"The function, care, and passion of the philosopher is the negentropic carillon of the possible." Michel Serres, 'Noise'

“There is an extraordinary passage at the end of Alexandr Blok's lecture on the 84th anniversary of the death of Pushkin:

'In the infinite depths of the spirit where man is man no longer, in those depths inaccessible to the state and society, there are sound waves similar to the ether waves which surround the universe. There, rhythmic vibrations pulsate like those that shape mountains, winds, marine currents, the animal and vegetable worlds.

It is the duty of the poet to commune with this primeval chaos and to draw from it a harmony that can be vouchsafed to other men.

The more veils are stripped away, the more charged the communion with chaos, the more painful the birth of sound, the more prolonged and harmonious will be that which comes forth, the clearer the form it will take, the more insistently it will speak to the human ear.'"
from 'Tanmatras: The Life and Work of Giacinto Scelsi' by Robin Freeman


Lac Nil Or - a Triptych for Michel Serres [An Iron Call and A Nil Carol] was recorded on June 3 2019, a day after I learned of Serres' passing. It is a two loop improvisation, recorded in approximately half an hour in a single 'take', with the base loop time at approximately 12 minutes. The album is structured in a triptych form with the initial 24 minutes a much more sparse and open architecture, and the third 12 minute arc through the loops providing a 'sentimental' condensation of the soundscape.


Serre's work has been for more than 20 years a central hinge in all my thinking, creative work, and teaching. With clinical honesty, my knowledge of him is very deep and very narrow. What I have read of his writing, I have read dozens of times. The larger portion of his work, I have yet to properly encounter, however. That's another way of saying I have not read the vast bulk of his work. What an incomplete story my love of this philosopher's work makes, with so much potential for our future...

On the session:
This material was recorded with no rehearsal, in a single take.
My remixing process utilizes LoopyHD, a software loopstation, in what are *also* improvisational mixing sessions. They preserve a substantial amount of spontaneity and uncertainty in terms of what final outcome and structure may be, and also rely on subconscious perception and memory of musical and sonic structures. These remix sessions are the only moments where any 'rehearsal' or 'second chances' appear. Sometimes my work develops in a single live take using LoopyHD [see my Adab: The Demanding Memory album, where both tracks were live performances]. However for this record, the triptych is a set of remixes based on the original two track looping session.

The signal path and setup for this project was:
Strandberg Boden 7 string guitar > Apogee interface > iPad Pro > Audiobus > Bias FX [compression, boost, Klon, Matchless and Tweed, Dark Memory, hall reverb] > LoopyHD > Laney IRTX speakers in stereo.
I use extremely heavy [5mm] Vpicks for many of the 'prepared guitar' effects, slide effects, etc; these are reminiscent of the stone Mind Picks we used in the 1980s. Mixing in LoopyHD as improvised 'remix' sessions; mastering in Final Touch.


An Iron Call
These two parts [of the triptych which comprise this album] total ~24 minutes long and function as a double passage through the loop cycle. The track was remixed on July 8 2019, on a flight to Lisbon. My intention with this mix was to open up the sparse architecture of the improvisation, in contrast to the shorter, much denser 12 minute long mix [A Nil Carol] which forms the third part of this triptych. That shorter single passage through the loop includes multiple layers of the two original tracks, in excerpts and reversals, whereas this track maintains a largely two part guitar structure, with certain passages utilizing reversal and judicious use of excerpts from those two original loop tracks as additional layers in the soundscape.

If you would like to hear the 'entire piece' but devote only 12 minutes, you can comfortably skip this longer diptych and jump right over to A Nil Carol. However this longer arc might yield a kind of ascetic immersion that is far less sentimental. Your mileage, as they say, may vary. If you've read this far in the album notes, then chances are you are ready to listen to it all. Mille Grazie!


A Nil Carol, the third part of the triptych which comprises this album, is ~12 minutes long and functions as a single passage through the loop cycle. This track was mixed on June 3 immediately after the recording work. My intention with this mix was to create a highly dense, emotional and sentimental arc, and initially it was to be stand-alone; however after some weeks of consideration and some remixing sessions in July 2019, and then more than a year of re-listening to the different mixes, it was decided to structure the album as a triptych with 'discardable' portions, depending on the needs and time commitment of the listener. This shorter single passage through the loop includes multiple layers of the two original tracks, in excerpts and reversals, and deploys many passages utilizing reversals and excerpts from those two initial loop tracks as additional layers in the soundscape.