ðøgeþístlr’s third release, ‘wrath of the ðøgeþíst‘, came out today. It’s mostly songs written by Cameron Piko of Montresor (see the previous news post for an interview with him – we discuss this EP a little bit), plus a few things I arranged at the end. Check it out below:
It was mastered by Ryan Fitz-Henry of Forecast Tomorrow and Solkyri. I recently interviewed him on Make Weird Music – check that out below:
I will be conducting two more live interviews for Make Weird Music in the coming weeks by two artists who love to play with wild rhythms! They will remain online if you can’t catch them live.
First, on Thursday 7/18 at 7PM EST: Cameron Piko of Montresor
I helped shape the piano tones on the new Montresor album, Autopoesis, which features Morgan Ågren on drums and Charlie Cawood on bass, among others:
Next, on Monday 7/22 at 5:30PM EST: Travis Orbin
I also recently interviewed Jeff Libersher of CHEER-ACCIDENT:
The debut full length by ðøgeþístlr, my new black metal project, released on June 21. It is an hour long meditation on the note ‘B’:
Røtflÿ – Supreme Direction
Divorced Hedgehog – Execution
Lørd Tenebröus, Cloaked Cvnt Belgarath of Dunwich, Bullet. In. The. Head., Wådbløwer – James Joyce Recitationᚨᛚᛖᚲᛊ ᚾᚨᚱᚢᛞᚨᚹᚷ – Cover Art
From 2016-2018 in Chicago, The Gabriel Construct live band had the same lineup as Matt Tate’s Pavlov3 live band. As the story goes, Matt decided to expand his live band from a duo to a full ensemble, fleshing out the arrangements of his material and exploring it in a new context. As he’d helped me assemble the live lineup for TGC, we soon found ourselves in a position where our two bands had nearly identical (and, shortly after, completely identical) live lineups. Effectively, we became the same band playing two different pools of material live under two different names. At a show where we were both on the bill, I suggested that we try fusing together the two piles of material into a single long set, and I created segues between the Pavlov3 and TGC material. Before long, the distinction between between the two groups vanished, and it ceased to matter which name we were playing under – each set featured a mix of songs by me, Matt, and Sophia Uddin, plus an always-evolving collaborative composition based on an initial idea by Bill Banks. We never did find a new name, though Bill liked to call us Plorp behind the scenes.
12/16/2016
We covered King Crimson’s ‘Frame by Frame’ as the opening song of our set at Reggie’s Music Joint, Chicago, IL, at the Sons of Ra CD Release Show on December 16, 2016. I was working on the THRAK Score book at the time, and we felt it was time to actually perform a King Crimson song! I thought it would be fitting to share our second and final performance of the song in honor of the upcoming BEAT tour. You can, of course, find a full transcription of this song in The Discipline Era Transcriptions (Order at: US / International), which I transcribed and Matt Tate proofread – but that score was unfinished at the time of this performance. Later on in the night, Matt also joined Sons of Ra for a cover of ‘Red’.
Lineup L to R:
Gabriel Riccio – Keyboards, Vocals
Angelo Zaigirdar – Bass
Sophia Uddin – Violin, Vocals
Wendell Lowe II – Drums
Matt Tate – U8 Touch Guitar
Bill Banks – Guitar
3/28/2018
Next up, here’s the beginning of a set this combined band played at Subterranean basement in Chicago (alongside Cleric., Imelda Marcos of Chicago, and Anthony Freemont’s Garden Solutions) on 3/26/18. We opened with my song ‘Arrival in a Distant Land’ then smoothly segued right into Matt’s instrumental piece ‘Singularity’. Both of these pieces left quite a lot of open space for improvisation. We then seamlessly moved into our big collaborative composition, but I’m not ready to unveil that one just yet.
