Ganglion (band)
Encyclopedia
Ganglion was both a Calgary
-based electroacoustic
rock
band, and the musical alias for the solo recordings of bandleader Ivan Reese. Their music featured diverse instrumentation utilizing classical
, modern
and extended technique
s. Since the beginning of the solo-recording
project, Ganglion have recorded hundreds of hours of music and released dozens of albums.
in November, 2004. After passing around a few experimental demo
recordings, he was contracted to write and record a musical score for a newly written play, Alarum Within. The play was based on a book of poetry by the same name, about the time author Kimmy Beach spent as the stage manager
of the theatre where the play had its debut. Principal recording of the score was completed in three days in the summer of 2005 with the assistance of future Ganglion member, Owen Thelwall. Both musicians neither slept, ate, nor wore any clothing during most of the recording process, covering their faces and bodies with tribally-inspired painted designs.
The following winter, Reese released the first solo work under the Ganglion name: a collection of demos and recording experiments titled with the pun, About To Be Pretty. Following this release, he was contracted to record another theatrical score, for a staging of the play The Bundle by Edward Bond
. The score was completed in the fall of 2006.
Immediately following the completion of the score, Ivan began recording a double album
, with the two halves titled Point and Laugh respectively. While the double album was still in the early writing and demoing phase, Reese was engaged by his friend and fellow Calgary
musician Kris Ellestad to release an album for Ellestad's newly-established 6Sided Records label. Ellestad was hesitant to put out a double album as the label's first release, so Reese agreed to craft an album especially for the label. Using some of the material planned for Point/Laugh, and other material cobbled together from previous demos, the first proper Ganglion album In An Incubator was released in February, 2007.
At this point, the Point/Laugh project was scrapped in favor of a new, more challenging undertaking. Reese decided to record a series of eight albums, to be released as a "concept
box-set" upon their completion. Each album was given a title containing one letter from the word 'Ganglion' corresponding to the order of albums in the series, and the whole series would be titled semi-eponymously: GANGLION8. Much of the material for these eight albums was written and recorded in May, 2007 at Reese's home in Half Moon Bay
, Alberta
. Go!, the first album of the series, was released the following fall via the internet to promote the project. This was followed by another musical score
for the short film Wanderrordinary, directed by Matthew Thiel.
The second album in the GANGLION8 series, Away was to be released in the early months of 2008, but Reese delayed it after an early preview of the album garnered mixed impressions. He then spent the summer rehearsing, performing, and recording with Sylvan Lake
-based act, Slake. This resulted in the Slake/Ganglion Split EP, released in the Fall of 2008, featuring three revised versions of songs from Go!. The next release was the sixth album in the GANGLION8 series, titled Listen, released as a physical CD in March and online in April, 2009. An unfinished form of the album was partially leaked to the internet
in November 2008, though this did not negatively impact the album's sales.
In April 2009, a steady lineup of musicians began writing and rehearsing music specifically for live performance under the Ganglion name: Ivan Reese (Bass Clarinet
, Guitar
), Owen Thelwall (Saxophone
), Megan Gerbrandt (Drums, Jawharp), Kiri Rix (Vocals
), Jessica Yeandle-Hignell (Piano
), Audrey Burch (Piano
, Accordion
), Mark Webber (Guitar
, Banjo
), and Kyle Cheadle (Bass). They played two concerts in July, 2009, one at the Mukwah Jamboree music festival and another at the Arbour Lake Sghool.
In the fall of 2009, Reese recorded a score for a feature film titled Mirror rorriM, a dark comedy written by Sticks Sutton. In January 2010, Ivan Reese and Owen Thelwall performed a piece titled The Unlimited Dream Company at the High Performance Rodeo festival, as a part of the Soundasaurus showcase of experimental music. The performance entailed a number of electronic, mechanical, and organic sound sources: a radio signal generator, animatronic penguin and elephant, boiling kettle, power drill, bass feedback, saxophone, harmonica, duck decoys, children's toys, poetry, singing, and various odd tone-sources. In the summer of 2010, the album Away was finally released after an additional two years of revisions following its originally-planned release date. It has become the most highly-praised Ganglion album, and is considered by many to be the pinnacle of Reese's work as a recording artist. He also recorded two film scores in the summer, for the films Butt Ugly and Mapping Creativity.
On the 26th of September 2010, the Ganglion band were touring the United States when their tour van overturned on Highway 200 in Montana, killing nearly all members as well as the driver of an oncoming tractor trailer. While Ivan Reese survived the accident with minor injuries, the tragedy shook the Calgary independent music scene and constituted a great loss for the future of Canadian music. In January 2011, Reese gave his only performance following the death of his band, at Soundasaurus 2011. Titled Mary Everest Boole, it was a piece honouring the life and work of the titular mathematician, Mary Everest Boole
. The performance featured specialized computer software which recorded the sound of a Reese's voice, analyzing and rearranging the sounds of his speech into musical phrase. At the performance, Reese announced his retirement from musical recording and performance, stating that he can no longer bear the weight performing following the deaths of his band mates.
