MADISON GREENSTONE, ‘Resonance Studies in Ecstatic Consciousness’ CD, Relative Pitch Records

all tracks recorded live in the studio on Bb clarinet by Madison Greenstone, August 29-30, 2022

1.
ecstatic consciousness i 03:26
2.
aeolian harp i 03:40
3.
flicker 03:26
4.
glass horn (acoustic shadows) 03:22
5.
aspects beyond thought i 02:25
6.
aspects beyond thought ii 03:05
7.
hidden name 02:51
8.
aspects beyond thought iii (shadow presence) 02:30
9.
ecstatic consciousness ii 03:26
10.
smell of the moon 04:23
11.
aeolian harp ii 03:45

As I came to appreciate, and then to savor, the seemingly infinite varieties of the color ‘black’ in the paintings of Diego Velázquez in museums, I also came to appreciate the seemingly infinite varieties of natural sound within the environments in which I found myself—-for instance, the variations within the endless dream-chord of wind and metals from the abandoned gas station and hardware store seen through the North-facing window of my shack outside New Braunfels, Texas, where I worked for about 3 months helping a friend set up a micro-brewery. I would lock into that dream-chord, as if strapping myself into and holding onto the safety bar of a roller coaster before starting my ride, and then follow its variations, as if walking a dry creek bed in uncharted territory and then following it way beyond the point where I knew where I was, excited by the sense of discovery and of the infinite variety of, and the infinite combinations among, the various sense impressions, simultaneously a symphony, an exhibition, a kaleidoscopic smorgasbord of tastes and smells and textures. It was all about turning off expectations, shutting down filters, and continuing a deep investigation of the possibilities of consciousness while rooted in a controlled element: the path of the dry creek bed.

I must have brought that way-of-perception to this recent album by Madison Greenstone because this series of investigations into the possibilities of resonances (to a non-musician lay-person such as myself, in the area of reed instruments, I tend to think of the overtones/harmonics/whatever in the playing of an Albert Ayler or a Frank Wright, or the rigorous examinations of these possibilites in the work on reed-player/composer/theorist Massimo Magee) produced by the Bb clarinet.

When the young soprano saxophonist Bob Wilber studied with the master, Sidney Bechet, in the 1940s, Bechet would have him play the same “note” in as many ways as possible. When you play it 10 ways, and don’t think you can go any further down that road, force yourself to approach it from 10 more directions, and make each one different in some way….then you discover the many potential ways to be different that you may have either taken for granted or not have ever conceived of before. Then force yourself to conceive of 10 more ways, etc. etc.

As Greenstone writes in the notes accompanying this release, “Each of these studies takes as its basis a mode of resonance latent in the Bb clarinet. This album collects iterative and essayistic reflections on the self-generative qualities of these resonances. The instrument becomes a site of indeterminacy. What happens when resonance overflows? Each resonance has some form of inner agency, some form of emergent phenomena that I search to breathe into being. This demands a continually renewed attunement to the liveliness of the sound: to its wildness, recalcitrance, and roughnesses. I sense that which seeks passage on the current of the breath. What wanders between? I fasten the conditions so that some other thing can emerge– without seeking to control, but merely to influence, to follow where it leads. Who follows during this passage?”

It’s also interesting that Greenstone uses the term ECSTATIC CONSCIOUSNESS for this project in that the creation of the sound paintings involves the letting go and following the untamed, as-yet-undefined flow wherever it leads, as in glossolalia (speaking/chanting in tongues). These resonances also seem to take on a life of their own, which the sensitive musician needs to dance with, rather than attempt to fully control.

This new album from Madison Greenstone is a fascinating and aesthetically satisfying exhibition of 11 related sound-art canvases that ride the exciting and unpredictable wave created when artists place themselves in that delicious grey area between control and loss of control. I can’t imagine this album ever getting old. Congrats to Ms. Greenstone for creating a work devoted to the possibilities of a particular reed instrument that is as forward-thinking in 2024 as Anthony Braxton’s FOR ALTO was to me in 1971.

