Decline of Ballooning is a ghost-narrated story of a man and a woman caught up in a web of geomantic intrigue. It's a musical love story about aerial photography. The woman struggles to balance the stresses of her life's work with an increasingly unstable perception of reality, the man strives to actualize his ethereal yearning.
The next collision_theory event is a music/dance improv lab led by Lisa Gonzales (of The Architects) and musician Bob Garrett. Bring your instrument or your body and be ready to jam. This should be super fun. (Are you a fan of c_t on facebook yet?)
Rates of Reaction:
an improvisation lab for movers and musicians
February 8, 2010
7:30 – 9:30pm
suggested donation $5
@ Links Hall
3435 N Sheffield (@ Newport)
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Plagiarists Salon @ The Black Rock
Theatre people The Plagiarists put on a monthly salon at The Black Rock in Wrigleyville/Roscoe Village. February's salon will be curated by Sara McCarthy, and addresses the celebration of non-romantic loves. For the occasion, I am collaborating with soundman Noé Cuéllar on a song about kleptoplasty, diamond oceans, crazy fish, bornean tree frogs, and Milford Graves. The other performers Sara's conscripted are pretty awesome (I'm especially psyched about Kevin O'Donnell's contribution).
Plagiarists Salon
February 15th
7pm
The Black Rock Pub
3614 N Damen
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Upcoming:
03_08: collision_theory: Spooky Action:
an evening of "silent movies" confronting disembodied performance
featuring Parallel Process, WUMMIN, Carol Genetti, Colleen Leonardi & Lily Skove, Ayako Kato, & more
03_24: Guitarkestra
I'll be joining Steve Krakow's 6th Guitarkestra at the Empty Bottle as one of a small chorus of singers (a first for the endeavor). Angel Olsen will be there too.
A few months ago, friend and traveller CJ Boyd wrote me about contributing to the Pärt Lynch Project, an endeavor to create an alternate soundtrack to Lynch's Eraserhead consisting of adaptations/covers of the music of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. I've long been an avid admirer of Pärt's music, so I was excited to participate.
My immediate instinct was to arrange the opening and closing Amen canons of his Stabat Mater—originally for soprano, alto and tenor voice and a string trio—for three harmoniums (harmonia?) and vocoder. This is essentially what I ended up doing. At the start, I thought it would be great to recruit some other harmonium players (Ben Boye and Paul Giallorenzo) to play. When we met to try it out, however, we discovered that our respective instruments were egregiously out of tune with each other. After some consideration, I decided to go it alone and multitrack the three harmonium parts with my one A=440MHz instrument. (I'm excited to hear Boye's contribution to the comp; he's a big Pärt fan as well, and an excellent, sensitive musician.) The final product, for my harmonium x 3, vocoded vocals (using Reason's soft vocoder, synths, and samplers), tibetan singing bowl, and two field recordings (one of an amazing thunderstorm in Chicago, and another of afternoon church bells in the quiet town of Cervione, Corsica), was a whole lot of fun to make.
So, with all due humility and deference to Pärt's amazing composition, I'm posting Robot Mater and its accompanying artwork (a versioning of a detail from Michelangelo's Pieta) here as a holiday gift to the digital masses. I hope you enjoy, and would love to know what you think of it.
An old flame sent me a brief and somewhat cryptic email in the wee hours of this morning, requesting me to write a note or poem or song about the night we met.
This is what he wrote:
From: [REDACTED]
Subject:Fwd: memory recorded
Date: November 21, 2009 1:46:19 AM CST
To: [REDACTED]
this was supposed to go to you...
