K3CS by Peter Freeman

This double-CD collects tracks by the late great Peter Freeman including his year 2000 album Mercurial and the pieces of Sinistar completed in 2020 before his untimely passing.

Peter was a polymathic musician: virtuosic bassist, visionary producer and sound designer, electron and code wrangler He had a long and close collaboration for over 25 years with trumpeter Jon Hassell and had lent his bass-playing talents to projects with Indian electric violinist L. Shankar, Seal, Pierce Turner, John Cale, Alanis Morissette, Nile Rodgers, Shawn Colvin, Sussan Deyhim, and Elliott Sharp.

Moving to Los Angeles in 2002, he became involved in film and television as a musician and sound designer and working with such composers such as Thomas Newman, Cliff Martinez, Anton Sanko, and Charlie Clouser.

Together with David Zicarelli, he was the driving force behind the iPad music sampling and looping applications, Looperverse and SAMPLR. Peter was also a licensed amateur radio operator for over 40 years with call letters K3CS, and held an Extra Class license. He died on March 16, 2021, after a year-long battle with stomach cancer.

This album derives its name from Peter's ham radio call letters.


Peter's notes to these CDs:

Sinistar:
As a pure feat of architecture, it was a shock. It seemed to have been fused into the ground, as if by some hideously powerful other-worldly force, creating the strong impression that it had always been part of the surrounding landscape. Its streamlined, towering form was etched with a frieze of endless, intricately-carved detail, stretching up out of sight into the darkness overhead. The porous black volcanic-looking surface texture seemed at odds with the complexity of the patterns carved into it, as if it had been the product of laser cutting technology applied at scale to some experimental, unthinkably expensive new concrete casting process that had probably left a trail of bankrupt architecture firms, contractors and investors in its wake.

Mercurial:
High up in the unseen maze of darkness, in amongst the untouched upper reaches of the densely clustered buildings, he could feel the echoes of long-vanished experiences persisting, hovering spectrally above only those specific streets, alleys and intersections, forever. He came to perceive them as the city’s only permanent inhabitants, the remnants  of a million tiny, stinging fragments of the past, irrevocably distorting the once-familiar landscape. It was as if the very fabric of the atmosphere itself had captured only the most wrenching, key moments in endlessly-accruing layers, until ordinary life was consumed in the swirling, viscous eddies and currents of memory.

Peter Freeman is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer from NYC whose professional career began in 1983 as bassist with Indian violinist L. Shankar. He toured and/or recorded with Seal, Alanis Morissette, John Cale band with Chris Spedding, Nile Rodgers, Shawn Colvin, Sussan Deyhim, Elliott Sharp and trumpet innovator Jon Hassell as well as working in sound design for film and TV.