Making my way back from the depths.

Fognode – performing live @ CPR April 17, 2010 @ 7:30p, originally uploaded by brian siskind.

FOGNODE – “BEAT HOLLOW”
beat hollow [colloq.]; distance; leave in the -lurch, transcend, surmount; soar (rise)

Brian Siskind a.k.a. Fognode presents a sonic program made of ambient drones, field recordings, and shamanic beat-driven compositions to form an amalgam of sound that amounts to a singular experience toward transcendence. From documented ritual of Bhutan monks in Brooklyn, to the birds in the ruins of Pompeii, and an alternating portrait of rural and urban life from across the US and Europe, the resulting images are a portrait of not only Siskind’s perspective, but the collective auditory experience. Rooted in the dub music ethos, and smeared into the abstract akin to Rothko’s color fields, ambient drones and forward movement bring the listener into the peak experience of ecstatic music and rhythm, based in composition, but more so simply experienced by the composer and listener alike. Beat Hollow is a melange of sound that brings about a cerebrally induced experience, but amidst a canvas made of all things familiar, even minutiae, yet unheard.

TICKETS $20 – STUDENT DISCOUNT AVAILABLE

Brian Eno calls Siskind’s work “original” “It has to me, a seductive quality” “I want to listen to what’s going to happen”

HERE IS THE PROGRAM FOR THE ENTIRE WEEK
Technoshamanism April 12-17, 2010 Curated by Karl Cronin
New Voices in Live Performance
Center for Performance Research
Brooklyn, NY
A week dedicated to extended mind and altered states in contemporary performance.

Events OverviewApril 12-17 (All week)
Cyborg Nation (encounters, performance, installation)
April 14 (Wed)The Art of Transformation (symposium) – Free
April 15 (Thurs)Trancedance workshop, led by Jennifer Hicks, $20
April 16 (Fri) Ode to the Winter Sea (performance), $20
April 17 (Sat)Beat Hollow (transcendent sound performance), $20
$50 Festival pass available

Curatorial Statement – Karl Cronin
Performing artists have long used “technologies” to induce creative states, ex- pand their capabilities, and alter their audience’s perception of reality.This week of discussion, performance, and participatory events will use a broaddefinition of technology to bring to the surface an underlying aesthetic discussionabout incorporating technology into performance.Technoshamanism is a term used for applying modern technology to traditionalshamanic practices. Contemporary performance is not shamanic practice, yet thetwo share some important features. Technoshamanism is a messy term, yet for some reason I’ve enjoyed using it as a placeholder for the messy terrain sur- rounding transformation and art, states of being/consciousness in performance,social sculpture projects that involve the shaping of perception, and a deeper analysis of performance “technologies” and how they can be used effectively inthe alchemy of live performance. The concept of technoshamanism will serve as a jumping off point for discussions between the artists presentingwork throughout the week.

Long form music video / short film for Good Rester.
Music and Film produced & edited by Brian Siskind.

Good Rester is:
Brian Siskind aka Fognode
Karen Y Chan
Andy Alexander

a Beat Hollow production
beathollow.com

“Good Rester – Dark” is an abstract film that uses made and found post-war footage, combined with original score and field recordings, to weave a sensory narrative – across the Tarot and the imminent cycle of life and death.

“Good Rester – Dark” is a poetic abstract film from renowned composer Brian Siskind (a.k.a. Fognode) who has always made very visual music. Ambient music pioneer Brian Eno calls Siskind’s work:

“original”
“It has to me, a seductive quality”
“I want to listen to what’s going to happen”

The film, in three movements, uses found/public domain footage of post-war Germany and New York City, as well as footage shot by Siskind, to take the viewer on a journey through the cycle of life and death. Field Recordings made by Siskind from Rome, Pompeii, London, Nice, Nashville, New York and other locations are characters in the film that guide the narrative. Original music recorded, produced, and performed by Siskind (and collaborators) under the name “Good Rester” provide the only human voice, and is the basis for the progression through the cycle.

