One month with Jeph Jerman

[Richard Pinnell]

also, one slight correction. the cdrs you have listed as anomalous cdrs are not released by anomalous released. they are in fact just released by jeph. anomalous records did release a few jeph jerman cds and an lp and the animist orchestra cd. but unfortunately they went out of business a year or so ago. so now jeph just sells most of his music from his website and makes cdrs on demand.
]

Thanks for this Greg, I wasn't sure as it isn't clear. The ones I have called Anomalous discs all had Anomalous written on the sleeve , but I couldn't really te;; if this was just a link for information or not. I was aware they had gone out of business though.

[Richard Pinnell]

Day 6 – Jeph Jerman / Albert Casais – Add This To That Shadow Puppet

One of the key features of Jeph Jerman’s releases that I have as yet left unmentioned is the packaging. Very much like the music itself, these are pretty much lo-fi releases, with usually hand made covers. Track listings are often printed from a computer, cut out and glued into place on hand printed sleeves, sometimes adorned with glossy prints of Jerman’s photography, most often taking the form of pictures of the items used to create the music, or other pictures from nature.

The overall feel of the packaging is one of real beauty. Unfortunately about half of the releases here suffer from the curse of the jewel box, (albeit the slightly more palatable slim version) but even these have a home made feel to them. Later in the month there is an item of stunning beauty that will take some effort to give justice to with a review, but for now today’s disc is a lovely piece of work in itself.
The CDR is inside a standard clear polythene sleeve that also contains a list (a long list!) of the assorted found items used on this recording and some photos of the said objects.
This is all then wrapped in some beautiful hand made recycled paper, a rich yellow coloured parchment dotted with pieces of grass and other bits and pieces, and then roughly stapled together around the disc, a lovely item worthy of the lovely music inside.

I am very conscious of the fact that I am describing many of these Jerman discs as ‘the best so far’ but I have to say yet again that this may be the case with Add This To That.
Yet again (predictable this isn’t it?) I have no prior knowledge of Albert Casais but googling his name reveal him as the man behind The Shadow Puppet label that released this disc. He also works under the name Omnid, but this means even less to me.

Add This To That is probably the most professionally recorded disc I’ve listened to here yet. The tape hiss is virtually non existent allowing the sounds to sit in silence. The funny thing is that whilst the hiss annoyed me for the first couple of days of this listening series I almost miss it here!

The better recording quality does allow you to really take in the subtlety of the sounds on this disc though, and it is a very rewarding experience to really sit back, shut your eyes and take in the extraordinary musical language at work. The two musicians exchange the tiniest slithers of sound with each other, ranging from the now standard pin pricks and crackles, but augmented here by some interesting scraping sounds that I cannot place the origin of. Jerman even allows a brief snatch of a toy xylophone to slip into the midst of it all at one point, the first time I have heard him use anything other than naturally sourced objects in his improvisatory playing.

This disc is all about two musician’s musical conversation like any other improv duo, but again it is the choice of instrumentation that lends this its special magic. You are forced to sit and listen to sound rather than instruments, and your brain seems forced to work harder to process what it is sent because this information is divested of the automatic musical language of everyday instrumentation.

I am really tired tonight after thirteen hours stressful work today so my sensations are dulled a little, and I am finding it hard for the first time to find words for this music, yet it still manages to place me in a certain state of mind. My ears are hyper aware of the sounds within the room. The hum of the computer’s fan, the muffled chatter of my brother’s television downstairs, the creak of my chair as I sit back in it to read what I have just written.

Perhaps I will write a little more on this disc tomorrow when I am less inclined to want to fall straight into bed. It will be interesting to see if I like this as much when I have a slightly more rounded control of my senses!

[jon abbey]

impressive dedication to stay up late enough to post this through the board troubles, Richard...

[Richard Pinnell]

impressive dedication to stay up late enough to post this through the board troubles, Richard...

Thanks Jon, but to be honest I cheated a bit.
I wrote it up to a Word file, and went to bed at 11PM after it was clear IHM wasn't playing.
I then woke at 1AM and had left the PC on so just copy and pasted it.
Mind you, if I'm going to commit to doing this every day I'm not going to let something as annoying as the world's worst internet server get in the way!

