two short solo noise improvs, played back simultaneously with minimal editing. sounds best cranked through speakers, of course

taste test

Decided to record a track this morning. Whittled four minutes of heavy, pulsating, engine-like drones and demonic, garbled noise out of a half-hour of pushing a tuba around the floor in front of three speakers.

The title's from page 22 of Remember Be Here Now. The rest of the page says Well, It's all right now. But later?...forget it baby. That's later. Now is now. Are you going to be here or not? It's as simple as that!

What Are You Doing? Planning For The Future?

I wanted to make something more meditative than my last two tracks. Looking forwards to recording some lengthier works with soloists!

The title's from page 37 of Remember Be Here Now.

example: somebody looks at you seductively ...
an ice cream cone goes by ... will it ever be
the big ice cream cone
in the sky?
will it ever be an eternal ice cream cone?
or ... is it always going to melt?
you gotta keep eating it yet it melts & melts
that's its problem
you gotta keep eating it cuz it will melt
... & then it's gone
& you know that taste in your mouth when you
finish & ... you want a glass of water? right? ...
then you have a glass of water & there's that
bloaty feeling?
then you're ready for the next one ...
to get rid of that one ...
let's take a walk ... & you take a walk ...
it's cold out. let's have some hot chocolate.
yes, let's have some, & on & on & on & it's called
life
you see: the opposite of craving is saying
baby, this is the way it is yeah
ok here & now this is it
i accept the here & now
fully
as it is
right at this moment!!!

Ram Dass ॐ 37

The Big Ice Cream Cone In The Sky

working towards long-form meditative works.

The title's from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

(spoiler warning)

He stares at the wall in a cross-legged position upon a quilted blanket on the floor of a bedless bedroom. All bridges have been burned. There is no way back. And now there is no way forward either.

For three days and three nights, Phædrus stares at the wall of the bedroom, his thoughts moving neither forward nor backward, staying only at the instant. His wife asks if he is sick, and he does not answer. His wife becomes angry, but Phædrus listens without responding. He is aware of what she says but is no longer able to feel any urgency about it. Not only are his thoughts slowing down, but his desires too. And they slow and slow, as if gaining an imponderable mass. So heavy, so tired, but no sleep comes. He feels like a giant, a million miles tall. He feels himself extending into the universe with no limit.

He begins to discard things, encumbrances that he has carried with him all his life. He tells his wife to leave with the children, to consider themselves separated. Fear of loathsomeness and shame disappear when his urine flows not deliberately but naturally on the floor of the room. Fear of pain, the pain of the martyrs is overcome when cigarettes burn not deliberately but naturally down into his fingers until they are extinguished by blisters formed by their own heat. His wife sees his injured hands and the urine on the floor and calls for help.

But before help comes, slowly, imperceptibly at first, the entire consciousness of Phædrus begins to come apart -- to dissolve and fade away. Then gradually he no longer wonders what will happen next. He knows what will happen next, and tears flow for his family and for himself and for this world. A fragment comes and lingers from an old Christian hymn, 'You've got to cross that lonesome valley.' It carries him forward. 'You've got to cross it by yourself.' It seems a Western hymn that belongs out in Montana.

'No one else can cross it for you,' it says. It seems to suggest something beyond. 'You've got to cross it by yourself.'

He crosses a lonesome valley, out of the mythos, and emerges as if from a dream, seeing that his whole consciousness, the mythos, has been a dream and no one's dream but his own, a dream he must now sustain of his own efforts. Then even 'he' disappears and only the dream of himself remains with himself in it.

And the Quality, the areté he has fought so hard for, has sacrificed for, has never betrayed, but in all that time has never once understood, now makes itself clear to him and his soul is at rest.

A Fragment Comes And Lingers

A Transparent Layer Remains

I really like this vocal sample, so I improvised some feedback around it, then improvised some tuba around that. Mixed them all as best as I could, and voila: pure evil.

Alabaster Bones

Bowed cymbal bath by Matt Samolis https://mattsamolis.org/
Billowing tuba tones by John Baylies http://jbaylies.wixsite.com/tuba
The rig: http://i.imgur.com/iYgWbHd.jpg

“Creativity is a harmony of opposite tensions, as encapsulated in our opening idea of lîla, or divine play. As we ride through the flux of our own creative processes, we hold onto both poles. If we let go of play, our work becomes ponderous and stiff. If we let go of the sacred, our work loses its connection to the ground on which we live." -Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play

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