Mining sound’s extremities

BASYA LAYE

Since arriving in Vancouver, Gabriel Salomon has made several contributions to the experimental arts scene here. And, next month, he will provide the sonic backdrop for Adhere, one of two original choreographies in tripping.closely.perception, to be performed by local contemporary dance company Contingency Plan at the Firehall Arts Centre.

“I landed in Vancouver right in the middle of the 2010 Olympics,” the writer, curator, activist and composer told the Independent. “I’d fallen in love and eventually got married with my partner, Aja Rose Bond, who is a Vancouver-based artist and musician. Truthfully, I was drawn to Vancouver only for love but, upon arriving, I was impressed with the creative, intellectual and politically rigorous arts community here. I’ve been more productive here than almost any other place I’ve lived.”

Salomon began experimenting with music at a young age. “I was drawn to music because I was a fan of music,” he explained. “My father is an artist and had a very brief run as a folkie in the East Village in 1960s New York. I thought I would become Neil Young but, within a few weeks of picking up my father’s old acoustic guitar, I realized I was far more interested in the strange sounds that I could make by placing objects in the strings and using a soda bottle as a slide than I was in learning scales and writing songs.

“From my teen years on, I saw sound as a world to explore and to seek the mysteries of the universe in. It mostly looked like a kid with long hair holding his guitar up to an amp and making squealing feedback noises, but, after over a decade of that kind of ruckus, I learned how to harness that with skill. Eventually, I ended up in a collaboration with Pete Swanson called Yellow Swans, which became an eight-plus-year exploration of the extremities of sound.”

As a prolific producer of psychedelic soundscapes, Salomon mines the edges of music, exploring esoteric and existential themes as they relate to social practice. Much of his work is improvisational and conceptual and resonates with the Contingency Plan’s focus on creating and presenting “work that is socially relevant and accessible.”

It was at the Firehall that the collaboration with choreographer and dancer Vanessa Goodman and the Contingency Plan had its inspiration. “A few years ago, I went to the Firehall to see a night of dance and to support some friends who are a part of the group Dance Troupe Practice,” Salomon said. “I saw Vanessa and her sister performing a piece by Rob Kitsos and was absolutely blown away by the power of their movement and the willingness to explore and challenge their capacities. I felt like the Goodman sisters and Rob’s choreography was on the same edge within dance that I was attempting to find through music and sound.

“By wonderful synchronicity, I sat with Vanessa’s partner and he was familiar with my musical projects, in particular, Yellow Swans. He introduced me to Vanessa and we informally agreed to try and collaborate at some point in the future. This first led to my creating music for Vanessa’s public dance work, unlike taste, which was performed in Victory Plaza as part of Dancing on the Edge Festival. That collaboration was so wonderful that there was no question about continuing to work together when the opportunity to do Adhere became a reality.”

About that, Salomon explained, “The score for Adhere attempts to perform itself in a few different worlds, without neglecting any. First and foremost, it needs to serve the dance itself, and that provides a very different context and set of limitations than I normally engage in. It also invites a lot of ideas and choices that I might never have made otherwise. In particular, the use of percussion is something I never seriously explored until I started working with Vanessa. Nearly all of the music is composed using self-recorded performances on percussion, piano and guitar, which I then cut and arrange on a computer.

“Very little of the music is altered digitally,” he continued, “but I am very free in the ways I combine sounds which were recorded separately. For example, one segment of the piece is almost completely constructed out of the sound of the reverberation of piano strings after they’ve been struck, but without the initial ‘attack’ of the note. It creates these beautiful and eerie drones that sound like piano but could never be replicated in real life. The process most resembles collage; the cutting and pasting of different distinct materials which are recombined to create a new whole.”

The project’s unique challenges were also part of what attracted Salomon. “The greatest challenge to composing for dance is also its greatest pleasure – collaborating with dancers! The intelligence and embodied awareness of dancers is incredibly inspiring, but we use different language and are listening in different ways.”

While every one of Salomon’s ventures is unique, he said, “I have many projects, but they are in many ways simply pseudonyms. Each project, whether it is me by myself or in collaboration, has its own set of ideas, concerns and limitations. In a sense, giving them a separate name means giving them permission to exist on their own terms without having to ask people to reconcile the multitude of differences. I think creative people are diamonds, crystals, with many facets that can’t possibly express the whole.”

One of Salomon’s projects is STAG, a gallery and performance space that he and his wife run out of their Strathcona home. “Aja Rose Bond is an amazing and inspiring artist and musician in her own right and, so, even if we weren’t partners, it would be pleasure to create with her,” Salomon enthused. “That said, one of the joys of being in a marriage with your collaborator is that the quotidian parts of everyday life, such as your domestic space, becomes a collaborative artwork.

“The Strathcona Art Gallery [STAG] is an experiment in seeing how you can make contemporary art a part of your day-to-day life, and running a gallery out of our living room was not as hard as you might think. It’s in transition now, as we reform it into a semi-private/semi-public library and writing residency. We’ll be shifting focus from exhibitions and performance towards readings and publishing.”

Performing music together “is a joy,” he continued, “though it’s harder to prioritize rehearsals when we can just as easily make a meal or read in bed. That said, we share so much in common regarding our interests that having projects like Diadem and the STAG is an important way to experience our mutual adventure.”

The two are partly focused on a shared interest in divination and esoteric exploration. “Our use of divination stems from our mutual interest in spirituality and esoteric philosophy – kabbalah, hermeticism and earth-based religions,” he explained. “At the same time, it is a nod to John Cage and other musicians who use chance as a way of creating new musical possibilities.”

Salomon’s interest in the esoteric stems in part from his Jewish identity, he said. “I absolutely identify with Judaism as my ethnic and cultural heritage. I often think that the sad-yet-hopeful feel of much of my music is rooted in my heritage. Kabbalah in particular has been an inspiring source for my creativity and Yesod, which is on a hiatus for now, was an attempt to directly pay homage to that. Jewishness infuses itself in what I create even if it is rarely explicit.”

In keeping with his art’s democratic and inclusive nature, Salomon encourages those interested to “scour” the Internet for a listen. “A lot of Yellow Swans’ music is available for free on blogs, download sites and YouTube,” he said. “By all means, please feel free to listen.” LPs of Salomon’s various music projects are also available at local independent music shops.

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