In the Spring of 2011, Ivan Reese founded a video game company, Quintessent Games. While he is chiefly working as an animator and programmer, he is also responsible for the musical score of every game this company releases.
Calgary
Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...
-based electroacoustic
Electroacoustic music
Electroacoustic music originated in Western art music during its modern era following the incorporation of electric sound production into compositional practice. The initial developments in electroacoustic music composition during the mid-20th century are associated with the activities of composers...
rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
band, and the musical alias for the solo recordings of bandleader Ivan Reese. Their music featured diverse instrumentation utilizing classical
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
, modern
Modern music
Modern music may refer to:* 20th-century music* 20th-century classical music* 21st-century classical music* Contemporary classical music* Modernism * Modern rock* Popular music...
and extended technique
Extended technique
Extended techniques are performance techniques used in music to describe unconventional, unorthodox, or non-traditional techniques of singing, or of playing musical instruments to obtain unusual sounds or instrumental timbres....
s. Since the beginning of the solo-recording
Multitrack recording
Multitrack recording is a method of sound recording that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources to create a cohesive whole...
project, Ganglion have recorded hundreds of hours of music and released dozens of albums.
Sound
Ganglion's performances and recording sessions varied wildly, between a standard repertoire and free-form improvisation. In concert, their renditions of songs changed frequently and were always played differently than the recorded versions. There was no fixed lineup of musicians, with long-time regulars and one-time contributors filling different roles at every outing. Performances have featured as few as one and more than twenty players, with the band often pulling in members of the audience to drum along or sing freely.History
Ivan Reese began recording music on his home computer when he dropped out of the Alberta College of Art and DesignAlberta College of Art and Design
-History:The Alberta College of Art & Design is a Canadian degree-granting, publicly-funded art and design college located in Calgary . It was known as the Provincial Institute of Technology and Arts, which was part of SAIT until 1985...
in November, 2004. After passing around a few experimental demo
Demo (music)
A demo version or demo of a song is one recorded for reference rather than for release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas on tape or disc, and provide an example of those ideas to record labels, producers or other artists...
recordings, he was contracted to write and record a musical score for a newly written play, Alarum Within. The play was based on a book of poetry by the same name, about the time author Kimmy Beach spent as the stage manager
Stage management
Stage management is the practice of organizing and coordinating a theatrical production. It encompasses a variety of activities, including organizing the production and coordinating communications between various personnel...
of the theatre where the play had its debut. Principal recording of the score was completed in three days in the summer of 2005 with the assistance of future Ganglion member, Owen Thelwall. Both musicians neither slept, ate, nor wore any clothing during most of the recording process, covering their faces and bodies with tribally-inspired painted designs.
The following winter, Reese released the first solo work under the Ganglion name: a collection of demos and recording experiments titled with the pun, About To Be Pretty. Following this release, he was contracted to record another theatrical score, for a staging of the play The Bundle by Edward Bond
Edward Bond
Edward Bond is an English playwright, theatre director, poet, theorist and screenwriter. He is the author of some fifty plays, among them Saved , the production of which was instrumental in the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK...
. The score was completed in the fall of 2006.
Immediately following the completion of the score, Ivan began recording a double album
Double album
A double album is an audio album which spans two units of the primary medium in which it is sold, typically records and compact discs....
, with the two halves titled Point and Laugh respectively. While the double album was still in the early writing and demoing phase, Reese was engaged by his friend and fellow Calgary
Calgary
Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...
musician Kris Ellestad to release an album for Ellestad's newly-established 6Sided Records label. Ellestad was hesitant to put out a double album as the label's first release, so Reese agreed to craft an album especially for the label. Using some of the material planned for Point/Laugh, and other material cobbled together from previous demos, the first proper Ganglion album In An Incubator was released in February, 2007.
At this point, the Point/Laugh project was scrapped in favor of a new, more challenging undertaking. Reese decided to record a series of eight albums, to be released as a "concept
Concept album
In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...
box-set" upon their completion. Each album was given a title containing one letter from the word 'Ganglion' corresponding to the order of albums in the series, and the whole series would be titled semi-eponymously: GANGLION8. Much of the material for these eight albums was written and recorded in May, 2007 at Reese's home in Half Moon Bay
Half Moon Bay, Alberta
Half Moon Bay is a summer village in Alberta, Canada. It is located on the western shore of Sylvan Lake, near Sylvan Lake Provincial Park.-Demographics:In 2006, Half Moon Bay had a population of 32 living in 60 dwellings, a -13.5% increase from 2001...
, Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
. Go!, the first album of the series, was released the following fall via the internet to promote the project. This was followed by another musical score
Film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
for the short film Wanderrordinary, directed by Matthew Thiel.
The second album in the GANGLION8 series, Away was to be released in the early months of 2008, but Reese delayed it after an early preview of the album garnered mixed impressions. He then spent the summer rehearsing, performing, and recording with Sylvan Lake
Sylvan Lake, Alberta
Sylvan Lake is a town in central Alberta, Canada. It is located west of the City of Red Deer along Highway 11 or Highway 11A. It is situated on the southeast edge of Sylvan Lake, a long freshwater lake, in Red Deer County....
-based act, Slake. This resulted in the Slake/Ganglion Split EP, released in the Fall of 2008, featuring three revised versions of songs from Go!. The next release was the sixth album in the GANGLION8 series, titled Listen, released as a physical CD in March and online in April, 2009. An unfinished form of the album was partially leaked to the internet
Internet leak
An Internet leak occurs when a party's confidential information is released to the public on the Internet. Various types of information and data can be, and have been, "leaked" to the Internet, the most common being personal information, computer software and source code, and artistic works such...
in November 2008, though this did not negatively impact the album's sales.
In April 2009, a steady lineup of musicians began writing and rehearsing music specifically for live performance under the Ganglion name: Ivan Reese (Bass Clarinet
Bass clarinet
The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B , but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B clarinet...
, Guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
), Owen Thelwall (Saxophone
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
), Megan Gerbrandt (Drums, Jawharp), Kiri Rix (Vocals
Singing
Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
), Jessica Yeandle-Hignell (Piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
), Audrey Burch (Piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
, Accordion
Accordion
The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....
), Mark Webber (Guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, Banjo
Banjo
In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...
), and Kyle Cheadle (Bass). They played two concerts in July, 2009, one at the Mukwah Jamboree music festival and another at the Arbour Lake Sghool.
In the fall of 2009, Reese recorded a score for a feature film titled Mirror rorriM, a dark comedy written by Sticks Sutton. In January 2010, Ivan Reese and Owen Thelwall performed a piece titled The Unlimited Dream Company at the High Performance Rodeo festival, as a part of the Soundasaurus showcase of experimental music. The performance entailed a number of electronic, mechanical, and organic sound sources: a radio signal generator, animatronic penguin and elephant, boiling kettle, power drill, bass feedback, saxophone, harmonica, duck decoys, children's toys, poetry, singing, and various odd tone-sources. In the summer of 2010, the album Away was finally released after an additional two years of revisions following its originally-planned release date. It has become the most highly-praised Ganglion album, and is considered by many to be the pinnacle of Reese's work as a recording artist. He also recorded two film scores in the summer, for the films Butt Ugly and Mapping Creativity.
On the 26th of September 2010, the Ganglion band were touring the United States when their tour van overturned on Highway 200 in Montana, killing nearly all members as well as the driver of an oncoming tractor trailer. While Ivan Reese survived the accident with minor injuries, the tragedy shook the Calgary independent music scene and constituted a great loss for the future of Canadian music. In January 2011, Reese gave his only performance following the death of his band, at Soundasaurus 2011. Titled Mary Everest Boole, it was a piece honouring the life and work of the titular mathematician, Mary Everest Boole
Mary Everest Boole
Mary Everest Boole was a self-taught mathematician who is best known as an author of didactic works on mathematics, such as Philosophy and Fun of Algebra, and as the wife of fellow mathematician George Boole...
. The performance featured specialized computer software which recorded the sound of a Reese's voice, analyzing and rearranging the sounds of his speech into musical phrase. At the performance, Reese announced his retirement from musical recording and performance, stating that he can no longer bear the weight performing following the deaths of his band mates.
In the Spring of 2011, Ivan Reese founded a video game company, Quintessent Games. While he is chiefly working as an animator and programmer, he is also responsible for the musical score of every game this company releases.
Theatrical/Film Scores
- Alarum Within (as Ivan Reese & Owen Thelwall, Independent, 2005)
- The Bundle (as Ivan Reese, Independent, 2006)
- Wanderrordinary (as Ivan Reese, Independent, 2007)
- Mirror rorriM (as Ivan Reese, Independent, 2009)
- Butt Ugly (as Ivan Reese, Independent, 2010)
- Mapping Creativity (as Ivan Reese, Independent, 2010)
Studio Albums
- About To Be Pretty (Societal Records, 2006)
- In An Incubator (6Sided Records, 2007)
- Go! (Societal Records, 2007)
- Slake/Ganglion Split EP (Societal Records, 2008)
- Listen (Societal Records, 2009)
- Away (Societal Records, 2010)
- Quadrate Honey and the Baleen Mysterians (Antithetical Records)
Live Albums and Compilations
- Abreast Of (Societal Records, 2011)
- Live at the Arbour Lake Sghool (Societal Records, 2011)
Non-Album Works
- The Unlimited Dream Company (multimedia performance piece, 2010)
- Mary Everest Boole (interactive-media performance piece, 2011)
Game Scores
- A Shrinking Feeling (as Ivan Reese, Quintessent Games, 2011)
- Breakin (as Ivan Reese, Quintessent Games, 2011)
- Chord (as Ivan Reese, Quintessent Games, 2011)