Others
Geist
Formed in 2016, Others is the project of two artists longing for something more experimental in their musical work. Lesli Wood (Cobra Family Picnic) and Daniel Martin Diaz (Trees Speak, Amelia Poe) began these recordings in Woods warehouse studio, inviting one guest musician to sit in for each live session. Abstract violinist Vicki Brown, known for her "psychosonic visualizations," is featured throughout the record, along with guest artists Ben Nisbett, Gabriel Sullivan, Julius Schlosburg, Damian Diaz, and Michael Glidewell. This avant-garde project has one foot in the 21 st Century and the other shifting among various eras of the past, sometimes in a dance, sometimes a dirge, of synths and dulcimers. Freed of genre limitations and preconceived patterns, the musicians were encouraged to explore wildly, using the foundation of a broken consort of 18th Century chamber music wherein one musician introduces a melody, motif, or sound and the other musicians respond as they see fit. Recording sessions were lit by candlelight and shrouded in incense smoke, establishing the mood for composition, calling to mind, as Diaz describes, a gothic cathedral "filled with early analog synthesizers with vines growing out of them, a living breathing entity of music that transcends time and space."