Tom Djll

Recently, the poetry that swirls around chaotic processes has infiltrated my thoughts, given rise to new ideas and connectivities. The instruments I use, based around Rob Hordijk‘s rungler circuit, function via the double-well principle (sometimes called “strange attractors”); they settle into patterns that remain in place until a new condition, or stimulus, is introduced into the system. What I like to tell audiences is that, alongside the dynamics of random event generation (not well-received technoblather among non-techies), chaotic systems are always seeking stasis — or “peace,” if you will. Anyone can relate to this, lending my presentations a resonance which elevates a concert of abstract sound generation into an ecstatic immersion. I like to draw audiences into what I’m doing gradually and, in a manner of speaking, unfold an outward-facing synaesthesia of abstract sounds connected with speaking.

In June 2024 I did one of these shows to a sellout audience at CNMAT in Berkeley.

It turns out that there is a ‘poetics of chaos.’ A chaotic system, far from the popular conception of the inside of a tornado — violent, uncontrollable, never-ending disaster — is constantly seeking stability. It’s just like you and me! It wants peace and stability. It will settle into comfy stasis and never get up from the easy chair again, if there are no new conditions introduced into it. A chaotic system starts from a discrete set of variables that determine where it will end up. Thing is, even with the same opening conditions, it doesn’t reach the same outcome with each iteration. Launch it, and it may head not for Mars but straight into the sun, or into the nearest 7-11. Even with the same initial conditions, the trajectory cannot be predicted with certainty.

Each day, most of us wake up with more or less the same initial conditions as the day before. But the day never ends up in the same place. It’s chaos. You could wake up, get out of bed, and die: that’s chaos. In fact, this particular outcome already happened to somebody, you can be sure. Somewhere, sometime in the vast pantheon of human history, some poor schmoe woke up, said, “Jeez, what a great day! I can’t wait to get started!” — then slipped on a banana peel, or a banana slug, or a slug of whiskey, or a whisk broom, keeled over and put their face through the window-pane, or that heavy glass ashtray they never could stand or that sharp corner of the night-stand, and, boom. Gone in a minute. This is living, and dying, with chaos in action. The multiple-universe theory gives a daunting picture of chaos emerging, and leading to a new possible universe existing alongside the one we think we’re living in, every moment. Every possible outcome is emerging, already, all the time.

Having recovered from a demanding/rewarding Europe trip that filled all of May and June 2023, I spent July and August recording and learning some new gear, not always in that order. Some of the results can be heard on the recording the album THISTLE, which exploits the Landscape NOON, a highly idiosyncratic, not to say subversive synthesizer, billed as a “drum machine” but not really. The thing about it that’s so unusual is that the circuitry is entirely passive. It doesn’t use any constant power source such as batteries or a 9 volt DC converter. Nothing plugs in except whatever control voltages you put into it (also audio). These voltages provide the power to start up whatever channel you plug it into. As soon as that voltage stops, the channel powers down again. The sounds of the electronics powering up and down in this fashion shapes the sound to a tremendous extent. It is the essence of NON-LINEARITY. In addition to sounds from the NOON, there are a few dozen other sound sources and voltage sources that populate the tracks with snapping, hissing, popping, crispy-fresh free jazz funck. You can hear the results here.

The Wing Pinger is a more peace-oriented bit of kit, although it, too, can bring in da knoise, when pushed to the edge. It is very much an instrument that runs on “edginess,” the edge being the crest of resonance that each of two filters is designed to generate. It’s feedback, pure and simple, albeit highly controllable. From that resonance are derived voltages which are used as data points to populate two shift registers, from which are extracted further voltages used to drive the other parameters of the instrument. The entire architecture was inspired by the work of the late Rob Hordijk, inventor of legendary electronic instruments the Blippoo Box and the Benjolin. In addition, the Wing Pinger sports two touch-sensor keyboards as well as control inputs, MIDI ins and outs, and audio inputs (to process other instruments or sounds). I’m enjoying it all a hell of a lot. It can proceed smoothly from peaceful drones or placid major-pentatonic bells to dancing kalimba sounds and video-game PWEENGs to sheer hellish sonic wall-dom. No sonic samples online as of this blogging.