Begin forwarded message:
From: [REDACTED]
Date: November 21, 2009 2:37:33 AM EST
Subject: Re: memory recorded
start when you met me but progress to playing piano for me in your prof;s apt. what were you experiencing? this is very important to me as is honesty.... with the caveat that you had me so hooked & in love On Nov 21, 2009, at 1:33 AM, [REDACTED] wrote:
write me a note, a poem, or a bit of prose for how who saw and experienced me when you first met me...your choice, Ill see you soon enough I hope
[REDACTED]
p.s.music is ok too. I just started piano lessons, maybe one day Ill understand
This is what I wrote:
Bildungsroman
The scene: What now? Fresh from the full-body tattoo of college, I am inflamed and vulnerable to whatever formative influence one might expect from a summer’s layover in New York City. I am a fresh-faced Nick Carraway, slinging coffee at Des Moines. The fog of youth, caffeine, and an acquired affinity for scotch whisky have my mind ripe for some Gatsby to blow it.
It’s drinks after work at some bar straddling the Villages—exciting Manhattan faggots all around. I am here, perhaps, for an introduction to someone or someone else, but who’s this? You’re a friend of a friend of a regular at the coffee shop, or of my tall, queeny coworker. Of course I’m gravitated to this guy; he’s clearly the brain in the room—green (lantern?) t-shirt, urbane salt-&-pepper hair, spirit-induced mischief (which I will come to love) flashing in your glassy eyes.
I will not recall what we talk about while we stroll to Tom Bogdan’s place; music, literature, typical flirtatious getting-to-know-you fare, I suspect. I am apartment-sitting for Tom, my college voice professor and advisor. I have been padding around the place gingerly, afraid of what tawdry baubles of too-much-information Idle Curiosity might unearth there. I will later come to understand that it was the defensive crouch of my fledgling homosexuality that had throughout my education inspired me to project a specious and uneasy pall of ‘dirty-old-man’ on poor Tom. So while I’m sure Tom wouldn’t mind (defensive crouch says he might quite enjoy the idea), it feels transgressive to have brought this charming trick here. The flat is closer, though, than the room I’m renting in Spanish Harlem that seems so impossibly far away.
What now? We had undertaken this endeavor under the impression that it was some innocent, slutty maneuver, but suddenly it’s fraught by unexpected intensity. Alone now inside Tom’s strange time-capsule of latter 20th Century Manhattan queer history, we are giddy. It hardly matters what we’re talking about; you’re amusing yourself with my naïveté, I’m entranced by your intelligence and privelege. The night, the music, the liquor, the attraction are all swirling up and it’s a wonder we can keep our hands off each other for long enough for me to play you a song on Tom’s piano.
The song is the engorged silence that precedes an explosion in a film. It will be difficult for you to believe I am playing it without intent to seduce; trust, though, that youth has granted me license for limitless ingenuousness this summer. After inebriated excuses for what I’m sure will be an inferior performance, I launch into a rendition of “For Sarah,” all hopeful and earnest. It does a trick, and does the trick in; in lieu of applause, a pregnant pause during which a missile hits silently in the distance; wait for it…
I’ve turned to face you now, and now I am a sheepish siren. I realize, blushing, that the song has laid me bare, and the scene is suddenly much more intimate. For a moment there are no words—only the ball idling for a spell in your court.
That moment has passed and of course our mouths are on each other, our hands and tongues busying themselves as if we’ve done this before. It begins on the couch, so naughty in the lamplight, and proceeds to the darkness of the bedroom—then we’re beastly, het up and coasting wild to a quick and enervating climax. (This would not prove to be the cadence of later, more thorough couplings scored by oval and Low and Ida.)
And now we are collecting our breath. And now you are collecting your clothes. And now I am alone, drunk and spent in the hot darkness of Tom’s bedroom, body ringing like a giant ear just home from a rock show.
And now I am asleep.
This was the first sentence in a paragraph that was cramped for space on the page of that summer. Its last sentence (or the last sentence that fit) describes us being photographed in flagrante at Starlight. I return to that photo like it was once my favorite song.
You command me to write this in a stuttering flurry of incomplete late-night emails that read almost like Nigerian 419 spam; were it not for the inclusion of personal details that no Nigerian could know, I might have dismissed them as so much digital apocrypha.
You stress the importance of honesty, with a caveat that I’d had you so “hooked & in love.” Why? Do you not trust my recollection to be as fond? Assure yourself, it is the fondest.
