments that you’re operating in. When it comes to the bioacoustics aspect, that’s where it’s important to link up with other communities, the people that nerd out all day with their own software suites that bioacousticians use and see what they can pull out of the recordings and add that to a map or an archive for a specific area for a project that may or may not be going on, and determining for instance how development or capitalism at large is affecting semi-rural to rural areas that are miles down the road. The work that recordists can do if they come home not too thrilled about their day out in the field is to hold on to that and work with communities who might be able to use that material for something else, something even bigger than realizing our own artistic projects.

KP: Yeah, and I imagine even recording the same space or a similar space across time can be super helpful as well. I mean you get a sense of seasonal behaviors of what’s there but you do also see longer term effects in the context of developments and stuff like that. 

AJ: Sometimes the difference makes itself most apparent just by the times of day that you might be recording it. When you zoom out and start comparing recordings that you’ve made of a specific area over the course of a month, things begin to get even more interesting. And then exponentially so if you’re recording a site for as long as a year or more, hopefully with others helping you out.

KP: Yeah. How long have you been doing the creek project? 

AJ: That partnership started I think two years ago. It’s an organization out here called the Great Peninsula Conservancy. One of the stewards over there and I just happened to meet and talk about things - she may have read something or vice versa - but we ended up talking and we both got pretty jazzed pretty quickly about the potential in me being able to just do stuff that I normally like to do on such an outing with microphones and have it be useful. And where this has really become special to me is in the ability to teach young people and to get them into this type of thing. So I’ve done a couple of lectures with middle school students about this whole idea of getting out and leaving the camera at home and just take microphones and a recording device and see if that kind of thing gives you kicks. All the way out to encouraging them, encouraging a seventh grader to work with the academics and researchers about the things that they’ve been recording and starting conversations about whether or not this could be useful to those departments at schools or any particular student who might be doing a project. A nice feedback chain can sometimes develop out of those efforts and that makes me pretty happy. I get to, on Sunday, provided the weather behaves, do like an hour and a half walkthrough of this specific site, the Curley Creek, where the salmon do their annual runs and walk people through the processes that I took out there, how I went about it. And how do we protect it? How do we conserve a place like that? And furthermore how do we restore similar areas that have not been so cared for or that have been completely beat up, particularly just in the last four years by administrative changes and funding changes to wetlands conservation efforts and other environments.

KP: Did I hear that that particular area was dammed?

AJ: It’s not. It’s actually a tributary that feeds directly into the Puget Sound on part of the peninsula out here called Port Orchard. It’s a rural part of that town. Dam removals are something different and that’s where I think I’m going to be spending a lot more time over the next year, trying to work with others on a long-term project. You’ve seen satellite photos just of your town or Round Rock or Georgetown or places like that, what they look like in 1955 versus 2005 and the comparisons are crazy, right? Just the amount of development. I want to do something similar with audio and work with other recordists and any students in ecological programs - and I’m talking ecology proper not acoustic ecology - who might want to partner up and do before and after recordings of the areas down near the Snake River and the Klamath Basin in the northern part of California where four dams are actively being discussed for removal.

KP: Yeah there’s a book - I’m blanking on the author, I think it’s John Graves [it is] - called Goodbye to a River and it’s about his last canoe trip down - blanking on the river too but I wanna say it’s the Blanco [it’s the Brazos] - before they put in the dams. And in the context today, after having put in the dams, it’s pretty sad. Just what it’s done to the experience around there. Some of my early background is in river geology so I’ve got a little knowledge of what dams can do to a watershed and how just putting in a dam completely changes the way a basin erodes, where the runoff goes, so it’s not great. 

AJ: No it’s not.

KP: And then you’ve got the whole US Army Corps of Engineers thing - which is I guess is mostly active in the Mississippi - but how they treat the river like a sandbox and put in random shapes to see what they will do. But yeah it’s… I don’t know… I feel like the way the modern US culture treats rivers is a little disrespectful I guess, trying to control them a little too much and not really aware of the effects they cause when they play with them. 

AJ: Yeah a good study is the Elwha River.

KP: mmm, where’s that?

AJ: It’s in northern Washington, it’s up in - I think that’s Jefferson County - but it’s north of the Olympic mountain range on the coast of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and there were two dams there that were constructed 100, 120 years ago, something like that. They took the dams down in the 2013, 2014 timeframe if I’m not mistaken. For the first time in a hundred years, right. And what they have seen, with the removal of the upper and lower dam, miles away upstream from the mouth of the river, is the return of King and Chinook salmon, which have not seen that part of the river in over a hundred years. What they’re finding is that marine-based minerals that are carried around by the salmon -- because they have spent so much time in a marine environment -- they’re transporting those minerals, things at the molecular level, that far upstream, which has additionally boosted the return of even certain flora up there in riparian areas. Certain predators are returning to the areas which brings certain consequences or circumstances in addition to the salmon and what they bring and what they deposit into the river. So you’re just kind of at the micro-level seeing this slow shift to what I think many imagine things might’ve looked like a hundred years ago when there was zero building on that dam where it was just used more or less for logging. And that’s very promising to me. The same level of concern - as much as we have concern for the local ecology itself - is in indigenous communities, specifically in the area that I’m talking about in northern California and southern Oregon in the Klamath Basin. The dams and drought have put a damper on indigenous communities and their ways of life, which in many areas on those rivers are built around fishing and specifically for salmon. When you have the amount and the level of fish kills that you’ve seen over the last couple of years, just because of drought conditions and other untoward events, it’s having a massive impact. It gets interesting because, as much as it is a right for indigenous peoples to have their quota, which is effectively - you know it depends on where it is and it depends on the state - limitless, which is good and how I think it should be, under a responsible fisheries management program, right. But there’s competition by local farmers, right. And there’s competition not just for the fish by local fishermen that do make some income off of fishing those rivers but also the farmers themselves and the allocation of those waters. When the waters become so low because of the dams that still exist - that really do very little these days comparatively when you have other power sources such as wind - you can imagine how nasty those discussions at a political level can become, especially in local politics. It’s interesting to watch. 

KP: Yeah, I almost actually forgot that dams can be used for power [laughs] I mostly think of them as flood-control measures. I’ve got some odds and ends, those were the two main threads I had, but do you want to take it in any direction in particular?

AJ: I am having a good time doing a lot of listening lately to a lot of records that I haven’t listened to in awhile and also going through some interviews that I’ve done… I think you read this thing that I published with Marilyn Crispell at the beginning of the week?

Read Alan’s interview with Marilyn Crispell here.

KP: Yeah, that was super interesting.

AJ: Man, I don’t know, and maybe I’m showing my age or something… I’m just, I’m missing those times. And not in a way that “things were better back then or it wasn’t like this 20 years ago,” I’m not processing it that way. I’m processing it with all of the frustration that is being endured by so many musicians and people involved with music and the arts in general. There’s a lot to be taken from in some of those discussions that happened 20 years ago and it’s remarkable how different things were just in terms of the grind itself, what it’s like to be a musician and what collaboration looks like and what good curatorial decisions look like, those types of things. And digging back into some of these interviews that are 20, 30 years old, it’s been really illuminating for me lately, both as a musician who at times does his own thing and as someone who’s just involved with other people’s music.

KP: It’s interesting that you say that you felt a lot has changed because when I was reading it my thought was, wow it seems like not a lot has changed [laughs] only because y’all were talking about like, wow wouldn’t it be nice to have a national healthcare system…

AJ: Yeah, the concerns are definitely the same. I guess they’re just in a different kind of shape and paradigm at this point. I guess the one thing that I’m thinking about that I’m not articulating very well is just the outright saturation that exists now versus 2001. Which is, it’s something to digest.

KP: Promotion. Yeah, promotion was another thing that stuck out. If we could only get people to talk about this music there are people out there who would listen to it. And yeah, maybe compared to 2001 with the web a little more fleshed out there are presumably more voices talking about it in maybe a more accessible way through the internet but not compared to the amount of work that’s just available. And then I guess another interesting thing that stuck out to me is... Marilyn says something along the lines of, we are the product of our contingencies. What she was listening to, what she was doing at the moment, what she’s experiencing, which is very intuitive and it’s something that I agree with as well but I know she was a performer in a heavily improvised context but it’s nice to have a performer’s voice acknowledge that instead of like, there’s a right way to play Bach and there’s a wrong way type of thing. 

AJ: Yeah, she’s such a sincere and warm voice too. She’s just immediately… I don’t know, just immediately inspirational in what she has to say. 

KP: Yeah, she also said too… she seemed very concerned with the well-being of the people around her, and I think that came through just in y’alls conversation.

AJ: Yeah, yeah, magically so, huh. I have a good memory of the first part of that interview, I think the March 16th part. But all of that, that was like two and a half hours of me sitting in my automobile in my garage because my kids were real young then - I think they were two and four years old - and it was their bedtime and I was like, there’s no way I’m gonna be able to pull off a telephone interview I’m trying to record in the house, so I went out in the car. And she made it the coziest place in the world to be during a cold March evening in 2001. It was a wonderful discussion. I think we’re all lucky that she wanted to open up so much. 

