reconnaissance fly

Reconnaissance Fly and FPR Trio at Luna’s Cafe, Sacramento

Today we look back Reconnaissance Fly’s performance at the Nebraska Mondays series at Luna’s Cafe in Sacramento. We had played this series last year as well and had a positive experience, and looked forward to performing again this past June. And of course, I cannot turn down an opportunity to play someplace called “Luna’s Cafe.”

It was a hot day in Sacramento. Though I have to admit, I was actually feeling relatively comfortable in the evening warmth, and took the opportunity to walk around, take photos and experience the atmosphere. Inside the cafe, things were once again a bit on the cozy side.

But we somehow managed to get a keyboard, drum set, bass and concert and bass flutes onto the stage along with the four humans that were supposed to play these instruments. Interestingly, in this photo it seems a lot more spacious than it actually was.

[Photo by George R. Thompson.]

It is always interesting to perform for a relatively intimate audience in a setting such as this, especially with a program as varied as our Flower Futures spong cycle. People seemed receptive to both the more purely experimental pieces and the more idiomatic jazz shuffles, sambas and rock ballads. It was also our first show featuring our drummer Larry The O – I thought he brought a new vitality to our most rhythmic pieces in particular, such as An Empty Rectangle and sense iz crede nza. In balance, it was a successful performance.

We shared the bill with the FPR Trio, consisting of Phillip Greenlief, Frank Gratkowski, and Jon Raskin on saxophones, and after a hasty teardown of our equipment we settled by the bar for refreshing beverages, tasty snacks and the opportunity to hear this accomplished ensemble. They performed several pieces based on graphical scores (which I got to take a look at after the performance). The first pieces featured complex polyrhythms with occasional bursts, blurts and squeaks. Every so often as things built up, they would resolve softly, either to an anxious harmony or even to something tonal. There were moments of very defined counterpoint embellished with virtuosic flourishes.

However, the most impressive and memorable part of the set was when all three saxophones came together in a trio of multiphonics. It is a tribute to their skills that they were able to produce complex harmonic series, periods of unison, and intricate beating effects. The timbres moved in and out of stability, and at times seemed like the metallic resonance of a digital subtractive synthesizer. They went on for quite a while in this way, and I and many of the other members of the audience remained captivated throughout.

Thanks to Ross Hammond for continuing to support us through this series, and to Art Luna for hosting us at the cafe.

Reconnaissance Fly at Luna’s Cafe, Sacramento, June 20

Monday, June 20, is our next Reconnaissance Fly show. We will be returning to Luna’s Cafe in Sacramento for the Nebraska Mondays series.

Of course, we have to take every opportunity to bring new music to any and all venues that include “Luna” in their names.

This is our first performance in which our new drummer Larry The O will be joining myself, Polly Moller and Tim Walters. We will be playing our “spong cycle” Flower Futures, featuring pieces in a variety of styles based on spoetry (spam poetry).

Those in the Sacramento area are encouraged to come out and see us (and I know at least a few of you who read this do live and work there). For those not in the area, I will be live tweeting @catsynth with hashtag #rfly.

Reconnaissance Fly at Luna’s Cafe, Sacramento

This is the “official CatSynth report” from our Reconnaissance Fly show at Luna’s Cafe in Sacramento last Monday.

Luna’s Cafe is in downtown Sacramento, within a couple of blocks of the large park that surrounds our State Capitol.

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I had stopped in during then In the Flow Festival back in may, so everything was quite familiar.

Inside, the stage was…well…a bit cozy.

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We managed to fit ourselves on in an odd arrangement of angles and overlapping. Polly was in this small triangle of space bounded by the stage front, the keyboard and the drum set.

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The painting behind the stage is David and the Giant Under the Blue Moon, by Bill Carr. All of Carr’s paintings on the wall had a moon theme, which was rather apropos of the venue (although “Luna’s” actually refers to the name of the proprietor of the cafe and not directly to the moon or to any cats we may know).

I felt like we did not play as well as we did at the Outsound Music Summit, but it was still a fun experience, and we got a warm reception from the audience (including the other musicians)

We were followed by the Garage Jazz Architects, with Lob Instagon on bass, Chad E Williams on guitar and Mark Halverson on drums.

