EPIPHENOMENAL BOOGIE: LIGHT-SOUND SINGULARITIES IN PATTERNED TIME

Please come to hear/see me perform my new piece for three 16mm projectors, light-mixing, light-modulated electrical feedback, and a 26-inch gong.

Lauren Carter and Ben Russell are also set to blow minds with 16mm film/live audio pieces. Should be intense! Details below!

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THE SOUND AND LIGHT SHOW
8:00pm on Saturday the 13th of September
at the Nightingale Theatre, 1084 N Milwaukee
$5

In the grand tradition of the Pyramids at Giza (home of "The Sound and Light Show"), the London Filmmakers Co-Operative, Tony Conrad and Bruce McClure and _____, your friends at the Nightingale Theater are bringing a triple-header EXPANDED CINEMA show to your own Midwestern backyard. In what promises to be a loud, flickering, and thoroughly LIVE event, Itinerant Chicagoan Ben Russell joins forces with New Chicagoans Joe Grimm and Lauren Carter (welcome!) for a 4-part performance involving Multiple Projectors, Thumb-Piano Drones, Resonant Frequencies, Stroboscopic Action, A Rubber Mask, Red Underwear and A Massive Gong! Burn some ear candles, visit your eye doctor, and prepare to have your senses be overwhelmed! WARNING: this show contains visuals that may be harmful to those with epilepsy

FEATURING: Nature Illusion by Lauren Carter (6:00, 16mm, live sound, 2007) Epiphenomenal Boogie: Light-Sound Singularities In Patterned Time by Joe Grimm (25:00, live triple-projector performance, 2008), The Red and the Blue Gods by Ben Russell w/Joe Grimm (8:00, 16mm, live sound, 2005), The Black and the White Gods by Ben Russell (25:00, live double-projector performance, 2008)
TRT 64:00

SYNOPSIS
Nature Illusion by Lauren Carter (6:00, 16mm, live sound, 2007)
Diseased Oak leaves from the floodplains of New Orleans are transformed into a cameraless 16mm string of geometrical forms, pushed through the night air by live drones and hypnotic tones.

Epiphenomenal Boogie: Light-Sound Singularities In Patterned Time by Joe Grimm (25:00, live triple-projector performance, 2008)
Using three 16mm projectors, black-and-white loops are projected through primary-colored gels to produce various mixed color phenomena at the screen. Noisy audio is produced by a circuit matrix that uses screen-mounted light sensors to modulate the feedback within projectors' built-in audio circuits. Sound is played back through a massive, resonant gong. A psychedelic, stroboscopic exploration of the physical qualities of light, electricity, shaking metal, and vibrating air.

The Red and the Blue Gods by Ben Russell w/Joe Grimm (8:00, 16mm, live sound, 2005)
An ethnographic field report in which the Anthropologist describes the mythic creation of an unnamed 'sun-scraping structure' through the ritualized actions of the Red and the Blue Gods. Featuring live narration by Ben Russell and sound by Joe Grimm.

The Black and the White Gods by Ben Russell (25:00, live double-projector performance, 2008)
Using a short segment of Russell's early ethnographic film DAUMË as its foundation, this double-projection performance employs a variety of 16mm film loops, hand-built electronics, prismatic lenses, and analog components to create an audiovisual feedback loop that edges steadily towards the phenomenological. With echoes of Tony Conrad's The Flicker and William Basinski's Disintegration Loops, THE BLACK AND THE WHITE GODS seeks to interrogate the possibility of representation via the abstracted field of bodily experience.

Thanks to Rob S. for tipping me off to this thoughtful review in Dusted Magazine.

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Joe Grimm's projects have always had both an ear sympathetic to melodic beauty and an interest in the formal constructions of sound – often noise. The Wind-Up Bird's 2003 album Whips had Grimm and collaborator Jeff Smith combining a properly "experimental" or technical approach in manipulating mostly acoustic sound sources into textured drones, along with a traditional instrumental conception of the suite. Whips' centerpiece, "This," distills these polarities at their most extreme in one of the most unnervingly intimate moments I've experienced in a music recording: a female voice on an answering machine sobbing the words "I'm sorry I've become this monster / I love you a lot," which are gradually processed to the limit of abrasion.

The avant-garde influence was always there, but it served tracks that were as much about melody as texture. Braincloud (released under Grimm's given name) tips the scales the other way. It's built of stricter edges and conceptual rigor. Inspired by his experience playing in one of Glenn Branca's 100 guitar symphonies, Grimm became enamored with the harmonic possibilities latent in cacophony. Specifically, he means to focus on sympathetic harmonics, the "ghost tones" created by the frequency interplay between notes played simultaneously (see the piano works of Charlemagne Palestine). There are no electronics or digital treatments here other than the use of an equalizer. Rather violins, horns, throat singing and especially pianos enmesh in pieces that are often deafeningly thick. A haze looms above the instrumentation that is all natural overtone.

In the rapidly proliferating electronic and noise scenes, Braincloud is a nice reminder of how much of what we consider experimental still derives from the physical principles of acoustics rather than circuitry. The 15-minute "Braincloud III" was recorded live on three pianos, each played by three musicians, but you'd never know it. Between the three main suites ("Braincloud I-III") are interludes for solo harpsichord that might come off as a bit monochromatic to some but – as with all the songs here – increasing the volume helps to appreciate everything going on.

This record is significantly less inviting for the uninitiated listener when compared with Grimm's previous efforts, which are sumptuous and often instantly engrossing. But Braincloud offers a different pleasure, one that seems only to be getting more rare. It's a pleasure that requires attention and patience, and is the richer for it.

