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A year or so ago OMM started receiving some unsolicited remixes of Philip Glass works from young producer/musicians. I believe this is because in some circles Philip Glass is known as “the Godfather of Trance”. The remixes I received were exciting interpretations of Philip’s work.

We have wanted to do remixes of some of Philip’s work for many years. We were aware of the Aphex Twin work, so we knew the intricacies involved in connecting with a ‘name’ remixer and the difficulty of getting permission from Sony or Nonesuch to use recordings that had been released by them. It occurred to us that Orange Mountain Music was in an ideal position to do a remix project. We have released and made many fantastic Philip Glass recordings, and there was obvious interest from talented artists to do the remixing. I contacted the remixers and sounded them out on this idea and they sent the word out through their network of remixers around the world.

I received many recordings and from them selected a group of thirteen strong mixes for a CD’s length program. They represent a very diverse program without any one dominant style. The artists are: Androoval from Uruguay, Robert Bell from Australia, Brian Bender from the US, Héctor Castillo from Venezuela, Taylor Deupree from the US, Sebastián Escofet from Argentina, impLOG. from the US, Woody McBride-DJ ESP from the US, Marcos Romero from Uruguay, Kate Simko from the US, Dietrich Schoenemann from the US, Luciano Supervielle from Uruguay and Dave Wesley from the US.

I want to thank all these artists for their exceptional efforts and especially Marcos Romero for making initial contact and helping me sustain the effort to make it happen.

— Don Christensen

Spring 2005

I came in contact with Junji Kubo from noble label through my label, Happy, in Tokyo during the summer of 2004. Happy was the result of my long-time interest in unconventional japanese pop, and was quite a different direction from the minimalist microsounds of my flagship label 12k. Little did I know at the time, but the worlds of Happy and 12k would soon merge.

Upon hearing Eisi’s “Awaawa” CD from Noble I was struck by the beauty, simplicity, and unpretentious experimentalism of their sound. I found their use of traditional instruments and the airy, haunting voice of Mujika Easel to be unique and captivating. Due to my growing interest in acoustic sound sources I approached Kubo-san with a concept of recreating “Awaawa” in its entirety using the band’s original tracks as source material for digital manipulation and building them from the ground up. It was an opportunity for me to explore more pop-based production techniques and to take my own sound in new directions.

“Every Still Day” (a phrase taken from the lyrics of “Soshite Hossuru”) was started in the late summer of 2004 and quickly became one of the most challenging projects I had ever worked on. I had to simultaneously balance the integrity of eisi’s original work with my own fresh interpretation while loosely adhering to the “rules” of pop music. Eisi kindly supplied me not only with every individual track from each song on the original album, but also multiple takes of each track as well as outtakes that never appeared on the album. The source material was daunting, but enormously deep. Added to this was a sense of sadness as I found out that Eisi had recently disbanded, so my work immediately became an elegy of sorts.

My initial concept for “Every Still Day” was to take Eisi’s songs, which are acoustic and freeform in nature, and to stretch them in two opposite directions. On one hand, I wanted to add more structure and a sense of “popness” and on the other blending in my own style of digital experimentalism. Given the immense possibility of source material at hand I often chose to keep much of the main instrumentation intact, keeping a direct reference to the original songs, not getting distracted by too many choices and technological possibilities. To this I would add layers and fragments of digitally processed sounds and build new arrangements. In addition to the original tracks I created 3 interludes sourced from eisi’s live recordings. These short pieces appear on the album as an intro, an interlude, and an outro. I also asked San Francisco guitarist Christopher Willits, a friend, collaborator, and artist on 12k to supply some guitar parts using his signature folded guitar technique. His work appears on “Note 1.”

I want to extend my warmest respects to each of the members of eisi for allowing me complete freedom to manipulate their recordings. As an artist myself I know how difficult it is to let go of work and allow someone to change or recontextualize it. For this opportunity I am deeply grateful. I believe that my work offers a unique interpretation of “Awaawa,” approaching it from my own point of view with my own influences, and in the end it was one of the most exciting and important projects I’ve ever had the pleasure to work on. It was my wish that eisi would equally enjoy hearing their songs in a new light and perhaps discover elements or sonic relationships that they had not noticed before. It appears that they did indeed like my work: upon hearing some of the early demo versions the band decided to get back together.

Despite all of the challenges, excitement and creative energy I experienced during the writing of “Every Still Day” I still believe that my work is merely a peek inside Eisi, from a stranger’s point of view, and that the beauty of their original songs and performances can never be improved upon.

