Alph the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man ...
There's a guitar tone I have in my mind's ear that I try to approximate, but I usually get distracted. It's an electric blues guitar sound that oozes, but has a bit of edge. The guitar used on one part was the cheap Rockster which gets near that, with its faux EMG humbucker on the bridge position. I nearly got the sound, but not quite. But then it is that search for sound that keeps us going.
I usually start with the intention of doing something grounded and down to Earth [usually a blues], but then the gremlins get to me and I start to pile in more and more wierdness, and before I know it, I'm on top of Alpha centuri again!
The outro is just one guitar - the cheap Rockster - drenched in delay - of course!
The piece builds around a series of organic climaxes, or 'gatherings'
The producer's art is like that of the alchemist ... turning base metal into gold!
Sparking ideas - that's how art works for me - there's an endless spiral and cascade of a concatenation of ideas, sounds, images and words. This piece is a special example of this,
Unbridled.
Its a sheer descent not based on any preconditioned ideas of scales etc. It's like stepping out of a swimming pool backwards, naked.
I suppose I was subconsciously channeling McLaughlin circa 1970 [Lifetime, Devotion, Jack Johnson, Where Fortune Smiles, Escalator over the Hill etc.] before he got sophisticated. Not that I could ever play as good as him, but more how he could be completely abrasive and almost brutally naive and ridiculously intense. This is the first piece I've done here where I got gooseflesh from the intensiity of the tremelado. As I said before, I consciously block out all scales, arpeggios etc. as being preconditioned, and play by 'ear' - try to avoid the usual tonalities, and lean towards sound, and therefore texture - and colour
Jazz-rock fusion and prog rock are very close relatives, and heirs to certain strains first woven by Jimi.
Calgon, take me away to Signus X-9.
There's a certain Sun Ra/Beefheart mixture going on here, I think it is the concept of collective improvisation. While there is a 'lead guitar' [ a cheap Rockster superstrat I picked up a few weeks ago - it should be rubbish, but it has a peculiarly penetrating sound with a weighty lower register], but that is foiled by an intertwining lead [my trustyYamaha] as well as a host of other guitars coming in and out [my Honher headless G3T and my two Squier Strats]; then there's the 5 string bass [faux fretless] reaing up. As I was putting this togther, I began to think of the New Orleans concept of collective jazz improvisation, which very close to the blues. I began to think of Ornette too, more to do with the atonal blues lines; and Coltrane's late stuff too. Beefheart always
Lead instruments change second to second, sometimes it's the one doing almost nothing that actually leads the thing, after all.
Deep - he who waits, leads - your intelligence is ice cold.
lyrics
The Atomic Cortage
Carried Ornette Coleman's corse
Relentlessly into
Furthest Space.
From the Golden Circle,
With plastic sax at his feet,
Did Ornette's ghost
Beseech the Harmolodic
Spheres.
And the throng of improvisors
Called out to the Death Star:
"Take him in and imbue
The Universe
With his Freedom
Tune!"
