Quick Links and News: (1) The Hirshhorn Museum has posted a website to complement its current Visual Music exhibit (link), with soundclips from Olivier Messiaen and Alexander Scriabin, and images representing abstract painting, color organs, film, light shows and installation art. … (2) Work by Bainbridge Bishop is not included in the Visual Music exhibit, but he was an early theorist on the relation between color and sound. A short pamphlet he published on the subject in 1893, A Souvenir of the Color Organ, with Some Suggestions in Regard to the Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light, is available as a free download in PDF form (link) from rhythmiclight.com. (The band Growing took the title of its recent Kranky Records album, The Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Light, from Bishop’s essay.) … (3) Composer Stella Sung worked with sound designer David Wallace to produce a background-music environment for the M.C. Escher exhibit showing at the Orlando Museum of Art through October 30 (link). … (4) Other Minds Records announced in its email newsletter that it will release in 2007 The Complete Ragas of John Cage, thanks to a $12K grant from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. Working on the project are Italian vocalist Amelia Cuni, percussionist Federico Sanesi and electronic composer Werner Durand. A world premiere is scheduled for the MerzMusik Festival in Berlin. … (5, 6) Via gizmodo.com, drum machines for the PlayStation Portable (link) and an “optical theremin toilet” (link). … (7) Speaking of which, a list of the “leading ladies of music of the air” (createdigitalmusic.com). … (8) Famed music technologist Bob Moog is being treated for a brain tumor. His family is maintaining a journal online (link). … (9) Why does the copy protection on my store-bought Who Is Mike Jones CD keep it from playing on my car stereo? Wasn’t it recorded with the intention of being played in cars? Maybe my 10-year-old Honda isn’t “street” enough for it.
… Good Reads: (1) Sound designers explain what they do, in BackStage magazine (link). “Music or sounds may comment on the last scene and set the tone for the one that’s coming up,” says musician David Van Tieghem, one of several sound designers interviewed for the piece. … (2) Scroll down to the July 26 entry on the news page at Matmos‘s website (brainwashed.com/matmos) for an overview of what they did on their summer vacation, complete with photos.
… Select New Releases: (1) Anticon Records regular Alias recorded the lovingly introspective electronic hodgepodge of Lillian with his younger brother, Ehren, who’s still in his teens (Anticon); the album is named for their grandmother. … (2) Steve Roach‘s two-CD ethno-ambient Dreamtime Return has been remastered (Projekt), plus Roach has two new albums: New Life Dreaming, which he has said was inspired by the re-mastering process, and Possible Planet, a textural album for which he ditched his computers, MIDI and keyboards entirely (both Timeroom Editions). … (3) The Japanese pair of funk-glitchy producer Aoki Takamasa and ingenue vocalist Tujiko Noriko have teamed for 28 (FatCat). The title is their shared current age. … (4) Venetian Snares (aka Aaron Funk) has a new full-length, Meathole, perhaps his hardest post-drum’n’bass set yet (Planet Mu). … (5) Live hip-hop band Breakestra‘s Family Rap 12″ (Ubiquity) includes an instrumental track and a Cut Chemist edit. … (6) The Kallikak Family‘s May 23rd 2007 (Tell-All) includes noise and field recordings. … (7) Mossyrock‘s The Zero to One Sessions mix loungey, often Herb Alpert-ish folk-pop with electronic touches (nice+smooth) … (8) Nybbl (aka Tim Quackenbush) releases The Path from a Point Is in the Shape of a Heart (Noise Factory) … (9) Jackson‘s “Rock On” (Warp) is expertly jerky and sample-laden.
… Disquiet Heavy Rotation: (1) “Kirilian Auras,” off The Psychic Nature of Being (Kranky) by Lichens, aka Robert Lowe (of 90 Day Men, TV on the Radio and the Castanets), builds from low-sung syllables to embrace slow, gritty feedback and archaic acoustic guitar phrases. … (2) That untitled reworking of Seamus Cater‘s chromatic harmonica by Roddy Schrock (MP3) is the top Disquiet Downstream entry from last week (full entry here). .. (3) Bill Frisell credits “loops” right alongside his guitar on the back cover of his new live album, East/West (Nonesuch). While nothing here gets as abstract as on Smash and Scatteration, his ancient (well, 1984) collaboration with Vernon Reid, he really lets the digitally enabled music take over on a sweet cover of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” The album’s due out this coming Tuesday, August 23.
… Quote of the Week: “What is this clicky stuff?” Text displayed as part of a background visual for a performance by the Hub, six composers improvising over a computer network on August 20, the third night of the sixth annual San Francisco Electronic Music Festival. The Hub that evening consisted of John Bischoff, Chris Brown, Scot Gresham-Lancaster, Tim Perkis, Phil Stone and Mark Trayle.
… R.I.P.: Yesterday, while attending the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, I learned that Richard Zvonar had passed away. Zvonar was an accomplished musician and artist based out of Los Angeles. I never met him in person, but I helped edit a profile he wrote about composer Bebe Baron, best known for her work with her husband, Louis, on the soundtrack for the science-fiction classic Forbidden Planet. The piece appeared in the third issue of e/i magazine, which was published last year. Zvonar and I spent numerous phone calls talking about the analog roots of Information Age culture, and with each successive conversation I learned more and more about his extensive career. What he didn’t dwell on was the cancer he’d been fighting for years. When the Baron piece was complete, he said his next proposed article, on composer Carl Stone, would have to be put on hold until he regained his strength. Richard Zvonar passed away on August 3. … Doug Wyatt, of Mother Mallard and Red Letter, reminisces on his website (sonosphere.com). Keith Snyder, who along with Zvonar was a member of the band Cosmic Debris, tributes Zvonar on his web journal (link), which includes a 10-minute MP3 of them improvising. … More info at zvonar.com.