Sky City - Sky City - CD

Sky City features Tom Carter (Charalambides), Robert Horton, Lisa Cameron & Lee Ann Cameron. Lisa Cameron is a drummer and percussionist from Austin, Texas, whom Tom Carter has played with in the past. Lisa creates exquisite noise by vibrating snares and cymbals with feedback. When she heard Tom Carter and Robert Horton’s Lunar Eclipse, she wanted to record with them. Lisa and vocalist Lee Ann Cameron drove from Austin to the Bay Area and a session was planned. In the meantime, Tom was journeying in New Mexico and drove by a road sign to Sky City, so he had found the name for the new group.

The day of the session, Lisa and Lee Ann drove from San Francisco, picked up Tom in Oakland and arrived at the studio on the hill. Lisa had somehow left her equipment in SF. As they drove up, I heard Tom say, “That’s so Texas.” Then the magic started.

Lisa asked, “Do you have a cymbal?”

“Yes”

“An extra contact microphone?”

“Yes.”

“A snare?”

“Yes.”

" Some strips of metal?”

“Yes.”

Then we walked over the abyss together into Sky City.

Sky City is psychedelic space music with all the atoms of surfaces freed to inter and counter react. Noise in the outer dimension. Horton’s homemade inventions, Carter’s lyrical ebow guitar lines. The walking on the moon vocals of Lee Ann Cameron. The vibration of material planes by Lisa Cameron. The broken blues of the boot (Horton’s oldest instrument: 4 strings on a piece of wood the shape of Italy). Sun Ra ark and Neil Young’s arc put through a digital blender and reconstituted for space travel. The magical musical thing (MMT) a toy synthesizer from the 70s. All with a great drawing on the inside cover by Natacha Robinson. A chance for music induced time travel to parallel worlds and an opportunity to receive a collect call for the future from Sky City.