Vampires, Quicksand and Frog Pond, All Realized on ImprovFriday

Well as said ‘”better late than never” and so without any further delay the Whats New At ImprovFriday edition for the weekend of August 26th – 28th. Many distractions that followed last weekend pushed publication back a few days, but here we are, living better than ever. With every thread event the ImprovFriday community just keeps on getting better than ever, stronger and more deeper into the ‘muse’ connection that the member artists have come to know.

ImprovFriday:  If you just happened onto this page, ImprovFriday is a creative New Music community on the Ning network formed by composer/environmental soundscape artist, J.C. Combs. Founded in 2009, the community has grown to a member base of 216 with approximately 30 active composer artists participating in the Thursday to Saturday ‘thread event’ as it’s called, serving as an open call for those participating to produce a piece(s) of music for world-wide web consumption on the ImprovFriday home page. The pieces are licensed under the Creative Commons agreement and are intended to be both presented as they are submitted as well as given to the member community to remix and ‘mash-up’ for an additional posting.

Following each weekend’s event, member and ImprovFriday Radio host Paul Muller and myself [Jim Goodin] do spontaneous short commentaries on each work submitted and publish the results here generally by the following Thursday on WhatsNewAtImProvFriday.Wordpress.com. Each piece below is hyperlinked to it’s MP3 audio file so you may click on and listen to.

So let’s go…

Jim Hae, Gu Le, and Din Yu
Ri Ko Shi – Featuring Jim Hae, Gu Le, Din Yu and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Weaving together of 3 oudists’ who go east then west in search of their muse. Professor Layton caught them wandering across Texas and blended them wonderfully. – Jim.

Jeff Duke
Yashmaar – Unmistakable Jeff arises. In my knowing him the last year-plus I’ve seen a very signature voice evolve in him, this one no less. Lovely decay. – Jim. Warm tones form a good structure for the guitar to play over. Restful, reflective – beautiful playing. – Paul.

Steve Moyes
Standstill –
Longer and Darker – Wow almost Fireside Theater here, Steve! Love the play-by-play guy. All the while seeming to be commentary on the video arcade, Jukka’s influence abounds here across the Channel. Nice distortion voice enters amongst the electronic battle. Nice end. – Jim. Jukka-Pekka goes to the cricket match. Fascinating dialogue for us non-Brits. Feels like there is a whole parallel universe hovering over the pitch. Very inventive and you gave it the perfect ending. – Paul.

Paul Hertz
Minimalish – Subtle pulse and modulation in nicely clustered chords diminishing away. – Jim. Listening to David Toub lately? This is certainly reduced to its essentials. Nobody doesn’t like minimalism… 🙂 – Paul.

J.C. Combs
Quicksand – Focused and pensive, reminding me of a Bill Frisell piece that I love called Pendulum, also for some reason J.C.’s percussive groove here feels very much like a bolero to me. The repetitive piano note(s) is quite cool and begins to evolve into other textures. – Jim. Tension builds right from the opening. The pitches are rapid… but sinking. Nice playing and the notes are well-chosen. – Paul.

Jérôme Poirier
Portrait of Satoshi Kon’s Nested Dreams Sequence in ‘Perfect Blue’ – Lovely deep solo cello memorial to the fallen one. Changes to more hopping contrasting frenetic vibe then varies between the two as if a dance. – Jim. Some great playing here – solemn melody accompanied by rapid series of multiple notes makes a good contrast. Strong Japanese flavor to this. – Paul.

This is How We Get There – A sampled truffle pig, yes Jérôme? Just kidding…,well initially that thought came to mind but then becomes more pulsed and thinking manipulated cello, then I’m thinking Jukka is inside your cello and has electrified it with his bleeps and bings! Regardless, very creative as all. – Jim. Series of very short segments of sound that gradually lengthen and speed up to form the sound of a motorcycle engine. A reminder of our reliance on the infernal combustion engine. Nicely realized. – Paul.

Todd Lainhart
Frog Pond – Echoing clarinetish voice conversation, sequence, pulse in a spacious Steve Reich sort of growing repetition. Is it frogs at night on the pond taking me back to when I was a kid and my daddy talked of going frog gigging with friend B.H., miss them both. – Jim. Simple yet precise flute sounds accurately render a series of frog calls. Effectively pastoral and relaxing. Well done! – Paul.

Jeff Duke and Jim Goodin
Yashmaar Minaret – Featuring Jeff Duke, Jim Goodin and Adam Kondor (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Not much I can say here but thank you to both gentlemen for doing what you do.  Jeff Yashmaar is a great vibe of around the world and in a sense I’m there too. Adam thanks for putting us all together. – Jim. The call of the minaret now against the background of Jeff’s lush playing. Exotic feel and both pieces compliment each other very well. – Paul.

Chris Vaisvil
Keys at Lowes – Dense keyboard wash following searching voices, leading to more cathedral-like organ sounds – more the phantom of the room than the praise. Warbling percussive beat lightly comes and goes. Nice decay. – Jim. Serious sound processing going on here. All the ambient sounds acquire a sort of sonic halo that adds together interestingly. The sound of a key being made? It might as well be cutting a steel beam. Amazing the way this piece scales up an everyday sound and makes it fill your head! – Paul.

Children of the Insane / Voice and Effects Improvisation – Creative voice samples and layering, density grows then releases, cries in the night or police sirens, bees in a swarm, a sawing on the end as in a beat. – Jim. A questioning sound here that becomes the squalling of infants that becomes tigers fighting! Echo-y voices now at 2:30 and more infants. The similarity of these sounds to human speech triggers unsettling reflexive feelings. – Paul.

Steve Layton and Jérôme Poirier
Kon’s Moon – Evans and Casals, wow, just perfect guys. – Jim. Sleek piano accompaniment to Jerome’s Japanese sounds adds a sort of western counterpoint. Well done by both artists! – Paul.

Paul Bailey with Guitarist Jeremy Keller
Music for Controllers 1 – Neat opening distortion bowed plucked. Distant found drum in back. Cool flowing in out in guitar overlaying the rhythm. Tremendous work in this track to me Paul. – Jim. Good contrast between the long tones in the (bowed?) guitar and the sharp percussion. Good groove going by 2:30. Lovely guitar playing at 4:30. A sort of wistful feel to this – very engaging as it builds. Beautiful piece. – Paul.

Benjamin Smith
Ben_improv.Aug26.2010 – Like tumbling waters or plummeting stones down the hill, keys to keys, notes to notes, growing intensity into descending, passionate dark dense lines, recoils for a bit then returns to tight clusters and almost percussive beats to the conclusion. – Jim. The sound of the levers and hammers inside the piano actually add to this piece as heard here at IF! The piano sound has a prepared feeling to it. Like the repetitive theme to this. 🙂 Very effective in sustaining a feeling of uncertainty. I dunno Ben, I like this every bit as much as your more polished recordings. Great ending. – Paul.

Jeff Fairbanks
IO – Input output, pulsing tones that begin and end in a staccato feel. Joined by lyrical clusters, all defining a neat beat. The cluster lines fade out and the starting pulse sequences nicely concludes. – Jim. Cool minimalist/electronic feel to this – Io is a moon of Jupiter – could be a musical portrait. – Paul.

Paul Bailey
I Might as Well Get in Line – Featuring Norbert Oldani, Lee Noyes, Jérôme Poirier, Shane Cadman, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen and Paul Bailey (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Environmental beginnings as if outside a large room, the light passes through the walls as the density of strobelike melody and interwoven synth textures grows. Speaks of Michael Oldfield as it grows. Nice blending Paul. – Jim. Organ opening almost Glass-like 🙂 . Builds in intensity but remains solemn. Roaring at 3:50 out adds menace to the ending. Well made from a lot of different pieces. – Paul.

Peter Thörn
Spellevink – Me thinks this is a street merchant passing through the village on a wagon possibly, is it Pete? In fact you must be riding along and it’s possibly raining. Nice feeling. – Jim. We are in a boat being rowed, I think = the oarsman is singing. All of the banging sounds and squeaks seem to be in tune with the melody. A perfect summer outing – thanks for inviting us along. – Paul.

Short Impro – Cool vibe Peter, so organic as you always are using what is there before you. The percussive hits of your nyckelharpa become ‘electric’ as the density grows overlayed with sitar like voice circling. – Jim. Could it be the zither reborn? Gentle cloud of strumming provides a soothing texture while the higher tones add some light color. Surprisingly enjoyable. – Paul.

Sleepy – Ry Cooder and cats on the sunny porch. Stellar darkness is around, maybe it’s the early winter sky after autumn. Really nice long slides and just letting this one sit there waiting to see what happens. – Jim.

Johnny and Faith
Vampires Are Lucky – Your usual cool fun creative workings Johnny and Faith, this one too. Voice and street beat vibe with neat organic foundational feel. – Jim. Sinister with a modern touch. The Julia Child segment was particularly chilling. – Paul.

Glenn Weyant
ESP ~ The Armed Forces – Commentary spoken word view of a sense of stuck, of time goes by and nothing changes. Reading tones of definitions, centering on ‘life’. Comments on our traditional corporate America and the ‘corps’ of our America, don’t play this too loud around the boys of West Point. – Jim. The Armed Forces – Reading by the washing machine on the spin cycle. Esp good. – Paul.

Ken Palmer
Tempest – Great stage presence orchestration weaving piano coloring throughout. Nice timpani hits. Piano sounds like Vince Guaraldi qoute for a moment, dark synth voices enter after that. Piano finishes. – Jim. The piano provides a conventional sort of entrance but the background is decidedly menacing. Nice use of timpani and brass. The title and sound suggests this is about 5 years post-Katrina? – Paul.

Roger “ErocNet” Sundström
Boiler Room – The warmth and dampness of steam seaps from under the door as we near the room. We go in turn a valve and settle its release, then the door closes. Walk away. The steam returns, a vicious cycle, almost like the wily coyote in the Roadrunner cartoon. – Jim. Steamy sounds along with the humming of motors – then we close the door and are in a new place. More steam – quite a trip. – Paul.

Harkrank Metall – Crunching metal in machinery, lower intestine breaking down, monster in the depths, approaching evil. – Jim.

BG Environment – An industrial space, a mechanical drone coming across the room, the floor, the street, the world, the wind. Grows stronger, darker, slightly sinister, could be a windstorm across the plains. – Jim.

Premoon Hunting – Featuring Steve Layton, Adam Kondor x2 and Roger “ErocNet” Sundström (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Dusk as the sun lowers to the approaching dark northern skies, brisk piano sounds announce the first light of a full moon on the horizon, reflecting light through the fields and streams, the hunters sipping hot coffee from their camp fire awaiting the night stirring of critters to begin. – Jim. Lovely deep chord starts out – then the entrance by Steve’s piano has an almost metallic quality – nice contrasts here. The background becomes more complex and abstract but our attention stays on the piano line with its reassuring familiarity. – Paul.

Shane W. Cadman
Piece082710 – Floating delicate pensiveness with really nice lyrical Robin Ford like guitar line joining the float. Nice space in the mix and feel Shane as well as the ending. – Jim. Fine organ entrance – the bell tones provide good contrast. The guitar dominates the texture – a conventional enough melody but played with a heartfelt touch. – Paul.

Lee Noyes
Following Tones – Atmospheric nicely recorded room sound kettle drum or some shallow drum like sound, sterile alone, suggesting a sense of listening for what’s in between. Shifts to sounds of hands moving along the surface texture finding a contrast. Fingertips brushing asking asking what’s between the sound as only Lee can do. – Jim. Sounds of an ordinary pan being struck but the tone breaks out into a ringing that reminds me of a temple bell. Another brilliant object lesson in sonic perspective. The extended silence in the middle of the piece becomes a meditation. – Paul.

Untitled – Reverse envelop beginning possibly to space, screen door opens, spiritualism of the muse walks in, maybe it’s the wind blowing free off the New Z… coast. – Jim. Short segments of sound followed by a total cut-off. These sounds gradually are extended – then cut-off again. You begin to guess when they will end. Interesting. – Paul.

Open Piano 14ET No. 1 – Sappho’s Remembrance – Nice contrast between the felt hammers and the plucks. Plucked high sounds suggests zither or Asian tones, ah a tuning hammer as we just had a cool slide mod there or perhaps you are using a slide Lee. You’re such a forensics doctor with this open piano project. Good work! – Jim. Almost a guitar-like sound as the strings are plucked. A definite South Asia feel to this. – Paul.

Open Piano 14ET No. 2 – The Opposite of Remembrance is Invitation – Strong percussive hit starts this one off followed by some rubbing or bowing (Michael Masley influence maybe Lee?). At times a slide guitar feel going on which is so innovative. You’re def’ly in Lee land here but clearly you’re the mayor! Percussive stuff in this one is quite cool. – Jim.

Norbert Oldani
Blusey – Rich synth voices, very choir like in color but much more modern in phrasing and releases as the title suggests, resolves with cool chord voicing at end. – Jim. Voices – in harmony! Chant-like beginnings give way to interesting bluesy chords. Good realization. – Paul.

Evening Rain on my Front Porch My Driveway on a Sunny – Ah the sound of summer after long hot day and the sky breaks into tears, long steady rains fall, screened in porch and my grandmother at the door talking about how she loved to see it rain, hear the thunder, see the lightning as I jumped when the sky cracked, okay I digress… – Jim. Gentle rain sounds – we here in SoCal have a different emotional reaction! – Paul.

My Driveway on a Sunny Afternoon – Birds singing, railroad in the distance, the cawe of the crows across the field, sitting under the car port roof, the drone of space and that which surrounds us. The crow cawes and a car drives by. Effective spacial discovery Norbert. – Jim. The mournful sound of a train in the distance offsets the singing of the birds – nice slice of New York state. – Paul.

Start of Walk from Mohawk River dam along the trail to Wertz Ave in – Taking us on another tour adventure here Norbert. Begins as if we are passing by a waterfall then gradually moving away, nicely recorded footsteps surrounded by evening crickets or cicadas in the distance. – Jim. Watery sounds, we are on foot… – the North American answer to Roger’s ‘Nifsarpsmaden’ from last week! Good response! – Paul.

Bruce Hamilton
Treehouse Cellar – Opening makes me think of Leo Kottke maybe it’s part the title Treehouse and the opening brief guitar pluck. That evolves into a nice environmental and playful stridesque piano, lovely. Perhaps we are in a wine cellar seeking the lost vintage. Nice one Bruce. – Jim. A lot of activity here. Some keyboard comes in – every treehouse cellar has a piano… Homey feel with some electronica as an overlay. Interesting ending… – Paul.

Jola – Featuring Steve Layton, Lee Noyes, Norbert Oldani, Roger Sundström, Peter Thörn, Glenn Weyant and Bruce Hamilton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Love the name Bruce. The color between the voice and Steve’s safari melody nicely juxtaposes with Peter’s percussive energy. The environmental weaving of Glenn’s boredom of life narration with pulsing edits amidst the boiler room and intense gunfire. Wow whose dream is this! – Jim. Norbert’s voices provide a chanting to calm compliment the frenetic stringy sounds – feels like we are in a temple of some kind during a ceremony. A series of explosions at 2:45 adds a certain menace to the proceedings… Calm returns with flutes and voices at about 4:10. – Paul.

Input Output Smoothnews Standstill on Frog Pond – Featuring Jeff Fairbanks, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Todd Lainhart, Steve Moyes and Bruce Hamilton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Circusy in feel with passing colors and lights, growing internal drone weaves through the bottom, lyrical guitars envelop amidst the drone and pulse. Cool acoustic string tones announce later in the piece all riding about the drone, the smoke, the color, the lights on the road (to the Frog Pond). – Jim. Pleasant electronic groove becomes surrounded by a roaring sound. Trouble on the frog pond? Bells at 2:00 add some optimism to the gathering gloom. By 2:45 a sense of normality returns – the guitar provides more sunshine and a smooth ending.. – Paul.

Adam Kondor
Towards Harfleur – Featuring Steve Moyes, Lee Noyes, J.C. Combs, Roger “ErocNet” Sundström, Kavin Allenson and Adam Kondor (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – The field drums and pipes in this mash are particularly effective weaving through the environmental ambiance. The synth and environmental drone equally nice. The voice enters and suggests something very Scots to me maybe it’s the pipes setting the stage. The brief siren and the drone move more towards seriousness and danger, perhaps approaching storm on the eastern shore over the Channel, perhaps the Nazi planes 50 some odd years before. – Jim. Sounds of movement – a pulsing motor-like sound and electronica. Now JC’s parade. Nice progression of pieces. – Paul.

