S&P, Lascaux

So I've been diligently setting things in motion for standards & practices goodness. Adding a lot of myspace friends, booking recording date, coming up with new tunes, and hopefully getting gigs. (We're playing this Wed. at Empire). What I'm interested in with this group is coming up with more and more ways to allow flexiblilty in improv. Giving the players choices and rules as guidelines for interesting music. I also like when we are playing things that don't normally go together, and to somehow keep that organized. Its cool as a duo, because we can try out pretty much anything, and just go from there.

In trio news, Lascaux (Jason Arce on sax, Pinson Chanselle on drums, and me) is playing this Saturday at Blue Mountain Coffee in Carytown at 8pm (and its free). Also, John D'earth will be sitting in with us, so I'm pretty excited. He is an amazing trumpet player that has played with everyone from Miles Davis to Miles Davis, and everything in between! He's got a great band with an amazing drummer Emre Khatari called Origin that has played Patchwork stuff before. So I'm looking forward to it.

New Standards & Practices Stuff

I'm excited to say that the myspace site for my band "Standards & Practices" has been updated with a new track called "Details". Its great to work in a duo setting, as it frees us up so much. I was slow to realize, but in this format we can actually do a lot less than in the quartet, and still keep the music interesting. This piece sets up a groove that quickly builds tension as Shareef messes with the time, then I lock into a chord sequence that Shareef solos over. After that, we go back to the feel of the first section, but this time I solo while Shareef is limited in the timbres that he can use. It works very well live, and it is a definite departure from the jazzier stuff of yester-year. Check out the new song at our myspace site.

Geekdom in Music

Today I've been thinking about the fact that I am involved in creating new/creative music, and that I am a gigantic geek. I grew up with Nintendo, Genesis, Sega CD, Gameboy, Super Nintendo, and of course...the arcade. Terms like, "Leveling Up", "Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start", "Quater-Circle Forward", "8 Meg Cartridge", and "Mode 7" were just part of the language I used when talking with my friends. The endless Sega vs. Nintendo debate (of which I was on Sega's side), and the stupidity of the Power Glove were things I could talk about all day long.

Now, I am 26 and can still talk about them all day long.

I realized this the weekend I played in the Glenn Branca Symphony for 100 Guitars. On the way back riding with Josh and Nick of my band Ones & Zeros , we talked about video games the entire way home. It was amazing, and it really got me thinking about how you could use this influence in music. I have no idea yet, but there has to be a better way of honoring the memories of gaming then starting a Nintendo cover band. Maybe by examining the patterns of code in Metroid, you could transcribe a Charlie Parker sax solo. I think Justin Bailey knows!

Patchwork Throwdown, Stuff

So this Saturday will be the Patchwork vs. This Ghost show, and it should be amazing. More info on this can be found at the patchwork website--but it will be an all out brawl starting at 8 and for only $5. Theres a Ted Leo concert that same night in town for the same price, which I guess is our competition. Its kind of hard to take that seriously when I think of the music that will take place at our event. Hopefully Richmond's inferiority complex will take a breather and come out to support its own (in lethal combat).

Finding new ways to perform music is an endless source of amusement for me. It was very inspirational to see/hear Anthony Braxton, and its something that I knew would be great...but he far surpassed my already high expectations. It just makes you think of the very nature of sound, and ways to organize it in a way that gives freedom. Everyone in the ensemble had a lot of freedom within this framework that Braxton developed, and its that very framework that I only now fully appreciate. The implications of it are amazing, and to me, are far more interesting then anything most composers have done. I used to think John Zorn was on to something with his gamepieces, but after listening to Cobra, and seeing performance footage, it was never something I could listen to more than once (and sometimes that was hard). Braxton has laid down a melodic framework that is never too imposing, but always fun to work with and around...something I am very interested in trying to establish myself. Its lead me to an idea of a new biggish group that would play hip-hop influenced music, but in a way that would lend itself to much freedom, I'm still thinking about it, but its something that I hope to actually bring to light!

New York: Anthony Braxton

So my brother and I ventured to NY over the weekend to check out Anthony Braxton 12tet (+1) at the Iridium. Mary Halvorson and Jessica Pavone were both in the group, and I had never seen Braxton before...So I had to go. I had always been fascinated by the sounds of his groups. I never knew what was going on, but I always thought the sound was at least interesting. When I stayed with Mary (while playing/recording the Branca 100 guitar piece), I got to see some of the scores, and was instantly amazed. They were so perfect looking (all hand written by Braxton), and there were no traditional bar lines, but instead everything was written out in relation to a pulse. In addition, some of the notes were written in different colors, some morphed off the music page (Dali-style), while still other notes had circles and triangles drawn over them.

So now I had to see Braxton, and I was not disappointed, but highly blown away when the band took the stage at the Iridium on Friday. His music is like seeing a Christopher Guest film for the first time: it introduces you to a completely new way of approaching and accomplishing the goal of interesting content. The band started playing his new piece, and throughout, anyone in the band could cue anyone else to play parts from his other pieces, or to improvise. Everyone in the band was armed with an array of gestures and hand-signals, as well as dry-erase boards to make cuing that much easier.

And the music was always thoroughly entertaining.

