Zaireeka

Last night was quite fun. Mike, his girlfriend Melissa, and Phil all stopped by (Justin and I work with Mike and Phil at Q101). On the way over, it started raining something awful – by the time we got to Stu’s, I was pretty drenched.

I think it’s a good sign that I drank more at a party – I felt much more relaxed, and that speaks well since I’m normally not so hot in public. I had about five beers, all told… so I was feeling quite good. To top things off, I actually smoked some pot. This is the first time I’ve smoked anything at all, since I quit smoking some few months back. Normally, I’m a paranoid when it comes to that. I clam up, I don’t really interact with others, and tend to move off into my own little world.

While listening to Zaireeka, it actually helped. Many people kept on talking while the album played, but I spent most of the time trying to focus in on the sounds. For a while, I was skeptical – these types of experiments make it hard for me to discern actual intent, from the author’s/artist’s perspective. How much was planned, and how much is sheer randomness that happened, outside of their control?

When talking to Grumpy, he pointed out that, no matter what – they were the ones to think of it first, and to execute the idea into action. For the issues that I have as far as intent goes, the evening was incredibly enjoyable. I listened with more focus and attention to a piece of music than I have in a long, long while. And for that, I think the Flaming Lips definitely succeeded.

A few months back, when I used to commute out into Barrington, I used to play a game with myself. While waiting around, I’d try to close my eyes and identify all the sounds I was hearing. After a while, I started to realize that there are numerous sounds happening, all the time – we just block them out because… well, because we have to. Otherwise, according to Diane Ackerman, we’d get overloaded and become paralyzed by stimulus.

There were several points (three as far as I recall) that were quite exquisite, when Zaireeka was playing. Based on what I had read on the inside cover, the FL knew that no two CD players play at exactly the same rate. They experimented, and found that CD players would catch up and exceed/fall behind, almost randomly when they attempted to "synchronize." After a few minutes of listening, I realized that the only way for the Zaireeka to work is to work a lot with syncopation. One moment in particular had triplets playing through different CD’s. At this point, they got really close and started to overlap, at times falling in synch, at times playing independently of each other. But they were all, at most, a second off. This made for a really nice effect.

Another point was when a single guitar plucked a note, and an echo effect was applied. Again, since there wasn’t a set time pattern, the echo effect extended and allowed for other sounds to get "included" into the melody. The final end of the CD used a cacophony of drums, building in volume to almost unbearable levels… a great way to finish, but falls short of some of the earlier effects they achieved.

Dave was nice enough to record the event on his minidisc recorder. I’m hoping to get a few minutes (particularly the start of the CD) from him, which I’ll convert and post here. I’ve got a few pics too, but I’m going to hold off and upload that stuff at once.

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