Monkeying

[imomus]

"Devil Mask, Buddha Mind" is the first track completed for the new album. I say "completed"; we just have a rough mix, after the first day's work.

The first thing we recorded (me in the kitchen with the mics, Rusty in the living room at the control desk) was just two single acoustic guitar notes, plucked and then decaying to silence. So, by the time we broke for lunch at Papaya, our local Thai restaurant, we just had these two unvarnished guitar notes recorded. They were nice notes, though, pure and simple, brave and proud. They didn't need chords, they weren't secondary or subservient to anything. They sat a minute or so apart, like travellers who'd gone to different countries. To call them a "sequence" would be to assume memory feats in the listener. But the notes haven't forgotten each other; they probably call each other long distance and say "Hi!"

Rusty and I discussed making the record all at once; with twenty "canvases" (song files on Rusty's noisy laptop) on which we daub and sprinkle sound colours at first randomly (guitar note at 3.12 on this song, at 1.47 on the next, and so on). Then, by selective erasure and re-recording, we'd shape each song into a more defined entity, taking it away from randomness, towards something with its own themes and identity. I like that idea; composition by erasure! The randomness would still be crucial, though; the record would find itself, slowly, because of the accidents, even while moving away from them. Accidents would slowly gel into stories that couldn't have existed without them. It would be like the famous monkey with the typewriter trying to write Shakespeare, but with Shakespeare himself on hand to work the nonsense into sense with constant edits, interventions, and revisions. With any luck, the tug-o-war between nonsense and sense, mess and intention, would be a productive one. Because pure mess and pure intention are, in themselves, boring.

This composition-in-series thing is tricky to stick to, though. It's hard to abandon a "canvas" once you start working on it. You get involved. You want to start adding stuff, filling up the blank space, investing the composition with meaning and sense. And so I started levering in some Google-translated Japanese diary phrases, some french concrete word games, a sung interval, multi-tracked, some Harry Partch twangly chords. And so, around the middle, our piece became a song with lots of complicated vocals and chords and a melody. Almost too rapidly, really. We couldn't hold sense back long enough, defer gratification, defer composition. We got a mixdown by about 5pm, and there it was, a semi-finished piece which I could e-mail to a friend for an opinion. (No advance mp3 posts of the new stuff this time, we're keeping it under our hats.)

Reactions to the rough mix of "Devil Mask, Buddha Mind" were useful. Hisae liked the beginning, laughed at the Japanese phrasing in the sung bit, but thought the melody became too melancholy when the singing started. A friend in London said the track sounded like "Summerisle" or the Summerisle Horspiel, mixed with a podcast, and fitted the Click Opera "manifesto" well. The way the two different parts, concrete language poetry and the song, splice together gives a very Araca Azul-like impression, apparently.

My personal thoughts on the piece? I had the inevitable "song crush", falling in love with it when it seemed finished. But then, when we were all crashed out for a siesta (Rusty is still jet-lagged) I felt dissatisfied and took the file over to my iBook to tinker with it, extend the song section, mess around with tempo and stereo, cross-fade, shorten, edit. On headphones I could hear spill on the vocals; a baby crying next door, birds singing in the courtyard out back. I regretted layering in some backwards Japanese flute, which sounds too melancholy and too "musical", edging the song towards pastiche, even if it's not jokey pastiche. I began to think we'd probably only keep little bits of "Devil Mask, Buddha Mind", chopped up for salvage and spliced into something completely different. And I was plunged into doubt about the displacement of sampling and sequencing, my usual compositional tools, by microphone art. Microphones are sort of messy and organic, and I miss the sequencing grid, which gives this clean machine sheen to everything, and allows you to rock out with impressive metronomic beats if you want to go that way. This time I don't, though, because all those beats are just garrulous clutter; "sequencer chaff".

Mics and splicing and playing stuff freehand in real time (even if it's Flash sample-based instruments played clumsily with a trackpad and letter keys)... this is a nice way to work. A bit like painting. Very hand—and throat—made. You never know what'll rise out of the smeared paint. What silver dragons will emerge from the clouds today? What surprises will the monkeys—under the wary eye of Shakespeare—come up with?

Comments

Listening suggestions

[(Anonymous)]

Nick,
Based on what you've written this week about ideas for your new album, I'd like to suggest the following compositions, which I think you may find interesting.

Of course, these are graphic scores, and compositionally, there is a lot going on, but the way you are talking about your music reminds me a lot of the sound of these compositons.

Earle Brown's Hodograph (1959)
http://www.earle-brown.org/works.focus.php?id=24

Any/all of the Feldman Projections (early 50's)
http://www.mode.com/catalog/146feldman.html

If you are already familiar with these, then please disregard.
Thanks,
R.

[siokaos.livejournal.com]

I guess this is more common in sound art than in whatever one would classify your music as, but have you considered a more generative, direct approach?

It's not shakespear, and it's not monkeys.

[(Anonymous)]

No comment

[chuckdarwin.livejournal.com]

Do you construct obstructions for yourself before you begin to write things - as in 'this piece only has two notes'?

Software

[ucantquitmebaby.livejournal.com]

What software do you use to put your music together? I've been looking at different programs and would like some professional advice. Thanks alot, the new album sounds interesting I'm looking forward to hearing it.

Re: Software

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm a Mac man, but Rusty is recording everything onto his laptop using Nuendo.

Re: MOMUSWARE Software

[instant-c.livejournal.com]

Nick, I am building you a max/msp patch that will run on its own, tentatively called "iPatch". It will involve bright colours and elements of random action for recording sounds and playback. Let me know if you have any preferences for extra behaviors! hope you really enjoy this, I am working hard on it!-David

Re: Software

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

I'm a Mac man, but Rusty is recording everything onto his laptop using Nuendo....

I felt dissatisfied and took the file over to my iBook to tinker with it,

Mac's and pc's side by side in perfect harmony. Reminds me of that marvelous Paul McCartney song you are so fond of.

What sound software do you use on your mac? Just curious.

background blips

[(Anonymous)]

One element I think should be considered is the enviromental acoustics. Say, recording the same 'sound/note' but in different locales(kitchen, humid bathroom, hallway, in tub/toilet) each version's qualities used to underline the value of the lyrics(must be some fancy, succinct way of stating that). The sound of your acoustic guitar being rained upon its back? Pipe noise, water/air. One thing I've heard only a couple of times is what sound like the onset of a large thunderstorm...something about it conveyed that feeling of when it's closing in on your town like a colossal blanket.
It may require a more sensitive microphone than available, but perhaps in some gradient this concept could be employed.

When reading your ideas for this album over the last weeks the song "My Only Child" by Nico came to mind for the distinct point when the "t" in the word "tall" from the phrase "the morning small, the evening tall"...at that point there is a single note played on a French horn and allowed to decay to the silence that accompanied Nico's delivery.

The album "Spirit of the Wardrobe" by Koji Asano is a kind of take on the 'minimal background' concept. From aquariusrecords.org: "He recorded some sounds in his backyard in Barcelona, then processed them into brief bursts of audible activity spaced between long stretches of pure silence, these placements in time being his main compositional task. The disc is nearly an hour long, but there may be less than a minute of actual sound on it";"It's more like by putting it in your cd player you're "activating" this disc, which will occasionally make itself known in sudden, startling fashion".

The last paragraph in this day's entry you mention playing virtual instruments with your trackpad and mouse. Perhaps a whiff lame, but maybe record some of those noises and the keyboard. The technology that can distinguish the sound of each keyboard key could some day be available widely so why not type us out a message and record only the sound? A bit of a magnetic tease to ponder.

Wood cracking, or other violent-when-personified-yet-natural-happenings-and-even-necessary-for-survival type sounds as interludes. Like...the sound of wood cracking with a near simultaneous human response before/after a song about some type of relatable topic? The sound of a clay pot being lifted off a gravely wood floor, with some other movement to create a short micro-rhythm/composition. Peeling an orange with fingers or snapping a cucumber in two. A single {chew..}-then-"Shh!" could be poignant if placed well. Mmm, wind through wavy-wafty trees... love that, too. Boiling water, plopping things into it, the sound of food cooking in a pan turning into a summery backdrop with a brief hurdygurdy drone and lyric just long enough to evoke some kind of tree silhouette and yellow/green plaid sky with you tramping past with a kookoo chirp? Sweet potato, when cooked to hot enough in foil, emits a sort of miniscule squeeling sound for a very short bit (or was that something else?). If you have a spring-type mattress, if you lay on it with your ear to it and then hit the mattress it has a vast kind of reverberation.

