crushing your bits.

Looks like I'm officially DJing again after an almost five-year hiatus? Sheeeeeeeeeeeit. I'm pretty sure there must be some upper age bound for this job, and I'm equally sure I'm approaching it. But until then.....vee dansks!!! Or brood, or, you know whatever.

26 October 2012: Delicatessen @ Wilhemina Pakhuis, co-produced by STEIM: CD release party for Bandwidth ft. Gerri Jaeger; Robert van Heumen.

14 November 2012: AUXXX presents 2 xxx 3 @ OT301, with Knalpot ft. Hilary Jeffrey and Jozef Dumoulin Trio.

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And zen I play guitar on 13 November at Zaal 100 with Ig Henneman (viola), Alan "Gunga" Purves (perc), Lori Freedman (reeds) and Anne La Berge (flute).

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the softer side of super hardon collider.

It looks like the Super Hardon Collider session is just maybe going to be made into some kind of release of some sort, hopefully mixed by Dog Faced Herman Colin, yay.

Here's a bit of it, mixed by Rune and tweaked by me, followed by an outtake experimentally mixed by me that probably won't make it in.

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Magnet Quench. (6.7MB, 2:50).



Suit Of Armor. (7.8MB, 3:23).



John Dikeman: tenor sax
Rune Lohse: drums
Mark Morse: electric guitar
Jasper Stadhouders: electric bass

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another look.

The Sleep Gunner is trying to record a record next week, and in preparation for that we're rethinking some arrangements. This is really just an impro that happened while I was seeing how my Octava condenser sounded with the dobro, and the answer is "thin and crispy". But the approach to SJC is maybe useful for something. And yes that's the sound of traffic outside.

Satan's Jewelled Crown. (5.3MB, 3:15).



 Mark Morse: dobro, laptop

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today's turgid episode.

Recording session this past Sunday with the beguilingly machoesque Super Hardon at Jottem in Wormerveer. Here's a tiny excerpt of the rough stereo mix, just a little Ferox analog overload added for that "we're really loud" feeling and some OmniSone side gain to bring the guitars up.

Blue Booby. (4.3MB, 2:15).

John Dikeman: tenor saxophone
Rune Lohse: drums
Mark Morse: electric guitar (right)
Jasper Stadhouders: electric guitar (left)

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de kortste nacht.

From relaxed 8pm soundcheck through scarily underattended 10:40pm opening notes (due to scarily lightning-attended storms maybe?) to engaging 1am Xenakis to desperately necessary 5:30am croissants and multi-amplifier guitar solos. To....yes, 12noon hangover. It was a pretty fun night. Also a bit, mmm, "special" due to the fact that this room is where we had our first gig together back in 2008, almost four years ago, and every time we play here seems to be generally pretty satisfying.

And in the aftermath? Spirits remain pretty OK, and Coming Up Next: the wagon. And two recording sessions. I'll take pictures.

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saturate.

An improbable glut/surfeit of gigs coming up. Yeah I said surfeit. Also, Sleep Gunner has a new website.

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23 Apr 2012: Oorsprong, Amsterdam. With Jan Klug and Bart de Vrees.
29 Apr 2012: Pakhuis Wilhelmina, Amsterdam. Sleep Gunner (Soirée Poirée).
03 May 2012: Dokhuis Gallery, Amsterdam. Superhardon (w/Jasper Stadhouders, John Dikeman, Rune Lohse).
13 May 2012: Budapest OV (SOTU Festival Amsterdam): Sleep Gunner.
15 May 2012: Zaal 100, Amsterdam. With Ab Baars, Michael Moore, Felicity Provan, Joost Buis, Wilbert de Joode, Jasper Stadhouders, Michael Vatcher.
24 May 2012: Bonte Koe, Utrecht (Casa Rosa). Sleep Gunner.
26 May 2012: De Nieuwe Anita, Amsterdam. Sleep Gunner.
12 Jun 2012: Red Light Radio, Amsterdam: Sleep Gunner is live on the radio bitches.
14 Jun 2012: OT301, Amsterdam. Light Metal Trio.
21 Jun 2012: SMART Project Space, Amsterdam. Sleep Gunner (Splendor: De Kortste Nacht)...SMART has a pretty amazing program that lasts from sundown to sunrise, don't know what time we're playing yet.

After this let's all take some time off.

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disable.

Above: today's recording setup.

Below: Let me explain. Though he's certainly made plenty of bullshit music, I've liked/admired/been confused by Keiji Haino's guitar playing in Fushitsusha for a long time. His solos (especially in the early live recordings) are totally mystifying: definitely arranged in phrases, but in a language that is primitive and atonal to the point of sounding completely deranged or chemically disabled.

It's a style that I've tried to emulate before, but only in a kind of unconsidered, half-assed way. I'm going to try and eventually record some more fully-assed attempts here, but this is the first.

Haino Study. (2.2MB, 0:55).



Me: Guild hollowbody, Fuzz Factory, ebow.

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factory of fuzz.

So after 15 years or so of coveting one, I bought a Zvex Fuzz Factory. The photo above is to document my settings for these studies. In a couple of these it really sounds like there's an effect other than fuzz involved, but there ain't: in the 1st study, the E and B string are tuned a minor second apart, so it sounds like there's a chorus or vibrato thing happening; and what sounds like a seriously damaged or unpredictable gate in the 2nd study is just the superball bouncing maniacally.

Fuzz Slide. (7.2MB, 3:01).



Fuzz Mallet. (8.8MB, 3:52).



Me: Guild hollowbody, Fuzz Factory, homemade superball mallet, glass slide.

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forked, forked, and forked again.

