DaveX interviews Sabrina Siegel!.........................................................................
Despite having numerous albums available through one of my favorite labels (this being Pax Recordings) I only recently became aware of Sabrina Siegel’s work; through her latest Pax release, “Grace/Precarious,”which features solo explorations for cello, electric guitar, and voice. This is an album that truly earns the description “visceral,” for it is not only Siegel’s heart that is engaged in the creative process, but her body– with each track reflecting a different sort of physical struggle to balance creation against failure. It’s a remarkable album, which has quickly moved onto my short list of all-time favorites.
Being the sort of person that I am, there was no way I could hear “Grace/Precarious” and not come up with at least a few questions for Sabrina Siegel. Once you’ve heard it, you’ll understand why.
STARTLING MONIKER: I am really enjoying the “Grace/Precarious” album, and my first thought is about how this concept occurred to you. What’s the back story?..............
SABRINA SIEGEL: I’m so glad you are enjoying…… Well, the concept is really just a way to think about or name the relationship of the forces at play when i play instruments in general. And i can say the way i perceive the way i live and practice visual art as well…. perhaps it is the way everything goes in life. It is the way i play, always in improvisation and experimenting with difficult to controllable extended modes of playing(such as playing electric guitar with a pile of rocks, some of them very large). It is all very spontaneous, raw, natural, moment by moment, sound by sound and finding/creating mastery or balance or grace or flow in the precarious sound-creating situation at hand. One could liken this way perhaps to Jackson Pollock’s action painting, where an unconventional beauty and visual compositional balance was achieved through a grosser and seemingly less controllable mode of applying paint to canvas................
SM: As a liner note enthusiast, I’m sort of let down about not knowing the “setup” for more of the tracks. “Drop Bow Down Cello” seems pretty straightforward, but most of the others are far more difficult to figure out. In fact, without the press sheet, I don’t think I would have put it together with the title. With such an interesting process, why hide it?..........
SS: Well, i didn’t mean to hide anything. i did try too point to it with the little poetic writing that i did include. Maybe this leaves more space for the listener to imagine the situation and sounds as well?..............
I could tell you the “setups” if you like. (DaveX sez: SPOILER ALERT!) They all take place in my home, which is an old quaker meeting house made of cinderblocks with a polished concrete floor, which creates a very live sonic space. most of them are first time”experiments” that i’ve never tried before. “Yom Kippur” (i have sent an image from this one) is playing the electric guitar with rocks balancing on the strings and in hands, with the guitar balanced on a wooden chair which is then pushed and pulled around the room, involving the space, the dimensions of the room, relying on my physical strength, grace of movement, feelings, and ear, to express “musically” through this situation/medium (which evoked the vision and depth of feeling, in the performer, of the experience of Yom Kippur in it’s spiritual weight and it’s ceremonial blowing of the shofar.)........................
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“Fire” is singing as if flame, with the fire that is alive in the fireplace right there. “I am the bow” is playing the cello with the hairs of the bow (pulled off my ruined bow) between my hands. “Big electric rose” is playing the electric guitar with rocks with an external pickup clipped on, as i had lent my cord to my neighbor and so could not utilize it’s built-in pickups (actually only one of them works, and i like the sound quality it gives this way), the recording device itself was also in a precarious situation as it was cutting out or something, creating several unusual slight rests and a few other interesting and mysterious artifacts in the recording. “After your voice” is simply an emotional or visceral response to the interruption (or one could even think of it as the punctuation) of my recording session by a friend’s voice on the answering machine. …………to identify a few for you. .................
SM: I find that I can think of “Grace/Precarious” in at least two manners– as a musician struggling to achieve a sound and failing in many interesting ways; or as an example of a musician using an interesting process to ‘call out’ these interesting “failures”. In the first manner, the album is full of ‘mistakes,’ but obviously not in the other manner. Do you find either of these viewpoints more relevant than the other?SS: I think that both of these ways relate to the process… perhaps the second one more so. you could think of those sounds as mistakes or just the next sounds in the work. (Perhaps this is a more valueless process or the values or way of “judging” is different, more open and active……….. to embrace all sound, all expression as what is, as what has come forth for some reason and so is of value and is something to work off of and enjoy. One could take this way and apply it to one’s whole life…….. accept what comes and work with it.) I could tell you that because i am not in complete control of what i am doing i use my body, ear, hand to come close to what i imagine would be the next sound that i would “want”.