Erik Satie Organ-Concerto, 2nd Mvt. – Featuring Paul Hertz, Anton Dvorak and Adam Kondor (reconstructing mixer/masher) – Color abounds and what sounds at times to me like pentatonic scales. Paul’s in good company here. ‘Going home, going home’ statement at end brings chills. – Jim. Another inspired repurposing of the classics. A very relaxed feeling here – like watching a sunset. Combines the best of the two pieces to sustain the mood – superior almost, to hearing them separately… yet again. – Paul.

Creeping-Crawling – Vincent Price about to enter the room with his ‘ghoulish’ glare. It’s those kind of strings and voicing with a smidge of German industrialism about like post WWII. Grows throughout occasionally suggesting voices then quietly leaves the room. – Jim. Fine sense of tension and menace here, yet very controlled and not too extravagant. – Paul.

La Chasse Royale – Neat orchestral sounds over African percussive beats becoming one at times, cultures and times apart, the French and the Afrikaans, nice solo voice enters to the end. – Jim. La Chasse Royale – Exotic, yet familiar. A combination of a middle-ages dance and Indian tabla? A certain courtly stateliness here, even with all the rapid drumming. – Paul.

Prelude – Dark in the woods tones here akin to Steve Moshier in color. Sense of depth and mobility in the lower range, subtle snare passes through, Mark Isham in color but two shades more dense. – Jim. Lovely deep sounds open into lighter tones and colors. Like drifting on a soft warm cloud. – Paul.

Prelude 2 – Underwater exploring in a Nautilus bubblesphere, slowing delicately bumping along the oceanic floor looking for life, objects de sea. – Jim. Pure sine tones here give a slightly harder edge than in the first Prelude. Same piece, but filtered? Warm and smooth. – Paul.

Rondeau X – Featuring Paul Bailey, Shane Cadman, Paul Muller, Peter Thörn, Steve Layton-mix and Adam Kondor (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Tokyo after WWII and a growing society, healing. Dark streets. Neat interplay between Shane’s guitar voice and Jeremy’s in Paul’s piece happening. A film reel plays. Cool mix Adam, particularly when the voices come in. – Jim.

Paul-Phase – Featuring Paul Muller and Adam Kondor (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Brilliant weave here. Such like chocolate and peanut butter as Kavin ref’d last weekend. There’s Paul’s gorgeous like bright ReichGlass like pulse and Adam enters with contrasting almost old World tones bringing much density into the workings. – Jim. The music box sounds start off softly and are soon joined by another set, but out of phase and displaced in pitch. The overall effect as they combine is to suggest a sense of dementia. Well-crafted. – Paul.

To Alex Ross – Featuring Paul Hertz, Todd Lainhart, Jeff Fairbanks, Kavin Allenson, Paul Bailey, Lee Noyes-3x and Adam Kondor (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – This has a very subliminal Steve Reich feel to me particularly in the use of the reeds or wind patches. The electronic groove and pulse leads to more density Kavin and Jeremy’s cool guitar lines interspersed with the ‘frogs’ and beats between Todd, Jeff and Paul. Nice evolving moods in this one Adam. – Jim.

Hexagonal – Featuring Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Steve Layton, JC Combs and Adam Kondor (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Timewarp. Moving through. Dimensions on a conveyor belt. Flashing lights crossing Zelda. Actually we’re in a video game. – Jim.

Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
Impro (Medusa) #1 – just like Miami VIce, coming on pulsing, strobing with a great sense urgency. – Jim. A piano concerto in electronica! Nice groove. This could be a good start to a longer version… – Paul.

Mod Impro 08/26/10-#1 – Moog like low tones in this one amidst the lights and pulsing bursts. Nice decaying ‘bounce’ like sounds in between. I see lava lamps on speed in your pieces Jukka! – Jim. More growling – this stays mostly in the lower registers. Very explosive! – Paul.

Mod Impro 08/26/10-#1, Variation – Continuation with added decay to my ears, subtle moon like sound almost ghostly at times, also some metallic energy is about, maybe Roger is slipping in there in influence! This one feels a bit like chipping away at the ice block making the sculpture. – Jim. As above but now with a buzzing that appears from time to time – the effect is to lengthen the perspective on the more explosive sounds. Not as unexpected in this way… Interesting psychological effect. – Paul.

Smooth News – Thinking closer to asteroids here and general feeling of space, time travel which in my past looks at your tracks Jukka I think I’m seeing and then don’t, more earthen things come to mind, this one however very feeling of space and floating travel. Good one. – Jim. Electronica in all its bleeping, blooping glory. Feels like we are far out in space. – Paul.

Steve Layton
One Game of Hex Empire – Music box like opening weaving into deepest darkest Africa and elephants passing on a safari. Great ambiance in the trees and surrounding. Wind chimes hit echoing darker voices precursor something up and gunfire starts to occur. The mix of the three continues to the music box conclusion. It’s Saturday afternoon before the ‘Net and cable – Jim. Music box, then flutes bring exotic flavor to this. Explosions? Watched ‘Lord Jim’ over the weekend – similar feeling to this. Bells at the end provide some hopeful relief – music box plays us out. – Paul.

Full Moon Sidewalk – Bill Evans with new colors. Lovely Steve. – Jim. Elegant piano with bright tones. Creates a solemn mood, like a rainy day. – Paul.

Storm Warning – Featuring Kavin Allenson, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Roger Sundström, Norbert Oldani and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Rural south in the spring, pre-summer when the sky becomes electric and the winds blow. The great Pacific railroad in the distant, cars beginning to rush, crows in the distance, Twilight Zone, storm coming… – Jim. Definite feeling of tension, right from the start. Shimmering sounds hover over the almost normal scene provided by Norbert’s piece. Drama builds with Kavin’s guitar and the roaring sound that seems to be gathering. Well done! – Paul.

Life Threatening – Featuring Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Adam Kondor, Lee Noyes, Chris Vaisvil, Glenn Weyant, Benjamin Smith and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Sense of ambiance, perhaps could be in an ER room, could be as the voice talks a person waking up from his entrapment of boredom, the organ wash amidst the acoustic keys, voices scurry minimally about as the piano tones fade to voices about the room fading fading. – Jim. A lot happening here – voices, arcade sounds, steel being cut. Sounds like we are close to a giant saw – suitably scary… Ben’s frantic piano adds to the uncertainty. It all drains away and we are safe… – Paul.

Orchestral Dream – Featuring Ken Palmer, Adam Kondor and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Wow kings of orchestration here! Matinee theater and film score scape abounds. Then the Vince Guraldi piano nicely breaks the ice, love that Ken. – Jim.

Lucky Vampire Anthem – Featuring Johnny and Faith, Jim Goodin, Paul Bailey, Shane Cadman, Adam Kondor and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Cool dub pop about this one. Johnny’s playfulness and sense of humor opens it and leads into a scape of percussion, Jeremy’s great guitar lines, Shane and Adam’s great orchestrations all woven. Great piece Steve. – Jim.

Things Seen From the Window – Featuring Lee Noyes x2, Jérôme Poirier, Chris Vaisvil, Steve Moyes and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Lovely beginning color but I’m reminded of Peter’s hedge hog recording back in the spring for a bit! A bit of Jukka without Jukka goes on, the cello and spacial acoustic percussive tones bring together lovely color towards the middle that demands that we wait to see what’s next. The cries of children the sound of angry bees the scream of the neighbors (I’m glad we’re inside the room instead of outside). A subtle growing of acoustic plucks, distant guitar and voices emerge with a slight shrill perhaps an ambulance as here in Brooklyn about to break the rare night quiet… but it doesn’t. – Jim.

Kavin Allenson
Petrichoral – Michael Hedges feel in the foundation with layered lyrical guitar lines flowing through. Wes Montgomeryesque southern crosspicking in the developing guitar lines as the piece centers. – Jim. Sweet groove along with poignant sliding guitar tones. Abstract but yet somehow very basic. Good playing, as usual. Room for this to extend… – Paul.

So that’s the thread review for the weekend of August 26th – 28th which I hope you found interesting and information perhaps a bit thought-provoking. Paul and I as a rule do not publicly review each others contributions as we in addition to reviewing everyone’s work, we also participate each weekend with our own submissions. We do however post our work titles and links as follows so you may check out our musical worlds.

Paul Muller
Hammerings

Jim Goodin
Ricochet
Climbing Geometry
Minaret
Hand Chant
F Sharp

I do want to mention that each month ImprovFriday produces a podcast series that resides on Podomatic.com at ImprovFridayRadio.Podomatic.Com. You may go to that site or search ‘ImprovFriday Radio’ in iTunes and subscribe to the series. Paul and I take turns hosting each month. Paul generally features an ImprovFriday concept of working shared by several member artists and features that and some of the artists. I do a Skype interview and present that featured artist and his/her music for a complete in-depth episode. Currently the August series is posted. Paul featured mixes and mash-ups and looked at the work of ImprovFriday member artists’ J.C. Combs, Bruce Hamilton and Adam Kondor. During the month of September I will be featuring member artist Steve Moyes.

If you enjoyed this blog entry please feel free to post your comments at the link provided and additionally please visit the ImprovFriday website at ImprovFriday.Ning.Com and check out all the above artists and get to know our community of creative New Music making. Have a great week and we will see you on the next edition.

Cheers

Jim and Paul

Mosquitoes Attack House Speaker Nancy, ImprovFriday visits Bushwick, News at 10, All on ImprovFriday!

Well friends as the mosquitoes roar about our ears in pursuit of house speaker Nancy, fellow ImprovFriday member artist Paul Muller and myself [Jim Goodin] once again reconvene for another post of WhatsNewatImprovFriday looking back at the musical work done by the community during last weekend’s (August 19 – 21) open call thread.

In addition to the 31 fabulous pieces of music produced by the many fine ImprovFriday artists, we at ImprovFriday were proud to host our first remote live video webcast on Friday evening August 20th. Musicians James Ross, Alex Carpenter and Michael Vincent Waller performed live from Brooklyn venue, Goodbye Blue Monday. We produced their show to streamed video and carried them live on the ImprovFriday home page. Below the thread reviews are details on the show as well as some of the interactive chat and performance pages.

Notes from Paul: Last week I overlooked a piece by Todd Lainhart – just flat missed it in the thread. Sorry Todd – Jim Goodin has posted some comments on your piece on the What’s New at ImprovFriday blog. [editor’s note: August 12-14 post]. Thanks to Chris Vaisvil who has been posting comments on pieces this week in the event thread. Good work! Very fine work posted here this week. Steve Layton is out of his studio visiting Los Angeles so we have fewer pieces from him this week, but still lots to listen to.

And with that said Paul my friend and co-commentator we are off looking at ImprovFriday member artist work produced for the weekend of August 19 – 21, 2010. Links to each artist’s work are included so please to check out the wonderful tracks done.

Bruce Hamilton
Verging On – Good processing of speech on the intro – artistic yet intelligible. The piece that follows effectively evokes a spare and open landscape. – Paul. Creative Max Headroom (early 80’s commercial editing style showing age) style editing, love the Jerrrrssssseeeeyyyyy stretch Bruce, leading in to a low level ambiance a kin to settled myst over the spill of a waterfall. Nice woodwind and subtle piano/keys emerge. – Jim.

Promise – Begins as a recording – we are outside, I think. Now pop music – we are on the side of the road in the sunshine. Nice warm feel to this. – Paul. Environmental beginnings that lead in to a Paul Simonesque sound South African sound ala Graceland, very reminiscent even in the lyric content. Good one Bruce. – Jim.

IF ReCon – Featuring J.C. Combs, Jeff Fairbanks, Jérôme Poirier, Roger Sundström and Bruce Hamilton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Another IF community kind of ‘chain letter’ piece similar to last weekend’s collective piece. Really nice. Begins with ambiance, environmental, voices and wind chimes segueing to ambient mix that increases in density as it rises slowly as if the sun cascading across the landscape then descends and back to environmental sounds like a summer day with a lawn mower in the distance. – Jim.

Shane W. Cadman

Piece082010 – Great bass effect – oscillates left and right in my headphones. Echo adds a nice repetitive effect 🙂 Solid musical instincts here are not obscured by the technology. – Paul. Great diggeridoo real or synth patch on the beginning! Really cool sound modulation of the opening into other synth sounds with neat auto panning effects. Neat sense of a sense of light to dark in this piece, ends with a nice saw tooth wave. Excellent piece and sounds Shane. – Jim.

Lee Noyes
Abandoning Sound – Short bursts of sound enveloped by silences. The sounds are percussive mostly. Vaguely familiar but hard to place – amazing how this increases one’s concentration – an interesting psychological effect. The sounds seem to get louder as the piece proceeds – like we are hearing someone organize a workbench full of tools and metallic materials. Surprisingly engaging. – Paul. Wandering about the room which is clearly Lee’s canvas and finding an occasional pulse, beat of sound. The room is the canvas is the space between sounds. Sounds of what sounds like a drawer of silverware being sorted or coins paints the rooms, then an occasional horn like or tweet sound occurs in Lee’s exploring. At one point there is a pattern in the sounds that contrasts with a perfect rhythm and a neat ‘noise gate’ feel, occurs about 6:30 in to the 8:09 minute score. Right near end you do this rhytmic figure that brings to mind my friend Will. You continue to push your envelope in to the next Lee. – Jim.

Steve Moyes
Backs – A deep humming sound increases in level – gives an effect of rotating. Various other pitches and beeps creep in, but the rotational effect is sustained. At 1:40 the tones break into a triad and more sounds appear – like we are in a spaceship trying to take off. By 3:00 things have settled down – we could be in orbit – a sense of effortless motion. The tones are very active – high and low pitches – giving the sense that something is being communicated. By 8:00 more agitated sounds – engine trouble? By 9:00 we are back – watching the the visitor depart. Nice journey – hope the spaceship analogy wasn’t over-worked… – Paul. Excellent oscillations and modulations Steve. Bordering on chasing Mr. JP Kervinen at a point, concludes and then begins another tubular like journey. The tubular part mod’s to glitch a bit and tips it’s hat to Mr Noyes I think. The pitch changes almost like the slide whistles at times around this section @6 minutes are neat. As the piece winds down we’ve clearly been moving through the cosmos and the sites are on the ‘beyond’ as I would expect no less Mr Steve. – Jim.

Steve Layton
Small Sad – Nice mix of two different keyboard sounds with percussion – just getting started! Should be revisited and extended, IMO… 🙂 – Paul. Like the ‘stuttering’ feel of the rhythm Steve and with the momentary piano voice, it has a sense of unpredictability and then, concludes. – Jim.

Feeling the Way – Featuring Lee Noyes, Jérôme Poirier, Kavin Allenson, Roger Sundström, Ken Palmer, Bruce Hamilton and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Mysterious feel to this – Lee’s piece adds to the sense of uncertainty. Bubbling, then boiling sounds add a sense of menace and nearby danger. Piano music at 5:00 makes a nice contrast of misplaced normality. By 7:15 we have made our way outside – it’s sunny and children are playing! Great sequencing – even if all you had was an old Mac and Audacity. Next week – magnetic tape! – Paul. Your recent trip to California got you some movie score influence here Steve. Really nice color in the surrounding synth sound layering the voices and other parts of the mash. Quasi industrial and quasi ‘Lost’ to me. Lee’s random ‘abandoned’ percussion sounds appear at interesting places as your orchestration fills the space between. At times it calls for a squeezed down telephone or radio voice mixed in almost like something you might hear Eno or Bowie throw in. Lots of great mystery and color throughout. – Jim.

Kavin Allenson
long after midnight – out on the highway, maybe. Nice effects here of wide open spaces, headlights in the distance. Using a sound stretcher? Like quarter notes in succession, except slowed down 20x, you can hear the strings vibrate. Beautiful. – Paul. Man everyone did such lovely rich orchestration on this thread and Kavin your’s no less. Rich floating patches float about searching the sea floor to unknown depths. Really great dark voice suggests there is something near. The dark voice returns near end just like the ‘Smoke Monster’. Good colors and mystic Kavin. – Jim.

