Hypnosis
(2004)
Track listing:
01 Intro Flute
02 Hypnosis (Raag Sakta)
03 Ukrainians
04 Vorelli
05 Pumpkinseed (Raag Burra)
06 Revenge
07 Key Loop With Sitar
08 Tanic
09 Sixteen MM
10 Ominous Rain
11 Doom
12 The Edge of the World
13 November
14 Breath
15 Hypnochunck
16 Salt Water Honey
17 End
(2004)
Track listing:
01 Intro Flute
02 Hypnosis (Raag Sakta)
03 Ukrainians
04 Vorelli
05 Pumpkinseed (Raag Burra)
06 Revenge
07 Key Loop With Sitar
08 Tanic
09 Sixteen MM
10 Ominous Rain
11 Doom
12 The Edge of the World
13 November
14 Breath
15 Hypnochunck
16 Salt Water Honey
17 End
Information about the recording:
'Hypnosis' was made before Ichigatsu had a name.
At that point, J. Biebel had not moved
projects over to the later found 'name', yet it is truly
an Ichigatsu project. I've never been one
who liked reading endless notes about how some
independent music makers actually created
what she or he has done, but I'll allowing myself a
bit of indulgence here. The title 'Hypnosis'
was, in many ways, an homage to the many
important people from Greece that had influenced
me. Using a Greek-derived word as a title, with its
own English meaning, was significant,
because many passages in time are, more or less,
spells. Usually good spells under which we
willingly partake. For me, the spell spanned the
Atlantic ocean. My laptop carried an endless
amount of recorded sounds from London while I
was living there. They ranged from incredibly
diverse sources: upright piano compositions
created on the fly in an apartment in the Kennington
section of London, tabla recorded at the now
'famous' Scriven Court apartment that housed so
many amazing artists over the years. Scriven, in
Hackney, was without a doubt the center of a
musical awakening. It was here that Squid, my
previous collaborative-band had been born,
producing two albums. It continued on with more
and more recording of voice, percussion, and
the beginning of an endless collection of ambient
sound. Soon I was throwing things on the floor
numerous times and recording the resulting sound
just to achieve a certain 'something' that was
essential, or something that would then become the
vertebrae of a new sonic notion. There are
some memorable moments - tossing a 16 mm film
reel over and over again across the floor to
record the grinding spin (this is featured in the
obviously-titled track 'sixteen MM'. I'd also begun
carrying the laptop around with me in London and
recorded steps through leaves, echoed boots
in hallways, whistling, conversations in cafes. My
arsenal of sound was getting larger and larger.
It took a complete shake-up of life to bring me back
to the US and to Boston, and it was soon that
I found myself working the 3rd shift as a security
guard in a building with amazing acoustics.
Deep into the night, I would record my voice, ticking
clocks, percussive rhythms with all the
objects around me, putting sounds through digital
filters and slowly, very patiently and slowly
mixing them all together. In effect, two years or
more was the working time behind 'Hypnosis'.
The songs are some of the darker pieces I've
created; they are pregnant with many diverging
thoughts, and a strange optimism in the face of
reality. I had undergone a difficult personal
transformation involving immigration to the UK, and
it ended badly. Songs betray an obvious
need to understand what was happening. 'Vorelli',
a track that includes sound samples from the
British film 'Devil Doll', is a relentless pattern of
beats, mostly created out of found object sounds
(banging on hollow guitars, tossing spoons across
the room, etc.) The beats manifest in a
machine-like cadence of wanting, yearning - I don't
type those words with ease, because the
sensations were captured in a raw state, and so
they tend to remain there. 'Key Loop With Sitar'
was a carefully mixed kaleidescope of ambient
sound with Indian instruments. My Greek friends
in London, all of whom came to England with a rich
background of Eastern music, had a deep
effect on my perceptions of sound and what it can
and does accomplish. Soon, flutes and
percussion became the 'meat' of the tracks, and it
is these sounds that overtook 'Hypnosis.'
