Super Happy Funland, Houston 12/28/10

This was a cool venue, an art house in the warehouse district of Houston's Third Ward, Lightnin' Hopkins' old stomping ground. Unfortunately I was the last act, so most everyone there at the start of the evening had left, remaining were the duo Wasp & Pair (thanks guys) and the friend and bro I brung with me. It was a nice big room and it was a good move miking my amp into the house p.a.. Got a real BIG sound.





part 1

part 2

improvFriday submission 12/24/10

I started with Norm's Afoxe'percussion track from alonetone, sped it up and applied some heavy filtering. The bass is gtr thru octave pedal, detuning the low string, no fretting involved. Then some heavily processed/delayed gtr. I like how this turned out and will probably include on the next BL release.

Psychedelic Sleigh

Psychedelacoustic #6 is now!

My annual end of the year multi-genre musical spew is ready for your perusal. Colabs, sit-ins, improvs and other bits from the past year's adventures in the sound lab. Grab it here (it's free) :
PA6

Feed Your Head 12/11/10

I've come to accept the fact that no one really wants to come out and hear me play this stuff and I'm ok with that. Experimental music is always a dicey undertaking, and especially in the cultural mecca that is Texas, there's so much more stimulating musical fare to compete with. Anyway, I enjoyed playing for Chris and Elaine and hanging out in their cool hippie store.

FYH121110

improvFriday submissions 12/10/10

handheld cassette recorder, chimes, koto, filtered. Definitely some HIO influence here.

SHARDS


And a miniature Breaking Light loop

BL121110

End of Year Projects!

Ok its crunch time. In addition to the traditional release of my "holiday/end of year" cd, Psyche De L'acoustic (notice the new syntax), this year it's volume 6!, I have the Tonefreakin' Podcast #2 I'm shooting to have done and released on Jan.1 (2011 of course). As if that's not enough, I'm working on a new song for the RPM Holiday Challenge, which is a precursor to the big RPM Challenge thing in February. This song is inspired by Arthur C. Clarke's classic science fiction short story The Star, which is about an astronaut/priest who discovers the supernova remnant that was the Star of Bethlehem, and his resulting doubt in his faith. Obviously it won't be a traditional Christmas song of good cheer.

IF submissions 12/3/10

I cut up snippets of a jam I had with a buddy last Tgiving weekend and laid them over a bleep!Box app beat, with some Paulstretch thrown in. What a mess! Cute title tho, huh?

Turtlenecktie


Then I dusted off the 'ol Multikord pedal steel, ran it thru loads of effects. Unfortunately that ps has a bad ground or maybe just the nature of the single coil pu, but the recording is a bit buzzy/noisy. It is what it is.

Riding Rails

IF submission 112610-Vortex/Jumbie

A field recording/sound collage from last Saturday at the Fort Worth MOMA. Sounds inside the Serra sculpture Vortex, and the African percussion/dance ensemble Jumbie.

oMY

I've just discovered one of the most beautiful guitar records, ever! Bill Frisell's In Line.
His first solo release, on ECM, has some great improvised guitarscapes, alot of deep delay/reverb stuff, and some fine bass accompaniment by Arild Andersen.


..."The distance traveled from his first solo record, In Line, until today is enormous, and Frisell has shown such a broad scope in his playing. But some of his trademark features were present then. The playing is kept deceptively simple, with so much attention given to melody and sound. His thoughtful improvisations are creating contemplative and impressionistic soundscapes, and the result is very beautiful music. And the unique sound leaves a lasting impression on your heart. "I hope I've made some progress since In Line. In some ways, so much of what I do now was already there then. The basic idea was there. I hope I've gotten stronger. I think I have more confidence now. I'm not quite as afraid to do what I want."

In Line

How nice...uh, New Age?

I am grateful that I've been getting some mentions in the FW Weekly here recently. Here's an excerpt, describing the new BL album Proto-Sapien:

"What you may notice is that the album lies at that bloody crossroads of experimental and New Age — “bloody” because while we applaud experimental (Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream), we look down upon New Age (Yanni, John Tesh, Vangelis). Who cares about labels, though, right? Listen without prejudice, and you’ll find that Breaking Light (né Kavin Allenson) creates music that while atmospheric is highly durable and pleasing. He achieves his sweeping, airy sonicscapes merely via guitar and some sampling wizardry. Quite a trick."

