Ball of Wax 65 Songs: electric bird noise – “won eht ylno s’ereht”

Posted on September 27, 2021 by Michele Khazak

Epic, funky, artfully disjointed, and even a little creepy, this five and a half minutes of madness from electric bird noise is absolutely worth your full attention. It grooves deeply and explores an aural universe of hypnotic harmonics and distorted solos. There’s structure there that stabilizes things in contrast to the wailing discord that becomes more and more dense and intense as the piece continues. The balance struck here is not a simple one to achieve, and electric bird noise executes and delivers with a grace and ferocity that can be felt. So grateful to have been turned on to this music.

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Ball of Wax 65 Songs: Keyboar – “Under Glass for Now”

Posted on September 23, 2021 by Lattney B. Jones

If I thought that I was 2 for 2 interpreting what the artists on the new Ball of Wax were saying instrumentally and sonically about “the future,” Levi throws “Under Glass for Now” in as the third panel in this instrumental triptych and ensures that I return to the drawing board.

I want to say a lot of things about this track all at once but I can’t quite get it out without my fingers stammering and tripping each other up. The song seems to do so, as well, although far more gloriously. It seems to start before it’s ready to start, with the tin clatterbox percussion jumping the gun a split second before a deep, rich tone with synth-and-stringed counterpoint arpeggios begins proper and presents enunciated guitar plucks crispy enough to plant you firmly in an amplified desert somewhere west of El Topo and south of Eastwood/Leone. Once it’s underway, though, everything falls firmly into place.

This is a 2-minute, 18-second final score of the film we’re coming to know as “The Future.” Like any epic audio denouement, “Under Glass for Now” marches the whole narrative of WHAT HAS BEEN before our eyes/ears/hearts, but shows us at the very same time WHAT WILL BE—but in such a way as to render us incapable of fully comprehending, the guitar’s sinister melody informing us that, when the music’s over, we’ll remember what we’ve seen the way we remember a dream by lunchtime (remember the arpeggios? Understated, dreamlike). This, of course, is by design, for we’ll be drawn to listen again—and again—gaining just a hint of something more each time but still unable to grasp the whole picture. Is the future as uncertain as we’ve always feared?

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Ball of Wax 65 Songs: Kora Karuna – “Kolombia Is the Future”

Posted on September 22, 2021 by Lattney B. Jones

The kora is a traditional West African instrument not unlike the combination of a guitar and harp and large gourd (though there is a lot more to it than my oversimplification) and the word “karuna” (or “karuṇā”) is found in Sanskrit and Jainism and translates roughly as “compassion” or “mercy.” Gabriel Bass and his associates in Kora Karuna create just such in atmosphere within “Kolombia Is the Future,” their lovely marriage of organic and synthetic, on Ball of Wax 65.

As previously mentioned, the theme here at #65 is “the future,” and the artists are free to pursue or express that theme however they desire. Opening on the gentle plucks of the kora and an alternating-current drone with oscillations and electronic spritzes and splashes, Kora Karuna invite the listener into a future of naturopathic spiritual cleansing and fern-speckled valleys, joined in here and there on what I believe to be a very lively marimba and a synth bass that holds the otherwise freestyling players together.

But before simply declaring that the future is a full return to the acoustics and hide-and-wood tones of nature in the spirit of reconnecting with that from which we all get our start, that buzzy drone shows up again to upstage the gang, at least for a bar or two. Electronics don’t belong in this valley, do they? Or don’t they? If the drone and synth bass were removed, the song would lose something. Maybe, then, the future is really a world of symbiotic codependence between man and machine and animal and circuit board and rocks and trees and electrons—not like a SkyNet-McGovCorp world with its envy and excess and demand for subjugation, but like a place filled with mutual respect, genuine extraself interest, desire to understand and help the community—“compassion” or “mercy,” even. Maybe Kolombia?

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Ball of Wax 65 Songs: autOaudiO – “untitled (wax mix)”

Posted on September 21, 2021 by Lattney B. Jones

Without lyrical content or even clues in the title as to what autOaudiO’s vision of the future may be as represented musically, one is left to invest oneself fully into the actual composition—and therein lay the rewards. Levi asked for submissions to this edition of Ball of Wax to revolve around “the future,” with no additional specificity required. That leaves the artists free to interpret how they like.

The synths that swim toward the listener’s ears at the beginning of this untitled track embody a liveliness, a newly-forming aural colony reproducing, teeming with life and survival instinct, their motility driving them out and about in various directions—seemingly random but somehow still organized. They’re allowed to proliferate, albeit placed gently to one side, and a blooping synth and trimmed beat take the central role on this beatlab benchtop, seeming to skip along without real direction and yet aligned to the aforementioned organism. In their symbiotic state, they bring us to a somewhat sudden primary analog motif and then, together, the various elements do that to which life is occasionally driven: They evolve. Bloops find their place as the backbone of an actual jam, the fledgling beat becomes an electronic four-on-the-floor, and our colony of aurobacillus chimedophilus acquires a new life complete with a silvery sheen and slow decay.

Lyrics might only have taken away autOaudiO’s untitled statement, which is as much mankind’s own statement toward this point in time as to what the future holds: Despite difficulty and hostile environments, life survives, even flourishes.

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Ball of Wax 65 Songs: Grumpy Bear – “Windows and Doors”

Posted on September 20, 2021 by Levi Fuller

BoW MVPs Grumpy Bear are back with the gritty, noisy, pulsing jam “Windows and Doors.” Yet again, Tyler and Lattney have conspired to find the perfect balance of sonic adventurism and pop sensibilities. The beat and melodies keep our heads bobbing, and the layers of twisted, tweaked, and tortured sound elements keep our brains reeling as we attempt figure out by what strange alchemy they managed to piece this glorious beast together. Depending on the actual manifestation of your current apocalyptic reality, “open your windows and doors” might not be the best advice, but it sure feels good to holler along with.

