Daze on the Mounts and Other Realms of Discovery

There’s a wonderful time during a clear morning, right before the sun comes up, that the sky is a twisting, fading rainbow; all the shades of dawn cradling the treetops and weaving the stillness into soundwaves.

If you quiet your mind and close your eyes, it is possible to hear these little tapestries rolling over each other like whales in deep water. Frequencies are being lit up by the freedom and solitude. Modulating and turning, stopping; then beginning again with renewed fervor. There is as much happening in the air here as in the middle of any metropolitan area, it’s just happening on a different plane. That is how I began to process this wonderful thing called noise music.

Listening to certain records, it is possible to see the artists’ processing of such planes, and then to view (or listen to) them manifested through their music. Now, if you read Arthur Magazine, specifically Byron’s and Thurston’s "Bull Tongue," you’ll see all sorts of words describing genres, sub-genres, and factions within each. I do not possess that breadth of knowledge regarding the myriad disparate scenes, but I feel like each document committed to vinyl, tape, or some digital media contains a unique vision of our world; a different person’s quiet home at night, when the silence isn’t silent at all, but rife with nightmarish infinity and the gurgles within the brain.

I’m certain that some of these midnight cassettes etc are blowhard bullshit made by Brooklyn scenesters, but even in their post-Warhol, dadaist constructions, there has to be some truth.

The recordings that have illuminated these thoughts for me are Dredd Foole’s Daze on the Mounts, the Black Dice Beaches and Canyons, and Tetsu Inoue’s World Receiver. In each one, the seriousness is undeniable. This may be contextual, but with most art, context can enlighten. I’m not exactly sure how I ended up getting a copy of Daze but it didn’t leave my stereo for weeks.

Then, out of nowhere, I end up running into the Dreddman himself, and I started to bring him up here to Peterborough to play shows. Interestingly enough, he brought zero gadgets or machines, and just strummed his guitar and let his voice howl the night into a warm analog buzz. The evening interacted with him as if he were a songbird in that early morning, calling out “I am a bird” as the clouds answered “and we are the clouds”, and the trees whisper “we are the tall swaying trees”. Every thing is its sound.

Article Author: Eric Gagne

Eric runs the the glass museum , which is basically his kitchen and a stereo. He is poor and happy.

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