The Same World and Not

N I C H O L A S K N I G H T THE SAME WORLD AND NOT

N I C H O L A S K N I G H T THE SAME WORLD AND NOT Recorded by Nicholas Knight from 1997 - 2000 and in 2015. Move Out, Oriole, Years and Minutes, Robot Liked Your Essay, and Constantly Concluding mastered by Kevin McNoldy at Cphonic Mastering, North Carolina, 2015.

All playing and programming by Nicholas Knight. All the drums tracks are made with Garageband X (including loops altered and unaltered; the Virtual Drummer, altered and unaltered; and full manual programming); keyboard tracks are all manually programmed midi instruments in GBX; most samples are transfers from radio broadcasts recorded onto cassette tapes in the ‘90s; vocals are hijacked from the text-to-speech website Acapela Box and autotuned with Melodyne.

Gear: A Fernandes Strat, a fretless Fender Stratocaster, two acoustic guitars; Yamaha G100 212ii guitar amp; JVC KD-D50 cassette player; Tascam Portastudio 464 4-Track; a Shure SM58 mic; iMac 2.66 GHz i5; an iPad; Garageband X; Melodyne Single Track; Final Cut Studio 7.

Thanks: Joianne Bittle. Matt Allen, Jeremy Allen; TJ Barnes, Paul Fuelling, Allen France; Eric Peters, Dave Haughn, Jeremy Novak; Kengo Hioki and Yumiko Kanazaki; Geoff Lowe and Jacqueline Riva; Jeremie Boyard; Kevin McNoldy; Murat Cannoyan; Chris and Wes Knight; Joianne Bittle again!

Issued by Subject Predicate Projects [SP-024], 2015

REPOSE

P H OTO G R A P H S

2009 - 2014

Each spread in this booklet includes a brief description of an audio track on the left side, and a photograph on the right side.

These photographs, taken between 2009 and 2014, were not shot as a group or guided by premeditated intent. They were assembled after the fact, based on the recognition of a tendency I didn’t know was there: when I travel, I take pictures of the rooms I’m staying in.

Often the bed is shown, but sometimes it’s other details, like a desk, or the view out the window.

These images have a specific dependence on their captions. Without that little bit of information to tether them to an exact place, at an exact time, they threaten to drift off into generality.

Revisiting these songs almost 20 years later, they are inseparable from my memories of the places, and times, I made them; they are breadcrumbs through the woods.

So too, I suppose, are the photographs. Different loaf, different forest, but a deeply related impulse. I hope you, viewer and listener, might like to tear off some bits for your own path.

Move Out written by NK in 2000 this version recorded in 2015

From February 1998 to March 2000, I lived on Dupont Street in Brooklyn. It was a very active time for my music-making. This was the last song I wrote and recorded in that apartment.

For this 2015 version, I elaborated on the middle section a bit, adding the changes in key from Bb to A to G#.

The first version just stayed in A until I petered out.

San Francisco

12 September 2009 8:43:45 PM 1/60 sec

Don’t Get Around Much Anymore written by Duke Ellington and Bob Russell in 1942 recorded in 2015

Yeah, so I’m a really lousy singer. But vocals needed a solution, and I figured, if the computer can do drums and keyboards and more, why not ask it to sing too?

I typed the lyrics into a text-to-speech website and recorded that audio; I aligned it in Garageband with a vocal track of my own for timing; then I tuned it with Melodyne, before re-importing it into GB for the final mix.

This is the only song in the collection that doesn’t have its roots in the ‘90s for me. I started playing it around 2004.

Nice

1 February 2010 7:41:01 AM 1/100 sec

Oriole written by NK in 1997 this version recorded in 2015, with one element retained from original 1997 recording

I lived in alone in a basement apartment my last two years in Bloomington, Indiana, at 11th and Grant streets. It had brown shag carpet and came furnished with black faux-leather furniture, really great.

This was the most elaborated song I recorded in that apartment. I listened to TJ Kirk a lot around that time, and this song bears their imprint.

Paris

4 May 2010 11:58:26 AM 1/40 sec

Years and Minutes written by NK in 1995 / 1999 / 2015 this version recorded in 2015, with the opening retained from a 1999 recording

The main set of changes for this song were in place in 1995. I decided the tune could go back and forth between a somber feeling and a funky feeling. When I explained this to Matt Allen, he informed me that the same thing applies to every song ever.

So I settled on the more somber approach. In 1999 I added the turnaround. In 2015 I shortened the turnaround for the two bridges in the interior of the song, to tighten it up.

Miami

2 December 2010 7:17:35 AM 1/400 sec

Down At The End of Main Street written by NK, TJ Barnes, and Paul Fuelling in 1994 this version recorded by NK in 2015, with Text-to-Speech vocals and NK providing the chorus vocal

In the summer of 1994, after our freshman year of college, TJ Barnes, Paul Fuelling, and I joined up with Allen France to form Cherokee Indian Bingo League.

We only ever intended to exist for one summer, and that’s what happened. We recorded this for our album excuse me, 4-track cassette - “Nineteen”.

This song was based on an actual event in our hometown of Mt. Vernon, Indiana. There were two competing bars at the corner of Main St and Water St - the Peerless and the Riverview. Both were seedy. The Riverview burned

down. After that, you could buy a t-shirt that read “I partied at the Peerless while the Riverview burned.”

That seemed like a great start for a country song, and we made up this story to explain the event.

Everglades

18 February 2012 8:35:03 AM 1/200 sec

Main Street Interlude written by NK in 1997 this version recorded in 2015

In 1997, I re-recorded Down At The End of Main Street.

I always thought of it as a Tom Waits-inspired song, and so I wrote this little instrumental break to go with it. It is meant to be in the spirit of the instrumental section at the end of Anywhere I Lay My Head.

For this 2015 version, I transcribed the original improvised acoustic guitar solo and tweaked it a bit into this synthesizer melody. Since the new version of Down At The End... has a computer vocal, the synth lead on Interlude seemed fitting.

West Palm Beach 19 February 2012 8:26:35 AM 1/40 sec

Metropolitan Gnome recorded by NK in 1999 remixed with added elements in 2015

Fun with metronomes and tape speeds. The main action of this track is all done analog with tapes recording the beeping of a metronome and slowing it down and layering it. In the late 90’s I used to record a lot of stuff off the radio, and I was occasionally indiscriminate about those tapes. I might just grab one at random to record a new project, so there are always these leftover bits around my songs, staticky broadcast fragments.

I added in messages from our answering machine tape, in retrospect a ghastly piece of technology, but charmingly ghostly too.

The high pitched beeping is added new with digital effects, because hey, it sounds cool.

Rotterdam 8 June 2012 7:32:36 AM 1/250 sec

Robot Liked Your Essay written by NK in 1995 / 1997 / 1999 this version recorded in 2015, with several samples retained from a 1999 recording

The title is taken from a late ‘90s New York Times article about automated computer grading of student writing samples. The technology was very primitive then and provided a lot of reason to be wary of it.

Since then the technology has improved and now provides even more reason to be wary.

I introduced this song to everybody that I played with, because it was fun and I wanted input. That included Dave Haughn and Eric Peters, when we played in the basement on Smith Ave in Bloomington, and one time when Jeremy Allen and I drank a six pack in my apartment on 11th Street and played music together. The distorted guitar riff in Part C is based on a bassline that Jeremy improvised that night.

This is my most fusion-y song, with changing time signatures, and that descending line that doesn’t follow any rules.

The structure is symmetrical: A - B - C - B - A The time goes: 5/4 - 4/4 - 7/8 - 4/4 - 5/4

Angers

16 October 2012 7:22:07 AM 1/15 sec

Cell Division recorded by NK in 1999

One night on Dupont Street I was recording Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out for the umpteenth time. On playback, I heard a phantom voice in the background. My microphone was picking up one side of a cell phone conversation. It was magic.

So I improvised this track as an excuse to keep rolling tape and capture more of the phone call. In the original I included an awful percussion track made by banging on a coffee can with a chopstick. Not even modern technology could make that sound good, so I replaced that in 2015 with a digital claypot percussion track. I also edited out some of the guitar noodling, which shortened the track by about 50%.

Costa Rica

23 April 2013 7:48:13 AM 1.3 sec

Flower Picker Blues written by NK in 1997 this version recorded in 2015, with lead guitar retained from original 1997 recording

In the summer of 1997 I took a job working on a flower farm once a week outside of Bloomington. It was idyllic, and operated by some unreconstructed hippies, who were numerous in the area. We cultivated the flowers in the early summer, then cut them and prepared them for market as the season wore on.

