Drones, minimalism, field recording and other retro-modern composition for liminal and deep listening; headphones are suggested. All original compositions by artist, author and musician Brian C. Short (Solid Objects, BCS). Updated fortnightly.
Also wondering about the teleology of scorpions, and why they're so good at dying. I mean, they really are good at it. And then getting reborn…[for electric guitar, cello, & sine wave oscillator] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
_______ raccoon got under the _____. __ pulled off the panel to the ____, having moved _____ the bricks holding it __ place.[for electric guitar, cello] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
Bear has no insides.[for electric and acoustic guitar, synth, speck, speckle, the witnessing of it] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
Washed clean, like nothing. I feel like nothing. That's just fine.[for guitar, synth, and stillness within movement] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
With the urgency of birds.[for guitar, ears, hair, and flight] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
It feels cruel. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
And no, I don't want to go anywhere or talk to anyone.{for acoustic and electric guitar, noise floor, stereo fields, synthismickens, blaubait] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
You know. When you're an alien. When you see with your eyes closed.[for field recording, narrative voice, synth, electric guitar] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
Moments. And other moments. It becomes difficult to speak.[For guitar, synth, formant oscillator, Caribbean cruise, killers on the Caribbean cruise, and column] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
Some, in stickhouse, the.[for guitar, clatter, glass shard, synth, & suchness] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
I am / they are / the killers of form.[for gilding, glitter, for synth, forms, acoustic guitar, and forms] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
Halfway held, and then halfway made something of.[for acoustic guitar, synth, boiling or steaming] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
Among the other things I'd neglected to learn, or learn proper, was the use of the dead-body voice. This will not be my mistake going forward.[for acoustic/electric guitar, synth, speck, speak, and moments] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
“The pale ones. I think you know just how pale they can be.”“Very pale.”“Very pale, yes.”[for electric guitar, synth, plinth, pale, somber & soak] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
if only in the fact[for voice, cello, electric guitar, synth] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
You are in your dead-body phase while you're undergoing. Things.And I should be here in the way of the line-splitters.And I think that I am.[for electric & acoustic guitar} This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
I will be fine, it will be fine, we'll deal with it.[for cello, dvina, electric and acoustic guitar, synth] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
The featherless hatchling of some baby bird was crawling under the skin of my right arm. I could see the bulge of its beak as it crept steadily toward the elbow joint. Somehow, I simply knew that it was a just-hatched – or really never-hatched – baby bird, and could envision the rest of it, though it was only the beak that was visible, bulging up through the skin. It frightened me; I couldn't stop its progress, though I pressed down on the skin and muscle of my forearm, as if that might convince it to stop. Should I smash the creature? Should I break its fragile beak? I wasn't sure that I could even do so if I tried, though it seemed perhaps possible. But I was worried about then having the corpse of this young, and never-even-properly-born, creature still stuck in my arm, having no way to get it out. I knew besides that it was already dead; that this could in no way be a live baby bird, but more like an unborn embryo, its egg prematurely cracked. Yet it crept along incessantly, apparently very strong. I tried alternately ignoring it – though I could feel it crawling in there – and then to block its progress, squeezing my arm, but I stopped short of actually trying to crush the bird. Still, it crept along, indifferent to my efforts, making its inexorable way up toward my shoulder.[for synth, electric guitar} This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
The ground floor room is someplace where I'm not supposed to go. Inside, it is a mystery to me, but my father seems to know it. He, at least, knows what it contains. And though I'm not to go there myself, he promises that one day we can take a “vacation” there, and he will show it to me. I imagine it as some very nice place, full of interesting things to do and friendly people. Alternately, he leaves me with the impression that the ground floor is a frightening place, full of dangers and depravity, and that's why it's so important I never go there by myself. Yet he never takes me. The years pass, and now I'm the age that I am now. My father has been dead for a long time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
The only thinghe knew for surewas that noneof itwas his idea.[for electric guitar, field recording, synth] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
…the stuff so old, I don't even know what it is, but can only feel my way around the edges of it, see it's tracks through the dirt.[for electric guitar, cello, synth] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
What is awful about this is how utterly normal it is. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
“Rather than putting things together, let's take them apart,” says the man with no eyes. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
A time of life / of simply having answers / to questions you'd never thought to ask.[for field recording, acoustic & electric guitar, piano] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
Who is Mr.?[for synth, electric guitar] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
Reeds and tall grasses throughout.[for field recording, synth, cello] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
This kid is just annoying. Though he's got his own prominent role, now he's shadowing me on stage, hovering around and peering over my shoulder at the card in my hand as I'm trying to read it. Though I've been doing this part for a while, tonight I simply can't manage. I stumble through the sentences and flub it terribly. It isn't necessarily because of this kid who's bugging me (though the kid is definitely bugging me), but for some more personal reason. Finally, in utter frustration, I give up, saying, “A*****e. You want to read this? Then f*****g read this. Because apparently I can't.” Someone in the audience laughs, but I don't know if it's because he thinks that's part of the play, and it's funny, or because he sees what's really happening to me, and that's funny. But I've just had it – I am done. I throw the card at this obnoxious kid and stalk off through the auditorium. The kid can have the part if he wants it. I'm f*****g sick of all of it.[for cello, electric guitar] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
Armies of collapse. [for electric guitar, piano & acoustic guitar] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
Armies of soft derangement.[for dvina, cello, electric guitar, pressure0Oo] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
[for electric guitar, synth] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
[for electric guitar, cello] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
“Asakusa” is a response to my first visit to Japan in February of 2023, staying in the Asakusa neighborhood of Tokyo, with its river and elevated highway and frenetically busy temple. I don't know why I chose Asakusa for my first visit, but then again, why not? Knowing nothing about the layout of Tokyo, it made as much sense as anything for a place to start. The piece is composed first from field recordings from the area, arranged to form a narrative structure, then layered with acoustic/electric guitar and noise from a Landscape Stereo Fields device. Given that the base layer of field recordings is in discrete movements, the more conventionally musical elements follow this, making the piece more a suite of short chapters that form a whole than a single, durational piece, as I'm more typically prone toward. It captures, I think, some of the chilly brightness of late winter in that part of the city, heard through the naiveté of an enthusiastic, if somewhat exhausted, first-time visitor. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
The several-times silence (out) of need and remembrance.[for acoustic & electric guitar, cello, synth, just intonation] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
I like the idea that people are a story. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
[for electric & acoustic guitar, cello, dvina, ghost] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
Among? Or first, you see: a-mong. He will go a-mong them. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit briancshort.substack.com
Persons in juxtaposition; the heads of persons, juxtaposed. They will – they do – face each other and they will (do) speak, are (are) speak(ing).
Examination of the offering; the offering is accepted, and grrr…. grrrrr… the god becomes manifest.
I shaved today my muzzy mug, shaved it bare and clear. Cut off my eyes, my nose, my mouth, I even cut the ears.
The room was full of people who were not there. Amsterdam, August 2022.
Running through Chinatown, I have several small pins nailed into my face.
It's not for nothing.
The focus now has shifted somewhat between the two.
The treachery of homes and Liberation through Eating.
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