Toby Driver / In The L..L..Library Loft
Label: IODA
Year: 2005
Track Title
1. Kandu vs. Corky (Horrorca)
2. The Lugubrious Library Loft
3. Brown Light Upon Us
4. Eptaceros
Kandu vs. Corky (Horrorca)
This one's a microtonal piece that loves bell-shaped things. The rhythm is basically a bell-curve shape over and over again, and some of the instrumentation (bells, and sine waves) are themselves bell-shaped. Part of the original idea was to mic things really loud but play them extra-quietly, so that they sounded really artifact-laden on tape. The strings at the beginning use this idea, as well as some of the cymbals, which we miked right above the rim of each, and a simple touch would produce an insanely resonant bass tone. All these things working together create an extremely undulatious take on contemporary drone-metal.
electric guitar, bells, sine waves, drum kit (2), upright bass, electric bass, violin, trombone, euphonium, trumpet, vocal.
The Lugubrious Library Loft
This clustonic piece is based on the need for two persons to perform each instrument. For example, the piano requires a player on the keyboard and a player malleting the strings simultaneously, and so on for each instrument. As for the vocals, one person was to sing only the notes in an "ah" while the second person skillfully inserted their lips, tongue, and teeth into the first person's mouth and moved them around a bit to form the enunciations.
prepared piano, string piano, bowed tuning forks, tuning fork pattycake, two-tongue vocals, electric bass, electric guitar, violin.
Brown Light Upon Us
The idea behind this one was to just have a band play in one room, and place the microphone in another room behind walls and closed doors. I wrote the song with those things in mind, trying to use sounds, rhythms, harmonies, etc. that would result in a song that sounded right only when listened to from one room over - in other words, if you heard it in the room it was being played in, it wouldn't sound as good. The ambient quality of the song would obviously have to be pretty important, to discourage the listener from listening in a way that they were used to doing. I've heard plenty of music that has haunted me most when drifting in from a far-off hall, most often piano music. Never with a metal band though, so i was trying to capture the same vibe here with that instrumentation.
electric guitar, drum kit, electric bass, remote snare drum.
Eptaceros
Kayo Dot's trumpetist at the time had been experimenting with interesting extended-technique trumpet sounds. I was interested in hearing his technique in a different context, so I wrote a song based on that, "Eptaceros" means "seven-horn," an appropriately haunting title for one of the most beautiful and bleak pieces I have ever written.
cello (2), electric guitar, piano, trumpet, vocal.
Enjoy.
