One month with Jeph Jerman

[Richard Pinnell]

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]

Thanks very much for this, whoever you may be?!

It is true that I have not yet contacted Jeph. I do have his email as I obtained it before I began this exercise, but I have deliberately held off contacting him so far. Chris Letchausen above hits most of my reasons for not doing so bang on the button, (thanks Chris) i am doing this as much as anything to develop my own response to this fascinating music, and often this is clouded by knowing too much to begin with.

As you perfectly assess though Jules, I am learning a lot about my listening style and ability through this. I absorb phenomenal amounts of music every week and have done for many years, but this experience is really making me stop and listen one level closer.

Also one element of all of this that I haven't really talked about yet is my interest in the general worth of music journalism. Is there anything that can be added to music through the written word (I doubt it) does the original attention of the artist in question get clouded once filtered through the words of a critic with limited knowledge? (quite probably) Does music journalism really have any use beyond letting a potential listener know how something will sound? (I am really beginning to wonder)

It has always been my intention to mail Jeph and ask him for an overview of his music before I finish this project. Whilst a musician should expect his music to be reviewed and potentially misunderstood once he/she releases it into the public eye, a project of this size would be a little unfair to do without at least asking for a few words, so I intend to do this, probably sooner now than originally planned.

But above all, this has been about my personal response to a large catalogue of very interesting and thoughtful music (if indeed, music is the correct word here) My experience has been extremely enjoyable and the opportunity to share that with others here may just increase other people's interest in Jeph's work. If thats all I achieve here I will be happy.

[hatta]

and you'll be all set to write that Wire Primer

But seriously, I have been shaking my head over the repeated comments on contacting Jeph and such. I mean this is a webboard not a published article. Is it a requirement that one contact any artist when you review their work? Or is it just if you review a bunch? What's the cutoff then - I may be getting close on a few artists myself. Richard and Chris covered the salient points pretty well there, but I would like to stress to Richard that he will be better served by not contacting Jeph - at least until the project is over. Because most of us will never talk to the artists that we enjoy it is this perspective that is most valuable.

Anyway on the subject at hand I've been enjoying this series quite a bit and while I own a number of Jeph cds this will certainly help me as I add more to my collection. This latest one is sounding particularly intriguing.

[Richard Pinnell]

Day 12 – Jeph Jerman, Doug Theriault – Red, water (Fargone Records CDR)

A short review tonight as been out. Listened to tonight’s disc on the way home in the car whilst driving through heavy rain that hammered against the windscreen. This was probably the most fitting CD yet to be playing in those conditions as the sounds on the disc and the sounds of the rain merged together very closely. Listening now on headphones back in my house with the lights dimmed the feeling of the rain and cold remains with me.

I really like this disc. The photo that wraps around the familiar Fargone white paper sleeve is of Beaver Creek, the site of a previous set of recordings here. This release has been conducted through the post, with Jerman listed as contributing ‘field recordings, digital’ and Theriault ‘processing, real time’. This would suggest that Jerman has made some field recordings that he has then sent to Theriault to work with live to produce the final recordings we have here. One of Jerman’s subjects seems again to be Beaver Creek as the rush of water going about its way seems to make up the basis for much the piece, but Theriault has done a lot of work on the recordings to rework the sounds within them.

The main structure of the one forty five minute track is for phases of continual textured sound to move in and out, often starting and stopping abruptly as they come and go. The sound of running water is sometimes very clear and unaffected, but then in other places it is abstracted into a buzz of electronic static and passages not at all dissimilar to the sound of rain pouring against the window. Later in the disc birdsong and the familar chimes of stone against stone are also stirred into the melting pot, towards the end processed to a degree it becomes hard to identify the source material.

I am guessing that the majority of the processing of the sound is the work of Theriault, and if this is the case he understands Jeph Jerman’s soundworld very well, working to create new structures and sounds but in a manner very sympathetic to the feel and origin of the existing work.

Some of the discs I have listened to and discussed here seem more about the simple beauty of sound, recordings made and then left largely untouched so they can just be listened to with no preconception or evaluation of the human impact upon them. Here though, there is definately a composition placed before us, using the field recordings at its heart.

