MORAL CRAYFISH: Go to Church
This Moral Crayfish recording is a live document, that features Dan Cohoon on prepared guitar, as well as special guest Scott Verrastro (Kohoutek) on percussion. It was recorded on 9.09.09 @ the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia by Scott Slimm. This was the first time that Cohoon & Verrastro ever played together. The piece was totally improvised.
Tiny Mix Tapes live review:
Moral Crayfish, first in the lineup, is the recording project of Philadelphia’s Dan Cohoon, whose haunted guitar-drones were, on this night, accompanied by the free-percussion of Scott Verrastro, with whom he had never previously played. Cohoon built up a colossal wall of doom but allowed wraithlike shimmers to sneak through and softly cry. Verrastro’s bow-to-cymbal technique, gong-hits and bell-clangs provided a Silvester Anfang-esque, funeral-procession vibe that pushed the screeching guitar spirits out through the cracks around the edges of the windows and ceilings of the chapel. (Tiny Mix Tapes) (Elliott Sharp)
You can down load or stream the entire recording for free here.
If you are still into the whole object hood thing you can purchase a copy for $4.00 via PayPal.
MORAL CRAYFISH: Gadolinite
Much like the mineral Gadolinite, which the latest Moral Crayfishalbum is named after, this album is a dark dense brooding affair. This album marks Dan Cohoon’s third time to participating in the National Solo Album Monthcontest, which happens every November. All Sounds produced were made using prepared/ unprepared guitar, hand percussion, thrift shop snare drum, Yamaha DX-100 keyboard, Christmas tree watering device used as a horn, bells, violin, thumb harp, harmonica and various other house hold objects. These sounds were then manipulated and layered on a laptop to create the dense sonic environments. You can stream or download the entire album here.
If you are still into the whole object-hood thing you can purchase
the album for $5.00. (postage paid inside US)
MORAL CRAYFISH:I am fully aware of my own unreality.
This album was recorded in the month of November, 2007 for the National Record a Solo Album Month. It deals with a missadventure by Dan Cohoon involving a certain town on the north shore of Massachusetts, home to a substandard art school with questionable taste in public art. . [Hints: It is the town north of Witch City USA (a town making profit off of the massacre of women for over 250 years), it is where the people who killed all witches actually lived, John Updike lives there, Julia Childs liked to frequent a bad Chinese restaurant just north of the town), it is the town that birthed the American Navy (unless you talk to the folks in Marblehead).]
All sounds made by Dan Cohoon using prepared guitar (electric and acoustic), pot lids, chop sticks, hand drum, harmonica, violin, snare drum, maracas, Yamaha DX-100, Casio CT-K 330, Hondo II, Washburn, toy keyboards and various other implements of clatter.
If you you prefer the physical object you can get it via PayPal for $5.00
MORAL CRAYFISH:Catastrophic Success
All sounds made by Dan Cohoon using prepared guitar, screwdrivers, chopsticks, dowel rods, bells and various other household objects. This E.P. is less dependent on prepared guitar than previous work. Most of the sounds were produced using everyday objects that were then manipulated on the computer. It was recorded from Summer of 2005-Winter 2006 in Glen Mills, PA. It was mastered by Jacob Anderson @ Tape Mountain HQ.
The name Catastrophic Success comes from one of the many brilliant mis-statements our dear leader has made in regards to Iraq. A reporter asked what he thought of the situation in Iraq. George W. Bush replied that it was a “Catastrophic Success!” Well, he got it half right.
Underseas * Hypnotheoretical * I’m the DeciderCatastrophic Success * Misunderestimate * Make the Pie Higher
Moral Crayfish: Catastrophic Success may be purchased via PayPal for $3.00
MORAL CRAYFISH: We did not do it, but we dug it!
All sounds created by Dan Cohoon using prepared guitar, plastic water bottles, glass cups, music box, Casio CTK-330, metal bowl, AM radio static, photographic flash, coins, screwdrivers, metal flashing & various other household objects.
Recorded in the summer & fall of 2004 in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. Mastered by Mini-Wagonwheel in Portland, Oregon in the winter of 2005. The quote, “We did not do it, but we dug it,” originated in the documentary The Weather Underground. It is what a hippy girl said after the Weathermen bombed the United States Capital Building.
