2020-04-18: Improvisational
| 2020.04.18: Improvisational | |
|---|---|
| Kallisti and DeadPixel make some improvisational music. | |
| IC Date | April 18, 2020 |
| IC Time | Afternoon |
| Players | DeadPixel, Kallisti |
With nothing better to do, Kallisti has seated herself on a broken up sofa with her guitar in her lap, a lead running from it into a small amplifier, little more than ten inches tall and wide. It still pumps out a nice sound, however, and she has the distortion cranked up to punk levels. The woman strikes some heavy, noisy chords, fingers moving up and down the board quickly, dancing across the frets to add in some musical breaks inbetween the chords until she finds a rhythm that has her smiling and her head nodding along to it.
Beside her on the arm of the couch, Stitch watches on with disinterest, laying flat with his head hanging off the end of the couch, occasionally sniffing the air or looking left and right as if he's spotting movement.
Kallisti rolls Dexterity(3) + Performance(3) (6 dice) vs 4 for 5 successes.
Nearby, DeadPixel is in front of an array of electronic instruments -- both handbuilt and stolen. As Kallisti plays the guitar, DeadPixel uses a microphone and her voice to harmonize with the guitar sounds. She then begins to sample, manipulate, and loop her voice. Slower longer tones get drenched in reverb providing a quite background ambience that heightens the power of the guitar noise. Words are chopped up so they no longer sounds like words, just little quite stabs and punches and pops of vocalization. These noises in turn begin to form a very simple rock rhythm to provide a backbone to the song. As she does this, her head is lowered, looking down at the electronic array, almost completely replacing her face with the word 'P S Y C H I C'.
DeadPixel rolls Dexterity + Performance vs 4 for 5 successes.
The introduction of new sounds has Kallisti glancing up, though her hands don't stop playing, she's so used to it she doesn't need to look anymore except during really difficult moments. "Niiiice..", she calls across to Pixel, "Mix in some drums, something dark. Those samples sound eerie..". Listening for the break, she taps a pedal near her foot and the rhythm changes, taking the tune in a whole new direction; twisted chords that stretch her fingers but sound creepy over the top of the samples. A tap on the pedal again and the twisted chord sequence begins to repeat itself, while she switches to a clearer sound, adding a spooky melody over the top of it all that twists beautifully with the samples and guitar sounds.
DeadPixel looks up, making eye contact and smiling for a moment, which given her usual affect speaks volumes about how she feels about this. Moving to her sampler, DeadPixel begins to tap out a drum beat. The samples she uses mix actual drums sounds with various industrial equipment they've found and sampled in their adventures: beating on a boiler with a baseball bat, grinding and clunking machinery, rocks thrown into cavernous empt warehouses, and things of that nature. This beat comes is slower than the rest of the instrumentation, being played at half-time in a way that's so rigidly on the beat it almost becomes funky. A slow grinding industrial groove that is both eerie and sensual.
Once the drums and effects kick in, Kallisti really starts to enjoy it, nodding her head and most of her upper body with it, following along with the beat that's steadily building, clanks and rattles combining into something unique. Pushing to her feet, she moves around the amplifier and prepares herself for the correct moment in the tune, still playing the eerie melody over the top. And then it's time to add some serious sounds, the melody sliding down the neck to the higher notes, the woman's fingers moving with precision as she blasts out a solo that falls in time with the rest of the tune. It's no rock twiddly solo, however, this is purposeful, dark notes extended though shadowy corridors, held notes that make the senses tingle, then faster notes as something gives chase. It perfectly slides backwards, further up to the lower notes, something wicked this way comes, and then she flicks make to the original spooky melody. "I hope we remember this shit, it sounds fuckin' awesome.", she calls over to you.
DeadPixel gives a toothy grimace, raises a finger and presses a button. Why do they always forget to press record at the beginning? The perils of improvisation. Oh well, it'll at least be helpful for figuring this out again later. With slow grinding industrial drums, the pops and clicks, and droning humms programmed in, DeadPixel moves to grab her bass guitar. The instrument seems to almost be as big as the woman, and it might be comical if it wasn't for how serious she takes it and how talented she is. A dark bass groove gets added into the mix, sounding all the more funky and swung by the rigidity of the beat. The slow mechanic churn of the beat now seems to be propelled with new energy from the bass. The tune is now actually become danceable, though not something you'd ever find on a radio or in a club -- no, this is underground dance music for the occult set.
With a pull on the guitar lead, Kallisti frees it up so she can move, her steps taking her closer to Pixel until they're standing in front of each other, both playing their separate instruments. Watching carefully at what Pixels fingers are doing, what she's bringing into the mix, Kallisti follows along for a while, the higher pitched guitar echoing over the top of the heavy bass tone. But then it's time to get people dancing, the woman switching to chords that have a dark tone to them, but hitting them at a steady pace, enough to get feet tapping and heads bobbing. To go with the performance, she spins around on the spot while hammering out the tune, her hand moving effortlessly across the neck of the guitar to bring one dark sound after another. She even laughs with joy, spinning the other way as she reverses the chord sequence, the drop down to hell replaced by the climb back up.
