We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

the somnambulist

from the portable yugen by yugenro

/

about

Heavily edited and processed track created around the lyrics, which were composed for a creative writing class. I loved the poem for its surreality and pure purpose-of-sound-and-image. I enjoyed reading, nay *performing*, the poem for my classmates so much that it just screamed to be fleshed out as an all-out tone-poem.

The main, big drum in this track is a series of samples of my "ba-boomba," which was a large ceramic drum I made by hand, under the guidance of Louis Katz, ceramics instructor at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. I had been making clay drums on the potter's wheel, but had bumped against a ceiling on size. When I expressed to Louis that I wanted to make some BIG drums, he taught me a Thai style of coil-building pots that the potter built in a matter of hours, from inside! Indeed, the potter would start coiling in circles around his feet, and keep stacking coils until he couldn't reach any farther over his head!, at which point a group of friends would lift him out of the pot!

I never made a drum remotely that big, but I did make four big ones: the first was a simple barrel drum, but the next three were so nice I named them. In order of size from smallest to largest: "be-boomba," "ba-boomba," and "bo-boomba" (following the onomatopoeic model of African drum-names). The be-boomba is housed at the Corpus Christi Cathedral, and is still in use by the music program there. (As of 12/8/2011)

lyrics

"we dig wormholes between our varying points of view…"

…when narcoleptic dream-tears melt vanilla incense,
only days slumber by without a waking provocation
of this blanket-tangled corpse meandering
off course for another long, cold winter of hibernation
amongst backlit hollows moving mumbly mumbly mumbly…
& on the verge of shiny velvet revelation
begun weeks ago on a blank bit of untidy beach
southwest of shannondaun's willowy mist;

while watery shadows of a silvery-tinted silhouette moon
wash dark & luscious women barely
aware any hint of shimmering sound collects
in livid & discoloured shallows where winds meet,
wishing they were asleep along with a foot tingling
twisted dextrously beneath its weak & bleary-eyed body
lying upright in perpetually hollow & resounding bedchambers
in which timid & weary belongings bay & howl
& wallow in spice-scented incomplete screams
until they fall barren, in a cloudy poof,
to the black, talc-covered floor.

Brazenly aware of the dissonance between what I think and what I do,
(I’m scared of myself!)
I fold and crumble and dissolve into the ether
To dissipate this sense of ego-fixedness that’s nailed me spread-eagle to the world.
(I’m too close to myself…)
I need dissipation
So that I can be blown by the wind,
Washed away by the rain,
Ground by plate tectonics into the very world I grew out of,
But which I only see in moments of exceptional lucidity--
Like when I’m lost and completely off-centered,
Completely disjointed perplexed contorted spiraling spinning falling flailing
disjointed perplexed distorted contorted spiraling spinning falling flailing disjointed--
That there’s no other way to see…

And we call this underground, otherworldy, fucked-up maze of self absorbed blackness…

“Ourselves.”

credits

from the portable yugen, track released February 1, 1995
keith rowley-yugen: voices, synth, electronic percussion, sequencing, sampling, ba-boomba, effects, processing, digital editing

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

yugenro Seattle, Washington

I teach people how to use computers and software. I listen to a LOT of music. I explore consciousness and my pallette. I observe, organize, and categorize. I read and watch lots of space and sci-fi stuff.

I dream of doing nothing other than making music and floating in zero-g. :-)
... more

contact / help

Contact yugenro

Streaming and
Download help

Report this track or account

yugenro recommends:

If you like yugenro, you may also like: