Music
HIST Soundtrack Excerpts On ANMLY /
Thanks to the wonderful people at ANMLY mag who have an awesome hybrid creative blog, “The Markings of Music.” The editor, Olivia Muenz, was kind enough to publish excerpts from the HIST soundtrack, “Canoe Chase on the Horican,” and “Narra-mattah,” my audio/visual collaborations with Matthew Klane. Our recordings are accompanied with an interview diving in to the process behind the book and the reasoning behind a soundtrack for it. There are so many wonderful things on the blog so check them all out!
New Audio: Green Kill Performance of Idiopathic /
Enjoy this performance from my performance of Idiopathic for voice, electronics, and found sound on 2/27/20 at Green Kill Performance Space.
Power Electronics and Media Myth /
A great find today on Ubu Web: “Toward a Sound Ecstatic Electronica: The Rationale Behind Tellus Issues “Power Electronics” and “Media Myth” by Joseph Nechvatal. Though Nechvatal originally wrote the essay for Tellus #13 in the 80s Power Electronics heyday, he revised it again in 2000. I’m impressed with how apt its notion of sound as an ecstatic critique of reductive social constructions is for today’s noise music progenitors. There is a wonderful listening list also. Check it out!
Birds Wheeling Flick Audibility /
For me, lines of bird flight are always audible. Birds wheeling flick the quick wisps of the conductor's baton tip into the blue, they curve shimmering notes up over the top staff line, or they bend like a light arc flickering through a lens pointed into the sun. But even more than resonating with other phenomenon, bird murmurs draw me into that moment of alien self-organization where I am confronted with confluences completely outside myself. Jane Bennett calls minor experiences like this enchanting and argues that they can remind us how wonder reorients our perception toward less habituated modes of experience. What I enjoy in enchantment is that although I associate the organized kinesis of the bird's swooping with musical expressiveness, the fact that birds understand what constitutes music differently than we do means that this expression is not reducible to a culturally legible melody or form. In short, bird murmurs remind me that there is always a pressure on the cultural conditioning my hearing and vision emerge through. I find this pleasure enchanting.
Bennett, Jane. The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001.
Canyons Tour Audio from Just Buffalo Literary Center Available /
CANYONS by James Belflower and Matthew Klane from Flimb Press. 7x9, 106 pages w/ 26 full-page color plates, $25
Canyons Tour Audio from Woodland Pattern Available /
CANYONS by James Belflower and Matthew Klane from Flimb Press. 7x9, 106 pages w/ 26 full-page color plates, $25
Canyons Tour Audio from PS1 Performance Available /
Just uploaded audio from the 4th set of the Canyons reading tour. Enjoy!
CANYONS by James Belflower and Matthew Klane from Flimb Press. 7x9, 106 pages w/ 26 full-page color plates, $25
Canyons Tour @ PS1 in Iowa City 10.9.16 /
Performance Space One
The Canyons tour ended its first phase in Iowa City at Performance Space one, hosted by John Éngelbrecht. It was a lovely night. The performance artist Jillian Weise screened pointedly political videos of her alter ego Tipsy Tullivan, and poet Raj Chakrapani read from a new work that blended poetry with voice-overs of prominent public figures. Matthew and I played a longer set than previous readings and we enjoyed plugging into PS1's sound system for two reasons. One, we didn't have to lug all our equipment in and out! Two, it was vastly superior! I'll post audio of this performance over the weekend so check back soon! We are in Providence toward the end of October, so if you're in the area we hope to see you. The rest of our tour schedule is available here.
Canyons Tour @ Absinthe and Zygote in Chicago, 10.8.16 /
Photo courtesy of Matthew Klane
Another amazing evening on the Canyons tour! After a few too many coffees Matthew and I landed in Chicago for our 3rd performance at the Experimental Sound Studio. Anne Shaw and Toby Altman hosted us at Absinthe and Zygote an innovative performance series that changes locations for each event, from dark rooms, to crowded elevators, to hair salons. In front of the welcoming pink baffle backdrop of the Experimental Sound Studio it was a night of multimedia projections, polyvocality, and hilarious characters. We opened our set with "Welcome to Colorado" and sonically constructed an environment in which the "pure products of America go crazy." Little did we know how well that would resonate with the other performers. Poet and playwright Kate Morris read next, projecting maplike watercolor images in the corner of the room. She was followed by Olivia Lilley, whose comparisons of dating life to The Lord of the Rings had everyone cracking up. Olivia Cronk's reading of Louise and Louise and Louise ended the evening, quickly switching through the voices of a slew of characters, inhabiting each deftly. We read in Iowa City on the 10th, and will pick up the tour again on October 22nd in Providence. Hope to see you there!
We just arrived home yesterday so audio of the tour will be posted soon!
Kate Morris
Olivia Lilley
Olivia Cronk