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Michael Chocholak

About Me

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Lucid Dreaming by Scarcity of Moments
A collaborative project by Johann Meier and myself. Nearly an hour of guitar and bass ambience realizing a sonic version of the multiple view points, fractured geometry, and repetition found in the literary works of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Edition of 72 copies packaged in three variations of manipulated images by Johann. Available from Small Doses
"Memory belongs to the imagination." - Alain Robbe-Grillet
Michael Chocholak - Alveromancy; conjuring through the use of sound. Abstract electronics, behemoth guitar drones, sonic surrealism. Limited edition of 96 numbered copies, 56 minutes, CDR, full color artwork print in a transparent sleeve. Available from Triple Bath
Originally a guitarist, these days (Michael is) using anything he can lay his hands on: from the guitar to the computer, from drums to glass - all of this is used to the extent of no longer being able to recognize what it is. Creating large pieces of vast and dense clouds of sound. Music that sounds very electronic, yet very organic too. You don't recognize the initial sources - it's only because they are mentioned in the press text. Music like this would be called ambient industrial: it's too noisy to be fully ambient and relaxing, and too ambient to pass on as real noise. This is sort of ambient (industrial, drone whatever) music that I really like. Referring to modern electronics (especially Roland Kayn), heavily processed electro-acoustic music and Germany's cosmic music (especially Conrad Schnitzler), this is music that hardly sees innovation, but in the capable hands of Chocholak it's still a great miracle. Franz de Waard/Vital Weekly
"Michael Chocholak is a sound shaman. His music transforms you, carries you away to other realities, other dimensions and other states of consciousness. If you are looking for a Bardo preview, this is the soundtrack." - Misha Nogha.Electronic and electroacoustic soundscapes. Abstract. Visceral and imagick. Structured improvisations. Surreal architectures. Alternate mythologies. Although initially a guitarist, any sound source is considered a potential instrument from skin drum to pc.Michael has fronted a number of ensembles playing original and improvisational music and issued over 25 independent releases including collaborations with his wife, writer and poet Misha Nogha, cyberpunk writer and rocker John Shirley, German electronic music pioneer Conrad Schnitzler, Canadian text/sound composer and performer Richard Truhlar, Australian sound artist Rik Rue, the Schreck electroacoustic Ensemble, poets David Memmott and Mel Buffington, the garage band Leather Smile, world fusion vocalist Pandia, and surreal transformationalist Richard Dunlap. Michael and Misha live in Northeast Oregon where they own and operate a small farm and raise Norwegian Fjord horses.
“A Salvador Dali of music.” - Gypsy
“It conjures up visions.” - Brian Aldiss
"I always put you in with Varese and crazy bastards like Bartok... John Cage and friends would be proud. It's sort of classic in a way. The Zen of tones and sonic space. " - John Shirley
“Heaven sent.” - Glenn Branca
“Crazy” - Thurston Moore
“It casts a long shadow over my inner ear.” - Rik Rue
“Audio-cinematic cortical opera.” - Richard Truhlar
"Really evocative and sensitively done. Beautiful." - David Lee Myers
“Pure heat, atavistic futurity.” - Ferret
“Takes the cutting edge of electronic music and slices through your cornea.” - Joey Zone
“When the last song was finished, all the birds fell dead from the sky.” - Richard Schindler
"It conjures visions of superstrings twined around a quantum fork in ten-dimensional space-time." - Keyboard Magazine
"Dark, cold, eerie, and beautiful" - EAR
"Some of the most evocative soundscapes you could imagine" - Eurock
"Dark and moody music that wraps you in tightly like a wet sheet" - Factsheet Five
"This evocative mix conjures up pictures that range from somber beauty to sobering brutality. Here is ambient music of an involving, organic nature, thick with activity... a wholly human approach" - Sound Choice Magazine
"Positively stunning" - Option Magazine

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 6/2/2008
Band Website: http://www.eoni.com/%7Emishamez/badge2.htm
Influences: Edgard Varese, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, John Fahey, Beethoven, the Russian giants, Gerald McBoing Boing, shamanism, Pablo Neruda, Max Ernst, William Blake, quantum physics, Big Science, Les Paul, Salvador Dali, Basho, John Cage, motorcycles, the Beat poets, toccata and fugue in D minor, bird songs, Wassily Kandinsky, The Rite of Spring, Misha Nogha, Alexander Scriabin, Akira Kurosawa, Jorge Luis Borges, Carl Stalling, Giorgio de Chirico, Wim Wenders, Sputnik, Margaret Bourke-White, gamelan, Alexander Calder, lenses, Andrei Tarkovsky, Kobo Abe, maps, Jean Cocteau, Buto dancers, Ingmar Bergman, Huge Le Caine, Moebius, Walt Disney, Naum Gabo, k7 kulture, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Conrad Schnitzler, Arie van Schutterhoef, Rik Rue, Nokalypse, Richard Dunlap, jopy, Phenotypo, Richard Truhlar, The Schreck Electroacoustic Ensemble, radio waves, wind, water, wood, metal, the living world.
Sounds Like: Tamas Ungvary, John Chowning, Luc Ferrari, Jaap Vink

Record Label: Triple Bath, Small Doses, Howski, echomusic
Type of Label: Indie

My Blog

Lucid Dreaming CDr by Scarcity of Moments

A collaborative projectby Johann Meier and myself. Nearly an hour of guitar and bass ambience realizinga sonic version of the multiple view points, fractured geometry, and repetitionfound in the liter...
Posted by on Sat, 11 Apr 2009 19:46:00 GMT

new tracks 4/3/09

Six Hours in the Book of Gates - from the ancient Egyptian sacred text describing the 12 hour journey ofa newly deceased soul through Tuat, the land of the dead. a gate foreach hour of the sun's journ...
Posted by on Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:58:00 GMT

Moondog, Parker, Varese and the LHC

Although the Large Hadron Collider is broken until at least next year, I keep it tucked in a back corner of my head wondering what will happen to reality when they fire that hula hoop up again. Especi...
Posted by on Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:28:00 GMT

new tracks on 7/28/08

I posted five playlists of my music from my page at imeem (There's a discussion of these tracks here .) and then, to keep redundancy to a minimum, I replaced three tracks on my myspace player with;The...
Posted by on Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:11:00 GMT

Alveromancy CD on Triple Bath

Alveromancy; the act of conjuring using sound 1) Calabi Yau (G2 manifold) is a massive, droning, striated solo electric guitar improvisation with it's title is taken from string theory;check out this ...
Posted by on Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:02:00 GMT

My Music on MySpace

Rain - Tibetan bowl, birds, wine glass, drumsIf the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth - Ecclesiastes 11:3 And sweet rain would fall, Effortlessly slaking every thirst... Be...
Posted by on Sat, 07 Jun 2008 12:01:00 GMT

In Memory of Arie van Schutterhoef

I sadly pass on the announcement that Dutch composer Arie van Schutterhoef (1957 - 2008) passed away on Saturday, June 7 while on a short trip to Paris. He was a true friend and one of the sharpest, f...
Posted by on Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT