Showing posts with label field recordings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label field recordings. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Fennel - Carillon Air


Carillon Air is the name of the new 13 minute Fennel piece available through bandcamp and, more excitingly, absence of wax. As this blog has become a de facto repository of Fennel recordings, I'm dropping it off here with one of my summaries. The core of the piece was assembled from field recordings made in Berkeley and Riverside, CA. Early in January I bought a melodica for playing when I couldn't get around to a piano. Not much of a substitute for a piano, but the thing has its charms, and it really got me thinking a lot more about (what else?) melodic concerns than I had been previously.

In Carillon Air the melodica, layered against itself, provides harmony in the first section, a kind of prelude. From then on it plays a strictly melodic role and there is no more overdubbing. The lines were culled from a lengthy improvisation session recorded in a garden one gray (but still very beautiful) morning.

This piece is my first conscious attempt to record something which could be taken for the audio track of a short film - not just the musical score, but also sound effects, dialog, natural ambiance and all. Though I was concerned with the music moving forward in a coherent way, I didn't really have an imaginary film running in my mind while making this, so the 'plot' is highly ambiguous - I focused on feeling and the interaction of dissimilar sounds (my basic working approach from the start of this project).

Downloadable through either link above. More music coming, always...
& thanks again, Devin Sarno!

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Fennel - Resuming the Trail

Please enjoy the newest full-length Fennel album Resuming the Trail. Most of the work on this was done between early spring and late summer of this year, from the time I was anxiously waiting to see what would result of my school applications, up to just before I moved from Woodland Hills to Riverside. This is my most biographical and varied work yet, and the format this time around is quite different from before: there are 14 tracks adding to just over 35 minutes, and they're all seamless. No one track is fit to be isolated from the rest.

Field recordings were taken around Woodland Hills, Sherman Oaks, Santa Monica, Venice, Berkeley and Santa Barbara, California. These form a continuous environmental backdrop for the album, partly urban and partly natural, over which I put recordings of piano, guitar, voice, fujara (Slovakian overtone flute), and miscellaneous other sounds. My personal narrative unfolds in an exploded-fragmentary fashion, with much ambiguity. Some of the material was freely improvised and left unaltered; some of it was patched together from guided improvisations, and a little of it was completely premeditated and written out.

If you download this from Bandcamp ("name-your-price" as always), you'll get a couple bonus photos and a .pdf score for the piano part to one of the songs. You'll also get a good sized version of the swoon-worthy cover art made by Niv Bavarsky.

Huge thanks go out to everyone who has encouraged me or given advice or criticism of one kind or another. With the release of Resuming the Trail, I won't be producing new Fennel material for quite some time. Graduate study is quickly getting extremely time consuming. That said, I still think about music constantly and can guarantee the world will see more recordings come from me in the future.

Download for free or a donation

Friday, March 25, 2011

Fennel - Relics

Striking cover art by illustrator Cam Floyd

I'm very excited to finally give you all a new Fennel release. This 25 minute EP is called Relics because it deals with certain feelings and events that are now for the most part behind me. Work started on it shortly after the occurrence of my graduation from college last year, and continued on and off until the final touches were placed last February. All of the field recordings stem from in and around my home in Woodland Hills, CA.

"Deep Sky" was the very first thing I wrote after releasing A Leap Across A Chasm last June. The piece was inspired by walks around my neighborhood at certain times of day when the clouds and sunlight and trees all coalesce into something sublime. That kind of setting tends to fill me with a particular kind of cosmic longing or nostalgia that is hard for me to put into words. I would like to be forthcoming and acknowledge Brian Eno's "1/1" from Music for Airports as a major influence on the basic form of "Deep Sky"; from the first time I heard that magical track back in 2004, I had always wanted to attempt my own spin on the ambient piano-loop format. My loops (three main themes in different modes centered around the note D) were initially constructed from free improvisations, and then complicated by many dozens of small variations. I hoped to achieve a fractal-like effect, repetitive but ever-changing.

"Memorandum" has its roots in the early experiments that led to my debut full length. One weekend home from school, I was recording in my backyard when some negligence on my part led to an argument with my parents. Everything was caught on tape, but I didn't seriously consider using it for a piece until months later, when "Deep Sky" was nearly done. I ended up juxtaposing the fight with a much more serene memory of mine, that of a 100% ordinary afternoon spent working with my dad to repair a fence. Brought together, the two events give me a valuable, though incomplete, picture of my family dynamic. It is my hope that others will derive their own meaning.

