1. |
||||
while we laid in the sun for a while
and the skin did melt off your face
nothing vanished
our troubles they just piled
up until they
swallowed up this place
but if its alright
alright with you
i would like to
stay a little while
if it's alright
alright with you
i could stay here
even as the sea
swallows me
tried to keep my heart from the world
tried to keep my
self upon a little island
even as the
kodachrom swirl
washed out the ground
from beneath where i was standing
but if its alright
alright with you
i would like to
stay a little while
if it's alright
alright with you
i could stay here
even as the sea
swallows me
could it be
that this little phantasy
is repeated endlessly?
in a time when each seeks to be
theirs and theirs alone
theirs and theirs alone
alone
but if its alright
alright with you
i would like to
stay a little while
if it's alright
alright with you
i could stay here
even as the sea
swallows me
|
||||
2. |
||||
on a rainy day much like today
a shoestring hammer fell on from the sky, oh boy,
and curled its strings around a falling water drop
and placed itself within my ticklish tongue, oh boy
could it be that two hearts could melt into one?
could it be that two hearts could melt into one?
lah dee dah dah dah do do
on a sunken day much like today
a crumbling flows within an oblong mistiness
and turned the beach beneath the streets to solid gold
and sold itself as such to dying crackling foals
could it be that two hearts could melt into one?
could it be that two hearts could melt into one?
lah dee dah dah dah do do
|
||||
3. |
Fat Loss/Filth
01:42
|
|||
4. |
||||
even in the light
where everything is known
even in the light
there lies a wound that cant be closed
even in the day
where objects stand as such
every border drawn will never seem to be enough
sometime there's love
but mostly there;s pain x2
the body retches at the sight of unclean hands
you find revolting what you cannot
even in the home
where all your needs are met
even in the home
there lurks the fear that cannot rest
and all that you have loved
and hold so close to you
there would be disgust and a hatred pure and true
sometimes there's love
but mostly there;s pain x2
the fingers grasp for words that lend some clarity
a distance that would give you respite from this shit
terror, terror, the absolute
terror, terror the absolute terror
of living in
sometimes there's love
but mostly there;s pain
|
||||
5. |
||||
and all the people that you have
known and loved will surely die
like autumn leaves that once were
green but fall on from the sky
even in the ocean
where a starfish slops
even in the ocean
all will come undone
"don't bother me now i'm just sleeping'
don't bother me i'm not here
don't bother me now i'm just sleeping
don't bother me i'm not here'"
and all the places that had held
your memories now are gone
some factories and restaurants
have replaced the water front
even in the deserts
where the succulents grow
even in the deserts
all will come undone
"don't bother me now i'm just sleeping'
don't bother me i'm not here
don't bother me now i'm just sleeping
don't bother me i'm not here'"
how will you live
when you cannot face death
how will you break bread
when your body breaks down
how will you sleep
when i haunt your dreams
|
||||
6. |
||||
tossed a pinecone back
to your outstretched hand
and asked what could it be
to name it essentially
for now and now forever more
to that which is my life
to that which is my debt
to that which is the gift
to all that makes my breath
on a sunken beach
all covered with plastic grey shit
how i loved you then
holding hands too drunk to fuck
again
to that which is my life
to that which is my debt
to that which is the gift
to all that makes my breath
on a moonlit night
where the fire's dying light
by the train track rocks
too young to be too weary
to that which is my life
to that which is my debt
to that which is the gift
to all that makes my breath
|
||||
7. |
||||
the two of us are fading things beneath the swarm
haunted by the background noise that you could never seem to sublimate
within your understanding
in an ocean of light
in an ocean of death
in an ocean of noise
in an ocean of breath
waiting for meaning to come
from above
you hold your breath
but you
wont find it here
no you wont find it here
(noise break)
the two of us are blooming things among the heap
swimming towards the pulsing mob
that just would always seem to congregate
within a coalescence
in an ocean of light
in an ocean of death
in an ocean of noise
in an ocean of breath
standing within the sands
while the moon curves down below but you
wont find it here
no you
wont find it here
noise interludex@2
the two of us are fading things amongst the swarm
haunted by the background noise that you could never seem to sublimate
within your understanding
|
||||
8. |
||||
in the mud of an abstract room
all hands gather in the dust
in the light of a strangers phone
