Unnoted Sessions

‘Finally and fortunately’ were the right words to describe the fact that we had multi-talented artist Which keys today as our guest performer. Matching agendas and mastering the Dutch traffic can be almost as hard as creating a work of art. On top of the latter midi problems were the cause of even more delays and frustration. Was it better to call it a day, with the expectancy of too many monologues? During the session it sometimes seemed like it, chaotic at best, wave after wave of translocated air power, which purpose seemed hidden to us.

Listening back now to all 4 jams the contrary seems true. From the funky and complex first jam, the spontaneous tribute to one of Miles Davids classics during jam 028, the groovy and more easy going jam 029 to the concluding dramatic notes in the last jam, there is structure, monologues come and go followed by recurring streams of dialog. Subconsciously a work was fused together that was larger than our minds could take hold of, running from one frame to the next one, always being out of sync from a singular reality.

Part of the duality was caused by W, who seemed to modulate in and out of tone as if it were his second favourite hobby next to smoking and Godard. Often it was better to just pray and do than to try and guess, catering for an exhilarating environment with a possibilities and pitfalls around every bend. Something definitely worth of investigating further.

After merely a week we were back for more ‘X’ marks the spot emotions. Due to some miscommunication it was just the two of us again. Plus the always receptive walls of the studio, mocking the very essence of our performance. ‘Throw at me whatever you want, I’ll accept willingly but will neither bend nor brake. I’ll be there long after any wave has expired, being one in my existence.’

How long can you keep evolving without forgetting what you are is a question one could ask after listening to jam 24. It was the first jam of that session. From the first funky bass groove it sucked us inside, setting a stateless deus ex machina in motion that just went on and on, mixing sadness and happiness in one wash and go emotion. It was only after ‘Theo’, our digital rhythm section, got confused that we awoke again from our self-induced trance. Who is the bigger machine here?

As a reaction towards the first jam the second one, jam 25 turned into an avantgarde scream against itself. Fueled by Francis Ford Coppola’s classic movie we created with one hand and killed with the other, fighting the power that made us gods. But as with any beast that rears it ugly head, you have to touch it, over and over again until one. ‘The horror, the horror.’

Exhausted and with only 15 more minutes of afterplay left, we decided to do one more quickie. Strangely enough from out of nowhere jam 26 turned into a nicely structured song, contemplating our wanderings through life; as if structure can only be digested bit by bit.

Was our previous session the start of our downfall? Does the act of creativity materialize only for so long until it falls back to the subconscious level of existence, being around to be seen or only being there when created?

We brought in some ‘heavy equipment’ to face these challenges. Professional singer C the voice agreed, quite happily actually, to be part of another improvisational performance after the previous one with her turned out so successful. Expectations were high in the narrow confinements of our studio, with inner shadows ready to be projected.

For our first jam we started with an up-tempo jazz improvisation. Maybe it was lack of sleep, overcomplicated drums or pure misfire, but it turned out to be too challenging for starters, leaving C a bit lost here and there. We decided to take a step back, slow down the tempo, go for more straightforward rock in Jam 022. All of a sudden there was space, dialog, a framework through which both C and IC started screaming the dawn of a new order together. Any remanence of fatigue was blown away by C’s fortissimo’s vocals, we were back, there and then.

Having created enough room to exist in, we slowed down even more. In our last jam, Jam 023, we just let go, following the dark electro waves through time, mixing private and public space into one. In the words of C: ‘I give you my lonely heart, and with that I give you everything I’ve got’.

Getting to our center of the world is not an easy thing to do as our two guest musicians rhyt-M and Y-coustic experienced today. Luckily they stumbled inside right at the moment when we were about to start. On one hand we were particularly keen to begin the session as we now had a live drummer which could take us into new directions. But on the other hand, recording drums appeared to be not that straightforward as the quality of the recordings shows. Furthermore it was a bit unfortunate that Y-coustic brought with him his acoustic guitar causing all kinds of feedback headaches.

The search for the creative moment with four less experienced musicians seemed to be harder then we had hoped for. Though clearly giving hints of the possibilities, we had a hard time floating above random noise level. The question arises to what extend communication is possible between several people without defining a framework. To be continued.

Having been late already we started installing our setup in the studio, when discovering that Lucky forgot to bring along the hardware security key for our recording application. Without key no recording, and without recording no documentation of the jam. And without documentation no art performance? Can art only exit through the perception of the receiver, with the performer excluded from his own artwork? And what is the value of the performance without registration, to what good has it been created, if at all?

Feeling that the previous questions were not be ignored, we feverishly looked for a solution. Bizarrely enough there was a wireless Internet connection in the studio, with which we were able to download a freeware sequencer application. This proved to be more time consuming and frustrating: while we could record our jams now, the recording itself appeared disastrous afterwards. Fortunately we were able to recover it through extensive postproduction, though the quality of the documentation leaves much to be desired.

From this state of frustration we tried to lift the spell by uttering classic words like ‘Let’s rock & roll’ and setting out for some stress induced straight rock. While not reaching new personal heights with it, we were able to be open and free of mind when starting our second jam, Jam 013. In these by Lucky’s bass created jazzy spaces IC floated away with long waves of delay from his guitar, reminding us why God made guitar and sent his son Jimi to earth to preach.