2011 Favorites – Confessions of a Deviant Machine
I was pleased to find myself and Lee Noyes‘ collaboration, “Confessions of a Deviant Machine,” in the avant-garde net magazine “Spiritual Archives” year-end favorites of 2011. This album is free for download in a couple locations: http://www.archive.org/details/cnv68 and http://www.con-v.org/cnv68.htm.
“Over 70 titles chosen from thousands of discs, embracing a huge range of genres, a good exercise to remember the year that is leaving.” – SA
2011 – Top 100 Netlabel Releases – Confessions of a Deviant Machine
What a pleasant surprise to see my duo, “confessions,” with the talented Lee Noyes in a wrap up year review on the pages of AoS. Released on the netlabel “con-V,” this album is free for download in a couple locations: http://www.archive.org/details/cnv68 and http://www.con-v.org/cnv68.htm.
Re-Release “Bats in the Belfry”
My subscription to TuneCore ran out, apparently, a couple weeks ago and I decided against renewal in favor of releasing a free copy of “Bats in the Belfry” – 2009 via my independent label “cellar door.” This album is a contemporary classical piano work for piano roll.
Big event week
You can never predict when the ImprovFriday event week is going to be quiet, fair or large. Last week, December 1-3, was pretty large, with a couple new contributors and some old faces showing up for a total of 67 unique works. Ambient, drone, noise, acousmatic, electronic…., IF has it covered. There’s also a fair amount of mixes and mashes since we operate under a 3.0 creative commons.
Here is the particular playlist and here is the actual “event thread” if you would like to peruse through each post with the description of works and photos tagging along in some cases.
Paul H. Muller
Paul Muller – 2009 to present. Back in the day when ImprovFriday was 1st circulating around Twitter, Facebook and NNM, I used to post a playlist to this here blog. One day in 2009 Paul Muller posted a comment here and asked a simple question with a statement to the point of: I want to submit notated works and if accomplished within the time period of the event, why not include it? Should IF be limited purely to the idea of absolute improvisation? Well, we weren’t exactly following a pure improvisational structure to begin with, so I was open to more ideas.
I checked out Paul’s status. A minimalist composer whose influence is Bach, composes for his church, performs in the local symphony. I concluded this is definitely an artist worthy of joining the IF team, if not only to counter my temperament but to widen the scope of what ImprovFriday represents.
Paul Muller has worked with IF since late 2009 to really invoke what we are now as an event. He consistently comes up with new ideas and lends his input on every tiny or significant issue. Paul also played a large part in organizing the renewal of IF in the second year of our pay to host status and was an instrumental part of the projects, ImprovFriday Vo. 1& 2, and For Japan. He has written several mini-reviews at IF as well – example and started up IF Radio which has turned into a joint project with Jim Goodin. He also is involved in the project “What’s New at ImprovFriday” with Jim Goodin.
Paul released an ambient work definitely worth checking out titlted “dark sunset.” Here is a great review.
Paul is also an author at the Contemporary Composer blog at Sequenza21.
Unchained Melody – 8 Bagatelles for Piano (1999) – Steve Moshier
Its been a long, long time since I used what used to be “amaranth arthouse” as a vehicle to share outstanding works of my fellow musicians. I have since re-arranged the site, but decided keeping the “shout-out” section made perfect sense. In that regard, let me lead you to a work which I believe is worth your time to allow stereo infiltration to your brain through your ears.
This week at the event, ImprovFriday, we decided to add links to artist websites via contributors to our playlist and surfing through the links I came upon http://stevemoshier.com//. And all this time I thought I was the only one to create a set of Bagatelles for piano in my circle of new music friends. Steve Moshier’s “Unchained Melody – 8 Bagatelles for Piano” are not only outstanding, they represent minimalist compositional prowess. What I hear on a personal level is something akin to Julius Eastman with a touch of more complexity.
Have a listen for yourself:
Unchained Melody – 8 Bagatelles for Piano (1999) [1st Four] by Steve Moshier
New Release: The Chrome Castle and an Overgrown Lawn
“The Chrome Castle and an Overgrown Lawn” is a somewhat eclectic album consisting of improvisation, sound art, ambient music, noise and drone characteristics. Someone once advised that I not use the word “experimental” when describing a work, as apparently some listeners are quickly turned off by the term. So I will say it is “adventurous” and quite fun.
Jeffrey Harrington
Jeffrey Harrington – 2009. Regarding the history of ImprovFriday, the second person worthy of mention is Jeff Harrington. Jeff was also included in the think tank, but quit in late 2009. Jeff had some great ideas, but all in all, we didn’t agree in the overall direction. Jeff deserves thanks for allowing me to use his work, Viento Del Monstruo to open up the event for a good two to three months. A lovely, festive piece. Very glad he allowed me to use it.
What Jeff Harrington really deserves is credit for rooting for the idea of IF while we were hobbling along Twitter and for using his own site, NNM, to lend a proving ground for how it could work at a central location. I did offer IF to Jeff Harrington when realizing how NNM blossomed with IF, but as the gentleman he is, he declined.
IF is also proud of Harrington in that he won the Calefax Prize in 2010.
David Toub
I’m going to post a quick blog series on ImprovFriday for my own record before a Wiki one day displays their own version. Not many people know about my efforts in running an online event for the last 2+ years. Just so you know, its called “ImprovFriday,” an online event held every week. Pretty simple, we look for new music musicians around the world who are willing to share their music freely in a sort of virtual playground of music.
David Toub was not only the first member of ImprovFriday; through numerous think tank sessions dating 2009-2010 he was vital to make IF an actual event. Toub took over the helm of the group New Ensembles and Composers in 2010.
Toub is a gifted composer really worth checking out. Post-minimalism is his preferred genre descriptor, creating great works in the early 80s and continuing to this day.
We all need some free time
I will not make this a long philosophical essay on the merits of giving away music for free or charging for it. I will quickly point out that within the arts monetary gain is typically sought through grants and commissions, the latter being the status quo for quite a long time. Aside from the fact that for the moment I’m still focusing on non-traditional instrumentation, I’ve decided to give away my music for free at my personal label Cellar Door Records and here at the mirror of that label in the catalog/downloads section. This doesn’t necessarily apply to future or past works which I may release or have already released on an outside label or music loaded into distribution networks. I agree with both sides of the spectrum of the free-versus-charge-argument, but with the economy and the faulty socioeconomic present tense, it makes more sense to give away my music here at my website and personal label (cellar door records) free of charge. If things were to improve, switching positions isn’t entirely impossible. I am also in the process of researching the Internet Archives as a way to upload my music.
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