Discipline 99/The RaMix Project
A Serial Composition by Bushmeat Soundsystem

Sometime in late 2005 I decided to bubble off what I had been doing in two groups (Noumenal Lingam and MOMMOM) as a solo electronic project dubbed Bushmeat for reasons that don't merit a lot of discussion here. It's a cool name for a project even if I have to remind people of where the term comes from originally and disassociate myself from those tragic connotations (people shouldn't eat other primates -- especially bonobos and chimps). I thought that my ensemble contribution would be much stronger if I learned how to hold up the whole thing myself. My first couple of gigs as Bushmeat Soundsystem went terribly wrong -- felt bad, sounded shabby. I couldn't figure out how to think fast enough to improvise solo in the same way that had become so natural with Chris and Bobby. I also hadn't anticipated how much deeper I had to prepare my materials and equipment if I was going to move fluidly around my kit. So in an effort to turn my shame into power I gave myself a homework assignment. That is, I went into the shed. I took on the task of doing a series of 99 remixes involving my soundscapes and samples of the late Sun Ra's spoken voice. Discipline 99 would be my attempt to bring my collages under the umbrella of what Sonny called precision-discipline and at the same time rehear the words and wisdom of Rabbi Ra. I've done 75 of these things over the last 2-and-a-half years. Some of the early ones were epic, but the sound card I was using at the time was not, so I've avoided those and have posted a couple of my favorite gems from the middle and end of the series under the sound tab above. The Ramixes are conceived as studies and are not to be used commercially or distributed as cds.

Photo: Kohl Black