The mixture of electronic processing and raw acoustic footage is very appealing to me here on red, water. I enjoy the way the two mesh in places and then stand far apart elsewhere. The whole work moves along slowly at a slow pace. Further into the disc the sound of rushing water is replaced by the twittering of birds on a Sunday morning. The hint of computer processing throws you every so often, removing the sounds from the comfort zone of how we remember they should sound and creating new digitised worlds for them. In places the processing is subtle, just slightly shifting the sound from their nomal axis, but elsewhere the deconstruction is marked and little remains of the source recording.

This is a fragile, finely crafted work of real beauty in the most simple sense of the word. In a different way to how Bernhard Gunter worked simple structures around Jerman’s recordings on their collaborative disc, Theriault here takes the raw material and moulds it like clay into similar but always slightly removed shapes and textures. This is a hard disc to find by all accounts, with few copies remaining in circulation, but if you enjoy Jerman’s work and you spot a copy I recommend you snap it up.

[p_ano]

Day 11 – Jeph Jerman – Derelict 1 CDR

ooooh, best review yet! i gotta hear this now. thanks a bunch richard!

[Richard Pinnell]

Day 13 – Jeph Jerman – Beech Tree and Birds. Manifold Records CDR

Tonight I have really struggled to listen and write with the same verve as previously. Late this afternoon I had a wisdom tooth extracted and the experience has been far from enjoyable. In some ways I have just felt like curling up on the sofa with something nice to listen to, but having to sit and write up the experience afterwards has been difficult, and focussed listening is also not so easy when your mouth feels like its full of a combination of barbed wire and cotton wool.

The first thing that struck me about this release was the packaging. The CD is in a clear wallet that also includes a CD booklet sized section of a map of the British Isles. I am pretty sure that random sections of maps have been cut up so that each of the discs is unique, but it did make me smile to see my home county there in front of me when I slid the disc out earlier.

The track listing here was initially a little confusing. There are four tracks listed on the small square of paper glued halfway across the English Channel, yet only two tracks show when the disc is placed in the player. All four tracks do exist here though, and here we are treated to four more examples of Jerman’s field recordings from nature.

The first and title track sounds as if a microphone has been left in the beech tree as it consists of amplified rustling against the mic, presumably the sound made as the tree sways in the wind. This sound is quite aggressive and fills the music on the surface, but in the gaps in between you can hear the gentle twittering of birds in the trees breaking through in the background.

Bamboo and birds, the second track, is not that dissimilar, though the sounds are different again, from the more percussive sound of the bamboo to the more distant call of the birds and there are also large spaces that appear in the recording where little happens. These pieces return me to my attempts to try and process what I am hearing. The sounds do not relate themselves easily to the descriptions on the packaging, so my mind tries to associate them to mechanical or electronic sounds, when in truth it should spend less time assessing and more time just listening.

The third track, Sycamore Creek is again the sound of water rushing past a microphone. Hearing this reminds me of the famous quote used to describe the music of AMM; “Their music is as alike or unalike as trees” In Jeph Jerman’s case this rings equally and ironically true. Listening close to Sycamore Creek the sounds differ to those on Wet Beaver Creek and Red, water. Although we hear water running down a stream and our minds tell us it sounds the same, the truth when you compare the two is that they are markedly different. Maybe this level of scrutiny seems a little silly, but I find myself taking greater interest in the detail of these things.

The last piece, Puget sound and stones features a wind battered mic recording the wash of waves across a stony shoreline. Whilst this description paints pictures of tranquility and suggests the kind of new age nonsense found on yoga mediation tapes the roar of the wind ensures that this remains a bumpy ride for the listener.

One of the questions I would like to eventually ask Jeph Jerman is if he considers these kind of pieces to be music, or just presentations of sound. I am beginning to think that this kind of question is probably irrelevant to him anyway, but I would be interested to hear his thoughts.

[letchhausen]

Another very nice post. The mention of water amused me bacause I am reading this book called "Noise Water Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts" and it has a section on water. The section starts with Cage's "Water Music" and works backwards and forwards, from programmatic orchestral water to the actual recorded sounds of water dripping. When I think of water in music, I think first of early Whitehouse, records like "Peter Kurten" and "Buchenwald" that have passages of dripping sounds. The other thing I think of is a record that my mother used to play all the time when I was young, called "Songs of the Humpback Whales". The recorded whale songs buried in the murk and wash of the lapping ocean. Real water music. I think that this record had a powerful effect on my listening aesthetic.

