Minutes of a deliberative body that convened only at night

Council
of Sleep

The sessions are ongoing. You simply weren't present.

Taos, New Mexico · 1989–2001 · Clerk's Office Recordings

Take a seat

Order of Business

I. Call to Order
II. Roll Call
III. Reading of the Minutes
IV. Business
V. Sessions
VI. Correspondence
VII. Adjournment

Called to order at nightfall. Adjournment not recorded.

I · Call to Order

The meeting was called to order by Gordon Fells.

Seven people answered one index card. The first rehearsal ran four hours and eleven minutes. Nothing was said. The minutes begin there.

Convened: Taos, New Mexico, 1989
Adjourned: 2001, without announcement
Classification: Instrumental Ambient / Psychedelic Space Rock
Subclass: Meditative Drift
As entered by the Council: Sleep Jazz · Passive Drone · Consensual Dissolution
Recordings filed: 11 items · 16:33:37 as filed

Quorum

Required: all seven · Present: seven

No business was conducted without the full Council. No business was conducted with it, either, in the usual sense.

An index card pinned to a crowded community co-op bulletin board in Taos, 1989

The co-op bulletin board, Taos, September 1989. The card was up for under a week.

Exhibit 1 · Founding notice

Seeking musicians interested in doing less. No drummers. No singers. Bring a chair.

Gordon Fells' founding notice — Taos community co-op bulletin board, September 1989

A photocopied notice for a Council of Sleep session with a drawing of a folding chair and a candle — Notice posted for a session. Doors at dusk. The chair was the audience's responsibility until 1991.

II · Roll Call

Seven seats. Seven answers. No one spoke.

The Clerk calls each name once. The answer is entered as given. Seats are listed in the order the Council sat, left to right, facing the room.

Seat 1 · 1989–2001
Gordon Fells
Electric guitar, effects chain
Present
“The note isn't the point. The space after the note is also not the point. The point is the room agreeing to let go of the point.”
“We appreciate the letter.”
Present whereabouts. Still owns the rewired 1969 Telecaster. Still considers the original output excessive.
Seat 2 · 1989–2001
Delia Marsh
Fender Rhodes, Hammond organ
Present
“I'm not trying to put you to sleep. I'm trying to make sleep feel earned.”
“Until they're over.”
Present whereabouts. Still keeps the mailing list — 847 names on index cards. Has described no plans for it.
Seat 3 · 1989–2001
Augusto Vance
Electric bass
Present
“I'm giving the root note somewhere to live for a while.”
Present whereabouts. Reportedly fine. Confirmation has always varied.
Seat 4 · 1989–2001
Theo Brink
Pedal steel guitar
Present
“Country music told me where I was going. I didn't want to go there.”
“I don't measure things that way.”
Present whereabouts. Still wears the bolo. The bolo changes. The commitment does not.
Seat 5 · 1989–2001
Simone Calder
Percussion — brushes only
Present
“I'm keeping time the way a sundial keeps time. It only works if you're patient and the conditions are right.”
Present whereabouts. Kept the brushes. Dismantled everything else in 1988 and never went back.
Seat 6 · 1989–2001
Ray Odum
Synthesizer, tape loops, reel-to-reel
Present
Present whereabouts. The quiet one. Remains so.
Seat 7 · 1989–2001
Constance Fells
Tape architect / thematic conceptualist (ambient tape manipulation, concert flute on record)
Present · Ex officio
“We communicate the same way we always have.”
Present whereabouts. Communicates with her brother the same way they always have. Has not clarified what that means.
Seat 8
The Visitor
Audience, any
Not present
A chair was provided. It was in place before the doors opened. The record will reflect that it was not used.

Rows of metal folding chairs set in an empty adobe hall at dusk, lamps lit

Chairs in place before the doors opened. Required from 1991 onward. Venues that could not comply were declined.

Minute Book of the Council of Sleep · 1989–2001

III · Reading of the Minutes

Four entries. Read into the record without objection. Corrections may be submitted in writing. None have been.

§1 The Convening

Gordon Fells had played guitar in three bands that all collapsed the same way — The Lateral Corridor, Moth Signal, and Open Proceedings — each dissolving because the audiences kept moving. He had watched crowds dance, sway, shout, and, on one occasion in Albuquerque in 1988, form an eleven-person conga line during an Open Proceedings set. He set his guitar against the amplifier and left the stage. He considered each of these outcomes a failure of the music to do its job.

