ABONECRONEDRONE

   


John:

Well it's funny that our particular culture, which seems so far removed from the cultures, whose music is a drone with a melody over it. We've sort of surrounded ourselves with drones. I mean, in this country it's the 60 kilohertz, the 60 cycle drone that powers all of our electricity that runs our refrigerators and our ...

Sheila:

And even the appliances themselves hum and whine and drone and, I know some really lovely photocopiers that one wants to sing over.

John:

Uhuh! So has it gotton to the point now where, you know, if there's a bit of sustain sound, that you just ....?

Sheila:

Yes, Yes! I hear things in it, I do hear things in it and I think when you listen long enough, you start hearing more than just those harmonic dances. Your brain, your imagination takes over and I start to hear full performances and it is like seeing things, and I say to Steve. "Well can't you hear them - that's a Carnatic vocal with a violin following?" He says "No, I can't hear that". And then when we were mixing, 'cos listening to the same drone for 16 hours, you can imagine, how deeply you get into it. When we were mixing "ABone Crone Drone II" and the digeridoos came in, I started hearing a cajun band and, there isn't one there! So... other people could hear that one as well which was a bit weird! Maybe because we'd all been listening at the same rate for the same amount of time. So who knows, there maybe even for the listener that's not used to tuning into these things and very weird things to be heard on this album. Things that aren't there.

John:

Do you ascribe a sort of musical drone to the din of traffic outside your window or I mean, things like that.

Sheila:

Yes, I do, yes. It is just a different way of hearing.

John:

We were talking before, off mike, about this composer, Lamont Young, who actually, he and his wife went out into the surf off of the Long Island shore, attempted to find the drone, and this was a recording project they were doing in the 60s. You know the idea of finding a drone, infact that this recording came to naught because Lamont says - a very choppy day and they couldn't identify the drone but, the idea is such a, I don't know, such an quixotic one, you know and ...

Sheila:

Mmm! Poetic as well.

John:

 

Yes, absolutely, and it seems that again, that's sort of part of the magic of the drones.

Sheila:

Mmm! Well, we talk about ideas resonating about things ringing true and about being sound and not cracked. A cracked jar won't ring - when you tap it and I really think that a lot of these poetical illusions are to do with concrete physics that we, you know, we maybe don't acknowledge but, we feel instinctively.