ale{atori}c

i’m playing some ambient looping guitar tonight (sat. may 7. 2022) at lemieux galleries, taking inspiration from brian eno, harmonia, and terry riley. 300 block of julia street, 6-8 pm.

This was not a “song”, at least insofar as I did not rehearse for it other than to check my equipment that morning. (This will very apparent to you after listening to any portion this.) But it was noizefest, so there ya go.

Sign by Ray Bong, who through the miracle of the internet knew about my other life as an Apple developer and a certain pissy email that I got from the CEO-emeritus Steve Jobs. I don’t really think that makes me his “enemy”, but it was good stagecraft, and was probably the most interesting part of the set.

So here’s the recording of what turned out to be my first completely solo set ever, clocking in around 12 minutes, and titled thanks to Ray Bong. You can hear him shout out at the very end!

#11 “Enemy of Steve Jobs” (Noizefest NOLA 2009) (17.6MB mp3, 12:49)

Thanks to Phil of Slobodan for letting me use his amp (that’s his feet in the picture above). Setup was 6 string electric through overdrive, looper (Boomerang), then echo (Memory Man) into the amp. Most of the noise is the Memory Man delay loopback.

raga on the farfisa mini compact, with moog phaser.

#8 Persepolis In Ruins (4:44, 6.5MB mp3)

here’s the third in this week’s song of the week series using the monome and boiinngg. 

for this one i used a synth called automat which is really nice (and free).

this setup happens to do a great Krzysztof impression (apologies to mike) although some might say it’s more Raymond Scott or Terry Riley-like.

i have video for this as well, which i may upload later.

krzsztfsh (5:20) 7.4MB mp3

banksy graffiti art on st claude ave

again, using the monome and boiinngg, a quick improvisation.

it’s frighteningly easy to make get a terry riley / steve reich type thing happening.

so much fun, i could do this forever…

inseaish (6:56) mp3 9.6MB

I thought that this week I might record an upbeat song to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama.

My free time got eaten up by an unexpected work call, but I was still able to get together with friends and had a hell of a time and a rockin’ jam.

And today, the plumbing backed up (I’ll spare you the details) so instead of doing any of my more elaborate ideas, I thought I would do what comes most natural to me. Without further ado, here is a simple one-take electric guitar improvisation in A, a bluesy ambient kinda thing, no edits or overdubs. 

Blues for the American Health Care System (9:00, 12.4MB mp3)

The first thing of the week is something I’ve been working on with my 12-string acoustic guitar. It’s the second of three recorded (so far) demo improvisations in a series I’ve done in an open G tuning. I plan to develop it as my technique improves:

After a half-lifetime of guitar, I only recently got decent at fingerpicking, after watching some free banjo lessons online and applying what I learned there to guitar as well as watching an instructional video by Doc Watson. Also, I’ve got a dusty old Takoma LP that I’ve listened to quite a bit in the past year with John Fahey, Leo Kotke and Peter Lang that connected with my endless background/fascination with old-time Appalachian music; other recent favorite listens are records by Sir Richard Bishop (“Polytheistic Fragments”) and Daniel Higgs, and as always Jack Rose and Pelt.