I’m still pinching myself that Bandcamp’s editors took a listen!
Chilling ambient music with mournful tones and barren textures, perfect to score and abandoned cityscape.
Queen City Sounds just gave Evil Gima a wonderful review:
One has to imagine that Evil Gima conceived of the song and video for “IT/AM” in some sort of creative tandem. The sounds themselves suggest spaciousness and texture like the snow and water droplets depicted in the video. The piano figure drifts while plinks of metallic sounds like processed windchimes or stringed instrument plucking and slowly resolving drones convey a languid atmosphere. It’s like the analog of natural processes unfolding like the accumulation of snow depicted in the video as it forms and melts into water and fills into ponds then evaporates and the cycle begins again. It’s a little like an orchestral piece Anthony Braxton might have written around the turn of the 70s if he had access to a robust electronic palette of sounds. That organic improvisational way of arranging noises in abstract, conceptual fashion that made him a rebel then and a style outside orthodox music making that ambient music and abstract free jazz aficionados appreciate now.
Pulling disparate threads of sonic traditions, Evil Gima creates a cinematic experience with the audiovisual project “IT/AM”. In the Jorge Martinez directed video for “IT/AM” the trailing melodies of Evil Gima’s forlorn piano arc across an alive sound palate of evolving drones and mechanical, almost bird-like musicbox percussion. Fans of dark ambient or deconstructed neo-classical music will find a lot in “IT/AM” and Evil Gima’s work to sink into.
Directed by Jorge Martinez:
Listen to IT\AM & Evil Gima
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Preorder Alluvion by Evil Gima
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“Listening to Evil Gima’s Alluvion is a singular experience. Its implacable currents of sound pull from two worlds. The first is a place mythic and terribly old, an ancient corridor where monsters lurk with the unknowable thing inside you. The other is an echo of our own voices, captured from some unimaginable future; deranged and waiting. It’s the only music I have ever heard that conjures the cosmic terror/wonder of the world unknown.
Evil Gima and Alluvion are a genre unto themselves, a separate universe from the familiar and predictable undulations of horror than can only speak to the surface of things. Alluvion peels you open and seizes that unfathomable reality within... then sets it churning.
Rejoice, human. Music is not dead. And you are called to obliteration.”
In 2021, I purchased my first Eurorack synthesizer. The obsession with the quality of analog sound took hold very quickly. This album of sketches and tests came directly from experimenting with the synthesizers on the Eurorack. I doubt I'll ever buy another digital synth plugin again...
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Album cover is a public domain photograph of the flutist John Finn, ca 1923. The original is located here: www.loc.gov/resource/musdcmphot.a0169.0
Originally written and recorded in 2005. Dedicated to (and written for) all the servers and bartenders at the now defunct Hickory Street Bar and Grill, Austin, TX. You know who you are.
This concept of the cult of productivity has huge relevance to the world of meetings, gatherings and conferences. And it is at the expense of presence, relationship and connection. It doesn't have to be a dichotomy – an either or – but requires us to reframe that presence, relationship and connection is the work. And the more we can be centred from that concept, instead of the productivity concept, wiser action will flow.
I sense the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe—but just as irrational as sympathetic magic when looked at in a typically scientific way. I wouldn't be surprised if poetry—poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs—is how the world works. The world isn't logical, it's a song.
David Byrne
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Deja Vu, a film shot during the first lockdown of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, will be screened on August 12th at 6:30pm at AFS Cinema, 6406 N I-35, Suite 3100, Austin, TX.
Motivate Pictures CEO/Producer Maurice Moore (Austin, TX) and Writer/Director Alex Rios (Barcelona, Spain) risked the unknown to shoot Deja Vu.
Maurice Moore: “Alex showed up in Austin the day that the world’s borders closed. Literally, that day. He was stuck here until we didn't know when. He came over to DP a feature film that I was set to direct that was canceled literally the day he arrived in the states. Because we were in lockdown, we needed a creative outlet. I challenged Alex and myself to come up with an idea that would work in this lockdown world and Deja Vu was the brainchild of Alex.”
After Deja Vu wrapped production, the next challenge was getting Alex Rios back home. Mau- rice Moore: “Because travel was suspended, it was impossible to know when Alex could fly back to Barcelona. After several attempts to book flights over the course of six weeks, ultimately Alex was able to secure a flight back to Barcelona with an exciting and eerie film in the can.”
In the film Deja Vu, it’s not safe to go outside because an anomaly is making people disappear once they leave their homes. Erik (Maurice Moore) and Grey (Olivia Whitney) are plunged head- first into an intense series of events trying to untangle the mystery. Ultimately, Deja Vu is a touching and emotional story of familial love and devotion in the height of a scary situation.
Maurice Moore is excited to showcase Deja Vu and other works: “I’m a stronger more focused artist because COVID19 challenged me emotionally and creatively. Now I’m excited to show that creativity to the world.”
Deja Vu will be screened along with with several other exciting Motivate Pictures projects on August 12th at AFS Cinema.
AFS Cinema is located at 6406 N I-35, Suite 3100, Austin, TX
The screening starts at 6:30pm.
Seating for the screening is extremely limited due to COVID19 safety concerns but is free to attend
Motivate Pictures is an African-American owned film and multi-media company that prides itself on its diversity and creating engaging and dynamic stories
For more information on Deja Vu go to HTTP://MOTIVATE.PICTURES/
Listen to the Soundtrack Here:
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Fetch is the story of a woman who walks into the woods to find her disappeared friend only to meet the Fae, the creatures who guard the wilderness. Fetch was written and directed by Heather Halstead in cooperation with Motivate Pictures., and stars Dana Wing Lau.
The original score for Fetch takes the perspective of a mythical adversary: The fae. It features live-recorded piano, voice, kalimba, big drums, and most notable, a cigar box guitar. Heather Halstead, the director of this film, also came into the studio to record the final melody.
Fetch is a chilling story of mythological creatures taking their anger out on a unsuspecting young woman. The result? Absolute fright and mayhem.
Grande Valley Auction Incident takes a look in the rearview mirror and asks, “Hey, what if the music that was created during ____ and ____ wasn’t actually all that bad?”
Archive Volume Two gathers all interesting instrumentals from 2001 to 2003 and brings them together into one whopping collection.
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Archive Volume One houses 11 songs from my past, recorded somewhere around 2001-2004. I listened heavily to The Red House Painters and Godspeed You Black Emperor.
Gestures, the song in this music video, is part of Archive Volume One by Grande Valley Auction Incident. This album is available for preorder today and will have it’s full release on May 31st, 2021. Oh, and two other GVAI albums are coming on… on the same day. It’s a release bonanza!
I was searching through my old papers this morning when I found something I did nearly ten years ago: I fully transcribed the lyrics, the melodies, and the syllabic stress of Bon Iver’s masterpiece For Emma, Forever Ago.
If you want all of these transcriptions, follow me on Bandcamp. Here are the first three:
