Tag: marimba

Jeritree – Jeritree’s House Of Many Colours, 1978

Guest post by Peter Harkawik

At a time when self-care is as much a multibillion dollar industry as it is a punchline, it seems wise to look back to a more substantial model for the articulation and maintenance of self. I’m confident that no better an example can be found than Jeriann Hilderley’s wonderful 1978 avant-folk record, Jeritree’s House of Many Colors. Jeritree is both persona and methodology, one that Hilderley inhabits and directs. Coming from a tradition of sculpture and instrument-building, she describes her work as “ritual dramatic music (creating conscious space that is healing, releasing and expressive), women’s music (diving deeply into my own womoon-self for the materials…) and creative music (creating a whole new world of meaning that comes out of the particularities of my existence).” Healing, specifically healing oneself through self-directed activity, is a central theme.

I haven’t found a lot of biographical information on Jeritree, save for the wooden yet enchantingly solipsistic jacket text. The LP was distributed by Kay Gardner‘s Wise Women Enterprises in Maine and lists a P.O. Box at Madison Square Station. 1978 was an extraordinarily generative time for the downtown music scene, which would soon give rise to New Music America, an annual nomadic festival showcasing New Music. House of Many Colors is a record equally at home with the Takoma stable as it as among members of this scene who experimented with vocals, such as Shelley Hirsch, Kirk Nurock, and Anna Homler.

“Sea Wave,” the nine minute opener, is buttressed by rolling, cacophonous cymbal crashes. To say that these evoke, symbolize or otherwise represent the ocean’s violent cycles would be entirely wrong. These thunderous crescendos are waves. They physicalize the music, inscribing the body of the listener and binding her to its rhythmic imperative. Hilderley’s vocals are shimmering specters that emerge from the stereo and linger in space long after the record has stopped spinning. Less about communicating or aligning the song with a particular style or expressive mode, they are a kind of personal evidence in the offing. The album’s title number (alternately, “Symphony of Little Sprouts”) is shortened from a 30 minute ritual performance piece and is described as a “meditational healing chant.” For me, the true delight here is the final piece, “Through Your Blue Veil,” a stirring devotional tune in which Hilderley somberly returns her lover’s assorted virtues, somewhat tarnished (“I give you back your perfect mouth/Less perfect since I have known you”). Its emotional power is shocking, disarming, and without comparison.

Hilderley’s vocals work against the marimba’s casual agreeability, and, as is the case with Robbie Basho, I imagine them to be the record’s polarizing aspect. While the instrumentation is an ode to the sonic and psychoacoustic possibilities of the marimba, her mournful warble has more in common with jazz and soul singers, taking her project out of the folk register. Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, and even Maya Angelou’s 1957 one-off Miss Calypso all come readily to mind. Hilderley worked closely with recording engineer Marilyn Ries to “milk” the marimba’s rich overtones, drawing on Japanese, Mexican, African and Central American traditions.

The power of House of Many Colors is in many ways demonstrative, and it more closely resembles a kind of praxis than a display of artistic talent or ambition. Its politics operate on a broad formal level, without slogans or entreaties to identify or exclude. I am reminded happily of the experiments of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark, who by 1970 had given up plastic art for individualized psychotherapeutic encounters, or what she called “ritual without myth.” I can think of no better way to describe Hilderley’s stunning achievement.

Peter Garland, Aki Takahashi & Essential Music – Another Sunrise, 2002



Guest post by Peter Harkawik

For the past few years, I’ve been fascinated by a certain thread of post-minimalist music that has taken the form away from its challenging, austere roots and more toward the melodic, etherial, and uplifting. Daniel Lentz, Mary Jane Leach, Paul Dresher, Elodie Lauten, and Andrew Poppy (whose Lost Jockey LP remains criminally out of circulation) have all made contributions in this direction. Wim Mertens is as responsible as anyone, publishing American Minimal Music, a text that helped introduce Europe to minimalism, in 1983. Perhaps my favorite though is Another Sunrise, a piece composed by Peter Garland for Aki Takahashi and Essential Music in 1995.

Another Sunrise continues a long intersection between Native American and minimalist music. Harry Partch and Moondog both constructed instruments inspired largely by those of indigenous peoples; the latter spent a summer in 1948 camped outside a Navajo reservation in New Mexico in a failed attempt to interest them in his music. Garland studied composition and ethnomusicology under Harold Budd and James Tenney at CalArts in the early 1970s, making extended stays in Mexico and eventually settling in Santa Fe in 1980, where he directed a performance ensemble. Sunrise benefits greatly from his long friendship with Aki Takahashi, a gifted and prolific avant-garde pianist who has collaborated with Tōru Takemitsu, Morton Feldman, Alvin Lucier, and Carl Stone. She is joined by Judith Gordon on piano, and four percussionists, apparently the product of an arrangement previously set up for a Paul Bowles piece.

 Another Sunrise is, from its first note, a showcase for the marimbula, an instrument of the Caribbean that shares a heritage with the African thumb piano. Its opening five bars form a simple theme that is the piece’s primary generative element. The titles of its short segments offer formal clues: mariachi, ballad, rumba, bolero, coda and finally, gospel. Vibraphone and marimba declare themselves halfway through “Ballad,” joined by dueling pianos. If it were not for the supreme beauty of the melody, Takahashi’s playing here would be almost violent, an urgent reminder that the piano is, after all, a percussive instrument. “Rumba” borrows only rattles and tempo from its namesake, followed by a quiet interlude in “Bolero.” Another Sunrise makes powerful use of its silent passages, and its circular, modal nature make for many moments when the piece feels it has concluded, only to continue in a thrilling steel drum crash. This is most true in the coda and final “Gospel Medley,” a deeply moving summation that calls to mind a congregation of enthralled worshippers. Part of my love of minimalist music is its ability to reveal itself upon repeated listenings, making it the ideal soundtrack for work that requires long stretches of sustained concentration, and this is certainly true here.

Sunrise is accompanied by two other Garland works, “Dreaming of Immortality in a Thatched Cottage” (1977, recorded in 1997) and “I Have Had to Learn the Simplest Things Last” (1993, recorded in 1995). “Dreaming” is a somber polyphonic work, beginning with a naked vocal harmony and slowly introducing an Indonesian angklung, marimba, and harpsichord. This marks Garland’s return to working with orchestral instruments after a period of abstinence apparently inspired by a brief friendship with Partch. “Simplest” was composed shortly after the death of John Cage in 1993, and is the collection’s most pared-down, most direct piece. It is broken into four segments that feel like a single supposition with divergent conclusions. Its final component, titled “I Found Them Like Seashells On The Beach (J. Cage)” is a passage of startling and profound quietude, and a fitting end, both for its subject, and this collection.

Motohiko Hamase – Reminiscence, 1986

Peak malletcore, except here fretless bass gets a little closer to center stage, dripping all over dense towers of avant-classical synthetic strings. A die-hard fretless enthusiast, Hamase has written several books about the subject and is perhaps most famous in Japan as a coveted session bassist. He’s worked with a daunting lineup including Jimmy Murakawa, Yasuaki Shimizu, Seigen Ono, Isao Suzuki, and Yas-Kaz.

Reminiscence was recorded at Tokyo’s Sound Design Studio, famous for being the home base for most of Kitaro’s giant catalogue. Despite its reputation as an ambient record, Reminiscence doesn’t adhere to stillness in the way we might expect. It moves freely and often in steep, vertical shapes, pulling just as much inspiration from avant-classical experimentalists as from gamelan and its subsequent American minimalism devotees. Though there are many moments of unflinching beauty, Hamase is unafraid to wade out into the deep end, moving seamlessly between woozy, noodling dissonance, transparent puffs of synthesizer rising like early morning fog, and tunneling tonal percussive segments. It’s a bit disorienting, in a good way. There’s a lot to chew on here, and thankfully Reminiscence only continues to open up with increasing generosity upon further listens. This is a longtime favorite of mine, but I only recently got ahold of a good quality rip, so I’m thrilled to be able to finally share it. Enjoy!

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David Casper – Crystal Waves, 1984

Another gem from private issue new age icon David Casper, one of the later follow-ups to his excellent Tantra-La. Like that record, Crystal Waves manages to blend a laundry list of instruments (cello, played by Jami Sieber; marimba, played by Scott Cossu; ch’in [yuequin, aka moon zither, played by T’ao Chu-Chen], h’siao [Chinese bamboo flute], ocarina, crystallophone) into something that never sounds at all busy. That unhurried spaciousness is even moreso the case for this record than for Tantra-La. While a very careful and thorough use of acoustic environment brings to mind open landscapes rather than large rooms, and while there’s definitely some highly detailed multi-tracking going on, the precision and directness of the sounds seem to belie their numbers–which is to say, Crystal Waves masquerades as a very effective minimalist line drawing until you stare at it for awhile and realize it’s a full-color impressionist oil painting. It’s rendered in tones that are so delicate, translucent even, that you might not realize right away that they’re there.

This is particularly the case on the second side of the cassette, which, for our purposes, is the “Crystal Waves I-IV” tracks 4-7. It’s composed entirely of tuned crystal glasses:

Each glass was played individually with meditative attention and recorded, grouped, and re-recorded in a lengthy blending process. In order to attain a broad spectrum of sound from a simple source, tape speed, equalization, and harmonic balance were changed to produce sounds reminiscent of bass and cello, flutes and horns, organs, bells and gongs, and other sounds suggestive of electronic synthesis. Sometimes as many as thirty glasses may be heard at once, each with its own pulsation and timbre, produced acoustically by finger on glass.

The depth of field and texture Casper achieves with glass alone is remarkable, as is his gift with drawing heat out of sounds that might otherwise be predisposed towards frostiness. He’s just as skilled with his treatment of strings as he is with glasses: in spite of the wide openness of these songs, there’s a direct suggestion of reassuring warmth that I find myself feeding on over and over in the wintertime. I also just realized that it’s been a year almost to the day since I posted Tantra-La, so clearly these records are seasonally significant to me. I hope you love this as much as I do.

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John Clark – Faces, 1981

Another gem from the ECM catalogue. Brooklyn-born jazz horn player John Clark hasn’t made many records as a bandleader, but has been hugely prolific and has recorded and performed with Miles Davis, Jaco Pastorius, Chick Corea, Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, and Leonard Bernstein, among many others. He’s still a faculty member at Manhattan School of Music.

Faces is disarmingly beautiful in ways that I don’t typically expect to hear from a jazz record (though I’m admittedly a jazz idiot). The cover image feels very apt: in addition to much of this being a very quiet record, it also has a ghostly quality, suggesting faint impressions from a carbon copy done too lightly. That vaporous, trailing-behind sensation is echoed in the generous reverb on both the horn and the electric cello, suggesting watercolors or streaks of neon in street puddles. Despite all these murky descriptors, there’s joy to be found all over it: “Silver Rain, Pt. III” is a nod to steel-drum tropical sunshine, and closer “You Did It, You Did It!” is almost baroque in its exuberance. There are some really nice notes about Faces on ECM Reviews, which, incidentally, is an excellent resource if you’re as daunted as I am by the ECM catalogue. Thank you Gil and Matthew for bringing me here!

(download removed as reissue is forthcoming)