Transmissions
Summary
An album marking the beginning of our OZET 10th anniversary celebration.
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About the Transmissions
In November 2010, Aaron was in the middle of a hectic stretch of work, composing and designing sound for plays across the country with Daniel Baker (as Broken Chord). Aaron and Scott had been making OZET pieces for almost three and a half years, but three months had passed since their last piece, Alberts I-V. Aaron, Scott, and Daniel were playing around with the idea of forming an OZET Band. Aaron’s son, Leon, was two months old.
On the 22nd Aaron bought his first life insurance policy, came home, and recorded a short instrumental track in his apartment in Washington Heights.
He called the track a “transmission.” We can’t now remember exactly why, but messages – transmitted between earth and the OZET, between generations of Pioneers, between OZET villages, between the underground and the uninformed, the imprisoned and the free – have played an important role in nearly all of our pieces.
Over the next seven years, he wrote at least 130 more transmissions. Some explored the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic qualities of the OZET Formula; some investigated formal composition or sonic techniques; some developed ideas specific to performance pieces we were creating at the time.
OZET Band performed a few of the transmissions during their first live show on Hart Street in Brooklyn, on July 20, 2011. Many of the transmissions found their way into OZET performances such as Common Hall Village 20 and Katorga. Scott added words to some of them later; all were wordless when written except one.
This past summer, we invited four of our favorite musicians – Matt Mitchell (piano), Kate Gentile (drums), Devin Hoff (bass) and Taylor Levine (guitar) – into the studio to record songs from the OZET Songbook and a selection of Transmissions. We’ve collected those reimagined Transmissions here. Frequent OZET collaborator Jesse Perez also appears on the album, in the role of the Historian.
Performers
Matt Mitchell: piano
Kate Gentile: drums
Devin Hoff: bass
Taylor Levine: guitar
Aaron Meicht: trumpet, electronics