[Richard Pinnell]

Day 7 – Jeph Jerman – Sound in Rooms, Los Angeles 3rd August 2002, Albuquerque 11th April 2002

So more solo Jerman from the Sound in Rooms series. This is probably my least favourite of the recordings I have listened to so far. The first piece, from a place called Beyond Baroque in Los Angeles is an interesting version of Jerman’s improvisatory style. He appears to use a similar method to making his music here as on the previous discs, but he uses larger blocks of wood in what sounds like a large echo friendly space in place of the tiny stones and other items from the previous recordings.

There is an element of guesswork here on my behalf but it almost sounds like the first track here is a larger scale version of his usual apparatus. It sounds as if he is working with wood and maybe large stones directly on the floor, shuffling them into one another, dropping them, and generally working with the sounds made when the objects come into conflict with one another.

About eighteen minutes into this first piece the sound changes dramatically. Jerman seems to whirl something about in the air to create a wind effect that serves as a kind of cyclical drone for a few minutes before he returns to the louder sounds as before. The recording quality is not so good, but here the music sounds distant and the sharpness of the sound is muffled and lost in the background rather than just set against tape hiss as in the other recordings.

The second piece at just over half an hour in length fares better, but features many of the same sounds to the first despite the five months between the recordings. This track is enveloped in a heavy fog of tape noise that is less of a hiss and more of a warm hum, providing a nice base for the sounds to fall into.

The piece uses many of the wooden block styled sounds in places, but also leaves a lot of space for them to work a little better, there is a less random feel to the piece all round.
Near the end the swishing sounds reappear though, without any real effect. Here it is possible Jerman is swiping a branch of some type back and forth fast through the air, but the sound is a little obvious, and for me adds little to what has gone before.

After the beautiful little structures of yesterday’s disc this was a little bit of a let down. I think my preference is for the quieter, more intimate area of Jerman’s catalogue. This piece is obviously designed to be louder and in places more aggressive than the other recordings, but for my taste much of the subtlety is lost here.

The end of this working week has been very tough for me, work has been very stressful and demanding and it has not escaped my attention that my attentive listening ability has suffered. Hopefully this weekend with a little rest things will improve again.

[p_ano]

Day 4 – Jeph Jerman / Greg Davis – Cottonwood, Arizona Autumn Records CDR

this was my first exposure to jeph jerman, and is probably still my favorite. hurray for the leaves series!

[Richard Pinnell]

Day 4 – Jeph Jerman / Greg Davis – Cottonwood, Arizona Autumn Records CDR

this was my first exposure to jeph jerman, and is probably still my favorite. hurray for the leaves series!

If you enjoyed that David, I thoroughly recommend the disc with Casais if you've not already heard it. Very lovely in a similar vein.

[Richard Pinnell]

Day 8 – Bernhard Gunter, Jeph Jerman – Buddha with the sun face, Buddha with the moon face. Digital Narcis

An interesting moment this evening. I went out for a meal this to an old 17th Century pub beside the river Thames in a quieter part of Oxfordshire. Before going out I had a bath, during which I accidentally got water in my left ear. This coupled with the fact I have been a little run down with a mild cold this week left my hearing somewhat impaired.

It was while sat in the pub I noticed something interesting that immediately brought me to think of my experiences here. Every so often my ear would block, and the sounds I heard would be muffled as if under water. I found I struggled to hear certain types of softer sound such as the human voice (which rather annoyed the girlfriend) but sharper, louder noises such as the rattle of cutlery or the banging of doors were amplified. The overall effect left me focussing my hearing on these sounds, listening for music within them, relating the different sounds to one another. In places I could even hear my own heartbeat in my ear, adding a deeper, slightly disconcerting rhythm.

Normally this kind of thing annoys me and I would sit waggling my finger in my ear trying to clear it, but this time, undoubtedly because of my current thoughts about these matters, I left things be. Didn’t impress the girlfriend a great deal though!

So to tonight’s disc. Well in some ways this is a bit of a cheat as I have owned and enjoyed this release for a few years now. Bernhard Gunter’s minimal electronic compositions have been amongst my favourite music for a long time, and the release of this disc in 1999 was the first time I came across Jeph Jerman’s name.

