some free marfa music...

it was about a year ago that stephen vitiello and i were lucky enough to participate in an exhibition in marfa texas called the marfa sessions. part of the exhibition was inside the marfa ballroom, but many of the installations were site specific and out in the landscape. along with our installation, we had the incredible opportunity to do a performance inside one of the large military barracks that are part of the chinati foundation and filled with a beautiful series of reflective aluminum sculpture by donald judd. stephen and i performed live inside the space, while bob bielecki mixed the sound that moved from interior microphones to speakers outside the space. the audience was outside, listening to the speakers, and essentially seeing us as if inside of a fishbowl. as the sun set, reflections upon the glass walls shifted, light changed, and our visual presences appeared and disappeared amongst the landscape and the sculpture.

as i was about to leave for marfa, a stereo mix of our performance, as well as one of our rehearsals, has been made available for free on ubuweb. all of the music was improvised using a variety of electronic and acoustic sounds.

click here to listen

when bunnies and clowns can be scary...

click here to listen to a home recording from the 1940's, also related to halloween...

the stars...

when night falls
i stand on the steps and listen;
the stars romance in the garden
and i stand in darkness.
listen, a star fell with a ring!
do not walk on the grass in your bare feet;
my garden is filled with star splinters.

edith södergran, 1916

what is seen and heard through windows...

close eyes - open window

open eyes - if daylight is not satisfactory: close eyes again

and close window

and try another window

image and text by the fluxus artist arthur koepcke / addi kopke as an insert in the danish furniture/design magazine mobilia, 1970.

the text and image recalls the work of peter hutchinson whom i've posted on in the past. thinking about the notion of closing eyes and opening another window i was reminded of a morning a month or so ago when i was awakened by a strange sound while still having my eyes closed. it was very early but the sun was bright and even with eyes closed i could see that reddish glow of bright light falling on eyelids. i grabbed my phone and opened the window to discover a woodpecker in the tree in front of the house. such a thing i've never heard, nor seen, living here now almost 11 years. fortunately, and this is why i grabbed my phone, i was able to record a tiny bit of the uncanny sound on my phone, before the cars beginning their morning commute enveloped it.

i hadn't heard nor seen wing nor tapping until yesterday when the bird appeared just outside the window in the afternoon in a tree. he was not tapping at all, but standing still as a statue. the first time i'd only heard him, and this time he was completely visible - a red tufted head, black and white body - standing in complete silence as seen through a window that doesn't open. each view a different window, a different direction, different time of day...

somehow all seeming to make sense with the flipping through the pages of this old mobilia magazine this morning in the studio and happening upon koepke's piece. a reminder that with eyes closed, ears are perhaps a bit more open...or perhaps ears themselves can be that other window.

click here to hear the low fidelity recording of a woodpecker in the city...

slow burning silliness...

here a recording by an unknown "frankie" performing a commercial for an undertaker and a song. it was recorded on a wilcox gray home recording 'recordio' disc (note the motto: slow burning material), probably in the early 1940s.

i buy a lot of these discs, and they are generally pretty darn dull - usually home recordings from a radio broadcast, etc. i've posted a few of the better ones on airforms over the past few years, but this recent find is a doozie.

here we have silliness in all its goofing off glory, and i can't imagine anyone who experiences the fullness of frankie's horrible high pitched singing finding it both hilarious and life affirming.

click here to listen.

when each speak each other's language...

well, after listening to a very convoluted mess of a discussion on the radio yesterday about school children celebrating thanksgiving in insensitive and/or socially incorrect ways, it's clear that america's relationship to their native forefathers (and foremothers) involves a heavy dose of guilt, denial, or some relatively epic confusion - especially when it comes to thanksgiving. in light of the confusion, and perhaps to push it further, i've decided to post two discs that veer into sketchy territory... as both tracks are not only incredibly beautiful, but also incredibly "wrong".

the first is from a small group of eight inch 78's i recently got in the mail. they were published by the american bible society, and each side has a person reading a bible story in a native american language. the side i'm posting is in the apache language, and the story is called 'light and darkness.' it is read by mrs. celena perry, whom i'm guessing was a missionary, who learned various native american dialects in order to teach them the ways of the bible. the thing is her voice and story telling are incredibly gentle and beautiful, feeling as if she's speaking a fairytale or a bedtime story in a made up language. it's strangely seductive and other worldly, but there is also this underlying current of someone trying to take the magic out of a culture, only to replace it with the magic of her own. certainly it's easy to exoticize a langauge you don't understand, but here it is her fragile human self that comes through, the pitch and waver of her voice leaving the words behind.

