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!
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 |
.jpg) |
| 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
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.