Five years ago saw the Other Minds release of TOM DJLL: SERGE WORKS, (Here on Bandcamp) an overview of improvised and composed electronic music I did in the 1980s, using the Serge Modular Music System. Usually, trumpet was involved. The piece titled TOMBO was published in Chris Cutler’s ReR Quarterly Vol 3 # 3, 1991, along with a letter I had written which Cutler printed under the title “Synthesizer + Improvisation = Impossible?” (The letter was a scream of protest against what we today call presets. I didn’t have any idea he would publish it.) Around 1990 I added a digital delay, the Digitech RDS 7.6 TIME MACHINE. It was a far more affordable (and noisy) copy of the legendary Lexicon PCM 42. Via the TIME MACHINE I was able to live-sample my trumpet, or anything else, and further process it through the Serge system, or use the latter as a kind of backup band for trumpet craziness, and so on. I even did some ‘plunderphonic’ work with this setup, as heard on Rastascan’s compilation (Y)Earbook Vol. 3. (Here on Spotify)

Anyway, Bay Area writer and blogger Stephen Smoliar did a nice writeup of SERGE WORKS on his blog The Rehearsal Studio.

I didn’t take this to Europe…

Didn’t take all this Eurorack or Bugbrand stuff, either:

And I left the VCS3 with my friend Clarke for safekeeping.

Here’s the rig I toured Europe with. Vienna, Czech Republic (and Slovakia), Germany, Sweden, Norway:

Behind me, Petr Vrba(r) and Axel Dörner(l) were setting up.

Here’s a shot of the quartet doing its thing in Prague. L-R Axel, me, Tassos, Petr (who also organized the whole 5-city tour):

Greetings from Central Europe! Blogging from Vienna, where I kick off a nine-week tour taking its course from Vienna to Prague, around the Czech Republic, thence to Germany with three weeks in Berlin, up to Scandinavia and the Baltics.

Started off just last night with a lovely duo gig at CELESTE with Biliana Voutchkova, who is incredibly busy but somehow found time to play with me. The indefatigable Petr Vrba of Prague heard of my coming and put together a powerhouse quartet of extended trumpeters which came to be called QUTRIT: Axel Dörner, Petr Vrba, Tassos Tataroglou, and Djll. We’ll be doing five gigs in five days! — taking us into Slovakia as well as Czechia. Another day is set aside for rehearsing and recording.

My long-term duo partner Tim Perkis now lives in Gothenburg, Sweden. As KINDA GREEN we’ve been creating sonic disturbances since 2003, but we go back to 1996 at least (on my release Electro-Ecstatic). We just released our second collection of tracks, KINDA, on the Artifact Recordings imprint. We’re still setting up shows in Oslo, Gothenburg, Helsinki, and Vilnius.

See you soon!

I have found myself saying, too often in the past three years: “There’s no new normal.” And here we are.

My life somehow continues in the wake of many personal losses over the last few years, most significant being my mother’s passing last January. This summer I spent six weeks on the road through the American West, seeing to my mother’s wish to have her remains scattered in the Columbia and Rio Grande rivers, rivers where she had spent significant time in her life, from 1972 until her death this past January 2022. Fifty years of rivers…

Along the way I made some music-adjacent noises in places like Santa Fe, Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Denver, and Portland. Made new friends and reaffirmed some choice vintage friendships, stretching back nearly (WOW) years. (see photo gallery at the bottom of this post)

The SF Bay Area [new, weird, experimental, whatever] music scene seems to be waking up this fall, for reals this time, as the damned plague waves go out with the tide. My schedule is filling up as it hasn’t in two and a half years. Feels nice. Life returns.