click here to listen to darkness and light.

the second disc is a flexi from an old poetry magazine featuring a 1971 recording of jerome rothenberg singing/chanting a navajo piece called 'the 10th horse song of frank mitchell'. rothenberg did an LP of this piece using multi-tracked voices and sort of taking the role of the shaman to the text/sound poet extreme, which you can find here on ubuweb. this piece, to the best of my knowledge was not part of the LP, and is much more straight ahead, with him simply chanting a solo. it's a beautifully hypnotic and relatively minimal performance. again, there's a lot to scoff at here, particularly a non-navajo, attempting to re-create a ritual from another's culture; but like mrs. celena perry, rothenberg's voice is so darn convincing, that you get a sense he's looking at poetry and ritual through the same eyes, and in many ways evening the playing field. rothenberg's performance suggests, at least to me, that poetry can work the magic of ritual, and ritual can become the song-like poetry.

click here to listen to the 10th horse song of frank mitchell.

i believe in the spirit of thanksgiving, that one should be able to look in the mirror and understand that at this point in time none of us are really as pure culturally as we think we are. we are living in a moment where cultures are constantly becoming infested with other cultures; and old rituals have become not only new rituals, but fodder for poetry, and just about everything else. the question is where does one draw the line between exploitation, affectation, and/or deeply felt respect.

i believe in my heart of hearts, as much as both of these recordings can be viewed through negative eyes (and ears), they can also be heard for what they are - beautiful amalgamations of various cultures, attempting on some level to share love, in a way that attempts to cross from one culture into another with an open heart. of course, in the midst of all this there is a potential for the jive-ass uber diluted schlock now called "world music"; but in these two cases beauty, as well as a kind of humble sincerity, transcends any missteps that might have been taken.

on this day of giving thanks, i for one would like to mention that i am grateful for all the convoluted, mixed-up, bad ideas that have led people, in their own human way, to make beautiful things - intentionally, as well as in spite of themselves. and more than anything, i am thankful that a good number of these things have ended up in the archive here, fairly regularly.

i leave you on this thanksgiving day with a chippewa verse, also filtered through rothenberg, a gift...

know what i'll promise you?
skies be bright & clear for you
that's what i'll promise you.

mexican marimbas...

here, two tracks from a 78 set i also picked up sunday, the music, performed by "marimba pan-americana" is unfortunately not as raw as the photo on the cover would lead one to believe. it is unfortunate that those beautiful drums cannot be heard... nonetheless here are the two best sides, the upbeat "tu ya no soplas", which is a tune from the film "ora ponciano" and one with a bit of a melancholy feel called "mayita"...

click here to listen to: tu ya no soplas.

click here to listen to: mayita.

while moving from here to there...

today i fly to chicago to give a talk on my work and meet with grad students, then to philadelphia to visit the girard college site for my installation next spring.

fortunately, blogger's ability to create posts in advance, and the fact that i had a pretty good day at the flea market sunday, have allowed me a week's worth of posts just from sunday's findings. and so i begin this first post forming a line from my leaving and returning site, here; through my destinations, there...

here: seen above, a great snapshot found in a box of photos at the flea market, from the 40's of a radio or television transmission site, probably shot through a telescope, or some such circular hole-like form, taken from the pasadena area, not far from my home...

there: a beautiful song called "snow" from a 1940's set of 78's called 'songs from the first grade book'. i am sure to encounter snow in either chicago or philadelphia if not both... i honestly don't know how the real thing could be anymore sublime or beautiful than this song... which arrived in the mail monday morning...

click here to listen.

a poetry of beeps and words...

recently, i managed to score two volumes of 78's called basic radio code kit: pre-induction training records. unfortunately the manual and disc 1 are missing, so no idea what one is supposed to do with these, but i put on disc 2 side 1, and discovered, much to my happiness, a series of random shouted words and beeps... not as lively as schwitters ursonata, but pretty odd spoken poetry nonetheless...

you can click here to listen. below i've notated what i think he's saying, but the words that are repeated sound like different words every time... it sounds a bit like a litany...

