Disquiet

[ June 19, 2008 / bookmark ]

Henry Mancini Hip-Hop Remix MP3s

The aspiring hip-hop producers who populate the forums at cratekings.com work together for mutual musical benefit — and not only by commenting on each other’s work and pushing the collective to tweak each sample, hone each beat, and better craft each instrumental track that they post. They also collaborate, as on the 14-track compilation of remixes of themes by Hollywood screen-music legend Henry Mancini. The set, Crate Kings vs. Henry Mancini, is available as a series of individual tracks (ZIP) or as a single mix, put together by Rafferty, one of the tribute’s contributors (MP3). Participants include Figment, DJ Oaty Love, DJ Tru Blu, Olivertone, Kid Konnect, Illstylus, Pyro. More info at cratekings.com.

[ June 18, 2008 / bookmark ]

Post-Synth MP3s from Budapest’s Veron

There’s something about Eastern-bloc electronic music that often suggests a heavy influence of synth-rock, the soundtracks of Golem, the space explorations of Cluster, the melodic drones of Tangerine Dream. Veron, of Budapest, Hungary, fits that mold, judging by a recent four-track release on the Stasisfield netlabel (stasisfield.com). It’s most noticeable on “Early Morning” (MP3), a synth bed of slowly decaying notes. But the other material here ventures away from the recognizably artificial tonalities, most effectively “Flower” (MP3), which is all gently blipping pin-prick percussion above undulations so soft you could mistake them for organic near-silence. Since that’s the track on which the set, titled Dreamtime, closes, perhaps it suggests the direction in which Veron is headed — away from tone synthesis, and into texture and rhythm. Get the full set at stasisfield.com.

[ June 17, 2008 / bookmark ]

Juárez and Calarco Field-Noise MP3

A new collaboration by Adrián Juárez and Juan José Calarco provides one of those situations wherein the sum of the parts is considerably less than the constituent parts themselves. Except in this case, that statement is not just a compliment; it’s a formal measure of the duo’s accomplishment. The material that Juárez and Calarco plumbed for their 14-minute soundcape, titled “Tierra Abierta, is, self-evidently, field recordings — rain and wind and other real-world noise working together to form an artificial but semi-natural realm (MP3). Only with repeated listens can the attention to balance between those elements can be appreciated, as can the means by which apparent light processing has allowed looped elements to yield rhythmic and compositional impact. More information at the website of the releasing netlabel, restingbell.net. Don’t turn it up too high, as there is one loud moment, but it serves primarily to emphasize the relative quietude of the rest of the piece.

[ June 16, 2008 / bookmark ]

Juju Mega-Remix MP3 (Oh No vs. Plunky Branch)

Indie hip-hop figure Oh No has provided an album-length podcast for the Stones Throw label (stonesthrow.com/jukebox), in which he mixes up various afro-jazz tracks from the group Oneness of Juju, led by prolific saxophonist Plunky Branch. It’s a rough mix, with occasional gaps between tracks, and noticeable delay in some of the beatmatching, but Dr. No knows well that the rhythmic intensity of juju that characterizes Branch’s music — the shuffle beats, the way single melodic elements sit aloft above the mechanistic patterns, the subtle shifts in texture — lends itself well to DJ techniques (MP3). More on Branch at plunkyone.com and on Oh No at both stonesthrow.com/ohno and myspace.com/ohnodisrupt.

For future reference, should the podcast listing disappear from the Stones Throw site, here is the track listing provided: 1. “3B,” 2. “Carving,” 3. “Wawa,” 4. “Carving Again,” 5. “A Call to Arms,” 6. “Time Iz Now,” 7. “Twoness of Juju,” 8. “Ooo Ow,” 9. “Keys,” 10. “Following,” 11. “Funk U Very Much,” 12. “Harmony,” 13. “Something in the Air,” 14. “Morning Alarm,” 15. “Santesana,” 16. “Get Up,” 17. “Wap,” 18. “Juju March,” 19. “Funkier than Wood,” 20. “All Ahhs on Me,” 21. “Giiiiive,” 22. “African Chant,” 23. “Onnon,” 24. “River Rhythm,” 25. “Bogged Down.”

[ June 13, 2008 / bookmark ]

Aaron Ximm Transmuted Travelog MP3

On Turns in the South, his recent two-CD set, Aaron Ximm delivers raw and filtered documentation of his travels. The highlight is a 40-minute track titled “Madurai Mani Fold” (MP3). Described by Ximm as an “epic of introspection,” it is an exercise in minimalist process. The lengthy track is built from but a mere few seconds of a recording he made in India. The piping sounds, which gain momentum, only to occasionally relax, over the course of the piece bring to mind the linear chords of Philip Glass’s instrumental compositions and the pulsing work of Steve Reich. It’s one of four tracks on the album, all of which are available for free download at Ximm’s website, quietamerican.org.