KP: And you mentioned Braxton a little earlier and I got a sense that you at least used to listen to quite a bit of jazz around the time of this interview. Do you still or?

AJ: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. There’s a lot of new jazz that I’m finding my way into and then there’s also some of the old jazz which is really what informed all my listening and even my playing right now, the way that I improvise more immediately comes from someone like Ornette than it does others that you might think if you’ve listened to my work. More that, in the course of improvising, I’m talking specifically with live performances, just the manner of composing something in real time either by yourself or in collaboration with others, big imprints have been left on me by people like Thelonius Monk and Ornette and certainly Marilyn Crispell in how I might think out the trajectory of decisions in a live performance. But yeah I’m heavily into jazz, I would be embarrassed to say how many jazz recordings that I have, right. Tyshawn Sorey is… he’s a fucking genius. In today’s music, for me personally, he’s at the center of a lot of things with his thinking and his composing and especially with his playing. He’s a monster, on a lot of instruments. I’ve been really into him and his work and some of the satellite works that have been popping up around that sphere.

KP: Nice. You mentioned that you’ve been spending a lot of time with records; what else have you been listening to lately?

AJ: A lot of older records. A lot of CRI recordings, do you know this label? 

KP: mm mm

AJ: Composers... Recording... Inc? It’s very university, academic based effort, this label, that existed I wanna say from the late sixties all the way out to maybe ‘81… [It was 1954 – 2003] But these recordings were full of American composers and occasionally composers from overseas that were doing fantastic, near outlandish type of work in the composing world. What I would call experimental composition. Cagean in many ways. In other ways more influenced directly by Feldman than Cage. But there’s hundreds, I believe, of releases on that label, with all kinds of juicy little kernels of activity that you wouldn’t find elsewhere, names that you wouldn’t hear about elsewhere. Sometimes these recordings... were completely driven by a faculty head in a department of music using a couple of students that might’ve been available to them, and then some big shot symphonic orchestra level chairs that are playing and adding their voices to this music too. And in other cases it’s just completely obscure. You know, musicians and composers who now have an enduring place on this label. I wanna say that New World Records is beginning to release or re-release some of those CRI recordings. 

Explore New World Records’ reissues of CRI releases here.

KP: Yeah, whenever you described it, it seemed like a very DRAM type of thing, which I think is tied to New World too. Alright, did you want to hit up anything else?

AJ: I should mention some collaborations that I’m working on. I really respect the people that I’m working with just out the gate but they’re such nice people and they’ve been very understanding with me and this stop-start constant thing that’s been going on with me since mid-2020. One is with Alexandra Spence. She’s Sydney, Australia based. We’re at the beginning stages of a project that we have kind of teased back and forth with wanting to work with one another for a couple of years and we’re finally in the beginning stages of that. Grisha Shakhnes and I started a project in early 2020 and we’re nearing the end of that. The collaborative continues in kind of real time phase and we’ll be in post-production on that at some point. And then also a British player by the name of Daniel Jones whose the biggest sweetheart of a guy and someone whose work I was turned on to many years ago. We rapped with one another one time about, you know we should do something together. The results have been joyous for me. I’ve loved working with Daniel Jones. And the greatest thing about Dan is his humility which if you know him you’re laughing with me inside right now because he is humble to a fault which is what makes him so great. But yeah, he sent me some really interesting work that I was able to work back with and we’ll be picking up the final stages of that at some point pretty soon. Grisha Shakhnes and I have a project that has required some environmental aspects to line up properly in order to execute the ideas. I want to say we are nearly completion on that one, which we’ve thought about for a long time. Lastly I’ve begun mixing the new Telescoping record, which is myself, Dave Abramson, Greg Kelley, and Rob Millis. We are working from around two hours of material from live recordings we made last year in a bizarre space, physically, aesthetically, and acoustically. Those are all things that I’m working on right now. No solo stuff. Haven’t been in that headspace. And rather putting any pressure on myself to be in that headspace I’m just enjoying working with others right now. 

annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Cheryl Leonard - Point Eight Ice (2011)

Cheryl Leonard is a composer, performer, field recordist, and instrument builder perhaps most associated with the natural-object instruments she crafts from bones, stones, shells, wood, and other found natural materials and the non-standard notations she composes specifically for these instruments, often in tandem with field recordings and reflecting the environment(s) the materials came from. In 2021, she released Schism for field recordings, coil pickup recordings, natural objects, glass, and metal. 

Point Eight Ice is a 2011 composition for two performers with Octobone, Limpet Shell Spine, and a fixed field recording. It is part of a project, Antarctica: Music from the Ice, created with natural objects and field recordings sourced from a five-week trip to Antarctica’s Palmer Research Station. Raw sounds from Leonard’s trip have been released on Chattermarks: Field Recordings from Palmer Station, Antarctica, and an album of her musical compositions is due in 2022 from Other Minds Records. Point Eight Ice features its three parts together in a diagram on an absolute timeline. It includes: circled numbers for location on natural-object instruments; floating numbers for silences; text direction for action; indicators for dynamics and tempo; and various drawn shapes for tones, the heights of which indicate volume and the vertical position of which indicates relative pitch. A performance from the composer is below. 

The shapes intuitively represent the gestures described by the text in time: loop-the-loops for the nearly rotary wrist motion of jingling mobiles; zig-zags for the seismographic shaking of tremolo; points for taps; and lines for scrapes. I think it’s interesting that traditional dynamic indicators are used for a mobile and feather flicks in the first 30” when shapes and their heights are used for similar devices elsewhere. Drawing out the fixed field recording seems to illuminate a desired relation to the performed sound, like the percussive compliment of quill taps to loud pops around 1’00” or a contrapuntal interweaving around 3’10.” The text associated with the fixed field recording describes the sound result while the text associated with performance only describes how to make sound, which makes plain sense because the recording already exists but also implies an openness in the sound result and centers the contingent performance aspect of the piece. The performance above breaks the score beyond the indicated ‘improvisation’ inherent to these fine movements by realizing it with a single performer alternating among natural-object instrument parts with playback and by using a vertebrae mobile instead of pine needles on the Limpet Shell Spine around the 3’ mark. While every mark on the page is understandably not reflected in this performance, the performance does demonstrate the precision in dynamics and relative pitch possible with these instruments, whose non-standard tunings require non-standard notation like this.

reviews

Joshua Bonnetta & Judith Hamann - RE-RECORDER (Canti Magnetici, 2022)

Joshua Bonnetta and Judith Hamann explore film sound design via contact mics, electronics, tape, synth, field recordings, cello, and voice.

Last week, I finally watched Edward Yang’s multi-generational family-drama epic film Yi Yi, in which ‘nothing happens’ but also ‘everything matters,’ in the sense that everyday images and sounds take on a kind of spiritual significance via camera and microphone. What is it about film as a medium, or perhaps even visual media in general, that so readily supercharges the banal in this way? Something in the shot, something outside the shot? In RE-RECORDER, it is not only the obvious absence of image but also the absence of concrete narrative, the absent ontological ground against which to feel that numinous spiritual connection, which is experienced as a haunting - a melancholy inability to find ‘real’ coherence in this assemblage of “location recordings, musical fragments, foley, in-studio recordings, outtakes, and sketches,” not knowing how different situations have been pasted together or modified (why am I tearing up listening to traffic, is it something in the mastering?). Of course these issues are not different from issues in ‘real’ film, which also can provide only an artificial coherence. Still, in suggesting the ‘removal’ of a visual element which was never really there, Bonnetta and Hamann construct a sensibility according to which, it turns out, the images were only a distraction. Here, in sound alone, is both a hardening and a softening of awareness, and new dimensions to explore.

- Ellie Kerry

Vilhelm Bromander - aurora (Warm Winters Ltd., 2022)

Mauritz Agnas (clarinet, contrabass), Emma Augustsson (cello), Vilhelm Bromander (soprano saxophone, pump organ, percussion), Johan Graden (clarinet, piano, pump organ), Anton Svanberg (tuba), and Pelle Westlin (soprano saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet) perform ten Bromander compositions on the 26’ aurora. 

Tracks’ fleeting brevity adds to the airiness imbued by the instrumentation and that each almost appears a variation on a theme adds to the dream haze of the flighty tracks. Small nuances differentiate them, organ and tuba accentuated here, twinkling mallets and cymbal splashes there, some step-pattern play, or a prominent pause, melodies coalescing into lush layered harmonies with saccharine apogees. Hear children playing in the rests. Its harmonies push and pull for separate and synchronous emotivities, at once low and hopeful, elegiac jubilations, a cordial malaise. 

