A Very Early Greg Davis EP

Previously unreleased music from 1997-1998

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Perhaps Aphex Twin’s unloading of his old hard drives will have dividends in other acts following his lead. In any case, Greg Davis has just uploaded to his SoundCloud account a great, unreleased three-track set that predates his 2002 debut album, *Arbor* (Carpark), by almost half a decade. This artifact EP is titled *One of Us* and is attributed to Davis’ Asterisk moniker.

The first track, “I Have a Peanut Butter Knife & a Cheese Knife,” opens with a post-digital scatter, an early-PC version of pause-tape mania. Fractured elements are broken and splattered in a frantic rhythm that only functions as a rhythm if you stop trying to tap your foot to it. Sure, it works, ultimately, as 4/4, but banging your head to the downbeat requires you to negate the ecstasy that the beat is just barely containing. Halfway through, the piece dissolves into welcome country-pop exotica.

“Artie” goes in the opposite direction, from a hazy melody of tuned drones to something upbeat, in this case minimalist-percussive patterning. Throughout it is a mantra worthy of Terry Riley. Like the second half of “”I Have a Peanut Butter Knife & a Cheese Knife,” it emphasizes the repetition of an individual phrase with slight variations and, ultimately, a slow removal of core materials as the music fades. At its peak, this could be Philip Glass’ idea of county-fair music.

“Giants” reiterates the opening track’s broken-beat madness with a crunch reminiscent of boots in hard snow, albeit filtered through an early digital aesthetic: thick pixels meet blunt implements. As one listener, Chang Terhune, has mentioned in the SoundCloud comments, “Giants” favorably brings to mind what Autechre was up to around that same time.

Over on Facebook, Davis provided a bit more background information:

>”i just uploaded an unreleased e.p. i made back in my chicago / depaul days of 1997-98. me, a studio apartment, my early mac clone computer and a handful of instruments and samples. enjoy!””ª

Set originally posted at [soundcloud.com/greg-davis](https://soundcloud.com/greg-davis/sets/asterisk-one-of-us-e-p-1997-98). Hear all of *Arbor* at [gregdavis.bandcamp.com](https://gregdavis.bandcamp.com/album/arbor). More music from Davis, who is based in Burlington, Vermont, at [gregdavismusic.com](http://gregdavismusic.com/) and [autumnrecords.net](http://www.autumnrecords.net/).

**Update:** Subsequent to this post, over on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/gregdavismusic/status/564849248005783553) Davis helpfully expanded on some connections between the *One of Us* EP and what became his debut album, *Arbor*. He says that *Arbor*’s “Sea Green and Cyan” originated as “Artie,” and that “Giants” was “made around the same time” as *Arbor*’s “Thirteen Eight.” For comparison, here are those two *Arbor* pieces:


Ladeez and Gentlemen, Effecks Twin

An instant remix of Aphex Twin's big night

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

[My book on Aphex Twin’s *Selected Ambient Works Volume II* was published a year ago this coming Friday, February 13. A year ago he was largely a memory. Tonight he won a Grammy.](https://twitter.com/disquiet/status/564588693722116096)

[It’s weird to have written a book on a subject that everyone discussed in the past tense, and now he is fully actively present tense.](https://twitter.com/disquiet/status/564592640583143424)

[People so spoke of Aphex Twin in 2013 in the past tense that I talk in the book about how much people spoke of him in the past tense. Weird.](https://twitter.com/disquiet/status/564605058524798976)

Those were among the thoughts I posted on Twitter this evening after the announcement that *Syro* had won the award for best album in the Dance/Electronica category. *Syro* was released last fall, after a 13-year gap since the album *Drukqs*. The award was given out in the pre-show Grammy ceremony, and this video snippet of the moment was uploaded shortly thereafter to YouTube:

So much anticlimax is packed into that moment, from the semi-anonymous nature of those non-show categories, to the mispronunciation of the name Aphex Twin. What stands out is the Hollywood wallpaper music that fades in after the announcement is made, this sad, out-of-place cocktail-party piano. It seems especially, unwittingly ironic given the centrality of piano to some of Aphex Twin’s own recording, including the closing track to *Syro*.

I [mentioned on Twitter](https://twitter.com/disquiet/status/564610159830654977), where there was quite a bit of fun back’n’forth — including noting that music by Harry Partch, a fine precursor to Richard D. James in the field of making one’s own instruments, also won an award this evening — that I wanted nothing so much as to hear Aphex Twin snatch that bit of cocktail piano and remix it.

Ask, and, thanks to the Internet, you sometimes receive. Of course, Aphex Twin himself didn’t do the remixing, but Lee Rosevere of Vancouver, Canada, did a great job of it, breaking the source audio into pieces, layering it to stuttered and melodramatic effect, and doing a Max Headroom with the announcement itself:

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/happypuppyrecords](https://soundcloud.com/happypuppyrecords/sirro-by-effecks-twin-2). More from Rosevere at [twitter.com/leerosevere](https://twitter.com/leerosevere).

**Update (2015.02.09):** Peculiarly, this alternate upload (found thanks to Eric Legendre) of the award announcement has no cocktail piano, but does feature some weird warped vocals and what appears to be an acceptance acknowledgement:

Caroline Park’s New 5-Track Album

Less Than Human is more than satisfying.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

CP_pic_opensignal

Caroline Park in the past week or so posted a short teaser of her then forthcoming album, *Less Than Human*. At just [46 seconds](https://soundcloud.com/cpark/being-states-clip-pan-y-rosas-2015), it seemed just a little short to constitute a standalone post here, and fortunately the releasing label, Pan y Rosas Discos, has followed up with the full, [freely downloadable](https://soundcloud.com/panyrosasdiscos/sets/caroline-park-less-than-human) set of five tracks, and posted [three of them on its SoundCloud account](https://soundcloud.com/panyrosasdiscos/sets/caroline-park-less-than-human) for streaming. The album’s brief liner note includes this instruction:

>play at full volume,
>with good speakers
>in a nice room.
>
>no head/earphones please (sound needs space).

Do follow the instructions when the opportunity arises. The material in the SoundCloud subset of *Less Than Human* ranges from luminous and droning (“Plantlife”) to ominous and distant (“A Moth Is Born”) to stuttered and disorienting (“Fractured Barnacles”), and all of it is best experienced in full body, the nuances not left to the compressed nature of headphones, and the volume not adjusted for proximity’s sake.

Missing from the SoundCloud set are the album’s opening and closing tracks, “Being States” and “Gldufglsd.” The first is perhaps the album’s most ambitious, a gentle melody refracted through subtle, pinging percussion. As for “Gldufglsd,” the album’s longest cut, at over 11 minutes, it is, like “Plantlife,” structured around a low-level drone, heard here below a harsh shimmer, out of which slowly arises a warmer tone whose sense of comfort is balanced by the increased threat of that buzzsaw shimmer. It seems to suggest a sequel to “A Moth Is Born,” in which the promise of a heat brings the end.

Three-track set originally posted at [soundcloud.com/panyrosasdiscos](https://soundcloud.com/panyrosasdiscos/sets/caroline-park-less-than-human). Get the full album at [panyrosasdiscos.net](http://www.panyrosasdiscos.net/pyr142-caroline-park-less-than-human/). More from Park, who is based in Providence, Rhode Island, at [soundcloud.com/cpark](https://soundcloud.com/cpark), [cpark.bandcamp.com](https://cpark.bandcamp.com/), and [blanksound.org](http://www.blanksound.org/). Pan y Rosas Discos is a netlabel, based in Chicago and at [panyrosasdiscos.net](http://www.panyrosasdiscos.net/).