Paul Hertz
Adagietto for the End of Summer – Warm and slow – like an August sunset. The woodwind effects are quite good – oboe and bassoon. A slightly melancholy feel to this. Fine continuity – well sustained for a long improvisation. – Paul. Lovely lovely track Paul, melancholy, a bit mournful and occasionally joyous. Reminds me of Faulkner and magnolia trees and the rural south at times. – Jim.

Chris Vaisvil
Subway Pinball Paint Can – Wonderful mix of pinging and plinking sounds with saxophone – you can hear the paint can being shaken. Sforzando is effectively realized. Good processing and mixing here – title is accurately portrayed. – Paul. Kind of a ‘Birth of Cool’ for the melinium. Horn voicings and effects with maybe some editing cast a real west-east feel to this within the continental States. Has a sense of LA and NY combined. Good mood Chris. – Jim.

Kenneth Palmer
Chilling Out – Lovely mixture of bells, guitar and woodwind. Solid bass line. Piano brings us back to familiar territory. Exotic feel to this – Peruvian? – Paul. One of your best Ken, cool earthy World tones setting an ambient vibe with a gentle beat, tasteful piano tones float about, an occasional wind chime tone is the added spice. – Jim.

Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
MOD/Impro #1 – Fast-paced, explosive sounds here. We are inside a pin-ball machine! Nicely realized. – Paul. Short bursts and creative edits, low end reverse scratch like tones, all woven together in this electronic scape, like a circuit board on speed! – Jim.

Mayan Ceremony, variation #1 – Featuring Adam Kondor and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen (contributing artist/mixer/masher)Mayan Ceremony, variation #1 (feat. Adam Kondor/Jukka-Pekka Kervinen) – Interesting cutting of the percussion offers a fast and exotic feel. – Paul. Electronic tones meet organic tones, manipulated in a digital age, pitched and stretched, like chalk marks in the rain, etched in time. – Jim.

Jérôme Poirier
Undrinkable – Featuring Steve Layton, Roger “ErocNet” Sundström and Jérôme Poirier (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Lovely bell tones amid the bubbling and electronica. Feels like it owes a bit to Steve Moyes’ ‘Backs’. – Paul. A sense of ascending and descending, crunching steps through a snow field, tonal stretches, cool organ tones intermingled with variable oscillations, the footsteps pass into the distance. – Jim.

Portrait of Bruce Hamilton’s ‘verging on’ – Featuring Bruce Hamilton, KGMI Radio and Jérôme Poirier (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Nice mixing and cutting of Bruce’s voice. I guess if you put your voice out there it’s fair game… 🙂 The pizzicato strings provide a nice finish. – Paul. This one is a riot Jerome! Love the exaggerated manips of Bruce’s voice over and sparse tones. Tip of the hat to Lee in the use of space. – Jim.

Paul Muller
If082010 – Remastered by Adam Kondor – Adam’s processing gives the pulsing lines some space, helps the oboe cut through and warms the texture a bit. Thanks! – Paul. Brings to mind the Windham Hill duo of Ira Stein and Russell Walder. Lovely oboe patch leading the way as path along the tree lined road. Nice work gentlemen. – Jim.

Jérôme Poirier
Get Directions – A fountain, children are playing! Crowd noises and a siren as well as church bells – a perfectly normal day… Rapid French – getting directions? A beautiful sonic portrait. – Paul. The day begins with the starting bell and they’re off! Environmental, a day in the life, a city square, confusion, how do I get to… – Jim.

J.C. Combs
Parader – Indistinct, distant drums slowly make their way into the foreground amid sirens and car horns. Nice cadence at 1:20… Good panning here – they marched from left to right in my head! A roll-off and some music, but obscured by some motor float, I expect. At 3:00 a much hipper cadence appears. Bagpipes! But they are playing a cliche… At 5:00 the fire trucks growl like tigers… Motorcycles at 6:45 – Shriners? Never fails – wherever you stand on the parade route the bands march by – but they aren’t playing. Good clear sounds – thanks for inviting us along… – Paul. Approaching, approaching. Drums in the distance in cadence, a siren goes by. Nice right to left, left to right drum pan then segue to a roar of machines, generator, cotton candy machine or your thought here. Drums approach again this time joined by pipers. A precursor to a circus, small town celebration as I grew up with celebrating the annual summer water festival or marching to war. As with your recent posts J.C. really great creative process in your aural documenting style. – Jim.

Norbert Oldani
Improvised Convolutions 2 – Interesting funk pattern going here that seems to deconstruct as it goes along. Reminds me of the theme to “Mission Impossible”. – Paul. Are these and your others this weekend in Kyma Norbert? These are great, very organic percussive beats kind of ala Blue Man Group sounds, particularly at :39. Visual afro beat. Good patterns as Paul pointed out. – Jim.

Study for Woodwind and Trombone – Repetition! Nice mix of trombone, clarinet, saxophone and bassoon. At 2:11 we have the trombone in a much better register. Everything is up an octave and it produces a crisper sound. Nice groove goin’. – Paul. Echo’ing Paul a bit Norbert nice sounds between the trombone and bassoon. Plus I almost thought it was a mash piece with Paul as the main lead clarinet reminded me so much of one of Paul’s pieces. It’s interesting when you start sliding the piece a bit ‘downward’ mid-way, makes me think of shifting platelets in the earth under shelves (I know where did that come from! had a very visual childhood…). As the piece moves along your voicings start to remind me of modernist composer Honnegger in the orchestration. Good piece Norbert. – Jim.

Jeff Fairbanks
Tude – Dude! Lush mix of woodwinds, organ and electronics. Big, warm sound here – well done. – Paul. Pulsing mix of voices that really gives this arrangement a ‘real’ effect. Organ has a minising almost clipping sound that with the other voices sounds really neat Jeff. Feels a bit like a hot air balloon making it’s way through jagged mountainous passage. – Jim.

Johnny & Faith
A Cloud Of Mosquitoes Eating Nancy Pelosi – Yikes! It sounds exactly like a giant swarm of mosquitoes… Mosquitoes as big as B52s! I guess Newt Gingrich was too sour for them… Sufficiently scary for any politician! – Paul. Okay sad as it is I had to Google to find out how Miss Nancy is/was so I guess that’s good education for me as part of the uninformed public here Johnny. Appreciated. And judging from this swarm I don’t think she will fair too well, she must be swinging much too right. Tis some good ‘noize’ there in your piece J and F. – Jim.

Adam Kondor
Grisaille – Masterful mix of the entire Aug 13 event. The parts never overwhelm and are carefully sequenced. Amazing achievement. – Paul. The name makes me feel a sense of Africa about particularly in the beginning. I will say also Adam includes snippets of some of my udu trax (thank you) and also later on a some of friend Will [Romano] (thank you) so hence the ‘African’ vibe. There are also others (Roger/Jukka hear for sure and sure there are more) from the community passing through so tis ‘Adamashed’. Funny too I guess from the Africa thoughts I was thinking that Grisaille was a critter of the plains but in reality it is a painting that is all monochrome or shades of gray so in a weird way suddenly this mash goes other visual directions to me, such as a blending and kind of evenness so there you go power of words. – Jim.

Sairung – A Rainbow Over Time – Featuring Shane Cadman/15Jan, Paul Hertz/8Jan, Lee-Noyes-&-JC-Combs/22Jan – a shooting star and Adam Kondor (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Bright piano, bells and drone light up the landscape. Full of sunny optimism – sad to hear it end! – Paul. Adam some great environmental work this weekend and this one no less. Sounds like a bit the Far East as well as for some reason I want to say Willy Wonka as it has a factory sound but fun sound. – Jim.

Two Clarinets – difficult playing here – how do the two stay in tune? Wonderful weaving of each melody line in and around the other. Very bright sound in this register. Like two butterflys chasing each other in a summer meadow. Unexpected ending! – Paul. Weaving plants entangling vines, sunlight trying to peer through but much closure here. Tight linear lines that take on organ color to my ears but clearly blown. Low register line enters nicely like a new vine beginning to sprout. Nice endslip the way the piece resolves. – Jim.

Mayan Ceremony – Firecrackers, drums, a big crowd – must be something interesting. Low droning horns provide interesting contrast to all the excitement. Now the ceremony starts… 1000 years old but with jets flying overhead. Sun, air, rain – esp rain – very important. Now faint drumming and chanting – getting louder. Interesting how music really adds a lot to any ceremony. A valuable reconstruction. – Paul. A sense of building abounds during first few minutes so it’s kind of preparing for a ceremony. The voices and environmental documentation are grand, the voice of an older woman talking about ‘today is the day of the Sun’. A feeling of both the present as well as back centuries to the Mayan civilization, the woman’s voice sounds as an edict to not forget the past. It’s such a constant metaphor in our planet’s ‘worlds’ and cultures. Really interesting piece Adam. – Jim.

Verbunkos – To Lee Noyes – Featuring Bela Bartok, Jimmy Giuffre and Adam Kondor (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – More difficult clarinet playing. Pizzicato strings appear. Settles into a sort of swinging mode but filled with interesting contrasts. The two styles don’t quite compliment each other – but each plays off the other surprisingly well. Perhaps Adam should notate this – could be a great piece for an orchestral concert. – Paul. Sounds like a mix of 60’s filmreel score and 40’s dance band. Lovely orchestration between the modern classical winds, swingesque light piano and kind of Goodman lead clarinet that weaves through. Actually lead clarinet gets more modern near end and then sneaks away. – Jim.

Roger “ErocNet” Sundström
Nifsarpsmaden – Liquidy sounds, and walking on gravel. Roaring and water sounds – no doubt a waterfall. Nice tour of some Swedish water features – unlike anything we have here in SoCal. – Paul. Well lots of education this week. Nifsarpsmaden is a wetland in Sweden that is sort of from I what interpret online, an area that has been setup to organically handle sewage treatment. If I misinterpret, Roger or Peter, please correct me. But another great environmental as we get the sense of walking about, of wet grass or for a bit before I knew this I thought the crunching of snow but it has ‘melted’. Near end we hear nicely recorded cicada like critters. – Jim.

ICA – Guitar sounds here. Arpeggios with unusual starting points and endings. Pensive feel to this. Nice gentle closing chord. – Paul. From wetlands we return with Roger to a sense of traditions and raw guitar, still progressive and some alternate technique. A bit Frisellian color as I’ve pointed out before in Roger’s phrasing and feel. Nice chord color ends. – Jim.

These were all the recorded pieces from last weekend’s thread. In addition to these pieces history was made for the IF community on Friday evening August 20th when we streamed live from a Brooklyn (NY) music venue, a video performance of the live Goodbye Blue Monday show of members James Ross, Michael Vincent Waller and their collaborating ‘band mate’ Alex Carpenter. ImprovFriday began hosting live ‘in studio’ video webcasts in the spring of 2010 but this was the first to take place from a public venue.

Richard Lainhart and myself produced/streamed live to the Internet the inspired evening of ‘new’ experimental music. Richard did a stellar job of camera and sound and I monitored our online feed and interactive chat which I provided play-by-play text and audio voice over commentary. Included in this section are screen captures of some of the interactive chat which was an audience of @30 known connections between ImprovFriday and Livestream. Our feed was broadcast to the Internet via video host Livestream.com then embedded on the ImprovFriday page.

It was such a great night of introspective thought reaching music from the three experimental artists coming from the stage of the Bushwick neighborhood music haunt, Goodbye Blue Monday.

James began the evening with a screwdriver infused wash of guitar driven sound in a traditional un-guitar driven way, beginning subtle and ‘raising the roof’ a few notches and then as the tide goes out, down came the wash of wired tones lowering the roof gently back in place in the 20 minute performance.

Next up Australian born Alex Carpenter took the stage bringing a ‘harp like’ 6-string wall of delay laden tones that nicely balanced, equally complimented and yet contrasted James set.

Next up Michael, James and Alex teamed up for a journey to ‘dorian’ land population three, brilliantly locking in on a huge unison low end drone, expanding upward and outward to a gorgeous cerebral alchemy. It was a great evening and first for ImprovFriday. Special thanks to James, Alex and Michael for a great show!

The archive recording of the ImprovFriday Goodbye Blue Monday show can be see at http://www.livestream.com/otownlive.

Lastly though Paul and I don’t review each others work publicly as part of this blog, we both contribute each week to the thread. Paul’s fine track was listed as part of the thread above as Adam Kondor wanted to do a re-mix of it this week. Here is a link for the piece I did…

Jim Goodin
Down to the Goat’s Ass Blues Minimalism Brooklyn Funk

That’s it for this week. Join us next week for a look at the new music from the ImprovFriday thread, August 26-28. Remember the ImprovFriday Radio podcast series which for the month of August Paul looks at mixes a mashes, featuring the work of Bruce Hamilton, J.C. Combs and Alex Kondor. Have a great day and as my since passed on much too soon old Arkansas friend, Ray Lincoln used to say when he would close his radio talk show on KARN-AM, ‘I hope you did something fun today ’cause it cost you a day of your life!’

Jim and Paul

Visit ImprovFriday at http://improvfriday.ning.com.

LIVE from ImprovFriday, this Friday!

ImprovFriday will be doing a ‘first’ this Friday evening, August 20th, at 10:30 EST / 7:30 PST (see link below for global times).  From a live performance in Bushwick Brooklyn at Goodbye Blue Monday, we will be producing a live video webcast of the Alex Carpenter/James Ross/Michael Waller show. So if you can’t be there you can be there!

Richard Lainhart and I will be tag-team tech producing this event for ImprovFriday and I’m very jazzed to be involved in this ImprovFriday ‘first’.

For times specific to your local visit Time and Date.

If you’re in the NY area please come on down to the venue, directions here, but if you can’t catch it live at ImprovFriday at http://improvfriday.ning.com!

We Grow and Grow, Cicadas Abound, ImprovFriday

And once again welcome to the weekly ImprovFriday ‘thread’ in review, hosted by Paul Muller and myself [Jim Goodin]. If you just happened on to this blog and wonder what is ImprovFriday, it is an online community created by composer and experimental sound artist J.C. Combs, as a ‘spot’ on the Internet where like minded musical artists interested in creating and communicating about experimental and largely improvisational music gather together. A large part of the community is heavy on the creating end meaning active working musicians in the experimental genre.

Every week beginning at 4pm PST on Thursday, the ribbon is cut on the open call forum thread at ImprovFriday and those interested in participating generally around 30 artists freely under the Creative Commons license agreement upload a piece of spontaneous music for anyone to hear as well as for those particpating in the event, to download and combine with ideas of their own as well as ideas of others beyond the piece’s original creater. These combining of musical ideas are called ‘mashes’ and are very popular on the two-and-a-half-day event which closes officially at 10pm PST on Saturday.

ImprovFriday located on the web at http://improvfriday.ning.com, produces a monthy radio podcast series, subscribable through iTunes as well as via Podomatic.com, and featured in the August podcast hosted by Paul [Muller], are mashes. It’s an exciting concept and Paul did a marvelous job in selecting several recent mashes to be featured in this month’s cast so please tune in. The ImprovFriday Radio podcast resides at http://improvfridayradio.podomatic.com and is also in iTunes at ImprovFriday Radio.

So here we go. The following reviews are for the thread event of August 5-7, 2010. I’ve hyperlinked each piece so you may have a chance to check out the work for yourself. Please consider posting a comment to this blog, a link is provided at the blog’s end and as mentioned please consider checking out and subscribing to the ImprovFriday Radio podcast series.

David John Baer McNicholas 1st time participant
Purdy Wavy Water Dance – Industrial like ambient feel with organic hits creating nice sense of presence. Feels like a cross between erriness of a swamp and metallic, factory like goth energy. Point is nice first piece for IF David and welcome. – Jim. Industrial sounds combined with electronics – a bit like Lee Noyes. The solid beat gives a sort of disco feel but this owes as much to the factory floor as the swimming pool. Nice piece – welcome to IF David. – Paul.

Chris Vaisvil 1st time participant
Blowing Leaves – Reminds me of the Windham Hill collective sometimes duo sometimes band, Nightnoise but with a bit more of a cutting edge. Nice thick acoustic instrument voices weave throughout and you too Chris, good first piece for IF and welcome. – Jim. Nice guitar playing here – interesting endings to the conventional phrasing. Would like to hear the last few bars of this as the starting point for a new piece! Welcome to IF Chris. – Paul.