And this week in the FWW Turkey awards, I was mentioned as an example, along with some other fine local artists, of whom local clubs should be booking, instead of the standard "Texas Music" fare. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

improvFriday submissions

I shall try to start posting these here every week, as time allows. ImprovFriday is a great new music site where participants upload, share and discuss improvisational recordings every week, from Thursday evening to Saturday night (the site is on Pacific time). Their link is over there on the right.

For this week, my focus was on son Eric's Line 6 POD XT which he let me borrow. The POD really opens a wide range of sound colors for the electric guitar (here I'm using the trusty Squier Tele).

PT's Groove utilizes Peter Thoegersen's 10/8 drum groove which he submitted to improvFriday last week.
I edited down to 2 minutes from the original 4:09 length, because jamming to the whole thing would have taxed the listener a bit much, being improv....I wish I had written down the patch I used, a nice distortion tone that worked well.

Pod Mind- used the Octave Bend setting on the Pod for this one, the pedal used to modulate the pitch bends. Using some slide and ebow, got some pretty wild sounds. Some live looping, reverse and half/double speed looping on my delay modeler (line 6 DL4).

PT's Groove


Pod Mind

And Then...

new one from

Joe And the Sonic Dirt from Madagascar

"And Then.."

Proto-Sapien

This can be considered the THIRD Breaking Light album release, and it is available only on the internet. No more of those shiny plastic discs for me, uh uh. As always, it's free. If you like it, come to a gig. Seems I have yet to find an audience..


Latest tracks by Breaking Light

Kayo Dot

This review of a Kayo Dot album on eMusic made me laugh. Then I realized he's describing most of the music I listen to these days.

"There are some recordings that people rave about that I hear and think “it must be a big joke”. Just because something is unconventional does not make it genius. Post-rock? Post-metal? How about post-post-post-rock. Or better yet, post-music. This CD does not have songs, it does not have compositions (which implies some structure or, at least, intention or forethought). It barely has anything resembling musicianship. The “songs” typically start imperceptibly quiet and impossibly slow and (sometimes) build to a climax of sludgy noise (or sometimes they don’t). Track 4 would have been almost appealling if it stopped at the four minute mark, but it winds down and then inexplicably restarts with a droning repetition of noise for the next....14 minutes. Which brings to mind another description for this CD: Pretentious. You know what it really sounds like? It sounds like a bunch of stoned guys screwing around on their instruments in someone’s basement with the lights turned out."

To be fair, here's a KD track from a different album ("Coyote"):

Kayo Dot_03_III. Abyss Hinge 1 Sleeping Birds Sighing In Roscolux.mp3

the rig for tomorrow's gig at Doc's

Rc20XL loop station
DL4 Line 6 delay modeler
Ibanez DE7 delay/echo
Boss Super Octave OC-3

iPod touch running Aura Flux app
paintbrush
slide (regular)
long slide (aluminum)
portable cassette recorder/various tapes
ebow

Epiphone Dot Deluxe guitar (not shown)

Exercise for Buchla and Nagra

Ok seems I've become a bit too self-absorbed with this blog so here's this.

Exercise for Buchla and Nagra from Giorgio Sancristoforo on Vimeo.

Breaking Light set at Hip Pocket

I've been performing the BL thang in the post-play set at Hip Pocket Theatre lately. (my standard acoustic set before the play). I figure what the hell, as I'm usually background music then anyway, unlike before the play where people actually listen and applaud. But I do get some encouraging comments here and there.

Petrichoral

Petrichor is a word used to describe the scent that rain produces when it saturates dry soil.

Another improvFriday submission.







improvFriday

new toy

It's a monophonic electronic device you play with a stylus on a keyboard grid.
Hear it here, combined with a synth app and police scanner, the stylophone is the buzzing sound that bounces between your speakers:

BL @ 806 in Amarillo, 7/10/10

This gig was the culmination of a 1700 mile road trip around Colorado, so I was a bit burnt out come showtime. After a xanax/chai latte/Dead Guy Ale pick-me-up, I was ready to go. A very laid back ambient set, more so than usual.

Thanks to Rene', Stephanie and Julianne for coming out.