- Keith Prosk

Eventless Plot - Apatris (tsss tapes, 2022)

Aris Giatas, Vasilis Liolios, and Yiannis Tsirikoglou perform collective compositions for tapes, piano, percussion, and electronics on the four-track, 23’ Apatris.

The piano a disjointed melody’s nervous stumbling, the curt plink of muted keys and the glowing decay ringing out in tremulous cadences. The first part might pluck the strings inside and strike the body to resonate abyssally hollow. The environment surrounding the piano in each part is distinct from the others. The frictional flicker of turning tape and the glitch of its rearranging grains with electric whirr and whomp. Unobtrusive yet ubiquitous white noise with ululating oscillations. A symphony of chitinous shaking and rotational snare play with singing sines. Turntablesque scratching and rip and chirp of rewinding with a turning chugging. A moment of respite in each part, the environment drops out, only to return and appear more oppressive after its absence. But the piano perseveres, changing little. A kind of refugee tossed among these harsh states.

- Keith Prosk

Forbes Graham - Solo Horn (Sound Holes, 2022)

Forbes Graham performs two quarter-hour tracks for trumpet and objects on Solo Horn. 

“Grey Etchings” seems to explore ambiguities in the sounds of trumpet and other objects. Glimpses of recognizable trumpet tone and something recognized as not trumpet and acousmatic moments where the two blur. Key clicks like unsealed jar top pops phase into something too quick or something too wobbly to be trumpet. The shear of breath becomes something rubbed, something scraped, could be anything as much as air through a mouthpiece. An alternating amplifier hum activates around the moments the trumpet is activated, groaning, sighing, wheezing, whistling. Something rattling in metal that could be in trumpet if it didn’t occur together with its bluster of squeegee and dolphin talk. The whirlpools and flurries in “White and Blue Etchings” are softened and dulled, mediated through water, which carries the irregular metronome of dripping water and the slow motion resonance of its tapped cistern. Again the horn here as just another object in a system of sounding objects. And in making the horn just another object, a thing unbound to the fealty of virtuosity, virtuosity seems silly, opening the heart to the wonders of the sounds themselves, expanding its language in more ways than texture alone.

- Keith Prosk

Sarah Hennies - Clock Dies (Earle Brown Music Foundation, 2022)

Talea Ensemble, conducted by James Baker, performs Sarah Hennies’ half-hour composition Clock Dies for flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, piano, and percussion. 

A clockwork complexity made from simple means. Precise rhythmic sequences repeated ad nauseam after some time discard components and integrate inclusions to disorient time. Likewise swift transitions between distinct material baffles any linear flow. Harmony stays in the family, winds, strings, or bowed percussion and its long decay sustaining together, and when it seems to sour is when harmonic interactions bloom. Intermittently imitations of tremors over what must be fatiguing durations challenge performers’ coordination, twitching wrists, rapid tapped feet, small quick key clicks, maybe weird tonguing. There is a dark humor in seemingly nudging the ensemble to error, in recognizing some repetition as music and some repetition as task. The embodiment and not the ideal of the performer is always underscored. Moments of familiar harmony and trackable patterns alternately feel more comfortable in their sparsity and more unsettling for the same reason. 

- Keith Prosk

Talea Ensemble on this recording is: Barry Crawford (flute); Matthew Gold (percussion); Stephen Gosling (piano); Chris Gross (cello); Marianne Gythfeldt (clarinet); Karen Kim (violin); Hannah Levinson (viola); and Alex Lipowski (percussion).

Catherine Lamb - aggregate forms (KAIROS, 2021)

JACK Quartet performs Catherine Lamb’s string quartet (two blooms) and divisio spiralis on the two-and-a-half hour aggregate forms. 

Slow sustained strings sometimes silent for a moment but more often dynamically dropped out to return beating create a sense of suspended gradual expansion, most often appearing to move in pairs, two layers of distinct pulse, the structure perceived through these microstructures in two blooms. Perhaps because it is an earlier composition, I hear the Hindustani music in it, phylloidal layers of metallic corrugations like tanpura, bowing returns in raga rhythm, deep bass register oms. 

Sustained strings in endless gliss approximate a curve in their progressing web of lines in divisio spiralis. Pauses between pieces and within pieces like light against cames, small discontinuities in something recognized as continuous. From piercing frequencies towards a swaddling harmonic warmth, beating becoming stronger, at times ethereally melodic, an ascending spiral curve.

- Keith Prosk

JACK Quartet on this recording is: Jay Campbell (cello); Christopher Otto (violin); John Pickford Richards (viola); Austin Wulliman (violin).

https://www.kairos-music.com/cds/0018010kai

Jack Langdon - Less Than You Remember (Sawyer Editions, 2022)

Jack Langdon performs three solo organ improvisations on the 47’ Less Than You Remember. 

Emphatic staccato like young lungs through a new wood train whistle neuters the warm sustain expected of organ. Then at the threshold of continuity and sounding, its bellows close enough as if to fill the pipes but not close enough to vibrate them. But “Decline” slowly intersperses layers of chords to build towards the throb of warm sustain and a mellifluous melody. Dense droning chords whose undulations appear to alter autonomously begin “Old Path,” corporeal vibrations that accentuate the architecture of the instrument. And a twinkling and startling melody sprinkling it. Each begins by subverting characteristics of the organ; each ends having succumbed to them. Always an argument between high and low registers. Perhaps “The Highest Fall” finds an in-between space, its sequestered chords trailing beatings like a smoking aura, ending not in beauty but in sonic distortions, tones shaking in its low rumbling. 

- Keith Prosk

Kasper T. Toeplitz - CoRoT​-​3 (Les Naines Brunes #3) (self-released, 2021)

Kasper T. Toeplitz presents the 36’ fixed audio arrangement - featuring Elena Kakaliagou on multitracked horn and effects - for CoRoT-3, a multimedia project whose performances include music and images from the composer, live horn from Kakaliagou, and choreography from Myriam Gourfink. 

Any horn is unheard, so heavily distorted as to seem more amplified power line hum, deep strata of diverse pulse in seismic rumble and whirr. Morse distress amidst disintegrating wind. Waves expressionistic outlines of the endless expansion of perpetual combustion in slow motion. Some arcane orchestra breaching the maelstrom but it is still not horn-forward. True to the brown dwarfs it takes its inspiration from, the sound is massive and engulfing, physical in its volume.

- Keith Prosk

Tongue Depressor + Austin Larkin - Curve of the Spine (Obscure & Terrible, 2021)

Zach Rowden and Henry Birdsey - the duo Tongue Depressor - combine bass and cello with Austin Larkin’s violin.

Seeming to evolve directly out of previous Tongue Depressor recordings, especially the Fiddle Music series, Curve of the Spine finds the duo’s extended explorations of minor-feeling harmony-in-drone inflected, subtly but decisively, by the contributions of collaborator Austin Larkin. Certainly, the addition of another instrument, if nothing else, “deepens” the atmosphere, tilting further towards drone-as-enveloping-soundscape. But, aside from “several more vibrating strings,” what Larkin seems to bring to the table here is yet another conceptualization of ‘drone music,’ or set of tools from which drone (and what is it, really, that unites these ideas under one heading?) may be built - an emphasis on drone as constructed from overlapping cyclical “cells” of varying lengths and speeds, each instrument seeming to periodically find and stick to a new repeating fragment, a pluck or a slide or a note, and the overall soundscape comes across as corollary to those structural patterns’ non-metrical coincidences. The resulting music therefore strikes me as having a greater sense of “architecture” than prior Tongue Depressor recordings (which is not meant as a value judgment), perhaps aligning with the release webpage’s foregrounded assertion that “there was nothing to figure out, nothing to explore, the forms were in place.” 

- Ellie Kerry 

Michael Winter - Counterfeiting in Colonial Connecticut (XI Records, 2022)

Gemma Tripiana Muñoz, Elliot Simpson, Mandy Toderian, and Michael Winter present a 41’ performance of Winter’s Counterfeiting in Colonial Connecticut for guitar, high and low accompaniments, readings, and electronics.

A knotty outsider guitar melody, ringing harmonics, rambling circular similitudes based on the coin press and its imperfections with rippling bass guitar decay and glassy piccolo whine runs through Counterfeiting in Colonial Connecticut. In between readings of excerpts from Kenneth Scott’s titular book and perhaps other numismatic publications, the general remarks in the score, and a selection of texts related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and the fractures - especially in US society - that these events lay bare, often but not always in threes like the instruments, the counterfeiting accounts central like guitar, flanked by other readings. The selected counterfeiting accounts are particularly punitive and cruel, cataloging arrest, capture, imprisonment, fines, the forfeiture of bonds in absence due to illness, denied petitions to imprisonment in an unheated cell in winter, lashes, dismemberment. Which echo in the country’s systems today as told through accounts of the pandemic and response to George Floyd’s murder. I have a suspicion that these and other small mimickries threading the music and the text and the two together conceal a clever sleight of hand but the recognition of injustice in the content for similar suspicions leverages my confidence to appreciate it at face value.

