anok01 Threat Level Charlie
track1 ( 8:08 ) track2 ( 10:07 ) track3 ( 4:48 ) track4 ( 8:48 ) track5 ( 12:19 )
after 9/11, i thought what is there to do? i could see the shitstorm that was coming, and i was trapped in between wanting to kick the world's ass and also wanting to bury all weapons and destroy the consciousness that makes war. it's my noise-love peace song. i spent hours in the studio at CalArts over Xmas break brutalizing the studio monitors, and ended up with 3 hours of material. feedback is intoxicating....
the piece started with a sheet of glass (at least the 2nd one still hasn't broken), an industrial gong made out of a floor drain, and speeches by George W Bush and Osama Bin Laden that are ring modulated together. i added some ambient recordings from a meditation center, the freeway, and the radio (i randomly came upon the Disney channel's AM radio station playing Lenny Kravitz's "I want to get away" in the midst of the CalArts sessions, which seemed all too appropriate). i wanted to situate the intentional musical elements within the chthonic environmental aural environment where i was while recording and mulling it all over.
i made some rough edits and sent some CDrs out in Jan 2002. somehow it was chosen to receive top honors at the Pediodic Sound Art competition at the Centre Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona in April 2002. in September 2002 i released it as my first CD, combining the early studio experiments with live recordings from the CCCB and KXLU
liner notes:
I love to play with dangerous things, to dare something to break in my hands as I seduce it into serenading me with its chthonic aural grace, because the threat of imminent destruction causes a people to behave like there is nothing left to lose, and yet then we hunker down in defiant defense of our pathetic civilian lives
Threat Level Charlie is a live performance piece for glass, metal and other engineered materials, space(s), ambient and sampled sound, body, electronics, programming and power. The title stands for the state of almost-highest security in the United States. To me it resonates as Business-pretty-much-as-usual: do whatever you can to succeed, invent marketable ends, defend the means; manipulate the appearance of benevolent omniscience. For all the maneuverings of upstanding citizens to wage a war with prgressive statements about liberating the women of Afghanistan, force-feeding suburbans, taking advantage of tragedy to forward a partisan agenda, terrorists-making and innocents-bombing, I play this music
My obsession with the innate sound of material objects, stress systems, chaotic structures, and feedback has led me to this unwieldy combination of materials and prgramming. I choose engineered materials that are emblematic of consumer need for protection and comfort, and make feedback, beat them with my hands, bow, breath, a visceral wail against corporate spiritual and political power systems
Glass is challenging to work with - it has an incredible ability to feed back at the highest audible registers which can alter hearing for a short period of time, as well as shatter instantly - a religious experience. It is a material more tense on the surface than inside, like some people. It is very sturdy - you can pound on its surface with your fist or a soft mallet - but nervous around metal or stone, especially at the edges - one small nick and it shatters. I am on constant alert, waiting for it to spite me again
Noise is more reliable. Ambient sound is a renewable resource, a contstant variable. It is never pure, never clean; it is inconsistent, chaotic, organic, essentially a biological model for what can often be a static, sheet-spread score of specifics and succulent pop morsels. It is the song of the universe, an oppressed signal
It is a call to arms to defy the command to rejoice sedate in a consumer frenzy and redeem the funding of military industries jonesing for a permanent fix. GO FORTH AND MULTIPLY (((CORPORATE POWER))) is the slogan of that tyrraneous pageant - or we'll bomb you into the glass age. All sides are righteous, all sides are right, all sides are wrong and need to get their asses kicked in an enlightened way. I shower a holy war of my own on their parade - may they interpret the warm golden rain as an omen. It is my form of poetic terrorism; I am guilty and I am glad
bob bellerue / halfnormal 2002