This 11 minute black and white abstract and sonically rich film pushes toward renewal – transcendence.

Long Island City. NYC.

Much to catch up on and accomplish this year. Starting with more photography, more music, and more output in general. I never seem to be satisfied with how much I create and finish. When I look back it looks different.

So in this year 2010, I will just try and look upward, and onward.

I hope to make another Fognode record, another Good Rester record, finish a couple of current projects, as well as master Ableton Live 8, the Roland SP-555 and get out and do some live shows…

In image I just want to make more and better and more engaging work. I think I have learned the thematic happens when I am not trying to think thematically. There is some thread through what is simply reaction.

My educational endeavors will continue, and I am on my way to non-fiction filmmaking. I have already learned enough to know that I will never use Final Cut Pro as it is hands down the worst software I have ever used, and am excited to begin looking to Sony Vegas Professional and all it’s exciting image and sound capabilities. I have done a lot of writing this past year, and I hope to get away from that where I can for a while. I love it, but not so much I must do it all the time.

I am cooking up lots of new and unique opportunities and outlets, and things are starting to open up. My adjustment period moving to New York City has settled and now I feel I can navigate into any situation I want. Now to navigate all these damned choices.

I thank all those I have collaborated with over this past year, and I look forward to really stretching things out this year.

If you like what I do, please spread the word. Every bit helps keep it going. There are also Facebook groups for Brian Siskind Photography, and Fognode. Not sure what they translate to, but groups are fun right?

Oh! and if anyone knows of an excellent photography website, please forward it along or comment here and leave the link. I am going to develop a comprehensive site early this year.

Onward and upward.

Interesting article out of Nashville from the Nashville Scene mentions one of my earliest releases. I thought no one even noticed:

For Nashville indie musicians like Lambchop and Cortney Tidwell, it was the post-post-rock decade
By Edd Hurt
published: December 24, 2009

Over the course of the last decade, Nashville became the city that couldn’t forget post-rock, and some of the era’s finest indie records imagined Music City as a dreamscape unencumbered by song-pluggers or song form. Like their ’90s predecessors, such performers as Cortney Tidwell, Lone Official and Altered Statesman made sounds that grasped for the limits of traditional rock and pop music. In a city crammed to the gills with players and home-recording savants, indie bands invented a topsy-turvy Nashville that valued sound over lyrics and literary values over colloquial turns of phrase. It was a late moment in pop history, and it felt good.
The pop moment was already well into evening 10 years ago, when post-rock icons such as Pavement, Tortoise and Stereolab were making transitional records or breaking up entirely. High-toned Muzak with impeccably hip credentials, Tortoise’s 1998 TNT sounded like a commentary on the tail end of a boom era. Ennio Morricone-style melodies dovetailed into jazzy passages, while the record’s simple, indelible melodies floated over minimalist drums-and-bass backdrops. Rock only by association, TNT never removed its seamless mask.

Tortoise represented a strain of mid-American experimentation that found a home in Chicago, where all manner of pop visionaries were busy expanding ideas of traditional song form. At the same time, Nashville’s avant-pop collective Lambchop were working along similar lines. Mixing countrypolitan gentility with cooled-out soul guitars and Kurt Wagner’s pleasantly meandering lyrics, Lambchop was as close as Nashville got to post-rock in the ’90s. They would be an enormous influence on the post-post-rock of the next decade.

Released in 2001, Fognode’s Beat Hollow stands as an excellent introduction to the pastoral mode that would characterize indie Nashville in the coming decade. The brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Brian Siskind, Beat Hollow sounds a lot like TNT, except that trip-hop beats underpin acoustic guitar patterns and half-remembered country-blues licks. If TNT was decisively urban, Beat Hollow sounds like Nashville looks—complete with humidity and crumbling stone walls.

