In celebration of it’s one year anniversary, The Long Beach Musicians’ League is presenting an evening of experimental music featuring Ain Soph Aur, Between Ravens and Crows, and SMGSAP.
This evening will be a rare opportunity to experience the work of seasoned artists, each with divergent esthetics, yet unified in an intention to venture boldly into unknown sonic terrains.
Ain Soph Aur is an experimental music duo featuring Karloff (Refrigerator Mothers, The Hop Frog Kollectiv, URCK Records) and Sander Roscoe Wolff (Quiverfish, Blue Dot, Poor Old Joe). They create gently
evolving sonic landscapes using a variety of acoustic, electric, and electronic instruments, found sounds, and effects. ASA will be joined on modular synthesizer by David Bunoan.
Also performing is Between Ravens and Crows. Flail and Thwack, world travelers, bring a balance of creation and destruction to their
performances, smashing home-made instruments, delicately playing Indonesian metalphones, and occasionally causing harm to themselves and others.
SMGSAP is Shea M Gauer and Scott A Peterson. They’ve been using a variety of sources to explore sound and context for nearly 10 years.
While working on Dancing Upon A Foaming Sea, I had a discussion with my friend Loren Nerell, who is a long time and well established electronic music artist whose work is well regarded by many folks around the globe. We talked about a well known technique which involves taking a short audio tidbit and slowing it down repeatedly, until it sounds quite different. This is a technique used by Brian Eno, most famously on his CD, Neroli.
In DUAFS, there’s a short recording of a chime or bell. It looks like a metal heart, no more than 2 inches across, but inside there is some sort of ball and tone bars. I used this as the basis for Swimming in Dark Waters.
One of the great things about working with Karloff is that, when I share something with him, I know that he’ll find just the right thing to connect with my intention, and then take it to a whole new level. His addition of synth on this track is at first sublime, then… well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise.
We may yet add more to this. Sometimes it can be difficult to know when to stop. Still, I am happy to present it as a work in progress. Slip on your headphones, and enjoy:
In the previous post, a working version of Dancing Upon a Foaming Sea was revealed. I was in the kitchen one morning and observed an interesting, and short-lived, visual occurance which I documented with my video camera. It seemed to go nicely with DUFS, so I put them together. Here’s the result:
