A world in a raindrop

So I was thinking while listening to the detailed but totally unconventional music being played by Jim Denley and Mike Majkowski. They performed as BLIP during their East Cost tour stopoff at Smith’s Alternative Bookshop for a small group of intense listeners. You have to be an intense listener for this music, to pick up those details in the raindrop. It’s something we forget – that there are sounds everywhere, sounds we can wring from anything. This music makes you remember. The techniques are totally unconventional, of course, so it amuses me that they use conventional instruments to do it. But the intent and the seriousness is there, and the beauty is also evident if you open your mind and ears to the detail. What’s the sound of a balloon path from mouthpiece to alto? Or drums sticks on bass strings, or vibrator in alto bell, or clappers damping bass strings? Or the more earthy and unmediated, like mouth clicks and pops or a stick swishing through the air? It’s that elemental and basic: quite beautiful but otherwise unnoticed. Like windchimes, it’s music of the environment. I’m wondering if that makes it a signature music for our age. It’s certainly not sophisticated (in the original meaning) or urban or I might even say civilised, despite the lovely tarnished alto and the dark, mysterious, rich-sounding bass. There’s technique there. I could see it in Mike’s strong and precise bass hands which he did use for occasional thumb position playing, and heard it as he warmed up on free jazz (for once more traditional and less challenging than the music they played). But abandon the conventional, all ye who enter here. I said to Jim afterwards that I had no idea what they were doing. He (perhaps jokingly) said he felt the same. It’s a world of its own, this art sound, and worthy and fascinating in its own way.

Locals Andrew Fedorovich and Luke Penders had opened the night with their takes on this style. Andrew played an alto in a mostly conventional way (with lips and no preparation) but the sounds were multiphonics and tonguings and slapping keys and solid, unexpected low notes with airy tones clouding above. This was quiet and pensive, sometimes jagged and gentle so it was occasionally interrupted by the noises of the outside street. Luke performed a piece of electronica with laptop, reference monitors and the like and, what amused me, a synthesizer in a Nintendo (!), the Korg DS-10. Funnily enough, this was the most harmonically structured piece of the night (who would’a thunk it?), with repetition of harsh heavy metallic sounds and a signature truncated rising tone mixed with clicks and pops and random noises. The cosmic background made electronic art.

Not a night to invite Megan! Jim Denley (alto sax, baritone flute, wooden flute, balloons, etc) and Mike Majkowski (bass, bells, whistles, drumsticks, etc) performed as BLIP. Andrew Fedorovich (alto sax) and Luke Penders (electronics) performed as a warmup.

This is CJBlog post no. 600.