Gurdonark - I cannot play my Mother's Marimba

Our old friend, Gurdonark has a new release out called Constellation Blackbird from the netlabel, we are all ghosts. 

WAAG describes his sound as "weirdbient".  That works.  We have enjoyed the Gurdonark sound for almost of decade now.  His music appears both in BSWC the show and here in the feed.

WAAG has a nice way with words:

“Constellation Blackbird” continues the musical journey Gurdonark first started with WAAG back in late 2012 with “Open Spaces”. This isn’t easy listening: it has dissonant frequencies, naive sounds and glitchy melodies that may not be instantly accessible. However I, for one, enjoy his particular style of minimalist expressionism … I look on it aural ginger that cleanses the palate from a meal of ambient sushi. 

Clear your palate.

Gurdonark - I cannot play my Mother's Marimba

Gurdonark - Maisie's Dream

"Music connects us through shared stories and through melodies without a narrative."

This sentence is how a description of the subject of today's post begins over at ccMixter.org.  The track was produced by long-time BSWC friend, Gurdonark. He has been a mixter at the Creative Commons remix site since November of 2005.

We've included his work on the blog and on the BSWC radio program. You can find this work here, here, here, here, and here.

This track is vintage Gurdonark.  It was posted to the site this past November. In a review of this piece at ccMixter, mixter SacJo22 uses a term, (coined by Gurdonark himself), new to us, but fitting for the style, weirdbient.

We'll let Gurdonark explain:

Mary Emma Jones, a 19th Century Stage actress, performed as Miss Clive. Histories remember her as the companion of English artist Frederick Sandys, a Pre-Raphaelite painter. Mr. Sandys gave her the nickname Proud Maisie, as in the (now public domain) poem of that title by Sir Walter Scott...I tried to take the music to an other, dream-like place, where everything is too simple and not simple at all.

Music connects us through shared stories and through melodies without a narrative.

Gurdonark - Maisie's Dream

Loveshadow - Kisses On Lips ( The Mistletoe Mix )

This Loveshadow mix was posted at ccMixter.org in November of 2007.  It was featured on a Black Sweater, White Christmas radio program, but never got a BSWChristmas post.  Here goes...

Mistletoe Dance, Photo by

Allison Marchant

Loveshadow's work forms part of the backbone of ccMixter.  And that is part of the joy of the creative commons remix site.  A collective dedicated to putting a wide variety of really great sounds out there and then building on the body of work...always building.  If you haven't been there, well...

The building block that Loveshadow used here was provided by a year-long project by calendargirl to put up a vocal track each month to challenge the mixters.  Some great tunes were generated including this one.

Mixter Gurdonark (friend of BSWC) explains:

I like that you make this mix so much fun. It’s great that you play in the field of holiday novelty, and yet you do more than merely an obvious send-up, but create your own mistletoe- verse in which this song makes sense. The interweave of vocal and insturments is good, and the little sequenced keyboard/bell around where the lyric “spider” pops up is good.

But mostly, you stretch, and you go places that people sometimes imagine they’re too hip to go, and you show there’s a lot of fun up on them thar asteroids.

I don’t think they’ll be playing this one at Billy Bob’s Texas in Fort Worth any time soon, but it’s great to hear the nods to country in this wonderfully odd mix.

Merry Christmas...enjoy the season.

Loveshadow - Kisses On Lips ( The Mistletoe Mix )

Gurdonark - Rescue Fantasies

Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday to you, Lisa Debenedictis.

Marking the happy day with this Gurdonark remix that highlights that birthday voice. Lisa has been featured on this blog and on the radio show many times and it gives me much pleasure to post again.

Gurdonark has also found favor on this site. Hey man, nice mix.

Gurdonark - Rescue Fantasies

Lisa Debenedictis and YouTube

Recent work from a long-time BSWC friend, Gurdonark...



A search for Lisa pulls up a handful of videos with attribution to her music. This is one of the great things about CC...good CC music can become a social meme and take off...In Gurdonark's words:

Lisa DeBenedictis' song Tigers appears o Lisa DeBenedictis' song Tigers appears on her album Tigers from magnatune.com. Lisa is one of the most remixed artists on the 'net, because she kindly posts her a capellas with Creative Commons licenses for others to remix. One of those remixes of her voice, "Brilliant Daze", by professional hip hop musician and producer Pat Chilla the Beat Gorilla, even found its way onto a lonelygirl15 video.

This music video is itself a kind of Creative Commons visual remix. The photographs, which are credited in the film, are all by Flickr.com artists who kindly granted BY or BY SA licenses to use their work. This kind of sharing makes for a Creative Commons (see www.creativecommons.org) which is a wonderful alternative to major-corporate-hegemony musical culture.

The visuals of this film are therefore licensed Creative Commons BY SA, while the music is BY SA NC, which permits non-commercial uses.

Thanks to Lisa and her husband B. for allowing use of photos of her in the film.

Later this week we'll take a look at some of the lonelygirl15 stuff.