2024 February Catskill Listening Club Offerings
The club met this month in the cold of Winter at 86 Church Street in Leeds. Rebecca and I have closed off the living room, and everyone gathered together in a cozier physical space. Members offered up a generous passel of sonic delights. Present were Meredith Kooi, Kenji Garland, Rodney Greenblat, Bradford Reed, Jack Magai, Winslow, David Garland, Timothy Hill, Rebecca Bray, and Jimmy Garver. Below is a brief description of what went down.Meredith Kooi shared a variation on a piece she recently recorded in a live performance using short wave radio feedback, a littleBits synth and FM transistors. The group talked about the feeling of animals swarming, and how the sounds aren’t organized like a narrative but more like a forest. Meredith spoke about how she loves working with radio and transmission because it feels like exploration - as you might explore new geologies or oceanscapes. The group talked about the radio waves traveling into space, and still traveling forever, surprising the aliens.
MeredithKooi_for_CLiCl.mp3Timothy Hill sang in overtones for us, in harmonic series. He’s been experimenting with holding the first 16 harmonics and scaling fundamentals up to the 2500 hertz range, and wanted to share with the group to see if it registers to others as a practice. He talked about thinking about the provanence of a note, and finding your way to another in the way that you might clamber around the latticework of a geodesic dome. The group reflected on consonance within dissonance, on visualizing these amazing sounds with sand or water or fabric. Timothy said he used to think of sounds as coming out of the body but now thinks of the voice like a fruit with the body as a pit within it. “Sounds go into you before you can do anything about it.”
Bradford Reed shared a piece he made by recording himself playing a keyboard and then three separate passes on his pencilina including bass, trebble and then bowing it. He transcribes his initial improvised keyboard part to midi notes, and then reads along and spontaneously composes as he plays the pencelina. He said that last time he was at a Listening Club meeting he played something he wasn’t sure about but people responded well to it, and it helped to make this one.
Petal Tones 020224-1.mp3David Garland recently worked on an album he made years ago called "Noise In You." He loves the music and wanted to make some adjustments based on what he thinks it needs now. He set some rules for himself, like hands off the vocals. He shared two songs from the album: "Cumulonimbus", about how language is used to define things, and "Noise in You", which among other things recounts Cage’s story of being in an anechoic chamber. David wondered if it should be presented as a remix, or a re-imagining of the original album, or something else.
Noise In You song 2024 edit4 mix2-1.mp3Rodney Greenblat shared two rough mixes of ideas for songs that he’ll play when he opens for Matmos and Negativeland on May 31st at the Greenville Drive-In (!) He spoke about his love of Matmos, and what great people they are. Even before he met them, their music felt like an invitation to make his own. For these pieces, Rodney embraced his love of old synth patches, and used a number of them in Ableton, along with polyrhthms, to develop these songs. One of the songs started with the surprising pops his metal water bottle makes when filled with ice.
1.SaagPaneer_mix01-1.mp3Music for Furniture. Every Monday morning from 8:30 until 10:00, five Listening Club members play a live set of improvised music at Joust Cafe in downtown Catskill. On February 9, 2024, the ensemble will release their first album - a collection of moments captured live during those morning sessions. Jimmy shared two selections from the upcoming album, titled Live at Cafe Joust 2023. You can purchase the album at their bandcamp page musicforfurniture.bandcamp.com. The ensemble will play a live set at the Avalon Lounge on Sunday, February 11 at 7:30pm. Music for Furniture is David Garland on reeds, Kenji Garland generating sounds with Monome norns and custom software, Jimmy Garver playing a hand-picked collection of digital synths and drum machines, Rodney Greenblat on the Moog Sub 37, and Dan Kirkhus on the Arturia Microfreak and Korg EMX-1.
December 11 916-925AM.mp3