four eyes meet the twilights musk
dying for connection
dying for a touch
dying not to feel
in your own skin
in the buzz of a chainsaw's cry
you hear music of another kind
in the clack of a train track's sigh
too much pleasure for one of us
now everything is changed
only shards remain
to be picked apart
now everything is changed
only shards remain
to be picked apart
dying for connection
dying for a touch
dying not to feel
in your own skin
in the murk of the L.A. sprawl
fingers move towards satellites
in the dusk of an ending day
tears fall down below your waist
now everything is changed
only shards remain
to be picked apart
|
||||
9. |
Composite #1
02:46
|
|||
1. Aleatory Music as a Critical-Poetic Practice
This project is, first and foremost, an attempt to think critically and historically about how and why we interact with urban environments in the ways ‘we’ do, with the intention and hope of developing new ways of thinking and interacting with the world around us that might be more radical politically, ecologically and ethically. We noticed that our interactions with the great majority of nonhumans in urban environments reduced those actors to their functionality, and only one particular function at that: a metal railing becomes only a risk-management tool, a stop-sign only a member of a network of traffic technologies, a plastic cup only a receptacle for water. These habits of thinking and acting are so commonplace, so much a part of everyday life, that they have become ingrained into our psyche and largely escape notice. It seemed to us that this reduction was extremely ideological in character, both in that the particular functions these objects are reduced to potentiate the capitalist mode of production and in the ways that this reduction becomes an unconscious structure that governs the ways we interact with these nonhuman others. The question that arises from this observation bifurcates into two levels or modes: a) how and why did this come about and b) how can ‘we’ think with and engage urban environments in ways that subvert the ideological organization of human-nonhuman relations?
As musicians/sound designers/would-be philosophers, it seemed that sound and music was one way in which we could critically engage with these problems. On the first level, the din of contemporary cities is so loud, pervasive and normal that it escapes our attention. It has become normalized. It’s simply ‘the way things are.’ The average noise level of a midsize suburban town like Santa Cruz is around 60-65 decibels during the daytime. As such, the possibility of things being different or even the more modest goal of changing how we interact with our environment can seem almost impossible. One way we have been engaging these questions is through the critical-poetic practice of field recording. Thinking of this kind of sound (the sound of sitting in a crowded bus, for example) as music through the practice of field recording does three things:
• it makes the listener consciously perceive and pay attention to that which is normally registered unconsciously and taken for granted
• rendering what we normally think of (if we think it at all) as background noise music makes the listener engage with these sounds in a different mode; it changes the quality of their relation with the sound
• moving through environments thinking about potentially recordable sounds changes the ways in which we engage nonhuman actors in a way that subverts the ideological organization of human-nonhuman relations that relegates and defines nonhumans in purely functional terms. Thinking of these actors sonic potentiality makes us move through spaces in a completely different way, changing both who we interact with, why we interact with them, and how we interact with them
This kind of practice takes its inspiration from John Cage, a 20th century modernist composer who tried to think of music in a new way. Whereas previous composers worked exclusively with musical instruments for their compositions, he attempted to work with things we would normally categorize as ‘noise.’ He writes in Silence: Lectures and Writings that “whereas, in the past, the point of disagreement has been between dissonance and consonance, it will be, in the immediate future, between noise and so-called musical sounds,” (Cage, 4). The sound of a bus or footsteps clacking in an abandoned warehouse become potential elements in a musical score in a way that challenges the distinction between ‘noise’ and ‘music.’ Additionally, Cage attempted to make space within his compositions through the use of silence for ‘extra-musical’ musical elements, such as the sounds of the environment where the performance was taking place. We sampled his notion of what can count as music in our attempt to make something wild, unexpected and worthwhile. Later I will address how we are using his concept of music and, significantly, where we disagree with him.
