Portland

I am reporting on Portland after Astoria, even though we visted and played a day earlier. That’s just how things sometimes work.

We did have some time to spend in the Rose City before our show at Rotture:


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We experienced Portland’s famously variable weather. Fortunately, many of the city’s attractions are indoors. This includes Powell’s Books. I could have spent the whole day in the Pearl Room, which contained the art and architecture offerings, as well as their extensive rare book collection.

Portland also has abundant public art. Across from Powell’s is this “brush,” a noted landmark:

And this “recursive elephant” was quite intriguing:

This sculpture includes other animals besides the elephants. I think I see a cat on the trunk:

It always comes back to cats, doesn’t it.

The show that evening was at Rotture, a club on the waterfront, conveniently located next to a construction zone. Although our audience was small, the show went well; and I did like the space, a converted early-20th century industrial brick building.


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They also had an interesting mural in the main audience area, and a nice large stage. We shared the bill with Emily Hay, who also does improvisation with flute and voice (although with a very contrasting sound and style from Polly); as well as Tim DuRoche and Resolution 51 (free jazz improvisation). So it was definitely worth sticking around after our performance to hear everyone else – although the entire evening was probably branded as “experimental night” or “improvisation night”, there was a great variety among the three groups, and I think the ordering worked well with us first, both musically and energy-wise.

More on Portland, our show at Rotture, and the trip up from the Bay Area can be found here.

Weekend Cat Blogging #124 and more: Away

Luna is looking out her favorite window…and waiting for someone to return from tour…

Weekend Cat Blogging #124 is at the *New* Tuxedo Gang Hideout.

The Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos will be held at Pet's Garden Blog, while the Carnival of the Cats will be at our friends The Bad Kitty Cats – we hope things are going a bit better for them now. And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Astoria

Just a quick note this afternoon, from Astoria, Oregon. Our second show of the tour (third, if you count 1510 in Oakland) will be here in Astoria tonight, at the Astoria Visual Arts center. And I will also be performing a solo set to open, again with electronics and my folk and toy instruments.

We have posters all over town, and a great write-up in the Coast Weekend, a local paper.

Astoria itself is an interesting little town, at the mouth of Columbia River on the Oregon coast:

The coast highway runs through and north across the river into Washington state.

Here are a few photos from town:

And here is the band at the “Astoria Column”:


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More on the performance itself after it actually happens. Also, I might go backwards in time to our show and day yesterday in Portland…but in the meantime, Polly has already journaled the first two days of our tour…

Tour Kick-off show in Oakland

The tour for Polly Moller and Company began last night with out kick-off show at 1510 8th Street in Oakland:

We were a trio last night, rather than a quartet. Guitarist Bill Wolter joins us tomorrow for the trip north.

I also performed a solo set to open the evening:


(Photo by Polly Moller)

Once again, I am playing the ektar (single-string instrument).

This is the first performance in which I used two laptops (both PC and Mac), mainly because not everything I wanted to use last night ran on a single system. I also took advantage of the excellent piano present at 1510. I improvised against the electronics, trying to match the timbre and “vague pitches” – the piano was also picked up by the mic for processing. And I opened the set with a brief rendition of “Alley Cat” (which has been stuck in my head after the bad kitty chaos festival from a couple of weekends back).

I will be doing another solo set for our show in Astoria, Oregon.

Intermezzo: Headphone Festival

Well the :plug3: headphone festival is done. Thanks to the deletist for putting this together once again.

I'm going to have to keep my report short, given that I have to focus soon on tonight's performance and the tour. So here are a few photos:

The above photo, which features Cypod performing, also gives a sense of the venue and how the audience works. The venue, “The Lab”, is an art gallery and performance space. The audience were clustered around stations where they could see the performers, but listen by plugging headphones into provided jacks.

Attendance was somewhat sparse, but people seemed interested. And the calm, sparser audience also worked with the venue, which had relatively minimalist media art on display, and plenty of empty space. All of which puts me very much at ease, it's part of why I like playing galleries.

Below, we see Bruce Bennet and Michael Zbyszynski performing:

And in the background is another friend no.e from Santa Cruz, who performed after me this year.

