Show at The Robinwood Concert House
6/23
9pm
2564 Robinwood ave. Toledo Ohio
Donations please
Bran(...)pos is the solo experimental electronic music project of Jake Rodriguez. Given life in 1995, bran(...)pos focuses on real-time sonic plasticization and voice manipulation, achieving these ends with both hardware synthesizers and a custom set of software-based sound grapplers that interface with the real world via tactile control. bran(...)pos' recordings (heavy and heady like Cannibal Corpse doing Xenakis covers) and performances (rounded out with facial interpretations and physical gesture-butoh and Max Fleischer-inspired) are consistently praised for their inventiveness and attention to detail.
Robert Turman- A founding member (along with Boyd Rice) of NON, Turman's industrial bona-fides are beyond question. His early tape releases featured snarling guitar figures over primitive drumbox and throbbing synth -- a dream for fans of early Cabaret Voltaire and DAF. He planted his flag in the sand for keeps with the eleven year-spanning, eight-cassette boxset (!) Chapter Eleven (briefly reissued by Hanson a few years back, and slated for eventual CD treatment). Recently, Dais Records reissued an early Turman tape, Way Down, as an LP in an edition of 500 copies. Turman has seen a spike of activity in recent years, collaborating closely with Hanson Records' Aaron Dilloway (ex-Wolf Eyes) and issuing both new and archival material on various formats.
Jason Soliday is a stalwart member of the Chicago scene, having performed in many groups (Gunshop, Mora, with members of TVPOW, etc.) and on his own (under his own name and as Coeurl). He also runs the excellent show-space Enemy. Live, Soliday presents a dense and detailed sonic stew: heavy noise, but informed by his years of improvising, gigging, recording, building, and programming. Soliday does more than just find an engaging sound and stick with it- he constantly shifts, feints, and dodges, pulling the rug out from under you only to smother you in it later.
Startless is Blake Edwards (turntables, cassettes, shortwave, electronics) and Jason
Zeh (cassettes, tape, cassette players, contact mics); they utilize multiple layers of both processed and raw turntable (including hand altered records and turntable motor mechanics), shortwave, cassette, and cassette player motors to create a engaging balance of thick, complex, streams of sound with delicate, highly structured, singular audio gestures to create an engaging deep listening experience.
On the Ruins of the Great Black Swamp
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Collaboration with Matt Ruzicka
My friend Matt Ruzicka, a ceramicist, posted on his blog about a collaboration that we are working on together. Here is his original post.
The end result will be a double cassette. One cassette will be made out ceramics and the other will be a tape composed of sounds derived from clay and the related machinery. I am looking forward to seeing these come together.
The above pictures are the ceramic cassettes as they are now. I think they are looking really nice, but am unsure if Matt has any further plans for them. I am super excited to see how this project comes together.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Respect
I had a strange experience last night. A Swiss man named Reto Mader played in Toledo OH, about 30 minutes from my home. A few Months ago I was contacted by someone at Ramalama records in Toledo about playing this show. After determining that I was able to do the show, I looked into Mader's work and became really interested. I got excited about the show and was really interested in playing at Ramalama because it is part of a dying breed of independent record stores. However, i was a bit skeptical. In general, I have had bad experiences with the owner of the store and, more generally, I have had bad experiences playing shows set up by people who do not specialize in noise, EAI, or other out sounds. I was willing to give it a shot.
I felt good about my set. I was able to try out some new stuff in a relatively low risk situation and it turned out well.
Reto Mader, aka RM74, was kind, gracious, and enthusiastic. This was the last stop on a brief, 6 day tour in The States. He originally came out here from Switzerland to play the Utech Records Festival put on by the phenomenal Utech Records label. His set was really strong. It was a sophisticated combination of dark drone metal and high brow improvisation using a bass, kalimba, other devices, and loop pedals. There were three basic kinds of pieces that he played each of which resembled songs in their fairly clear use of a beginning, middle, and end. He began with an interesting percussive piece gently pounding out and looping rhythmic passages using a mallet on the body of the bass. He then layered in some drones and bass riffs on top. In the middle there was a mind bending, multi-layered, polyrhythmic, Kalimba piece that was incredible. The rest of the "songs" were looped and layered bass riffs that sometimes included pre-recorded sounds and/or synthesizer drones. These were really atmospheric, somewhat dark, and very powerful. However, after a while, they became a bit repetitive as each one followed much the same format. Overall, I was really pleased with his set and was very thankful to have been able to see it.
We chatted, traded music, and had a good time.
The only problem is that there were roughly 5 people in attendance including myself and my partner, the woman who was touring with him, and two other friends of mine. The person who had set up the show did not even put up a flyer at the record store, nor did he stick around to see the show. In fact, the amp he brought for Mader to use did not work. Reto thought the promoter had gone to get another amp, but several hours later we began to suspect that he had simply gone home. Luckily Gabe Beam, one of the audience members agreed to bring his amp.
