Cats Cradle Robbers: April 2015

Seattle, Washington, April 11 2015

Cats Cradle Robbers are proud to announce general availability of our latest collection of electroacoustic constructions, Seen and Unseen. Here are a few thoughts about this album.

When we decided in 2013 to polish up and release many of our early musical experiments as albums for general availability, we spent an evening grouping our music into albums using a process called “affinities.” (See the description of that process in aprevious post in this blog).

One of the groupings, which we called “religious”, included tracks where either the title, or the mood, or the lyrics, or the idea of the track related in some way to spirituality. This is that collection.

As a part of putting together the collection, we expanded, added, re-recorded, and brought in additional collaborators to make the music new and take advantage of several years of reflection.

As always, we rely on and celebrate our many collaborators, who are partners in creating the music and who inspire us to go beyond our personal creative potential. And of course, we could not do what we do without the love and support of our families - a grateful thanks to Salome, ParisAnne, Lisa, Payton, and (soon to be born) Ed "Quattro" Essey.

The cover image was created by artist Carlie Reilly of New Jersey, the winner of our album cover contest. We love Carlie's winning cover - it made us really glad we decided to do the contest!

We hope that you enjoy this latest collection of our creative experiments in music-making!

- Nick Dallett and Ed Essey, aka Snake and DJSE, Cats Cradle Robbers

It Begins (feat. Lisa Jaffe Hubbell and Vidya Ramarathnam)

Lisa Jaffe Hubbell: Hebrew vocal

Vidya Ramarathnam: Tamil vocal

DJSE: Synth, Sequencing and effects (SSE)

Snake: Wine glasses

Snake conceived the idea of combining two of the oldest living languages – Hebrew and Tamil – each singing the creation story from their culture. We engaged Lisa and Vidya to provide the raw vocals in their respective traditional styles, and we combined them in the studio. The Hebrew text is cut into individual syllables for the initial part of the track, and both vocals are sung in full later in the track.

We use the ending of this piece to introduce elements of the rest of the album.

Hebrew lyrics (Genesis 1:1-3)

Hebrew script	Phonetic transliteration	English translation
בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים	bə-rê-šîṯ bā-rā ’ĕ-lō-hîm;	In the beginning, God created
אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃	’êṯ haš-šā-ma-yim wə-’êṯ hā-’ā-reṣ.	The heavens and the earth
וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ	wə-hā-’ā-reṣ, hā-yə-ṯāh ṯō-hū wā-ḇō-hū,	And the earth was without form and void
וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־ פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם	wə-ḥō-šeḵ ‘al-pə-nê ṯə-hō-wm;	And darkness [was] on the face of the deep
וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־ פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃	wə-rū-aḥ ’ĕ-lō-hîm, mə-ra-ḥe-p̄eṯ ‘al-pə-nê ham-mā-yim.	And the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters
וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר וַֽיְהִי־ אֽוֹר׃	way-yō-mer ’ĕ-lō-hîm yə-hî ’ō-wr; way-hî- ’ō-wr.	And said God let there be light and there was light

Tamil Lyrics

Tamil script	Phonetic transliteration	English translation
கல் தோன்றி மண் தோன்றா	Kal thondri mann thondra	Before stones and sand were discovered
காலத்தே முன் தோன்றிய மொழி	kaalathey munThondriya mozhi	Before stone age, this language was born
எம் தமிழ் மொழி	yem thamizh mozhi	our tamil language
அகம் என்றும் புறம் என்றும்	Agam yendrum puram yendrum	The right way of living our life both within (inner well being) and external ( outer well being)
வாழ்வை அழகாக வகுத்த மொழி	Vaazhvai azhagaga vagutha mozhi	were artistically written and followed through this language
எம் தமிழ் மொழ	yem thamizh mozhi	My tamil language
எம் செம்மொழி	yem sem mozhi	Our great language
நம் தமிழ் மொழி	nam thamizh mozhi	Our tamil language

Everyone Loves a Martyr

India: meow

Snake: oven door, guitars, piano, flute

DJSE: piano, guitar, SSE

In our early days, we used to try to feature cat sounds in every track. This is one of the last pieces that followed that guideline (listen to Racoonba Persistante for another example).

Dark and cinematic, this piece features Snake on slide guitar and DJSE on the piano. The ending section was recorded with a single mic and features DJSE playing one guitar while Snake plays a guitar with one hand and the piano with the other.

