Keith Rowe - The Room

Now, back to something really weird.  Keith Rowe, formerly the guitarist for house favorites AMM, is probably one of the most influential underground guitarists of all time.  He was one of the first guitarists to pioneer a tabletop prepared guitar technique wherein the instrument is placed flat on a table and manipulated with various found objects to create unusual and unconventional timbres.  After quitting AMM for the second time in 2004 (a move of which he's apparently quite proud), Rowe's solo performance and album release schedule has picked up markedly, as has his further exploration of the possibilities of Electroacoustic Improvisation (EAI), a loosely-defined branch of free improvisation with an emphasis on live computer processing of improvised sound sources.  This, a 2007 solo release, is regarded by some as Rowe's best solo album and was released on Erstwhile Records, which courageously releases an impressive amount of good EAI to a generally apathetic public (awesomely enough, the label also eschews barcodes in their packaging).

While Rowe's contributions to AMM often seem intended to amplify the sounds of his unusual guitar approach into a space (i.e. a room or concert hall), The Room sounds to me much more inward, as if he is listening to the innards of the things producing the sound.  This impression is probably intensified by the fact that Rowe's improvisations sound like they're directly input to the recording device, rather than amplified and miked.  In any case, the result is a single 38:57 continuous track (though there are brief silences between sections) of droning guitar tone, amplified signals and electronic processors, some traces of Rowe's signature radio frequency manipulation, and some visceral textures produced by Rowe's physical manipulation of the guitar's strings.  If that description doesn't sound like much, please be aware that the actual sounds contained on this disc are very difficult to verbalize!  Though this album is much too indie to appear on YouTube, this video of Rowe playing prepared guitar will at least give you a better idea of what some of this sounds like (though I personally prefer not having these bizarre sounds attached to any visual explanations for their origins).  To me, the dominant timbres of the music are a sort of ambient hum (presumably the guitar), and a more rhythmically dynamic, twittering, upper-frequency sort of repetitive digital bleeping.  It's fascinating how the textures overlap in a sort of progressively sliding series of layers, with one tone source pulsing gently while another simultaneously rapidly dances on top, and before you know it one of the sounds has disappeared while your ears were transfixed by another, and a new one is just moving into the picture.

How does this music compare to free improvisation like AMM?  Well, for starters, I think it's not completely discrete--if there was some way to only hear what Rowe was doing during certain AMM performances (I'm thinking especially of the drone-heavy 2001 album Fine), I think it might sound a lot like parts of this album, despite Rowe's written assertions that it's an attempt to go somewhere completely new.  In other ways, though, it's much colder, more alien and less organic than AMM's albums, conjuring a claustrophobic atmosphere (perhaps there's a connection to the album's title and the feeling the music conveys) and a sort of digital industrial feel that never really occurs on AMM albums.  Not that it's a particularly bad thing--I vividly remember on my first listen feeling (perhaps around the 22:30 minute mark, when Rowe starts scraping the strings beneath a piercing electronic tone) a powerful sense of unease and a strange, alien emotion that no other music has ever made me feel before.  Though it's far from the warm-and-fuzzy elation that most listeners hope to achieve from an album, the experience remains ingrained in my memory as an inspirational example of music's unlimited emotional potential, and as a sort of revelation (how often do you feel a feeling you've never felt before, right?!).  Don't get me wrong--Rowe's sometimes laughably-strident views on musical aesthetics (which seem to come with the territory of free improvisation) inform this music with an uncommon level of academic seriousness--but attempting to deny the music's very real emotional power in the name of disagreeing with Rowe's artistic choices seems to unjustly disregard his contributions to the ever-growing palette of potential moods and emotions available to listeners and musicians alike. 

It's hard to really assess the quality of music like this--it's so fundamentally different structurally and in its aesthetic goals that even when talking in terms of elemental sound, it's hard to separate what's "good" from "bad," and the subjectivity of personal preference that's present with all music becomes a starting point rather than an ultimate conclusion.  Despite Rowe's professed anti-virtuosic method, though, he clearly (in my ears, at least) has a flair for space, flow and tone/timbre choice that few other improvisers do.  Though I think The Room occasionally suffers from the sort of repetitiousness and aimless structure that understandably pops up in a lot of free improv, the frigid atmosphere and occasional moments of revelation (like the digital explosion at about 24:25) make it a much-appreciated part of my collection (though I'm not sure I currently have the interest to sustain a lot more similar additions).  Support some fringe indie music facilitators and grab a copy from Erstwhile!