I was really frustrated by the lack of respect that the promoter showed for our guest. I explained to the guys at the shop that, theoretically, we are all on the same team. We are all trying to make life in the area less shitty for ourselves and for others. We do ourselves a disservice when we prove to people that their preconceived notions about the Midwest are accurate.
The promoter called to yell at me. It was a lot of silly drama, but I think I realize now that it is rarely a good idea to contact people who are not musicians to set up a show. A friend, Blake Edwards, has been talking about putting a simple primer on how to set up shows properly and I think we need to do it. Here are my brief guidelines.
If you are setting up a show, at MINIMUM, you owe out of town bands the following.
1) A simple meal.
2) A place to stay, even just a spot on your floor.
3) Promotion including online posts and a flyer.
4) Gas money.
5) The consideration to show up and pay attention.
6) Adequate equipment that meets the performer's needs.
Keep this in mind people. Lets all be friends and help each other out.
I felt good about my set. I was able to try out some new stuff in a relatively low risk situation and it turned out well.
Reto Mader, aka RM74, was kind, gracious, and enthusiastic. This was the last stop on a brief, 6 day tour in The States. He originally came out here from Switzerland to play the Utech Records Festival put on by the phenomenal Utech Records label. His set was really strong. It was a sophisticated combination of dark drone metal and high brow improvisation using a bass, kalimba, other devices, and loop pedals. There were three basic kinds of pieces that he played each of which resembled songs in their fairly clear use of a beginning, middle, and end. He began with an interesting percussive piece gently pounding out and looping rhythmic passages using a mallet on the body of the bass. He then layered in some drones and bass riffs on top. In the middle there was a mind bending, multi-layered, polyrhythmic, Kalimba piece that was incredible. The rest of the "songs" were looped and layered bass riffs that sometimes included pre-recorded sounds and/or synthesizer drones. These were really atmospheric, somewhat dark, and very powerful. However, after a while, they became a bit repetitive as each one followed much the same format. Overall, I was really pleased with his set and was very thankful to have been able to see it.
We chatted, traded music, and had a good time.
The only problem is that there were roughly 5 people in attendance including myself and my partner, the woman who was touring with him, and two other friends of mine. The person who had set up the show did not even put up a flyer at the record store, nor did he stick around to see the show. In fact, the amp he brought for Mader to use did not work. Reto thought the promoter had gone to get another amp, but several hours later we began to suspect that he had simply gone home. Luckily Gabe Beam, one of the audience members agreed to bring his amp.
I was really frustrated by the lack of respect that the promoter showed for our guest. I explained to the guys at the shop that, theoretically, we are all on the same team. We are all trying to make life in the area less shitty for ourselves and for others. We do ourselves a disservice when we prove to people that their preconceived notions about the Midwest are accurate.
The promoter called to yell at me. It was a lot of silly drama, but I think I realize now that it is rarely a good idea to contact people who are not musicians to set up a show. A friend, Blake Edwards, has been talking about putting a simple primer on how to set up shows properly and I think we need to do it. Here are my brief guidelines.
If you are setting up a show, at MINIMUM, you owe out of town bands the following.
1) A simple meal.
2) A place to stay, even just a spot on your floor.
3) Promotion including online posts and a flyer.
4) Gas money.
5) The consideration to show up and pay attention.
6) Adequate equipment that meets the performer's needs.
Keep this in mind people. Lets all be friends and help each other out.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
My favorite one so far.
http://www.progress-report.co.uk/Reviews/reviews_z.htm
The smallest of things. An unforeseeable result of process and movement. A scratch delineates silence from presence. Sections form and fall with the emphasis on placement rather than linear a projection.
From here spills a churning flow; machine wheels spin out tonal harmonics. Tape break. High end tone and a slight undertow to shift the panorama.
Rather than using tape to record, the tape -or the medium- becomes the instrument in itself. Through manipulating, heating and freezing the tape it becomes an active object rather than a passive medium which merely recorded. The magnetic fields altered and warped, fucked and burnt. Process and machinery. The realigning of magnetic fields on tape through these 'other' more physical means are a process worth working with.
Tinnitus and the sound of your room play a part. Another useful release in the immaculate Brombron series. HM
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Friday, April 1, 2011
Old review of Heraclitus
CD Review--Jason Zeh
From Toledo BellowsJason Zeh: Heraclitus
Label: Crippled Intellect Productions
"A man in the quiet of the night
is kindled like a fire soon quenched."
