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.

+++

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.

+++

in the weeds again.

I guess I'm just trying to get these off my chest, maybe it's a cleansing thing.

These are primarily solo guitar pieces using AudioMulch, recorded in 2002-2003, and stylistically they have almost nothing to do with me anymore. Why am I dispensing them in this seemingly random or at least non-sequential order one might wonder, and the answer is I don't know.

This block of recordings is kind of an uncomfortable thing to share, because although I think there are a couple of moments worth preserving, my guitar playing was really in a total Shambles of Derivativity at the time, and for me these recordings are largely the sound of frustration, documenting some of the first tentative attempts to start figuring out a way out of the hole I was in, or, yeah, out of the weeds I guess.

+++

Morsanek: In The Weeds I (1:55), 4.4MB.

Morsanek: In The Weeds II (4:37), 10.6MB.

Morsanek: In The Weeds X (4:41), 10.7MB.

Morsanek: In The Weeds XIV (7:31), 17.2MB.

Mark Morse: guitar, AudioMulch, FruityLoops programming.

+++

in the weeds vi.

Still cleaning, still turning up old tracks. This is another from 2002-2003. There was a greater concept for these bits, but I was struggling with a multitude of factors at the time and nothing ever happened, a situation which could hardly be more generic, I know. But now that there is no greater concept, especially now that there's no visual component, I'm thinking about detaching that now-not-so-necessary generic beat underneath. I should also just totally ignore this overwhelming compulsion to fuck with old recordings.

Morsanek: In The Weeds VI (7:55), 17MB.

Mark Morse: guitar, AudioMulch, programming.

+++

archival footage.

Just unearthed a couple of old hard drives, I'll be posting some previously unpublished things here in a few, just 'cause. Most of this stuff should be from the period 2001-2005, years in which I was mired in a massive creative crisis and had almost completely stopped playing guitar, except to use it as an input to the AudioMulch patches I was semi-obsessively building.

+++

Morsanek: In The Weeds IV (2:46), 6.3MB.

Mark Morse: guitar, AudioMulch.

+++

rummage sale.

Photo: Andy Moor. Cleaning out an old DJ hard drive and found this mix that's a good snapshot of what I was listening to in 2004. Features alva.noto, Peter Warren & Matt Samolis, Senking, Xerophonics, Leviathan, Philip Jeck, Suicide, David Dunn, Paul Lemos, Porter Ricks, Dymaxion, some Sardinian acapella shit, Dalek, Merzbow, Broklyn Beats, Team Shadetek, Moblin...and that's just what I can identify/remember. This was mixed live @ OT301 in Amsterdam in late 2004, I also seem to remember running this whole thing through my guitar effects rig for "added excitement", but due to poor planning by me the recording was straight off the laptop so we just get the unmolested tunes.

(dj) morsanek: the ubertomb, 59MB.

+++

remix repost.

Since my other blog that used to host this info is now toast, I'm reposting a pocket of info about the My Life in the Bush of Ghosts remix I did in 2006 for Disquiet (here's some background).

Listening to the remix now, I find it to be an encapsulation of most of the recurring problems with the Morsanek approach circa 2006: arresting, pretty cohesive beginning; weaker, meandering middle; practical but unsatisfying ending.

I'm not sure that I ever did figure out how to avoid these pitfalls, but if I ever decide to learn from my mistakes, this is as good an illustration of them as any.

Here's most of the original post.

+++

This post is mostly to make sure that everyone is credited properly....large thanks again to everyone who donated their music to this mix. Any sound not sourced from the below is either from the Eno/Byrne tracks or my guitar and/or digitally mucking about.

Initial bewildered feedback about the remix suggests that I should mention a couple of things: I didn't really listen to more than a few seconds of the originals before I started (no remixes either), only the multitrack source files...a few seconds after I started listening to the originals I realized I didn't want to know what parts were where in the originals...start, finish, foreground, dominant, etc. I wanted everything to have equal potential value.

Thanks again to Marc at Disquiet for initiating this exercise and for asking me to participate. Here's the finished version.

+++

morsanek: the black isle (full version). (192kbps)



+++

Source recordings:

"Sociologist", "Artist", and "Blindman" from Wordless by Yannis Kyriakides, (c) 2006. Used with permission. Yannis Kyriakides: electronics and field recordings.

"Shell Fish" and "Wet My Shelf" from All by Myshelf by Alan "Gunga" Purves, (c) 2005. Used with permission. Alan "Gunga" Purves: percussion.

"Madang" from Krang by Ab Baars, (c) 1989. Used with permission. Ab Baars: tenor saxophone.

"Solos #1", "Solos #3", and "Solos #4" from Solos by Michael Fischer, (c) 2002. Used with permission. Michael Fischer: tenor saxophone.