In brief, Gunter invited Jerman to submit a recording for release on his Trente Oiseaux label after he was mesmerised by Jerman’s live show when they shared a bill at the Anomalous Records space in Seattle. Jerman sent a tape to Gunter, but the poor sound quality and abundant background noise put Gunter off of releasing the recording as it was, and instead he set about working with Jerman’s tape to create a new piece using his sounds.

I have long adored this disc, but now listening again for the first time in a good few months with the experience of extended Jerman listening behind me it makes a lot more sense. Gunter has left most of Jerman’s sounds alone, occasionally bring them forward in the mix, digitally sharpening them here and there and most probably rearranging them somewhat, but at its essence there remains the bulk of a Jerman recording here.

Gunter has made a feature of the tape hum that was obviously all over the original recording, smoothing it out a little, making it warmer and involving it further with the surface sounds. I feel I already know the Jerman piece that is used within here, but I most probably do not. A small tuneful pattern emerges ten minutes into the piece. Its hard to identify the source of the sound, but it may be the surface of an object played with a bow or something similar. The pattern arises as the same notes reappear, creating an odd little melody for a few seconds, but I am not sure if this is the way Jerman played to begin with or if Gunter has looped a section to create this effect. Either way it sounds hauntingly beautiful amongst the rattle of stones and the deep colours of the background drone.

Bernhard Gunter has always had a very sensitive ear for sound and it does not surprise me at all that he chose to work with Jeph Jerman. The real delight of this recording is in the wonder that can be found in these sounds and Gunter’s respectful treatment of them. His approach to the piece is typically subtle. Whilst digital processing is marked in some areas but he is also not afraid to leave sections untouched. At one point an aeroplane can be heard passing slowly overhead as could be heard on the Jerman/Theriault disc from day 2, suggesting perhaps that the original tape was made out of doors.

My only gripe with this wonderful release is that it is only twenty one minutes long and it is over almost as soon as it begins. All the same it works perfectly at this length, a small haiku of simple, beautiful sound. This allusion to zen is echoed in the title which refers to the fact that Gunter and Jerman each spend a lot of time in extreme climates, Jerman in the Arizona Desert, Gunter in the cold with the winter moon continually visible.
The influence of zen and in particular the wabi sabi aesthetic that rejoices in all things natural and slowly decaying has always been important to Gunter’s music. After listening again here, I wonder if Jerman has similar interests.

In one way Jerman and Gunter are very different in their approach to making music. Whilst Jerman uses rough analogue recordings of purely natural acoustics, Gunter works with the clean precision digital processing. Yet this release shows that they both have a deep love of sound and the effect it can have on the human mind when presented in a suitable way. If you are able to find this unfortunately out of print release on the Japanese Digital Narcis label I heartily recommend that you grab it quick.

[gtd]

i know jeph has at least a passing interest in zen. like most of us sound folks, he may have gotten to zen through cage. and i know that he is also interested in animism as well. which is defined as such:

The belief in the existence of individual spirits that inhabit natural objects and phenomena.
The belief in the existence of spiritual beings that are separable or separate from bodies.
The hypothesis holding that an immaterial force animates the universe.

im not trying to be jeph's spokesperson here but i hope i can illuminate some of your ideas based on what i know about jeph.

-gd

[Richard Pinnell]

Day 9 – Jeph Jerman – Instability Studies. CDR

Today’s disc is very interesting and a departure from Jerman’s working practices on the previous recordings. Instability Studies is the fitting title for this set of four recordings that mostly utilise an object called a Shaketable as its main source of inspiration. Google reveals a shaketable to be a flat wooden table mounted on springs that is vibrated by a motor causing anything placed upon the table top to vibrate erratically. The instrument is used to test the stability of model buildings in an earthquake situation before the full size building is constructed.

The last three tracks here are recordings made of a shaketable with assorted items placed upon it. Tracks 2 and 3 are named Shaketable (simple) and are basic stereo recordings. The first thing apparent in these recordings is the table’s motor whirring in the background, setting a base into which the various items placed on the table rattle and quiver at varying speeds, creating a mixture of blurred vibrating sounds and the occasional crash as objects strike each other.

