In early 2025, All Colors Present was performed in ten cities throughout the midwestern and southeastern US, and will reach more cities throughout the east and west coasts before the year’s end. A collaboration with photographer Tom Lecky, it’s a nearly 60-minute sound and visual meditation.
I am very grateful to have worked with Tom on this and to have his photographs involved. They are an integral part of the performance, offering their own detail and mystery in such a complementary way to the sound.
Table of the Elements plan to release a physical edition of it. Here are some of their words about it…
“Here, recorded in real-time and with no overdubs, two crisp beats repeat and reverberate—one, then two; two, then one—in a confluence of hand and stick, drumhead, and heartbeat. Yet, from this seemingly metronomic exercise blossoms every possible tint and hue of infinite spectral sound.
An apt reference point resides within the broad, decades-spanning catalog of Table of the Elements. Like Tony Conrad’s surging Outside the Dream Syndicate, the aural and conceptual headwinds are real, but the perceived affronts of provocation are not. These works are not endurance challenges, nor are they threadbare minimalist upholstery. They are not obstacles. They are invitations. Within their simplicity and formalism await a sympathetic repose, a comfort. These are gestures of generosity.”
But I need to elaborate a bit further…
When I was young, I dreamt of playing guitar, but it ended up being just a string or two that captivated me, vibrating from feedback, which I had no idea what that even was. Eventually ditching that instrument and finding drums, I ended up hitting the wall of realization that I would never be as good as so many others, making the road seem less than worthwhile. So, my quest was to develop what I thought of as a “personal relationship” to the instrument. Not to just play it via techniques learned from people, but to learn things from the instrument itself.
I’ve talked about all of that stuff before, but it’s worth noting that All Colors Present is the essence of all these ideas. It encompasses many experiences that have shaped my relationship to drums and percussion, and celebrates moving them beyond being a time-keeping device into something much more complex.
Table of the Elements also writes:
“Why do we undertake these efforts? Mueller doesn’t overtly intend this to be his final recording. Yet he recognizes an apotheosis of a lifelong path, a throughline that has dragged him from his origin to this moment. None of us may ever grasp the purpose of our innermost drive. We strain towards destinations of numinous obliteration.
What is the sense of it all? The answer may be another question. Have we at least honored ourselves and that most primal urge that beckons us to surge further and farther and beyond…?”
The “sense of it all” is what happens during a performance. The very particular line between tedium and wondrous awe that moves and shapes into almost physical form. Creating something so simplistic that it ends up revealing a puzzle as to what reality itself even is.
Can drums do that? All Colors Present says yes.