AMITABHA

Moog Rock - featuring the one-and-only badass musician and songwriter Jason Magee, on drums and electric guitar

Break Out (feat. J Magee at Oddfellow Studios)

Theme from "HOTLINE" - from the short film by Toko Shiiki


Theme from HOTLINE (feat. Manfrom Ham)

early October Babies, featuring our friend's poetry.  Thank you Shintarou san!

Somethin’ Eternal  (Shiiki/Santos – Shintaro)

VERSE: 
A cold TV spreads sad news everyday, 
however, it never tells what THE truth is.
In places beyond the wall of sky I can see through this small window, 
innocent laughs are drowned out… 

CHORUS:
The sense of value that I built is easily blown away when I go overseas –
How can I judge what is correct and what is wrong?

VERSE 2:
In Central Park, John was singing 
that borders don’t actually exist
And now sheep-clouds are swimming 
across the sky on the wind (F R E E D O M)

CHORUS:
What meaning do the dividing lines on the map have?
Even if I try to close my ears, I still can hear the discord…
I sigh for useless fights in the daily life in the world.

BRIDGE:
A photo of a dirty boy, taken in a battlefield,
What are his clear eyes telling us?

VERSE:
A cold TV spreads sad news everyday,
but it never tells what “truth” is.

CHORUS:
I want to sing my heart.  “Ideal” is almost always exaggerated fantasy, even so
Sing, my heart.  I want to tell you why the sun rises everyday.
Someday, I want to sing my truth for you…




Somethin' Eternal (early October Babies, feat. lyrics by Shintaro)

early October Babies, feat. the great Satchel Jones

Floating Soldier

Surrounded by incomprehensible words,
Continuing to have meaningless dreams,
Losing my sense of forward or backward,
I'm a soldier just floating in the air.

Confused by incomprehensible rumors,
Sneered at without clear reasons,
Losing my sense of dream or reality,
I'm a soldier just wandering in the dark.

Ah?

Pushing meaningless crowd away,
Shrugging off incomprehensible scorn, Losing my sense of right or left,
I'm a soldier just floating in the air

Confused by incomprehensible rumors,
Sneered at without clear reasons,
Losing my sense of dream or reality,
I'm a soldier just wandering in the dark.

Ah?

Forget your parents and go to Paris
Get your hair cut and be embarrassed
Have too much fun and they’ll say you’re careless 
The good fight isn’t just Saturday night

Traffic thickens like them’s slim pickens
Sprechens zie deutch in hells kitchens
Mano et mano in the Turkish prisons
Or sipping high tea with the queen of queens

It’s a dream in a dream
Like Strawberries and cream 
And the noose hanging loose from the roof beam
Says the guillotine’s not what it used to be
When the iron maiden’s retired her designer jeans…

Come the fast and the furious/ stupid lookin’ curious
It’s tough to be in 3-d most of the time
Walking the fine lines to break the deadlines
Human life is shortest between two points…

I know it’s scary yo coming through in Stereo, 
Hi Ho the Dario Osaka to Ontario
Checkin’ e-mail from the belly of the whale
Can’t fail when your money’s in jail

Cuddled up in the palm of Ishmaels and King Kongs
Godzilla didn’t know what he was doing was wrong
Soldiers floating mentally gentle but strong


Floating Soldier (early October Babies, feat. Satchel Jones)

early October Babies, feat. Ben Lorenz on Drums and Ableton Live

Poem by Toko

COCOON

Inexpressible thoughts come out of my mouth like silken threads, 
Really fragile and sensitive, almost falling apart.
How can you make the innocence suffer
When it just started walking?
Even so, this planet keeps spinning with our thoughts. 
And the moon continuously rises and falls reflecting them.

Do these silk threads connect to someone?
In order to find out why I’m here, I pull the thread.


Cocoon (early October Babies, feat. Ben Lorenz)

tune by Kiyosu Kuniyoshi, arrangement by erik and toko

We met this superstylin' gentleman this year in Tokyo. We loved his tune, made our version of it, and luckily, he approved! Then, he took us out to eat supreme pancakes in Shibuya...

p.s. recorded on a Zoom in our living room.