Ronny's is in a sad state. For those who don't know the filthy, smelly Logan Square dive bar/drywall rock venue at California & Dickens, I'd advise you to stay away - at least until they clean up their act/space.
I played my first show there last night with Bloomington's Horns of Happiness and Chicago's Thin Hymns, and, admittedly, it was less hellish than I was expecting, but the experience left plenty to be desired. Sound guy Brian Klein did his best with the equipment he had, and it did sound pretty ok. Turnout was abysmal, of course, and the staff made it clear to us before the show that Ronny himself wanted out of there as soon as possible, so could you please hurry up? That coupled with the fact that I cannot remember ever being paid a dime to play at any venue booked by mpshows (this one being no exception), left me and everyone else cold.
But, outside of a disastrous rendition of Andrae's First Blush, I played pretty well. I'm going to try to embed five songs from my set into this post with a fancy flash player. Wish me luck, and enjoy.
DRMWPN's been pretty busy this year. We'll be playing 2 sets at The Whistler on Tuesday. Come out and sip on Paul McGee's superlative cocktails, and enjoy some pre-halloween hypnogogia.
Tuesday, October 27, 9pm
The Whistler
2421 N Milwaukee Ave
FREE
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ALL SAINTS DAY:
Relaxation Record, Hedia, Fielded @ The Empty Bottle
After a summer off from playing out, Relaxation Record hits The Empty Bottle for an evening of dark/goth/ambient sounds. Hedia (ABQ) - the solo project of Bryce from Yoda's House; and Fielded - the solo project of Lindsay Powell of Ga'an - play first. The whole show's only $3, and I can't think of a better remedy for your Halloween hangover. N.B.: the show starts early at 8pm.
Sunday, November 1, 8pm
The Empty Bottle
1035 N Western Ave
$3
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UPCOMING:
110809 collision_theory:Melissa St. Pierre, solo performance & workshop @ Experimental Sound Studio
110909 collision_theory: Technical Drawings and Darrell Jones & Kirstie Simson @ Links Hall
121409 collision_theory: DRMWPN and Julia Antonick & Jonathan Meyer @ Links Hall
As I've mentioned, DRMWPN traveled to Pittsburgh this weekend to perform at the ROY GEE BIV Festival of Robotics & Music. The four of us piled into a rented Hyundai Sonata on a gloomy Friday, and drove through rain, fog, and bewildering directions from my Blackberry's navigation system to the sleepy Steel City.
The festival, curated by Melissa St. Pierre and Stuart Anderson, presented talks, workshops and performances all dealing with some aspect of cross-platform collaborations between sound and kinetic artists. It all took place at The Nerve, a boomy warehouse space in PGH's Bloomfield neighborhood. We missed Friday's opening talks by robotic sound artist Eric Singer and Jesse Stiles - whose buzzing/blinking Automatic Glasswareprovided a sonic backdrop for the whole affair, weaving in and out of the quieter moments of Saturday's evening of performances.
The show began with Technical Drawings, the prepared piano and electronics duo of Mr. Stiles and Ms. St. Pierre. The two performed semi-improvisational, beat driven tunes, Stiles processing St. Pierre's flashily prepared Yamaha portable baby grand with Max MSP and a Lemur - a graphic touch-screen control interface with something of a cult following. The two sometimes seemed to have a few technical difficulties with their looping technology, but the last few songs of the set crystallized into a suite of infectious dance tunes, made even more appealing by the physical engagement of the performers - Stiles and St. Pierre bounced around and otherwise grooved throughout the set.
I'm very excited to see the pair perform in collision_theory with dancers Darrell Jones and Kirstie Simson on November 9th - having seen their live act, I suspect that the collision promises to be high-octane entertainment. I contributed vocals to a track on their debut record on Gagarin (Germany), an exciting beefed-up mix of which Jesse played for me (and all the other 10 or so artists bunking at St. Pierre's house) that morning.