There was so much going on...But never too much as to make it hard to follow. The concert really opened my eyes to different ways of organizing live performance, and the importance of freedom and restraints therein. I will definitely steal every idea I saw there...Okay, maybe I'll just borrow or rent out the ideas.

Afterwards, I got a little drunk off the 7 and 7 (thanks Jess), and talked very briefly with Braxton. He was so enthusiastic to hear that my brother and I were musicians, and reminded me instantly of Santa Claus at the old Miller and Roads...Very jolly!

Links

Mary Halvorson
Jessica Pavone
Iridium NY
Anthony Braxton
Santa Claus

Patchwork, Samson Trinh, S & P, and the death of Fusion

So the Patchwork show went pretty well last night. Atlas played an awesome set, but it was weird seeing the whole audience sit down to watch a rock band. We had the chairs set up, but I didn't realize how weird it would look. Fight the Big Bull sounded better and tighter. Matt has written some pretty sweet new charts that sound nice, and Brian Jones continues to amaze in his auxiliary percussion chair. At times, with Matt and Brian both standing up, Matt conducting and Brian pounding woodblocks, it almost looked like a face off. A face off of excellence.

Samson Trinh came out, and gave me a copy of his new cd "Very Strange Night", of which I play on most of. Its a great sounding cd that is very well put together. My brother's sweet photography is showcased, as well as Samson's weird-ass sense of humor. Samson is the founder and leader of the Upper East Side Big Band, of which I've been a member from the start. Its funny but no matter how avant-garde I get, I still love sitting in a big band, and just playing chords---and occasionally quoting songs from "Once Upon a Time in China" during Mingus tunes (which we did several times).

Then, after the Patchwork show, Shareef Taher and I played our first gig as a duo. Our band "standards & practices" is now officially just the two of us, so we've been slowly putting together tunes just for guitar and drums. It was loud and fun, and the people there seemed to really like it. It was very encouraging to see that our moving into a totally new sound wasn't too offensive! Its basically the slow realization that you don't need sound all the time in music, and when you play against each other, it pretty much always sounds cool. We should be able to solidify the new sound soon, because it looks like we will be playing every other Wednesday at Empire with my brother's amazing band: The OK Bird. More details as they develop.

And Fusion finally closed. It was a great venue, but it was in a bad location, and the cover charges were tough to pay (because most of the time you had to pay cash, and you couldn't put the charge on your bill). Its a bad combination, because you have great food, and then a band with a cash cover. Its awful because people going for the music aren't gonna spend money on food, and people coming for the food will not have cash to pay the cover. That's what sucks about the state laws regarding venues having to serve food. That's why Patchwork does most of its shows at Art Galleries.

Anyway, I think that's all I got for today--now its off to New York to see Mary and Jess with Anthony Braxton!

Links:
standards & practices -new stuff posted soon...
The OK Bird
Atlas
Samson Trinh -check it out

Turntables to Burn Fables

So the Patchwork Turntable Sessions seem to be the bomb. We get a bunch of musicians together from different sides of the musical spectrum, and then we put them together in random configurations, and tell them to play for 10 minutes. It works great, or maybe it doesn't...we don't know until the audience know, and thats always fun. So today, I decided to google "Patchwork Collective", and I happened to find some videos on YouTube.com that someone had posted of our last Turntable Session at ADA Gallery. The videos are short, but its good to see an enthusiastic fan not only film some of it, but then blog about it...and post videos! It was awesome. Thanks to Daniel and his sweet blog "Daniel's Pilgrimage".

Links organized below (a new experiment I'm trying):
Patchwork Collective
Turntable Videos
Daniel's Pilgrimage
The Amazing ADA Gallery

Atomic/School Days

So this is one of the most kick ass bands that was ever 2 bands and then combined (voltron style) to 1 band.

It started as a Ken Vandermark group called School Days. School Days' first album "Crossing Division" is amazing. The quartet of Vandermark (reeds), Jeb Bishop (trombone), Paal Nilsson-Love (drums), and Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten(bass) is pretty amazing. This album really solidified my love of Vandermark's music, mostly because I have a very particular taste in films that Vandermark seems to share, and seeing that he wrote a song dedicated to Takeshi Kitano just made it more obvious. So then the group became a quintet by adding Kjell Nordeson on vibes with the album "In Our Time". Now the group was sporting the same instrumentation as the Dave Holland Quintet, but with much more variation, and creativity in the writing.

Enter Atomic

They were an amazing Scandanavian Quintet made up of:

Paal Nilsson-Love (drums)
Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten (bass)
Magnus Broo (trumpet)
Fredrik Ljungkvist (sax)
Havard Wiik (piano)

They released a couple albums, one of which had a sweet cover of "Pyramid Song" by Radiohead. They even toured the US, where they unleashed a fury of crazy ass jazz intensity. Seeing them at the Ottobar in Baltimore was a revelation. It was like their instruments couldn't even contain the sheer density of their feral battle-like songs.

So...checking the great Vandermark discography at tisue.net, I found out that the two bands of School Days, and Atomic were joining forces...and would only perform as one entity. They even released an album, the amazing "Nuclear Assembly Hall" in which they display a chameleon-like blend of styles and timbres.

And now the three-headed monster that is Atomic/School Days will convene in Chicago in April for a couple of shows that should not be missed...and we can only hope they will be documented somehow!

More info on the dates and locations of these performances can be found at:
www.kenvandermark.com