'Between Dreams' with Ted Taforo
Wielding brass with Ted Taforo; press photo courtesy of the artist.
Los Angeles-based artist Ted Taforo has made a name for himself from a plethora of saxophone contributions (Spoon, Snow Nerds) and as the recipient of jazz accolades with two ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Awards. Sharing a candid listen and view into the inception of the Between Dreams EP released via the imprint Future Gods; Taforo invites the listener to enter an avant-garde fun house of brass, keyboards and electronics that stands at the precipice of humankind and the instruments utilized to create arts that mimic life (and vice versa).
Travel through the corridors between states of consciousness with the minimalist instrumental intro piece "Common Era Blues" that begins the passage Between Dreams. The conceits of Southern California life are delivered in a shoulder shaking low-to-the-floor style rhythm on the funk fusion station of "Chill Out", to the illuminated key kaleidoscope of the mind on "Computerz" that straddles the machine/humanity continuum. The attitude of feeling a level freedom that reaches high for the stars and celebrates life is heard on the jubilant "Mir@cle", to the strange Sunday service bop of "It Belongs to the Creator" that is rounded out with the closing organized cacophony "If We're Always Turning How Can We Return" that concludes with a stew of sound all of Taforo's own design. Not unlike his creative Instagram presence, Ted Taforo provides glimmers of hope and joy to dream on at a time where inspiration can be on short supply.
Ted Taforo provided an interpretive poetic flow that introduces his new EP Between Dreams:
BETWEEN DREAMS
What fuels us, what is true food? Man and machine are like mirror and visage and so become like mortar and pestle. The one crashing into the other, neither autonomous nor unified enough to exist as one word (or at least not in this language…)
When you see yourself in the mirror, what is that called? What could possibly be said about the ultimate intimacy of total reality?
What would the ancients say about our constant mirror, the veil of unfathomable data which surrounds us?
Are we doomed to suffer the fate of the Ichthyosaurus, or will we adapt to the currents of the ever changing sea, like the ancient shark?Can you feel the rhythm of your true self? Trying so hard just to make it look gravy, but can you feel this life? If more beings can feel, then it follows that more can love and thus feel for others. The astral truth, the cosmic funk of the now is within your highest self. Look not to our desires. They are only these ires, time’s woe… For without the love of Mother Space, Father Time is just a clock of numbers. The numbers that we invented.
Say you do and you can and so you keep doing, because you can!….but it’s a matter of will.
Will you?
Will You
Be You?!There is thought. There is feeling. And most importantly, there is hearing. Or SEEING….
To see without using your eyes, but without not using your eyes also…
To hear without using your ears, but without not using your ears also…
To know without using your mind, but without not using your mind also...
Simultaneously, infinitely, completely, the great paradox…You are here, right here. When is too late? It’s okay to be afraid, listen to the spirit it knows us better than we know ourselves. Life is truly a miracle. Yours in healing and freedom.
—Ted Taforo
Between Dreams is available now via Future Gods.