Wrong Turn & The Tape Orchestra

I was part of another great Public Assembly show this month—our 8th! The monthly theme of the show was “Wrong Turn.” I was involved with two interstitial pieces this time around.

The first piece pictured a heated interaction between two meth addicts that leads down a path of escalating mania and panic. I accompanied them with a live-improvised score performed on an Arp Odyssey synthesizer. Getting in sync with these actors and trying to match their rhythms and dynamics with music, all in realtime, was thrilling and unlike anything I’d done before.

The second piece I was involved was an unsettling monologue by a “mother” with some serious boundary issues. For this piece, I designed a “tape orchestra” to be played by the audience, another endeavor that was very different from anything I’ve done. Prior to the show, I recorded 10 cassette tapes with 10 interacting layers of music and sound design. Then, on the night of the show, I placed tape players with those cassettes in them on seats throughout the theater. The audience was cued when to start the tape players by a red light on the side of the stage. Erica Dasher gave an incredible performance as the mother while eerie, lo-fi layers of sound wafted through the theater.

Public Assembly always manages to get me out of my creative comfort zone in really rewarding ways and it’s such a privilege to have such a talented group of creators to explore with. Check out @thepublicassembly on instagram to catch a show.

Heat Wave

I recently wrote and recorded the music for 3 short modern dance pieces that were performed as interludes to the latest Public Assembly show, “Heat Wave.” I had a lot of fun with this one, trying to make the pieces feel like heat. The buzzing of summer cicadas that starts each piece; synths and samples processed through sun-warped tape effects; woozy slide licks running through layers of vibrato and chorus pedals as though even the guitars had been sapped of energy and could barely stand upright in the heat.

I also took inspiration from 2 quite disparate musical sources, classical composer Edvard Grieg and koto innovator Michio Miyagi. Listen closely for samples of Michio’s old RCA recordings from the turn of the 20th century that I took and chopped up against heavy breakbeats. Used even more abstractly, I took Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor and reversed, time-streched, pitch-shifted, distorted, delayed and just generally mangled it into the undulating ambient waves that make up much of ACT II, first mellow and inviting, eventually growing to the doomy sludge that overwhelms the piece.

Even more rewarding than recording the piece itself though, was watching it danced to. I’ve never had the pleasure of having a piece of mine choreographed, and seeing the dancers bring it to life on the night of the performance was surreal and thrilling. Definitely something I hope to do again.

I put a playlist of the dance score below along with a few photos of the dance being performed so you can get a taste of the event. Big, huge fuckin ups to my collaborators on this: writer/director Clara Aranovich, choreographer/lead dancer Marlon Pelayo and dancers Bridget Scheiner & Jakob Olivier Scott. Thanks as well to Shawheen Keyani for the wonderful photos of the night.

 
 

Watch Spring Affair

Remember that short “Spring Affair” I told you about a bit ago? The one that I scored? The one that played the SF Indiefest? The one that is very funny and dry and absurd?? Well now you can watch it online! In fact, right below all these dumb words I’m currently writing is the video. So I’m going to stop writing and just let you get on with the watching. Thanks again to the talented and delightful Oberon Augarde for bringing me on board for this one!

Treehouse x Pavemint Fine Art Show

I’m showing some photos as part a group art show sponsored by Treehouse LA & Pavemint. Lots of great artists showing, plus live music on the rooftop and free drinks. Show is this Saturday — RSVP to attend. It’s a first for me, and I’m a bit nervous (read as: VERY NERVOUS), so come out and say hi to ya boi (that’s me, Josh, I am “ya boi”) and buy a photo! Sneak preview of the 9 prints I’m showing below…

8mm Videos

I visited my grandma recently, and she showed me some 8mm film her family had shot in the 40s and early 50s in their hometown of St. Charles, Illinois. I cut up some of the best bits and put some of my music to it.

The first reel was shot when her brother was home on leave from the Navy during WWII. My grandma was about 11–she’s the figure you see rubbing her hands together.

This second reel was from the springtime in Illinois, made to show off my great-grandmother's garden. My grandma is the blond girl at the start in the black outfit.

Public Assembly!!!

 
 

I'm legitimately using THREE exclamation marks up top there, because I am beyond excited about a new theater collective I am a member of. If you saw my post a few months back about Vista at Mount Wilson Toll Road then you know I've been getting my feet wet in Los Angeles theater recently, both musically and otherwise.  

This new group is called Public Assembly. Goes like this--each month we ask our audience for a theme. Based on that theme the collective writes, directs, and produces a series of original one-acts/performances, all in the span of four weeks. We then perform the show at a venue around town, one night only, complimentary beer/wine, and the cost of the whole thing? Free.

The talent in this group is incredibly high, and I feel lucky to be a part of it. Our inaugural show is one week, so go RSVP your tickets over at this link here. 

The Marías

 
 

Wrote a tune last year with my friend María Zardoya called "I Don't Know You," and the video of the song (performed with her band "The Marías") is blowing up on youtube. Check it out and help push that puppy over the million mark. Her band is great and is playing lots of shows around LA these days, so go catch them live if you can.

VISTA AT MOUNT WILSON TOLL ROAD

Photo by Tory Stolper

Photo by Tory Stolper

I recently got to do something a bit different for me that was pretty amazing. My good friend (and super talented writer/director/producer) Jimmy Loweree and I co-wrote and co-directed a short play called VISTA AT MOUNT WILSON TOLL ROAD as part of New Guard Theater Company's Company Presents series. New Guard is a young, enthusiastic, incredibly talented theater company in Los Angeles. Company Presents is their monthly series of original one-act plays. Each month, all the plays are centered around a common theme, picked the month previous by audience suggestion, and then written and prepped in a month. This month's theme was "The Day After". We got to put our piece up alongside incredible new work by playwrights AJ Marechal, Alex Mirecki, & Nic Murphy. Our actors, Satya Bhabha & Connor Kelly-Eiding were a dream, talented, intelligent, and enthusiastic. They both gave so much honesty and nuance to the characters--I'm still reeling from the thrill of getting to see them bring to life the words we wrote in front of an audience. If you live in LA, I can't recommend more highly going to the next Company Presents show. New Guard is a vital new voice in the LA theater scene, and I'm humbled to have gotten the chance to work with them.