36 Years Later

Let Me Install This Dishwasher

Mark Rushton’s Abundant Spare Time is a weekly email on Substack where I talk about my ongoing work as a recording artist and visual artist. This is my 158th weekly email.

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This week’s topics:

• 36 Years Later

• Meditative Drift - Energetics

• Omniessence

• Pat Metheny Group - “We Live Here”

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36 Years Later

I had an extra ticket to the Pat Metheny Group concert in Iowa City on September 17, 1989, and asked the program director of the college radio station, Ann, if she wanted to go along - and we went. A week or two later, she went along with me to see Phillip Glass at Clapp Recital Hall.

36 years later, still together. I like using this date rather than the wedding date in 1995.

There’s an excellent story about Phillip Glass from the late 70s that I always like to pass along:

“I had gone to install a dishwasher in a loft in SoHo,” Glass says. “While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to find Robert Hughes, the art critic of Time magazine, staring at me in disbelief. ‘But you’re Philip Glass! What are you doing here?’ It was obvious that I was installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be finished. ‘But you are an artist,’ he protested. I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well and that he should go away and let me finish.”

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Meditative Drift - Energetics

Are the embeds working now? Who knows? Here’s a link in case everybody changes their mind.

This is a new, single track by me as Meditative Drift. It’s bell chimes with electronic processing. Eventually I’ll release an entire album of this type of music. This will be out on the streamers on October 1st, but is available at Bandcamp now.

The frequencies and resonance of bell chimes are always captivating, especially when recorded closely with a microphone, but adding the processing of electronics really adds dimension to the recording.

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Omniessence

Omniessence is also out on the streamers and fully on Bandcamp on October 1st. I made this on my Suzuki Omnichord with processing.

The track “Elegant Getaway” can be previewed from Bandcamp.

I think it’s a beautiful album full of hazy, dreamy, early 80s electronic pulses and synth washes. It’s 10 tracks, about 37 minutes or so. I have much more in this style for future releases.

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Pat Metheny Group - “We Live Here”

This was released in 1995, but a year prior Pat Metheny had released “Zero Tolerance for Silence”, an album of avant-garde guitar noise (… but let’s be honest, it was “all noise” … ) that had more in common with Lou Reed’s “Metal Machine Music” than Metheny’s typical fusion of Wes Montgomery-inspired guitar runs, expertly-played melodic jazz, and world rhythms.

The title track of “We Live Here” is also atypical of Metheny’s usual musical fare, but has remained hugely inspiring to me.

It starts off with electronic noise in an almost Morse Code style before a frantic, relentless Afro-Cuban beat kicks in. Most musicians, especially jazz guys, want “variation”, but I love total repetition and this totally speaks to me.

The other thing that’s cool here is Metheny’s guitar, which is processed to sound like a trumpet.

A long time ago, I read Metheny’s comments on using guitar synthesis. I guess he has a thing called “Pat’s GR-300” patch, a nod to the original Roland GR-300 he started using in the late 70s and early 80s. Metheny’s philosophy, as I remember it, was to use the guitar synth to craft a particular sound - rather than using every available sound possible. It’s like that old Miles Davis quote, “It takes a long time to sound like yourself…”

My approach is similar. When I use particular synth apps and instruments, along with my processing, I’m trying to come up with my own sound. I do work in a variety of styles and instruments, but I try to impose limitations to keep my recordings sounding somewhat familiar.