Windy and Carl @ The Sunset Tavern, Seattle, Washington 05.23.09

Hopped in a car and made my way down to Seattle last Saturday. I couldn't have imagined on the ride down how incredible a kick start to a perfect weekend + monday this show was going to be. I was about to give Vancouver's big brother to the South a proper visit (no one nighter this time). A looong weekend that consisted of booze, breakfasts, music, record shopping, antique stores, ranch hostels, ferries, Jonh Fante novels and an almost ménage à trois. It all really helped me loosen up and rid (at least temporarily) my mind of lingering depression and non-motivation, a prefect rejuvenation from the monotonous work week. Peaceful and just all around good times.

Openers This Blinding Light

Kicking things off was local stoner rockers This Blinding Light, who when they weren't letting their instruments drone on, played a well rehearsed (really, these guys are pretty tight and you can tell they practice) repertoire of head noddin' grooves ala Dead Meadow and the likes. Can't say I listen to this stuff all that much any more, but I have to admit that these guys were hitting the spot. Oh, and how often does a show get progressively more experimental and more minimal as the night goes on? I wish that all shows were billed that way, throw on the popstars first and when everyone who came to see them leaves, then bring on the weirdo drone acts. I'm all for it.

Adam Forkner aka White Rainbow

I've spent many a time with Prism of Eternal Now and was really bummed when the scheduled Atlas Sound, Valet, White Rainbow show in Vancouver was cancelled due to border? problems. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to see that Forkner was paired up with W+C for a few westcoast dates, including this one. No vibe huts this time, but a solid arsenal of floor junk that looked something like an Aaron Davis setup.

Forkner is quite skilled at layering sound, but sometimes has the tendency to suffocate the mood by simply adding too much. That's pretty much how I feel about his performance. It started out great, but after about 15 minutes I wish he would've started taking thigs out of the mix instead of layering more and more on. Still kicked ass though, I really enjoyed it none the less.

WhiteRainbow

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my personal recording

Windy

Carl

Windy and Carl

I can't think of all that many things to say about Windy and Carl's set that don't include the words 'perfect' and 'mesmorizing'. They played for an hour and flawlessly exuded their magical sound into the small venue, hypnotizing the audience. I met up with my friend Amir at the show (also from Van) and we both agreed that we were part of a small minority that had just witnessed something special, something that people need to experience at least once in their life. I literally felt like I was floating the entire time. I'm still working on getting the playlist together so hang tight, but I do remember them opening with The Sun from 'Consciousness' and later playing some tracks off of the new record, and my personal favourite of the night, the sprawling epic 'Antarctica' from the record I posted a little while back of the same name. To top it off, all the tracks were blended together into one long ambient bliss-out set, incredible!

Pretty much cleaned out the merch table, highlights include a beautiful tour only lp and a hand painted poster by Windy. More about that stuff soon. The recording is broken up into two segments. I decided not to cut up the recording into individual tracks because of the nature of their set, but there was one break at about the 20 minute mark where they actually ended a song and everyone clapped. So, I decided to cut it there to make the recording more managable for people. Enjoy.

Windy + Carl
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Rare Frequency Podcasts

Just discovered these great podcasts of experimental music by the radio show/website Rare Frequency out of Boston. Occasionally a really great artist will perform at the station which is recorded and later podcasted, Jonathan Coleclough, Illusion of Safety, Jason Kahn and Asher, Keith Fullerton Whitman, and Howard Stelzer to name a few. Great stuff. The site also features playlists, reviews, resources, and a cool "found" section. You can catch the show on the air Thursdays, 7-10pm EST WZBC 90.3fm. Or listen to it online through the link on the website.

Visit it here - Rare Frequency
Jump to the podcasts page here

*Click on the photos for a direct link to their podcast

Jonathan Coleclough Live on Rare Frequency November 20, 2008.

Asher and Jason Kahn live on Rare Frequency September 25, 2008

*Photos reposted without permission from Rare Frequency

Illusion of Safety live on Rare Frequency Octover 23, 2008

Giancarlo Toniutti and Andrew Chalk 'Tahta Tarla' LP (Pans'urlo Panseri, 1993)

Giancarlo Toniutti you could write a book about anything. Nobody would be able to read it, but that wouldn't stop you from writing it, would it?


As soon as the microfrontiers become stable, the map-points in a morphologic equilibrium are defined through the bifurcation of the functional field-potential, by very quasi-stable singularities. Next, the map-points begin their own universal unfolding onto the n-dimensional mother-space which is the open of the system's regular points. This is the spatial phase of the mapping which is isomorphic onto the time-space support (fig G).
-Excerpt of linear notes by Toniutti.


I can only assume that your philosophical dialectic ramblings within these pages are an attempt to reveal the process of how Tahta Tarla came to be. And I can only guess that the wire diagrams illustrated in these pages are that of actual environmental musical structures, resonating in the wind and singing subtle scraped tones as they're manipulated. Despite the associative lack of clarity between the text and music, this is absolutely essential drone, rivaling the best work from these two veterans.

Esoteric Sounds [Seabus Terminal] - Keith Fullerton Whitman 'Darmouth Street Underpass' (Locust, 2003)

Part three of an ongoing field log of captured environments and so on and so forth.

This one's from the archive. I can't remember where I was going or when in fact this is from but it's probably a few years old at least. Mic in hand, I recorded the walk from the street side entrance of Waterfront station, through the terminal and down the escalator eventually ending at my seat on the Seabus.

What you will hear in this five minute slice of a meaningless day:
Flutes, Voices, Escalators, Footsteps, Jangling Keys, Turnstiles, and Mechanistic Drones. I've come across this recording a lot in the last couple of months and have found it stands shaky kneed but firm to the test of time, so here...Oh, and a Seabus, in case you don't know... is exactly what you think it is.

Seabus Terminal

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Keith Fullerton Whitman Darmouth Street Underpass

Beneath Darmouth street (Boston) lies a tunnel lined with glass walls, the place in which Whitman decided to actualize his field recording. The glass walls, creating "unorthodox acoustic conditions," give a strange sonic life to the things that pass by them (notice the jangling keys in both our recordings, what are the chances? Probably pretty high actually) There is a second track on this album, a real-time processed reply to the first track using bits of the original as source material. Completed on Whitman's porch at home, nice stuff.

Whitman's Untampered Underpass Recording

Kevin Drumm 'Imperial Distortion' 2CD (Hospital Productions, 2008)

Take my lack of a review as an extreme compliment to this work by Kevin Drumm.

And thus, take my only critisicm again as a compliment, to the captivating quality of this music: a 70 second blast of hot static is not how you should have closed the album Mr. Drumm, but I guess it's your album and not mine, and maybe I care all too much about being suddenly jarred out of the trance you so magically put me into and you saying "good luck" and sending me into the real world again, helpless.