In September 1989 he pinned a single index card to the bulletin board at the Taos community co-op. It read: "Seeking musicians interested in doing less. No drummers. No singers. Bring a chair." Six people responded. Fells kept all of them. One brought two chairs. The Council held its first rehearsal on October 14, 1989. It lasted four hours and eleven minutes. No one spoke. Fells considered it a strong start.

§2 Doing Less

The Council of Sleep was a seven-piece instrumental ensemble, and its founding principle was subtraction. There were no singers at all and no drummer in the conventional sense. Delia Marsh played long sustained chords and, sometimes, nothing. Augusto Vance held a single root note for forty minutes at a stretch. Theo Brink's pedal steel suggested that a melody could exist, if anyone felt they needed one, and then declined to provide it. Simone Calder never struck a drumhead; she brushed in slow circles and considered herself the rhythmic anchor, which by any conventional measure she was not.

They never used the word "concert." A performance was a "session." They considered applause a misunderstanding. Beginning in 1991 they required venues to provide chairs for every audience member — not optional seating, but chairs already in place before the doors opened. Venues that could not accommodate this were politely declined. The Council performed seated. Standing was not prohibited. It was simply, by all accounts, unnecessary.

§3 The Sessions

The Council performed only at night and never announced set times. During their 1993 residency at The Meridian in Albuquerque, three audience members arrived on the third night with sleeping bags. Venue management cited fire code; a quiet negotiation followed. The Council played through the entire proceeding without pause or acknowledgment. Policy was revised before the fourth night, and thirteen sleeping bags were present on the final one. The Council noted this in no public statement.

Their defining document was made by accident. On March 11, 1997, engineer Ray Odum left the tape deck running before a Santa Fe session and neglected to stop it; the result was six hours and forty-one minutes of continuous music. Fourteen people were present at the start. Eleven were asleep by the two-hour mark. The Council has described the recording as their most accurate representation. Their music was later used, without their involvement, in sleep clinics, a hospice, a dentist's waiting room in Flagstaff, and a federal labor mediation that reached agreement in a single session. The Council did not comment on any of these uses. They considered all of them correct.

§4 The Adjournment

In 1995 a small Los Angeles label offered the Council a recording contract, describing their music as "commercially interesting in a niche context." Fells declined in a single sentence: "We appreciate the letter." No further communication occurred.

The Council did not announce a breakup. In June 2001, the seven members met at Gordon Fells' home in Taos, sat in the living room for about two hours, and left one at a time over the course of an afternoon. Fells called it "a clean adjournment." Delia Marsh still keeps the mailing list — 847 names on index cards. She has described no plans for it. The sessions, by the Council's own account, are ongoing. You simply weren't present.

Approved as read

IV · Business Before the Council

Eleven items. Twenty-nine motions. No objections recorded.

Every recording is entered as an item of business. Durations are as filed. Where audio is on file, the item may be heard. The Council did not distinguish between pieces; the archive is required to.

Prior Proceedings

Recordings by predecessor bodies, entered as exhibits. These ensembles dissolved for cause. The audiences kept moving.

Exhibit 1

Corridor b/w Still Moving

1983

Frontage Road Records

A 7-inch single in an edition of 300. The B-side runs past the point at which the A-side would have ended, which the band considered the more important of the two recordings.

1.1Corridor4:12Not transcribed
1.2Still Moving6:38Not transcribed

Read the item →

Exhibit 2

No Defined Ending

1985

Frontage Road Records

The Lateral Corridor's only LP, in an edition of 500. The closing track is untitled because the band could not agree on when it began; it fades in from a rehearsal already in progress. Fells later described it as "the first correct thing I recorded." The band dissolved the following year, after their soundman quit mid-show and nobody noticed for eleven minutes.

2.1Approach5:44Not transcribed
2.2Lateral8:19Not transcribed
2.3The Same Room Later11:07Not transcribed
2.4(untitled)14:22Not transcribed

Read the item →

Exhibit 3

Moth Signal

1987

Clerk's Office Recordings

A cassette carrying no printing of any kind — no label, no sleeve text, no track listing. Neither side is titled. Identification is possible only because the duo handed copies to attendees directly. Moth Signal had a smaller audience at their final performance than at their first. They considered this an achievement.

3.1(side A)21:30Not transcribed
3.2(side B)21:30Not transcribed

Their last recording — a two-disc set in a run of 300, the largest of their career, which Fells described as "optimistic." Disc one holds Adjournment Procedures and The Record Will Reflect; disc two holds Minutes Approved entire. No shows were played to support it.