Track 2 begins with very small buzzing sounds as smaller items are vibrated, but later in the piece larger objects seem to be added and the vibration rate is possibly slowed down, making the sounds appear slower and more obvious compared to the electronic sounding reverberations of the opening minutes.

Track 3 starts fiercely with what sounds like several items crashing about before settling into a continual mechanical routine, adjusted every so often when new objects are added or taken away from the table. The piece ends in typical Jeph Jerman manner (i.e. when he just stops the tape)

Track 4, Shaketable (complex) is a lot longer than the other two, stretching to 26 minutes in all. This piece sees Jerman take several of the shaketable recordings and overdub them on a four track mixer. The layering of the tracks is sensitively done, slowly allowing the vibrations and whirring of the recordings to settle into each other and merge into a thick detailed construction. On the previous two tracks it is not easy to see how much control Jerman had over the sounds created beyond deciding which objects should be placed upon the table. Here though, as the tracks cross each other, creating a feeling of delay and echo there is a real sense of construction apparent. This piece is a more rewarding listen to the first two, possibly as the layering of the multiple tracks provides the further dimension of depth to the sound as the tracks merge into each other.

The first track on the disc does not appear to involve the shaketable. ‘Sugar Bowl’ is a recording that uses a ceramic sugar bowl and its ill-fitting lid as its sound source. Here it seems that overdubbing effects are in use again, though this is not suggested on the brief slip of paper hidden inside the sleeve.
The lid of the sugar bowl, when not seated properly rocks in its place creating a vibrating ring that lasts a few seconds before dying away. The sound is different depending on how vigorous the vibration of the lid and how it is positioned in its place.
This first track is made up of many of these small moments of sound layered across each other. The piece is an interesting use of everyday acoustic phenomena in a compositional environment, again making me pay attention to how my tea mug wobbles on the uneven coaster on my desk and the sounds of my fingers typing this into the keyboard.

The sleeve art extends the theme of instability a step further. Jerman has drawn a swirl of glue onto the simple white cardboard sleeve onto which sand has been poured, sticking in place and creating a delicate little pattern that flakes away into sand grains again when it is touched.

Instability Studies is a nice recording, making the listener reflect upon the fleeting nature of the sounds around us. Musically it is not as nice to listen to as Jerman’s more sparse improvisations but the way in which it is constructed leaves the listener a lot to reflect upon.

[letchhausen]

Instability Studies is a nice recording, making the listener reflect upon the fleeting nature of the sounds around us. Musically it is not as nice to listen to as Jerman’s more sparse improvisations but the way in which it is constructed leaves the listener a lot to reflect upon.

I only have "Instability Studies" and "Harvester Ants" and I like both a lot. I agree that the last track on this is great but I like the whole thing through and through. But now I'm getting curious, I'm starting to think that what I have is not indicative at all of the discs you've been describing previously. I do have some on order but now I'm getting real anxious to get my hands on them.
Great job with the reviews, I look forward to this each day. The restaurant setting with the girlfriend was a nice touch but do you think you could throw in a car chase or two?
Thanks.

[Richard Pinnell]

Day 10 – Jeph Jerman – Trees and Shrubs. Autumn Records CDR

A shorter review tonight as been out all evening. Driving home in the dark I felt tired so put on the radio at full blast rather than listen to tonight’s Jerman disc. I found a station playing modern Indian rap music which did the trick and cranked it up high.
However now I have got in, its eleven at night and I have put on Trees and Shrubs on headphones and its a jarring experience. Moving from the brash, in your face confrontation of the music driving home to this gentle, delicate wash of natural sound requires a real shift in listening sensibility.

As this is part of Autumn’s beautifully packaged Leaves series, the sleeve information is somewhat sparse. All we are told is that this was recorded with contact microphones onto an inexpensive stereo cassette machine sometime in 2000. The sounds that make up the 29 minute single piece are a continual, deeply textured rumble that seems to move in a cyclical manner, turning over on itself and sounding like ancient rusting clockwork parts moving again for the first time in decades and then recorded underwater...

