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HCC - 052

Christopher Riggs - Former Supporter of Bad Things

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

HCC - 051

Chris Dadge - What Comes After Dust

   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

HCC - 050

Forced Collapse - Consider the Weather a Failure

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.  

*for more on the concept of "aping" please note the shit-talking under HCC - 036.

LP edition of 250

HCC - 049

Christopher Riggs - Slip and Fall Down Carefully

Live solo guitar set from Wilkes Barre, PA.

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HCC - 048

Christopher Riggs - You're Going to Have Numbers for Hands

A 20 minute recording made up of 1 minute excerpts from each of the 61 minute-long sounds from side A of HCC - 047.  Do the short clips contain more instrumental intentionality if they are part of a larger whole?  Does it matter?  Why would you pay money for the tape when you could just download the 1 minute section for free and loop it for an hour?  Are you paying to hear me struggle to get through the full hour?  Is this what the concept of "free" in the information age has done to the experimental musician?!?!

Dudes bidding on vintage stompboxes on ebay aren't the only guitarists interested in the conceptual possibilities of contemporary music(see HCC - 046).

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HCC - 047

Christopher Riggs - Relentless March of Progress

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Side A consists of a single sound played on the guitar for 61 minutes.  No loops, effects, or editing.  Is this an improvisation, composition, or simply a repetitive physical activity?   

Side B contains many short pieces all made up of the same musical material.  The material is rearranged arbitrarily piece after piece for 61 minutes until the act of improvisation collapses on itself.  The size of the tiny canvases against the enormity of the wall they're hanging on make any in-the-moment compositional decisions futile.  Should it go ABAC, BABCA, or AABBC?  It starts not to matter after a while.

This two-part process was repeated 20 times to create an edition of 20 unique cassettes.  Limit one per customer.  You'll be the only person with access to 122 minutes of my musical life. 

C-122 cassette edition of 20

HCC - 046

Ben Hall - Whitewash

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Violins, saxophones, trumpets, no input mixing boards, and of course guitars can sound indistinguishable from one another when run through enough effects pedals.  Is it seen as conceptually interesting to achieve the same sonic result using whatever instrument you want?  If so, aren't there more interesting ways to explore this concept than by plugging your instrument into some 9 volt drainer you picked up at Guitar Center?  Are musicians choosing this path because they think it's the most interesting one or because it looks easy to do?  Ben Hall isn't going to choose the path that looks easy.  The object-based percussion work on part two of his Holy Cheever Church cassette trilogy is no exception.  He makes the head of a tympani drum sound like the dirtiest Michigan basement noise gig not with the help of those little rectangular converters of chemical to electrical energy(=batteries=jump=zone), but instead with the constant practice and refinement of instrumental technique.  When it comes to truly experimental music practice can only make perfect if you're willing to constantly reinvent and redefine your musical game, and one tape later Hall is using an entirely new setup.  That setup has probably already been dismantled and rebuilt into something new by the time of the release of this tape.  Why you bust?

C-30 cassette edition of 35

HCC - 045

Christopher Riggs - Touch The Earth, Break My Ass

The result of one month of practicing solos on a stereo-guitar using chance operations to determine the formal constraints of the improvisation.

Self-actualization of the performer.

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HCC - 044

Gino Robair/Christopher Riggs - Punishment Allows the Evolution of Cooperation

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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

HCC - 043

Megan Schubert/Christopher Riggs - Rueful Irony About The Limits of Human Agency

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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

HCC - 042

Bill Corrigan - Noodlin'

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Force someone to listen to nothing but Borah Bergman and Conlon Nancarrow for a year, give them access to a piano for 2 minutes every day, record it, and compile it into a c-30 and you'd get a close approximation of this tape.  No improv, noise, or free jazz cliches on this one.  Everything ends on a question mark.  Bill's part of the younger breed of Michigan noise weirdos.  Keep your eyes peeled for more from Bill on his All Gone imprint.

