The Squirm Orchestra
started in earnest by the turn of the millenium as a trio consisting of Kahlil Smylie (aka Flash, Luworm, RidiculousMeticulous &c.) Brett Padgett (aka Pierre, Agrufulis the Jagged Faced DJ, papa, and so forth)
and Brandon Nelson (aka Nimbus, IpsoFactoid, papa, ad infinitum). Created from the remnants of the Juniper Tree, AliBaba's Tahini and the Drowsy Birds, these three found eachother as castaways in the ecstatic storm of sound. After a revelatory performance the following August at the annual Silent Film Festival at the Vicker's Theater
in Three Oaks Michigan the trio became a quartet with the addition of Thomas Klepach, (aka TeK, Dr. RawDogRex, Turboteddyechoafghanigrandma, Greybear Grandmother) itinerant noise cleric. He played
with them the following year at the 2001 Silent Film Festival, an event
which had become the standing anual gig until 2008, the last year of
the festival. Many many gifted players have rotated through the ranks
over the years, with the core remaining the same. Squirm has played the
live soundtrack to some exceptional films including Vsevolod Pudovkin's
"Storm over Asia", Stan Brakhages "Dog Star Man", and numerous stop
motion animations by animators such as Ladislas Starewicz, Jiří Trnka, Jan Svankmajer, The Brothers Quay, and even some animations done by school children at the famous multimedia museum "Zeum" in San Francisco. The seeds of the Squirm Orchestra were sewn by the chance encounter of Smylie and Padgett at a pole barn party for auditorily impared Amish willing to give jazz a try. Smylie, attending the event as part of the evening's entertainment, had suffered a garden variety equipment malfunction. Padgett, a well known rapper from area code 616 was present that evening in hopes of expanding his own fan base, and was certainly no stranger to the curative powers of permaculture. Padgett proceeded to intercede on behalf of Smylie during that awkward moment, and filled the silence with a joyful electric skronk. Something subversive had been born! Brandon Nelson, a broker in broken brakedrum sculptures and other rusty rural fetishes, stumbled accross a seredipitious clue to the existence of the duo upon one of his fetish finding forays into the Amish jungles of Michiana and Indigan. A disgruntled and slightly hard of hearing amish man had contacted Nelson asking him to remove a battered tuba that had been left in his pole barn. "It duth not make a toot, nor a twinkle anymore! such mis-cheif!" exclaimed Malachi Yoder, the Amish farmer, refering to the fact that the badly tarnished and abraded tuba made nothing more than a muffled "whumphhh" when blown into. Nelson happily retrieved the excoriated tuba and upon closer inspection pulled a musty smelling pair of gym sweats from the bell of the tuba. Embroidered into the waistband of the workout pants was the entreaty "If found please return to B. Padgett" followed by Padgett's 616 phone number. An ever conscientious adventurer, Nelson contacted Padgett and arranged to meet at Brett's place of employment, the "Java Jurt". Padgett was so overjoyed at the return of his missing tuba that he promised Nelson as much coffee and turkish delight as Nelson could stomach. Upon becoming friends it was revealed that Nelson enjoyed rythmically banging on his various artifacts, relics and reliquaries and would be delighted to add to the cacophony. The two were now three! The trio were offhandedly dubbed "Squirm" by a reclusive poet and vodka bottle collector aquaintance enigmactically named RTP due to the physical effect their music had upon his innards.  Squirm are all multi-instrumentalists whose instruments include but are not limited to: guitar, bass, drums, banjos, flutes metal and wooden, violin, zither, laptop, accordian, autoharp, marching band bass drums, tablas, bells, dulcimer, zurna, sitar, basoon, ukulele, m'bira thumb piano, toy piano, melodica, toy guitar, xylophone, baritone, double bass, glockenspiel, Casio SK-1, Roland SH-101, Prophet-500 analog synth, other samplers, hulusi, sax, lap steel, pedal steel, clarinet, upright and washtub bass, tuba (yes brett plays the tuba) rhodes keyboard, analog stuff that we build ourselves such as the "Rawdog-aphone" or the "electric wind stressed barn timber", kettles, pots and pans, glass cutters, shoetap-stomp-and-holler, occasional farm animals such as sheep and chickens and any other reasonably willing noise making object that we can get our hands on. The group disdain for musical labeling comes from concurrent individual opinions on the matter, however Squirm's musical influences are as diverse as the instruments that they employ. The Squirm musical method ranges from the amiably orchestrated to the empathically improvised. Squirm strives to create psycho-acoustic events in which the music is the medium but not an end in itself. Rather Squirm plays in the service of the feeling of magic, wonder and awe that acts as a glue holding our humanity together. Externalizing the eternal inner child in its brilliance and ebullience.  In the summer of 2007 the squirm orchestra released its debut album "Somersaults Inside Ourselves". It was recorded in the Kerrigan barn squirm studio by themselves during the winter of '06/'07 and was endlessly edited and mixed by Kahlil that spring. The song "Per Arsin" from the album was featured that summer on the BBC radio show Mixin' It, and the song "Nature Slaughter Scenes" and the album in general were lauded on WFMU's Beware the Blog. Later that summer the Squirm Orchestra mounted an ambitious East Coast tour playing at independent theaters and venues in Phile, New York, Boston (here, and here), Rhode Island, upstate New York, Detroit, Ann Arbor and Chicago among other places. |  Kahlil Smylie  Brett Padgett          |
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