Canadian composer, instrument inventor, and performer Gayle Young, and Robert Wheeler, known for his synthesizer work with American experimental rock band Pere Ubu, have teamed up for a new release. The album From Grimsby To Milan was recorded at legendary Grant Avenue Studios in Hamilton, Ontario, and features textural, exploratory music.
Young plays a microtonal zither she’s called the Amaranth, and Wheeler an EML Electrocomp 101 synthesizer. The album’s name comes from Grimsby, Ontario, where Gayle is now based, and Milan, Ohio, where inventor Thomas Alva Edison was born, and the release will be officially launched September 3.
Gayle Young & Robert Wheeler
Young has been associated with contemporary classical music, microntonality, and inventing both instruments and notation systems, while Wheeler is known for his expertise with electronic music, and keyboards in particular. Pere Ubu, founded in Cleveland in 1975, pioneered a distinctive and inventive sound which they’ve dubbed avant-garage, and incorporating performance art and other elements in their music. They have a significant underground fandom, and have influenced many bands that have come after them.
The Young and Wheeler performed together in the summer of 2008 as part of a live performance and recording of John Cage and Lejaren Hiller’s HPSCHD at the Ontario College of Art & Design. It was an auspicious occasion. The performers that day also included Casey Sokol, founding member of Canadian free improvisation group CCMC, Eve Egoyan, George Boski, Gregory Oh, Marc Couroux, Tania Gill, and American electronic music composer and author Joel Chadabe.
Wheeler processed Young’s Clavinet through a Moog modular, and it was the beginning of a musical and artistic friendship.
The Interview
The album is a culmination of an ongoing relationship, and a mutual dedication to musical experimentation.
“That sounds correct,” Wheeler says. “We have a common friend, [Toronto musician] William Blakeney, and he makes things happens.”
“He’s acting a bit like an artistic director in this case,” Young adds.
It was Blakeney, in fact, who produced the John Cage extravaganza at OCADU several years ago. The current album was co-produced by all three.
“We had a really good time have dinner together after all the recordings,” She adds.
Robert says that the album came together over three days spent in the studio, with the music composed/improvised on the spot.
“I rely hugely on Robert’s playing for inspiration,” Gayle says.
“And I was relying on Gayle,” Robert adds.
It’s clear the pair have an enviable working relationship.
“I think that both Roert and I share a kind of perceptiveness about the nature of sound outside any [notion] of genre,” Young says. When Wheeler plays a low frequency wave form, for example, she’ll pick up on the rhythm in her own playing.
“There are many layers happening at the same time while we’re playing,” she says. “I came up with things I’ve never done before when I heard Robert playing.”
Experimental Music
Wheeler recalls that an album of the Azuma Kubuki Musicians was one of the first recordings he got from his parents as a child. He was struck by the music and its effect on him.
“The way they are playing traditional Japanese instruments, but they’re bending the notes,” he says. “It would paint pictures, and it would paint landscapes. I remember vividly the sounds.”
To his ear, it evoked the sounds of dawn in a jungle, where fleshy leaves are heavy with dew.
“These are the pictures i would get from the kabuki music,” he says. Electronic music and its flexibility held an immediate appeal. “I just ran to electronic music,” he says.
It was that energy that took him to Pere Ubu, where he first played the theramin. “With Ubu we did a piece with clarinet and theramin,” he recalls.
It led to experimenting with the instruments themselves. “My first theramin I built was backwards,” he laughs. There wasn’t much to go on in terms of reference material. “There was no internet. You had to find the right store with the right magazines. And the right record store.”
The search was rewarding. “Once you locked into things, a new world opened out.”
“Some radio stations were very influential,” Gayle notes of the 1970s. “It seems there was always a lot of experimentation.” Much of that occurred in live performance rather than in recordings, though.
“It’s really important,” she says. “Some musicians really feed off the audience.”
Her own passion for building instruments likewise stems from an experimental curiosity.
“I built a 24 string instrument because I used guitar strings,” she relates. As she notes, guitar strings come in packages of six. “Those are very practical decisions,” she laughs.
Asian stringed instruments became an inspiration, resulting in one of her inventions.
“The strings are all 1000 mm long, and that’s because I was interested in proportional tuning,” she explains.
She invents the instruments using knowledge gleaned from all over the world.
“It’s not new technology,” she says. It’s more about putting various elements together in new ways.
The Spirit of Invention
“In my case, I engage in a multiplicity of different kinds of things,” she says. That includes outdoor installations, new music, and new instruments. “I think the main thing is curiosity. So I try stuff, and sometimes it doesn’t work.”
“Doing things that haven’t been done before,” Robert adds.
It’s a matter of attitude. If you’re playing for your public, real or imagined, it can stymie creativity. “If you don’t care about other people, you can do what you want,” he says.
The Album
“When I listen to this album, it was either a really good editing job, or maybe I did know what I was doing all along,” Gayle laughs. Among other things, it was a chance to play. “I’ve had the instrument since 1981, so it’s been a while.”
Robert says there may be a possibility for a live concert version of the album, but it would take some planning and organization.
“We live on both sides of Lake Erie, basically,” Gayle notes.
“I had put this down —I often don’t listen to things for a while after they’re done, just to get perspective form a distance, but I really like this stuff,” Robert says.
Gayle says she’s inspired by the sounds he achieves on the synth. “It sounds like speech on What’s Up, Puss E Cat,” she tells him. There are five other tracks on the album, ranging from 4:51 to 16:27 in length.
“I was accused once of making machines sound really organic,” Wheeler says.
The tones pulse with the sound waves, speeding up and slowing down. “That’s really exciting too,” Young says. “It’s a tone, but it still has its rhythm.”
“It’s a real joy working with Gayle and Bill,” Wheeler says. “very very easy.”
“I have to repeat that,” Young adds.
There’s always something new to be explored.
“This is the first interview we’ve done together,” she points out.
- You can find the album From Grimsby To Milan on the Irish indie label Far Point Recordings as of September 5 [HERE].
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