Curious Automata will no longer be selling CDs on Amazon starting June 1st, 2021. We will have options for physical media sans that sweet Prime shipping. So if you’ve been meaning to pick up a shiny disk or two, you’d best shop this list now.
Category: News
New Release: Spring Cleaning by Tim Carmichael and Vic Dillahay
Tim Carmichael and I have a new album! We decided to celebrate getting vaccinated and things starting to open up with a bit of free improvisation. We hadn’t played together since recording Graphite’s Thoughtful Departure in February of 2020 but we weren’t too rusty and the ideas still flowed. As Tim says in the liner notes “When you listen to this album imagine yourself getting together with a friend over a cup of coffee to catch up and enjoy the stories of your life’s journey. And, ideally, you will enjoy listening to this album with a great friend.”
Check it out at Bandcamp, on CD, or the music service of your choice!
“Improrealization” at All About Jazz
Graphite Addiction’s “Improrealization” is the Track of the Day at All About Jazz!
New Release: Thoughtful Departure by Graphite Addiction
Also Available From: Amazon | Catapult
Thoughtful Departure at Curious Automata
Graphite has a new album! On February 15th, 2020 we went into the studio to finish recording last year’s Grateful Destination. At the end of that session, we played this improvisation. It’s the last 45 minutes of the last time we were able to play together before COVID shut everything down. It’s also the last recording made at Aspen Street, since Pete has since retired to the greener fields of Michigan.
Check it out on the music service of your choosing and enjoy grooving with us one more time!
New Release: Other Analogues
2020 has made me nostalgic for simpler times, so I used my ample free time to record an all electric improvisation in the spirit of 2014’s Analogues of Infinity.
Really, this was an excuse to play with the Electro-Harmonix Grand Canyon delay. Each track is an improvisation through one of its different delay modes. No real looping on this, but I did record the looper in the same session. The result of that is on Phantom Canyon.
Also, please remind me to never release an album on election day again.
Warbly Noodle Session by Richard Ellis
Richard Ellis’ excellent new album Warbly Noodle Session is out today. It’s an improvised masterclass in tasteful use of the whammy bar which he graciously allowed me to produce.
Check it out at Bandcamp or the streaming site of your choice.
New Release: Phantom Canyon (Single, Curious Automata)
Here’s another single, this time an improvisation with looping. I was programming presets in my Electro-Harmonix Grand Canyon delay pedal and took a few minutes to just play.
New Release: After Disobedience (Single)
This is an odd one…
An instrumental musing on the affect of mediation on rules.
This piece is divided into 5 major sections:
Structure (0:00)
The piece introduces its harmonic structure, first with a drone, then adding a synth pattern (0:15), and finally add chords on electric piano (0:31).
Stumbling (0:46)
The guitar enters, trying but failing to play the pattern. The electric piano responds to failure by skipping chords in an attempt to remain consonant.
Testing Edges (1:18)
The guitar attempts to solo on a very fast and difficult series of chords, failing yet again. The electric piano now highlights the guitar’s mistakes by shifting chords by a half step, increasing dissonance.
Breaking Free (1:53)
The guitar now solos on a ten-tone scale, avoiding only the most “out” dissonances. The electric piano doggedly plays along with the synth’s pattern, abandoning any interaction with the guitar.
New Consonance (2:21 to the end)
The electric piano shifts to a series of chords designed to allow for a (relatively) high degree of consonance between the pattern and any note on the guitar. The guitar now solos freely until the end of the piece.
It’s worth mentioning that the “Stumbling” section nearly broke me. I wrote it to be misplayed, avoided practicing it, and set the music on a stand several feet away, all in the hope of increasing errors. It worked. And I got so frustrated at my playing, even though it was wrong when wrong was intentional, that I had to take a break and come back to it another day.
The Bandcamp download includes backing tracks and a leadsheet should you wish to annoy yourself playing wrong rightly. Or practice and play right wrongly.
Also, the title is because I sketched out the piece after watching the movie “Disobedience”.