Week 25: Sound As Resistance

More buttons than a tailor shop, more keys than a locksmith, more cables than a telephone company; the scene: five highly trained, dedicated, studious, creative improvising musicians crammed into the corner of a local pub, the air thick with concentration, the smell of at least one analog circuit overloaded; the men are not wealthy, but rich with cobbled together electronics and handmade drums; the cables connecting kingdoms of life as the tropical plants filling every spare inch of the room are wired into their synthesizers; the sense of creation, invention and the uncompromising desire for new ideas, sounds and patterns as palpable as the craft beer dribbling down the patrons’ shirt front.

Of the patrons, few get it. The ones that do bobbing their heads with big grins on their faces, the rest yelling in their friend’s ear, annoyed by the sneaking feeling that they are missing something they don’t understand. The musicians don’t care; they are interested in one thing. The act of creation, the building of something, piece by piece, block by block, that will outlive all of them, that will propagate through the collective conciseness and influence events far beyond their perception and understanding. The energy that is put into their creation, this night, will bring down the dark tower of authoritarianism and shine a light into the future of the human race.

Credits

Joseph Dowdy // tenor, soprano sax, flute, effects

Kevin Timmons // Synthesizers, effects

Melchi Kpade // Keyboards

Jonathan Greene // drums

John Daniel Ray // bass, computer, effects

Small Tropical Plant // Roland Juno Synthesizer

Produced by John Daniel Ray

Mr. Haircut Studios