March '24

2024 March Catskill Listening Club Offerings

This month's meeting was remarkable. The people who shared last night offered up a very wide range of deeply felt soundworks; and the conversation was incredibly thoughtful, generous, and focused. Oddly, a vague theme arose: play.
Rebecca and I are so pleased that this is happening; we marvel at the generous, heartfelt attitude which you all bring. Thank you for it.
9 people attended: Bradford Reed, Rodney Greenblatt, Meredith Kooi, Kenji Garland, Nicole Cohen, Brian Crabtree, David Garland, Jared Mezzocchi, Jesse Hiatt

Bradford Reed shared two pieces of music. The first, “Viscous Moon” is pretty much a live recording: Bradford on the pencillina and Ryder Cooley on the saw. Bradford double-bowed the pencillina for this recording - the first time he’s ever done that ( ! ). We talked a bit about how difficult it can be to record the saw; Bradford used a contact mic (but I’m not sure where he put it and what his signal chain was after that). The second piece is called "Euphora's Granary", and it was made in a very different, highly produced approach. He used an enormous bass drum that he’s had for a long time, leftover from his Blue Man Group days. Watch a video of Bradford and Ryder doing Viscous Moon.

Viscous Moon .2 021424-normalized.mp3

Rodney Greenblat shared two of the songs that he’s preparing for his upcoming gig supporting Matmos and Negativeland. Matmos has been super important to Rodney throughout his music-making journey, and he is psyched to share a bill with them in May. The first piece he shared is called “Basket of Lemons”. He speaks over music, repeating a poem three times and I found it confrontational, as if he were saying “I dare you.” The second song is called “Container Store”. He made this song hitting a container with a stick, and some mellotron samples. Rodney plays a live set on May 31 at the Greenville Drive-In, supporting Matmos and Negativeland, a benefit for WGXC. Do you have your tickets yet? wavefarm.org/drivein

BasketOfLemons(CLiCmix02).mp3

Meredith Kooi is working on a new project that is physical, aural, visual, and deeply human. She and Kenji Garland shared some recent research findings. The project concerns play and her history of playground exploration. They’re placing contact mics on playground equipment and exciting them with typical playing around. And shooting video to document the process.
Take a look at one of them here

Nicole Cohen shared a piece of audio journalism with us. She’s an editor at NPR, working on education stories. She talked about how a recent story she edited involved a delicate mix of policy and the challenge of focusing on the subject of the story: a girl who doesn’t talk. The story contains a lot of policy discussion and explanation (Medicaid) plus a very compelling person at the center of the story - but we can’t hear her! We listened. Everyone talked about how clear the story was, and we mostly felt that it was indeed balanced between intellect and emotion.
Listen to the radio segment here https://www.npr.org/2023/08/24/1194170616/schools-medicaid-millions-special-education-money

Brian Crabtree shared a simple observation: why not just play it with my hands? As monome, Brian has a long history of building physical instruments that intertwine themselves with the computing world. This recent observation unearthed many deep truths (and also suspicions) about music-making with electronics and the physical. He was building an arpeggio and instead of asking code to perform the midi notes, he realized he was able to just play the arpeggio with his hands. What would the difference be? What is more creative? Why? Why are we collaborating with computers? Brian admitted to a bit of “imposter syndrome” - feeling that his facility as a player is smaller than his abillity to artfully code. It used to be that programming allowed you to do things that commercial synths and other tools didn’t (could not) allow. But now, tech is different; and - to be frank - completely overrun with the tyranny presets. This line of investigation is not trivial! It reminded me of a very old dilemma of an audience questioning the laptop DJ up in front of a crowd: what’s he actually DOING up there? A deep and complicated discussion ensued.

tehn_farthest_skies_02_vi.mp3

David Garland continues to share reworkings of his 2007 album Noise In You. We listened to two songs “oh my god” and “Drop By Drop”. He’s working some rhythmic dissonance into these tracks, adding a bit more complication. He talked about sharing an intimacy with a joyous perseverance.

01 oh my god 2024 edit2 mix1.mp3