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They played a mix of covers and originals. After an original piece called “Butter”, they moved into a series of including an interesting version of the Simpson’s theme with alternate harmonies, and several other classic TV shows. One of the originals was a surf-style piece entitled Surf Orangevale. From what I am told, Orangevale is a completely landlocked area east of of Sacramento. Lob also recited a poem that he composed on August 9, 1995 after hearing of the death of Jerry Garcia – a poem he only reads on August 9 – with musical accompaniment by the rest of the band.

Lob also leads the group Instagon, which has a different lineup every time it performs. After the show he invited me to join in the next Instagon performance, which just happened to be at the regular Outsound Thursday night series at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco. That took place last Thursday, so look for an upcoming report soon.

Thanks to Ross Hammond for inviting us to play, and Art Luna for hosting us at the cafe

Reconnaissance Fly At Luna’s Cafe, Sacramento. Monday, August 9

Our next Reconnaissance Fly show will this Monday at Luna’s Cafe in Sacramento, CA.

We will be sharing the bill with the Garage Jazz Architects. The show is part of the weekly Nebraska Monday’s jazz series hosted by Ross Hammond. Our spong cycle Flower Futures should be an interesting contrast.

Sacramento may be a bit of a distance for a Monday night show, but there is no way I could turn up playing at a place called “Luna’s Cafe”!

Outsound Music Summit: MultiVox

Today we at CatSynth conclude our series from the recent Outsound Music Summit with my own report from the MultiVox program that featured Reconnaissance Fly, the Cornelius Cardew Choir, and Amy X Neuburg. We did feature a guest review by Joe McMahon last week, which covers the same show from an outside perspective. My own perspective is anything but outside, given that I was in two of the three groups performing at night.

This was a professional show, with formal load-ins, sound checks, and staging. Reconnaissance Fly features a full rhythm section, so we had a lot of equipment to set up:

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On the left is Tim Walters’ bass and Macbook running SuperCollider. In the middle is Moe! Staiano’s drum set, and on the right is my own keyboard+electronics setup featuring the Nord Stage, the trusty Korg Kaoss Pad, and the little stuffed cat for good luck. Here is another perspective with more detail:

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The Evolver was actually for the Cardew Choir, but I set up everything at once. One can also see Moe!’s toys and other support percussion instruments.

Onto the show itself. Here is the full band on stage, with myself, Polly Moller (flute/vocals), Tim Walters (bass), Moe! Staiano as our special guest “concussionist”.

[Photo by Michael Zelner.  Click image to enlarge.]

We performed a full nine-piece set from Flower Futures, our “spong cycle” featuring music set to spam poetry. The set now has an eclectic mix of styles, from experimental avant-garde to prog rock, along with latin and jazz influences. We as always with Small Chinese Gong and ended with An Empty Rectangle – we always like playing that last one, but it’s even better with Moe!’s drums! I particularly enjoyed playing the medley of Electric Rock Like a Cat and Sanse is Credenza – the end of the first piece, with free-improvisation on flute set against B-diminished chords, elides into an early 1970s jazz fusion jam on the same chord (think “Chameleon” from Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters album). This is a relatively high-energy and somewhat challenging piece, and while it was fun to play, it also felt good to then return to the relative calmness of Oh Goldfinch Cage, which featured samples of “human calls” for training birds to speak, with phrases like “Hello, how are you?” and “pretty bird”, processed with ring modulation and turntable effects.

[Photo by Bill Wolter.  Click image to enlarge.]

Overall, it was a great performance with a lot of energy. It’s easy to lose sight of that in the midst of playing, where one focuses on mistakes and challenges – personally, I forgot to check that patches for the Nord were all queued up at the start of the performance, and the heat from the lighting and large crowd added unexpected challenges. But it was received well by the audience (a full house), and it seemed like they were asking us for an encore!

The Cornelius Cardew Choir was a stark contrast to Reconnaissance Fly in terms of form and energy. Our first piece, Joe Zitt’s “That Alphabet Thing” was a cappella with a freeform structure. Basically, it unfolds by each singer intoning the sounds of the letters of the alphabet, starting with A and gradually working his or her way to Z. Everyone moves at a separate pace but mindful of others not to get too far ahead or behind, and there were a lot of fun moments of interplay among different choir members, such as back-and-forth with “Hi!” for H-I or “why?” for Y.

