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Buh-bye 2021. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

2021 was arguably one of the worst years of my life, for reasons I won’t go into as they don’t really apply here. Suffice it to say, while I am not holding my breath (unless around the unmasked), and having abandoned what most people call “hope”, I am starting the year off with cautiously reserved optimism.

So, what is on the horizon? Well, since booking isn’t really happening right now, The Arty LaVigne Band is pivoting into recording pre-production mode. Currently I am reviewing hours of multitrack rehearsal recordings (a very useful tool) and working out arrangements, hooks, sounds, etc.

I am also continuing to spelunk through the archives* and organizing and digitizing multitracks from long ago. Amongst these are a wealth of Regional Science Fair recordings (several I don’t even remember doing) as well as all the demos/experiments from my teenage years when I was just learning how to do this stuff. Some of this stuff might actually make it to your eardrums one of these days.

What else? Well, I have my Stick rig rebuilt and I am trying to get back into a practice routine. My plan is to finish my own album soon-ish. All the members of Ghost Ghost are working on their own stuff but cross-pollination/collaboration is a definite possibility. Also, while Stone Document is in mothballs, Dennis and I continue to plot and conspire our next steps as a team. No idea of a direction but it will doubtless be eclectic.

• Please take a moment to imagine Tiny Tim singing “Spelunk Through the Archives”

Well, its the first post of 2021 and it only took me until mid-October to get around to it. Haven’t been as productive as hoped what with COVID avoidance, working from home, battling depression, digging through personal and professional archives and dealing with losing family and friends…

So, here we are in October. Summer is behind us. A Summer that saw the renaming of one band (from Winooski Falls to the more accurate/descriptive Arty LaVigne Band), and we did manage to play a handful of outdoor shows. It was so good to be playing for people again! Now that gigs are moving indoors, we have temporarily stopped booking and have shifted into album pre-production mode. Oh and the guitar maintenance and pedalboard reconfiguration goes on ad infinitum.

Selected Solo Improvisations, vol. 1 is the first in a series of archival recordings taken mostly from live performances. Quite often the pieces employ real-time looping to create a complex soundscape. This collection also includes some Chapman Stick practice experiments that attempted to synchronize a drum machine with the loops as they were being created.

Here are some details about the tracks:

1. Raga Ndbone – A fretless guitar improvisation (with some odd delays writhing in the background. The title is a play on the terms “raga” and the English slang “rag and bone” (a rag and bone man is an old term for a peddler who collected discarded items for resale).
2. Post-normal – A guitar/guitar-synthesiszer/looper piece taken from my solo spot in one of the shows I did with compadre Kevin Peckham. My main moment of unrestrained weirdness in each show.
3. Stick Practice Improvisation – Forgive the following descent into techno-geekery. The Chapman Stick is a multi-stringed instrument with the range of a bass and a guitar that is played by tapping the strings with both hands; essentially using piano-like technique on astringed instrument. In this instance (and the ones that follow in this collection) the treble register of the Stick was looped using an Electro Harmonix 2880 multitrack looper and the bass register was looped using a Lexicon JamMan, both of which were synchronized to a Roger Linn Adrenalinn III drum machine/processor. These are the only pieces that weren’t created in front of an audience.
4. Like for Part 2 – Ambient guitar/looper exploration of type I am typically “known for”.
5. Return of Stick Practice Improvisation – More basement experimentation with synchronization.
6. Any Questions? – Probably too many if you’ve made it this far.
7. Son of Return of Stick Practice Improvisation – Yeah. You guessed it. Might make a good bumper for radio if any of my friends in broadcasting are reading this. Wink wink.
8. Part 2 – Another ambient guitar noodle dish. Pairs well with a Pinot Noir and/or Strawberry Cush.
9. Son of Return of Stick Practice Improvisation (Slight Return) – Just some playing around with the loops from Track 7 that was at the end of that recording.

Available exclusively at BandCamp

My main discography from the last decade is now available at my Bandcamp page. Tis doesn’t include sideman and session gigs but focuses on the projects I had more involvement in. Find it all at:

https://markchristensen.bandcamp.com/

One of the advantages of having retired (willingly or not) from performing live is extra time to organize the archives of demos, live recordings and outtakes that have piled up over the years. Some of the demos actually have found their way out into the world as completed songs, others will probably remain unheard until I at least get a better grip on sample clearance. When I was just learning how to record/write/arrange it was long before DAWs and even affordable samplers. So my drum choices came down to using a primitive drum machine (“paging Dr. Rhythm”?) or making drum “loops” by playing recordings through my digital delay stomp-box and trying to hit the HOLD function at just the right time. As a result I have some rather amateur sounding songs with some of the best (unwitting) drummers in the world. Most of these tracks are of no significance or value except to me and the glimpse it gives to moments in my musical development. Still, I might share a couple pieces down the road.

So, what is going on here? It’s actually pretty straightforward and super-flexable. First, the pedalboard:

The pedalboard can be used as a standalone rig for more basic needs. For more complex needs we add the rack (controlled by Behringer FCB1010 foot controller sending PC, CC and note messages):

Amps are either a Trace Elliott combo (for smaller gigs) or a SWR amp and 8X10 cab (for larger/louder).

Meet “the Grateful Dead of the Northeast Basement IDM Scene”.

The entirety of the “Regional Science Fair at the Mill, 05/04/01” bootleg is the current offering on the RSF SoundCloud page. This is one of the best examples of the band at the height of it’s initial run; the sound of the band in it’s happy place. Also features special guest appearance by Darren Case on sax.

Turn your thermostat up to 105 degrees, grab a cup o’ Purple Jesus and look nervously at Pub Safe and it’s the next best thing to having been there.