Experimental Consciousness-Expanding Music From David Franklin

Lillian

New member
David Franklin is a musical experimenter. First he recorded several folk-pop singer-songwriter albums, then a solo piano Christmas recording, then a mostly-instrumental avant-garde album, and then, most recently, a piano-and-acoustic-guitar new age CD with fretless-bassist-master Michael Manring on two-thirds of the tracks. That melodic album of gentle music but hot licks was embraced by the new age community and climbed high on the new age charts. Now Franklin is back with an album that returns to his avant-garde passions although mixed with both ambient and a few melodic new age tracks. It is an interesting mixture because all of these types of music fall loosely under the broad new age music umbrella these days.

Whereas some new age music is created to be consciousness-raising, this music is more consciousness-expanding, in all ways and directions, not just spiritualy-upwards, but perception-increasing. In the world of avant-garde experimentation (where pioneers explored silence or using a hammer on piano strings or cars driving by outside) Franklin fits right in because some of the tunes include sounds from a ringing telephone, a crying baby or a drone-like vacuum-cleaner. He also uses unusual tunings or plays an instrument in some strange way like when he plays just the bass notes on a harp guitar (some of the notes using a bow), or when he plays percussion on an Afruican udu and then records the sound backwards. The whole idea is to make and craft unusual sounds and then fit them into a musical recording in a way that may sound unusual but propels the music forward and takes the listener’s ear on a journey to a new place that the person might never go to if the sounds did not move the listener in a way that traditional musical notes would not.

But the rest of the album has other experimentation (like rubbing the strings of a guitar against a shelf) as well as more regular instrument performance on piano, guitar and synth. There are some pieces with pretty melodies, some ambient mood pieces, some very slow numbers, a few with wordless or can’t-quite-understand vocals in the background, and one short poetry recitation set to a singing bowl.

If you want to explore or immerse yourself in unusual sounds and rhythms, and be propelled along a highway with no road-signs, and feel like you are watching a French underground thriller film, then step right this way. It is a ride worth taking because it is not like your last or next listening experience. Your consciousness will thank you.
 

John Watt

Member
Lillian! Good afternoon! I'm not listening to what is probably predictable for me, for sure, oh yeah...
If it was a new band, with Jimi Hendrix writing songs and playing guitar, Jaco Pastorius on bass,
McCoy Tyner on piano, Pat Methaney and Lyle Mays on back-up guitar and synths,
with Elvin Jones drumming and Paco Lucia on percussion, yeah, I'd be interested,
even if I was wondering why they didn't call me to be the singer and lead guitar follower.

I'm just getting off on what you typed, because I'm known for semi-lengthy posting.

What you are saying about sounds is where I was at in the late sixties.
Jimi Hendrix began his first liner notes by saying,
"Please, be forewarned. While this music might not make you necessarily higher,
it will make you wider". That was his definition of what his musical experience was,
what he could do with stereo effects, saying you should listen with headphones.

When I was reading that, and seeing Jimi at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto,
I ordered a pair of light duty Koss headphones, what they said they were using,
and my parents drove me to Hamilton so I could pick them up.

Here's an old one, because I have a hard time putting up postings about new ones.
You know Pink Floyd, with "Meddle", the cover art being blue with water drops, something like that. I never bought or played that stuff.
I was acid-overdosed by criminals who wanted me to be their guitar player,
but I felt poisoned and sickened, moving back home with my parents, a long recovery.
For the song that goes underwater, "round and round and round and round and round around we go,
hurry my darling we musn't be late, for the show, neptune...."
that's not a synthesizer making those sounds, it's an acoustic guitar.
Depending on the strings and string tension, with a glass or metal or plastic slide, whatever works,
you can move the slide sideways only at the fifth fret, very fast, and harmonics will ring out.
Once you get them going, you can slide it up and down.
A flute player friend of mine came up with that, nothing I ever figured out. He had the album.

You should start your own thread about sounds and recordings, and I could really get into it.
I'm glad I looked here, something I don't usually do.

Consciousness raising, consciousness expanding?
All humans are born singing and dancing,
but most lose it by the age of five.

the northern rain always cools.
standing here alone I need it,
to whet my burning heart,
so my mind, like a late white floe down summers' Niagara,
can shine in radiant splendour,
before the final Falls.

Even Niagara Falls is only diminishing.
 
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