News

What an amazing music reunion. Every member of A Minor Forest, Creeping Death, Aspects of Physics, and almost Phineas Gage (that really would have been too much). Drew Matmos gave a really great speech about marriage acknowledging what's already there: the commitment between two people (one wearing an orange shirt, or as Andee put it, dressed as the captain of a steamboat; the other dressed in a bridal gown). Drew used a healthy dose of quotes from the philosopher Spinoza; Martin Matmos declined to wear his borrowed Liberace outfit - we can only wonder what it would have been like. The wedding cake was made out of ice cream, and Wobbly performed yet another excellent DJ set, including something called the Symphony of Birds. He also turned us on to a CD in which a fellow ends each song with the solo from Hotel California. The last sentence in the liner notes is "By the way, have you ever seen Purple Rain?"

We've returned from ATP 2004. We played some new material and almost used the fake blood Martin drummed up for us at the last second. Erik hosted karaoke events two weekends in a row, and the entire band participated (sans Dave, who claimed that he needed rest before the show). The guitorgan proves once again to be one too many items for European travel. Or maybe the metallophone is the problem. Or the extra t-shirts we didn't sell. On top of all that, we had seven people in the chalet, including world famous Brandon Butler of Canyon and Boys' Life fame. Brandon provided morale boosting, comic relief, red wine, acoustic guitar tuning by ear, and basic band management services for a nominal fee (basically, he only requested that he be allowed to mock every single travel photo from Erik's trip to Ethiopia). For images that only somewhat explain this second trip to Camber Sands, England, see the photo gallery and choose the 2004_ATP menu.

We're going back to the UK in April to play at the All Tomorrow's Parties Festival. This will be your first opportunity in more than a year to experience the Threnody onslaught at 220 AC Volts. A full run-down of the event can be found at www.atpfestival.com. We may try to play a few other dates in the UK and Europe after the festival, so if you have any ideas, please let us know!

After briefly trying out a Variax guitar at the local San Francisco Guitar Center, Dave concluded that maybe all the possibilities technology offers isn't such a good thing for making music. Still, everyone's got to try playing an electric guitar with an Ethernet connector on it. Erik points out that they've just released an acoustic guitar (also with an Ethernet connection - technically called an RJ-45 connector). In all seriousness, I think they've finally gone too far. More research should be done on building a holodeck like Star Trek has instead of acoustic guitars with mutant connectors. What's next, a video switcher with XLRs built in?! Come see the Threnody Ensemble Ethernet Laser Show in Europe this year to see what it's all about.

Mixing audio improvisations from the last couple of years and adding a bunch of new material. Erik recorded some drum tracks with Steve Walls, world's most excellent three-orange-dot tattooed man, up-and-coming New York artiste, and infamous good-style (as opposed to bad-style) jazzic drummer from the former 33.3. Not that you'd know 33.3 was gone, considering Erik, Dominique, and Steve have been writing music together lately. Not that the three of them comprised the original 33.3, but hey, two out of three is pretty close. Thanks to Paul from 3 Heart Mile Procession for engineering those drums and making those WAVES. Marit actually instigated this trip by having to attend the annual MLA conference and give a paper on one of her PhD topics, poet Robert Frost. Erik did most of the ProTools mixing while Dave said, "That sounds great. Just change all of it."

Dominique, Robert, and Buc let us stay at their place in New Haven (Branford) to record for a couple of days. An amazing recording moment: Buc howled along to one of our improvisations perfectly in tune. It's the kind of thing that HAS to be on the record, but probably no one will notice it and then we'll be forced to make a big deal about how cool it is while we explain it. Really, you can't hear it that well since the microphones were placed directly on the amps and Buc was in the other room, but there's a moment at the end where you just might be able to tell. We finally tracked a song we originally improvised with Anthony (the Burr-ster, oh please...) back in 2001 at a really nice studio in Brooklyn called Headgear. Erik and Dave endlessly compared the minute quality differences between their Boss RC-20 looping pedals only to conclude that Dave's "just kind of sucks more" but Erik's always looks a little more worn because he isn't quite as uptight about his gear looking top notch. Laptop comparisons are another good indication of this - but I digress. By the way, Buc is Dominique's dog, in case that wasn't clear.