C-30 cassette edition of 48

HCC - 041

Christopher Riggs - Long Self-Trained in Taking Despair Sitting Down

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Two home-made stereo guitars played through 4 amps at the same time.  The human four-track.  Excerpt.

C-30 cassette edition of 48

HCC - 040

Christopher Riggs - The President of Instrumentality

The compositions exist separately from the tapes.  Smoked Poetry on MJC was also performed at the Hessler House in Cleveland(search youtube for "guitarist who doesn't know how to prop his amp up against a wall") and Enemy in Chicago.  Here it is again.  New format.  New name.  New focus. 

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HCC - 039

Tuba - Or

More physical objects and less mp3s?  I don't see much of a reason to release a CDR.  You're just going to upload it to your iTunes, right?  Let's get right to the point and skip the plastic middleman.  While we're at it, how about stripping away the 80 minutes of noodling that usually accompany the oh so easy to duplicate compact disc?  What's left?  A bunch of 1's and 0's that translate into 2:24 of face tearing-off screeches.  Gold Danny?  That was a cassette, right?

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HCC - 038

Tuba - As If Standing On Fishes

Christopher Riggs and Tony Gordon combine forces to play 7 short pieces.  More searching and less severe than THREE but still attempts to pull no punches.  Played on guitar and bass?  All we need is a drummer.  

C-30 cassette edition of 47

HCC - 037

FREEBASS- THREE

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   I used to love Primus.  Les Claypool's playing on Pork Soda left a long lasting impression on my guitar playing.  Yes, Primus is a terrible band.  I know that now.  I can't even listen to one of their songs when I'm completely alone and not get embarrassed, but nevertheless, it was the beginning of a fascination with traditional instruments being played in a non-traditional way.  It wasn't long though before I got wise and gave up on trying to sound like Les Claypool.  I traded in the 4-string for the 6-string(guitar! I never intended on being one of these dudes) and didn't look back.
    No, Atlanta's Tony Gordon( AKA Freebass) does not sound anything like Les Claypool.  Thank God.  But he does play an effectless electric bass guitar.  He does exactly what I wished I could have done with the instrument.  Why waste money on dorky effects pedals when you can make your Fender Jazz Bass sound like Borbetomagus slowed down to 0 RPM just by caressing it in the right way?  
    This is some serious Post-Tape instrumental music.  Forget all formal music structures other than those dictated by the 15 minute sides of a C-30.  There is such a consistency of pacing, material, and patience in each piece that these have more in common with physical objects than musical compositions.  In a time when the music industry is suffocating from the ever increasing squeeze of information that is the coming Singularity, maybe we need more physical objects and less mp3s.

C-30 cassette edition of 44

HCC - 036

Ben Hall - Hellephant

SOLD OUT

Lower-case percussion seems to attract copycats, thieves, and dilettantes.  How many times have you seen somebody try and summon a sine wave by rubbing a dowel on a snare drum?  Maybe it's the object-based nature of the instrument.  Harder to figure out what's happening inside Wooley or Kelley's mouth, or inside Dilloway's fucked electronics and just shamelessly whip out someone else's idea at your next gig(although I'm sure people have tried/are trying).  Much easier to check out Nakatani's doing on youtube and go get your supplies from Home Depot.  Lots of people have probably seen Meehan reinvent sound-waves with a snare drum and a piece of wood and thought "I could do that."  Should they do that?  I had to hear the amateur reproduction(many times over) before I heard the original.  Ben Hall has taken measures to leave the bush-league batters dead on the diamond.  This isn't so much a lower-case percussion album as it is a documentation of Hall reifying the sounds of a damaged and decaying Michigan noise cassette into objects that he can rub, scrap, and snap his teeth at.  These objects won't be readily available to the next flash in the pan styrofoam player because even if you saw what he was doing on this tape, you wouldn't believe it.  

c-30 cassette edition of 41

 

HCC - 035

Christopher Riggs - For Their Hearts Are Fat And Heavy, And Their Ears Are Dull, And They Have Closed Their Eyes In Sleep