Tender Buttons dropped a new CD since the last time I checked in. It’s called an established color and cunning. The jacket features some artwork by my mother Mary Dill, and if I haven’t mentioned it before, you should get one for your collection. “As a texturally-driven communication, its palette is broad. An electronic library as rigorous as Skywalker Sound of swells, throbs, chugs, and bubbling, of bleeps, bloops, and clicks, of groans, oms, and roars from activated surfaces, something like fretless electric bass, the wet clapping valve of a heartbeat, and some radio transmission as if it was picked up through a feedback system rather than played in-house. Inside-piano strummed, plucked, and played on with ping pong balls and lonesome notes and ominous chords whose decay fades into that of the percussion.” — Keith Prosk, harmonicseries.org

Euphotic drops a new cassette this week: Conjugate Regions, on the IKUISUUS label, out of Finland.

Beyond the obvious fact that we each bring a distinct instrumental palette to the job at hand, I’ve never been able to put into words what makes Euphotic unique and so gosh-darned listenable (unlike Brand X ‘experimental music’). Each of the instruments Cheryl, Bryan and I deploy demands a distinct approach to playing and listening. The aggregate result — or more to the point, process — isn’t like anything else I can put my finger on. We’re listening but not reacting; we’re building something together but not with parts that are ready-made to fit; we’re walking together in this co-created soundscape but each taking note of different features within it. And, despite the differences in approach, often we can’t tell who’s doing what at any given moment. (This odd but by no means unheard-of problem comes up at rehearsal, again and again. Is it a feature rather than a bug?)

Last November (2021) Euphotic played the High Desert Soundings Festival, part of the burgeoning Inland Empire revival, if that’s a reasonable thing to call it. Maybe call it “Was Cheap Real Estate Before the Pandemic.” Anyway, we had a great time at the festival and also taking some high desert hikes with field-recording gear in tow, and managed to do some outback jamming on an abandoned box spring frame suspended over an abandoned well (and the expected abandoned cars, as shown). Cheryl even crawled into an old mine, which gave me the heebie-jeebies.

Coming up fast is the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, in its twenty-first iteration, and for the closing set on closing night, I join Gino Robair and the Rova Saxophone Quartet in what is to be a freely improvised set of electroacoustic ear-stretching called the Rova Sonic Six, or Popular Tectonics, I’m not sure. What is sure is that we were kind of a hit at the 2019 Garden of Memory event (shown below) in the California Columbarium room at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, and we’ve been plotting a reunion ever since. Because it was a blast.

Right now my builder genius Sam Cooper in Los Angeles is putting the finishing touches on a new Serge-format panel for me, which should get delivered in time to spice up the Rova/SFEMF gig:

I’m in the midst of planning a European jaunt for next spring, so there will likely be an update about that! … in about a year’s time. Berlin, Prague, Köln, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Goteborg…

A gallery of shots from this summer’s tour:

Who knew year numbers could get so big? Yet here we are, even surpassing the rare OCTADIGIT PALINDROME date of 02/02/2020. (Not to mention Groundhog Day/Superbowl Sunday Octadigit Palindrome Day.)

The year previous was memorable for lots of good reasons. One, being released by my employer in March to re-discover the joys of having time to create. Two, the results of creative time: more time with my co-creators.

KOKUO at VAMP in Oakland, January – Kyle Bruckmann, Kanoko Nishi-Smith, and Jacob Felix Heule. We’ve been trying to release an album for awhile now.

EUPHOTIC tourette from SF to LA in April, with Cheryl Leonard and Bryan Day.

Wendy Reid’s AMBIENT BIRD 433 at Frank Ogawa Plaza, on a cold afternoon in April, with many many folks chirping in the chill air, to the delight/puzzlement of onlookers and homeless people

MICROFESTIVAL OF INSTANT COMPOSITION – Michael Fischer from Vienna provided the spark for this joyous occasion, with Matt Ingalls, Phillip Greenlief, gabby fluke-mogul, Kanoko Nishi-Smith, Kevin CK Lo, Lisa Mezzacappa, Brett Carson, Gino Robair, Kim Nucci, Jordan Glenn, J-F Heule, Karl Evangelista, and John Shiurba. Jordan Glenn has a nice post about it on his page.

