FFR 20

FFR20

ISSN: 1929-7238
©2016 Now, for the nonce, and nevermore, Fowl Feathered Review is purportedly the disorderly quarterly published by Fowlpox
Press.
This issue is dedicated to the memory of Camille Claudel (8 December 1864 – 19 October 1943) and Vali Myers (2 August
1930 – 12 February 2003)
Cover: The Power of Myself by Jirawat Plekhongthu. You can see more of his amazing work and purchase here:
http://bit.ly/2fVdxtZ Mr.Plekhongthu has generously donated this photo for our use so that readers will feel encouraged to make donations to
the FFAC Foundation in Bangkok, Thailand. Children in need will benefit. Their website may be seen here: http://www.ffac-foundation.org/
Guest DJ: BJ Rubin, host of the BJ Rubin Show, which airs on Manhattan Neighborhood Network every other Thursday at 4pm,
and on Brooklyn Public Network the first Thursday of the month at 2pm. You can catch past episodes here:
http://www.pukekos.org/

ayaz daryl nielsen was born in Valentine, Nebraska, attended schools in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Monterrey, Mexico, has lived in
Bonn, Germany and now lives in Longmont, Colorado with beloved wife Judith. A veteran, former hospice nurse, ex-roughneck (as on oil
rigs), he has been editor of the print publication bear creek haiku for 25+ years and over 135 issues. ayaz can be found online at bear
creek haiku - poetry, poems and info. His poetry, published worldwide, includes senryu chosen in 2010 and 2012 as "best of year" by
the Irish Haiku Association, the chapbook ‘window left open’ from Prolific Press, and, with other deeply appreciated honors, he is
especially delighted by the depth and quality of poets worldwide whose poems have found homes in bear creek haiku’s print and online
presence.

Art by Ted Mineo from his website, http://tedmineo.com/

2 poems by Natalie Crick

Natalie Crick, from Newcastle in the UK, has found delight in writing all of her life and first began writing when she was a very
young girl. She graduated from Newcastle University with a degree in English Literature and plan to pursue an MA at Newcastle
this year. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in a range of journals and magazines including The Lake, Ink Sweat
and Tears, Poetry Pacific, Interpreters House and Jet Fuel Review. Her work also features or is forthcoming in a number of
anthologies, including Lehigh Valley Vanguard Collections 13. This year her poem, 'Sunday School' was nominated for the
Pushcart Prize.

Ultimate Care II is the new album from
renowned conceptual electronics duo
Matmos (Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt).
Recorded in the basement studio of their
home in Baltimore, the album is
constructed entirely out of the sounds
generated by a Whirlpool Ultimate Care
II model washing machine. Like its
namesake, the album runs across its
variations as a single, continuous thirty
eight minute experience that starts with
the grinding turn of the wash size
selection wheel, and ends with the alert
noise that signals that the wash is done.
Between these audio-verité book-ends,
we experience an exploded view of the
machine, hearing it in normal operation,
but also as an object being rubbed and
stroked and drummed upon and
prodded and sampled and sequenced
and processed by the duo, with some
occasional extra help from an ultra-local
crew of guest stars (some of whom
regularly do laundry chez Matmos). Dan
Deacon, Max Eilbacher (Horse Lords),
Sam Haberman (Horse Lords), Jason
Willett (Half Japanese), and Duncan
Moore (Needle Gun) all took part, either
playing the machine like a drum,
processing its audio, or sending MIDI
data to the duo’s samplers. The
vocabulary of the Ultimate Care II, its
rhythmic chugs, spin cycle drones, rinse
cycle splashes, metallic clanks and
electronic beeps are parsed into an
eclectic syntax of diverse musical genres.
The result is a suite of rhythmic, melodic
and drone-based compositions that
morph dramatically, but remain
fanatically centered upon their single,
original sound source.
Like their promiscuous DJ sets, the
palette of genres in play reveals
Matmos’ hybrid musical DNA:
Industrial music, vogue beats, gabber,
Miami bass, free jazz, house, krautrock,
drone, musique-concrete, and new age
music all churn up to the surface and are
sucked back into the depths. In this
moiré pattern of textures, the listener
encounters elements that sound like
horns, kick drums, xylophones or sine
waves, but in fact each component is
meticulously crafted out of a
manipulated sample of the machine. In
other hands, such relentless conceptual
tightness would court claustrophobia.
Happily, Matmos’ willingness to
transform audio and engage pop
structure bypasses arid, arty thought
exercises and produces instead their
signature effect: abject and unusual
noises yielding weirdly listenable music.
The duo know how to rein back the
processing too. In its starkest passage,
we hear the rinse cycle of the machine
run uninterruptedly for four minutes as a
slow filter sweep combs across the
oceanic frequency range. The result is a
kind of “Environments” LP that never
was: the Psychologically Ultimate
Washing Machine. It’s a gesture that’s
likely to infuriate some people and
tantalize others. Is this the conceptualist
emperor’s new clothes, a wistful
domestic reverie, a parody of recent
moves in “object oriented” philosophy,
a feminist point about alienated
domestic labor, an elegy to a
discontinued model that stands in for
unsustainable and water-wasteful
technologies generally, or simply an
immersion in the beauty of the noises of
everyday life? Sucker-punching ambient
pastoral, the album ends with a technoindustrial-booty
bass workout that
recapitulates motifs from across the
entire composition before grinding to a
halt, its task completed. Funny and sad,
bouncy and creepy, liquid and
mechanical, Ultimate Care II swirls with
perverse paradox, but the agitation at its
core offers vital evidence of Matmos’
abiding faith in the musical potential of
sound.
In a visual analogue to the recording

