Music Emissions. This reviewer pretty much nails my intention with Sonic Demons:

“Sonic Demons, at least if the titles represent the intent, is an instrumental exploration of the darkness we invite into us, the demons we flirt with until it is too late to send them packing. This electronic divine comedy is pulled off with grace and grit.”

“Sonic Demons would be intense and impressive without the dark night of the soul motif. With it, it allows Lucio Menegon to let it rip with purpose, a goal of exploration into the uncomfortable. He wins on all counts.” full review

Music Extreme

Experimental guitarist Lucio Menegon shows pure experimentation with sounds on this recording. Going from free jazz up to almost noise or ambient within the same composition, he shows great technical and improvisational skills. On the recording he is joined in some of the tunes by other fellow musicians that interact cleverly with Menegon´s guitar phrases. There is a strong knowledge of intensity and volume here and that is evident in many of the compositions where Menegon goes into a crescendo of sound before exploding at the end of the tune. There are good combinations of sounds with some melodies and phrases that surprise the listener. This is an album for open minded people who are into sound exploration and improvisation.
full review

Downtown Music Gallery NYC Here’s an interesting one from their weekly newsletter (btw, I’m an American citizen by birth):

LUCIO MENEGON – Sonic Demons (Edgetone 4092; USA)
Italian guitarist Lucio Menegon is currently a Bay area-based musician, as well as a friend of local drummer David Grollman, a friend of DMG who shows up almost every week for our in-store performances. Hence these live performances feature most west coast players except for Grollman, Rob Price & Valerie Kuehne. ‘Lucifer’s Meltdown” opens with a solo guitar & loops excursion that on the verge of coming apart as it throbs to an intense ending. “Shrunken Head” features Lucio & Rob Price on guitars & electronics & Dave Grollman on drums. It sounds as if there are layers electronics & static erupting together into a brooding storm. I can’t really hear the drums but the results are scary nonetheless. It is often difficult to tell that Lucio is playing guitar since the electronics and distortion is more prominent than any plucking. On “Gasping for Air” Lucio plays tortured noise guitar fractures with intense drumming of Laurie Arnat. Lucio inserts four solo guitar and/or electronics pieces in between the small group improvs and each one is different, sometimes twisting the feedback or noise sounds inside out. Each piece is quite effective yet occasionally disturbing. Overall there are some impressive bouts of well selected noise segments and it all fits together. – Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery

Paper Cuts Magazine Sept 2010 issue
LUCIO MENEGON – Sonic Demons (Edgetone 4092; USA)

It’s hard sometimes to listen to instrumental music and not create movies or stories in your head. For me that’s often the best part. Lucio Menegon’s album “Sonic Demons” does the work for you by providing a short story in conjunction with the music. I’ll let you discover the story on your own as I don’t want to ruin it, but with or without this strange backdrop the album is a beautifully executed collection of free-jazz-ish-noise and ambient pieces that can take the listener to many unusual places.

Menegon performs on all the tracks here with his ability to mix effected guitar with electronic and atmospheric sound elements to create a unique aural picture. Sounds range from spacey layered guitars as in the opening piece “Lucifer’s Meltdown” to harsher improvisations with enough squeaks and screeching to satisfy any noise fan as on the track “Shrunken Head”. Additional yummy layers of interest added by a fun vocal piece with Laurie Amat (The Residents), Jonathan Segel (Camper Van Beethoven), the fantastic drumming of David Grollman, John Hanes, and others. “Sonic Demons” has a bit of something for anyone with open ears and is certainly worth checking out and creating some fantastic dream-movies to. In the Sept 2010 issue of full review

Sea of Tranquility:

Lucio Menegon is an experimental artist, guitar player and some sort of electronics wiz. He gathered a bunch of guest artists to add “improvisational” elements to his journey.