Clearly the contact mics are being used against surfaces here, perhaps moved over them in a regular rhythm to create the feeling of motion that the recording suggests. What does confuse me however is how the sounds I hear relate to the title of Trees and Shrubs.
Apart from a passage towards the end when it sounds as if the mic is being pulled through thick leaves to create a rushing sound it is hard to make out any obvious use of the sound source.
Contact mics by their very nature have the tendency to amplify tiny sounds into loud brittle events and that is what we hear here, but whilst the catalogue of noises that develop are all quite industrial and mechanical sounding it is just as likely they are the result of nothing more than the mic being rubbed across the bark of a tree.

The rolling, circular nature of this disc reminds me of the tide breaking against a rocky bay. It also is reminiscent of the Wet Beaver Creek recordings where the contact mic was placed close to the rush of water moving downstream.
Trees and Shrubs is on one hand quite a noisy disc with little space to be found from the moment it begins to the point it is unceremoniously stopped, but it is also very calm and relaxing. The rolling sound becomes hypnotic after a while, never breaking into any speed, evolving very little, as if just going about its way and captured by the passing mic.

The real beauty here is in the fact I cannot say how this was recorded, and thus I am forced to forget its origins and just listen to it for what it is. I like this one.

[letchhausen]

No, no, no, Richard. This will never do. You have an exciting enough opening but you need to exploit it. Like this:

Day 10 – Jeph Jerman – Trees and Shrubs. Autumn Records CDR FIXED.

A shorter review as tonight has been an out all evening. A bank job I pulled went a little sour as a tosser hit an alarm as we were loading the loot into the Audi. I cracked him good across the face with my gat and opened a gusher over his eyelid. Serves the bastard right. Before you know it I'm blasting out of a street crawling with her Majesty's finest. As we tear through a circle at top speed I get an idea. The description will have us as four in ski masks and dark jackets. I decided to change that. We lay down some gunfire and I ripped through a certain alley I know leaving the cozzer's behind. I chose this route because it butt ends against a tube station, where I drop the other two and we all do a quick change. Alastair and his partner swap into anoraks and head with their backpacks down into the tube. No one would recognize them as anything other than a couple of trainspotters now. The girlfriend slinks into an evening dress and I throw on a tux. As we spin out across another yet another interminable circle a bobby spots the car and drives evenly past. We won't come a copper this time, I thought. Driving home in the dark I felt tired so I told my bird to put on the radio at full blast rather than listen to tonight’s Jerman disc. She found a station playing modern Indian rap music which did the trick and cranked it up high.

However now I have got in, its eleven at night and I have put on Trees and Shrubs on headphones as my gal washes up and its a jarring experience. Moving from the brash, in your face confrontation of the gunfire and the music driving home to this gentle, delicate wash of natural sound requires a real shift in listening sensibility.

As this is part of Autumn’s beautifully packaged Leaves series, the sleeve information is somewhat sparse. All we are told is that this was recorded with contact microphones onto an inexpensive stereo cassette machine sometime in 2000. The sounds that make up the 29 minute single piece are a continual, deeply textured rumble that seems to move in a cyclical manner, turning over on itself and sounding like ancient rusting clockwork parts moving again for the first time in decades and then recorded underwater...

Clearly the contact mics are being used against surfaces here, perhaps moved over them in a regular rhythm to create the feeling of motion that the recording suggests. What does confuse me however is how the sounds I hear relate to the title of Trees and Shrubs.
Apart from a passage towards the end when it sounds as if the mic is being pulled through thick leaves to create a rushing sound it is hard to make out any obvious use of the sound source.
Contact mics by their very nature have the tendency to amplify tiny sounds into loud brittle events and that is what we hear here, but whilst the catalogue of noises that develop are all quite industrial and mechanical sounding it is just as likely they are the result of nothing more than the mic being rubbed across the bark of a tree.

The rolling, circular nature of this disc reminds me of the tide breaking against a rocky bay. It also is reminiscent of the Wet Beaver Creek recordings where the contact mic was placed close to the rush of water moving downstream.
Trees and Shrubs is on one hand quite a noisy disc with little space to be found from the moment it begins to the point it is unceremoniously stopped, but it is also very calm and relaxing. The rolling sound becomes hypnotic after a while, never breaking into any speed, evolving very little, as if just going about its way and captured by the passing mic.

