Sander Roscoe Wolff

The amazingly talented electric guitarist Scott Heustis embraced a rather odd challenge I tossed his way: To play an entirely acoustic set. He confessed that he’d not even owned an acoustic guitar in 10 years but, shortly after my query, ran out and purchased one. Orlando was hesitant that his upright might not carry well without support, but he left his amplification in the car. I, for some reason, felt inspired to tackle the upright piano that had, according to reports, been recently tuned.

Despite the late hour, and the chill in the air, the room was fairly packed with friends new and old. We stepped off the edge of the cliff, with no rehearsal, discussion, or planning and just played.

I made a room recording which, unfortunately, didn’t capture Scott’s guitar as well as I’d hoped. Still, if you listen you can hear everything.

After a rather boisterous romp in Part 5, I was overcome by melancholy due to some dear friends experiencing a personal tragedy. This was expressed in Part 6.

Anyway, it was quite a ride, and we were all sweaty at the end.

I have been curating music performances for art openings at Sipology Village Gallery in Downtown Long Beach for several months. The performances take place in the cafe next to the gallery. Sumako, the art curator, invited me to do this because I have some experience bringing interesting artists to Long Beach, and have worked with him both at the now sadly defunct Koos Art Center, and at the first Experimental Music show I produced at The Puka Bar, which led to the creation of Ain Soph Aur.

October’s art show was scheduled to be a visual retrospective of the past 6 years of SoundWalk, and the event was scheduled for the 2nd Saturday, the 9th of October. Normally, art openings at Sipology Village are on the 2nd Saturday of every month but, because of some logistical challenges, the event was moved to the 1st Saturday, the 2nd. Thus, I moved the planned music for the Gallery opening to the 2nd.

I planned a series of performances, one flowing into the next, with several combinations of artists interacting. I recorded all but one performance, missing that one because my PA wasn’t used for it. So, here’s the line-up, with links to MP3s of each.

The Second State

5:00 – 6:00:

6:00 – 7:00:
7:00 – 8:00:
8:00 – 9:00: Orlando Greenhill
9:00 – 10:00:

Instrumentation

Sander Roscoe Wolff – Voice, Guitar, Bells, Environmental Recordings, Recorder, Penny Whistle, Bone Samples, Effects
Jeremy Morelock – Midi Guitar, Ethnic Samples, Voice, Lute, Effects
Sumako – Custom Fretless Fernandez Electric Guitar, Kaossolators
Mike Weber – Lap Steel, Delay
Orlando Greenhill – Upright acoustic Bass, Electric Bass, Voice, Antics

I volunteered to do some sound design work for a fledgling theater group’s 2nd annual 6 play festival. One of the plays took place in Heaven, Earth, and Hell. I created a soundscape for Heaven using trombone and voice, and one for

using audio from a live performance by sound artists SMGSAP. The director decided not to use the tracks I produced, but I rather liked the piece I created, so I thought I’d share it here:

I’ve received quite a few mixed reactions from folks who have listened to it. Most find it pleasing, but decidedly unheavenly. That’s ok. It feels reverential, peaceful, and heavenly to me.

Please feel free to leave comments.

A few weeks ago Carl, my collaborator in Ain Soph Aur, emailed me a short audio snippet with the request that I come up with some parts that might sit well with it. The part was strange, with an unusual meter and a chorused bass part that felt elusive. I immediately recorded several guitar tracks, burned them to a CD, and gave them to Carl within the next few days.

Several weeks passed and, to be honest, I’d pretty much forgotten about it entirely. In my email in-box came an MP3, where Carl had taken his original loop, my guitar parts, and added several more tracks as well. I began to get really excited. He then gave me 14 stereo WAV tracks that made up his mix of the tune, and I began playing with those, adding more tracks, processing existing ones, and generally going crazy.

The result is a 33 minute epic of sonic goodness. Now, Carl hasn’t heard this long-form version yet, and it really isn’t complete. I have no doubt that, when he hears it, he’ll be inspired to respond in some way. I can’t wait!!!

Still, he’s away right now, and won’t be back for a while, so I felt moved to share this as it is, knowing that, down the road, it may change significantly.

So, without further ado, behold “Dancing Upon A Foaming Sea.”