Hitsuji Kumo No Uta (feat. Kiyosu Kuniyoshi and October Babies)

little known October Babies song from early days - it never made the stage, but I always thought this one was really catchy.  ~e

KURU KURU KURU - October Babies

Where am I going?
Where did I come from?
The Earth keeps spinning around
How many times will the hands on my clock be able to go around...?

Where should I go?
Where do you go?
Weathervane keeps spinning around
How many times will the hands on my clock be able to go around...?

The miracle that I could meet you here,
The road that I have encountered here,
The thread wound around my finger, I keep it and go forward.

Where will I go tomorrow?
Where will "tomorrow" come?
The Earth is dancing around
My heart is also bounding

Maybe, tomorrow, it'll be sunny.
Maybe, tomorrow, I'll be able to laugh at it.
The pinwheel keeps spinning around.
I keep spinning around too...

The miracle that I could meet you here,
The road that I have encountered here,
The thoughts wound around my finger, I keep them and go forward.

The miracle that I could meet you here,
The road that I have encountered here,
The thread wound around my finger, I keep it and go forward.

La la la...


Kuru Kuru Kuru (early October Babies, feat. Dale King)

Another one of the favorite tunes I've written, recorded by the late great Ann Arbor band 16 More Miles (Jason Magee, Ben Lorenz, Brian Poore, Erik Santos). We broke up before we could release this on an album, though I still play the song as solo and with The Crossed Lines. 

Sweet pearl drop pedal steel stylins here by John Lang.

Give Me Love (feat. 16 More Miles, w/ John Lang on pedal steel)

Another of my favorite songs, performed by the late great Ann Arbor band 16 More Miles, that became The Crossed Lines.  This song also features the sweet and tangy pedal steel stylins of John Lang --- truly musical nectar straight from the soul of the midnight moon!  

Perhaps you, like I, have experienced some kind of extraordinary dum in you too, at a perfectly inappropriate time, and survived.  Here's to you!  Enjoy, e

Dum (feat. 16 More Miles, w/ John Lang on pedal steel)

A track from the late great 16 More Miles - a terrific original alt-country outfit formed with members of what what once were the Restroom Poets and then became The Crossed Lines.  

This track also features Mike Lorenz (Ben's dad) on the Hammond B3.

I love this song, and I'm so grateful that we recorded these songs together before we left the platt pizza palace.   This group sure had soul.  Thanks y'all.  
~e

Supposed to Do (feat. 16 More Miles)

Sometimes some weird affectations just hang on. I don't know what possessed me to stick with this song, because I didn't really like it for most of its long birth, and I kept wondering why I was still working on it, but screw it, it kept me coming back.  Hope you enjoy it, or are at least a little confused.

Thus The Love We Won (feat. The Appy Seeds)

I started composing "Air Chunks for solo piano" about the same time I began my long-term infatuation with the literature of the Beat Generation (Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, etc.) Like the automatic writing of the Surrealists, and the wild improvisations of Bebop jazz musicians, these authors allowed their ideas to flow from pen to paper in a bold unhindered, and very personal stream-of-consciousness. This means that their focus was on the writing rather than the written, that the paper was simply a device with which to capture particles of inspiration from the electric river as it stormed madly through - a filter of sorts. Enlightened, I began to view the staff lines on my music paper as the fine grid work of a filter screen, and I, too, dipped my strainer into the river. The result is the hodgepodge of seemingly incongruous elements, of Air Chunks, which, allowed to harden, became this piece.

Dedicated to the memory of my great teacher William Albright, this piece is full of little tributes to people that have inspired me. In particular, Movt 2 is a nod to my first wife, Sharon Marie Santos, and Movt 4 is dedicated to the mad genius of pianist and fellow Univ of Michigan alum Craig Taborn.

