Trees, Firefly, Water, Clouds

Environs returns this Friday!

The sight of trees in full leaf is impossibly rich. Hundreds or thousands of geometric, subtly unique shapes, arrayed in patterns we can understand but never predict, that we can recognize but that never precisely repeat, radiating in relationship to the light, in conversation with the sun, in awareness of the space around, arching, collecting volume, producing shade, always slightly moving, the slightest of sounds in the creaking of wood, in the places where the leaves touch.

I’m already lost in wonder before the first gentle breeze, when suddenly they all shimmer, bob, and turn side to side, showing slivers of their undersides, the whispers collecting to a soft rush, a symphony for thousands of the flimsiest drums, and the light touch of a shifting current, an invisible ripple in the volume of our surroundings.

As the leaves fall, I’m thinking about the acoustic richness of natural ecosystems — or as small a piece of one as a single tree.

ENVIRONS is Friday, 10/17 at Dada Bar

Environs: a series gathering music across genres that embraces texture, improvisation and the environment.

This Friday we have a very fun and stacked edition of Environs! Kicking off, Leftpop will debut new material at 8pm sharp (you have been warned)! Also featuring the multidisciplinary performance of IKWE, the genre-bending fusion of Friends with Heads ensemble, and dynamite DJ sets from Paper Gem and Logan Takahashi. Tapes and zines will be available from New Memento. It’s going to be an eclectic, groovy and all around enjoyable evening. Who knew environmental music could be like, fun?

Save the date! The following Environs will be on 11/12 featuring Gryphon Rue, Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola, Mónica de la Torre, Diego Gerard Morrison, Leftpop, paper gem (DJ)

Firefly EP by Mimi Oz is Out Now

“The 3-song EP ‘Firefly’ is a beautifully crafted synth-pop production, co-produced between Mimi and her producer Left Pop (Harrison Adams) in Brooklyn, NY. It recalls standout 2000s alternative synth artists like Ladyhawke, Robyn, and La Roux. The beats are dynamic and tastefully layered with shimmering electro textures and soaring, infectious hooks.” — It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine

Check out the EP on Bandcamp!

Like Water, Like Clouds

Last month I was lucky enough to witness the North American premiere at Reforesters Lab of Senaida Ng’s Like Water, Like Clouds: a multidisciplinary performance where music, dance, the act of calligraphy and the medium of ink became elements in a charged, symbolic ritual.

Ng and her collaborator, dancer and artist Kanami Kusajima, wore all white and sat facing each other in a meditative pose across a large white canvas. A modified calligraphic stylus and a pot of ink sat to one side.

An opening text in Ng’s voice came over the speakers — speaking of Mother Nature in personal, worshipful, and at the same time rational terms. Proceeding from the core knowledge that we are made of the same “stuff” as our environment, this text established a framework for the performance, emphasizing ways that we are one with nature. This is an important concept for environmental music and performance—seeing humanity as living appendages of a greater ecosystem, part and parcel of the universe itself.

Music comprised of ocean waves, birdsong, and swelling pads underscored this text. As the text concluded, Ng lifted the stylus and a flutelike synthesizer entered the soundscape, with gentle melodies that responded to the movements and gestures of the stylus in space.

A dance gradually emerged. The performance dissolved boundaries between canvas, clothing, and body—transforming pristine white fabrics into testaments of water. Black liquid shapes ran across limbs. Smudging, squiggling, quick-drying marks traced the paths of bodies in motion, creating a moving artwork.

Ng writes of the value of “softness” in technology—meaning something like presence and fluidity at the intersection of human and machine interfaces. This performance served as a convincing demonstration of the artistic possibilities of bespoke technologies, thoughtfully combined to make new rituals. Ng’s work made the implicit statement that different organizing systems and ways of understanding the world—sonic and visual, human and machine, embodiment and abstraction, sensation and analysis—are not mutually exclusive, but rather, can resonate together in moments of softness. It’s all part of one universe.

Until next time,

Harrison