专辑简介

Ben Miller's 2008 solo fretless guitar outing. The structure of the CD is like this: the first 3 tracks are a slow, subtle development of an idea I've taken around the country (USA) and played across several different musical styles over the past 5 years. Conceptually, expressing a knowledge of Pythagorean "chordmode" development while simultaneously adding the element of harmonic quartal music a-la modern jazz, underneath a pulsating dotted quarter-quarter-eighth rhythm. I tune the guitar to pure fourths, and the open strings are really saying something on these tracks, if you are listening. The next track after bump(a pseudo name for this groove)bang, and boom ...is violent destruction, smashing an antique 1920's piano with a sledgehammer. You can hear the participants taking turns unleashing aggressions on the 88-key reservoir of undulating overtones and cracking wood. These tracks were recorded by untrained "street people" (myself included) outdoors in southwest Philly. Listen close and you will hear the kids and bewildered parents! After this interlude of destruction, the movement is toward building, with linear improvisation in the free jazz style. I'm sure you will find better linear free jazz playing!! What makes this unique, though, is the instrument itself, leads to unusual sounding glissandos, microtones, and of course it's ME! Hear what I have to "say". The ideas (I wouldn't really call them compositions) juxtapose and develop and transit and generally reflect not only my emotional and spiritual state but my studies and cultural experiences of the recent times. So...who am I? what was I studying? Young guitarist, 24 years old, who has been playing for 13 years. Many wonderful guitarists and musicians have helped guide me to discover my own voice, including, Brandon Ross, David Fiuczynski, Will Calhoun, Dave Stryker, Sid Jacobs, Steve Coleman, Jean-Paul Bourelly, Henry Threadgill, W.A. Mathieu, Erv Wilson, Neil Haverstick, Stephen James Taylor, and many other friends and colleagues. My listening habits are severely structured to encompass heavy doses of the medicine I need to grow, following, roughly, a line of J.I., modern western composition, Jazz, African, Indian, in a complex weave that probably only makes sense to me. I consciously listen to and absorb the ideas from the main movers, shakers, and stylists of the recorded music era, methodically. During the time of making this recording, I was studying Lubicz's metaphysics a bit, learning about phi, studying Italian, Rembrandt, hanging out at jazz clubs, improvising with a local tabla player/experimental musician, studying the Bible, studying Sufism, spending lots of hours at the library, reading Sri Aurobindo, listening to Stockhausen, Anthony Braxton, LaMonte Young, Terry Riley, Lou Harrision...and talking constantly to my Italian family. I wonder if you can hear all that in these three tracks!! I would probably never release anything if I thought I really had to (be perfect)... The main point is absorb, then communicate, try to offer something pure and beautiful to inspire. Following these three tracks of linear improvisation is yet another interlude of violent piano smashing, somehow, strangely, grounding the disc. The 9th track, Nodus, does not move from the D which it begins on, the entire time. Maybe you will like to jam with it, I suggest playing an E. The next track is a melody that I showed my cousins and pentatonic revelations in real-time. Track 11 is the completion, or rather, the demolition of the piano. This album is dedicated to Salihu, an ancient mystic living in SW Philly who is teaching me about the "Nur" (the completion of the light of divine knowledge, ilm).... Peace,, Ben, 1-18-09