process, the artwork for the album is
constructed entirely out of photographs
of the machine in question shot in its
natural habitat and then digitally
manipulated by New York artist Ted
Mineo. Lending trunk-rattling low end
and sharp high frequencies, Rashad
Becker mastered the album at D&M in
Berlin. San Francisco motion graphics
firm L-inc, who created the “Very Large
Green Triangles” video for Matmos’
last album, “The Marriage of True
Minds”, are slated to create a video to
accompany Ultimate Care II. The duo will
be performing in the United States and
Europe to celebrate the release. The
washing machine was not available for
comment.
https://matmos.bandcamp.com/
“When does the stormy paste
appraise the decision?”
—Voltaire, upon failing his
driver’s exam, 1956.

Walter Thompson—Soundpainter,
Composer, Woodwinds, Piano,
Percussion, Educator
Walter Thompson has achieved international
recognition as a composer and for the creation
of Soundpainting, the universal multidisciplinary
live composing sign language. Thompson has
composed Soundpaintings with contemporary
orchestras, dance companies, theatre
ensembles and multidisciplinary groups in
United States, Europe and South America.
In 1974, after attending Berklee School of
Music, Walter Thompson moved to Woodstock
and began an association with the Creative
Music Studio. While there, he studied
composition and woodwinds with Anthony
Braxton and began to develop his interest in
using hand and body gestures as a way to
create real-time compositions. Beginning as a
tool to help shape the direction of a
performance, it has evolved to become a
universal composing language for composers
and artists off all disciplines and abilities.
The language continues to be developed
through Thompson’s performances,
ASCAP, Rockefeller Foundation, Mid Atlantic
Arts Foundation, New York State Council on
the Arts, and the Jerome Foundation.
international think tanks, and the contributions
of a wide range of artists and educators.
Soundpainting is now being used both
professionally and in education in more than 35
countries around the world including; the
United States, France, Canada, Australia,
Czech Republic, China, Germany, Spain,
Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Italy,
Japan, South Africa, Brazil, Uruguay,
Montenegro, Guadeloupe, Argentina,
Kazakhstan, Mexico, Nigeria, Switzerland,
Turkey, and the Netherlands.
Thompson has composed Soundpaintings with
contemporary orchestras, dance companies,
theatre ensembles and multidisciplinary groups
in many cities, including Barcelona, Paris, New
York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Oslo,
Berlin, Bergen, Lucerne, Copenhagen, and
Reykjavik, among others, and has taught
Soundpainting at the Paris Conservatoire;
Grieg Academy, Bergen, Norway; Iceland
Academy of the Arts; Eastman School of Music;
University of California San Diego; University of
Michigan; University of Iowa; Oberlin College-
Conservatory of Music; and New York
University, among many others. Thompson is
founder of and Soundpainter for The Walter
Thompson Orchestra founded in 1984 and
based in New York City.
In 2002, Premis FAD Sebastià Gasch d’Arts
Parateatrals awarded Thompson the
prestigious “Aplaudiment” for his work with
Soundpainting in Barcelona, Spain. He has also
received awards from the National Endowment
for the Arts, Meet the Composer, the Mary
Flagler Cary Charitable Trust,