I respond to each sound as well or as true as i can as they come. So it is almost the constant unknown, and constant intense listening and bodily feeling (you know in the handling of the rocks, with all their crags, different weights, sizes, sonic qualities, balance….etc.) to be able to make a “coherent” piece. (It’s like eating the mushroom in Alice in Wonderland….. you never know what you are going to get exactly) And the rest of it is also how i am feeling at the moment- emotional content and some thoughts too. Sometimes it is more about the energy and feeling/movement of the body, as in “The body moving” than finding a specific sound or note and is more like Dance. So every sound counts and is true to the process and ultimately there are no mistakes. But perhaps, in my experience playing this way, i could say that some works have more ” coherency” than others, or make more”musical” “sense” than others and this is where the
grace/Grace comes in…………… .....................
SM: Did any harm come to your instruments? I am particularly worried about the cello.
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SS: Yes…..it is a bit unavoidable. But i am as careful as i can be. I love my guitar but it is full of scratches and dents and the strings, which i haven’t changed in two years (part of this “work with what is” way…… also it means that the guitar is always changing,) are all worn down ( i think it’s time for new strings!) and one is now missing. With the cello i am a bit more careful. There was a time though that i was in the studio with Onomatopoeia and we were recording what became the “Walking On Water” album, (which was such a great and intense experience for me) and i was playing a ceramic flute at one point and we were playing an intense piece that seemed a voodoon ritual and so i ended up banging it on a bottle over and over and there were pieces of it and glass all over……..) ...............
SM: An argument could be made that, like a recording using extended techniques, this album uses ‘extended situation’ or ‘extended setting’. While field recordings certainly offer setting as a point of importance, “Grace/Precarious” may be the first to use setting in this way. What are your feelings on this? ...................
SS: Wow………..I think it is great that you ask this question! I have thought of and written of “situationist” playing, where the situation is a very personal experience, with all the contents of and encounters of a singular being/beings, the individual musician/musicians with what ever is happening and related to the sound…… strengths, weakness, personality, mind, body, thoughts, the space that one is in; the “musical situation,” all of what is there in this singular moment. I think this opens “music” up, sound/noise wise, time wise, content wise, and creates a more dimensional and intimate musical experience for both musician and listener. ......................
SM: Have there been any live performances of the album? .................
SS: Well it’s all just improvisation and so there really couldn’t be another performance of the album (aside from when it was recorded…but i was alone…..some of it on video) or any of my albums…..it wouldn’t be the same thing. i could repeat similar set ups for playing though…. but i’m not into repeating. ....................
SM: The word “grace” has many meanings– the quality of elegance, a favor bestowed, or even a religious concept of a god’s strengthening influence. What is your reading of this word, and how does that relate to the recording? ...................
SS: I guess for me it is both one’s personal physical grace (”elegance”) of movement, which involves strength, and bodily awareness etc. and Grace, G-d’s or the Tao’s “strengthening”, sustaining, flowing, buoyant “perfection”, and the relationship of the two in the experience of the musician and through it’s precipitate (the phenomenon of the outcome, the music.) ......................
SM: This is the first album of yours to find me, and possibly my listeners as well. What have we missed, and where could we find it? ....................
SS: There are fifteen or so albums that i (and Pax Recordings) have put all on cdbaby online, and so they are available as well on itunes and other digital distribution sites. There are three other solo albums of electric guitar played with rocks and one album of a work that i made from a recording in rural upstate New York that i think is very special in it’s meditative quality(intense one though) and experience of the perfect sonic compositional nature of Nature (the world and the way things go/flow) called “G-d’s Music (fill in your name)”. There are four albums with my duo with Charles Coxon (SIECOX), and the rest are with “experimental” ensemble Onomatopoeia, which utilize pseudo pop elements, giving a very pop first hit, but are very “situational”, all improvised, interesting, and intimate in that i sing as well - the latest one is called “The Quality Of Flowers”. ....................