This type of “music” is a bit hard to appreciate and is not for everybody, neither is it the thing you’ll most likely spin at any time. I found the compositions mostly cohesive in their own experimental way. Off course improvised parts came into play to bring touches of surprises and variation. Some of this music carries an ambient feel, while other parts are more psychedelic or even totally hectic. I can feel inspiration coming from bands of the seventies like: Egg, King Crimson and the Mothers of Invention. I can hear Dave Stewart going nuts over the tone generator in a few instances, such as on ” Shrunken Head” and “Experiments with the Force”. Ian Underwood seems to be “wipping it all” on the sax in “Shrunken Head”, while the hectic drumming of the Mothers is quite present on: “Resident Tourette” and “Killing Green”. Lucio’s guitar playing is pretty un-orthodox too. He deliberately de-tunes his guitar in some way unknown to me, in a number of places. Examples of this could be heard on “The Debigulator” and “Vulcan’s Wish”. My personal favorite tunes are: “Lucifer’s Melt Down: (dark/psychedelic) , as well as tracks 10 to 12, namely “Vulcan’s Wish”, ” Scattered Brain” and “Sonic Demons”.

Prehistoric Horse plays a very intense and dynamic form of improvisational music that sometimes borders on sheer noise but also incorporates the dramatic and absurd. Our sets morphed with the miles logged and the tenor and pacing changed dramatically from the first chaotic show in Albany CA to the final mellow moments in NYC. There were many good shows on our 13 gig cross-country run with Oakland, Seattle, Minneapolis and New York being particular highlights.

Since my last post in Madison, we played Louisville, KY (where I managed to leave the power supply to my laptop – thanks to Mateo for mailing it back), Pittsburgh, Toronto, Baltimore and NYC. The lack of laptop partially explains the drop off in the tour blog, but in truth, the last few shows were difficult, involved much driving and were not necessarily inspired. The NYC show was the exception, so I will wrap up a brief description of it.

The gig was in hipster Williamsburg at a place called Monkeytown, a space that boasts four walls of projected imagery, with musicians in the middle and comfy low-rise couches behind spartan japanese style tables on the perimeter. In response to said surroundings and perhaps inspired by a terrific quartet improvisation featuring cellist Okkyung Lee, we upped our game (New York does that to you) and performed a rather ‘cinematic’ set, quite different from others we have done before. David used a stripped down percussion setup and the overall tone was much less frenetic, with more melody and ‘playing’ from Valerie and I. The audience seemed to appreciate it and despite some of the usual second guessing, this feeling was verified a few days later when a gent stopped me in the street to favorably comment on the performance 🙂

Below are some links to videos, pics and audio. Plans are afoot for more shows/tours in the next year. Enjoy.

Here is a particularly interesting section of improv from Toronto, Canada. A gig with the dubious distinction of having ‘not a soul in attendance.’

photo slideshow
[set_id=72157621801219327]

more to come…

July 22
Nottingham Coop, Madison, WI
Picture this: A gorgeous Italianate castle/villa perched on a large lake in the midst of sprawling modern university buildings. Expansive rooms filled with random couches and chairs in various states of decay, desks, nooks and crannies, filled with books, filth or notes, messages, threats and/or suggestions to other members of the cooperative. A large kitchen, a filthy bathroom with door graffiti expounding on the subject of eggs.

As we are a trio self contained, no PA needed, thank you, we decided to set up amongst this predetermined chaos, near the large stone fireplace in the main room. A room that felt heavy, restricted. One that had seen many things – like the accumulated energy of all the parties and shows that had gone on before (even Husker Du played here back in the day). We were happy to have this gig as all things coop apparently must be voted on and Jeremy, the gent who set up the show managed the politics in order to make this happen. Thanks Jeremy.

A very nice opening solo set was performed by Chris (part of the band following us) and featured some great textures produced on sax and mangled/processed/looped. From where i sat out on the porch, the sound was three dimensional, flying out the windows and ricocheting off surrounding buildings to where i lay staring at the sky. very nice.

We followed with a set destined to echo the agreed upon vibe of the room. Delicate, building, longer tones and pieces, punctuated by our usual dose of mayhem. David’s theater moment included a discussion of waking and having a vagina and wondering about the fate of his penis (and mine). The set was well received and the only disappointment was the failure to record the set – one for the gods as my friend Suki would say.

The Bastard Trio followed up with a great hard edged set of guitar, drums and sax – Jeremy’s guitar volume swells and a great bass/guitar low/hi end juxtaposition against Tim’s furious drumming and sheets of sound from Chris’ sax.

We finished the evening with a group collaboration that was fine and good, but a bit of a drop in creativity and energy and eventually evolving into several loud drumming duets between Tim and David. And then everyone sort of evaporated and the place was ours.

