albert casais + jeph jerman and this

According to Jeph Jerman, "the idea called music is not separate from "sound in general", yet we have made it so by devising rules by which music may be ascertained or known. music is in the listening, and this is what i am about." Jeph Jerman link

Jeph goes on to say, "all sound is the same, namely a vibration, and our minds have separated one set of vibrations from the general over-all vibration and labeled it. music is therefore, a judgement [sic]."

If you listen to and this with a fixed notion of what sounds constitute music and what sounds do not, then you will be missing the real meaning of this beautifully simple little album completely. Our minds pigeonhole sensory information received, be it visual, auditory, or otherwise, in order to make it more manageable, and most of us have been taught to categorize sounds as either musical or non-musical. The sounds on and this were not meant to be analyzed or sorted. They were meant to be listened to in the purest sense possible - without judgment, as is.

Standard instrumentation whether it be real or virtual will not be heard here. What you will hear on this three-track album is collection of fairly common noises found in the auditory backdrop of our existence (scratching, rustling, clangs, crumpling, crunches, metallic, woody, pops, clicks, crackle, thuds etc. are a few descriptors) separated by varying periods of silence (or periods of silence interrupted by intermittent noises). A quick look at the notes accompanying and this reveals the organic sources of the sounds as each artist “plays” his instruments which include wood galls, sea shells, squeaky floor, metal bowl, stone bowl, cactus needles, small stones, blue spruce pine cone, lake pebbles, sycamore branch, petrified wood, acorns, and more.

I’ve listened to and this both in the isolation of a closed room listening hard with head phones and in an open setting letting its sounds intermingle and blend in with other environmental noises. Concentrated listening with head phones was not rewarding, but after a few repeated listenings in the open I soon discovered that the album’s sounds merged smoothly in with the natural background noises so that at times I found it difficult to distinguish between the sounds coming from the recording from those that were inherent to the immediate surroundings. And it’s this observation that partially fulfills what Jeph refers to as “the ultimate outcome of listening without judgement [sic]” which is “the realization that all things are one, that no thing is separate from any other except by the machinations of our minds.”

and this will not appeal to the rigid traditionalist who has a definite idea of what constitutes music. However, for anyone who has the inclination to view music in broader, more unified context, and this would be a good place to start.

and this comes as a 100 edition cd-r and is nicely packaged in a 18 cm by 13 cm white silkscreen and letterpress sleeve with light yellow-green print. The album can be purchased via the Winds Measure Recordings website.

Lary Johnson 2007 0109