Gino Robair’s UNPOPULAR ELECTRONICS – a series of interlocking sets with ROVA at Garden of Memory, in the memorable California Columbarium room (surrounded by the ashes of the departed), which turned into a complex, uninterrupted 4-hour collaborative piece, then a separate recording session, and — YAY! —concerts in San Francisco in June 2020! Stay tuned at Rova’s page.

Polly Moller’s TOMOGRAPHY FORTUNAE with 7 guys named Tom, at the Outsound Festival in July. Besides Djll, the Toms: Duff, Dambly, Dimuzio, Scandura, Nunn, Weeks!

Tim Rowe’s MY PAL KRUPA episode of “How to Play the Drums,” featuring my (mysteriously) highly regarded John Cage impersonation.

DAY AFTER THE DEAD INCANTATION, an arbitrary name I gave to this large group put together by Tom Nunn for the occasion of Ed Herrmann’s visit to the Bay Area (a much too infrequent occurrence), with Thomas Dimuzio, Andrew Voigt, David Michalak, Ron Heglin, Ed Herrmann, Scott Looney, and instrument maker/genius Tom Nunn. Video by Djll, in Nunn’s studio, which is why Djll does not appear in the video.

PGLRG playing Phillip Greenlief’s compositions and guided improvisations, at Center for New Music, and I’m still meeting new people! w/ Greenlief, Michael Dessen, gabby fluke-mogul, David Boyce, Thomas Dimuzio, Cory Wright, Mark Clifford, Kim Nucci, Matt Ingalls, J-F Heule, Sharkiface, (?) Cargill. A possibly larger orchestra did PG’s “Los Angeles” score in February 2020 at the Active Music Series in Oakland. Beautiful creations from a beautiful soul.

Birgit Ulher’s visit in November, which sparked a number of gigs and logistical improvising as well. A new trio was born out of it, with Bill Hsu and Matt Ingalls. We quite like the sounds we make together, which span the entire electronic and acoustic spectrum.

2020 got off to a great start with RDuck at KZSU on his New Year’s Eve SOUND WHEELS show, with Ernesto Diaz-Infante and Clarke Robinson.

Finally, Tender Buttons had a great week in February. Tania Caroline Chen made it happen, and four memorable shows resulted:
Godwaffle Noise Pancakes, 2/8 (no Gino – out sick)
KZSU Day of Noise, also 2/8 (also without Gino)
Stanford CCRMA, 2/13, with Gino and with video artist Bill Thibault! (very nice concert video at the link) Organizer Constantin did an outstanding job, and fellow CCRMA worker David Kerr treated us to wonderful late-night tapas in downtown Palo Alto.
Tom’s Place in Berkeley, 2/15, to a sold-out house. Tim Perkis and Madalyn Merkey delivered an breathtaking opening set.

A slight retrospective.

I’m kind of overdue for a check-in here. Even if nobody reads this, I need it to reflect and remember an especially momentous year in my musical sojourn; this last month — and a year ago in November and December — being some high points. It seems one reaches a point in life where the self-reflection often echoes in one’s head, “I’m lucky to have made it this far.” Years like this last one make that sentiment extra sweet.

First, I want to mention a gig that falls outside this time frame, one so special and mind-shaking, it must be mentioned for sake of completion. And, bragging. What was in all likelihood the only time I will ever play at the SF Jazz Center: January 29, 2017, ROVA Saxophone Quartet gathered a large group of players to perform their sprawling tribute to John Coltrane’s Ascension, which they call Electric Ascension. Complete personnel included Steve Adams, Bruce Ackley, Larry Ochs, Jon Raskin, Donald Robinson, Trey Spruance, Zeena Parkins, Fred Frith, Ava Mendoza, Darren Johnston, Gino Robair, and Djll. Gino and I got to do a 5-minute duo that reached farther outward than even the heavenly interstellar space where Coltrane himself resides. I like to position myself as against professionalism, but at times like that, with so many potentially flailing egos and malfunctioning equipment and other kinds of things that need serious wrangling, having a band and crew of professionals handling it all makes a huge difference. A big thanks to Rova for including me and for being such stalwart supporters of the local scene for over 40 years!

