Swinging with Paulo Ramos (rainmaker) and Aletheia Elwood Cedino (Eat the Fruit) at Alchemy.
The Fabric project... forward-thinking and aspirational. To create such a platform will require time and effort.
I am not primarily a business-focused person. To me art is a much clearer conveyor of the aspects of life worth considering. I will spend more time listening to a Marley, Beatles, Hendrix, Dylan, Mitchell, Cohen, Young or whoever expresses truth as he or she sees it.
This necessarily cuts into my time listening to speeches by politicians, no matter how able.
I am not primarily a business-focused person. To me art is a much clearer conveyor of the aspects of life worth considering. I will spend more time listening to a Marley, Beatles, Hendrix, Dylan, Mitchell, Cohen, Young or whoever expresses truth as he or she sees it.
This necessarily cuts into my time listening to speeches by politicians, no matter how able.
View of Paolo and John de Cernada Lumagod from the isolation booth, Alchemy.
Writers and visual artists also work for me. I will get into the head of a Joseph Conrad, a Steinbeck, or a Garcia Marquez, willingly. I will try and understand the votive message of any artist who treasures life and the earth.
My plan then is to promote fabric through writing and music––I feel that both are original enough to gain respect in ways that allow projects to happen. I have finally found a reason to seek out a larger audience. My aim is to create stuff that, while far from perfect, is original and unaffected by the techno beats of the masses.
Music that creates a template for those in the know and launches other fabric-minded artists. No guitar riff copycats to contend with––the tribal flute is not built for mass appropriation (thank god).*
My plan then is to promote fabric through writing and music––I feel that both are original enough to gain respect in ways that allow projects to happen. I have finally found a reason to seek out a larger audience. My aim is to create stuff that, while far from perfect, is original and unaffected by the techno beats of the masses.
Music that creates a template for those in the know and launches other fabric-minded artists. No guitar riff copycats to contend with––the tribal flute is not built for mass appropriation (thank god).*
John has a 1974 VW Bug, undoubtedly the coolest car in Dumaguete and possibly in the Western Visayas.
Fabric is now the title of the loose band that I have conceived... I have always felt uncomfortable using my own name for music-–Shulenberger** carries with it cultural assumptions. Fine for writing, there is an Arvid-guided tradition associated with that I suppose....
Fabric: a collection of musicians no better or worse than myself, similarly committed to new sounds and to the meanings contained therein. I have met a few musicians in Dumaguete who inspire and/or haunt me. Paulo Ramos, who has taken the title "music interpreter" and the inimitable Aletheia are among these. John, Ramke, Dyck, Louie, Japhoy, Ralph, Jin, DJ Tong, Davide, Mariano, Peter, Paul, and George... the list goes on. They have had the willingness to improv with me until we get things right.
The album is actually turning out to be quite a process. Fly Away Home has about three distinct archeological eras of editing involved. The first fast-paced instrumental track with John on bass, Rocky on guitar, and me on flute. This provided the early 1970s Sesame Street guitar sound and the bed of the urban Manila paranoia and longing that I am trying to convey. Followed by... well let that whet the appetite for the actual album, sometime before Christmas.
Suffice it to say, I believe that each song kind of magically captures a moment. Each is distinct, many with approximations of field-recorded patterns and tunings (thanks Paolo). Lyrics that are my own. Fabric - Chasing Sun, coming soon.
To be followed by a new Fabric song cycle spanning Raleigh, Miami Beach, Tulum, the Bay Area?
Fabric: a collection of musicians no better or worse than myself, similarly committed to new sounds and to the meanings contained therein. I have met a few musicians in Dumaguete who inspire and/or haunt me. Paulo Ramos, who has taken the title "music interpreter" and the inimitable Aletheia are among these. John, Ramke, Dyck, Louie, Japhoy, Ralph, Jin, DJ Tong, Davide, Mariano, Peter, Paul, and George... the list goes on. They have had the willingness to improv with me until we get things right.
The album is actually turning out to be quite a process. Fly Away Home has about three distinct archeological eras of editing involved. The first fast-paced instrumental track with John on bass, Rocky on guitar, and me on flute. This provided the early 1970s Sesame Street guitar sound and the bed of the urban Manila paranoia and longing that I am trying to convey. Followed by... well let that whet the appetite for the actual album, sometime before Christmas.
Suffice it to say, I believe that each song kind of magically captures a moment. Each is distinct, many with approximations of field-recorded patterns and tunings (thanks Paolo). Lyrics that are my own. Fabric - Chasing Sun, coming soon.
To be followed by a new Fabric song cycle spanning Raleigh, Miami Beach, Tulum, the Bay Area?
Picture John works the controls, while Dyck Cedino records jaw harp for UFOs & Labyrinths in the egg foam-lined isolation booth
*Do we need to be in altered states to get in touch with these spirits? Not so much, if life is on a path that makes sense. Stay with marijuana and the occasional pilsen, I think we will be fine.
**What can I say? My personality is far from German. Whoever my real father was was pretty ethnically diverse. I know on my mom's side there are about a dozen countries of origin. Fabric sounds more indicative of where I am coming from.
I tried Stu Lenberger for my acoustic recordings a decade ago but a) nobody cared and b) it sounded too 1970s punk-turned-pub-football-watcher.
#fabric #endwriter #ChasingSun
**What can I say? My personality is far from German. Whoever my real father was was pretty ethnically diverse. I know on my mom's side there are about a dozen countries of origin. Fabric sounds more indicative of where I am coming from.
I tried Stu Lenberger for my acoustic recordings a decade ago but a) nobody cared and b) it sounded too 1970s punk-turned-pub-football-watcher.
#fabric #endwriter #ChasingSun
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