July 21
Minneapolis, MN @ The Art Of This. Great gig in a nice art space very near our host’s (la familia Porter) house! There were 30 or so people there – such a rarity to have such attendance at a new music concert – on a tuesday nite no less! George Cartwrights trio of fine players roared thru an hour of continuous improvising and we followed soon thereafter with our bursts of noise. Our sets have been morphing towards shorter pieces and we performed two @ under a minute length. The opening piece was a graphic score i came up with just before the set, titled ‘Muerto Corto’ intended to be fast and furious. And just so, it was. We followed with some longer bits and at some point did a piece intended to fit with in the confines of my point and shoot camera’s 30 sec video capability:

July 19-20
Driving. All about driving. We put in a long day of driving thru some gorgeous Montana mountain country, the rushing streams and the every-present Burlington Northern railway line on our side. We reached the lovely town of Bozeman, Montana, where we once again scored a nice hotel room on priceline.com for a third of the advertised rate of $150. Crashed out and woke up refreshed, took an early morning jacuzzi and swim in the hotel pool and split for the local food coop where we filled up with healthy snacks for the long trip ahead.

After a lovely first few hours of driving along the Yellowstone river (spotted a Bald Eagle perched on a dead tree limb), we began the looooooong drive across the prairie lands of North Dakota. Stopped in Bismarck, ND for dinner at a ‘mexican’ cantina-style restaurant, during which a sudden hail storm accompanied by a freight train roaring right by the place drove everyone off the patio but us (we found the experience rather exhilarating…city folk, ya know). With the change to central time, the sky stayed light well into 10pm. took this video from the back of the van to commemorate it (with John Cage’s ‘Two Pieces & Two Pieces for Piano):

As we approached Fargo and our 11th hour in the van, we began the search for a motel only to find every one of them booked up. WTF?! Turns out large wind farms were being put up all over the area and the rooms were filled with construction workers. We finally found a dirtbag motel at a Flying J near Fargo and crashed hard. the next morning, we ventured into Fargo to say we’d been there, found a cafe with some wireless and then promptly got the hell out (as far as i’m concerned, the next ice age won’t come soon enough to scrape the place clean) and headed for our much anticipated gig in Minneapolis with George Cartwright (of Curlew).

July 18 Seattle WA
Been looking forward to this show playing with our friends in Pink Mountain and Eyes. Shortly after our arrival in Seattle, we met with the gang for a nice meal at Thai Tom in the U district and then proceeded to get lost trying to find the venue. Relying on GPS, we ended up in front of a nice house in a residential neighborhood. Turns out the address was NW 65th St not N 65th st, just a 1/2 mile down the same street, but amongst a small strip of buildings down the hill from the Phinney district. May I digress a moment? This GPS thing is wonderful, but you tend to lose your sense of place as it seems you are taking orders from a dispatcher who knows your every movement and change in direction and politely tells you what to do (our GPS, named Matilda speaks with an educated English accent). And when she melts down (like she did when we were on Bainbridge Island), you resort to asking the nice policeman for directions. I feel a little naked without an actual paper maps. AAA here we come.

Back to the point…So the venue was punk-squat-like and the nice creatures living there sort of wandered around the place very used to the hustle bustle of touring band load in and text messaging, moving about, etc.

We played a good set. I must say we are feeling like a band more than a collaboration and the sets are changing and developing new things. Of late shorter pieces. this night we did three: a scritchy-scratchy one, a mayhem loud one with much theatrics, screaming from Val and David (David’s extended theater moment including a discussion of lactating and a desire for breast milk ice cream) and a high-pitch whistley thing that finished with a Branca-like tension filled ‘big ending.’

Seattle Scream, Seattle, WA 7.18.09

Eyes rocked out a quick set and Pink Mountain kicked it all into high gear. Sadly, their set was cut short just as they were really grooving. The PA wasn’t very good and the vocalist for PM apparently wasn’t having a very good time and put and end to the evening early.