One day I was scheduled to work, but I knew I had no future in flower farming, and I just didn’t feel like going.

I called in “sick” and with my new-found free time, I recorded this.

It’s a blues in E major, and for the I-chord, I adapted the opening chords from the Allman Brothers’ Sweet Melissa.

Lisbon

11 July 2013 7:40:34 PM 1/470 sec

O Rio recorded by NK in 1997

The center section of Oriole has two parts, and this first study is called O Rio. A study for the second part is called Ole! It’s not included in this collection.

The lead guitar on this is influenced by Marc Ribot’s playing on Tom Wait’s “Rain Dogs” album. Or that’s what I tell myself.

Porto

14 July 2013 9:41:09 AM 1/50 sec

LSLB (MLK) first version recorded in 1998 this version recorded in 2015, except the middle section retained from the 1998 recording

First section is Lie Still Little Bottle (1998), written

by They Might Be Giants (John Linnell and John Flansburgh); middle section contains a snippet of REM’s 1991 MTV Unplugged concert, Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven (1971), and some Duke Ellington played backwards; closing section contains an extensive sample of Superlyrical (1998) by Big Pun featuring Black Thought, Swing Low Sweet Chariot (1959) by Johnny Cash, and audio of a 1954 Martin Luther King speech called “Recovering Lost Values”.

Vocal in the first section is text-to-speech autotuned with Melodyne, which came out sounding a lot like Laurie Anderson. That’s unintentional but not unwelcome. The bass is an acoustic guitar tuned down almost an octave so that the strings smack and buzz when played. Good and sloppy.

Little Rock

8 January 2014 9:27:53 PM 1/20 sec

Duke for Joi recorded by NK in 1999

WKCR is Columbia University’s radio station in New York. To celebrate Duke Ellington’s 100th birthday in 1999, they played nothing but his music for 2 weeks, or maybe more. I filled up several cassettes taping those broadcasts.

One day during that marathon, I had two messages on my answering machine when I got home from work - a wrong number from a French woman, and a message from Joi confirming that she was returning from her year living in Italy and would be moving in with me in New York.

I improvised this song that night and included both messages. The drums were added with the computer in 2015.

Marfa

21 January 2014 12:26:31 PM 1/125 sec

Cane Sugar written by NK in 1999 this version recorded in 2015

Hurricane Floyd glanced off of New York City in September of 1999. The city authorities warned everyone to get ready, disaster preparedness and all that.

We hunkered down and waited for the storm (which turned out to be little more than heavy rain). To pass the time I recorded this song.

The opening section is in 5/4, and the clapping is meant to evoke that mnemonic device “Who Parked the Car, I Did�. But its placement in relation to the rhythm keeps shifting, more or less ruining its helpful purpose.

Montpellier

6 February 2014 2:48:11 PM 1 sec

Constantly Concluding recorded by NK in 1999

This one is an outlier. When I dug back into my old tapes in December 2014, I found this recording on the second day. I had no memory and no record of it. It made me think I would find many other orphaned treasures on the old tapes, but this was the only one.

In its current form, it’s played back at half-speed, with computerized drums added in. The guitar and slide fills duck in and out, another 2015 mixing choice. It sounds like it’s always about to end, but takes forever to do so, thus the title.

The rhythm guitar track has an organ effect on it, a hat

tip to the important influence Charlie Hunter has had on my playing - at least on my conception of my playing, if not my actual ability.

Brussels

15 September 2014 7:27:22 AM 1/120 sec

Ursa You Needn’t opening written by NK in 1996 middle section by Thelonius Monk in 1944 this version recorded in 1997

I fooled around with a funky riff for a couple years that I eventually titled Ursa Minor. I couldn’t quite get it to go anywhere.

In 1997 I joined this riff with Monk’s Well You Needn’t.

The track returns to Ursa Minor for a hopped-up solo; then there is a silly slide-guitar statement of Monk’s phrase, and quick hit of Ursa Minor to close.

This track is meant “to cut the treacle” of the preceding track, and be the actual ending to this collection.

Mt. Vernon

26 September 2014 10:22:59 AM 1 sec

Copyright Nicholas Knight, Subject Predicate Projects, 2015