Laudanum Escapade (feat. Eliza Heery)

Eliza Heery: Lead Vocal, Bass

Cathy Breshears: Backing Vocal

Snake: SSE, sampled frogs, monk seal, white handed gibbon, guitar, synth

DJSE: SSE, sampled parrot, dog

(ok cool)

Laudanum…

It’s raining on my window pane

And I’m feeling no pain

No pain, no pain

Laudanum…

Birds are tapping on my window pane

And I’m feeling no pain

It’s raining on my window pane

And I’m feeling no pain

Laudanum…

The dog is barking again

In the yard and in the rain

And I’m feeling no pain

No pain, no pain

Said I’m feeling no pain

No pain

Laudanum…

Laudanum escapade was originally recorded in a tiny apartment that Cathy Breshears shared with two kids, a dog, and a bird in Issaquah, Washington. Cathy was nervous and unused to improvisation, so the original vocal of this track was created by Snake improvising lyrics and singing them call-and-response style with Cathy. We cut Snake’s voice out for the first version of this song. Later we asked bassist and vocalist Eliza Heery to contribute her own jazzy style to the vocal, and we kept Cathy’s original vocals for the haunting “no pain” refrain.

Everything is embedded in DJSE’s brilliantly composed drum and bass track, to which Snake then added a guitar and synth chord pattern. Eliza’s bass puts the finishing touch on the instrumental tracks.

Aside from Cathy’s dog and bird, which can be heard in the final fade, all of the animal sounds were sampled by Snake while on a trip to Hawaii in November 2010. The frogs were recorded in Hilo on the Big Island. The white handed gibbon calls were sampled at the Honolulu zoo, and the monk seal snorts at the Waikiki aquarium a few blocks away.

Laudanum is a highly addictive opiate compound that was a popular ingredient in patent medicines in the 1800s, and is just the sort of thing that a bored housewife might have used to dull the pain of a humdrum lifestyle.

Seen and Unseen

Snake: Dih, fireworks, berimbau

DJSE: SSE

In 2011, when we recorded the first version of this track on Snake’s back deck, Snake was studying the Brazilian martial art form capoeira, and the unique rhythmic character of capoeira music colored this track from day one. As the piece evolved, we brought in explicit samba rhythms to carry forward the Brazilian sound. The berimbau, the single-stringed musical instrument that is specific to capoeira, was an obvious – but late – addition to the track.

The night we recorded this, we had a pile of leftover fireworks, and the sounds of crackling firecrackers is one of the unique elements that works its way into the background of the music.

Introducing the Dih

The instrument that Snake calls a “dih” is any small wire-stringed instrument where the strings are detuned enough to make the slinky sounds you can hear several times in this track. The idea of a “dih” was invented by Snake (aka Steve Peanut) and Larry Genuth (aka Eric Butter) as part of their music comedy duo Peanut Butter in the early 1980s. This particular instance was a small overhand dulcimer, in itself an unusual instrument, created by luthier John Lindsey of Lindsey Guitar fame.

Seen and Unseen was originally dedicated to Jeremy Roberts, our first fan.

Racoonba Persistante (Sharpie's Revenge)

Sharpie: snuffles

Agent K: meows

DJSE: SSE

Snake: Guitars

One night while we were working at DJSE’s erstwhile bachelor pad at the Mosler Lofts in Belltown, Snake’s wife called to say that there was a raccoon lying on the back deck. It didn’t appear injured or sick and was just hanging out and not going away. That was the night we started this track.

At the time, Snake’s family had a cat named Darien who had been banished to the back deck after too many things were ruined by cat urine. Sharpie (as we named the raccoon) became a regular visitor. She would wait for Darien to be fed, and after he had eaten his fill, she would swoop in and clean out his bowl. When Sharpie gave birth to a litter of kits, she started bringing them by to visit. The snuffling sounds in this track were recorded one night when Sharpie brought her kits to visit.

DJSE’s cat Agent K was one of the original members of the band and can still be found on Facebook. Agent K has since retired from music. In this track, he tries in vain to find that darned raccoon.

For this version of the track, we added the (live) guitars and (synthesized) theremin.