Two prongs to this one, thus maybe making this a mere tong not a fork, but: Prong 1: after watching way too many gear demos on YouTube in the past 24 hours, I'm getting inspired to do my own. Some vague concepts are emerging. I think the goal would be to make the format seem as "realistic" as possible (subtly annoying voiceover; camera focused on the boxes, not the guitar; any hand or foot appearing in the frame to make adjustments would be adorned with douchey rawk garb such as skull thumb rings, black fingernails, knuckle tats or snakeskin boots, possibly all of the above) until the playing starts.

From that point on, the idea would be to either A) test out gear the way I normally test out gear, which I'm sure is plenty annoying: looking for the most unattractive or least-controllable sounds; seeing what kind of piercing feedback/oscillation notes are available; etc. Or, B) play completely unrealistic things. I'll probably have to ask Grandmaster Flash to do some stunt guitar on this since he's got the most unrealistic technique of anyone I know.

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Prong 2: This track has been lurking around forever, and I'm posting it now so that I never again have to look at it and evaluate its "not good enough to share" vs. "I kind of liked it when i did it" status.

I think I mostly like it because I remember when I made it it seemed like a nearly perfect encapsulation of how I was feeling at the time. And yet, I have no idea when it was actually made. I know I did it in FruityLoops, I can even picture the samples on screen (sarod samples from a SwarSystems VST and cuts from Le Samouraï), but I can't picture the table my laptop is on or any of the surroundings. One explanation is that I was kneeling on the floor in my darkened basement in Atlanta, that would make it 1999 or so at the latest.

समुराई. (5.2MB, 2:15).



Me: FruityLoops.

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saturday night.

I find myself kind of accidentally opening up for Thurston Moore next Saturday night. Not just me of course, unless something seriously accidental happens: it'll be a quartet of lovely-seeming local gentlemen, at least they seem lovely via email, we've never played together.

And thus, we shall have a week of guitar studies/recordings.

SSA. (5MB, 2:00).



Me: Telecaster, ballpoint pen, SP-404.

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befoiled.

I am laughably, pitifully bad about getting music off of my hard drive and into a place where people with ears might actually be able to listen to it. This one is, I believe, the first time Santiago, Dirk and I sat down together to record in a non-gig situation. It's a project whose simple goal is to play with the instabilities of aluminum foil as an instrument preparation. We usually don't sound this "produced", this mix is an experiment by me, just some dicking around with Ferox, PanGloss and Omniverb. ECM here we come.

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Light Metal Trio: 1 (morsanek retro mix). (18MB, 7:51).



Santiago Botero: double bass
Dirk Bruinsma: baritone saxophone
Mark Morse: electric guitar

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sunday study.

Yeah there's a lot of synthy stuff up in this bitch lately, if you're here for manlier, guitar-oriented things, just scroll down 4 or 5 posts....

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Getting ready to do some playing that looks like it will involve some.....eh, electronics. Which I don't do so often anymore, and I've stopped using most of the pedals and things I used to use b/c fuck, they were all 15 years old and starting to sound like it. I mean, effects that sound 30 years old are fine, but 15...that puts us at an unfortunate moment in the evolution of guitar effects. I also just got tired of effects in general, and kind of stopped understanding the point.

But, so, now, in the interest of coming up with a new and useful effects setup that is both somehow good and also reflects my fatigue with "regular" effects, I wanted to try plugging the guitar into this Audioweevil feedback thingie I had going on. It's something I think I did with Minister Kebab once or twice but that was so long ago I don't really remember how it worked or if it was any good.

I've arrived at something that sounds OK but is logistically a bit over-complicated since it uses two amps, but it goes like this: guitar-->cube-->sampler MIC in-->sampler PHONES out-->Audioweevil in-->Audioweevil out-->sampler LINE IN-->sampler LINE OUT-->second amp. The cube wouldn't be totally necessary for live playing but kind of is for recording, otherwise you end up with a rather shitty dry direct guitar sound.

Anyway. This is a simple E-bow drone on a detuned A string, run through the harmonizer on the sampler. Then I turn up the Audioweevil and start knobtwisting.

Sunday Study. (11MB, 4:50).



Me: Telecaster, Audioweevil, feedback, SP-404 fx, reverb.

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in, out, repeat.

Went to see Christer's long, long-awaited show yesterday...I think I first talked to her about it maybe 5 years ago? I wasn't sitting in the best place: I couldn't get comfortable and the sound was a little unbalanced, both of which are kind of critical for a 90-minute drone performance.

But if I didn't have a perfect physical experience, the music itself must've made me think about something: I woke up this morning and did this longer-than-usual study while thinking about yesterday: can't say that the music has anything to do with Christer's approach, but well that's not always what inspiration's about now is it.

This is a BugBrand AudioWeevil (pictured, above) cabled up to feed back through itself and my Roland SP-404 sampler (the sampler is necessary for recording b/c it has an in and two outs). This is three takes layered together.

Hennix Study. (50MB, 22:49).

Me: audioweevil, feedback.



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cue exposure.

It's a bummer that Roland discontinued the Micro Cube this year: it weighed about 3 kg, so you could wear it around; had a 5-inch speaker driven by 2 watts of power, fueled by 6AA batteries. I always liked most everything about it except the built-in noise gate that you can't turn off, but oh well.

My point is: I'm recording with it right now b/c yeah, I can't be bothered to set up a microphone and my real amp, so this is the sound of the Cube going direct out to my soundcard, monitored through my stereo. It's like I'm in high school. That awesome hum is my Telecaster. It's such a shitty sound that it's almost OK.

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Cube Study. (7MB, 03:09).



Mark Morse: Telecaster, glass slide

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