christopher riggs - with his weaponry of charm he conquers the world - holy cheever church - cass - 6$
A single sound was recorded on the Arp synthesizer for 2 minutes direct to tape. The last 2 minutes of 14 minutes of guitar playing requiring me to repeat the same material at least once every 2 minutes(see HCC - 053) was recorded direct to tape (separate from the Arp recording). This process was repeated 14 times. The resulting 30 minute tape is comprised of pairings of guitar and Arp tracks. A different take on intentionality than HCC - 061.
c-30 cassette edition of 39
christopher riggs - shotgun on sewing machines and saxophones - holy cheever church - cass - 6$
The guitar repeats the same 4 minute sound mass form from Husky-Eyed Surprise but in real-time, with a microphone on a guitar amp, and onto recycled cassette tapes whose individual lengths are unknown to the performer(=me). The form is articulated until the tape runs out. The form starts over at the beginning of each tape.
While Husky-Eyed Surprise serves as the "artificial" (i.e. recorded direct and in multiple takes) recreation of an impossible to complete infinite form, Shotgun on Sewing Machines and Saxophones is its failure to exist in the "real" (recorded live in one take through an amplifier). The tape runs out (hopefully) before my memory does.
Each of the last 4 minute chunks (the ones where the tape ran out) were edited together on this C-40. You here the failure again and again.
C-40 cassette edition of 47
andrew royal/christopher riggs - tons of knobs and long tones - holy cheever church - cass - 6$
First time meeting of Andrew Royal and Chris Riggs at WHPK in Chicago. Who plays what? You tell me. I asked Olson to write a description of the tape to help with sales but he told me to just write it myself and sign his name. "JUST INSERT A BUNCH OF JUMPS, ZONES, AND WHY YOU BUSTS, USE AN EQUAL SIGN AS PUNCTUATION, AND PUT IT IN ALL CAPS." Straight did. Do you wanna sell some tapes or not?
c-40 edition of 42
christopher riggs - former supporter of bad things - holy cheever church - cass - 6$
Each side of this c-122 contains a single sound played for 60 minutes, but this isn't just any meditation on harsh noise. The two large sound masses are themselves each a composite of five individual sounds. Sound #1 is played for 3:45 and looped 16 times to total 60:00. Sound #2 is played for 7:30 and looped 8 times to total 60:00. Sound #3 is played for 15:00 and looped 4 times to total 60:00. This process of doubling and looping to total one hour is continued until Sound #5 is actually played for 60:00. Each side utilizes the same structure but uses different sounds as content.
C-30 cassette edition of 53
-holy cheever
chris dadge - what comes after dust - holy cheever church - cass - 6$
Bug Incision's Chris Dadge knows the Cheever sound. That's been made clear by his previous contributions to the catalog through his solo work and the BSD, but the five tracks on this c-30 appear to show an intimate knowledge of the yet-to-be-released jams, ideas not yet revealed to the general public. Chris Dadge - please remove yourself from my brain-box(=idea-pot). Dadge creates a minimalist landscape on each track of What Comes After Dust using multiple overdubs of single repeated sounds. Reminiscent of Former Supporter of Bad Things in design but he slows everything down so that the frenetic pace of Riggs'(=me) endurance art marathon becomes a psychedelic field recording where all the villagers are the same dude from Calgary. The music is slow, patient, and ritualistic.
Sounds like Memorize The Sky if they had some dirt in their faces? No, despite it's ritualistic nature(or my assertion that it has a ritualistic nature=The Wire), this music doesn't have the blissed-out trance atmosphere of MTS. Dadge's individual overdubs don't lack development. They just sound like an accomplished technician reduced down to a single musical ability and forced to rip a solo. Virtuosity meets stasis.
C-30 cassette edition of 59
-holy cheever
forced collapse - consider the weather a failure - holy cheever church - lp - 17$
Liz Allbee - Trumpet, Electronics
Christopher Riggs - Guitar
Chris: "I think I should start a label."
Ben: "Yeah, you should."