- Keith Prosk

Zinc & Copper - Éliane Radigue: Occam Delta X (self-released, 2022)

Robin Hayward, Hilary Jeffery, and Elena Kakaliagou present an hour-long performance of the Éliane Radigue composition for tuba, trombone, and horn, Occam Delta X. 

Deep low tuba tones guttural, growling, in chanting repetitions and sputtering tonguings from horn and tanpura formants of throat singing trombone layer and extend and blend in long meditative duration to dissolve discrete soundings into ethereal waves of om spilling singing beatings. Overwhelming wonder from this ascetic practice. An audible union of the ensemble’s preoccupations with the protolinguistic aspects of brass and the composer’s Buddhist faith. 

- Keith Prosk

Peter Conradin Zumthor - things are going down (Edition Wandelweiser, 2021)

One of my favourite things about Peter Conradin Zumthor’s things are going down is the large extent to which it lives up to the mental image that its title conjures, as well as to its curious credits: piano player and piano tuner. Zumthor starts the piece with a small, repetitive piano melody played quick enough to take on a pulsing effect. It could be mistaken for classic minimalism at first, where a simple repetition of octaves may gradually evolve or advance into a beautifully complex music, but Zumthor’s performance just stagnates and circles around its pulse. It feels committed, confident and purposeful as a war drum. It takes a few minutes of this provocative repetition for the effects of the loosening strings of the piano to be heard, for the listener to become aware that things are going down.

Through the 46-minute composition, René Waldhauser gradually detunes the piano, dampening the thundering war drum into an incoherent blob of dissonant reverberation by the ten minute mark and carrying on from there. Apparently the risk of snapped strings, the piano figuratively striking back against its abusers, was high enough that both players had to perform while wearing goggles. As the ugly sound-mass of loosened, shaking strings grows, it overpowers the striking keys, creating the illusion that the key-sounds are an effect of the dominating string-sounds and not the other way around.

As the lower strings loosen into unplayability, Zumthor updates his performance to focus on just the higher notes. The result is the re-appearance of the piano as an identifiable, comprehensible, attractive instrument. The upper strings are loosened enough that the keys still carry a considerably janky effect, but their shakiness actually results in surprisingly pleasant layering harmonies. It’s a beautiful moment of levity. It gives the impression that things are looking up, and, like before, it might even take the listener a moment to realize that things are still going down.

The upper strings descend back into the same archaic mess of abstraction, but now they bring along high-end metallic scrapings to give this detuned piano blackhole an even uglier voice than before. As the piano is forced into its lower limits it sounds increasingly mechanical – the incidental sounds of low-end thumps, awkward shakes and harmful scratching accompany each strike of a piano key, building into a mammoth echo which rings within the piano’s body while its organs are severed.

One of my other favourite things about the piece is that by the nature of its concept it promises a specific non-climax: the tipping point where the detuned piano can no longer be played, where the strings have stretched out of audibility and the piano is rendered mute. It does get there, but the tipping point is more dramatic than I anticipated, with Zumthor unloading a barrage of failed high notes, resulting in a gorgeous mess of descending string smashes, like a frail last hurrah as the instrument finally falls apart and loses its voice, completing its descent into uncomfortable industrial melancholy.

The composition does have a last trick up its sleeve, however. After the humiliating climax, the chords begin to tighten again. The scraping fades away and the piano regains its voice. For some reason, things are going up. I can’t help but see it as an optimistic ending – minutes ago it seemed all is lost, and now the pianist has returned and is playing with greater conviction than ever. One could read this as an analogy for a machine that naturally shuts off before turning back on by its own processes, but I’d rather read it as a beacon of hope that suggests that nothing can be so far gone that it can’t start going up again.

- Connor Kurtz

https://www.wandelweiser.de/_e-w-records/_ewr-catalogue/ewr2119.html

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate this newsletter and have the means, please consider donating to it. Your contributions support not only the regular writers but the musicians and other contributors that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the regular writers, and distributes 40% to musicians and other contributors (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised the newsletter of work it reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. The newsletter was able to offer musicians and other contributors $1.99 to $4.64 for December and $2.90 to $7.74 for January. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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mumei TEN is available, featuring postcard pieces from Cao Thanh Lan, Carolyn Chen, Christian Kesten, Rasha Ragab, Rebekah Alero, Steffi Weismann, and Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec. 

Recordedness recently published a new series of discussions, including: Ellen Fullman interviewed by Frantz Loriot; Luciano Maggiore by Eamon Sprod/TARAB; Sean Meehan and Theresa Wong in conversation; Barre Phillips by Emmanuel Cremmer and Patrice Soletti; Hannes Seidl by Raphaël Belfiore; and Eamon Sprod/TARAB by Tom Soloveitzik.

Simon Martin recently published the e-book, Treatise: Numbers-Based Musical Harmony. Additional information, supplements, and a link to support the work with donations can be found here. 

The Free Jazz Collective organized a small celebration of “echtzeitmusik,” including blurbs and reviews from blog writers and questionnaires with Burkhard Beins, Mia Dyberg, Emilio Gordoa, Robin Hayward, Carina Khorkhordina, Annette Krebs, Magda Mayas, Matthias Müller, Olaf Rupp, Ignaz Schick, Sabine Vogel, and Eric Wong.

To celebrate what would be Pauline Oliveros’ 90th birthday, The Center for Deep Listening has issued a call for text scores, to be presented one-a-day for 365 days from May 22, 2022. More information here. 

$5 Suggested Donation | If you appreciate this newsletter and have the means, please consider donating to it. Your contributions support not only the regular writers but the musicians and other contributors that make it possible. For all monthly income received, harmonic series retains 20% for operating costs, equally distributes 40% to the regular writers, and distributes 40% to musicians and other contributors (of this, 40% to interviewee or guest essayist, 30% to rotating feature contributor, and 30% equally to those that apprised the newsletter of work it reviewed). For the nitty gritty of this system, please read the editorial here. The newsletter was able to offer musicians and other contributors $2.00 to $5.32 for November and $1.99 to $4.64 for December. Disclaimer: harmonic series LLC is not a non-profit organization, as such donations are not tax-deductible.

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conversations

Over video chat, cellist Judith Hamann and I talk about Berlin, in-between spaces, centering the performer, collectivism and collaboration, and listening and responding. 

Judith Hamann has released the solos Hinterhof and A Coffin Spray as well as Heiligenstadt with BJ Nilsen and Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson in 2021 so far.

Keith Prosk: Hey! Can you hear me?

Judith Hamann: Yes.

KP: Perfect. How’re you doing today?

JH: I am OK. Sorry, I wasn’t sure if I should do the whole headphones thing or not, but is this fine? 

KP: Oh, absolutely. It’s whatever you’re comfortable with. You just got back from a rehearsal? 

JH: Yeah.

KP: Nice. What’re you up to if you can share?  

JH: Maybe less a rehearsal, it’s sort of like… Cat Lamb has started this singing by numbers group, so it’s like we get together and sing ratios. It’s really lovely. 

KP: Nice. Very cool. Cat Lamb might come up a little later. But, yeah, since you just recently moved there, how is Berlin treating you? I know you’ve got quite a few collaborators there in the Harmonic Space people, Sam Dunscombe, and Anthea [Caddy] and stuff. 

JH: Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t necessarily the plan to move here, but of all the places that I could’ve got stuck during this time, it’s been great. And having so many collaborators and friends, people who are really old friends, like Anthea, Sam, for instance, they’re like family, so… but you know we were in lockdown from like October ‘til the end of May so it’s sort of just recently… I feel like the last two months have gone from like 0 to 100 immediately. And I feel like my tour and multi-tasking muscles have atrophied [laughs] I find myself super kind of like, oh my god I can’t believe how many things I’m trying to do this month. But it’s also pretty nice.

KP: Yeah, yeah. And it does seem like you’ve been pretty busy with music recently but I was interested in whether or not you’ve decided to pursue the locksmithing trade [laughs] I remember while reading that Tone Glow interview I found it a little poetic that someone who deals pretty explicitly with in-between spaces in their music would be interested in a profession that was literally dealing with liminal spaces.

JH: [laughs] Well, I still threaten to do it every now and then, but it would be a little bit tricky here because my German is coming along very slowly [laughs] and I think if I was in another place, maybe that’s something that I would’ve pursued during the lockdown but, yeah, it’s been sort of an empty threat for a few years now, even pre-COVID. Actually, I used to be quite handy with a butter knife and a phone card in my teens, and then touring a lot I sort of developed key phobia with a lot of unfortunate incidents with doors and not being able to open them. So I think it’s also something like - as well as the practicalities of it would be so nice to do a trade, you know, something reliable, people are always gonna have doors - I think part of it was also about like, wouldn’t it be great to be able to open any door? And also wouldn’t it be great for me to not be afraid of not being able to open a door? 

