PLAYLIST #145

PLAYLIST #144

WEI ZHONGLE - NU TRANCE

I've been taking in Wei Zhongle's album Nu Trance these past few months. Wanting to see what age brings has meant sitting on this recording for a bit longer than expected. A brilliance, concentrated and concise is emitted from every pore of this music. What a difference the light makes in an atmosphere, a sharpness that directs what could otherwise be lost in slipstreams of flotation. Here, with instrumentation that would upon brief glance conjure an image of hollowness, Wei Zhongle constructs thickets of fortified uniquity. An electric channel to traditions of the east (peking opera etc.) rides the crest without ever falling into the entrapments of academia, mundanity, or contrivance. Qualities of the musics of Harry Partch, Faust, This Heat, Snakefinger, all cascade from what stands, certainly, a higher alternate point of departure. A wakeful directness shatters expectation; profound in its deceptive simplicity. Nu Trance maintains itself over the course of many listens. The stream never weakening (a rare achievement uncommon in the life to which we are accustomed). Its consciousness resolute. Better to die than live in sleep.

Wei Zhongle's "Nu Trance" is out now on Hairy Spider Legs and NNA Tapes

NF Presents:

M. DWINELL
NEW FIRMAMENT
LOW NOX (John Atkinson of Aa - RECORD RELEASE!!)
ANGUS TARNAWSKY

***MATINEE***3pm***
Palisades (906 Broadway)
3pm


It's a pleasure to bring you the next NF installment both as presenter and performer. Extremely excited to be joining a diverse and excellent cast for the afternoon. Come settle yourself and transit through your afternoon with us. I'm especially happy to be performing this New Firmament material in a different hour. Come try it. Next step, outdoors.

-N.P.

THE NEW FIRMAMENT UNIVERSE (EXPLAINED?)

It's difficult for me to word descriptions of my music in a way that makes it simply appealing to general public. I think part of the reason is the point of this music, NF playlists, etc. is encouraging the listener to think differently. It's more the point that there's a trajectory outlined for you to follow and send your own experience through. To say that it's this genre or that feels weird and beside the point. Admittedly, this is how people are drawn in to check a thing out but it's something I still don't have a full intuitive grasp of and feels weird for me to take time away from building the actual thing to work on describing it. Nonetheless I'm incredibly excited this summer to have several performances and recordings coming up and out that I feel work in conjunction with one another to fully reinforce and depict the totality of New Firmament as a universe. Additionally I feel like SOME explanation of what the hell is going on with all the names here is required. So NEW FIRMAMENT began as, and continues to be, an umbrella term for any releases/playlists/etc. I've worked on. It is the name of the "label" through which I self-release and occasionally release the recordings of others (though I see it more as a private collection as the business parts of what a "label" are mostly absent from my motivation/pursuit. FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY has been and will continue to be my (N. Podgurski) main musical vehicle. Early on however, that project encountered a split into several trajectories (one more home-recorded experiments than the other.) As it became clear that I would like to continue to pursue both trajectories it became necessary to reconfigure and so it is that, generally speaking, FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY has taken on the duty of more rigid composition. "Songs" and "Vocals" are found there. Whereas NEW FIRMAMENT, as a project, is more adaptable and changing. Currently the focus has been on meditative binaural beats-oriented minimal keyboard. This will likely change and so it is encouraged to approach each NEW FIRMAMENT release newly and geared more towards the idea of the "album" name as a the project itself. Change in FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY occurs more slowly and the general compositional intuition remains in tact though, as the people I work with in it shift, so too will the music as that is the nature of the project for me. ABOVE ALL ELSE I feel that the best form of information for ALL of these projects is one another. They are, for me, counterweights to the way each one works. The earliest recordings in what would become the NF musical trajectory were used as a reprieve from the style of intuition used in writing with FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY. From there both have developed apart from, yet in many ways, can't NOT influence one another. So here we are. I encourage you to make use of the collection as a means to understand the other parts of it. Influences are abound and are available in our playlists but to simply tell you one piece feels, ALWAYS, like glaring omission. The way I understand one is through the other and I hope you can enjoy investigating that.

Here is a brief bio for FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY I feel is relevant:

FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY is the earliest and perhaps most rigid piece of the New Firmament foreordination. Presence and focus are achieved inverse to other NF forms. Hyperactivity rebuilds interior ambience encouraging a global zoom out. Subtlety and monument, rather than poles, become lenses. All parts constantly modifying themselves, their relationships, and ways in which they are perceived. The direct result of a slow collaborative assimilation, each manifestation developed with a key unique unto itself often never to be returned to save for as experiential wayposts to coalescence.

Feast of the Epiphany is:

Nick Podgurski - keyboard vocals Caley Monahon-Ward - guitars Andrew Smiley - guitars Keith Abrams - bass

PLAYLIST #143

FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY

FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY (N. Podgurski/New Firmament primary musical vehicle) will be performing new music in June. The last live performance in February of 2013 also marked the sending off of the lineup from the album Temperance.

At an unspeakably slow pace the past two and a half years have been spent seeking out the right people and beginning work on new music. Being a musician (even a great one) is more often than not beside the point for the this thing. Fortunately, answers lay close by in Caley Monahon-Ward (Extra Life), Andrew Smiley (Little Women), and Keith Abrams (Kayo Dot). Working with these people and in this slowed manner effectively changed my entire perception of what it is that one gets from music; what can be done with it, what I want from it. Strengthening some habits as we explore; eliminating others. To incorporate, absolutely, the intuition of all involved into a process whereby we can all learn from one another as we go and proceed forth using both our own individual and one another's intuitive sense as a larger instrument is certainly at the forefront. Sparing more artistic jargon this takes a long time. In order that we might make this work we must learn to BE together, then play together, then, hopefully, create together. All parts and individuals are significant and equally temper what the creation yields; and it's that traversal that stands tantamount to the music created.

No, there is no record.

This is the performance.


JUNE 11th at IBEAM we will perform this music in full sharing the evening with Travis Laplante, one of the most deeply devoted individuals I know (and simply no one better suited for this experience.) I'm incredibly grateful to these people for helping to create this evening over the course of the past two and some odd years and look forward to seeing you there.




For more guidance regarding Feast of the Epiphany/New Firmament/N. Podgurski I recommend listening to our releases here: https://newfirmament.bandcamp.com/

Further definitive taste information (things we like) can be found in our weekly playlists, assorted writings, and drawings: http://newfirmament.blogspot.com/


TRAVIS LAPLANTE is a member of Battle Trance, Little Women, and performs solo on Tenor Saxophone. His work can be found here: http://travislaplante.com/


JUNE 11th
8pm
IBEAM
168 7th Street Brooklyn

PLAYLIST #142