The music within the grooves of this platter is made for elevation. It is made for levitation. Roky Erikson’s brand of levitation. Where the soul leaves the body behind and rises up, where the body meets the soul and gives it the foundation it needs to accept the rules of the world. The Threshing Floor is that part of the farmer’s field where the crops are brought to process; grain is winnowed. The Threshing Floor has been historically thought of as MAGICAL…as both sacred and profane. As a place of cultic activities and ritual sacrifices. No crops are planted here…leaving the opportunity for the fertile flat space to become electrified at midnight, with farmworkers shakin’ it on down under the light of the moon. Ruth went to find Boaz at The Threshing Floor. She went to find food for her family. Ruth lay down with Boaz on the Threshing Floor, finding love and life. When the dawn came Ruth’s family was fed and she and Boaz were on the path to marriage. On Shavuot 2020, in the middle of a historic pandemic, a cast of renegade noisemongers (Alan Licht, Rebecca Odes, Gretchen Gonzales, Nate Young and John Olson) created a drone model of the Threshing Floor, offering a respite from the chaos of the eve, a moment to provide shelter from the storm. For twenty minutes, these witches and renegades filled the space with rumbling reverberations and souring sonic outbursts inviting the listener to lay down…as Ruth lay…to lay down and be taken away. Let the music flow on through, providing strength for the Dawn and the knowledge that the Dawn would bring. The Threshing Floor was an experimental experiment, improvising together apart during a time of plague, taking a usual time of togetherness reverberations and mediations and instead finding a unified voice by sharing ideas across currents, many miles apart, and using the time tested accompanist named chance to take the beautiful wandering vibrations and lace them together into the blanket of sound before you. Music does heal, it does strengthen. It can wash over and make alive. Please lay down with us and lose yourself to the sound of The Threshing Floor