You can sample some tracks and order your own copy of the album here: https://relativepitchrecords.bandcamp.com/album/resonance-studies-in-ecstatic-consciousness

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Be sure to pick up a copy of my newest poetry book…

STATIC STRUT by Bill Shute

KSE #421, 125 pages, 6″ x 9″ perfect bound, softcover, $6.95 cover price

published 2 January 2024

available for immediate order in the USA from https://amzn.to/48GeYC5

The RODDY McDOWALL APPRECIATION GROUP on Facebook

I recently became co-administrator of a new FB group devoted to the multi-talented RODDY McDOWALL, very similar to the TAB HUNTER group I also co-moderate.

If you are on FB and you are already a fan of RM or if you’d like to further investigate his work, please apply to become a member, using the following link:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/393085160048389

with Montgomery Clift in THE DEFECTOR (1966)

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Be sure to pick up a copy of my newest poetry book…

STATIC STRUT by Bill Shute

KSE #421, 125 pages, 6″ x 9″ perfect bound, softcover, $6.95 cover price

published 2 January 2024

available for immediate order in the USA from https://amzn.to/48GeYC5

NORMAN PETTY STUDIOS: THE VAULT SERIES VOLUME 7, 1953-59 (CD, Nor-Va-Jak)

1 Norman Petty– I Kiss Your Hand, Madam
2 Don Guess– Believe Me
3 Hope Griffith– Only Once In A While
4 Ralph Newton– I’m Grievin’
5 Bobby Jackson – Wow, Man!
6 Jim Robinson – Man From Texas
7 Lloyd Call– If I Had Known
8 Bob Church– Teenage Lady
9 Sherry Davis– Broken Promises
10 Roy Orbison– Cat Called Domino
11 Don And His Roses– Since You Went Away To School
12 Rick Tucker & The Roses– Dig Ya Little Later
13 Earl Henry– Whatcha Gonna Do?
14 Jimmie Stewart – Livin’ Doll
15 Glenn Pace & The Starlites– Outer Space
16 Johnny Wilson– I’m With You
17 Ronnie Price & The Velvets– White Bucks
18 Bill Sego– Come Along Dolly
19 Sonny Curtis– Red Headed Stranger
20 Ivan – That’ll Be Alright
21 Derrell Felts– It’s A Great Big Day
22 Jimmy Bowen– You Made Me Love You
23 Jack Kennelly– Cool Fool
24 Alvis Edwards– I Wake Up Crying
25 Honest Jess And His Western Cavaliers– Suzanne (Quit Rockin’ To The Can-Can)
26 Don Webb– Little Ditty Baby
27 The Big Beats, The Rhythm Orchids– I’m Runnin’ Late
28 Juanita Jordan– Some Sweet Day
29 Myron Lee & The Caddies– Blue Lawdy Blue
30 Terry Wayne – Be My Baby

NORMAN PETTY STUDIOS—Vault Series Volume 7, 1953-1959 (Nor-Va-Jak) CD 

     The Petty Vault Series moves back to the 1950’s with Volume 7, with 30 tracks from West Texas and New Mexico artists (except for Myron Lee, who came down from South Dakota), 11 of them originally unreleased.

     The set starts off with a 1953 cocktail-jazz piano trio track from Petty himself, which is fitting because Petty’s success with his trio, with hit records on major labels, gave him the money to improve the studio in Clovis, New Mexico, and gave him the contacts with major labels and talent agencies that he used so well in placing the masters of artists he produced with a myriad of labels. Only in recent years has the full scope of Petty’s production work been catalogued and recognized. Petty’s name didn’t even appear on many of the records he produced, and often Petty collectors had to look for his publishing companies, Dundee Music or Nor-Va-Jak Music, on a 45 label to identify a possible Petty production.

