You may not be able to hear our music outside of gigs, but you CAN now buy the T-shirt! We've got two shirts so far, and Meg is working on some designs for some others. We'll get them up here as soon as we can. Check 'em out! There's a choice of colours, two simple designs, and they're only a tenner. Bargain! Grab 'em from the widget below, Drum Monkey and Gem x
OK, so Drum Monkey and I have been working on some ideas for 'guided improv'. We LOVE improvising, but have been looking at a load of different ways to inspire different ideas.
The first two things we looked at were:
• Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies, which are a series of random statements, phrases or suggestions that you pick at random and apply to what you're doing.
• John Zorn's Cobra composition, which is a load of instructions for performance, but doesn't tell anyone what notes to play.
Brian Eno is the guy who invented ambient music, and then made records with U2 and James and did a great job on Paul Simon's last album. John Zorn is, from what I've seen on YouTube, an insane sax player. So neither of their ideas seemed best adapted to what we want to do.
So we were talking about it, and realised that what we needed were frameworks to improvise with, and Drum Monkey decided they should be called 'Fluid Frameworks', which is a great name :)))
Here are a few of the ones I've come up with - just single line inspiration ideas for us to improvise around:
• Soundtrack to oblivion
• from space drums to space bass to spacial awareness
• when shit is the new awesome
• droning on and on. In a good way.
• feminist funk
• old romantic improv - from Duran to Miles in 4 movements
I've got some others, but this is just a small sample.
Drum Monkey has got into writing a script for a non-existent film that we're then going to soundtrack. I'll leave him to blog about that. Suffice to say, it's all kinds of fun, and we'll get back to you with how it goes. Hopefully we'll try some out at the next bookshop gig.
Bye for nowwwwww,
luv Meg x
Hello again!
Inspired by Drum Monkey's awesome collection of weird improvised stuff for me to listen to, I've been sorting out a Spotify playlist. It took me a little while to work out how to do it, just because it's easier than you'd think. It's just like iTunes - search for the songs ---> drag them into a playlist ---> copy the internet address of the list ---> away you go! It's amazing :)))
Anyway, here's my 'Inspiration List' - not much of it is improvised, as until about three weeks ago, I didn't know that I loved improvised music! How stupid is that?? Anywayyyyyy, here's a list of things that sound like the music I want to improvise. Some are floaty, some are rhythmic, some blend music from around the world. Some of it sounds like drum monkey on space-drums, and a few little bits sounds a bit like me on bass, but only because I do a bad impersonation of some of my heroes.
click here to get the playlist - if you've got Spotify.
If you haven't, here's the list of songs -
Talvin Singh - One (this one's spesh for Drum Monkey - lots of tabla and electronics!)
The Orb - Blue Room (remember dancing to this in chill-out rooms at college :)))
Miles Davis - All Blues (Drum Monkey played me this. I love it. Great bass-line. Might see if I can loop it!)
Bobby McFerrin - Blackbird (this is one voice, no overdubs. Live. So inspiring)
Steve Reich/Pat Metheny - Electric Counterpoint (the one thing I heard in music at school that I still love - and it's like looping!!)
The Cure - A Forest (electronic drums and repetitive driving bass? How can that not inspire us? :)))
Clatter - Nighttime (Drum Monkey's favourite band, just bass and drums YAYYYYYY)
Herbie Hancock - Chameleon (funkyyyy)
Talk Talk - Desire (this is the sound inside my head. I want to sound like this...)
David Sylvian - Mother And Child (...and this)
Steve Lawson - Exit Sandman (I might do a cover of this, it sounds quite easy :))))
Jeff Schmidt - Until You Don’t (found this on youtube looking for solo bass - wow)
Imogen Heap - Half Life (she's my heroooooo)
I'll write more soon - pleeeze add your suggestions for great inspiring songs to the comments. And if you want, add a link to them on the internet! Welcome to the future! heeeee!
