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"Eventually in a million years, things will work out. Humans will have gone extinct, and DNA will have recombined into some new form."
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Steve Tibbetts
Natural Causes
ECM Press Release
Steve Tibbetts: guitars, piano, kalimba, bouzouki
Marc Anderson: percussion, steel drums, gongs
“I am partial to silence, breaks, decay, full stops in music. I could have delineated separate sections in some compositions at a break, but I like the idea of freezing silence or gaps into the fabric of the music. It was tempting to have the entire album appear as one track, one unbroken piece.”
-- Steve Tibbetts
It has been eight years since Steve Tibbetts gave us the fiery electric guitar album A Man About A Horse. Now he returns with a different kind of recording: an album of, primarily, acoustic sounds. The making of Natural Causes took place in a period when Tibbetts was reconsidering some fundamental aspects of his art and craft - in parallel with daily studies of Bach, Bartók, and music theory. Examining those giants up close made it doubly difficult to go about business-as-usual in his own work. “After some hours, my ears would be wide open...and disinclined to the prospect of blasting electric guitar. So I stuck with my dad’s Martin D-12-20 12-string. I wanted to keep things simple. I thought maybe I could find a voice in well-played single-string lines and say more with less - like Sultan Kahn perhaps. That was the intent, even though the music usually mutated into complex little cathedrals.”
The music of Sultan Kahn has been a reference for Tibbetts since the mid-90s and his experience of witnessing a revelatory concert that brought the Indian sarangi master to Saint Paul. “Since then I have taken the singing, voice-like quality of his sarangi as my example. Over months and years of playing the frets were ground down on my 12-string and it began to sound more and more like the sarangi. The frets are nearly flat now. The guitar is about 45 years old and has a mellow, aged sound to it. I set up that guitar so that the strings are in double courses. I set them in unisons. This makes it possible to find (for me) a more “singing” tonality in single string lines. “
Gongs are another primary instrument on Natural Causes: “Gong cycles are everywhere in this album. I lived around gong cycles when I worked for study-abroad programs in Indonesia. The students studied gamelan music as part of our programs. Music is everywhere in Indonesia: feasts, temple ceremonies, funerals, births, sacred calendar days. Gong cycles anchor the music. The gong cycles on songs like “Lakshmivana” are triggered from a 12-string I set up with a midi interface. A friend let me record in his gong shop in Peliatan (south of Ubud, Bali) for a few hours, sampling gongs and other metal-key instruments on a portable DAT recorder I brought to Asia. I sampled gongs, gamelans, jublangs, and other metallaphones. I mapped them to diatonic scales, not necessarily tracking the guitar pitches. In other words, a harmonic minor scale played on the guitar might trigger a melodic minor scale from the sampler a 5th higher. I would sometimes make four or five different scales like this, trigger all of them from the guitar, then craft tiny compositions or motifs.”
Marc Anderson has drummed on all of Tibbetts’s ECM albums, but the present disc is the first since 1981’s Northern Song to feature just the two of them.. Tibbetts: “Working with Marc is like working with my hands. I don’t have to ask my hands to find the fretboard, they just do. Marc is the same way. We’ve worked together now for 32 years. I don’t have to ask him to do anything in particular, or analyze his approach. He just finds the right drum, we spend some time finding the voice in the instrument with the mics, and then go to work. There were a couple of tunes where I thought I really didn’t need percussion, where things seemed to be standing on their own. Simplicity and all that. Marc would say, "Let me try something." I'd listen to his playing afterwards and wonder how I could have considered not having him play on that particular song.
For most of the last three decades Tibbetts has been his own recording producer: “It can be difficult to produce yourself...especially when both the producer and the artist are tired or out of ideas. In moments like that, I would try to record extremely concise bits of music; 5-10 seconds of guitar, bouzouki, or kalimba. Occasionally I’d haul out these miniature compositions and try to craft one into a rhythmic base, a frame, a beginning, or an ending. The second song, “Padre-yaga” is full of these little bits.”
