For retuned mandolin, synthesizer, feedback and room resonance. The piece was not concieved as a winter soundscape but it all seems to make sense and the title too. Perhaps tomorrow there will be another new one with rebab (which I have been composing/preparing for all last week) and wind instruments, other captures. Who knows. It's like the weather. Checking in with you all tomorrow.

Buy via Bandcamp

Winter Serenity I

With the upcoming Keith Rowe celebration in Berlin just around the corner, reflecting upon how Prepared Guitar noise crossed cultural boundaries. Pink Floyd in 66/67 a band of the London arts scene. Legend has it that Keith Rowe influenced Syd Barret to do improper things for the guitar that no other Pink Floyd guitarist cared to explore. I found this idea more plausible than Syd being stoned or aggressive -- although both artists might have found they shared a transgressive feeling for how such noises are the thang to challenge the thinking about the thang. While there's nothing in Syd's guitar sound surpassing anything Hendrix hadn't blown through several times with the vitality of ten thousand cats, it's also more complicated to think it through the Keith Rowe perspective. Hendrix's path, in my reading, was, yes, to found his own sound, gain his freedom, but also to destroy the white western exploitation culture with the rage of the slave uprising through the electrified blues and render, as a result, an American problem and treasure. In the last days, Jimi wanted to bring it back home and play deep electro-acoustic blues and rock the studio like CAN influenced by Stockhausen on shrooms. Keith's sound was already detached from folk traditions, more consciously post-modern (self-historicizing, self-contextualizing -- to lay the emotional guitar down, pushed away from the body), and few people really want to deal with that new kind of wilderness he explored in HARSH, where you see shards of what he maybe transmitted to Syd and which Jimi knew very well but never lived to take out of the rock and roll physicality context. Prepared Guitar music doesn't really exist if the guitar is not really involved, though. This track is all about those cross-over moments between the psychedelic movement and fluxus and free improv and indeterminacy. Syd was still in a rock band rooted in the Black Music of the Colonies and then they got rid of him. Noise has maybe messages beyond human aesthetic.

Syd B Keith R

Synthesizer & Found Sounds by Marco Lucchi (Modena, Italia)
Guitar and Mix by Jeff Gburek (Poznan, Polska)

Ὁ Γὰρ Καιρὸς Ἐγγύς Jeff Gburek Marco Lucchi

Using a process loop framework from my previous ambientish compositions "our voice" and "ceres 1" -- addtional drum and singing bowl and radio sounds added in Keszcya and Poznan.
https://jeffgburekprojects.bandcamp.com/album/still-life-with-a-question-mark

Still Life with a Question Mark_01

Multlayer performance by Jeff Gburek and Karolina Ossowska. Compositional framework generated by JG -- process derived from feeding a fire place while playing frame drum, cymbals and singing bowls so that the sounds of kindling, shovelling ash and other actions blend with the playful dance or organizing the burn. Karolina Ossowska improvised 3 violin tracks to accompany the stem sounds. These violin sounds (col legno battuto, flageolets, pressurized bow-drags) were reconfigured, splintered with various time-line offsets but remain organic and never subjected to any granular convolutions. Sounds from shortwave radio SDR create a kind of cantus firmus reflecting yet again the ionosopheric morphing layers of the planet in geomagnetic warped transitions as expressed by signals bounced into open radios tuned between stations on the floor. Work in progress/regress, clearly. I am reminded of a recent conversation whereine I paid homage to the nature mystic and great Romanian-born architect of chaos theory music, Iannis Xenakis.

Witch Hazel Gathering

jeff gburek: swarmandal; karolina ossowska: drop-tuned violin
album out now on Akashic Records
https://jeffgburekprojects.bandcamp.com/album/one-moon-many-shines

Buy via bandcamp

One Moon Many Shines 07

From the album The rise and Fall and Brittle Resurrection of Adam Kadmon.
This piece is divided into three movements. 1) The Human Copulation X-plosion; 2)Emergence from Sleep Mud; 3) Dried Dung of Collosal Olmec Heads

Jitters of Cervical Zenith

Voices taken from speeches of Martin Luther King and the final one in Arabic from a man and his wife in Gaza speaking about sleeping with their child close together so that they might all...

A Moon Will Rise From My Darkness

Also known as Gaza Blue Theme, composed around October 11, 2023. The title comes from a poem by Mohammed El-Kurd whose voice you hear on my track, reciting not his own poem however but that of Rashid Hussein (d.1977) first in Arabic and then in El-Kurd's translation. Thanks to Mohammed El-Kurd and the Palestine Festival of Literature who faced great obstacles in finding venues for their conferences and readings since October 7.

