Does it groove?
c. 2015 w/ Phil Sudderberg & Spencer Jenich. c. 2018-2019 w/ Errata
From Errata's debut album recorded March 03, 2019 at the Shape Shoppe by Nick Broste. released May 10, 2020
Ishmael Ali - guitar & electronics
Eli Namay - upright bass
Bill Harris - drums & percussion
Recorded at Constellation with Spencer Jenich [prophet synth], Eli Namay [electric bass], & Phil Sudderberg [drum kit].
Sound Mass is a text based score presented as a zine that includes a reflection on how individualism shows up in the arts, and an exercise for any group of people to sonically meditate as a collective unit. Excerpt and videos below.
Excerpt. Full zine in the PDF above:
There is a particularly insidious brand of bootstrap individualism that permeates various art and music communities. This is characterized by a belief that the “best” naturally rise to the top, that music and art production exists above socio-economic processes, and that the fundamental way to grow culture is to compete and economically succeed as an individual.
There are also insidious and misleading faux-radical reactions against bootstrap individualism. These reactions can be characterized by an ironic artistic practice and detachment from the human need for culture / ritual; individual / identity based representational politics that do not take into account flows of resources and fail to challenge the fundamental nature of institutional power; and/or the reduction of political ethics to artistic aesthetics (i.e. where the most radial artistic practice is judged by the characteristics of the artistic product, rather than by the efficacy of organizing for democratic power against structures of oppression).4
While superficially different, these both enable uncritical relationships to how art and music function and are valued under capitalism. Either implicitly or explicitly, they validate the reified notion (i.e., abstract idea falsely made to be real) that maximizing exchange value is the best way to nurture artistic practice. This turns the necessities that capitalism imposes on cultural activity into virtues…
These tendencies are insidious because they generally appear as obvious, yet unstated underlying assumptions — “of course this is the way things are and should be… he’s really telling it like it is…” The full implications of these modes of practice are psychologically repressed in the practitioner as unconscious beliefs. This is the definition of ideology.6
Written and recorded during a very short period of time in January when my friend Billie Howard gave me access to the High Concept Labs space (for about a week no one was using it). I was fascinated with the reverb in the space. I tuned my bass to an open D major chord (D-A-D-F#) and came up with this. As far as one can talk about a difference between improvisation and composition, this is not an imprivsation. This was written for Gerard Grisey and Cornelius Cardew. Reflecting on my access to the resources of that nice space, the original title of this piece was going to be Someday We Will All Be Free to Fuck Around. While I disagree with Cardew's political conclusions, reading Stockhausen Serves Imperialism was definitely a big influence. As for Grisey, I just think his music is dope. Everyone should have the freedom to explore his - or whoever else’s - musical ideas, unrestricted by the limitations of economically exclusive institutions.
TOAEoSiG 2 - c. September 2017 - documented in my apartment with Alex Grimes and Chris Kimmons. Grimes is shown manipulating my ampified burps with Rodrigo Constanzo's Max patch called Cut Glove. Chris Kimmons wrote a randomized ampitude and pitch shift Max patch that interfaced with the Cut Glove. The second version was performed at the comedy show Helltrap Nightmare.
TOAEoSiG 1 - c. Dec 2016 I eat, drink, burp and explore my environment. Sine tones derived from the spectrogram were added in post.
…
for George Risk and Jerry Lewis
“Ultimately, expressivism promotes an ethics of individualism… as well as the concept of metaphysical dualism in that it conceptualizes a separate inner dimension of the mind to which each individual has sole access… What follows is a description of thee historical and cultural roots of the expressivist strand of the “default” model of the self through the accounts of the inward turn of Protestantism and Romanticism, the post-Freudian psychological man, and the concept of authenticity.
...
The product of Psychoanalysis as a post-religious ethic, is the psychological man who becomes his own religion --a religion in which taking care of oneself is the ritual and health is the ultimate dogma….
…
In The Ethics of Authenticity (1991)... Charles Taylor… claims that an ethic of authenticity was born at the end of the eighteenth century by building on earlier forms of individualism, namely, Descartes’ metaphysical dualism..., John Locke’s political individualism… and Romanticism... The notion of authenticity developed out of a displacement of the moral agent in this idea: rather than being in touch with the “right thing to do,” we are in touch with our “ true selves.” ...(Taylor, 1991).
….
