threat level charlie
Threat Level Charlie
Threat Level Charlie is a sound / noise work for glass, metal, bamboo flute,
PVC tubes, electronics, programming, body, and power. Microphones are placed
inside of long PVC tubes (or other acoustic space) and made to feedback, modulated
by a Supercollider 2.2.16 patch and some analog EQ. The performer plays non-musical
instruments (panes of glass, metal) with hands and feedback, and a contact mic
is placed in the mouth and played with the guttoral palette. Radio is tapped
as a chthonic noise source, and as processing stage and path for feedback via
transmitter. Broadband noise is generated from public and private ambient recordings,
and speeches by George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden are shredded together. A
Balinese bamboo flute plays a blues in proximity to the instruments, thereby
processing it with the media so to speak. The result is a visceral wail against
corporate spiritual and political power systems, using organic and alleatoric
rhythms, melodies, textures; chthonic sounds, oppressed signals.
The title is an obsolete term for the state of security in the United States
that is almost-highest, which to me means business-pretty-much-as-usual - reinventing
the wheel of terror. But this is not a political statement. It is music of spatial
and physical natures, a sonic expression of anguished rage against the hell
we’ve gotten ourselves in, on both sides of the battle - governments and
terrorists.
I exploit the physics of non-musical instruments to produce music of civilized
comfort gone amok, using them as agents in a war of aural tyranny against the
fear-and-terror-breeding military consciousness, against aggressive apathy and
ignorance, the brutal numbing of sense in muzak and conditioned environments,
the bliss of blind faith in divine will and the sickening extents to which groups
of believers will carry out the master plan of a god made in their own imagination.
With a desire for music that is beyond the conditioning of scales, modes and
meter, I try to listen to what is inside of things and spaces and work directly
with the self-arising energy therein, instead of just filling them with my sequenced
output.
I love to play with dangerous things, to dare something to break in my hands
as I seduce it into serenading me with its chthonic aural grace, because the
threat of imminent destruction causes a people to behave like there's nothing
left to lose, and yet then we hunker down in defiant defense of our pathetic
civilian lives. It is a call to arms to defy the command to rejoice sedate in
a consumer frenzy and redeem the funding of military industries jonesing for
a permanent fix. GO FORTH AND MULTIPLY (((CORPORATE POWER))) is the slogan of
this tyrannous pageant - or we'll bomb you into the glass age. All sides are
righteous, all sides are right, all sides are wrong and need to get their asses
kicked in a enlightened way. I shower a holy war of my own on their brutal parade
- may they interpret the warm golden rain as an omen. It is my form of poetic
terrorism; I am guilty and I am glad.
technical notes:
The bulk of the recording is from the California Institute of the Arts studio B308 on March 28, 2002, with excerpts from the Centre de Cultura Contemporànea de Barcelona (CCCB) (April 19 and 20, 2002), and KXLU 88.9 FM Los Angeles (June 5, 2002).
Performances:
Judson Studios, Pasadena (October 2001)
CEAIT Festival 2002, CalArts, Valencia (January 2002)
physic, Beyond Baroque, Venice (March 2002)
Centre de Cultura Contemporànea de Barcelona, Spain (April 2002)
KXLU, Los Angeles (June 2002)
Jasmine Tree, Portland (September 2002)
Polestar Music Gallery, Seattle (September 2002)
KFJC, Los Altos Hills (October 2002)
my Recit*l, Main Gallery, CalArts, Valencia (April 2003)
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO (Sept 2003)
Cordell Taylor Gallery, Denver, CO (Sept 2003)
New Genre Festival XI, Living Arts of Tulsa (Oct 2003)
The Performance Space, Albuquerque, NM (Oct 2003)
LA Times review - Monday January 14, 2002
TJ Norris Review - October 2002 in IglooMag.com