[Photo by Michael Zelner.  Click image to enlarge.]

We wear white lab coats.

This was followed by “El Morro” by choir director and co-founder Tom Bickley. The piece was inspired by a trip to the El Morro monument in New Mexico and featured the text from inscriptions on a rock spanning carved messages from two centuries of Spanish, Mexican and American passers by, soldiers as well as other travelers. Each of us had a set of inscriptions to recite on a single pitch per inscription, set against an electronic background of rocks, birds of prey and highly processed vocal incantations. This was a rather complex piece conceptually, though not difficult to perform. Because we were so involved in the performance and the conceptual nature, it is hard to know how it was received in the audience.

The set concluded with a performance of Polly Moller’s Genesis. We had seen a previous performance of Genesis at the Quickening Moon Concert. The previous performance was entirely instrumental. This time, the parts of the spatial and higher dimensions were voice. I performed part of “universal time”, using the sequencer on the Evolver as the time-keeper and performed various modulations of the tempo and timbre. Polly played the role of the “new universe” with a flute solo featuring multiphonics and other techniques. Tom Bickley conducted the piece by walking around the stage and carrying chimes.

[Photo by Michael Zelner.  Click image to enlarge.]

This was a very meditative performance, with the chimes, the flute multiphonics, the ever changing electronic rhythm and timbre, and the vocalists singing their respective dimension numbers in different languages.

The final set of the evening featured Amy X Neuburg. As always, her “avant cabaret” set was very polished and spoke well to both her technical expertise with her instruments and her versatility as a performer. She employs several styles of singing, often in a single piece, moving from classical to cabaret/jazz to experimental vocalizations. Her synchronization with looping electronics is very tight, seemlessly adding and subtracting samples and recordings within the rhythms and phrasings of the song.

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There were pieces familiar from past performances, such as “Life Stepped In” where she deftly mixes looping technology and theatrical vocals. She also did a few improvisational pieces, the first of which featured the Blippo Box. This is an instrument with chaotic oscillators that never quite sounds the same twice, but she always manages to control it quite well – in this performance she made it sound like a voice, to which she responded with her own voice. She also performed an improvisation with a Skatch Box which she made at the “build your own Skatch Box” presentation earlier in the week (and which I unfortunately missed). It’s hard to make a skatch box sound like a voice, but she could make her voice sound like the growls and scrapes that it produced.

[Photo by Michael Zelner.  Click image to enlarge.]

She ended her set with a tribute to Kim Flint, who was very active in the looping and electronic-music communities, and the founder of Loopers Delight, and who passed away after a tragic accident in Berkeley in June. He was someone I knew as well from both music and social events. Amy’s tribute was a performance of the first piece she ever created using the Echoplex, which he co-invented.

Guest post: Friday at Outsound: Reconnaissance Fly, Cornelius Cardew Choir, Amy X Neuburg

[While I work on the reviews for the Friday and Saturday shows at the Outsound Music Summit, we have a guest review from Joe McMahon, ambient music/soundscapes – pemungkah.com. Given that I was a performer in two groups on Friday, his review provides an interesting outside perspective.]

Friday at Outsound: Reconnaissance Fly, Cornelius Cardew Choir, Amy X Neuburg

An interesting evening of word (and other vocalization) related music. Reconnaissance Fly led off with their songs based on “spam poetry” – the sometimes strangely numinous texts randomly generated to try to evade spam filters. RF can, and does, play in a massive variety of styles, from samba and tango through pop, prog rock, and jazz, all the way to full-on avante-garde improv. These wildly disparate styles and surreal text are combined in pop song structures into catchily mind-bending conceptual smoothies. It appeared that the audience was ready for an encore, but time was short. The piece which included what seemed to be samples from a “teach your bird to talk” record and Polly Moller’s exceptional flute multiphonics and extended techniques was particularly fascinating, and Moe!’s drumming lent serious propulsion and quirky humor as well.

The Cornelius Cardew Choir did three pieces: the first was based on the alphabet and reminded me a bit of “In C”, as the choir started at “A”, both reciting the letters and making their sounds, the individual members determining the speed at which they moved through the alphabet. Charming and fun. The second piece was based on rock inscriptions; very dense and almost surflike; I had a little trouble spotting a structure in this one, but that’s probably more the result of a long day on my part. The last piece added electronics and flute; a very evocative, ritualistic piece – fascinating textures and quite wonderful.

