Archive Dive: Liof Munimula 1990
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.
///
In my first week as the new Creative Audio Archive Manager, I received an email from Hal Rammel about a VHS tape he shot of a Liof Munimula gig from 1990 at the Willy Street Fest in Madison, WI. Liof Munimula was an experimental music trio (Michael Zerang, Don Meckley, and Daniel Scanlan) who performed regularly from 1982 until 1997. Without wasting any time I tracked down the tape and put it on, and much to my delight, the footage drops you right in. The brief soundcheck shows Don bending his radiotar finding his levels, while Michael warms up his limbs with breakneck singles across his paired down drum kit. Daniel preps to shred as a locomotive wails in the distance, and the on-stage feedback assures us that the levels are pushed. The rest is history.
The point of Hal’s email though, was connecting this tape to Michael and Don’s upcoming live performance at Elastic Arts, the first by the two players in over twenty years. The duo call themselves The GILGAMANIANS, and were brought back together by the untimely passing of Daniel in 2018. Earlier this year on March 18th, they released ESCAPE FROM DARK MATTER, (recorded, mixed, and mastered by Alex Inglizian at ESS) on Michael's label Pink Palace Records, and the record is dedicated to the memory of Daniel. I talked on the phone with both Michael and Don about their collaboration and approach to improvisation in anticipation of their performance.
While this is a different group than Liof Munimula, Michael and Don improvise with a similar palette of sounds, primarily that of short-wave radio. Don shared with me his on-going fascination with radio as raw material and pulling sound from the air. The element of surprise means you can “soar or crash” as he put it. In an effort to harness radio’s never ending stream of unpredictable sounds and textures, Don developed his own radio instrument called the "radiotar" (dubbed this by Gene Coleman), a modified Sony short-wave radio outfitted with a bending guitar neck to effectively control the fine-tune knob. Paired with the Sony's handy preset feature, Don was able to maintain a consistent level of performative control. He said this allowed him to get out from behind the desk and duel with Dan’s guitar. Michael called radio “a spigot of noise,” and emphasized the gradual shift over the years in the sonic palette of radio as the landscape shifted from analog to digital and satellites became more common.
Even though the radiotar unfortunately no longer exists, Don still experiments with shortwave these days with a Grundig International Satellite 650. The other part of the equation is his Yamaha SPX-90 digital effects box (the same one used in this clip), with which he processes the signal and uses a foot pedal to cycle through effects. He first started using the Yamaha while studying at School of the Art Institute (SAIC) around the time the Sound Department was formed. As faculty in Sound, I was excited to tell Don that the EMU synthesizer that he learned on is alive and well and still operates as a core pedagogical tool. Don said that coming out of SAIC, he was encouraged to appreciate and build off of what had been done before with Varese, Cage, and Musique Concréte. “Non-traditional sounds became the foundation,” he said.
The other stand-out instrument in this clip is the hydro-kalimba (also named by Gene), which we get a good look at around the 12-minute mark. It uses soaked clothes to drip water onto an amplified cafeteria tray cut to produce different pitches, producing organic rhythmic patterns. Michael explained that performing with this instrument made a huge impression on him and expanded his understanding of time. Louder, slower drips might produce a tempo, while quicker natural patterns would emerge in between. This allowed him to become more sensitive to the malleability of tempo and to be more flexible with rhythm. It also freed him up to not worry so much about time-keeping and develop a more textural and spatially focused style (space-keeping if you will). I've always loved the way Michael moves around his drums with such fluidity, and its a bit more clear to me now how he mastered that approach.
As a whole, Liof’s members were constantly challenging each other to get somewhere they hadn’t been before. They made a point to grow as a group and push into non-comfort zones. By recording and listening back to their performances, they localized patterns in their music as a way to break free from them and to reset their sound. As Michael put it, “it wasn’t about finding an endpoint, but it was about what is next.” The GILGAMANIANS build off the foundation that was Liof Munimula and continue their pursuit tonight.
I'll leave you with some of Michael’s words on improvisation that I found particularly inspiring; “When I go into a situation like this, I try to be like a child. I try to go in as open minded and open hearted as possible so that I can just exist within whatever it is without too much of a preconceived notion. I want to start from scratch and to start from fresh every time.” I’ve pulled a ton of insight from my conversations with Michael and Don, and I look forward to hearing the two come together to make some noise tonight.
Please enjoy this footage along with Hal’s personal recollection of the tape shared below!
- James Wetzel, Archives Manager
Liof Munimula Live at the Willy Street Fest - 1990
The Willy Street Fair has been an end-of-summer street fair on Williamson Street in Madison, WI for over 4 decades. In the 70s and into the early 1990s the street fair events included an Experimental Stage organized by Lyx Ish and Miekal And, perhaps best known for all their projects, performances, cassette releases and books under the name Xexoxial Endarchy. Our close friend, bassist/cellist Russell Thorne (of Chicago’s Occult Bookstore) had opened a bookstore on Williamson Street called Prisca Magia and his Madison-based ensemble was booked to perform on that stage one Sunday in 1990. I took our camcorder along to document both Russell’s set and a set by one of my favorite Chicago bands Liof Munimula. The interplay between the 3 musicians of Liof Munimula (Michael Zerang, Daniel Scanlan, and Don Meckley) was always fascinating and exciting. I had a particular interest in Don Meckley’s work with self-made instruments (the radiotar and hydro-kalimba seen in this video) and his manner of integrating these unique voices in and around more conventional sound sources (drums, electric guitar, and violin though played in equally experimental fashion) was a constant source of inspiration to me as I developed my own approaches to playing amplified homemade instruments in similar settings. Watching this video after some 30 years, notwithstanding Liof Munimula’s significant place in the history of improvised music, I realize why I walked all around the stage as I witnessed this band in action (close-ups of Michael’s drums, Daniel’s guitar strings and the dripping water from Don’s hydro-kalimba), the thrills are in the details.
Hal Rammel, November 2022
The Gilgamanians, Maku Sica Tue 11/29, 8 PM, Elastic Arts, 3429 W. Diversey #208, $15, all ages
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.