Shane W. Cadman
Piece080610 – Lot’s of great stuff going on in here Shane and clearly many emotions given everything you’ve had come your way last couple of weeks. I hope for better times but as someone once said about ‘songwriters’, you couldn’t really be a good one unless you went through some heartache and hard times at times in the path and I think that’s true for all of us. Music is clearly a gift we all were bequeathed with for our salvation I think at times. This also has maybe it’s the slide work, makes me think of Ry [Cooder]. Glad to hear you on acoustic guitar of late. – Jim. Beautiful chant-like opening, could be a Kyrie. Lonely guitar plays against the solemn background – a fine sense of suspension hovers just underneath. More chant at 3:00 – blends nicely with the guitar and background. The various elements here are perfectly mixed – the last 30 seconds are just above a whisper. Well done under trying circumstances – the gift of a gesture of sadness. Congratulations on one continuous year posting of your pieces on IF. – Paul.

Bruce Hamilton and Roger “ErocNet” Sundström
Dam – Stellar and stirring ambience between you guys in this piece. Love the slow thickness in Roger’s guitar(?) parts/manipulations and sense of ‘things that go bump in the night’ electronics about from you Bruce. There’s also a sense of a haunting voice rising every now and in. Excellent colours fellas. – Jim.

Johnny and Faith
Johnny Use Deodorant Even Jared Says You Stink – Misty vibe tones like slipping along the floor and seques into cool ‘helicopter’ tones like suddenly flying over the rice paddies of southeast Asia, moving to almost a e-tribal beat with Steve Moshier ghostlike tones on end. Now where does the deodorant come from? – Jim. Interesting collection of sounds that build nicely at 1:20. A bit of JC Combs influence here? At 2:00 a sort of other-worldly laughing. Looks like J&F are off to conquer the world of TV commercial music – it will never be the same and this is a good thing. – Paul.

Adam Kondor
Monkey-Warriors – Killer edits among the samples Adam. Like the playful almost kookoo clock on the beginning/end. Like Ian Anderson like fluttering around and signs of Tull and the Doors in here but may be hearing things. [editor note – Adam is among those featured in this month’s ImprovFriday Radio podcast – see details end of the blog]. – Jim. Refreshing blend of familiar sounds, the spoken text ‘Budapest’ and radio music. Interesting finish. Very upbeat with a sort of pop optimism.. – Paul.

Scales – Nice fundatmental that grows like a seed to a tree with pristine ending. Made me think of Norbert here. – Jim. Just what the title says! Layers and layers of them, forming a sunny cascade of sound. Cheery and bright. – Paul.

An Alien’s View – Love the spoken word/ambient dialog/’the news story’ throughout and balanced by the cathedral choir voices is a killer mash Adam. – Jim. Spoken text by Republican politicians combined with a baroque aria – the petty and small juxtaposed with the sublime. Makes for an effective editorial… – Paul.

Hanuman’s View – Featuring Peter Thörn, Steve Layton, Norbert Oldani, Jim Goodin and Adam Kondor (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Makes me think of southeast Asia rice paddies again ala David and then atmospheric moments in some distant port or even end of the day market in India. Nice to be included in this one (thx Adam). – Jim. An almost orchestral sound of string basses hovers underneath –
a drone sounds above. The fast pace and sound of horse hooves and bells
– reminds me just a bit of Wagner. Nice finish by the basses. – Paul.

UsIt (Jeff Duke and Gaetano Fontanazza)
Come Close to Me – Brilliant continued work from Jeff and Gaetano’s NinJam collaboration which honestly reminds me so much of my initial NinJam work of many months with bandmate Daryl Shawn in development of our Chinapainting project. You guys are going the same way if I may be so bold. This piece is neat to me as it’s almost more acousticee in some sense and not as densely electronic as some of your other work. Also great riff @3 min in that just propels things along – good feeling, keep it up guys. – Jim. Beautiful guitar sounds here – floating on sunshine,
bright needles riding a gentle breeze. Could go on for much longer! – Paul.

J.C. Combs
Attitude No. 1 – Atmospheric ‘story’ like sound weaving as J.C. continues to develop so well. Nicely edited and ‘tight’. On first hearing it was more like a war or street engagement, scuffle, later found out it was sounds from football scimage. Foundation throughout has pitched down piano tones that give it a certain haunt. – Jim. Deep, dark tones, a distant yet menacing alarm, strident voices and running in the street – the sounds of danger. The elements are well-mixed here. Evokes a powerfully sinister mood and finishes with what is becoming a signature JC Combs ending. – Paul.

Ken Palmer
Simultaneity – Nightscape as the ‘crickets/cicadas’ sing throughout, reminds me of my native south. In the backdrop a recital is going on, perhaps we ‘the listener’ is outside of the hall on a hot night, the windows are open, perhaps we couldn’t afford to pay to get in and we are enjoying the beautiful music. In a sense doubly blessed by the music of the creatures as well as the human creatures. Nice piece Ken. – Jim. Low, dark, booming sounds and crickets – it is night deep in the forest but something is not normal. A pleasingly abstract piano line arcs over the shadows – a sort of lifeline to rationality. Good contrasting elements here. – Paul.

Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
OPL3 08/05/10-#2Like bubbles rising to the surface, among interplanetary frequencies (okay vivid imagination). Bouncing about. Jukka you haven’t been gone perse but I think you were not with us last weekend though maybe historically in a mash, so welcome back in the virtual flesh. Your electronic alchemy of beeps and bawks continue to amaze. At some point would be cool to have you talk about how you capture all the range of sounds, perhaps a podcast interview approaches for such. – Jim. The 23d century is here with beeps, clicks and burbles. These sounds feel fatter and fuller – more than just video-game effects. – Paul.

NES Impro #1 – Okay this one is right in the arcade pocket to me. Neat and nicely edited or captured. I can see Mario bounce about or flippers flipping, buttons pushed… – Jim. Beautifully constructed – a definite groove goin’ here. Exhibit A in how to make music from pure NES! Well done! – Paul.

Steve Moyes
Watching, Waiting For An End – Stellar and patient Steve with a great sense of depth between your xylophone or similar tones. Exploring color after color, almost like passing through a winter chamber and gently tapping on vibrant icicles… [editor’s note – Steve will be my interview on the September ImprovFriday Radio podcast, stay tuned.] – Jim. Quiet, deliberate series of solitary bell chimes. Great use of space between the tones. Love the echos in the
lower registers. Solemn, with just a suggestion of expectation. – Paul.

What It’s Not Like – Like a slow-motion alarm bell that slowly evolves into a zen-like series of chimes. Builds nicely into a complex series of tones, drones and chimes. Becomes noticeably lighter at 6:00 – the bells sustaining the mood – the slow fade out is perfect. Engaging over the full 8 minutes. Very well done! – Paul. A return of Steve’s classic finger cymbals and Chinese bells I think, creating aural frequencies all strung together, guessing through Mobius looping, of which he is an avid user. The percussive hits grow more dense tones ringing into each other overlaying becoming an almost single tone then expanding again in to separates and then resolving out to the foundation it began – a complete picture Steve. – Jim.

Greg Hooper
If Not Now, Later – Slow motion bungee recoil (grins), actually maybe audio stretched guitar or other instrument strings. Lovely bouncing tones with nice reverse near end. Neat piece Greg. – Jim. Interesting sounds – a bit like Jukka’s but stretched out some. Elastic in tone and timbre. Nice harmonies, even
when the pitches are stretched. – Paul.

Suitable – More sub string tones (if I’m wrong Greg forgive) with a nice developing funk kind of groove. At times it’s almost like a rubber gongs clanging about. Higher frequency emerges near end contrasting the lower tones. – Jim. Deep tones sound out like low intensity explosions. The cymbal adds some interesting harmonics. – Paul.

Kavin Allenson
Trouble in Hamtramck – Police scanner capture narrative riding along with synth like ‘Jukka’ like tones. Nice density in the arrangement Kavin complimenting what reminds me of Police band I’d hear on a hot August night years ago in the television station newsroom I worked at – lots of ‘trouble’ on nights like that. – Jim. Morse code! Police dispatcher talk, surrounded by a bouncy bass line. It all adds up to a sad story. – Paul.

Quartered – Pristine slighty edgee acoustic guitar loops/sequences. Quarter tone tuned and quoting Kavin’s description, “Here’s an experiment with quarter tone tuning. I tuned my guitar: low E (normal tuning), A (quarter step up), D (normal tuning), G (quarter step down), B (normal tuning) high and E (tuned D then quarter step down)”. Nicely put together with resolving strums to prepared or pre nut koto like plucks to a processed almost marimba like conclusion. – Jim.

Paul Hertz
In An Augustly Sluggish Manor [sic] – Paul your organ seems to be getting more and more mellower with every week of late. Exploring nice textures introspectively rich. Tones melt into each other like a humid August afternoon. Much suspension resolving throughout as if one step to another, growing to a faint and gradual fade conclusion. – Jim. Slow, deliberate – quietly sets a somber scene. Slowly decreases in volume ending on a single note. – Paul.

Roger “ErocNet” Sundström
Rx3Q War – A sense of outside, distant activity away growing closer, maybe airplanes, maybe rush of the ocean, pops like guns possibly only celebration. @1:30 sounds more immediate, atmosphere startled by random electronic sounds. Nice panning in the growing diminishinig noise floor. – Jim. Sounds of flame and steam underground. Thumps and bumps produce a feeling of being under attack. Relentless yet somehow distant. – Paul.

Digital Message – Featuring Lee Noyes and Roger “ErocNet” Sundström (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Echoing through the wire. Calling calling. 3 long 2 short. Wait. Over. Transatlantic call, 1932. First contact with ‘space noise’ radio telescope. Sightings sightings, no there are no aliens, I repeat there are no aleins… – Jim. Interesting periodic wailing sounds mixed with electronics and static. Gives a sense of traveling down some cable or along some circuit board trace. – Paul.

Damage Goods – Love this. Minimalist gritty thick electric guitar sets a beautiful minimal scape leading into more intricate fingerpicked detail. Excellent space. Sounds like exploring a room that has really delicate or fragile surfaces. – Jim. Rich guitar sounds – reminds me of a Joni Mitchell album. Nice playing – a somber feel of regret to it. Last note dies away perfectly! – Paul.

FALCON Twist – Reminds me of the ReUse record I produced, using things we discard as our instruments for this project. Roger sounds like he has empty hairspray or spray paint cans strung up and is lightly tapped about them or allowing the wind to blow them, getting that ringing of empty cans familiar long decay ring, nice. Additionally much tapping in the early stages of this piece as well as some nice ‘recoil’ sounds from some kind of sound reflective surface. – Jim. Gentle metalic sounds – a wind chime? Tapping on a coffee can lid? Nice ringing tones here. – Paul.

Laser – Heavy earthy strat thick guitar similar to Damaged Goods, cutting like a ‘laser’. On hearing this it has a real Bill Frisell feel to it Roger, cool track. – Jim. Full electic guitar sounds here – effective use of echo. Well-played. – Paul.

Alien Industri – Featuring Adam Kondor, Bruce Hamilton, David John Baer McNicholas and Roger “ErocNet” Sundström (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Distant guitar cutting through the aural fog like a search light. On/off beat sense of uneasiness about. Great metallic density. Creature growls at piece’s end, perfect underscore. – Jim.

Mr Bob Copycat Drake – Featuring Steve Layton, Chris Vaisvil, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Lee Noyes and Roger “ErocNet” Sundström (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Kind of a very melancoloy feel to this mash, nice spacing in the mix and several series of short edits and reoccurring themes such as Chris’s Blowing Leaves comes and goes a s theme. – Jim.

Lee Noyes
Scored Speck Paean – Spacial hits, occasional passer by voices, a metal smith shop, a family miced from far away, a kitchen, something is sizzling or perhaps rain, all open to interpretation, the real the unreal, the space which is often a theme in Lee’s music as in the same way I interpret as the area we call the square framed by 4 connected evenly measured lines. Kitchen sizzle is back. All thoughts that come about in listening to ‘Scored Speck Paean’. – Jim. Certain sense of routine domestic activity here, but the dynamic levels give it a new perspective. We are 1 inch tall and standing on the counter top near a sink. Ingenious! – Paul.

Marsh Wind Waxing – Oscillation, first growing quickly to high pitch then desent then more modulated as it fades. Then a ‘crackle’ as if a distant firework explodes. Then nothing no the next wave of an oscillation grows as if sound in that that’s what happens, the foundation of our music whether traditional or experimental grows from silence, the anticipation, the nothing, the mental emotion, feeling, idea. Silence the oscillation returns, so smooth it’s rheostat, so pure the tone, the Marsh Wind. – Jim. Subtle rising and falling of simple sinewave tones spaced with silence. This is what science fiction sounded like before
Star Wars… – Paul.

Norbert Oldani
Sample Cloud of Wind Chimes – High pitched or pitched up, sped up wind chimes, raked across as in series, grows lower, nice texture in here. – Jim. Beautiful pinging just at the edge of perceptibility (for my old ears). Lovely bell-like tones in the middle registers. – Paul.

Open Form – To Complete or Mash – Commanding synth strings emerge, low arpeggiating with viola or cello esque stating, then a violin. A synth wind joins. Strong musical motif here and I hear an influence that suggests a sense of Paul Muller. Nice track Norbert. – Jim. The perfect music of indecision! Gets a
nice groove going that could be profitably expanded IMHO. The starting and stopping are exactly right. Well done! – Paul.

Sample Cloud of a Chinese Yangqin – Neat Norbert. Looped Far East like bells and plucked like instruments. Pulsing like change gradually being dropped on a table but in a rhythmic order. – Jim. The bright harp-like sounds are very engaging. – Paul.

Walk Thru Target – An aural moment in the life, errands, moments in America’s superstore and I can tell they are already friendlier than the one in Brooklyn on Atlantic Avenue. I sense the life beyond New York. Nice mic placement for a good sense of motion as well as the passing ambience on all sides. A child’s voice… A nice musical interlude as we pass through Latin America and back to Americana. Nice moment in time. – Jim. Ah, got the new recorder out have we? Picks up voices very well… Actually sounds quite pleasant – unlike when I have to go shopping. I’m listening and wondering – what is he going to buy? Now some Mexican music – sounds like home! Alas, we never made it to the
check-out…. – Paul.

Bruce Hamilton
Lunchtime Euphony – Heartland solo piano with ambience, at times hearing influence of J.C.’s dearthy dense chords ringing in Bruce’s chops. A sense of hope and optimism abound in the colors which for brief glimmerings ring Hornsby but return to darker shades. Ham and cheese on rye please… – Jim. Great booming sounds from the piano intensified by
the echo-y feel. Achieves an almost Copeland-like grandeur by about 2:00. – Paul.

ArnestGreat e-beat Bruce that sets the stage for your ‘short’. Piano microtonal sounds emerge and weave through looking for signs of pitch but stayinig independently clear. Guitaresque distortion sets nice closing moment. – Jim. Funky percussion and micro-tuned piano give a steel drum feel. Definite Caribbean vibe going here. – Paul.

Vome – Cool vocal departure Bruce, flowing lyrical prose of ‘sleeping’ with vocoder enhancement or some modulation. – Jim. C&W taken to a whole ‘nother level. Lovely harmonies, even when bent. – Paul.

While We Sleep – Featuring Adam Kondor, Lee Noyes, Norbert Oldani, Jérôme Poirier, Peter Thörn and Bruce Hamilton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Vome reinstates in to a more dense landscape of Adam Kondor porportion (cool how we are all starting to influence one another), lot’s good brief seguewaying of various partners here, Adam, Lee and Peter’s environmentals, Norberts manips, Jerome’s edits and twists/turns. As the voice moves through the piece and away environmental colors grow more as well as nice metallic chimes and reverse sweeps. Nice one. – Jim.

Kondstrumoyer – Featuring Adam Kondor, Steve Moyes, Roger Sundström and Bruce Hamilton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Vast and fat opening. Cool textures between the dense dark guitars, electronics and ‘xylophone’ all jangled with occasional rhythmic bursts. Nice modulation and resolution on end. Funny I Google kondstrumoyer to find out what it means and I get one hit, the very mash on ImprovFriday, I’d say we’re ‘out there’ gang. – Jim. Muscular sound from Roger’s guitar competes with the rising, mysterious tones. The pieces of this mix play off well against one another. – Paul.