A little over a year ago I was interviewed by Aaron Oppenheim for the Other Minds netlabel (aka “Modern Hits”) album of Tom Djll: Serge Works, which was released this past July of 2018. I’m proud to have been picked by Other Minds to be part of their artists roster, and proud of the noises I was making back during the Reagan era — my non-commercial counterpoint of protest to the prevailing culture back then. Includes a live track from the 1988 Seattle Festival of Improvised Music, the third of that hoary old series. Some of it’s as noisy as anything I’ve ever done, and it’s available wherever fine noises are sold! (OM website, Bandcamp, Apple Music, Amazon Music…) The interview was published in the book with the release, along with my notes to the pieces. Download yours today!

The same week as that interview, Carl Ludwig Hübsch was in town, taking statements from Bay Area improvisers about this evanescent art we practice. The results (playing and speaking) are collected here. Carl took one of my off-the-wall comments for the title. CL’s project was sponsored by SF MOMA and the Headlands Center for the Arts.

In October 2017 trio Euphotic (with Cheryl Leonard and Bryan Day) played at the Canessa Gallery on a bill with Elliott Sharp and Morgan Evans-Weiler. A fine night of subtle sounds, encapsulated on CatSynth TV.

November and December 2017 saw my return to Europe — after only 30 years — as the third leg of Tender Buttons (with Tania Chen and Gino Robair). We started in London, playing first at IKLECTIK, as friends and fellow-oddsound-worshippers Steve Beresford, David Toop, Steph Horak, Phil Durrant, Burkhard Beins, Bertrand Denzler, Bill Thompson and quite a lot of other players and audients gathered to shake ‘n’ bake the ears, or simply be treated to an evening of freely improvised electro-acoustic music. My favorite kind of evening.
A day or two later, the TB trio were joined by master saxist John Butcher for a nice long set at Ray’s Jazz, on the fifth floor of Foyle’s Bookstore on Charing Cross Road. A lovely venue, a lovely audience, and great books and records downstairs. (The current listing shows Ray’s Jazz on floor 2, so I guess they have since moved it from 5).
We moved on to Oxford, and a cozy, intimate, well-fed house concert put together by Martin Hackett, a very fine gentleman, musician and artist. There we played, ate and drank and caroused and met the great improvising violinist Phil Wachsmann.
Hopping a train, the Buttoneers arrived in Glasgow the next evening for a 3-day residency with the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra GIOfest X. What a superb group of people and players, so nice, and such party-heartiers: Gerry Rossi, Raymond MacDonald, Lori Freedman, Corey Mwamba — I wish I could remember them all — with guests Maggi Nichols, Guro Gravem Johansen, and Rhodri Davies. TB played individually in workshop pieces with the orchestra, and a trio set on Friday 12/3 (both the performance and the run-through were of a quality for a release… someday.). The weather was pretty good and Glasgow nightlife showed itself proud and vibrant (and drunk). I wanna go back!

From there, Gino and I traveled direct to Berlin for some concerts and private sessions and recordings (the two of us had also joined Phil Durrant for a recording together at the legendary Dave Hunt Sound Studio, in London, back in November). We had a hilarious time at Schneidersladen — the synth shop in Berlin — talking with Herr Andreas Schneider himself, all of which was captured on video for the SL channel. I was feeling a little tired and ill and saw a pair of silly sunglasses on a mannequin there, so swiped them for the interview. (Since I knew I wouldn’t be talking for long stretches, I tried to sit stone-faced behind the shades, a la Andy Warhol.) We also visited with the folks at KOMA Elektronik in Neuköln and got the full tour. With a beer cooler in the front of the shop (called Common Ground), it proved how civilized a city can be, if given the right atmosphere. A couple of days later we scheduled a bleepy-bloopy session with Richard Scott, a master of electronics and improvisation, who’s been in Berlin for some years now. He runs a label called Sound Anatomy which you should def check out. On the last evening, Gino and I joined Prof. Guilherme Rodrigues for an outstanding trio set at Spektrum.