Special thanks to Andy Bishop, colleague and music master, whose recent enthusiasm for the piece convinced me to revive it, rather than retire it.
And extra special thanks to Toko Shiiki, for her excellent artwork and technical expertise.   

Oh yeah, that's me on the piano.  I think this may be the premiere performance in 1991 at the University of Michigan Composer's Forum.
Enjoy!

p.s. interesting to listen and read this piece again, now at 52, almost 30 years later. It shows much rawness and rebellion, balanced by someone obsessed with micro-details, either achieving them or breaking them. Someone in the center is dumbfounded listening.

Air Chunks for solo piano

Air Chunks for solo piano (1991)

"Guernica Dances... for 2 pianos" is a musical expression of warfare. 
The title is derived from Picasso's legendary mural "Guernica" (1937), a passionate memorial to the horrific destruction of the Spanish town of the same name by a fleet of Hitler's military bombers. When I first beheld the enormous painting, I was immediately struck dumb by the thought that humans were capable of wreaking such destruction upon other humans. But more importantly, I was astonished when I realized what Picasso had done: he had revealed a fundamental purity and lyricism at the heart of such an atrocity. He had, in effect, distilled and illuminated and sublimated the powerful dance of war.

In 1994, my piano teacher at the University of Michigan, a young, boisterous, and beautifully talented musician named Ellen Weckler, collapsed under a devastating resurgence of cancer that had previously lain in remission for 15 years.  Despite the physical and mental ravages undergone in her struggles against this disease, her spirit grew stronger and more open to the possibility that there was some larger meaning behind all of this, a meaning which she must have overlooked. Despite the fact that her body was turning completely against itself - becoming one tremendous contradiction - she never lost her glorious artistic urge to discover the poetry beneath the madness. She taught me to look deeper than superficial antagonisms, to understand that war is actually an interaction of opposites. 

Using two pianos, both at odds with each other, as well as mutual participants in a bloody game, a la corrida, I invoke the spirit of war to musically manifest how Guernica dances.

This dynamic performance features the one-and-only Gabriela Lena Frank on Piano 2, and Me on Piano 1, Britton Recital Hall, University of Michigan, 12/12/2002. 

Hope you enjoy. If you are interested to perform this piece, please contact me at @eriksantosmusic@gmail.com.

p.s. As a bit of trivia, this piece was mainly composed over many late nights, while sitting in the now-defunct Cafe Expresso on State St. Ann Arbor, MI. It was an exercise to see if I could compose something completely by ear, by hand, in my head, without "fact-checking" notes, and with other music blaring over speakers in the background. We had no laptops in those days. To my surprise, it turned out pretty well!

Guernica Dances... for 2 pianos

Guernica Dances... for 2 pianos (1995)

...from the Ripe Flesh... (Consolations for solo piano) was written in 1995, while I was a resident of the MacDowell Colony, NH. I was deeply immersed in the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, and the immense Waterlilly paintings of Claude Monet.  The richness and depth of color and sensuous poetic language made me recall my childhood dream of discovering that I could breathe underwater, free of time and space. I wished to express this musically.

The first Consolation was inspired by Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, number XVII, Book 2 ("Wo, in welchen immer selig bewässerten Gärten..."), and was dedicated to Sharon Marie Santos. The second Consolation was also inspired by Sonnets to Orpheus, number XIII - Book 1 ("Voller Apfel..."). 

Special Thanks to Toko Shiiki, my wife and collaborator, for helping me to present this music to you, blended with the marvelous rippling colors of Monet's Nympheas.

...from the Ripe Flesh... (2 Consolations For Solo Piano)

Drumba Rendered, nearly unremembered,
This music was made in 2011, but I'm just rediscovering it just now.  I love it, though I honestly can't remember having composed it, even though the file is open in front of my face. How our passions catch us and consume us, and catch up with us again and again.  

The name "Drumba" is unusual.  Past life for Drumba born May 26, 1929
My computer told me, "I do not know how you feel about it, but you were a female in your last earthly incarnation. You were born somewhere around the territory of Northern Australia approximately on 1325. Your profession was leader, major, and captain.

