Aboombong Interview

Winter is officially here, and in Disaster Amnesiac's home base of Northern California, this means rain. Rain in turn means long bus rides during commute hours. Thankfully, the old iPod is loaded with great music, which makes the longer slogs bearable.

One recording that has filled up tons of commute time has been Amnemonic, by Aboombong. The music of Aboombong is a great mixture of Industrial aesthetic, "World" percussion, and Psychedelic abandon. The tracks on Amnemonic sprawl out within these parameters, giving an air of the mysterious to the otherwise mundane chore of the day's commute.

Curious about what makes this cool project tick, I emailed Aboombong some questions, and he was kind enough to reply.

What was the genesis of Aboombong?

Aboombong started as a way to release detritus from my archive of half-finished projects that had never seen the light of day. The first album is pretty much just a collection of outtakes (recorded primarily from 1999 to about 2003). By the end of putting together the first release, I had a couple of loops and one percussion track that didn't feel finished enough to put out as is...these became the genesis for "asynchronic". Once I started working on these (Daymare and Never Been to Konono), I recorded some new material, mixed it with some older snippets and found myself with another album's worth of material.

I get the sense that Aboombong is a one-man project, but a lot of the music has the rich sound of an entire group's effort. Do you have a cast of musicians? 

It is a one-man project...although some of the tape archives used on the first two releases include other players. Most notably David Chapman from !Para!helion on trumpet (Jericho) and the members of Waltz Bop Shop on Aboom. Everything else is me.

There is a definite, for lack of a better term, Third World feel in Aboombong, particularly in the various percussive approaches and instrumentation. Can yo explain where this approach comes from? What sparks it?

I listen to lots of music from around the world. That gets filtered through my American brain when I compose. Not much more to it than that. I don't every try to mimic specific genres or rhythms...but I do feel like I abstract elements or approaches I hear in music from other cultures and apply those to my own work. For instance, a lot of non-western musical traditions will use incessant unchanging rhythms underneath a more fluid foreground. I don't use those rhythms in any of my pieces, but the basic approach is one that resonates with me when I am composing.

In light of the mentioned "world percussion" approach, do you have formal training in any non-Western systems (eg Balinese Gamelan, Filipino Kulintang, Korean Samulnori, etc)?


Nope. Just lots of listening. I was briefly a member of a traditional Javanese Gamelan, buth other than the handful of lessons done to get parts down for that, I have no formal training outside of the standard American school-based music education. I did a fair amount of course work in college in experimental music, but none in non-Western traditions. More than anything, I'm just an old Punk Rock drummer who likes to experiment.


The recordings sound as if they were done with a lot of care, yet they retain a great, raw feel. What kind of recording set ups are used for Aboombong releases?


One microphone, a stand alone CD-r burner and a mixer. [The recordings] (R)ecorded one track at a time, mixed with Audacity.


How about individual instruments? As I listen to the rich bell tones, guitar tones, and drum tones, I envision a warehouse full of exotic percussion worthy of Martin Denny's studio. Is this the case?


Every toy is listed on the bandcamp page. That pretty much exhausts my collection. I live on a houseboat, so there isn't much room for storage. If I had space and money...it would be much larger.

Along with the excellent percussion, there are also great "junk electronic" sounds within Aboombong's music. What sorts of instruments are being used, and how much electronic manipulation is being made to their initial sounds?

That's a secret.

Amnemonic's tracks have a very "ritual" feel; as one listens, one can feel transported to imaginary worlds, filled with wild street festivals or austere temples. Please speak to the creation of these soundscapes.

All I can say to that is...thanks. I have always felt like each piece of music should create it's own unique environment.

What lies in store for Aboombong? Any great projects looming on the horizon? 

The next album will be based around some spoken word and field recordings. None of the musical elements have been recorded yet, but it should be quite different from the other three releases. I am also working with DUSTdevil & Crow on another release. Tracks are just starting to get bounced around the planet for that one.

