Illustration for 2025 Drawtober Day 8: Demon. See Facebook / Instagram for the series.
This episode features three long form pieces, the first and third from a recording session with Blake Helton way back in 2009. What was even happening then? We were! I love these tracks, and hope to release them as some sort of EP in the future.
We didn’t fall back on our familiar instruments during this session, but combined acoustic sounds such as my voice, gongs, hand percussion, and an autoharp stripped of its dampers with electronics like loopers, harmonizers, filters, of course Blake’s trusty Minimoog. The results are deep and rich, and remind me of many of our 1970s touch points in early experimental krautrock and fantasy and horror films.
The first piece sets the scene with an icy, otherworldly procession of choir, gongs, and autoharp.
The third piece has wonderful rhythmic movement made of muted gongs, thumb piano, fuzzy filters, delay lines, and eventually a guttural, rhythmic vocal. This one really reminds me of Can and early Kraftwerk.
Listening to these soundscapes, I wonder why I eventually donated that autoharp. I could get my Henry Cowell / John Cage playing piano strings fix without having a giant piano! Someday I’ll find another one and adopt it.
The second track is a piece titled “Theme from Yellow Smoke” and was created for a multimedia collaboration with visual artist and photographer Kevin Hoth in 2006. Kevin is an awesome, creative, questing spirit whose work “delves into the transformative potential of image disruption, acting as a catalyst for transgression, healing, and synthesis.” Yes it does!
See Kevin’s website and Hopper Prize interview for a look at his vibrant, vital photography.
The piece begins with gongs and possibly prepared guitar. A short interlude of a sped-up, looped plucked instrument appears and makes way for a distant duo of feedback guitars and some sort of morse code tapped out with the switch on a Les Paul. Previous elements are juggled and reiterated for the finish, along with one of my favorite extended guitar techniques: rapidly moving a slide in a small section of the guitar neck, activating all the strings without any attack. With reverb, I can approximate a ghostly string section.
I can’t remember the context of this piece, but I am getting some David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti vibes. The little people in Mulholland Drive. The reverse house explosion in Lost Highway.
Finally, the episode concludes with a short guitar loop I recorded maybe 20 years ago. It’s a palette cleanser with a steel-guitar flavor, it returns us from our pilgrimage through strange sound worlds.
Lenny Bernstein was sometimes critiqued for his introductions for modern pieces for his concert audiences. It was said that his intro to “The Unanswered Question” lasted longer than the piece itself!
Typically, I like to be surprised by new music and not read about it, but there’s something interesting about writing out the form a piece or improvisation takes. It helps me to think about form and how music moves through time. Maybe it makes me more honest, or aware of how long someone can actually stand to listen to a pentatonic, histrionic guitar solo.
Colin Bragg 