Sergey Kuryokhin & David Moss : "2 for tea"

(Long Arms, 1998)

By 1983, I'd heard his name for several years. We in the New York Improvising scene were always looking for soul-mates, musical partners, & sound-information from other countries. The rumors began trickling in to Morton St. (in the Village) that a pianist named Sergey Kuryokhin was playing wild music and organizing even wilder projects. But it wasn't until 1986 when I came to Berlin to play duos with drummer Peter Hollinger that we first met. It was just after the concert when I saw a guy with very black hair and shining eyes, wearing some kind of military-style jacket walk toward me. "David? David Moss?", he said. "I very happy to meet!" When I found out it was Sergey, we both laughed like crazy - to finally meet here, in Berlin, trying to communicate with his 20 words of English and my faded Russian from university days. But somehow we managed to talk - to share the idea that we wanted to learn about each other and somehow play together.In September 1987, we met again in Berlin and he asked me to sing in his Berlin premiere of Pop Mechanika at the Tempodrome. "Just wear a black jacket and sun-glasses, and I'll tell you when to go onstage and sing", he told me. I arrived backstage at the Tempodrome (a semi-outdoor tent famous for rock music) the next night, ready for anything, and found a huge throng of musicians, Russian & German. There was Africa, Sergey's friend and performance artist, many people dressed in odd costumes, 10 saxophonist, heavy-metal guitarists (quite a few!) and god-knows who else. Sergey seemed nervous or full of intense energy, but that turned out to be quite normal for him. The music began. Pounding drum beats, screaming saxophones, and rhythmic unisons and riffs from the guitarists. Africa tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Go" - I ran onstage and, standing in front of several thousand excited and confused Berliners, began to scream in 10 languages.
As I sang, a parade of Russian performance artists surrounded me with bouquets of flowers and live pigs cradled in their arms. I was in Sergey's world now. I sang until Sergey started a new section on the piano, then I walked off-stage, exhilarated. That was the first time.I saw Sergey 2 or 3 times at different festivals after that, but our next musical meeting (out of which came this CD) was in Dec. 1988 in Miami, Florida at the New Music America Festival. Rumor had reached me that Sergey would be touring the US in December, so I called the Festival director and told him we had a unique opportunity to feature Sergey in a NMA festival. After a little arm-twisting, he agreed. I got the telephone # of Sergey's American tour manager from John Zorn, and called to arrange a solo for Sergey in Miami. That autumn, I spoke to Sergey, and he suggested that we also play a duo as part of his gig. I asked him if he would like to play with other American improvisers in the Festival; he wasn't too excited about the idea, but said "maybe OK I think about it". Sergey arrived in Miami with Alexander Kahn (producer, manager, translator). Our duo was scheduled in an intimate club that seated maybe 150. Meanwhile, the director of the festival was furious when he heard that Sergey wanted to play duo with me. Well, there was a lot of music-politics going on in those days, and to shorten a long story, the director thought I was getting too much exposure if I played a duo with Sergey in addition to my regular gig. Even though Sergey had invited me to play with him, the director was completely, irrationally oppose to the duo, and even threatened to close the club and cancel Sergey's concert. When I told this to Sergey and offered to drop the duo, Sergey refused, saying that either we play together (he didn't want to play with other musicians), or he would cancel. After many calls, threats, & demands from the director, the concert went on as originally planned. I remember just before the show, when tension was at its highest and the director threatened to call the police to pull us off the stage, Sergey said to me, "You know David, it's funny that there is more censorship and problems here in USA to play a concert than normally I have in Russia!" Yes, a funny & prophetic statement about the American culture scene.Well, about the concert (the one you can hear oh this CD). We rehearsed a bit in the afternoon. Sergey had very strong ideas about what he wanted to play. I told him there were several things I could do well, several I couldn't do, and made a few suggestions about energy levels, speed, intensity and the interaction of our voices. We spent the rest of the radio sound-check practicing the piece that grew out of his ideas. All concerts for the festival were being either broadcast live or recorded by Miami Public Radio, and in charge was Steve Malagodi (the radio producer of this recording). We spent quite a while getting a non-distorted level for my voice and electronics, but as you can hear, the sound-quality is generally better on the rehearsal segments. I think the engineers were afraid of getting too "hot" (or uncontrollable) a sound for the performance, and so they reduced the overall levels and lost some of the power that is audible in the rehearsals. As I mention on the rehearsal tapes, this was the only time I played with brushes for any music after 1975. It's surely the only time I was asked to lift a pianist's legs off the ground while he was playing and pull him away from the piano while we sang. Sergey wanted me to play various musical genres, from waltz to pseudo hip-hop, from operatic to lounge music, and so we did. I hadn't played these recognizable styles for years - but if Sergey wanted it, I was happy to do it. In the rehearsal segments, Sergey's commentes show the clarity of his thinking process and ideas.
