Plasmodium
Clairaudience
© 2003 Plasmodium (601183812826)
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A hi-fi adventure in paranormal sound investigation, Plasmodium breathes new life into the "concept album" genre, taking the listener on a truly unique audio adventure.
tracks
- 1 This Is I.S.A.R.
- 2 Sin
- 3 Ancestor
- 4 Saw What You Did
- 5 Space Eye
- 6 Tristay
- 7 Dr. Ocotobongopus
- 8 Rethinking The Raven
- 9 Clive Buckledown
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notes
Plasmodium is Bob Miller (trumpets, flugelhorn, keyboards, sound manipulations) and Jim Thomson (drums, percussion, sound manipulations, and voice).
Initially conceived in Richmond, Virginia in the year 2000 as an improvisational and experimental drum and trumpet duo, Plasmodium has since expanded its music into the realm of clairaudience-the perception of messages in thought forms from entities who exist in another realm--after experiencing supranormal hearing during their rehearsals. What they thought were static CB transmissions and AM radio signals coming through their amplifiers turned out to actually be a transmission of paranormal voices carrying various messages and bits and pieces of information. Determining that the tops of their heads and their respective musical equipment were acting as "channeling instruments," Plasmodium opened The Investigative Sonic Apparition Research Laboratories in the year 2000. Using a dizzying array of drum loops, keyboards, trumpets, diodes, crystals, mirrors, and audio-visual surveillance monitors finetuned to paranormal frequencies, Plasmodium gives the psychic phenomenon known as clairaudience a sound, so to speak, and they paint a "sound-surveillance" portrait of sonic apparitions that they channel in their laboratories. Their latest CD, Clairaudience, is the result the group's adventures in the phenomenon of clairaudience between 2002 and 2004.
Visit Plasmodium at drycounty.net
e-mail: plasmodium@drycounty.net
snail mail: Dry County Records
P.O. Box 14592
Richmond, Virginia
23221
Press:
When do you travel out of town to see a hometown group? When it hasn't played here for months - a year and a half ago at Artspace, actually. Plasmodium, a duo featuring Bio Ritmo vet Bob Miller and longtime Richmond musician Jim Thomson, was working on an album back then, which it is just now finishing. Plasmodium's rebirth happens during a special series right down the road in scenic Charlottesville, where it will offer the most unlikely of mountain music every Wednesday night in January at the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, 414 E. Main St. Dubbed a future music series, the nights will offer prerecorded drum loops, live horns and keyboards. Plasmodium creates improvised sets that depend heavily on the mood of the time, Miller says. The group got its initial inspiration from a DJ Krush album, but now includes elements of jazz-rock, spoken word and theatrics. It's art music with tongue firmly planted in cheek. "It's got a sense of humor," Miller says.
- Wayne Melton, Style Weekly
"I use the term "performance art" very hesitantly and loosely. We are mainly into musical improvisation with a side dish of theatrical improvisation within whatever environment we find ourselves in. If there happens to be a bar regular who likes to play spoons and dress up like Elizabeth Taylor, we welcome them to the stage. The music that we play comes out of the music of the tradition of life and our lifestyles. People basically can expect what we expect out of the show: a subtle interactive phenomenon. We are self-proclaimed clairaudients. Clairaudience is the psychic ability to hear things that are beyond the range of the ordinary power of hearing, such as voices from the dead or the living. One night while playing in our practice space we channeled an entity named Clive Buckledown who is this guy who works a graveyard shift in a convenience store and owes his life to VISA. He usually visits us for a session when we perform and tells his story while we go into a trance..."
