State Laughter

I often imagine my life as a selfish piece of string, consumed by its own biology and history. And then another fibre is realized branching off and I'm writhing in the web of data and artifact. "Wave Music II- 100 musicians with lights" sonically embraces this feeling, but what got me on this train of thought was my own experiences/experiences i had read about involving tape recording in the wild. Lomax in the Matrix. It begins with a drunken party when I was maybe 21, maybe not. First house I'd lived in after moving away from home. I had temporarily divorced myself from most guitar music and most structured music in general. Cacophony began and ended every day. At said party i carried a portable tape player through out the house, randomly pressing record and stop. It wasn't just a party though, as everyone was making music through out the house....I'm talking like 100 people. Banging on walls, smashing bottles, strumming the stringboard of our pet broken piano. I was doing some kind of weird yodel where id pull on the skin of my throat to create a natural tremolo. (Woke up the next morning with what looked like the worst hickey in the world from it). I so anticipated waking to be able to listen to the sound's I had imprisoned on magnetic tape...only to find the tape was gone the next morning. We were 99% certain of which house member to blame, as they were behind most unwanted antics that occurred. Anyways, the said Morrow piece i reference above involves a 100 musicians being recorded at night in Central Park. The recording was captured as one member danced through out the crowd, sound changing with the feet of one individual anchored to the tape player. It was just like that drunken party. Also coming to mind was a record Peter Brotzmann and Han Bennik made in the Black Forest in Germany. Recording apparatus was stationary and the 2 would flail through out the woodland, drumming on trees, throwing rocks in the water, Brotzmann's sax becoming more distant as he ran towards god knows what. I love the idea that you have a composition and can record it, but three dimensional space is something that is absent from most recordings. Performer and recording devices are stagnant. But as a listener you can move throughout a sound event and get infinitely different results given you path. The last piece that came to mind was by Phil Kline who played in post DNA group Dark Day with Robin Crutchfield. I'm not sure if its been recorded, but if so it would bring this to another level being that all the instruments are tape players...Anyway, every December Kline leads a parade of individuals on a walk through out New York. Each individual is given a tape to play ahead of time. I'm pretty sure it's called Silent Night (given that that is what is on the tape)...They carol around each pressing play slightly off time from each other (intentionally and unintentionally I'm sure). The performance can include as many people as want to be involved. That raw cacophony of tape unspooling slightly off from each other. Anyway the important part is Charlie Morrow as this LP has sewn together a nice little string of time for me to reminisce on. There are some really great pieces on here and a nice full color booklet to accompany it. Recital is becoming a contemporary fave in archival work for sure.