"If you start it well and end it well, it doesn't matter what you do in the middle."
-Our Fearless Leader
As of Sunday night -- as far as we know -- O.C.D. ("Original Crypto Drummmer") Alex Cline's new record Continuation -- his first since 2001's The Constant Flame -- is in the can!
"Baba" Cline [Photo by Ethan Pines]
Rehearsals took place at Crypto Central on Thursday & Friday (April 10 & 11) and recording took place at the wisteria-covered Glenwood Place Studios in Burbank on Saturday & Sunday (April 12 & 13). Present for the sessions were Myra Melford on piano and harmonium, Fearless Leader Jeff Gauthier on violin, Peggy Lee on cello, Scott Walton on bass and Rich Breen on the mixing board -- not to mention bassist/Buddhist John Graves (who kindly converted the charts into digitally rendered notation via Finale software) and photog Anne Fishbein, who crept with stealth around the action to snap album pics.
Saturday was the hyper-session -- the crew nailed down FIVE tracks: "Open Hands (Receive, Release) " "On the Bones of the Homegoing Thunder" "Nourishing Our Roots" "Clearing Our Streams" and "Fade To Green" (hmmm, environmental themes abound). So naturally, we show up on Sunday to find that most of the record was already put away (freakin' improvisers!). Just two tracks remained but we managed to watch Alex & Co. build them from the roots up. Before starting on "Steadfast", Alex -- who, surrounded by his Mouse-Trap army of percussion, looked like a man who could very well be injured by his own set of traps -- kicked things off with: "Well, in the words of Ken Filiano, 'Use your antennae, man'" (before adding -"yet the antennae rarely works in the studio. Ironic, isn't it"). The tune starts with a wild Tito Puente-meets-Michael Shrieve drum solo, followed by SW's 7/4-time bass as PL and JG pick up the complex melody that is soon chased by a lovely free-jazz free-fall. Then the solos: JG's violin is as light and compact as spider sugar, and PL's bowed cello sounds eerily like it was being played backwards on a loop (how does she do it?). We hate to spoil it for you, but the tune lulls you into a comfortable groove before ending so abruptly that the ensuing silence acts as an instrument in itself. The second track, "SubMerge" is classic AC: an appropriately titled spelunk into an underground cave system of echoing percussive effects (gongs, bells, chimes, cymbals) anchored by MM's beautiful harmonium playing and a woozy river of melody created by JG and PL's strings. AC's bass drum booms will freak you right out of your chair if you're not prepared.
(Tech-talk Interlude: AC, listening to the playback, smiled and noted: "Ahhh, there's nothing like a Paiste Formula 602 thin flatride," a discontinued line of cymbals used -- among others -- by Roy Haynes on 1968's Now He Sings, Now He Cries. "This seems to be the way it is: if I like it, it's doomed.")
Things of note: The shittier the neighborhood, the better the studio. Is that an L.A. rule?
Glenwood Studios is located in a quiet, hot part of Burb' across from some sort of freight company. Yet get buzzed in and you are surrounded by a verdant outdoor garden with hanging benches and even water-misters to hose you down should the inspiration leave your body. And the studios -- oh, the studios! In the back of ours (Studio A), there was a split-level lounge replete with pool table, a mini-library (stocked, for some reason, with Tom Clancy novels), and an upstairs loft with big pouffy beanbag chairs. (A.C.'s little daughter kept calling the Pool Room the "Poodle Room"; hell, that's what studios sessions need -- an adorable pixie running around, asking questions, getting her parents water, getting tickled by Mom, and sitting quietly on a chair before the studio glass, happily watching her "Baba" bash it out. Lesson: Musicians, Bring Your Kids! They are Life's Magical Monotony Breakers!) The bathrooms stocked with bandages, toothpaste, shaving tools, deodorant, hand cream, body wash -- man, what is this? The Four Seasons? And Alex's lovely Other Half Karen stocked the 'fridge with juice, green tea soymilk, avocados and that stand-by of any studio musician:
Weird & Wacky Postscript #1:
On one level, this recording session was sort of a weird, semi-homecoming experience. Glenwood Place, which started out in the seventies as Kendun Recorders (a very big studio at the time), was eventually divided into two studios, one of which was Red Zone (the building we were in). The other building was where Nels recorded his first album as a leader. Angelica (Enja). Apparently, Nels also recorded Mike Watt’s Contemplating the Engine Room at Glenwood Place in its earlier and less beauteous incarnation. According to the scuttle-butt, it was an incarnation which evidently ended when the Black-Eyed Peas, who were ALLEGEDLY recording there, ALLEGEDLY went off to dinner and ALLEGEDLY left a bunch of candles burning, causing part of the studio to go up in flames. We can only be grateful to them, as it sure is a lovely place to record music now! Alex also mastered his first record ever (Duo Infinity with Jamil Shabaka) at Kendun back in 1977 -- in the same building we recorded in last week. Messes with your head, donnit?
Weird & Wacky Postscript #2:
Capricorns Alex Cline & Myra Melford's L.A. Times horoscope for Sat., 4/12/08: "There's very little information available on your subject of interest. Improvisation is more valuable now than research."
As it turns out, their birthdays are actually one day and one year apart (which means ditto for Gnarls, of course).
Can't add anything better than that. Really. Can't think of a thing.