Downward Daffodil (feat. Sharanya Viswanath)

Sharanya Viswanath: vocal

Vidya Ramarathnam: vocal

Joe Breskin: Guitar, Moon Lute

DJSE: SSE

Snake: Guitarron, vertical marimba

This track has been through many iterations on its way to this (final?) form. The first published version was called “Gravity Schmavity,” a title that came out of a long series of word associations between DJSE and Snake. Another, very different, version of the track was called Demitasse. The original samples were recorded at Joe Breskin’s Port Townsend home, and included Snake playing Joe’s guitarron, Joe playing a Vietnamese moon lute, and both Joe and Snake striking long rosewood beams that we hung from his ceiling (Snake dubbed this the “Vertical Marimba”). Joe then played a long electric guitar solo over the groove we created using these elements. We’ve excerpted only small pieces of each of these things in this version.

The Vertical Marimba

The main rhythm of the piece lumbers like an elephant (which is what spurred the aforementioned series of word associations leading to “Horton taunts Newton: Gravity Shmavity!”), and our association between Elephants and India is probably what prompted us, when presented with the opportunity to work with Carnatic vocalist Sharanya Viswanath, to ask her to improvise to this track.

The result is something we would like to think could accompany yogic practice, hence the also word-associative name Downward Daffodil.

DJSE setting up shop at Breskin's

Breskin in full effect

Sharanya, relaxing between takes

Tamil Lyrics:

Tamil Script	Phonetic transliteration	English translation
ஓ அன்பே எனது உயிரே	Oh anbe yenadhu uyirae	My dear, my life
நீயும் ஒரு குழந்தை	Neeyum oru kuzhandhai	you are my child too

Joe on the Moon Lute

Truesetto

Snake: Lindsey fretless tenor guitar, Bookmarked guitar, electric dih

DJSE: SSE, Trombone

Dating from 2009, Truesetto features the Lindsey fretless tenor guitar and the electric dih (which has almost no relation to the acoustic instrument of the same name mentioned above). You can read all about the creation of this track in this blog post from 2009. http://catscradlerobbers.blogspot.com/2009/07/truesetto-reflections-by-snake-on.html

There is also a video of this tune on our YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnDydCBHDH8

Listening (feat. Janet Dallett)

Janet Dallett: vocal

Michael and Jane Engle: wine glasses, voices

Snake: guitar, berimbau, piano

DJSE: speak n spell, SSE

Snake’s mother, Jungian Psychologist Janet O. Dallett, passed away in June 2010. A few days after her memorial service in Port Townsend, her nephew Michael and his wife joined us for a session at Snake’s house. We talked and played with water and wine glasses, and started a track we called Funk Back.

Back in the 1970s, there was a consumer advocacy show on TV called Fight Back with David Horowitz. Snake once overheard his mother and her friends joking that the show should be called “Fuck Back” instead. We modified this to Funk back to make it more musical and less PG-Rated.

DJSE had a Speak & Spell that he brought along to the session, and you can hear it saying “funk back” periodically in the final mix.

We worked on this track on and off for a month or two and never got very far with it. Then Snake got the idea to make it an explicit homage to his mom by bringing in phrases recorded at a reading of her book Listening to the Rhino: Violence and Healing in a Scientific Age, as well as other snippets of conversation recorded during her last months. This formed the backbone that we used as the center of the final piece.

How much longer?

And if longer, how long?

Today is the time of the rhino

(funk back)

If you dismiss it, become possessed by it, or try to destroy it, it will surely annihilate you

It is vastly more powerful than our little egos

I have very complicated eyes

Today is the time of the rhino

He offers his roomy, ancient skin for us to grow into

Do it - it is urgent

Diablita

DJSE: SSE

Snake: guitar, vocal, fork and nutcan

Cathy Breshears: vocal

One day, Snake arrived at DJSE’s place armed with his Gibson L6 electric guitar and Roland Jazz Chorus amp only to find DJSE burning to do something with a hard rock sound. He had built the first pieces of Diablita in Ableton before Snake showed up, and Snake put his Gibson to good use.

In China, they say that the ideal woman has 天使般的脸,魔鬼身材, or “Angel’s face, Devil’s figure.” We played on this idiom in this track, taking advantage of the fact that Snake, in the last stages of a cold, temporarily possessed an unnaturally deep voice.

This track has gone through several phases, including one in which Cathy sang several verses that we co-wrote on the same evening that we wrote Laudanum Escapade, but this mostly instrumental version is the one we liked best.

Angel's face

Devil's body

Saving grace

Salumba parte

To-cha-mo

Are you ready for me?

One of our most frequently used instruments, the Nutcan.
Snake scraped it with a fork for this track.
First Frost in the Garden and The Immortal Bottle both feature a quarter spun on the lid.

