Tonight, Davey Williams, inventor of “convulsive blues,” came through Chattanooga. He read from his book of musings, Solo Gig; he spoke off of and away from it; he performed guitar pieces that were influenced by the book and by the moment. Among many other ingredients, the audience tasted variation, deviation, deception, abstraction, recursion, reaction, and decay.
One anecdotal spin-off, entitled “Pillow Talk,” referred to an instance of confusion where his pillow talked to him. It took him a minute to realize it had been, in fact, his cat talking, not the pillow. However, whether one has a talking cat or a talking pillow, Mr. Williams remarked, one has found a moneymaker.
Corporate Park begin their descent on Mise En Abyme with “Pillow Talk.” One of the stronger similarities between Corporate Park and Davey Williams’ performance is their use of the phrase: pillow talk. The similarities are blurry otherwise.
Davey Williams’ performance was dynamic; ever-shifting. For example, in no particular order (with, in his own words, “judicious inclusivity”), a Johnny and Santo line would dive into abstract madness, then electric cleansing, then dream-like blues lines, then blurting blurbs about waffle irons, then smeared minutes of hypnotic wiggling, then unplanned synchronicity with emergency traffic, then unplanned evocative tunings, then jolts beyond the boundaries. One had to keep their wits while putting in, not out, his small fires.
Corporate Park’s Mise En Abyme, on the other hand, is like one slow-burning fire of plastic. The duo picks their poison and sticks with it. They sever the head and keep it simple. They let the rhythm unit arrive instantly in a groove-loop and they let it ride, until it tires out either itself or them. The groove is left largely untampered, sparsely enhanced with subtle embellishments. A pedal slowly flanges the rhythm seated next to a voice slowly trembling behind a muzzle; the beats’ peaks spike through the tape hiss; a hollow sequence stretches one repetition of a 12-bar blues progression over the course of three minutes; a chance broadcast is panned languorously left to right to left to right to left to right to left to right to left to right to left to right to left…
The leisurely movements of Corporate Park zone out the listeners and performers alike. The duo has it covered: an even distribution of work between man and machine, delivered in the form of one transmission after another of poolside industrial — ride the synthetic wavelength — sway and dodge the sharks cooly, as a liquid nitrogen cocktail eats away your stomach.
• Davey Williams: http://www.the-improvisor.com/transmuseq/davey
• Corporate Park: https://soundcloud.com/corporate-park
• Nostilevo: http://nursed.tumblr.com
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