Soundpaintig Introduction
Soundpainting is the universal multidisciplinary
live composing sign language for musicians,
actors, dancers, and visual Artists. Presently
(2016) the language comprises more than 1200
gestures that are signed by the Soundpainter
(composer) to indicate the type of material
desired of the performers. The creation of the
composition is realized, by the Soundpainter,
through the parameters of each set of signed
gestures. The Soundpainting language was
created by Walter Thompson in Woodstock,
New York in 1974.
Analysis
The Soundpainter (the composer) standing in
front (usually) of the group communicates a
series of signs using hand and body gestures
indicating specific and/or aleatoric material to
be performed by the group. The Soundpainter
develops the responses of the performers,
molding and shaping them into the composition
then signs another series of gestures, a phrase,
and continues in this process of composing the
piece.
The Soundpainter composes in real time
utilizing the gestures to create the composition
in any way they desire. The Soundpainter
sometimes knows what he/she will receive from
the performers and sometimes does not know
what he/she will receive – the elements of
specificity and chance. The Soundpainter
composes with what happens in the moment,
whether expected or not. The ability to
compose with what happens in the moment, in
real time, is what is required in order to attain a
high level of fluency with the Soundpainting
language.
The gestures of the Soundpainting language
are signed using the syntax of Who, What, How
and When. There are many types of gestures,
some indicating specific material to be
performed as well as others indicating specific
styles, genres, aleatoric concepts,
improvisation, disciplines, stage positions,
costumes, props, and many others.
http://www.soundpainting.com/
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/waltert

Villages and Plains the Streams Flow Through
Jonas Mekas
Translated by Vyt Bakaitis
You too return, along with days gone,
and flow again, my blue rivers,
to carry on the songs of washerwomen,
fishermen's nets and grey wooden bridges.
Clear blue nights, smelling warm,
streams of thin mist off the meadow drift in
with distinct hoof-stomps from a fettered horse.
To carry off rioting spring thaws,
willows torn loose and yellow lily cups,
with children's shrill riots.
The summer heat, its midday simmer:
lillypads crowd, where a riverbed's narrowed,
while mud in the heat smells
of fish and rock-studded shallows.
And even at the peak, when the heat

locked in with no wind appears to shiver and burn,
and barn siding cracks in the sun, even then
this water touches shade, down in the reeds,
so you can feel the pull and crawl,
one cool blue current through your fingers,
and bending over its clear blue flow
make out field smells, shimmering meadows,
other villages passed on the way here,
remote unfamiliar homesteads,
the heavy oakwood tables
heaped with bread, meat, and a soup of cold greens,
the women waiting for the reapers to return.

Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, The Sun, 1907

Mirror (Russian: Зеркало, translit. Zerkalo; Distributed in United States as The Mirror. Released in 1975, directed by Andrei
Tarkovsky.

Interview with Jirawat Plekhongthu,
Photographer
Our
fascination with
a series of
photographs of
fish in dancelike
motion
compelled us to
become more familiar with their
creator, the decorous and erudite
Jirawat Plekhongthu.
FFR: Perhaps we could start with a
synopsis of your life and calling.
Plekhongthu: I was born in 1990 and
graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree
in Geology from Chulalongkorn
University, Thailand. In 2015, I started
the series called The Elegance of
Siamese Fighting Fish. I’m an artist
featured in the FineArtGate photo
gallery located in Geneva,
Switzerland. I also sell my pictures on
a microstock site.
FFR: Where do you presently work
and live?
Plekhongthu: I work from my home in
Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand.
FFR: That brings to mind the
provincial seal, which displays the
Kuha Karuhas Pavilion. The Pavilion
was built when King Chulalongkorn
paid visit to the Praya Nakorn Cave.
And of course, your university is
named after that king! How did you
become a photographer?
Plekhongthu: The turning point
occurred during my last year in
university. I took a photography
course and I found myself passionate
in my desire to share the beauty of
the natural world through my artistic
perspective. Then I had many
opportunities to experience different
kinds of photography as a
freelance/commercial photographer.
FFR: What prompted you to take
photographs of fish?
Plekhongthu: When I was a boy, my
father gave me a pet called "Pla-kad"
in Thai langue (Siamese fighting fish).
They have become my lovely pets
because of their strong shape and
colour. Originally in Thailand you
could commonly find them in canals,
rice paddies and floodplains. Later,
when I grew up, I saw them in the
Chatuchak Weekend Market in
Bangkok, Thailand. They're so
beautiful and look more elegant than
the fish that I had when I was a child.
That is because Thai fish farmers
have developed various species of
them. They're amazing both in colour
and pattern. I wanted to capture the
movement of them with the same
sense of awe that I experienced in
my childhood and convey their beauty
to the world.
FFR: Obviously, you have succeeded.
Is it hard to wait for the perfect
moment?
Plekhongthu: Yes, it's quite difficult.
Each fish moves in a unique way.
What I can do is clean the fish tank,
ensure that the water is clear and set
the lights. And then I patiently wait for
the perfect moment.
FFR: Ah, yes, or as photographer
Henri Cartier-Bresson called it, “the
decisive moment”, taking his
inspiration from 17th century Jean
François Paul de Gondi, cardinal de
Retz, who wrote: "Il n'y a rien dans ce
monde qui n'ait un moment decisif"
("There is nothing in this world that
does not have a decisive moment").
Where can our readers find your
wonderful work—these “decisive
moments?”
Plekhongthu: You can find my work
on the following websites:
https://500px.com/jirawatplekhongthu
http://www.jirawatfoto.com/

