Free

Did a bit of working on music throughout the day yesterday. I'm working on this song for that P.A.I.N. compilation thingie (Pennsylvania Ambient Industrial Noise...they're doing a thing open to anyone anywhere). I decided to take a direct approach and hit all three marks with TINA (I'll leave you to fill in the blanks). I finished the "industrial" part, which I'd almost had finished. Then I did the "noise" part (I'm hoping it's visceral enough, I may need to revisit it). Mary Beth and I went up to Crosstown for the Sound Observations thing. It was a performance by Nicole Mitchell fronted by a panel discussion on afrofuturism. Both parts were really excellent. The panel was great. It had Sheree Renée Thomas, Nicole Mitchell, James Dukes, Troy L. Wiggins, and Danian Jerry. Nicole's performance was really great. She plays flute and she mixed in a bit of electronics (which she says is a new thing to her). She started solo on the flute, doing lots of tricks to get every sound possible out of the instrument. She had effects on the table, and at first I thought she was going through the effects but I later realized the effects were hooked up to the other microphone and this was all acoustic. Then she moved over to a sampler and was back and forth between the dry and wet microphones. It was really good stuff. I saw her play with Henry Grimes at Big Ears last year, though not knowing anything about who she was at the time. So it was really awesome to see her solo.