turn a deaf ear

Collection Contents

#		Title	Length
1		Das Capital Crime: Local Bomb	4:47	Play
2		Pavement Jam: Hey Your Car's on Fire	4:19	Play
3		Olde Tyme Unnatural Rock n' Roll	5:31	Play
4		Your Title Here	8:04	Play
5		Spank My Piano	5:10	Play
6		We should'ave Known	3:56	Play
7		Possum Ridge Paralyzer	19:30	Play

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Description

Environmental improv: composition by temperament & inheritance, playing as one walks in a group, conscious of sound, economics and disdaining The Jam.

rev. 99 pairs two duos: Akio Mokuno & 99 Hooker who have been performing out of NY for the last three years and Chris Forsyth & Ernesto Diaz-Infante who have just released their second CD Wires and Wooden Boxes (Pax Recordings/Evolving Ear).

Environmental improv begins in fact: recorded music differs essentially from live performance. The "improv world" has never resolved spontaneous concert experience with mechanical reproduction. It wants to, but it won't. The two cannot be reconciled. CDs are objects, concerts are experiences. rev. 99 is an objectified experience. To bring this fact home, the presence of the mix was emphasized with engineer Ross Bonnadonna. The mix was also part of the performance. Each heard in headphones the fixing of their sound. Therefore each player could respond to the very process of production that 99% of all "music" ignores: musicians don't make music, technology makes CDs. To avoid over-Romanticizing this effort with ideas of purity, Ross and 99 did insert a few obvious overdubs. rev. 99 may make conscious of the problem of fixing improvisation and intuition into product, it does not claim to "solve" it.

In recording, musicians increasingly are often minor asides in the production of music. In the pop world from Phil Spector to Britney Spears the traditional conceits of music such as technique, talent and personal feeling are little more than distractions trumpeted to hide the grim sound of the "star-making machine" (including anti-stars, avant-garde stars, noise-stars, etc.) The sounds of social production, those hums and grunts of technology that technology wants to efface, from the linoleum jazz of Steely Dan to the well-placed post-punk-alternative turd drop; these are sounds rev. 99 amplify and/or strip-mine. rev. 99 is the sound of the outtake. These sounds are not specific. It is the approach that references but does not mimic the two story air-conditioner at Madison Square Garden that cools Aerosmith fans with a deafening hiss, or the rumble in the belly of Garth Brook's tax attorney; the sounds of the world that produce the rattle of a subway or imposed silence of a luxury car share rev. 99's production values. These values have a spontaneous resonance with "life as we know it" because of the way each musician here has lived their life; what they've eaten, who they have sought out, what they have done to support their own non-blockbuster life, and of course how this shapes their approach to generating sound. There is no correspondence in the old sense between content and representation. Nor is there a post-apocalyptic reconstitution of virtuosity for its own sake. This improvisation is akin to the multiple pressures that determine the rhythms and gestures of using a remote control. The "musicianship" here is an environmental improvisation that plays with the day using the language of sound.

99 Hooker video work include collaborations with Martha Colburn, Benton Bainbridge, Thad Povey and among many others. National Poetry Slam Finals (Chicago), Images Film Festival (Toronto), Coolidge Corner Super 8 Fest (Boston), The San Francisco Cin(e)Poem Fest, Lollapalooza, Ifilm.com, etc. Two sixty minute collections of 99 Hooker videos are available, and a third collection (1999-2001) is to be released in January, 2002, including the music of Akio Mokuno, Borbetomagus, Fracture, Casio Shack, Bible Launcher and cult favorite Deep Fat Fried Grinder. Tzadik released and then destroyed under threat of lawsuit Bible Launcher (unconscious vocals channeling Larry Flynt and various evangelists); 99 Hooker (rants) releases are available on Megaphone, PAX, No Solution, Limited Sedition, French Import, Radical House, as well as with Baltimore's Dramatics, Ron Anderson and Happy New Year, and many others. He appears on over twenty CDs. 99 Hooker has been published mostly in small magazines, such as Cyanosis (San Francisco), Tales for the Waiting Room (Just Press, Marin, CA), Sandbox (NYC), Revue & Corigee (France), web reviews for what is now a part of TV Guide, and others. 99 Hooker has performed all around the USA, Italy, Switzerland and France including, Musique Action (Nancy, FR), The Red Eye Theater (Minneapolis,) The Kitchen (NY), Knitting Factory (NY), Big Sur Experimental Music Fest (CA), and Knickerbockers in (Lincoln, NE) to name but a fraction of the places. In addition to the great players on this CD, He has worked with Mark Marinoff (Mercury Rev, Chemical Brothers), Donald Miller (Borbetomagus, William Hooker etc.), LX Rudis, Ron Anderson (The Molecules, Pak), Glenn Sorvisto, Jason Willett et al. (Dramatics, Jad Fair, etc.), Gino Robair, Ralph Carney, Jim Nelson and David Krakauer to again name a few. More info can be found at 99hooker.com.