Then came the concert. Sergey played a long solo that was beyond astonishing in its wealth of ideas and super-virtuosity. I remember thinking, as I was standing there in the back of the club, that Sergeysucceeded in surprising the audience by doing nothing that they expected or desired - none of the spatial attacks, fractured rock, or simplistic minimalism of American new music. It was pure Kuryokhin - intense, non-stop, overflowing with fantasy, referential to Russian folk music and European classical music, and definitely virtuoso Russian piano playing.
Then came our duo. The 12 minutes went by in a flash. Everything worked exactly as we'd planned and rehearsed (with a few surprises of course'). It was an incredible pleasure to play drums with Sergey - both of us had such power, and it felt great to mix it all together in downtown Miami, just a few weeks before Christmas, 1988. After the gig we hugged, and I told Sergey that it had been a dream of mine to play in Russia (my grandparents came from there, so I've always felt a pull), and I would love to do it with him. He said that was a wonderful idea and he hoped to find a way to make it happen.1990, I was practicing in the basement of my house in Vermont when the telephone rang. It was Sergey calling from "Leningrad" inviting me to perform in the St. Petersburg Renaissance Festival - a marathon 24-hour benefit concert (including a 6 hour section of avant-garde performance) to be broadcast 'live' on Soviet television.
As I was about to take off from Kennedy Airport, my Russian contact handed me a package wrapped in plain brown paper to bring along. As I was told that the large parcel was a painting by Robert Rauschenberg - his gift and donation to the festival for the city of St. Petersburg, I must admit, it made me pretty nervous to be carrying a work by such a famous artist - but c'est la Russian vie - aand away I went on Aeroflot. Of course, I had asked how to get this thing through Customs and I was told to say simply, "to kartina", "this is a picture". And IT WORKED no problem, Moss and kartina into Russia. But then at the hotel I got a call from Sergey: "David, the avant-garde part of the festival has been canceled!" My god. I'm in Russia with nothing to do and nowhere to go!! But very quickly Sergey called back and said "Don't worry - you will play - the organizers of this festival have no idea what's going on I told them you will play in the ETHNIC section because you are really a very famous African Folk singer!!!!!" OK let's give it a try.So we went to the Kirov theater where hundreds of costumed performers were milling around backstage (ps. I presented the Rauschenberg to the Mayor of St.Petersburg - Mr. Sobchak). Then after a classic baritone sang Russian songs, I was introduced as the famous African Folk Singer - and I began to sing: a 4-minute vocal solo filled with the intensity, power, and personal songs that are part of my voice - much to the consternation and surprise of the glitterati audience, who clearly had no idea what I was doing, or why. That was my premiere In Russia.
Meanwhile, Alexander Kahn had arranged a concert in a small theater where I played a solo section, and then a duo with Sergey. (I remember other musicians joining in, and a young child singing happily with us). This was a very emotional moment for me. I finally was able to sing my songs and melodies to an interested Russian audience and feel their strong response. Sergey played a small synthesizer keyboard, and we improvised together without any plans or words. I don't think any tape of this concert exists, but if there is one somewhere in St. Petersburg, I would love to hear it - because I'm sure we did some unexpected things together. Then, just before i left, Sergey invited me to sing, and to play some "found" percussion, on a sound-track he was making for a film. We met at a large well-equipped professional studio. Sergey played some tracks, I sang some melodies and noises, and overdubbed rhythm tracks on metal percussion (if anyone knows about this film, or can give me any information, I would appreciate it!). And that was the last time we played together.
In Oct. 1991 I moved to Berlin, and over the next few years met Sergey several times: at a CD shop, at the Akademie der Künste to talk about one of his pieces, at Natan Fedorovsky's Avant Garde Gallery. Each time he was full of ideas, and planning new projects, concerts, films.
Then in October 1995 I was playing at the LaMama club in Tokyo. Just before the gig I walked outside to relax and saw a line of people waiting to get in, and suddenly I heard that familiar voice say, "David!", and there was Sergey, standing with Keshavan Maslak (they were in the middle of a duo tour). I hustled them through the line and into the club and laughed in delight that Sergey and I were together again in another strange city. It was a great feeling to sing and drum with Sergey sitting in the audience. That was the last time I saw him.