Once again I have made my music downloadable for free at http://fennel.bandcamp.com. I sincerely appreciate all feedback and donations, two things that help ensure more releases in the future.

Best wishes to my readers and listeners!

Sunday, January 16, 2011

2010 - Fifty Great Releases, 15 - 11

15. William Basinski - Vivian & Ondine

William Basinski is one of the most adept composers to work with a writing process that in less skillful hands leads only to tedium: the tape loop piece. His best known works, the Disintegration Loops, explore the phenomenon of slow decay, as elegant orchestral passages on antiquated magnetic tape repeat over and over, each time losing sonic data as bits of the tape flake off. This newest work, Vivian & Ondine, is at the same time more subtle and more directly engaging than those prior masterpieces, making it one of his very best recordings.

At low volume or on speakers that can't provide much detail, Vivian & Ondine plays out much like Basinski's El Camino Real (2007). A neo-Classical theme of magisterial, sublime beauty is repeated again and again. The loop is short, only a handful of seconds, but it possesses timelessness - as one might experience from the iteration of a mantra, hearing the loop indefinitely causes moments just prior to or beyond the present one to take on an identical quality. Unlike El Camino Real, which is beautiful in a coldly austere and uninhabitable sense, the repeating theme of Vivian & Ondine is warmly reassuring and comfortable, like an infinite series of slow rolling waves in a tropical sea. If there really is anything to the healing power of music (which anecdotal evidence has suggested for centuries), this music has that to the fullest.

But beneath the surface of the aqueous main theme is a world of activity, as any pair of headphones will reveal when you listen to Vivian & Ondine in a very quiet room. Basinski compiled a collection of additional short loops, including gently percussive crackles and pops, delicate scrapes against guitar strings, siren-like chimes, and melodic and textural embellishments of the main theme. All the while the main theme repeats, Basinski adjusts which of these auxiliary loops is playing and how loudly (they are always kept low in the mix). Therefore Vivian & Ondine is much more than a simple tape loop composition, in fact having a generous live performance element; this recording was made live in one take in Basinski's studio in Los Angeles. Monumentally beautiful and full of details to discover for many, many listens.

14. Taylor Deupree - Shoals

I've had relatively less time to digest this album than the other ones this high on my list, but I could tell from the first 30 seconds of my first listen to it that it's special. Taylor Deupree - ambient artist, photographer, software designer and head of the consistently great label 12k Records - was given a pretty much ideal situation to make this album. He was afforded the full resources of the University of York Music Research Center, which presumably means he was allowed to use top equipment to make anything at all he could reasonably envision. When presented with such a multiplicity of options, an artist is often wise to set up some strict creative limitations to work within, which is what Deupree did: all of the sounds comprising Shoals are digitally enhanced recordings of Balinese and Javanese gamelan instruments.

With this stringent compositional decision in place, it's wondrous how much the album sounds like somebody placed a very tiny microphone in a natural setting, admist dripping branches, chattering insects, snapping twigs, distant bird cries, clattering rocks and rotting tree trunks. The lovely cover photograph and titles such as "Shoals", "Rusted Oak", and "Falls Touching Grasses" enforce this overall naturalistic aesthetic, and like habitats, the songs evolve, slowly, continuously, and organically. However, now and again sounds intrude that are clearly electronic and processed (especially on the more ambiguously titled "A Fading Found"), thwarting any attempt to categorize this as one of those sounds-of-nature ambient albums. In reality Shoals is a complex electroacoustic work, beautifully juggling sounds of polar opposite qualities - wood/metal, transient/stable, warm/cool, natural/fabricated - and contemplating the sole source of all those sounds richly deepens the experience.

In terms of Brian Eno's criteria for effective ambient music (that it should be as ignorable as it is engaging), Shoals strikes an almost perfect middle ground, but more often than not ends up being too engaging to ignore (certainly not a strike against it). Although there are not really any discernible melodies or harmonic progressions to hold on to, its diverse array of lush timbres and textures makes Shoals one compelling listen.