This and That (The Piping of Earth)

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Adding, swelling
More in one spot
Growing, staying
Pretty much the same
Slowly, quicker
Helps if it's hot

At once--release!
In pieces small enough to have no name

Hurry, arms outstretched
Carry seeds of gold on uplifting fingers
Don't delay--to the weightless depths!
Peek with wonder
Fertile currents allow spring again!
You can know if you don't understand

Choosing, changing
Switching order
Sculpting, fleshing
Accidents become the laws
Encircling meaning
With a porous border

A shape is born!
The product falsely clarifies the cause

Hurry, arms outstretched
Carry seeds of gold on uplifting fingers
Don't delay--to the weightless depths!
Peek with wonder
Fertile currents allow spring again!
You can know if you don't understand

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This poem is about a dream I had--it was one of those dreams with very little action, but a whole lot of implicit meaning and impressionistic understanding.  I was facing a giant aquarium that was lit from the inside, full of tiny microorganisms floating around.  In the dream I remember feeling it was imperative that I get to the aquarium with what I was holding in my hands (which I knew was the beginning of a new life) so it could grow in the hot, fertile waters--and I wasn't the only one there ferrying life to the waters.

I spend a lot of In Not-Even-Anything Land trashing on our unqualified glorification of life (Hiding from Heaven and Dedicated... in particular), but this song celebrates the utterly inexplicable, microscopic transmutation that occurs when inanimate material becomes life.  Although I think we humans prize life as the ultimate good without giving much thought to the greater picture of the other amazing things going on in the universe, the beginning of life is a pretty amazing thing...just not necessarily better than something else. 

Among other things, the music experiments with ambiguous time signatures (for life's seeming randomness) and also with the guitar's timbre--I used a fine brush to play a hotly-miked guitar on the chorus to try and get ahold of the mysterious feeling the dream gave me.

Hiding from Heaven

Hiding from Heaven

Elbows gasping, nails bleeding—following electricity (whatever THAT is)

I fought my way out of a box to find myself in a bigger box
Then it hit me—it’s not about boxes!
They’re always collapsing—you’re always in the (W)ay

If you think you’re outside the box, then you forgot
The hardest rocks are the ones rattling round inside our heads--Dead!
I found you no longer breathing from your heels
But from your throat!

Each radical breath you take is speeding you to
The shallow grave your lungs are digging for you

It will be filled by a frail form that failed to feel the flailing madness

In the old days they called it ‘hiding from heaven’—back in the day
These days they call it “faith”

Ears sputtering, spine coughing—chased down by stars (whatever THEY are)
I sucked to empty self-fulfilling prophecies, filling my saintly virtue
Til the whole of my being leaked excess in puddles on the floor

What’s more—I awoke to find my “I”ness gone
In its place, a view through the eye of the storm

Can I trouble you to stop a sec, explain why death’s so bad
When everything that ever lived on earth is dead except for this now

Huh? Huh? Don’t make me laugh!

You reek of a living way of thinking, stinking of “human first”—“life as good”

You’re clawing forward as you fall back instead of graciously giving yourself to
A deep grave, gallantly going on with the great game, gulping gutfuls of ground
Grasp the gatekeeper’s grip when you gasp in a new way

In the old days they called it “hiding from heaven”—back in the day
These days they call it “salvation”

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Before I launch into what’s likely to be another tiresome rant, let me just comment on that very subject. This is the reason I love and MUST practice music and songwriting. You can discuss these things with prose, but you’ll never achieve the thrill of understanding the same (or many more) ideas from only five, well-chosen and aesthetically appealing words. You can write poems about these ideas, but you can never feel the same sublime, soaring feeling or crushing weight without the addition of music and at least one singing human voice. There’s something irreplaceable in that combination, and the coalescence of popular music’s conciseness and accessibility with high art’s depth, audacity and range of emotion is dizzyingly intoxicating—a vein that I can see myself mining for the rest of my days. So, I’ll try to explain myself in these entries, but only for those interested in a different perspective on the sounds than they’ve already provided themselves, and also, personally, to help me understand what I actually think myself.