The inward turns of the confessional self, Romanticism, and psychological man have in contemporary American consumer society been turned outward as personal values, or sets of values, manifested in the notion of taste. In a post-Romantic and post-psychoanalytic society, the act of expression is no longer reserved for artistic creation; expression can now be achieved through what we decide to buy from among the huge set of possibilities… (Guignon, 2004)”
-- Rami Gabriel, Why I Buy (2013)
[overheard at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry in the Body Worlds exhibit]
Young Boy: [crying and yelling]
Mother: It’s ok honey… This is what’s inside you.
Young Boy: [through tears] But I don’t want it to be inside me!
“It is the music of yourself. Yes, you are music too. Everyone is supposed to be playing their part in this vast Arkestra of the Cosmos.”
-- Sun Ra
Coupled with either nihilistic or necessitous preoccupations, Gabriel’s description of our cultural landscape is accurate, and I would argue its problematic nature goes beyond just when it is expressed through consumerism. It is the vast set of images that mediates all social relations, including how individuals relate to themselves. It influences everything from the political to the intimate. These images are designed to release dopamine, coupled with economic desperation we all become addicts: hyper-stimulation -> arousal addiction. It is the phenomena of experiencing and reflecting on our own lives as if they were movies, from Romantic Comedy idealism to Campbellian stories of heroic struggle told with dramatic special effects. We expect our lives to be as thrilling as these stories, we give value to our experiences when they reflect spectacular events.
Alienation from each other and our own bodies is part of this. When we are separated from ourselves and each other a void of insecurity is created that is to be filled with the consumptive activities. Like the little boy in the museum we become frightened when we are confronted with the functions of our bodies and we actively avoid experiencing ourselves. This is quite evident in beauty and hygiene products marketed towards “women.” i.e. the tampon applicator that physically separates a woman from, herself and the douche that implies an inherent in uncleanliness.
In this situation, we find ourselves doing all sorts of absurd things. We play emotional games with our sexual partners, buy sports cars we can’t afford, compulsively document ourselves, join cults, and spend significant amounts of time deconstructing and arranging recordings of our own burps.
Pedestal - c. winter 2017 - was developed by Alex Grimes [Cut Glove], Jon Ascolese [concept], Burt, and Eli Namay. Jon was waiting tables at a very fancy restaurant in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, where he met a rich art patron fellow. This fellow regularly threw art showings at his mansion in Hyde Park, and invited Jon to curate one. This piece was developed specifically for this show. Burt built a pedestal on which Eli exercised for 3 hours. Eli’s breathing was amplified and manipulated by Alex through Rodrigo Costanzo’s Max/MSP patch, Cut Glove. People became concerned towards the end of the show. Some asked if Eli was being forced to do this against his will. Below is a video documentation that was slowed down and coupled with a recording that came straight from the Cut Glove patch. Skip around to see different angles on the performance, and get a glimpse of what the vibe of the space was like.
A collaborative work between Alex Grimes [Cut Glove], A.J. McClenon [spoken word and electronics], and Eli Namay [piano] centered around social themes as framed in McClenon's personal narrative driven poetry.
Written in collaboration with Alex Grimes, Daniela Amortegui, and Ruby Pinto. Grimes made a video score for me to follow that indicates positioning with the instrument. It speeds up over time, becoming increasingly difficult to follow. At the end Pinto starts yelling at me. She approaches me from the audience, yelling "Hey" at me over and over again. She starts to yell more frequently, approaches me and yells at me, telling me to smile.
I collaborated with my good friend and clarinet player Emily Beisel on this piece. After about a year of playing together we became fascinated with the various compound sounds we could make between the double bass and bass clarinet. We wanted to write something that coupled this fascination with that of the pulse in popular music (death metal in particular). How far can you push a pulse until it is not a pulse? Recorded at the Experimental Sound Studio with Emily Beisel [bass clarinet], Eli Namay [double bass] & Tyler Berg [drum kit].
Having some fun smashing together notation & harmony, a la Gerard Grisey & Anthony Braxton on my undergrad senior recital.
Recorded at Jackalope Coffee and Tea House with Sam Trump Harris [tpt], Landon LeMoine [alt sx], Danny Andrade [tnr sx], Jeb Bishop [tbn], Dan Gillespie [vln], Evan Collins [banjo], Chris Kimmons [gtr], Spencer Jenich [organ], Eli Namay [dbl bs], & Matt Roberts