Steve Moshier
Weeds and Debris – Good title, like walking through a huge garden, all kinds of things aboud visually here. Great mysterious tones as I’ve come to expect no less from you Steve, rich in the dark. – Jim. Classic Moshier with sounds from all directions. Nice incoming explosions. Does not disappoint given the title. – Paul.

Bumper Car – Cool 44 seconds. Heavy stamping sound, friction, gangs motion, emerging treble slightly piercing sound appears. Then all stops. Well recorded and innovative colors Steve. – Jim. Effective re-creation of the classic boardwalk ride. – Paul.

Steve Layton
Rising Falls – Me thinks an Oberheim here or similar voice. Feels the past though. The water surges below, sounds pound down, nice rolling vibe in the ‘O’ voice. As the piece grows the sensing of crashing colors abounds into the next. Neat and effective Steve. – Jim. A complex sequence that never quite settles into a predictable pattern. Like watching rapids in a river – dynamic and static at the same time. – Paul.

Ear Cinema – Featuring Steve Moshier x2, Peter Thörn, Jeff Fairbanks, Greg Hooper, Adam Kondor, Norbert Oldani and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Chains in the closet, as the title suggests cimematic or more to my ears from here in New York, akin to the open of a musical in a sense. Love the visitation this week by the infamous Man Ray (Peter thanks), what a neat statement and sense of art. Nice rhythmic foundation grows and with various sounds takes on a cross between an Asian motif and a Michal Oldfield piece. Near end flutter of Swedish(grins) creatures takes us into a more forest world and Man Ray reappears – fun scape Steve. – Jim.

Our Lady of Tunnels – Birds come to mind, sort of as in the periphrial sounds on the sides, a bit of the rain forest. Haunting main voice almost like No Face from Hayao Miyazaki. Nice spacial colors throughout the mix Steve. – Jim. Electronic sounds that unfurl quietly, gracefully. Owes something to Jukka’s recent influence, I think. Peaceful feeling here, for all the surface busyness. – Paul.

Breakthrough and Stillness – Featuring Jérôme Poirier, Bruce Hamilton, Lee Noyes, Paul Muller, Ken Palmer, Peter Thörn and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Quick edits accompany the ‘Lunchtime…’ piano bringing in cool balance between tones and ambience. Occasional distortion color breaks the ice and the nicely heard stellarness of Paul’s drone carries the foundation of bursts of passing parts. Great color among the various keyboards, occasional percussion/physical hits and the Lost in Space upward rising modulations. I wrote a guitar piece once, Stillness and Return, so I love the title Steve. PS, our community cicada’s emerge here. – Jim. Dramatic beginning intensified by Jerome’s cello and Jukka’s electronic fireworks. The drone background heightens the effect of the cello and other sounds. The piano entrance at about 3:30 carries the mood forward. The cello and domestic sounds come in and out of the foreground effectively. Peaceful ending. – Paul.

Busy Signals – Featuring Kavin Allenson, Roger Sundström, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Bruce Hamilton and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – This one takes your cake this weekend Steve. Love Kavin’s police band and the sense of urban scape here in the electronic parts from all of you. It’s an interesting contrast when Bruce’s Vome should emerge. Dig the flowing pulsation the whole mash exudes. Video collaboration of this piece was particularly nice so please have a look here! – Jim.

Purdy Suitable – Featuring Greg Hooper, David John Baer McNicholas, Steve Moyes, Roger Sundström x2 and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Mashing in a 1st time participant, excellent and nice percussive hit David brought to us. Lot’s of mystery and drama abound in the tones of Steve and Roger with Greg’s bass line suggesting a groove of separation. Lot’s of nice rings here. – Jim.

Jeff Fairbanks
Melange7 – More seriousness in the feel of this piece Jeff than some of your recent pieces that were more playful, which neither here nor there but this is a nice contrasting tone surrounded by interesting percussion hits and blipping passing tones almost in a street beat. Seriously nice melody. – Jim. Interesting groove going – the percussion adds to the exotic feel. Should be expanded! – Paul.

Peter Thörn
Everything and More – Great natural aural scape, I can see Sweden from here Peter. Sounds like a summer rain blowing through with great thunder rolling across the fields. Then it’s like I never left the Delta, your bowed nyckelharpa with a supporting pulsingn rhythm, emerges like the southern heat praying the sky will crack with rain and suddenly it does. Voices echo in the distance mimicking your nyckel…, sounds of town appear along with gently strummed acoustic guitar. Some cicada’s who have been running through this IF thread emerge with the nightfall along with birdlike flutter and sounds, gentle udu somewhere out there as well no? Beautiful environmental scape Pete. – Jim. Quite a series of explosive sounds here – thunder and rain. The drone adds to the sense of disappointment – a reprise of the vuvuzela at times. Bowling sounds at 9:00 bring us into a whole new environment and produces the impressive ending. Nicely crafted. (So I’m thinking you guys finally got a nice warm summer weekend up there in
Sweden and it rained the whole time?) – Paul.

Man Ray in A – Droning nyckelharpa supports an aural flashback of Man Ray, wow! – Jim. Interesting text – a comment on the drone sound? – Paul.

Flush Out the Jack – Birds across the field, a hunter has passed through. Shots ring out. Danger… Danger… my feathered friends. Very visual. – Jim. Amazing looping of bird sounds, slowly extends itself. Nice contrast with the motor sound. A portrait of the outdoors. – Paul.

Jérôme Poirier
Portrait of Kovásznai’s ‘Szintézis Önarcképpel’ – Love the distortion and quick edits and the way they intermingle. The painting is very cool and akin to Dali. Here’s a look for the uninformed such as myself. Good aural description Jérôme. – Jim. Very exotic sounds intermixed with Jerome’s cello. Like turning the dial on an old AM radio. Now we are in a crowd and people are walking by – and the cello plays alone. – Paul.

Sur le Côté Gauche – Featuring Kavin Allenson, Shane W. Cadman, Jeff Duke, Jeff Fairbanks, Gaetano Fontanazza, Jim Goodin, Bruce Hamilton, Paul Hertz, Greg Hooper, Johnny & Faith, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Adam Kondor, Steve Layton, Steve Moshier, Paul Muller, Lee Noyes, Norbert Oldani, Ken Palmer, Roger “ErocNet” Sundström, Peter Thörn and Chris Vaisvil and Jérôme Poirier (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – A nice call and renedering Jérôme for a return of the large scale mashes as your work and recent Adam Kondor’s have put together. Sur le Côté Gauche (Googled for my curiosity of meaning but only got French) paints a great sense of this sampling of IFer’s of which thanks for including me. It’s all very quick and sort of like ‘find the Pope in the pizza’ but it’s quite rich in color and sense of taking the listener through ‘well you must hear this, this and this!’, almost like the rabbit in Alice. Excellent flow. – Jim. Well it’s everything all in the same mix! Difficult to do… – Paul. [editor’s note update, add’ info sent by Jérôme Poirier – ‘Sur le côté gauche’ means ‘On the left side’. You can hear a french tourist guide saying the expression at 01’35. I took it from Adam’s piece ‘Monkey-warriors’. I liked the idea of pointing in one direction. Like, there’s new music over there. Plus her voice is nice. So here’s the title.].

And though we don’t as a rule review each other’s work publicly I do want to start posting the links to the work that Paul and I each produce in each weekend’s threads and will begin with what we did last weekend here.

Paul Muller
Drone Study #8
Trumpet Warm Up #2

Jim Goodin
By Random Chance
We Work
Nite

That wraps up this week’s WhatsNewAtImprovFriday blog posting. Check us out each week for a review of the work recently created by the ImprovFriday artist community. If you are a musician interested in improvisational and expermental music please visit the ImprovFriday site at http://improvfriday.ning.com and consider joining us, it’s totally free, we just ask that you in with an open mind and heart. Don’t forget to check out the August ImprovFriday Radio podcast and Paul’s fine show on mashes. Paul and I rotate hosting duties and formats each month. He does concept and ImprovFriday multi-artist features, I do an in-depth interview with one ImprovFriday artist who for the September show will be Steve Moyes.

See you next week, have a great weekend.

Jim & Paul

Sadness, Joy, Mystery and Beauty, ImprovFriday

Once again the WhatsNewAtImprovFriday review team of Goodin and Muller have cranked out another round of reviews of this past weekend’s ImprovFriday wide world web event open call new music forum thread, revealing the spontaneous work of the member artists who make it a weekly habit to gather together and create new, exciting music for posting on the ImprovFriday home portal. Many of these musical works once posted by their creators are then downloaded by other participating musicians and ‘mashed up’ or remixed to make new renderings of the original ideas, giving them another dimension of creativity and ‘spark’. So without further rambling read on and join us for the review…

Shawn W. Cadman (with Kalimba by Joshua Cadman, age eight)
Piece073010 – Sometimes there are no words. – Paul. Beautiful, subtle, saying goodbye and yet welcoming in with a new young life. Nice chose of instruments Joshua and wonderful you are joining your dad on this piece of music. Shane I’m sorry for the losses that you experienced this week, music is the healer. – Jim.

Dave Seidel
Sumeru – Lovely pattern of accelerating chime-like sounds. Surprisingly accessible given the unconventional tuning. Gonna save this somewhere for my friends who have never heard just intonation… – Paul. Dave love this and yes it’s very close to the hammered dulcimer or zither. Excellent that you delve in CSound, I’m curious about it and should explore. This floats really nice and complimented Steve’s Ricer well and viceversa. – Jim

Johnny and Faith
Faith Likes ImprovFirday – Faith makes a convincing case…. J&F
seem to have adapted nicely to the techno-industrial sounds we have been hearing here lately. – Paul. Spoken dialog like underwater with a cool effect, sensual overtones with nice floating decaying ending. Reverse is nice as things come to a close. – Jim

Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
PSG 08/01/10-#1 – Jukka wow like Johnny man welcome back, you guys have been missed. Great bouncy tones coming from your circuit boards. As I think about it this would have made a cook mash between you and Johnny. – Jim.

Greg Hooper
After Mail – Wonderful boingy tone and intriguing rhythm – too short! – Paul. Neat electro percussion sound as I’ve been playing the udu a lot which Greg’s sounds bring to mind. Assuming this is electro or sampled or could be pitched down kalimba. [ed note] Just noted in your shortY post that you were thinking about doing more short compositional forms and here we are, this one very haiku like – look forward to more. – Jim.

Steve Layton and Andrew McCance
Clear Lines – Sweet piano sounds start out light and sunny but slowly
darken. A little of Ben’s influence here? Melodies crossing each other –
but don’t clash. Comes in for a soft landing…Paul.
Love the name guys. So good to hear you both on ‘acoustic’ at least tones perhaps sampled but really complimentary lines, the brightness against the more dense close clusters. Would be neat with Ben’s touch after he gets his key’s back. – Jim.

Combs and Noyes
Wait A Minute Against this Tree – Space between spaces. Great sensitivity and patience with an almost ‘live’ feel at times. Point counterpoint, question answer. – Jim.

Thomas Bjørnseth & Lee Noyes
Etude for piano Aº34 & Improvised percussion – Hearing this back to back with J.C. and Lee’s ‘Wait a Minute…’ it’s wonderfully connected. The sentence continues. It would be interesting to hear these two mashes. Echoing sensitivity fellas and love the titles! – Jim.

Banko – Featuring Jeff Fairbanks and Bruce Hamilton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Wow, yet more of Jukka’s influence alternating with Jeff’s clean guitar – excellent contrast and nicely mixed. – Paul. Brilliant editing and turntable like scratch as well as great treatment of Jeff’s playful circus like piece. – Jim.

Kavin Allenson
Darganfod – Amazing guitar sounds with a great groove. The text provides an interesting commentary. – Paul.
Love this, tried to mash it without realizing that it was desired to be left as was, my bad as they say but infectious groove and feel speaks volumes Kavin and and the ending spoken part such a statement man, excellent! – Jim.

Transept in the Sound Temple – Beautiful tones rising up – a bit of James Ross’ influence here, I think… Very nice at about 3:00 with the deep pedal tone. Almost sorrowful at 4:30. Elegant ending. – Paul. Really rich and moving synth voices Kavin. Much ebb and flow and film score feeling here. A feeling akin to Pictures at an Exhibition re voice flowing like walking through a room of images. – Jim.

Steve Moyes
Lumpy – Booming bass bounces along with guitar accompaniment that builds up intriguingly in layers. Arrives at a complex texture with the bass holding everything together. At 4:00 the top layers are in conversation but by 5:00 all the voices are speaking at once in a sort of cacophony of guitars – we are rescued by the bass just before the sudden finish. – Paul. – Really cool Middle Eastern feeling in the guitar lines that starts very spacially apart from the lower foundation line but grows closer as the melodic line thickens. A feeling of ‘on the edge’ burning embers throughout Steve. Great gnarly tone develops in a third inner voice later in the piece. – Jim.

Jeff Duke
Strange Week in Lake Wobegone – Yeah, we’re definitely not in Minnesota… A bit of Dave Seidel and Lee Noyes’ industrial sounds have found their way into this one? Coming out of the Side-Track Tap, I saw these strange lights out over the lake…. – Paul. Sounds just like mosquitoes Jeff. Cool menacing feeling abounds in Garrison’s ‘above average’ world here. Monsters from the lake begin to emerge in the glitch about half way and grows more and more to the edge of glitch. Like it particularly the decay to nothingness on the end. – Jim.

Circus Krim – Sweet minimalist groove going here 🙂 Builds nicely. Too short! – Paul. You have defined a style Jeff, can always sense your sound almost before it happens, somewhat ethereal spacious and this one no less. Good vibe, the sounds hang, the journey begins.- Jim.

J.C. Combs
Wait a Minute – More economical piano from Mr. Combs… Intriguing, mysterious. – Paul. Floating tonal clusters in a spacial sea, drifting yet connected in a similar fashion to Beat poetry. Haunting final chord that drifts out questioning resolution. – Jim.

Thomas Bjørnseth
Etude for piano Aº34 – Nice segue from J.C. – could almost be part of the same piece. Well conceived and played. – Paul. Continuing in the outer schism of ‘found’ playing style if you will that I equally associate in both J.C.’s and Thomas’s fine approaches, Thomas lines to me move possibly towards an almost Monkish style allowing the spaces to connect the tones. In a sense this could be said about all music, it’s just with traditional and some other forms there are much more notes and much less space, perhaps a lesson. – Jim.

Lee Noyes
Oldani’s Sample Clouds & the Voice of Marshall Allen – Featuring Norbert Oldani, Marshall Allen and Lee Noyes (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – More electro-industrial sounds and good use of silences. Lightning fast cuts in the voice places add to sense of mystery.. – Paul.

Lee Noyes and Jim Goodin
Across the Seas, Across the World – Featuring Jim Goodin and Lee Noyes (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – I posted ‘Across the Field, Across the World’ in the final hour of the thread on Saturday night. Not too long after that half way around the world from downunder, Lee Noyes put his spin on it with a dulcimerish/gamelan sound, maybe some other percussion too, all of which took this piece on a new adventure. Some really neat high plucked sounds on the end. Thanks Lee for taking it ‘across the seas’. – Jim.

Benjamin Smith
Ben.improv.Jul.29.2010 – Ben gives us the 21st century accordion! (Maybe the best thing I have ever heard from an accordion.) Now some fast vibraphones – very well-played. Ben’s midi keyboard is out of commission and I believe this was recorded with a mic – bravo! – Paul. Nothing like having to take an instrument you normally play and due to some mechanical or electro mechanical issue I think in this case and work with it within new limitations. In this case I think it pushed Ben in some new directions. From micing the keyboards output it has brought in some ambience that’s not normally there so this track has a nice ‘live’ feel and suspect it is. Kudos Ben for meeting your obstacles and holding course. – Jim.

Kenneth Palmer
Procession (edited) – Pizzicato strings – mysterious woodwind floats overhead. Cool piano part weaves in and out – percussion as well. Quite a production altogether – very nice orchestration here. – Paul. Really lovely floating and haunting orchestration Ken. Great balance between the plucked opening strings and the woodwind voices with echoing Paul’s comments about the piano, darting about between the lines with nice presence. Nice queue Ken. – Jim.

Jeff Fairbanks
iBank – Heavy-duty beats keep time while a reedy melody buzzes by. Almost rap-like by 1:30, but it definitely grooves. – Paul. Like a balance between ‘March of the Tin Soldiers’ and hip-hop! Cool groove Jeff with what sounds like kind of early Casio percussion. You have a great sense of playfulness in your work Jeff that’s almost cartoonish but like Cirque du Soleil stuff. – Jim.