N.Y. based Japanese avant-garde noisician Akio Mokuno performs regularly around the East Village in New York City with his various projects including the ElectroPutas, FreshFish, Roots, and with 99 Hooker. He is the curator of the +/_ experimental music series at Bar 16 in NYC. His music is recorded on No Solution, Pax Recordings, S/t Electro Putas, and Super Genius Records. More info at www.onepine.com/~akiom/

Chris Forsyth (b. 1973) is a Brooklyn, NY based electric guitarist engaged in exploring the possibilities of improvisation in music. He has been working in New York City and performing throughout the United States and Europe with multiple ensembles since 1996, including a performance at the 2001 Philadelphia Fringe Festival, two appearances at the Big Sur (CA) Experimental Music Festival (1999 & 2001), and Improvised & Otherwise Festival (2002). His ongoing, long-term projects include the groups ALL TIME PRESENT (NYC), W.O.O. REVELATOR (NYC), and a duo with pianist/acoustic guitarist ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE (San Francisco). Recordings of these groups have been released on the Pax Recordings, Evolving Ear, Sweetstuff Media, and Bottomfeeder labels, and received radio play and press acclaim worldwide. In addition, he has performed in NYC with, among others, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Brian Moran, Greg Kelley, Assif Tsahar, Daniel Carter, Gary Smith, Dan Dechellis, Jeff Arnal, Tony Bevan, and as a solo curated by Derek Bailey. He was also the curator of the Bunker Annex Series of improvised and experimental music at the Knitting Factory in New York City, and a co-curator of the Improvised & Otherwise Festival of Sound and Form, an annual three day event in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Ernesto Diaz-Infante, guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, composer and improviser is an active member of the vital San Francisco experimental music scene. Born in Salinas, California, Diaz-Infante's early musical life began with private piano lessons and in high school jazz, marching and concert bands, garage rock bands and Mexican conjunto/pop bands. In his teens, he became immersed in writing poetry, drawing, playing synthesizer and guitar, and lo-fi 4-track recording of songs. He received his formal musical education from the University of California Santa Barbara College of Creative Studies (1992-94) and California Institute of the Arts (1994-96), where he studied a variety of music, composition, electronic music, film music, Gamelan, modern dance, and performance art. Diaz-Infante has composed contemporary chamber music for solo, ensemble and orchestra. He has been awarded residencies at the Centre International de Recherche Musicale (CIRM), the Villa Arson (both in Nice, France), The Millay Colony for the Arts, Centrum, Villa Montalvo, The New York Mills Arts Retreat, The Ucross Foundation and Dorland Mountain Arts Colony. He has recorded more than 15 CDs of music, collaborated with numerous musicans, and he has had performances and radio broadcasts all over the world.

Press Quotes:

"Together they offer new insights into the guitar's potential as a sound source." Tony Wilson, CODA Magazine

"(Ernesto Diaz-Infante and Chris Forsyth) first got together in 1999, but to listen to their highly intelligent and effective electro-acoutsic music one might think that they've been on the same wavelength for a good deal longer than that--I personally would have guessed at somewhere between two and three thousand years." -- Walter Horn, Signal to Noise

"The dialogue established between the two musicians is convincing, their sound palette enough varied to sustain the attention. Both have a propensity to land on tonal islands in the flow of free improv, which gives them the power to destabilize and charm. Recommended. (****)" -- Franois Couture, All Music Guide, www.allmusicguide.com

"This record offers an extremely creative take on string music in all its rich variety. The ideas that work on Wires and Wooden Boxes are timelessly beautiful."-- Nils Jacobson, All About Jazz, www.allaboutjazz.com

"Ernesto Diaz-Infante and Chris Forsyth go beyond the perceived random actsof improvisation into a cohesive and hearty musical experience. In a sea of sound, this release stands out above the rest." --Rent Romus, San Francisco Transbay Creative Music Calendar

"There are 'right' and 'wrong' ways to play, depending on the approach. Ernesto Diaz-Infante and Chris Forsyth play the wrong way. All the time.Most often, the results are spectacular." --Jon Worley, Aiding and Abetting

"Guitarist Chris Forsyth has been an illuminating presence on the NYC free rock scene for the past couple of years." The WIRE, March 2001

"Since the mid-'90s, Ernesto Diaz-Infante counts as one of the most prolific avant-garde composer and improviser the U.S. West Coast has seen. He has performed and recorded music on piano, prepared guitar, and electronics; composed chamber music; improvised with a very large number of musicians from California, New York, and Chicago; and released a pile of CDs on very small independent labels such as Pax Recordings, Sweetstuff Media, Zzaj Productions, and Public Eyesore. He also curates the Big Sur Experimental Music Festival (since 1999) and the creative music series at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco (since 2000). His multifaceted career gives him the look of an eclectic or maverick artist, but the persistence and commanding seriousness with which he pursues his career is gaining him a small but dedicated following." --Francois Couture, All Muisc Guide.

"...the mind is by and large, an untapped resource. Here, Diaz-Infante and Forsyth give a bit of credence to that notion as they pursue previously unknown terrain." Glenn Astarita, ALL ABOUT JAZZ, www.allaboutjazz.com

"He's a big talent." -- Walter Horn, Signal to Noise

"A composer and performer with an instinctive way of creating sound paintings" --Josef Woodard, The Los Angeles Times

"...Diaz-Infante breaks down the creative process into its most basic elements of man and instrument."--Scott Menhinick, Signal to Noise.

"a minimalist with an expanded sense of scale" -- Time Out NY