From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V7 #67 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Tuesday, March 6 2001 Volume 07 : Number 067 Today's Subjects: ----------------- a few words about "Gray Code" [dmw ] Re: a few words about "Gray Code" [Joseph Zitt ] bjork at the oscars [meredith ] Eliza Carthy [Valerie Richardson ] EctoFestWest tickets now available ["Shelly DeForte" Subject: a few words about "Gray Code" Perhaps because fellow ectophile Joe Zitt and I both live in the same city and both play out fairly frequently, rather than in spite of it, I never, until yesterday managed to fit a performance by Zitt's ensemble Gray Code into my schedule -- my loss. I would only classify Gray Code as "ectophilic" under that most circular of definitions -- "music that ectophiles like" -- but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to anyone who doesn't find the notion of an electro-acoustic avant/improvisational group unduly daunting. The edition of Gray Code that I saw was a quartet, lacking Matthew Ross Davis (trumpet, etc.) but including Joe Zitt (voice, melodica, bass) Brian Fending (percussion, voice) Jonathan Matis (electric guitar, voice) and Thomas Bickley (recorder, "digihorn," mixer, laptop). For the most part, they tended toward the gentler side of avant improvisation -- Fending's percussion was more minimalist than busy, the group was more quiet than loud, and they weren't averse to flirting with conventionally pretty melodic structures (though they weren't bound to them either). They opened with a striking a capella piece. In contrast to much of the improvised vocal music I've heard, the Gray Code singers favored long, powerful notes, with some interesting harmonies configurations. The overtones produced between the singers made it hard to believe at times that most of the sound was coming from two throats (Matis and Fending mostly added percussive vocal elements). The improvisation also had a welcome sense of humor -- when one of the singers coughed, the cough was immediately incorporated into the piece as part of a new series of more guttural vocal sounds. It was immediately apparent that this was a group without slouchers -- it was hard for me to decide which performer was the most musically interesting, either overall, or at any one time. Zitt was clearly comfortable with the melodica and the electric bass, but his vocal work was the most impressive of his contributions -- he has a strong, full resonant voice with good control, good breath technique, and a substantial range, but he also has the whimsy to incorporate an array of less tonal elements -- snarling, babbling, and other sounds. Fending played a modified sort of trap kit -- snare, low tom, hihat, and array of cymbals, gongs, and shakers. Instead of a kick drum he had a cow bell on a kick pedal, used with good effect and considerable subtlety. He was clearly aware of the tonal rather than strictly percussive qualities of his instruments. I was particularly intrigued by one section in which he pressed the tip on one stick against the snare head, and scrubbed it rapidly against the other stick. Matis was the only performer to stick to a single instrument throughout the performance, but I doubt a blind observer would have guessed that. His stratocaster ran through a substantial rack full of gear (direct, he had no amplifier.) He was equally adept with spider-fingered chords, sparse, Bill Frisell-like single note and two-note off-kilter jangles, and more exotic "treatments" -- he got some pretty interesting sounds out of whacking the strings with, i think, a pencil. At one point he had a very super-saturated distorted sound at a very low volume, which was an interestingly unusual thing to hear. He would also sample phrases from his guitar, store them in a delay, and play over top of them in a very Frippertronic (or, for that matter, Kevin Bartletty) fashion. Bickley was probably consistently the busiest of the performers, because in addition to playing assorted acoustic wind instruments and the "digihorn," a saxophone-styled midi controller, he was also mixing the performance on the fly, through both a small mixing board and a laptop computer. He made considerable use of digital delay effects, capturing one of the other musician's output and feeding it back to them. I think (though I'm not completely sure) that at one point he had his digihorn and Matis' guitar output both triggering the same bank of midi samples. That's perhaps worth mentioning: I was alert and paying close attention, my ears are fairly good, and I'm enough of a guitar/bass player that I can generally coordinate finger movements pretty closely to what's being played -- yet there were a number of times during this performance that I was not completely sure which music was coming from which performer, and which bits had just been sampled, and which were really "live." As anyone who's ever tried jamming with people in a basement knows, improvisation, even within a well-established framework like a standard twelve-bar blues, call easily fall into cacaphony at almost any point. The risk of creating a murky din rises, I think, exponentially as you add delay loops, sample-remapping, and other electrotoys to the mix. So one of the things that has to be most noticable about Gray Code is the players' restraint -- this is a chopsy bunch of folks, but chops are (comparitively) easy to acquire -- the wisdom not to overplay, and the gift of really *listening* to the other improvisers, and fashioning a cohesive compositional whole, is much, much rarer than the ability to make some whiz-bang sounds on your weapon of choice. And it was here that Gray Code was, finally, most impressive. The players were clearly comfortable with each other, clearly aware of their own space in the overall mix. But there were also very few moments where I had the sense that someone had fallen into a predictable riff, that things had grown stale -- the sense of exploration and discovery was almost continually present. Do I sound effusive? Well, I'm effusive. Not to mention a little more nervous about the prospect of Joe coming to hear one of my bands. ;) By the way: I've spent about three hours with a Gray Code _Live in Philadelphia 2000_ CD, which is a satisfying representation of the group, and gets my unhesitating recommendation from anyone intrigued by this description. - -- d. - - oh no, you've just read mail from doug = dmw@radix.net - get yr pathos - - www.pathetic-caverns.com -- books, flicks, tunes, etc. = reviews - - www.fecklessbeast.com -- angst, guilt, fear, betrayal! = guitar pop ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2001 14:49:14 -0600 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: a few words about "Gray Code" Er, uh, wow *blush* On Mon, Mar 05, 2001 at 10:15:06AM -0500, dmw wrote: > Perhaps because fellow ectophile Joe Zitt and I both live in the same city > and both play out fairly frequently, rather than in spite of it, I never, > until yesterday managed to fit a performance by Zitt's ensemble Gray Code > into my schedule -- my loss. [snip] > By the way: I've spent about three hours with a Gray Code _Live in > Philadelphia 2000_ CD, which is a satisfying representation of the group, > and gets my unhesitating recommendation from anyone intrigued by this > description. If anyone would want to review this for the Ectophile Guide or other publication, lemme know and I can send you a copy. Doug's concert review should give you a good idea if it's the kind of thing that would interest you. - -- |> ~The only thing that is not art is inattention~ --- Marcel Duchamp <| | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt | | Latest CD: Jerusaklyn http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2001 18:23:33 -0500 From: meredith Subject: bjork at the oscars Hi! Bjork is going to be performing "I've Seen It All" (from _Dancer In The Dark_) at the Oscars. M2 did a little news bit on this, which is available online at http://homepage.mac.com/bjorkoscar/.Movies/bjorkoscar180.mov (QuickTime required). Also, her new album _Vespertine_ sounds like it's going to be really interesting. There's an interview with her about it at http://rock.yahoo.com/rock/music_news/sonicnet/story.html?s=n/sonicnet/rock/ news/20010305/20010305009 (Sorry for the huge URL there, but SonicNet crashes my computer, so I have to get to articles there through a back door.) +==========================================================================+ | Meredith Tarr meth@smoe.org | | New Haven, CT USA http://www.smoe.org/~meth | +==========================================================================+ | "things are more beautiful when they're obscure" -- veda hille | | *** TRAJECTORY, the Veda Hille mailing list: *** | | *** http://www.smoe.org/meth/trajectory.html *** | +==========================================================================+ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2001 22:52:54 -0500 From: Valerie Richardson Subject: Eliza Carthy It is rumored that she of the blue hair, Eliza Carthy, is scheduled to appear on NPR's morning edition tomorrow morning (Tuesday) between 5:30-6:00 (7:30-8:00 and 9:30-10:00). She's on tour in the United States to promote her new CD "Angels & Cigarettes." http://www.elizacarthy.com/new_site/index.html - --Valerie Richardson ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2001 21:39:07 -0800 From: "Shelly DeForte" Subject: EctoFestWest tickets now available I guess the subject says it all. Tickets are $20 each. They are currently available by snail mail. You can send your check or money order and a SASE to: EctoFestWest POB 867 Cotati, CA 94931 I'm going to update the website with the same info soon, but thought I'd give yuall first dibs. Tanks much, Shelly - ---------------------------------------------- Shelly DeForte Web Design shelly@cybermagician.com Web Tools http://www.cybermagician.com Programming ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V7 #67 *************************