Ball of Wax 51 Songs: Peter Colclasure – “Long Form 1”

Posted on February 26, 2018 by Levi Fuller

In this space I recently sang the praises of Peter Colclasure’s compositions for piano – which, as far as I know, are usually composed and performed in the traditional way of writing down music, and then playing it. “Long Form 1,” as far as I can tell, is a new direction in composition and performance for Peter. I don’t know exactly how it was written – if it’s a combination of composed and improvised work, or exclusively one or the other – but I do know it’s a digitally created collage of acoustic and electronic piano, different performances and elements chopped up and (maybe) looped and (definitely) laid over each other. It start simply, and for the first few minutes you might think it was just one deft piano player, but new elements arrive, strange non-acoustic sounds start manifesting, and you begin adding the parts up in your head and realizing that no one one human could be performing this piece. The overall feeling is beautiful, sublime, perhaps even meditative – but in a focused, hyperaware way, rather than a spacing-out and forgetting all your troubles kind of way. (I’ve never really meditated, so it could be that neither of these describes the actual state.) Whatever the state it inspires or evokes, I love this new direction from Peter, and hereby demand a full-length album. In the meantime, he’s generously given us almost 15 minutes of music to immerse ourselves in here. Commence immersion now!

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Ball of Wax 51 Songs: slicnaton – “Storch”

Posted on February 23, 2018 by Zach Warnes

From the opening lines, slicnaton’s “Storch” sounds like menace slowly being poured over a smoldering fire. I imagine that scene from Apocalypse Now where a sweat-drenched and terrified Martin Sheen makes his way into the jungle temple to slay his mortal foe, only to find the gruesome reality of human nature fully on display. No, Marty! Don’t go in there! . . . The horror! The fuckin’ horror, man.

Nicholas Slaton uses analog instruments married with digital manipulation to create vast soundscapes both terrifying and full of intrigue. Melodies fall into each other and disintegrate into sound artifact. Each layer creaks along with the anticipation of something truly terrible lurking around the corner. Hints of jazz linger from well-captured woodwinds before being washed away. Sometimes you can’t even tell what it is you are hearing but that only adds to this experience.

Even for someone who is not an avid fan of drone music, this track has something to offer an audiophile looking for inspiration for creativity or perhaps the darkness within themselves.

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Ball of Wax 51 Songs: Steven Arntson – “The Squirrel”

Posted on February 23, 2018 by Levi Fuller

A squirrel. A concertina. This is not a pair that should make for 11-plus minutes of captivating music – even if you figure in the fact that we’re talking about our native Pine Squirrel in general, and not one particular squirrel. And yet here we are. Steven Arntson has taken these two simple elements and woven together something beautiful and delightful – a doubtless exhausting, painstaking task that reveals not a bit of effort or strife in its final execution.

“The Squirrel” starts off slowly, tentatively. You might be a bit skeptical at first. “Is this it? This wheezy little squeezebox?” And then, perhaps like finding yourself in a Pacific Northwest wood, watching a little native creature in its natural habitat, digging up nuts, scampering over leaves and up and down trees, you can find yourself zoning out and getting lost in the moment, and then focusing in with laser clarity on specific movements or phrases. And then before you know it you’ve lost all track of time, it’s dark, you have no food, and the only thing to lead you home is the sweet sound of a concertina drifting over the hills. Or maybe that’s just me. Suffice it to say, Steven Arntson has achieved something remarkable with this intimately minimalist, charming piece of music. Repeated listens will be rewarding, I promise you.

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Ball of Wax 51 Songs: Virgin of the Birds – “Laura and Jennifer, Bright in Some Soft Sky”

Posted on February 22, 2018 by Matty P

It’s a semi-sunny sunday Seattle afternoon in February and the piano slowly plays its themes in the background. There are celestial keyboard-sounding chords fading in and out. I’m half conscious, like the music that plays. I’m reflective. It’s as if we were in that movie Interstellar that came out a few years back now, and we are in some weird new time-space dimension looking out onto the world that only knows itself in three dimensions. Everything is bright and still. I could be shouting but it would not matter because I would not be heard by myself or others. Never would I have thought Matthew McConaughey and Virgin of the Birds share so much in common. But seriously, Jon Rooney shows great restraint and patience in “Laura and Jennifer, Bright in Some Soft Sky.” The ebb and flow is not rushed. It goes at a natural pace. You can sip your coffee or tea and let your mind wander throughout this meditation. And then the xylophone will smack you like a zen moment. The listener is rewarded for venturing into the depths of this part of the song. The lightness carries you away. Trepidation, resolution.

 

 

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Ball of Wax 51 Songs: Andrew Weathers – “Walk Backwards a Lightning, Rattle Down the Sky”

Posted on February 21, 2018 by Levi Fuller

And now we pare it down to just the guitar. Longtime Ball of Wax friend Andrew Weathers beamed in this transmission, recorded live at Stanford’s mighty KZSU, from his newish home in Littlefield, Texas. Iit builds slowly, as longer works often do, with a repeated arpeggio played on a twangy electric guitar, slowly bringing in lower notes, a pulsing chord, then moving up and down the fretboard a little to toy with some melodic ideas before drawing back, giving us room to breathe, and then launching again into arrhythmic runs, arpeggios, and occasional bursts of dissonance – maybe a little Fahey, a little Ribot, but all Weathers.

Maybe it’s just me, but these 10-minute songs are starting to go by in a flash. Before we know it, Andrew and his guitar are tumbling down a hill together toward the end and I don’t know what it means, but it sounds a lot like “walk backwards a lightning, rattle down the sky.”

