Gimmie Mountain Language, by Chris Kallmyer

Gimmie Mountain Language

by Chris Kallmyer

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1.	Trees 04:30	info
2.	Field 04:23
3.	Wind 04:02
4.	Sun 04:36
5.	Bird 05:46
6.	Mountain 05:47
7.	Cabin 02:23
8.	Time 01:38

about

Gimmie Mountain Language is a collection of improvisations and songs inspired by the ways music and landscape speak to one another. For example, the way that music from the west of Ireland is born of the craggy and mystic landscape is mirrored for me in the ways in which artificial echo describes the American southwest in country music and western films. Music has been used to describe landscapes both real and imagined since we all walked (hunched?) into the caves.

Most of these tracks were conceived as demos for a larger performance work scheduled to be staged in late 2020. Instead, I’m pleased to share them with you here, amidst our collective crisis. Now that I spend my days of self-isolation looking out at the mountains from our front porch, I am more fully realizing that we are surrounded by landscapes. Equally, I’m reminded by the human geographer Yi-Fu Tuan that our interior landscape also offers refuge: ”we speak of resting in each other’s strength or dwelling in each other’s gaze.” I'm finding a lot of peace looking out into the San Gabriels on our unusually clear days here, and I hope you, too, are finding some peace from your real and imagined vistas.

April 2020, Los Angeles

credits

released April 30, 2020

These tracks were recorded at home in Los Angeles between 2017 and 2019. Chris played guitars, hammond organ, moog synthesizer, and percussion. Track #1, Trees, was played at the Eaux Claires Festival 2018 at the Trees Stage, an open-pavilion surrounded by speakers placed high up in the forest canopy.

LeWitt built by Chris Kallmyer
Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber

The silence of landscape conceals vast presence. Place is not simply location. A place is a profound individuality. Its surface texture of grass and stone is blessed by rain, wind, and light. With complete attention, landscape celebrates the liturgy of the seasons, giving itself unreservedly. The shape of a landscape is an ancient and silent form of consciousness. Mountains are huge contemplatives. Rivers and streams offer voice; they are the tears of the earth's joy and despair. The earth is full of soul.
- John O’Donohue

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about

Chris Kallmyer Los Angeles, California

Chris Kallmyer is and artist and musician who works across music, art, and architecture. The work is driven by his interest in the perception of community, listening, landscape, and embodied experience.
Kallmyer has garnered commissions from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, San Francisco Symphony, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. ... more

chriskallmyer.com

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