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Galaxy Express 555 - an appreciation


Appreciation: Galaxy Express 555 (Christopher Farstad)


“Can you hear the real me?” is a question which is not quite heard in the improvisational soundscape performed Thursday at the Khyber Pass.  

The computer generated downpour and hail-storm yielded to quadraphonic waves crashing on Brighton Beach. 

The amusement park there is closed but loose ride parts and flapping signs sing with the wind and animated orchestrated pipes and valves ask the question:  Where is the Lizard King?

Electric organs breed with birdsongs that haunt this unseen movie’s soundtrack before the Yamaha electrosaxophone stirs up Zappa-esque but guitar-less feedback.

Does it matter if Christopher tells the truth about not playing the sax?  Hard to say.  That’s a problem with electronica - if there is skillful intonation, can anyone identify it?  

But this music is not about tunefulness, not when your overheated wookie cries elicit eruptions of hilarity from an audience member who rocks her chair disordered, compulsions and obsessions set free.  

The transistors heat up steam-driven loops  and loom together a series of waves and throbbing organ repetitions.  

The sound tends towards too much of the screech and the two stacked speakers leave us to wonder what high fidelity might add to this, but the overall effect is mesmerizing - yes, like a soundtrack of a movie where both projector and dialogue are MIA but not required.

Two speakers, two little keyboards, a dj mixer, computer and 22 patch cords.  Christopher disclaimed ever hearing of Quadrophenia.  I did not ask about Shaker Loops.  

My note pad rested this evening on Poetry, the Nov. 2018 edition, and before leaving, I opened it and found what could be the evening’s storyline:

The Hastily Assembled Angel Considers the Kingdoms of Dogs and of People
BY SHANE MCCRAE

The hastily assembled angel wanders

And has      through cities centuries of  cities

And countries and millennia of  cities

And countries and of  women and of men      there’s


No hurry now though he was hurriedly

Once brought to being      and bears the scars of  that

Though slowly      in the Earth      though slowly he

Eventually began to wonder what


The hurry had been for      and if  he could

Have been a better angel or have done

Better the job he did if once

They’d made him the      other angels had allowed


Him to meet God      for he has been uncertain

As people are uncertain he has nev-

er been as certain      as dogs are      who sniff

The wind that moves the curtain      and see behind the curtain


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