Vic Rawlings | fotofono

Brooklyn steam

September 16, 2010, 6:48 pm
Filed under: Andrew Lafkas, Bryan Eubanks, C. Spencer Yeh, events, Mike Bullock, Tim Feeney, Todd Capp, Vic Rawlings

As anticipated in the previous post, this summer was going to be hot at Fotofono. It’s good to think about it, now that brisk winds are blowing it away. Um.. I am probably the only one around who’s missing NYC’s summer steam…. so let’s just talk about music.

The initial idea for the event documented here came up after I listened to Andrew Lafkas and Mike Bullock playing together at Middle Press last May, at the release party for their duo release on Winds Measure Recordings. Both the release and their set were such a treat. I just wanted to try and somehow extend the scope of their collaboration, see where it would lead up to. So I asked if they were into curating together one Fotofono night. The following recordings are the outcome — indeed, more goodies came out of that encounter.

Fast forward to July 23. The tiny Fotofono studio was packed, and some people had to stay in the hallway for the concert. But the doors and windows were full open, as the heat inside was quite extreme. The boundary between the studio and the outside world became fuzzy, and the street noise overlapped with the improvised music coming from inside. Particularly in the first set one can clearly hear the various vehicles passing, a doorbell ringing, and my neighbor’s dog barking and barking, among other things. In the summer heat, everything seemed to melt together.

After the concert I tried to apologize to Vic for the noisy environment. He just replied: ‘Oh, no. We were digging it’!
I liked that. And I liked his choice of words. In retrospect, I can see how the music that he and Tim were playing was meant to open up wide expanses, allowing the sounds of the Brooklyn summer to fill the room, and their music.
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Vic Rawlings (cello, electronics), Tim Feeney (percussion) [24 min. 36 sec.].
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Mike Bullock (bass + electronics), C. Spencer Yeh (violin/voice) [15 min. 10 sec.].
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Andrew Lafkas (bass/electronics), Bryan Eubanks (soprano sax/electronics), Todd Capp (drums) [35 min. 43 sec.].
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Download zipped files: ogg [244.9 MB]; 320 kbps mp3 [164.6 MB].

Recorded by Gill Arno at Fotofono, July 23 2010.
Thanks to Vic Rawlings for the images of this post.

3 comments

100313 – lucre trio and daniel neumann

March 18, 2010, 10:23 pm
Filed under: Bryan Eubanks, Chris Cogburn, Daniel Neumann, events, Lucre trio, Vic Rawlings

Lucre (L to R: Eubanks, Cogburn, Rawlings)

The last event here was the kickstart of an East Coast tour by Chris Cogburn, Bryan Eubanks and Vic Rawlings. The three have been friends and collaborators for some time now, however the two improvisations that they recorded last week document their first time together as a trio. As Bryan wrote, “Building on lengthly playing relationships as duos and in larger groups, we’ll be discovering common ground and developing our music throughout [the tour] through improvisations”.
See the tour page for the trio here.

The evening was opened by Daniel Neumann who presented his piece titled “The Sound of 500 Speer 9 mm. Luger Shells & O Between Fans plus Modular Extensions”, a concert for stereo speakers, room microphone, computer and tape or other extensions.

In Daniel’s own words: “In the electroacoustic live concert The Sound of 500 Speer 9 mm. Luger Shells & O Between Fans two initial sounds are played back. The playback is recorded with a room microphone on to a multitrack sampling tool. From there it repeatedly processes through different modules, one being the room itself, which functions as a filter and is used as an instrument. Other Modular Extensions are carefully added as simultaneous external processes, which influence the narrative. As the two initial sounds are both very aggressive, but in opposite ways, the process of the concert is the struggle between those two sounds about which one gets established in the room. Daniel Neumann leads this struggle between The Sound of 500 Speer 9 mm. Luger Shells Dropped from a Height of 119 Inches at 550 West 21st Street New York, NY, 10011, on April 8th, 2009, 10:37 p.m. – an installation by Ben Turner and a recording of Zilvinas Kempinas’ sculpture O Between Fans.”

Daniel Neumann
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