how
uncle
uncle
roger
how
how
mike
might
box
how
box
gee
box
gate
how
george
uncle
fox
jeep
how
botch
george
might
george
fought
roger
roger
roger
uncle
uncle
pow
vox
jeep
uncle
mike
roger
blot
jake
botch
uncle
george
howl
fought
vot
fah
might
george
door
pig
uncle
howl

before the house deceased (with help from the sunrise)

this morning i was looking through some records for a piece of music to post, and found a track on a 7" of field recordings from bali of a funeral march - the title translated from french via google being "before the house deceased". the track follows part of a five kilometer procession ending with a cremation.

when i recorded the track into my computer, i used, as always, a protools session that i have set up only for transferring vinyl into my mac. a strange thing started to happen as i was listening to my re-recording... in the quieter spots of the cremation procession i could hear some electronic sounding drones, and once in a while notes that sounded as if they were played on a lap steel guitar. i listened to the track several times, thinking i might have brought some ghosts into my room, before i then realized i had left some bits of my sunrise recording in the session on a track i never use, and thus didn't see on the screen.

i decided, rather than retrace my vinyl to digital steps, i would post it as is, apparent vinyl apparitions intact. it's not often one gets to duet from their bedroom in pasadena with a procession of musicians from bali...

if you listen softly, you hear only the procession, if you listen with headphones or loudly, well you'll hear a bit of the ghosts of a sunrise tagging along, perhaps helping the dead feel a bit lighter and a little happier in their journey...

click here to listen

o vestido do noivado...

for those of you who are tired of all my quote posting lately, i know it's been a long time since i've run some old music on airforms, so today i pulled out some 78's and will run a few oddball things in the next week or so. here's a very pretty and sad sounding portugese fado, probably from the 1940's, performed by carlos marques afonso. i don't know anything about him, the recording is not spectacular, but it sounds heartfelt and quite beautiful, and is the kind of thing a non-specialist like myself can fall in love with easily. i think rather than more words, i'll leave it to you to listen and enjoy in silence.

click here to listen to "o vestido do noviado"

when flowers sleep...

when i found this 7" from the great french label 'le chant du monde', i assumed from the cover it would be traditional persian folk music. when i put the needle onto the record, well, i must say i was surprised, as well as mind blown. the delicate melancholy voice and rendition of these tunes is absolutely sublime.

monir vakili was born in tabriz iran, but studied in paris, boston, and other places. she sang opera as well as folk music, and was somewhat of an international star in europe in the early 1960s, and in 1958, this disc received an academy charles cros grande prix du disque.

the songs and their arrangements remind me a lot of one my my guilty musical pleasures, richard dyer-bennet. this is not folk song for lovers of the harry smith anthology, but folk song sung with affectation, finesse, and in vakili's case, a healthy dose of french chanson. but, like dyer-bennet, vakili, at least on this disc, transcends all of those affectations to create a music of lilting human tender beauty. these songs are pretty darn wonderful.

the track here is called "gorgan", the lyrics, as translated by my friend google translate are roughly:

"sleep, my beautiful tulip, sleep. do you hear the sound of a panther, groaning in the mountains? sleep my beautiful flower hazel, sleep. while your mother works. sleep my beautiful flower poppy, sleep. your father is far away. and God is with him."

click here to listen to gorgon

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.

click here to listen

when paper flowers mirror life... and tragedy yields beauty...

in october of 2006 i did a week of posts celebrating my favorite indian film director, guru dutt. i posted images and songs from most of the soundtrack LPs, but at the time i didn't have anything from kagaz ke phool (one of his greater films, perhaps second only to pyaasa, which is definitely his masterpiece). this 7", a recent find, sparked a revisiting, and so for any completists our there (besides me...), here's a song from that film.

as with most of dutt's later films, kagaz ke phool (the title translates as 'paper flowers', and suggests not only the fragility of life, but also the fleetingness of fame...) is a relatively dark and depressing film, and very much connected to dutt's own tragic biography. the story centers on an aging movie director, who is unable to recapture the popularity of his earlier films with the public. he is lost in a loveless marriage, and because of circumstances, unable to be with the young actress he is truly in love with. scandals develop, people are selfish and ugly, and dutt is constantly criticizing the gossip and fame machines in the film world. the film is incredibly pessimistic in its view of fame. in the end, it is a classic tragedy of unfulfilled desires, and unappreciated genius, both of which unfortunately, mirrored the darkness of dutt's own late career. the last scene of the film shows the director in a kind of mental fog and physically unrecognizable to everyone around him, sitting alone, broken, in a darkened film studio, collapsing "to let the life flow out of him". five years later dutt would take his own life.

