Dance of the Penguins

Came across Dance of the Penguins by Michael Masley a little while ago and had to post.  Brilliant and so unique.  There's a few great videos on youtube about his background.  

"His unique method of playing the instrument comes from his invention of the bowhammer, a cross between a fiddle bow and a dulcimer hammer, attached to the finger with a ring."

Here's one of his songs with some animation behind it.  

Penguins doing mass yoga to Dead Can Dance?!?

Plus some natural sounds like 'Beyond the Blues'
https://roadtonowhere.forumotion.org/t709-paul-winter-consort

A nice find, j_s_g!

The similarity to Dead Can Dance is what drew me to it for sure, but his invention / work on the Hungarian cymbalom with a bowhammer is impressive.  His songs with titles like Music to Look for Something Lost By, The Sea As a Moon Launched Mirror, Sleepdance On Leaves of Water, Adive From the Angel of Thresholds peeked my curiosity.

It's the oddest thing to see him play it, but also kinda mesmerizing.  A hammered dulcimer sound with violin?  I don't exactly know how to describe it.  You can take a peek at him playing in this short clip.  



His album Cymbalom Solos from 1994 is definitely worth a listen.  

Very interesting stuff - including his 10-inch reversed 'fingernails'!

I'm not sure what makes the music sound so 'textured' but wiki talks about his "turkish steambath of overtones" and his a "pitch universe in which no stable center governs yet which, for all its randomness, demonstrates an elastic stability".... so..... yeah.....overtones and elastic pitches.

Masley was born in 1952 and it is hard to beat boomers for their musical independence, they went their own way and did their own thing.

I looked up the Cymalom/Cimbalom on wikipedia and was shocked that Masley did not rank a mention because it was full of bigger stars like Alan Parson, Sonic Youth, Blue Man Group, composer James Horner and the Japanese noise band 'The Boredoms'. It even shows up in Star Trek and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Who Knew?  

Whenever people say they don't want to be immoral because they would "grow bored", I immediately discount all the rest of their opinions. I could spend one life time just playing around with the chordophones!