archives

[ August 21, 2005 / bookmark ]

field notes / Tangents (synaesthesia, ragas, Zvonar)

Quick Links and News: (1) The Hirshhorn Museum has posted a website to complement its current Visual Music exhibit (link), with soundclips from Olivier Messiaen and Alexander Scriabin, and …

[ August 19, 2005 / bookmark ]

downstream / Germanic Soundscape MP3 Album

In Traum (”traum” meaning “dream”), by the German act Seetyca, could very well take as its title the name of the netlabel that released it: Dark Winter. It’s nine tracks of near-lifeless, emotionally and physically remote soundscapes. Or is it? …

[ August 18, 2005 / bookmark ]

downstream / Kettel Keys’n'Beats MP3

When is a light bit of studio-concocted radio funk-jazz more than that? Well, when it opens with a lo-fi heavenly choir, only to cut off the beatific vocalists unceremoniously. And when it shuffles by with a digital beat that, despite …

[ August 17, 2005 / bookmark ]

downstream / Staunch Austrian MP3s

When Rifa, on Elevator Monkey (Prison Soup, a French netlabel), isn’t channeling Tom Waits (”Penetrate”), or ramming a disco chestnut through a carton of cigarettes disguised as a granular synthesizer (”Don’t Rush”), it makes for some bracing electronic music. “Timewarp” …

[ August 16, 2005 / bookmark ]

downstream / Sounds of Thunder MP3

What is it about high technology that makes everyone want to go back to nature? The Freesound Project (freesound.iua.upf.edu) is a massive public open-source file-trading database of sounds, from screams to machine noise to instrument samples, from trains to …

[ August 15, 2005 / bookmark ]

downstream / Electro-Acoustic MP3s

For all the evening’s sonic ingenuity, the harmonica took top honors. Two Fridays back, on August 5, Seamus Cater played as half a laptop duo with Roddy Schrock. It was part of an extensive bill held by the Drum Machine …

[ August 14, 2005 / bookmark ]

field notes / Tangents (freesound, Luaka, Accelerando)

Quick Links: (1) The Freesound Project is “a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds,” at freesound.iua.upf.edu (via makezine.com). Among the highlights is a “remix tree,” in which users add samples of previous entries, forming an outline-style branching …

[ August 12, 2005 / bookmark ]

downstream /

There’s a handy RSS feed (link) that alerts you to what free music downloads have been added to Amazon.com. Amid unfamiliar names in the past week or so is one that’s a fairly regular subject of Disquiet Downstreams: …

[ August 11, 2005 / bookmark ]

downstream / Sound Design MP3

Judging by a recently uploaded example, Chris Herbert’s forthcoming album on Kranky is to be looked forward to. At six and a half minutes, with little to no contextual setting by Kranky, the song, titled “Chlorophyl” (MP3), opens a …

[ August 10, 2005 / bookmark ]

downstream / Atari-Powered Post-Dub MP3

The guys in the Seattle-based group Foscil name a single piece of equipment in their bio at Fourth City Records: the Atari ST, on which they reportedly did all the composition for their self-titled album, which came out yesterday. A …