One of my more recent projects, Drone Wallah, has been focused on very long-form drone-ambient recordings. Until “Abecedronium” that is.
When I started work on the album I had the idea to make a collection of 20-30 very short drone pieces, each with a different way of generating the sounds, so no two tracks are alike. I used a large variety of instruments. Guitars, flutes, synths, a vintage chord organ, voice, whistling, to name but a few, as well as processing prerecorded samples. Also I used a lot of effects: delays, convolution reverbs, stretching, vocoding, a mix of hardware and software tricks. One track uses the warbles of a musical saw, played by Aria Nadii, that I processed in a number of ways to arrive at some complexity.
At some point in the making of the album I decided to limit the tracks to 26 and name them alphabetically, with obscure concepts and archaic words. There’s WWI army slang, thieves’ cant, outdated colloquialisms, regionalisms, and whimsicalities. I feel doing this adds some depth to the piece, by rewarding the listeners who look up the words, thereby enriching their vocabularies, and suggesting a relationship of the title to the character of the recording itself.
Drone Wallah as a name borrows the word “wallah” from Hindi, which is used to indicate someone who’s a specialist in something. Thus, a drone wallah is a person you seek out if you want drones. Playfulness with words is an important part of my creativity, and although I don’t write songs, I make up for it with evocative names and titles.
The cover image for the album uses a painting by Aria Nadii which I found to have an abstract quality reminiscent of drone music.
Visit the release page at Webbed Hand to see more information about this album and to download it for free.
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As a bonus, some brief definitions of the titles:
01 *A – Ancient Lights (old English law protecting windows)
02 *B – Boojum (like a Snark, but worse)
03 *C – Caboodle (collection of things)
04 *D – Duckboard Harrier (WWI for runner who delivers messages)
05 *E – Euterpe – (Muse of flute players)
06 *F – Fiddler’s Green (Where sailors go after they die)
07 *G – Grimalkin (Cat, a witch’s familiar)
08 *H – Here and Thereian – (From no place in particular)
09 *I – Infra Dignitatem (Beneath ones dignity)
10 *J – Jackanapes (impudent or mischievous child)
11 *K – Kittle Pitchering (pub game, derailing a long-winded storyteller)
12 *L – Lion’s Provider (the jackal, who leads a lion to prey)
13 *M – Mumbudget (Thieves’ cant for “be quiet”)
14 *N – Nightspell – (Prayer used as charm against nightmares)
15 *O – Orrery (mechanical model of solar system)
16 *P – Play Possum (act dead)
17 *Q – Quius Kius (theater jargon for “be quiet”)
18 *R – Runcible Spoon (mysterious utensil coined by Edward Lear)
19 *S – Sygaldry (a charmor spell that is sung)
20 *T – Tarnation (damnation)
21 *U – Umbersorrow (hardy, resists ill effects from weather)
22 *V – Vamoose (let’s go; leave in a hurry)
23 *W – Ware Hawk (thieves cant for “keep your eyes open”)
24 *X – Xiphias (a sword-shaped comet)
25 *Y – Yeth-hounds (headless ghost dogs, spirits of unbaptized children)
26 *Z – Zero Hour (WWI term, exact time for attack to begin)
Great post. I really enjoyed reading about how the concept for the collection was developed and seeing the list with the title definitions!
Thanks, Donna! One of my hobbies is browsing through old dictionaries and glossaries of archaic words and phrases, and I’m always taking note of things that would make great titles for something. For example, the name for my project Djinnestan came from something I found in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, one of my most favorite references.