Children for whom the Red Sea does not part

Introductory passage from and address given by assasinated Palestianian poet Refaat Alareer. Next poem by Tony Brewer (USA), "stripped barren reborn" -- music and arrangement by myself.

Stripped Barren and Reborn



Where are we?

Home

Where are we from?

Beyond the veil 
of tears unnumbered 

That’s too far

Earth inside the veil
One of many tears
Stars from out there

I want to be closer

Explosion of sunset

Too close

Fiery blooms of sunrise

Too close

Falling infrared tears
green night vision
sight of soldiers
of children waking
from dreams

The Earth covers me

Avenging moon rising scythe
A mouth of night
swallowing Earth

A mouth of tombstones

The throat of Earth
not linen but stone
coarse – unforgiving

What have I done?

Hiding nothing
but moon and clouds
its veil

I die here

We do not perish but
death is an answer

Feeding on the Earth
Feeding the Earth
is how we learn home
Chance existence
where we are born

Swollen stomach Earth
Swollen feasting worm

Born bordered

Doppler of sirens

Little obliteration – big scream

Sun & moon pass over walls
obliterating obstacles

We do not move

Persistence ammunition
Survival a threat

We migrate

River of conscience
Souls rippling to the sea

Impediments to firmament

Working free like a tooth
pushing through new gum
slipping out of decay

To whom?

Dust in the mouth
Civilian rubble
Frozen conflict swelters

To home

We will not be moved
We move or die
and die

To who we are

Explosions move 
everything

Ingrained 
in grains

Dust

Settling

Oxygen is not for the Dead

07 If I Must Die, Let it be a Tale (Suite for Refaat Alareer)

improvisation on acoustic guitar while listening to democracy now

How is this happening in 2024

Recital of New York Times article accompanied by prepared Swarmandal. Article used for educational purposes only.

The War The World Cannot See

Before the word drone started to be associated with surveillance and warfare. This sequence of drones derived from devices around the house circa 2019 might be from more than one place. I must have been building these up for some composition that turns out to this one. Your never alone with a drone. There are effects and post-recording manipulations. Not pure field recording by any stretch of the imagination, but no Paulstretch in there ;)

Electro Domestic Drones

With the poetryof Basman Aldirawi and Jeff Gburek recited by Jeff Gburek. Music by Jeff Gburek: electronic drums, field recordings, radios.

Maybe They Told You Children Don't Grow Old in Gaza

VLF Composition Feb 10 materials

This is called Threnody but it is not strictly in the tradition of the wailing song of grief but rather a broken form of lullaby for those children who might survive. On the first level, it's a piece of music that should calm me down while creating, processing, and now replaying it for friends. The percussive, random back-drop was generated using 4 layers of the swarmandal stimulated by a re-purposed computer ventilator with long strings attached (see my Youtube channel for a video demonstration. Then another layer of improvisation: plucked, strummed swarmandal zither, played at times with a bottle-neck slide to create mictrotonal glissandi textures. The fact that I started out with aleatoric pizziccati movements that echo Penderecki's piece tagged for Hiroshima pushed me towards this title which may, in the future, change. Peace. Hug your kids if you have any. Help some if you can. They are the future only if they survive this mad machine of wars.

Threnody for the Children of Gaza

Some commentary about Gaza by the Anti-Empire Project podcast inspired this rendition of Tuxedomoon's "In a Manner of Speaking".

Give Me The Words

Poetry by Jeff Gburek & Ahmad Almallah ("A poem for Gaza, a pome for Palestine) voiced by Jeff Gburek. Music: melodica loop layers, prepared guitar, zither by Jeff Gburek

abyss or kiss in the shadows
beneath the dust the stone
from the once hanging window
where your eyes will hover forever
within my piece of endlessness
although your eradication is utter
and my grief secondary to yours
who crumble upon the ground
& only through the one
nearest so dear to me can I
fathom the absence
fracturing my sentence
I the landless who know daily
what they seek to take away
from the likes of you
and I see those eyes
you seek with your own
as if the only grace I've known
were blown away
by a ravaging wind