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Ball of Wax 65 Songs: Green Light Cameras – “Shelter in Place (Can’t Wake Up)”

Posted on September 17, 2021 by Levi Fuller

Beloved Florida pop weirdos Green Light Cameras return with the disco-infused “Shelter in Place (Can’t Wake Up),” their response to our call for future-themed songs. Retro strings and a pulsing beat keep this song moving through an ever-shifting aural landscape, as two vocalists unwind a love story set in the all-too-familar not-too-distant future portended by the current moment. (When you’re already living in a dystopian world wrought by madness and calamity, is there any difference between writing about the present and the future?) “Maybe when I kiss you we’ll wake up,” ruminates Phil Chamberlin towards the end, but his counterpart closes with the echoing refrain, “This is not a dream, we can’t wake up,” a sobering and increasingly common realization for all of us these days.

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Ball of Wax 65 Songs: Spinster – “Saddle Through”

Posted on September 16, 2021 by Levi Fuller

As you might have noticed, Ball of Wax 65 is kind of easing you into this future theme. Things will get darker, I assure you, but right now we must immerse ourselves in this lush, hopeful pop gem from Spinster. A single, glimmering voice starts us off: “Stranger, can you spare a moment?” – then drops us into a beautifully sparse arrangement of drums/bass/synths, all in service of the melodies and harmonies that grow and layer, until by the end you’re just swimming in song, looking up at the blue sky, and you never want it to stop.

I have to say . . . I really, really, really wish we were able to do an in-person release show for this volume. For some reason this particular song has me feeling that loss particularly hard. I miss live music, and I want to see Spinster play this song live. Until that’s possible, I’m glad to have been able to share it with you here.

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Ball of Wax 65 Songs: Tekla Waterfield – “New Skies”

Posted on September 15, 2021 by Levi Fuller

The gently optimistic “New Skies” is the title track of Tekla Waterfield’s brand-new album (the release of which she and her band are celebrating next Tuesday at the Tractor. You should go). As the title suggests, the overall feel is light and breezy, full of the brightness and potential in the big wide world (and yes, this album was written and recorded pre-pandemic). Acoustic guitars and lightly shuffling drums and Tekla’s sweet, high voice welcome you into a world of possibility, although the first verse does end with a gentle warning, as it takes a minor turn: “There’s no place to hide.” Which is absolutely true: The future may, indeed, be brimming with limitless possibility and beauty, or it may be a nightmarish hellscape, but we absolutely cannot hide from it. It feels a bit more manageable, though, with Tekla and her band holding our hands and guiding us along.

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Ball of Wax 65 Songs: Icarus Phoenix – “All the Same”

Posted on September 14, 2021 by Levi Fuller

For the newest volume of Ball of Wax Audio Quarterly, I solicited songs from artists near and far on the slippery, evasive, murky topic of The Future. Drew Danburry of Icarus Phoenix shared a number of forward-thinking songs from his brand new album No tree can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell, and “All the Same” leaped out to me as the perfect way to start off this particular collection. The tune starts with Drew setting the scene over chiming acoustic guitars: “When I find myself in suffering/when I find myself in pain / Am I guilty of dishonor? / Can I find another way?” Alternating between a syncopated, loping verse and a driving chorus, Drew lets us in on his thoughts as he ponders big questions – not just questions of life, but how to even ask or consider these questions themselves: logic versus emotion, reason versus belief. “What is wisdom?” he ponders. “Is it similar to faith?”

You won’t be surprised to hear that all of our deepest philosophical questions aren’t answered in a three-minute pop song, but in the final chorus – this song employs a favorite device of mine, with no two choruses the same – Drew seems to settle into some comfort with both the uncertainty and the present moment: “There aren’t answers better than what’s here right now. These sweet details I can hold onto forever.” Drew’s music is certainly one of those sweet details I’ll be holding onto for a long time, as we hurtle into whatever the future holds.

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Ball of Wax 64 Songs: Priscila Chu – “Falling into Place”

Posted on August 13, 2021 by Levi Fuller

Priscila Chu’s “Falling into Place” is not just the final piece of music in this sprawling web of an exhibit/game/project, it’s the final piece, period. The last link in the chain. The end of the road. [Insert your favorite such cliched metaphor here.] As such, there is no following work for me to reference here. No other artist (to my knowledge) has taken this beautiful piece and spun it into another work in another discipline. So, this will be the only piece in this 80-track collection that I will actually attempt to write something about.

Of course, the task of summing up such an enormous undertaking as TELEPHONE in one work – of any discipline, including book-length essay or novel – is impossible. But that wasn’t Priscila’s task, of course. She merely happened to be the artist tasked with completing the final act of interpretation, taking a story and a drawing that had been circuitously distilled from 900-plus other artworks and turning them into a peaceful, contemplative work for solo piano. You can feel things falling into place as she explores the keyboard – locks turning, memories awakening, roots growing. You want it to go on forever. And then, too soon, it all ends in a juuust slightly-left-of-resolved chord, leaving you with no option but to start back at the beginning. Whether that’s listening to this piece again, or starting all over with the Original Message, is up to you.

Thank you Priscila. Thank you to every musician in this collection, and every artist in TELEPHONE. Enormous, billboard-sized THANK YOU to Nathan, Katelyn, and the entire TELEPHONE crew for making this thing happen. I am humbled and inspired to have been a small part of this big, beautiful, banyan.

[Context: here and here.]

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