13. Chubby Wolf - Ornitheology

Here we go - another lengthy excursion into finely honed yet totally unabashed beauty. Chubby Wolf was the moniker of the late Danielle Baquet-Long for her solo releases, and this long two-sided cassette was only her third such work to see the light of day, after L'Histoire and the EP Meandering Pupa. I recommend all of my readers check out this detailed, heartfelt and difficult to follow up review over at 5 Against 4, which blog declared Ornitheology to be the best album of 2010. It's a big claim that I have no intention of trying to refute, as the album is indubitably flawless. Why it only landed at #13 on my list, well, quite a lot of music came out last year that to my ears is in a neighborhood of as 'good as it gets'; I've had some real hair splitting to do in numbering these Best 15, and basically I regard them all as essential.

Back to the actual reviewing. The two album-long tracks here are "On Burnt, Gauzed Wings" and "Phantasmagoria Of Nothingness (Prey To Our Emotions)". These are accompanied by the following poem, written by Danielle and printed in the cassette case insert: "You glue wings to / my ideas about love; / Though, / There is something in / the way they take flight, / spin and begird, / returning again / in the manner of flocks / that suggests / they sprouted manifestly." Combined with the dedication "To my Will", the message couldn't be more clear: this music is a direct distillation of love to sound waves. If it all sounds a little sentimental, it should. This is Romanticism with a capital R at its very finest, stripping away the intellect, the ego, and leaving only feeling. That pure feeling is presented with a raw intensity that has been matched only on albums by Celer (I'm thinking especially of Engaged Touches, Mane Blooms and I Love You So Much I Can't Even Title This).

Superficially speaking Ornitheology operates in the classic long-form Celer style, and many of the remarks I made about their albums Cursory Asperses and In Escaping Lakes, particularly about their use of through-composition and very slow change, apply equally well to this album. There are notable differences, however. Both tracks on Ornitheology use fairly restricted palettes, so they really sound like single long pieces, rather than ten or more short pieces with inaudible boundaries. The variations they undergo are intensional rather than extensional - different arrangements of consonance, dissonance, and dynamics are ceaselessly juxtaposed without conventional development or a sense of direction. The effect is somewhat like wandering through a very small and confining labyrinth in which the walls shift their configuration, constantly giving you slightly different views of the same central abstract object, namely, unwavering devotion. Immersing oneself in this feeling for fully 80 minutes is challenging, bracing, and ultimately affirming as it requires mustering quite a bit of devotion in itself.

It's a happy fact indeed that most Chubby Wolf albums have yet to be released, as we almost surely have additional gems to look forward to. Ornitheology is the brightest thus far.

12. Brother Raven - Diving into the Pineapple Portal

It's a bit difficult for me to explain why I like this short, quirkily-titled album quite so much, but a starting point is that my first listen to the opening track gave me a similar feeling as when I first heard the original recording of Terry Riley's "A Rainbow In Curved Air". What these pieces have in common includes a reliance on overlapping textures of short synth pitches, energetically and buoyantly repeating, with certain melodic lines using different echo periods, so that a thick, polyrhythmic construction results. Both of these pieces also work within a certain dreamy, laid back and positive vibe I associate with the 70s and psychedelics. Influences on Brother Raven, a synth-based duo from Seattle, WA, seem to include Kraut rock and/or so-called "kosmische" groups of the late 60s to 70s, more modern dream pop bands, and to somewhat less of an extent, contemporary electronica/glitch.

For all their experimenting with strange noises, the accessible melodic element to their music is always foremost, and there is also a strong rhythmic component to all of the tracks. "Diving Into The Pineapple Portal", the opening, longest and best track, settles into a joyful groove based on quintuple-time while duplets and triplets bubble about and compete for your attention. "Speaking Whale From My Sea Canoe" emphasizes sustained drone tones, appropriately enough, but it also features a background ostinato in a quick seven-time. Odd metric divisions like this are unusual for this kind of music, effectively anchoring the somewhat noodly melodies without giving the pieces a rhythmically boxed in and constrained feel. The closer "Happy Astronaut" utilizes this component best - I just can't count out how that track works for the life of me, yet it clearly has 'bars' and could be given a definite (if completely artificial) time signature. Brother Raven are doing very fresh things on various technical levels, but most of all their sound exudes playfulness, naiveté and a lack of pretense. Diving Into The Pineapple Portal is the album on my list which most sounds like it was created by benevolent aliens.