David Moss

HERE

John King + Electric World

(Ear Rational, 1989)

John King, composer and guitarist, has presented his unique style of composed and improvisational music in many major festivals worldwide. John King has composed for orchestra, chamber ensembles, rock bands, dance, film and theater. He has written three operas to texts by Heiner Müller, Robbe-Grillet and Mallarmé, and worked closely with Merce Cunningham for many years.
He has had many working bands over the last 5 years including ELECTRIC WORLD (with Jean Chaine, David Moss and/or Abe Speller), VIBROVERB (with Nioka Workman and Michael Wimberly), and KING KORTETTE (Jonathan Kane, Nicki Parrott and Christopher McIntyre), all blues/funk/jazz based. He plays lead guitar with the avant-blues group Deep Blue Sea, led by French avant-noise guitarist Jean-Francois Pauvros and art rock drummer extraordinaire Jonathan Kane; and also performed with : William Parker's "Little Huey Creative Orchestra", Butch Morris' "Conduction" Orchestra, Guy Klucevsek's "Ain't Nothin' But A Polka" band and Rhys Chatham's 6-guitar band.
His commissions and collaborations include those for the Kronos Quartet, Bang On A Can All-Stars, the string quartet ETHEL and many other famous classical orchestras.
Recently, a new album is available on Tzadik : « He again embraces rock, jazz, blues and other popular styles in an energetic and colorful program for string quartet. Featuring passionate and inspiring performances by the remarkable quartet Crucible with King himself on viola, Mark Feldman & Cornelius Duffalo on violin and Alex Waterman on cello : the music jumps from moment to moment with lightening speed and an organic sense of form ».

HERE

David Moss + Michael Rodach = "Fragmentary blues"

(Traumton, 1999)