KP: [laughs] Yeah, yeah. I guess - just since you’ve travelled quite a few places in the world - you probably have a better sense than most, I imagine, of what’s sustainable where. And is the Berlin environment a little more sustainable to actually be a full-time musician than other places that you’ve been? 

JH: It turns out, yes [laughs] I mean, my previous strategy was to not live anywhere. ‘Cause I was like, if you don’t have to pay rent or anything then it does kind of just work, you know. I’ve never lived in Europe before and now that things are getting going I’m sort of like, oh, it’s possible here you know. It’s been a difficult year and a half but for the first time in ages I feel like my back isn’t totally against the wall in terms of how I am going to survive. 

KP: That’s great. And does that kind of safety feed back into the music? 

JH: Well, this is really recent. This is maybe like the first month that I’ve been [exhales in relief] [laughs] so I think I still kind of have that scarcity fear thing. I think it takes a little while to subside. But I’m also starting this residency in Stuttgart really soon, so that is also very stable. Housing. Stipend. Work space. So I feel like it might be OK to let myself relax. A little bit. Soon. But definitely compared to the United States, where I lived for a few years, Northern Europe, comparatively, for artists, it’s a completely different situation. 

KP: Yeah. Yeah I know here it’s like music is relegated as a hobby type of thing, so everyone has a day job and then they go and have to put all their efforts into their creative practices. 

JH: Yeah. I feel like the situation here does enable people to be full-time artists in a different way. But I also feel like there’s pressure in a way, that if you’re an artist you should be a full-time artist. And I’m still… I don’t think the locksmithing concept is a bad concept, still [laughs] and yeah I’ve never minded having other jobs and things like that. I think it’s kind of good, in a way. Maybe not an all-consuming one but it’s nice to have different kinds of interactions and to not have survival bound up so much in creative work. I would love to disentangle them if that was possible. I’m not sure it is. 

KP: Yeah, I think in a way - not really with musicmaking in my case - but I always found that my physical jobs almost kind of provided a space to ruminate unconsciously on whatever I was doing creatively later. It’s almost kind of like sleeping on it while you’re awake. 

JH: Yeah it’s like background processing happens. I worked in restaurants all through my twenties and then moved into teaching a lot in my early thirties and I think some of my best accidental thinking has come out of doing another task and being in a different social space as well, you know. I think that you can’t get into the same kind of bubbles if you’re like hanging out with a bunch of chefs, you know [laughs] 

KP: [laughs] Yeah yeah. I guess, so getting back into the liminal stuff, I’ll dig into your practice a little bit if that’s alright. 

JH: I feel like this is a funny moment for me ‘cause I haven’t been able to do any making for like two months. It’s just like everything’s flipped suddenly into performance world. I feel like I had so much time being so close to a particular kind of thinking and working and it’s like… I edited a tiny bit of audio for this collaboration that I’m doing with Marja Ahti, a Finnish sound artist and composer, which has been taking forever, partly my fault - mostly my fault [laughs] - but I felt so much better just after doing like two minutes of something and if you told me two, three years ago that making work in that way would become really important to me I would have been like, no no, it all happens in like a performance real-time kind of thing, and I think things have really shifted for me… But at the same time, just right now I’m kind of like, what is my work again? So feel free to remind me about what it is that I do [laughs]

KP: [laughs] That’s interesting, that might be jumping ahead to where I was eventually gonna flow…

JH: No, let’s go from… where were you gonna hop in?

KP: Well, I guess around the Shaking Studies, you talk about [Henri] Lefebvre’s tender interval, which is kind of like the spaces between measurable things or beats. And to me... it kind of struck me as relating to the way movement is described when you discuss movement in Tashi Wada’s Duets in your dissertation - kind of the oddity of the perceived tonal movement being opposite the physical movement on the neck, which I guess kind of calls into question what is musical movement right. And…

JH: Oh, like in terms of the discussion of descent...

KP: Yeah...

JH: Like how it maps sonically or visually or how we construct… the idea of musical space, how we orient ourselves, those kind of questions…

Read Judith Hamann’s dissertation, Double, Sync, Constellate: Realization Specific Works for More Than One Cello here.

KP: Yeah, yeah and, I guess, relating it back to the shaking bit, or something like beatings, I think it’s easy to perceive movement on like low frequency waves - you can hear that - but whenever you’re dealing with high-frequency beatings or even the scale of shaking, I’m not sure if I actually perceive any movement between the beats. It’s almost like my brain smooths it over like an integral curve type of thing. And I feel like in that moment because movement is kind of suspended, maybe the music is kind of suspended. Sorry, I guess all that is to say that it was hinted that the Shaking Studies was kind of exploring this interval between the beats, or the tender interval, and I’m wondering what you perceive is there, or what you’ve found there. 

JH: I feel like also shaking and vibration and tremor occupies this space of movement and not-movement at the same time. Kind of what you’re describing, when something is in motion, we perceive it as kind of a continuous sustaining thing when actually there’s all this activity there. But I guess also - particularly in terms of that idea of tenderness - it’s also about the irregularity, or the inconsistency, or the interruption, or the pushback from the cello itself, or the space, or an unstable phenomena or interval or ratio that sets that kind of thing in motion where it’s like, is it movement or is it not movement? I think in terms of a performance practice, I think all of those things, things that only come into being when they’re sounding, is something that I’m really interested in. Or things that are sort of not necessarily desirable or the things that you can put in motion that then make other phenomena appear. So rather than being like, I do this and this is the result, I’m interested in what happens in between. And that extends to larger things like rather than, this is a score and this is the outcome - like the work object resides in one of those spaces - I’m interested in work that lives only in-between, if that makes sense. And it’s iterative nature - with the shaking in particular - that’s just something that emerged so slowly over like hundreds of performances you know. And each time I work with that material, something shifts or something new happens. But it’s not necessarily newness in terms of I made a cool new sound but it’s more like, ah another unexpected kind of space opened here. And the material and the cello and I kind of... we work together in that space. And I think tremor and trembling is such an interesting idea like conceptually as well as practically. But for me it definitely came from a practice-based thing to begin with and it sort of over time… you know when you’re interested in something and then suddenly it pops up everywhere?

KP: yeah yeah

JH: Or like you learn a new word and suddenly it’s there. So it’s sort of like not an active critical research project but over time you sieve things and it shakes out these nuggets of interest or ideas and then that folds back into the playing and it’s kind of like, ah is what I’m doing maybe this, or is it multiple things that illuminate different spaces. During the lockdown I’ve started getting really into Édouard Glissant’s writing and he has an amazing book, Poetics of Relation, I’ve been thinking about relation a lot... He’s talking about it in terms of archipelagic thinking and colonialism and all this other stuff but he has all this material around trembling thinking and he’s using it conceptually but occasionally he applies it to actual music as well. And it’s like the thought that trembles is something that is also multiple, it is occupying multiple stances or perspectives simultaneously, and I was like, how have I been talking about shaking for years and no one brought this up! [laughs] That’s been such an interesting thing to think about, shaking, or that space - movement or not-movement - instead of being a binary between those things it’s like could it be both those things simultaneously?

KP: mmhmm, like a motion blur or something, like the way someone might look like Janus or something, you achieve that through motion blur or trembling.

JH: Yeah. I mean it comes also from on a very practical level of taking this rate of shaking that the instrument has and if you put these things in motion what it offers up. If you take that rate of shaking that is endemic to the instrument itself, how does the instrument respond when you’re working with its own tremor, which also changes all the time. So it’s like this constant navigation as well. So, yeah, it’s sort of like physical phenomena that have led to a lot of different strands of conceptual thinking. Which is something I sort of have realized is my tendency [laughs] to do something intuitively, that’s very much in the body, in sound, and then sort of slowly find what the frame is that was already there [miming a frame] but you have to very slowly work your way outwards. 

Read Judith Hamann’s presentation on Shaking Studies from the 2018 Gender Diversity in Music Making Conference here.

KP: Yeah, and just with the physical aspect of playing with an unstable shaking in the instrument or a tremor in your hand, is this a physically fatiguing music to perform? And then also I read how you related shaking to trauma as well, so it’s almost kind of like you’re walking this line between remembering or reliving that trauma and then also reclaiming power over it, which would seem super psychologically taxing as well…

JH: Yeah I guess in the beginning of this kind of work, that was very much there. I was recovering from a really fucked-up time, and I was shaking a lot. There’s a really interesting book called The Shaking Woman or a History of My Nerves that goes really deep into all these origins of shaking. But you know it’s how your body processes things in a way. It started out vaguely therapeutic I guess. In the beginning when I was thinking a lot about shaking, I was thinking a lot about frequencies, I was doing a lot of work with really loud subs and things like that. But I think over time it doesn’t have necessarily that association for me anymore, it’s sort of become something else. So that’s the origin story but now I think it’s not about revisiting something but about generating other things to occupy that space. And I guess in terms of the instability… working with instability, fragility, things that break, things that fail, things that reveal new and unexpected material is also for me partly about changing what my relationship is to my instrument. It’s a lot about undoing ideas of mastery. And I think those are really interesting questions, especially coming from a settler-colonial state of Australia, playing a European-heritage instrument like, what am I doing [laughs] in terms of those things. Like how can this instrument or this sound or this practice, how can that exist apposite or alongside pushes for decolonization and questions like that. And I’m not saying that what I’m doing is solving any of that or even approaching any of that at all. But I think even just the shift of relationship to make it more lateral, more responsive… responsiveness and care is something that I think about a lot. I think anything that shifts that dynamic of the expectation of control, or how we exert mastery over an instrument... the instrument becomes like a foil or a stand-in because it’s actually mastery over your own body, in a way. But then how can you make a more dialogic, complex relationship that also teaches you as well. Does that… sorry…

KP: no no no

JH: I wandered.