     The other 29 tracks here are all the kind of thing one expects from 1950’s Petty productions: lean, twangy small-group rockabilly, rockin’ country, and teen rock and roll with the inimitable West Texas grit. Well-known names such as Roy Orbison (an early version of “Domino”), Sonny Curtis, and Jimmy Bowen are mixed with artists associated with Petty’s stable (Peanuts Wilson, Juanita Jordan, Don Guess, and post-Holly Crickets vocalist Earl Sinks/Earl Henry) and lesser-known tracks by rockabilly legends such as Alvis “Eddie” Edwards and Derrell Felts, as well as local artists from cities such as Amarillo, Texas, and Hobbs, New Mexico. The released sides appeared on nationally distributed labels such as Coral, Dot, and Okeh, as well as obscure labels such as Enall, Fashion, Fidelity, Gold Air, and Triple-D.

     As usual for this series, the material is presented in chronological order but provides a good mix of styles and tempos, making for a satisfying listening experience. You’d be hard-pressed to find just one of the 45’s included here for the price of this over-stuffed and attractive CD. These Nor-Va-Jak reissues, all from the Petty master tapes, have presented a huge amount of quality little-known music in the last few years, but they sell out in a few months, so grab this one while you can if you want an actual CD and not just a download.

BILL SHUTE, originally published in Ugly Things magazine in 2019

January 2024 note: This album is long out of print, and I see ZERO copies presently for sale on Discogs.

However, it IS available on various streaming services. 28 tracks from it can be found on You Tube Music:

…………………………………….

Be sure to pick up a copy of my newest poetry book:

STATIC STRUT by Bill Shute

KSE #421, 125 pages, 6″ x 9″ perfect bound, softcover, $6.95 cover price

published 2 January 2024

available for immediate order in the USA from https://amzn.to/48GeYC5

ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE: GETTING IT TOGETHER IN THE COUNTRY, 1968-1974 (3-cd box, Grapefruit UK)

DISC ONE

TEATIME ON THE TRAIL

1. WARMING UP THE BAND – Heads Hands & Feet
2. CAJUN WOMAN – Fairport Convention
3. HOME IS WHERE I WANT TO BE – Mott The Hoople
4. DEVIL’S WHISPER – Mighty Baby
5. DESERT ISLAND WOMAN – Chilli Willi & The Red Hot Peppers
6. WILLOWING TREES – Shape Of The Rain
7. ABBOT OF THE VALE – Tony Hazzard
8. LOUISIANA MAN – The Hollies
9. FADING – Mason
10. SLEEP SONG – Unicorn
11. BOY, YOU’VE GOT THE SUN IN YOUR EYES – Open Road
12. COUSIN NORMAN – The Marmalade
13. CLIFFTOP – Richmond
14. LADY CAME FRO THE SOUTH – Starry Eyed And Laughing
15. OIL FUMES AND SEA AIR – Stray
16. RED MAN – Rare Bird
17. THE PIE – The Sutherland Brothers Band
18. TOUCH HER IF YOU CAN – Matthews Southern Comfort
19. EMPTY STREET, EMPTY HEART – Quicksand
20. OOH LA LA – Faces

DISC TWO

BEFORE THE GOLDRUSH

1. COUNTRY GIRL – Brinsley Schwarz
2. WHEN I’M DEAD AND GONE – McGuinness Flint
3. FORTY THOUSAND HEADMEN – Traffic
4. NEW DAY AVENUE – Bronco
5. TRY AGAIN – Tranquility
6. VELVET MOUNTAIN – Cochise
7. A SOUVENIR OF LONDON – Procol Harum
8. CINNAMON GIRL – The Deep Set
9. DAY THE WORLD RAN AWAY – Stephen Jameson
10. I’LL JUST TAKE MY TIME – Byzantium
11. IT’S A WAY TO PASS THE TIME – High Broom
12. GOING TO THE COUNTRY – Holy Mackerel
13. LIQUOR MAN – Montage*
14. JESUS IS JUST ALRIGHT – Shelagh McDonald
15. WE BOTH NEED TO KNOW – Granny’s Intentions
16. BYE AND BYE – Heron
17. COUNTRY DAN AND CITY LIL – Timebox
18. AND A BUTTON – The Searchers
19. TAKE ME TO THE PILOT – The Orange Bicycle
20. THE JAILER – Natural Gas*
21. SO NICE – Curtiss Maldoon
22. MILLION TIMES BEFORE – Jawbone