Toronto was a first-class experience. I've never seen such an attentive experimental film crowd - Dave was even hugged by an experimental filmmaker after the show. Erik wore one of Jen's scarves to a gala event, and Pat O'Neill was good enough to pose with the evil metal horned goat hand gesture. Thanks to everyone who invited us and helped out - especially Susan Oxtoby from the Wavelengths Festival for providing unbelievable Canadian luxuries like the bed-and-breakfast just blocks for the museum where we performed. Also, we're auctioning our Canadian Starbucks gift passes (bidding starts at $150). They still have a little bit of money left on them. Also, Dave's 30th birthday was celebrated by a rowdy crowd of international experimental filmmakers after the show. See the photos for details.

We are going to Wavelengths Program at the Toronto International Film Festival to play live music along with a number of films by Jenn Reeves and Pat O'Neil. The show/screening is at 8pm on Saturday, September 6th at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

It's pretty random, but I'm going to be playing a show in Ames, Iowa on June 9th. Expect Karaoke, space jams, and some depressing power-ballads. See the shows section for details.

It's been a while since we've played with Pinback, and it's been even longer since we've played on the East Coast, so we're doing both in March. In addition to Amy Domingues (cello) and Anthony Burr (clarinet), we have Dominique playing on all shows! We'll meet up with Pinback in Philadelphia and part ways in Boston (see our shows page for specific dates). If we're ambitious, we'll post DVD and game reviews from the latest in Pinback's collection. Other trip highlights include two long-anticipated recording sessions with Dominique and Amy D. Speaking of recording sessions, I just had a dream that I was in Chicago watching Bob Weston (who had grown an extremely long mullet haircut - in the dream) record the Magic Band, but there was someone upstairs teaching people how to hammer in hardwood floor planks (which obviously ruined the session). I also had a dream that people were mad at me because I kept referring to the second Lord of the Rings movie as "Lord of the Rings 2". At the end, Gandalf explained that he had been traveling in the future. With tears in his eyes, he revealed a large cardboard sign that said "7-11" on it. A hobbit mentioned that this year's All Tomorrow's Parties was going to be hosted by someone like Enya and it was going to happen wherever the hobbits live (the Shire?) I thought that was incredibly clever marketing on ATP's part. I haven't actually seen any of these movies yet... see you on the East Coast.

England was fun and a lot of work. Anthony and Reynard, both incredibly accomplished musicians, were also the only qualified drivers for the wrong side of the road. London takes about 4 hours to cross on an average day. Rain added to the mix for an unbearably slow London exit on the way to Leeds. When we arrived in Leeds, we discovered that the locals had taken down all the street signs. The evening ended with everyone smoking hookas while Barry waited an hour and a half for a sandwich consisting of bread and cheese. We played with Nina Nastasia almost every night... the rumor-mill has yet to settle whether those folks attended the Whitney Houston record release party after our Union Chapel show. As usual, we got almost no leisure time in. Amy made it to the Portrait Gallery and the Tate. Erik made it to Kew Gardens by sundown. Overall, the trip was a success because Barry Hogan came along to entertain us. He taught us combinations of English words we had never considered here in the States. If we can afford to hire him for our next tour we will do it in a flash. Thanks to Barry, Helen, Storm, Amy, Reynard, Anthony, Martin and Matt Snowball's, and to Virgin Airlines for allowing me to pause my movies on the airplane when I visited the lavatory. Pictures from our trip are now in the photo gallery under the heading "2002_UK_December".

We're heading to England for a few shows in early December. We are incredibly fortunate to have Amy Domingues (cello), Reynard Rott (cello) and Anthony Burr (clarinet) coming along with us - they are all incredible musicians. These London shows have been arranged by Barry Hogan at All Tomorrow's Parties, who is also planning to release and distribute Timbre Hollow in Europe. We can't thank him enough for his efforts. There will be a "Who's the Nicest Guy in England Wrap Party" after our last show, and we've already made the trophy for Barry. Meanwhile, the "Flattery" award already has my name engraved into it. But the most pressing question remains: who will be the one to lug the Guitorgan all the way from San Diego to London?

