music

Fever Dreams

Fever Dream This EP is a set of excerpts from a single 38-minute live recording, which I won't even really call an improvisation since it began as a test of some delay sounds. I'd been in bed for two days with a fever, dozing, watching Netflix, and listening to Robert Fripp. (Full story here.)

The cover art is taken from a drawing by Eoin and Drew, using the Neon Doodle application on my iPad. Basically they scribbled over and over the same spot, layering yellows and oranges and ... yeah. They're improvisational artists too.

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Megrims: Loading the player ...; "Megrims" is an antiquated word for a headache, usually a migraine, but not always. This is the sound of a harmonica tapped on a microphone, processed by a modulated delay, and then played at double speed. And it sounds like my head felt for two straight days.
Fever Pitch I: Loading the player ...; Eventually I stopped using the harmonica as percussion and started using it as a harmonica. This starts as a simple jam, just playing through my OCD distortion pedal. It felt good to just let loose and play. After the first break, I start using a few other delays, and overloading them a bit, finally letting one note hold while I dropped the delay resolution down to five bits or so. It closes out with some overlaid versions of the same riff, and a return of the double-time percussion.
Fever Pitch III: Loading the player ...; The percussion here is my hand on the mic, but then it's back to the harp, differently modulated and again played at double-speed. You'll be hearing that a lot. (And yes, this is III, not II. II was taken from in between I and III in the original, but it fit better later on.)
The Three Temples of Febris: Palatine: Loading the player ...; Febris was the Roman god of fever; malaria has always been a problem there, although the bad air then was the result of swamps and disease rather than the Vatican's pronouncements. There were three temples to Febris in Rome, each on a hill; people brought amulets to them to ward off disease. This piece shifts the mood to a more ambient feel, although the megrims persist. These are single notes or brief phrases overlaid on a one-second loop, which is then captured on a set of longer loops.
The Three Temples of Febris: Quirinal: Loading the player ...; Melody begins to build on top of the three background loops. The Quirinal is one of the seven original hills of Rome, where the Italian presidential palace is located.
The Three Temples of Febris: Sacra Via: Loading the player ...; Some glitching enters the picture, and the loops are now feeding into a master loop, which decays at varying rates. But a theme is starting to make itself known. (To me.) The Sacra Via (or, in modern Italian, Via Sacra), is Rome's main road.
Fever Pitch II: Loading the player ...; Fevers are all about the ups and downs. Sometimes you feel calm, sometimes you're back to, well, fever pitch. The rhythm jam degenerates into random riffing and a final note that's held by breath, not delay.
Ague: Quotidian: Loading the player ...; "Ague" was once a term for any intermittent fever, particularly malaria. These fevers were grouped by the length of time between each cycle of chills/fever/intermission. Those with a roughly daily interval were called "quotidian," Latin for "daily." The megrims persist, of course, but a melodic background loop is being built.
Ague: Tertian: Loading the player ...; Three melodic phrases show up that will become the basis for the rest of the piece. They're played through a filtered delay, and I'm manipulating the resonance on the final notes to add the spacey sounds. Tertian agues recur every 48 hours.
Ague: Quartan: Loading the player ...; And the theme itself shows up, at last; you hear it first in a lower register -- standard harmonica shifted down an octave -- and it's looped. Then it's looped again at double speed, sounding a bit like an organ. Finally it's looped at half speed, very low. These three loops now feed together into the decaying master loop. Quartan agues recur every 72 hours.
Ague: Remittent: Loading the player ...; Finally, the headache is gone. A remittent fever is a normal one; if your ague progessed to this you were getting better. The three versions of the theme are now all playing -- normal, double speed, and half speed, over the background loops that started building in Quotidian. Almost none of the original loops (the percussion and Temple stuff) is left. I'm playing bits of melody into the loops, and fading different loops up and down, and finally, turning them all the way down, one by one,

Ken Ficara

music

Fever Dreams

Listen below, or download now!