SM: Any projects/albums/performances on the horizon? ...................
SS: I have several projects on the horizon. One most important one is raising my new beautiful son Isidore, now six weeks old. there is another SIECOX album, and a Sabrina Siegel and Onomatopoeia album to come. There is a work made from a recording of a six mile bike ride with an autistic girl that i have worked with that i think will be called “Biking and Swinging with Sara” (exploring the musicality of moving through space and time this way, with the wind, repetitive bike sounds, repetitive conversation, etc.) There is also the project of finding gallery representation for a new photographic project that i am calling “Natures Recompositions”, which are large prints made from high resolution scans of photographic slides that i left out to Nature for four years……. they are a visual illustration of grace/precarious! They (a gift of Grace) show how perfect nature is in it’s compositional beauty, as microscopic plant, crystal, and insect life moved in on the gelatin emulsion and lived a “landscape”, as opposed to a photographic eye’s framing a landscape. They look, on first view, like abstract expressionist works. I have also been working on a film about Friedrich Nietzsche for a while that i hope to finish before too long. As for performing, Onomatopoeia and i will be performing in Portland, Oregon in December in the Lunar Music series………… For now. .....................................
SM: What albums or artists are you excited about right now? ...................
SS: Right now i’m excited to hear a new release of Erik Satie’s music that i heard about, with his more avant-garde works on it. I’m excited listening to my tape of Victor Jara again, that has been lost for a few years. He is so tremendously beautiful and dimensional in his voice, and words and what he stood for. i am also excited for Charles Coxon to release his “Crab to Sun” album soon, with it’s very special poignancy. ................
http://startlingmoniker.wordpress.com/2007/07/12/siegelinterview/
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Furthernoise review Aug 2007:
Grace/Precarious is the fifth solo recording of improvised compositions from multi-disciplinary artist and musician Sabrina Siegel. Featuring cello, electric guitar and voice, the physicality of playing a musical instrument is the driving force behind Siegel's improvisations. Each composition draws on the circumstances (physical, spatial, emotional, sensual) of its creation to reach a fine balance of grace and precariousness:
"In the relationship of grace to the precarious / in the moment unknown, a space for an event of the body, the spirit / the precipitate of living urges .. Of forces in the timing of nature - in a body and out of the time/space of a sexual surge, a breath, a smile, the handling of a rock, a chair, a bow / what will be envisioned, felt, experienced?"
While Siegel doesn't elaborate on the exact processes she uses to create Grace/Precarious (there is, for me, a disappointing lack of sleeve notes), in tracks such as Drop Bow Down Cello the percussive and wooden sonic materials tempt the listener to take the title literally. A number of tracks betray not just the body of their creator but also the spaces they were created in, from the lingering resonances in Yom Kippur to the more obvious crackling of the flames in the hearth in Fire.
The compositional processes and instruments Siegel uses are varied enough to sustain interest throughout the thirteen tracks, yet still give a sense of cohesion. Siegel's vocals feature on over half the tracks, sometimes as a faint and childlike whisper, sometimes singing a rich harmony and at other times ear-piercingly operatic or slightly hysterical. Instrumental sonorities tend to be jagged or sharply visceral, exploiting in full Siegel's physical relationship to the instrument, making conventional playing styles of bowing or plucking all the more powerful when they are heard.. The final track, Light comes closest to conventional musical models with its strumming and singing, but hardly crosses into comfortable singer-songwriter territory, while a big electric rose mixes gentle, petal-like vocals with thorny jagged strings, as Siegel scratches around in the pegbox of her instrument for inspiration. The opening track, Yom Kippur, features the granular scraping of rock on electric guitar, wearing away the surface to leave moments of near-violent clarity, the aural equivalent of another of Siegel's projects - leaving photographic negatives outside for four years to let nature take its course to reveal a new beauty. It seems likely a similar phenomena will occur with this Grace/Precarious: instead of merely sounding worn down with repeated listening, new dimensions will continually emerge.
