Emmett, The Stick, and Parallel Galaxy

Review and discussion of Emmett Chapman’s 1985 recording Parallel Galaxy, with an emphasis on the development of the Stick’s unique tuning and playing technique.

Relevant Links:

A look at Japhlet Bire Attias’ JBA

2021 Album Preview Series: December Showcase!

One last roundup for 2021, including albums by:

Chassol – Indiamore (2013)
Deafheaven – Infinite Granite (2021)
Injury Reserve – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (2021)
Let’s Eat Grandma – I’m All Ears (2018)
The Angstromers – Path to Danach (2020)
Emmett Chapman – Parallel Galaxy (1985)

 

A Rainy Morning and Zweiton's "Form"

I have a very clear memory of listening to Zweiton’s Form early on a rainy March morning in 2016. The sky was overcast, but the morning seemed bright, and the rain was light enough that windshield wipers were almost unnecessary. Patterns of water formed on my windshield only to be erased when the view became dangerously obstructed. I was deeply involved in the melody at the end of Licht, appreciating the way that it snaked through a variety of disorienting polyrhythms, only to reveal its simple origins in its final variation. I was really, really tired, and my exhaustion seemed to heighten the hallucinogenic quality of this exploration.

My weariness was well-earned, because just days before, my second daughter EJ had been born. I was on paternity leave. It was also one of the most important days of the school year for a Texas band director - UIL Concert and Sightreading. I would, however, be sitting in the audience listening to my band rather than standing in front of them. Knowing that she would be coming right in the middle of contest preparations, I rehearsed the band for the first half of the season and, with some careful planning, turned them over to the High School director for their final performances. I knew that they were in good hands, but letting go was still difficult.

This sea of overlapping thoughts and emotions seemed more vivid due to lack of sleep, and Form, which had been in rotation for several weeks, had become the standard soundtrack for my bedraggled state. The album had been suggested by fellow Stick player that I had met during my studies, and true to his suggestion, it is unique and engaging in ways that sidestep easy categorization.



As a project that centers on “touchstyle guitar” playing, Zweiton’s style can be traced back to King Crimson with some confidence. In particular, the heavier, mathematical approach that the group was spearheading in the mid-90s on THRaK. At that time, the band expanded to a cacophonous double trio with Trey Gunn on Warr Guitar. His contributions on THRaK were initially difficult to unravel, but they became clearer when he released The Joy of Molybdenum, a defining album to which Form owes its scope.

Form has some very heavy moments, but never veers into the emotionally vacuous traps of technical prog-metal Instead, its heaviness emerges from deeply mathematical grooves and interlocked melodic structures. These more intense moments are made more effective as they are juxtaposed by more delicate, atmospheric passages, spun together into often sprawling yet coherent compositions.



By the time contest came around, I had made the decision that I would not be returning for the following year. Sitting in the audience was not the way in which I wanted to end my 9 year run at the school. I unequivocally decided, however, that family, took priority in this situation. I know many directors who would have not taken this path, but ultimately I was happy to be relieved of the pressure so that I could focus on EJ’s somewhat problematic infancy, and I do not regret it to this day. At the time, however, it was not the way that I wanted to say goodbye to those kids, which made this particular morning a bittersweet and introspective one.

Flashback to the Oughts: 2004

2004 was a year of beginnings that were fueled by equal parts confidence and, if I am honest with myself, delusion. At the end of the previous year, I acquired a Chapman Stick, and the practice that I had been using as therapy started to manifest in some real musical output. Determined to master this non-traditional instrument and use it to somehow subvert academia, I began coursework for a Master’s degree in Ethnomusicology. My studies included jazz improv courses and a seminar in global pop music, both of which began to further diversify my listening.

At the same time, I continued to teach out at Krum. The breadth of these new experiences make connecting the dots between my memory episodes and the reality of the calendar particularly confusing. My propensity to listen to older albums or to let albums simmer for a while complicates matters further.  I’ve had to refer to school records, Amazon shipping statements, and even dates on old pictures to flesh out specifics.  Still, after toying around with my memory and all available information, the 2004 list is, like its predecessors, a good representation of what I was into at the time.



This project is making me realize the extent to which memory episodes resist lining themselves up in neat chronological order.  They seem to arise in vivid flashes as I revisit this music, bringing to mind seemingly random events that must then be categorized.  This all might seem to be more trouble than its worth, but organizing my life story by the music that I surround myself with has, in recent years, emerged as a satisfying narrative in this blog.

10 The Drowners - Think of Me: I continued a steady diet of inexpensive power pop albums throughout 2004, many of which were unremarkable. The Drowners’ Swedish identity provided a unique perspective on the style that was slick and compelling.

9 Muse - Absolution: It has been a rare occasion for me to favorably compare any band to Rush. In 2004, however, I discovered Absolution, which earned Muse that distinction for a time by virtue of its accessible songs, impressive chops, and intense energy.

8 Blackfield - Blackfield: I supported Porcupine Tree’s move towards heavier and more identifiably progressive territory, but part of me missed Steven Wilson's relatively straightforward songwriting on Stupid Dream. Blackfield became the place where I could get my fix.

7 The Decemberists - Her Majesty the Decemberists: I saw The Decemberists in Denton on a lark, without ever hearing a note of their music, one night in 2004. Their show was impressive, and within 24 hours, Her Majesty the Decemberists had the dubious honor of being one of the few albums that I uploaded through ITunes in its earlier iteration.

6 Green Day - American Idiot: I saw American Idiot as the 21sy century Tommy - a punk rock opera of resistance for the Bush administration. Alas, within a few years Green Day would jump the shark with this great album and run it as a broadway musical, but at the time it was quite the statement.

5 The Trey Gunn Band - The Joy of Molybdenum: As I was getting more and more into transcription, I started making more of an effort to find other Stick and touchstyle guitar players that I felt a connection with. Gunn’s style was, and still is, a baffling exploitation of the instrument’s affordances, but his melodicism and conceptual adventurousness makes him one of my favorite players and The Joy of Molybdenum remains my favorite of his solo works.

4. Miles Davis - Kind of Blue: I owned Kind of Blue for decades, but in retrospect, I had never really engaged it beyond mere background music. Transcribing solos from it for an improv class changed all that, however, and provided me with a deep appreciation for the clarity of Davis’ ideas.

3 Brian Wilson - SMiLE: Brian Wilson finally released the long awaited follow-up to Pet Sounds in 2004 with compelling results. The tour that followed provided one of the best live shows I had ever seen.

2. Fela Kuti - Zombie: A seminar in Global Popular Music fleshed out my understanding of Fela and his unique political position. I ended up getting several Fela albums this year, but Zombie remains the best of the bunch.

Album of the Year: 2004

1. Opeth - Damnation: Opeth’s one-off experiment in melodic melancholy would, in hindsight, serve to pivot them from their black metal roots into their current progressive rock incarnation. In itself, however, it remains a unique masterpiece in their catalog.

Mr. Bungle Goes to Persia: Ethnos and the Secret Chiefs 3

Late in 2013 I was invited to by some ethnomusicology students to play in an original world music crossover ensemble. To me, this invitation seemed auspicious.  Although I don’t think fate dictates our path, I do think that things happen for a reason. It’s not always easy, however, to tell if the path path you have chosen is authentic or self-serving. For example, I often wonder if I took up Chapman Stick because I was “supposed to,” or if it was some desperate personal gambit to forge an identity for myself after the divorce. Perhaps the meaning of my ethnomusicological studies is yet to be revealed, or maybe they were merely an unnecessary and expensive exercise in egoism. Playing with this group, however, which came to be called Ethnos, seemed to make sense of so many disparate aspects of my experience that I could not help but accept.

I was nervous, though, because when I got the call, my Chapman Stick chops were nowhere near what they were during my master's studies. I have always grown as a musician, however, by putting myself in difficult musical situations and working my way through it. This is certainly where I was when I started in this group, but I was fortunate. They were quite patient with me as I got (and continue to get) my Stick playing where I want it to be.

This was to be an all-original group, and not one tethered to the conceptual restraints of a university, which I found particularly exciting. Authenticity has never been quite as important to me as influence, and it always seems to hang in the air in the academic setting.  The majority of our book currently consists of reimagined arrangements of popular music from around the world, but I have secretly been thinking about what sort of original tunes we could generate. For inspiration, I revisited an album that captured my attention a couple of years ago: Book M by The Secret Chiefs 3.

No, I don't know what's up with the cloaks.  Let's move on.

Secret Chiefs 3 is actually a collective of musicians guided by Ex-Mr. Bungle guitarist Trey Spruance.  Under his direction, the Secret Chiefs 3 have multiple configurations and identities that they operate under depending on the musicians and styles involved in any particular recording. Book M is one of their more ethnically influenced recordings, rather like “Mr. Bungle goes to Persia.”

