“Improvisation” (Used 80 times)

Today's MP3 comes to us from Oneonta, New York where Buildings and Mountains have been pumping out some wonderfully atmospheric drone improvisations. With a haunting piano melody and a gloomy feedback/fieldrecording howl filling the cassette-tape void, "Fall Moon" is the perfect soundtrack to your weekend introspection. Thanks to owldirt, new to the FMA, for making this available!

Also, be sure to check out Summer Gut String and the accompanying experimental videos done by Jaime Rodriguez Lopez at the band's Vimeo page. 

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FUN—as I've come to know the Philadelphia-based combo, its sounds and membership, I realize how truly appropriate the name is for what they do. FUN are able to apply clever, inventive, fresh ideas to their improvised music-making, minus all the beard-stroking and pretentious, high-minded, music-conservatory-based conceptualization and back-patting that often accompanies similar activities.

For their FUN Go! America! tour, a 50-year project that involves one performance a year, each in a different state, on the very date that that state was inducted into the Union, FUN came to New Jersey on December 18th, to WFMU's Studio B, to render two unique, smartly conceived and individually distinct long-form improvisations. The concept of the tour alone is staggering, and relies upon FUN's members having access to interstate transportation, and living long enough, to execute the mass concept in its entirety.

Backed by an American flag, adorned with their name in silver duct tape, and a host of gear ranging from plastic soda bottles to radically modified electric guitars, Mat and Jonny donned Kennedy and Nixon masks ("lifelong enemies") to render their first set, which begins with the delicious sound of carbonated-beverage-pouring, and takes flight from there. Set two, entitled "A Stroll In Jersey City," involved a studio-stationed, close-mic'd cel phone, into which they called in, while walking around the neighborhood of WFMU's building, making music from whatever they encountered on their walk.

Engineer Bob Bellerue and myself certainly had a great deal of FUN, recording the sets and watching the action put forth live and in person. These sets were broadcast the following Friday a.m. on My Castle of Quiet, though it was critical to the concept that they were recorded on Dec. 18th, the very date of NJ's 224th anniversary of statehood.

Thanks again to Mat, Jonny, and their friend Kevin, all of whom were present for the rendering of similarly intriguing sets on the Castle on the last day of December 2010, that material also resulting in a dynamic set of remixes, aired on the show the following February. Thanks as always to Bob, for his invaluable, sterling engineering skills, and to Tracy Widdess, for once again rendering my performance photos into art.

As soon as one really starts listening to Ryan T. Dunn's sonic creations as Instinct Control, one realizes that as much as they are improvised, the project name is no accident, as the end result is very much an experiential journey with the composer/performer as guide, "intent" unfolding as it happens. I envision Ryan a bit lost in a pyramid, but far from panicking, he's gradually mastering the texture of the glyphs along the wall, patiently and deliberately finding his way. It's good chaos, like that scene in Tarkovsky's The Mirror, all shaken-out hair and falling plaster rendered in slow motion.

Ryan is a real-time composer, who really knows his instrument, and where you could say this about many in the circuit-bending crowd, when listening to Instinct Control, one really feels the journey—every corner the music turns, every choice the player takes, is an exploration of feeling, a joyous journey, and lucky you get to ride along.

These two sets were rendered absolutely live, on the My Castle of Quiet program of February 18, Ryan seated on the floor, thus somewhat hidden from view to engineer Bob Bellerue and myself. Seemingly very lucid, quiet and confident, Ryan sat before his instrument and found his way, for as long as the journey made sense. And though by the common standard, this is raucous, intense music, to me these are soul-stirring trips—the more I explore these sets, the more I appreciate their energizing quality, their sure power and uplifting vibrance.

Thanks to Bob Bellerue for exposing me to Ryan's music and setting up the meet, as well as engineering the live session. Thanks as always to Tracy Widdess of Brutal Knitting for stomping colorful life into my iPhone capture of the artist at work; buy a radical balaclava from her today—reasonably priced original Canadian folk art it is. And thanks most of all to Ryan T. Dunn for these ever-more-uplifting performances. Hallelujah!

Some best music and songs of February on a netlabel Clinical Archives.

01 - melting clouds - Autumn - 6:06 (ca425)
02 - Claudio Nuñez - bailando sobre arquitectura again (dancing about architecture again) - 9:35 (ca423)
03 - ViYA - Huzur İsyanda - 4:44 (ca422)
04 - 10KoneKt VS MIXoLIVe - #8f8f8e - 15:27 (ca424)
05 - Zreen Toyz - Pianistic Latency - 7:21 (ca426)
06 - ViYA - Oyuncaklar Ülkesi - 6:13 (ca422)
07 - melting clouds - Found Light - 5:58 (ca425)

Total time: 55:21

Artists: melting clouds (Ukraina), Claudio Nuñez (Argentina), Zreen Toyz (France), 10KoneKt VS MIXoLIVe (France), ViYA (Turkey)

In the run-up to ISSUE's first benefit this coming Friday, we're featuring podcasts of music and interviews with composer and guitarist Elliott Sharp (whose 60th birthday party is happening at 110 Livingston in Brooklyn on March 4).

Elliott Sharp's output spans a whole bunch of genres of current experimental music, and so one podcast just didn't seem quite enough. Luckily, James Ilgenfritz's series Ten Thousand Hours takes a close look at Elliott's improvisational output, on what it means to be an improviser and still associate with "classical" genres, or to be an musician using amplification, sampling, and electronics and still associate with the jazz (or even classical) worlds. Sharp doesn't seem to think too much of the distinction, but he and James dig deeper; they talk about his teenage years reading Xenakis and Cage, his days releasing string quartets on the punk label SST, the challenges of being a freelance composer, and his ongoing hope for the open-mindedness of today's younger musicians and music enthusiasts. Check out James's podcast below, and we'll be featuring a number of these interviews with creative improvisors throughout March and onward.