Review by Stacey Sewell
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Earlabs........... and Vital weekly
Reviewed by Frans de Waard
9/4/2007
LABEL
[ Pax Recordings ]
Other reviewed releases of SABRINA SIEGEL
Normally releases by Pax Records land on the desk of Dolf Mulder, but for whatever reason this arrived at HQ, and was investigated by fresh ears. Sabrina Siegel is, despite her appearance on fifteen CDs a new name to me. She lives in Eugene, Oregon and she plays guitar and cello, although her background is classical voice and flute. Her pieces are from the field of improvised music, but she certainly has her own edge to it. She plays 'situations' rather than 'pieces'. Placing a bunch of rocks on the strings and then slowly move the guitar - that sort of thing. However the outcome is much more musical, and much less 'fluxus' than my inapt description may sound. Sometimes she does play a real song like thing, with singing and all that, but oddly enough I must admit that these pieces work less for me. I prefer the more abstract sound exploring she does. Sat in a room with a wooden floor, the ambience is of equal importance as the actual playing is. Quite intense music, with a lot of things happening, yet at the same time it seems a lot less that is going on. In these pieces tension is felt, between the player, the instrument and the environment in which things happen. It makes this quite a remarkable release of improvised music.
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Touching Extremes......October 2007
Massimo Ricci
SABRINA SIEGEL - Grace / Precarious (Pax)
Right after my first approach to this album I checked an online interview with Sabrina Siegel, where I discovered that the girl records her music at home in peculiar settings, playing (battering?) her instruments with various tools and - get this - with rocks. She also reports that the strings of her guitar have been left unchanged for years now; I remember that the same thing was once affirmed by Henry Kaiser, and I myself love the sound of decay on old guitar strings. But it’s not exclusively strings that you’ll find in “Grace / Precarious”. Siegel is the archetypal improviser, dragging things around (the initial “Yom Kippur” reminded me somehow of Christian Weber’s “Osaka solo” 3-inch, with all kinds of growls and groans from what I believe being her mistreated cello). She also puts some moan in, almost chuckling while performing acts that the lo-fi qualities of the recording let just intuit. Elsewhere, Sabrina accompanies that same cello with other kinds of vocalization: “I killed the chicken” is a cross between Maria Callas in underpants and the meeting of Eugene Chadbourne and Fred Frith in swimming outfit, while “Drop bow down cello” is my favourite track, Siegel singing along a simple arco movement unthreading many fascinating harmonics. The final “Light” is a stoned “au revoir” concluding a strangely effective, frictional outing that left me fairly unimpressed at first, but reveals substance with each new try.
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Sabrina Siegel “Hand/Rock” : review by Székelyhidi Zsolt @ Spanyolnatha [HaloWatts]
(English translation from Hungarian)
Székelyhidi Zsolt
Hand/RockSabrina Siegel húrhörgetései
siegel.xml
I can't play guitar, but I’ve wanted to do a song since ’95 where I strummed the guitar rhythmically, not with chords, but in strange time signatures and with a synthesizer. It’s all really about creating great music that might go against the grain and conventional notions of tonality, but when it comes down to it, you’re like “Oh, my God, you can really feel this music!”
Sabrina, the modern American antipop phenomenon, is our contemporary experimental guitarist, playing some amazing stuff throughout her second album, free on download from Clinical Archives.
Sabrina is great because she fits into the bigger picture of guitar experimentalists. [Here he goes through a whole list of experimental musicians in Europe see the Hungarian copy to follow http://www.spanyolnatha.hu/halowatts/hand-rock/122/
:] Latvians in ’96 and ’97; Middle East EUBAM; Hungarians named Sőrés Zsoltiék, Zsoltiék Kovács, Gábor Tóth; experimentalism in Hungary in the mid-90s, violin, guitar, sax. Now we listen to this American girl, put in the mp3, remembering the great Hungarian students. We’re also reminded of the 70s scene in England, the Polish, Slovak, Slovene, Scandinavian, French festivals of experimental music, the terrific stuff that has evolved over the past 15-20 hear.