The album’s exotic impressions partially stem from its modal composition. It deftly dodges the monotony that often arises in modal music, however, by using complex, intuitive rhythmic structures alongside contemporary techno and metal styles. If this sounds erratic, it is, but the album’s allure reverberates forth from the collision of these disparate elements. It is by sheer force of will and conviction that it works, but in the final analysis, Book M coheres into a singular statement incredibly well.



While The Secret Chiefs 3 hardly fit the current instrumentation of Ethnos, I find their general compositional approach and intensity very appealing. I am currently working up some compositions using very rudimentary versions of what I see in the music of the Secret Chiefs 3. While quite a bit may be lost in the interpretation, in the end that is what I hope will make it original.

Baby Jenga, Chapman Stick, and a New Prog-Girl

Day/night confusion is a real problem.  Getting the Little One to sleep during the hours that she is supposed to be sleeping is an art form.  At two weeks, there is only so much you can do, so often you have to just grin and bear it, but we try to pay attention to the stimulus that seems to relax her enough to hit the event horizon.  A combination of pacifiers, rocking, wedges, and whatnot will usually do the trick.  However, due to the fear of SIDS, pediatricians seem to suggest that most babies avoid sleeping with such props for any length of time, so recently, my wife and I have taken to playing a game we dubbed “baby Jenga.”  In order to play, you take a sleeping baby with all of her sleeping props in place and then remove them one by one without waking her. 

One of the sleep props is, of course, music.  While I don’t want to “program” my child to go to sleep every time she hears a raga, the hypnotic quality of eastern Indian music does seem to lull her to an extent.  One night I tried shakuhachi music with mixed results.  Last night, though, my wife came out of the nursery and said “I think that your daughter may be more of a prog-rocker than an ethno-baby, because she really loves that Stick album that’s playing now.”

Two weeks old and I’m already proud of her musical tastes.  The album that was playing was Mexican Stickist Japhlet Bire Attais’ psudeo-self-titled 2008 release, JBA.  I was exposed to many great Stick albums during the course of a study I did on the Chapman Stick community, and JBA one of my favorites.  It is a seeming mishmash of original Stick tunes, jazz standards, and covered arrangements.  Despite the variety of its track listing, however, the album coheres incredibly well due to the consistency of Attais’ Stick voice.  He subsumes his influences throughout JBA in a way that makes it a very special and, I think, unique contribution to the growing Stick repertoire. 

In addition to the obligatory unaccompanied solo tracks that are found on any Stick album, JBA also features a revolving door of support personnel, ranging from standard drum and guitar to more esoteric pairings for the Stick’s unique voice.  One of my favorites is the track What Are You Doing for the Rest of Your Life?, a haunting duet between Stick and bass clarinet. 

Like a lot of Stick music, JBA is too rock to be jazz and too jazz to be rock.  The instrument is often adopted by players with backgrounds in both genres, but the instrument itself is not really at home in either.  Thanks to Tony Levin’s contributions on Discipline, however, the instrument is more often associated with post-80s progressive rock.   Attais explicitly dances with this relationship on JBA, which features two arrangements that clearly connect to and elaborate on progressive rock and the King Crimson family tree.  One of these tracks is a compelling arrangement of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s Trilogy. 

Doing a convincing arrangement of a keyboard-based piece on Stick is a difficult endeavor, and Attias’ version is technically compelling.  On their own, ELP was an influential progressive rock band, but Greg Lake formed the band after leaving his post as King Crimson’s lead singer.  More directly, Attias also closes with a beautiful rendition of King Crimson’s Islands, the track that also closes their 1971 album of the same name.  The original prominently featured a cornet solo, while this instrumental version is a Stick and tenor sax duet.  Mel Collins (the same Collins that recently rejoined Fripp) played a significant role during that era of King Crimson, however, so the saxophone is a natural, organic choice to express the song’s melody.

Both of these tracks reference a path in progressive rock’s history that eventually meets the Chapman Stick’s in an important way.  The points that they reference, however, lie much earlier in the timeline, and the performances are excellent examples of 21^st century Stick technique.  Most importantly, Attias manages to get these songs to stand alongside other arrangements with roots in other genres, unified by his idiosyncratic approach to the instrument.