This piece mourns our leaving the sea, the loss of our amphibean nature. A loss pointed out by Jimi to whom the piece is indebted, particularly in the use of reversed guitar.
The reversed guitar part is played on a left handed Strat copy strung right handed [another nod to Jimi]. The prepared guitar is another Strat [Squier], a right-handed one. The Strat is the ultimate in electric guitar design, in my view, and whether it has the Fender name on it is immaterial,
This began as a one off solo, a kind of warm up that I happened to record. I added the second guitar part, for some reason. The nice people at Droning Earth asked me to post it, as they wanted to hear a slow one, without drums and only two guitars, I was reluctant at first, as there are a few equipment buzzes on it, but hell, here it is, warts and all - like yours truly.
Experimentalcosmic chamber musicspace jazzguitarelegy for two guitars - a reversed guitar and a prepared guitarfree improvisationmoodbackwards guitarreversed guitarprepared guitarOriginalstrangemeditationhypnotic
Gorgeous, such a tripped out vibe. Aptly titled, great imagery it invokes and delivers!
... way down by the Methane Sea ... and Arizona's new red sands ...
this is surrealist beauty. love it and excited to go through your others works right now .... Oh wow that's great - your spirit is all pervasive, your own work and presence here is so inspiring
A most transportive piece. Hypnotic and meditational at once:)
Thanks - I like the distinction you make between transportation, hypnosis and meditation. The first with the sense of being carried away, the second as in an induced dream, and the latter with the sense of pondering. In the first two one is somewhat powerless, whereas the last is an excercise of mental will. I am reminded of Durer's etching called Melancolia, where the winged figure ponders with a strange otherworldly heaviness - that picture too combines transportative dreaming and meditation
Well, I can honestly say I have never heard anything quite like this before. Cool!
Nor have I ... and I created it! Thanks
i love the open and spontaneously probing aspect of this one (and of course the watery Jimi themes, the devotion and even obsession with which i share), It was sheerly spontaneous - you know how it is, you are around the house first thing in the morning with one or two minutes to kill. I picked my lefty Strat copy and just started pinging around - no amp, purely acoustic. I liked the feel so I switched on the 'tape' and put it down in one take. Went out. When I came back, I listened again, and some of the phrases suggested reversal. So reversed the whole lot, added some 'prepared' guitar - actually just some slide and behind the nut harmonics, with smoe bells and surf - and voila! I also put some sine wave drones to suggest the harmonic 'movement' - but I think fairly chromatically on that score. So there was that magic, that ghost in the machine again. Jimi is guiding us down here, man.
that reverse sound is extraordinarily vocal. It is uncanny, Jonathan. I am unnerved by the strangeness that simple reversal gives to a guitar line. There is something mystical at work here.
reversed guitar sounds like a flute or something, great track, it was worth doing something totally different, more minimalistic, add this to vol73.Thanks for enabling this - I've always wanted to do a whole track of reversed guitar, rather than just using the effect for colouring on snatches of sound. Strange how elusive it is though; there's a ghost in machine there.
Reversed guitar is simply playing a passage backwards - so 1234 becomes 4321 - and yet there is a third thing there - something else happens - that's the ghost. On this track I can hear a faint voice shout something - that got in there on the reversal. Reversing changes the tone a whole lot too. It's almost as if you are breaking the rules of the unoiverse
It's said that the first reversed recorded guitar solo was by George of the Beatles in 1966, before Jimi was to really exploit the effect shortly after in '67. I like the reversed stuff Harvey Mandel did on Cristo in '68 too.
lyrics
Floating Liquid Gardens
Land lubbing
Ocean outcasts
Sired by the starry
Sea
You turned your backs
On the watery way,
And on the milky way.
For Space is a sea,
And planets are but
Floating liquid gardens
