Ambient Matyk was an album that Jon Harnish and I released in 2009.  It was recorded outdoors in two sessions behind the Matyk Building and next door to CSPS Legion Arts in the “New Bohemia” section of Cedar Rapids, IA.  The area suffered devastating flooding in 2008.

We had a bunch of outtakes from these sessions, including a 31 minute piece called Return To Bohemia, but this piece seemed to escape my memory until I found it on a flash drive recently.  It was a “Late Edit” – a piece edited after the album was done and released.  I don’t know why this wasn’t included on the album or why I edited it “late”.  Normally I am fairly well-organized, but sometimes things slip through the cracks.

I gave it a simple title:  Ambient Matyk Late Edit One.  It’s 5 minutes and 14 seconds long.  One take.  Jon Harnish is layering loops with his bass guitar using the Electro-Harmonix Memory Man looper.  I’m on Xiosynth and laptop with live loop manipulation.  Since we recorded outdoors in late July and early August (I’m not sure which session this was from), we had crickets throughout and a couple waves of cicada that hit at the right times.  Towards the end there’s some dragging sounds and bottle clinking.

It’s a really good piece, I think, at least as far as live ambient improvising outdoors goes.  It’s symbolic of the recordings on the Ambient Matyk album.

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