Lineup L to R:
Gabriel Riccio – Keyboards, Vocals
Angelo Zaigirdar – 6-String Bass, Guitar
Sophia Uddin – Viper 7-String Electric Violin
Nick Tate – Drums
Matt Tate – U8 Touch Guitar
Bill Banks – Guitar
4/5/2018
Lastly, here is another video of that same duo of songs from a few weeks later, this time at Empty Bottle Chicago, alongside Imelda Marcos of Chicago and Puke In The Icetray, on 4/15/18:
Lineup L to R:
Matt Tate – U8 Touch Guitar
Nick Tate – Drums
Sophia Uddin – Viper 7-String Electric Violin
Bill Banks – Guitar
Gabriel Riccio – Keyboards, Vocals
That’s the last of the archival content I had planned for now. Thank you to everyone who followed along!
The final studio album in the semi-archival Garmonbozia series is now available for pre-order, alongside a live video and a live album!
STUDIO SESSION 3: September 27, 2017
For the first Garmonbozia live show, Sophia and Gabriel decided to try something different and expand their ranks to a trio. U8 Touch Guitarist Matt Tate was the logical choice for a third member, as he was their bandmate in both The Gabriel Construct and his band Pavlov(3). A few days before our first performance, we had our sole rehearsal, which was our first attempt at playing in this style as a trio. I recorded this, yielding three more improvisations spanning 64 minutes. I didn’t open the session again until late 2023 – but when I finally returned to it, I was very surprised at what I heard. I sent the tracks to Markus Reuter to mix, giving him free reign creatively. He completely transformed them into something entirely new and different, yielding our new record, ‘Garmonbozia(3)’.
The full album will become available on Friday, 4/12, but the first song is available for streaming now. A Bandcamp listening party will take place in advance of the release, on Wednesday, 4/10, at 8PM EST – RSVP here!
Sophia Uddin – Viper 7-String Electric Violin
Matt Tate – U8 Touch Guitar
Gabriel Riccio – Electric Piano
Post-production, mix and mastering by Markus Reuter
Cover photo by Gabriel Riccio, art design by Alex Narveson
LIVE SESSION 1: September 30, 2017 at The Handsome Squid, Chicago, IL
Our sole live performance as a trio is documented in this youtube video. It was a house show at The Handsome Squid, Chicago, IL, on September 30, 2017. We played alongside Sacha Mullin and The Mercury Tree, who played early single guitar versions of songs that later landed on their Spidermilk record. The set was essentially an extended improvisation around the opening track from Interior City, ‘Arrival in a Distant Land‘. It also included a keyboard progression which appeared on the second track of Garmonbozia(3), as well as some ideas which can be heard on ‘Concussion III‘ on Forecast Tomorrow’s ‘Concussion’ album.
Sophia Uddin – Viper 7-String Electric Violin
Matt Tate – U8 Touch Guitar
Gabriel Riccio – Electric Piano, Vocals
Additional camera work by Ashante Shomari
LIVE SESSION 2: October 29, 2023 at The Crown, Baltimore, MD
The duo configuration of Garmonbozia returned after a long hiatus at a Halloween show at The Crown back bar in Baltimore, organized by our friend Darin Tambascio (Mast Year/XOM/Thought Eater/National Sunday Law/Graviton): ‘Drone/Experimental Night Presents Dark and Spooky Sounds‘. We alongside Joy Amaranthian (Eric ‘Mustard’ Rhodes of Genevieve and Lavender, whose set that night can be found here) and Shadow Comforts (Alan Baumbusch). Darin recorded all 3 sets in addition to manning the sound that night. Once again, this performance culminated in a rendition of ‘Arrival in a Distant Land‘.
