when the sun rises in spite of hooligans...
a strange weekend indeed.
i arrived at the performance space saturday afternoon around 4 pm, to do a soundcheck for my sunrise performance. i was quite happy to discover a perfection of site. the performance space was in the southwest corner of the carousel building, facing the coastline with a curved wall of windows - absolutely ideal for the light shifts outside to be experienced by listeners inside. the soundcheck went relatively smoothly, and i was quite sure i would be able to have the audience hovering in a state between gentle sleep and barely awake.
12 hours later i arrived at the space at 4 am, only to discover an abundance of policemen, and some serious chaos. it seems some hooligans were wreaking havoc on the carousel itself, someone called the cops, and just as i arrived, the carousel space, as well as much of the rest of the festival, was shut down. i was told i would not be able to do the performance.
driving home in the dark i decided that the sun was still depending on me, so upon arrival, i put my gear together haphazardly on the floor of my studio, opened the garage door, and just as the sky was beginning to feel a slight presence of light - probably around 5:35 or so - i played a nice improvised piece for about 20 minutes. when the performance was done, i looked up to see that the light had completely changed.
i have to say i felt really bad for the wonderful and dedicated fans who woke before dawn and arrived only to find the venue barricaded. so i decided to post the performance that no one saw or heard other than me and the sun, for free download/listening. as you can see in my little telephone photos, the sound seemed to make the sun very happy.
the piece was performed with a lap steel guitar, an old paia oz battery powered synthesizer, a contact microphone, my voice, and two very old delay pedals. it was recorded live direct to a small zoom h4 recorder.
6 Comments:
i think herzog would have been very pleased with this soundtrack to his documentary about the carosel riots of '08. florian fricke never time-lag accumulated so sonorously. sorry i missed it, and at the same time, glad you did.
i don't want to promote hooligans, but thanks to them for this - a fine piece of work, subtle supple and delightful. the early rise was not wasted. jeremy
lovely stuff.
thanks for this, steve. great occasional music. sadly I'm rarely awake at that time of day/night.
i was so sad to find out that you were not able to perform. the event as a whole was kind of mind blowing... going from the ambient bliss of the carousel building into the chaos of the pier was so jarring.
our set went pretty smoothly until the fire marshal told people that they couldn't sit/lay on the floor and started herding people through.
while it wasn't perfect i am very thankful that they were ever able to have that edition of tonalism in the first place.
also, thank you so much for this great piece of music.
Post a Comment
<< Home