One of the things I liked in your post was the self-consciousness about the sounds, that different waters sound differently and I think that level of scrutiny is important. In some sense the idea that these are music or soundscapes means that the categorizing force in our mind would treat them differently and that the sound of a stream is the sound of a stream because it categorizes it not as music. But as you know, that ain't the case. I think your eai listening background makes you well suited for realizing that the presentations of sound ARE music. At least for many of us. For those of us who love noise, noises and the rest; we can find enjoyment in these areas. We're in Cagean territory here, where art and life and sound and music intermingle.

I like this:

Whilst this description paints pictures of tranquility and suggests the kind of new age nonsense found on yoga mediation tapes the roar of the wind ensures that this remains a bumpy ride for the listener.

Which juxtaposes the way that we view music and often the way we view nature, often to find that things are not as they seem. Nature is often an extremely cruel taskmaster. It sounds like Jerman's music encodes nature as it is as opposed to those who homogenize it for other purposes......

[lukaz]

''Noise, Water, Meat- A history of sound in the arts'' is a pretty damn fine book by Douglas Kahn. I would also recommend a book where Kahn appears as editor and it's called ''Wireless Imagination- Sound, Radio and the avantgarde'' (MIT Press, 1994)

[Alastair]

I would also recommend a book where Kahn appears as editor and it's called ''Wireless Imagination- Sound, Radio and the avantgarde'' (MIT Press, 1994)

I bought this second hand from Strand Books when I was in NY for ErstQuake. It's in the queue to read...

[Richard Pinnell]

In some sense the idea that these are music or soundscapes means that the categorizing force in our mind would treat them differently and that the sound of a stream is the sound of a stream because it categorizes it not as music. But as you know, that ain't the case. .

Agreed here Chris. Cage once wrote something somewhere that all sound is just sound, it is the human mind that makes the choice to categorise something as music, placing it on a pedestal almost. I sense that Jeph Jerman's approach is merely to enjoy sound for what it is, to truly listen to what our surroundings have to offer us.

The problem with this is is that the minute you place a recording onto a CD it becomes part of the music industry. It is instantly addressed using the same protocol and criteria for judgement that every other CD is considered by. When I started this series of posts I was initially taken aback by things such as poor recording quality and abrupt endings, but in the case of some of these recordings these questions miss the point entirely. I am slowly learning to just listen here and take in what exists on the disc.

I intend to continue with this series because it has been fun and seems to be helping half a dozen or so people find their way through Jerman's music, but as I do so something an old English teacher once told me keeps springing to mind, something like; "We all have two ears but one mouth, it would be far wiser if we all used them to the same ratio"

[Richard Pinnell]

And particular thanks for your support and contribution here Chris, good to know my efforts here are stirring seeds of thought elsewhere.

[eklkrl]

good to know my efforts here are stirring seeds of thought elsewhere.

By all means, far and wide I'm sure. It's coming upon an oasis, this excursion into close listening to Jeph's music.

[jon abbey]

welcome, ernst! you're in berlin now? when did that happen?

[Richard Pinnell]

Day 14 – Jeph Jerman – Harvester Ants. Autumn Records Leaves Series CDR

This is just the disc to lay back on the bed and close your eyes to after a really tough week of work and dentistry. Its odd as I have begun to find it easier to listen to these discs with the lights either dimmed or turned off completely. There is scientific proof that the hearing ability of blind people is accentuated as they rely more on their ears than the majority of us. Whilst obviously closing my eyes does not in any way have the same effect I am finding it easier to focus my listening with other distractions removed.

Harvester Ants is another luminescent purple disc wrapped in the gorgeous Leaves series packaging. Detail on the music’s creation is on the sparse side again, but I think it is safe to assume that here we have recordings of harvester ants making their way back and forth across a contact microphone.

The actual sound here is very beautiful to listen to. The distant murky hum of the street is punctuated occasionally by a vehicle passing close and overlaid by the habitual chatter of birds and the occasional barking dog. Above these sounds though sits the scratches and patter of tiny feet as the ants go about their business. These footsteps translate here as rough electronic scrabbling and miniscule bursts of static, not dissimilar to the sound of a turntable cartridge popping its way across a dusty old piece of vinyl. These little bursts of sound are continual throughout the recording, but spread apart with patches of inactivity, allowing the sounds of the big wide world to fill the spaces between. Twelve minutes in a very low aeroplane drowns out everything for a few seconds before fading away to find the ants still going about their way.

