Eric Cook: Audioblog

This is track one from an in-progress release, tentatively named ‘Mouthless.’ Five tracks in total, each fairly dense drone/ambient/beatless-sound. This one is probably the darkest & noisiest of the set.

I’ll post each track in turn here as I finish editing it, and then post a link to a full zip with final artwork on the discography. More backstory on this release later.

First, the audio. Two tracks from 1997, multitracked metal percussion and delays:

• MNML-02
• MNML-06

Now, the backstory:
These were included on a release-that-wasn’t called MNML — various experiments at minimal 4-track compositions. I put together a whole CDr package w/artwork etc, but only made 3 or 4 copies for friends, because most of it never felt finished enough to actually “release” (a fairly arbitrary distinction for a CDr, I’ll admit).

These were my favorite two tracks on the CD, and evidence I suppose that I still haven’t gotten my fill of the sounds of metal percussion in the 10 years since then, since it formed the base of some of the later Persona releases (see Splinter and Last Songs), and remained a key component/sound source of my work with Ben B. and solo.

I should think a bit more about why that is..

Another live clip from 2003, this time at the Detroit Art Space. Again, abstract electronics/live sample manipulation, metallic textures.

This blog doesn’t seem to be doing much to get me going on new music, but it has been a good motivator to post the old stuff that has been kicking around my harddrive for a while now.

Ben and I had a productive period of rehearsals and shows in 2003. This show (@ Detroit Contemporary) from July of that year is a bit more active/variable than the more edited material on the
Framed/Frozen CD, but with a similar palette.

Another old rehearsal tape find, from the pile of 4-tracks in the closet. A big loping Sabbath-y riff from Mike forms the pivot point around which Geoff spins like a crazed bee with a wah pedal strapped to its chest. Satisfyingly thick guitar tone in places.

Did I say that I was mainly going to post new stuff? Ok, I said that, but apparently I was lying. I’ve been slowly digitizing choice bits out of Gravitar 4-track rehearsal tapes off and on over the past couple of years, with a goal of …what? Putting it online? One more LP? Who knows.

Anyway, this was a one-off from a rehearsal tape June 97 that I really liked, basically a one-note drone jam: Lost Twanger

More of this stuff in the pipeline over the next week or so.

Murky ES1 drummachine, onboard effects. Original source sounds were from session that John D’ag and I did in early 2006, I think.

Johnd build me a really fun 20 Lofi Looper pedal for Christmas, hereby named “The Notorious R.E.D.” (Repeating Electronic Device). This video is a quick demo noodle of R.E.D. joining two other John creations from years past, the Transmogrifier and the Synthopotomus. (Takes about a minute or so to get interesting.) Now I just need to convince him to build me an amp..

I haven’t done much music in the past year or two, and am making a concerted effort to get back into the swing of things this year.  Back in 2003 (which doesn’t feel nearly as long ago as it sounds, now that I actually type it), I kept an audioblog of sorts, mainly of work-in-progress material.  This was a good motivator for me, and much of the Asymptosy CDr and the accompanying mp3-only “bonus album” Concessions and Allocations came out of that material and/or the Reaktor ensembles that I was building and working with at that time.

So I thought that I might have another go at an audioblog, this time with more robust and supported software, and see if it has a similar effect.  My intention is to focus on new material, but I may also be posting and linking to archival audio from time to time.

I’m going to keep the look simple and vanilla on purpose, so I’m less inclined to waste time futzing around with Wordpress, trying to tweak this and that.