Last on the bill was Amy X Neuburg, who wowed the crowd as always, performing, among others, several pieces from her _Residue_ album; her performances of these have evolved interestingly. In addition, she improvised a new piece on the spot using her Blippo Box and her just-built Scatchbox, and a tribute to Kim Flint the late founder of the Looper’s Delight mailing list.

A very enjoyable evening; looking forward to hearing more from all the performers.

Preparing for tonight’s performance

This week has all been about the Outsound Summit, either attending programs or rehearsals, including two rehearsals for Reconnaissance Fly and one for the Cornelius Cardew Choir.

For Reconnaissance Fly, We now have our full Flower Futures set:

1. Small Chinese Gong
2. One Should Never
3. Neat As Wax
4. Emir Scamp Budge
5. Seemed to be Divided in Twain
6. Electric Rock Like a Cat
7. Sanse is Credenza
8. Oh! Goldfinch cage
9. An Empty Rectangle

There is actually a tenth movement, but we had to leave it out of this performance for timing reasons. One of the pieces, “Electric Rock Like a Cat”, was first premiered on KFJC last weekend. And three others are brand new that we only read and rehearsed in the past week. This included a final rehearsal last night. Sadly, it means I was not able to attend last night’s performance, but the extra rehearsal time paid off and I think we are going to play a great set tonight!

Technologically, things are relatively simple compared to the solo shows like the Quickening Moon Concert. I will primarily be using a Nord Stage keyboard for classic Fender Rhodes and organ models and acoustic piano, with support from the Korg Kaoss pad on several pieces and a loop/sample playback application on the iPhone. Tim Walters will be using SuperCollider for signal processing alongside bass guitar. Moe! Staiano will probably have toy instruments along with his drum set. We don’t have any live processing of Polly Moller’s flute or vocals in this particular set. I like the way our music has evolved to require less feats of technology and more musicianship.

For the Cardew Choir, I will be performing the role of “Universal Time” in Polly Moller’s Genesis using a combination of “space like” and “drum like” patches on the DSI Evolver. Other than that, the set is all vocals.

For those in the Bay Area who would like to attend, the show is 8PM at the Community Music Center, 544 Capp Street in San Francisco. You can get full schedule and ticking info here.

Report from the In The Flow Festival

As I prepare for my next performance with Reconnaissance Fly tonight (details here), it seems like a good time to look back at last week’s In The Flow Festival in Sacramento.

My roadie friend and I arrived in Sacramento around 12:30 to the rather calm and rather pleasant jazz-guitar sounds of the Nahum Zdybel Trio. As we wandered off for a quick bite to eat, I was thinking how much of a contrast our own set would be. When I returned to set up, the ensemble on the other stage lead by Henry Robinette was harder and more driving – with much stronger drum, bass and rhythm guitar – but still straight ahead jazz.

[Reconnaissance Fly: (Tim Walters, Polly Moller, Amar Chaudhary).  Photo by Jen Hung.  Click to enlarge.]

So then it was time for us to perform. Our set begins with my graphical improvisation piece Small Chinese Gong, a complete 180 degree turn from the previous sets, though it does feature a short section of tongue-in-cheek early 1970s lounge jazz amongst the free improvisation and noise. We also did both of our rock-inspired pieces One Should Never and An Empty Rectangle (written by Tim Walters); a more refined version of The Animal Trade in Canada with both a bluesy “Ca-na-da” rock-out and an Afro-beat jam; and an abridged performance of our epic Ode to Steengo. All the pieces feature spoetry, i.e., spam messages that rise to the aesthetic level of poetry.

Our set was followed by Fig, the duo of Nels Cline and Yuka Honda. Their set started relatively calmly and quietly, but by the time I finished packing and had a chance to wander over to the other stage, things began to get a bit louder.

[Fig (Nels Cline and Yuka Honda). Click images to enlarge.]

Nels Cline alternately set driving heavily processed guitar rhythms and long virtuosic lines against Honda’s beats, which featured highly synthetic percussion sounds. Often, she was playing a Tenori-on, as featured in the second photo. Overall, the set moved back and forth between beat-based sections and “skronking” (i.e., arhythmic and often noisy performance with fast runs of ntoes), ending with an extended guitar-and-drum-machine jam with a more techno feel.

