I thought I would share two new interviews with Chris Weisman who is promoting not only his book, Nonmusical Patterns and their Musical Uses, but also his latest double album, Transparency ( available from Autumn Records ). The interviews were conducted by Crawford Philleo of Foxy Digitalis and Matt Bushlow for Tiny Mix Tapes.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Chris Weisman was recently interviewed on the subject of his book, Nonmusical Patterns and their Musical Uses (for Guitar in Standard Tuning) on the Work & Worry blog by Raymond Morin. Have a look.
Friday, March 18, 2011
"From the brilliant mind of Chris Weisman comes a clever and intriguing book about shape exploration on the guitar, embodying a perspective that for me is both fresh and useful."
-Kurt Rosenwinkel
The Radical Readout Press is proud to present Chris Weisman's Nonmusical Patterns and their Musical Uses (for Guitar in Standard Tuning). Nonmusical Patterns is a hand-made, perfect-bound softback with letterpressed cover containing one hundred geometric patterns overlaid to the fretboard of a guitar in standard tuning. Weisman, a performer, recording artist and music teacher devised the selected patterns with their potential as creative spurs for the improvising guitarist in mind. Nonmusical Patterns is an unorthodox fusion of musical and visual esthetic concerns and is ultimately an act of conceptual synesthesia whose practical result, in the hands of the improvising guitarist, is musical and artistic risk-taking. As such, the work is in the tradition of George Brecht's Water Yam, Yoko Ono's Grapefruit or Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies and may appeal as much to those interested in conceptual art and artists' books as it will to the improviser and theoretician.
Nonmusical Patterns and their Musical Uses (for Guitar in Standard Tuning) is available directly from the Radical Readout Press for $17 postage paid anywhere in the US, $15 + shipping to the rest of the world.
Chris Weisman is a songwriter, improviser, and tape artist living in Brattleboro, Vermont. Multitrack cassette recording has been his primary medium since 1991 when he and Ben Stamper borrowed their music teacher's 4-track and started recording under the name CLOV. Since then, Weisman has recorded hundreds of songs that can be purchased via his Website (many of which are also available on various cassette and CD releases). Weisman has also collaborated with Autumn Records' Greg Davis on the album Northern Songs and was an original member of the Brattleboro group Happy Birthday, whose debut LP was released in 2010 on Sub Pop. His latest release is the double CD Transparency available from Autumn Records.
It's been more than five years since the Radical Readout Press presented a new edition to the world. Our previous title, Steven Zultanski's chapbook Homoem, was published in 2005 to some acclaim, but whereas Zultanski has been not only busy but prolific in the intervening years, we at the RRP have been merely busy. Busy planning and plotting? Most certainly. But busy producing? No, and that was a problem, the only one that mattered. In the time that it took Steve to have published at least three additional chapbooks, USA = Nazi (with Brad Flis), This and That Lenin, and Copkisser (none of which he has sent me, and perhaps there are others), to produce and edit two numbers of his poetry journal, President's Choice (Thanks, Steve, I have those two), to move to Buffalo in pursuit of his PhD, and then, having attained that goal, to move on with his terminal degree to the New York, the terminal city, the Radical Readout Press had done one thing, but it was an important one: dream. We dreamt of the time when our next project, Chris Weisman's Nonmusical Patterns and their Musical Uses would get off the shelf and assemble itself in the dead of night. That never happened, but one day in late 2010 the book was a reality and so, once again, was the Radical Readout Press. We thank you for your patience and in advance for your continued interest.
Cheers to Steve Zultanski: he has been a useful stick by which to measure our shortcomings. In tribute and gratitude, a reading from the past recorded here at the Radical Redoubt in August 2006, ladies and gentlemen, Steven Zultanski.
5 tracks, press forward or back for next selection
ook.
