24. Rhythm and Sound. 17:05

I'm downing glass after glass of water, but I can still feel a headache coming on. I want more of these one-rhythm albums.

There's a short, but informative article at the Basic Channel website about the making of "See Mi Yah". "It's never a bore - and goes on in the listener's head, when voices, rhythm and sound will be long gone". I can relate to that, that happened to me all the time with previous listens. Also, according to their website, R&S are playing in Toronto next week, even though nothing has been announced in any of the papers here.

In Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting In a Room" (read about it on AMG here if you're unfamiliar with the record), each ~ 80 second-long repetition of the vocal becomes gradually more distorted until the words are no longer discernable. But the rhythm of the words remain discernable -- it's impossible to make them out, but you remain aware of where you are within the 80-second runtime between repetitions. But in much of the latter half of the piece, all temporal sense of place vanishes as well. You've got no idea when each repetition begins and ends.

That's how I'm starting to feel about "See Mi Yah", except that each repetitive loop is 46 minutes long, instead of 80 seconds. In fact, you can do the math -- the number of repetitions of the vocal in "I Am Sitting In A Room" is about the same number of times that I'll have heard "See Mi Yah" by tomorrow morning.