Whew. Back in the states, and, more specifically, Oakland, Euphotic played an insect-inspired trio set on opening night of the 20th Annual Thingamajigs Festival at the Oakland Museum, December 15. Sometime after that, 2018 came lumbering through the door.

January of the new year was notable for two sessions with KOKUO, an all-acoustic group dedicated to delicate soundwork, with Kyle Bruckmann, Kanoko Nishi-Smith, John McCowen, and Jacob Felix Heule. Also me. I hope some of that music makes it onto more plasticky media some day so that all of you may enjoy it. We have some studio recordings that are nearing a finalized edited state (but without John). Another studio recording session by Tender Buttons happened that month at the (now nothing but a legend) Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. February saw radio KZSU’s Day of Noise occupy its 24 non-stop broadcast hours, with the Djll participating in sets by Runcible Spoon Fight, Tender Buttons, Rent Romus‘ Ruminations, and Karl Evangelista‘s REVENANT. You can look around in this video and others on YouTube for those sets. Rent and Karl = two of the hardest-working men in Bay Area show business!
Later in February, I re-freshed my musical partnership with Jack Wright, with whom I have been making music here and there since 1987 or maybe ’88. Jack’s book also came out last year and you should buy it. (Like, here.) His trio ROUGHHOUSING is an absolute BLAST and I was so happy to be able to enjoy multiple driving, kaleidoscrappic sets by them (Jack + Evan Lipson and Zach Darrup).

In May I spent a couple of weekends in Seattle and Portland, visiting and playing with friends old and new: avant-trumpet master Greg Kelley, who I first met in 1997 during nmperign‘s first (there’s that word again, legendary) tour of the US. Greg and I played our first duo — unfortunately, that’s one that got away from the recording machinery. In Corvallis I was the guest of Jim Whittemore (aka Luthor Maggot) and played a solo set at his series Interzone.

The summer was busy with new and existing projects, then in September something pretty unusual came my way, accompanying a book reading. The book was Underbug: An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology; the author: Lisa Margonelli. The project brought about an unexpected cinematic flavor to the results, and I am planning for more collaborations with Lisa and other authors.

Later in September, some of my favorite people visited the Bay Area — Per Anders Nilsson, Palle Dahlstedt, and, coincidentally, David Toop. Per Anders and Palle have been working with Tim Perkis and Gino Robair on a long-term international project concerning interactive scores for improvisers. That concert, at CNMAT, is immortalized here. Mr Toop was a robust participant in that event, which included an afternoon of playing, experimenting, discussion, and dinner, then performance — was without doubt one of the best hang-outs I’ve ever been a part of. These Systemic Improvisation cats are doing important work, and, happily, two of them live in a country whose government and civic institutions support the arts. What a crazy concept!
The very next evening, also in Berkeley, Toop, Robair, Djll and the estimable Jon Leidecker (aka Wobbly) came together to freely improvise electronically and acoustically (David played leaves and cones of paper, a small box, skittery toy bugs that got stuck in a paper cone and buzzed for longer than David wanted, transducers, tapes, radio, lap steel guitar and bass recorder (and probably some other stuff)). A pinnacle moment to play in such company (and another one that didn’t get recorded). Toop has been a hero of mine since 1980 when I first heard Alterations. As a teacher and contributor to music publications since the 1980s, Toop’s writing is world-class: his book Into the Maelstrom is one every improviser ought to read if they intend to understand this vast and improbable, sometimes unaccountably gorgeous métier.

Speaking of things unaccountable: Yesterday I played an uncompromising, very loud, very gnarly trumpet-feedback set at Robotspeak in San Francisco. Afterwards I felt almost mobbed by the crowd, and sold out my schwag table. That’s never happened before. And this morning, Serge Tcherepnine, inventor of the Serge Modular Music System that I (and so many others) love and work with, shared one of my bloopy synth videos on Facebook to the Facebook Serge Modular Synthesizers page. Another first.

I want to squeal like a little kid. And then sample and mangle it…