I’m poking around the garden, assessing the winter damage – a branch snapped off an apple tree, most of the bulbs coming up blind, soil issues here and there – and getting myself back into the outdoor headspace.
STATUS: Taking a decompression day. Got tickets to see PROJECT HAIL MARY later in the week. As I wrote in January:
I actually liked the book, but I’m going to be curious to see if Drew Goddard addressed the underlying autistic note in and the apparent asexuality of the protagonist.
The Kodak Charmera is an objectively awful camera and I love it.
ViviLnk
It’s not so much “point and shoot” as much as it is “spray and pray.”
I was at Konsztrukting Soundz last night – an unusually full house, which means I probably caught a new iteration of the mange, and a really good night. I have a few Bandcamp rabbit holes to go down this – Julia Brussel, who played violin, and Sylvia Hallett, who played violin, bicycle wheel and saw. Hearing someone play a mic’d-up bicycle wheel with violin bow and seashell was quite a thing.
Of course, All The News happened last night while my phone was muted. Khamenei dead, which I presume was an attempt at regime decapitation by people who don’t understand how Iranian government works.
I read about an influencer who identifies as a snake and was found slithering all over the streets of Japan in a snakeskin crop top and matching tail. Its been living rent-free in my head ever since.
2 years now in an environment that is snow roughly half of the year, and I have become a penguin. I am one with the ice. The trees are heavy, limbs decorated and hanging low. Layered and thick, holding their breath alongside me. We wait. It is beautiful, the waiting.
Konsztrukting Soundz is a wonderful local event of experimental music that I try to attend every month. Last night’s event was really good.
The standout for me was Mandhira de Saram’s absolute storm of looped violin work with electronic intrusions. She has no website I can find, but she’s on IG and I found a couple of collaborations on Bandcamp, none of which seem to approach the force she brought to bear last night, so, given what was said at the top of the performance, I suspect she’s testing a new style.
I was also impressed by Angharad Davies, who’s one of the players on this Eliane Radigue piece I didn’t know:
And here with John Butcher, which is much more reminiscent of what she did with Rie Nakajima last night:
I can’t tell you how much better I feel after one of these gigs. Three hours on airplane mode, just listening and thinking.
OPERATIONS: scripts, foreword, prose series development, outline, newsletter probably a dozen other things I’m forgetting STATUS: I have a thousand things to do so of course I’m going out for lunch instead READING:SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+) LISTENING: Door 200
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
Fun night. The takeaway this time was the thing Lev alerted me to on my arrival – Pascal Marzan and his ten-string microtonal guitar, which produces the strangest sounds, one moment woody and percussive, the next shimmering and silvered.
I’ve seen the Mediaeval Baebes a few times in the past. Once in a converted barn with deep snow outside, once at a mediaeval banquet in high summer when they were about six feet away from me. This time, at a cathedral, with great acoustics but a lousy mix – the instruments were too up front and the vocals got blanketed more than once. But their rendition of Gaudete was magnificent, quite the best I’ve heard them do it. The current line-up includes a high soprano whose voice is just remarkable. I got gifted an old Miranda Sex Garden CD while there (thanks, Lee) which delighted me – I was around for Miranda Sex Garden, way back when, but only had a tape, as I recall.
Missed a chunk of the Sakamoto due to two loudly wittering old biddies behind me whom I eventually had to tell to shut up. The Three Argentine Dances and the Rhapsody were very good.
Last Saturday night at the Fishermen’s Chapel in Old Leigh. Here’s the details of what was. I want to make some notes while it’s fresh in my mind.
First off, the sound art of event organiser Lev Dudas, which that night seemed strongly radiophonic to me.
Saulius Bendoraitis & Brian Webb: the former providing complex and gorgeous musique concrete soundscapes while the latter did some (slightly muffled) spoken word over the top.
And finally Sunfish Starfish, who to my mind owned the night with an absolutely IMMENSE sound reminiscent of Philip Jeck, only more expansive and meditative – like listening to eight sunken bands and orchestras. Made my fucking week, it did.
Special shout to Karina Townsend, who performed with an assemblage of plastic tubes, sound pickups, a straw and a Marigold washing up glove that I can really only describe to you as an electronic bagpipe…
I popped down to the Fishermen’s Chapel in Old Leigh over the weekend to attend the Konsztrukting Soundz event. Four acts, two of which I want to make notes on. Here’s the full bill.
According to Korean folklore, the daegeum is said to have been invented when King Sinmun of Silla was informed by Park Suk Jung, his caretaker of the ocean in 681 that a small island was floating toward a Buddhist temple in the East Sea. The king ordered his caretaker of the sun to test whether this was good luck. The caretaker replied that a dead king who turned into a sea dragon, and two great warriors are giving a gift to protect Silla, and if the king would visit the sea, he would receive a priceless gift. The king soon sent a person to look for the gift. The person replied that a bamboo tree on the top of the island becomes two in the morning and one in the night. On the next day, the world shook and it rained and wind blew, and the world was thrown into darkness for a week. When the king went to the island himself, a dragon appeared and told him that if the bamboo on the top of the island was cut down, made into a flute, and blown, the country would be peaceful. The king cut down the tree, and the flute made from the bamboo was called manpasikjeok…
She told a version of this story during her performance. There was the sighing of trees in the breeze, and ten thousand waves, and then the storm. Actually riveting.
I spoke to Teresa Hackel briefly afterwards because I wanted to know what instrument she started the piece off with – it looks like a huge chunk of doorframe converted into a musical device. Turned out it was called a Paetzold Recorder
You can see it partway through this video of them playing together a few years ago.
They were absolutely stunning.
I had to leave before buying the CDs I had my eye on, which I still regret. But I had a great time and learned a bunch of new things.
