My newest favorite HipHopper! I dunno - lol - I have a feeling that every attempt I make at your genre's going to have me dancing down an alternate path - like the frog and scorpion, it's just in my nature. I think it's because I so often deliberately try to subvert the genre thing, and end up bouncing off and landing somewhere else. Will certainly be pulling yours up shortly. Cheers.

Hi Jpipes23 - Glad you enjoyed listening to this one. Though offering lots of frustration, this was a lot of fun to create. Haven't seen you around before, and will be swinging by to see if you have any tracks up. Cheers!

The melody is created by the geng gongs (see image link above), and really are some of my favorite instruments of all time. They're really different in tonality from the metal Jew's harps we're used to hearing. Actually the two in the picture are the very ones used in this track (I have a dozen in my collection). I did a 3 track recording with the 2 geng gongs, and then created this around that melody.

The mutations this one went through can't really be appreciated in what you hear now. What I had originally intended is much different than what happened. I don't "get" Hip Hop and this started as a personal challenge to make a track. A lot of really frustrating attempts that just didn't work at first. Really this came together only after I gave myself up to the archetype that I had invoked, the Trickster Frog. Sounds funny, but really it was only after I stopped trying to force it, and then "let it happen" did the internal logic of it all reveal itself.

Damn Jung and his Soft-Science!

It is a "thick" piece isn't it? In one of my other tracks, someone said they thought "maximalism" would sound like my stuff. Maybe I'm the counter weight to Philip Glass? Here it ended up deliberate, as the "Frog Song" is composed of many voices, and mirrors the desire of drums (who don't want to be played alone).

Thanks for both the listen and fantastic review!

Admittedly I listened to a lot of Eno and Byrne over the years, but My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is one I've never heard. I hadn't considered either as real influences, but I'm sure it's there. Actually, I really started seriously with music in the early `90's in Seattle in the underground scene, and I really see what I'm doing now as an evolution of that. Acoustic Trance into Primal Electronica. Glad you're enjoying my sonic offerings.

Thanks for the fave! It's definitely one of those archetypal tracks that gave me much grief in the early stages. Once I submitted to the demands of Frog it all kind of fell into place. Cheers.

Merci beaucoup! Les enregistrements sur le terrain de grenouilles viennent de tous les continents, et les Juifs harpe(?) morceaux ont t jous par moi-mme. C'est la musique du marais qui fait danser la boue, non?

If there's ever a call for quotes for publicity purposes, I'm going to use this one! You're literate, aren't you? "Music that wells up from the swamp and makes the very mud dance." That's absolutely beautiful! Thanks.

Far from being a pest, I'd say this is about the greatest compliment you could give. Actually 9 of the songs here are available on my Totems from the Diaspora album for sale on all major digital distribution sites (iTunes, Napster, mp3, rebeat, etc.) and it's a trip seeing it for sale on Japanese sites. I'll shoot you an email with some details. Thanks and cheers!

Yeah, some sort of CGI experience behind this would be amazing. I can see it it my head: stepping through the boundary of the fairy ring and landing in the space of Frog. Strobes and tracers galore. Thanks for the listen and review!

Wayne,

There are two geng-gongs (http://www.looperman.com/users/detail/247253&pid=3225 the 2 actually played here) played in this, and everything else is samples or loops. The geng gong track (3 tracks - ie 2 overdubs) was an experiment I did a few years ago while living in Bellingham. This was my first experiment with blending 'live' analog recordings with the Ableton Live 7 environment. The geng gong bit I called "Amphibian's Metamorphosis" as I'd tried to do a bamboo Jew Harp blues piece (not very successfully).

I really need to write the n0mad23 Musick Manifesto at some point - but you're right/rite about the grounding, though I'm drawing from a plethora of traditions. I lived in Cameroon and Indonesia in the late 60's, early 70's and sort of 'fell into' things as a kid - so much so in fact, that my mother insisted on getting her kids home before they went "totally native."

There are many traditions where music is used very deliberately to induce emotional and/or psychological states (religious and/or spiritual in context) in both the musician and the audience. I've consciously been fascinated by psycho-acoustic phenomena since my first Indonesian Gamelan orchestra performance. Not only were hidden melodies very obviously revealed, but the frequencies of some of the bronze instruments did physical things to my body.

No surprise really that it's struck this particular chord then. I am a product of the collected experiences and conclusions reached by one of the first Space Age children who grew up in much older forms of apprehension.

Thanks for the fave!

Estefano - I think the 3 geng-gong (bamboo Jew's harp) tracks are really reminiscent of the digeridoo, so perhaps that in combination with the frog's voices is the outback vibe? For sure, in playing both I've found each informs my technique and sensibility with the other. The seven tracks (and 12 loops) of frog field recordings represent all habitable continents, so "Frog Song" seems like the appropriate title. Glad you enjoyed this, and thanks for the fave! No greater form of compliment! Cheers!