Roger “ErocNet” Sundström
Drive Man – Dark, mysterious low rumbling sounds convincingly sinister. – Paul. Ghostly higher voice floats throughout over the low sub frequency wash that I bet would sound really cool at high volume over speakers that would respond to it. Near end an almost wolf like voice harkens as the low wash pores about like the ‘dark smoke’ in Lost. Nice mood Roger. – Jim.

ImproSound 1 – Heavy-duty industrial motor sounds and rapping provide a menacing feel – but I’m not sure why… – Paul. It feels that we are in some kind of workshop or more so large warehouse. The sounds of the motor or some kind of vacuum device to my ears like an air vault or hydraulic device labors off/on. The mystery presence of random tapping approaches and goes. – Jim.

ImproSound 2 – Softer sounds at first but now an even bigger motor! We must be inside a steel mill, at least, yet it produces a sort of empty feeling… – Paul. Maybe all these sounds Roger is I don’t know getting ready to switch out the engine block in his car (grins) but not quite ready. The piece begins in silence and then we are greeted by a wind like rush that again feels/sounds like hydraulics about, then a sudden crash as if something is seating. Both these pieces are sensitively miced and prepped Roger. You continue to bring new sounds to the thread each week and are clearly working to push your envelope, all in neat ways. – Jim.

Paul Hertz
Mutation Toccata – Rhythmic notes bounce along with pedal tones added at about 1:30 that develop a nice contrast. Introspective by about 5:00. Surprising ending. – Paul. Subtle linear growing lines from Paul’s signature organ. As he’s been in recent weeks less cathedral-like and more spacious, searching. This one on the edge of ‘phantom’ grows with tension with clusters entering midway that suggest a bit of pop color in the harmonies to my ears then returns to linear lines winding down and then ‘surprise’! – Jim.

Peter Thörn
Pumps on line – Interesting collection of repeating sounds – like a dragon snoring. – Paul. Peter sounds like you’ve been in Roger’s machine shop! Clearly rhythm in the machine and the repetitive pattern ranges to a snarling dog to the grunting pig. Would be interesting to reverse delay that pattern and see what you get. As always Peter you are as Roger constantly experimenting with what is around you and Lee here too. – Jim.

Pseudo (Gaetano Fontanazza)
Mellowing Tides – Lovely warm sound – like watching a sunset on a summer beach. You can hear the sea birds at 3:20. Apt title. – Paul. Love the reverse sounds in this track Gaetano. As if crying seagulls flying just off the shore. The tide is calm this evening. A loan ship is voyaging its way to port. Lovely and visual sweeping groove here. You and Mr Duke are each charting a serene course, so much color in each of you individually and with UsIt, happening guys. This track brings that to mind. – Jim.

Bruce Hamilton
Boons – Softly beautiful sounds rise up accompanied by an electric motor – a day spent working happily around the house. Somewhat more intense by 2:30 – must be quite a project – yet restful and relaxing for all of that. – Paul. Epic like piece, a bit of ‘How the West Was Won’ in feel and spirit. Nice mix of percussive hits off the top and what’s the vacuum cleaner like thing going about? Love the reverse which always creates a great vibe, greatest effect ever realized I think. Know this isn’t a mash but I hear all kinds of folks in it so influence speaks of Jeff, Roger and Lee to my most immediate ears/thoughts. – Jim.

line Pumpercar – Featuring Steve Layton, Peter Thörn and Bruce Hamilton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – An opening like a prehistoric bird or a tower crier in Iran calling to morning prayer. Glimpses of Steve’s piano take this to like morning accompanying light then the noises of the day encircle the setting, drone of life symbolized in Peter’s machine animals. – Jim.

Trom – Featuring Paul H. Muller and Bruce Hamilton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Echos add layer on layer. A deep pedal sound rises up from below intermittently adding mass to the frothy surface texture. Smooths out nicely at the end. Creative use of material that already sounds busy… – Paul. Sophisticated rumblings of an urban landscape, people moving, riveting lower pulses augmented by edgee treble patch, nice shift in mood at end to ambient sweep and distant voice. – .Jim.

Guide – Featuring Kavin Allenson, Jeff Duke, Pseudo, Ben Smith and Bruce Hamilton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Ben’s accordion dances around a bright lovely background – great segue into some beautiful repeating guitar parts. Very attractive piece. – Paul. Intricate workings in this ambient sweep between minimalist steady backdrop of guitar voicing, lovely synth washes and Ben’s searching accordion voice or patch floating about the surface as if a searchlight on the water looking for land. Mood reminds me of the great Andy Summers-Robert Fripp duo albums of late 80’s. – Jim.

Yip – Featuring Miles Hamilton-Sommer and Bruce Hamilton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Percussive sounds abound – now cheering! Quiets at 1:30 and we hear a piano accompanying an emerging violin player. Too short! – Paul. Beat and kind of electro pop groove with contrasting last third of the piece with sudden change to gentle piano and ambience voices as if closing the door on the room. – Jim.

Andrew McCance
IF – Dreams Part 1 – Put Away the Day – Solemn piano chords in slow progression. A bit of Thomas Bjørnseth, perhaps? Beautifully realized – perfect for watching the sun set. – Paul. Put away the day into the twilight, reflective piano reflecting modern but with clear hold on the traditions. – Jim.

IF – Dreams Part 2 – To Whom it may Concern – To Whom it may Concern – More quiet piano music now with cello. Perfectly matched melody with the accompaniment – very evocative. Andrew could write for TV and movies. – Paul. The suite continues, exploring piano as if it looking about the room and thinking about the time spent, lovely cello emerges to begin painting the canvas. – Jim.

IF – Dreams Part 3 – Deep Cells – Something completely different from parts 1 & 2, incorporating many of the industrial sounds we have heard on IF. A low rumbling and a rushing sound change in intensity, leaves one with a solitary feeling. – Paul. A wind storm outside is coming on, weather man had called for possible gale conditions. Traffic on the highway nearby goes by, splashing surface water about. Low rumbling voice starts to emerge suggesting what’s next! – Jim.

IF – Inside the Mind of ImprovFriday – Dreams Part 4 – Spoken text underlain by a busy electronic foundation – definitely futuristic. Nice dramatic entrance of strings at 1:35. More great orchestral licks start at 2:40 and build to the climax. An impressive series of pieces. – Paul. Hearing voices beginning as if alone in your own quietness but convinced you’re hearing voices around you then this killer killer string arrangement emerges that just makes your hair stand, just killer arrangement Andy. – Jim.

Steve Moshier
Uncertainty Principle – Uncertainty Principle – A great vortex of sound – gives you a feeling of hearing randomness in action, as the title suggests. Like hearing a fractal… – Paul. Man Steve you get the ghostliess patches. Kind of like a street beat afro feeling happening with spirits about in the concrete canyon. – Jim.

Loose Change – extraterrestrial mood going on, exploring sounds as if life entering a strange room. Nice dark mysterious mood and strangely I want to comment on the pulsing like cricket sounds which I wouldn’t think would be ‘extraterrestrial’ but doesn’t matter, like em! – Jim.

Will Romano and Jim Goodin
Walk With Me – More lovely guitar playing – we have been lucky this week. Nice layering with a woodwind sound, then percussion added into the mix as the intensity builds, yet without becoming strident. Sustains the mood beautifully, even with all that is going on. Percussion really takes over the texture at 5:00 but still supports the original mood set
by the guitars. Guitars seem to lose their way at 6:00 but come back into sync by 6:45 most effectively. All the stops are out by 7:45 but the piece is still under control. From 8:45 the guitars glide slowly back to earth. I really like this piece. – Paul. I can’t really comment on this as too vested of course but I do want to add that I’m proud to introduce Will to this community, really creative guy with a great sense of keeping the ‘organic’ in his process of fine drumming. Paul thanks for the nice words. – Jim.

Norbert Oldani
Vocalization 2 – Mysterious low opening, now joined by voices – charmingly medieval in character. Crusaders back from Jerusalem? – Paul. Angelic, almost boy choir voices suggesting other times. Nice melodic development Norbert. – Jim.

SampleCloud of Trombones – Nice drum work here. More string-like than brassy. – Paul. Sort of a continuous passing forth of horn like samples and drums samples, a horn and drum corp. Are these made in Kyma by chance Norbert? – Jim.

SampleCloud of ? – Machine-like rolling sounds – with a crisply played snare drum. – Paul. Metallic to concrete like sound envelop starts with snare drum taking over and continuing in a para or flama rhythmic cast. – Jim.

SampleCloud of a Bucket – Hard to describe, like footsteps on stonework with reverb – and very short. – Paul. Walking in snow to me, crunch, crunch. Wonder if these 4 pieces are part of similar ideas Greg was working on for ShortY posts? – Jim.

Steve Layton
Ricercare – Delicate piano playing with pleasingly complex melodies weaving around each other. Nice touch. – Paul. What can I say but love this and have listened to this week in several settings as various including myself have taken Steve’s lovely kind of Bill Evanish track and evolved something new. When I first heard this the other day think on Saturday, I just thought wow Steve so great to hear you out of the electronics for a moment. – Jim.

In Flanders Field – Featuring Andy McCance, Adam Kondor, Norbert Oldani, Bruce Hamilton and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – In the halls of Harry Potter, mystery about and also beginning of a holiday mass. Lovely piano and voice intermingling throughout, drum samples coming in are cool and takes this to new places. Also overall vibe feels like post-war England but maybe that’s the titling which I happen to love for the name is associated with a traditional Scots tune I think. – Jim.

Bad Trip – Featuring Paul Muller, Bruce Hamilton, Steve Moshier, Peter Thörn, Norbert Oldani and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – “This is your brain on drugs” – accurately depicted. – Paul. Evil sounding Mercedes MaCambridge voice down in the mix, kind of like Alien. Great alchemy of evil here gentlemen. – jim.

Bird of the Mesa – Featuring Benjamin Smith, Jeff Duke, Gaetano Fontanazza, Kavin Allenson and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Ben’s bird-like accordion holds this together while the background gathers darkly. Gaetano’s sea gulls close this out nicely. – Paul. The ‘Bird’ flies through several gardens here. Ben’s pinch-hitting on not his traditional instrument provides a haunting sort knarly like tone bouncing around amongst the varying colours of the mesa orchestrated by Jeff, Gaetano and Kavin. Kind of rain forest mood throughout. – Jim.

Generator – Featuring Jim Goodin, Roger Sundström, Will Romano, Gaetano Fontanazza, Peter Thörn, Shane Cadman and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – This piece owes a lot to the mood of ‘Walk With Me’ yet manages to enhance it with the added material. This is the best mix I have heard from Steve since I can remember. Beautiful and affecting. – Paul. Steve thanks for taking our track to new places and spreading Will’s work a bit more here. – Jim.

Carnival Overload – Featuring Jeff Fairbanks, Ken Palmer, Shane Cadman, Roger Sundström, Jeff Duke and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Bolero like opening, kind of mix between spooky clowns about in a festive circus atmosphere. @3:30 mood moves to more ambient feel as repeating guitar develops. I mentioned Cirque du Soleil earlier in another piece’s feeling, this mash suggests that as well. – Jim.

Beach – Featuring Gaetano Fontanazza, Greg Hooper, Jim Goodin and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Despite having a part in this (thanks Steve) and should downplay ‘back patting’ I do dig this mash a lot. G’s sweeping backwards fluid scape is like the ocean and Greg’s electro acoustic maybe organic synth tones adding separation are nice and as said organic. Then there’s this guy ‘caterwauling’ in the depths, oh that’s me, ha! – Jim.

China, What Happened? – Featuring Steve Moyes, Peter Thörn, Adam Kondor, Johnny & Faith and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Growing Adam’s fine environmental aural documentary piece in a wider World feel with Steve’s menacing Middle Eastern feel guitar, Peter’s ‘growls’, Johnny and Faith’s erotic tones and Captain Layton at the helm of the ship charting for seas afar. – Jim.

Steve Layton, Dave Seidel & Jim Goodin
Thousand Years, Thousand Smiles – Featuring Steve Layton, Dave Seidel and Jim Goodin (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Okay really had fun with this one and can’t in good faith comment but will say thanks Steve and Dave for blending so well in what feels all acoustic tones given the fine in disguise CSound dulcimer tones. – JIm.

Adam Kondor
Microexpressions – Complex piano playing and percussion underneath spoken text provides a feeling of alienation. Wonderful orchestral hits and other sounds add to the mix. Well crafted! – Paul. Detailed and ornate visual landscape. Good contrasting orchestral hits that echo early Sci Fi sound queues. – Jim.

The Canonic Mingus Tapestry (feat. Charlie Mingus – Contrabass) – Could be another part of ‘Microexpressions’ – bass sounds intermixed with orchestral sounds form a complex texture. – Paul. Good to resurface Charlie M Adam. His classic bowing and phrasing abound here surrounded by interesting vibe from you. – Jim.

Beautiful Transition – The birds win again. – Paul. Interlude, nice birds and quick edit of the sample on tail end setting the stage nicely when this is heard in sequence as it is in this playlist, stay tuned. – Jim.

What Happened In China – Explanation of the Cultural Revolution by talking heads who happen to be the same person. The aloofness of the speaker from the reality is chilling. – Paul. Wonderful edits and a brief but effective aural documentary statement. Can almost see Mao Tse-tung in this Truman Capote like narrative. – Jim.

For Sophie Podolski – Featuring Steve Layton, Andrew McCance, Jim Goodin, Benjamin Smith, Paul Herz, Roger Sundström, Jeff Duke, Bruce Hamilton, Kavin Allenson, Greg Hooper and Adam Kondor (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Lovely piano playing mixed with strings, voices and a squeeze box create a very exotic atmosphere. At 4:50 I thought I heard Paul Hertz and by 6:00 we are in space. Interesting, liquidy sounds at the end. – Paul. Adam said he was heading in a mass mash of everyone but stopped early and then decided to post as is. Glad you did Adam. It’s a true sounding painting to the soul that you honored in naming. Led me to Google and find out who was Sophie. For those that don’t know as I didn’t, she was a Belgian poet and designer who battled schizophrenia and died early following a suicide attempt in 1974. I search for some text from her published works, ‘The Country Where Everything is Permitted’ published in her lifetime and the ‘Snow Queen’ published after her death but found no examples. Now knowing all this reveals a great deal of her troubled life in Adam’s mash of those of us included. Beautiful mash and honoring of her Adam. – Jim.

And as another thread review closes know that the new ImprovFriday open call thread music event is about to kick off in a couple of hours. If this writing sparks your interest for the work of those represented or New Music in general do check out this weekend’s event at ImprovFriday.ning.com.

Also please consider subscribing to our ImprovFriday Radio podcast series via iTunes or at it’s home at ImprovFridayRadio.podomatic.com. The series published monthly features overviews of the works of ImprovFriday member artists and focused interviews with them.

Many thanks for following ImprovFriday and the WhatsNewAtImprovFriday blog.

Happy week and weekend,

Jim & Paul

Ants, Drag Net and Helium Ghosts, Sounds to Awaken, ImprovFriday

Welcome to another ImprovFriday review commentary by Paul Muller and myself [Jim Goodin]. Lot’s of great music made last weekend’s (July 22-24) open call thread so let the reviews roll forward! Read on…

Kraig Grady 1st time participant
Tumbleshore – Mysterious, languid, tropical – we are on a beach.. Interesting drone develops that contrasts with the laid back feeling and builds tension. The mood is effectively sustained over the full 22 minutes. Welcome to IF Kraig. – Paul. Floating on the water, reminds me of John Michael Jarre in a way. Nice colors and great to have a new member, yes welcome Kraig. – Jim

Roger “ErocNet” Sundstrom & Peter Thorn
Tree Groper – Neat ‘in the room’ live feel, darkness and tradition between the plucked nyckelharpa by Peter and Roger’s ‘found’ and other things, think Peter is on fretless. Goes very sitarish and raga feel as the piece develops. – jim.

Steve Moshier
Swatting Sand Flies. Understated, given the title. Intermittent “fly motif” appears unexpectedly against a soft background. An accurate realization. – Paul. Airy foundation, perhaps the desert, perhaps the flies akin to Peter’s ants. Sparsely interesting sounds bounce about through, electric piano adds definition near end. – Jim

Wanda – Spacy, pipe-organ sounds offer a dark portrait – a lady standing in the shadows. – Paul. Light moves in and out of the passage way, the woman stirs the soup, baby sleeps soundly, time passes, then the child is 16… – Jim.

