Notes on Track Titles —by patrick brennan

TRACK 1: terraphonia/fonia

Greek- earth sound

No explanation needed; the notion springs especially from the electroacoustic, nature-based qualities of the prepared guitars’ sonic generation vs. synthesizers, as well as with my general attitudes about sound & music.

TRACK 2: nilch’i . telespire , nilch’i

nilch’i — Diné (Navajo) – holy wind – the entire body of the atmosphere, air in motion, the air we breathe & speak with (as well as listen), the air that enables life, movement, speech, awareness, vehicle of consciousness & communication, the totality of air, various specific winds, such as the winds of the 4 directions, one’s personal wind, the wind of language; wind (along with water & soil) is the invisible placenta within which we exist (the mother Earth image actually does denote something literally factual, not some sentimental image of a hippie woman in a flowing dress — & it’s worth, in this respect, noting the macho misogyny of those most committed to imperial/corporate ecocide — Pobre Brasil! E pobre todos nós … & let’s not even start about U.S. oligarchy …).

telespire — tele- (Greek)  across a distance + spirare (Latin) – to breathe

I don’t necessarily expect anyone to understand the Diné, or even recognize it, so I also added this more recognizable neologism.  Nilch’i gives recognition to Turtle Island & its pre-colonization  peoples & cultures (& the relative superiority of many of their ways of thinking), along with the fundamentality of air itself (which was inspired by the breathy falsetto I was traversing on that track. telespire calls to the musicians’ communication in composing together.

TRACK 3: ndụ enweghị ihe abụọ / no two

Igbo – common Nigerian proverb: Life has no Duplicate.

I picked this up from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. I’m not sure the Igbo is correct because it’s a Google translation of the English, but the English phrase can be found on buses there. When I’d reverse translate the phrase into English, I’d get “no two”.  I admire the Igbo for their flexibility & their traditional politics: “The Igbo know no king”, unlike the neighboring Yoruba or many of the other pre-colonization West African empires. Plus, the Igbo have, in literature, been prodigious in (convenient to me) the current language of global empire, ingles.

So, why other languages?  I can only reach so far in cooking up neologisms for titles. The world isn’t just European, so I want to reach out that way, within my limits, toward the equal value, of cultures outside the imperial center.  It’s a very, very tiny reach toward a possible, & hoped for, future of peers.

TRACK 4: gotabrilhar

portugues – literally drop (gota) + to shine (brilhar), or, better yet: shining, (or glowing) droplet

TRACK 5: mycellerate

A grafting of mycelium, the filagree network of fungi communication (also essential to healthy forests & organic food cultivation) with accelerate (I’m playing a lot with tempo, speeding up & slowing down in my phrasing on this one).

TRACK 6: tactiludic

Latin – touch + play, as an adjective — relates to the guitars’ percussive approach on this one.

TRACK 7: witness ampersand

Thinking of Peter Bastiaan Van Ginkel’s (Zin) love of the ampersand (& : 1+1=3, he rightly says) & witness involves the musician’s respective presenses to one’s self, to each other & to the sonic eventualities.