Taylor Deupree + Christopher Willits Live In Japan, 2004 is the first release in 12k’s new Limited Series. Issued in a numbered edition of 500 cds, Live In Japan, 2004
Live In Japan, 2004Audiosphere 8 (Audiosphere/Sub Rosa, 2003), and Mujo (Plop, 2004). However, new directions are taken into pulsing and repetitive frameworks, more intense than either artist is commonly known for. The second track is Christopher Willits’ own performance capturing his signature live, folded guitar work and the third track is a micro/ambient set from Deupree utilizing not only computer-based sounds but live, processed melodica as well as real-time room recording manipulations.

Taylor Deupree & Kenneth Kirschner’s Post_Piano 2 continues the two New York composers’ collaborative investigation into the intersections of digital minimalism and experimental piano composition. Working with his childhood acoustic piano and the accidental sounds of an imperfect recording environment, Kirschner first composed a simple, austere “piano sketch” to serve as raw material for the project. This sketch was then passed on to Deupree, who created three new compositions entirely out of sounds derived from Kirschner’s piece. The two then collaborated on editing the new recordings, which transform the original piano sketch into a diverse array of sounds both familiar and unexpected. Like their previous CD, Post_Piano 22 is released as an open source project, and the composers invite other artists to continue the interpretation and transformation of their work in an ongoing process of open collaboration.

Kenneth Kirschner on Post_Piano 2:
“Taylor and I wrote Post_Pianoo in 2002, and since then I had added to my studio an actual acoustic piano – in fact, the very piano on which I first started studying at the age of 5. It’s an old piano, with an old sound, and I knew I wanted to use it for Post_Piano 2. But my studio doesn’t exactly offer a pristine environment for recording acoustic instruments – not least because an elevated train runs by the window every few minutes. My idea, therefore, was to emphasize the environmental sounds of the space, and create a piano piece that was as much a series of field recordings as an actual studio work. The result was “November 11, 2003” – a spare, fragmentary piano sketch recorded using techniques that ranged from the relatively high-tech to the very, very low-tech. This formed the source material for the entire project. And from that point on, the process was similar to our previous CD: the piano sketch was handed off to Taylor, who chopped it up in the computer and built new compositions from the resulting fragments. I encouraged him to focus as much on the accidental sounds – the passing subway, the street noises, the creaking of the old piano’s mechanisms – as on the piano notes themselves. Taylor wrote three long pieces using three distinct approaches, and each transforms the piano sketch into something new while still evoking the character of the original. His tracks have a modern, state-of-the-art sound – yet they never let you forget that what you’re hearing was once a piano. We then collaborated on the editing of these pieces, which make up the first three tracks of the CD. The final track is “November 11, 2003” itself; the CD thus concludes at the project’s beginning, with a coda that reveals the origin of all the sounds that preceded it. And as with the first post_piano, we’re presenting this new CD as an open source project: it’s released under an open license, and we eagerly look forward to hearing how our friends and colleagues take these old sounds and find new uses for them.”

Deupree and Willits unite again in their second collaborative release. Mujo builds on the duo’s growing process which was initiated on Audiosphere 08, the acclaimed Deupree / Willits CD released by Sub Rosa in late 2003. Mujo develops their collaborative and living process of generating music, and locates new paths and branches of sonic exploration.

Mujo is a Japanesse word that means “constant change”, or “transience”. Inspired by ideas and principles of wabi-sabi, Willits and Deupree set out to generate a music that celebrated the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. This music holds an elusive fragility. There are structural elements in constant flux, forms with cracks, melodies tickled with beautiful imperfections, phrases incomplete and broken. The music seeps, and wanders, remaining gaseous and solid all at once. The albums duration seems to trace a line, or flow from from light to dark, external to internal.

Built upon a series of loose jams and guitar improvisations, the music has a fresh under-produced and natural quality to it. Live collaborations were recorded in Deupree’s brooklyn studio in late fall 2003 and spring 2004, times of natural change and transformation.

Fragments and whole recordings of thoses sessions were subject to further processing in Willits’ San Francisco studio and in Deupree’s 12k headquarters. Mujo is the continued exploration of what will surely become a long and influential collaboration between these two unique sound artists/ musicians. Their work highlights each artist’s own unique aesthetics but more importantly creates a third, unique voice, that is not just a simple sum of their two sounds.