As I mentioned I can’t play guitar, but I love the guitar. I’m pleased Sabrina came to my attention, because she reminds me of the pioneers of experimental music. She reminds us that it’s all about improvisation, of capturing a moment that can’t be repeated, a sameness that can never be the same again because after it’s played the moment is gone forever. She reminds us about the power of spontaneity and pure creativity. She also reminds us of the electronic possibilities, going beyond tone, connecting with the social expectations of her listeners, her success at making the experience timeless, electric!
http://www.spanyolnatha.hu/halowatts/hand-rock/122/
Nem tudok gitározni, de mindig akartam, csináltam is egy számot '96-ban, a Zajtalanításcíműt, hergelem benne a gitárt ütemesen, nem fogok le akkordokat, csak ujjazom ritmusosan, csak pattintom fergetegesen, s beleszámítógépezek a felvételbe, időnként, zaftos-zajosan, megtréfálva vele a kellemes vágyat a jó zenére, a jó dalra. Elrontom direkt, mert én a rontást szeretem, az életem része, az nyújt élvezetet a nagy zenei harmóniálásban, hogy szembe megyek a dallammal, és ajjajt érez, aki csak hallja.
Sabrina az amerikai modern antipop feneleányaként kortárs gitárzajt alkot, kísérleti ricsajt, elképesztő ujjgyakorlatokat. Jójó, jókjók.
Sabrina második albuma ingyen letölthető a Clinical Archives honlapjáról.
Itt jövök a képbe én, aki meghallgatja egyik-másik számát, és persze rögtön felkérdezi, hogy miért jó, miért is jó ez a gitárzaj. Mit hoz a gitártörténelembe Sabrina amerikailag, kísérletileg, ami még nem lett eljátszva '96-ban, '97-ig bezárólag, a Közép-Kelet-Euban? Eltelt 12-3 év. Sőrés Zsoltiék, Kovács Zsoltiék, Tóth Gáborék Magyarországon a '90-es évek közepétől hegedűn, gitáron, elemes szaxofonon eljátszották mindazt, amit Sabrina ma, többet is, mint Sabrina ma, de máshogyan, mint Sabrina. Mi meghallgatjuk az amerikai kiscsajt, betesszük az mp3-ba, emlékezve a nagy magyar elődökre, és hallgatjuk, mi változott.
A gitárzajt a '70-es években az Industrial jelentette Angliában és Amerikában. A szólógitárzajt kevesen művelték, mindenki együttesben gondolkodott, orkesztrában, volumenben, magasságokban. A „meg nem értett" szólózaj lassan lépett ki saját árnyékából, lassan jutott el a közönséghez, hozzám is. Az izgalmas, de elszigetelt lengyel, szlovák, szlovén, skandináv, francia zajfesztiválok, de a több éven át megrendezett magyar fülfesztivál, a szentendrei, mai napig ismert nehézzenei fesztivál néhány kiugródeszka az egy-kétszemélyes alkalmi vagy épp az elszántan együttzenélő zajprojekteknek.
Talán Sabrina Siegel is megjárná Magyarföldet, eljutna Lengyelbe és gitárzajt adna elő, ha megkérnék, azoknak a szervezőknek, akik őelőtte 15-20 évvel már gitáron-gépen hurrogtak, szólóhúron géppendítettek. Ja.
Nem tudok gitározni, de a gitárzenét szeretem. Örömmel figyelem Sabrina ujjgyakorlatait, mondjuk úgy, hogy nem az úttörőké, hanem az utántörőké, a későbbtörőké a zajvilág. Ott és amikor a régiek már mást hurrognak, mást berhelnek, jó visszhangzásra találni a neten, netingyen, jó olyat hallani, amit a régiek már nem tesznek fel, nem adnak közzé, mert lejárt lemez, lejárt és egyszeri élő improvizáció, lejárt és megismételhetetlen, és ezért nem is ugyanolyan, nem is lehet az.
Sabrina Siegel elgondolása tehát, mint annyiunké a zenei netkatyvaszban — visszahallgathatóvá tenni az improvizációt, megkereshetővé tenni az elektronikus világban, ingyenesíteni a fogyasztói társadalmi elvárások közt — valahogy időtlenné tenni, de legalábbis addig ott tartani, amíg van áram.
