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

+++

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.

+++

GLDMOG 2.0.

.

Sleep Gunner is at OT301 with Duke Garwood this Wednesday (1 June)...please come on out if you're not doing one of the other 17 things that are going on that night.

+++

honeytone meltdown.

(Photo: Raymond van Mil)

This is the encore from last Friday's Sleep Gunner gig at SMART. I was quite ill, victim of some kind of food poisoning thing, and I think my playing reflects a certain inner toxicity here. Since someone's already asked: besides a little tremelo at the beginning, there are no effect pedals here, just feedback and that underused bit of real estate on your guitar, the tone knob.

Sleep Gunner: Satan's Jeweled Crown (4:38).



Jeroen Kimman: harmonium
Mark Morse: guitar, handheld amplifier

+++

in the silvery moonlight.

UPDATE: Jeroen has uploaded a few properly-normalized excerpts from the gig on his new blog.

+++

Until I have time to do something friendlier to it, here's the unadulterated audio from Sleep Gunner's last gig at DNK. Unadulterated in that you get two minutes of crowd chatter before we're even onstage.

The tempos are sprightly, the sound is very honest, and the highlight is probably the encore, a pretty funny never-really-played-before omnichord/feedback version of Satan's Jeweled Crown at 28:56. Also nice to hear people giggling at hocketing @ 7:45. Really, only at DNK do you get props for hocketing and feedback.

sleep gunner live @ DNK 32:13, 59MB.

+++

high lonesome.

Sleep Gunner is working working day and night on rehearsals/music for The High Lonesome, a piece by choreographer Hillary Blake Firestone for Conny Janssen Danst. The High Lonesome opens in Rotterdam on 10 December.

+++

The High Lonesome

Square Dancing: an American folkdance based on constantly shifting group patterns, whose beauty is refined spatial virtuosity. Sleep Gunner: two Amsterdam-based guitar players devoted to the complex harmonies of 1950s Alabama heartbreak duo The Louvin Brothers. The High Lonesome: a performance that takes its inspiration, forms, physicality and pleasure from Square Dance; its four songs -with lyrics of longing for home and memories of familiar things- from the Louvins' catalog; and its structure from a country jamboree. Or, The High Lonesome: a band of six whose numbers are all about one thing: space and place, presence and absence, longing and belonging.

Credits:
title: the high lonesome
choreography: hillary blake firestone i.s.m. the performers
performers: winston arnon, yanaika holle, jeroen kimman, lola mino, mark morse, christiana ruggieri
music/arrangements: sleep gunner (jeroen kimman & mark morse)
original songs: Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar, Kentucky, Alabama & Southern Moon, recorded by The Louvin Brothers
length: 20 minutes
thanks to maurits van geel

+++

superstardom, imminent.

For more spills and thrills, there is now a Sleep Gunner website.

+++

detritus.

Above: LYSN in Berlin, approaching the limits of our tolerance for promo photos.

Below: Ongoing warts-and-all documentation of the summer and fall's efforts, for better or for worse.

+++

+++

+++

The Family Tapes. Rehearsal Recording. June 2008.

"Funnel Cloud"

"Machine Oil"

"Mutiny"

"Harakiri"

• Alfredo Genovesi: guitar
  
• Jeroen Kimman: guitar
  
• Jasper Stadhouders: guitar
  
• Raphael Vanoli: guitar
  
• Mark Morse: guitar
  

+++
+++
+++

LYSN live at the ADM Festival, Amsterdam: "A Drone Moment". 31 August 2008.

• Hilary Jeffery: trombone, tromboscillator
  
• Alfredo Genovesi: guitar
  
• Charlotte Cegarra: voice
  
• Seamus Cater: harmonica
  
• Mark Morse: guitar
  

+++
+++
+++

sleepgunner live in Kikker Theater, Utrecht. 24 Sept 2008.

"New Partner Waltz". (Mark: main melody, tremelo gtr; Jeroen: tele solo)

"Lorene" (Jeroen: ebow/slide, non-slide melody; Mark: ebow/harmonizer, slide melody)

• Jeroen Kimman: guitar
  
• Mark Morse: guitar

+++
+++
+++