EARTH UNIVERSAL – “CURTAINS OF SILENCE HUNG ABOUT THE THING”

  A new release of sound-scapes by Earth Universal, limited 50 copies cassette edition...

Listen link
https://plazach.bandcamp.com/album/curtains-of-silence-hung-about-the-thing

Review link
http://www.tabsout.com/?p=19014

 EARTH UNIVERSAL – “CURTAINS OF SILENCE HUNG ABOUT THE THING”

reviewed by Ryn Masteller

"If anyone was gonna make extraterrestrial contact, it was gonna be Earth Universal. And by “anyone,” I mean anyone between Earth Universal and Jazznoise and Miguel A. Garcia, mainly because of Earth Universal’s use of shortwave in their compositions. Sounds like deep-space transmissions. Which is cool. And if we’re going to get all Star Trek on you, all Asimov, all “Childhood’s End,” then we’re going to have to recognize that extraterrestrial contact is the thing that brings humanity together. Not climate change. Not Bitcoin. Not Trump. No, extraterrestrial contact, and that’s FINAL. So Earth Universal is basically speeding up the process, and we’re really, really grateful. Jeff Gburek and Hubert Wińczyk “[emit] various organic and electronic signals from the ground to the sky to represent the diversity of life forms here,” for the sole purpose of giving any non-Earth-originating beings an idea of what to expect. I’m telling you, I’m not joking: “Curtains of Silence Hung About the Thing” is a varied and vibrant paean to Earth life and communication, a fitting ode to whatever you run across or whatever you imagine. The horrific, the weird, the sublime – it’s all represented. And side B “contains tracks inspired by the RE_WOLTA theater performance, which is something that you’re going to have to look up in your spare time, because I’m not paid by Tabs Out. But for Earth Universal, this is a fantastic tape, and I recommend you have at it posthaste."

Tape Runs Out for Louis Sarno

from Louis Sarno's Facebook page

News Flash, June 8! : I've decided to add to RABBITS bandcamp album Rabbits a bonus track recorded in 2017 in honor or the life and works of Louis Sarno remembered here by Jim Jarmusch. Sarno's recordings of the Bayaka Pygmies' music and their lives in the rainforest created a whole new approach to the idea of field recording for me, inspired deeper, broader listening, and revealed the role of music & sound in daily life among the people. Since the underlying percussive instrumentation of RABBITS is akin, it seems in keeping with the spirit, although Tape Runs Out for Louis Sarno is in fact a home studio piece, with no field recordings, no sounds from the environment, except the environment of the sounds. Only those who purchase the album will be able to hear it on the bandcamp album page but this Soundcloud version https://soundcloud.com/jeff-gburek/tape-runs-out-for-louis-sarno will remain posted until further (or disappear without) notice  ;)

yes, me again :)

Rabbits: Soundscapes in homage to Z'ev with bonus track dedicated to Louis Sarno

   

 rabbits, full length album, 45 minutes

   Introducing Rabbits, a percussion-oriented, textural soundscape album, very well experienced with headphones. Beware, some of the things you hear may actually be in the recording even though it seems like they should not be there.

   Sounds heard in these acousmatic compositions are hybrid: objective field recording, interactive field recording (where the recordist enters from beyond the 4th wall, introducing live personal sound), improvised on-site percussion performances (for no audience, until now) and radio captures, re-sampled voices. While on tour in Bruxelles, Louvain-le-Neuve, Liege, Lille, Paris, I began some of my recordings rather consciously in homage to Z'EV --Wiki on Z'EV -- who had died on December 16, 2018 the actions in some sense constituting memorial service, pushing the spirit of found-object tribal percussion into immediate inspiration. Back at home, in my studio, I added chants, accents and counter-points. When I realized there was an actual album developing, it was Chinese New Year, almost 2 months after Z'EV's death. I noticed he too was sign of the Rabbit, hence the title. The two figures on the cover are from my personal collection of percussion designs, works in progress. The album includes also field recordings from Gdansk, Dublin, recorded by myself, and Bali (mixed into Rabbits 3), sent to me by Anastasia Nia Arkhangelskaya. Special thanks to Thibault Delferiere for organizing the concert at Ateliers del la Baraque, where the metal platforms and stairways gave rise to the first layers of the Rabbits material. 