Uranian Willy – Lovely deep tones with an overlay of bright swatches of sound. A surprisingly restrained set of pieces from Steve this week! – Paul. Post tones of Wanda, she leaves the room, the light in the passage becomes more ominous, growing. Out on the sea the waves swell, the sailor longs for home… – Jim

Jérôme Poirier
Acrophobia – Featuring Steve Layton, Bruce Hamilton, Norbert Oldani and Jerome Poirier (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Succinct, yet with a wide variety of sounds. Don’t look down! – Paul – Bursts and pixels in this :47 second gesture like aural drawing. A bit of glitch, a bit of Blue Man and a bit of your imagination. – Jim

A Few Amperes – Featuring Andrew McCance, Bruce Hamilton, Norbert Oldani and Jérôme Poirier (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Sparks and generator sounds with a nice trombone coda. – Paul. Great Drag Net orchestration Andrew! Well placed voices and love the tympani hit. – Jim.

Bench Memorandum – Featuring Jeff Fairbanks, Roger “ErocNet” Sundström, Kavin Allenson and Jérôme Poirier (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – A subdued series of arcade sounds – been listening to Jukka? – Paul. Lot’s of electronic shootemup and what sounds like 8-bit (Jukka where are you this week dude!) influence and some cool metallic clanging near end that I suspect are courtesy of Mr ErocNet no? – Jim

Renversement – Featuring Lee Noyes and Jérôme Poirier (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Some 60 Hz, some silence and a symphony that sounds like it is trying to get started. Owes much to Lee Noyes 🙂 – Paul. Fab spectrum range here and I missed the first time as I didn’t hear this over phones which things come alive with the aide of. Really nice lower frequency oscillations going on in the opening moments. Like helicopters over the rice paddys. – Jim

Gérald DeGroote
Chickenshit Plus Featuring Steve Moyes and Gérald DeGroote (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – OK, I think we have the definitive version of ‘Chickenshit’ here. Gerald’s bass makes the decisive contribution – congratulations Gerald and welcome back. – Paul. Like a mix of the Doors and laid back Jaco tones here, Gérald sets a slight funk feel to Steve’s chicken infused morphed xaphoon tones. – jim.

Steve Moyes
Chickenshit – Wonderful realization of chickens scratching and pecking happily about in the upper registers. And then there are the lower tones…. perhaps referring to the title. Playful and inventive. – Paul. Hum, my puritan upbringing is going hush our mouth but highly great mood going here Mr Steve in your command of Mobius and manipulation. Eerie twist of the xaphoon I think or maybe mouth organ or who knows but wonderful twists and turns throughout the chicken’s innards perhaps. – Jim

Anizzypetething – Featuring Izzy, Peter Thorn and Steve Moyes (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Really cool mystical surreal mood that is a specialty to Steve, creator of many thick moods. This one the voices are spooky playful kind of like helium infused ghosts! – Jim

Greg Hooper
IF Today – Rich, resonant bell tones create a fine sense of space. – Paul. Mirror like sounds of a ‘rubbed’ xylophone or close miced kalimba, wind chime quality, being in a room of all just ringing around you. Nice. – Jim.

Steve Layton
Vertigogo – 23d century go-go sounds. Not sure if I could dance to it but it has a great ending. Amazing how JP Kervinen recent postings has
influenced many of the pieces this week. – Paul. Cool track with lots of PVC like samples or found going on to my ears. Nice organic feel from that. – Jim.

In which we visit the Discovery Channel … Featring Kavin Allenson, Mick Martin, Roger Sundström, Norbert Oldani x2, Bruce Hamilton and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – A lovely flute line floats above darker tones in the lower registers. A beatbreaks out – but we are still in the wilds. Bird calls and insect sounds add to the Exotic flavor. An informative journey… – Paul. Featuring Kavin Allenson, Mick Martin, Roger Sundström, Norbert Oldani x2, Bruce Hamilton and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – I’d say, visual landscape with much to ‘discover’. Nice to have Mick join Kavin in this week’s thread btw. – Jim.

Happy Varèse – Featuring Andrew McCance, Jérôme Poirier x2, Roger Sunström x2 and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Andrew’s orchestra adds heft to this. Good panning on the otherworldly sounds that seem to hover overhead. Crescendo is effective at 3:00 and the ending trails off nicely. – Paul. Great play between the ‘bone orchestration and the various synth and organic sounds/effects/emotions. The horn orchestration that I believe is Andrew’s work reminds me so much of the Swiss composer of the 1900’s Honneger and his Pacific piece as well as early 60’s television sound queues. – Jim.

Traveler’s Time – Featuring Jim Goodin, Shane Cadman, Adam Kondor, Steve Moshier, Kavin Allenson and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Jim’s voice get your attention and sets the mood. The string-like sounds float above and compliment the vocal line but now and then break out into a more menacing presence of which the singer is blissfully unaware. – Paul. A feeling of the new west frontier, on the desert, sky finally cracks after months of heat and rainstorm comes to rescue. Nice to be included in this, thanks Steve. – Jim.

Vättar – Featuring Steve Moshier, Peter Thörn, Izzy and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Wow – love the feeling of this layering. Ants those little buggers make a great rain on the roof sound Peter and the dialog of you and Izzy already echo’d about but grand, the orchestration of the two Steve’s, great result guys and lady. – Jim.

Miami Vice – Featuring Gaetano Fontanazza, Lee Noyes, Ken Palmer and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Sinister, menacing – builds intensity and tension. – Paul. Street mystic with David Lynch film score richness. Cool bass tones and subtle acoustic keys lacing through. – Jim

Dance, Chickenshit, Dance! – Featuring Steve Moyes, Gérald DeGroote, Roger Sundström and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Continuing to twist the chicken this time along with Gerald’s funky bouncy bass lines and Roger and Steve’s plucked (no pun intended) and keyed sounds meshing in. – Jim.

Duple Duple Triple – Featuring Roger Sundström, Peter Thörn, Jim Goodin, Jeff Fairbanks, Bruce Hamilton, Jérôme Poirier w/ Lee Noyes and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Slowly turning rusty gears of a clock, gradually turning and turning. The pulse starts, slips a skosh, then finds it’s momentum and then… the alarm rings and it’s time to get up! Good morning world! – Jim.

Lee Noyes
Bruit – Soft electrical sound – possibly a motor, with an even softer music box melody underneath. The two interact and end in a sudden malfunction. Understated – and draws you into concentrating. Effective use of quiet and low-level sound. – Paul. Continuing to find his muse in the things that whir, cycle, glitch and ‘purr’ (okay haven’t heard purring yet but…), Lee conducts these aural illusions with care and vision, this one no less. Like the early stages of this with the sense of a natural phase shifting perhaps it is. – Jim.

C’ing 3’kinds – More 60 cycle uncertainty here. Brief sounds, in and out. Good recreation of something trying to get going, gradually building in to overdrive. Amazing how these sounds cause you to think through a list of their possible causes – an open connection somewhere? – Paul. Very quiet but nice surprising sounds out of nowhere of increasing oscillations and warbles. – Jim.

V S Ble Axe – Voltage control to the max! I don’t know how it was made but I can visualize Lee turning the various knobs on something retro which I think is a cool thing about this kind of creation, we get the picture. – Jim.

Get Out – Strong opening beat and muscular sounds – could be rap music.
Good cutting and mixing here – achieves a percussive effect. Very creative use of materials. – Paul. Very different for you Lee, like taking a device you usually work from the inner most detail to with this one working within the product of what I hear as an all in one beat box of some type, ala hip hop with a good groove and scratch as well as a certain amount of glitch happening in the speed up/down part. Like it! – Jim.

On Deposing the President – Spooky and oscillations going to voice like sound patches, drone as in airplanes, perhaps Germans flying into England in WWII, Churchill, perhaps Air Force one flying the body of JFK to be buried. – Jim.

Pseudo (Gaetano Fontanazza)
The Last Hour – Calling, longing, distant tones, distant shores. Nice depth Gaetano – PinkishDavidGilmoreish Feeling! – Jim.

Adam Kondor
Peter Lee Vanessa Featuring Peter Thoegersen, Lee Noyes, Vanessa Rossetto and Adam Kondor (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Interesting mix of various sounds – birds, strings, assorted tones…Occasional outbursts remind one of a timpani roll. Creates an almost normal ambience, only to be disrupted by sharp crashes that arouse the curiosity. – Paul. Inside a room of machinery and metal after it all begins to cool down, things begin to groan, squeak and evolve as the organic ores they are made begin to contract. – Jim.

Sacrifice – Featuring Kraig Grady, Lee Noyes and Adam Kondor (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Kraig’s easy tropical ambience is infiltrated by the sinister sounds from Lee’s piece. Good title. – Paul. The pot is boiling and so are the world colors in this mash, tribal ambient with definition. – Jim.

Construction – Featuring Kraig Grady, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen and Adam Kondor (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Boy, Adam really likes ‘Tumbleshore’ – makes a great starting point for a mix. Now the island is under attack by Jukka’s arcade forces. – Paul. Wow I was just saying earlier who we were missing Jukka this week and here he is by miracle of Adam looking outside the current box, excellent! This one is growing from ‘Sacrifice’ I see. – Jim.

Transcendance – Featuring Kraig Grady, Peter Thörn and Adam Kondor (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – – Now the island seems to
be the scene of some gunfire – or maybe that is just because I’m from LA. Great selection of pieces to add to ‘Tumbleshore’. – Paul. And part III, three scenes, moods, Kraig’s ambient waterscape continues and Peter’s ‘found’ textures weave through. – Jim.

Lullaby – A beautiful combination of Alexandra’s piece from last week and a new talent! Too short… – Paul. A great visiting of Alexandra’s track from last week beautifully matched with Peter and Izzy’s playful vocalise, splendid, to the moon. – Jim.

Oedipal Lullaby – Featuring Peter Thörn, IZZY, Alexandra Marculewicz Adshead, J.C. Combs, Lee Noyes and Adam Kondor (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Now we have some mystery added to the Lullaby. Incredibly, the optimism from the voices remains the dominant feel to this piece. – Paul. Another great mash of Alexandra’s playful almost dance like vocalise joined by Peter and Izzy’s equally dancing voices. – Jim.

The Treasure of Silver Lake – Featuring Roger Sundström, Steve Moshier, Steve Moyes, Greg Hooper, Steve Layton, Lee Noyes, Shane Cadman, Jim Goodin, Bruce Hamilton, Kavin Allenson, Paul Muller, Norbert Oldani, Peter Thörn, Izzy and Adam Kondor (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Excellent Adam and thanks for the tip of the hat re my massive mashes which I apologize have been remis in recent weeks. I’ve focused on the reviewing and blog but I do hope to get back to the large scale mixdowns. That said though this you echo’d is no the whole it’s a healthy offering of us and well done. The more layers the more mysteriously things begin to take off, new motifs, new directions, new voicings which you’ve done here. – Jim.

Jeff Fairbanks
Free Again – Good groove going here – complete with some 70’s arcade retro sensibility. Is Jukka everywhere this week? – Paul. 8 bit, gamesque and neat ending tone. Nintendo should use this Jeff. Hope they find you and pay lot of green. – Jim.

Shane W. Cadman
Piece072310 – The background cooks while the foreground reminds one of a series of trumpet flourishes. – Paul. Gated accordion patch (maybe real) over suspenseful pulsing ostinato baas lines. Law and Order influence to my ears. You [Shane], Muller, Bailey and Moshier should get together and form a production company and go after tv ( I know you live in LA and everyone is in that race). – Jim.

Andrew McCance
IF – Inside that Machine – Another beautiful orchestration from Andrew with some great sounding brass passage work. Reminds me a bit of Adam’s orchestral pieces and his use of woodwinds. – Paul.

Bruce Hamilton
Steerjuque – Lovely bells above some strong piano and strings. A somewhat Latin flavor. Curious finish. – Paul. New spring, reflective, slightly troubled as the synth strings enter, sparkly percussive beat, interesting lower synth patch separates the reoccurring motif later on. – Jim.

Face – Fortissimo entrance gets your attention! Like when the monster appears in those old horror movies. Clarinets make a nice bridge to the
quiet ending. – Paul. Another aural haiku, very visual synth almost quasar tones, like the moon on the river. – Jim.

From Machine – Featuring Steve Layton, Andrew McCance, Roger Sundström and Bruce Hamilton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) –
Wonderful contrast – the frogs are in a movie chase scene? Great cutting and echo work with Andrew’s brass. Nice finish. Hard to keep from smiling… – Paul. Really grand orchestration Bruce layering these 3 pieces. Frogs cut through really cool in this like early television sound queue. – Jim.

Rubber Clouds – Featuring Kavin Allenson, Mick Martin, Steve Moshier, Paul Muller, Norbert Oldani, Roger Sundström and Bruce Hamilton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Dense layering produces a brawny sound but it all keeps moving along at a pretty good clip. By 4:00 we are rolling downhill and picking up speed – does this thing have any brakes? Happily, we coast to a stop… Great ride! – Paul. Moving positive aural foundation with electronica and acoustical/found sounds bouncing ‘about the clouds’. – Jim.

Dora Queeora – Interesting vocals – and in harmony! A convincing 23d century do-wop feel to this. – Paul. Stealthy vocoder tones that I first thought were a bit of ‘autotune’ going on, also brings to mind a 70’s television commercial for a television set. Nice immediate mood Bruce, an aural haiku. – JIm.

Slews – Intriguing piano theme – a bit of Lee Noyes influence translated to keyboard? Good pacing. – Paul. A piano sound is heard about the room as the composer thinks about what he is envisioning, then the sound is rewound as if thinking backwards, searching the ideas. Lovely acoustic piano tones early on here. – Jim.

Mage Featuring Kavin Allenson, Bruce Hamilton, Mick Martin, Steve Moshier, Lee Noyes, Ken Palmer and Bruce Hamilton (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Contrast of pieces in this mix. Ken’s piece provides a slender thread of normality amid a swirling cloud of futuristic sounds that eventually prevail. We’re not in Kansas anymore… – Paul. Excellent and again great to have Mick’s didgeridoo this weekend. Ken’s floating standards on the ivory passing through like the blur of a dream of emotions with all the colors of the surrounding sounds. Great mash Bruce. – Jim.

Kavin Allenson
Aborgine – The didgeridoo sounds give this piece its distinctive color. The guitars weave nicely in and out around the steady drone. – Paul. The sounds of downunder courtesy of Mick Martin. Great earthy feeling between Kavin’s guitar density and the didgeridoo, all walking a line between Native American and beyond. – Jim

Burnt Mcdonald Evaporator (memo) – You don’t want to have your McDonald evaporator burn up in July! Unsettling sounds remind one of a failing machine. Convincingly worrisome. – Paul. Organic, tribal, metallic, dense, dig it! – Jim.

Kenneth Palmer
Easy Listening 2 pianos – So you’re staying on business in a big downtown hotel and you wander down to dinner not expecting much and then you hear the group playing there and are pleasantly surprised at how good it all sounds. And life in a strange place isn’t so bad after all…. – Paul. Visions of a friend of mine, a lounge lizard in Little Rock, AR, playing these tried/true tunes. Great feel in the keys Ken. – Jim.

Roger “ErocNet” Sundström
Rubber Song – Bouncy and light – good use of echo. A distinctly rubbery feel to this. – Paul. Much recoil, sounds of tension and release… – Jim.

Human Face Featuring Bruce Hamilton and Roger “ErocNet” Sundström (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Kind of like the elasticity of a dancer inside something looking for a portal out, perhaps a face with a mask as in a phantom. – Jim.

Frog Gossip – Persuasively frog-like in tone and pattern. We are a long way out into the woods… – Paul. Like these little percussive goober like gila monsters. Almost real at times as I envision a night walk in the summer Swedish skies and hearing mr froggy. – Jim.

Cam Noize – Sounds very smooth, but definitely mechanical – certainly some Lee Noyes influence here. – Paul. Literally ‘noise in the machine’ I think. Imagining close micing the optical zoom element but perhaps I’m much to anal here. Creative capturing and manipulation though and me thinks there is influence from Jukka in here, maybe therein lays a future mash. – Jim.

