alex silver

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Tag: maine music

  • In retrospect: West Olive, Michigan, Collage 3 (May 2019)

    Recording equipment setup at a cottage on Lake Michigan, used by Alex Silver for the making of Five Collages (2019). View of pink, purple, and blue sunset from the living room.

    I stayed for a month or two at a cottage on Lake Michigan in 2019. I’d just moved from New Mexico and was hoping to go to France and teach. I’m grateful for this time and the generosity of Tom, who has had the cottage in his family a long time. Pretty much made of concrete blocks, it was a refreshing place in the spring that I turned 30. Somewhat lonely, somewhat stimulated, I recorded a lot, compiled a lot, released a lot, and had a real opportunity to go deep into the less-effable zones.

    Listen on Soundcloud (@alexsilver_sketches)

    This is from Five Collages, available on Bandcamp here.

  • Essai: “Why don’t I know what to look through”

    From Instagram:

    I’ve been making a few of these free improvisations a week, and I’ve noticed that in hearing the words I sing, I often make a political reading. It’s funny how we can connect any image to our underlying concerns.

    I recycle the phrases that stick (“Why don’t I know what to look through?”) and react to new things in the magnified space of recording. When I play them back, what felt like 5 seconds of thinking is usually about .5—so I was actually able to resolve things better than I’d believed.

    I’m definitely oriented toward the dark “cloud” around us, but thankfully my spirit also wants to talk to clarity.

    Listen to the fifth essai, or attempt/draft/iteration, I’ve put up on SoundCloud here.

    It’s starting to get more interesting to hear these compiled together, and there are shifts in my attention when I evaluate songs as communication—something I assume is implied by creating artwork, captioning, and making the experiment visible to others.

  • Essai: “Big cloud raising its head”

    With this one, I was mostly focused on getting a workable sound for the recordings going forward. I wanted to sing twice to give the impression of intentionality. As I went back over, following the original words of the improvisation, I started to think of the slight mismatches with an image in mind. I thought about hand tracing over something, how doing that implies that the original is the model. 

    If something is a model, maybe it takes on that abstract sense of permanence we attribute to song. In fact, I often take issue with this feeling of permanence (existentialists would call it essence) because I think it is false. What I like about the air of tracing is giving both the sense of improvisation—of creation—and of completion and intentionality at the same time. I would like if it helped me, and listeners, to notice both of those aspects of any phenomenon.

    Listen to this latest “Essai” on SoundCloud.

    Did you see that big cloud
    raising its head?

    Giving a warning
    to everyone
    trying hard

  • Last Karaoke of 2021: Old Thing

    I’ve now arrived at the last installation of the “Karaoke” series, which I typically made quite on-the-fly as I recorded songs or covers in early 2021. This is the only video I made that’s my own song.

    Old Thing doesn’t appear on any album yet, but you can hear this demo version on SoundCloud. It was definitely one of my favorites to sing for a time. Also, I really miss the stereo setup behind me in the video. That room was special for my partner and I. The stereo was this big, free-standing block made of books and it had such a wonderful physicality to it. The light entered that room in just such a way.

  • En chantant Mama You Been On My Mind de Bob Dylan dans le froid avec guitare slide

    Peu de temps après je suis arrivé dans le Maine, j’ai crée une série s’appelle des « Karaokes », des chansons folks avec vidéo qui incluent Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Raw Honey, et moi-même. J’ai enregistré chaque chanson, assez vite, et l’écouté en train de chanter silencieusement devant mon MacBook. J’aimais bien cette forme et j’en ferais peut-être d’autres. Une des façons en commun entre les enregistrements: un sac de riz pour des percussions simples.

    English:

    Not long after I arrived in Maine, I created a series called “Karaokes,” folk songs with video that include Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Raw Honey, and myself. I recorded each song, fairly quickly, and listened to it while singing silently in front of my MacBook. I liked this form and maybe I’ll make some others. Of the aspects in common between the recordings: a bag of rice for simple percussion.