Barry Chabala/Daniel Jones – “Undercurrents”
I’ve been out of the music-listening loop lately, lacking energy, in a funk, what have you. A lot of studying (foolishly attempting to become a scientist at age 35) and dealing with my dad’s declining health have left me with little time or motivation to sit down and actively listen to things. Fortunately, I’ve managed to make a little time recently to listen, which is beneficial to my well-being in ways that few other things are… particularly listening to EAI and lowercase music, since it seems to attune my perceptions to smaller events, sounds, and occurences I encounter from day to day… Listening to something made of very small unique sounds, meticulously spaced out over the course of an hour is an interesting experience. After some time doing this, you go back into the world and it’s like you have taken off a thick pair of gloves and feel the texture of everything more acutely.
To come to the point, this particular release is something I ordered from Squidco a few months ago. “Undercurrents” is a long-distance collaboration between New Jersey guitarist Barry Chabala and UK lowercase electronics and turntable alchemist Daniel Jones. I know all I ever write about are guitarists but I play guitar so that’s what I know and I’m particularly impressed by Chabala’s playing here. He uses a guitar and a Fender Princeton amp from the 60s and that’s it, no effects, no postprocessing. The first track is punctuated by recognizably guitar-oriented sounds, clanging gonglike timbres, but after that the musicians become indistinguishable to me. Sub-bass drones and static fields give way to cricket-like chirrups and long periods of silence. What’s amazing is that Chabala is able to use the inherent buzz, crackle, and hum that lives in the electric guitar in such a musical and chameleonic way. I suppose it can’t be considered fully improvised because as a long distance collaboration there is probably a lot of editing and the musicians obviously had a chance to listen to the music as it unfolded and consider their musical responses on a time scale one couldn’t have the luxury of enjoying in a live improvised setting, and it’s not quite lowercase because the sounds build up to quite an immersive wash at times, but it is definitely immensely enjoyable and approachable for me. It’s quite an accomplishment to make something so abstract and alien sound simultaneously so warm and inviting.
May 24, 2010 at 7:19 am
thanks for the nice words. it great to see this release still being listened to and talked about. dan and i are really proud of it.
while there was a little forethought on my part as to what i was going to do, there isn’t a whole lot of after-the-fact editing. dan sent me live solo recordings he had done. i listened to them for a while a picked out which were the ones i wanted to play with. a little processing to those tracks was done, mainly to expand the sonics and the stereo field, and then i added my parts and they were played live as if i was playing with dan in the room. afterwards, i did a little editing, mostly removing things to leave a little more space, and that was about it.
glad you enjoyed it!
May 24, 2010 at 9:53 am
Thanks for the response Barry! Knowing the processes by which things are made always increases my enjoyment, I’m a nerd that way.
May 24, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Undercurrents is a fine release, bears repeated listens well- I am cheered to see, as Barry said, it has not been lost to the hyper-speed track of the dust bin of history. So many releases out there, its important the really good stuff is revisited.
Orangette, press on as time and funds allow, check out more by both of these gentlemen.
May 25, 2010 at 10:27 am
Indeed I will. I just ordered a few more EAI titles from Squidco, although nothing from Barry or Daniel this time. Soon though! I’ve had this for a while, and always enjoyed it, but after not listening to any music at all for a couple months, I came back and listened to this and while I enjoyed it before, I really -get- it now.
May 25, 2010 at 11:28 am
thats great to hear, when someone really gets what you are chasing – thanks for that. as for other music, ‘an unrhymed chord’ is still around but getting harder to find. i think sound323 is sold out now, and ‘black,white,red,green,blue(voyelles) hopefully will see a cd reissue sometime, although it will probably be two separate labels for the two pieces.