11. Chihei Hatakeyama - A Long Journey

This album snuck up on me and blew me away. Chihei Hatakeyama is a prolific musician with about ten albums out since 2006, most of which appeared in the last two years. He is a true musical Impressionist, with highly visually descriptive titles such as "The Moon Reflecting on the Surface of the Ocean" bestowed upon nearly every track he records. A Long Journey probably refers to Chihei's own artistic path, which always seems concerned with recreating lost places, moments or feelings. The album is fairly brief at 34 minutes and passes by as a series of ten vignettes, all nostalgic in character and seamlessly blending recognizable instrumentation (guitar, piano, bell tones) with abstract drone material derived from thereof with a laptop. The majority of the tracks feature direct melodies and chord changes to follow, and very earnest ones at that, giving them the feeling of something closer to 'songs' than 'ambient compositions' (though the distinction is only one of vague connotation). Many though not all of the tracks also feature anecdotal field recordings, always to illustrate, as on "Within New Trees" which includes families chatting in Japanese, leaves in the wind, gentle wooden knocks, and a squeaking swing, among other events. The most impressive of the field recording heavy tracks is "The Distant Sound of a Bustle", which effectively summarizes in four and a half minutes what Celer's Generic City is all about (not at all to say Generic City is any less valuable), and which finally forced me to find myself a new direction/format to work in for my own music, because this guy is just too good at this stuff. Hats off! If the late Luc Ferrari's then-unprecedented Presque Rien ou le lever du Jour au Bord de la Mer was musical photography, Chihei Hatakeyama is a master musical videographer.* The closing track "The Dance of The Sea" features field recordings alone, of light rain on the ocean, a boom of thunder, heavier rain, a chiming bell calling in children at play, more thunder, and a sudden crescendo of excited bugs. This ending is somewhat abrupt, though it does successfully get across a sense that ordinary, day to day events often regarded as mundane are in fact precious and beautiful from another angle, and that these qualities are encoded in their associated sounds. Although I haven't yet heard the definitive Chihei Hatakeyama album, A Long Journey stands out in maturity and variety, and has some of his individually strongest tracks to date.

*I don't seriously intend to compare the quality of these two great artists with this metaphor.

Top 10 coming who knows when!

Saturday, January 1, 2011

2010 - Fifty Great Releases, 30 - 21

30. Big K.R.I.T. - K.R.I.T. Wuz Here

Bit K.R.I.T. (King Remembered In Time) released this full studio album as a free digital download last June and firmly established himself as one of the most exciting voices of the South. His intelligence and hunger to succeed are delivered through the classic tradition of Underground Kingz, with honest lyrics backed by highly musical production (Big K.R.I.T.'s own) that includes funky organs, mellow Rhodes, wah guitars, cold piano runs and a lot more. Some of the cuts are deliciously 90s, like the super faded and smooth "Moon & Stars" featuring the still-relevant veteran Devin The Dude. Big K.R.I.T. has it all and I can't wait until I'm hearing new tracks of his dominating the rap charts. One can hope.

29. Dirty Projectors and Bjork - Mount Wittenberg Orca

New jaw-dropping material from one of the most unique and important songwriters active today, Dave Longstreth. I revere this guy's ability to combine direct pop sensibility with really smart composerly ideas that draw from, for example, Medieval polyphony (hocketing). I feel like, if he wanted to, Longstreth could easily compose amazing works for the full modern orchestra. Instead, we get advanced works for the modern "indie band" format that sound like no other music in existence. This stuff is so good it's worthy of scholarly attention. The fact that Bjork is on this EP is somewhat incidental unless you happen to be extremely fond of her voice - it feels fully like the aesthetic product of Dirty Projectors. Compositionally as exciting as Bitte Orca, this might have made my Top 10 if it was longer.

28. Ras G & Samiyam - LA Series #3

I can't get enough of this stuff. You've got six songs on this little split 10", three each by Ras G (& The Afrikan Space Program) and Samiyam. If you're not hip, these guys are two of the best Brainfeeder affiliates after Godhead Flying Lotus Himself. Ras G is something like the reincarnation of Sun Ra as a hip hop producer, using his dirty GarageBand concoctions to communicate with interstellar beings and blow out venue sound-systems. Samiyam brings the next movement in gritty, nostalgic hip hop with generous use of Nintendo sounds. The two of them make for a dynamic duo on this short, blunt-fueled space romp. Put your car's bass on +3 - Los Angeles bangs.

27. Polar Bear - Peepers

Polar Bear play an eccentric blend of jazz, funk and punk that is generally really catchy, though they aren't afraid to explore more dissonant and aggressive territory. The two tenor saxes that comprise the main melodic element of the band sometimes work with extended techniques that recall the great Eric Dolphy's voicelike squawks and howls. Interesting use of electronic manipulation also comes into play at times, resulting in a sound akin to The Contortions sent fifty years into the future, but without those inimitably pissed-off James Chance vocals. A great followup to their self-titled debut, Peepers is full of crafty songwriting and gutsy solos.