kagaz ke phool is certainly considered a masterpiece now, but at the time it was an enormous box office failure. the negative reception finally exhausted dutt's faith in the public ever embracing another of his films. it was the last film he would ever credit himself as director, fearing the public's dislike of his dark pessimism would keep any film with his name as director from having any success. the few films he made after kagaz, dutt is listed as a producer, even though you can see his hands all over the place in them. clearly he was more involved than credited. unfortunately even these films were met with relative disinterest.

kagaz ke phool is a powerful film in its own right, but in terms of its relationship to dutt's own life and beliefs, it is a difficult film to watch. it's an incredibly powerful film, but knowing dutt's biography, one has a sense he was very aware of the unfortunates life had in store for him.

the song here, waqt ne kiya, is sung by his wife, the amazing singer geeta dutt (although unintentional, in the context of the film's narrative this is highly ironic). it conveys beautifully all the sadness of such a melancholy love and the longing that unfolds with the story. dutt was a pioneer in this - using songs to enhance the emotional trajectory of the narrative, instead of simple festive breaks. for the film music, dutt worked again with composer s.d. burman, who wrote several great scores for him. of course, as you can hear, this song is an absolute gem...

click here to listen

between moondog and exotica...

picked up this thurston knudson 7" - tropic drums - at the flea market last sunday, mainly because of the stellar cover. the scratchboard image with pre-psychedelic lettering has all the best qualities of early sun ra record covers. the dealer said he saved it from the garbage can and he was just happy someone wanted it, so it's nice to know that once again the archives are living proof that one man's trash is indeed another's treasure...

it seems a lot of folks online credit knudson's early drum records as pre-cursors to what became known exotica. according to the web, "Thurston Knudson brought African drums to the American album-buying public in the late 1940s, along with a crackpot theory relating rhythm to bondage and footstep speed."

the 7" clearly has ethnic music overtones, but fortunately it's also pretty awkward and a distant hillbilly cousin to the smooth sounds of exotica. although not nearly as amazing, the music here does sound a little like teiji ito's early music for maya deren films, as well as some of some of yusef lateef's earliest records with african instruments. there's a homespun feeling to the recording, which, along with all the drum repetitions, brings it right into the land of moondog. most of the tracks are just drums, a few have chanting, and the one i've posted has some kind of wind instruments and horns.

i believe the tempo record label was knudon's own, as it says "this is a custom-made record" on the cover, as well as the index number being 1100. i couldn't find a picture of it online, and it would seem from a space age bachelor pad music chat room, that it is quite a rarity.

the track here is called ju-ju. this from the back cover: "the reason why this african spirit call - which knudson brings to you precisely as it is performed today by the swahili of zanzibar island - is so oriental in its mood is because these are the natives who traveled - as bearers - with the indian slave traders on their raids - and their music still reflects this influence."

unfortunately there is no mention of the other instruments or who is playing them, because they are pretty amazing, especially the big chords near the end. i swear this red vinyl gem is not even slightly warped (in the physical sense). knudon went on to do some discs with augie goupil , and you can read about their collaborations here somewhere in this mess i have a couple of 78's of goupil doing tahitian drum duets, and i'm 99% sure they are with knudson...

click here to listen to juju .

audio lucida...

"what the photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially".
roland barthes, camera lucida 1980

home recording discs are like snapshots. they are small records recorded in a record booth (see photo above); or at home, with smaller portable units that looked a bit like record players. in most cases a minute or two of sound was recorded onto a plastic covered cardboard 'blank'.

when i was 5 or 6 i remember recording two sides in a booth in an arcade down in san pedro. on one disc i did a howard cosell impersonation calling a fight between muhammad ali and joe frazier. on the other i sang an unaccompanied version of bad bad leroy brown....(yes, i still have these, no i won't post them...)

like digging through mountains of mediocre snapshots and seldom finding a nugget, the majority of home recorded discs are pretty dull. an audio letter telling a son in the army about on what's going on at home, or worse, a recording of a big band song off the radio (an early attempt at killing music with home recording). once in awhile, like the hunting story filled disc i posted a few months ago, you get a gem, and over the last year or so, i've been fortunate to find a number of pretty great little discs.