DISC THREE

URBAN COWBOYS

1. OPEN THE DOOR – Carolanne Pegg
2. COUNTRY COMFORT – Rod Stewart
3. HOME FOR FROZEN ROSES – Northwind
4. NICE – Bridget St. John
5. COUNTRY ROAD – The Pretty Things
6. HOME GROWN – Andy Roberts
7. SHERIFF MYRAS LINCOLN – Edwards Hand
8. CIRCLE ROUND THE SUN – Marian Segal
9. PRETTY HAIRED GIRL – The Parlour Band
10. HELLO BUDDY – The Tremeloes
11. TALLAWAYA – Greasy Bear
12. MY NAME IS JESUS SMITH – Man
13. METROPOLIS – Keith Christmas
14. COUNTRY HEIR (single edit) – Deep Feeling
15. JOHNSON BOY – Prelude
16. COTTAGE MADE FOR TWO – Paul Brett’s Sage
17. SEE HOW THEY RUN – Dave Cousins & Dave Lambert
18. CLEAR BLUE SKY – Mother Nature
19. DANCING FLOWER – Idle Race
20. WHEEL OF FORTUNE – The Illusions*
21. MY LITTLE ONE – Gordon, Ellis & Steel*
22. I’LL FLY AWAY (demo version) – Plainsong

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V.A.—Across The Great Divide: Getting It Together In The Country, 1968-74 (Grapefruit UK), 3-cd box

     This unexpected compilation looks at UK bands who, somewhat under the influence of The Band, the Clarence White-era Byrds, and John Wesley Harding-era Dylan, decided to go “back to the country,” both literally (the liner notes date this “movement” from Traffic’s 1967 relocation to rural Berkshire) and musically. Since North American country and roots music is largely derived from English/Scottish/Irish roots anyway, these artists wound up re-investigating their own roots. As the UK music scene moved into 1968-69, this rural rock movement provided an alternative for those who didn’t feel like moving into hard rock or prog or heavy blues. While some bands moved totally into the field, many others dipped their toe into it or featured a track or two on an album or B-side, so we’ve got unexpected songs from well-known artists such as Rod Stewart, The Pretty Things, The Tremeloes, The Searchers,  Mott The Hoople, Fairport Convention, and Procol Harum mixed among the more obscure names.

     For many listeners, the real value of this collection will be revisiting (or discovering) lesser-known bands such as Head, Hands & Feet, Quicksand, Stray, Starry Eyed and Laughing, Richmond, Bronco, The Deep Set, and Curtiss Muldoon. This compilation offers UK “rural rock” as a genre unto itself, running alongside prog, hard rock, glam, singer-songwriter and other styles of that period, and there is a lot of diversity within this movement, whose members probably all thought of themselves as free spirits doing their own thing outside of then-current fads or styles.

    Compiler-annotator David Wells is to be commended for tying together so many disparate strands from the UK music scene from 68-74 and finding a “rural” thread that unites them. The deep archival dig involved here is also quite impressive—there are 13 tracks not originally issued (and collectors are probably not on the lookout for an unreleased version of “Jesus Is Just Alright” from 1970 by Scottish singer-songwriter Shelagh McDonald the way they would be for some 1966 Freakbeat acetate) and Wells’ exhaustive liner notes provide a full context and background for each artist/track and offer many unexpected connections. A few tracks drift a bit too far into Crosby, Stills & Nash territory, but are mixed nicely into the overall fabric so that they don’t call much attention to themselves. A highly recommended set!

