2001 Journal:
A couple
weeks ago I performed in an electronics trio with Roddy Schrock and Robert
Duckworth of TOG (laptop
electronics duo recently from
Motoko went away to her residency at the OMI Music Colony in
upstate NY for a couple weeks (of which she'll report on soon) and so I visited
her a couple times to catch the vibe. While there, I had a chance to play
some solo sax in an empty silo which acted as a massive reverberation
chamber. I learned to play slower there. Very
revelatory. I may upload some extract of that session in the near
future as soon as I find something that isn't too awful. I also had a
cool session with me on theremin, Motoko on turntable and Michael Evans on
theremin. Textures were flying through the air like arrows in a
fussillade attack. Loads of fun. After the
OMI residency ended, one of the "fellows", Adam Simmons a reed player
from
Oh yeah, the DUAL CD has been sent to the
manufacturers! The wait will soon be over....tour plans coming up!
Ed Chang - 8/15/01
The last few
weeks have been pretty busy with the DUAL CD slowly coming into existence (and
the money for it even slower...). But we're pretty excited about that and
soon we'll be setting up the West Coast DUAL Tour in late Fall
(DUAL hasn't toured in about 3 years, amazingly enough).
OK, I also did a solo show a couple weeks ago trying out my
idea of playing guitar with my feet while accompanying myself on sax at the
same time. I prepared the guitar with various Slinkies and metal objects
inserted into the strings and was able to get smooth textural sounds by playing
with the slinkies and more harsh abrasive sounds with the heavy metals around
the pick-ups area. I'd originally planned to strap silverware to my shoes
to get the right sounds but found that my workboots worked fine
un-accoutred. On sax, I concentrated on smooth circular-breathing
multi-phonics, along with some melodic thematic material thrown in. The
very first time I tried this crazy idea was the night before the show, probably
since I was afraid that if it didn't work I'd have to think of something else
and this way I had no choice but to sink or swim. Brilliant,
eh? Anyways, as it turned out the rehearsal sounded good and the
next day's show seemed a bit less organic, like I was going through the greatest
bits I'd come up with the night before. So my lesson is that I should not
have practiced. However, I did do a second piece that was unrehearsed,
which was playing the same arrangement but with full distortion on the guitar
(the first piece had no effects) and going screech-crazy on the sax. That
worked out somewhat better since I had REALLY never done that before and came
up with a couple good moments verging on "the zone". In any
case I think this idea could be the seed of some future solo tour.... maybe.
Well enough about that, soon after that show Spin-17/ppppp
with me on clarinet/melodica, Motoko on voice/vibraphone, Matt Heyner on bass
and Rich Gross on clarinet played at the Den of Cin at Two Boots Pizza's Nova
Nights series. At this point there are 2 versions of "ppppp",
with this being the somewhat quieter, modal version I guess. It was a
weird room since the crowd was not an "improv crowd" (oxymoron?
you tell me.) and at
first there was a bit of room conversation but the audience seemed to get into
it more, probably because the music was far more film-ic and thematic than
skronky and plinky. But I really enjoyed the playing and I think it was a
good bit better than the last time this particular ensemble played. It sounded
more "composed" than improv usually sounds, which is why I say it had
a more modal feeling. Thanks Miles! Also I have to mention
Rich's cool shades - definitely a career highlight.
Ed Chang - July 5, 2001
Guitar Explosion - Knitting
Factory, 6/12/01
I was little bit nervous for this gig since I haven't played
the guitar for a year at gigs or even at home. But my new H&M tropical
print tank which matches perfectly with my red & turquoise blue Mustang
gave me a boost! So I just played the guitar & sang. Ed just
played the guitar, too. That was a nice challenge since we've only played toys,
turntable, sax and guitar arrangements with drummer Toshi Makihara in the past.
It was a fresh experience & worked perfectly. It was a pure blast of noisy
feedback with two sometimes-prepared distorted
guitars. And itís always fun to play with Toshi. Despite his small set, he kept
up with us amazingly. Whew, that was the sweatiest gig Iíve ever had, I mean
good sweat. Hardly cold sweat. My primary
instrument is my voice, and the guitar is such a mysterious instrument for me : I didnít know what would happen next - what pure
surprise! I just reacted instinctively with Ed & Toshi. I discovered
again that guitar is such an amazing Jack-in-a-Box & so decided to bring my
guitar to the OMI music residency program in August to explore it more. I will
report back on this program, so please look for it!!
-Motoko, 6/27/01
Been so busy
with gigs I haven't had a chance to add as much to this site recently - I guess
that's a good thing! Anyways Our last 2 gigs
went pretty good I thought. We played for only 15 minutes at the Theatre
for the
The next day was pretty crazy since it was the yearly
Benefit Concert for ABCnoRio. I got there and peeled off a solo sax piece
(just to get it out of my system) that had a couple good seconds in it, and
then spent the next 3 hours running up & down 5 flights of stairs filming
some shots of about 34 different bands. I may eventually put together
some kind of documentary of the event. At around 9pm, Motoko Shimizu,
Matthew Heyner, David Gould and I played the "ppppp" thing, which is
the quiet immobile sonic group. That was the premiere of that group and
it was really promising. Because there were 3 other bands playing on
different floors around us, we probably got a bit less "quiet" than
the original intention, but that sounded fine and we went with it. I
found it pretty challenging to play for a long period of time, quietly and with
intensity. Uncharted territory and very exciting and
challenging. Biased as it is, I felt that "ppppp" played
one of the best sets of the night. And after that another 2 hours of
running around filming....one of the best and most varied ABCnoRio benefits
yet!
6/10/01
Last weekend I went to COMA at ABCnoRio and sat in on a couple of
pieces with Charles Cohen (from
In other news, Motoko Shimizu was accepted to the Music OMI International Music
Colony residency program in upstate
- Ed Chang 5/12/01
April was a
pretty busy month for us. Besides the debut of this website, we did 3
gigs which was quite alot considering we only had that many gigs in the
previous 6 months! Very exhilaratin'.
The Tracheotomy gig at OASIS was a quick 7 minutes.
The piece was written by John McDonough and featured 6 vocalists including John
himself and Motoko. I did the conducting, which was basically using cue
cards to prompt singers to start singing or change material. The show was
a shifting collage of acapella rock, classical, show-tune, folk, pop, blues and
improv. Pretty interesting.
The ABCnoRio gig ("ppppp") was cool except that I
couldn't play sax due to some dental work and so I had to scrounge up some of
my old home-made toys and instruments. Also Rich Gross filled in for the
missing reed section and he did that admirably. This is a new
project of mine which has as its basis the concept of "quiet, immobile
jazz". In recent years I've been discovering how hard (yet
satisfying) it is to play quietly, yet with intensity. I'm hoping to
explore that world with "ppppp" (working title). This is also
an all-acoustic project which is also somewhat different considering the
aggro-noise of the DUAL project. Also playing with Matt Heyner again is
great, he's a bud from way back. Motoko of course sang beautifully and
spun metal percussion.
The CBGB's gig was a revelation. Again with Motoko and
Matt, and substituting Michael Evans (drums) for Rich, this was a Spin-17 gig
with rock on it's mind. We did some old Spin-17
chestnuts like "
- Ed Chang 5/3/01