Out of these 11 songs, “Hiding from Heaven” is unequivocally my baby…a “Rosemary’s” baby of sorts, but no less loved for it. Ever since it began its 2+ year gestation period on the back patio of the farm as an enormous, serpentine, wonky poem, this song has constantly harassed my thoughts. It took two years before I had fit the entire asymmetrical shape of the poem to music, and when it came to recording, “Hiding from Heaven” was the first song I started in November and one of the last ones finished in early April (most of the songs took 1-2 hours to mix, this one took over 4). A lot of thoughts were expended on how best to translate the booming din I’d been hearing in my head into a thing of dark, terrible majesty (insert “yeah, Elliot, it really is TERRIBLE” joke here) and you can rest assured I started feeling sympathetic pangs of the song’s professed madness in the process.

Musically, the song is a culmination of a large number of influences, tempered with a sense of my own personality. Despite its length, the song moves quickly and often abruptly between different musical sections—from the dissonant and odd-metered intro to the spacious first vocal section, the proggy breakdown, etc. I’ve tried my hardest to populate this song with guitar riffs and leads that other players will appreciate, but also that don’t tread the same ground too many times, playing with the song’s themes, dissonance, listener expectations and musical styles. A lot of these parts didn’t seem humanly possible when I started attempting takes, so hopefully that’s a good sign…most importantly, though, they strive to support the song’s overarching ideas. This principle has been crucial for all of these songs, but “Hiding from Heaven” required even more reaching on my part to bring the ideas to fruition—I used (but by no means invented) a few different techniques to get uncommon sounds out of the guitar. The eerie sustained notes at 1:45 are produced by a rubbing/tapping a steel slide on the strings; the single notes with the high-pitched texture around 3:10 come from scraping the pick perpendicularly against the strings windings instead of plucking. Finally, I couldn’t have realized my ideals for this song if my voice hadn’t gotten better. The theatrics you already heard in “No More” are turned up a notch in so many ways and the emotional brunt of the poem required a number of different singing styles and moments of strangeness and wildness to illustrate its intensity. I mention all of this out of a sense of accomplishment, but also to give you an idea of just how obsessively hard I worked to make this song sound how it does.

Lyrically, this is a long and complicated song. It’s heavily influenced by the ideas of and uses a few images from the ancient Taoist text, the Chuang-Tzu to illustrate a feverishly personal mind journey. You know you’re in for a fun time when a song starts with sensory dissociation and disbelief in such “comprehensible” and “tangible” items as electricity and stars…teetering on the edge. The one thing I keep thinking of when rounding up my thoughts for this note is Thomas Paine’s revolutionary “Common Sense” pamphlet—“Hiding from Heaven” means ignoring common sense—the way things simply are—attempting to circumvent demonstrable reality in favor of a coddling lollipop philosophy that panders to our most selfish indulgences. In my opinion, the major religious traditions offered in the world’s marketplace today offer solutions to undeniable human needs that insult our progress as thinking beings. Despite everything our science, art and long historical record has shown us, the best we can come up with is still an anthropomorphized “god” who created everything and will reward us with an eternal “after”life that fulfills all of our creature wants and pacifies all of our living fears—that is, only if we follow the arbitrary system of morality in the book that He (never She) wrote! Please! First of all, our infinitesimal scientific knowledge about the vastness of the universe, physics and biology here on earth demonstrate that a human-centric vision of the universe is a laughable proposition—on top of that, an omnipotent god that looks like a human and any system that is so clearly tailored to compensate for and satisfy human-only desires can only be human creations. Secondly, the justification for this system can be distilled to just one element—fear: fear of not having enough to eat, fear of physical pain, fear of losing loved ones, and fear of the inexplicable experience of death. These fears are entirely reasonable aspects of the human condition, but I think that we, as thinking creatures, deserve a better response than the utter fantasy that is fed to us by the religious institutions who can’t see beyond their own experience of power. There are currently a lot of social and environmental threats to our human world, but we can’t fight them effectively if we don’t address the fundamental ways of thinking that spawn them.

