The elusive prime transient, disoriented.
Pulling apart the threads to find new answers
– and new questions to ask.
I’ve for long thought that if one listens deeply enough, music is like a transparent mirror: a brutally honest lens through which to reflect both inward and outward.
For me as composer and performer, this has meant that – admittedly, to various degrees of success – I try to listen deeply to what the music asks of me at any given moment: what is necessary?
“The Weaver, Every So Often Shifting the Sands Beneath Her” – the third movement of Three Seconds | Kolme Toista and the second video and single from the album – was no exception. Written in parallel with “The Veil”, both movements started to whisper (even scream, at times) in my ear not only what was necessary as far as the instrumentation of the suite, but beyond that, which particular musician should play each instrument.
As the fragments of the puzzle started to come together, it became crystal clear that the bass parts needed to be played by no one other than my longtime dear friend KYLE MILES, whose deep musicianship and presence I’d learned so much from, having played with him since 2009 or so. From the moment he signed on, writing the bass parts for the suite – “The Weaver” and the fourth movement “Verso” in particular – was pure joy, as I could imagine exactly what was now possible. I’ve always felt that Kyle and I have an unspoken understanding on many levels, and having him join the nonet felt like the family was complete.
In my conversations with our drummer VANCIL COOPER I’d gone on and on about the music asking for “earth”, “weight” and “ground”, but “The Weaver” brought with it another unexpected element: water. As so many other things that seemed to appear from something subconscious in the writing of this music, I don’t know where the visual came from, but in describing what I was envisioning with the coda of this movement, for some reason I kept coming back to water, the ocean, and the feeling of washing ashore, which Vancil’s improvisation, colored by KEITA OGAWA’s percussion magic, captured more vividly than I could have imagined.
– A purification ritual before turning a new leaf with “Verso”, perhaps?
