scatterism by steven leak and johnny kachoola

Not very long ago, the wonderful label “Church of the Noisy Goat”
https://thechurchofnoisygoat.bandcamp.com
released an album called “Broken Guitar” by Johnny Kachoola.
The notes for the release were wonderfully simple:
"Improvisation with one guitar
one homemade strange pedal
and almost one note...
improvised noise/glitch with broken and homemade equipment.”

i gave it a quick listen and it was hard hard on my ears and all the same, I was drawn back to a special evening i spent in the mid-eighties in the basement of a squat in toronto with fred frith, chris cutler and david thomas . . . so i bought a copy.

I listened through the album . . . Johnny's music asked a LOT of questions of me . . . in truth, it was really hard music to my ears and you know what? I loved it for that alone because there was something happening behind the wall of noise. . And then out of nowhere, there was something else in the back, middle and front of my mind and that said, “steven, ask Bode if he can connect you with Johnny and then ask Johnny if you can have carte blanche with this music so you can work and play with it and maybe even find that “something”?”

So I did and would you believe it! Johnny said “yes”.

When I imported the files they showed up as solid horizontal red bricks. I’d seen skinny little red lines (the red shows maxxed out something) but nothing like this. So i had to learn how to find the details inside Johnny's music . . . which i did and when i found the details, I was able to isolate them and cut-and-paste add reverb and pitch shift and reverse and duplicate them into part of what you will hear here. I also brought in my own sounds . . . arturia minifreak and its red panda pedal friends, rainstick, cutlery, pans, tuned wine glasses, bear bell, and hand held percussion instruments, all worked and played with.

I shipped the results to Johnny and when he wrote back “I've listened with great pleasure to your remix, it's super cool ! Thank you!”
I was (and am) so happy and grateful for his words and for this opportunity.

Very big thanks to Bode for connecting Johnny and I.

So very cool!
And now we get to share our music with you . . .

johnny and steven

I am a Canadian musician who creates soundscapes. These soundscapes are created with Arturia Microfreak and Minifreak synthesizers various electronic devices , pre-recorded loops, field recordings, and found sounds. I am also a member of "The Forever Moment" a band where I get to co-create music with Mark Cook.