Thanks Slap - "Frog Rock" works, though I'm thinking "n0madick Jungulation" might be more appropriate to the genre I'm exploring currently. You know - I love this site specifically because of the encouragement there is from real artists in trying out new things. It's a bit daunting always dancing to the beat of your own drummer, but it's reviews like this that give me license to keep going. Webbed feet are helpful for dancing to this jam, however I've found that hip-wader rubber boots will suffice in a pinch. Cheers, and thanks for adding this one to your faves - that is the ultimate nod of encouragement in my book.

It's kind of a pairing with "Bonobo challenges the Electric Storm" in its use of field recordings. Yeah, the groove shift is the result of live bamboo jew's harp recordings that everything else is woven around - but I think it does what I set out to do. I now actually enjoy that part, as it really gives it a live, immediate sense in terms of listening. Glad you like it!

CalifKen - cheers on being a fellow fuzzy boundary artist. It's amazing what's now possible, and we've got to push those edges and see what's just on the other side. Maybe the periphery is attainable through some sort of electronic osmosis, and if so I'm betting there's all kinds of cool sounds there that we're all going to dig. What's nature? What's synthetic? Is biomimicry the way? Thanks for the review!

bcway - Thanks for the listen and kind words. I was looking toward the local Salish mythos for this one, but if you'll look closely at these cheekbones (and jaw) of mine, you'll see we're distant cousins! Maybe it was the Mohawk genes that compelled me to make this one! Coming by to check out your music presently. Cheers.

Yes, there are two bamboo jew's harps in this one (on three tracks) and really that was the inspiration for this piece. Something swampy and primal about that bamboo instrument's sound (pics - http://www.looperman.com/users/detail/247253&pid=3225). I'm glad you had some visualizations behind this one, as I read that as a good sign. I usually compose/create my music through my own visual imaginings and if the audience experiences it as well then I must be doing something right. I really like your description of stumbling into a crazy rave. Welcome to MiddleMarch, where Frog has wicked and slightly dangerous dance parties! Thanks for the fav - this is a huge compliment!

Thanks jfw! I'm always uncertain about trying to fuse field recordings with music, but the Frog Totem here really needed to be grounded in the physical. I'm in agreement re: the drum outro, and there's something rather satisfying about letting the voices from nature have the last "words". Cheers.

Frogs are great, because you don't need to run the recordings through any sort of effects. They sound like their plugged into a stack already! The geng gong bit I originally did was done with me imagining frogs singing the blues, so the translation/interpretation into this track was meant to be. Glad you had pun with it.

Thanks Apocalynium! It's funny how this one came together, and you'd think I'd have learned by now about consciously playing with Trickster archetypes. Still, the result is quite pleasing.

Cheers DustHill - I believe 3 or 4 or those drum loops are from you. I like that it all builds to a breaking point before fading back to the atmospheric stuff. Reminds me a bit of the African approach where the jam doesn't end until a drum head breaks.

Thanks Reverse1984! That fav gives a real vote of confidence. I love what I'm doing currently, and I finally feel like I have the license to do what I want, and not what's expected. I'm delighted to see that other people like it, too! I promise to keep doing something "different!"

Thanks Spivkurl - this track is in many ways the direction I'm planning on going, it that it's a combination of sampling (loops) and my own analog instruments. The original geng gong (bamboo jew's harps) were recorded on a mulitrack and then brought into Ableton Live 7 LE where I added the percussion tracks. Mixed that all down, and then reloaded the "master" track and brought in the water drums and 7 tracks of frog field recordings. Sprinkle gris-gris say an incantation or two and voila. "Frog Song." Thanks for the review.

DV - you called it. Totally live with no alterations, just me and Cool Edit 2000 with a mic and two geng gongs. Banjo is such a brilliant idea, and gives me an excuse to hook up with a musical buddy I haven't seen for several years. Maybe I'll finally convince him to hand over that banjo....Cheers!

This was just an experiment, and from a collection of three solo pieces I tried at the time that I called "Nano-onaN". Though better than a "toss-off", it's not a song. Very incomplete - BUT a great example of how inherently psychedelic "primitive" instruments can be. Even without delay, my impulse is to play it in a way that imitates delay.

Now it's a temporary "listen and tell."

The best geng gong stuff I did was with my spouse in public performances. We'd play face to face sharing the same mic (no delay but with a gate). My favorite was a review of a bit we did at the Seattle Improvisational Dance and Music Festival one year. The guy said that he "kept blushing. The sounds and their proximity was just too intimate. I felt like a voyeur watching something more than sex." Nice one, huh?

The bamboo variety is played against the lips and not teeth, unlike the metal variety. There are a couple of spots where there's a kind of growling sound, and thats what's produced against the teeth (here, deliberately). For sure there's a similarity to the didjeridoo as all tonal shaping is done with the mouth as pitch chamber. Thanks for having a listen and response.