Title: THISNESS
Label: Pi Recordings
Release Date: March 20, 2022
Produced by Miles Okazaki and David Breskin
Executive Producers: Seth Rosner and Yulun Wang
Recorded March 19-20, 2021 at Oktaven Studios, Mount Vernon, NY by Ron Saint Germain and Ryan Streber
Mixed at Saint’s Place by Ron Saint Germain
Mastered at Masterdisk, Peekskill, NY by Scott Hull
Artwork by Linda Okazaki, Dream at Salt Creek
Liner notes by Robin D.G. Kelley
Package design by Miles Okazaki
All compositions by Miles Okazaki (Salish Sea Music, SESAC)
except track 3, by Miles Okazaki and Sean Rickman
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Players:
Miles Okazaki: Guitar, Vocals, Robots
Matt Mitchell: Piano, Fender Rhodes, Prophet-6
Anthony Tidd: Electric Bass
Sean Rickman: Drums
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Tracks:
1. In some far off place (9:27)
2. years in space (10:04)
3. i’ll build a world (10:00)
4. and wait for you (9:34)
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Liner Notes by Robin D.G. Kelley:
“In some far off place, years in space, I’ll build a world and wait for you.” Sun Ra built it and is waiting. Miles Okazaki carefully excised these lines from Ra’s poem, “The Far Off Place,” rearranging and reattaching the fragments to create a new work of art, where he and his band of Tricksters create a surrealist sound map, follow it to a far off place in space, and land in Linda Okazaki’s Dream at Salt Creek. Skipping, strolling, dancing, they arrive rousing ravens and swaying trees with convulsive beauty, propulsive rhythm, elusive meaning.
This is Surrealism. It defies definition, time signatures, and death itself. It is the music. On Thisness, Miles Okazaki embraces the Marvelous with fierce intentionality, riffing on the Surrealist game known as the “exquisite corpse” to experiment in re-composition and group improvisation. Invented in 1925 by pioneers of the European Surrealist movement, Yves Tanguy, Jacques Prévert, André Breton and Marcel Duchamp, an exquisite corpse [cadavre exquis] is a collective drawing in which each participant makes a picture on one section of a folded page, extends two or three lines into the top of the next section and folds the drawing back so it cannot be seen. The next person draws a picture incorporating the dangling lines and does the same thing until all sections are complete. The end product is often a wildly absurd and humorously discordant creature. In the 1940s, modern composers John Cage, Henry Cowell, Lou Harrison, and Virgil Thompson tried to apply the game to music. Each wrote a passage of music and folded the page back so the next person could not see it. The result was predictable—a short piece of music composed of four distinct voices performed in sequence, creating an eccentric musical journey.
By contrast, Miles Okazaki’s effort to make an exquisite corpse takes on a completely different form and valence. Nothing is concealed in the process or revealed at the end, and yet the effect is the same: a spontaneous and unpredictable work of art, accordingly discordant, subversively accordant, a pendulum crushing the cage of temporality. This is Surrealism in practice. This is jazz. This is freedom. A band of Tricksters breathes life into the cadaver; it rises with rhythm, beckoning all life forms inhabiting Salt Creek to drink the new wine and dance. The band is responding not to imagined phrases and grooves but to music in real time. Miles understands that “the value of serendipitous events in the music” happens in conversation, not in isolation. After all, the exquisite corpse is a parlor game, derived from the French parler which means to speak. He makes it work because he understands something about Surrealism that John Cage and his friends did not. Surrealists did not invent Surrealism; they discovered it in far-off places where there was no distinction between art and everyday life, reality and imagination. It was there all along, around Salt Creek (in present day Washington State) where the S'Kalllam, Quileute and Chimakum understood and embraced the Marvelous in music, dance, speech, and relations. It was there in every forest, river, lake, mountain top and valley that settlers, infected by capitalist fever and Cartesian thinking, claimed to have “discovered” and “civilized.” Miles Okazaki and Trickster found it and are waiting for the rest of us.
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Liner Notes by Miles Okazaki:
On the March equinox of 2021, Trickster (Matt Mitchell, Anthony Tidd, and Sean Rickman and myself) assembled at Oktaven Studios north of NYC to tackle a new collection of compositions I’d written during the pandemic. Our previous albums were made up of what I would simply call "songs," but for this project I decided to expand the format. The intention was to make something like an exquisite corpse, the collective improvisations developed by the Surrealists. So for this album my job as composer was to bring in some ideas, set them in motion and then listen, trying to recognize the value of serendipitous events at transitional points in the music and lead the band down whatever path may be opening. The borderlands are where the Trickster hangs out, the undefined space where logic dissolves and creativity thrives. My hope was that the listener would enjoy the experience of passing through these boundaries between contrasting episodes.
After mixing and mastering, I was trying to come up with titles. I thought of strange journeys to distant lands, and of Sun Ra, one of the greatest Surrealists of them all. I called Matt Mitchell to bounce some ideas around, and he gave me a copy of Monorails and Satellites. While looking at the liner notes I saw the poem called "The Far Off Place," and got my answer. The song titles on this album are lines from that poem.
The artwork is by Linda Okazaki (my mother), a watercolor called Dream at Salt Creek. Her work is also aligned with the surrealist impulse to dream of ways to travel to different possible times and worlds through symbolism. The imagery is from the Pacific Northwest, notably the ravens, which find their way into many of my album covers.
As I make more recordings I’m getting better at letting the materials do their own thing. David Breskin (the producer of this album) likened this sensibility to the architect Louis Kahn, talking to the brick, asking it what it wants to be, and going in that direction. When I presented to David the early versions of the modular sections that make up this album, he came up with the architectural analogue of the “kit-of-parts,” where fabricated components can be shuffled and assembled in a variety of ways. For this album I had detailed blueprints, but at some point surrendered to the dream logic of the collective. Luckily I have here a group of musicians who are willing to explore any direction at the drop of a hat. I’m grateful for any opportunity I have to work with them.
The last member of the team is the brilliant scholar Robin D. G. Kelley. He came to see us play in Los Angeles a few years back and we stayed in touch, talking about Monk, Erroll Garner, and other tricksters. As he’s also one of the great Surrealist thinkers of our time, I wanted to ask him if he’d be willing to say a few words about this album and am honored to have his elegant riffs introduce the music in the liner notes.
I’d like to thank the people who brought this project to life: Matt, Sean, and Anthony for releasing the sounds; Ron Saint Germain for capturing and shaping them; Scott Hull for icing the cake; David Breskin and Chelsea Hadley for vision, guidance, and support; Linda Okazaki for setting the music to images; and Robin D. G. Kelley for finding the words to invite the listener into this place.