"At times it reminds me of Charles Ives with several ensembles playing simultaneously, and motifs fading in and out of our attention."
--Tom Moody
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
On Breaking the Square: A Conversation between John Parker and Tom Moody:
www.tommoody.us/archives/2020/12/04/on-breaking-the-square-a-conversation-between-john-parker-and-tom-moody/
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Despite these tracks best being listened through the 4D instrument, this album, in 2 channels, does tell a story:
1. This Suite was the raw experimentation on how to present 16 tracks on 16 speakers pointed in different directions. The tracks get longer in an effort to become musical pieces.
2. After a break these are the first works that are intact, individual musical pieces. They get shorter in an effort to become more varied and complex, again pushing the boundaries of what this unique environment and situation could provide.
3. After another shorter break, I made fast work of 6 songs in a sad, happy, repeat, simple structure.
4. Things are moving fast here, too, and the songs are the most 'pop' the Suites ever get. Ditty is a great example, similarly named as above, it was the happiest of the happy tracks. Dirge is the saddest. In fact most of the source material was written live in 2006 when I had piles of vintage analog and 'cutting edge' digital gear spread across my 2000 sq/ft New York studio. I enjoyed it but had to make ends meet and eventually moved from gentrified Williamsburg.
5. The first five Suites that would be exhibited live in São Paulo culminate with this album, a return to more experimental work not on a bpm. The titles are simple.
6. I picked up from Suite #5 in the midst of a pandemic and lockdown after a break. These are tracks I was itching to make.
7. Music that could only be made in extreme isolation with time to work and in a dark mood but happy to create.
8. Protests are in the streets of Seattle with police cars burning outside my window. The iconic 'March of the Covids' is published.
9. This is the culmination of this project having the most complex arrangements that begin to pull away on their own from the cohesiveness of this massive album. It was time to close this chapter and make a new album which would later be "51".
Each Suite serves as an LP side.
released October 28, 2021
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
photo by Marcus Leoni
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
MUSIC VIDEO:
VEVO:
youtu.be/JbF0LVLRF6s
Apple:
music.apple.com/us/music-video/serenade-no-cry/1591322781
TIDAL:
tidal.com/video/201659851
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
On 'March of the Covids':
Reflecting the swiftness of the virus’s outbreak throughout the world, March of the Covids by St. Celfer moves at a relentless brisk pace and is driven throughout nearly its entire eight minutes and forty-eight seconds by a clicky, sine-tone-like ostinato. Over this insistent rhythmic engine and the repeated, down-pitched sample of a voice intoning “Don’t stop it before I break down. You wouldn’t stop anyway”, St Celfer deploys a kaleidoscopic assortment of varied electronic textures with associated melodic motives in an free, improvisatory fashion, recalling landmark jazz fusion and minimalist albums of the late 1960s and early 1970s such as Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew and Terry Riley’s A Rainbow in Curved Air. With prominent grooves throughout its duration strongly emphasizing the notes G and D, the tonal center of March of the Covids is firmly established at G. While DTMF (Touch-Tone)-like twirling gestures around notes A and B and singing, rubato meanderings around note groups C-G and G-D-E establish the piece’s major mode, hints of a minor mode darkness with the note B flat appear throughout the beginning and most prominently in repeated swells at the two minute mark.
--Derek Kwan
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
