drawn to... Country Tropics by Old Saw

I started drawing this a week or so back after first hearing the Country Tropics LP by Old Saw. I've had this four-track musical wonder on all week and—whenever I had an hour or so spare (not often, as it's been a bumper-sized, busy week)—I worked on this drawing while the music played.

In no way does the drawing do justice to the simply AMAZING LP, nor, I think, does it really reflect the music. In retrospect, I think this drawing is just something I did while listening to the LP.

Country Tropics is ambient, analogue, avant-garde, Americana, spattered with pedal steel, bells, banjo, fiddle drones, burring nylon, and pipe organ, and it is incredibly soothing. I like this description of the band by worriedsongs,

"A network of New England string pluckers, organ drivers and bell ringers crafting a rusted and granular shadow world where the dive bar meets the divine."

Search out Old Saw on Bandcamp - you won't be disappointed (unless that is, the vinyl is sold-out). And, here is an interview with Henry Birdsey, one of the brains behind Old Saw. His take on how and why he makes music is enlightening and spot on,

"Sound is innately terrifying and haunting. And it holds this magnetism over us because of that. We’re talking about physical pressure waves that are invisible and inescapable."

I made this drawing using four H and HB pencils on almost LP-sized Clairefontaine acid-free paper.

Originally posted on my old website.

drawn to… Hill, Flower, Fog by Emily A. Sprague

Emily A. Sprague recorded Hill, Flower, Fog at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. And, I have a feeling that, in the future, this LP might end up reminding me of these times more than most music of this period.

She recorded its six instrumental tracks in a single week in March, in the early days of the pandemic. “I found myself suddenly a part of that stream which flows now separate from the reality we used to know,” she wrote upon first uploading the album to Bandcamp in March, just four days after she had finished it. (The RVNG Intl. edition has been expanded and resequenced.) “It is meant as a soundtrack to these new days, practices, distances, losses, ends, and beginnings.” Rather than fear or discord, though, she emphasizes a grounding tranquility.

Pitchfork NOVEMBER 19 2020

A couple of days ago, the power went out for the whole day in our part of Dakar. This made it almost impossible to do anything apart from sweat and worry about the fridge and freezer contents. As I dripped, I listened to Hill, Flower, Fog by Emily A. Sprague on repeat and made this drawing - before the laptop battery finally evaporated, which was just a few hours after power to my phone vanished. I love this album. It's a whole lot more relaxing than (I think) my drawing suggests. There's a lovely short film on YouTube—called Emily Sprague | Chasing light—about how she works with Moog synthesizers.

I made this using two HB pencils, pencil shavings, and various Rotring, Marvy Uchida and Steadler Pigment Liner pens on 21x21 cm Clairefontaine acid free paper.

Originally posted on my old website.

drawn to... New Love Music (continuous mix) by Marta Forsberg

'Free' drawing is very meditative. And, in these dark times, I fully recommend it. I also recommend this mini-LP by Marta Forsberg. I discovered her work on Bandcamp about a year ago, and since then I've watched a few of her performances on YouTube. It's all gloriously experimental, but New Love Music is probably one of her most 'accessible' recordings - fantastically simple album title too.

I made this drawing blind using a sharpened HB pencil on a 21x21cm square piece of 250g/m2 acid free Clairefontaine paper while listening to New Love Music (continuous mix). Have a listen below.

Lastly, below, is a live performance of New Love Music.

Originally posted on my old website.

drawn to... Original BGM by Haruomi Hosono

I was looking for a piece of music to draw to—something I hadn't heard before—when I came across Original BGM by Haruomi Hosono. I believe this track is from a 1981 album by Yellow Magic Orchestra. It was only after I finished the drawing that I realised this music was made by the same guy who made Watering a flower 1984 cassette (花に水) - one of my favourite discoveries of the past few years.

I made this drawing blind using a sharpened HB pencil on a 21x21cm square piece of 250g/m2 acid free Clairefontaine paper.

Originally posted on my old website.

drawn to... Tibetan Bells by Henry Wolff, Nancy Hennings w. Drew Gladstone

An album of Tibetan bell music made by white folk in 1972 might conjure up images of hippy trail beatniks down a Kathmandu back alley attempting to jam celestial monk music. And, you'd not be far off—a lot of this recording is calming and other-worldly—but some strands within this seven-track album are also quite jarring. Various websites state that this LP was "the first recording to use Tibetan bells". I don't know if that's true or not or how you could even verify that claim. I do wonder how these artists discovered Tibetan bells back in the early 70s. Unfortunately, the Internet appears to have very little information about any of the musicians who played on this recording.

I made this drawing blind using an unsharpened HB pencil on a 21x21cm slightly faded piece of 250g/m2 acid free Clairefontaine paper.

Originally posted on my old website.

drawn to… Unerforschtes Gebiet A by Thomas Köner

I used a Marco 9001 sharpened pencil to draw on a piece of 200g 21x29.7 cm Clairefontaine paper to this 21:50 track Unerforschtes Gebiet A by Thomas Köner from his Unerforschtes Gebiet album (2001).