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"A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE AX=6-STRING JUMP:
D. BAILEY - DANCEHALL JAZZBOX PLAYER FROM THE JUMP HEARD WEBERN AND GOT IT IN HIS IDEA BOX THAT HE COULD GET THE SAME TIMBRE FX(=CONSTRUCTING A MELODY BY SWITCHING INSTRUMENTS EVERY NOTE) BY TREATING HARMONICS, FRETTED NOTES, OPEN STRINGS ALL EQUAL AND THEN LAYS A SLAB O ANTON'S TRICHORDS OVER TOP.  KILLER.  JOE MORRIS UP NEXT.  DOES THE OPPOSITE.  TOTAL POST-BOP STYLE.  ONLY FRETTED NOTES.  STAYING IN ONE LEFT-HAND POSITION = GRADUAL TIMBRE CHANGES WITHIN THE TONE-ROW.  TWO MUGS ON OPPOSITES SIDE O THE SAME WAVELENGTH.  OUTTA THEY MINDZ.  KEITH "FANCY A HUNDER?" ROWE COMES ALONG AND FUCKS IT UP.  DISREGARDS TECHNIQUE, SAYS "FUCK YOU" TO THE PARADIGM SET UP BY D. BAILEY AND JOE "JOE" MORRIS, AND OPENS THE DOOR FOR HUNDREDS OF FUCKIN COPYCATS WHO LOVE BUYING FX PEDALS ON EBAY.  BULLSHIT BUT IT HAD TO HAPPEN.  LOOKED LIKE IT WAS TIME TO SAY R.I.P. TO THE 6-STRING.  NOTHIN NEW OUTTA THAT MUGG.  THEN COMES ALONG CHRIS "NACHO" RIGGS.  THINKS HE CAN RESURRECT THAT DEAD HORSE WITH AN FX PEDAL-LESS 2-STRING(SIDE A HAS JUST 2 STRINGS ON IT?!!?!) GUITAR ALL THE WHILE APPLYING LACHENMANN'S OBSESSION FOR EXTENDO TECHNIQUE TOWARD THE GOAL OF SOUNDING LIKE A DILLO TAPE LOOP.  ROOT SCOOT"  -OLZONE 

c-30 cassette edition of 40

HCC - 034

Trauma - it ain't happenin'

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Compositions for percussion and electric guitar by Ben Hall and Christopher Riggs.

c-30 cassette edition of 30

christopher riggs - home of the glassman

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longest riggs solo tape released yet.  a whopping 71 minutes of fucked up guitar playing.  two guitars played at once.  no effects, overdubs, or edits.  really!

c-71 cassette edition of 22

HCC - 030

andrew t. royal - gritty for the city

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raw violin solos from chicago-based improviser.  sounds like someone's sawing my teeth in half.

c-30 cassette edition of 58

HCC - 029

christopher riggs - gold danny

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the cdr that was never meant to be. solo guitar.

CDR edition of 100

HCC - 028

lifetones - quivering mass

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continuation of the cheever lifetones debut. moves slower. more material.

c-65 cassette edition of 35

HCC - 027

lifetones - cop time

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new band with matt endahl on fender rhodes and riggs on guitar. attempts at drawing a straight line between chopsy fusion freakout and synth/tape noise while bypassing the improv world altogether. maybe not successful at accomplishing this task but still turned out super strange.

c-30 cassette edition of 35

HCC - 026

skin graft - depression

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the midwest is full of weirdos playing tapes through broken down electronics. wyatt really stands out in the post-olson/dilloway scene. this c-30 is terrifying. lots of low-end. the sound of magnetic tape eating itself recorded onto a cassette? some scary shit.

HCC - 025

matt endahl/christopher riggs - tangible but not communicated

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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.

c-30 cassette edition of 72

HCC - 024

mike khoury/christopher riggs - my words came out slow and odd

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HCC - 023

christopher riggs - riggs home security

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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 - 022