Damn the Flood

by Adrian Knight

Tracklist:

1 Damn the Flood

2 Flood Prototype 1

3 Flood Prototype 3

4 Flood Prototype 2

5 Bottomlands

Credits: 

Andy Meyerson vibraphone, percussion

Travis Andrews processed electric guitar

Adrian Knight Juno 6, Rhodes, electric guitar

David Lackner saxophone

Matt Evans gongs, bowls

Mike Advensky percussion

Composed, produced, recorded and mixed by Adrian Knight

Mastered by Travis Andrews

As with so many of my works, 'Damn the Flood' began as a series of prototypes: scaffolds of harmonies, rhythms and formal contours, a dimly neon-lit fog bank full of promise, the faintest outlines of some great discovery pulling me forward and inward. A circular maze of great ambiguity emerging, I felt strangely captivated and yet distant from my own creation: how did I end up here? And how do I proceed? How to get out? The resulting work was in answer to such questions, but it also carried the mutant gene of ambiguity out of the laboratory into the exalted chambers of 'the work'. The fleeting nature of running water and the timeless, malleable concept of an impending 'flood' were images that helped curate the selections made for the final version. Meanwhile, the prototypes receded back into oblivion, only to be rediscovered several years later. 

In a way, the unearthed prototypes are like items lost in some mythical flood, preserved for future times by archivists. They are lenses through which 'the work' can be reappraised, redefined and contrasted. The sustained harmonies cruise undisturbed over endless bottomlands, gathering a multitude of instruments in its wake, gravitating toward a settlement. If in 'Damn the Flood' the findings have been consolidated, distilled and groomed, folded up to conserve time and space, the prototypes present those same findings unfurled, uncompressed. The sum total of these constituent parts yet again aligns with the flood metaphor: the materials thoroughly inspected, their possibilities probed, the maze flooded as the only means of escape. 

The start and end points are by definition elastic. Captured here is the entire flood expedition, the prototypes naked in their infancy, the outcome incomplete in its ambition. A fragmentary assemblage of impressions, the work is as partial a vision of some great discovery as a clockface is to the expanse of time – caught in the drift, this too is destined to be dwarfed, absorbed and washed away. 

***

Damn the flood was commissioned by Post:Ballet and was premiered on March 3, 2017 at SOMArts, San Francisco as part of a dance performance choreographed by Robert Dekkers, with Brett Conway and Kar Will, and costumes by Christian Squires. 

The work is in one continuous movement with five distinct harmonic areas. Throughout, melodic fragments from Here’s That Rainy Day gently obstruct the chords, foreshadowing the unexpected cameo of an invisible (prerecorded) saxophone towards the end. 

The work is part of a series of works written for The Living Earth Show with or without additional instruments: Humble Servant (percussion solo), Family Man (electric guitar and percussion with electronics), and Damn the flood, culminating in the massive 12-movement Idea to Life (Success Stories) (alto sax, electric guitar, percussion, Rhodes/synth), in which the formerly invisible David Lackner is now given the lead.