[note: this is a very large, 31 MB, file. People with small hard drives or dial-up connections should wait for the CD release]

The title, which comes from Alister Crowley’s description of the Princess of Cups in his Egyptian Tarot book, The Book of Thoth, may change too, btw.

I’ve also posted a screen shot of the project in my Cubase SX3 audio software.

To the best of my knowledge, the track contains the following: Bass, organ, guitar, cornet, recorder, tin flute, bells, voices, plastic tubes, shakers, metal bowls, dog collars, field recordings of seals and birds, a live performance snippet, kalimba, hand drum, synth drums, and a few other things. See if you can find them all!

Karloff and I were invited to perform at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in the heart of Santa Ana’s Artists’ Village. Opening the show were “Between Ravens and Crows,” followed by Ain Soph Aur and, closing the show, was Madamn Grislee.

Due to an oversight on my part, the audio recording captured ambient sound where Karloff and I were seated, but not the sounds the audience heard. While not capturing what I intended, it still produced several nice sections, one of which I’m including here:

The First and Fourth Intellects – Part 2

Karloff can be heard playing organ and bass, and I the lap steel guitar, shaker, and maybe even some voice.

Please feel free to leave comments.

Last night Karloff and I were joined by Jeremy Morelock and Nial Morgan. We opened a wonderful show at Koos Art Center. We were followed by John Schneider’s breathtaking performance of microtonal music for refretted acoustic guitar, written by legendary American composer Lou Harrison. Following John’s performance, Master Ho’s Pin Peat ensemble performed Khmer Classical Music with intensity, precision, and passion. The room was thrumming with the energy flowing from the stage.

Ain Soph Aur’s performance was 30 minutes, but I excerpted two parts. The first is from the beginning, and the second from the end.

In A Strange Country – Part 1

In A Strange Country – Part 2

Please feel free to leave comments.

Ain Soph Aur performed at {open} on May 15, 2008 as part of their 3rd Thursday series. Joining us for our set was 15 year old Nial Morgan (Deer Tear).

Hear a board recording of the performance, or view two 10 minute video excerpts.

[Please note that the audio quality of the videos is greatly diminished due to YouTube’s proprietary compression system.]

Part 1:

Part 2:

On April 5th 2008, Ain Soph Aur performed at Zero Point Space as part of Thee Dung Mummy 5th Anniversary Experimental Music Festival. In keeping with the organic fluidity of the group’s performance philosophy we, at the last minute, included a third artist in our performance. The artist known as ‘Catastrophic Mermaids on Parade’ joined us.

Here’s a flyer I made for the show:

I am offering up a room recording of our performance, which I decided to call “The Quality of Volition.” It is actually an excerpt, but a fairly long one. (About 15 minutes) The entire performance was about 25 minutes long.

The Quality of Volition

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Raindog Armstrong is a poet, publisher, and pied piper for poetry. With his Lummox Press, he published the Lummox Journal as a monthly magazine, which showcased artists from around the country, and around the world. Publishing both poetry and in-depth interviews, the Journal has now moved onto the internet. This has freed him, at last, to publish the first of several volumes of his own work, the first of which is called Fire & Rain. It reaches back to some of his earliest work, and spans nearly 15 years of creativity.

Raindog joined me for a free wheeling, and wide ranging, conversation that includes three poetry recitations, discussions of 9/11, and his past and future musical efforts. It is 50 minutes of honest talk with one of our fair City’s creative icons.

If you can’t commit to listening to an hour-long conversation, you can hear all three of his poems:

Pinto

Traveling Man (an homage to Charles Kuralt)

The Poem Will Save You

Also, you can see a brief video of Raindog reciting Eyes Like Mingus:

Many years ago, back in the mid 90s, I worked for a local radio station. I did a variety of things but, occasionally, I pulled a weekend shift where I was basically playing pre-recorded shows on open reel tape, or dat. In one of the small production studios they had two Studer 1/4″ 2 track open reel tape machines and, in a fit of creativity spurred by boredom, I hooked them into a ‘Frippertronics’ set-up.

The machine on the left would have a reel of tape on the left spool which would run over it’s heads, then across to the right (take-up) spool of the 2nd machine. The playback of the machine on the right would be fed back into the machine on the left, along with whatever new sound was added, and the whole thing would repeat, and slowly fade out. The speed of the repeats was a function of the tape speed and the distance between the two machines.

Here’s a lame graphic I created to illustrate the process:

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