live recording from a recent amo1 show. this is actually a new version of a really old song i did with jon canady back in and around 93/94 under the name "torture chamber". i'm playing with a pedal catching live drum loops then running the whole mess through delay. i originally started playing with effecting the drums in an attempt to work out ideas for a more dub like live sound and markus had mentioned that his original idea for waldteufel was to do "dub waltzes"... 

Vita ignes-a minority of one-inertia-live oct 24 2010

FIELD notes

A1. dawn, just before a summer sunrise at Sauvie Island Wildlife Area... blue quail, ring neck doves, redwing blackbirds, bull frogs, pacific chorus frogs.
A2. beaver creek at Hopkins Demonstration Forest. Oregon coast
,Short Sand Beach tide pool and mussle bed… mussels releasing pressure, water, air? little crab scuttling around small fish, starfish green anemone? rain on the shore of the Puget Sound... a small prop airplane unseen above.
A3. grackles, cardinal duets or Joyce… morning. mom passes. Night Hawks… new species new sounds, big foot walk with kids, Maryland
toad chorus pairing sounds that have familiar feelings, cicada.
A4. back to Puget Sound Campbient, morning walk in dark/heavy rain/bear tracks. setting up under tree… prop plane bassy in the dark. noise pollution? used to filter it out but later feels dishonest and sometimes beautiful and relevant. night time crickets again, train at Smith and
Bybee ponds while harvesting ice storm windfall Cottonwood buds. transition sounds… train moves on and cicadas come in.
A5. cicadas Brood X and Scissor Grinder (excellent name!) bee tree Farragut Park, old leaning hollow cedar on sunny summer day coming and going bumping into the mic….
A6. Canadian Geese, rw black birds, marsh birds, ducks, coots, this years first serious attempts at field recording. Heavy frost crisp morning..Sandhill Cranes fly by...Laying on the cold ground with headphones on, unfocused on the usual daily things, very present as an individual, me, Jason, just dosent exist.. my daily concerns, obligations, cares, work.. non of it exists.

B1. tug boat pushing a massive barge of crushed stone up the Columbia River… noise pollution again but also somehow fits, makes sense… provides context that’s terrifying but also comforting. flickers and wood peckers, two airplanes cross the sky one going north the other south, for a moment they sync up and become one sound then get out of phase with one another and dissolve away.
B2. St Johns Bridge color of oxidized copper? Geofon seismic electromagnetic junction boxes unheard daily sounds passing thru objects…. putting my ear up to structure …early morning traffic, cow bird pebbles dropping in water morning cardinal songs… heron flys by crows, geese.
B3. osprey and bald eagle dive for fish and rain clouds blow in …cowbirds dropping pebbles eternal geese and cows “Sauvie Island Cowlife Area”… rain on recorder. i often leave a small drop rig somewhere and often is more compelling than the subject I went to record.
B4. Assateague Island morning waves, scouring, on a visit with family in
MD a few weeks after mom passed, beach
day I stood/floated up to my neck in the surf and the relentless pounding scouring feeling of salt water is cleansing… i included an extended passage here because it takes time to lose yourself… went back early next morning with dad to record with out people… sand crabs, mosquitoes, horses, campers, smoldering camp fire.
B5. Sauvie Island Bridge Geofon and contact mic, hydrophone in river…i pass over this bridge so often…cricket, toad, cicada chorus … the way the toads change pitch… literally all night long where I grew up… i can hear them get fatigued after hours of singing….
B6. central Oregon Carpenter Ants crawling and biting. i accidentally disturbed them and stuck the Geofon spike down into the bark paired with cicada and birdsong.

credits:
field recordings by jason hovatter april
thru september 2021 primarily in and around Portland, Oregon as well as
Camp Sherman Oregon, the Oregon Coast, Delmar
Maryland and Assateauge Island National Seashore.
these recordings are dedicated to the memory of my mother Joyce Ann
Hovatter who passed away this summer. 
credits
released April 26, 2022

