The pop-music landscape sometimes to me resembles coarse fabric — fabric with lots of weight and substance, which distracts you from the fact of all the holes in between: “holes” as in “opportunities,” for artists with just the right sort of corkscrew sensibilities. Jherek Bischoff is one of those odd-duck musicians who periodically poke through the surface.
Unlike most singers and songwriters, Bischoff seems to work in no particular niche. For his 2012 album, Composed (also released in a straight instrumental version, called Scores), Bischoff composed all the songs on a ukelele, with the idea that they’d eventually be performed by an orchestra. Then (in his own words):
This record was recorded with one microphone, an Mbox and a laptop. I recorded each individual musician of the “orchestra” in their very own living rooms. I then layered each instrument (sometimes one violinist playing one part twenty times for instance) until it was the size of a huge orchestra. I spent the summer bike riding from house to house recording each musician. I then took a road trip and recorded all of the singers except Caetano and David.
(“Caetano” there is Caetano Veloso, a Brazilian multi-genre performer, composer, and activist; Wikipedia describes his genre as a blend of Música Popular Brasileira, tropicália, psychedelic rock, folk rock, and bossa nova. “David,” of course, is David Byrne.)
I have no idea if Bischoff is exaggerating the makeshift elements in this description of the album. (And when he says he went “bike riding,” I sort of hope he meant via motorcycle.) However he did it, this song is a gorgeous, many-layered thing. Bischoff’s site includes some photographs shot during the video’s recording, among them what seems to be a set of choreographic instructions for Byrne’s on-camera contribution:
(In some respects, you might regard this as a catalogue of Byrne’s standard on-camera repertoire. It does not, however, seem to correspond to the actual sequence of movements in the video.)
And here’s the video itself:
[Lyrics — as you can see, there’s some uncertainty about a portion of them; this is how numerous lyrics sites handle the matter. If I ever get any other interpretation, I’ll update the lyrics here.]
Froog says
That’s a great little video shoot exercise. I’m going to steal that for my new ‘Film’ class!
Thanks to Brad Roberts, I can now never think of Mr Byrne without hearing in my head the line If I were David Byrne, I’d go to galleries and not be too concerned…
John says
Here y’go:
(You HAD to know I’d have to look that up.)
Froog says
Well, I hope you enjoyed that little ‘mission’. I expected that you’d already know this – although I suppose it is nearly 20 years since its release, and perhaps not quite your in your area(s) musically.
That album was stuffed full of memorable lines.
John says
Definitely not in my musical bailiwick. Not that I have any objections to them (the Dummies), or this song, but it’s probably the first song from them that I’ve ever heard. But what are horizons for, if not for pushing against? (Says the man who’s had the same haircut, facial hair, and wardrobe for pretty much four whole decades.)
s.o.m.e. one's brudder says
Thanks for keeping me in the loop of things I would have missed otherwise!
John says
We’ve gone around on this point before, but you know I always feel like I’ve got a long way to go to catch up with you.