SOUNDTRACK: LARAAJI-Tiny Desk Concert #846 (May 2, 2019).
I had no idea, and yet, it seems like I should.
40 years ago … Brian Eno produced an ambient album of his music called Ambient 3: Day of Radiance as part of a series of ambient records from Eno that began with 1978’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports. Edward Larry Gordon, now known as Laraaji, was a comedian as well as a musician. I suppose that explains the laughter as part of his meditative and therapeutic music. Laraaji is now in his mid-70s, has released over 50 recordings as well as an abundance of sound-healing sessions.
Laraaji and his musical partner Arji “OceAnanda” Cakouros (“draped in loose-fitted, saffron-tinted clothes, with a table draped in a similar orange fabric — almost the tones of a setting sun”) play an uninterrupted 15 minutes of chillout, which they call “12345678…”
It begins with a small bell, a set of tiny wind chimes and a plucked, angelic zither sounding much like a harp.
Laraaji plays the electric autoharp/zither and has a cool swirling echoing effect on it. Meanwhile OceAnanda has all manner of percussion at her disposal, including, chimes, shakers, and most surprising, and iPad synth (but that comes later).
The opening is incredibly soothing with just chimes and the autoharp Laraaji uses a pick and his fingers to create notes and chords. With the delay on it, it is incredibly chill.
After about two minutes OceAnanda plays some notes on the iPad. Then around 3 and a half minutes Laraaji picks up drum stick brushes and begins gentle tapping the autoharp. OceAnanda plays the kalimba, which is a little too loud, but still works nicely.
Then Laraaji began to laugh. I smiled. (His laugh is infectious). Then more of us in the office smiled as he brushed rhythms on his zither and processed the sounds to add delay and intensify the hypnotic pulse.
I agree that his laugh is infectious, but I found it so jarring that his laughter turned into him singing. Rather than it being fifteen minutes of blissful chill out, it was now a song with words–even if the words were meaningless, or very familiar. He sang “12345678” and “lum lum lum lum lumalum la”
But since the majority of the song has him singing over it, I soon got used to it and allowed it to wash over me as well. But, really his voice definitely brings you out of the headspace you’ve created for yourself. Even if his laugh is indeed infectious.
At seven and a half minutes OceAnanda starts playing a violin melody on the iPad and it works very nicely–slow and pretty with a melody that works, even if it is random. After a couple minutes she changes the sound of the violin to a more synthy sound, which fits in even better.
With a few minutes left, OceAnanda switches to a shaker which works its own hypnotizing momentum. And then for the end, she plays a bit more of that violin iPad while Laraaji sings the words from “this little light of mine.”
And then it all fades and you come back to reality.
[READ: July 1, 2019] “Bacon Fat”
The Summer 2019 issue of The West End Phoenix was a special all comics issue with illustrations by Simone Heath. Each story either has one central illustration or is broken up with many pictures (or even done like a comic strip).
Each story is headed by the year that the story takes place–a story from that particular summer.
1974: This is a short story about the summer that Michael’s family wanted to build a log cabin on a piece of land in Newfoundland. It was a popular place and they had next door neighbors at the lake who built a log cabin in what seemed like a weekend.
His parents were from England. But his dad always wanted to be a cowboy and his mom always wanted to live in New York City. So they settled on Newfoundland.
His family was struggling to get their cabin upright. They were working on the logs (they wanted it to look like a log cabin). While they were trying to nail these logs together they could see the neighbors pulling cans of Coke out of the lake they were swimming in.
The project took several weekends to work on. They had the basic structure up, but his dad had left a hole for the fireplace.
On the weekends, his dad would cover the hole with a piece of plywood.
He and his dad went back up one weekend and saw that the plywood had been lifted.
They crept inside to see what the thief got but nothing was missing.
It was only in the morning that the punchline and the title come together with a very amusing illustration.
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