summer bordeom pt 3: matanuska

I just spent a full day with my cousin traipsing around the Matanuska Glacier in Alaska. In the stillness between the waves of warm air, the glacier speaks in hisses, snaps, gurgles, drips and an occasional slam as if of a sheet of metal unfurls somewhere in the depths. Mesmerized by the details of this ice cosmos, oblivious for a time to my own physical situation within it, when I settle in my shoes again I wonder if the terrain has changed enough during my trance that the path to this ridge has already changed its shape enough that I will not be able to follow it back?

Here's how the day looked and sounded....
Listening to the Matanuska Glacier by Loren Chasse

Bertoia gong

In the spirit of 'summer boredom', sifting through boxes of stuff, I decided to begin archiving sounds from an overwhelming heap of mini discs. Here's the sound of one of Harry Bertoia's gongs (played with one hand while recording with the other) on display in downtown Allentown, PA. Bertoia gong by Loren Chasse

Unenao Raamat

Going through stacks of books today, I came across these old children's magazines printed on newsprint (the author of this one is called Seppel...the title means 'dream book'!).
I found them a few years ago in a used bookshop in Tartu, Estonia.
I remember my friend Hitoshi Kojo and I doing battle over them! Fortunately, after frenzied digging we found duplicates of some of them.

Again, I find myself asking: What music would accompany this world?

summer boredom pt.2: smith-bybee lake

canoeing with my cousin this morning, we catch sight of a crude pyramid on the other side of the lake. as we make our way, we pass over a completely smooth earth-colored field on the watertop. this illusion is created by the tangle of sun-bleached plants just below the surface, pressing the water taught against the rolling wind. all along the edge of this smooth still zone however, the wind makes elaborate ripples, as if on a dune.
when we arrive at the structure it is as we had hoped--a massive beaver lodge, about 20ft. in diameter and 6ft. high, limbs whittled to classic pencil points and laid deliberately across a foundation of packed mud. the nearby treeline in both directions shows signs of past gnawing and projects underway. as we begin to circle the lodge a blue heron lifts off with a squawk from the other side. and after, awesome quiet...

Chamber piece for the museum of hands and eyes

Recently, TopShake Dance and I collaborated on a performance that took place in a small dressing room at the Conduit dance studio in downtown Portland. Throughout the night, the audience would intermittently enter through a curtained doorway and sit on a bench to look and listen.

melodeon

An eight-year old girl on my grandfather's side of the family was sent to America on a ship along with this ornate wood foot-pump organ, called a melodeon. Now it sways from side to side and creaks, imaginably like the ship it traveled on, when pumped. The layer in this recording that sounds like a field recording is really all the sympathetic noise from the instrument being played.

The melodeon plays itself, almost by Loren Chasse

This monoprint (here's just a detail of it) by my wife Kendra, propped on the windowsill, started me off recently on a long afternoon at the melodeon...
Of--white violet by Loren Chasse

Of--melodeon songs

This painting of a Czech landscape, which was recently given to me--after a childhood of fixating my imagination on this lonely road--necessitated a soundtrack. The music may be made as much for the frame as it is the hilltop.
Of--"hilltop figures" by Loren Chasse