The group EA has more computer equipment than do many Silicon Valley startups. Despite which, they rummage amid some of the most lo-fi sounds around: radio static, synthesized vocals, field recordings, and nearly sub-aural bass rumbles.
EA consists of André Gonçalves (laptop), Andy Graydon (laptop), Ben Owen (laptop, objects), Gill Arno (laptop, objects, FM radio), and […]
A flyer arrived in the mail from a San Francisco performing arts organization, listing upcoming shows featuring work by Darius Milhaud, Osvaldo Golijov, Laurie Anderson, Michael Nyman and David Lang, among others. And it wasn’t a new season of the San Francisco Symphony. As it turns out, those are just some of the composers […]
Videos Worth Streaming: Robot orchestra made of ping pong balls and glasses (engadget.com). … And a band whose instruments are a Nintendo DS (with Electroplankton) and two handheld Apple products (dhadm.com). … Music made only from sounds from the Windows OS (youtube.com — easily six or seven people sent this link to me separately, and […]
Quick News, Links, Bits, Reads: A belated R.I.P. for Teo Macero, studio maven and Miles Davis fellow maverick (latimes.com, nytimes.com, jazztimes.com, pitchforkmedia.com). … The Mosquito, a high-pitched anti-truancy weapon mentioned here previously (disquiet.com, disquiet.com), is under investigation by England’s commissioner for children (nytimes.com). … Creating music from Pi at (avoision.com, via engadget.com and boingboing.net). … […]
A live half-hour Cepia set recorded at the Wordless Music Series in Manhattan back on November 28, 2007, is true to its name — not the “wordless” part, because in fact voices are heard low down in the mix, but the Cepia part. The track is deeply imbued with a sense of nostalgia, from the […]
At the gallery and performance space Galapagos in Brooklyn last summer, I was fortunate to catch a show of electronically mediated music, art, installations, and short films. Among the participants was a musician and tinkerer named Jamie Allen whose set-up was a revelation in its simplicity.
His instrument was a wooden wine crate filled with custom-made […]
The score to Jim Nollman’s “Cigarette Piece” is a classic example of instruction-music, a work in which the score is a set of rules, not of musical notes on ruled paper. The piece was performed live on KPFA radio in 1973, and a recording of that show was uploaded to the Other Minds catalog at […]
The latest release on the netlabel called term, a subsidiary of Taylor Deupree’s 12k label, is a live performance recorded back in November of last year, featuring three eminent electronicists: Sawako (computer and voice), Richard Chartier (computer), and Shinjiro Yamaguchi (mixing board, feedback loops, sampling). The concert was part of the festival Atlantic Waves, held […]
This is what I’ve been most focused on, listening-wise, this past week:
(1) If it’s possible to imagine a merging of Charles Mingus’s muddy, deeply felt jazz and Morton Feldman’s proto-ambient classical arrangements, this may be it: The track “Itsuki no Komoriuta” off the Fujin Raijin album by the Sakoto Fujii Min-Yoh Ensemble (Les Disques Victo, […]
Re-uploaded another batch of past “essays/reports” I wrote, plus one interview I did, dating back to 1994. Here they are, in roughly chronological order:
“Good Neighbors” (1994): How rock music and classical music face similar creative obstacles — and how so-called “crossover” projects aim for a mirage of a middle ground. What, for example, does […]