26. The Roots - How I Got Over

Now almost 20 years in the rap game, The Roots prove with How I Got Over that they are still capable of dropping releases as hungry, observant, classy, and downright essential as Phrenology, Things Fall Apart and Illadelph Halflife. This band probably has as good a ratio of artistic credibility to mainstream acceptance as it's possible to get in the hip hop world nowadays. They have honed a widely appealing sound, increasingly including cross-over elements from rock and roll and pop music, without ever compromising their message of elevating the mind or straying from the core values of hip hop. Black Thought is one of the best emcees, period. ?uestlove is a top-shelf drummer and producer, and the fact he got Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian, and Haley Dekle of Dirty Projectors fame for the opening track "A Piece of Light" should clue you in to how cool How I Got Over is. In a genre where live "bands" don't properly exist (or are extremely rare), The Roots are as vital as they come.

25. Supersilent - 11

Supersilent are one of my favorite groups of all, so I was really happy when 2010 brought not one but two excellent full albums by them. For the uninitiated: Supersilent free-improvise absolutely everything they play, and maintain an air of mystery by just numbering everything they release. I have to admit, when it was announced that Supersilent's drummer Jarle Vespestad was leaving, I had fears for the future of the group, even though it's undeniable that some of their most moving recordings don't feature the drummer. In truth, Supersilent are doing fine without a drummer, as 10 shows, but this vinyl-only LP is a welcome gift for anyone who misses the classic Supersilent sound. Its contents stem from the same sessions that gave us 8, and Vespestad's drumming appears in top form. In my opinion, Supersilent have only released one miss, the highly unusual (even for them) 9, an album of explorations on three Hammond organs. Besides that anomaly, the band has been mining gems for over a decade now, and moments of 11 are as breathtaking and difficult to accept as improvised as anything they have ever recorded.

24. Hiroki Sasajima - Nille

I can't say this about many albums: Nille scared me on the first listen. It possesses a genuinely haunted quality that downright spooked me when I gave it the proper, immersion-style listening test: with headphones, lying down in the dark, full attention. There may be no other way to really appreciate this work, which is extremely minimal in terms of traditional musical content. Nille operates mostly with field recordings, opening with an aural depiction of a vaguely nautical location marked by a subtle and somehow ineffably cruel background reverberation. Tension builds through unidentified wooden thumps and scrapes, and over several minutes the strange resonance thickens to something more miasmatic, as delicate sounds like clinking crystal chains join the mix. Later on, the sound of rustling, crumpling paper builds into an atmosphere of anxiety before giving way to primitive electronic hums. As eerily foreboding and bracingly austere as this music is, there is also something entrancingly beautiful about it; Nille ultimately resides in an emotional no-man's land for the brave and patient.

23. Janelle Monáe - The ArchAndroid

A fantastically ambitious debut album, The ArchAndroid somehow combines hip hop, R&B, soul, rock, funk, rap, pop, electronica, and at times even classical orchestration without any serious missteps. It doesn't even sound overly ambitious, sprawling, or unfocused - just amazingly fresh, confident and exciting. Janelle Monáe has a very strong and individual voice, overlooks her own production, and has cooked up some kind of sci-fi plot behind all of this in which the Android is a mediator between the majority and minority, like Neo in the Matrix, or something. (Her words). Pop brilliance that I bet Michael Jackson, rest his soul, would have gotten behind.

22. Various Artists - Pomegranates: Persian Pop, Funk, Folk & Psych of the 60's & 70's

The post-Beatles psychedelic movement reached a lot further than a lot of people may realize. Yeah, there's all that wonderful Brazilian psych a la Os Mutantes, Os Brazoes, Tom Ze and etc. And you've got your Amon Duuls and Ash Ra Tempels and other Kraut rockers. But who knew Iran had a thriving hippie scene in the 70s?? This compilation was one of the most eye-opening records I heard in 2010. As a "stupid American", to borrow a stereotype popular around the world, I didn't commonly think about Middle Easterners going out and shaking their asses to groovin James Brown-esque jams. But it seems that, as a form of rebellion against the Shah's autocratic rule of the 70s, that's exactly what some people did, at least until such practices were deemed sinful by traditionalists and fanatics after the Revolution of '79. "One form of tyranny swapped for another", as the liner notes to this absolute jewel of a compilation puts it. Broaden your cultural awareness and collection of deep dance cuts with this trove of forgotten treasures.