Sophia Uddin – Violin
Gabriel Riccio – Keyboards, Vocals
Recorded by Darin Tambascio
Cover art by Alex Narveson
The version of Interior City’s opening song ‘Arrival in a Distant Land‘ that opens the first Garmonbozia record ended up defining how we played that song live. As such, I’ve decided to start releasing live videos of that song on a weekly basis so you can hear how it evolved over time. The video of our first performance (at Martyrs’, 10/5/15 with Sacha Mullin and Pavlov3) has been available for quite a while now:
To kick off this new video series, I recently released a partial video of the track from our second performance of the song, at Elbo Room, Chicago, IL, on Thursday, 3/24/16. We played with with Lybria, Sea Charms, Sacha Mullin, and Balkan Blue Band – a group specially invented to fill the show’s latest slot, as no one would take it (check out their set here!). Check that out below:
Both of these videos feature the initial live lineup of The Gabriel Construct:
Gabriel Riccio – vocals, keyboard
Sacha Mullin – vocals, keyboard
Sophia Uddin – violin, vocals
Jeff Siegfried – tenor saxophone, vocals
Bill Banks – guitar, vocals
Dante Kester – bass
Thor Bremer – drums
Our third performance (on May 20, 2016) already featured a somewhat different lineup. Jeff Siegfried departed, so we got a new sax player, Joel Moore. He left after this gig – I believe it was our last show with a sax player. We also added a second guitarist, Angelo Zaigirdar, who remained with us for quite a while, jumping between guitar and bass), expanding the lineup to an 8-piece.
The show took place at Harding House, a true haven for weirdo prog musicians. It was lovingly run by Rich Poston and Valerie Pallson, and we are still eternally grateful to them. We played alongside Justin Carter and The Mercury Tree. For this show, we decided to open things a little more abrasively – rather than start with a spooky mood and build things up, we immediately exploded into the first minute of Interior City’s closing song, ‘Curing Somatization’, before jumping into ‘Arrival in a Distant Land’s mysterious atmospheres. I think my scream at the start was perhaps more goofy than intended, but live and learn! As you can see in the thumbnail, The Mercury Tree’s drummer Connor Reilly enters the frame partway through the video:
What interests me so much about performances of ‘Arrival’ is that the song wasn’t as composed as my other material. It’s really a loose scaffold – some chords, a shape, a melody – that allowed the band to really do their thing. As such, I feel like it highlighted the players in my band better than most of the other songs in our set at the time.
In 2014, Sophia Uddin and I started a new ambient/experimental/drone/doom improvisatory duo we called Garmonbozia, based around using processed violin and electric piano to create ominous atmospheres. I am now working on releasing all of our recordings in a semi-archival series. Our first 2 duo sessions from the end of 2014 will be properly released this Friday, March 22:
STUDIO SESSION 1: October 8, 2014
The initial three improvisations were recorded at our home studio on October 8, 2014, with the intent of celebrating Halloween with some spooky music. I released them on Soundcloud around Halloween 2014. In that same session, we also tried performing a couple songs from Interior City, including album opener ‘Arrival in a Distant Land‘. This version became the framework for how we performed the song live with a full band. This was our first time experimenting with these patches, and we felt the results were successful enough that improvisations in this style became part of our repertoire. This proper album issue of the first session features a new mix, in addition to a previously unissued recording of ‘Arrival in a Distant Land’ with a few new overdubs (including the vocal take).
STUDIO SESSION 2: November 17, 2014
Our second session in this style occurred a little over a month later, yielding two more improvisations. Early this year, I decided to send the raw tracks from that session to Ryan Fitz-Henry of Australian bands Forecast Tomorrow and Solkyri. He used these tracks as raw material for his new collaborative album with Ryan Pracy, Forecast Tomorrow’s ‘Concussion’. They described this project on their Bandcamp:
This EP is a collection of experimental drones, field recordings and improvisations. It also features several guest appearances from friends of the band who share our sympathies for those in Palestine. Now on release of the complete EP, over 30,000 deaths have been recorded. The majority of this is women and children. The EP is presented for $1 on Bandcamp. Any amount you choose to pay will be donated to Act for Peace. We will donate everything.
Concussion II, III and IV feature guest improvisations by Gabriel Riccio and Sophia Uddin of The Gabriel Construct. Gabe has always been passionate about the freedom of the Palestinian people and wanted to contribute some of his project’s darker improvisations to the project, including his hypnotising keyboard work and Sophia Uddin’s haunting violin. We were more than happy to oblige and what resulted was inspiration for several more tracks on the EP.