  Listen & place orders for physical media here: 

https://jeffgburekprojects.bandcamp.com/album/rabbits

 Process Statement

   The idea that the arrow of time moves in the direction of the always new, and the never again, stays with me while composing, as an improvisation ethos, rendering the balance between them as a danced fulcrum, the tip (of the hat) to counter gravities, on either side of the rainbow. It's the wobble that creates the tension, whether that be with pure ideas sketched into linguistic signs, digital triggers or pure actions improvised with variable or destiny-factored intention. The aim of time is to be true to the evolving effort of both my assemblage itself and the messages hidden inside the assembly of sound energies surging into the field of composition. All of it there for you to find, alone. There is something sacred and sacrificial in the ritual of banging out the count, whether that be on some atomic clock or on one's own medicine drum, desk or petrol tank. Something in doing what must amount to the thing rendered as one's own. Resonance is the aim.
I'm up for the count, as much as I'm down for it.

News Flash, June 8! : I've decided to add to RABBITS
as bonus track recorded in 2017 in honor or the life and works of Louis Sarno, since the instrumentation is akin, although Tape Runs Out for Louis Sarno is a studio piece. Only those who purchase the album will be able to hear it on the bandcamp album page but the Soundcloud version will remain posted until further (or disappear without) notice  ;)
https://soundcloud.com/jeff-gburek/tape-runs-out-for-louis-sarno

Julius Eastman, Precarity & Legacy

the precarity and the legacy of Julius Eastman
seem to be one and the same, in terms of a legend, 

fitting the paradigm of the off-base,
outsider (or ousted), "difficult" genius, the alien --
such as Artaud, from whom this blog derives it's name,
Julius lived outside of time, ranting, praising, suffering,
composing in the interstitial game plans "between fixes"
Appearing to be a man "done with society" - spiritized -
yet entirely at odds with religion, the tele-evangelicals --
He lived outside of time or "just outside" (out of doors)
all the time, seemingly ready & uncompromisingly
singing at the drop of a hat, "for a song" --
for the prophecy, of the lord of endorphins--
as if to speak -discourse- were too much drag already *
-- even in the middle of this amazing interview from 1984
with David Garland, who deserves a garland,
for preserving this tape...

https://spinningonair.org/episode-2-julius-eastman/

Julius Eastman, who some people know
from the Meredith Monk days,
when he pitched his voice in --for he was not shy,
and the aforementioned tape unspools his charm,
coming in somewhere between field hollers
and Gavin Bryars (of "Jesus' Blood") -- gospel --
on a hot aluminum roof  -- and yet others may not
have known him for his own piano & ensemble compositions,
since his vagabondage and 

ongoing "argument with the Lord"
prevented all semblance of "establishment" 

from taking hold -- even while we have 

this mind-blowing 3 and 1/4 hour set
of performances on the following virtual album

Julius Eastman - Unjust Malaise (full album)
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxtLoItArrc

There forms in my mind, when I think of Julius Eastman,
the quintessential brink-man, a minimalist composer
amid the free jazz vibes of the Lower East Wherever,
 the Sinner Saint, some cat you meet in an alley,
some cat you speak to guessing the spin of the mind
bridged behind those eyes peaks pointed ears,
scribbles on bar-stools, and you are sure he's got someone,
somewhere to call home, because, you think
this shit can't be this way, that such a person wanders
without home, hither and thither

until it dawns on you, the generosity & humor
of such a spirit flies melting
Icarus wings --belongs to wind --
& the NY Times gentrification overdrive,
the soul of the street-person, dies
withdrawn into the social monastic memory,
of smart-phone brain-lock-- google --
  Back in the day, you may have
met such a Moondog, on any corner,
the brave and lonely lover
of wabi-sabi Charles Ives
meets Albert Ayler
and granted open mind
unmitigated attention

 

but what happened to the world of seeking soothsayers and gymnosophes

after all the rainbows

became enclosed in windows

 ipads

flat plasmic light forced the eyes 

as if the whole collapse
of the spirit of the malcolms
and kings & ra's
the physical culture
itself of relation
zombied out in the road
the displaced 
or withered at the helm
 struts of ahab's boat
proclaiming I culture
of ishmael
the foolology
knowing root from fruit
swinging in the breeze

 

 " I speak like Ali Baba (“The Arabian Pope”)

Who when he spoke the magic words,

“Open this sucker up,” and the mountain swang, envisioned one day

There would be a John named Trane who would blow the same shit

I blow with the deep fear of John on the island
looking at the actual devil

--Amiri Baraka

And if not the devil, then to the other side... Eastman... 

 ------------------------------------

   * Julius seemed to be truly between worlds infantile, dadaist, bound by his own spells and these words from Nate Mackey seem appropriate

 "... enough to induce an exasperated scat or an incipient stutter or a lapse into baby talk (Nuh) … 

the advent of “unsay’s / day”  --