50 releases later Cheever is still struggling to carve out it's own path through the New American Improvisation highway without aping* the fine work at Broken Research. I couldn't think of a better recording to release on vinyl in celebration of Cheever reaching the big FIVE OH. After spending the last 49 releases attempting to imitate the sounds of trumpets and broken down Michigan electronics on my effects-pedal-less guitar while keeping one foot in the High-Concept-Art-Recording-Is-Performance-And-I-Have-Good-Reasons-For-Using-Antiquated-Media zone, I sit down for one recording session with trumpeter Liz Allbee and she gets inside my brain to anticipate every move I'm going to make. So much for re-contextualizing extended trumpet techniques with the sounds of Michigan basements when she's already doing it for me.
LP edition of 250
-holy cheever
christopher riggs / megan schubert - rueful irony about the limits of the human agency - holy cheever church - cass - 6$
The rigorous meets the accidental.
Derek Bailey in interview with Stefan Jaworzyn discussing his experience playing with a percussionist in Japan.
"I found it sort of intriguing - there was no musically logical progression to the activity - the timing was not subject to musical imperatives. What I played only had a peripheral effect on what he did...Years ago I used to work with tapes: I'd make a tape, then obliterate large sections of it and use it when I played solo - so I never knew when it was going to come in, the tape was silent most of the time, but at some point you would get something - totally unpredictable, at least for the first few times I used it. He was a bit like that."
Critics might not be aware but Derek Bailey's influence extends further than musicians making funny little sounds on their guitars.
Classical vocalist Megan Schubert sent me 15 short recordings of examples of extended vocal techniques. I arranged 5 samples along a 15 minute time-line using chance operations. I repeated this process until I had enough tracks to practice duets with "virtual Megan" for a week. Each track was discarded after being used once. Megan's entrances always remained unpredictable. At the end of the week, I recorded side A.
Side B is my half of a mail-collaboration that never materialized played on a $30 Harmony guitar that I've since chopped in half and turn into, uh, something else. I didn't even mean to make a copy of the collab to keep for myself. Maybe I never even sent it...
C-30 cassette edition of 42
-holycheever
christopher riggs/matt endahl - tangible but not communicated - holy cheever church - cass - 6$
electric guitar and piano are turned into instruments of shimmering drone and harsh noise until everything breaks down into a no-fi free jazz jam
-hcc
christopher riggs - fat, sassy, and mean as hell - holy cheever church - cass - 6$
Live tape dedicated to Nate Wooley. April 2009 midwest tour opening for Wally Shoup and Ben Hall. Each night a different composition. Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis fit on the tape. Includes compositions from Unverified Records' "Amazed Nova" and Pizza Night Tapes' "Dead in Michigan" plus something unreleased.
-hcc
- past -
christopher riggs/mike khoury - my words came out slow and odd - holy cheever church - cass - 6$ sold out
violin and bowed guitar eat each other alive.
-hcc
sean mccann - haven - holy cheever church - cass - 6$ sold out
"I stopped listening to Post-Rock when I thought the genre was unable to cut away the fat of its excess bullshit posturing, stupid lyrics, and flaccid musical experimental. It should have been stripped down to cheap pathos and simple repetition. On this C-71 Sean McCann does just that. Synthesized strings that rise and fall over and over with tension and release. Rules. edition of 70"
-holy cheever church
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christopher riggs - gold danny - holy cheever church - cdr - 6$ sold out
the cdr that was never meant to be. solo guitar.
christopher riggs - riggs home security - holy cheever church - cass - 6$ sold out
solo electric guitar. side A is super slow, underwater strings. spent too much time listening to the Squid and playing with the reverb on a broken guitar amp. high-pitched guitar feedback dominates side B with a brief interruption from a choir of fuzzed out 12-string power chords.
-hcc
christopher riggs / gino robair - punishment allows the evolution of cooperation - holy cheever church - cass - 6$ sold out
If you tell Chris Riggs you like his playing, he might just come to your town to play with you. Gino Robair's the real deal. He was playing lower-case percussion when the Sean Meehan imitators were still listening to Green Day. Why in the world someone who's recorded with Anthony Braxton, Tom Waits, and Peter Kowald would ever let me desecrate their music by dubbing it onto a cassette and covering it in spray-paint I'll never know. This is the first meeting of Christopher Riggs and Gino Robair live at The Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco, CA in all it's awkward and nervous energy improv glory. Imagine the tentative beginnings and unplanned endings stereotypical of free improvisation but put the beginnings in the middle and the endings at the beginning. Makes no sense. Thank God for that.
C-30 cassette edition of 42
-hc