communication breathless

Where there is practical beauty often the skein of torment lies softly underneath, bound tightly and waiting for release. In recording with mature equipment, and if by that you guessed I mean 2 inch tapes, hand built compressors and 50 year old consoles lovingly restored over years, it becomes necessary to develop patience combined with slow wit. Arriving at the site of creative extrication never fails to excite me, entering the booth with all the gear, dials and needles illuminated by lights, colorful racks of switches and knobs laid out for handling, stratifying the padded and smooth confines of the room. Gears and wires and rubber bands run all the equipment, listening to their whirlings and lock-step pronouncements as they flavor the commands of pushed buttons and circling capstans develops in me a tremendous amount of excited anticipation.

Each take of captured music is a suspension of belief, practically religious in it's regard, as the players strain for measure and pluck loosening the constraints of memory while gripping firmly the moment that strives to incite and elicit breathless connection of sound and vision. Often on playback of newly minted sounds the pathways between ear and brain seem to elongate, developing either a slowly realized and pleasant catharsis or meditative doubts that enclose the perception; I find myself actively trying to separate the performance from the sounds that rush and worry around the room so as better to make either peace or war with the results.

Those moments of playback are singular in my experience, they always give up something and often with wildly divergent result, unexpected pleasure or intransigent opinions develop in the recording booth when having given up both ears and brain to the moment of reckoning. These moments are insular and level such a total commitment to the moment that all other pieces of a life are removed, focus becomes immediate and a cocoon is born out of the concentration and predilection to being open to all possibilities that may result. Even the basic reasons for trapping sounds and performances to a physical medium have slowly evolved over the years, where once I imagined that others would hear and experience the multilayered joy I found in the creations I was part of, I now only imagine a moment of sound; wrapped so delicately in unspoiled communication, release, collaboration. Neither a secret I want to keep forever, nor a blazing trumpeted aural missive to thrust upon all, the music and sounds are all I want to surrender to; marking for the minutes and hours an undefined purchase of pure feeling and thought.