[ June 11, 2008 / bookmark ]

Backwards Reverb Sound Design MP3s from Tim Prebble

Sound designer Tim Prebble keeps a prolific, enthusiastic and informative blog at his substation.co.nz website, often sharing experiences from the set of film productions. It’s the sort of place where he’ll link to a Fatboy Slim video one day, and then theorize on the value of temp tracks the next.

Late last month, he went into detail on what he calls the “backwards reverb” effect, in which an echo of a sound is heard before the sound itself comes into focus. “I think why the technique is very useful when applied in an appropriate context,” he writes, “is because it essentially generates interesting tonal sounds that are directly related to the sound they precede.” He also provides step-by-step visualization of how the effect is produced:

It’s a sound often utilized in horror films, to signify a supernatural state, and in scenes in which individuals regain consciousness as they come out of a black out. It’s also something I associate with some of the eerier Led Zeppelin tracks, in which Robert Plant’s voice seems to arrive ahead of schedule.

Prebble uploaded two audio examples to his blog, one brief vocal (MP3) and one from the sound design for the film Perfect Strangers, on which he worked (MP3). Perfect Strangers opens with the image of an onion being cut by a knife. He describes how he accomplished the final audio as follows:

I realised that when its seen in a theatre that onion would be HUGE so I started experimenting with accentuating the sound of the knife cutting into the onion and the pieces of onion almost dancing as they came off the knife. I recorded a lot of very close up onion cutting sounds, at various speeds & got the sequence working kind of as I imagined… After I played it to the director, she liked it so much she decided to extend it prior to the film starting, starting off very slow & almost abstract & then becoming more real until it reveals onscreen… So I pitched down some of my onion cutting sounds and recorded more, slower ones but I needed a means of pushing them away from reality a bit - ahar! Time to try a backwards reverb on it. So I reversed a number of the sounds - the cutting sound and especially the wooden clunk as the knife hit the cutting board - applied various length reverbs, then reversed those reverbs & resynced them with the other ‘real’ effects… magic! It took some manipulating to make the elements all feel a part of the same moment, but it worked a treat and i remember playing the sequence to the composers on the film and they couldnt work out how I had done it…. when we mixed it we also had some fun by placing the start of the onion cut in the surrounds, so the slice basically passed through the audience, until it impacted at the front…. have a listen, its not quite as coherent without the images but you can get a feel for merging backwards reverbs with real effects…. You’ll notice we start introducing elements of the ambience during the transition from surreal to real, by the third chop you can hear the fridge and then you start to hear the kitchen etc…. bear in mind this is a stereo crash down of the 5.1 FX stem… crunched to mp3….

Read the full post at substation.co.nz. More on Prebble’s film work at his imdb.com listing.

[ June 10, 2008 / bookmark ]

Rutger Zuydervelt & Stephen Vitiello Team-up MP3

A new collaboration between Rutger Zuydervelt and Stephen Vitiello has been released on the 12k label. It’s a collaboration in, with one exception, a purely conceptual sense — but since creative collaboration often has more to do with casting than with curation, more with people than with process, their innovative approach is especially appreciated.

The album, Box Music, takes its title from the duo’s unique mode of working in tandem while toiling separately. Each musician sent to the other a box of generally “non-musical” items (according to the album’s write-up at 12k.com) and then set about making musical constructions from provided materials. Imagine Joseph Cornell at work with a laptop sampler, and you’ll have a sense of what lurks beneath track names such as “Bells, Book, Tin Foil, Buttons” and “Crackle Box, Thumb Piano.”

The fifth and final entry on the album is the only one of the tracks on Box Music that is attributed to both Zuydervelt (who records as Machinefabriek) and Vitiello, the only one that was created by both of them. Titled “Chocolate Sprinkles, Tape, Egg Cutter, Rice, Plastic Bag,” it is a mix of quietly documented activity beneath what sound like ceremonial bells (MP3). The MP3 clocks in at 4′33, which may or may not be a nod to John Cage, who certainly would have appreciated this effort to locate aural beauty in the mundane physical world. More on Zuydervelt at machinefabriek.nu and Vitiello at stephenvitiello.com.

[ June 9, 2008 / bookmark ]

More MP3 Forum Digging at CrateKings.com

In hip-hop, nothing sounds as contemporary these days as old school. It’s remarkable how much excellent beatmaking has resulted, of late, from the combination of a slightly dusty vocal sample, tweaked just so, and an automated beat. It’s a style perhaps most closely associated with A-list producer Kanye West, but everyone from Just Blaze to the late J. Dilla has reveled in it. It’s also a fairly common modus operandi for beats that have popped up recently on the cratekings.com forums, where aspiring beatmakers post their beats and critique each other’s.