there's something about an honest amateur that works. i believe it is the feeling that the folks speaking, singing, or making, are sincere in their attempt. if they miss the mark, there's generally a level of innocence that can be pretty powerful, and at times, more so than a schooled approach. it's not a question of better, but of having access to the presence of a person in a state of absolute vulnerability and humanness. like standing in front of a camera, there's the potential for either a "ham" or absolute awkwardness when confronted with a microphone for the first time.

like the photograph in barthes camera lucida, an audio recording also stops time and allows for numerous repetitions of a moment that in 'real life' was never repeated. the difference, i think, is that listening to someone's voice is more intimate as an experience than looking at a picture, and connects one more vividly back to a specific moment. listening with eyes closed, one is transported to another time, where voices are heard beneath a surface of noise, almost as they were in life. unlike the complex flattening of life onto a small piece of paper called a photograph, sound can still project from a speaker out into space as it might have when originally spoken from mouths. certainly it is detached from faces and original rooms, but in terms of the voice still being a voice, it remains relatively intact.

unlike fading in a photo, where information is subtracted, the distance of time in a disc recording is generally felt through addition. photographic images evaporate, recordings get covered in noise. handling and material disintegration fuels a mountain of defects that eventually renders the original voice mute in favor of the voice of the object's tactile surface. images evaporate, but audio get buried alive...

click here to listen to one of my favorite recent finds...

the discarded voice of the poet...

i haven't run much in the way of sound on the blog for a while, but the discovery of this library "discard" a few weeks ago seemed ideal for such a rainy morning. a few months ago i posted a 78 of a reading of a vachel lindsay poem by norman corwin, a radio guy. today's post features a recent find of a 78 of one of lindsay's poems read by the poet himself. lindsay's reading is pretty incredible and it is interesting to compare the connects and disconnects with this and corwin's reading of lindsay's work.

lindsay's voice and performance are grittier, sounding ever more like harry partch. you can even hear him clear his throat once or twice giving one the feeling that the incantation/singing must've taken considerable effort, which brings it down to a very human level.

take a peek at that older post for a picture of lindsay because his voice and inflections so match the photo incredibly. there are many moments in this scratchy beat to hell piece of shellac that his words dissolve into simple voice rhythms that are quite beautiful, and i'd recommend listening to it very soft so it sounds more like mumbling than words; although the words themselves are quite wonderful, and from his epic poem the chinese nightingale.

since we've got an uncharacteristic rain storm going on in pasadena this morning, including some seriously ominous dark clouds, and loud pattering drops, the image of a small chinese nightingale birthed from lindsay's voice makes for quite a morning...

click here to listen

the poetry of carpenter's tools as musical instruments

some rollicking music for a monday morning from an odd 5" green plastic 78 that had to be had simply because it was titled 'saw duet'. fortunately it did not disappoint, as along with a piano there are two saws playing swanee river. unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your response to the music), the disc is so small my record player would only play the first minute.

mussehl and westphal were the first professional musical saw company, and have been making musical saws since 1921. this was probably a demo disc, from the mid to late 1920's, that might have come with an instrument and probably some kind of 'how to play' book.

click here to listen...

the typewriter and the mouth...

henri chopin was the supreme poet of both the typewriter and the mouth. you can find a ton of information about him, as well as the publication he founded - revou ou', online (a good place to start is here).

being a sucker for a book with a record inside, i have always loved his little catalog with a 7" published in 1987 by gallerie J&J donguy. between the visual poems and the audible ones, there is a wonderful feeling of connectedness - particularly in that the sound poem, made with mouth and tape, resembles very much a typewriter's frenetic/rhythmic activity. it's a beautiful rhythmic stuttering presence that mimics the visual works.

click here to listen (and if you listen quietly it sounds a bit like trickling water...)

it was so cold we had to stretch socks over our heads to keep warm...

collecting home recording discs is a total crap shoot. when they're good, they're generally really good; and when they are bad, they are generally incredibly boring. many of the discs i've found have mediocre big band performances taken off a radio program; but there have been occasional gems. the nice thing about these is that you get a real intimate sense of people sitting in their homes (or occasionally in an amusement park record booth), speaking to the intended recipient of the audio letter like a one sided phone conversation. you can generally sense the discomfort people get from speaking into a microphone. these are true audio equivalents of candid photos.

the designs on these discs have soldiers in various humorous situations, so i'm guessing these were intended as audio letters for servicemen stationed overseas during WWII. this group of discs contained updates from mom and dad, stories from a sister or girlfriend, and this disc, which was definitely the best of the bunch, with two guys talking about a hunting trip...

click here to listen...