The second concept we sampled from Cage is the notion of ‘chance composition’ or what some (and I prefer this due to its more historical/ politicized valence) have called ‘aleatory music’. Aleatory music tries to use the concept of chance to compose pieces. Chance is incorporated in a variety of ways: one could use chance as a way to determine the particular values of a given variable. One could, for example, decide to write a piece using the variable ‘dynamics’ and then determine its value through a chance operation. The most famous is example is Cage use the I-Ching, a Chinese text used to divine the future, to determine the values of some of the variables in his compositions. An overriding concept (dynamics) is chosen and then its potential permutations/manifestations make up the piece. Another way chance is incorporated is to leave the notation of a given work open to the interpretations of the performer. An example of this is, in lieu of a notated musical score, a composer would give a performer some written instructions (i.e. ‘move the hand as fast as physically possible’) that they were then free to interpret. Thus, the piece is open to chance because it is different every single time.
This kind of practice (making aleatory music from field recordings), for ‘us’, inevitably leads to historical questions concerning why we, at this particular historical juncture, encounter the particular sounds and objects that we do, in the ways that we do, and it is here where we part from Cage and his contemporaries. They failed to inquire into the historical conditions of possibility for their engagements and interactions with the sounds that surrounded them, and thus fell into a deeply depoliticized avant-garde-ism. Our experiments are mediated through the histories of colonization and the rise of industrial capitalism, through structural violence in the form of on-going institutionalized racism, classism and sexism, to name in a very general way but a few of the ways in which our access to sound is non-innocent. They thus failed to see the most radical form of chance and indeterminacy that is at the heart of every musical composition/sound: that the auditory encounter, in its particularity, historical contingency, and politics, ‘took hold’ (Althusser) in the first place.
Moving through spaces with a field recorder becomes a critical, in addition to poetic, practice only if we historicize our aleatory encounters with particular sounds. It is through this recognition of historical contingency, through the deeply situated way in which a situation arises for a sound to be felt and recorded, that aleatory music takes on a political cadence. The point in moving through spaces in this way is to engage critically with everyday life, to “ regard everyday life as the frontier between the dominated and the undominated sectors of life… [and] to work ceaselessly toward the organization of new chances,” (Debord, 1961) as Guy Debord notes. It is to think through, in the medium of sound, the possibility of making other worlds in the present through our concrete practices, of the possibility of a life without dead time. We are in the business of creating the conditions of possibility for chance encounters to occur and to recognize the potential for the rupture of the restlessly new to emerge in everyday life. Part of this work is to render the everyday strange through turning the everyday into music in order to expose the possibility of a new way engaging with those environments where resistance seems most hopeless.
|
||||
10. |
||||
11. |
Mastery
03:42
|
|||
in the master's sight
where our bodies must bend
an isolated mind contemplates itself
dreaming of purity
dreaming of flight
dreaming of vision
dreaming of light
in the yawning dusk
where the globe melts away
a crumbling fog that would swallow us whole
dreaming of platypus
dreaming of might
dreaming of scarecrows
dreaming of night
in the mottled land
where love's body is burned
by phallic hands who can never seem to understand
burning with gases
burning with doubt
burning with emptiness
burning without
on the river's edge
where the bank turns to slime
form is sly illusion for life changing in kind
falling with minerals
falling with grime
falling with emptiness
falling with mind
reify the body where you found it
don't think twice
just ask not what you do
just say not what you feel
reify the unknown into a price
to be paid and made and undone
and silence now to always cry
|
Bourgeois Speedball Oakland, California
Bourgeois Speedball lives in ruins. Sculpting compositions from crumbling synthesizers, samplers, and the soundscapes of Bay Area rebellions, Bourgeois Speedball organizes sound within the decaying oikos of globalized neoliberalism.
Streaming and Download help
If you like Bourgeois Speedball, you may also like:
Bandcamp Daily your guide to the world of Bandcamp