 So there you have the mysterious Aboombong in his own words. Do your mind a favor and click on his bandcamp link, where you can buy his music at good prices. And then float away.................

3 Nights in August-Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager, by Buzz Bissinger

Another week further into winter, another day closer to Opening Day! What a better a way to celebrate that American dynamic than by reading yet another baseball book?
Researched and written during the height of the "Moneyball" and the tail end of the anabolic steroid eras, 3 Nights in August ventures to go inside of probable Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa's heart and head, in search of the real. Real passion and grit, as opposed to the stats obsession ushered in by the likes of Billy Beane and the "hey, I'm just an entertainer" attitude from players such as Jose Canseco. These factors are anathema to men such as Bissinger and La Russa, men who crave the beautiful "levers and pulleys" exhibited within the elegant complexity of f great baseball game.
The action of the book occurs during a three game series played between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs. As Bissenger so effectively writes, it's as venerable a rivalry as Red Sox/Yankess or Giants/Dodgers. The tight divisional pennant race that was transpiring during this series only adds to the historical tension. Within this broader context, the manager's in-game life is illuminated by way of descriptions of various types of baseball player: the hard working, freakishly talented (Albert Pujols), the methodical, intelligent veteran pitcher (Woody Williamson), the coasting Star (J.D. Drew), the discipline problem (Kerry Robinson), the reliable workhorse (Matt Morris). Each player's trajectory, and La Russa's work, thoughts, feelings, and processes with them is described with honestly and objectivity. These straightforward appraisals of the good, bad, and ugly provide an excellent view into the inner workings of baseball as it is played and managed throughout a season.
As this book is now six years old, and the described games over seven years old, historical light is shed on just how short and tragic the shelf life of Major League pitching can be. The Cub's two star pitchers as described in the book, Mark Prior and Kerry Wood, pitchers whose talents seemed to shine so brightly, who seemed so destined for dominating greatness, have for the most part faded away. Bissinger and La Russa do much to acknowledge the outright toughness of the Game, fate's cruelties lurking right below the "tranquil surface" of the Game.
That said, they always come back to the wondrous and magical feeling that arises within a great game. To quote Bissinger's conclusion, "Just Beautiful Baseball". That in itself  makes up for all of the time spent obsessing. I could not agree more.

41st Annual Fungus Festival, Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley, 12/4-12/5 2010

Mrs. Amnesiac and I copped free passes to this fun, amazing event. We braved yet another SF Bay Area 2010 rainstorm to hang out amongst mycologists, hippies, punks, and other curious types. Check the photos and then, if the spirit grabs you, go and forage! Just, please, consult a mycology book before you eat!

We even bumped into old pal Suzanne Carter, a member of the Bay Area Mycological Society!

Some beautiful 'shrooms!

The afternoon finished up with a lecture by mushroom photographer Taylor F. Lockwood. His motto is "Chase the rain".

Yes, that's a mushroom cap! Get it? I think I may have, ah, ingested something........

