Both And by Max Davies

"Cities are bizarre places
From the errant crackhead to the glorious lights in the night sky
Of the bougainvillea and the vine
Towards the epicenter
West of confusion
Neatly gliding amongst the throng
the fluorescent and the neon
All feelings have to end
Sometimes they end when you least expect them to"

This music formed in a mostly itinerant fashion, primarily when I was spending a lot of time in Los Angeles throughout 2006-2007. Often, during this time, I would while away the time making music as a vibratory journal of my day-to-day experiences of sorts --while I lived in a little bungalow of an apartment off Sunset and Lucille in Silverlake. These songs were little experiments, electronic tone poems if you will, often incorporating the automatic and "cut-up" methods in the arrangements. Often, in the recording and arranging of these pieces, some outside noises would intrude into my apprehension and often I would commit a field recording on the spot of these sounds to incorporate into a piece --to add an element of the real world, as an antidote to all the synthesized bits; as some chaos to the structure.

Each of these songs echoes in someways with the energy of the modern world, the 21-Century world: with it’s cities; it’s ceaseless warp and weft of creation and destruction; beauty and obscenity; technology and nature; dark and light --things of which my life was not immune during the period that elapsed during this production. However, let the listener bear in mind that by noting the dualistic aspects of things approached in this work I am not trying to label it as being limited to, or beholden by, such a classification; or as William S. Burroughs would say: It's not either/ or, it's both/ and. (The bewildering antinomy of the equation 0=2 also might be a more abstract way of comprehending this album title?)

In no way would this music have been made possible were it not for the unprecedented influence that things like David Bowie/ Brian Eno's Berlin Trilogy, Another Green World, Music for Film, Suicide's first record, Tears For Fears' The Hurting, The Human League‘s Reproduction and Dare albums had on me. Also, I’m sure that my childhood viewings of Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams made a definite influence on some of this work. Lastly and maybe most importantly these recordings would not exist were it not for the inimitable effect of Miss Toni Oswald who's invisible influence presented itself to me during the initial stages of this production, and for which I am most aesthetically indebted.

So it is that I am dusting these songs off after leaving them for several years to gather some rust and patina, and officially releasing them out into the world to wend their own way into the fabric of time in whatever way they will.

Songwriter, guitarist and producer. Max Davies has been featured in: Artforum; Guitar World & Guitarist magazines; Centre Pompidou, the American College Dance Festival, Naropa University, and on numerous albums and films. He has worked with Thurston Moore, Anne Waldman, Lydia Lunch, CA Conrad, Toni Oswald, Clark Coolidge, Cecilia Vicuna, Eleni Sikelianos Gregory Alan Isakov, and more.

linktr.ee
Toni Oswald
Fast Speaking Music
YouTube
Fast Speaking Music