Category Archives: Music

ASAC Presents The Synapse Brothers, Matts Weston and Davignon

Posted on by

Albany Sonic Arts presents an evening of percussive-driven electronic music featuring The Synapse Brothers (Bob Gluck, John Myers), Matt Weston and Matt Davignon.

Saturday July 25 @ 8pm
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
$5 suggested donation

If you’d like to study up for this show, check out Davignon’s Some Notes on Drum Machining.

Artist Bios:

The Synapse Brothers fuse together elements of electroacoustic music with improvised jazz and funk. Bob Gluck on the keyboard and electronics and John Myers playing guitars and MIDI-guitar will play live. They will be virtually accompanied by sound designer Pat Gleeson’s lustrous beats and sounds. Bob is well known for his presence on the local jazz scene. His repertoire spans jazz performance both acoustic and with electronics and free improvisation, avant-garde concert music and music for electronic expansions of acoustical instruments, including the ram¹s horn, Disklavier (computer-assisted piano) and Turkish baglama saz. Bob Gluck is Associate Professor of Music and Director of the University at Albany Electronic Music Studio.

Matt Weston has recently relocated to Albany, and we couldn’t be luckier to have such an incredible musician in our midst. Matt plays percussion and electronics, and has performed throughout the US and in Europe. He has appeared on CNN, VH1, and CBS TV. He has studied and/or collaborated with Arthur Brooks, Bill Dixon, Kevin Drumm, Milford Graves, William Parker, Jack Wright and others. He has recorded for the Tautology, Sachimay, Breaking World Records, Imvated, Crank Satori, BoxMedia, and Drag City labels. He currently records for the new 7272music label. In addition to his solo work, Weston is a member of Barn Owl (with guitarist Chris Cooper and bassist Andy Crespo); and is guitarist with Thrillpillow (with guitarist/vocalist Plum Crane, bassist/vocalist Maggie Nowinski, and drummer James Z).

Matt Davignon is an experimental musician living in Oakland, California. Since 1993, he has developed his own unique style of music, which focuses largely on textures, arrhythmic patterns and musical imperfections. Since 2004, he has been working almost exclusively with a drum machine. Instead of using it as a rhythm device, he plays the pads manually while processing the sounds through an array of effects devices and samplers, improvising music made of organic-sounding textures, hums, gurgles and crackles. Matt is also a member of the Crank Ensemble, and is the founder of the Pmocatat Ensemble. He’s active in organizing experimental & unusual music performances in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to being responsible for such events as The San Francisco Found Objects Festival, and regular DroneShift concerts, he’s one of the curators for the Luggage Store Gallery Experimental Music Series.

John Cohen Banjo Workshop on the Down Home Radio Show

Posted on by

I’ve been picking and grinning along to this recording of a banjo workshop led by John Cohen. He covers so much stylistic territory for old time banjo and touches on some of my favorite players. Mentioned repeatedly is Cohen’s classic banjo compilation, High Atmosphere. It’s great to hear Cohen talk about the tunes and the players. Even better is hearing him marvel at the possibilities afforded by different picking styles and tunings. Host Eli Smith has also put together a companion mix tape of the original recordings. Highly recommended.

ASAC Presents The Human Quena Orchestra, Grab Ass Cowboys and More

Posted on by

Much more…so much more. Albany Sonic Arts pulls out the noise stops for tomorrow’s show.

Firday July 17 @ 8pm
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
$5 suggested donation

The Human Quena Orchestra – Punishing duo from PA/CA on Crucial Blast Records.
“like having your face ground into a brick wall” -Signal to Noise Magazine

Grab Ass Cowboys – Albany freeformnoiserock cheapskates

Requiem – 1/2 of Human Quena Orchestra…sweet drone shindig

Derealize – (also known as Worlds of Sh*t) – a one man harsh noise mugging

Remembering Tina Marsh

Posted on by

I’m saddened to read that Austin has lost one of its greats, vocalist Tina Marsh. Read the story here: Remembering Tina Marsh | Austin Music Source.

I only heard Tina sing a handful of times (always with the amazing Creative Opportunity Orchestra) and was never lucky enough to perform with her. I’m almost ashamed to say it now, but I’m sure Tina attended more of my gigs than I attended hers. I’m only almost ashamed, though, since this imbalance is really a testament to Tina’s full engagement with her community. I appreciate her quiet, reliable, affirming support more than ever now that she’s gone.

Steve Lacy came through Austin near the end of his life with George Lewis in the band. I remember someone asking George about his impressions of the jazz scene in Austin, or some such question. And George responded “Well, you’ve got Tina Marsh.” As if to say, “What more do you need?”

Go to http://www.creop.org/ to hear Tina again and again.

ASAC Presents Sublime Frequencies

Posted on by

The Albany Sonic Arts Collective presents Sublime Frequencies, film screenings and rare 78rpm records from around the globe from Ian Nagoski and Robert Millis.

Saturday June 20 @ 8pm
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
$5 suggested donation

Ian Nagoski (Black Mirror/Canary Records/Mississippi Records)

Robert Millis (Climax Golden Twins/Victrola Favorites/Sublime Frequencies)

Rare and unseen Sublime Frequencies (www.sublimefrequencies.com) films will be screened, with the director in attendance. This very special night will appeal to music lovers, film buffs, world scholars, those interested in South Asia, history fiends, and anyone with an eye for the beauty of uncovered cultural treasures from around the globe.

