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Explorations 8 (Lovecraft)

by Payton MacDonald's Explorations

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1.
Rhan Tegoth in C# minor 06:52
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2.
Cthulu in C diminished 07:19
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3.
Yog-Sothoth in A minor 03:40
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4.
Gobogeg in C minor 06:04
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5.
Gnophkeh in D minor 04:08
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6.
Spider of Leng in C major 08:31
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about

When I created this music I was working as a gas station attendant at a QuickChek in Wayne, New Jersey, near William Paterson University. I worked the night shift. The university students would come in, red-eyed and reeking of pot, rooting around for sweets and bottles of water. Sometimes it got busy, but mostly I had a lot of down time, which I spent revisiting H.P. Lovecraft's old stories and looking at Mike Winkelman's (AKA Beeple) fantastic artwork.

This brought back a long-lost memory of a folio of music I had commissioned from some fellow student composers when I was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. We were all obsessed with Lovecraft back then, and would spend our evenings reading his tales, while listening to avant-garde music, often after a long day of making music together in one of Stephen Rush's ensembles. I asked several of my friends to write pieces for me for solo marimba, all based on Lovecraft's creatures, curiously and humorously set in major and minor keys. (We were also unaware of his bigotry. Wrestling with that would come years later for me, after I read more about his personal life, but that's a discussion beyond the scope of these liner notes.)

One morning (after a particularly exhausting night shift at the QuickChek) I dug around in my cellar and found the folio. I was delighted to find these pieces again, and set about learning them. However, not one of them was complete. They were all in very fragmentary or sketch form, so what you hear on the recording are my own realizations of the pieces, with ample improvisation.

I tried to find my long-lost friends, but four of them are apparently completely off the grid, and two of them have passed on to the next realm (Sonia Green and Jackson Jaans).

This recording is made in their memory, to all those glorious evenings of our youth, when the strange and bizarre stories of H.P. Lovecraft swirled around in our minds, intermingling with the music of Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, and so many others. I'll never forget those nights.

credits

released December 2, 2020

-Realized, performed, recorded, mixed, mastered by Payton MacDonald
-Music composed by Scott Winfeld, Lillian Whipple, Susan Robie, Russell Frederick, Jackson Jaans, and Sonia Green
-Artwork by Beeple (www.beeple-crap.com)
-Recorded on a Malletech 5.0 MJB marimba
-A blog post about these recordings: paytonmacdonald.com/2020/12/15/52-marimba-recordings-in-52-weeks/

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Payton MacDonald's Explorations Wayne, New Jersey

Explorations is Payton MacDonald's series where he explores every possible avenue of sonic expression, mostly centered around marimba, with electronics, collaborations and solo recordings. Good headphones are recommended.

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