Scott Bazar and I have started collaborating. Our first track has some spoken word elements from me, while his foundation track was improvised, partially with a microwave rotator.

The first time I played with Scott, I was at a festival and in a small theater. The instrument he gave me was a prepared metal garden rake that was also running through a small guitar amp. Scott makes recordings, compositional games, instruments, and awesomely weird short films.

If anything, at least I’m having fun with this and I hope someone else does, too. My influences so far on this are (as usual) film scores, but I also wanted to capture something like the atmosphere of the William S. Burroughs recordings of the ’80s and ’90s or the Weird Nightmare record that Hal Wilner did as a tribute to Charles Mingus and Harry Partch. Come to think of it, I did to dig back into some of those Wilner collections again.

Check out the track. Enjoy! Or not!

Currently working on more tracks for this project and a new Stull track. Some writing may be cropping up more here and elsewhere, too. More soon…Track notes and words below.

Notes:

The initial soundscape was improvised by Bazar using a guitar, eq pedal, metal straw bow, and microwave rotator.

McClurg wrote guitar, bass, and organ parts and contributed voice and words.

Rebus

The book fell off the shelf
and I saw your name on the page
in sentences written a century before.

In the light late at night,
thinking about reading rather than life,
it’s dark except for the porch lights 
killing the fireflies. Wickedness can be bright.

A different life drawn around the angels’ names
in old books. Muses that Milton updated
and Modernism tried to bomb away.
The coffee’s gone and the candle’s out.
Sin is what the others saw.

It’s fall somewhere. Find a name in leaves there.
He had notions of letters in the oceans
and reading waves. I chipped a tooth on a tetherball,
but her nail polish rarely chipped at all. 
The broken pieces were on the inside.

Categories: Inspiration Music Writing

Tagged as: metal bow microwave rotator music rebus Scott Bazar spoken word

Stephen McClurg

I like red peppers and Jan Svankmajer movies.

1. Current Listening: May Day by Silica Gel

2. Current Viewing: "Uncle Yanco" (1967).

3. Current Reading: Ottessa Moshfegh: Death In Her Hands