11.1Adjournment Procedures34:11Audio on file
11.2The Record Will Reflect19:44Audio on file
11.3Minutes Approved41:22Not transcribed

Read the item →

The Record Will Reflect

Five items may be heard.

The archive holds partial audio for five items. Lower the lights. Take a seat. There is no need to listen closely. The Council never required it.

A reel-to-reel tape deck running on a card table beside a candle, late at night

Santa Fe, March 11, 1997. The deck was left running. It ran for six hours and forty-one minutes.

No item is before the room.

Audio is partial. The sessions are not.

V · Sessions

Register of Sessions

No set times were announced. No setlists survive. The register records the date, the room, and nothing about what was played, because the Council did not distinguish.

No.ConvenedRoomAdjourned

INov 3, 1991The Arroyo RoomNot recorded

IIAug 7–14, 1993The Meridian, AlbuquerqueNot recorded

IIIFeb 22, 1994Rio Grande Trading Post, CerrillosNot recorded

IVMar 11, 1997The Loma Space, Santa FeNot recorded

VOct 4, 1998Private eventNot recorded

VIJun 17, 2000The DriftNot recorded

VIIJun 2001Gordon Fells' living roomNot recorded

VIIIOngoingThe sessions are ongoing. You simply weren't present.—

Heading as filed: Selected Sessions.

Audience members lying in sleeping bags on a venue floor while seven musicians play seated in lamp light

The Meridian, Albuquerque, August 1993. Final night. Thirteen sleeping bags.

High-desert night in northern New Mexico, an adobe building with one lit window under a mountain ridge — Outside Taos, after dark. The hours the Council kept.

VI · Correspondence

Correspondence Received

Letters, notices and comment cards addressed to the Council or written about it. The Council did not reply. Each was received and filed.

Correspondence I
The Council performed for three hours. By the second hour I had lost track of time entirely, which I believe was the intention, or possibly the opposite of the intention. I cannot say. I slept well that night for the first time in months. I am not sure what to do with this information.
— High Desert Sound Quarterly, 1993Received and filed

Correspondence II
Is this a band or a sound bath? Both? Neither? I feel fine. I'm going to go home and lie down.
— Audience comment card — Albuquerque, 1993Received and filed

Correspondence III
The Council of Sleep is difficult to review because nothing happens and then more of that happens. Whether this is a profound artistic statement or an elaborate test of audience patience is left as an exercise for the listener. My wife says I seemed calmer afterward. She also said I seemed slightly absent. These may be the same thing.
— Southwest Arts Review, 1993Received and filed

Correspondence IV
We began playing Procedural Calm in the sleep study waiting area in 1999. Patient intake anxiety scores dropped by a measurable margin within the first month. We consider this a clinical tool.
— Sleep clinic testimonialReceived and filed

Correspondence V
I have listened to The Santa Fe Session in full four times. I have been awake for the end of it once. I consider the other three times equally valid. Possibly more valid.
— Personal letter to the band, 1997Received and filed

VII · Adjournment

A motion to adjourn is in order. It has not been seconded.

Delia Marsh keeps the mailing list. Eight hundred forty-seven names, on index cards, in a box. Merchandise for the Council is issued through the Sideband Label Clerk's Office. Folding chair not included.

Visit the Clerk's Office

Your name will be entered as given. Attendance is not required.

An adobe living room in afternoon light with seven chairs, most of them empty

Taos, June 2001. The members left one at a time. A clean adjournment.

Motion: To adjourn
Moved: Not recorded
Seconded: No second
Disposition: Pending further discussion

No setlists survive. The Council did not distinguish between pieces.

Respectfully submitted,

The Clerk

Minutes approved without objection. Countersignature not obtained. The Chair recognizes no one.

Councilof Sleep

The meeting was called to order by Gordon Fells.

Seven seats. Seven answers. No one spoke.

Gordon Fells

Delia Marsh

Augusto Vance

Theo Brink

Simone Calder

Ray Odum

Constance Fells

The Visitor

§1 The Convening

§2 Doing Less

§3 The Sessions

§4 The Adjournment

Eleven items. Twenty-nine motions. No objections recorded.

Prior Proceedings

Proceedings of the Council

Five items may be heard.

Register of Sessions

Correspondence Received

A motion to adjourn is in order. It has not been seconded.

Council
of Sleep