#mamiffer

Faith Coloccia

Every Record I Own - Day 62: Barnett + Coloccia Retrieval

I’ve become the default email interview answerer for Russian Circles, and one of the most common questions we get is “what’s your writing process like?”

I hate this question. I hate it because the answer is so boring. The truth? You hear a note or a musical phrase in your head, and you just build off of it. Or you play a note on your instrument and it almost seems to beg for another specific note, then another one, and another one. The songs build themselves, one note or one beat at a time. How else are you supposed to do it?

Last year I was fortunate enough to contribute bass duties on a couple of Mamiffer tours. I’ve known Faith Coloccia since her tenure in Everlovely Lightningheart and played on a few of her early Mamiffer recordings, but I only had the pleasure of actually performing live with her last year. Working with Faith was very illuminating because her creative process seems much more visual, more deliberate, and more conceptual. It’s not a matter of striking a note then figuring out what comes next. She already has the whole textural arc of the piece envisioned in her mind. She knows what she wants to convey, she just has to put all the pieces in place. I find that very inspiring.

This is her first of two collaborations with Oakeater’s synth-wizard Alex Barnett, and my understanding is that while most of the actual melodies were determined in the studio, the dynamic trajectory and textural shifts were all mapped out in advance. In many ways, that kinda blows my mind. But listening to Retrieval, it’s understandable how the passages of protracted ambience, John Carpenter-esque synth-based creep-outs, sound collage, and classical minimalism had to come to fruition through this process. This is music that’s really about the big picture and creating an overarching feeling to a project, as opposed to the more standard convention of stockpiling bits and pieces and fashioning them into songs.

Mamiffer + Circle “Enharmonic Intervals for Paschen Organ” came out 8 years ago. Recorded over a single day at Keski-Porin Kirkko, the nineteenth-century stone church in the heart of Circle’s hometown of Pori Finland.

https://sigerecords.bandcamp.com/album/mettapatterning-for-constellation

Releases November 27, 2020 on SIGE records 1. Mettapatterning for Constellation 2. ))((Mettapatterning for Constellation <ll> Mamiffer is Faith Coloccia + Aaron Turner 1. Mettapatterning for Constellation Composition by Faith Coloccia (2016) Orchestration and string arrangement by Eyvind Kang Performed by Spółdzielnia Muzyczna contemporary ensemble (2017) Małgorzata Mikulska - flute Bartosz Sałdan, Aleksander Wnuk - percussion Martyna Zakrzewska - piano Paulina Woś, Barbara Mglej - violins Gabriela Biel - viola Jakub Gucik - cello Mateusz Rusowicz - conductor Aaron Turner - cassette players Recorded by Robert Szczukiewicz (FS Audio) on 30th September 2017 in Nowohuckie Centrum Kultury, Krakow Commissioned by and performed at 15. Sacrum Profanum Festival, curated by Krzysztof Pietraszewski -))((- Mettapatterning for Constellation <ll> Faith Coloccia: piano, mellotron flute, string patch, bells, cassette recordings Aaron Turner: guitar, percussion Jon Mueller: bells Recorded to 4 track cassette by Faith Coloccia, 2016 Additional recording by Aaron Turner at The House of Low Culture, Vashon, WA, 2016 Artwork and design by Faith Coloccia Score preparation by Brianna Atwell All tracks mixed by Randall Dunn at AVAST! Seattle ,WA, fall 2017 Mastered by James Plotkin Special thank you to Krzysztof Pietraszewski and Spółdzielnia Muzyczna contemporary ensemble. C+P Faith Coloccia BMG/ASCAP SIGE072

Faith Coloccia’s music as Mamiffer behaves as a living organism that feeds off its surroundings as it multiplies and evolves to live in harmony with its environment. This malleability is presented in Mamiffers’s latest record, Mettapatterning for Constellation. The album features two incarnations of a single composition by Coloccia, commissioned by the Sacrum Profanum Festival in Krakow, Poland. Side A documents the 2017 live presentation of “Mettapatterning for Constellation” as performed by the Półdzielnia Muzyczna contemporary ensemble, orchestrated by Eyvind Kang, conducted by Mateusz Rusowicz, and mixed by Randall Dunn. The B side features the initial pre-notation home recording of the composition, “))((Mettapatterning for Constellation <ll>,” as performed by Faith Coloccia, Aaron Turner, and percussionist Jon Mueller. Together the two tracks not only depict the emotional depth and textural vibrancy of Coloccia’s vision, they model the organic breadth and variability of the work. The two versions have distinct intentions and diametric harmonic spiritual relations. A perfect metaphor for Mettapatterning would be that of eukaryotic organisms: those that can live freely as single cells, but can also aggregate together to form multicellular reproductive structures, just as a lo-fi 4-track creation can evolve into its own distinct, transcribed, and orchestrated form when presented to the world.