This is an incredible recording. It is really hard to relate to these sounds in any logical manner. These are sounds that normally would only be heard by a passing centipede, and as ridiculous a comment as that may appear, the reality here is that this recording places you in a microscopic soundworld on that level.

This is one field recording that serves us better than any first hand trip into the countryside could. Here the human ear is extended beyond its natural capabilities and the human brain is confused by the mixture of the familiar and the abstract. Laying listening to this in the dark is even a little disconcerting if you pay attention to the thought of what you are listening to here.

If you forget that you are listening to ants, stop trying to work out how the music is recorded and just focus on the sound coming from the speakers, this is a relaxing, gentle piece of highly detailed music that rewards the careful listener well.

[Richard Pinnell]

Day 15 - Animist Orchestra – Wu Wei Anomalous Records CD

I have been listening to this recording on and off for a few months now, but only in the past week or so did I manage to obtain a ‘real’ CD of it, before now I had been listening to a CDR made from an mp3 download. The disc includes an inlay card adorned with Jerman’s beautiful photography and poetic notes on the music, so I am very pleased I finally have a copy in my possession. This is also one of my favourite pieces of Jeph Jerman’s music, and listening to it closely this evening was a real pleasure.

The Animist Orchestra was formed in 1999 by Jerman and some friends in Seattle in an attempt to take the natural sounds of Jerman’s solo improvisations and give them more density. Six people can be heard on this beautifully recorded release, a ‘real’ CD on the unfortunately now defunct Anomalous Records label.

Extensive notes by Jerman on the progression of the Orchestra through to and beyond the point of this recording can be read at his site, http://www.davidstanford.com/jerman/animist.html so I won’t repeat these details here. This though, appears to be a completely improvised performance of the Orchestra, following earlier sessions when written ‘scores’ were used to keep some level of focus in the music.

The music consists mainly of swathes of percussive sounds generated from bones, shells, stones, the usual Jerman fayre, but here the sounds come in clusters, pouring into earshot rather than the tentative patter of some of the solo discs. At the same time though, silence and the spaces between the music play an important part. Jerman’s aim was to create a natural sound that developed its own form rather than anything built upon the virtuosity of the musicians involved. The result sounds totally organic and inhuman, it is hard to sit here listening and picture how this music was made. Without the credits on the sleeve notes it would be impossible to tell how many musicians are actually involved here, the musicians are closely focussed on the sound as a whole rather than their own contribution.

Unlike many of the other recordings I have written about here, I am finding it very difficult to paint pictures of how Wu Wei actually sounds. It has the feel of a field recording but clearly it is not. There are no ‘voices’ to be heard in the music, it is impossible to tell who is using what to create the sounds. There are none of the obvious call and response techniques of some improvised music, yet together the Orchestra respond to the overall sound to allow it to progress and grow.

The only part of the recording that fails for me is near the end when again someone changes the feel of the recording totally by whirling something around in the air to make a loud circular sound not unlike a motor turning over. This moment allows the human element of the recording to creep back in and it awakens you from the trance like state that the music places you in, but as it only lasts a couple of minutes near the end this can be forgiven.

In short I am lost for words to describe this recording. One thing is for sure it is a remarkably original piece of music, and something that needs listening to rather than talking about. This is one of the most fully realised examples of Jerman’s improvised soundworld and is essential for anyone with even a passing interest in his music. Unfortunately it is also very difficult to lay your hands upon a copy but I recommend you commence your search.

[user_265]

richard, you know that you're seriously insane, don't you?

[Richard Pinnell]

richard, you know that you're seriously insane, don't you?

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

I'm acutely aware of it Tomas!

[p_ano]

Day 15 - Animist Orchestra – Wu Wei Anomalous Records CD

In short I am lost for words to describe this recording.

i adore this record.

it's just so <insert appropriate word here>.