Psychologically, you were timid, constrained, and quiet. You had creative talents, waited until that life to be liberated. Sometimes environment considered you strange. Your main lesson in present - to develop magnanimity and feeling of brotherhood. Try to become less adhered to material property and learn to have only as many, as you may give back."

Here is the first in a long list of compositions, 24 or so, created for use by brilliant butoh dancers I have known. Butoh is an underground form of dance theatre, which originated in Japan the 1960's and has spread to worldwide awareness. The "dance of darkness" draws deep from the hidden realms of the psyche and body memory - mysterious, disturbingly and shockingly beautiful, it grabbed me in 2000, and never let go. I have collaborated with a great number of phenomenal artists, mainly from the seminal butoh troupe Dairakudakan, led by Akaji Maro.  

The music in this long list are highlights of the larger collection of music composed for these artists; most of it was used during productions, but some of it never made it to the stage. The butoh world is extraordinary beyond explanation, and it has always brought me to adventurous new imaginings, connected me to strange new obsessions, always broken new ground. One of my collaborators, Daiichiro, said "Your music sounds like there is a monster inside."  
Welcome.

(By the way, this first track is dedicated to my niece Ariana Santos, on her 21st birthday, on 11/22/2020 and the track is 21:21 long. 

Weird things about the name "Drumba" that the Internet told me:
"The name spelled backwards is "Abmurd". A random rearrangement of the letters in the name (anagram) will give "Bmdura". How do you pronounce that?"

Drumba (Butoh Music vol. 1)

This was composed for the Dairakudakan production "Yupiters" featuring choreographer Yuko Kobayashi. It was performed in Tokyo, New York, and Paris in 2009.  She danced this unforgettable finale solo in silver paint.

Pulse (Butoh Music vol. 1)

This was composed for, though never used for, the Dairakudakan production of "Ditch" featuring Takuya Muramatsu. This one is one the slimier pieces I've composed for a butoh production. It reminds me of the ditch of our dreams and nightmares, from the Night Stalker series.

It has never before been danced to, or publicly presented, so if you have any ideas, let me know.

The photo is of the amazing Jun Wakabayashi, by the way.  I've had the profound and unusual fortune to collaborate with him for many years.  There is only one.

Ditch (Butoh Music vol. 1)

This was written for the Dairakudakan production "Niku no Uta" (Song of Flesh), featuring choreographer Emiko Agatsuma. This was performed in 2014 Kochuten, Kichijouji, Tokyo, JAPAN, and at the Maison de la Culture du Japon, in Paris, FRANCE

Flesh (Butoh Music vol. 1)

This was composed for butoh dancer Daiichiro Yuyama in 2015, and was used in a butoh dream nightmare in the movie "Ah...Wasteland" (co-featuring Naomi Muku).

Work In Hell (Butoh Music vol. 1)

What many people in 2020 are probably pondering - the deep need to get out and go wandering. The call to adventure is still burnin in our heart, and it's in this hidden flame that we can always start.

This song is dedicated to our friend Angel, who turns 81 this year.  My mother also turned 81 this past year, and it's her magic antique flute you'll hear. 

My friend Donna Coleman said, "A 'walkabout' is the Australian Aboriginal concept of . . . well, someone just decides to disappear for awhile . . . we say s/he has gone walkabout."

Composed, performed, produced by Erik Santos. Featuring Chad Sturdivant in the ancient drumming summoning. Recorded and mixed at AoZora Studios. Mastered by Chris Goosman at Baseline Audio Labs.

This great golden photo seen by the golden eye of Toko Shiiki (thanks my darling for invoking the flute invocation1)

Walkabout

Used in Daiichiro Yuyama's performance, "Memory of the Land".  NY, NY, 2017.

Thanks Toko Shiiki for the fantastic image.

KHIDR 2020, Butoh Music, vol. 2

If we do indeed replace all our bodily cells every 7 years, I am Erik Santos 7.

Pleased to meet you.

erik santos

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