Still Waters

Rajas - 11:1:24, 4.38 AM

Title track from new album release called sub-Saharan. This is a collaboration with my good friend Axel Weiss (guitars),from Germany, under my name Bury The Jar.
Currently on bandcamp- soon on Spotify and other services.
 Art-Axel Weiss
Axel's coordinates are: Music: https://soundcloud.com/axelweis
Art/Other: www.axelweis.bplaced.net/wordpress/art
https://burythejar.bandcamp.com/album/sub-saharan

sub-Saharan

Ansound: https://soundcloud.com/ansound-655183295

Ansound and Mesmo "Anmesoundmo"

https://www.beatport.com/artist/xfa/589219

MMXXXXXXIFRTLFLD

A live performance of Set XI of my Preludes, Interludes & Postludes for organ, given at the Orgelpark, Amsterdam, on 16 November 2024 as part of the concert 'Until Now', presented by video maker Thomas Mohr, bassist Dario Calderone and myself.

PRELUDES, INTERLUDES & POSTLUDE SET XI (live performance, Orgelpark, Amsterdam 16.11.24)

This iteration of Sleeping House is Limited Bob (@bob-bowden) and Mesmo

Sleeping House "North of Sarasota"

Insuming vaility

This is my final instrumental mix but I think I will develop it into a full song.

Feel free to provide comments and feedback

Interlude

The title of this album my attempt at translating the Farsi phrase قارچ‌های غربت to English. It comes from the poem "The Sound of Water's Footsteps" by Iranian poet Sohrab Sepehri. 

A more literal translation of the phrase would be Mushrooms of "Ghurba", an originally Arabic word that has several meanings, including senses of estrangement, alienation, loneliness, being away for home, and longing.

I composed many of these pieces during and after Israel's 12 day war on Iran in the summer of 2025. Being  an Iranian living abroad for 15 years, I had never felt Ghurba the way I felt it this summer, as I realized more and more that Iranian lives matter to exactly no one.
Ghurba and all its meanings overshadow most of the pieces in this album. 

The music heard on this post is the final track, which is an improv piece with the same title as the album.

In the album art, I tried to depict a mycelial network creeping up the piano and my body, and expanding into the ground, maybe a thread or two reaching the other side of the world where home is.

As Sepehri's poem says "Who cares if sometimes the mushrooms of ghurba start to grow?" 

You are right Sohrab, nobody does...

Improv 10 - Mushrooms of Longing

driving layers of piano , 200bpm in 4/4 time

what everyone's thinking

Caveat: I explicitly prohibit the use of any material I post for purposes of torture, brainwashing, hypnosis, bedazzlement or any other nefarious activity. This prohibition applies to all governments, corporations, institutions, agencies and individuals. 

“The avant garde is dead. That is its triumph. Let it lie.” - Chris Cutler in “Not As We Choose: Music, Memory and Technology”. (Highly recommended!)

“… there is increasingly less call to exercise an already too rare generosity of aesthetic hospitality.” - Chris Cutler

" Music is one of the great Mysteries. It gives life. It is not a career, nor a business, nor a craft. It is a gift... and a great responsibility. Because one can never know where the creative spark comes from or why it exists, it must be treasured as a Mystery. For the most part I believe creativity chooses you, not the other way around." - John Zorn (excerpt from the liner notes to 'Magick')

“Listen as if you were being told a secret” - Federico Fellini

“Experimental and electronic music was once not-so-benignly tolerated at the margins of western art music, but it has over the last decade or so moved toward a central position as something of the soundtrack of our digital culture. Where it once was merely tolerated it is now more engaged and doesn’t have to apologize to anyone”.  - Douglas Kahn 

"Through technology, voices are amplified and silence is broken. Spaces are shared." – Laurie Anderson

"I frequently hear music in the heart of noise." - George Gershwin

"'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds." - 
Malaclypse the Younger in 'Principia Discordia'

“Let us cross a great modern capital with our ears more alert than our eyes and we will get enjoyment from distinguishing the eddying of water, air and gas in metal pipes, the grumbling noises that breathe and pulse with indisputable animility, the palpitation of waves, the coming and going of pistons, the howl of mechanical saws, the jolting of the tram on its rails, the cracking of whips, the flapping of curtains and flags. We enjoy creating mental orchestrations of crashing down of metal shop blinds, slamming doors, the hubbub and shuffle of crowds, the variety of din from the stations, railways, iron foundries, spinning mills, printing works, electric power stations and underground railways.” — Luigi Russolo in 'The Art of Noises' (L'arte dei Rumori)

Urban Dictionary (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Mesmo)
(New Norberian English)

1. lit. in a state of mesmerism, hypnotism; in a trance
2. in a state of bewilderment or confusion, daydreaming; 'out of it'
3. mind bogglingly awesome, spellbinding, captivating

(1) "He swung that watch in front of her face and she got all mesmo"
(2) "When the teacher called me to the board I had just woken up and was still pretty mesmo"
(3) "The new N64 cartridge is totally mesmo, bro”

Banner: The Hearing Trumpet_Leonora Carrington (detail)