I wrote about Ian’s last visit to the Capital Region here and look forward to hearing him again. Sublime Frequencies’s releases have provided consistent inspiration and enjoyment, particularly Radio Sumatra.

Program:

India at 78rpm
Folk and classical music in India through the lens of the largest private collection of 78rpm records and dusty ephemera on the sub-continent.

My Friend Rain
Decay and rebirth and death through the endless Asian monsoon cycle. A collage of musical segments and tropical ambiance from Robert Millis and Alan Bishop.

Phi Ta Khon: Ghosts of Isan
A traditional Buddhist ghost festival from Thailand’s Isan province that features beautiful handmade masks, outrageous wooden phalluses, ceremony, ritual, dancing, and endless music.

Connecting Connections

Posted on by

I’m a long-time reader of Kyle Gann’s Postclassic, so a bit surprised that I don’t point more often to  the gems he posts. I couldn’t pass up his latest entry, though, since it pulls together so many figures of contemporary music and finds connections between them. Case in point is this quote about James Tenney:

Someday there will be a book on James Tenney, who studied with Varese, befriended Ruggles, argued with Partch, made psychedelic eletcronic music with Mort Subotnick, played in the ensembles of Steve Reich and Phil Glass, taught alongside Harold Budd, and taught Peter Garland, Larry Polansky, John Luther Adams, and Michael Byron, among many others. Tenney is a line wandering through American musical history, drawing a variety of unexpected connections. The people most central to American music, those who can’t be pulled out of the fabric without it unraveling, are not always the household names.

I can’t wait for that book on James Tenney; if we’re lucky Kyle will write it. Speaking of Kyle’s writings, he’s currently working on a book about Robert Ashley–another one of those wandering lines–who he quotes:

“The only thing that’s interesting to me right now is that, up to me and a couple of other guys, music had always been about the eventfulness: like, when things happened, and if they happened, whether they would be a surprise, or an enjoyment, or something like that… It’s about eventfulness. And I was never interested in eventfulness. I was only interested in sound. I mean, just literally, sound in the Morton Feldman sense…. There’s a quality in music that is outside of time, that is not related to time. And that has always fascinated me… That’s sort of what I’m all about, from the first until the most recent. A lot of people are back into eventfulness. But it’s very boring. Eventfulness is really boring.”

I find Ashley’s ‘eventfulness’ formulation to be useful. I’ve often thought of my music’s tendency toward uneventfulness (here here and here, for example) as related to landscape, particularly landscape painting or photography. My interest in field recordings and soundscapes both grows from that predilection and informs it.

ASAC Presents Tape Chants

Posted on by

The Albany Sonic Arts Collective presents Gregg Kowalsky and Ben Bracken from Oakland, California. Gregg will be presenting his Tape Chants project which involves sounds from cassette players distributed throughout the performance space. Tape Chants has just been released on Kranky Records.

Also performing are Fossils From the Sun (Ray Hare solo project) and Rambutan (Eric Hardiman solo project).

Friday, June 19 @ 8pm
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St. Albany

Music: The Brand

Posted on by

Thinking recently that the RIAA could benefit from a music industry slogan–the musical equivalent of “Got Milk” or “The Other White Meat” (fatback, if you had to ask…). My top suggestion was inspired by the warmer weather that has brought the ice-cream trucks out trawling for sweaty dollars clutched in pudgy toddler fingers.

Photo and Sticker by *USB*

Photo and Sticker by *USB*

Music: Because Ice Cream Won’t Just Sell Itself

Awards Abound

Posted on by

Just read on NewMusicBox about awards to some (now even more) distinguished colleagues. Congratulations to Erik Carlson, John King and Pauline Oliveros.

Erik Carlson – Area C – has recently received a MacColl Johnson Fellowship from The Rhode Island Foundation.

John King is the recipient of an Alpert Award.

And finally, Columbia University School of the Arts is presenting Pauline Oliveros the William Schuman Award.

Yes, it’s been awhile since I caught up with NewMusicBox, but this still seems like an awards bonanza. A kind of alternate universe Grammys.

Tax Refund

Posted on by

Here’s your tax refund from The Field Guide: two new recordings from my recent Albany Sonic Arts Collective performance at the Upstate Artists Guild. See photos from the show here.

The first piece features an in-progress version of my Fender Telecaster morphing into an electric 6-string banjo. I replaced the lowest string on the Tele with another high string to serve as a drone. Soon to come are railroad spikes so I can change the pitch of the drone string more easily and my usual allotment of sensors added to the instrument. This piece is played in a traditional thumb lead two-finger style using a modified mountain-minor tuning (dG’DGcd) run through a loopy MSP patch.

[audio:spring_dissent_bubbling.mp3]

Spring Dissent (Bubbling)

The second piece is a modified version of a work for banjo and electronics with the banjo replaced by my Base On, a circuit-bent walkie-talkie. Not much of the circuit-bent sound is heard, though, since it drives an elaborate resynthesis process in MSP that simultaneously retunes the pitches to just-intonation and smears the transitions with glissandi. A touch of feedback in the process opens up slightly unstable areas where the algorithm fights with itself to settle on a consistent pitch.

[audio:wichita_mind_control_estate_capital.mp3]

Wichita Mind Control – Estate Capital