There were originally about 25 songs that were in a
rough stage for 'Hypnosis': about half of
them were either re-worked, combined with other
songs, or scrapped as 'a good idea that needs
more work'... Up until then, my most accomplished
piece 'John Raga' had undergone so many
transformations and had become such an elephant
of nearly 27 separate tracks of sound, that it
was left off the CD, only to reappear in a fresher
edited version on 2006's 'Airport'. When
whittling down the music to the 17 tracks that did
make it, I'd felt that I'd done all the editing I
could do - which is probably why the recording is as
long as it is. Many years, so much sound, so
many small moments of piano and flute and
banging drums and slight bits of grinding voice that
had to have a home, so I made homes for each of
them.
'Hypnosis' was made before Ichigatsu had a name.
At that point, J. Biebel had not moved
projects over to the later found 'name', yet it is truly
an Ichigatsu project. I've never been one
who liked reading endless notes about how some
independent music makers actually created
what she or he has done, but I'll allowing myself a
bit of indulgence here. The title 'Hypnosis'
was, in many ways, an homage to the many
important people from Greece that had influenced
me. Using a Greek-derived word as a title, with its
own English meaning, was significant,
because many passages in time are, more or less,
spells. Usually good spells under which we
willingly partake. For me, the spell spanned the
Atlantic ocean. My laptop carried an endless
amount of recorded sounds from London while I
was living there. They ranged from incredibly
diverse sources: upright piano compositions
created on the fly in an apartment in the Kennington
section of London, tabla recorded at the now
'famous' Scriven Court apartment that housed so
many amazing artists over the years. Scriven, in
Hackney, was without a doubt the center of a
musical awakening. It was here that Squid, my
previous collaborative-band had been born,
producing two albums. It continued on with more
and more recording of voice, percussion, and
the beginning of an endless collection of ambient
sound. Soon I was throwing things on the floor
numerous times and recording the resulting sound
just to achieve a certain 'something' that was
essential, or something that would then become the
vertebrae of a new sonic notion. There are
some memorable moments - tossing a 16 mm film
reel over and over again across the floor to
record the grinding spin (this is featured in the
obviously-titled track 'sixteen MM'. I'd also begun
carrying the laptop around with me in London and
recorded steps through leaves, echoed boots
in hallways, whistling, conversations in cafes. My
arsenal of sound was getting larger and larger.
It took a complete shake-up of life to bring me back
to the US and to Boston, and it was soon that
I found myself working the 3rd shift as a security
guard in a building with amazing acoustics.
Deep into the night, I would record my voice, ticking
clocks, percussive rhythms with all the
objects around me, putting sounds through digital
filters and slowly, very patiently and slowly
mixing them all together. In effect, two years or
more was the working time behind 'Hypnosis'.
The songs are some of the darker pieces I've
created; they are pregnant with many diverging
thoughts, and a strange optimism in the face of
reality. I had undergone a difficult personal
transformation involving immigration to the UK, and
it ended badly. Songs betray an obvious
need to understand what was happening. 'Vorelli',
a track that includes sound samples from the
British film 'Devil Doll', is a relentless pattern of
beats, mostly created out of found object sounds
(banging on hollow guitars, tossing spoons across
the room, etc.) The beats manifest in a
machine-like cadence of wanting, yearning - I don't
type those words with ease, because the
sensations were captured in a raw state, and so
they tend to remain there. 'Key Loop With Sitar'
was a carefully mixed kaleidescope of ambient
sound with Indian instruments. My Greek friends
in London, all of whom came to England with a rich
background of Eastern music, had a deep
effect on my perceptions of sound and what it can
and does accomplish. Soon, flutes and
percussion became the 'meat' of the tracks, and it
is these sounds that overtook 'Hypnosis.'
There were originally about 25 songs that were in a
rough stage for 'Hypnosis': about half of
them were either re-worked, combined with other
songs, or scrapped as 'a good idea that needs
more work'... Up until then, my most accomplished
piece 'John Raga' had undergone so many
transformations and had become such an elephant
of nearly 27 separate tracks of sound, that it
was left off the CD, only to reappear in a fresher
edited version on 2006's 'Airport'. When
whittling down the music to the 17 tracks that did
make it, I'd felt that I'd done all the editing I
could do - which is probably why the recording is as
long as it is. Many years, so much sound, so
many small moments of piano and flute and
banging drums and slight bits of grinding voice that
had to have a home, so I made homes for each of
them.
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