White Out w/ Jim O'Rourke and Thurston Moore-Senso

Disaster Amnesiac continues the late 2010 trend in improvised music listening with this meaty 2 disc set by this NYC amalgamation of stone cold masters.
This all-live document of a set at Tonic in 2004 blasts off with the quickness, and rarely lets up. The players quickly delve into their respective bags of improvisational tricks, the sum total being a forest of blurping, bleeping, clicking, and ratcheting sounds. There have been improv sets that seem all the more boring for their insistence on "energy" and "fire", but the players that make up White Out for the Senso set manage to avoid those kinds of dynamics, instead achieving an intensely focused, yet highly energized interaction. There is never the sense players simply blowing for the sake of blowing. This is not to say that White Out doesn't  lack energy. That's not the case at all. The sound just has, for the most part, a sense of restraint as the players reveal new sounds and motifs into the overall  piece.
 Drummer Tom Surgal is particularly impressive, utilizing rolling phrases to move the music. One wonders if he ever studied with Roger Blank, a mid-period NYC Free Jazz player profiled in Val Wilmer's classic study As Serious As Your Life. The question is asked due to Surgal's predominant use of mallets, an approach that Blank touted heavily is Wilmer's book. In a recent New Yorker podcast Blake Eskin, trying to describe Keith Moon's approach, opined "why not just be doing rolls the whole time?". This is essentially Surgal's style on Senso, and the use of mallets to effect these rolls gives his kit a melodic, rounded sound. It gives focus and drive to the scraping and feedback sounds emanating  from Liz Culbertson and Jim O'Rourke's synths and Thurston Moore's guitar.
After repeated listening, it's clear that engineer Kari Erickson deserves as much credit for the ease of listening as the players. The audio is stunning; each instrument is clearly captured, with none of the "in the red" qualities that often add to the hyperbolic macho of many improv settings.
The combination of spatial awareness, dynamic focus, and imagination in playing and presentation make Senso an entertaining document of what was surely a solid show by a great band.

The Baseball Codes-Beanballs, Sign Stealing & Bench-Clearing Brawls, by Jason Turbow with Michael Duca

As I'm sure most are aware, the San Francisco Giants won the 2010 World Series. Their road to this monumental victory was not an easy one, and it was traveled by a classic band of misfits, worthy in all ways of Johnny Damon's 2004 Red Sox "we're idiots" sobriquet.
As amazing as it was to watch the Fall Classic unfold, there was an event that occurred in the NLCS against the Philadelphia Phillies which in some ways, seemed even more amazing to me. Giants' game 6 starter Jonathan Sanchez had nothing. No control. No command. He looked lost from about two batters into the game.
In the second inning, one of his pitches hit Phillies second baseman Chase Utley. This beaning, whether intentional or not, had great significance for the game 6, and for the Giants' eventual historic Championship win.
Utley and Sanchez had already established a history of antagonism; Sanchez threw behind Utley in an at-bat in 2009. There was no love lost between the  two. As such, Utley, while taking his base, reached down for the ball and flipped it toward Sanchez. Sanchez and Utley "exchanged words" once Utley reached first base. It was clear to me that "fuck you" was uttered by Sanchez, as he walked off of the mound toward the agitated Utley on first.
Eventually, the benches cleared, and play was stopped for at least five minutes. During the melee, Giants reliever Jeremy Affeldt did not join the fray. FOX Sports cameras at one point panned to the bullpen, showing  Affeldt calmly throwing  warm-up pitches. By time the  brawl had been stopped, he was ready for relief. Sanchez was promptly pulled, and Affeldt proceeded to pitch superbly, giving the Giants the relied they needed, and keeping them in a game that they needed to, and eventually did, win.
A question: did Sanchez deke the Phillies into losing their collective composure, just long enough for Affeldt to warm up, incredibly earlier than he probably expected to, thus giving  the Giants a chance within a game that was rapidly slipping from their grasp? The answer to this one is probably lost to history, but I've pondered it a lot since that Sunday night in October, 2010.
Whatever the truth of the matter really was, there were Codes at play, ones that Jason Turbow and Michael Duca set out to describe in The Baseball Codes. For example, Affeldt's choice to remain in the bullpen could be seen as a violation of one of the codes expounded upon in the Baseball Codes.
The Baseball Codes sets out to shine light upon the unwritten rules of baseball, rules that players' careers live and die by. Much like life in greater society, these codes provide both guidance and boundaries to the interactions that make up daily life. One could argue that without codes, people are often left clueless as to how to make their way through the tasks at hand, whether in baseball or any other pursuit.
Dekes, tagging etiquette, sign stealing, rookie vs. veteran dynamics, retaliatory tactics,  and a plethora of other baseball codes are explained and examined in depth within this very entertaining book. The authors did a great job of researching these inner workings of baseball, with anecdotes and opinions from several generations of players, managers, and broadcasters.
The insider information within this book provides many revealing glimpses into the sport that I have come to love so much, the sport that best exemplifies how life really works in U.S. society.

