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CB0001 Jim Fox:
Last Things
The
Copy of the Drawing (39:36) Janyce
Collins, voice Jim Fox,
electronics Text
derived from No One May Ever Have the Same Knowledge Again: Letters
to Mt. Wilson Observatory 1915-1935, edited by Sarah Simons, published
by The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Los Angeles.
Used by
permission of the publisher. Recorded
and mixed by Jim Fox, The Room, Los Angeles, 1992.
Last
Things (21:01) Marty
Walker, bass clarinet Chas
Smith, pedal-steel guitar Rick Cox,
glass guitar Jim Fox,
piano and electronic keyboards Recorded
and mixed by Jim Fox and Chas Smith,
The Room,
Los Angeles, and TDS Studios, Encino, CA, 1987.
This is
music that sounds like it was made in California--not the California
of celluloid freeway madness, but rather that California of cool
northern beaches or the Mojave Desert as seen in the stark intimacy
of Joshua Tree or even the remembered despair of the landscape around
Donner Pass. This is a music of honesty, seductive and delicate yet
strong and dark. In a way, Fox is a quintessential California
composer in the lineage of Cowell, Rudhyar, and Harrison. Like
theirs, his is music that could come only from the West.
--Daniel
Lentz
The
Copy of the Drawing: "The idea of time at no instant, a
beginning, of space in expanse, no point an end." Embryonic
music, soft, edgeless, without form, sounds drifting through time as
clouds drifting through space. The voice almost inaudible, the text
reduced to a poetic breathing which recalls Beckett, but without his
bleakness, even though this is not necessarily an amicable
environment. The correspondents' thoughts are used as evocative
images rather than as vehicles of communication--as if the remnants
of their ideas were drifting through the endless void. There is an
extraordinary alertness to the import of these messages, an evocative
nothingness, an epic scarcely begun. "There is no rain there.
The light is always the same and the temperature has not changed one
degree in a million years."
Last
Things: Deep voids, echoing canyons, and an endlessly elongated
set of changes, repeated, repeated. A distantly threatening piano
evokes lowering storm clouds. The pedal-steel guitar creates a
dominant over a tonic pedal miles from its roots, seeking a new
identity. An almost Debussyian impressionism conveyed by a deceptive
simplicity and consistency of style. "These are deep waters..."
--Christopher
Hobbs
Jim Fox's
music is a quiet music that is not made to grab your ear rudely or to
flabbergast. It's a great American music and a great "Southern
Californian" music. When I listen, I think of the Inland
Empire's deserts, the Angeles National Forest, the Channel Islands.
The
Copy of the Drawing is a strange electronic world in which one of
the elements is a reading of excerpts from strange letters written to
an observatory. It's a great atmosphere, a night music, a huge
expanse of dark, empty sky.
Last
Things is deep and dark, moody and dreamlike, a geologically
paced call-and-response between bass clarinet and pedal steel guitar,
with a kind of basso profundo on the low end of the piano. As
the music cycles, we are surely in a profound world. When all
elements finally come together at the very end, it is an astounding
musical payoff, as dramatic as the last chords of a Beethoven
symphony, but in a whole other world of understatement and subtlety. --Carl
Stone
The
Copy of the Drawing is a flowing music field centered in a
ceremonial design. In the way it is constructed--a multi-sectional
composition in which the text and music imply inner and outer
spheres--it has a psychological space that recalls for me the
Japanese spiritual garden. It is a beautifully conceived composition,
a vibrant interplay of musical activities and interludes.
Last
Things is a dark landscape of resonant sonic streams of activity,
continuously evolving meditational shapes. Walker's bass clarinet
gives character to these shapes. It is a shimmering bridge that
cyclically rises from the sonic wave, contributing a beautifully
conceived moment as it interacts with the main musical design.
One of
the striking qualities of Jim Fox's compositions is that you can
still hear them inside you long after the music is over--and that's
great.
--Wadada
Leo Smith
Special
thanks to Tom Recchion, Marty Walker, Matt Walters, Michael Jon Fink,
Rick Cox, and Sarah Simons. Mastered
by Andre Knecht, ARK Digital, Pasadena, CA. Design by
Tom Recchion. Photographs:
© 1987 Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward, © 2000 Rick Cox. All muisc
BMI. ©
and P Cold Blue Music. All rights reserved.
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