KP: No that’s perfect. I know you think of the cello and the performer as a kind of dyad, like you’re not just giving the cello information but the cello is giving you information as well and you’re responding to that as you would maybe someone else.

JH: Yeah, yeah. I think it’s collaborative, you know. It’s not about my idea or my vision. I think all the work I make is in some way responding to something else as like a partnership, whether that’s my cello or my backyard [laughs] yeah, I’ve never thought of myself as a composer with a capital c. It took such a long time before I was like, maybe I could make my own work, kind of thing. It’s like I had to sneak around my own brain, coming at it through more and more distant approaches - particularly repertoire or improvisation or things like that - but I grew up surrounded by all these amazing composer people who were bona fide geniuses like James Rushford and people like that, so I never thought of putting myself in that place. So by having this other approach or by thinking of things like studies or things like that, it’s a way to trick myself into not being a composer necessarily but into making things. 

KP: Yeah yeah. And just going a little bit back to failure, and incorporating the collapse recordings. I get the sense that you don’t think of collapse so much as failure as more a convergence of spaces. And since you mentioned Catherine Lamb too, it almost reminds me of what she does in a live setting with the double rainbow synthesizer and converging spaces...

JH: yeah

KP: So I guess with a lot of field recording stuff, a lot of people I think they perceive that as a recontextualizing of the sources, but what are you exploring with your more phonography-based stuff?

JH: I guess I’ve been thinking about things in a certain way for awhile but maybe the idea of collapsing certain spaces simultaneously became clearer when I was making that Another Timbre record when I was in Finland. I have a longstanding interest in - and I guess this comes back to centering the performer again as well - but in kind of sonography work that isn’t about either representing something as itself or the pure morphology of recorded sound, something like Pierre Schaeffer, like we can make absolute music with decontextualized recorded sound, but I’ve always loved and been more interested in things where the recordist themselves is in the frame of the recording. And also domestic and quotidian kinds of things. People like Vanessa Rossetto or Graham Lambkin or crys cole, they make this kind of work really beautifully, these kinds of frames that are both real but unreal, they’re sort of like fictions but truths collapsed on top of each other in a way. They sort of reframe recorded material and it’s outside of that… I feel like there’s a lot of discourse that’s sort of like, either morphology of sound like musique concrète, or then acoustic ecology pristineness. And I guess I’m always interested in the things where the recordist is in the frame by bumping the thing or shuffling, which I know is not good field recording sound practice, but I also don’t pretend to be any good at field recording at all, it’s just that there’s some material that really interests me. But I’m also interested in unreality, or how you can use sound to build an imaginary surface, a different vision, or an impossible surface… I guess with the ‘Days…’ thing that was a lot about the weather of the island that I was on in Finland, so it’s just like collapsing different kinds of weather on each other in one way, and inside/outside spaces, all those kinds of things. And at the same time I was doing… part of my stay-sane program for myself at the time was drawing a lot, but I started doing lots of massive frottage drawings, like rubbings, of different parts of the island which is sort of like a rearranging of material and surface, but I was thinking a lot about the relationship to recording there because a microphone and a piece of paper can both be like a membrane for recording. Usually when you do a frottage of something, people do a rubbing of a famous plaque or gravestone or something so it’s a way of pre-photography recording in way. I think there’s a link there in terms of how I’m thinking about collapse not just as something that’s just like [exhales ‘boom’ while vertically clapping hands] but like what if you can both exist in multiple spaces at the same time but also why shouldn’t we use sound to do speculative fiction in a way and imagine or create different realities that might put other ideas and experiences in motion. 

KP: mmhmm. I guess it’s another way of looking at the thresholds thing that we’ve been talking about, by eliminating the boundary or maybe crossing the boundary it becomes something else. 

JH: Yeah and I guess for me I primarily think about myself as occupying this performer space, and for me this is another way of understanding recording work as having a kinship to that performance work in a way. Like building a similar space, just using different materials. So instead of using real-time and the cello and my body, it’s making this other kind of imaginary space that occupies the same kind of in-between, in-motion/not-in-motion kind of question. I guess a lot of it is questions as well. I’m not sure that these are necessarily always successful, whatever that means, I don’t even… what is success… I don’t know… sometimes it’s just kind of like, yeah, again, being in this sort of in-between space and having a kernel of an idea or a sound and it’s like instead of being a sculptor with a block chipping away at the outside I’m actually in there and I have to find my way out somehow [laughs]

KP: [laughs] Nice. And then the humming music also kind of reminds me a little bit about convergence - I know it kind of deals with thresholds of sounding the voice as well - but I feel like with the overlapping range of the voice and the cello, you’re almost kind of strengthening that dyad relationship between you and the cello. I guess as far as the humming aspect, what are you exploring there? Is it again part of these spaces in-between, or shared spaces?

JH: I think it became that. Actually, it’s funny that you mention Cat’s music and convergence because actually the humming thing started because I was learning this piece of Cat’s called Frame/Frames for flute… maybe it’s bass flute… one of the bigger flutes - it was a few years ago - and cello. And I was trying to practice this a lot by myself but the way that I’ve learnt to think about just intonation from working with Charles [Curtis] and La Monte [Young] is always super relational, so I needed the flute notes to be able to understand how my ratios were in relation to them. So I was trying to hum the flute part, badly, badly, but it still helped me with learning the piece. But in the process of doing that I was like, ah there’s something really interesting here about the instability, the fragility, the hiddenness. Partly… it’s funny actually I feel like in some ways, now I’m talking about this and today at this singing session, to be able to sing a note with as few overtones as possible you really have to close your mouth almost all the way, you know. And some of the people in the group are proper singers, you know. I’m amateur hour. But it was interesting because one singer was talking about but when you hum, you have to have your mouth open a tiny bit because otherwise all the partials resonate in the top part of your face and come out of your nose. This is all stuff I’m learning that I didn’t know at all but I think intuitively I stumbled into this space where I was like, oh all the summation tones are resonating, or this beating is happening, with this particular sound. So it kind of came from there, just trying to figure out how to learn a piece and then I just became more and more interested again in this unstable, in-between space. Like setting something in motion and then these artifacts that emerge become the focal material, rather than being like, I’m going to play this interval and then hum this ratio. It became very intuitive and more about what can I uncover. But it’s also very strange because I finished that record in isolation, in lockdown, and when you’re humming it’s like everything is happening or resonating inside your own head. I had no idea whether these pieces would actually translate to an audience or listeners. It’s only really recently that I’ve started playing them live and so I feel like they’re also now entering another space and they’re asking for different things and shifting what they want to be in these interesting ways. 

KP: You kind of mentioned this a little earlier but centering the performer. And it strikes me that all of these - and these are all separate projects with maybe a common theme with the thresholds - but they’re also all physical, like with the breath work on A Coffin Spray, the humming, and the shaking. It makes the performer the musical material, I guess kind of collapsing that performer-composer chain almost like the music is not an absolute that can happen without the performer or the performer as a replicator, but the performer themselves is the music. I guess, is that intentional or do you think about that at all?

JH: Yeah I’ve thought about this a lot [laughs] Again, part of it probably comes from an old space of vague insecurity that like, I’m not a composer. I’m also not a very good scholar. I love reading and writing about things but I’ve never had the kind of brain to do the super academic rigorous thing so I remember feeling really liberated when I think it was Amy Cimini, who was on my doctoral committee when I was studying in San Diego, and she was like, the epistemic stance of the performer is its own space and no one has as much authority to talk about that as the person that’s inside that space. And at the same time, I was doing all this work with Charles and really trying to understand, build kind of like my own theory or concept of these pieces like the Tashi Wada Duets or the work I was doing with Charles and La Monte where the piece lives in the space of performance. There are instructions or directions, but the navigation of that can only occur in this configuration of body and time and that’s where the actual piece reveals itself in a way. At the time I was calling it ‘realization specificity,’ which is just a silly way to think about it and I think it’s actually much more complex than that but it’s also one of those weird things where the more you try to explain it the more you start to paint yourself into a corner [laughs] you’re like, it’s this but it’s not this, but it’s this, but it’s this. But I think more useful to me than trying to figure out how to do an elevator pitch version of it is just to be like, well that’s present across all the work that I make. Everything I’m doing is about coming from that particular space. It’s not about concepts and execution, it’s about something that is deeply engaged with material that is responsive, that is resonant with different things or ideas or that it’s this particular space for making work and revealing work that for me has a totally different relationship to authorship or making. Maybe it’s not so far from locksmithing [laughs] I don’t know because there is something about task and undertaking an action and in the navigation of that action the music is revealed from within that space. So then you know maybe in some cases, the more organized electroacoustic things, then there’s a lot of work that takes place, but a lot of it comes always from this seed of something experiential at the center of everything.