--Heraclitus
The thought of Heraclitus survives only in rather enigmatic fragments and was a source for speculation and study by many of the leading lights of 20th-century continental philosophy (Heidegger immediately comes to mind). There is something very enticing about his fragments, for even though they are incredibly elusive in terms of meaning, after repeated readings, one feels closer and closer to reaching some kind of deeper, intuitive understanding that ALMOST makes it into language but doesn't quite get there. His images, much like the one encased within the fragment that Jason Zeh included in his new CD on Crippled Intellect Productions, strain against the easy dichotomies within which we often frame and shape our own experiences (i.e. good/bad, hot/cold, white/black, etc.); in this particular image, the second part of the metaphor, working with fire, is where the straining takes place. If a fire is kindled (the obvious read here on kindled would probably be started or begun, as with kindling) yet soon to be quenched, it may seem, at first glance, that the fire is started with the idea that it will soon go out; however, it seems more likely to me that quenched is meant more here as "satisfied", which may mean that the fire goes out, but it has also served its purpose. If we take it back a step further, then, thinking about the first part of the metaphor, if a man sitting quietly is able to be kindled like a fire, one might think of the fire as a sudden epiphany or insight, the spark of inspiration, which can definitely bring satisfaction, but the fire cannot and often does not burn indefinitely; the epiphany occurs and then subsides; there is no persistent dwelling in the epiphany over long measurable periods of time (even though within the space of the epiphany, time may suddenly shift). Of course, even as I construct this reading, I find myself drawn to other equally valid readings which take me off on other intellectual trajectories only loosely related to the one I have just laid out, but, again, this speaks more to the richness of his work than anything else; I can find a kind of satisfaction with one reading for some time and then return to the same deceptively simple fragment moments later and find some other meaning that is equally satisfying.
Losing one's self in such abstract language while attempting to engage with enigmatic text is comparable to my attempt to translate the kind of experience I have with Zeh's newest work, which I think of as a kind of "dwelling-in", inhabiting a sonic space which, as in my reading of Heraclitus' quote, creeps out of the quiet of a night of recording, sparks itself into existence, burns and burns and burns, and then extinguishes itself. I won't overemphasize the context of and mechanisms employed for the construction of this recording (all of which is detailed in Zeh's liner notes). Suffice it to say that most of Zeh's work is cassette-based, and this composition is no exception; fire and water (the potentially quenching force here?) are both employed as manipulation devices or sound reconstructors, and tape is recorded on and rerecorded on, layered and stripped away, dissected and reconnected, stretched and swollen. The recording pushes against genre or sub-genre-defined spaces, finding itself somewhere in between minimalist composition and DIY drone/noise without fully inhabiting either space comfortably, much like Heraclitus' images strain against the dichotomies which we employ to define ourselves and our world. Furthermore, as in Heraclitus' fragments, the end results of these processes and manipulations have a kind of elusiveness to them; you never quite know where he's going or where he will end up. Zeh, in certain respects, bucks the logic established by the majority of folk working in drone environments; most approach it from one of two perspectives: starting with a wide variety of layers and slowly stripping everything away to nothing or starting with one sound or layer and piling up to some brain-melting crescendo that then either melts away or simply ends. Zeh builds multiple narratives within his piece, stories which depend upon each other for cohesion but do not always dovetail each other in the almost mathematical fashion that one sees in a good deal of drone music. There are four or five distinct movements in the piece, each connected to one another by a sound either in the foreground or the background serving as the thread that binds all movements together; in this sense, it reminds me of Boggs-era Aaron Dilloway, less abrasive but equally as abrupt at times in the way Zeh transitions from movement to movement.
The beginning centers around what sounds like a primitive, quiet field recording, with bare glimpses of sound, clicks, clacks and hums. The second part comes out of animalistic squealing that spirals out and around the initial hum, building into a fleshy, fluid, slippery squall which is then itself enveloped in the warbling, thunderous, wider hum of the third section. As the fourth part begins, Zeh employs a transitional device that he often uses when playing live, where all of the raging blaze which has dominated the fire he has generated is suddenly swept away to reveal a quiet smouldering source which, unbeknownst to the listener, was stoking the blaze all along; the contrast can be somewhat disorienting (particularly live) because the relative loudness of sound is so drastically different when moving from one level of sound to the other, and it often has a physical effect as well, like a sudden shift in altitude has taken place without any of the potential nausea that can ensue. Orchestrally-speaking, it would be like moving from a brash horn section to one solo violin; thinking imagistically, it's like transposing the image of a candle behind a mansion on fire, with the picture of the mansion fading quickly into oblivion, leaving only the single flickering flame. On this recording, though, Zeh takes this process a step further, sweeping away the whistles, whispers, and moans of the fourth part to reveal an even deeper source which, sonically, reveals itself as cassettes slowly dying, stretched out over nearly ten minutes of time, as warbles and rumbles are enveloped in silence. It is a captivating piece, one that rewards time and time again on repeated listening, revealing new layers and meanings as one dwells in its flickers, flames, ashes, and remnants.
--FCB
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