This site announces and archives information, media, announcements, about the music related stuff I am working on… shows, releases, videos, ideas, collaborations, collectives, core groups, long term, short term, one offs, life long music collaborations, invitations… (Eric Craven)
Ce site annonce et archive des informations, des médias, des annonces sur les choses liées à la musique sur lesquelles je travaille… spectacles, sorties, vidéos, idées, collaborations, collectifs, groupes de base, à long terme, à court terme, ponctuels, collaborations musicales à vie, invitations… (Eric Craven)
1/4 Tonne Overhaul is a trio based in Montreal, Laurentians, and Ottawa, w/ Eric Craven (hangedup, Pangea De Futura, Hrsta, Silver Mt Zion) on drums, keyboards, guitar and loops, Nick Kuepfer (No Nature, Aidswolf, Hrsta, Elfin Saddle) on guitar, 1/4″ tape loops, and Mark Molnar (Kingdom Shore, Horseman Pass By., Land of Kush, Black Seas Ensemble) on cello, tape tracing, electronics, and loops.
le 16 janvier, 2024 (un grand merci pour ces clips à Raphael Foisy-Couture et Sophie Chartier)
AC//CC est une formation poético-musicale composée de Sarah Albu à la voix et objets, Belinda Campbell au piano et électroniques, Marilou Craft à la poésie, textes ou manipulations de toutes sortes et Eric Craven aux percussions. Le rencontre est née lors du lancement de l’album CUCH-187 60X44 de l’étiquette de disque Cuchabata Records en juin 2022.
Depuis lors le groupe a participé à deux des éditions du Mardi Spaghetti à la Casa Del Popolo en obtobre 2022 et janvier 2023, au IMOO decembre 2023, au Festival Metropolis Bleu en avril 2023 et finalement au Suoni Per Il Popolo en juin.
Jusqu’à présent, leurs performances totalement improvisées surgissent de l’amalgame entre les choix de textes de Craft et la musique de Albu, Campbell et Craven. Nos performances sont totalement improvisées. Marilou Craft décide quelques instants avant ce qu’elle lira, s’adaptant à la musique qui se crée au moment même. Cela peut prendre la forme de collage de ses textes, de recueils en entier ou de piger dans la culture populaire des inspirations ponctuelles comme par exemple de lire des réponses d’entrevues de Céline Dion. Les musiciens sur scène se nourrissent les uns les autres dans un mélange spontané de mots, de sons, de textures, de rythme ou de mélodie.
AC//CC is a poetic-musical formation composed of Sarah Albu on voice and objects, Belinda Campbell on piano and electronics, Marilou Craft on poetry, texts or manipulations of all kinds and Eric Craven on percussion. The meeting was born during the launch of the album CUCH- 187 60X44 from the Cuchabata Records record label in June 2022.
Since then the group has continued to perform including Mardi Spaghetti at Casa Del Popolo in October 2022 and January 2023, IMOO in Gatineau Qc in December 2023, Blue Metropolis Festival in April 2023 and finally at Suoni Per Il Popolo in June 2023. So far, their totally improvised performances arise from the amalgam between Craft’s text choices and the music of Albu, Campbell and Craven.
Our performances are completely improvised. Marilou Craft decides a few moments before what she will read, adapting to the music that is being created at the same time. This can take the form of collages of these texts, entire collections or drawing from popular culture for specific inspirations such as reading answers to interviews with Celine Dion. The musicians on stage feed each other in a spontaneous mixture of words, sounds, textures, rhythm or melody.
le 16 janvier, 2024 (un grand merci pour ces clips à Raphael Foisy-Couture et Sophie Chartier
1/4 Tonne Overhaul is a trio based in Montreal, Laurentians, and Ottawa, w/ Eric Craven (hangedup, Pangea De Futura, Hrsta, Silver Mt Zion) on drums, keyboards, guitar and loops, Nick Kuepfer (No Nature, Aidswolf, Hrsta, Elfin Saddle) on guitar, 1/4″ tape loops, and Mark Molnar (Kingdom Shore, Horseman Pass By., Land of Kush, Black Seas Ensemble) on cello, tape tracing, electronics, and loops. Production: Live in Concrete Direction, edit & coloration: Michaela Grill Gaffer: Gabriel Payeur Recording & mixing: Zachary Scholes Mastering: Harris Newman at Greymarket Mastering Set photographer: Mathieu Dumontier Production assistant: Marcel Deslongchamps Thanks to the Canada Council of the Arts for supporting this project.
