Track 14.  The Couch's Spadefoot toad emerges after the first summer desert monsoon rains, only for a couple of days to procreate. I captured their mating calls one nite in 2006 near a muddy shallow pool in the barrio south of here, along with one of the 62 trains of iron elephants that wind their way through Tucson.  Their voices shore up the end of the track while the introduction was recorded during a June monsoon in 2004 with the doors wide open.

Spadefoot toes the Iron Elephant

storm's a'comin, but even the baby will sleep through while the house is spun into a tornado's belly and let down a mile away only 3 and a half minutes later. 
unedited section from an afternoon-into-the-evening living room floor clutter session with thøger lund. original painting courtesy of my sister in switzerland, donna brown.



even tornados dream

ashivayaohm

they are going
gone into the redemptive sky

no more free...
doms of the coffers 
lined with cruel oil 
move without trepidation
bold
breaking spirit and soul

(dedicated to the islands of indonesia)


redemptive sky

Another tomorrow

Last of the Water

Excerpt from a morning session at MICI 2012 (movement intensive in compositional improvisation) working on perception taught by the inimitable Jennifer Kale of The Architects.  

when i see you

recorded on day 3 of mici (movement intensive in compositional improvisation)

Day 3

take flight

Compositions from a collaboration between dance artist Katherine Ferrier of the Architects, and musician, Vicki Brown, for "If My Verse Is Alive...": An evening of Dance and Music in Honor of Emily Dickinson (produced by Kore Press' Big Read Tucson & New Articulations Dance Theater).

emily dickinson w katherine

i felt my life with both my hands

Vicki's second release "Seas & Trees", pulls together material laid down over two years, pieces that found their rightful home. Most of it was recorded at home either by herself or with the additions on bass, pedals, and casio sk1 courtesy of Thøger Lund (Giant Sand, The Desoto Caucus), in the studio with Thøger Lund and France's French Tourist (Laurent Allinger) on theramin and vinyl, or while choreographing sounds for Movement Salon, an ensemble of dancers, musicians and writers that practice compositional improvisation where the only parameters are space and time. 

""You might assume that songs described as “hypnotic and transporting ambient acoustelectric psychosonic visualizations captured in ephemeral movements and fortunate folds” would be crippled by abstraction and theory. But these manipulations of sound from artist Vicki Brown are, in the end, hauntingly… musical. Hailing from Tucson, Arizona, it is not surprising that the experimental tunes here are filled with the spaciousness of desert expanses, moving at glacial pace, but filled with momentum all the same. “Seas & Trees” was a wise name choice for an album full of music that simultaneously suggests the profound and elemental."" CDBaby

“like the Eno of that high water mark, Brown is as interested in timbre and texture as in melodic development…from the point of view of found sound, might be Pink Floyd’s underrated Atom Heart Mother…in order to say something about the human heart and its appreciation of slow development and historical repetition…loops that are subtler and more textured tell us how things recur in the physiognomy of human beings, in human psychology, and in history.” Rick Moody, NYC

"groundbreaking audio offering intellectual or, dare I say, psychic stimulation…loosely capturing and mixing evocative, ephemeral sounds…space from which a lot of great art is born…a highly intuitive, accomplished, and aesthetically exacting player and composer…her somewhat deceptively serene tracks chart integral esoteric and visceral pathways.” Mary Leary, San Diego Entertainer

“dreamy landscapes” Modisti, Madrid

7/10 “evoking a mood reminiscent of smoky Appalachian dawns with the sun rising on a frosty landscape, crying out for a visual treatment, one can envisage this music set to film.” Paul Kerr, Americana-UK

“cinematic instrumental mood music.”
” Carl Hanni, Tucson Weekly

vickibrown