KP: Yeah and I guess, to use the now-outdated term realization-specific [laughs]

JH: I think we should pretend that I never… I don’t think that’s good, yeah. It’s too tied to site-specific and it’s just not the right frame, but it kind of gives you a hint of the idea I guess.

KP: I think it totally does. I’ve heard it reframed as like the absolute kind of view is music in time and the realization-specific view is music as time type of thing, which I guess you can start to think about time and whether that actually exists but [laughs]

JH: But I think the thing is that it’s more bodily than just that. I think that makes it too neat, to think about it in those terms, because then it can be just abstracted to sound that occurs without a body making it, you know. And I guess this is always just a thing, you know, I feel like this has come up a bit. Like if you go looking into all these things like that great Lydia Goehr book, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, you know all these things like, is the work object in the score or is it in the piece. And the performer is just this idea like some transparent vessel for the sound, and there’s nothing about the tactility or the messiness or the fuck-ups or the effort or the discomfort but also the magic of what it is to then be doing the thing. It’s too much of a task-trade thing. It’s about labor and care practices and those sorts of things. It doesn’t sit super well with the idea of “the work” and things like that. Or, like, I don’t know, yeah… I’m doing like a cat gesture [laughs] but I feel like that’s really important to me in all of this, that the physicality, the things that you do and the things that you respond to in order to make the thing happen, for me that’s where the weird crazy magic often happens. 

KP: Yeah and not only do you kind of collapse the composer chain like we talked about earlier but with all of these real-time pieces, you’re listening as well, and responding, so you become maybe as much of a listener as the audience is...

JH: Yeah, you’re occupying multiple subject positions simultaneously. I think it’s also important to remember that listening was seen as a participatory practice even in European thinking up until a couple centuries ago. That division is relatively new really. 

KP: Would you ever, or have you, composed for situations that you weren’t involved in?

JH: No… I haven’t. But a friend of mine who’s a viola player transcribed one of my humming pieces and performed it in Naarm, where I’m from, and I’ve never felt remotely like a composer up until that point. And it was so strange to hear something I made played by someone else. And on a different instrument as well, on a viola. And I was like, wow that’s kind of cool. 

KP: And the viola itself - this might be getting a little technical - but it’s almost like a transitory instrument too, right, like whereas the cello and the violin are very specified lengths aren’t there a range of lengths for the viola? 

JH: Yeah it’s much more volatile and crazy. You can have these ginormous ones and then ones that are closer to a violin.

KP: Yeah super interesting instrument…

JH: I love the viola, it’s such a good instrument. I mean, yeah, maybe one day. I did a performance of the A Coffin Spray piece by myself but with delay and a little bit of playback but I was thinking it would be much much nicer just to arrange it, which would be very simple, and just play it with another cello. So maybe it’s just baby steps towards things becoming a little bit more external.

KP: Yeah, yeah. And this is also maybe getting a little technical but I’ve only within the past year become aware of harmonic interactions through playback and not through two or more acoustic bodies, but is there a huge… or do you a perceive a huge difference in interactions with playback versus the interactions with another instrument?

JH: I think you can achieve the same… I mean, it’s always gonna be a little bit different. But you can definitely record all the parts individually and have the ratios line up and have the activity happen. But part of me is like, that’s not the question in this music in a way. It’s like, how do you fuse sound collectively. I think playing this music is a collective practice in a way. And I think that harmonic fusion or interference, like summation tones, difference tones, all those things, part of the incredible thing about that for me is when you’re doing it collectively. It’s like you’re sustaining a collective hallucination. Because the things, these beautiful summation tones and things, can only emerge when the thing is being wielded by more than one person, in a lot of the music I play anyway. Well, maybe hallucination is the wrong word, it’s like a hologram or something or it’s like you’ve all got a laser beam and you’re holding the thing [makes gesture of ghostbusters crossing streams] and then you have to take care of it, you know, you can’t drop it, you can’t drop out, or do one thing, and when someone needs to take a breath or take a bow you compensate for them to support this thing. So for me it’s the fusion, the incredible feeling of it. And I also like the real pressure of how it feels in your ears and your chest and all those things that happen in real space. But I think one of the things I love about - and it’s not like I do that kind of work only, I also do plenty of stuff in like equal temperament you know - but there is something very special about the communal and relational practice that that kind of music demands that I think can only be good for us to do, even if you just do it for fun. 

KP: Yeah. And like you mentioned earlier with your solo work I picked up on a little hesitation around being presented as a capital c composer but is there also a little bit of this tension with some of this work being solo and not collective? I know you view your instrument or environment as a kind of collaborator but I guess specifically with other people.

JH: Yeah I don’t think it’s truly solo. I think that’s kind of like a fallacy anyway, that anyone is not dependent on multiple things and systems and people and environments to do anything. But I guess I don’t have to battle with another brain when I’m working alone, only my own. And I guess it turns out I like making things maybe with lots of other bodies and activities and sounds but maybe only having to deal with my own weird brain. I think it’s good for me to do both things, and they’re complimentary practices. For me, making solo records was very scary, vulnerable. I was feeling totally sick right before the Blank Forms records came out, like, oh my god what have I done [laughs] I don’t know, it’s a different thing for that music to live in performance, as an iterative performance, and then to be like, OK I’m going to nail down one version of that and call it the thing and let other people listen to it. I’m feeling more comfortable with this space than I did before. Kind of enjoying it, actually, making my own weird things.

KP: Yeah, it’s good. And with the recordings as well, just since so much of your practice does seem to draw attention towards the performer or the body, do see an issue in recordings as disembodying the performer or making it blind to them? A lot of your stuff, with the shaking and the breath work, there’s artifacts in the sound result, but do you feel too much of something is lost in the recording?

JH: I mean, I think coming to terms with the fact that recordings and performances are different things is really important. And I think part of why it took me forever to make records is that I love records, I love recorded music, I love people who just make a record to be a record, you know. And I felt like there was this chasm between a performance practice and making a great record. It just didn’t really, for me, kind of add up in a way. So it was more helpful for me to think about the recordings as like documents of a practice that has been going for a long time and will continue. So it’s on this temporal spectrum of an evolving, iterative, embodied work and this was like... you know when geologists do the thing, they take a sample...

KP: Yeah, they take a core.

JH: Yeah. It’s kind of like taking a core sample at that particular moment, you know. And I was like, if I think about it that way then I feel OK about it. But I also... like for instance the shaking record, I recorded that live with some people in the room because my friend who recorded it was like, it’s just not going to be the same unless you have people there. 

KP: That’s interesting...

JH: He knows me really well and he’s like, if you start thinking that it’s gonna be a record then it’s not gonna be that thing anymore. So there’s footsteps as well as my own breath and creaking and moving - like the cello creaks - there’s hand sounds and the fingers and all those kinds of things, so it was really important for me to have the body present in those things, even if it’s just as a trace. And in the humming for instance I remember when I was working on edits for one of the things and someone was helping me just take out clicks then he started taking out breaths and mouth sounds and I’m like, no no no no no that’s the thing, that all has to stay. I mean, yeah, I think it’s interesting that recording is disembodied and it’s also one of those things where like... ‘cause I definitely think that sound and vibrations are not just aural but they’re haptic, they do have an impact on your body. So sending records out you have no idea how people are going to listen to them or engage with them, you know, headphones is a totally different question. It’s interesting. I’m actually working on a project for a series that a friend of mine who’s an artist here in Berlin has been doing that’s about grief work and sound but it’s like a thing of… it’s proposing these questions of whether you can inhabit a collective listening space through - she started the project in the lockdown - can you create a collective listening space that is also bodily when everyone’s in different spaces listening on headphones. It’s not a question to be answered but it’s just a question. So I’m trying to make something for that and it’s a really interesting conundrum to be posed with. How do you get something on headphones to connect into the body? How do you bring the body into the headphones? Interesting things. But I think letting go of these things and letting them be their own entities in the world has also been kind of hard but good I think. Sorry, I just drifted off from your question...

KP: No that’s perfect. So I feel like you’ve been a performer for some time and you’ve been releasing recordings for some time too but if I do a search for the press about you, it really only starts popping up after all these solo records from a year or two ago. I wonder if that betrays a bias, a societal bias, as a composer over performer type of thing… do you have any thoughts about that? 

