First posted on Mark Is Cranky:
It started in the middle of yesterday afternoon, continued on through the evening and finally, mercifully...ended somewhere around 4AM this morning.
A headache of monumental proportions. Though of the sinus variety, it reminded me of when I used to get migraine's once or twice a week. Not so much with the pain thing (migraines hurt much more) but with the feelings of disorientation and 'slowness'. I felt just plain dulled. If I'd let my jaw hang slack I could have passed for an older version of Napoleon Dynamite.
This morning I woke up realizing that I'd only had about two decent hours of sleep. Ughh. I don't need a whole lotta sleep but two hours is nowhere near the five or so that I can live on. Still shaky and mentally wobbly, I forced myself out of bed and into the gray, snow flurry day.
Ah, but what to listen to? Something jarring, so as to give my foggy brain parts a good smack? No, that would be kind of violent. How about something formless and non-demanding? Maybe Eno's Ambient 1: Music For Airports? No, that'd be taking the 'easy' way out. Plus, I might remain a smooshy head for the rest of that day.
The solution is music that manages to parallel what it felt like to be inside my head for much of yesterday. Gino Robair is a percussionist who is definitely not afraid to let his imagination take flight. Singular Pleasures is a fully improvised set of music played on Robair's collection of percussion instruments and non-instruments forced into service. Did you like to bang on pots & pans when you were a kid? Robair gets to do this as an adult! I love his attitude to this:
This music is improvised, both out of desire and necessity. I approach whatever drums I happened to be using as a set of surfaces which I "prepare" using an array of elements I carry with me. This often includes drums sticks, motors, marbles, cloth mutes, Ebows, brushes, small cymbals, woodblocks, game calls, dog toys, a suckerball, etc.
Article comments
1 - DJRadiohead
You do have to be a little intrigued.
I probably would not have been were it not for my enjoyment of Barrett Martin's The Painted Desert and Wayward Shaman's Alchemny. Both are pretty percussion-oriented records. I had never been a big 'percussion' guy but those two records have started to open me up to that.
I'd like to hear a snippet of this.
2 - Mary K. Williams
As usual Mark, your appreciation for music in all its forms shows in today's Listen.
I'd say its pretty brave of you to even consider this kind of music when your head was still recovering from the pain.
3 - DJRadiohead
Mark, I got to listen to a little bit of Gino Robair. I don't know what I was expecting but that wasn't it. I am looking forward to listening to those clips again a couple of times to get more of a feel for them.
4 - Mark Saleski
i should have warned you that there isn't much in the way of groove there.
i'll find the website that has the liner notes. you might find that interesting.
5 - harris
i have an old looking painting that has robair in the corner and was just curious if it had anything to do with gino robair?