Disquiet

Good Reading: The “projects” section over at the home page of musician Keith Fullerton Whitman (aka Hrvatski), keithfullertonwhitman.com, is highly recommended. Currently up are detailed explanations of three of his performance/recording systems. Each entry features screen shots and lengthy audio samples. There’s a 2,500-word section on various patches he has devised for the Max/MSP software package, such as “Bleep Factory, a six-voice synth that produces a very wide range of traditional ‘analog’ synthesizer sounds,” and “Taaltronixxx,” which he created, he explains, “to add a ‘rhythmic’ element to one of my guitar-drone patches.” Each of these entries dives deep into his tech and technique. Another 2,500-word piece focuses on what drove his excellent album Playthroughs (Kranky, 2002), which was built from guitar source material. There’s also a section on his work with moving pictures, including an ongoing project involving “47 very short films (less than 1 minute in length each) shot on (literally) and about/of turntables, with musical accompaniment.” … Glitch stars Autechre were interviewed by Matmos member Drew Daniel for pitchforkmedia.com about remixing Skinny Puppy, where Charles Manson went wrong, and the “how?” question. Autechre’s new album, Untitled, will be released in the U.K. on April 18 and in the U.S. on April 19. … Another IDM: For most readers who happen upon this website, the three letters IDM mean one thing: the perhaps unfortunately named genre “intelligent dance music.” But there are other IDMs, most of them institutes, like the Institute of Direct Marketing, the Institute of Design Montreal, and a transatlantic biotech firm with an interest in immunotherapy. Fans of the IDM genre should, if they already don’t, take interest in yet another IDM, the Internet Download Manager (internetdownloadmanager.com), a Windows tool that speeds downloads. What it also happens to do is extract MP3 files from the Flash scripts that provide streams and jukeboxes to numerous websites. (Side note: That biotech firm IDM’s logo, which is “made by mapping prime numbers along a square spiral, and marking the locations of the prime numbers with a different color from the non-primes,” is downright psychedelic [link].) … Search Returns: Top 10 most popular search returns on this site: bjork, moby, bedroom, mp3, dj, eno, ambient, ryoji, chemical, autechre. Recent search returns on this site: craig david, granddaddy, Nancarrow, bedroom, piano magic, speakspell, white, michael torke, yellow pages, boards, coldcut, 2pac, dj, 20th century, dj food, john duncan, jaga, kid koala, rhona, satie, iron chef, Royksopp, Morton Feldman. … Let’s Vibrate: Perhaps the most ubiquitous form of electronic music is cell-phone ring tones. The vibrate option isn’t really much of an option, since a phone vibrating on a desk is louder than most ring tones. And, come to think of it, isn’t putting your phone on vibrate redundant? That is, isn’t all sound a matter of vibration?

By Marc Weidenbaum