Five-minute Mix: Four Fins of the Rocket
16 February 2012
I recently switched to using Thunderbird as an e-mail client. The impetus was a bit of Google-paranoia; I realized that I had 30,000 e-mails (7 GB's worth) sitting around on my gmail account without a local backup. (That's fixed now.)
What I wasn't expecting to come out of this project was a reacquaintance with the past six years of my musical work. I have a tendency to back up everything I do in my e-mail (hence the need to backup the backup) and, while watching the progress bar go, I saw every piece find its way onto the hard drive of my recently reformatted computer for the first time and into my memory for the second.
One of the most heart-warming finds was two mp3s from the early days of my DC-based math-rock band, Four Fins of the Rocket. I forget the exact dates, but these were probably from the early summer of 2008 when it was just me and Bobby Allyn (we met our drummer James Magnum shortly after), and revealed two unplugged electric guitars chugging away like a pair of mimes in my old apartment in the unfortunate Berkshire apartment complex down the block from American University. Let it be said that Four Fins of the Rocket hasn't been totally out of my head since then; we have a MySpace page (that we no longer log into) and, from time to time, I listen to the live recordings that are posted there.
What these mp3s did was to remind me that our songs changed as we played them and the documentation from our live shows, upon which I've been constructing my memory of the project, didn't always tell it like it was. I was particularly taken by the second of the two, a proto-version of a song that would later, to my chagrin, be christened "Michael Phelps" by James. Clearly, we were very much of our time. The ending of the song was removed from a live recording on our MySpace, under the name "When Doves Cry" (re: Purple Rain), because we botched it that night. I haven't heard it since.
Four Fins stopped playing together for a number of reasons, mostly having to do with me moving to Oakland and Bobby moving to Portland. Earlier in 2009, before parting ways, we quickly put a few songs to tape in the recording studio at American University. Until rediscovering these old mp3s in my inbox of yore I had completely forgotten about it.
This happened yesterday, and I desperately wanted to hear the ending of "Michael Phelps," "When Doves Cry," or, if you please, "Song 2," the title the piece held the longest. So, I found the old sessions on an external drive, reinstalled the professional tools, and slapped it together in as much time as I had available (five minutes).
This will probably satiate only my own nostalgic cravings. But, I wonder: what gems have you forgotten about in the cold storage of your old hard drives and e-mail accounts?
Four Fins of the Rocket - Michael Phelps / When Doves Cry / Song 2
Video: Drumming at Chapel of the Chimes
05 July 2011
The first movement of Steve Reich's Drumming was the first piece of music I learned after joining the Percussion Group at Mills College. Over the past year we (myself, William Winant, Chris Golinksi, and Daniel Steffy) had the opportunity to play it several times. Our most recent performance took place at the Chapel of the Chimes in Piedmont, CA as part of their annual summer solstice concert. As I will be leaving for Montreal soon, this was my last time hitting bongos with the group. We're all in agreement that this performance (the second of two from that night) was our best yet, so I'm pleased to go out on a good note. Enjoy!
New Holiday Heart track
02 July 2011
Back in May I spent a weekend with the experimental Oakland/SF group Holiday Heart. We recorded some new material for their next record, as well as a track for an upcoming compilation of local Bay Area lady-noisers organized by Carrie Sullivan (of fslux and Short Wave Surfers fame, as well as others). You can hear the track, "Look Into the Camera," below:
Holiday Heart - Look Into the Camera by farleym
In related news, Holiday Heart members Sandy and Ellery will be hosting the third installment of The Labial Majority tonight at Life Changing Ministries (1629 8th St.) in West Oakland. The show series seeks to promote female experimental musicians and will be featuring Tongue + Teeth, Charm and Strange, Patrice Scanlon, Andrea Williams, and Christina Stanley. I encourage you to make it out if you can! The show starts at 8pm and has a $5 cover.
Mikromegas I
29 April 2011
Last night I premiered my composition Mikromegas I for harpsichord in the Littlefield Concert Hall at Mills College. Many thanks to Justin Nash for taking the harpsichord part so I could sit back in the hall and enjoy listening to the piece!
Site is created
18 March 2011
Added: video from Signal Flow performance, video from two performances with the William Winant Percussion Group, audio from Mountain.