Listening to Fognode or Lambchop, you could get the idea that rock ‘n’ roll had simply never occurred here—that Lee Hazlewood and John Fahey loomed as large in pop history as had Phil Spector and Jimi Hendrix. In the case of Lone Official (some of whose members had played in Lambchop), the obvious antecedent was Pavement. Still, leader Matt Button wrote about what he knew: horse racing and bar fights. The expressionist guitar structures may have been borrowed, but Lone Official’s 2006 Tuckassee Take sounds verdant where Pavement could seem parched.

Around the same time, singer-songwriter Cortney Tidwell dueted with Wagner on a song called “Society,” and her unnerving high wail—an unpredictable sound that crossed Björk’s damaged croon with Patty Waters’ free-jazz phrasing—made it clear that the prospect of joining society filled her with apprehension. The daughter of a ’70s country singer, Tidwell married a modest tune sense to a knack for the kind of two-chord compositions that recalled everything from ’60s garage bands to Gal Costa’s Brazilian pop.

Tidwell’s Don’t Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up featured contributions from Siskind, and the record continued in the pastoral and somewhat overheated mode of Beat Hollow, right down to the combination of acoustic guitars and shimmering keyboards. It remains a stunning debut. This year, Tidwell released Boys, a followup that folds, filters and double-tracks her voice into infinity. The results are amniotic and a little aimless, but often thrilling.

For all that, Tidwell can come across like an unsure diva, and that’s to be expected in the super-saturated landscape of the Nashville music business. Don’t Let Stars and Boys are unabashedly abstract, but there are times when one craves recognizable human detail. On his 2008 Altered Statesman, singer Steve Poulton makes like a stoned, down-at-heel Boz Scaggs on a series of songs that actually have something to say about the un-trendy side of Nashville’s bohemian fringe.

And that may be the rub of all this post-post-rock business. Nashville’s emphasis on the well-made record and the pithy song may cast a shadow on any number of acceptable daydreams, but the alternative can seem solipsistic. Poulton says he and Wagner have put together an EP for release early next year, and it features them singing over various country-rock settings, with Wagner doing his best Don Williams impersonation. It sounds both traditional and experimental, and maybe that combination is what Music City ought to aim for in the future. As Poulton says, “It used to be cruel and unusual punishment to own a guitar in Nashville and try to figure out what music is. It’s not that way any more.”

This shot was taken a few weeks back… the last warm day of the year. 2010 is nearly upon us. A water main broke in the village as I passed through on my bike. Like this street corner, this year has seen a lot, and more is blooming all the time.

Good Rester is putting together a show/installation/film for a small series of performances in Brooklyn at the beginning of the year. It will be a melange of space treatment, projections and film, sound installation and music, and live performance. This will not be a public event but footage will be had and shared. Look for more Good Rester in the new year including inclusion of the song “Dark” which will be featured on an upcoming compilation called Darkroom Beats from Aleph Zero in Tel Aviv.

Personally things have been hectic but good in the end, and the research and pre-production has been done for a documentary film project on urban noise. More details to come but it is coming.

Here is to 2009. Moving on. Best 2010.

In time.

This image is from a recent shoot for artist Patsy Mcarthur (http://www.patsymcarthur.blogspot.com/)
She makes really impressive drawings dramatic in movement and detail.

On other fronts, it has been a very long time since I have updated. There seemingly has been too much going on to well sum up. In short, there is new everything coming, and lots of work will soon come to fruition. Many pots have been stirring.

Hope everyone is well and I apologize for slow email responses and overall flaky behavior.

Speaking of, I miss buttermilk biscuits from the south.
However I don’t miss the extra 20 lbs. I carried there.

I would stick around but I have calls to return that are growing algae on them.

.b

click here –> download now

Chris Crofton – vocals, guitar
David Dawson – bass
Brandes Holcomb – guitar
Brian Siskind – drums

1. Yeah
2. Functional Drunk
3. Gold Paint
4. Studs and Sluts
5. Arenacross
6. Dickerson Pike
7. John Denver

Recorded at The 5 Spot in Nashville, TN sometime in late 2007 (date lost) by Todd Sherwood
Mixed By Todd Sherwood

Photo by Stephen Clark aka Dr. Jackson

ASB ON MYSPACE