BILL SHUTE, originally published in Ugly Things magazine in 2020

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Be sure to pick up a copy of my newest poetry book…

STATIC STRUT by Bill Shute

KSE #421, 125 pages, 6″ x 9″ perfect bound, softcover, $6.95 cover price

published 2 January 2024

available for immediate order in the USA from https://amzn.to/48GeYC5

new poetry book for 2024…STATIC STRUT by Bill Shute (KSE #421), available now for immediate shipment…

STATIC STRUT by Bill Shute

KSE #421, 125 pages, 6″ x 9″ perfect bound, softcover, $6.95 cover price

published 2 January 2024

available for immediate order in the USA from https://amzn.to/48GeYC5

also available as a local purchase with local postage from Amazon in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Japan, and Australia…

Press Release: STATIC STRUT is a one hundred page open-field poem, extending the format/technique used in Shute’s previous poetry books NEUTRAL, TWO SELF-PORTRAITS (After Murillo), COMPLEMENTARY ANGLES, TOMORROW WON’T BRING THE RAIN, and RIVERSIDE FUGUE.

STATIC STRUT is an expansive work, presented on a large canvas, influenced by the minimal approach of poet Frank Samperi and composer Jürg Frey, along with the diptych paintings of Andy Warhol.

Shute’s work is rooted in the post-Projective Verse poetics of Blackburn, Berrigan, and Eigner, but completely his own. The poetry echoes his work with such avant-garde musician-composers as Rambutan, Derek Rogers, Mari Rubio (aka More Eaze), Fossils, and Alfred 23 Harth, while being steeped in the culture and particulars of the present-day Gulf Coast and South-Central Texas.

The book’s epigraph comes from composer Morton Feldman, “silence is my substitute for counterpoint.”

A career-spanning Selected Poems, Junk Sculpture From The New Gilded Age, was published by Moloko Print in Germany in late 2021.

In 2023, Shute and Albany-based musician RAMBUTAN released a collaborative music-and-poetry album BRIDGE ON THE BAYOU, available on the Tape Drift label.

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I don’t want to repeat what was written here about my January 2023 poetry book NEUTRAL (you can read that write-up by clicking this link: https://kendrasteinereditions.wordpress.com/2023/01/14/new-poetry-book-for-2023-neutral-by-bill-shute-kse-420-available-now-for-immediate-shipment/ ), but STATIC STRUT was written immediately after NEUTRAL (Static Strut was composed between June 2022 and January 2023), and in many ways goes further out on the same limb as the previous work. Each physical page is a complete open-field poem, and as in NEUTRAL, each left-page/right-page combination functions as a diptych, although a number of the left-facing pages are blank (hence my reference to Warhol’s diptych paintings where one side is a monochrome canvas). The entire book works as ONE long-form poem, much like an exhibition of related visual works. Since 2018’s RIVERSIDE FUGUE, I have been working on a much larger canvas, the book-length poem, and in that work I began by using a fugue-like compositional logic, though I have been creating my own long-form structural designs, partially under the influence of composers Morton Feldman and Jürg Frey, whose works I was listening to during the creation of STATIC STRUT, and many of whose compositions could easily be described as a kind of static strut.

Unlike NEUTRAL, which was largely composed in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and contains a good amount of Vicksburg-specific detail, STATIC STRUT creates its own territory…and is both timeless and dealing with contemporary life in this toxic age in which we are situated. Take a 100-page open-field poetry STATIC STRUT for only $6.95.

As always, I thank you for your interest and support.

