Month: July 2009

• Reformatting old hard drives from FAT 32 to NTFS, which every time I look at it seems to read "NSFW." #
• Love Brian Eno/Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies, @Oblique_Chirps on Twitter, but "What would make this really successful?" seems unhelpful #
• Morning sounds, far to near: traffic (whoosh), typing (percussive), fridge (hum), hard drive (whir), ice cubes (crackling). #
• Make that: Steely Dan the Automatori Amos Deftones on Tail L Cool Jay ZZ Top #improbablebandcollaborations #
• Pan Sonic Youth Brigade #improbablebandcollaborations #
• Tori Amos Def #improbablebandcollaborations #
• Ramen two nights in a row — not so shabby. Katana-ya's is, I think, the very best in San Francisco. #
• Re-reading novel Down and Out by @doctorow in advance of Monday's artsjournal.com/gap discussion of Whuffie book by @missrogue #
• if you're really lucky, while you walk down the street with @rjdj running on your iPod Touch, you'll come upon a trumpet-playing busker. #
• There should be a movie whose score is simply a creative employment of @rjdj processing other sounds (dialog, foley) in the film. #
• Of the 16 music-related apps on my iPod Touch, the one I use most is @rjdj, a set of realtime processes that turn the world into sound art. #
• If you Twitter it's #followfriday: field-recordist Aaron @quiet Ximm & experimental collective @thecentrifuge & cartoonist @dylanhorrocks #
• Just experimented with @hootsuite — allows scheduled Twitter posts. Neat, but I think I'll maintain the illusion this is all "realtime." #
• Streaming-only new-classical music: Daniel Bernard Roumain (violin), DJ Scientific (laptop/CDs), Del Sol String Quartet: http://is.gd/1JwO6 #
• Former head of one of my favorite classical labels (CRI) wrote about state of record labels, & asked me about netlabels: http://is.gd/1JtDF #
• RIP, Yellow Submarine illustrator Heinz Edelmann (b. 1934). I didn't know he'd taught one of my heroes, Christoph Niemann http://is.gd/1IWsq #
• Really wishing there were Mac freeware like YamiPod that worked smoothly with the iPod Touch. Perhaps there is and I'm just not aware of it. #
• Check out http://ghostly.com/discovery for free iPhone/Touch app from the label Ghostly. Full catalog streams, sorted by mood, tempo, etc. #
• Afternoon sounds: old-style phone ring initiates moment, then voices below, typing ahead and behind, and the attenuated whir of the printer. #
• Just noticed the Venetian Snares banner on the cubicle wall of the character McGee on the TV show NCIS. #
• Sudden urge to get my TRS-80 out of my parents' attic. Not sure why. Wonder if it would still turn on. #
• Just purchased my first Kindle book ($9.99 seemed high, but convenient) for my iPod Touch, and loaded free epubs into the Touch app Stanza. #
• Local college radio just played lengthy set of Buddy Holly. On our rattly "earthquake-kit" radio, it seemed broadcast from the past. #
• Watching blockbusters on a small television. #
• Got a little microphone for my iPod Touch, meaning I can now fiddle with Curtis (the granular-synth tool) and RjDj, among other audio-games. #
• The Joy of Cron: Watching the #lastfm weekly faves pop up simultaneously for numerous people I follow via Twitter. #

From a July 15 interview with Bill Laswell:

[Q:] Do you look to the titans of 70s fusion when you’re trying to improvise in a rhythmical electronic format like this?

BL: No, I didn’t really relate to that kind of music. I mean fusion had a great beginning with Tony Williams’ ”˜Lifetime’ when he John McLaughlin and Larry Young and later with Jack Bruce. That is a really good example of a band who play with structure but who also improvise within that structure. That was important and some of the electric Miles Davis things, which were again based round repetitive rhythm. There was a lot of room for people to incorporate sounds and rhythms and structures on top and I think that was important. But then I think fusion got to analytical; too structured; to virtuoso over art or over feeling and I didn’t follow for much after that. The only fusion I became interested in then was through following African music, Indian music and music from parts of central Asia, Japan etc. Looking back I thought Cream was a good improvising band even though it was only in a couple of time signatures and mainly based on the blues I thought that was more inspiring than what fusion became.

[Q:] Speaking as someone that we regard as quite a radical figure working with the weight and depth of bass culture, what do you think of dubstep?

BL: Well dubstep to me is a style that we’ve been hinting at the whole time. I don’t see it as being anything totally new but I like it and relate to it because I think from time to time we’ve been doing stuff like that already and now there’s a name for it. It’s not so different to things that have gone before. I think there’s a lot you can incorporate into it and I like it.

Full interview, conducted by John Doran, at thequietus.com.