Doubleness/Weak Sleeping (Director’s Cut), 2019
(composition and live performance, debuted at Lisser Hall, Oakland California, December, 2019)
Instrumentation:
4-Track portable cassette recorder, cassette with contact mic and vibraphone recordings, digital signal processing via a laptop running Ableton Live and Max/MSP/PPooll, electric guitar, voice, hardware loopers and effects pedals, amplifier.
Program Notes:
A piece that explores how memory is abstracted through memorialization (recording, songwriting, mythologizing) and pharmakon (melody, alcohol, memorialization). A 4-track cassette recorder–an object that is constantly reshaped in cultural memory–serves as the initial sound source. The object is gesturally detached from its intended function with help from a piezo mic and digital signal processing (abstraction). The resulting palette soon blends and fades into what is essentially a folk song (memory) that has been drowned in modulating sound (pharmakon). Sonic density increases as a disembodied voice emerges (memorialization). Lyrical elements further specify the themes of the piece. The listener is encouraged to hold these themes or disregard them and slip into their own memories during the performance.