Announcing the finished “box set” (online only, except by request) of An Evening With… All four albums were recorded in 5 sessions over the course of a sesquimonth.  Volume 1 is only Trey, Tommy, and me; 2 is only Trey, Melissa, and me; 3 and 4 are the full quartet (except for a couple of select tracks).  All tracks are improvised without parameters, other than instrumentation, and everything is acoustic—no effects or post processing, outside of the usual gain, noise removal, and a little EQ.  All lyrics on anything with vocals are stream-of-consciousness.  All four volumes are available at the store, for free listening, or non-free purchase ($1 per track, or $6 per album).

Individual album links:

Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4

Enjoy!

-Timbill

We kind of…recorded a new album Thursday night.  We didn’t plan to record an album worth of material in a single night; it just kind of happened. The first notes of the album were played a bit after 8pm, and it was all done in about an hour and a half (counting a 20 minute break in the middle).  The next night, as Trey and I were going over the recordings, we realized we had 42 minutes and change of material, and it worked pretty well together.  The only regret is that Melissa wasn’t with us that night, due to a previous, rather exciting engagement.

The end result is An Evening With… A seven-part suite of improvisation, all recorded in a single night, completed and published within 27 hours of its start.  The majority of it can easily stand up alongside our February release, Demons of Gyrophonia & the Rotatable Tremulant All-Stars, and we think the instrumentation and textures explored here worked quite well as a whole.  The album, like all our others, can be streamed for free online at our BandCamp store.

Enjoy!

This month, Gyrophonia has a new crowning achievement; a double album. 103 minutes + 14 tracks + all free improv + 3 two-to-three hour sessions + 6 musicians (including 3 guest demons) = Demons of Gyrophonia & the Rotatable Tremulant All-Stars. We’re all extremely happy with how it turned out–it’s obscenely good. Even if you’re not usually into avant-garde music, you should give it a listen, preferably with a good pair of headphones.

Images of the artwork and Photos from some of the sessions can be viewed here. We even have videos of the performance of about half the tracks. Man vs sun hasn’t uploaded all of them yet, but you can check out the videos for three of the four tracks that we’ve posted so far to MeFi, so far.

Track Listing for the album is as follows:

01. Hypoxia (Styrofoam/Bass Intro)
02. Heist! (Delayed Bongo Improv)
03. In the Region of Leeds (Accordion Duel)
04. Trek of the Nautilus (Theremin solo, theremin/flute/alto/voice improv)
05. Homemade Napalm, Pt. II (All-Star noise jam)
06. Bushido (Bass Flute solo)
07. The Dissociative Unhappening (Tutti improv)

08. Take Up Yer Cudgels (Bass Duel)
09. Ceylon Timaliid (Recordaphone/bass flute/viola/tubulon quartet)
10. Differential Spectrum Radiation (Bass/viola/flute trio)
11. Sanctus langanum Immolare (Viola solo)
12. Rhu-Zhi-Bureth (Bass/Bari duo)
13. Étude Chronographique (Viola/tenor duo)
14. Éxi Láryngas (vocal improv)

Final play time: approx. 103 minutes

Oh, feel free to buy it, too, at our new store.

For anyone on Twitter, you can now follow us online at www.twitter.com/gyrophonia.  It will auto update with info about new tracks, webcasts, and whatever other random useless info Trey, Melissa, and I decide to spew forth.

Halfway through February, I think it’s an appropriate time to announce that we are indeed doing an album for Record Production Month. Our first recording session was last night and can be viewed on-demand on our livestream page.

Last night’s session involved zero preparation and three special guests: Curtis McKinney on Bass with SuperCollider effects, Tommy Scheurich on Tubulon, and Dexter Ford on Bass with a pedalboard full of effects.  The sub-ensembles that resulted included a bass duel, a Casio orgy, a vocal sextet and a Flute/Sax/Guitar/Tubulon ensemble.

The pieces are yet to be named.

Timbill has composed instructions for an improvisation (for up to twenty performers) based on the Doomsday Clock entitled Gladly Transform Cold, Smoky Codas. We’ll probably run through that next Thursday.

I still haven’t personally written any music for the album, and I’m not sure I will.  Keeping the record 100% improvisatory has a distinct appeal to it, especially considering the timeframe we’re working with, and last year’s last-minute scramble to save several wasted recording sessions.

Besides, improv is what we do best.

We’re turning on the cameras tonight for our recording session. You should be able to tune in on our livestream channel. Broadcast start time is approximate, so follow @vybeauregard for instant updates.

Every month, the Oklahoma Composers Association puts on a concert featuring works from three area composers and an opportunity to talk with each composer about their work. I am recording these concerts and hosting them at http://oca.vybeauregard.net/.

Current features of the OCA subsite include:

• Program information
• Live streaming playlists
• mp3 (192kbps) and lossless FLAC downloads
• Podcast feed

It’s a great opportunity to hear new music and some insight behind these works’ creation, so check it out. And if you’re in the area, come to the next salon concert.

The Demons of Gyrophonia have been rather productive in the past few months, spitting out handfuls of tracks each week. Not all will be posted here, but once a week, we’ll pick a good one and throw it on MetaFilter Music.

As an added benefit, all the MeFiMu tracks are funneled into this handy podcast.

So for best results, add that feed to your podcaster/feed aggregator. Then you’ll have some delicious new noise to digest each week without the fuss of trying to remember how to spell ‘Gyrophonia’.

In the meantime, we’ve got more recording to do if that extended box-set retrospective is going to hit shelves before Thanksgiving.

The final version of our album, Jersey has been uploaded to our RPM page. It is 16 tracks and 59 minutes long, exploring the themes of Expression of Emotions, Chess, The Underworld, and Failure. Enjoy, everyone!

• Expression of Emotions: there are eight 30-second sketches interspersed between the other tracks, each exploring a different emotion.
• Chess: Each Man vs Blue movement represents a single match between Garry Kasparov and IBM’s Chess-playing supercomputer Deep Blue.
• The Underworld: A Pomegranate in the Underworld and Arcana Major explore these themes with a prayer and a deck of Tarot cards.
• Failure. New Jersey and Drew Carey are both failures in their respective fields. And that’s just sad.

The Demons of Gyrophonia are participating in the Record Production Month challenge (basically we get 28 days to write, perform, record and ship an album of 10 tracks or 35 minutes).
There’s a blog at http://music.vybeauregard.net/gyrophonia/rpm2009/ where we’ll be posting updates, along with recordings made during this event.

Three fresh tracks up today in Gyrophonia. An improv, performed with special guest Jesse Harlin, entitled Ballad of the Moose-billed Platypi, and re-recordings of ERS and I’m the Scapegoat (But I Don’t Eat Garbage). Enjoy!