Ton-e Rêve est littéralement venu au membre Eric Lewis dans un rêve, où il a entendu l’ensemble composé de lui-même, Peter Burton, Eric Craven, Émilie Fortin, Geneviève Gauthier et Julie Richard jouer ensemble dans son monde imaginaire ! Il nous a rapidement invités à jouer ensemble et s’est arrangé pour le faire. En 2019, Ton-e Rêve existe depuis environ cinq ans et explore l’improvisation libre et structurée dans un contexte d’ensemble où chaque membre contribue de façon égale au son du collectif. S’appuyant sur des expériences en jazz, punk, post-rock, noise, improvisation, musique du monde et autres genres, Ton-e Rêve est unifié par une intense curiosité d’explorer de nouveaux coins du monde vibratoire. Nous ne savons pas si nous avons été à la hauteur du rêve d’Eric Lewis, mais quatre d’entre nous essaient toujours de jouer tous les mardis soirs.
Ton-e Rêve literally came to member Eric Lewis in a dream, where he heard the ensemble of himself and Peter Burton, Eric Craven, Émilie Fortin, Geneviève Gauthier and Julie Richard playing together in his dreamworld! He promptly invited and arranged for us all to play together. That was 2019, now in existence for approximately five years now, Ton-e Rêve explores free and structured improvisations in an ensemble setting where every member equally contributes to the collective’s sound. Drawing upon backgrounds in jazz, punk, post-rock, noise, improv, “world” music and other genres, Ton-e Rêve is unified by an intense curiosity to explore new corners of the vibrational world. We don’t know if we lived up to Eric Lewis’ dream but four us still try to play every Tuesday evening.
Le groupe est actuellement composé de / Currently the group is:
Geneviève Gauthier – saxophone alto/alto saxophone Eric Lewis – trompette et clarinette basse/trumpet & bass clarinet Peter Burton – contrebasse/double bass Eric Craven – batterie/drums
:
Eric Lewis, Eric Craven, Peter Burton, Julie Richard, Geneviève Gauthier and Émilie Fortin
Eric Lewis, Eric Craven, Peter Burton, Julie Richard, Geneviève Gauthier and Émilie Fortin
Pangea de Futura lead by Eric Quach (ThisQuietArmy) w/ Aidan Girt, Eric Quach, Samuel Bobony, Charly Buss, Reüel Ordonez, Neboysha Rakic, Veronique Janosy, Eric Craven (2019-present)
Using the slow motion sound and image captured candidly to create a different way to engage listen and see our everyday world. I hope to evolve this idea into an interdisciplinary project connect folks of all ages and creative interests.
Alex Pelchat – electric guitar Eric Craven – drums Craig Pedersen – amplified trumpet
From the IMOO (Improvising and Experimental Musicians of Ottawa and Outwards) website “Drawing influence equally from Pauline Oliveros’ Horse Sings from A Cloud, Keiji Haino’s Fushitsusha and Slayer’s Reign in Blood, PCP trio manages to make some cohesive sense of a mess of ideas. Hard-driving and noisy, Pelchat, Craven and Pedersen work together as a clear unit, pushing and pulling musical ideas to extremes.”
Two new compositions by Craig Pedersen, drawing influence equally from Pauline Oliveros’ Horse Sings from A Cloud, Keiji Haino’s Fushitsusha and Slayer’s Reign in Blood, PCP trio manages to make some cohesive sense of a mess of ideas.
à partir de www.mesenceintesfontdefaut.com“La plupart des membres formant BLD, aussi connu sous le nom de Black Light District, me sont déjà familiers. Je me suis retrouvé à maintes reprises devant eux lorsque certains de leurs autres projets comme Ghidrah, Maggot Breader ou Squalor ont foulé les planches. Il était alors impératif que leur collaboration avec le percussionniste montréalais de renom Eric Craven trouve sa place sur notre site. À mon humble avis, cette fusion totalement psychédélique entre ces deux entités ne pouvait tout simplement pas rester dans l’ombre.”