It's an album of bitter cold, creaking ice and cutting wind.

At first, I had the paper placed vertically to draw blind. However, I was interrupted twice while drawing. I restarted the track each time, and turned the paper before each restart. I like how some of the lines kind of depict cracking ice.

I'm glad I only used pencil for this drawing.

Originally posted on my old website.

drawn to... Vertigo KO by Phew

Why not draw while listening to a variety of LPs? It seemed like a simple enough premise, and, in these COVID-times, I thought it'd be a good time-filler, and it was. I decided to start this mini-project with Vertigo KO by Phew (aka Hiromi Moritani). I only discovered Phew's work in 2019, when I stumbled across the Patience Soup video. I went on to buy Light Sleep and, more recently, Vertigo KO, released in September 2020. Due to COVID, I have yet to open the vinyl copy I ordered (as it's in a different country), and so I've been listening to the digital version these past few months.

There's a feeling you get when you discover a new artist; a new sound, one with a unique way of doing things that you find immediately appealing—even familiar—like a missing piece in an unfinished jigsaw; a piece that fills its own particular space. However, it's not a feeling I get very often with music or art, it's something quite special and rare, but when it does show its face, I recognise it instinctively. There are uplifting moments on Vertigo KO, but for the most part, it occupies a bleak future-present; one that is cut-up with odd, analogue electronics and sparse, distinctive vocals. It's become something of a personal soundtrack to 2020. As Phew said about the LP,

“This album is an unconscious sound sketch... The hidden message of this album is: What a terrible world we live in, but let’s survive.”

blind cover | pens, pencils, highlighter, oyster shell | 10cm x 10cm card | 7 December 2020

The blind drawing above (literally done with eyes closed) is the last one I did in this series. I drew it while listening through to the LP a second time. The idea was to create an imaginary LP cover, but the resulting drawing suggested I develop it into a character (see below). I'm calling him 'hungry man'.

I made a different drawing while listening to each track on Vertigo KO, and I changed pens, pencils, and highlighters each time. EDIT: 28 April, 2025. For now, this is the only drawing from this LP that I have reworked and still like.

hungry man finished | pens, pencils, highlighter, oyster shell | 10cm x 10cm card | 7 December 2020

Originally posted (with other drawings) on December 16, 2020 on my old website.

drawn to... Music On A Long Thin Wire by Alvin Lucier

This is the third in my small series—where I draw to a particular piece of music—hence the 'drawn to..' project title. I drew each of the four drawings below blind while listening to a 6 minute 43 seconds excerpt of Music on a Long Thin Wire by Alvin Lucier.

I used a Marvy Uchida For Drawing 003 black pen on a 10cm X 10cm piece of 250g acid-free clarirefontaine paper. After drawing all four pieces, I scanned them onto photographic paper and glued them onto white card (see below). The total size of this collage is 25 cm X 25 cm (ish).

Music on a Long Thin Wire is an amazing way of creating a piece of ever-changing music. The full liner notes are at the end of this post, but here is how the wire works,

… the wire is extended across a large room, clamped to tables at both ends. The ends of the wire are connected to the loudspeaker terminals of a power amplifier placed under one of the tables. A sine wave oscillator is connected to the amplifier. A magnet straddles the wire at one end. Wooden bridges are inserted under the wire at both ends to which contact microphones are imbedded, routed to a stereo sound system. The microphones pick up the vibrations that the wire imparts to the bridges and are sent through the playback system. By varying the frequency and loudness of the oscillator, a rich variety of slides, frequency shifts, audible beats and other sonic phenomena may be produced... link

It's a method that has inspired many folk to have a go at creating it themselves.

I may adapt these drawings in the future as each of the four figures suggests something to me. However, I wanted to post the drawings in their raw format first which seems to be in keeping with how Lucier himself worked.

Originally posted on my old website.

drawn to... Palm Sugar Candy by Oren Ambarchi

I first heard of Oren Ambarchi last year, when I stumbled across the Patience Soup collaboration with Phew and Jim O'Rourke. Somewhat embarrassingly—given how good his music is—I'd never heard his solo work until last week. I dug around his discography and ended up listening to the 16-minute long Palm Sugar Candy track from the Simian Angel LP on repeat.

Palm Sugar Candy is so good that I decided to use it as the starting point for the second in my "drawn to..." series. Drawn to... is a mini-project where I draw blind onto a 10cm x 10cm piece of white card while listening to a track or an LP, and I see where it goes from there.

First, I drew the black pen sketch above while listening to the track. Then, I scanned and enlarged it, and printed it onto A4. As I continued listening to the LP, I started to embellish the drawing on the A4 print.

As ever with this kind of experiment, the result is unpredictable, and that is the delight. I'm calling the finished drawing 'three-face'. Thanks to Oren for the music, and, as I am discovering, Black Truffle records is a trove of gold.

Originally posted on December 16, 2020 on my old website.