Herd Of The Ether Space has a long and complex history, involving a large and ever-changing membership that has contributed to over forty hours of recordings released by Taped Rugs Productions over the course of many years. The three founders of the group: Charles Rice Goff III, Killr “Mark” Kaswan, and Robert Silverman were living in various places around the United States in June of 2001. At that point in time, they had not performed music together as a group since 1997. On the twenty-third of June they met at the Oakland, California, home of Robert Silverman for a recording session, which led to the production of “Dolly & Jackie & Mr. Wren.”
The session could be described as a celebration of free improvisation, and it flowed with all the spacey atmosphere and absurd dadaist humor that had characterized HOTES music for years previous. The shared intuition that Goff, Kaswan, and Silverman had developed from over twenty years of sonic collaboration expressed itself through electronic keyboards, guitar, homemade woodwinds, flutes, animal calls, a variety of percussion instruments (and non instruments), a few toys, and a couple of portable cassette recorders. This intuition was also especially apparent in the collaborators’ vocal interactions.
Some strange verbiage and weird stories also were cooked up in the Ether Space that day. The story that gives this collection its name came from a children’s book that Dee Ann Schaer had given to Goff on the evening previous to the recording session. The book: “The Bad Donkey,” had a special significance because donkeys had served as themes and characters in the music of Taped Rugs groups for years. Schaer’s late husband, Steve, had been a part of the Taped Rugs family since its beginnings in the 1970’s and had participated in the previous HOTES recording session in 1997 (a year prior to his death).
The Dolly & Jackie & Mr. Wren session was the first direct-to-digital HOTES recording. The album was engineered and mixed by Robert Silverman and is presented in its entirety in the following two pieces:
1 Level In The Box
2 Two Arms
copyright 2001
by Taped Rugs Productions
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