BLD + Craven’s 001.9 is the live recording of a summer’s afternoon improvisations under the influence of controversial knowledge.
This tape was originally released by in 2015. Bharal Tapes made this awesome re-release to bring this tape to Europe with a new, beautiful artwork by @nikavanplanten, post-edited by Fishermans End. The tape is wrapped in a printed slipcase and comes with an semi-transparent insert and a download code.
From their website Bharal Tapes says “we are a leipzig based collective of people who are setting up non-profit d.i.y./d.i.t.-shows and release music, essentially on tape. Our motivation is to support passionate and powerful music and we try to do it on a high aesthetic level.”
(Photo by David Lobato live at Sala Rossa/Suoni Per Il Popolo, 12.20.16.)
Inactive since Marielle moved to Europe
Jugular Methot is:
Marielle Groven – piano
Alex Pelchat – guitar
Eric Craven – drums and amplified percussion
Jugular Methot make improvised music. We explore detonative juxtaposition through uncovering combative approaches for piano, guitar and drums. We are used to being trouble-makers (too fast, too loud, too much).
Marielle Groven is a composer, her work draws on fragile and raw, often emotionally charged sounds and her pieces have been performed all over the world (see her site www.mariellegroven.ca).
Hoods Jinx is the first full-length album from Trace Magnette, a new project bringing together Montreal artist Eric Craven and longtime friend and collaborator (and former Montrealer) Damon Henry. The project, recorded in Montreal last July as Germany demolished Brazil 7-1 in the World Cup, distills the spirit of an intense three-day recording session. Hoods Jinx takes the intrepid listener on a barrier-breaking camel trek into scorching aural landscapes. Feedback loops and guitar scrapes are carved out around a solid architecture of rhythm. Nothing is abstract or slow burning: Hoods Jinx is immediate, vital, visceral and bloody-minded.
Trace Magnette is the sound of past and future Montreal. Post-industrial, chaotic yet disciplined, a sonic melting pot of the widest possible range of voices and influences. Its seven distinct tracks evoke back alley junkpiles, Mile-End breakfasts, snowbound Ladas, rent party handclaps, androgynous landlords, railway overpasses, broken synthesizers, linguistic threesomes, lost cats and found percussion. Throbbing drums, surgical guitar riffs, cinematic cut-ups, oxygenating keyboards and dubbed out basslines are all in full effect. Part Vorticist manifesto, part soundtrack for FPV drone racing: Hoods Jinx represents the best of the old and new, liberation and mourning, the sound of the broken sidewalk avant-garde.
A little backstory: Eric Craven’s Drophead project/label has featured collaborations with Silent Land Time Machine, onFrom Ashes Comes the Day , Nick Kuepfer, on ¼ Tonne Overhaul and cellist Mark Molnar on une gnolba en feu. The three musicians form the current line up of 1/4 tonne. Hoods Jinx sees Craven taking over the mixing duties and further exploring his outsider approach to guitar, keyboards, and loops. Eric Craven made his indelible mark as drummer in Constellation Records bands hangedup (a drums/viola duo started with Gen Heistek in 1999), Hrsta, and Silver Mt. Zion. Hangedup has toured extensively across Europe and North America, including All Tomorrow’s Parties in the UK and K-RAA-K in Belgium. They teamed up with legendary polymath Tony Conrad on Transit of Venus, released in 2012.
Damon Henry plays bass with the energetic No Wave-y, half-Japanese Ruby Karinto on the West Coast. He was also in the great math rock trio Saul Duck – I still have a CD cover made from a roofing shingle – and the hypnotic ambient post-rock Vancouver project ‘the beans‘ (who I saw once with The Flaming Lips and infamously played a continuous 48 Hour show at the now defunct Sugar Refinery).