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Ball of Wax 51 Songs: great unwashed luminaries – Sunspace Quasar (for Miles)

Posted on February 20, 2018 by Levi Fuller

My word, has it really been almost six years since we’ve heard from great unwashed luminaries? As far as I can tell, that name last graced a volume of Ball of Wax on #28,  our excellent Dance Party volume. (Although we have heard plenty from the many-hat-wearing head luminary Kelly Minnis – of Ex-Optimists, Invasion Boys, and many other projects – in the intervening years.)

From the sound of “Sunspace Quasar,” one might think he smashed all his keyboards and beep-boop machines (maybe holding onto one key of one synthesizer for drone purposes) and holed himself up in a cabin or basement somewhere with an electric guitar for the past six years, crafting beautiful, melodic soundscapes and watching spaghetti westerns. Or maybe he just really wanted to meld his interests in longform drone-based music and badass electric guitar. Whatever the inspiration, “Sunspace Quasar” is a happy-making 10 minutes of just that. It’s a new turn for great unwashed luminaries, but not a surprising move from a man with a long track record of making fine music in many forms.

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Ball of Wax 51 Songs: Freeway Park – “Paintings of Famous Satanists”

Posted on February 20, 2018 by Levi Fuller

Freeway Park make their long-anticipated Ball of Wax debut with “Paintings of Famous Satanists,” an expansive, extra-dirgey version of their brand of noisy, dissonant rock woven together with the prose-based (but never prosaic) verbal arts of vocalist Graham Isaac. The text recounts, in the present-tense, a visit to a bar (adorned with the title portraits). Nothing particularly ground-breaking occurs, but our narrator tells us what he sees and hears, and the thoughts that the settings inspire (Kind of like a post-Grunge Seattle Karl Ove Knausgård, if you will). The awkward intimacy of seeing a stranger’s bra strap is touched upon. Read on their own, there’s very little drama or intensity in the words, but the way they are delivered adds a level of energy and emotion that needs to be heard. The way he hollers “I’m not even using my loud voice. If I shouted, I could clear this fuckin’ room” puts a smile on my face every single time. Unlike your usual singy rock bands, there’s no direct rhythmic or melodic correlation between Graham’s vocals and what the band is doing, but it all works together, and the ten-plus minute running time just blazes by.

I am very excited to see this piece and others performed live by the band at the Ball of Wax 51 release show on Friday, March 9th.

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Ball of Wax 51 Songs: The Luna Moth – “Paean”

Posted on February 16, 2018 by Louis O'Callaghan

Some music makes you want to be in a rock band.

My first thought on hearing The Luna Moth‘s “Paean” was “oh hey this is live.” You can practially hear the room, maybe even the rain outside, the dark. It starts with a Sabbath-like riff, on a guitar or maybe a bass, I can’t tell. The riff itself describes a phrase, the phrase sounds simple but it’s not, it varies precisely across multiple measures, and repeats at intervals beyond the buffer of my brain’s ability to track it.

There must be some math involved.

There is a musical break from the riff somewhere in the middle, an introduction of chords that says “there was a first half and now it’s done.” The second half is a mirror of the first, relentless, driving.

My inability to track the seemingly simple riff, and the variations of dynamics with drums and another guitar (or bass?), the presence or absence of fuzz — all conspire to make this song keep my attention across what would otherwise be an absurd amount of time (for the attention-span-challenged) of over 10 minutes.

The mood, it’s made for this time of year, this place. This kind of song can inspire a fleet of Northwest basements. I want to be in one.

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Ball of Wax 51 Songs: Nachthexen – “NightWitch III/draft”

Posted on February 15, 2018 by Levi Fuller

It’s been a while since I gushed about local guitar hero Bill Horist, and even longer since he graced a volume of Ball of Wax with his guitarical prowess, so I’m excited that both are happening again right now! I’ve seen and heard (and loved) Bill in many different settings over the years, from solo prepared-guitar shredding sessions to full-band skronkfests with the likes of Ghidra and Nervewheel, to his gorgeous acoustic ensemble album Covalent Lodge, but his Nachthexen project represents something new. I believe this is somewhat of a one-man multi-tracked sketch for a project to be deployed with a full band of the sort of brilliant instrumentalists Bill pals around with on a regular basis, but even in this rough-ish format, it is a thing of majesty, an epic and triumphant piece that’s not quite stoner rock, not quite jazz, not quite prog, but all of those and much more. And he even sings on it! Beautifully! I could not be more honored that Bill entrusted this diamond in the rough to Ball of Wax, or more thrilled at the prospect of this project seeing proper fruition. Somebody give this man a pile of money to make this record, stat!

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Ball of Wax 51 Songs: The Lonely Children – “Turnaround Phase”

Posted on February 14, 2018 by Jon Rooney

The Lonely Children‘s contribution to Ball of Wax 51, “Turnaround Phase,” is almost 13 minutes of slinky, spaced out electric guitar – like Ry Cooder sitting in with Luna. There are prominent lead lines and a pedal steel part that poke through the mix and sit in front, though the overall soupy feel holds through much of the beginning of song. Approaching the five minute mark, an overdriven lead part gets downright assertive and kind of takes over until the last few minutes. There’s more of a shape to “Turnaround Phase” than a lot of the more ambient pieces on Volume 51, and the guitar parts are more traditionally expressive and dynamic.

Maybe it’s the Ry Cooder association, but I feel like there’s something cinematic about this song, like it could provide the backdrop for a car chase or gun fight that slowly unfolds before getting out of hand. The playing on the track is outstanding and, while the blips and delay pedal shimmers play a complimentary part in the composition, the arrangement is really compelling. All in all, an excellent contribution from an imaginative group.

 

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