“The secretive argument communicates the exchange.” George S. Patton, in
conversation with Chief Sitting Bull on The Dick Cavett Show

Buddin, David - Canticles for Electronic
Music
SKU UgExplode 54
"David Buddin’s ‘Canticles’ CD is an electronic music realization of the instrumental parts for a sixmovement
chamber work featuring soprano voice. The music is vigorous, dissonant, rhythmically
complex and exhilarating. Influenced heavily by the thrust of the Western classical music tradition,
Buddin is a modern musical maverick in the lineage of radical, iconoclastic American composers
like Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, Elliott Carter, Ralph Shapey and Milton Babbitt. The timbral
character of this release is reminiscent of latter-day electronic realizations by Karlheinz
Stockhausen, featuring phrases of seemingly erratic proportion, starkly dovetailing, unfolding and
hurtling chaotically from within a void of digital silence. Buddin’s fastidious compositional voice is
entirely uncompromising and bristles with untertones of violence, cruelty and danger. This release
should appeal equally to fans of New Music, noise, electronic music and avant-rock alike: It is
intense, relentless and highly intelligent. This sophisticated offering demands close scrutiny. David
Earl Buddin (b. 1968) is an American composer from South Carolina. His primary composition

teachers include Salvatore Macchia and Charles Wuorinen. Works of his have been performed by
such groups as the New York New Music Ensemble, Helix, and Ancora. His output is notable for its
volume and diversity. He has written large works for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles,
soloists, and electronic media. Presently he composes, performs, teaches, and writes about music
in Brooklyn."
“The work is generated from a single six-note ordered set and its canonical transformations . . . the
values of the intervals of this set determine everything from the note-to-note writing of individual
lines to the large-scale formal divisions of the six sections, as well as the durations of the sections
themselves.” - From the album notes by David Buddin

AMM ‎ – Ammmusic
Label:
Elektra ‎ – EUK-256
Format:
Vinyl, LP, Mono
CountrAMM ‎ – Ammmusic
Label:
Elektra ‎ – EUK-256
Format:
Vinyl, LP, Mono
Country:
UK
Released:
1967
Genre:
Electronic, Classical
Style:
Modern
Classical, Noise, Abstract, Experimental
Tracklist
A
B
Later During A Flaming Riviera Sunset
After Rapidly Circling The Plaza
Companies, etc.
Recorded At – Sound Techniques, London

The Uncle Floyd Show

More From Life: Ernie Kovacs
Harvey Deneroff
The Life archive notes: "Electronic sight gag created by comic Ernie Kovacs in
which he appears to be peering thru
head of actress Barbra Loden as part of his TV special ‘Ernie Kovacs’."
This and the photo below (which shows how the effect was done) were by Ralph Morse and done in March 1957, which were
probably included in the cover story on Kovacs. Kovacs created something of a sensation with his half-hour NBC special, The
Ernie Kovacs Show. Usually, NBC specials were 90 minutes, but Jerry Lewis was only willing to do a hour-long show and Kovacs
very willing stepped into the breach to fill the allotted time slot. He took this opportunity to experiment with a show done entirely in

pantomime; he also showed his penchant for experimenting with the medium, including doing visual effects. These type of
"electronic" effects by Kovacs and other early TV pioneers in many ways anticipated today’s digital effects.
Anyway, as The Ernie Kovacs Website describes notes:
The 30-minute show Ernie did was devoid of any dialogue, and featured the silent character Ernie had been
developing, Eugene, as well as the Nairobi Trio. The show’s centerpiece was an extended series of surreal
sight gags following Eugene, a mute, meek character as a fish out of water in a stuffy men’s club. The
sketch included the famous gag involving the gravity-defying olives and thermos of coffee.
"Comic Ernie Kovacs pasting black patch on forehead of Barbra Loden before posing her against black background which will
create the illusion of a hole in Loden’s head for sight gag to air on his TV special."
Harvey Deneroff (in his own words):

I am an independent scholar based in Los Angeles. I recently retired, after 11-1/2 years, as professor in the Animation Department
of the Savannah College of Art and Design. where I mostly taught film and animation history and theory, as well as some studio
classes. (I was largely based at SCAD’s Atlanta campus, though I also taught for several years in Savannah).
Link to this and other articles: http://deneroff.com/blog/

Philip Larkin was an English librarian and leading poet of his generation. He remained so until his
death, at which point he became a bump beneath a tombstone, in front of which younger, balding
poets regularly have their album cover photos taken. This album was discovered in a Canadian
thrift shop. There’s a one word reminder on the album label, just in case you feel inclined to talk
over it or use the album for a Frisbee. The same reminder is printed in subliminal fuchsia on the
lower, left portion of the front cover. LISTEN.