Next up was knob-twiddler Michael Johnsen, whose wet bloops and glitches served a rather disquieting juxtaposition to the giant silver diagrams of the male and female genital apparati painted on the walls. Though Johnsen's setup - a tangle of modded stomp boxes, cables, and even an oscilloscope - was an impressive sight, I was less enthusiastic about his performance, due in equal parts to its uniform pace and unengaging presentation.
Another batch of Yuengling was delivered, and solo drummer/electronics act Gangwish became the next center of attention. I found his combination of electronic drum triggers and processing with more pedestrian rock rhythms charming. Gangwish's stripped-down instrumentation and relative simplicity is pretty audacious for a solo act, but framed by The Nerve's generous cement box acoustics and set-long black out (the only lighting was a sole red flood light on the floor trained on the drummer), the whole scene was pleasantly raw - and an excellent precursor to what was to follow.
The next act was the first of two headlining collaborations between robotic sculptors and noise makers: a performance by Pittsburgh kineticist Greg Witt and WHITEdeer - the solo project of Neptune's Daniel Paul Wolfgang Boucher (Boston). I must emphasize the word 'performance' in referring to this work; beyond being a sound work - employing processed recordings of instructional deer-calling audio tapes, vocals, drums, and toy piano - the production values of the whole collaboration, from costuming to lighting to Witt's amazing Sound Turret, made for an unexpectedly effective piece of performance art. Clad in white, Boucher oozed hardcore angst, hurling drum sticks, demolishing his minimal drum kit, and eventually handing out red 'bingo daubers' to plants in the audience who proceeded to vandalize his pristine clothing. All the while, Witt operated his laptop while perched atop the Sound Turret - a somewhat tank-like assemblage hovering on wooden tracks. A lanky and aloof figure in a lab coat, he rode the Turret back and forth ominously on its tracks, controlling a rotating speaker horn below him that spewed processed sound like artillery. The piece ended with a frustrated Boucher unceremoniously and abruptly cutting off the sound with the flip of a switch. The whole performance was perhaps indulgent, but it represented an exciting and increasingly rare evolution of experimental music into the territory of theatre and performance art, and was strange enough to keep my attention for the duration.
DRMWPN took the stage next, headlining the evening in front of the jaw-droppingly beautiful Alpha Wave by kinetic sculptor Joshua Space. I'll let the pictures and video and previous post about the work speak for itself. After watching Space and his entourage troubleshooting, deconstructing and reconstituting the sculpture for the bulk of the afternoon, we were anxious to see the whole thing go, and weren't sure that our hopes wouldn't be dashed. Thankfully, everything came together before it came apart; we took the stage and everything looked beautiful. About two minutes in, however, the highest of the eight spinning mylar-coated octahedrons jettisoned itself and landed inches away from me, toppling two beers I'd lined up for the set. But the show went on...
Due to some issues with hearing each other on stage, the set was not DRMWPN's best, but it seemed to go over well. I can only imagine how the audio/video confluence was perceived by the audience. Based on our half-hour contemplation of the red-bulbed Dreamachine and Alpha Wave after the show, though, it must have been a unique experience, at least. View the videos below and judge for yourself.
All in all, it was a fruitful and entertaining trip. I look forward to the continuation of the Pittsburgh/Chicago exchange at collision_theory next month, and perhaps in December as well, if we can make it work for Space and his Alpha Wave to travel to Chicago.
This coming weekend, DRMWPN is traveling to Pittsburgh as a quartet: Jim Dorling (amplified & processed harmonium, voice), Steve Krakow (amplified & processed banjo), Dan Schneider (electric guitar), and Dan Mohr (voice, Nord Electro2). We'll be performing as part of the ROY GEE BIV festival of robotics & sound (see the previous post about Joshua Space for more information about that).
On Sunday, we had the first DRMWPN rehearsal I've ever attended. Since DRMWPN tends to be a large ensemble affair, we had some trepidation that we might sound a little thin as a 4-piece. As it turns out, that's nothing a few pedals & loops won't fix.
If you'd like to hear the rehearsal tape, please download it via the link below.
October is nigh, I am recently 31, and mercury is out of retrograde (I think). And I have a ton of shows coming up.
