Late last year, a guy named Joe Frawley discovered my little blog, listened to my music, and liked what he heard. He got in touch with me to tell me so, and asked if I'd be interested in collaborating with him. I love to try new things, so of course I said yes...and now I'm an official member of the Joe Frawley Ensemble. Joe's work is like nothing I'd ever heard before. I'll let you read what he writes about himself and his work on his website:
I am a pianist/composer/sound collage artist whose work falls between the cracks of several different genres, though I manage to find an audience with fans of ambient, experimental, and post-rock music. My approach is to combine original piano music with found sound samples, which I process electronically to simulate subsconcious states-- dreams, trances, auditory hallucinations, involuntary memories. I'm particularly interested in the effects of recontextualized speech samples and how they interact with each other to create new meanings. I also try to exploit the musical qualities of speech and aim to put the spoken voice on equal footing with musical (and other) sounds. The resulting work invariably suggests a narrative, though I try not to impose a particular story upon the the listener, preferring instead the individual and subjective interpretations of imaginative minds. Other interests include creating and photographing found object assemblages, and l have lately been experimenting with video montage.
Joe and I have become friends and frequent correspondents solely via the internet, and Greg Conte (the other member of the ensemble) and I submit our musical contributions to Joe via email. Joe has put together an amazing EP entitled Emperor of Daffodils, with a release date set for next month. This is what he writes about it:
I came across this You Tube video- and apparently there are others like it- of a young woman doing her makeup, talking about which eyeshadows she likes, how she puts on lipstick, etc. And then people would comment back saying "you're so pretty", "that shade looks good on you". It occurred to me that a web cam functions something like a magic mirror to some people, as in: "Who's the fairest of them all?" And it wasn't just one video, she had dozens of them. A lot of the samples you hear on this project come directly from that source. This was the initial fascination, which then lead to further explorations of the idea, from slightly different angles, including the male perspective. I have always found it fascinating, for example, to watch a woman put on makeup. It's a whole world I know nothing about, and have no place in- the world of feminine beauty rituals. This is what lead to the idea of an Emperor of Daffodils (that is of narcissists- the flower in French, narcisse, is named after the mythic figure). I imagined it as a fantasy for a man to have dominion over an empire of self-loving beautiful women, a fantasy which could easily turn dark, as you can imagine. This CD has been the most strictly programmatic work I have made, and I found working within the limits of the concept to be creatively liberating. I am encouraged by the results of this recording and hope to do more collaborative work in the future. –JF
Are you ready for something completely different? Go listen to excerpts of it here.
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