question_the_podcast

this is played on a set of hanging gongs i built from found flattened car metal sewn together with fishing line to resemble the shape of the continental u.s.a. paste this url into yr browser to see a picture of it: http://www.questionthetruth.com/noise/images/20080608_carpartamerica.jpg

this is a new project involving compositions for found objects and homemade instruments. it is me, steff barrow, christian brady, sean peoples, and brit powell. this is an excerpt from a performance last month. instrumentation for this section includes two metal pipe-o-phones, a zither, a vaguely kalimba-like instrument built from broken street sweeper brush 'bristles', pot lid gongs, bells, and a very loose one-headed bass drum. we were performing as 'fantasy apple pipe machine'. recorded by steve sanford. also playing were sejayno, courtney brown, and sonic circus. what a fun show!

if you haven't seen us lately, the cutest puppy in the world is now a thrash dance band.

i am playing in a balinese gamelan ensemble (see http://www.dcgamelan.com ). here we are performing a tune called 'selat segara' at the indonesian embassy in december. more recordings from that night are online at: http://www.archive.org/details/gamelanmk2007-12-14 .

here is the first piece i played at the fantastic voyagers festival in pittsburgh oct.20. great 2-day fest of solo performances curated by mike tamburo. amazing sets by keenan lawler, michael johnsen, nick schillace, anup pradhan, among many others.

the cutest puppy in the world just played a quick run of east coast shows. here\'s the recording from baltimore last monday (august 13).

i built a zither.

while i was on tour recently, i stopped by the grafton peace pagoda, in grafton new york. it's a buddhist shrine out in the middle of the woods. an amazing nun named jun-san lives there. she's walked across the u.s. multiple times chanting for peace. she offered me tea and dinner and a place to sleep having no idea at all who i was. this is a recording of her and the other nun who was staying there, kyoko-san, performing their evening ritual of drumming and chanting.

a new piece on electric guitar called "it's not that far, it's not that cold, it's not that heavy". (title granted by the walk home afterwards.) recorded the other night live by steve sanford. also playing at this show were owl xounds, ryan jewell, and eric carbonara - they were not messing around.

a few weeks ago the cutest puppy in the world played at a 703noise (703noise.org) show at george mason u. right in the middle of our set sirens and flashing white lights started going off. nearly everyone had cleared out due to the 'fire emergency' before i realized it wasn't just part of our set. this is the first half, pre-fire drill. some pretty great commentary on the way out at the end. thanks to davis white of rdk (myspace.com/rdk2) for recording.

here's some trance music for you. mailed off this afternoon for consideration for the furthernoise/freesound 'appropriate re-appropriations' compilation, the guidelines of which stipulate you must incorporate at least one sample from freesound (and upload one of your own for each you use). so, it's some layered acoustic guitar plus several field recordings of bells at japanese temples courtesy of freesound user MShades. great sites for sound, both of these - furthernoise.org and freesound.iua.upf.edu.

the other day we had a show at my house. whelp (rebecca mills and tristana fiscella, both of the caution curves) played a couple of beautiful pieces and kindly agreed to let me podcast one. [links: myspace.com/whelpingbitch ; thecautioncurves.com ]

cutest puppy jam from a recent practice.

solo acoustic cover of sonic youth's 'protect me you', from a june 17 show at brown's in dc. noisy recording - fittingly, perhaps.

field recording from a downpour-produced mud pit with more frogs than you've ever seen, one of whom i mic'ed real close. recorded at cove campground, gore, va, the night of june 2.