Headed back to the cool little bar at the end of the street called The Dray (why don’t we have any neat little corner pubs like this in Oakland???) with John Shiurba, listened to the bartenders consolidated life history and were soon joined by Gino Robair and Justin and Aaron from Eyes. Prehistoric Horse had decided to start the drive east immediately rather than deal with taking a ferry out to our hosts, The Snapp’s house and inevitably getting a late start. This strategy paid off handsomely as we put in a solid four hour drive east to the outskirts of Spokane. the next two days are going to be all about driving…

July 15 Eugene, OR
The gig in Eugene was at the Jazz Station, a small publicly-funded art space on the main pedestrian drag. Our good friend Jeff Kaiser helped set up the show and he and local artist Sabrina Siegel opened the evening with a wild set, Sabrina using her voice and controlled-feedback-guitar-played -with-rocks (yes rocks) effectively against Jeff’s trumpet/voice and Max MSP sonic manipulations.

Our set was a crazy one, the first long piece going to some very interesting places and contained a entertaining David dialog – complete with a french accent – about ‘the stinky man’ (you take him home, you put him in your bed, you sleep with him). Our second, short piece took things further and came completely off the hook when one of the audience members hurled himself onto the floor and writhed around screaming with his t-shirt wrapped around his head. Seriously – audio evidence coming soon…

July 17 Portland, OR
After a sweaty, hot van stop and go traffic van ride from Seattle, we barely had time for the required Powell’s Books stop before heading over to our gig at a Portland New Music Society fundraiser. The venue was an upstairs room in an old brick artist loft warehouse. Which like many spaces like this excelled at retaining the days heat well into the evening.

We performed first and played a very good set with the usual longer first piece, but followed up with several shorter pieces as well for a forty minute set. Each of us had a great time performing and there were some very cool moments, but the vibe when we finished up felt really strange. Sort of like we played at a funeral. A couple of the musicians in the next act stopped by and complemented us, but for the most part the remainder of the 25 people there were rather stone-faced. Dunno, maybe the chaos we delivered wasn’t what they were expecting or up their alley. And the chaos: it included a water gargling bit by David and Valerie, an intense second piece with valerie singing out of a dictionary and of course, David’s spoken theater moment which revolved around the idea and statement that “I could have been a Rabbi’ It was very cool. Afterwards we headed down to Backspace to catch the last few songs by our Oakland friends in Pink Mountain – which was some crazy rocknroll mayhem for sure…

Random Notes:

Big Blue is our Tour van. He rocks. He has a cassette player and we have a stash of them to play. Of course, we have a iPods and CDs with one of those cassette converter dealies, but there is something about cassettes that rock. One is the vintage of the music and the other is the physicality of the format, you have to handle it in some way and that is cool. of course they take up some space, but hey – we can just listen and discard and buy more at thrift stores i suppose.

(The first two gigs of the tour were with the original PH quartet of David, Valerie, LM and John Hanes)

July 13 Albany, CA
The first at the Ivy room was sort of a chaotic mini-hoot, with guests Mr Dorgon and Laurie Amat. Different combinations of people collaborated to make some crazy sounds. Prehistoric Horse did play an actual set at some point and it was fairly chaotic.

July 14 Oakland, CA
The second gig @ Flux 53 space in Oakland was more in a format and style we originally coalesced around with a good sounding room (in this case a blackbox theater) to allow for more dynamics and acoustic/electric interaction. We played exactly twenty-one minutes and the set had plenty of dynamics and David’s theater as well. Afterwards, a member of the opening act turned down the invitation to do an encore group collaboration (something to do with a bruised and/or overinflated ego), but that was just as well as we needed to pack our things, get in the van and drive as far as we could that evening on the way to our next gig in Eugene, OR.

Suki O’Kane and I have launched yet another new project: Delicate & Destructive. We played at the Sacramento ‘In the Flow’ Jazz festival this past Saturday. 105 degrees in Sacto that day and driving to the afternoon gig in a AC car sans AC, I thought I might melt. The festival featured ‘jazz’ (and the majority of the audience) in a main air conditioned fancy venue and ‘noise/improv’ in a warm, funky record store full of vinyl – quite perfect, really. We went for a completely different feel than any of our previous improvisations and sculpted a sonic build that went from, well, delicate to destructive.

Check out more of Michael Zelner’s pics from the show.

