The Sonic Circuits Festival was amazing this year. There was lot’s of creative music/sound/weirdness happening all over, and I think Ergo gave one of our best shows yet. Big thanks to all who put it together. Here’s a brief clip of our performance:
These incredibly dense, complex, beautiful sounds come from a field recording of a late night walk at I-Park in East Haddam, CT. It was amazing how loud and truly rhapsodic it became at night, all the crickets, insect, birds and frogs came out to speak and sing to one another. I intended to edit it down, but new, fascinating sounds continuously rise and fall, so sampling at any point will reveal something interesting. midnight at I-Park by srokasonic
This is just a random scrap from the cutting room floor of the Cherubim record in progress. I thought it was interesting-ish… but not interesting-ish enough… Randomscrap008 by srokasonic
Added a whole new layer of flexibility to my Max sequencers while here at I-Park. This is the very, very rough draft, but wait and see. Ipx004 by bzabza
Nobody likes going to the dentist, but any brass player can tell you how debilitating it can be- to your playing, your income or your art. I recently had to have a rear molar extracted due to a build up of bacteria in the roots of a botched root canal (that’s another story). In recent years I practiced trombone regularly to maintain my technique, but I focused mostly on developing my compositional voice and the performative capabilities of my Max/MSP instrument. In the past few months though, I’d been practicing trombone quite diligently and trying to break through to some new expressive sounds, which do require my technique and embouchure strength to be in peak condition. I had to stop practicing for a week or so while I heal (although I did make it through a gig the day after), and now I’m hoping it won’t be too difficult to return to where I was. My mouth, my embouchure, and my playing hurt and feel very awkward, it’s difficult to eat. Fortunately (I suppose), I don’t make a living as a working trombone player, so my income wasn’t terribly effected, although I will now need a VERY expensive tooth implant, (without the aid of insurance). Oooh, those dental blues hurt in so many ways.
Guitarist Yuko Pepe and myself have recently embarked on a collaboration we’re calling Cherubim. We’ve been playing together for the past few years in the noise, rock, improv, collective 12,000 Trees and wanted to see what that aesthetic paired down to the two of us would sound like. Cherubim is also a completely improvised project, with Yuko’s unique approach to sound, using guitar and fx, and and my trombone playing, singing and Max/MSP sampling of all of the above. It has yielded some interesting results so far, below are two tracks from our upcoming EP. We’ll be doing one of our first live gigs on Friday, July 6th at La Sala in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (at the old location of Monkey Town) and more in the coming months.
“Ambient, avant-garde and free jazz mingle in seven tracks that offer dissonant patterns underpinned by insistent drones, and some unexpected snippets of skewed melody that temper the austerely rarefied quality of the music.” Wow, that was a mouthful haha. A new review from prog-blog Fire of Unknown Origin.
An interesting and thoughtful review from Glenn Astarita in AllAboutJazz.com. Thanks Glenn! “Ergo’s modus operandi is not easily categorized, which is a good thing. A mark of distinction pervades throughout these compositions, partly engineered with budding layers, climactic opuses, subtle tonalities and a horde of compelling contrasts”