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Sabrina Siegel — “G(fill in your name)d’s Music”
By startlingmoniker
I’ll just throw this out there– you’ve got to have some chutzpah to title your album “G(fill in your name)d’s Music,” no matter if you leave the “o” out or not. It’s a gutsy move; “God” is probably the most pre-loaded word in the English language. Even an atheist like myself seems compelled to find some sort of “stance” about such a thing.
Of course, rigid beliefs don’t hold too well in an artistic setting. Oftentimes; the ridiculous, the absurd, or the magical are simply too fruitful a foundation of artistic exploration to be jettisoned regardless of their uselessness in other areas of life. Satan is one of my all-time favorite movie characters, endlessly explored with so many fascinating variations. Islamic architecture gives me a hint of some infinite, alien, mathematical fright I also enjoy.
Looking at an album essentially titled “God’s Music,” I want to know– what DOES God’s music sound like?That’s where Sabrina Siegel turns the listener’s expectations upside-down.
With ultra-low bass rumbles threatening to pull my speakers down from their respective walls; the otherwise-natural mix of insects, airplanes, and woodland sounds initially seemed a bit out of place. Early on, I found myself paying attention to one side or the other of this dichotomy… either focusing on the heavy subsonic damage puffing gusts of air at my head, or allowing myself to be pulled into the is-it-live-or-is-it-electronic world arranged so delicately among these monolithic bass noises.
In my initial listen, at least 20 minutes has elapsed before I started being able to hear these sounds together– not a fault of Siegel, but more a function of my disbelief– it doesn’t take a genius to imagine that this is Siegel’s comment on the weakness of perception, with an aural elephant in the room popping in and out of focus.
There’s still the “fill in your name” element, which to me suggests that Siegel is giving us all free reign to hear what we want. I’ve always been intrigued by the Biblical passage, “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
Setting aside the equally-interesting Planck Epoch for a moment, I’ve got to say that this is a pretty cool couple lines. It is similar to what I hear in Siegel’s disc, a massive incomprehensible thing moving about its business of creating the earth.
Like other of Siegel’s works, there is a very raw quality to “G(fill in your name)d’s Music”. I suspect that Siegel is less concerned with the individual soundings as with the overall “setting” the mix creates, much as a nature enthusiast will not begrudge a scene its occasional rotted leaf or dead bird.
All in all, it’s a unique and interesting listening experience that I’d recommend– just be sure to anchor those speakers well unless you also like the sound of falling electronics!
http://startlingmoniker.wordpress.com/2007/12/21/siegel1/
I was raised in New York and later Santa Monica, California. I received my MFA from the University of Oregon and now reside in Eugene, Oregon. My multi-disciplinary work includes Photography, Performance, and Film/Video Installation Arts along with a background in classical voice and flute from childhood. Aside from my solo work, I have performed with Eugene Opera, SIECOX, Onomatopoeia, and other experimental ensembles. I explore improvised composition exclusively and have created sixteen CDs of improvised music.
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More than executing notes or rhythms or melody, a song or a piece of music to me is a field for being--for direct living, feeling, breathing, and expressing in the moment; for sinking deeply, or flying highly into self/Self; or just maintaining our balance--which may reveal a simple beauty or truth. And like life, one rides the waves of grace and the precarious--in this existence, the better we watch and listen, the easier and more potent our flight.
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the creation /performance of "Yom Kippur" by Sabrina Siegel
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Sabrina Siegel at the DIVA Dec. 27 2008 performing/creating "14" , electric guitar and voice
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03:26 in 00:always short film by sabrina siegel featuring the electric guitar music of sabrina siegel (03:26 from the Flutter album) and the Organ Grinder from Weimar
Sabrina, my dear! I apologize for my silence, I have been crazy busy. The idea of playing on the west coast grows bigger and bigger so hopefully we will have a chance to meet soon... unfortunately my wallet gets emptier and emptier ha ha! I will figure something out soon i hope... many thanks for your support! love, E.
Hello Sabrina ... thank you for your very kind words ... I really enjoyed listening to your work ... nice to see manuela in your friends too :) My best to you
featuring kayoko masuda (voice), andreas geyer (bass clarinet) and others total playing time: 73 minutes comes as a factory-made cd with eight-page booklet
