Ain Soph Aur

The celebration of Ain Soph Aur’s 2nd anniversary was an opportunity to acknowledge our previous work, and look forward at the same time. In discussions with Carl, we came up with the idea of inviting artists who had performed with us before. In the past two years, we’d performed with 6 artists. Unfortunately, Hermit The Flog now lives in Portland, and Naill Morgan isn’t old enough to get into bars. Happily, all the other artists, David Witham, Jeremy Morelock, David Bunoan, and Christie Scott, were all willing and able to perform with us. To maintain parity, we invited two other artists to join us: Kirk Pickler and Mike Weber.

The idea we had was for the guest musicians to each have 20 minutes on stage with us, including a 10 minute overlap with another guest. We even made a schedule:

Intro 00-10 Sander/Carloff
10-20 + David B
20-30 + Kirk
30-40 – David B +Christie
40-50 -Kirk +Mike
50-60 -Christie +David W
60-70 – Mike +Jeremy
70-80 -David W
80-90 SRW & Carloff
90-120 Everybody!

(The ‘+’ indicates when an artist should begin, and the ‘-’ indicates when they should end.)

The schedule was never meant to be rigid, but more of a guide. Good thing, as we didn’t do a very good job of explaining it to our guest artists. Still, the performance did have a nice ebb and flo to it.

Although there were a few technical issues to contend with, I felt that the performance was, overall, quite good.

We recorded the two hour performance from the mixing board, and also made a room recording.

For those who feel daunted by navigating through a 2 hour performance recording, I’ve excerpted a 10 minute segment where Kirk Pickler plays a beautiful flute solo, one that features the lap steel stylings of Mike Weber, and another where Carl and I have an impromptu melodica duet, accompanied by David Witham on manipulated organ, and Christie Scott on vocals toward the end.

There are a total of seven 10-minute excerpts. You can find them all on the ‘Audio Tracks‘ page.

If you’re interested, I posted some anticipatory musings about the performance.

We extend our sincere thanks to our family and friends for their love and support, and to Ken Huntington for being open to hosting us.

Carl and I are starting a new studio project that began with four tracks of drums, (Frame Drum, Clay Drum, Tambourine, and Baking Sheet) recorded by SRW.   (Yes, a track that has a beat!)  

To that, Carl added voice, Chinese Moon Lute, violin, and some processing.  Once back in my hands, I added several tracks using my Industral Guitar Indy Rail lap steel.  Lately I’ve been using an alternate tuning:  G2 G3 G3 G3 G4 G4.  That’s right:  Three octaves, all G!

We’re still expecting contributions from David Bunoan, David Witham, and Christie Scott.  Still, while we’re patiently waiting for them, I thought I’d share the work in progress:

On This Road

12/08/09 – We just got David Witham’s contribution back, and WOW!  I really love it.  I’ve been listening to it obsessively, and I have all kinds of ideas. I find it really inspiring.

It stands well on its own, but I can sometimes hear parts that could be added… Dunno.

12/13/09 – Things keep unfolding in surprising and wonderful ways. I was chatting with an old High School chum, Janis Tanaka, who is an excellent professional musician. She’s been Pink’s touring bassist for at least her last two albums, and has played in a bunch of bands over the years, including the rather infamous L7.

I was talking with her about her current creative efforts, and sharing some of my own. She asked, “When do you get together to record?” We don’t, I explained, and showed her the links to several source tracks, and some links to various works in progress. The next day, I found this in my email inbox. She’s recorded a synth bass part over David Witham’s track, and it is DOPE!

I love the internet!

We’ve added a new ‘Releases‘ page to our blog because we now have an official release!

The Hop-Frog Kollectiv’s sporadic roaming festival, Nomadic Transmissions, took root in the Mojave desert this last weekend. 25 performances over two nights, lots of good friends, etc. I wasn’t up for camping, so drove out Saturday afternoon and arrived just after dark. We were schedule to play at 8 PM but, due to some last minute changes, went on a bit later. As is our habit, we often invite people to join us and, last night, vocalist Christie Scott (Bavab Bavab) lent her dulcet tones. Due to an oversight by both Carl and myself, we didn’t record the first part of our set but, at some point, Carl hit record and we captured the last half of our performance. I’m so glad he did.

Here is Upon the Lips of Angels.

I’ve uploaded a few photographs of the event to facebook.

Wow!  I felt really good about tonight’s performance.  It was great having David Witham sit in with us and, not surprisingly, his talent and artistry contributed greatly to the evening.