An overall goal of “simplicity and austerity, was not always evident in the work methods: “Sometimes I just can’t stop adding tracks. I wanted to see, just as a lark, what it would be like to overdub twenty or thirty 12-strings playing Michael’s song [“Gulezian”, a piece loosely-based based on fellow guitarist Michael Gulezian’s tune “Arcosanti”]. The sound was good. Goodbye austerity!”
A kind of selective randomness had its role to play, too: “I’d lay down a basic guitar line, something that hewed to my notion of clarity and articulation, then add something equally simple, like a bouzouki line. Then I’d listen to only the bouzouki line and add a kalimba. Then I’d listen to only the kalimba and add piano. This stepwise process would go on for days, weeks, years, out of control. No deadlines, right? Then I’d listen to everything, all at the same time. Sometimes, within that chaos, I’d find a 12 second section that sounded like four kalimbas mating fervently with three hybrid guitar-pianos. I’d snip that section out, set it aside, and develop it. That’s how the cuts ‘Sitavana’, ‘Ishvaravana’, and ‘Kuladzokpa’ came together.”
At one stage, Tibbetts included an acoustic version of Jimi Hendrix’s “Villanova Junction” in his track list, but ultimately felt it didn’t fit the album’s flow. The orphaned track has since been posted by Steve on YouTube, and can still be heard there. The journey towards ‘a result’ on Natural Causes was, as Tibbetts freely admits, a halting one. The artist’s final assessment?: “I have a real fondness for the whole thing, similar to a fondness you’d have for a three-legged cat you’d adopted. You don’t drive your kids to the pet store with the intention of buying a three legged cat, but if one hobbles up to your door and you feed it, you might eventually grow fonder of that cat than a regular four-legged one. It’s like that.”
U.S. Release date: June 15, 2010
ECM CD: B0014320-02
UPC: 6025 270 2164 (5)
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My experience with your work, starting with YR, is now best framed in the "mythologicical." WP
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Music Review:
Natural Causes by Steve Tibbetts
by Willi Paul
mother’s hand
her book of tools
guitars love worn down to glass
swimming in Chandogra
soft exploding sands and purple black moon sets
arms evolve
treading clay
hair on my neck stands up as scales
climb awake
future day
Natural Causes
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Interview with Steve Tibbetts by Will Paul - July 4th, 2010
You have journeyed to far-away places to collaborate with other artists. Like a hero in Joseph Campbell’s eyes.
Yes, I've traveled to far-away places. But it would be a stretch to find any commonality with Joseph Campbell's paradigm of "The Hero's Journey." I had always wanted to travel, and as a musician you get lots of opportunities to join travel with the creative process.
Lots of opportunities came up, and I took all of them. Any modern-day self-styled Odysseus would be a little suspect in my book, given the ease of intercontinental travel. For instance, I traveled to Mt. Kailash last year, and, while the travel was difficult, it was easy to arrange, and fairly painless to undertake. If you compare that with the trials one would undergo even 50 years ago it was a walk in the park. Easy. Not exactly a "hero's journey."
I think the real hero's journey takes place in solitary retreat.
* sacredsites.com/asia/tibet/mt_kailash.html
* retreatfoundation.org/
How do you prepare the listener for the resultant information?
The only preparation I've tried to make for listeners is in writing copious press releases for the record companies and decent liner notes for the CDs themselves. I've also put up some pages on my site to help people get some background:
* stevetibbetts.com/558/
* stevetibbetts.com/shocking-asia/
Sometimes I think that it's best not to explain too much about one's music. I have faith that the listener's mind will find its own way, so an attitude of "underpreparation" might be more suitable.
Are you at peace with your human form and soul? I feel a higher stirring sometimes when I close my eyes and listen to your music.
Yes, I enjoy being in my body. I make it work out every other day. I feed it coffee and chocolate sometimes. If I play well in right field at our Wednesday night softball games I let it have a cigarette to go with the beer I am pouring into its mouth. "Playing well" means I have to have caught all the fly balls that came to right field, and gotten at least one hit when I was up to bat. That's the rule. Then everything is peaceful.
