i was gonna just shoot an ask to say I hope that you're doing well but holy shit EDM flute is awesome
Hey callmealx, thanks for the shout, I'm doing fine!
Glad you dig my EDM flute gig - as a matter of fact, I'm back in the studio for the first time in years, working on new music for a wild collaborative performance art project that's been in development for over a year now with a queer performance collective in Berlin. The score has plenty of ambient/techno/trance elements, and my current EDM playlist is a deep well of inspiration.
For many years, I've played at clubs and warehouse parties, taking my unamplified flute and improvising along with whatever the DJ is putting through the speakers as I move through the space, aiming the notes where I sense the physics of the music will carry them, bouncing them off the walls and looking for the groove, the moments where I hook into the flow and without thinking about it anticipate the breaks and key changes and note patterns that are coming two, three, four measures ahead - and the thrill when I nail it just right and see the faces near me light up like Christmas trees and just that quick I'm gone to a fresh part of the space, sometimes with applause ringing at my back...
At a Tom of Finland warehouse party during NYC Pride in 2004, one of the go-go boys was in the green room dressing for his shift on the boxes, I had just finished my last set, my flute key pads sticky with the sweat of 2,000 shirtless guys that hung in the air, clouds of perspiration coating my head, my tongue cut and bleeding - the kid asks me what's that, I say it's my flute, well what do you do with it, I tell him I just play along with what the DJ plays -
and he starts laughing, a huge Cheshire Cat grin on his face, you mean you just put that thing together and play along? Yeah, I say. Jesus Christ! he laughs, incredulous. Holy shit, that's amazing, I've never heard of this, that's crazy shit man, and the kid is so taken with the thought he can't stop jumping around... he'd never heard of such a thing, and God I'll never forget that.
Since I was 15 years old, I've been blowing air through a metal stick with holes in it and waving my fingers up and down on it, and sometimes people are moved to tears or delighted or happy, and sometimes they just go apeshit.
This was recorded in 2001-2002. Ambient techno trance from Equa, John Neff, engineer; Rich Berman, bass; Animal J. Smith, flute.