FIELD spring/summer 21

FIELD spring/summer 21 mixtape

Jason Hovatter - FIELD - spring/summer 21 Side A

this collection of recordings was originally self released in 2006 as a limited edition of 100 CDrs, 50 of which were bound in leather. the first of these songs to be completed and released was “yarroway” on the “infernal proteus” compilation. i had discovered yarrow some years earlier and it had become one of my most important plant teachers. at the time i was also reading a lot of books on anthropology and remember being most strongly influenced by jared diamonds “guns germs and steel” especially that portion of the book describing “the great leap forward”. that moment in our collective history when our ancestors really began to spread out, build and travel to new places in rudimentary boats. when we began to encounter vast herds of massive animals who had up until this time had no meaningful interaction with their small rude distant cousins. who, in a few short millennia, drove them over the cliff of mass extinction. imagine it...! coursing along stampeding herds of animals weighing more than a thousand pounds each, heart in throat, screaming, waving arms, driving them un numbered to their deaths. this also reminds me of how, years earlier, i first hopped freight trains with a close friend. we were on an epic walkabout in the western united states, traveling with a bare minimum of gear and just the clothes on our backs. we spent long afternoons getting excited about the similarities, as we saw it, of catching a moving train to running down a buffalo, stabbing it with a spear and holding on for dear life... spending hours painting our faces we prepared
for the hunt... 
credits
released April 25, 2022

credits:

all songs arranged and recorded by jason hovatter 2001 thru 2005 in
portland and talent oregon.

instruments used on this recording include:
electric bass and guitar, various handmade and improvised drums,water, ebo, bull horns, bull roar, bells, singing bowls, glass, field recordings, a few samples from the movie “1984”, drum sequencer and digital editing software.
cover image from the mars rover “spirit” and insert photos by rhys balmer.
layout by jh.

prime

a minority of one - Prime - side A

a minority of one - Prime - side B

credits:
field recordings by jason hovatter september
thru april 2021 primarily in and around Portland, Oregon as well as
Camp Sherman Oregon, yellowstone national park and Delmar
Maryland.

cassette coming soon!
credits
released April 27, 2022

FIELD - fall/winter 21 mixtape

Jason Hovatter - FIELD - fall/winter 21 Side A

01 bowl sung

when i first began to consider how to bring this project out onto stage to perform this music live i teamed up with a friend (balam mcnally). we spent long hours creating bizarre instruments that sounded as if they'd been run thru effects processors but where in fact  completely acoustic in nature. the best of these was a large copper bowl, maybe 4 feet wide and a foot or so deep... i built a hanging strap system and filled it about half full of water. this song was recorded entirely in and on that copper bowl.

01 Bowl Sung

07 wave rolls (psychedelic mix)
markus, jason o.b. and myself attempted to do our own version of the classic veljio tormis
choral classic "wave rolls" a few years ago and released it on our "bathe in fiery answer"
album. i had the tune stuck in my head for weeks and would sing it to my self constantly..
one morning as i sung under my breath i started to hear a super noisy bm style guitar grating along to the tune in my head and called my friend brian, who is the mastermind of one of the few metal bands i really love "l'acephale" and fellow band mate in "waldteufel", to see if he'd be interested in working on a metal version with me. i also asked james woodhead who collaborated on the last amo1 record and has played several shows with me if he'd like to work on this as well, he has a small collection of beautiful analogue synths that he uses in his projects "at the head of the woods and elemental chrysalis" and the tracks he came up with just blew my mind... as i listen to this new version of the song it gives me the same nearly overwhelming feeling of liquid panic that i sometimes feel just as a strong hallucinogen like lsd or mushrooms are taking hold, it takes me to those moments when everyday perception begins to separate from that which is about to be revealed...

07 Wave Rolls (psychedelic Version)

01 Lungs - Breath

a cut up i did in 95 of material from the movie 1984..

tc/gulag - 02. we are the dead

Nature offers us easy access to space without time, to place as relationship, as teacher...

learning from place

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