Tennish

[bryan.helm@dinosaur.com]

What am I listening too? Truth be known...

1. The difference between the way the train horn resonates 
now as opposed to mid summer, the absence of leaves, the
presence of snow, all the variations of the way the engineer
signals with it, how it blends in with whatever I'm listening
to, how it sounds at my house as opposed to other parts of
town or out on the plains. The tracks are a mile away and the
stereo is glorious.

2. My aging clothes dryer which (my brother tells me) is wearing
out a bearing, hence the wonderfull polyrhytmic tumbling antics
that erupt every new load of clothes dryed( with 2 boys 8 & 13 yrs
dirty clothes are plentiful). Latin jazz seems to benefit most 
directly from this device's ambience.

3. Various and sundry video game soundtracks as it were, my
personal favorite is the music for the N-64 Star Wars game
which almost makes John Williams an ambient artist, or
at least a minimalist if you just let the game idle. I don't
play but listening is cool.

4. My last few looping adventures, gotta work on shorter
pieces, the minutes add up fast. Trying to utilize more
varied and shorter duration loops to expand the pallette
in lieu of expanding the loop memory (pronounced $$$$).
Enjoying the results of Vortexing slowed down sounds
on the EH-16, big metal scraping noises, a prepared 11
string guitar. The same set-up was great for this years
Halloween tape, this years victim the Tocatta and Fugue
married with screams and laughs thru twisted pitch fits
and scary synth noise, apologies to J.S.B.

5. Sylvian/Fripp- Damage---If you want to hear R.F. really
play with enthusiasm, this and the live League of Gentleman
disc are among the best examples released in recent years.
Though the performances are I think 14 years apart, and the
bands, instrumentation and intent are quite different, I think
both these recordings are great examples of Fripp's tactal 
and textural control as a guitarist, and "Damage" shows in
a wonderfully lush way how powerful loops are as part of
a multi-instrument configuration.

6. Lol Creme & Kevin Godley---visionary misfits on vinyl
still shine brightly..."Consequences"...the whole catalog
of the doowop-R&B Hebrew duo is still viable listening.
And talk about production technique....for the time.....

7. Walter/Wendy Carlos-- Different titles but specificly the
piece titled "Timesteps" from the "Clokwork Orange" album
by Carlos (the edited version appears on the soundtrack lp).
Pioneering tales from analog land.

8.Thelonius Monk- "Solo Monk"--This collection of tunes
just keeps getting better.Nobody like him!

9.The Finn Brothers-- In Split Enz,Crowded House, Tim and
Neil always entertain and amuse, and the live duo show was
one of the most musically entertaining concerts that I've been
to over the last 25 years.

10.Suzanne Vega- "Nine Objects of Desire"----The marriage literally
and figurtively of S.Vega to one Mitch Froom and his accompanying
techniques and devices make this disc very listenable,smart and
sincere.

It's no Top-10, but it's what got heard most recently here...

                                                                          
Bryan
Helm
                                                                        
Techno-Primitive
                                                                         
Longmont,CO

"Outside of a dog, a man's best friend is a good book.
  Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." G. Marx