Ryan Fitz-Henry used one of our November 2014 Garmonbozia improvisations as the basis for ‘Concussion IV’, and used some of the violin from the other improvisation in ‘Concussion II’. He also used the dark ambient piano improv I posted on Youtube in 2014 as the basis for ‘Concussion III’. Said improvisation was recorded in 2012 on a University of Pittsburgh practice room piano into a laptop microphone, so the recording quality was quite poor. I’m amazed at how good Ryan made it sound!
On the note of duos, the first song by my new black metal duo with Diogo Tabanez (who I previously collaborated with on a track called ‘Bleeding Lights’) went live today:
In a dark moonlit night, during a winter more north as the moon, within the deepest bowels of the northern forsests, fate wanted that a certain pursuer of dark alchemies, a necromancer of renown, a wizard of ill repute, knower of all that is grim, peddler of horrible curses and dark poems of the underworld, crossed paths with an indescribable creature. The dark mage asked the denizen of the undergrowth, “O ye of spiny hide and snouty visage, where dost thou hail from? What otherworldly secrets are kept in thine dark lair? How has thee been dealing with the divorce?” – to which the critter responded “I’m holding up, man, thanks for asking. I’ve been picking the guitar back up again and stuff, it’s helping me quite a bit actually. Hey, tell you what, how about we swing by my place and I show you some stuff I’ve been working on? We can even try and fit in some of those lyrics of yours, if you’re still doing those”.
The lich lord then let out a bellowing laugh, like the roar of a thousand-year-old undead dragon, and said: “Hah! A most fortuitous rendez-vous indeed, my barbed compatriot, for I have with me a slough of dark verses, veritable elegies of the underworld, cursed symphonies of fell madness… truly, Dom Satanas himself could have not come up with such execrable sonatas! Let us go at once, to shower this land with dark, and cold, and grim, and dark!”. The odious conjurer then whistled for his hounds of war, and off went the entourage to create the most blighted ballads this accursed world has ever seen. And thus was born ðøgeþístlr. The correct way to pronounce ðøgeþístlr is not to actually say it but instead to howl like a wolf in a night as cold as the dark.
Lørd Tenebröus (Diogo Tabanez) – Dungeon Synths, Samples, Whispers, Lyrics, Structure
Divorced Hedgehog (Gabriel Riccio) – Vocals, Guitar, Bass, Keyboards, Drum Programming, Riffs, Mixing
ᚨᛚᛖᚲᛊ ᚾᚨᚱᚢᛞᚨᚹᚷ (Alex Narveson) – Cover Art
Last month, I made my debut as an interviewer for Make Weird Music, interviewing artists I’ve collaborated with about their new records. Many thanks to Anthony Garone for allowing this to happen!
First, I interviewed my good friend and collaborator Sacha Mullin:
The interview was mostly about his new record, ‘Casino Wilderness Period‘, which I contributed to in several ways. Give it a listen below:
Next, I interviewed Ben Spees of The Mercury Tree:
I sang on the title track of their new record, ‘Self Similar‘, which is a microtonal album, mostly in 17EDO. You can stream it in my previous post.
I also sang on the opening song of Travis Orbin’s new record, ‘Silly String III‘, in addition to engineering Sophia Uddin’s violin parts, Sacha Mullin’s vocal spot, and a piano VST:
I played piano on the closing song of Cheer-Accident’s new album, ‘Q-Pop‘:
That song also features Sophia Uddin, who wrote its main idea.
We were also involved in another CHEER-ACCIDENT record which releases on February 23rd – an easy listening record entitled ‘Vacate‘, engineered by Steve Albini. My sole contribution was the magic organ chord on ‘Postmarked’. You can pre-order it below:
I have made my microtonal debut singing lead vocals on the title song of the new record by Portland band The Mercury Tree, Self Similar. The song is in 17EDO, and also features Tom Shad on piccolo bass and Deja Indigo Yerger (of Cryptic Ruse fame) on guitar.
The King Crimson ‘Discipline Era Transcriptions’ has been reprinted in a third edition, and the ‘THRAK: The Complete Scores’ books has received a second edition update. These books are available at the new 7D media store alongside 3 of my other sheet music books for US customers. International customers can order these new editions through Burning Shed, either individually or as a bundle.
