Archive Dive: STAFF PICKS!
As a part of the ongoing work of The Creative Audio Archive at ESS, we present Archive Dive - a regular newsletter featuring unheard recordings and ephemera related to the collections housed in the CAA. Items shared here are In Copyright: Education Use Permitted. By clicking the private links below, you agree that you will not make public, copy, distribute, or otherwise put to use any of the recordings featured here without the written consent of ESS and/or the rights holder(s), except for educational purposes. For more information on the recordings and/or collections included below, please contact james@ess.org or visit: http://www.creativeaudioarchive.org.
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S T A F F P I C K S !!!
The ESS staff did some digging in the Creative Audio Archive this past month, and everyone pulled out a few items that caught their ear. Enjoy listening below, and come out tonight to listen in person at middle brow as part of our CAA DJ Nights!
- james
ALEX INGLIZIAN
The Flaming Lips @ The Metro 12/10/93
(Side B: 13:35 “She Don’t Use Jelly”)
From Malachi Ritscher Collection (MR-0455)
I first heard the Flaming Lips on the show, Beavis and Butthead sometime in the mid 90’s. They played the music video for “She Don’t Use Jelly” and I was hooked! The song is a quirky and infectious track that encapsulates the eccentric charm of the band. Its lyrics are delightfully bizarre, painting a vivid and surreal picture. Wayne Coyne's distinctive vocals add to the song's unique character, blending perfectly with the offbeat lyrics, and punctuated by trademark moments of crunching but still harmonious noise. This was definitely one of the catalytic music moments that led me down the wormhole of psychedelic and experimental rock music.
- Alex
ADAM VIDA
Frissell / Mori / Staley @ Links Hall 04/23/88
From Links Hall Collection (LH-026-A)
This live performance is found in both the Links Hall and Malachi Ritscher Collections in CAA. An incredible set of improvisations from 1988 featuring Bill Frissell (electric guitar), Ikue Mori (percussion), and Jim Staley (trombone). Absolutely wonderful playing!
- Adam
KATE IN
George Lewis Computer Music Workshop @ Randolph Street Gallery 10/27/89
From ESS Collection (10_1_ESS)
I was excited to find a trove of workshops in the ESS Collection of the Creative Audio Archive and landed on a 1989 VHS recording of George Lewis teaching Interactive Computer Music Programming. In this excerpt, Lewis works with a small group of engaged participants and demonstrates FORTH, a computer language for interactive applications.
One of my favorite moments in the video is a zoom on Lewis around 3:10 as he explains something to the group. His own computer music scores the moment, playing in the room almost louder than his voice. Overall, I appreciate how Lewis teaches, fielding questions as they come, experimenting with an attitude of curiosity and play.
- Kate
KELSEY MCFALLS
Fred Anderson Interview / Birdhouse Tape
From Fred Anderson Collection (FA-011)
While working on a recent grant proposal I got into the Fred Anderson collection and stumbled upon an interview between Anderson and an unidentified interviewer. They talk about the beginnings of AACM, the Birdhouse, Anderson's introduction to music, finding his sound, and seemingly mundane details about his life: "working a day job... trying to buy a house."
My favorite exchange is around 3:30 when they discuss a friend of Anderson's who used to file mouthpieces to help musicians experiment with new sounds.
"About him being a saxophone player, you know, everybody used to come to him because they figured that he knew. Well, he knew a lot about sound, you know, just by looking. He didn't have no tools or nothing, no precision tools or shit, he'd just take a file in his hand... and change the mouthpieces around and just experiment.
So we used to do all of that kind of stuff, you know what I mean, and that went on for a while until we got to the point when, you know, we knew enough about what was happening with the sound and how to get the sound that we like abandoned that. So now, what I do now is just play on a regular stock mouthpiece that I go and buy in the store.
But at that time, you know what I mean, when you're starting to try to find something, you be trying everything."