-- Jeff Gburek

Gaza, the last thing you need is a poem. Don’t say!
I have nothing else to give. A poem is a poem…what can it do? Don’t say!
But simply be like a poem.
You were an open land, and
your sea was no sight
for blood. Yes, once upon a time,
you asked nothing
of the world,
and it gave you
nothing.
Gather our words and toss them into
the empty well.
Screams don’t linger, but they do not
disappear—
They lodge themselves
beyond the ear,
and once they begin to haunt
they appear, they
reappear.
*
Corrupted by the attempt to apply logic
to the wound. We are all talk
no action!
We all know, that talk is talk
that’s why no one
listens.
Reality wounds can’t be mended by
thoughts. We all know—
Don’t keep me in your prayers, and please
spare me the guilt.
Where can the eye rest on the sight –
screaming children?
*
I want my words to spill blood and when I say
that once upon a time…
I want you to cringe
because this land has only one name—
and its people are only
its people
Call them what you may, that doesn’t change a thing—they too disappear
and they too will reappear—
*
Once upon a time, Gaza,
there was no need for anyone to give you any
empty words, like this poem. Your only hope
is to look us straight in the eye, and say once more, that you were,
and are, once upon a time.

– Ahmed Almallah

Casa Mia, Casa Tua, Non C'e Differenza

For him and also for the unnammed woman in Atlanta who died in December, the news of which never reached me until this morning.

In Memory of a Martyr

While listening to Electronic Intifada's interview with Abubaker live from Gaza Strip, I've improvised an electro-acoustic piece using field recordings, synthesizer and guitar. Instrumental version (without voice-over but perhaps with another poem when it gets written). 
Keep informed and donate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykklx8iLo_0&ab_channel=TheElectronicIntifada

Unmute The Speaker On Gaza

Use headphones for this run. These are fields recordings heard in the Riifles & Garbage Podcast Second Edition. There is a stream called Bogdanka, a VLF radio grab, the water under a beaver's dam recorded with hydrophones and from above, the Warta river, a hydrophone recording of a pond in Solacz in summer, a pond in Wilson's Park in the winter (mostly carp rustling against the miccrophone cables I think, various birds in Poland and a cage full of baby chickens at a market in Tasnad, Romania. There may be other things in there too but I have to listen again to be more precise. Feel free to ask in comments.

Stream That Does Not Drink Itself

I recited lines of poems compiled into one long poem by Adi Magazine's Editorial team. From works by Hasheemah Afaneh, laila r. makled, Yousef Abu-Salah, Rashid Hussain (translated by Salma Harland), Bassam Jamil (translated by Nicole Mankinen), Rania Lardjane, Hani Albayarie, Summer Awad, Veera Sulaiman, Suzana Sallak, Nama’a Qudah, Michael Jabareen, Alia Yunis, Yara Ghabayen, Aiya Sakr, Edward Salem, Ahmad Mallah, Kat Abdallah, Liane Al Ghusain, Priscilla Wathington, Lisa Suhair Majaj, Farah Alhaddad, Mikhail de Parlaine, Bader Alzaharna, and Fady Joudah.  https://adimagazine.com/issues/17/   Sounds by Jeff Gburek composed from VLF, Shortwave radio captures, mixed with frame drum, synthesizer loops and other field recordings. Cease FIre Yesterday!

Cento for Falasteen

Thoughts on process & reality in the bioacousmatic field-mind. Field recordings from Mecca (via satellite), Sofia, Bulgaria, various locations Poland & Romania (special guest appearance by Phil Mill's Herons. Exploring acoustic ecology, sympoetic polyvocality, geological time factors, composite identity, long-term thinking, deconstruction of empires.  #acoustic #ecology #charlesdarwin #williammacaskill #polinabuchak #fieldrecording

Rifles & Garbage Podcast Third Edition

From the soon to be released album The Art of Prepared Guitar Volume Three (I have a tremor) on MuteAnt Sounds Netlabel
  Composed with field recordings, shortwave radio captures recorded in Berlin at Rocherstrasse last April and acoustic guitar overdub shortly after return to homebase in Poznan.

Hive Mind Hybrid

rainy day dream away improvisation with a news podcast murmur and VLF radio crackles holding the room together.  Jeff Gburek: guitar, VLF captures
+ Anti-Empire Project 
https://youtu.be/h5jIpgEZlTk?si=gq3m70qOvSqXTphN

"In a way, refugees must always feel a little posthumous, as though they are outliving themselves, having died to all they know. The uprooted person continues to pine for what is lost, experiencing an absolute and impossible love for home, as they yearn for an ideal. Exiled, they wander the world like strangers, forever out of place. This is why artists must make a homeland of their art, dipping their pens and brushes into the ink of their aching heart, for both remembrance and inspiration. Especially when your home is burning, you feel the heat half way across the world."  -- Yahia Lababidi

Sit Rep VLF Guitar

The Rifles & Garbage Podcast is named thusly to create a strong an mental association between militarism, waste and pollution. I am not opposed to subsistence hunting but maybe use a trap rather than firearms or maybe even try subsistence farming instead of the venison survivalist hype. This podcast has three movements. One introductory, paying homage to sources. The second featuring a recital of poems by Yahia Lababidi, Ghassan Kavafani, Noor Hindi, Yours Truly, Mourid Barghouti & Tony Brewer. The third and final section is a crunchy leaf peripatetic meander musings about Captain Beefheart, the apolitical politics of acoustric ecology and Charles Darwin. All of it supported by the non-musically specific vibratory matters of the planet and background radiations and creatures of the air, wald and water i.e. field recordings. Photo from the internet of women in Ramallah circa 1890, artist unknown. Sumud in Palestinian Arabic means steadfastness. Props to the healers & field workers.

Rifles & Garbage Podcast 4 Sumud

I just want you to know I can see through your mask. Like Anelle Sheline and Aaron Bushnell, I cannot remain silent. Stop the cash for arms bloody oil gas flood and open the book of life and love.
Stop quickening toxification of the earth. "The vast majority (over 99%) of the 281,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2 equivalent) estimated to have been generated in the first 60 days following the 7 October Hamas attack can be attributed to Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by researchers in the UK and US." (Sourced from the Guardian)

Post Deluvian Mechanism

Szachty April 1 Market of Sounds

This composition evolved from the desire to give a more proper requiem for the American Air Force serviceman Aaron Bushnell who immolated himself by fire at the gate of the Israeli Embassy in DC, saying he no longer wanted to be complicit in a genocide. Since then there have been many martyrs, most recently those killed during the siege of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and just a few days ago 7 aid-workers from World Central Kitchen by drone missile strike in a deconficted zone. And it goes without saying there have been easily between 70 and 100 deaths in Gaza daily since  Isarael's offensive in reaction to the Al-Aqsa Flood. There are many ways in which martyrs can be defined: death stemming from persecution for beliefs, giving one's life for a cause or as in the Arab world were it is called shahid and is generally appiled to anyone who suffers a violent death. Of which there have been far too many, certainly more than I can name. In hope for... well... in hope... in the life pervading all things...   A note about the music: I am not convinced that the acoustic guitar is in fact the most suitable vehicle for this piece. I've experimented with various counter-points, background soundscapes only to repeatedly take them away and leave the spare and stark approach. I believe it would be suitable for piano, given the right touch. It also fairly straight forward and most people with classical training would probably be apply to make notation or play in even by ear. The pacing should be slow, serious but not rigidly timed. There is room for embelishements. Indeed, of the 12 version I recorded, each of them transitions in different ways. It's open for interpretation.

For The Martyrs

acoustic guitar wordless in the arrival of spring magnolia strewn over almost grass and haunted ripples in the water either of a the great eclipse and all those planets behind us now or all those phantom limbs wandering phantom maps and the way the tree sings with a chorus of bees or wasps too high to see.

Phantom Limbs Phantom Maps

from thhe album: Iftar Radio March 15, 2024
https://jeffgburekprojects.bandcamp.com/album/iftar-radio-march-15-2024

Iftar Radio Excerpts

Jeff Gburek: trap-drum set, pvc tubes, sampled wood-block, shells, synthesizer. Two layers.

In Praise of the Shambolic

This podcast we go deeper into the otherness. Poems by Tony Brewer, Ilaria Boffa (English & Italiano) and recitation of Osip Mandelstam (English & Russian) by Tim Williams. It's called Rifles & Garbage Podcast in order to draw attention to outrageous military spending, ecological disaster, arms racketeering and the exploitation and/or removal of indigenous populations in favor extraction of raw materials for corporate profit. Stop that. Yikes.
https://buymeacoffee.com/jeff_gburek

Rifles & Garbage Podcast # 5

Textural ambient or haptic shambolic. Ocarina, wood-block, swarmandal (zither), synthesizer, VLF radio, pvc merdangam.

650 Shambolic Swarmandal

For mandolin and synthesizer drone. New album in the works.

May There Come More Bright Birds of Song to Zeitoun

listeners will find here the most recent edge of my research as well as album samples and one-offs from the last 10 years of my solo work, from official, upcoming releases, unreleased oddities, works in-progress, & experiments, all music by jeff gburek and collaborators, as noted. support directly via paypal: jeff.gburek@gmail.com or buy albums via https://jeffgburekprojects.bandcamp.com/

Popular tracks by Jeff Gburek