Prehistoric Horse provokes audiences through spasmodic bursts of snare drum (david grollman), guitar (lucio menegon), cello (valerie kuehne) and occasional unprovoked dramatic outburst. A very intense and dynamic form of improvisational music that sometimes borders on sheer noise and incorporates the absurd. A mashup of Bennink/Nakatani/Frith/Frisell/Bach/Britten/Bi-polar disorder punk rock sounds.
“…spasmodic bursts of clatter and skree via cello, drums, and guitar, typically played in ways that would make conventional music teachers shudder in horror.” (Seattle Stranger)

 

discography:

more vids:
Prehistoric Horse YouTube Channel

…played the Boise Creative And Improvised Music Festival this past weekend. Did one set as Strangelet (with John Hanes on electronics) and another as Prehistoric Horse (a new collaboration with John, LM, drummer David Grollman and cellist Valerie Kuehne). The Horse did a lot of wandering about Boise and had a lot of fun just hanging out. Our intense thirty minute set on saturday night started off an evening of incendiary performances by Emily Hay/Motoko Honda, Colter Frazier/Rob Wallace, Jim McAuley and Kribophoric.

The venue for the festival was The El Korah Shriner Hall (entertainment unto itself with a kick ass grotto-bar, prop room and fully costumed group portraits). Attendance was better than past years (it was free), but slim at times and there was the feeling that most of Boise had no idea or care that this was going on. However, the audience was polite, attentive and given what must have seemed like pretty confusing music to the majority, appreciative.

We attempted some guerilla promotion tactics during an outlandish visit to the 8th street pedestrian, which was mostly met with polite smiles and the occasional offer to stop by the festival. During the promotion blitz, we were approached by a photographer for Boisestyle.com – perhaps attracted by our thrift store furry puppet accessories (that he chose a picture of just me & my monkey over one of myself, the monkey, Valerie and her Wooly Mammoth puppet is baffling).

Boise is a vanilla kind of place. It’s pretty small and it doesn’t take long to walk back and forth across the downtown and we did so several times – not much else to do. We stopped in for pizza and beer at our favorite joint and discovered the salvation of the saturday late-night streetcart shawarma guy (doing our best to safely run the gauntlet of staggering frat-party drunks filling the sidewalk).

All together an odd setting for such music. So how is it we end up back here in this high desert potato town playing crazy-ass improv and experimental music year after year? One: the performers. Many of the same players who made last year a highlight were there and it’s fun to hang out with them. Two: Kris Hartung & Jeff Kaiser . Kris is the guy who has made great efforts to put together the Creative and Improvised Music festival for four years running and Jeff has been responsible for curating and raising the level of talent. Bravo, guys.

…played a cool gig last night at the Temescal Arts Center in Oakland. The trio of myself, Morgan Guberman and Pat Spurgeon (spawn of the Ivy Room Hootenany late night jam) have now officially played two gigs. For this second one we actually had a name, Impish Lizard – quickly pointed out as already taken and then appropriately mangled by the second act’s drummer, Jacob as Fisted Lizard – which I rather like.

The first act was John Shiurba and Gino Robair (purportedly in his birthday suit) rattling out some inspired improv as always.

Fisted Lizard followed and because there have been noise complaints from a neighbor who lives in the fancy new condo across the street, we pulled back a bit on the volume but still managed some punch.

We did three pieces, the middle being the most intense with only one moment where you think, ‘shit this is going nowhere’ at the beginning, but patience prevailed, something caught and didn’t let go for a good long while. To set the vibe, we each had a sheet of paper with Thelonius Monk quotes to guide us – two different ones highlighted for each – which was kinda cool.

Up last was the duo of Ava Mendoza and Jacob Felix Heule. Ava is the coolest guitarist and one of best of this style in the Bay area. I always get to steal some tricks from her (thanks Ava!). Jacob is a monstrously powerful drummer – sort of a Ches Smith on steroids. Together they put in a torrid thirty-five minute set of continuous rock/noise improv that worried not about volume. The cops didn’t show up, so it must have been well received…

This is why the Experimental/Improv Hootenanny rocks. It is also why folks should stay late, because it always gets…nutty. The below example comes courtesy of ‘Lude, the Narcotics addicted Clown.
Michael Z’s photos
Michael Z’s audio (KAP/Myles Boisen, ‘Lude, Lords of Outland, Michaela Peterson)

The idea behind the monthly Experimental/Improv Hootenanny & Social Club is to foster collaboration and community amongst players and fans of improvisational outside music in a cozy place where people can chill, chat, get a decent cocktail – all with no cover..

