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Inspired by the Fugates of Troublesome Creek, Smurfs, and colloidal silver overuse, I am on a lifelong mission to turn a sizeable swatch
of my skin blue. Blue is the color of the sky, water, the throat
chakra, and is also known as the color of desperation.
Appalachian Trance Metal is my mind, body, and soul.
It's my imperfect memory.
It's ghost harmonics: the essential character of the Appalachian mountains, filtered through my particular life experience.
It's Trance unforgetting.
It's Metal precision.
But what does it sound like? It's a river squeezed through cataracts.
Okay. But it doesn't sound Appalachian, I've heard. Yes...there's an imprint a place makes that is separate from the cultural traditions sprung up around it.
Your brow furrows. I have failed to provide enough context.
Trance is often misheard as "trans." Trans means across or beyond, which works, too. Trance is from the Old French transe, from transir- to faint, pass away. And "Trans" is the title of a controversial Neil Young album. He makes songs so good one listen sears, in the good way.
Metal could be mettle (fortitude) or medal (reward). Sociology factors heavily into our associations and affiliations with genre. It's curious heavy metal is considered a lower class phenomenon, given the exacting technical demands and extreme endurance required of its performers, requiring physical awareness, consummate timing, and emotional clarity of which the upper classes imagine only themselves capable. Only slightly off-topic, my friend Kyle says being a musician is nearly the last blue-collar work left in America. Does being an upper class musician mean feigning sloppiness, fauxthenticity? My sloppiness is the genuine article, despite elaborate attempts at purging. Embracing mistakes implies a hybrid upper-lower sensibility.
I once played a show in Tennessee at a former old man bar. My fingers danced around like wild. I know this because a young listener repeatedly shouted, "Crazy Hands!"
We improvise all the time, in every aspect of life. Should music be any different? Do I make music? Is it necessary or desirable to have my endeavors accepted as music? Is there a formula?
I was recently [August 2010] described in "Birmingham's City Paper," Black & White, as "a metal-crazed showboat who seems to mostly use improv to work out sexual fetishes."
Could that possibly be true?
It's true I don't eat foods containing gluten, yet it's pretend that I have great awareness of the food I consume. We do our best. That's kind of how the music is. I've spent many years developing a certain something that can (when the stars align) seem authoritative in a specific way that directly reaches somewhere in someone. It's also the case (often in the same event) that the beauty, magic, and majesty art bring can be absorbed- slurped and deadened- by an existential carpet, inspiring merely a "meh." What is reached, if, indeed, it is reached, is out of my control. However, the music is offered openly, and my attention is fully on it.
It's not hyperbole to me that I uncover hidden sounds, sounds found all around us but needing a nudge. There's a quantum basis to what I do, but I'm most concerned with communication between known and unknown, audience and performer, self and Self. I've resided in Maine (head), New Jersey (heart), Georgia (sacrum), plus spells in Massachusetts (neck), and Tokyo, Japan (right hand). These homes are the relics upon which I stack meaning-making activity, an incomplete body thirsting for metaphysical discovery. And I continue to dig deeper to see what's underground. That's when it gets most interesting.
Believe me, I have as many questions about Appalachian Trance Metal as you do. Thank you for listening.
Peace and Love,
Killick
September 29, 2010
Athens GA