Perhaps all too often, the sounds of outer space serve as a weak metaphor for electronic music. It’s why “space music” is virtually a genre name for all manner of headphones-only listening, despite the fact that, as we all learned in grade school, space is a vacuum. Well, here’s some real sound from the heavens: the European Space Agency has posted recordings from the audio sensors on the HASI probe (Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument) as it descended to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, this past Friday, January 14. There are currently two HASI MP3s on the esa.int website: (1) a sequence of radar echoes as the Huygens approached the moon’s surface (download MP3), (2) a “laboratory reconstruction” of what the Huygens’ microphones witnessed (download MP3), sewn together from multiple recordings, not unlike the mosaic panorama images of Titan’s surface that were reprinted in newspapers across our planet this past weekend. The former sounds like a whirlybird that’s about to spin out of control, and the latter has a harsh, mechanical feel. Together, they’re one giant step for humankind, and one contextually rich sample source for remixers. More info on the esa.int webpage, “Sounds of Titan.” (Link via boingboing.net, here.)
Month: January 2005
Chemical Brothers Remix Contest
Slightly off topic, given that it’s not in MP3 format, but let’s go three for three and close the week with another open-source remix challenge (yesterday’s entry on Wired magazine’s contest here, and the day prior’s entry on Recon’s contest here). This one’s from the Chemical Brothers, whose “Galvanize” single is now available for cut’n’paste play as a promotion for their new album, Push the Button (have seven years passed since Money Mark’s album of that name?). Download the track’s vocal, by rapper Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest, and various preset Chemical Brothers loops. Fiddle about. Upload your finished version. Winner takes the latest edition of ACID Pro’s audio-production software and other treats. The files are in WAV format, which doesn’t require proprietary software to audition, and they range in length from one second to nearly 20, and in content from disco-ready beats, to humorously simple snare dashes, to tasty vinyl scratches, to extended (well, 18-second) snatches of atmosphere. It’s all at the acidplanet.com website, more specifically here. Contest ends February 21. In the meanwhile, log on and check out the entrants.
Open-Source Remix Project
OPEN-SOURCE REMIX PROJECT: While on the subject of open-source remix projects, following up from yesterday’s Downstream entry (here) by Chris Coode (aka Recon, aka Motion), it would be negligent to fail to mention ccmixter.org. That’s a self-described “community music sharing site featuring songs licensed under Creative Commons,” which is currently housing remixes based on Wired magazine’s Rip. Mix. Sample. Mash. Share. CD, included in the November 2004 issue. The R.M.S.M. set featured tunes by, among others, Matmos, Thievery Corporation, Dan the Automator and Danger Mouse, all of which are downloadable from the ccmixter site in full (here) and as sets of pre-cut loops (here). Now, a free Matmos song is, on its own, reason enough for a Downstream entry, but of course ccmixter.org is more than just a handful of cuts; it’s a permutation engine. So, sure, you can pick up the Matmos song (“Action at a Distance,” MP3), a brief spell of digitally filtered guitar (filtered through Ennio Morricone’s laptop, that is), or you check out any number of tracks that use the Matmos as a sample source, like teru‘s “Matmos Slow Loop” (MP3), which references the guitar’s echo but adds a stable drum beat and builds something unexpected: a pop song. The project is easy to get lost in, in part because its interface requires some getting used to, and in part because participants are uploading new tracks daily. As particularly interesting ones arrive, you’ll find ’em here, in the Disquiet Downstream.
Construction Set MP3s
The Highpoint Lowlife record company and musician Chris Coode, a master of micro-minimal techno, have transformed Coode’s excellent 2004 White Label, released under his Recon moniker, into something of a franchise. First came the record itself, a dozen tracks of drawn out, rusty beats. As much as those real-world sounds were a nice surprise, following the equally superb microsonic work he’d done under the name Motion, what truly distanced Recon’s work from Motion’s were White Label‘s jittery sampled voices of muffled divas. White Label, though, was just the beginning, for it begat White Label Deconstruction, a free EP download from Highpoint, derived from Coode/Recon’s live set. Deconstruction came in not one but two versions, as eight individual tracks and as one 18-minute continuous mix (both here).
Well, not satisfied with one mix, Coode has determined to generate countless subsequent mixes. How? Like a DNA technician in a digital lab, he has reduced White Label to 23 of its constituent parts. He’s culled snippets of atmosphere, beats and, yes, those sensually stuttered vocals, each chunk ranging in length from 10 seconds to 41, and he’s put them all up online as an open-source mixing challenge. A handful of the elements are listenable unto themselves, though the pacing and structure of the individual snippets (and that’s what they are, just snippets, waiting to be grafted into something pleasingly whole) generally leads to strangely jerking sound montages. The first entry pivots back and forth between a bliss of raging static and a bracing jolt of silence. Others offer tantalizing bits of percussion, individual shocks of sound that take on meaning only once they’ve been looped. And as for those vocals, several are included here, in a voice enticing enough that you wouldn’t mind listening to it read a physics textbook (which is pretty much what’s on offer, since one track consists of a woman saying “The transmutation of matter” through a slice’n’dice filter).
And what’s down the road for Recon’s White Label? Well, a fourth generation is already in the works: the best remixes based on these newly posted samples will be collected online by Highpoint. Call it White Label Reconstructed. The samples are available as a Zip file (here), and be sure to visit the Highpoint Lowlife label at highpointlowlife.com.
PanAmerican MP3
It feels a little late for holiday music, but there’s really nothing season-specific about “Christmas 1983,” a free MP3 (download) from PanAmerican, culled reportedly from the same recording sessions as PanAm’s Quiet City album (2004, on Kranky Records, whose website, kranky.net, hosts the file). Note for the anti-Santa camp: the Kranky website refers to it as “Christmas 1983,” but the MP3 appears to carry the more secular title, “December 1983.” It opens with a heartbeat pulse and some seemingly computer-generated ambience, and soon enough a six-string enters, playing at a determinedly rudimentary pace. Occasional tones match and hold the pitch of a given guitar note, like it’s too good not to linger over — the sonic equivalent of a ghost image. Only a little quieter than that confectionary haze is some natural background noise (a little movement, perhaps a muffled voice, some shuffling), which lends the whole production a down-home appeal that contrasts nicely with (or, more to the point, subsumes) the more markedly digital elements. Midway through, Mark Nelson (who essentially is PanAm) starts talk-singing (“the streets are in ruins… “), and the combination of his detached vocals and the automation of the track sounds like nothing so much as a long lost Underworld song, like “Born Slippy” in super-slomo. The MP3 is part of Kranky’s ongoing semi-monthly giveaways. More info at kranky.net, under “news and tour updates.”