Black Kaspar Winter 2017/2018: Drone Wars

I'm in the process of organizing my thoughts to approach a show near the end of February. It will likely be the last Black Kaspar show for a while, though nothing is really certain.

Since the end of 2016, the band has undergone a lot of changes. Black Kaspar was always, in theory, a "project" band; the idea was to recruit a band on a project basis. The first Black Kaspar recording, the ridiculously rare Pain Free Living from 2008, featured two of my TBW! band mates, Matt Whitaker and Tony Woollard. Not long after that, I started working with the rest of final TBW! lineup -  Heather Floyd, Dan Willems, and Chris Willems - along with drummer Bart Galloway. Galloway, Floyd, and the Willems brothers were working as the Sick City Four at the time, and I (as Black Kaspar) referred to the Sick City Four as the "mobile strike force", the idea being that, while Black Kaspar was still theoretically revolving membership, working with the Sick City Four allowed me to do live shows on short notice without recruiting a new band each time. Eventually, the SC4 became part of Black Kaspar, due in part to my laziness and homebody tendencies (which meant that I didn't really make a lot of connections with other musicians), and in part to the fact that I really, really like playing with Heather, Dan, Chris, and Bart, and really like what we were doing at the time. After 2008's Pain Free Living, there are two bandcamp releases, 2011's The Rocker and The Null Set, which feature various paramutations of Dan, Chris, Heather, and I working out nebulous ideas and concepts. The first coherent Black Kaspar release was, in my opinion, 2012's The Expression Machine. Jim Marlowe's Loin Seepage label put out Schizo-Tech in 2014, which was the last thing to feature Bart on drums.

After a while, SC4 wound down, and Bart drifted away. Black Kaspar continued, drummerless, for most of 2014 and 2015. We played live rarely; once, to be precise, in a rather infamous show at the Zanzibar in Louisville.

In 2014, we released The Tower. Ruins (The Tower Pt. II) came along in 2016, along with Science Fiction, which included a live show from 2012 and a solo no-input mixer piece I recorded in my basement the same year.

In the spring of 2016, we hooked up with drummer Jeff Komara, just out of Tropical Trash (he is on the first two singles and the album, as well as a couple cassettes). From spring to the end of 2016, the band was Heather, Dan, Chris, Jeff, and I, and it was the most productive period of the band, not to mention the most "band like", although that exact lineup never played live. It was during that period that Year of the Centipede was recorded (released on Gubbey Records in March of 2017). There is still over an hour of recordings from those 2016 sessions that haven't seen the light of day, all of it at least as good as Year of the Centipede.

At the end of 2016, Dan and Heather left Louisville for Indianapolis, and the weekly quintet workshops ended. The idea was to have Dan and Heather come down for the tape release in March 2017, but, for various reasons, that did not materialize. Brian Manley from Insect Policy ably assisted us at the release show and a time or two thereafter, but for the most part, as 2017 dawned, Black Kaspar was a trio, with Jeff, Chis, and I. A fucking power trio, mind you. Achievement unlocked!

The sound changed as well . . . probably as dramatically as at any point throughout the long and winding Black Kaspar road. BK had toyed with the wall of droning guitars before - Death March in 2014, "The Rocker", "Fukushima", "After Image/Beyond Image" from the first two e.p.s in 2011, "Taste the Rainbow" from Gubbey Record's 2013 Headcleaner Louisville music compilation, and even the very first public performance was a four guitar drone - but drone and guitar walls became the centerpiece of the trio sound, driven by Jeff's krautrock drums.

The power trio version of the band played out more frequently than any other version of the band - though that was still only five times, and never outside Louisville (the band has never played outside of Louisville) - and amassed a big backlog of recordings, some of which show up on Soundcloud. There is one bandcamp album, Radiate, and there is a double cassette planned for 2018 from the trio.

In November of 2017, the band (by this time it was functioning more as a band, and less as a project) decided to stop regular rehearsals/recordings/live shows to work on other projects. Chris Willems and I will continue to work together on projects which may or may not end up being Black Kaspar, while Jeff works on his own projects (though likely our paths will cross again). The sole remaining live commitment is to our friend Doodlehound's book/CD release in February.

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Which is a long set-up for the fact that I've got to get my shit together for the February show. I know Chris is on board, I know Dan and Heather won't be, but beyond that, I don't know. Back to the original concept: get a project, recruit a band, develop an idea, go.

Part of the most recent work stoppage on the band is that we were headed to what appeared to be a dead end. I am comfortable banging my head against a wall, as is Chris (there is a reason TBW! lasted for twenty years), but we were at a stalemate with the drones. Black Kaspar has always orbited somewhere between three poles: noise, free improv, and drones. With the trio, drones came to the fore - purely my deal, nobody else's, just seemed to make sense to me. But we worked it, twisted it, pushed it, and finally wore it out. It was high time to reset, work another angle, try a different tack.

To that end, I decided to dedicate the February show to . . . drones? Yeah, that's how I think. Let's have a going away party to the drones; makes perfect sense to me. Hence, Drone Wars!

So I've put together a scrapbook to define my headspace for the show. Thought I would share it with you. It starts with Wagner's majestic overture to Das Rheingold, and continues through the first act: Wagner starts with a sonorous drone, where does he go from there? It also covers Buddhist chants that leaven the droning throat singing with clanging gongs and howling reeds. Sunn O))) and Earth are there, of course, but there's a little disruption and noise as well, from people like John Cage, Robert Ashley, and Pauline Oliveros. There's noise that becomes hypnotic, repetitive, and droning, from Throbbing Gristle. Krautrock's there too, with the eponymous song from Faust IV.  There's silence, like the extended silence that begins Ives's Sixth Symphony. And the drones come in different flavors, from drone metal to Tony Conrad/Phil Niblock/Henry Flynt minimalism (which is much more interesting from where I'm sitting).

I won't be composing much for the show: just recruiting the band, setting some parameters, developing some leitmotifs, and letting the chips fall where they may. There was a time when I was considering really fleshing this out, working past the February deadline and creating a composed work. That still may happen; but right now, it doesn't seem likely. I've really been itching to work more noise back into the sound, and I'm always heavily into improv, so it looks like the other two poles may end up re-asserting themselves.

As for the future of the band, that too is unclear. Being in a loud band means two things: one, heavy equipment; and two, hearing damage. I have been doing this for a very long time, and the amplifiers have taken a toll on my hearing. That can be addressed with visits to the doctor and earplugs; but, barring BK becoming famous enough to make enough money to afford roadies, the day is coming when I won't be able to move those big ass amps and speaker cabinets any more. I mean, that's not happening tomorrow, but it is on the horizon. Maybe when I recruit a new band I need to also get people who can move my shit?

Anyway, below is the playlist/scrapbook. It will be changing as I get closer to the show, so you can follow it on Spotify, or just return to this post as it will automatically update here. I also plan to add more notes on this blog as I make them, and ideally I will get a recording of the set as well.

Ciao!