- Jim Thomson, interviewed for C'ville Weekly
Plasmodium members discography:
Jim Thomson Discography:
With Alter Natives: Hold Your Tongue (SST Records, 1986), Group Therapy (SST Records, 1987), Buzz (SST Records, 1989), Alter Natives/Carnival of Souls split 7" (L'Age D'or Records, Germany, 1990)
With Hotel X: A Random History of the Avant-Groove (SST Records, 1992), Residential Suite (SST Records, 2003), Ladders (SST Records, 2004)
With Bio Ritmo: El Piraguero 7" (Merge Records), Que Siga La Musica (Shameless Records, 1995), Salsa Galactica (Permanent Records, 1997), Rumba Baby Rumba (Mercury Records, 1998)
With Gwar: (reissue of early recordings
With The Dave Brockie Experience: The Dave Brockie Experience (Metal Blade Records, 2001)
With Patrick Phelan: Parlor (Jagjaguar Records, 2001)
With The Griefbirds: Paper Radio (Planetary Records, 2001)
With Pan American: Pan American, (Kranky Records, Kranky 025)
With Anthony Curtis and Boom: Squint (Field of Sound Records, 1994)
With Trixie Delicious and the Lott Lizards: Bring Me Men (Don't Mess With Trixie Records, 2003)
With Broken Hips: Broken Hips (Self-Released, 2003)
With Tulsa Drone: No Wake (Dry County Records, 2003)
With Plasmodium: Clairaudience (Dry County Records, 2004)
Bob Miller Discography
Bio Ritmo - Salsa Galactica - Permanent Records - 1997
Bio Ritmo - Rumba, Baby, Rumba - Mercury/Triloka - 1998
Bio Ritmo - Bio Ritmo - Locutor Records - 2003
Squirrel Nut Zippers - Sold Out - Mammoth Records - 1997
Hobex - Wisteria - Phrex Records - 2000
Hobex - U Ready, Man? - Tone-Cool/Artemis - 2002
Devil's Workshop Big Band - Idle Hands - Grantham Dispatch Records - 2003
Brian Jones Double Quartet - Slang Sanctuary Records - 2004
Sau - Eggs, Crime & Milk - 1994
Sau - Lakeside Ep - Teletran 1 Records - 1997
Sau - Rock. and Roll Paradise - Teletran 1 Records - 1998
Sau - BPepY2K - Teletran 1 Records - 2000
Tropikimba - Irresistible Urge - Rainmaker Records - 2001
Trixie Delicious and the Lott Lizards - Bring Me Men - 2003
Dave Brockie Experience - Metal Blade Records - 2001
Sarah Lee Guthrie - Rising Sun Records - 2001
Ascension - nakedsoul - 1997
Chesterfield - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - 1997
Rings End - Vertigo - 2001
Antoinique - Introducing Antoinique - X Records - 2003
Alyson Williams - It's About Time - Three Keys Music - 2004
Plasmodium: Clairaudience (Dry County Records, 2004)
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The art-jazz-electronic duo Plasmodium has a CD out titled Clairaudience, blendi
author: Tom MoodyThe art-jazz-electronic duo Plasmodium has a CD out titled Clairaudience, blending fusion, sampladelia, grunge, and twisted Southern humor. At the music's core are jazzy grooves performed by Jim Thomson (drums, vocals) and Bob Miller (trumpet and keyboards), augmented with loops, samples, and electronic treatments a la the "labfunk" of Recloose or Atjazz. Miller's nimble trumpet is a versatile lead instrument, moving from traditional muted phrasing to wah wah-ed electric guitar shrieks. Veterans of the Virginia music scene centered around Richmond and Charlottesville, the pair has an interesting provenance: Miller gigs with the salsa group Bio Ritmo, while Thomson drummed in the 80s for the nuclear mutant hardcore outfit GWAR. Although mainly jazzy, Clairaudience spins a dazzling range of musical fictions, from "Tristay"'s reverbed rockabilly lament to the paranoid psychedelic dirge rock of "Space Eye" (think Alice in Chains meets Air, if that's possible). The daily indignities of hapless convenience store clerk "Clive Buckledown," recited in a deadpan, detective-story monotone over sensuous electric piano loops, recall the white psycho jazz rap of Kentuckyan-by-way-of-Dallas MC 900 Ft. Jesus. In a more Cagean mode, the sound collage "Rethinking the Raven" presents echo-treated field recordings of a suburban smart guy spouting increasingly ridiculous, palsied nonsense syllables into fast-food driveup intercoms. ("Sir, can you drive to the window so we can take your order, we can't understand you.") The track is funny on a mean spirited Jerky Boys level, but also seductive, with the sound manipulations turning the baffled or bored utterances of the franchise employees into quasi-world music. One clerk's digitally twinned "I don't know/I don't know (I don't understand what you're saying)" becomes poignantly melodic through repetition, resembling an eerie call-and-response chant. In "Dr. Octobongopus" a bored lounge MC introduces the stage act of a polyrhythmic, multi-armed, but basically lame bongo player in a routine that is pure deadpan surrealism.