Saints (Feat. Danny Shih)

Danny Shih: violin

Snake: electric guitar, vocal

DJSE: SSE, vocal

Danny was a co-worker of DJSE’s, and revealed one day that he played violin. In 2010, we were looking for somebody to replace the synthesized violin on Swan Station 5 (released on Jack in the Bucket), so we headed to Danny’s for a session. We spent some time on that track, and then decided to start something new. Snake picked up Danny’s electric guitar, and Danny contributed some beautiful violin lines to the beats DJSE laid down. The result is one of our all-time favorites.

Danny is a New Orleans Saints fan, and the scant lyrics on this track (Amen. Amen. Saints. / Feelin the Brees.) were taken from the framed newspaper article on the wall, celebrating their recent superbowl win.

The Dry Sound of Atonement

Snake: Maytag washer and dryer with various inclusions, glassware, cabinets, fuse box

DJSE: SSE

On Saturday, September 14, 2013, DJSE came over to Snake’s house for a boil. A boil is a special type of session that is near and dear to our hearts. Named for the first such session, Boiling the Ocean, a boil is a session in which we take a specific location, such as a room in a house, and wring as many sounds as we can out of items we find in that location. We then assemble a piece of music using only those sounds, straight up or electronically processed.

We often refer to the music thus produced as REAL house music. Get it?

In this boil, we attacked Snake’s laundry room. You can hear some AA batteries, a rock, and some dryer balls cycling around in the dryer, the washer filling up, and various cabinet doors being slammed. Snake sings into the dryer, and we created a virtual gamelan from various pieces of glassware that are stashed in that room. The beeping sounds created when the washer and dryer are turned on and off supplied a built-in melodic focus. The overall mood is trancelike and focused, and we tried to honor the idea of atonement, given that 9/14/13 was Yom Kippur that year.

Acid Washed Dreams

DJSE: SSE

Snake: nutcan, flute, tin whistle, balloon, vocals, berimbau, shaker, classical guitar, Lindsey fretless tenor guitar, Gibson L6 electric guitar

Salome: laughter

Acid washed dreams started with Snake wanting to reverse-engineer a Bhangra beat. We took some time to lay out this traditional Punjabi folk dance rhythm in Ableton, and then we started to add sounds into the mix. The heavily processed sound you hear at the beginning started life as a tin whistle. A balloon sounds a bit like a DJ scratching. The traditional Cats Cradle Robbers percussion staple, the nutcan, came into play. A tabla sample appears. DJSE samples his then girlfriend, now wife’s laughter. Eventually we added synthesized violins, some real guitars, berimbau, and vocals.

The lyrics present an imagined scene, tripping on mushrooms in the rainy streets of Mumbai after a night of clubbing during monsoon season.

It's not raining, it's steaming

Urchins blaspheming Shiva

And in weaving these visions

To believe is to leave her

Cars and bars and whores amid the Bollywood nights

The lights and the stars making the boulevard soar (sore?)

'Til they lock the doors and it's just me, alone

Walk in the warm rain

Steam rising from the street, in the heat

To be alive in the city of flowers and songs and mycelium dreams

What About That Pasta (Feat. Steven Harry Markowitz)

Steven Harry Markowitz: Piano

Snake: Guitar

DJSE: SSE

Steve Markowitz and Snake, under the name Polyrhythmics, performed improvised music at various open mic nights in the Seattle area in the early 2000s. In this track, we relive those moments with a pair of free improvisation bookends around an electronic piece tying together their duet with DJSE’s beats.

Steve is a brilliant composer and improviser, and his own music is well worth a listen and can be heard at his page on last.fm.

Cats Cradle Robbers

Friday, April 17, 2015

Remix Contest: Laudanum Escapade feat. Eliza Heery

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Cats Cradle Robbers' latest album Seen and Unseen is now for sale.

Seen and Unseen - the liner notes

It Begins (feat. Lisa Jaffe Hubbell and Vidya Ramarathnam)

Everyone Loves a Martyr

Laudanum Escapade (feat. Eliza Heery)

Seen and Unseen

Racoonba Persistante (Sharpie's Revenge)

Downward Daffodil (feat. Sharanya Viswanath)

Truesetto

Listening (feat. Janet Dallett)

Diablita

Saints (Feat. Danny Shih)

The Dry Sound of Atonement

Acid Washed Dreams

What About That Pasta (Feat. Steven Harry Markowitz)