There's an arresting aspect of every frame of Champ Emsinger's video for Pony Blues, the song by Steve Gunn and Mike Cooper. The rich greens of the jungle leaves, the smoke wafting through the hills, the boy picking his way through the forest, his yellow shirt playing against the brown of the tree trunks as he follows an enchanting spirit into the river.
But it's the juxtaposition of these visuals against the music itself that brings out the film's dualistic nature - namely, the interplay of the song Gunn and Cooper perform (a Delta blues written in Mississippi a century ago) and the setting of the video (outside Pai, Thailand, a rural town just across the border from Myanmar).
It's these kinds of clever juxtapositions that drive the indie record label RVNG Intl's FRKWYS series, of which Gunn and Cooper's recording is a part. The 12 records in the label's FRKWYS series pair a younger musical traveler with a more experienced one, meetings that also often span geography and aesthetic. And the best of these records are often the most improbable - like the blues of the American South weaving perfectly the greens of the Thai north. I think there is incredible potential between the intergenerational exchange where there's a mutuality in learning, says Matt Werth. And that becomes the thrust of these collaborations.
I think there is incredible potential between the intergenerational exchange where there's a mutuality in learning.
Werth founded RVNG in 2004 and runs the label out of an office in Brooklyn. In 2009, he started the FRKWYS series - pronounced Freakways, an homage to the legendary Folkways label. The first release paired noise pioneers Carter Tutti and Australian polymath J.G. Thirlwell; later releases upheld that collaborative spirit while expanding the project's boundaries. One such example is the 2011 edition that paired New Age zither master Laraaji and noise jammers Blues Control. Werth masterminds the collaborations himself.
While all of the collaborations are successful, some, particularly the recent ones, are spectacular. And in recent years, starting with the 2012 FRKWYS release ICON GIVE THANK featuring Sun Araw, M. Geddes Gengras, and the Congos, the series has added a video element. This includes music videos and full-fledged documentaries soaked in the vibes of the music.
[Video] was an opportunity to jump off the page, to smash the format and expand it, Werth says. It felt really important [for ICON GIVE THANK] that we had that strong documentation, even though it became abstract in the end. It felt like it would be, without aggrandizing it, a missed historical moment [without it].
Below, Werth joins us as we explore some of the visual and musical ground FRKWYS has explored so far.
Still from Steve Gunn & Mike Coopers Pony Blues video.
Steve Gunn & Mike Cooper - Pony Blues [Official Video]
FRKWYS Vol. 11: Cantos de Lisboa
Steve Gunn and Mike Cooper's FRKWYS collaboration, Cantos de Lisboa, sees the two guitar players meeting on unfamiliar ground, with each (the Rome-based Cooper and Philadelphia-based Gunn) decamping to Lisbon, Portugal for the sessions. On the album's more experimental tracks, Cooper, a seasoned genre-hopper, pulls the capable Gunn into strange, new territory. Particularly rewarding are murky, noisy exercises like Lampdusa 2013 and Song for Charlie, as well as the pair's mellower, fado-influenced Saudade Do Santos-o-Veiho.
[ Cantos de Lisboa' is] two really virtuosic players taking the geography in Portugal and the music of Lisbon and playing to those sensibilities, and playing to their dexterity, Werth says.
Unlike most of the RVNG videos, Emsinger's video for Pony Blues doesn't document the recording of the song or even feature either of the artists. But it does capture the hesitating, roiling nature of the record.
Suzanne Ciani and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - Sunergy [Documentary]
FRKWYS Vol. 13: Sunergy
Sunergy [Documentary] | RVNG Intl.
In his documentary of the Sunergy sessions, Sean Hellfritsch combines shots of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Suzanne Ciani making music together at a table with images from the Northern California coast. Both scenes - of the musicians interlocking; of waves shimmering or beating against the rocks - convey the feeling of nerves untangling and the sense of life teeming below the surface.
The two electronic musicians both use vintage Buchla modular synthesizers, which they spread across the table, turning knobs and stretching cables. Ciani, a noted sound designer in addition to her New Age credentials, is the seasoned master; Smith has been earning her own acclaim lately with the release of her album EARS.
The record is filled with the sounds of waves crashing - all fabricated by the Buchla machines. I wanted to write [a piece evoking] the sunrise, it's such a magnificent event here, Ciani said recently. I felt like that's what we were doing. We were writing the sunrise and that energy.
David Van Tieghem x Ten - Fits & Starts [Mini Doc]
FRKWYS Vol. 10: Fits & Starts
David Van Tieghem x Ten - Fits & Starts [Mini Documentary] | RVNG Intl.
Fits & Starts is the widest deviation from the main thrust of the FRKWYS series. To start, percussionist David Van Tiegham - a member of the 70s New York avant garde and collaborator with Steve Reich, Laurie Anderson, and David Byrne - was recorded improvising at a New York gallery, drumming over found materials that ranged from firecrackers to empty cans of coconut water. Ten artists contributed the materials; later, those ten artists (including the likes of Helado Negro, Diamond Terrifier, and Georgia) cut up and remixed Van Tieghem's performance. Van Tiegham, finally, assembled those pieces back together into the finished album.
Unlike other FRKWYS p
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There's an arresting aspect of every frame of Champ Emsinger's video for Pony Blues, the song by Steve Gunn and Mike Cooper. The rich greens of the jungle leaves, the smoke wafting through the hills, the boy picking his way through the forest, his yellow shirt playing against the brown of the tree trunks as he follows an enchanting spirit into the river.