October 1: DRMWPN opens for Wovenhand at The Empty Bottle
DRMWPN's got a lot of performing to do this fall. It started with our to-capacity show last month at the Bottle and continues with this gig on Thursday, opening for Wovenhand—dark southern baptist gothic rock from 16 Horsepower's David Eugene Edwards.
Wovenhand, White Hills, DRMWPN
Thursday, October 1, 9pm
@ The Empty Bottle
1035 N Western Ave
$12
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October 2 & 4: Stridulate Ensemble at Links Hall's 30^30 Celebration, Epiphany Dance Experiment
For those who missed the premiere of Stridulate: Hybrid Forms in Voice & Movement, here are a couple opportunities to see a bit of it. The first is at Links Hall's 30th anniversary celebration, 30^30. We're kicking off 30 continuous hours of performances, workshops and jams with a 15 minute performance of Stridulate material in the Underground Lounge. The second is at Ayako Kato's Epiphany Dance Experiment series, where we'll perform a similar piece with an expanded ensemble of 7 people. This iteration is especially heavy on the ensemble singing, and I'm very excited about it.
Stridulate Ensemble performs at:
Links Hall 30^30
Friday, October 2, 6:30pm
@ Links Hall
3435 N Sheffield
Tickets to the whole 30-hour affair are—you guessed it—$30
And now a plug for a show in which I'm not involved. Over the course of the past year or so, Lily Emerson's Lucid Street Theatre and Stephanie Acosta's Anatomy Collective have been working on a series of performances exploring memory loss and mutation, as a combined entity called Lucid Anatomy. The second work in the series, GONE or Who Is It Who Can Tell Me Who I Am, opens this weekend at the Douglas Park Fieldhouse. You should definitely try to see this - my absence notwithstanding. They say:
GONE is the second installment of Lucid Anatomy’s three-part series exploring Zombies to Alzheimer’s and everything between. Born from a conversation about zombies and a fascination with mutation, this series has led to unexpected places and exciting questions. Who are we when we are no longer ourselves? What do we become without our memories and minds? How do we connect with each other as we lose our personal histories, and is anything really ever gone?
Gone, or Who Is It Who Can Tell Me Who I Am
Fridays & Saturdays, October 2-3, 9-10, 7pm
@ Douglas Park Field House
1401 S. Sacramento Dr.
$15 suggested
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Upcoming Stuff That You'll Hear About In Next Week's Mohrcast:
October 10: DRMWPN performs in Pittsburgh with flashy sculpture by Joshua Space at the ROY GEE BIV festival
October 12:collision_theory, a series that Rachel Damon and I are curating over the course of the next year at Links Hall, begins with an improvised performance by Pillars & Tongues and Asimina Chremos
October 23: Dan Mohr, Thin Hymns, Horns of Happiness @ Ronny's
October 27: DRMWPN plays a 2-set show at The Whistler
Joshua Space is constructing a spinning mirrored robotic strobing color shifting backdrop for DRMWPN's Dreamachine for our performance in Pittsburgh's ROY GEE BIV festival on October 12. The above is a digital visualization of the machine: mylar-covered octahedrons spin around a central, color changing and strobe-capable LED lamp, the outer set of octahedrons rotating at a different rate than the inner. All of this reflecting the already hypnogogic Dreamachine should make for an especially intense quartet performance. Jim Dorling (amplified harmonium, vocals), Steve "Plastic Crimewave" Krakow (Banjo), Dan "Singleman" Schneider (Guitar), and myself (Nord Electro2, voice) will comprise ROY GEE BIV's DRMWPN formation.
Outside of this, I'm excited to see Technical Drawings, the duo of Jesse Styles and Melissa St. Pierre, who will perform the same night. Described as "piano molestation by clothespins & dsp" in the publicity for collision_theory—at which they will perform on November 9th, '09—the two create dubby dance and ambient music that's somewhere between Mouse on Mars and John Cage/Henry Cowell. I contributed guest vocals to their track "Skull on the Dancefloor," on their debut album, which is slated for release on vinyl from Germany's Gagarin label.