So here we are, all set up and ready, including the obligatory animals (cat and fish):

Unfortunately, someone seems to have gone wrong with the audio interface (E-MU 1616m) just as performance time approached – everything was still on, but not functioning, which I have seen happen occasionally with the E-MU interfaces and sadly means an embarrassing silence and reboot – fortunately I was able to recover by playing the evolver while rebooting, and I think the set came out OK in the end.

Unfrotunately, one of the casualties was being able to make a recording, so no podcast from yesterday :(.

But it was still and overall good experience, venue and people-wise, and thus worth the effort.

It might also be worth noting this was the first performance where I listed myself as “CatSynth” on the bill…

Weekend Cat Blogging #123 and more: An Old New Favorite Spot

After a major clean-up in the studio, the bean bag chair reemerged from hiding. And Luna immediately reclaimed it as one of her favorite spots:

In addition the great black-on-black styling, it's a comfy place to “nest”, whether just relaxing and watching me work, or taking a nap:

Indeed, Luna spent quite a bit of time on the beanbag yesterday, even well into the evening (while I was working on the headphone festival performance):

Cats can remind a lot about simple joys, like a comfy spot to nest.

Weekend Cat Bloggin #123 is being held by Upsie and Sher at What Did You Eat. Upsie is learning about the US healthcare system, and also featuring the “sight formerly known as ScamperDude” at their new home at CASPCA (Charlottesville, VA ASPCA).

The hardworking “cat boys” Kashim and Othello are hosting this weekend's Kad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos (it's already edition #14, tempus fugit). The Carnival of the Cats will be happening this Sunday, hosted by Grace and the Kittens. And of course the Friday Ark #160 is at the Modulator.

Preparing for the :plug3: headphone festival

This evening I set aside some time to prepare for the headphone festival, which is happening the Sunday in the middle of all the other craziness.

As usual, I am using a small rig, consisting of the PC laptop (with the E-MU 1616m and Emulator X), the Evolver, a MIDI keyboard, mixer, and of course headphones.

So this performance will use the PC laptop, while the others will be using the Mac. This means I have to schlep both laptops around this weekend, but what can you do?

I'm using the same collection of patches as last year on Emulator X, which on surface seems lame, but I think there is a lot I can do with them that I didn't do last year (think of it like a piano or string quartet). Additionally, I am using one of the Microkitty patches from the RPM album. And this time, I am going to be using the Evolver – I was little wary of doing so last year, but I have selected a small set of stable patches. And the sequencer gives me some beats to play with – I intend to use rhythm more as a humorous element in this performance (as in, “hey, he's using beats“).

I have a “script” that outlines the overall performance, with the details left to improvisation – which is of course what I generally do in my live performances.

Although this will be a fun set, like last year's performance, and not to technically difficult, somehow I feel like I'm not really putting the effort I should. And maybe that's true, with effort going towards the tour and finding employment. But we'll see what happens, after all it will likely be newer for the audience than for me…





Pinnacles East

On this rather dreary and anxious day, we take a few minutes to remember a much happier day from this summer.

That day trip which included the drive down highway 25 also included a side trip to the eastern section of Pinnacles National Monument. Both the east and west sides are approached by highway 146, but they are not connected (unless you walk).

The main features of Pinnacles are the volcanic rock formations that appear out of the otherwise soft hills of central California. They seem transported from the southwest.

This was a great day to visit the park. It was completely empty, I did not encounter a single person on the trails. Surprising, considering it was just after July 4. But it was very hot, over 100F, and that probably discouraged most casual visitors. Really not so bad, though, if one carries plenty of water and sticks to the simple trails.

Actually, for the middle of summer, things were quite lush in spots, and there was plenty of shade.

Even a few small critters remained out and about:

Although the wildlife and vegetation was interesting and welcome, the focus of Pinnacles remains the rocks:

Large boulders like these form small caves and tunnels beneath which one can walk (or crawl). There are also real caves formed from lava tubes, but these were closed for the season to protect the bats.

There is something quite rewarding about solitude in a place like this (as opposed to just being alone at home or in a crowded place). There was more of that beyond the borders of the park as well. Those who have not yet read the original highway 25 article are encouraged to do so.