LUV MEG x
Hey! I'm Meg. I guess you've read what Drum Monkey said about me being in the same band as him. He's fab. Love him to bits. Really. Anyway, let me tell you a bit about this band. It was a trio, it's now a duo, and who knows what in the future. We used to be a covers band. Well, technically we *are* still a covers band, but I'm not going to tell you what that's called, cos I don't really want you coming to see us play! hehehehe.
This band - Verfremdungseffekt - is much more interesting. It's also a little bit weird, and a challenge to explain. But I'll try, just for you. Seeing as how you asked so nicely.
The name - that's from Brecht. As in Berthold Brecht, the playwright. He had this thing he called 'The Distancing Effect' - trying to make sure the audience stay sort of dispassionate about the theatre, as a way of them being more engaged. For us, it started as a cool name, but makes sense, because we'll never be doing flashy gigs with lights and stages - it's the wrong music, and we don't want to. We want to put it in different contexts, and take our improvised music into cool places. Our first gig was in a bookshop. Looks like our second one will be too! hehehehe.
So that's why my twitter name is TheDistanceMeg - from the Distancing Effect. I know, it's not a great name, but all the ones I wanted were taken...
So, we improvise, we don't record, Drum Monkey plays space drums and I loop my bass. Gem plays guitar with us when he's not playing rock stars in Japan.
As you'll have seen in Drum Monkey's first post, he did me a lovely Spotify play list of great music to inspire me to improvise. Please make any suggestions you have have for that in the comments at the bottom :))))
Welcome to the all new shiny Verfremdungseffekt blog. We're an improvised music duo, that used to be a trio, and will probably be a trio again in the not-too-distant future.
Our guitarist, Gem Morris, is currently rehearsing with eNaNoTangent, before heading off to Japan for a tour. He's got a blog too, all about the tour - see http://gemjapan.posterous.com/ for more on that!
Anyway, a few things you should know about the band. I'm Drum Monkey, the drummer. In this band I play a Roland Handsonic:
...it's an electronic percussion instrument, but I've reprogrammed all the sounds I use to emulate how a drum would sound being played in zero gravity. It's just a thing.
The other member is Meg McKenzie - she's a bassist, and as of a couple of days ago, a 'looper' too. We're playing as a duo while Gem's away on tour, so watch out for gig news.
One thing I should point out up front - we haven't got any recordings. Well, we have but we're not putting anything out there to be listening to for a while. Kinda like The Bays did at first... We're interested in how our music develops live, and don't want people to come with expectations based on MP3s. Does that make sense? I hope so.
Anyway, Meg and I will be blogging here for a bit.
Here's the first thing I've got for you - I just did Meg a Spotify playlist of music that should inspire her to the heights of improvisational genius. It's all music I found by surfing around the web looking at answers to the same question - what music inspires you to improvise? Some great albums in there - have a listen if you've got Spotify, by clicking this link.
If you haven't got spotify, here's the list of albums included in the playlist:
Anouar Brahem: Thimar (plays Oud, I think, this is with Dave Holland on bass as well)
David Torn: Prezens (amazing improv guitar player - does a lot of processed live looping, hence the inclusion for Meg)
Art Lande: Rubisa Patrol (with Mark Isham on trumpet - if I could add any instrument to Verfremdungseffekt, it'd be trumpet...)
Paul Bley: Fragments (pretty weird stuff, but beautiful)
Bill Frisell: In Line (another american guitar player, in a duo with a bassist)
Shubha Mudgal: Best Of Shubha Mudgal (an indian singer - this is definitely not Bollywood. Really beautiful, and a totally different improvised music tradition...)
Enjoy that lot! Let me know what you think of them in the comments, or on twitter...
ah, Twitter! Yes, we're on there - I'm @drum_monkey_ and Meg is @thedistancemeg - I'm sure she'll explain her username in a blog post soon...
cheers, Drum Monkey