My poetry-and-music album with RAMBUTAN, ‘Bridge of the Bayou,’ which came out in 2023, is still available from Tape Drift Records: https://rambutan.bandcamp.com/album/bridge-on-the-bayou

You can sample a track here:

There will be another poetry book coming in the Summer of 2024, PROJECT BLUE, which is a collection of long-out-of-print poems from 2005-2009 KSE chapbooks, along with a brand-new forty-page open-field poem, ‘Project Blue’. The cover image is below:

[CREEL PONE CP 281.06 CD] Patrick Zentz; Day (September 1, 1985)

This beautiful and fascinating new Creel Pone release originates from a 1986 10″ Evatone soundsheet flexi-disc, running approximately 22 minutes, growing out of an installation at the Yellowstone Art Center in Montana, alongside the work of sculptor Dennis Voss.

Composer/sound-sculptor PATRICK ZENTZ has created a fascinating blend of natural sound (similar to the field recordings which have been a big part of contemporary music for the last 25 years) and instruments which, like an Aeolian harp, are “played” by the seemingly random effects of nature, thus using the aleatory to create works whose form is ever-becoming. Anyone who has ever tuned in to the music of a stream or the wind as it flows through foliage or the commentaries of the waking birds at 5 a.m. should warm up to Zentz’s creation here.

A1 1:00am 1:34
A2 7:46am 1:22
A3 9:20am 1:21
A4 10:50am 1:02
A5 1:39pm 2:27
A6 4:25pm 1:38
A7 4:33pm 1:29
B1 5:01pm 2:25
B2 5:51pm 1:30
B3 7:29pm 2:17
B4 8:34pm 1:03
B5 10:29pm 1:17
B6 11:10pm 1:12
B7 11:30pm 1:00

As can be seen from the track listing, Zentz has presented brief, bite-sized audio snapshots of this environment throughout the course of a day, hence the album’s title DAY (September 1, 1985). However, this is not mere field recording–Zentz has created mechanisms to record the fluctuations of the environment in time, so it’s one degree extended from pure field recording. Here is an explanation of the 3 mechanisms from the album’s liner notes:

“Audio recordings for the 24 hour period were made to provide documentation of the variations revealed by the instruments’ interaction with the environment.
…
The Creek Translator combines the velocity of the wind with the flow of water in a small stream.
…
The Run-Off Drum merges the fluctuations or pulse of the wind with temperature variations.
…
The Horizon Translator unites the directional changes of the wind with the elevational variation of the horizon line.”

The result combines what sounds like gurgling or softly rushing water, juxtaposed with a low-pitched percussive rumbling and on occasion what sounds like the plucking of a loose string, juxtaposed with a higher-pitched varying tone not unlike the sound of one’s own nervous system heard in an anechoic chamber though at other times sounding like barely-heard moans of a coyote five miles away. Each of the sounds is constantly varying, quite subtly, and of course the juxtaposition of the elements creates a kind of kaleidoscopic effect. By cutting this material into fourteen short pieces, as opposed to presenting us with one solid 22-minute slab of this sound-happening, we’re presented with a series of delicious and fascinating miniatures which tease the listener, and with the entire album running well under a half-hour, you will surely find yourself wanting more and pushing the play button again.

Again, this is not really field-recording, though it sounds quite like it. It is a kind of conceptual sound-art which uses natural happenings to create an exhibition of 14 miniatures. It should definitely appeal to listeners who appreciate the field recording-based creations of Lawrence English or Jeph Jerman but also those who find nature-based musical forms such as the Aeolian harp appealing or those who have enjoyed the sounds of Ellen Fullman’s ‘Long Stringed Instrument.’

Day (September 1, 1985) certainly has captivated me and has reminded me of the essential lesson of so much sound-art from John Cage and beyond, TO LISTEN TO MY ENVIRONMENT and become one with it, one element within it.

You can get your copy here https://alphastate.nyc/products/patrick-zentz

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ALSO….

In about two weeks (mid-to-late January 2024) my new book-length poetry work STATIC STRUT will be published. I’ll post an announcement and ordering information here at that time. Price should be in the neighborhood of $6.95, for a 100-page open-field poetry work which took seven months to compose and edit. I’d say that’s an excellent buy!