Sander Roscoe Wolff

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.

We are proud to present an evening of spectacular music.

Ain Soph Aur presents:

Threads of a Tonal Dream Tapestry

The Microtonal Compositions of Lou Harrison
Performed by John Schneider

Khmer Classical Music
Performed by Master Ho Chan’s
Pin Peat Ensemble

Intercontinental Improvisation
Performed by Ain Soph Aur
& Friends

Saturday July 5th, at 8 PM
$8
Koos Art Center
530 E Broadway
Long Beach, CA
90802

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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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I’m working on a documentary about a friend who is an artist. Amongst the many things she does, she’s been given a fellowship at a local art center where they have a rather extensive printmaking studio. She’s been working there for months, making prints from cardboard packaging, paper bags, etc. In the process of filming her there, I noticed that the space had an interesting acoustical environment, and that many of the machines and other equipment could make interesting sounds. I went there a few weeks back and recorded a whole bunch of different sounds, took them home, chopped them into small segments, and created a piece of music from them.

This is just a rough draft, sort of playing with the various elements, just to get a feel for them. This is, by no means, a final product.

Also, it may be helpful to know that, aside from the parsing of the various sounds, and some basic effects like reverb and delay, the original source sounds have been unaltered.

The tune starts with a metal drawer closing. The ‘kick drum’ sound is a silk screen. There are sounds from springs, a metal sink, a drying rack, an ink roller, etc.

Here’s the link

Please feel free to let me know what you think!

Ain Soph Aur (A Live Video Excerpt)

Before the gig:

During my many years as a musician, I’ve performed in a variety of contexts. In 6th grade, for example, I sang a solo in Hebrew as part of The Chitchester Psalms, a piece for chorus and organ, written by Leonard Bernstein. In rehearsals, the feeling of singing with so many voices was thrilling and euphoric. I felt myself open up in a way I’d never experienced before.

The night of the performance, I was filled with confidence. I remember walking out onto the stage in my new electric blue wide-wale corduroy pants, feeling the enthusiasm and support of the musicians behind me. The choir director remembered that the translated words were in the program and asked that the house lights be brought up so the audience could read along.

All of a sudden, hundreds of people emerged from the darkness and, much to my surprise, they were staring at me. In an instant, all that joy and confidence evaporated and, in its place, arose a new feeling: Terror. The music began, and I felt a bit heartened but, as my moment to sing approached, my body felt like it was going to split in two.

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