I don't know what a "soul" is, exactly. Mind? Thoughts? Memories? It's hard to pin anything down as existing as a particular essence. I don't think there is a separate, single, and permanent self or soul.
What does your innovation process require to make authentic sound?
I recorded this CD without much EQ or compression. I mixed it in a concert hall, in order to utilize natural reverb. That might qualify as "authentic."
We make our own samples. Marc and I have recorded drums, gongs, and natural sounds in our travels. The sounds are ours, like clay we dug up and fired ourselves. Is that "authentic?"
What is community? Can you describe the web of human and natural relationships that drive your art?
I don't know that relationships drive much of what I do. I had some wild years between 1985-96 that drove the insane electric guitars on "Exploded View and "The Fall of Us All." Lots of webs formed and dissolved. I wouldn't want to re-live those years, or re-live some parts of them, but the time certainly drove the music.
What is your purpose here on Earth?
I think it would be a little arrogant for anyone to say they have a "purpose" on earth. We're just animals. Mammals. Suppose your dog or cat started talking about their purpose on earth. Wouldn't you be a little surprised? Having a purpose would presuppose that someone gave you one. That's a little self-centered.
You are a shaman. This is central knowledge when I “get” Steve Tibbetts. Your view?
I am not a shaman. Shamans are trained from youth. I just wanted to be in a band like Blue Cheer. Vincebus Eruptum. Hendrix, Parker, and Coltrane might have been shamans.
I confess: I do not know what the names of your songs mean on Natural Causes. How important are song and album names in the meditation?
The titles aren't that important. But, they do have something to do with the music. You just have to search for the meanings yourself! One caveat: there's not much to find out. Better to spend that time listening to a shaman like Coltrane. "A Love Supreme."
When the band collaborates with high spirit and merges into One force, where are you physically?
Oh, probably right there, stage-right. Sweating a little.
Tell us about sonic initiation, alchemy and the metaphor – as you transmit or convey your heart message through notes, phrases and song.
I don't really understand this question.
What are the sounds from pre-history that inform your work? Do you sample Nature?
Who would know anything about sounds from pre-history? By definition, they would be unknowable. I do like folding in the sounds of chanting in such a way that they lurk just under other sonic features: cymbals, drums, and so on. It gives a sort of "voice" to the instruments. These sorts of sounds rest just under the threshold of consciousness. It's fun to play with perception in that way.
I don't actively sample nature. However, in sampling gongs and other instruments in Bali, I found that the sounds of frogs, bugs, and chickens were also recorded. I left those sounds in. It gives the samples a nice organic buzz on the top.
Are you working in sustainability?
I have an electric bike. By coincidence, I took delivery of it on September 9, 2001. It's a Bridgestone XO, outfitted with a Curry electric motor. I've put about 3000 miles on it, and ride it to my studio from April until November. The only other real nod I've made towards sustainability is being a vegetarian.
I find it difficult to take anyone's exhortation of sustainability seriously if they're eating a hot dog. A politician friend here, for instance, held a meat raffle to raise money for global warming awareness. That's similar to sending one's slaves out to do literature drops or door knocking for civil rights.
Eventually, however, in a million years, things will work out. Humans will have gone extinct, and DNA will have recombined into some new form.
The only other project I'm involved in that might warrant the moniker of "sustainability" is a retreat foundation I'm working on with a friend. If nothing else, being in retreat for a month or two takes people completely off the grid.
How do you think women’s reverence for the sacred differs from men’s?
I'm not sure that there is a difference. I've known batshit-crazy women and saint-like men. I do believe that having children connects one to the web of life in a visceral, down-to-earth way that men can never know.
Share a favorite myth please. What stories are critical to your spirit these days?
I like reading Jung's " Red Book." Have you seen that? Well worth a look.
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Please enjoy my first interview with Steve Tibbetts and Marc Anderson
Connections -
ECM Records Publicity
825 Eighth Ave. 19th floor
New York, NY 10019
212 333-1405
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