Thursday, June 2, 2011

Performing this Saturday at OCCCA in Santa Ana, CA


The phog masheeen experience is coming back to the OCCCA in Santa Ana this Saturday 6-4-11 for the second opening of the Deep show.

We will be performing from 7:00 to 10:00 PM in three long sets of atmospheric sound. We are hoping for Rapture of the Deep without the nitrogen narcosis.

Click here for Directions.

Did I mention that it is FREE!


Saturday, May 14, 2011

The "Boise Bundts" go Drone Crazy!


I am rolling out the "Boise Bundts" for the Le Placard headphone festival tonight at 10:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time. I will be streaming to Hamburg Germany where it will be 7:00 AM.

The event in Hamburg is titled Blurred Edges. It looks to be a great festival, judging from the program.

If you want to catch the stream. Log onto the Placard Chat and get the url then open it in your media player.

Here is the recording of The Boise Bundts Go Drone Crazy! for your streaming pleasure.



Monday, May 9, 2011

The Wonder Valley Set is up!

The Wonder Valley Experimental 3 set is now up on the internet archive.
You can find it here.
Or listen to the stream here:

Boise Set, Bundt Pans and event notes...



Here is the Boise set for your entertainment, the link to the stream is at the bottom of this post.

It appears that people in Boise do not value their Bundt Pans.
I found two fine specimens at the Idaho Youth Ranch thrift store.
One was the extremely unfinished "holy mother of aluminum" version.
Rare indeed. The sonic qualities of cast aluminum Bundt Pans are legendary for their resonance and sustain. The bell like qualities are like a bell from a parallel universe. Route that through a contact mic and you have a gateway to a wonderland of fun.

The city of Boise is clean walkable and safe. Bill and I had a great time checking out the downtown.

The sets at the Boise Creative and Improvised Music festival were varied and intriguing. Lots of surprises, which is the feature of improvised music that keeps me coming back for more.

I was paired with Colter Frasier to start the random match up part of the festival. That provided an opportunity to stretch out on the newly aquired Bundt Pans and Slide Trumpet. I was a fun feature that was unique to this festival.

Here is the stream of the phog masheeen set at B-CIMF 2011. Also Available at http://www.archive.org/details/PhogMasheeenB-cimf5-7-2011
Enjoy,
phog

Monday, April 25, 2011

WVE3 was Amazing, On to Boise!

Wonder Valley Experimental 3 was a huge success! Many happy/noisy people were present and convivial in the amazing environment that is the Palms in Wonder Valley. Pictured on the right is the skate board/Guitar or Skatar being pressed into service with Punk as a Doornail at WVE3. No frets, played slide style with a liquor bottle.

For the Wonder Valley event Bill projected his video feed onto a tree that was stage left. I liked that alot!

Dr. Kaplan turned in a great set bringing her pots and pans to the phog masheeen experience.

Next we are on to Boise Idaho for the B-CIMF (Boise Creative and Improvised Music Festival).

So if you know people in Boise, Tell them phog masheeen is coming.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Boston Recap, on to Wonder Valley!


The trip to Boston was stunning in its greatness! We had the honor of performing with brilliant performers. We found dry-ice easily. The talk was spectacular.
Many thanks to Vanessa LeFevre for booking the trip and orchestrating the entire event.
The most humbling experience was meeting Performer, Instrument designer and all around great guy Eric Nugent. He spent a decade creating the NU (pictured here). The short version is that it is a Digeridoo with keys.
Let us ponder that information for a moment.
Ten years in development. Casting the parts. Doing the math to locate and size the holes correctly. Then learning to play it brilliantly! I would be stopped at the ten year development cycle. I might scrawl the idea on a note pad that I would eventually not be able to locate. But the patience and skill to design and fab an instrument is a different level of patience and commitment.
But wait there's more!
Eric also fabricated a double trumpet that was operated by Eric Dahlman, the other half of the Auddity duo configuration. This horn had two bells, two sets of valves, a dog toy squeeker mouthpiece. On of the possible configurations included inflating a balloon that could be made to push air through the squeeker. Amazing! Also they had a pan of water with a mic on it that they would submerge the trumpet bell in the water and create an aquatic almost motorboat like sound with it. For added star power they added ENO to the performance. In the form of the fizzing antacid, not the Music for Airports guy.

