Rijaldian Notebook

Saturday, June 19, 2:00 pm.

Appearing with Special Guests, TBA.

Rhino Records
235 Yale Avenue
Claremont, CA 91711
Phone: (909) 626-7774

Thank you, Guitar Craft.

Over the last several months, I have had the distinct pleasure of contributing to the new album by Ollin, the basement rock/modern progressive rock band directed by Polish musician Radek Kordasiewicz.

The Opium Trail was recorded over a period of three years from beginning to completion. This album could not have happened in another time. The contributions of the musicians were made in various home studios in Poland, England and the USA. We worked by sharing audio files via the Web, and have never actually met in person.

The Opium Trail is available now for free download at The Internet Archive.

Click here for the Ollin Band myspace page or type/paste the following into your browser: http://www.myspace.com/ollinband

Click here to download the entire directory in one zip file (or paste the following into your browser window…) http://www.archive.org/compress/TheOpiumTrail

Click here for other download options, such as downloading separate files, etc.:
(or paste the following into your browser window…) http://www.archive.org/details/TheOpiumTrail

I really got to stretch out on this, and it features some of my best playing to date. See what you think.

I hope you enjoy listening!

This stunning photograph by Keith Chambers*, displayed by permission, gives me pause each time I see it. The cover image used on Adamantine is from the same series. Several people have asked me about where the cover photo was captured, while others have recognized it as Mono Lake, located in California’s Eastern Sierra region.

We selected our cover photo because I felt that the reflective landscape of the tufa columns and still waters echoed the shape of an audio waveform, and more importantly, resonated with the mood I was trying to get across with the record.

In his 1882 book, Roughing It, Mark Twain called Mono Lake “…one of the strangest freaks of Nature to be found in any land.”

Twain continues: Mono Lake lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, and is guarded by mountains two thousand feet higher, whose summits are always clothed in clouds. This solemn, silent, sail-less sea—this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on earth—is little graced with the picturesque. It is an unpretending expanse of grayish water, about a hundred miles in circumference, with two islands in its centre, mere upheavals of rent and scorched and blistered lava, snowed over with gray banks and drifts of pumice-stone and ashes, the winding sheet of the dead volcano, whose vast crater the lake has seized upon and occupied.

More recently, the unique bio-activity in the lake—actually one of the world’s most productive ecosystems despite its bleak appearance—has led some researchers to theorize that Mono Lake may be host to “weird life” microbes that have adapted to living within great concentrations of arsenic, possibly even life forms of extraterrestrial origin. It is an amazing place worth seeing, understanding, and protecting.

*Please note that this image may not be used or reproduced without the written permission of the photographer.

Mars went direct on my birthday last week. I love this time of year. Clocks move forward, days grow longer, and it’s time to transition from review and reflection to action.

That set-up is a hint that I am currently seeking new projects.  Need music for your picture? Are you a documentarian in need of a drone? I can provide music and sonic atmospheres for your film, trailer, industrial, etc.  Need blistering ad copy? Everything you always wanted to know about my corporate career can be found at Linked In.  I’m currently writing a longer work of fiction, but I’m open to the right opportunity.

And because truth is stranger than the aforementioned… while waiting to board a recent flight at Newark NJ, a gentleman in his early sixties—picture Wilfred Brimley if you will— took note of my guitar, approached me and politely asked if my name Leslie West. I’m not sure I convinced him that I was not, in fact, Leslie West. As much as dig Leslie (I saw West, Bruce and Laing twice in 73/74!) I am mystified how anyone might confuse the two of us.

Moving on, then… The amazing Mike Keneally ripped my head off (again) at The Baked Potato in Studio City last night. MK keeps getting better with every performance, and the Keneally Band has never sounded so together and fluid.  MooseMart is your Keneally shopping source.

Mad Rhino Mailing list. Leading the charge of indie music since Leslie West was widely recognized in airports nationwide, Rhino Records Claremont is the best reason I can think of to drive out to the distant edges of the Inland Empire. I’ve been invited to participate at an in-store performance at Rhino sometime in May, date tba.   Sign up for their free newsletter and you’ll know the details asap.

Mozza2Go. If there is better take out pizza in all of Los Angeles, I want to know about it.  Yes, it’s pricey, but you get what you pay for. Melrose near Highland. Praise the Lord and pass the sottocenere al tartufo.

My sincere thanks again to everyone who has written in about Adamantine. And thanks for your patience while I familiarize myself with the Word Press application.

And finally: over the last several weeks, I’ve been contributing to the new album from Ollin (the band based in Poland, not East L.A.) That album should be available for free download later this week, so I invite you to check back here for the link. I had a lot of fun working on it, particularly since it gave me an opportunity to learn how to record using Logic. More soon.

Here are a few views of Snowmageddon, as experienced in Neptune, NJ last weekend. All were captured by my iPhone. Check out the videos.IMG_0898IMG_0908

Knocked out by this review of Adamantine from Sid Smith:

Updating with a quick edit for the sake of brevity and relevance… Back on Rijaldia, I am pleased that Adamantine appears to be finding new listeners. Radek K. posted an interesting review over at the Inner Knot site that I very much enjoyed. Here’s an excerpt:

“it’s a very daring, difficult music. I think that people who will say it’s beautiful won’t understand it. ‘Cause it’s not beautiful. It’s very deep, very serious, very personal. It has a few beautiful moments, some musically delicate moments, but 95% of it is a powerful musical behemoth that takes the listener to very strange places. This music is huge. It’s like a large, black hole at the bottom of the sea, or a shape of a shipwreck in the depth, something that overwhelmes us. The hole is a better description- it’s a black, 500 meters wide hole at the bottom of the sea, and you fall down into it, like into a mouth of some mythical creature. This music works that way. It’s not to be enjoyed. Don’t get me wrong- it’s enjoyable, I’m just talking about my own experience. It’s to be felt, touched and surrendered to. 

It’s a success. It’s not just another ambient or experimental music album with the “musician” doing “music for the sake of music”, it’s not another bunch of tracks to listen to and enjoy their beauty. It’s intrusive, it’s disturbing, it’s the musical version of the “Bitter Moon” movie. There are no excuses, just the listener and a large, mysterious space of experience.”

Ronan’s take on it is that “it’s a polarizing record—the people who like it will really like it, and those who do not like it, will strongly dislike it for the same reasons that the people who like it do.” Yeah, I had trouble following that too, but I think I know what he means.

Peter Banks offered this:

I think that you are on drugs and I really don’t hear a single !

It’s majestic and beautiful: you finally nailed it.

My favorite comment to date came from Jack Grapes. “I’ve been listening to adamantine and find the work quite amazing… it’s quite haunting and gets into the blood.”

I’m not entirely comfortable with all of it myself, but it’s time to let it go and do something new, and that is a good way for me to wrap up 2009 and welcome in the New. Wishing everyone peaceful holidays and a prosperous, healthy 2010 and Year of the Tiger.