In spite of the above, this song isn’t merely another attempt to tear down organized religion—all you need for that is a bit of common sense, and it’s been done eloquently and effectively many times in the past 200+ years, regardless of whether or not the masses have climbed on board. Rather, it’s an attempt to address the same base human dilemmas in a way that takes into account our current advances (which should be obvious enough to be taken for granted) and reaches beyond to the unknowable to postulate a meaning—a rational mystic’s rally call. Sure, it’s much more difficult than jumping through moral hoops for a pie in the sky, but it’s ultimately a lot more rewarding and realistic.

Achievement of this sort of reconciliation not only requires abandonment of the status quo, but also engagement of our mystical potential (see “Head in the Clouds,” which also cautions against over-rationalization)—it requires intuitive experience of the Tao—(a descriptor for) the ineffable, indescribable, incomprehensible, inhuman, infinite and chaotic way the universe operates and is. For me personally, this process was a turbulent one that included several points of despair. When it comes to conjuring visions of the holistic nature of the universe, there’s a fine line between despair and ecstasy—easing the attachment to the knee-jerk ego response and ultimately abandoning the arrogance of any sense of human importance in the universe eventually replaces fear and despair with serene calmness and even sublime ecstasy. It’s not the human that takes first place, but the awe-inspiring, all-inclusive storm of the universe, from which we’re kidding ourselves if we say we’re separate. Death of a living organism is just one of incalculable aspects of the universe, and seen in such a vast perspective isn’t very dramatic at all. As the only living creatures (we’re aware of) that have the ability to contemplate the void, death is less of a loss of our beloved senses to be feared, and more of a reunification with the one to be anticipated when the time comes—to me a concept much more empowering, exciting and “other” than an eternity of sensory fulfillment on a cloud. So, despite the song’s foreboding atmosphere, the message is ultimately a positive (if challenging) one. Oh, and just remember—these are all opinions.

There, I finally got some ideas across without explaining the song line by line! I am pretty satisfied with the aesthetics of this song, though, and if you’ll indulge my hubris I’ll mention a line that indicates the layered detail that went into the word choice for the whole poem: “I sucked to empty self-fulfilling prophecies, filling my saintly virtue/till the whole of my being leaked excess in puddles on the floor,” which can be variously taken to mean “I sucked” (in the parlance of our time), “I sucked/latched [on]to self-fulfilling prophecies that were empty,” and “I sucked self-fulfilling prophecies until they were empty.”

Not sure how much I like this professor Elliot…luckily tomorrow’s song doesn’t require his services in the least, and he won’t be coming back in this capacity any time soon.

Box Elder (Virtue Complete)

You're out of order!
At least, any order I can see
You don't even know why you do the things you do, but you do them!
Ugly, even hideous in eyes that fail to see beyond near sight

Slender branch no good for burning
growth not quick enough returning
winding trunk too bent for planing,
and a grain unfit for staining
Not worth chopping, stopping interest
in your wisdom buried deep
asleep

Bend in a breeze you don't need to understand and
if you break, it's ok.
Bending, breaking, who decided they were different anyway?
You never know; you feel
Everything imaginary, everything is real

You sprang from a great clod
You sprang, an unhewn log
You sprang from yourself!

The laws that you obey change with the wind
As soon as you begin the old rules blow away
but you don't mind

Action is overrated; supple reaction makes for taller growth
Growing toward a fall
Falling to the sky

When they think they know what's good
they will cut you down to make room for square plans
Plans that stand til wind blows
Plans based on good that is not bad
With an end that is not beginning
Because they know when they go they do not return
When they are gone for good you will begin
from end anew

Bend in a breeze you don't need to understand and
when you break, it's ok.
Bending, breaking, who decided they were different anyway?
You never know; you feel
Everything imaginary, everything is real

From the In Not-Even-Anything Land CD Tray

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This is one of my favorite creations from the summer of 2007. The titular box elder is pictured above--it's located on my aunt and uncle's farm in Walla Walla, among my favorite (if not my very favorite) places to be. It's a curious tree--not particularly pretty, symmetrical or shapely. It tends to blow over, break and continue growing in odd directions. It's also a great place to sit in the shade on a hot Walla Walla day. The tree reminded me of a couple stories from the Chuang Tzu about a tree that grows to a monstrous size because it isn't ideal for any of the applications for which humans cut trees down. So, by being useless, the tree lives a happy and long life.

