Cans: Joe Tompkins and Chris Thompson
Percussion and Electronics: Michael Caterisano, David Mancuso, Eric Poland, Yuri Yamashita

Yesaroun’ Duo releases “HeavyUpHeavyDown”, I program a synth and sing mating calls to prehistoric space aliens.

From the program note for “Ryoanji” by the Yesaroun’ Duo:

Ryoanji is a rock garden in Kyoto, Japan, in which large beautiful boulders are surrounded by carefully raked fields of sand. The sparse, persistent pulsing of the percussion part designs a musical and temporal texture to represent the surrounding raked sand. Songful, animal-like melodic lines carve out the large boulders. Eight sections of piece, each lasting two minutes, follow eight gardens of Ryoanji.

Excerpt from “Ryoanji”, by John Cage. (Heavy Down)

3 of the sections (or “gardens”) in this piece have additional optional voices. One is me, the second is 100 of me, and the third is a synth patch I made. 

For some of the cues I sang a constant pitch, threw it into Reason’s sampler and drew the pitch curves out, letting the computer bend. For others I sang the line myself with the aid of my computer’s microtonal goodness. For all of them I completely freaked out the painter girl who works in the next studio over.

More importantly: this record, a double CD full of brilliant performances, is a staggering achievement for Eric Hewitt and Sam Solomon, one that has been a long time in the making. Everyone should buy it right away! In case you need convincing, here is some post-apocalyptic rage robot calculus death metal.

Excerpt from Wemcraftor: Limsniffer performed by the Yesaroun’ Duo. (Heavy Up…)