But the Hoods Jinx DNA goes even deeper. The members of Trace Magnette started playing together way back in 1991 – with bands like Seatbelt, in their native Victoria, and Shortwave, based in Montreal, who played the Knitting Factory in its heyday. The album title is a tribute to a talented West Coast drummer and friend who died in 2012. It also speaks of speed, energy and recklessness. Magnette (a type of 1950s MG), like Drophead, hints at a petrolhead obsession. All of that history is layered beneath the sounds of Hoods Jinx. It is futuristic and forward-looking and yet suggests, not least by its analogue format, a trenchant critique of tinkerproof digital technology, cloud computing, sleek white boxes, and ubiquitous connectivity. It wants to break the code, mess with the sensors, get under the hood. There are unresolved tensions and contradictions, like a Bukowski-loving feminist or a bicycle activist with a secret love of old cars – the contradictions we live with every day, the things we love that threaten to kill us. It’s an incredibly deep, rich listen, the result of decades of collaboration, experiment and experience.
From Ashes Comes the Day is the result of the alliance between Montréal’s Eric Craven (Drophead) and Austin’s Jonathan Slade (Silent Land Time Machine). For more than a decade Craven has been a prominent member of Montréal’s experimental music community, widely known as the drummer in HRSTA and Hangedup (Constellation Records). His recent solo work as Drophead finds Craven buried in layers of drums and homemade percussion as well as guitar, field recordings, and a vast array of other instruments. Now on Drophead’s vinyl debut Craven’s outsider take on guitar and keyboard assimilates the tenor of Austin’s foremost experimental violist/vocalist and co-founder of HOLODECK records, Jonathan Slade. Slade is best known for his two albums as electro-acoustic solo-ensemble Silent Land Time Machine and his work in the bands Lumens and AMASA•GANA. Together, Craven and Slade push each other into expansive new territory, fully embracing a darker yet broader sphere of expression and emotive depth. The dialogue of tidal chaos and isolation that wax and wane across both hemispheres of From Ashes Comes the Day makes this a highly unique release for both artists.
Simply divided into two halves entitled “I” and “II“, From Ashes Comes the Day is a single continuous piece comprised of a series of interweaving sonic vignettes that swell and decay into and out of one another. This brooding and lucid work is in a constant cycle of ruin and regeneration, where one moment’s fragmented wreckage degenerates into the fertile breeding ground for the genesis of the next. Movements of rhythmic guitar sweep in and fade out, propelling the album through a series of pensive destinations, while damaged viola phrases frantically build and collapse alongside increasingly distraught vocal howls. At times the strings rise to a panic, forming invasive waves of tension that eventually disintegrate into sparse minimal soundscapes consisting of dense columns of guitar feedback and clearings of near silence. Although this record features no percussion, Craven’s atypical drum-style translates directly into a superb ear for texture and improvisational structure; while Slade’s melodic articulation surfaces unbalanced and unhinged, revealing an intensity that has been previously absent on SLTM records. Mutual respect for one another’s musical endeavors cultivated a lasting friendship between Craven and Slade, and eventually through months of long-distance recording an album finally emerged as a cohesive and compelling finished piece. Montréal-based musician and visual artist Nick Kuepfer (HRSTA, Constellation Records) designed the artwork and hand silk-screened the vinyl jackets, making the album’s black-to-red color gradient unique to every beautifully packaged EP.
Austin and Montréal are internationally known as musical epicenters, but very few cities can claim to have the prolific experimental communities that these two share. It was in this pair of concentrated cultural centers that Craven and Slade were tempered into two seasoned veterans of their respective underground circuits. Consistent releases and tour schedules have forged a strong connection between these two vibrant and parallel scenes, allowing this recording to represent a unique meeting of minds that highlights some of the best in experimental music from these two communities. What initially started out as a fun collaboration between long-distance friends unexpectedly became a catalyst for both individual and artistic growth while synchronistically bringing together two artists and the cities from which they come.