[Richard Pinnell]

Day 16 – Jeph Jerman – Four (Four) Installation Pieces

This really is something quite special. Before explaining about the music here I need first to describe this object. Here is an old recycled heavy wooden cigar box. Still with the maker’s name carved into its sides, a treasure chest syle box with brass closure clips but with beautiful detailed Jerman photographs attached to the outside and inside of the hinged lid.
Also attached to the inside of the lid is a trademark scrap of paper announcing that the four CDs enclosed in the box are designed to be played simultaneously in loop mode. It also suggests that the accompanying objects in the box may be used to play along if desired.

Sure enough there are four CDRs in slimline jewel cases here, each with hand drawn pencil shapes on the cover and small notations inside written in the same abstract form as Jerman’s early scores for the Animist Orchestra. The aforementioned objects in the box are a fantastic selection of stones, dried leaves, wood, bone and shells. The scrap of paper suggests that they can be used to play along if desired.

Once you get beyond the sheer beauty of this object, (I have been sat looking at it in awe for about three weeks now) the next challenge is what to do with it. Each of the discs is marked either Bones, Pine cones, Shells or Stones, and sure enough each contains recordings of only those items, all lasting about twenty seven minutes.
Playing each in turn is a nice experience. Some, such as the bones recording could stand alone as a nice piece of Jerman improvisation, but others such as the Pine cones disc feature large sections of silence before a flurry of activity that dies away into silence again.

I wanted to follow the instructions as closely as I possibly could, but I unfortunately do not own four different ways to play CDs together at any kind of sensible volume. The nearest solution I could find was to rip each of the discs to a soundfile and then merge them together in Acid Pro, a piece of music creation software sat on my PC but rarely ever used. Playing all four tracks together revealed a rich mass of sounds overlapping each other to create similarly beautiful layered washes of sound to those evident on yesterday’s Animist Orchestra recording.

I found myself spending the afternoon playing with the four tracks, shifting them out of sync with each other, playing about with the volume levels and seeing what occurred if digital effects were added to the sounds. This may not have been the intention of Jerman when he put this set together but this wonderful playground of sound was too appealing to avoid. Several hours of this passed before I remembered the assorted objects still in the box, and the suggestion from Jerman they should be used to play along.

I have to admit I closed the door tight to avoid the ridicule of my younger brother, but then sat down on the floor with the combined sound files playing. You will be pleased to hear that no recorded evidence of this session exists, but I quite enjoyed myself scraping, rattling and rustling these beautiful items together to bring the whole experience alive.

I found the four tracks running together to be very dense and difficult to relate to with my own sounds, so I later played just the bones track alone whilst limiting myself to the assorted pieces of wood and dried leaves in the box. This sounded much nicer to my ears.

This is not so much a piece of music that can be measured and spoken about in the same way as the other albums in this series. Apart from being a wonderful object to own and hold in your hands it is a toolkit put together to really involve you in the art of listening to sound.

As this is the sixteenth day on the trot that I have been listening to Jeph Jerman’s music I found it easy to sink into the experience of creating this music. I have no pretensions of being a musician of any kind, but this afternoon feeling enveloped by this whole world of sound was a magical experience. Tonight I took a walk in the country close to my home as I often do on a Sunday evening, yet as the weather gets colder and the leaves have begun to fall from the trees I smiled to myself tonight as it occurred to me that October is the perfect month to be spending extended time with Jeph Jerman’s music.

I have no idea if any more copies of this set are available to purchase anywhere. Mine came from Erstwhile Distribution, and if they have any left I recommend you obtain one soon. This is one release that could never be reduced to a soulseek download.

[letchhausen]

Day 16 – Jeph Jerman – Four (Four) Installation Pieces


This is not so much a piece of music that can be measured and spoken about in the same way as the other albums in this series. Apart from being a wonderful object to own and hold in your hands it is a toolkit put together to really involve you in the art of listening to sound.
Jerman’s music.

This sounds amazing. I like the fact that not only were you forced to interact with it as a "recordist" to get the four pieces together but were provided with tools to improvise along with it. That's great. I wonder if Jeph thought that people would record the four tracks to attain the simultaniety that is needed to listen. Since very few people are going to have a way to play four CD's together it seems likely. It sounds like a wonderful experience and a rare one. You're getting in very deep territory here in relation to the sounds. I remember that conversation that you, Alastair and I had about how this scene makes you want to get involved on some level. And here you go.
Excellent.

[user_827]

If you're interested in the four installation set, it's easy to order them direct from Jeph......just go to his website.