alex silver

Listen on Subvert

Tag: recording

  • ‘Let Me Be A Friend For Lost Time’ after a few months

    I released a nearly 8-minute experimental folk song on May 22nd, and it intersected with some things. In June, Lolabelle invited me as their featured performer at One Longfellow Square where they have a residency. In July, I played a solo show with Jes and a duo version of Chico States (Joe + Ella on violin). At both of those shows I did songs in the improv/compositional style of this long single.

    A few people reviewed it! But perhaps my favorite quote comes from Javier Reyes (aka Santiago), an active participant at Subvert co-op. The song is exclusive to Subvert, a project I care about a lot and which seeks to bring ownership of platforms to artists themselves. In his collection North American Hits, he wrote:

    This is the most oblique and cubist perception of a hit that I’ve experienced. Everything not in its right place. And yet, you can tell there’s a song behind, scattered in beautiful small pieces.

    Thank you Javier!

    Another exciting “review” came from our local alt-weekly in Portland, The Bollard. Chris Busby put together an odd poetic collage, juxtaposing Oliver Wendell Holmes, my words about co-ownership, and others’ thoughts on platform malaise to evoke an implicit point—a method of open structuring not unlike the song’s.

    AnEarful, a great blog out of New York, wrote:

    “For over eight minutes, Silver, aided by Christy Armstrong (drum programming) and Tolly Kaiser (bassoon), seems to assemble the song’s many layers in front of your ears. As he plays angular acoustic guitar, his halting attempts to ‘articulate my perspective’ are strangely moving.”

    If you haven’t heard the song yet, you can listen at Subvert here: https://www.subvert.fm/alex-silver/tracks/let-me-be-a-friend-for-lost-time

    My collections, all with write-ups on music I’ve found this year: songs less off-sync with the shuddering landscape, First Library w/ Commentary, Second Library w/ Commentary.

  • 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: “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

  • Essai: “I gripped it under my sweat”

    Alex Silver, Scarborough, Maine, November 25, 2024

    This recording actually comes from the discard folder. I wanted to get started with “essais,” or attempts, but when I went back to find something I had in mind, I found this better. I understand why I’d remembered the other: it has clearer dynamics, deft(er) movement between phrases, ties together more rationally. In my notes, I’d written that the words had a strong narrative pull. I didn’t feel that tonight.

    Maybe I’m just tender today, but what appeals to me is the softness of the lyrics and the frail run in the singing at the end. I sang:

    I slipped it
    Like a note in your pocket
    I gripped it
    Under my sweat

    And I meant it
    And I meant it
    And I m-ea-nt it
    Until I bent

    I’m not ready to lay out my goals for these improvisations, but I will when I’m feeling more analytical. I’ll simply say that I’m contending with having many phrases, rhythms, hand-movements—in other words, sonic meanings—at my disposal, but fewer words to make emerge. The singing feels the most tenuous and even sometimes dull. Words are so bound to communicative meaning and more difficult to make fit.

  • Photographs as diary and seeing recent moments as “past”

    Medium-distance shot of hiking path and stone steps in Scarborough, Maine taken by the musician Alex Silver.

    I thought I’d start with a photograph. Though I’ve thought of my photographing this way for a while, I recently titled my folders “Diary” and “Discard.” I’m planning to keep both current, and I’ll review the pictures in each regularly. This is the same way I’m keeping music, especially the harder, more ephemeral stuff. If I keep some attempts organized in this way (Merleau-Ponty said every Cézanne work was an “essai”; Cara called my clatter in the other room a “stance,” warming my heart), I can look at mistakes and successes with a new mind at a later time, having abandoned the one that made the decisions. I can decide how I feel about the mind I had.

    This photo of stone steps, a railing, and an ascending trail is from last weekend walking near home in Scarborough, Maine. It did make into the “Diary” folder then. I don’t know if it’ll make into any other category, but it did surprise me when I looked at it. What surprised me especially was that it was one week old. It seemed like a memento from another, perhaps special time. Like if I walked over there today, I would find it changed. It happily reminds me that I am seeing things now as commonplace-if-notable, but—like when I turned the bend at Triglav National Park this hill me reminds me of—I may indeed be living in a special time.