The event was well attended, and people seemed to enjoy what we did.  (that’s always a nice bonus!)

We should have photos soon but, for now, here’s a recording of the show:

The Appearance of Innocence

Because we were using two (2) PA systems, one for Carl and one for me, with David split between them, I wasn’t able to get an accurate board recording.  Although you can hear some talking, and the occational passing vehicle, the recording is actually quite nice.

Thanks to everyone who came, and thanks to all who support us in other ways.  We really appreciate it.

Carl and I performed at Echo Curio last Saturday.  It was a fun show.



Listen to the board recording:

The Inner Restraints Of Conscience

You can also see some photos.

Last night, Ain Soph Aur somewhat prematurely celebrated their one year anniversary at the place where it all began back in February of 2008: The Puka Bar. More specifically, Ken Huntington’s Long Beach Musicians’ League helped to ‘midwife’ ASA into existance by asking me if I wanted to organize an evening of eclectic music performances.

Last night, Carl Off and I were joined by David Bunoan, a celebrated local guitarist, amp tech, and all-round good egg. He used some unique Moog-designed pedals, and a tricked-out iPod Touch, to create all kinds of tweets, warbles, and wails. It was great! Carl and I had our usual contingent of bells and whistles (literally).

The recording is about 25 minutes long, and goes through several distinct phases. It starts out quite quiet, and gets quite loud. As with all of our recordings, I recommend a listening with a good set of headphones.

The performance was entirely improvised, unplanned, and wonderfully intuitive.

Following our set, SMGSAP and Between Ravens and Crows performed great sets of their own.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s Epiphany’s Labor.

While working on Dancing Upon A Foaming Sea, I had a discussion with my friend Loren Nerell, who is a long time and well established electronic music artist whose work is well regarded by many folks around the globe. We talked about a well known technique which involves taking a short audio tidbit and slowing it down repeatedly, until it sounds quite different. This is a technique used by Brian Eno, most famously on his CD, Neroli.

In DUAFS, there’s a short recording of a chime or bell. It looks like a metal heart, no more than 2 inches across, but inside there is some sort of ball and tone bars. I used this as the basis for Swimming in Dark Waters.

One of the great things about working with Karloff is that, when I share something with him, I know that he’ll find just the right thing to connect with my intention, and then take it to a whole new level. His addition of synth on this track is at first sublime, then… well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise.

We may yet add more to this. Sometimes it can be difficult to know when to stop. Still, I am happy to present it as a work in progress. Slip on your headphones, and enjoy:

Swimming in Dark Waters

Please leave a comment and let us know what you think!

In the previous post, a working version of Dancing Upon a Foaming Sea was revealed.  I was in the kitchen one morning and observed an interesting, and short-lived, visual occurance which I documented with my video camera.  It seemed to go nicely with DUFS, so I put them together.  Here’s the result:

A few weeks ago Carl, my collaborator in Ain Soph Aur, emailed me a short audio snippet with the request that I come up with some parts that might sit well with it. The part was strange, with an unusual meter and a chorused bass part that felt elusive. I immediately recorded several guitar tracks, burned them to a CD, and gave them to Carl within the next few days.

Several weeks passed and, to be honest, I’d pretty much forgotten about it entirely. In my email in-box came an MP3, where Carl had taken his original loop, my guitar parts, and added several more tracks as well. I began to get really excited. He then gave me 14 stereo WAV tracks that made up his mix of the tune, and I began playing with those, adding more tracks, processing existing ones, and generally going crazy.

The result is a 33 minute epic of sonic goodness. Now, Carl hasn’t heard this long-form version yet, and it really isn’t complete. I have no doubt that, when he hears it, he’ll be inspired to respond in some way. I can’t wait!!!

Still, he’s away right now, and won’t be back for a while, so I felt moved to share this as it is, knowing that, down the road, it may change significantly.

So, without further ado, behold “Dancing Upon A Foaming Sea.”

[note: this is a very large, 31 MB, file. People with small hard drives or dial-up connections should wait for the CD release]

The title, which comes from Alister Crowley’s description of the Princess of Cups in his Egyptian Tarot book, The Book of Thoth, may change too, btw.

I’ve also posted a screen shot of the project in my Cubase SX3 audio software.

To the best of my knowledge, the track contains the following: Bass, organ, guitar, cornet, recorder, tin flute, bells, voices, plastic tubes, shakers, metal bowls, dog collars, field recordings of seals and birds, a live performance snippet, kalimba, hand drum, synth drums, and a few other things. See if you can find them all!