Someone suggested that Suss Müsik repost our contributions to the weekly Disquiet Junto projects, because they enjoy reading the explanations of the tracks. While you’re reading the original post, make sure you check out the other contributors’ works as well.
Artistic collaboration is a form of automatic writing. In his classic book A Vision, W.B. Yeats discussed the importance of relinquishing to spontaneous discovery. “I was told that I must write,” according to the unconscious impulses that Yeats claimed had penetrated his creative process. “That I must seize the moment between ripe and rotten—that there was a metaphor of apples about to fall and [had] just fallen.”
Whether due to supernatural alignment or the ideomotor effect, Yeats was on to something. Productive creative dialogue is a magical experience. Listen to how African percussion music is built around polyrhythmic conversations, for example, forming a singular one-on-one connection between two individual members among a large troupe of performers.
Suss Müsik took part in a similar discovery recently with Wm. Wolfgang Allen. A rough, simple piano phrase was recorded to 8-track. Allen then emoted a beautifully wordless vocal: vulnerable, anguished, redemptive. The piano phrase was refined using the vocal as guide, which was then followed by a new vocal response. Not a word was spoken between participants; the dialogue was entirely musical. Softly percolating bass, Moog synth and percussion finish the piece.
The result is both lament and celebration, a deeply personal and transcendent interaction. To again quote Yeats: “I do not know what my [creation] will be to others — nothing perhaps. To me it means a last act of defense against the chaos of the world … a tragedy of separation and rejection, which instead of asking whether it is not something almost incredible, [it] clings to all that is vague and obvious.”
The piece is titled Translating and dedicated to the memories of W. Larson and T. Thompson. RIP both.