Steve Touchton and Evan Backer-"03142009" and "04182009" tape

I picked this one up after reading Byron Coley's review of it in the Wire, in which he compared it to the work of Doug Snyder and Bob Thompson.
Happily, these two players do seem to dance together in much the same way that the early 1970's Ohioans did, locking guitar and drums parts within an improvised setting.
Touchton's guitar sound often reminds me of Sharrock at its most unadorned (i.e.guitar to amp without pedals). At other points, his sound makes me think of Wire or other post-Punk bands, filtered through a Free Jazz envelope.
Backer's approach to the kit is sometimes note-dense and busy, sometimes sparse, always very responsive to the moves that Touchton makes with his ax. At one point, given a space of  total silence from Touchton, he starts to quote Han Bennink's great Nerve Beats concept!
The format of this release (two short tunes on a short tape) and its bare bones packaging, give it an endearing d.i.y. feel. The tunes' brevity makes it very approachable. I've often thought that improvised and noise music are rapidly becoming truly Folk mediums, and this tape fits very nicely into that concept.

Anthony Braxton/Gerry Hemingway-Old Dogs (2007)

Some years back I had a conversation with a tenor sax player who stated bluntly, "I'm not feeling Anthony Braxton".
I, however, am very much feeling Mr. Braxton. Disaster Amnesiac is a fan.
As such, it's been easy and enjoyable to dig into the four discs that make up Old Dogs, Braxton's duo recording with long-time cohort Gerry Hemingway. Clocking in at well over four hours, Old Dogs is a king sized dose from these veterans. Both have built up lengthy reputations as top flight composers of Jazz/Creative Music, along with being improvisers of the highest order. It is their improvisational side that gets aired on this document. As stated in the liner notes, the only given parameter was that they played as long as a large hour  glass was running. These old dogs take full advantage of this given freedom, touching upon all sorts of different feels, spaces, and approaches within the duo context.
Each disc contains one lengthy piece, in which Braxton and Hemingway range from playing silence filled passages to dense and furious exchanges.
In improvised music, the listening thrill comes from paying close attention to the sounds being generated by the respective players' approaches. One of the great things about Old Dogs is the amount of such sounds that the duo are able to conjure up within each piece. Braxton utilizes seven different reed instruments, and Hemingway adds laptop samples, marimba, and electronic drum pads to his acoustic kit. Despite the scant number of players, the tonal options are quite varied.
These two have made careers out of researching and performing "extended sounds", and they utilize this research to the fullest extent on Old Dogs. Braxton ranges from repetitive arpeggio playing to primitive bleating, from complex overtone blowing to simple key slapping, all the while staying within his signature stylistic melding of players whose sounds he adores (Ayler, Gilmore, Allen, Coltrane, Marshe, Desmond, etc). Not to say that Braxton lacks a personal tone; one can tell it's him playing  pretty quickly, especially when he digs in with the alto sax. Hemingway's kit playing is amazing. His is a highly personal and masterful approach to drum set, defined not so much by the extent of options to be hit (size) than by choice of which kind of object to do the hitting (color). He uses sticks, brushes, mallets, hands, towels, anything to coax the right sound from the skin and wood of the drums or the metal of the cymbals and stands. Also of note is his use of space. Even within his densest poly-rhythmic thickets, there is always a feeling of room, of each note given just the right amount of time to ring out.
The material on Old Dogs is amazingly varied, highly listenable, and very fun indeed. If you're at all interested in improvised music, you'd do well to try and feel it, too.

Fancy Space People have landed!