Peerless Impr 1 – Minimalist drumming, string plucks as if sparks of light or voices in the night, breath, ping, random tones about, reoccurring rhythm continues. – Jim.

IF Willy Slews – Featuring Greg Hooper, Steve Moshier, Bruce Hamilton and Roger “ErocNet” Sundström (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Dramatic opening – makes good use of all the pieces in the mix. – Paul. Great blend of electronica and a cutting ‘acoustic’ piano at just the right point. Maybe it’s sample but sounds pure. Good layering and density guys. – Jim.

Paul Muller
IF 7-23-10 – I know not supposed to review each others work here but another great one Paul. You’re branching last couple of weeks. Very pure aural voices and good driving foundation. – Jim.

Norbert Oldani
Silverlake – Liquidy sounds above a restful flute line. Turning somewhat ominous by the end. Good voicing. – Paul. Lovely. For me Silverlake/Eagle Park in LA and strangely it gives me the feeling of a good vibe about being in that area, had a great gig there. Musically tones are floating and lower voicings on end nicely dense. Good stuff Norbert. – Jim.

Sample Cloud of Temple Bells – Light, airy – just what the title says! – Paul. In the harbor, the various sounds of ‘bells’ ring as the waves rock them back/forth, the reef bouy market, closer in possibly floaters for lobster traps, shapes of such things I’ve seen that have a clangy sound akin to the ref’d temple bells. Perhaps though it’s as a sound being rang by monks in cloister. – Jim.

Sample Cloud of an Ancient Greek Lyre – Taught, stretched feel to this – the more effective because one is anticipating a more harp-like sound. – Paul. Adjusting a koto, it’s strings raise and lower in tension… – Jim.

Sample Cloud of an Ancient Greek Aolustan – Expansion of a star or inside a furnace as the flames shoot about. – Jim.

Peter Thörn
Go vertigo go – Featuring Steve Layton and Peter Thörn (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Guitar, drone and space sounds combine to produce a feeling of movement and travel. – Paul. Feeling of movement and travel, inventive tweaks and acoustic plucks bouncing off the Mr Layton’s spinning room of color and light, good one Peter. – Jim.

Antenn – Are those ants walking all over the tinfoil? An amazing recording – sounds like boiling water. JC and Glenn W. are gonna be jealous. – Paul. Kind of like rain but tis the sound of a small world ‘blown up’ aurally I thinks. Excellent awareness of the sound in our world around us Peter. – Jim.

IZZY and me Featuring Izzy and Peter Thörn (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Simply gorgeous. And the perfect piece to mix with Alexandra’s from last week. We gotta hear more of this real soon! – Paul. Angelic dialog vocalizing, times gone by, times present? – Jim.

J.C. Combs
Interesting Title – Featuring Lee Noyes and J.C. Combs (contributing artist/mixer/masher) – Lovely piano chords – Lee’s piece hovers like a low cloud. Mysterious feel to this. Well crafted. – Paul. Long dark hall, nice sweeps and dense acoustic tones. As always great use of space by both gentlemen. – Jim.

Missed Ben two weeks now – I think his equipment is down. Jukka didn’t post but his fingerprints are certainly all over many of the pieces this week! Paul H. is probably enjoying his summer break – who can blame him? – Ben.

Whew! Wow that was a journey but an amazing one from the ImprovFriday world. The current weekend thread is full-scale underway with lot’s of good muse’s happening so look forward to next week’s blog entry right here on WhatsNewAtImprovFriday.

A reminder that you can ImprovFriday each month as well by subscribing to the ImprovFriday Radio podcast series. Each month Paul Muller and myself rotate hosting and do in Paul’s case often several featured artists from the community with a common theme, then on the next month I focus on one particular artist and cast a previously recorded Skype interview with them in addition to featuring a couple of tracks of his/her music from a recent thread. So check us out through either iTunes or via Podomatic.com at ImprovFridayRadio.podomatic.com. And as always check out our website at http://improvfriday.ning.com.

See you next time,

Jim & Paul

Welcome to 'What's New at ImprovFriday'

Welcome to a new blog, ‘What’s New at ImprovFriday’.  ImprovFriday is a collective of musical artists producing experimental improvisational creative music.  ImprovFriday is located on the Ning network at ImprovFriday.Ning.com.  Founded by composer/sound artist/musician J.C. Combs in 2008 the community has grown to a member artist base of approximately 150.

One of the things that makes ImprovFriday innovative happens each Thursday afternoon when an invitation known as the ‘thread’ opens as a call for new music among the active collective as well as participants who are always welcome.   Work submitted is expected to be created during the ‘thread’ window of Thursday PM through the events conclusion at 10 PST Saturday evening.  Music uploaded to the event is under Creative Commons License and is posted on the site homepage for listening as well as eligible for remixing/’mashing’, a very popular trend within the community.

ImprovFriday has an active radio podcast series hosted by Paul Muller and myself, Jim Goodin, who have regularly done post-thread event commentary on the work submitted.   One function of the ‘What’s New at ImprovFriday’ blog is to give visibility to the commentary as well as promote visibility for the ImprovFriday community.  What follows is commentary on the June 24-26 weekend event.

Work	Artist(s)	Paul Muller Commentary
For Life (In memory of Kim Flint, Founder of Loopers Delight)	Jeff Duke	Lovely mix of guitars – soaring melody, nice cross-currents in the texture. Quiet, thoughtful – with a beautiful ending. A fine tribute.
C8H10N4O2	Jeff Duke	Percussive with a sort of clanging iron-like sound. An overlay of space-sounds. Futuristic.
Tempor2	Kavin Allenson 1st time participant	Deep, booming syncopated percussion groove with a variety of guitar effects that form an effective combination. Welcome to IF Kavin.
Kurtag Phase – to Armin Tillmann	Gyorgy Kurtag/voice, Lajos Rozman/bass-clarinet & Adam Kondor (mixer/masher)	Mournful clarinet playing accompanies phased chanting. The clarinet part seems to be scored at the extremes of its range – well played!
Il tempo mi ha detto – for Vanessa and James	Jim Goodin, Norbert Oldani 2x, Kavin Allenson, Benjamin Smith 2x, Bruce Hamilton 2x, Steve Layton, Jérôme Poirier, Jeff Duke 2x & Adam Kondor (mixer/masher)	Initial piano chords remind me a bit of Herbie Hancock. Lots of moving parts to this mix yet they seem to stay out of each other’s way – good ear Adam.
The Big Picture	Jim Goodin, David Perreko, Don Bplaektree, Greg Hooper, Roger “ErocNet” Sundström, Bruce Hamilton, Shane Cadman & Adam Kondor (mixer/masher)	Exotic feel set by the percussion. Sax and bass working together nicely. Intriguing, mysterious sounds welling up around 2:00. Entirely new texture by 7:00 – love the keyboard licks. Nice ending. Many sounds but it never feels crowded.
disappearing among the masses of people moving this way and that	Roger “ErocNet” Sundström & Adam Kondor (mixer/masher)	Wonderful title. Interesting instrumental mix emerges from under the crashing and plinking. Great cymbal work.
The Ant and the Acoustic Loop	David Perreko	Sax and bass interplay holds this together amid various percussion effects. Nice barking effect by the sax at 2:10. Starts to grove at 3:00 with some vocals! Now we are in orbit with bleeps and pings and a shrieking sax. Quite a ride!
Who Can Resist?	Alexandra Marculewicz Adshead & Johnny & Faith	Alexandra’s trademark vocals mixed with classic J&F – quite a combination! Resistance is futile…
Drone weekend on NINJAM second segment	Don Bplaektree, Lyna & Karl Popper	Like hearing bells ringing in a pattering rain, complete with distant thunder.
Piece062510	Shane W. Cadman	Something spacey from Shane this week. Strong declarative phrases in the melody compliment the underlying beeps and blips. Nice arc to the ending.
Swig from the Jug	Steve Layton, local yoga instructor, claim rep. and Alexandra Marculewicz Adshead (contributing artist/mixer/masher)	Great vocal compliment to Steve’s patterns and rhythms – the voice seems to hover and float. A little Laurie Anderson at the end?
Dream the Jug and Piano	Benjamin Smith, Steve Layton and Alexandra Marculewicz Adshead (contributing artist/mixer/masher)	Ben’s keyboard adds a dreamy dimension to this. The higher voice parts arc nicely over the rest of the mix… Impressive range of tones and textures.
As Good as a Holiday	Greg Hooper	Sounds like changing channels on the telly. Sullen, low tone at 2:00 and the conversation turns ominous… Hardly a vacation.
Sex-Starved Trailer Trash	Johnny & Faith	Another great title – who can resist? Gets a good beat going by :30 with some solid drumming.
Dynamic Trio	Greg Hooper, Steve Layton, Steve Moshier & J.C. Combs (contributing artist/mixer/masher)	Nice combination – effective panning. Provides an air of mystery, esp with Greg’s text.
Purpose	Alan Watts (commentary) & Don Bplaektree (mixer/masher)	A sinister bass line contrasts nicely with the cheerful delivery of the text. The commentary makes you think, however…
Jug Band	Steve Layton	This has found its way into a number of mixes today. Even, subdued texture with only the suggestion of a melody. Accurate title. Ethereal.
Escalators	Jérôme Poirier, Roger Sundström, Steve Moshier, Jeff Duke and Steve Layton (contributing artist/mixer/masher)	Definitely mechanical with a kind of shuffling beat. Love the accordion licks. All the various parts seem to work well together here. Great ending.
Restless Natives	Kavin Allenson, Johnny & Faith, Jim Goodin, Bruce Hamilton, Jeff Duke and Steve Layton (mixer/masher)	Kavin’s percussion makes this ominous at the start and still it builds tension. The steel drums (?) add an un-nerving touch.
Circular Reasoning	Adam Kondor, Paul Muller, Shane Cadman, Bruce Hamilton, Greg Hooper and Steve Layton (mixer/masher)	Love the clear call of the clarinet and it manages to mix with the oboes. The phased chant pulls this nicely off-center. The metallic sounds contrast with the woodwinds. A graceful diminuendo at the finish, leaving only the drone.
Panic Attack	Don Bplaektree, Maha, Lvna, Roger Sundström, Steve Moshier, Fredrik Mikalsen, Tommy Holmgren, Jim Goodin, David Perreko, Paul Muller and Steve Layton (mixer/masher)	Unsettled texture at the beginning with some fine keyboard playing layered on top. Change at 3:00, now quiet but with distant rumbling and Goodin’s beat keeping time – drawn out and suspenseful. The entry of the bass at 6:40 adds some body – more guitar sounds and the saxophone follow, building the tension as the tempo increases. The drone at 9:15 attempts to add some stability but it can’t compete with the other voices and the rising sense of panic crests at 11:00. Well crafted!
Audio Piano Improvisation	Adam Kondor and Kenneth Palmer (contributing artist/mixer/masher)	Quiet, introspective – like being in a theater after rehearsal. Turns a bit darker at 4:00 but ends lightly with only the keyboard. Nice mix.
Ben.improv.Jun.20.2010	Benjamin Smith	Toy music box sound and high register gives this a light yet somehow somber feel. Mood accelerates to a mild anxiety by about 5:00. The soft sounds just seem to drain away – nice ending.
Ben.improv.Jun.21.2010	Benjamin Smith	A more full-bodied keyboard sound, now with echo. Deep, booming bass lines are effective. Still somber in character – could be combined with Jun 20?
Flagon Squad	Steve Layton and Jérôme Poirier (contributing artist/mixer/masher)	Interesting combination of 23d century sine waves with Steve’s jug band.
Flexible Metal Cartilage	Steve Moshier	To quote James Ross from the Facebook posting: “Clanky metallic goodness, Steve! “
Torg	Bruce Hamilton	Big piano sound – straightforward, anthem-like. Almost conventional – coming from Bruce…
Drive To	Bruce Hamilton	Bright metallic drone, slowly evolving. Sunny and optimistic. Beautiful diminuendo at the finish. A lovely piece.
Forgen Five	Jeff Duke, Greg Hooper, Steve Layton, Paul Muller, Ben Smith and Bruce Hamilton (contributing artist/mixer/masher)	Warm, full sounding at the start, turning a bit sinister by 2:00. Now we have Greg’s spoken part with ominous sounds rising in the lower registers. Last minute filled with Ben’s light keyboard touches.
Chrysaora	Jérôme Poirier	The call of a lonely, mournful cello. Like standing on an empty beach.
Improvised Vocalization	Norbert Oldani	Sweet sounding – like a French carol.
Improvisation of Percussion Textures	Norbert Oldani	Metal ball falls into metal cup in various registers. Interesting mix of percussion textures.
Accordion Imp1	Roger “ErocNet” Sundström	Big, full sound – almost like an orchestra! Almost Russian in its grandeur – I’m seeing the Soviet Navy Mens’ Chorus singing this one.
Midsummer Song	Kavin Allenson, Steve Layton, Alexandra Marculewicz Adshead & Johnny & Faith, Bruce Hamilton and Roger “ErocNet” Sundström (contributing artist/mixer/masher)	Steve’s jug band certainly gets around! Add in Kavin’s strong percussion and some assorted sounds and you have a powerful beat going. With Alexandra’s vocals a rave breaks out! The subdued ending saves us. Great mix!

Work	Artist(s)	Jim Goodin Commentary
Chants	Steve Layton	Poltergeists abound!
At the Heart of Things	Roger Sundström, Jeff Duke, Bruce Hamilton, Norbert Oldani & Steve Layton(contributing artist/mixer/masher)	Love this.  Rides along on Steve’s ghost in the desert as Roger’s playful accordian enters. Resolves to Jeff’s peaceful scape with Norbert’s tones entering and then the poltergeists returns. Yikes!
On Purpose	Don Bplaektree, Benjamin Smith, Steve Moshier, Jérôme Poirier, Bruce Hamilton & Steve Layton (mixer/masher)	Seeking the truth like Gurdjieff and the wind.
Half-remembered	Benjamin Smith, Bruce Hamilton, Greg Hooper, Roger Sundström, Don Bplaektree, Lvna, Karl Popper & Steve Layton (mixer/masher)	Searching, exploring textures, spacial tones looking around every corner.
Leeuwenhoek	Greg Hooper	Through the microscope, the world within…
At the Heart of Things (2nd mix)	Roger Sundström, Jeff Duke, Bruce Hamilton & Norbert Oldani, Steve Layton & Jérôme Poirier(mixers’/mashers’)	Another mix/mash spin on this moving tapestry, this one a bit more edgier but maintaining the same mystery.
Didn’t See It Comin’	Steve Moshier	A steam engine, a damp ally, great ‘hit’ percussion sound.
Metal Accordion Textures	Steve Moshier, Norbert Oldani, Roger Sundström & Bruce Hamilton (mixer/masher)	A journey up the river in the Apocalypse, shimmering accordion as if moonbeams on the water.
Begin All Nothing More	Bruce Hamilton	Like memories of wind chimes, pipes clanging, hammered bars on the marimba.
Window	Bruce Hamilton	Nice balance environmental and tonality, tasteful use reverse sweep bruce – leading motif on end enters almost ‘through a window’.
L.A. Strut	Shane Cadman, Kavin Allenson & Bruce Hamilton (mixer/masher)	Southern California Afro Beat! Reminds me of Cartoon Network Adult Swim like music.
Used New	Kavin Allenson, Shane Cadman, Jeff Duke, Jim Goodin, Ben Smith & Bruce Hamilton (contributing artist/mixer/masher)	Through the casbar, radio waves, searching, glitch and tribal beat.
Accordion Imp2	Roger Sundström	Refractions and chirps in the night.
Accordion Imp3	Roger Sundström	Accordion process, Parisian bistro with ‘Rocky Horror’ edge.
Midsummer Song	Kavin Allenson, Steve Layton, Alexandra Marculewicz Adshead & Johnny & Faith, Bruce Hamilton & Roger Sundström (mixer/masher)	Buskers on the square, street beat, Amsterdam or New York.
Lifeforms	Roger Sundström	Live or memorex, but a cool feel, very free and love way the guitar enters the room and groove takes off in bass figure
Digital Lava	Roger Sundström	Colliding video pixels, RF and excellent ‘noise’.
Concrete Nylon Duo	Greg Hooper & Roger Sundström (mixer/masher)	Visions of Vader and Luke light saber dueling. Excellent manipulation Roger.

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