By Brandon Kreitler

The inspiration for Joe Grimm's Brain Cloud was twofold: from Glenn Branca came the desire to generate music that would present itself as (in Grimm's own words) "a single mass of varying density, comprised of tens of thousands of individual events" (having participated previously in the performance of a Branca "100-guitar symphony," Grimm was struck by the humongous sound produced by the electric mass), and from the piano music of Charlemagne Palestine came a heightened sensitivity to the "ghost tone" that arises when two notes sharing a particular frequency in their overtone series are played. Grimm (aka The Wind-Up Bird) thus ventured to create overtone-based music filled with harmonically-related pitches and the "throbbing harmonics that arise as a result of their interaction."

The hour-long recording of acoustic sound masses that resulted alternates between three "Brain Cloud" variations (created using voices, violins, horns, and piano) and two "Harpsichord" solo improvisations—a natural and wisely sequenced arrangement. Certainly Palestine 's influence is heard in the rolling waves of piano that stream beneath the droning voices in the twenty-minute "Brain Cloud I" and in "Brain Cloud III" (arranged for three pianos only) even more. "Brain Cloud IV" opens the album with high-pitched drones that alternately suggest amplified tones bleeding from electric wires and Tuvan throat singing, while the "Harpsichord" pieces present shimmering masses whose unvarying pitches reinforces the percussive character of their staccato execution.

Though the foregoing description might suggest otherwise, the pieces aren't static. Grimm maintains interest in "Brain Cloud I" by subtle modulations in volume, tempo, and arrangement (layered shifts from single to multiple layers of voices and pianos recur throughout). Likewise, "Brain Cloud III" (an eighteen-handed piece recorded live with three pianos with each played by three people) begins softly with the playing a single piano before swelling into a huge mass when the others join in and then again reverts to the peaceful rumination of the single voice halfway through. By contrast, the dense roar generated by the three instruments towards the piece's close is something to behold.

August 2008

Hi friends!
After what feels like weeks of moving, Lauren and I are finally setting into our new home. We are living in Pilsen, a bustling Mexican neighborhood. This place is amazing. The streets are full of vendors selling horchata, tamales, paletas. We are directly behind the Pilsen branch of the Chicago public library. Yesterday we discovered that the hidden secret mexican supermarket one block from our house is a total treasure, combining ultra-cheap fresh produce with a nice selection of organic products and specialty items. We have a deck behind our apartment perfect for hanging out and eating meals. Everything seems pretty ideal so far, but we do miss our friends. In providence we had such a great community all around us, but out here it's just the two of us!

Hi friends --
As you probably know, Lauren and I are leaving for chicago. We leave early Monday morning. Sunday evening we will be hanging out and tending our FREE STORE! Come by and have a beer with us, and take some of the nice things we don't want to take with us, such as

fans
lamps
distorted P.A. speaker
photocells on a stick
giant bag of candy
unopened jelly
records, tapes, cd's
clothes for him and her
art supplies
dishes
furniture

We will also accept trades in the form of posters, music, mixtapes, beers, fresh fruit, zines, or whatever you want to give us to remember you by.

We will miss you all.
7:30pm, 32 Tuxedo Ave. see you there!

Joe Grimm

La lalalalala give it all away

In addition to making some pretty ill music, Keith Fullerton Whitman runs the totally great distro Mimaroglu Music Sales. It's one of the only reliable places where you can buy Brain Cloud in the US. Here's what he said about the album in his little write-up. Psyched he is feeling it!

"a simply fantastic set of ensemble / piano / harpsichord drone pieces spearheaded by providence-area composer joe grimm (aka "the wind-up bird") utilizing a variant of rhys chatham's "choiring" to yield a heady array of overtone-magic ... performers on the two "brain cloud" takes include geoff mullen, scott "work/death" reber, luke "lucky dragons" fischbeck, and black forest/black sea's jeffrey alexander and miriam goldberg.

one of the best discs i've heard this year ; highly recommended, esp. if charlemagne palestine's whole "strumming music" ethos strikes a nerve/chord ..."

My new full-length album is finally out! It's been released by the excellent Spekk label of Tokyo, Japan. Here's a short description I wrote for the label:

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The seed for this music was planted when I participated in one of Glenn Branca's 100-guitar symphonies. The sound was incredible: a deafening, electric choir incorporating so many voices that the each element was subsumed within the group sound.

But I was struck even more by the unrealized potential in Branca's approach; the sound was separated into several identifiable voices, so that the impression given was of a conventional counterpoint-driven music. I wanted to make a particulate music that presented itself as a single mass of varying density, comprised of tens of thousands of individual events.

Soon afterward, I began to immerse myself in the piano music of Charlemagne Palestine. I learned from him that when two notes share a particular frequency in their overtone series, that frequency can be made to sing out clearly -- a ghost tone, not played directly, but arising from the interactions among the directly played notes. I began to compose and improvise with this in mind -- I could sketch out desired pitches, and then arrange webs of lower pitches that coincided to produce those target pitches within their harmonic series.

This music deals with overtones. I listen not so much to the direct-played notes; instead, I let my mind wander through the web of throbbing harmonics that arise as a result of their interaction. There are obvious sounds on the surface of the music, but eventually my ears penetrate beneath the surface to where harmonics overlap in countless reinforcements and cancellations. I love the glowing acoustic haze that seems to hover above the obvious notes, and the sustained ghost tones that emerge and recede within that cloudy texture.

The Brain Cloud pieces are through-composed according to the principles of overtone confluence and particle density. There are no special electronics on these recordings -- the humming sounds are the result of the acoustical interaction of voices, violins, horns, and above all, piano (Brain Cloud III was recorded live with three pianos, each played by three people; 18-handed piano). The harpsichord interludes are solo improvisations for harpsichord, equalizer, and slight delay.