aisyalam

Day of travel, acclimatization, and re-acquaintance; within it, Eric and I spent 5+ hours rehearsing and scheming for the shows at his apartment in Nana (Bangkok). We started prepping for Tuesday’s one piece gig by recording a already much-edited Googlism I made using the term Bangkok (removing the title phrase in all lines but the first, and most of the verbs issued by the program). Since the first take was good enough, especially after some amplitude and reverb, we planned to play that in combination with loops and a voice-over, but as the evening progressed, and Eric showed me all of the sound toys he has been working with (mainly built-in to the programs Ableton and Reaktor), we changed approach, making a handful of samples, which he is going to loop and mix live (using a Reaktor map he has built called “Massive Bangkok Fest”) while I read an even further edited version of the text). I took some pictures from the roof of my hotel (Zenith Sukhumvit) yesterday afternoon, and thinking about making a slapdash Flash movie with them if time and attention permits before the show. Over the course of the evening, as phrases like “oblique referentiality,” glitch music,” “idiot tv” (the little screen inside the Reaktor interface that visualizes what the sound is doing), and “samples within samples” were being tossed about, and at least a couple of caipirinhas were imbibed, we managed to sketch out quite a few ideas for the longer set on Wednesday night, like matching Eric’s processed version of my piano recordings (now called “mumu jams”) with the 4 short spam poems I’ve brought, and a Reaktor “preset” he has made called “Jerome Rothenberg” with the (edited) Google poem “How fast can a zebra run” (both of these pieces I’ve already made animations for). We’ll work out the rest of the details and continue rehearsing during another set of hours on Tuesday before the show (at Bed Supperclub) & things are looking pretty good. I’m impressed at how deeply Eric has delved in to audio software; he was always a brilliant lyricist (& poet), singer, and performer, but now applying his brain/voice/body with the computer & it is a great fit.