Ain Soph Aur

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.

In celebration of it’s one year anniversary, The Long Beach Musicians’ League is presenting an evening of experimental music featuring Ain Soph Aur, Between Ravens and Crows, and SMGSAP.

Ain Soph Aur is an experimental music duo featuring Karloff (Refrigerator Mothers, The Hop Frog Kollectiv, URCK Records) and Sander Roscoe Wolff (Quiverfish, Blue Dot, Poor Old Joe). They create gently
evolving sonic landscapes using a variety of acoustic, electric, and electronic instruments, found sounds, and effects. ASA will be joined on modular synthesizer by David Bunoan.

Also performing is Between Ravens and Crows. Flail and Thwack, world travelers, bring a balance of creation and destruction to their
performances, smashing home-made instruments, delicately playing Indonesian metalphones, and occasionally causing harm to themselves and others.

SMGSAP is Shea M Gauer and Scott A Peterson. They’ve been using a variety of sources to explore sound and context for nearly 10 years.

I look forward to seeing you there!

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!

Karloff and I were invited to perform at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in the heart of Santa Ana’s Artists’ Village. Opening the show were “Between Ravens and Crows,” followed by Ain Soph Aur and, closing the show, was Madamn Grislee.

Due to an oversight on my part, the audio recording captured ambient sound where Karloff and I were seated, but not the sounds the audience heard. While not capturing what I intended, it still produced several nice sections, one of which I’m including here:

The First and Fourth Intellects – Part 2

Karloff can be heard playing organ and bass, and I the lap steel guitar, shaker, and maybe even some voice.

Please feel free to leave comments.

We are proud to present an evening of spectacular music.

Ain Soph Aur presents:

Threads of a Tonal Dream Tapestry

The Microtonal Compositions of Lou Harrison
Performed by John Schneider

Khmer Classical Music
Performed by Master Ho Chan’s
Pin Peat Ensemble

Intercontinental Improvisation
Performed by Ain Soph Aur
& Friends

Saturday July 5th, at 8 PM
$8
Koos Art Center
530 E Broadway
Long Beach, CA
90802

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Last night Karloff and I were joined by Jeremy Morelock and Nial Morgan. We opened a wonderful show at Koos Art Center. We were followed by John Schneider’s breathtaking performance of microtonal music for refretted acoustic guitar, written by legendary American composer Lou Harrison. Following John’s performance, Master Ho’s Pin Peat ensemble performed Khmer Classical Music with intensity, precision, and passion. The room was thrumming with the energy flowing from the stage.

Ain Soph Aur’s performance was 30 minutes, but I excerpted two parts. The first is from the beginning, and the second from the end.

In A Strange Country – Part 1

In A Strange Country – Part 2

Please feel free to leave comments.

Ain Soph Aur performed at {open} on May 15, 2008 as part of their 3rd Thursday series. Joining us for our set was 15 year old Nial Morgan (Deer Tear).

Hear a board recording of the performance, or view two 10 minute video excerpts.

[Please note that the audio quality of the videos is greatly diminished due to YouTube's proprietary compression system.]

Part 1:

Part 2:

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