The Zen of Frustration, or: ever had one of those days (or weeks)? This is probably as spontaneous as it gets. I felt better* by the end, but, I don’t know, as a listener, does this bring you frustration or relief?
* Autocorrect suggested ‘battered.’ Nice try, but no cigar.
My latest study in the #onetakestudy series is a super simple, quick little improvisation. This one is partly a response to some of the issues I had with study Nº 6. This study does, I think, what it needs to do, and no more. Enjoy.
I came away from a session with Kaffe Matthews with some fragments of ideas—not themes, barely motives—let’s call them random arrangement of atoms. This study is an unprepared (without even a warm-up) first-run of some of these. Think of it as a soup made from whatever’s at hand.
I’ve taken the title for this latest study (‘Don’t Overthink It’) from an album by Corey Mwamba. (I hope you don’t mind, Corey.)
Latest single-take improvisation, this one is, in part, a response to the shortcoming of study Nº 4. Of that study, I wrote:
There’s aspects of this I really, really don’t like. I hate that it’s that constant, artless thud-thud-thud through out. But there’s some parts—the way it’s contoured like waves—that might be salvageable. [Source…]
I love what’s recorded (and sculpted) here as sound. There are behind-the-scenes stories about an impossible group emerging from the debris of lockdown and the tangles of inter-border bureaucracy (stories for another time). But also, to my ears as a listener, there’s something tricky and oblique about our music—an origami of fire music and improvisative mischief—knotted, folded-on-itself, and, at time, joyously vexed.
Yet, the feeling on-stage, it’s all near effortless ‘and then’s and ‘therefore’s; of effects and reactions, but also reframings and reflections and retroactions. We went, I think, to a lot of unexpected places in that one session.
So sit-back in your favorite sofa or beanbag, or, headphones ready, go for a wander and a walk, or maybe sit at the table with a good book, and enjoy the journey.
Fluid, pliable motion…. The synergy between them is electrifying….
— Corey Mwamba (Freeness, BBC Radio 3)
Blue-green iridescence
(Crunch and more scatter)
A vacuum of warning
The latest project from Korean-American guitarist, improviser and composer Han-earl Park, Gonggong 225088 is his trio with Argentinian saxophonist, composer and visual artist Camila Nebbia, and Greek drummer, improviser and sound artist Yorgos Dimitriadis. Based in Berlin, the group emerged, piece-by-piece, from the darkly hazy, collective dream of masks, remote work, and social distancing.
By turns light-as-a-feather, and heavy and prickly as a bucket of rusty nails, the music is of contradiction and ambiguity. Leaps into ’90s HatHut pastiche are followed by truckers-in-space-engine-rumbles; slow-crawls-from-the-swap of irony-free ‘bells’n’smells’ sound art followed by turns-turns-turns-on-a-dime mutant Free Funk. Gonggong 225088 find overlapping-through-time, All-You-Zombies guitar gestures; stompbox-assisted saxophone punk ventriloquisms; and hive-mind metallophone creatures that migrate across the stereo field.
Here be dragons.
It’s music that is simultaneously earnest and full of ironic glee; a spaghetti junction of noise held together by a deep love of connection, and a constantly shifting center of balance found only in ensemble play.
Recorded with skill and sensitivity by Rabih Beaini, mixed by Han-earl Park to place the listener within the ensemble, and mastered for presence’n’punch by Andrew Weathers, this eponymous debut album captures Park, Dimitriadis and Nebbia in live performance at Morphine Raum.
Autopoiesis I (≥ 10:14), Autopoiesis II (≥ 4:29), Niche Shift I (16:09), Niche Shift II (≥ 4:45), Niche Shift III (4:35), Niche Shift IV (≥ 12:52), Autopoiesis III (3:26), Autopoiesis IV (≥ 5:03), Autopoiesis V (≥ 3:17), Autopoiesis VI (3:37). Total duration ≥ 70:14.
Catch the first ten minutes (‘Autopoiesis I’) from Gonggong 225088! The extended preview will premiere at 5pm CET* on Friday, March 1, 2024! [Click ‘notify me’…]
By turns light-as-a-feather, and heavy and prickly as a bucket of rusty nails, the music is of contradiction and ambiguity. Leaps into ’90s HatHut pastiche are followed by truckers-in-space-engine-rumbles; slow-crawls-from-the-swap of irony-free ‘bells’n’smells’ sound art followed by turns-turns-turns-on-a-dime mutant Free Funk. [More…]
I am super, super excited to finally be able to share this with you. The session was awesome: Rabih Beaini and his team did phenomenal work with the recording (it was a pleasure to mix), and I’m so happy that Carina Khorkhordina made time to be there and capture the performance on video.
Click ‘notify me’, and be ready with your headphones (and popcorn), and join me on Friday for some origami fire music!
* 17:00 CET, 16:00 GMT, 11:00 EST, and 8:00 PST. Or: 1:00 in Seoul, 18:00 in Athens, 13:00 in Buenos Aires, and 17:00 in Berlin.
A quick, ‘no-prep’ improvisation as part of the ‘#onetakestudy’ series: here’s what my guitar sounds like, straight out-of-the-case, the day after a gig. (Guitar tuning thanks to Aidan Baker and Katharina Schmidt, plus lighting design courtesy of the Berlin sky.) Enjoy!
What happens to interaction when gesture and context are removed by distance? A playful, noisy exploration of the oblique fictions of Here and Now, and Then and There.