Each month consists of one featured act and three curated sets with five minute overlaps creating a seamless night of improvised outside music and spontaneous collaboration.

Rules of the road:

All music is improvised.

The feature act can be an existing group or collaboration.

Curated sets are new collaborations or untried solo experiments. Curators either arrange collaborators beforehand or engage musicians in the room to play with.

After the main sets are over, the stage is open to collaborations until 1am. This has been really fun and sometimes pretty crazy. One late set had a DJ, a guy knocking out demented guitar/vocals, a sax and some drums/noise. I was like some 6am Berlin bar scene from ‘Wings of Desire.’

Third Monday’s of the Month at KingTone’s Ivy Room, in Albany, CA.

Check out the recent East Bay Express Article

Sonic evidence courtesy of Michel Zelner/House of Zoka (link takes you to a directory of all the audio):

#1 7/14/08
Brumit/Carnaki, Blue7, Jonathan Segel, John Hanes, Myles Boisen, John Shiurba/Morgan Guberman/Suki O’kane, Allen Whitman, Guberman/Spurgeon/Lightning (Fisted Lizard)

#2 9/15/08
Laurie Amat Sextet, Ross Hammond Quartet (w/ Hanes, Mezzacappa, Greenlief), Mark Growden Quintet

#3 10/27/08
Reid Johnston, Jeff Hobs, Geo, Jonathan Segel, Pluto

#4 11/24/08
KAP/Myles Boisen, ‘Lude, Lords of Outland, Michaela Peterson

#5 2/16/2009
Allen Whitman, Strangelet

#7 4/20/2009
Greyscale, Jet Black Hair People (P. Conheim), O-Type, Suki O’Kane, LM, David Slusser, Jeff Hobbs

#8 5/18/2009
Michaela Petersen (w/ Damon Smith/Weasel Walter), Mark Growden Sextet (w/ Hanes, Mezzacappa, Greenlief, Ross Hammond, LM), Wayne Grim, Salane & Friends

#9 June/15/ 2009
Ross Hammond, Matt Lebovsky, Salane & Friends, The Noodles

This is a republish of an older post. A CD of this project, 73-D is being released on the Swiss Musicians Association label on Sept 13, 2008.

In the Fall of 2006, I traveled to Europe to perform a variety of shows including solo experimental, a duo collaboration with Laurie Amat, and a very interesting week of performances in Bern, Switzerland with my friend Philipp Zuercher and his Fractaloid Project. In Philipp’s words:

Fractaloid 1-9 are 72 hours of live music, composed by Philipp Zuercher. The main issue is the interaction between four musicians and huge virtual structures: a computer program makes a looping device produce “a heap of empty wraps that want to be filled with musical contents”.

The form of those wraps is based on the aesthetics of fractals. Fractals are fragmented geometric shapes that are self-similar and appear in nature, too. The composition was first performed by four musicians, playing nine shifts of 8 hours each at Marks Blond, Bern-Switzerland (September 14th to 17th 2006).

The looping/sequence program Phillipp created called for the performer to record at specific moments, graphically represented on a computer screen from hot to cold colors. Red parts were, ‘must record!’ and blue were, ‘listen only’ with gradations in between. These gradations chopped up the recorded bits and threw them back, sometimes for many minutes at a time, allowing the performer to listen to the progression of things or take a break and get some food and drink! Each composition of sequences lasted around 40 minutes and would then start over, going around and around continuously for 8 hours straight, relentlessly, until the next musician took over.

I have fond memories of performing my three 8 hour shifts in the little MarksBlond.com hut, which has room for approximately 12 people and is situated in a nice upper middle class neighborhood next to an old stone church. I especially remember my last shift, which was from 4am to 12pm on Sunday. Food, energy and inspiration were running low when the church’s bells started pealing – echoing around the previously tranquil neighborhood, calling worshipers with that ancient, deep, cast-metal BONG, BONG, BONG that one only really experiences in Europe. I’d been performing all by myself for many, many hours and was getting mighty punchy, so I decided to incorporate the bells into the recording. I hastily stuck a mic out the door and managed to create some very satisfying musical chaos. At some point after this, I stumbled down the street in a crazed, sleep deprived, low blood sugar state in order to record the bells with my portable recorder, and received some concerned looks from a few of the staid, well dressed residents making their way to the morning service.

