archives

[ July 13, 2008 / bookmark ]

field notes / Image of the Week: Server Farm

The first server of hyperreal.org, the rave and electronic-music resource that is approaching its 15th anniversary. The X-Files-like aura of the photo seems appropriate to the home of, among other things, such essential email lists as IDM and microsound …

[ July 12, 2008 / bookmark ]

field notes / Quote of the Week: Byrne’s Robot

David Byrne is exhibiting his singing robot Julio at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain, as part of the show “Machines and Souls: Digital Art” (or “Máquinas y Almas”). Pondering the show’s title, he says:…

[ July 11, 2008 / bookmark ]

downstream / Scanner Rendition of Bryars’s Sinking of the Titanic (MP3)

It’s long been a central conceit of the music and art of Scanner (aka Robin Rimbaud) that when a human utterance is impacted by the envelope of a thick, electronically produced soundscape, the result isn’t a suffocation of the human …

[ July 10, 2008 / bookmark ]

downstream / Freebie Beat MP3s from Crate Kings Forums

The forums at cratekings.com continue to be a great place to dig for excellent electronic music in the form of beat-heavy, sample-based solo work. Recent faves include Grimeshine’s “Hangover,” with its old-soul strings, punchy funk touches, vocals reduced to …

[ July 9, 2008 / bookmark ]

downstream / 1996 Monolake MP3 Revision

Fans of techno, and even those simply intrigued by its android beats and cool emotional palette, needn’t fear repeating history due to any absence of learning. Monolake (aka Robert Henke), one of the …

[ July 8, 2008 / bookmark ]

downstream / Thea Farhadian’s Digitized Viola MP3

Composer Thea Farhadian teamed up with viola player Katrina Wreede for Farhadian’s 2007 piece Improvisation No. 7, a song-length excerpt of which is available for download (MP3) from her website, theafarhadian.com. (That is to say, it’s an excerpt …

[ July 7, 2008 / bookmark ]

downstream / Remixed 78-RPM MP3s from Alan Morse Davies

We know what Alan Morse Davies did to construct The Last Summer. The brief liner note on the project’s home page (at archive.org) states it plainly enough: “An album of manipulated recordings …

[ July 6, 2008 / bookmark ]

field notes / Image of the Week: Child’s Play

Initial images of the AMK, a modular sound toy intended for children:

More info at the site of the manufacturer, pknts.com. (Found via synthtopia.com.)

[ July 5, 2008 / bookmark ]

field notes / Quote of the Week: R2-D2’s Descendents

Sound designer Ben Burtt on his work on the film Wall-E:
Eve is a very high-tech robot and so, unlike the motors and squeaks and metallic sounds you’ve got with Wall-E, Eve is held together with some sort of force …

[ July 4, 2008 / bookmark ]

downstream / Early Tamara Albaitis MP3

How does one pronounce the given name of sound artist Tamara Albaitis? Well, the answer is buried in the audio of one of her early works, in which she recorded herself saying her name three different ways and then mixed …