The song is meant to be a mess with no apparent structure (poetically or musically), just like the tree. I'm pretty happy with the words I've chosen insofar as they evoke a number of meanings (for me anyway) and I've been a little unhappy with my tendency to explain too much on this blog, so I'll just say generally that we humans seem to try to understand structure and usefulness from a fairly limited perspective--and often with catastrophic results--when in reality what's "good" (more like what's efficacious) is less fixed and more situational. Perhaps an alternative to attempting to understand and control unfathomable and uncontrollable situations and events (like, why are we here, man?) a bit more supple and reactive attitude might result in a deeper intuitive understanding of what's going on. Less wordily: Go with the flow, and nothing can break you. Or maybe it will break you, but maybe being broken isn't a problem from a wider perspective.

In seeming validation of this trash heap of a song, the rough winter of '07 and '08 kicked this tree's ass pretty bad--it lost some major limbs and looks much less full, and perhaps a bit uglier. It's still growing strong, though. I'm about halfway through putting this song to music which mimics the lyric's formlessness. It probably won't be easy listening, but then again I'll probably have a smile on my face when I sing it.

Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

It's beneath my dignity to use my feet
Legs are for squatting; legs are for shaving
The hiss of tires, the thump of shocks is something sweet
Ancient blackened corpses are for burning, not for saving

Tell me why I shouldn't use what god allowed me?
Invention and convenience are just parts of being free
We're drinking from a cup and it ain't got no bottom
I'm just saying--smoke 'em if you got 'em!

Alright, if you insist, I'll move my legs to keep the fat off
If you want them to want your body, I guess it takes a little pain
Ride a bike to get somewhere? Please, don't make me scoff!
But you'd better bet your ass that I won't do it in the rain!

Tell me why I shouldn't use what god allowed me?
Invention and convenience are just parts of being free
We're drinking from a cup and it ain't got no bottom
I'm just saying--smoke 'em if you got 'em!

The silky touch of blacktop sends shivers to my groin
Grass is for fairways; trees are too dirty
Coffee from a paper cup is easier to enjoy
Commuting on a freeway...going 30

Tell me why I shouldn't use what god allowed me?
Invention and convenience are just parts of being free
We're drinking from a cup and it ain't got no bottom
I'm just saying--smoke 'em if you got 'em!


______________________________________

After a few 'heavy' songs, here's something a bit lighter (aka a throwaway). I wrote this shortly after moving to Bellevue. I decided I wanted to go for a walk, but it turns out the Factoria area is not as well-equipped for pedestrians as it is for motorists--I ended up having to walk on the shoulder of a pretty busy road while the cars whizzed by because there was nary a sidewalk in sight. So, I focused my indignant ire into irreverent words directed at the lazy majority.

I had an especially lewd alternate title for this one, but I can't for the life of me remember it.

Dedicated to You, But You Were Napping

How do you feel?
Do you feel now?
You lie, the final vessel of a life full
Wrapped in blankets of earth
Kind bedfellows--smaller points of life pull
Gently sharing your old form for what it's worth

What do you see?
Do you see now?
A mass of many units tightly clinging
As they relax what was so you abandons form
A million pieces wild and beautiful and singing!
Whirling knowingly and madly in the storm

[---]
[---]
In the spinning cloud of [---] the patterns rearrange
Here death and life are one and nothing finds it strange
I hope you felt no fear accepting senseless night
Existence is not limited to life




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Sarah's comforter cover, purchased for our new apartment, makes a special appearance in this picture. The punning title of this one finds its roots on the Soft Machine's second album. For a more obvious hint, also see Matching Mole's first album (Robert Wyatt is the source of both). If you still can't figure out who it's dedicated to after that, say ten 'Hail Mary-s', take 5 aspirin, and call me in the morning.

