“Chinese Whispers is a party game in which a whispered message is passed around a circle in the expectation that, in the telling, it will become comically distorted or exaggerated by the time it completes the circuit. In English, Chinese Whispers has become an idiomatic expression describing how a story passed from person to person will, inevitably, evolve or mutate in unpredictable ways. With Lady From Shanghai, the goal was to meticulously apply a Chinese Whispers methodology to the composition and recording of a coherent and complex musical work.
Pere Ubu – Free White; 414 Seconds
In the studio, the individual musician must be sequestered, provided with the minimum of information and protected from suggestion and influence. All that he can know must be restricted to the state of the composition at the stage of its evolution that the Producer chooses to engage him. As much as possible, composition should occur during the recorded performance. To facilitate, the Producer may need to lie, misdirect, misinform or confuse the musician. It may be helpful to move the goal posts at the last moment. The musician should not be allowed to see the Big Picture until the composition exists in a near finished form, and, ideally, only after he has contributed to it. The musician should be alone with his thoughts, uncertain but determined. Isolated. The goal should be to capture the unique and distinctive voice of the individual as he struggles to cobble. Only once over the course of the entire Lady From Shanghai project did any two band members find themselves in the same building at the same time. Even then, Michele and Robert were not in the same room at the same time for more than thirty-seven seconds. Neither heard what the other was playing. Conversation was limited to pleasantries. I shooed them away brusquely.ps: The difference between a musician and a civilian is that the musician will go out on stage in front of 10,000 people and make a complete ass of himself and then go out and do it all over again the next night without a second thought. “
David Thomas
The Arklight is a NYC based trio. They make noise pop. Digital album or cassette:
I don’t know why, but the player starts the set from the 13th song. Make the start from the first song!