Too much "help" I'm sure... Erase me if you like.

[peripherus-max.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, the first thing that I thought of upon reading this post was ubuweb. Summerisle comes to mind, of course, because that was less a Momus album of separate tracks than something singular (and ameoba-like) catered to a specific environment (like a gallery). But, given what you've said... impressions of stricture, this time. Walking a tight rope between academic exercises and successfully inspired accidents, with the hope of culling it all, geling it all together somehow within a collage. This will all be in the editing, won't it. For my two cents, I say go completely bonkers overboard with the editing. I love Animal Collective, but I hope that you resist making a new A.C. record with Rusty Santos. Why restrict yourself to just one producer with this project? For me, one of the joys of 20 Vodka Jellies was the fact that it was a compilation with many disparate styles that still seemed to "gel together" naturally.

[(Anonymous)]

HA HA and you wonder why you're not "famous" (though I'm sure that you'll say that you *really* don't care for fame and such... I call bullshit).

This shit you're working on was played out in the 60s.

Have fun wanking away on your "art", sunshine.

[lesser-one.livejournal.com]

Moron. Whatever music you listen to was probably played out by 1975 anyways. Just because something has been done before doesn't mean that there isn't merit in another atempt. If this wasn't the case, there'd probably be about a hundred albums in the whole of existence, and God-knows only a smattering of literature. I'd hate to visit your opinion of MOMA.

Rock on, Momus.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

When recording in the kitchen, is it only you there to just catch the "silence atmosphere" or is somebody walking around and making some few "regular" kitchen noises?

[telephoneface.livejournal.com]

Araca Azul seemed to be more a stream-of-consciousness collage then randomness. Perhaps the way to go would be every day come up with 10-15 short melodic/percussive ideas and lot them down with raw instrumentation and try to put them together like a melting jigsaw puzzle (which I suppose sounds like something you are doing). The great things about the more concrete parts of that album is that they kind of flow into one another, each theme informing in some small way the next.

[pirateman.livejournal.com]

Hey, what kind of mic do you use? Do you like it?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I was using a Shure Beta 52 for guitar recording today. My main mic, the one I've used for all my vocals on every album since "Timelord", is a Langevin VTL CR-3A, details here:

http://www.manleylabs.com/containerpages/Cr3a99.html

Review here:

http://www.manleylabs.com/reviews/Recording_CR3A_review.html

[intergalactim.livejournal.com]

i know we are all so over 90's remix hype, but this new album by Sawako seems interesting: http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/2533

i like the idea that rather than re-mixing it dj style, the listeners' in/attention or environment can remix it for them. Sounds like your new album is progressing well. And nice to read in the last post of your influences, i'm negotiating at the moment with various organisations about bringing Yuko Nexus6 out to NZ next year, and also waiting for some new LK discs in the mail - Keep experimenting!

"It is easy to make mediocre music in a computer. But even if the interest in electronic music grew to an unexpected degree, there would never be as many mediocre electronic musicians as there are hopelessly mediocre pop stars. In fact, there will always be many more mediocre AND successful rock stars than mediocre and unsuccessful electronic musicians. "
A&A from http://www.luckykitchen.com/tliyl/spring02/essay/access.html

[dzima.livejournal.com]

Why computer music sucks:

http://www.l-m-c.org.uk/texts/ostertag.html

Microphone spill

[(Anonymous)]

When you talk about the microphone spill and ambient sounds of a baby crying, isn't this a contradiction with your recent teaching experiments with found sound ? Could the ambient sounds be a part of the recording, ie accentuate the bird chirps... ? Actually, I've always wondered how you recorded your vocals. It must be difficult in non-studio envionment.

I think the sound of your voice from your collaboration with Mai was very soothing and I hope that some of that quality is developed. The recording process and the limitations you are instigating sound very intriguing. Anyway, I'd better get back to work....

Richard

[maybeimdead.livejournal.com]

will this be a monophonic record?

[mwmiller.livejournal.com]

It definitely will if you only have one speaker on.

[maybeimdead.livejournal.com]

ah yes, hahaha. but what i meant was whether the compositions would be polyphonic in nature, or whether they would be monophonic (and without harmony), like an ancient arabic or chinese piece? that's the impression i got from the previous post re: the lack of chords. maybe i'm just completely off my rocker hahahah. cheers.