21. Celer and Yui Onodera - Generic City

This review will be necessarily personal. If my past review of their albums Cursory Asperses and In Escaping Lakes is any indication, I am quite taken by the diverse ambient oeuvre of Celer. Heck, I even dedicated my debut album as an ambient recording artist to them. I thought I had worked out a pretty clever game plan with my album, combining totally unprocessed, "anecdotal" field recordings of real environments, with pensive, atmospheric drones and instrumental textures. I thought I was giving just the right amount of a nod to Celer's legacy (the drones), while bringing my own element to the game (the field recordings). Turns out, I'm not at all the first person to think of combining these two basic elements; in fact, while I was toiling on my album, Celer and Yui Onodera had already done it, and done it extremely well. I couldn't have known that, as Generic City, to my knowledge the first Celer album to use anecdotal field recordings in any overt way, would not be released for some five months after my album. It is quite a revelation hearing them work in this format; I am humbled at the pristine quality of their recordings, how finely the episodes of sound transition, and as always, how lovely and full of life the drones are. Several years of work went into the creation of this album, and you can hear it. For all of this praise, there is a "but" I have to mention at this point - Celer were at their best working alone and with abstract sonic material. As engaging as Generic City is for the most part, there are times when the musical arrangements and field recordings seem to be incongruous, one's presence distracting from the mood or character of the other. When this happens, the listener is stirred out of the otherwise perfect sense of place the music establishes, suddenly remembering that these sounds are not natural but have a hidden contrived organization. Fortunately, this doesn't happen too many times, and the album's more effective parts paint shockingly vivid urban scenes that instill complex emotions. Quite possibly the least characteristic album Celer ever had a hand in, and therefore one of their most intriguing, Generic City resides among the stronger of the band's many releases from 2010.

To be continued!

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Fennel - A Leap Across A Chasm

At long last, I feel my album is ready to share with the universe.

So... listen to it all for free here!! http://fennel.bandcamp.com

Obviously reviewing my own album would be a bit ridiculous, but I'll write a few words about it here just to give people a sense of what I was going for. Since I discovered Shuttle 358 sometime in late 2007, I have been totally compelled and fascinated by the notion of ambient music. My interest in the genre stems from its versatility of purpose, its diversity of sound timbres and song structures, and its unrivaled capacity for sheer beauty.

At the beginning of my last quarter at UCSB a few months ago I started feeling really nostalgic and sentimental. Reflecting on the past four years at that place, it became clear to me that I had to make some sort of sonic tribute that would keep me from forgetting the sounds and feelings I associate with the school. Simultaneously, I was falling more and more in love with the music of Celer, two of whose albums I reviewed here in February, and I also wanted my album to pay homage to them.

About six weeks ago, when the album was around 75% done, I read online that Dani Baquet-Long of Celer (rest in peace) actually attended UCSB, and graduated two years before I enrolled. This came as a genuine shock given my internal reasons for starting this project. My final month at school was colored by the haunting realization that the two subjects I was honoring in music are actually inextricably connected. I wonder, is there something in the water at UCSB that drives people to the shelter of warm drones and subtle hums?

For the music, I combined field recordings from various locations around UCSB, including its beautiful lagoon, its nearby beaches, and on campus. On top of these raw recordings I added drony tones generated from piano, flute, voice, glockenspiel, guitar, and other instruments with a lot of reverb added. The harmonies employed are influenced by jazz and 20th century composition, especially Bill Evans and Toru Takemitsu.

Anyway, I hope I've gotten across that this has been an extremely personal endeavor. Very very big thanks go to Sarah, Daniel, Niv and Sepehr, who all made invaluable critical suggestions and creative contributions to the project. I'm currently working with Niv on getting artwork made and turning this into a physical package, but for now, I hope you enjoy it as a high quality digital download.

One last thing. It would be supreme hypocrisy if I made payment for this album mandatory. Hell, just look around this blog. So listeners at the bandcamp page have the option to download A Leap Across A Chasm for free or else make a donation. I'm not expecting to make much for this, but anything is a world of help for a recent college graduate that didn't land a mega job.

Please share this with anyone you can think of interested in independent art music!

More frequent reviews on Giraffe Kingdom incoming!