The noise gives to the groove the groove to the chase the chase to dark joy, but in that joy the struggle was forgotten. DeadPixel moves from the faster low bass groove to a slower sustained one across the fret board. BuhhhhhhhhhhhhRoooBruhh---BuhhhhhhhhhRoooBruhh---. It's almost like some alarm sounding, letting everyone know they've been caught. That whoever it is is on the way. Time to decide: get back to the chase and run away or turn defiant in a joyful last stand as they face down certain death. With the bass alarm having pulled everyone's mind to this moment, DeadPixel moves to a variation of the earlier lower bass groove, occasionally mixing in a note from the alarm groove. This is it. This moment. How do you want to live it? She looks to Kallisti and gives her another little smile.
With a smile in return, Kallisti moves back to her small selection of pedals, lifts a finger and rolls it, telling her to continue, then waits for that alarm to hit again before kicking off the twisted chords that were repeating. Only the alarm and the samples, the weird drum beat with its twisted metallic sounds continues to play. Her fingers rest across the strings, silencing her playing too, as she quickly moves over to the sampling desk. Another alarm blast and the samples disappear with a touch of a key, leaving only the drum samples and that alarm to thrumm through the room, a touch of the sampler increasing the volume slowly, steadily, until it's almost all that's left.
Then with a sudden press of keys on the sampler and an adjustment of volume, everything kicks back in, Kallisti focusing on her guitar as she starts twisting chords from one crazy location to the other, it sounds like organized chaos, a fight between good and evil, high pitched screams bent upwards into hollow cries, deeper groans pulled into madness. Her hand flies back and fore, portraying the battle, as that alarm continues to warm everyone that this is no longer a safe place to be.
As Kallisti works the electronic station, DeadPixel begins to sample her bass groove. As Kallisti moves back to the guitar, DeadPixel jumps back to the station, her bass still hanging from her. New drums at double time are added on top. Fast taps to click out snares, holding buttons to drill out hi-hats. There's still that churning beat and the bass groove, but the new drums play right into the chaos of the guitar noise. It's rhythmic, sure, but the purpose is not rhythm, it's about turning that which was once the backbone, the steady thing you could rely on into harsh noise. It doesn't matter if you were the one to run, or the one to defiantly stand your ground. Whateve it is? It's here. This is your fate, and it's dark, mad, and unpredictable. Your only solace is that others have to go through this too.
What sounds like an intense battle continues, Kallisti has to look down at the guitar strings, this is the sort of thing she loves, something to challenge her and make her sit up and pay attention. The darker side seems to be winning out, her fingers playing around the heavy tunes, hard pulls on the strings sounding like devilish moans. The last of those with good intentions end with a squeal of a high pitched note, and while she's holding that note, Kallisti reaches out a hand to Pixel, waving it down, asking her to bring the tune down with her. The extended squeal of the light slowly fades away and her hand slides back up, bringing in the darker side, low notes with multiple bends that sound like evil laughter. And as her fingers play, so the hand that picks at the strings taps against the body of the guitar, like a heartbeat. A look up at Pixel seems to be asking her to bring that into the samples. Another dark laugh of twisted strings, then she uses both hands to play, tapping out notes that seem to hit at random, blood dripping onto a steel roof, slowing down a little at a time.
DeadPixel begins to layer effects over effects over the samples, pulling them in a dark reverbed sea where the individual samples lose their individual identity into a single churn. The heartbeat sound is sampled in, quiet at first, but slowly it's volume begins to switch place with the churn. A slow bodily rhythm over barely there fuzz. Maybe it was all ok, maybe there was escape. The heart sample seems to be slowing down very slowly, as if relaxing after having escape some cataclysm. But then DeadPixel presses some buttons, and the heart skips a beat, slowly begins to get faster in a ever-so-slightly arhythmic fashion. Faster, faster, panic setting in, what is it that's there? Why are the hairs on the back of your neck standing up? Turn and look. DeadPixel yanks out the audio chord and all sound stops at once. The space is now so quiet that it almost seems loud, the sonic equivalent of the outline of bodies left in sand. She turns to Kallisti and smiles, before reaching over to press stop on the recorder.
With a nod of appreciation at the heart sample, Kallisti keeps tapping out notes in a rapid fashion, but slowing down, like the blood is running out. The silence hits but she continues playing the last few notes, soft droplets onto a steel roof that finally end. With a twisting of her fingers into what looks like a painful position, she strums the strings backwards into a discordant sound that slowly drifts away until there's nothing but silence. With soft laughter, she pulls the guitar off her and rests it against the sofa, clicks off the amplifier, then walks over to Pixel, draping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her in for a friendly hug. "Yeah, that was badass..", she nods, reaching up playfully to pull down the front of the hat over your eyes.
DeadPixel puts the bass down in it's stand. As Kallisti hugs her, she kinda stands there awkwardly, her arms down at her side, but a big smile on her face. Someday she'll learn how to hug, or figure out what she needs to. "Yeah," she responds as she pulls off the hat, adjusts her hair, and puts it back on. "We should do a show here next Sunday, I know some others that want to perform. We just need to decide on a name." Ah yes, the name. Some bands choose a name and stick with it. Not these two, a new name each time to suit their mood, almost revelling in the obscurity, but also in knowing that those in the know will understand exactly who that band is. DeadPixel checks her phone, and then adds, "I also need to do some research soon. Wanna join?"