The real beauty here is in the fact I cannot say how this was recorded, and thus I am forced to forget its origins and just listen to it for what it is. I like this one. Tonight's job out to square up the money I needed for this large purchase and leave enough to keep me in plenty more to come. Tomorrow I'll size up the Erstdist catalog.

However, someone is now sitting on the bed wearing nothing but a blanket of bank notes from tonight's job. As the temptress waves a bottle of Veuve Cliquot at me I take my leave......

Now that's a review, ready for Hollywood and your own DVD!

[Richard Pinnell]

Chris, that is brilliant, you are in the wrong career....

At least I know when people start throwing eggs at me and telling me to shut up I know who can finish the month off...!

[Richard Pinnell]

Day 11 – Jeph Jerman – Derelict 1 CDR

Ok so at just over a third of the way through this project I have managed despite assorted setbacks to maintain my daily post. I have mixed feelings so far about how things are going. Remembering to sit back and listen to a new Jerman CD every evening is no problem at all, the listening experience has been really enjoyable and informative to me.

Putting my thoughts on the music into words has been a harder task though. Making the effort to sit down and do this every evening has been tough, but one of the reasons I set about this mission was to see if I could find this discipline within me and so far I have stuck with it.
I have found the actual task of putting my listening experience into words very difficult. It has been easy to merely paint descriptive pictures of the music with words, but I have struggled to capture much about the way this music encourages me to listen differently, and this is something I will try and address over the next 20 entries.

So to tonight’s disc; having a little more time this evening, I have listened to this through three times now. Derelict is a set of 12 field recordings, recorded at five different locations. The sites are described as derelict ghost towns and abandoned buildings spread around the United States.

The first track begins with an eerie stillness. It is titled simply Lampost and is recording at a trading post near Flagstaff, Arizona. I am not sure how the Lampost has been used to make this recording, but what exists on the tape is a virtually empty recording of occasional haunting sounds, perhaps the wind blowing through the lampost somehow. There is a distant rumble of passing vehicles evident, but the piece all round leaves you in a state of repose. My mind paints pictures of an empty town, grey buildings with boarded up windows. The title of the disc forces you to make this link, but even without it the solemn emptiness of this recording would point you in that direction.

The further two tracks recorded at the same location have a similar feel to them. The third brief track, ‘Walking’ includes the occasional sound of trudging feet and disturbed metal and rubble on the floor. These pieces use the ambient noise that pervades even the most deserted parts of human inhabitation to paint cinematic pictures in your head. Listening to them this evening at reasonable volume was a strange yet rewarding experience.
Transposing those sounds from their natural home to here, thousands of miles away in a different country is an odd concept to get my head around. Capturing these recordings is almost like capturing a piece of the soul of that empty trading station and then setting it free via my hi-fi system. Maybe this is an over the top thing to say about what is essentially just a field recording, but these three pieces in particular manage to get me feeling this way.

Tracks four and five capture the sound of chicken wire and then scrap metal in the rain respectively at separate locations. The fifth track in particular has a peculiar resonance to it, highly percussive random sounds fill the track as the sound of heavy raindrops hitting the metal is amplified. Here we go back to the concept I have formed of natural accidental sounds becoming abstract musical elements, shorn of their original status and taking on a new life when placed in this context.

Track six follows in a similar vein, recordings of barbed wire scraped over scrap metal, and then track seven is the claustrophobic sound of things being dropped down an old well, sometimes hitting structures on their way down, but ending with a satisfying splash.

Tracks eight and nine are recordings of a deserted old train car, and these return to some of the moods of the first few pieces. Track eight in particular is very sparse, it seems this is recorded inside the old train, and little can be heard bar the hiss of the tape and the wind blowing about the car, making pieces of rusty metal twitch and scrape against themselves. Track nine has a similar feel but now the recording has moved to outside as the wind buffets the mic wildly here, making for a noisy recording, but with the sounds of the train evident still in the background.

Track ten is less interesting. Listed as the recording of a ceremonial cave it begins with a lot of crashing and clunking about before falling into near silence and finally a few snippets of human voices as if a trip through the cave has been caught by a tourist that left the recording function of his video camera running by mistake.

