www.tumblr.com/rovingmusicologist-blog
The link above can get you started.
I got into sound recording as a way to have something to do in the noise music scene. In 2003 to 2004, I attempted to make a documentary about the art and music scene in San Diego. I moved in with my parents in North Mankato, Minnesota during the last part of this time to edit the footage. There, I met Jameson Sweiger and Clay Kohlbinger, who had a band called Maths Balance Volumes. My only frame of reference for it was the late period of John Coltrane, and the atonal music that was popular in the Music Department of UCSD. Also, in the documentary interviews I had talked to the Locust, and seen many “screamo” bands. But the music Jameson and Clay were making was even more chaotic, and seemed more intent on being amusical. Their contrarian streak manifested in anything related to their music. I didn’t really understand what they were doing, and they had no interest in explaining it.
“Maths Balance Volumes is another name for God. It makes sense if you think about it” Clay said once. I’ve refused to ever think about it, in the spirit of being contrarian. The only descriptor for their music that wasn’t immediately disparaged was “basement concrète”. We did play in a basement.
Though I was more bemused than amazed at what they were doing, it was fun to jam with them. They preferred to play music with people who didn’t know what they were doing. They booked shows, and I played some gigs with them. Slowly the music grew on me, as we interspersed listening to Black Dice and Albert Aylor with Gram Parsons and Bob Dylan. I also grew to know about the scene they were a part of, and the network of labels and bands they knew. I even ended up on a recording released by a label in Japan. “When you play that’s where the album falls apart” Jameson told me. I think they were somewhat bewildered someone else had wanted to release it.
Then I went to law school, and brought Jameson with me. He lived with me for a year before moving back to Minnesota. When I graduated in 2008 and my job prospects were in the toilet, I worked at Barnes & Noble for a bit in Mankato while I figured out what to do. Jameson and Clay were going on tour, and I was ready to leave everything. Natalie Mering aka Weyesblood, our friend we knew from Portland, was going to join them on the first part of the tour.
I already had a plan to leave the country and make field recordings with my Roland-09HR. My ideas were very much influenced by my time with these people. I had an idea for sound photographs of jarring or strange sonic occurrences. For instance, when I was working on a landscaping job on a house in the country, it was cloudy, and suddenly there was a loud hum. Not loud enough to stop working, but also no explanation for it. I watched the other guys working for a bit, with the cloudy sky and this sound that made no sense, just drifting through. There was never anything like this in movies, written about in books, it was just some zen moment that one could sit in. Until they had to get back to work, anyway, and that fleeting scene was preserved only in my brain.
So the inspiration of this moment was filtered through the sensibilities of Maths Balance Volumes. I would never start or lead a band, or make music in any serious sense. I was a recorder, a documentarian, I had been before and I would be again. Listening for these moments of “found noise” and writing about them a bit was my take on what they were doing. This tour with Jameson, Clay, and Natalie was what I needed to work out how to record things in the moment and how to present them. And they needed my gas money.
The blog I linked to is a broken down version of what it once was. There were pictures for each entry but these have disappeared. Even the original web address was taken and given to an AI cooking blog. But the recordings and writings are still there.