To my great pleasure, Fancy Space People have announced that their LP will arrive here on earth shortly. An advance landing has occurred by way of a free download at their Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fancy-Space-People/256599767850
If there is a better band on Planet California, I'm not aware of them. So many great elements coalesce within Don and Nora's vision: Glitter-stomp beats, Morricone chants, Psyched-out guitar lines, pauses worthy of Laughner getting spaced-out at Pirate's Cove in 1975, all framing Nora's wonderful warble.
They claim that they have come to save the human race. All I know is that I'll be saving a few bucks in order to buy the LP when it descends from the Heavens.

Jandek-Veterans Memorial Hall, Davis, CA 11/12/10

Having missed Jandek's SF Bay Area shows a few years back, I was determined to make the trip Davis for this one, despite scant advance notice.
Davis Veterans Memorial Hall seemed to be the perfect venue for this show. The feel of this small theater, with its 1950's design and intimate vibe, gave the proceedings less an air of "Rock show" and more of that of a recital. Given Jandek's very non-show biz approach, that seemed fitting.

The band consisted of Jandek on keyboards (Yamaha keyboard and Korg synth), accompanied by Davis musicians Christian Kiefer on guitar, Alex Jenkins on drums, and Greg Brucker on double bass.  This trio proved to be amazingly adept accompaniment for the Corwood Representative.
When I've listened to Jandek's recordings, they have often seemed to be made up of improvised music coupled to his Outsider poems of longing and loneliness. Not so at Davis, at least musically. The set's tunes were pretty clearly worked out header figures, with either Brucker or Jandek generally leading them in with small sound kernels, after which Kiefer and Jenkins would commence with their accompaniment. Jandek's keyboard sound was somewhat reminiscent of the 1960's approach of Sun Ra; he proved pretty adept at coaxing chiming bell tones out of his Yamaha and more smeary tones from the Korg. Kiefer's playing was a joy to hear. He alternated between a high, lonesome twang and blasts of pure post-Rock noise (on banjo, even!), all the while keeping his tone and playing approach very "Corwood". Brucker utilized loops and deep, long, bowed tones to provide an often surreal undertone. Jenkins, using a tiny kit of floor tom, djembe, trash can, and small percussion, was particularly amazing, in the amount of tone and texture he was able to coax from his battery. 
And the overall group sound? A delicious blast of primal, primitive ESP-type scree, at times quiet in order to accommodate Jandek's poems, at times blaring away to bring their impact home. The cacophonous passages hit Ayler/Godz levels of pure improvisational fire and grunge, and the vocal passages allowed for Jandek's words to have their full despairing and alienated effect. 
After almost two hours of playing, the group finished off with a solemn, chime-ey instrumental, and Jandek slowly closed his poetry book. They walked off, the house lights turned on, and the assembled crowd shuffled out, for the most part silent, for the most part smiling.

Top 20 Songs, by force

Recently I traveled to Britain. It was a lovely trip, and London is still blowing my mind, three weeks removed.
Along with staying at a great little hotel downtown, my wife Melissa and I stayed with our friends Debbie and Joel, who live in the wonderfully named suburb of Harrow on the Hill. Joel asked me at one point to list and email him my top twenty songs. At first I balked, but Joel can be a very convincing guy!
This list represents what felt like an honest attempt. My main criterion was: "what songs can I recall that I've either played obsessively or can listen to at any time?"
I hope this list will reignite my long-ignored music writing blog.

 

Pere Ubu- I, will wait
Tuxedomoon-No Tears
Kyuss-Cataraman
Toiling Midgets-Cling Fire/Clams
The Cramps-Green Fuzz
Black Sabbath-Hole in the Sky
Bad Company-Bad Company
Led Zeppelin-Houses of the Holy
Black Flag-Nervous Breakdown
Minor Threat-Cashing In
Frank Zappa-Peaches en Regalia
The Fall-Tempo House
Link Wray-Rumble
Grateful Dead-Scarlet Begonias
Monitor-We Get Messeges
Jethro Tull-Flying Dutchman
Miles Davis-All Blues
Gerry Hemingway-More Struttin' with Mutton
Royal Trux-(Have You Met) Horror James
X-Blue Spark