Rare & Old album dated 1997.
Cover has 2 slightly bent corners / Vinyl in perfect conditions!
egress is a song cycle comprising short songs played entirely on the remains of dead cactus found in the sonoran desert outside tucson arizona. the title refers to my exit from the desert, and also the decay and eventual exit of the cactus "instruments". egress is also an old theatrical term, and i realized after completing the song cycle that the recordings were made in close proximity to "old tucson", a tourist trap that was once the sight of an old theatrical set used In many early films and television programs, which was destroyed by fire during the recording of egress. nice coincidence that. saguaro cacti are the ones you see in roadrunner cartoons, the big skinny ones with the arms. a saguaro won't start growing arms until it is at least one hundred years old. they live many hundreds of years and are protected by law, when a saguaro dies, its outer skin rots and falls away, leaving many long straight "ribs" which are the cactus' skeletal frame. these ribs were bowed, usually with another (broken) rib, and the resulting "cry" could be heard some distance away. i also drummed on the trunks of dead cacti. agave cacti flower only once a century, sending a stalk of blooms sixty or more feet in the air. after blooming, the cactus dies. the dried stalks were for many years used by apache indians to construct one-string fiddles. the apache violin heard on egress was rather crudely constructed from an agave stalk and a used guitar string. an "acoustic theremin" was also constructed from agave stalk and a length of dowel, which was bowed with a violin bow. a drum of sorts was devised by contact-micing a forked saguaro rib. when struck against my palm, the forked rib resonated at a low frequency. cholla and ocatillo cactus were also played.
