north american city remasters and alt takes

Anne

hehehahahaherhehee

[Noise, Eileen Olson]
[Artwork, Leonora Carrington]

Renaissance

I was fortunate and honored to have a visit from Janine a few weeks ago. We had a great time. Somehow, and unexpectedly, this came out of it.

Janine: voice, vocal melody, lyrics 
Jonathan: guitars, bass, drum programming, music

Please visit Janine here: https://soundcloud.com/janinelevinson

at the beginning we carved out a message
into a monolith tower of stone

we were searching for our home

he was the mountain I climbed from the valley
I was the water he drank from the hole

and we searched for a home

so in the meadow
we dug in the soil
to find the root of plenty
and a child began to wail

at the beginning
at the beginning

at the beginning we shouted our message
holy vibration from hollow to dell

and our voices rang like bells

his was the rhythm that rose from the valley
mine was the melody born in the sun

and we harmonized as one

at the beginning
at the beginning
at the beginning we carved out a message

we were searching for our home

At The Beginning (with Janine Levinson)

This project started out as a self-administered technical tutorial. I am a very poor geek, and have just now gotten around to teaching myself Flex Time operations.

But as I kept working colors and ideas began to present themselves, and I found myself back in a palatially squalid student apartment in Worcester MA in the summer of 1976. There was a cheap “record player” there, and a certain album had just come out. I listened to it over and over, to the point where the vinyl seemed worn through. This sounds little to nothing like the album, but it is still somehow my fractured dream memory of it.

6 Florence Street

Six Feet from Heaven

This is a song I wrote about isolation in the present crisis, but, with an internet connection, we are less isolated than we think!
This is a revised and slightly extended version, incorporating the enormous talents of

Georg Boehme - Beautiful baritone sax - https://soundcloud.com/georg-boehme
Jamie Rhind - Gorgeous organ - https://soundcloud.com/jamie-rhind
Bruce Conover - lovely harmonica and background vocals - https://soundcloud.com/bruce-conover
Garddwr Porffor - everything else

I have really enjoyed gathering the musical contributions of these wonderful musicians! I can thoroughly recommend spending some time on their pages listening to their amazing music : ) 

Everybody Has the Blues

You wake in the morning
You have nothing to do
You drink your first coffee of the day

You look at each other
You have nothing to say
But you say something stupid anyway

Everything is different
Everything has changed
All the things you thought you knew were true
We are all so fragile
Holding on to life
Everybody has the blues

When I’m missing my loved ones
I still hold them in my heart
Isolation is such a hard thing to do

When this is all over
We won’t have to be apart
Till then I know that I’m in your heart too

Take each day at a time
Because all these things must pass
It doesn’t do to look too far ahead
No person is an island
We all need someone’s help
Everybody has the blues

Everybody Has The Blues Take 2 (with Georg Boehme, Jamie Rhind And Bruce Conover)

In E harmonic minor which seems to take me in a very Gothic direction. Some original lyrics and some borrowed from William Blake's poem 'London'

Down To The Bone

Been toying around with this simple way of preparing the guitar. It's basically  emulating the principle of a Koto and I've already done this a couple of times I think. However I want to get more familiar with this technique to hopefully employ this in some more serious stuff than just a couple of improvisations. 

Structurally this is nothing extraordinary - just a simple loop I started when looking for a sound on the Bluguitar Amp1 to go with the technique. 

I've got the (spring) reverb on the amp on and it's running on the boosted vintage channel with low to moderate gain. However the Master is turned up to 7-ish so which might have been a bit too much, but I do love how well you can control the gain with the volume knobs on the guitar that way. Also it makes the jsm-10 sound super dynamic. 

Signal chain: Ibanez JSM-10 - Bluguitar Amp1 (with Boss DD-20 in the fx-loop for looping) with some more spaceous reverb in ableton live (convolution reverb pro) into the blubox on the silver 1x10 setting directly into the mixer.

In case you've enjoyed this, you might also like my other original music on 

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7ti7ScpoJPlzAuh8beNTCV 

and https://saschamuhr.bandcamp.com

Improvisation_12: Waltzy looped improvisation on the prepared Ibanez JSM-10 into the Bluguitar Amp1

Original Score inspired by the Bentley Little novel The Consultant

February 11th 1977 - Songs From the Wood

ε - 0 (fucks) given 

Composed by Mahan Mahan, arranged and recorded at Pahlavi Sound Studios, Los Angeles, CA, USA 11/2020

Epsilon minus Zero Fucks Given

A light that never will be extinguished. A soul overflowing with kindness.

For Peggy

A laboratory with an open bar and floating altar. Come on in! 

Here are various solo and collaborative projects - songs, soundscapes, live looped solo guitar improvisations. 

This project used to be called "imaginary friends", but it became too real for that name, as did many of you.

I hope you enjoy something you find here. Do feel free to be in touch, you never know what might happen.  

I also invite you to attend @hypnopompetus, a duo project with the illustrious Cheesemont Paisley-Paisley https://soundcloud.com/sel-sync, and Fictive Sisters, a transatlantic band with  the incomparable Wheelwright https://fictivesisters.bandcamp.com/album/immaculate-distraction.

At The Beginning (with Janine Levinson)

Jonathan Beckenstein