ICS is an organization of musician/kooks that form mysterious lodges in order to use a very powerful and prolific composition technique known as the twenty song game.

This week’s Oakland East Bay Express features an in depth cover story about The Immersion Composition Society. Check it out, get inspired and start your own lodge!

As a charter member of New Lodge, formed in 2002 (and sort of morphing into IconoLodge in 2005), it has proven quite prolific.

Just returned from a week of shows with my pals Rob Price and David Grollman. It was a great run culminating with a show at the 3rd annual Boise Experimental Music Festival. I’ll be posting some more mp3s soon and lots of pics. Steady as she goes…

I’ve attended and performed at every BEMF and this one had some really great talent. Here is a quick synopsis…

It was an honor and humbling experience to twice hear acoustic guitarist Jim McAuley. His ability to perform outside music with varied instrumentation, utilizing interesting tunings and a fearless sense of composition were a revelation. Jeff Kaiser and I marveled at Jim’s ability to bring together traditional structures with avant garde techniques and composition. Jim plays melodies, he deconstructs harmonic form and he’s a badass soloist…but above all it was MUSIC. And I tell ya, sometimes these experimental festivals can test just about anyone’s definition.

Other highlights were The Transhumans rockin set, Rob Wallace, Colter Frazier, & Jim Connolly‘s mindblowing saturday night trio improvisation, Tom Baker‘s glass fretboard and fretless guitar tones, Kribophoric, The Choir Boys, and the duo of Emily Hay and Motoko Honda and their excursions of insanity.

I love the sound of old records. Especially ones from the 50’s and 60’s – the golden era of open reel tape recording – often utilizing fewer than 8 tracks. Great musicians made the music (usually all together), great producers coaxed and coerced great performances and brilliant engineers made it sound spectacular – using great rooms, great mics and simple recording paths.

One of those great engineers, Larry Levine has passed away. It was he who invented the Wall of Sound with Phil Spector at the venerable Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles on such hits as The Ronettes, Be My Little Baby and the Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling. He who recorded Eddie Cochran’s, Summertime Blues, The Beach Boys’, Pet Sounds, Herp Albert’s, A Taste of Honey and even the Ramone’s, End of the Century.

Strangelet had its first gig last night and we decided to dress up a bit. Jonathan Segel wore a nice steampunk ensemble, Suki O’Kane a santa suit and myself, a gold lame w/ black fringe jumpsuit that Scottie Chapman scored at a clothing swap party last weekend.

‘Case you didn’t know, the Ivy Room has been transformed from the former dive it was. Now it is comfy couches and DJ’s…but on Mondays…wierd gets to take over – and it was cool.

We played a torrid 25 minute set of improv. We were gonna play longer, but it felt over – although we did forget to do the confusing ‘is the set over?’ outro that was planned. Oh well, next time. As is often the case, MZ and Matt Cora recorded it.

The next bunch of players competently jammed around for a bit, sounding like an unorganized Emerson Lake and Palmer meets Bitches Brew era Miles Davis. Their set suddenly took off when this guy came in with a l.e.d. embellished, pedal powered MC bicycle set-up and rapped about being a fool for fuel, pedaling bikes and taking public transit.

Who says experimental can’t be fun, short and sweet?!

Just so you know – A Stranglet is a theoretical particle that could possibly prove to be the realization of the infamous ‘Ice-Nine’ from Kurt Vonnegut’s, Cat’s Cradle. From Wiki:

If the strange matter hypothesis is correct, and a strangelet comes in contact with a lump of ordinary matter such as Earth, it could convert the ordinary matter to strange matter. This “ice-nine” disaster scenario is as follows: one strangelet hits a nucleus, catalyzing its immediate conversion to strange matter. This liberates energy, producing a larger, more stable strangelet, which in turn hits another nucleus, catalyzing its conversion to strange matter. In the end, all the nuclei of all the atoms of Earth are converted, and Earth is reduced to a hot, large lump of strange matter.

Apparently folks are not quite sure whether the giant new Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland will manage to loose a Strangelet (or even a Micro Black Hole) upon us all.

a hot, large lump of strange matter.