~
Mastered by Harris Newman at Gray Market Mastering. Design and silk-screening by Nick Kuepfer. Ravens on vinyl labels adapted from the original drawings of Jeremy Gordaneer. All sounds by Drophead and Silent Land Time Machine (adapted from Eric Craven’s live-score to a performance piece by Erin Flynn).
nick: guitar, live reel to reel loops, field recordings, gardening
eric: drums, amplified percussion, loops, libraries
mark molnar: cello on ‘ulna nerve hoot’
recorded at Farm Red Orach by eric (two stereo mics)
Thanks to Mark Molnar for listening, uncovering, advising, encouraging and tweaking these recordings.
photo on cassette face andre guerette
Cover illustration – jeremy gordaneer
a.a + ulna nerve hoot
b.b
1/4 tonne drawing by Jeremy Gordaneer Notes about this recording from Nick.
Soon after being asked to open for Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley for the Suoni Per Il Popolo festival in June of 2013 at Sala Rosa in Montreal, I lost the majority of the gear to which I was relying heavily on at the time to a break in of my then quickly dying truck. I had packed the back cab the night before I was leaving to work on my set in the country and covered it with scrap wood, fabrics and garbage to give the appearance that that’s all it was. The next morning I arrived at my truck to find a smashed out window and the contents of the back cab gone, aside from what I found trailed down the alley, the things that were too heavy to carry. Whoever carried the other things home had a non-lucrative bounty of analogue tape machines, a broken wind instrument, various small pedals, cables and a diary of writings from a recent residency I took part in on a ship in the arctic circle. Needless to say, the diary was a devastating loss, the rest, replaceable, somewhat. With the pending performance a few short weeks away, Eric gave me a call and offered to help me pull something together to which I was then completely unprepared for. We’d worked together quite a bit over the pastfewyears and this was a great opportunity to workshop something new and somewhat impromptu. Days after the performance we decided it was best to record what we’d worked on. Eric thankfully took the reigns of the process and in a few hours we recorded the full set twice using two microphones and a Dictaphone receiver in a cabin close to Montreal. The set was made up of 2 compositional framework pieces that were improvised around cues. This recording process has now become one of my favourite ways to operate; having a finished body of music in an afternoon. Also, another favourite new way of approaching the recording process – handing the entire collection of bed tracks to another set of ears to extract the best parts and produce a record with it. Huge props to Mark Molner for both performing his subtle but deadly cello bits in Ulna Nerve Hoot and for editing/producing this release which gave grace to the abrasion and grit to the velvet.
nick, eric and sy (on hand bells) providing a live soundtrack to a shadow puppet show at kids POP MTL Sept. 2013.
Eric Craven – Drums, Live Loops, Skateboard, Electric Razors, Guitar.
Mark Molnar – Cello, Live Loops, Erhu, Busted Circuits, Pedals.
These are documents of our process while we were trying to figure out which way was forward
Notes:
I had returned to these recordings in the interest of remembering where Mark and I had left off. Also, I thought it might be possible take some of these rehearsal documents and make an edit that would be confounding through the intentional juxtaposition of ideas. After listening to some of what we had captured, I found the these recordings to be confounding enough on their own, to my ears anyway. It was hard for me to make edits that were less than 15 mins. I thought it might be fun to put together some of my favorite moments and share them on cassette. These are definitely ‘works-in-progress.’ Part of what I have enjoyed about compiling some of these sessions was the how much the process is visible. The parts that work… are mostly satisfying because you can hear us getting there.
A few notes on the process:
Musical:
– we worked on some themes
– we gave our selves challenges (what would it sound like if we tried sound like the wu tang but didn’t borrow any musical ideas from them, or Scorn with out any of their gear or Ivan Shapovalov with out a meta narrative)
– we seemed to feel compelled to fill the space with as much sound as possible and when we debriefed it was usually to discuss how we might add more elements.
– pasta was prepared and eaten
Technical:
– I recorded our practices with one stereo microphone
– I made an edit that was too long and passed that to Mark
– Mark cut the edit down to two 20 minute sides of a cassette tape
– Mark made different choices that I would have made and I am always happy to trust Mark’s judgement (but there is some beautiful mostly solo cello that we are missing out on)
Mark and Eric have been working at stuff together since meeting in 2002.
If your curious, listen to this live set from October 26th, 2007 at the Avant Garde Bar in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, (captured on a hand held recorder by Jean-Francois Blanchette)