Check out Milkman’s “Beat 45″ for an example; it has just a taste of a spoken bit, which is matched by the spare and slowly progressing rhythm that envelops it (file at zshare.net, post at cratekings.com); under a minute, it’s more of a sketch than a fully fleshed out track, but its restraint makes Milkman someone to keep an eye on.

Likewise p.illa, whose name and approach bring to mind the willfully scratchy loops of J. Dilla. P.illa’s appropriately named “Back in the Days” has a snatch of male vocal that serves as a punctuation, enlivened by a smattering of piano chords and gingerly plinked notes (file at zshare.net, post at cratekings.com).

“Dream” and “Didn’t Know” by R.Jay are great vocals’n'beats pairings. The latter occasionally uses a full phase from the female voice, buttery and ripe, as she sings “I didn’t know what to do with myself” and there’s the additional sweetness of a girl-group’s backing support, but what makes “Didn’t Know” spectacular is how R.Jay has cut up little tics in the lead singer’s vocal track and used them as elements unto themselves, doubling, or playing against, the percussion. On “Dream,” it’s more a matter delaying the drama inherent in the singer’s throaty vocalization, repeating syllables, and sometimes clauses, in her phrasing for optimal effect (”Dream” file at zshare.net and “Didn’t Know” file at zshare.net; post at cratekings.com).

A vocal sample figures prominently in Fatdan’s “Surprise” but he takes it further than do many of his bedroom-beat peers. The track sounds vocoded, and the beats jerks forward with the informed hesitance of something slowly, purposefully, coming up to speed. The way that vocal sample and beat work in lockstep, leaving these brief, vacuum-like pauses, is Fatdan’s trademark. And when the chorus on “Surprise” kicks in, it uses an ever more slender slice of that vocal sample, whipping it into a taut frenzy like a paddle ball with an especially short string. Also recommended are “Mee,” which is so slow you can hear the samples slowly tearing apart, and “Captain,” which uses a scraping texture to offset its watery rhythm (post at cratekings.com; “Captain” file at zshare.net, “Mee” file at zshare.net, “Surprise” file at zshare.net). Fatdan has one of the most fully formed and truly unique production styles on the cratekings.com forums, and these three tracks are worth a close listen.

[ June 6, 2008 / bookmark ]

Another Classic Monolake MP3

Right on schedule, another month yields another free track from Monalake, aka Robert Henke. “Index I” was first a 12″ and later appeared on Hong Kong, the debut Monolake album, back when the act was a duo, before Henke’s partner, Gerhard Behles, left in order to start up the audio-software company that became Ableton Live. Every month, Henke posts a free download on his website, monolake.de, and for June it’s a cleaned up edit of “Index I,” which is mostly of interest for how, over time, it has come to sound considerably less minimal. Monolake were among the originators of minimal techno, a music that removed the gloss from house and left just the pulsing infrastructure — their early works were the audio equivalent of The Lonely Crowd, picturing a dance space as a zone of interpersonal desolation. Per the website’s rules, there’s no direct link in this post to the MP3; just head to the URL link above to locate the file.

[ June 4, 2008 / bookmark ]

Manipulated Field Recording MP3s from Ascsoms

Solo albums by pop musicians are gauged by their guest stars. Solo albums by field-recording artists are gauged by their source material. On Realms, newly available for free download from the estimable wanderingear.com netlabel, those source materials include the sounds of boat masts, voice, rain, amplified room ambience, fireworks, a refrigerator, flies, birds, street noise, a cat, a fan heater, and a harmonica. Realms is credited to the London-based  Adam J Wimbush (aka Ascsoms).

After Ascsoms’s processing, those sampled sounds aren’t always recognizable. “Realm D (In Loquaciousness Lay Insanity)” seems like it’s infested with small buzzing lifeforms, but it’s not the one with the fly sounds (MP3). Birds are  vaguely discernible on “Realm C (The Permeated Anomaly)” as they chirp away as if in some infested, squalor aviary, where the place is so on the fritz that the automated announcements have degraded (MP3).

The real standout on the four-track set is the lead piece, “Realm A (Rococo),” which is the one that includes rain and boat masts and, perhaps explaining its achievement in ambiguity, what’s described succinctly as “unidentified field recording.” About halfway through a track marked by richly layered noise and churning rhythms, the majority of the sound suddenly drops out and about all that’s left is this cycling beat, like a rusty old machine clanking away in some back room while thunder is heard overhead (MP3). The moment is  stark, and it focuses the ear on the inner workings of Ascsoms’s approach to manipulating individual sonic objects.

Get the full set at wanderingear.com. More on Wimbush/Ascsoms at myspace.com/ascsoms.