The next set (back in previous room) was Ambi, a duo of Stuart Liebig and Andrew Pask. As the name suggested, the music had an “ambient” quality to it in that the sounds created an environment for the listeners more than individual lines and riffs to focus on. The set opened with lots of one-off percussion samples with pauses of varying length, some notes being very isolated and others coming in small clusters. On top of the percussion hits were layered long “space-like” sounds, liquidy bass notes and saxophone. Gradually, beats emerged from the ambient mix, but the patterns were regularly broken by other off-tempo sounds. I did notice they were using a Monome, a complement to Honda’s Tenori-on from the previous set. After a while, the beats become stronger and more stable, but were again interrupted by the sound of a thunderstorm that gave way to analog-sounded filtered arpeggios. Towards the end, the set, which unfolded as one long piece, evolved into a jam between bass (Leibig) and saxophone (Pask).  It concluded with a driving funky bass riff, which stopped suddenly in mid-motion, an ending I found quite effective.

After this set, we took a break from the festival to explore a bit of Sacramento, including the immediate neighborhood and some of the downtown. This excursion inspired last weekend’s Fun With Highways: Sacramento Edition article.

We arrived back at Beatnik Studios in time to L Stinkbug, featuring GE Stinson, Nels Cline (again), Scott Amendola and Steuart Liebig (again). There was certainly a lot of “double-dipping” in the lineup of the festival, but that seems appropriate for an event focused on improvisation, and the performances among the different combinations of musicians can be quite different. L Stinkbug was, if nothing else, loud. Certainly, these are all very technically adept musicians, and the combination of driving beats and skronking should be relatively loud, but perhaps a little less so in this particular space. We moved back and forth between the main stage and the adjacent room to avoid the full affects of the volume.

If there was one overall regret from my abbreviated experience at the festival, it is that it was an abbreviated experience. I missed a few sets that I would have liked to see, including Vinny Golia, whom I had heard at last year’s Outsound Music Summit, and the Thin Air Orchestra, featuring many familiar wind players.

Reconnaissance Fly at In The Flow Festival, May 15, Sacramento

Our next Reconnaissance Fly gig will be here on May 15.

We will be performance in the festival on Saturday, May 15, at 1PM at Beatnik Studios, 2421 17th Street @ Broadway, in Sacramento. Too bad we’re not at Luna’s Cafe.

This is the debut of our new quartet lineup, featuring myself, Polly Moller, Tim Walters on bass and electronics, and Noah Phillips on guitar.  We have been perfecting our “Flower Futures” cycle featuring spoetry (poetry based on spam messages) and taking advantage of the sonic and musical options of our expanded lineup.

So if you are in the Greater Sacramento Metropolitan Area (?) on the 15th, do come check it out.

Reconnaissance Fly at Studio 1510, Oakland

A few photos and thoughts from last Friday’s Reconnaissance Fly performance at Studio 1510 in Oakland.

I knew that Studio 1510 had a great acoustic piano, which I wanted to take advantage of particularly for our piece Emir Scamp Budge which features an extended jazz piano solo. But it turns that they also now have an actual Rhodes Stage Piano Mark II. I could pass up the opportunity to appropriate it for our set. Here is the Rhodes with the E-MU Proteus 2000 and Korg Kaos pad conveniently perched on top:

Together with the acoustic piano and MIDI keyboard for a rather massive keyboard setup:

Click the above picture to enlarge it and spot the cat!

Here we are getting ready to play the first note of our opening piece “Small Chinese Gong”.


[Photo by Tom Djll.]

The set went well from that point. I have not yet heard the recording, but I thought the first piece, as well as “One Should Never” (which was about as tight as I have heard us play it), “Ode to Steengo” – with the interplay of the text, the Kaos Pad, odd drum beats and Tim’s live electronic processing – and “Emir Scamp Budge” went particularly well.

Matt Davignon opened for us with a solo set featuring a live performance on drum machine and effects processors.

This was nominally a performance marking the release of his new CD Living Things, although none of the pieces in the performance were actually from the CD. But that was OK. I particularly remember the last piece in the set for a variety of reasons, including but limited to the subtle effects in the music.

Thanks to Scott Looney and Studio 1510 for hosting us!