"Who could imagine ? A blues album -- a "fragmentary blues" album? Well, I never really imagined it either. But then Michael Rodach and I met in Berlin at a recording session for trumpeter/composer Paul Brody's "American Folk Songs" project. From the beginning we loved each other's sound and style, approach and eccentricities, energy and rhythms. Fate ! Then Michael invited me to play a duo with him (as live music with the old Warner Brothers "Road Runner" cartoons) for a jazz festival. So in December 1997 we played together for the first time: funk riffs, improvisation textures, fast changes, odd sustains, blues quotes, rhythm fragments, odd melodies and (James Brown inspired) screams -- all mixed with that minimalist/repetitive and definitely dada-inspired cartoon bird and coyote. After the concert we both knew it was only the beginning. And Stefi Marcus, of Traumton Studio, who heard us that night, realized the potential of our duo and invited us to record at the studio sometime and "see what happens...". And somehow we both felt that the power of our duo came from an odd mixture of improvisation, noise, fund and blues elements.
Then, after more than a year of schedule conflicts we finally set up at Traumton. We wanted a 'live'-feeling: no headphones, no room dividers, no vocal booths; just the guitar, drums, and voice hearing each other in a room, playing and responding. After 3 days recording, and some vocal and guitar overdubs (we couldn't resist, because so many songs gave us new ideas), this was the result: improvised songs based on our own eccentric perceptions of the blues. Guitar, drums, and voice -- on the one hand, pretty basic; on the other hand, perverse, distorted, fragmentary, transformed.
Through it's lyrics and rhythms, "Fragmentary Blues" pays homage to the blues music that we've heard for years. The words, voices, passion, sounds, noises, beats, fractured blues forms, quotes and warped riffs are playful elements of old and new music, Michael and I found many sounds and ideas that we'd never made before. We certainly never imagined the 20 songs on this CD before we sat down in the room together to discover these fragments and moods. But hasn't "blues" always been about personal voices, life-stories, intense moments and surprises, anyhow ? We both wonder how listeners will react."

David Moss, Michael Rodach, Berlin, June 1999 (liner notes)

HERE

David Moss Dense band : "Live in Europe"

(Ear-Rational, 1988)

In 1985, David Moss released ''Dense Band,'' an album that distilled downtown noise improvisation into song-length chunks and added a funk beat now and then. It was a showcase for Mr. Moss's precise, clattery drumming and his peculiar specialty: improvised vocal gibberish that can evoke anything from a newscast in Lithuanian to a soprano wrestling a hyena.
Two years later, he is touring with a group called Dense Band; the group made its American debut Wednesday at the Whitney Annex.
The current Dense Band includes Wayne Horvitz on keyboard, Jean Chaine on electric bass, Christian Marclay on turntables and John King on guitar. It was a showcase for both Mr. Moss and Mr. Chaine, who made an impressive New York debut with ultra-fast funk patterns, whizzing melodies and strummed and plucked chords that took the innovations of the late Jaco Pastorius a step further.
Nearly a dozen concise, varied pieces used stop-start patterns, rock and funk riffs, bursts of loud noise and relative quiet, and Mr. Moss's own sense of timing and timbre -part funk, part slapstick. He uses a drum kit that features bent-up, clanking cymbals as well as conventional ones, so a steady beat can sound like it suddenly collided with a garbage truck.
Mr. Horvitz's bell-like keyboard sounds, Mr. King's guitar twangs and Mr. Marclay's selections from records - mostly swelling orchestral chords and operatic voices, rendered silly by their context - also contributed to the poised, cheerful cacophony. The only problem was the Whitney Annex's acoustics; the echoing concrete-and-glass room muddied the music.

Jon Pareles (New York Times, 1987)

HERE

Nicolas Collins : "It was a dark and stormy night"

(Trace Elements, 1992)