I served as the vocal producer on Travis Orbin’s ‘This is a Self-Titled Record’, in addition to playing keyboards on two songs engineering Sophia Uddin’s violin parts on four songs:
I also did some engineering work on ‘The Neon Suite’ on his new record ‘Delectable Machinery II’:
Travis also recently released a double album of soundscapes, ‘The Soundtrack of Nonexistence’, which you can check out here.
In 2014, Duo Verico (Sam Lorber and Becki Simon) commissioned me to write an 8 minute piece for flute and alto saxophone to be performed at the Navy Band International Saxophone Symposium in January 2015. They just finished editing a video of a new recording of the piece, which can be viewed above. The piece was an interesting challenge for me, as I’m a very chordal musical thinker – writing for 2 monophonic instruments was a bit outside my wheelhouse, even moreso with a deadline, but it was fun to take on. I did a bunch of nonsense involving 9-tone serialization of Messiaen’s 3rd mode of limited transposition. I hope you enjoy listening to it! You can also listen to the piece on Soundcloud.
In other news, I moved to Baltimore, which is the reason for the long silence.
I recently appeared on the podcast You Should Check It Out, which is co-hosted by Greg Loman, a fantastic guitarist who played on quite a bit of future TGC material. He worked with Roger Waters at Walter Reed hospital with the group The Resilient and collaborated with his son Harry Waters on The Halcyon, a short film on Dust. I had a great time talking to Greg and his friends Nick Kline and Jay Rossman. This is the first time I’ve gotten to publicly talk about my own music outside of form interviews, and I debuted a few clips of new material. I also talked a bit about the new King Crimson book, so check it out!
Episode #076 – Special Guest: Gabriel Riccio (Part 1 – Creating Music)
Gabriel Lucas Riccio is a vocalist, composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, transcriber, and engraver from Salisbury, MD, currently residing in Chicago, IL. You can find a whole lot more about him on his website (TheGabrielConstruct.com). He was so much fun to talk to that we’ve split this conversation up into two episodes.
This week we dive into Gabe’s music & process. His first album Interior City, released as The Gabriel Construct in 2013, was his first major endeavor in a studio setting & he poured everything he had, creatively speaking, into the project. Believing the project would be therapeutic and finding himself, at the end of it, unsatisfied with the result, he spent the next few years struggling to create more music while he contributed to other artists’ projects. He also spent that time learning to cope with his depression. The process has been long but he’s rounded a corner the last 18 months and he’s brought some fantastic new music to share with us today.
We’re thankful to Gabe for coming on the show and hope you join us next week for Part 2, where we dive into his work transcribing King Crimson. Have a great week everyone!
Songs:
The Gabriel Construct – Inner Sanctum
Gabriel Riccio & Sophia Uddin – Between Entwines
The Gabriel Construct – Hiding a Light
The Gabriel Construct – Build
Episode #077 – Special Guest: Gabriel Riccio (Part 2 – Transcribing King Crimson)
This week we bring you the second half of our conversation. About 7 years ago, Gabe uploaded a transcription of King Crimson’s “The ConstruKction of Light” to YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kd5kG4847I], completing his senior comprehensive exams. A few hours later, a positive comment from Trey Gunn appeared & the two connected. Gabe went on to transcribe a book for Trey Gunn (and another for The Stick Men) before tackling King Crimson. With a team of proofreaders & Trey’s assistance, the completed “King Crimson: The Discipline Era” is now available. It includes all three 1980s Crimson records: “Discipline”, “Beat” & “Three of a Perfect Pair”. We really get into the weeds on this one & it is absolutely delightful (hope you agree)!
*Unfortunately it’s recently sold out, but we believe more will be coming in the near future…so keep an eye out if you’re interested!
Thank you again Gabe for coming on the show & have a great week everyone!
Songs:
King Crimson – Neal & Jack & Me
King Crimson – Dig Me