For those of you who can't get enough of Schultz (like us), you'll be glad to know he is as prolific as ever. Please visit his various sites of genre-crushing lyric-core for the latest and greatest ever. I am not sure if he has a girlfriend these days, but his attempts to find one are thoroughly impressive (parental discretion strongly advised).

This is really exciting for us because it means we get to work with Barry Hogan, the creator of the All Tomorrow's Parties Festival. With ATP, Barry grants other musicians the power to design a music festival on their own terms - it's so simple and yet remarkably bold given the state of today's music industry. Playing at ATP 2002 re-ignited my own interest in the music scene (I downloaded a lot of mp3's afterwards) and it's exciting to have that inspiration connected directly to our band. We will post the release date when the details are ironed out.

For a while we were fairly balanced between the East and West Coast, but Erik pushed the seesaw further towards the East by picking up and moving to New York City. Exciting updates from his new cell phone include: John Zorn is a neighbor, the art museums in New York are really cool, the music scene is also really inspiring in New York City (just wait till CMJ, Erik) and, as if I need to be reminded, the New York subway is still 1000 times better than San Francisco BART. As long as the vegan soft-serve ice cream place is standing, we can assume things will be alright for him in the big city.

Dave's 10-year radio project has taken full root on the Internet. Weekly live shows begin on Saturday, October 5, 2002. Other exciting events include daily old-time radio dramas and a diverse range of sound artists performing live. Take a listen to the radio.

After some major demographic studies, Amy finally decided to put up her own website - a decision that we're really happy about. For those of you competing for the title "Performed with Most Bands" (is that in Guiness yet?), consider your competition first: Amy's band- and discography.

After the wedding in the Bay Area, Erik headed off to Anthony Burr's wedding in Maine, beating his own record of two weddings in two months set several days earlier in San Francisco. I've been trying to get him to write a review of his experiences for our web site, but I think we'll just have to be satisfied with the pictures. If you know of any weddings that we haven't attended, please contact us. Anthony and Eliza will be submitting some photos soon.

Erik came to town (San Francisco) for another wedding! After the wedding, Erik took BART to the Tenderloin wearing his wedding suit, which meant that we almost didn't get into the Neil Hamburger and Pleaseeasaur show at the Hemlock Tavern. Over the next couple of days, we worked on some music in the "old-style", listening to a recording, re-learning parts, re-recording sections. I ate cold tofu and coconut milk in a North Oakland driveway after I dropped Erik off at a friend's house just prior to his trip to Maine.

Read the article at SFGate.

Erik likes the prints, Dave gets the CD-ROM's. We paused the analog vs. digital debate just long enough to post our photos from the European tour. Now everyone can see them. It is always hard to capture the essence of a tour with a few still images, especially when you are right in the middle of it and all objectivity is lost. Hopefully, the sheer number of images will at least convey how many people and places we came into contact with. Check them out at the new photo gallery, made with a special dose of PHP.

Now that the European tour has finished and the wedding is over, we're sorting through all the 16 bit audio material for our next record (well, a few tracks were recorded at 24 bit, but it wasn't on purpose). We'll start posting potential song and record titles as we discover them. Here's a few for starters:

• (Just) thong and then pants as socks
• One black jeans
• If teleportation existed, the audience could come to you
• If Dead Can Dance lived at Austin Powers' house
• The laughing barrier
• This truck can bite my ass
• After I got mugged, I saw the baby yoghurt
• There are many Yannis in this world
• Neither coffee nor tea
• Germano-porn people
• Me and the weed go way back
• Extreme maneuvers by Kevin
• Napkin makeout session
• You decide how long the flush is

Last night, in San Francisco, I saw this great band called People's Bizarre. They are sort of like Eastern European / Balkan traditional music meets modern jazz horn section meets walkie-talkie and Learn Romanian Audio Cassette. Admirably, one song was written in Macedonian. Also, Dan Cantrell, the accordion player, played the saw in exceptional metal fashion (feedback plus noise chugs). Since it was a CD release party, they had cookies, cake and pie. I even won their new CD in the raffle! Though the stand-up comedy at the beginning got things off to a slow start, all in all it was an amazing musical evening.

A lot of people helped to make our European tour possible and we'd like to say thanks: Amy, Lori, Anthony and Kevin, Rachel Grimes, Michael and Fred, Barry, Helen, Steve, Bob and Todd at All Tomorrow's Parties, Nick and Bennett, Matt and Petro, Anna Moulson, Dave Campbell, Etienne and Arnaud, Giovanna, Tiziano, Roberta and Marta, Stefano, Alessandro, Laura and Joncarlo, Chiara and François, Andrea, Sergio and Gigi (the silent man), Agostino and Giovanna, Bara, Mate, Darko, Ljerke, Kukuriku Street, Annemieke and Nuno, Andreas and Claudina Beyer, Pascal, Marco, Michel and Michaela Kehl. Sorry for any misspellings or blatant omissions. Photos from our trip are in the images section.

Dominique is getting married! Erik and Dave headed to Block Island (off Rhode Island, which strangely, isn't an island at all) to participate in the festivities. We caught the one and only Point Judith Ferry to Block Island. Dave contracted a highly poisonous spider bite or severe poison oak on the island and has been treating it with calomine lotion since his return to San Francisco.

Only days after returning from our European tour we were notified that Bara, who we only just met 10 days earlier in Zagreb, had passed away from a heart attack. We were shocked and saddened to receive this news.

The tour was a success... Anthony headed to Australia for an over-the-top music / performance art piece, Amy is back in D.C., Erik is in San Diego grading papers, Dave is in San Francisco teaching video classes, and Lori stayed in Europe with her cello for another few weeks. The photo gallery is coming soon...

New photos from our 2002 tour will be available after May. View the last 5 years of Threnody Ensemble touring and recording history in the photos section.

After one too many visits to Guitar Center, we finally got on the plane and went to Europe. Somehow we managed to lug all of our gear to England (even the metallophones AND the Guitorgan!) and the tour is underway. Our music selection for the long European drives include: Puny Humans (Steve Schultz's last record? please say no!), Steve Schultz's entire web site, Black Sabbath, 'Maiden, MCHawking, TacoBell (rare! transferred from cassette), Shirley and Spinoza's Shoutcast stream outtakes, and the infamous Longmont recordings. You can always reach us by email if you have any pressing concerns or playlist suggestions for the road.

Threnody Ensemble is performing twice at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in England: Friday, April 19, 5:45 PM and Saturday, April 27, 3:15 PM. Check the complete ATP schedule (link broken) for details. Anthony Burr (clarinet), Amy Domingues (cello), and Lori Goldston (cello) will be playing with us. Thanks to Rachel Grimes, who will be making a guest appearance on piano.

After All Tomorrow's Parties, we head to the main land. Exact venues and dates will be posted soon. See the shows section for details.

We have been improvising, recording, composing and mixing with some fantastic collaborators: Anthony Burr (clarinet), Amy Domingues (cello), and Reynard Rott (cello). A new track will be available soon on the All Tomorrow's Parties compilation CD released in conjunction with the ATP Festival in England.

Timbre Hollow, our full-length release from August 2000, is still available in stores and online.

Listen to ThaRoman (formerly Valerie White) Part II (requires RealPlayer).

A tiny interactive music piece using notation from one of our songs.

Listen to an archived live interview on New SoundsTM with John Schaefer: Friday, October 20, 2000 at 11PM EST.

A live interview / performance on Irene Trudel's WFMU radio show (the Threnody Ensemble segment is located about 1 hour and 6 minutes into the 3 hour program).

Read an article that says this:

The members of Threnody Ensemble didn't wear leather pants and didn't have dyed hair, but that wasn't the point.

The San Francisco Weekly reviewed Timbre Hollow."

Erik wrote an article for the July issue of NewMusicBox.org.