The disc ends with two more short pieces, the first a recording at a disused mine shaft, and the last, entitled ‘Tumbleweed’ is made up of close recordings of rustling and scraping, though it is hard to recognise the sound source accurately and it is difficult to work out how tumbleweed played a part in its making.

These recordings were very enjoyable. The first three tracks in particular gripped me to the speakers and forced me to play them several times. With these tracks Jerman seems to have captured the mood and feeling of a location perfectly. These are perfect examples of how sound taken out of context can become music itself, bringing some of the emotion and atmosphere of the place along with it.

There is a Derelict 2 due later in the month, and I look forward to it now with great interest.

[ryan]

Day 11 – Jeph Jerman – Derelict 1 CDR

Transposing those sounds from their natural home to here, thousands of miles away in a different country is an odd concept to get my head around. Capturing these recordings is almost like capturing a piece of the soul of that empty trading station and then setting it free via my hi-fi system. Maybe this is an over the top thing to say about what is essentially just a field recording, but these three pieces in particular manage to get me feeling this way.

Not over the top at all, IMHO. That's a great description of what makes listening to "just field recordings" a beautiful and satisfying listening experience for me. Great job so far, Richard. Keep it going. I've been enamored of Jerman for a while, but I've never known what exactly to pick up outside of the Leaves series, Lithiary, and the non-CDr stuff. I'm glad you're enticing me with this project. I've got a few mp3's of this one that I'm going to listen to tonight. Looking forward to hearing those first few tracks.

[user_350]

most interesting topic - true respect !

[user_827]

I have mixed feelings about the fact that you haven't communicated with Jeph directly about his music/listening.
But maybe the whole point is....learning to listen.....truely listen. And not judge sound as noise or melody, ugly or beautiful, just something "that is"......something to experience.
And thanks Greg, you've described Jeph well.[/b]

[letchhausen]

I have mixed feelings about the fact that you haven't communicated with Jeph directly about his music/listening.
But maybe the whole point is....learning to listen.....truely listen. And not judge sound as noise or melody, ugly or beautiful, just something "that is"......something to experience.
And thanks Greg, you've described Jeph well.[/b]

I'm glad that he hasn't contacted Jeph. I'm interested in the interaction between Richard's listening experiences and Jeph's recordings and don't see that any other interaction is necessary. Sometimes I think that biographical material and other information can be helpful but I think it's worth an initial go round without the interference of other source material. What I'm interested in here is that Richard has a rich background in eai listening and is bringing that to bear on something that is tangential to that. These field recordings and such touch on a lot of the same signposts that a lot of the area of music under discussion do, but it seems that this particular set of recordings is getting us in deeper. Perhaps its also the mode of the project, the particular strategy of putting the listening act under this intense scrutiny that is opening these ideas up. I find the whole thing fascinating and look forward to the next installments. It reminds me of the name of that Robert Morris book "Continuous Project Altered Daily". I think at the outset that Richard made it clear that in some way this project is as much about him and I think that is part of the power that it's having is contained in that idea. His examination of his own power of listening, describing and reflecting on those acts puts this beyond mere record reviews. It shows in his constant reappraisal as he struggles to get beyond description to say something about the context of hearing this sounds, the worlds they contain and the effect the act of hearing it has. Everything he needs is in the room with him, the recordings and his own mind. Not that he should shun contact but he'll figure out what he needs as he goes along.

This particular review reminds me of a time about 12 years ago when my mother and I were driving in New Mexico from Santa Fe (where I was going to college), to Tucumcari (to visit my grandparents), and we stopped in the desert at a roadside rest near a cliff with cars at the bottom. My mother told me about a man who was going around the world to various uninhabited sites to record silence, since as man was expanding ever further and sending more ships, planes and trains everywhere, silence, or rather the sound of nature sans the sound of human activity, was becoming extinct. These recordings sound like they capture a dichotomy, the sound of abandonment, the ghost town, yet Richard describes those sounds in the background that make you realize that the sound of activity even pervades the forgotten areas that we are not immediately present in. And when the sound is not capturing that activity it is capturing the sound of nature interacting with the detritus we leave behind.

Fascinating stuff..........

[Brian Olewnick]

Excellent work, Richard! Keep chuggin'. (he says, as the owner of a mere single Jerman disc, now wanting more...)