Sunday, February 15, 2009

coffee and vitamin e

right now, i'm typing to you from the "robert fripp suite" of adrian belew's basement. it's our temporary housing. we've been here all week making a brand new record.

our working schedule gave us only 5 days to complete 50 minutes of demanding instrumental music, and yet it didn't phase us one bit. i haven't felt this stress-free in quite some time...perhaps it's because our diet has consisted of mexican food and julie's gourmet cooking. for our final day of recording, julie made a show-stopping indian meal. let's just say the "fripp suite" has now been poisioned by some brown malodorous gases. gross.

for inspiration i've been listening to:

stravinsky's "rite of spring"
pierre schaeffer
henry cow's "unrest"
konono no.1
nat baldwin's "mvp"
alice coltrane
frank zappa's "lumpy money"

i've also been reading voraciously:

william kotzwinkle's "the fan man"
chuck klosterman's "downtown owl" (i keep getting negative responses about this from my friends, but i liked it for it's lonely charm anyway)
and right now i am in the middle of stephen hawking's "brief history of time". i've always found modern science to be fascinating, but high school was never stimulating enough to make me think about it (at least when i wasn't in school).
call me a nerd, but i'm having fun reading about quantum mechanics!

i will leave you with my favorite internet video of 2009 thus far:

3 comments:

cyrus ghahremani said...

yo eric, that video was hysterical. you guys should record it as a b-side.

cheers to alice coltrane! she never gets enough attention. her harp stuff is unreal! good on the rest too, esp zappa, though 'overnite sensation' will always be my favorite.

i thought downtown owl was horrendoussssssss, but if you enjoy it i'm not going to bug you!

when you make it back to san diego i can give you pointers to the best mexican+indian stops here. incidentally, they are across the street from each other.

can't wait to hear the record. regards

Eric Slick said...

maybe i have to read "downtown owl" again...i have been on tour for a whole year so i've probably lost a few brain cells.
it probably is horrendous. but then again, i didn't read too much in my teenage years, so i have no real reference point. if i can read it all the way through without trouble, i consider it a good book!

anyway, i hope to see you at one of our shows soon. the record is going to melt yer face!

sincerely,
eric

davidly said...

I gotta cravin' fer E, man!

I hope you won't find it presumptuous of me to recommend a coupla things based on what you've just written:

Brief History is no easy read, even for the scientifically inclined. Respect.

First, a recommendation you've probably heard of:
Filmmaker Errol Morris did A Brief History of Time in the nineties. It's a mash of biopic and the book, lending specific incite into the man's methods.

Bernie Worrell has a song on his Blacktronic Science album called Time. Most probably inspired by Hawking's "elsewhere" concept. The whole album is great, actually; Funk at it's best. You might know Worrell from his having toured with Belew and Talking Heads.

Okay, enough of the recommendations; as if.

By the way, not having read said "owl" tome, I reserve the right to say it's great.