Walking on Mass Ave. provided some wonderful urban beauty as evidenced in this brilliant work of editing.









Also, since the 119 Gallery was located in Lowell, MA we visited the grave of Jack Kerouac. The city of Lowell has adopted Jack as a tourist attraction. Such that they named a 5K run in his honor. I imagine him spinning in his grave as healthy people run sweating in the streets of Lowell.
Lovely town Lowell. Home of RRR Records as well.



Moving on to next weekend. The Wonder Valley Experimental 3 rolls into the Palms.
There are some updates on this event.
Desert local, Piano Bob will be providing break music between sets with his legendary prepared piano! Bob is a local legend and some would say a national treasure! We are honored to have Bob as part of our line up.
Bob's history with noise is long and storied. He collected metal from illegal dumping in the desert and sorted it by sonic qualities.
This included larger pieces such as automobile gas tanks.
(Automobile gas tanks have a number of different bends and have a similarity to steel drums in that they offer a wide variety of pitches depending on where they are struck.)
Bob would bring his collection to local coffee houses for monthly "noise nights" where people were invited to jam on his collection of sonified metal.
His public piano project predated the character in New York that is desperately trying to claim it by years. That project included Bob pushing the piano on the side of highway 62 from one site to the next, where it would then be moored for the public to play till he pushed it on to another site.
I am looking forward to Bob's addition to the noise fest!

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Preparations for Boston Trip...


Collecting gear and packing for the trip to Boston.
It is a bit like herding cats and packaging them so the TSA wont kill them in transit.
Bill and I are heading out on a red-eye on Thursday to arrive early Friday.
Buy dry-ice and check the show at 119 Gallery on Friday night then we are on for two shows and a talk Sunday afternoon.

Here are the particulars. If you are in the Boston area and come to the show I would love to meet you, please hit me up for swag or something.

Saturday Show
119 Gallery, 119 Chelmsford St, Lowell MA 01851
978-452-8138 8PM
Phog Masheen + Auddity
WhenSat, April 2, 8pm – 9pm
DescriptionPhog Masheen (from Los Angeles) investigates noise as post-millenial folk music, unusual uses of resonant chambers, and sound as an object that can be stretched, inverted and mutilated. Hear the otherworldly sounds of the Duodenum, an instrument made from the exhaust manifold of a motorcycle and played with dry ice and blowtorch. Auddity (from Massacusetts) combine drones, free improvisation and whirled music grooves creating soundscapes utilizing traditional and invented instruments. Erik Nugent (playing his invention The Nu, a chromatic didgeridoo, as well as slide bagpipes, slide clarinet, overtone singing), Eric Dahlman (trumpets, voice, pasta tin), and Michael Knoblach (percussion, voice) bring humor, amazing technical skills, and fearless experimentation to their improvised performances. Sponsored by Vanessa/Lunar Plexus.
Sunday 3 April @ Outpost, 1-3pm, $5 donation
The Changing Context of Improvisation:
Unplayable Instruments, Disaster Management and the Safe Handling of Dry Ice


A workshop with Mark Soden of Phog Masheen


Phog Masheen (from Los Angeles) investigates noise as post-millenial folk music, unusual uses of resonant chambers, and sound as an object that can be stretched, inverted, and manipulated like sculpture. In this discussion/hands-on workshop, explore topics such as:

· The vuvuzela: was the 2010 World Cup a defining public noise performance or an act of audio terrorism?
· Voted Off the Island: the rise of reality television and its effect on the perception of improvisation.
· Dwellers of the Land that Time Forgot: drum circle, sweat lodge, the trance dehydration vortex.
· The rise of dissonance: cognitive, auditory, economic and political. If noise is the soundtrack of our times, what of the future?
· Loosening the lug nuts on the wheels of orchestration.
· Is the audience part of the performance?
· High Art vs. roadside attraction: some thoughts on community action.




Sunday Show

Phog Masheen Xiphoid Dementia Blac Bloc
Frkse
Trachypithecene Entity

It will be at Starlab, 32 Prospect St, Somerville, MA, Sunday April 3 at 8 PM