Chat rooms have a bad rap. They’ve gained a touch of the aura that used to hover around the word “hacker.” Though today it means something closer to “entrepreneur,” hacker used to be equivalent to “dangerous anti-social malcontent.” Chat rooms are social by definition, so they can’t be truly anti-social; but they still are saddled […]
My review of the new book Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (MIT Press), edited by Paul D. Miller, is in the latest issue of Nature magazine, dated May 1 — founded in 1869, Nature is now by far the oldest magazine to which I have ever contributed. (The next eldest would be Down […]
Another volume in the classic noise audio-journal Tellus (volume 13, “Power Electronics,” from 1986) has gone up for free download at ubu.com — 17 tracks of aggravated textures and general sonic investigatory work. Highlights include the richly squelchy opening of “Clotage” by Controlled Bleeding, who eventually shift into vaguely Hendrix-oid feedback (MP3), a vibrant torture […]
The New York-based duo of Justin Carter and Andrew Gath, who record together as Royal Trans, have released a second free collection of Buddha Machine mixes. The previous set, In an Expression of Form: The FM3 Experiments (archive.org, disquiet.com) took the nine brief loops contained in the Buddha Machine and recorded them in a variety […]
In the post-hip-hop era, one of the best things — which is to say, perhaps one of the few good things — about the Grammys is the opportunity to watch samples come alive. Tonight’s broadcast of the 50th annual ceremony was no exception. A glowing pyramid on stage in the background during Kanye West’s performance […]
The seven-song EP Senses Overloaded, from the instrumental hip-hop DJ team of Lamont and 2tall, opens with the exotic: a slinky track that uses as its base a romantic bit of koto, the string instrument of Asian antiquity. The cut is titled “Perpetual Patterns” (MP3) and it’s one of the few here to include a […]
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 […]
The Amsterdam-based DNK website’s audio section, dnk-amsterdam.com, has uploaded a live recording by Vesna Pisarovic (voice) and Roberto Garréton (electronics) from May 2007. Pisarovic has a gentle sound, at least to the extent that it’s legible as a voice in this recording. For the most of the piece, Garréton’s electronics send the voice through an […]
Cut to the chase, the clock’s ticking on 2007 as I type this. That previous sentence is intended to provide an alibi: making note of the circumstances under which a “best of” list is produced gives me an out down the road, when I might change my mind. In any case, this year’s “best of” […]
Time changes everything — especially when time is slowed down. And that is the modus operandi on Bob Downes’s album Episodes at 4 am, recently released by the Paradigm label (stalk.net/paradigm). The experiments heard on Episodes date from a period in recording-technology history when sound was measured not in kbps (kilobytes per second) but ips […]