Gold Gazebo
Gold Gazebo is a collaborative project of musicians who interact remotely. While the rest of the world stopped during the pandemic, Gold Gazebo continued producing albums across the thousand mile divide that separates its members. Their Right Brain Records albums Please Fall Awake, 9PM-5AM and Morphed by Miles are the results: three contrasting stream-of-consciousness soundscapes that reflect the angst and uncertainty of these times.
Hear Please Fall Awake on Bandcamp.
Chris Williams is the anchor of the project. He’s an Oregon-based creative writer turned experimental musician and producer. He uses his Linnstrument, banjo and sound design tools (in his words) “to make sense of the realities my subconscious tries to suppress and reflect on my blindspots. And to get high. I'm inspired by the musical qualities of mental crisis, major health issues, admiring the unadmired, and the absurd comedies that we face in the modern world.” The paintings of Jean Michel Basquiat guide Chris’s musical vision more than any particular musician. A close second major is recovering from the near-death experience of Guillain Barre Syndrome, which induced full body paralysis. He nearly suffocated to death in the comfort of his own bed at age 28. Since then he’s been driven to produce and record at a prolific rate, with albums ranging from introspective to enigmatic to goofy. His solo project is Ghost Bomb Survival, an anagram of his medical affliction. Hear GBS track “No Resolutions” that kicks off the RBR compilation, Xtempore 3.
Several partners bring GG’s inimitable sound to life. New Mexico-based guitarist Mike Basil, of The Bowling Alley Sound fame, fuses minimalism, alt-jazz and post-rock into a subtly dextrous palette of ethereal timbres while petting his cat, Little Sweet Heart. Other contributors include trombonist Matt Hotez, guitarist Cullen Morris and multi-instrumentalist Dustin Lee.
“Sounds like jazz pumped through a wormhole.”
“These ‘songs’ are surreal sonic sculptures... a set of dreamy crossroads in space that defy time. ”
Please Fall Awake is about the feelings of time dilatation and depersonalizion imposed by the lockdown:
“The state of being ‘room stoned.’ Your soul stretching thin, staring at the ceiling as the hours pass by. Watching shadows crawl along the wall. Almost falling asleep but random loud noises keep you half-lucid, like waves crashing as the tide rolls in. A living soft nightmare, where you're in a fight but the air is thicker than concrete and you can't throw a punch. Oppressive comfort, on the razor-thin edge of drowning. Someone screaming at you while you're in a coma. An old friend approaching you after years but you can't recognize them. Waking up from a daydream and not knowing where you are. The anticipation of doom to come. Busy stillness. A memory unrecalled. Forgetting your own birthday. Living in America in 2020."
9PM-5AM is the soundtrack to a story of an after-dark underworld: the hidden life of an abandoned paper mill in a vacant urban industrial district built along the Willamette Falls, it’s informed by the many artifacts found therein, various personas who made entry and reconstruction of a colorful past. This album is a contrast to Please Fall Awake in that it explores the inescapable human need to work on something, even if no work is available and one spends all day sleeping, trying not to exist. The mill failed to make it through 2020—it was destroyed by arson, and the album cover is a snapshot of its demise. (The actual story exists as a novella written by Chris that is available on the album's Bandcamp page.)
“Unholy jazz cacophony of blissed out sound”
“Music for the twilit places in between waking and sleeping, where the mundane becomes mystic and shadows keep secrets from those who won’t listen. Makes me want to find a nice little storm drain, crawl deep inside and be held by that forgotten muffled darkness beneath a city’s streets”
Both 9PM-5AM and Please Fall Awake are also video albums. See excerpts below, and visit the Gold Gazebo channel for the whole enchilada.
Morphed by Miles takes Gold Gazebo’s concept of improvised soundscapes a step further into the morass of psychedelia. We hear a variety of new sonic textures weaved with electronics and mutations of acoustic instruments like trumpet, cello and banjo.