- Kelsey
EDDIE GUZMAN
Jim Baker Trio @ Links Hall 10/13/89
From Links Hall Collection (LH-045-2-A)
October 13, 1989, Links Hall Studio
Jim Baker/Kent Kessler/Steve Hunt
00:01:40 - 00:22:02
Jim Baker is someone I’ve seen perform live many times, and each time it’s always a pleasure. I love his recordings with Charles Rumback, as well as his synthesizer performances with the ARP 2600. Links Hall is another place that I’m very interested in the history of, given the time I’ve spent working at Constellation. It’s great to see two familiar names (Jim Baker and Links Hall) and hear what they were up to in October of 1989.
The beginning of the set starts off with some very minimal drumming and lyrical piano sections. The second track opens up chaotically with all the instruments stabbing at each other, trying to grab hold of a sense of rhythm. Later it evolves into Baker exploring some strange melodic paths with the others following suit in strangeness and intensity.
- Eddie
JAMES WETZEL
Milford Graves @ Empty Bottle 10/27/99
From Malachi Ritscher Collection (MR-0958)
There’s so much to love about Milford Graves. Pure energy, fearless improvisation, singular technique, how he thinks about the human body's various internal rhythms, and the way he incorporates his voice. And to imagine him playing at the Empty Bottle blows my mind. His "polymeter-rhythm playing" changed the way I thought about drumming and freed my approach. Milford was really good at sounding like a percussion ensemble, and that comes through in this recording. I like how he lets rhythms slowly develop but then on a dime steers the performance in a completely different direction, and then pauses for an intermission/ drum and history lesson on track 5. Milford gave the art of drumming so much, and I often wonder what he’d think of my own playing.
"I didn't know I was avant garde" - Milford Graves
Had to toss in some Ra as well. This is a reel-to-reel tape of a live concert, and there isn't much information that came along with it. There's a nice rendition of Space is the Place, but I like this reel because at the 18 minute mark Ra rips one of his patented vacuum cleaner solos, my best guess is on a minimoog, then followed by some keys and Farfisa.
- James
OLIVIA JUNELL
Sarah Vowell - How Sunday Sounds (Sounds From Chicago series)
From ESS Collection (254_ESS)
As a longtime public radio and podcast listener, the name Sarah Vowell was immediately familiar. In browsing the archives for this Dive, all of the rest of my picks were chosen specifically because I didn’t recognize the names in them (one favorite was a track simply attributed to “Audrey”), so this one stood out as an anomaly too enticing to pass up. Turns out it’s a mesmerizingly mundane chronicle of exactly what the title describes. Sarah would have been ~27 years old at the time of this work.
- Olivia
JOEL APPEL-KRAUT
Mamadou Diabate Ensemble @ Eli’s Cheesecake World, 09/19/04
From Malachi Ritscher Collection (MR-1975)
Of all of Malachi’s live concert recordings, this concert has some of the best audio quality I’ve found. The opening of this recording is really just an ensemble of crying children, as I imagine most days at Eli’s Cheesecake World sound like. But if you listen for a minute longer, you get to witness a pretty magical transformation: Diabate’s Koura enters the soundscape, slowly and tentatively, and it placates these dairy-filled families into a sweet silence. By the end of the first track, the audience is enraptured, and remains so for the rest of the performance.
The Koura is a 21-string instrument from West Africa, and Diabate is as virtuosic a player of the instrument as anyone on this planet. On these recordings you can feel his unique and varied influence, ranging from Mande to Blues to Bluegrass.
- Joel
Tonight's DJ set at middle brow will feature these staff selections. We hope you can swing by!
CAA DJ Night No. 7
middle brow
2840 W. Armitage Ave
5 - 7 PM
About the Creative Audio Archive at ESS:
The Creative Audio Archive (CAA) at Experimental Sound Studio is a Chicago based center for the preservation and investigation of innovative and experimental sonic arts and music. With collections from Sun Ra / El Saturn, Links Hall, Malachi Ritscher, Studio Henry, and Experimental Sound Studio (its parent organization), among others - CAA was formed for the historical preservation of recordings, print, and visual ephemera related to avant-garde and exploratory sound and music.
The CAA's public programming works to fulfill its mission of stewardship, preservation, and accessibility through live events, artist commissions and residencies, and research fellowships.