This one reads a little bit dark, but in reality it's more of a celebratory song, dedicated to a deceased loved one. Spoiler alert: Things are about to get pretty hairy and philosophical. If you'd rather explain the song for yourself, skip to the last paragraph. Death is a departure from the sense- and identity-filled existence we're all currently leading, and that departure frightens a lot of people. Rather than see death as a mournful occasion, though, I'd prefer to see it as something truly glorious--a more complete return to the awe-inspiring mass of matter and energy from which our 'unique identities' sprang in the first place (and were only illusorily separate from, for that matter).

As living things, we humans tend to take the characteristics that are unique to living things (humans first, animals second, plants third) as what is good or ideal. Since we have no experience of death and can't conceptualize the experience of the quaintly-titled "inanimate," they constitute a black void of fear. Really, though, it's fairly arrogant to think that human consciousness is the only type of consciousness in this crushingly-huge universe that we infinitesimally understand. So, why not think of death as a chance to experience existence on a very different and more universal--if inconceivable--level? To me, that's not only heartening, it's exciting.

These ideas are partly inspired by a story from chapter 18 of the Zhuangzi in which Huizi finds Zhuangzi mourning his wife not by weeping, but by pounding on a tub and singing. Classic stuff.
The "[---]"s indicate wordless vocals--musical symbols for the jump from a fearful "Oh no, I can't feel anymore" to an entirely different experience. I've actually written all the music for this one--fingerpicked acoustic guitar in DADGAD tuning, for the interested. For many reasons, I personally consider this song one of my best accomplishments of the past several years.

The Hinge (Three in the Morning)

You were right; you are right
You were right; you are right
Can I tell you--if I told you
What would you do?
Can I convince you--would you smile?
If my face looked just like yours

You were right; you are right
You were right; you are right
Could it happen--what would happen?
How would we be then?
Stripped of the drag that grabs collision
Or idle, fallen to peaces?
Can the sacrifice be made without our blood?

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Lyrically, this one is based on a simple speculative question: What would happen to the human world if all of our large-scale arguments were resolved with one side's simple "OK, you're right." Would the absence of thinly-constructed right/wrong binary oppositions remove the friction from our collisions, or would we consequently have nothing to do, fallen to pieces (peaces). "Stripped of drag that grabs collisions" has two meanings, one more related to physics and one more lightheartedly related to the silliness in which some moral stances are clothed.

It's funny how complicated our world 'problems' are in relation to how simple this response would be, if only someone could drop their unilateral and undeniable sense of correctness. At least for me, though, saying "Yep, you're right" is often the most difficult part of resolving an argument.

I originally wrote these lyrics in a modern British literature class (Sorry Gaurav; we were talking about T.S. Eliot, so I'm sure you'll understand). Musically, this song is pretty experimental. A simple guitar line opens the tune, then the first section is sung a cappella, the guitar line repeats--more embellished--then the second section is sung a cappella. Finally, the guitar line returns in a more complex form, ending in cacophony. The first guitar line is meant to convey the one-sided simplicity that seems to resonate from most human-made doctrines, and the rich cacophony is meant to represent the blurry, splattered mess that is usually much closer to reality. Unless you disagree, that is, in which case, I admit it--you're right!

I was trying to work out the vocal melody for this song the last day my voice worked properly. Maybe it's a sign.

Oh Well

Oh well of life--please give me water to drink
Dim grow my eyes and my head it cannot think
It feels like it's been years since your water has touched my lips
Is this the truth? I fear my life has been eclipsed
Time outstripped!
Please, just one sip!

I know you're there, deep inside
If I look I can find where you are, deep inside
On the outside!

Oh well of life--your water tastes so good!
I feel sharp as a knife; you brought me back--I knew you could!
If you promise to be mine, I'll say I'm yours forevermore
If life can be this fine, then life is what I'm living for
I don't need more!
I won't keep score!

I know you're there, deep inside
If I look I can find where you are, deep inside
On the outside!
On the outside!