Moral Crayfish: We did not do it, but we dug it! is available for purchase
via PayPal for $4.oo.
Moral Crayfish is Dan Cohoon and who ever he can sucker in playing with. Moral Crayfish was the name of his sister’s imaginary rock band when she was in college. Brothers Dan & John Cohoon stole the name from her when they entered the battle of the bands in high school. They had discovered that by duct-taping a headphone to the body of their younger sister’s viola and plugging it into the mic jack of a boom box they could get distortion and feedback. They also discovered how to “multi-track” by connecting various boom boxes and audio devices together. The brothers started taping over their parents’ collection of Sermons from their former church, the Alliance Bible Church, in San Antonio to make noise tapes. At this time the brothers had little or no knowledge of avant-garde or underground music. It was with joy and a little disappointment when they first heard the works of such artists as Sonic Youth, Dead C, and Richard Youngs on college radio shows from WVUD & WPRB. It was exciting because these artists were pursuing similar sonic explorations; disappointing because they were not doing anything all that new.
In college a friend gave Dan Cohoon a Sears’s electric guitar that survived a house fire, complete with plastic flowers & 90210 stickers on it. One of the conditions of keeping the guitar was that he was not allowed to remove the stickers. By that time in college he had become interested in the work of John Cage, especially his work with prepared piano. Dan Cohoon started applying the techniques Cage used for his prepared piano on his guitar. He would shove metal and wooden objects into the guitar strings. Using the feedback of the guitar to move the objects would cause a loop. The feedback would cause the objects to move, and the movement would make a sound which would cause the objects to move again. When Dan Cohoon saw Dean Roberts play with his band White Winged Moth his style of guitar playing changed again. Dean Roberts would use a screw driver to twirl against the strings and the body of the guitar. When he adopted his style of playing he learned that you could have a great deal of control with a wider variety of sound possibilities.
His first release featured my own primitive guitar and piano playing, along with field recordings of my family and excerpts from sermon noise tapes he had made in high school. It was called I feel for you, but I can not find you.It was released on Dead-Fish Tapes, a tape-only label run by Jason Cammarata of Goat Boy Sound and Disappointed fame. He recorded Pain’s Temporary Glory on a computer that could barely handle four tracks of audio in Portland, Maine in 1999. The title comes from an interview with BMX freestyler Matt Hoffman, who was quoting Evil Knievel. He misread the quote and thought it said “Pain’s Temporary Glory.” The real quote is “Pain is temporary, glory is forever, and chicks dig scars”
After Portland, Maine he moved out to Portland, Oregon--thus fulfilling a dream of living in two separate cities with the same name in one year. He produced “If you build it, we will burn it ,” using a Sanyo boom box and toy keyboards. Sanyo boom boxes have the ability of playing two tapes at once, which he then dumped to a third tape deck. He borrowed a four track for final mixings, but the majority of the sound was produced using the more archaic multi-tape deck multi-tracking technique. It was released on Mini-Wagonwheel's (of Rollerball Fame) Nilla Cat CD-R label. While in Portland he was also active in the drone universal rock trio the Taken Girls.
In 2003 he moved back to Pennsylvania. Disconnected from an active music scene Cohoon began to concentrate on making sound pieces. The sound pieces still used the prepared guitar as a base but now included house hold objects and small percussion instruments that he manipulate on his laptop. He released several self produced CD-R’s. In 2007 Rumpus Records (from Norway) released The Month of the Dog That year Dan Cohoon also started up his imaginary record label, Field Theory Recordings that has released his latest offering I am fully aware of my own unreality.
Fourth Album Arrives January 2010! American Dollar MP3 Discography Special, Only $20 For All Four Albums! Go To: www.theamericandollar.info/merchstore.html Thanks For Listening!
"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born." Anais Nin
Dan, cool, it was a fun show, I enjoyed you guys. it is also crazy to play with a band that was in highschool when they first saw us. there is another DE guy who I remember coming to our shows in DE, scrawny little high school kid with big glasses, and he came out this spring, and is now an emergency room physician at Christiana
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