"Zombie Love", composer Hilary Jeffery, (c) 2005. Used with permission. Vanessa Vromans: violin. Elisabeth Reiter: violin. Yoos Moghaddam viola. Kumi Kondo: cello. Hilary Jeffery: electronics.

"Krimp" from 7 CC in IO by Cor Fuhler, (c) 1995. Used with permission. Cor Fuhler: prepared piano.

+++

another non-invite.

It's on again (background here).

+++

distressed.

Almost a year ago I very quietly released a split LP on the vinyl-only Kazemat label. As an anniversary present to myself I wanted to re-release it digitally via some sort of conceptually relevant and ambitious analog remix: tiny speakers in seashells; surveillance microphone recordings, etc.

None of that stuff happened. I originally constructed this track as a sort of imagined beachtown noir; this simply "distressed" version aims for the kind of lo-fi audio experience a viewer might have on a late and lonely night in a run-down oceanfront motel via YouTube.

Morsanek: The Vacation (Low Bit Distress mix) 19:20, 45MB.

MEM: all instruments, editing, recording, etc. Except for a couple of tiny non-musical samples that I stole from a movie or two or three or four. Free copy of the LP to anyone who can name two of the movies.

+++

extract of invitation.

This is a seven minute edit of our hour-long piece this is hardly an invitation. The edit (not done by us) does an amazing job of not giving you any context for anything that happens onstage, but luckily includes a full minute of us taking bows afterwards. I imagine that we'll have our own comparatively useful edit up here in the next couple of weeks.

And here's the first bit of unfinished music I'm posting from the piece, this would be The End:

Morsanek: perishing party (5:54)

+++

arrangements in public.

This is Kenzo Kusuda at the Jewish Historical Museum last week performing to a (now rather old) DJ mix of mine called Arrangements, all of which is also part of the My Name is Spinoza festival. For some of the clip you can hear the audio as the headphoned audience could, and for some of the clip you're in the position of non-audio participant, at least I think that's what's happening...I wasn't there for the performance myself unfortunately.

+++

this is hardly an invitation.

this is a perishing party...
this is a festivity lab...
this is hardly an invitation


+++

a performance by/with Hillary Blake Firestone & Morsanek
i.k.v. My Name is Spinoza Festival

Grand Theater Groningen May 19 @ 20.30h
Frascati Amsterdam May 22, 23 @ 21h

Light design: Floriaan Ganzevoort
Thanks: Keren Levi, Mara Tomanek, Jeroen Kimman, Jordis Jabuzichek

Made possible with the support of SKOR, Grand Theater Groningen, DWA and the Violet Bureau

+++

We need maracas
We need mutton
We need garish
We need gaudy
We need a reason to get drunk on a Tuesday
We need a reason to be childishly guileless
We need a reason to get in a fight
We need a reason for ABBA
We need a reason for orange
We need to practice being a corpse
We need a reason for marzipan teeth
We need fringe
We need food fights
We need a reason to think about decay
We need a reason for love letters
We need a reason for lapdance
We need a reason for limbo
We need a reason to get in over our heads
We need seduction
We need surrender
We need a reason for human target practice
We need a reason to spike the punch

this is hardly an invitation is a collaboration between sound artist Morsanek (aka Mark Morse) and choreographer Hillary Blake Firestone. Commissioned to create a performance inspired by Deleuze & Guattari’s concept of the Body without Organs, the two distilled from the text the unlikely combination of festivity as theme and laboratory as location. Joined by light designer Floriaan Ganzevoort, the group inaugurated a Festivity Lab, a liminal space devoted to testing the mechanisms of celebration.

The performance itself takes place within this oddly clinical disco. Exploring the imaginative flow and reconstructive energy that define festivity, the performers propose dry-humoured experiments where various hypotheses are tested…some of which are bound to fail.

The result is equally visual, musical and physical: a solo parade; a funny-sad spectacle; a lonely party for two people and their public, tinged with the recognition that within every celebration, along with the eternal, there is an inevitable suggestion of the perishing. Hoera.

+++



Hillary Blake Firestone (USA, 1974) is a choreographer, performer, and teacher, based in Amsterdam since 1999. After studying Dance Performance/Composition and Literature in New York, she began making her own work, first with the dance/theatre collective Unexpected Company. Since moving to the Netherlands, she has worked in collaboration with choreographers, composers, musicians, and visual artists. The relationship between movement and sound is one of the primary focuses of her work. To this end, she often makes use of simple objects and complex music.

Mark Morse aka Morsanek (USA, 1969) is an improvising guitarist, DJ, and sound editor who builds his own source material through a variety of prepared guitars, customized software, and feedback generators, and then painstakingly assembles dense narratives that draw on techniques from film editing, field recordings, and DJ mixing. His new LP on the Dutch label Kazemat has been called "a fascinating puzzle" (Gonzo Circus).

+++