[Note: The story about Fox and Graves detailed in the first paragraph is 100% fiction.]
The other day Greg Fox (from Guardian Alien, ZS, Liturgy) was just walking down the street in Queens when some fellah popped out and said, “Hey, Mr. Fox, you wanna come to my basement lab?” Ignoring all prevailing wisdom re: how one ought to typically avoid going into peoples’ “basement labs,” Fox was all like, “Sure!” And so they went. Once in the basement lab, the fellah asked Fox, “Hey, Mr. Fox, you wanna let me hook this machine up to you and measure your heart and stuff?” And again, ignoring the fact that most folks you meet on the street who want to hook machines up to you are probably not being totally forthright about what exactly that machine does, Fox was all like, “Sure!” And thus Fox’s new solo record Mitral Transmission was born. It’s out February 18, and you can pre-order it here.
“What, Taylor? I think you skipped a few steps.” Okay, well, let’s back up. As it happens, that “fellah” was actually the legendary free jazz drumming pioneer and holistic healer Milford Graves (perhaps best known for his work with Paul Bley and the New York Art Quartet), and he and Greg Fox were already bros at the time of the basement lab incident. Also that sketchy-sounding machine was totally legit. Turns out it’s something Graves has been working on for some time now, based on “technology to generate music from the natural rhythms of the human heart.” Fox took the output from the machine in conjunction with specialized software to generate the score on which Mitral Transmission is based.
The record will be out on Data Garden, and it’ll come in a limited edition run of “200 plantable hand-made art prints,” as well as a digital download. Because “Digital files are easily lost by the impermanence of computing” and “Physical objects like CDs, tapes and records last far beyond their usability and possibly even our existence as a species,” Data Garden makes their releases plantable in an attempt to find a middle between the ease of digital and the desire for an “awesome physical object.”
Mitral Transmission tracklisting:
01. Kardia I
02. Kardia II
03. Its OK
04. Dance Performance
• Greg Fox: http://infinitelimbs.com
• Data Garden: http://datagarden.org
More about: Greg Fox, Milford Graves