JH: It’s definitely a thing, that if you don’t make recordings it puts a ceiling on things I think. Which is not necessarily always a bad thing but part of what it does is it makes your practice very localized, as in people who see you know your work and love your work, but it doesn’t travel and it also makes it harder to travel then. A lot of really good friends of mine, musicians from Naarm, where I’m from, I know so many musicians like that, who are just amazing, have never made a solo record or a record even, you know. Maybe there are some live recordings floating around, but it in no way captures the scope of what these people have been doing, playing live like three times a week for thirty years. And yeah, there is something about the kind of machinery around records even in this relatively small niche world of experimental practices and contemporary composition and things like that which I think I resisted for a long time like, no no you don’t have to. But then in the end the work that I was making changed so that I wanted to I guess. But I think, I don’t know, is it a shame, or is it kind of like a beautiful thing, that someone can change the lives of so many people but maybe just in their city, state, region. I don’t know. But it puts certain limits on things, it makes things harder, like if you want to tour and you don’t have any records and you don’t have mates who will just tell someone to book you… I don’t know. It’s been kind of weird ‘cause all these records came out and I was in various kinds of lockdown for nearly the entire time. So it’s only now that I’m sort of emerging a little bit and I’m not sure how it will change my performance life. Maybe it won’t. And maybe that’s fine. It’s this complicated thing.

KP: Yeah, there’s always a tension somewhere right.

JH: I think it’s also OK to make records that you would never do live, that have no live realization. They live in the record, the record is their performance space. 

KP: Yeah just since we mentioned Amplify, I feel like that’s Jon Abbey’s mission, to take these live performance practices and make it translate to a great record, but there’s always an interesting tension there. 

JH: I mean, I don’t know how many of those people have never released any records, you know. I think you still have to be on the radar somehow to be able to access that space. I think Jon only asked me... when my friend Sean Baxter died, Jon didn’t know him actually but I guess knew a lot of people who knew Sean and were grieving Sean so I think he invited a lot of people who were close to Sean to make things, even though he might not have had us on his radar before, if that makes sense. And that was an interesting example of… like Sean was one of those people who basically didn’t really release records but just played, played, organized shows, put on shows, did so much work for a whole community, really sustained in some ways - him and his partner Annalee - like a whole experimental music community in so many ways. And it doesn’t matter that he didn’t release a whole bunch of records that got reviews in The Wire. He changed so many people’s lives, you know. There are other ways. They‘re just maybe not as visible. 

KP: Yeah, and you were talking about success a little earlier and I would view that a better metric of success than a review in The Wire. 

JH: Yeah, he was bona fide life changer. Not that I’m saying that music doesn’t change peoples lives all the time, because it does. But it’s more like the press construct around it…

KP: Yeah. And you talked a bit about subverting the big c composition and the hierarchy there, and centering the performer does it and approaching the music as something to be unfolded in time instead of an absolute to be replicated kind of conveys that. Also what I’ve heard about your work with Anthea as well, where it’s conveyed aurally to each other or through memory instead of a disembodied text... but are there other ways in which you’re trying to crumple that capital c. 

JH: Mmh, I mean I guess at what point is something a piece. Can it just be a practice, rather than a piece? Can you develop a vocabulary in a space? I guess for me a great deal is about developing a relationship with material, that the material then demarcates this space that the piece or the practice lives in and that doesn’t require a score or instruction or even necessarily memory in terms of: OK and then I do this bit and then I do this bit. I think developing parameters so that something can inhabit a particular kind of space... And I do believe you can do that collaboratively, for sure, if people are up for thinking about things that way but, yeah, maybe practice rather than ‘piece’ is another way to think about that. Again, it’s resisting the closed or finished thing. Even things that have less stable identities than like, you know this piece enacts this particular task and then the piece only lives in the performance but it still has these boundary markers of it’s a piece. I think there are other ways to think around that and maybe think of things in terms of like, yeah, this is a practice. So it’s always unfolding and changing through each iteration. Like the temporal idea doesn’t just hold the sound in time but also the way that iterates itself differently over time as in context and intention, and I change, and the instrument changes, the listeners change. Maybe it’s a larger sense of time and maybe time is not necessarily particularly linear as well, it’s kind of like more cyclical in a way. We’re revisiting territory and then making a new space by revisiting.

KP: Yeah, like seeing the canyon for the cores.

JH: Yeah.

KP: That’s all that I had flowed out. Did you have anything that you wanted to talk about? 

JH: Oh, I don’t know. I feel like I’m not very good at these things, honestly. Like when you were asking me and I was like, no but I just feel like I’m more coherent and clear when I write stuff down than when I try to remember things and talk, and then you were like, yeah but sometimes people take forever, and then I was remembering that there was this written Q&A thing that I just haven’t been able to do [laughs] It’s good that we talked but sometimes I feel like I have a terrible memory and I don’t focus my ideas so well when I’m speaking, so I’m not sure how I’ve done [laughs]

KP: No, it was perfect. That does kind of come from a practical thing. There have been some interviews that discontinued I think because of how much time it takes to write. It’s lessening the burden that way, but with the recognition that even if a lot of time people are talking past each other and fumbling with these headier concepts in words - because how well do people really think on their feet - but I think conversation reveals the kernels that people are getting after in interesting ways. But yeah, thank you for having the trust to do a conversation.

annotations

annotations is a recurring feature sampling non-standard notation in the spirit of John Cage & Alison Knowles’ Notations and Theresa Sauer’s Notations 21. Alternative notation can offer intuitive pathways to enriching interpretations of the sound it symbolizes and, even better, sound in general. For many listeners, music is more often approached through performances and recordings, rather than through compositional practices; these scores might offer additional information, hence the name, annotations.

Additional resources around non-standard notation can be found throughout our resource roll. 

All scores copied in this newsletter are done so with permission of the composer for the purpose of this newsletter only, and are not to be further copied without their permission. If you are a composer utilizing non-standard notation and are interested in featuring your work in this newsletter, please reach out to harmonicseries21@gmail.com for permissions and purchasing of your scores; if you know a composer that might be interested, please share this call.

Raven Chacon - American Ledger no. 1 (2018)

To be displayed as a flag, a wall, a blanket, a billboard, or a door.

For many players with sustaining and percussive instruments, coins, axe and wood, a police whistle, and a match. 

For at least 13 minutes

For any number of musicians with any number of non-musicians

Each line is a minute or longer

Line 1 is for both percussive and bendable tones

Line 2 begins with a warbly long tone crossfading into waves of harmonic or dynamic increases. X = chop wood

Line 3 is for police whistle(s). Other instruments may join

Line 4 is for coins to be thrown. Two instruments may accompany.

Line 5 is a line

Line 6 is a grand decelerando ending with the striking of a match

Line 7 is for acknowledging groupings of 5’s and 4’s. Chop wood. End with everyone and everything.

Raven Chacon is a Diné composer, performer, and artist perhaps most often associated with chamber music, noise, and installation. Chacon is an educator and the composer-in-residence for the Native American Composer Apprentice Project and has contributed as part of the Postcommodity arts collective. In 2021, Chacon released Sweet Land with Du Yun, Aja Couchois Duncan, and Douglas Kearney and White People Killed Them with John Dieterich and Marshall Trammell. 

American Ledger no. 1 is a 2018 composition for many players - any number of musicians with any number of non-musicians - with sustaining and percussive instruments, coins, axe and wood, a police whistle, and a match. It prescribes minimum durations for each line and the total performance but no maximum limits. Non-standard notation blends with standard notation, including: a trill chevron, whole note, and ghost notes in line 2; quarter notes and quarter rests in line 3; repeat signs in lines 2 and 3; a natural accidental and a dynamics indicator in line 4; an accent, coda sign, and Da Capo in line 6; and reappearances of some of these symbols in line 7. The instructions might intuitively decode non-standard symbols. Below are three performances of it. 

There’s a rich subtext in its materials. The gestalt of an American flag, its thirteen stripes fabricated by the Da Capo, as a ledger or record of accounts of that nation’s oppressive systems, police, money, virulent growth encroaching upon the sky, state & church. From these signposts for the toxicity of colonialism, the relationships with more ambiguously interpreted elements might take shape. It simultaneously offers a guide to a kind of decolonization in dissolving hierarchies associated with chamber music and in this way it assumes the other part of its meaning as not just a record of accounts but a burial slab. In suggesting a collective of non-musicians can perform it just as well and being intuitive enough for non-musicians to do so. In presenting all the information on one page for everyone instead of dividing players among parts that the audience never witnesses. In only specifying instruments outside of the western classical tradition, dismantling ideas of virtuosity and confronting concepts of failure in a chamber performance context (see how frequently the axe does not cut through, imagine how easy it is to not light a match on first try). And in instructing the notation be displayed as another object, diluting the idea of score as work-object. 

- Keith Prosk