A former student of Alvin Lucier, composer Nicolas Collins has been at the forefront of electronic music innovation since the mid-'80s. This disc contains three outstanding examples of his distinct and innovative approach. The first piece, "Broken Light" for string quartet and "hot-wired CD player," places the Soldier String Quartet in the position of interacting with skipping and otherwise damaged CDs containing the music of Corelli, Locatelli, and Torelli. The music is alternately frenetic and stasis-filled and, as Collins mentions in his liner notes, a nod toward Terry Riley's landmark composition "In C." "Broken Light" also displays an eerie sense of synchronicity between the players and the discs. "Tobabo Fonio" features Collins in the role for which he's achieved the most renown, that of the player of a trombone from which no trombone sounds emerge. His trombone contains a CD player and other electronics so that, when he puts lips to mouthpiece, one might hear a vocalist, an orchestra, a rock group or, in this case, a Peruvian brass band. By altering his breath pressure and manipulating his slide (and who knows what other machinations), Collins is able to widely vary the sounds emitted, so much so that the actual source may be only intermittently apparent. Here, he takes minute slices of original material and splays them out into fascinating drone patterns, only allowing the brass band to bloom in full force toward the end of the composition. The title track revolves around campfire stories nested into one another, beginning with and eventually reintroducing the title words as part of each embedded story. The voice triggers various electronic sounds wherein the words might disappear under an oddly syntactic rush of drumbeats or metallic pings. Collins uses some of the same music as in "Tobabo Fonio," both as a tape source and played live by the ensemble. The texts utilized generally have something to do with the themes of fraud (the art forger Van Megeren), misinterpretation, and appropriation, making ironic reference to Collins' own subversive use of found material. Its unusual combination of extreme and surprising sonic events with an underlying sense of Americana (storytelling around the campfire) make for a wonderfully rewarding and unique listening experience. Very highly recommended for adventurous listeners.

Brian Olewnick (All Music)

HERE

David Moss + Tom Cora : "Cargo cult revival"

(Rift, 1983)

Tom Cora : cello and cello-resonated objects
David Moss : percussion and voice

A1 Role Of The Bait
A2 The Goat Explains The Can (4 Parts)
A3 Finger Hut
A4 Monkey Lens
A5 Unipods Are Pacifists

B1 Boundary Janitor
B2 The Wand Walks The Plank (3 Parts)
B3 Business Is Not A Business
B4 Employer Accident
B5 Dog-In-Law

HERE

Paul Brody's DetoNation orchestra : "Animals & cowboys"

(NRW, 2001)

Hearing Paul Brody's DetoNation Orchestra is like hearing a flea market full of cowboys, pirates, thieves, and priests all screaming to sell there songs and stories for the best price. This is American folklore at its strangest. On stage the DetoNation Orchestra includes various sound processors, loops, unconventional guitar effects, as well as trumpet, bass & drums to give its songs and tunes a grotesque cartoon-like quality.
On top of the band are Paul Brody's strange lyrical melodies and David Moss's incredible vocal sounds and wild performance improvisations. The group pounds out an odd meter beat that matches the waves at high sea and David screams the songs of sick sailors. Next comes a retro-worksong groove and a train stumbles on its tracks up the Rocky Mountains. Then the sounds disipate into a underground disco loop with David Moss mumbling Leadbelly blues in a dark jailhouse.
Hearing Paul Brody's DetoNation Orchestra on stage is to experience one of the most exciting groups working today. A true synthesis of pop, folk, and jazz traditions. A true product of American culture organically grown from the music of Captain Beafheart, Charles Mingus, Robert Fripp, Ornette Coleman, Harry Partch, Charles Ives, and Frank Zappa.

HERE

John King Electric World : "Hot thumb in a funky groove"

(Enemy)

"Everybody needs a little funk and noise, and Electric World offers a hefty dose of both. This is rock'n'soul for the head and heart." CMJ New Music Report

"The classic guitar-bass-drums trio led by John King is held together by their virtuosic playing. This is an exciting crossover band that many funk-metal bands should look to, enviously, for inspiration." OOR Magazine (Holland)

"The unsuspecting audience was massaged with funk rhythms until we were completely wet. Then we were nailed to the wall with Hendrix-esque guitar solos. In one hour, the trio created a kind of music which made one long for citizenship in King's Electric World." Esmaspaev (Estonia)

"King didn't even have time to wipe the hair away from his face, his funk-passionate guitar creating solo after solo. It seems like this white man has combined training and tradition with Black ethnic sincerity and God-given talent." Kronika (Estonia)

HERE

NB : this is an other fantastic record from John King' Electric World trio with two swiss partners, JoPo and Markus Stauss called "JoPo + Markus Stauss meet John King electric World, NY" (XOPF, 1990) : HERE (on great Lucky Psychic Hut blog)