If you have time this evening for one track, dig into the free EP Three feet of by Brometer and focus on its penultimate entry, titled “Rotation.” The track opens with a mere slip of white noise, looped so as to let the point between repeats serve as a vaguely rhythmic element, with a slowly encroaching, then wistfully enveloping, miasma of muted sounds, maybe scraps of horns and backward-masked found recordings (MP3). In a brief accompanying liner note, Brometer (aka Nottingham, England-based Mark Sargison) says, “All of the music is recorded using the built in microphone on my Macbook, a 3 pounds organ and little else.” That explains the exquisite fragility that’s heard here, and that’s also infused in the album’s more fleshed out cuts, like the brief guitar-noise figment of “Stolen” (MP3), with which the album closes, and the digitally manipulated folk detritus that constitutes “A Trap” (MP3), all surface textures and circling guitar lines. Get the full thing at semlabel.com/iod. More on Brometer at myspace.com/brometer, where he’s currently streaming a non-EP song, a slowly building cacophony of what may be excited cymbals or stroked glass.
Month: May 2008
Peer-Reviewed Hip-Hop MP3s
Internet forums dedicated to hip-hop production and other forms of electronically mediated music are packed with posts from bedroom beatmakers and home-studio soundsmiths sharing their work, most of them just looking for some feedback.
At the better forums, the feedback isn’t merely a pat on the back from a fellow traveler. Over at cratekings.com, for example, if you post a weak beat, you may get a verbal beatdown in return.
For every encouraging post — “dont worry about what anyone thinks just make the music you like to make and make it as dope as possible,” a cratekings member named dyllemma recently replied to a novitiate with a Spike Lee photo for an avatar — there’s a taskmaster lurking in the shadows. Someone going by Organix told one poster, “I like how you rock the samples but the drums need a bit of work.” And CatasBeats told another poster, “i dont know man this sounds like noise to me. like i cant nod my head to it its all over the place. no steady pattern of anything.”
Aspiring beat scholars take note, this is peer-reviewed material. Most of the participants in the dialog post their own work, backing up their words with their own efforts. At cratekings.com, there are several places where users post their beats for the public. One is the Beat Battles forum, where a single sample is shared by competitors who, Iron Chef-style, seek to best utilize it in a rhythmic backing track. There’s also a freeform forum, where a typical heading will read “New Beat. Thoughts Wanted.” That’s how Boulder, Colorado-based Organix introduced a track titled “Rising Sun.” (The file is available not as a direct download but, like most of the cratekings.com material, via the zshare.net service, which holds data for a limited time.) The Organix cut is an exercise in beats and atmosphere, a mix of hand claps and hard synth tones serving as undergirding for a gentle, headphone-to-headphone sway of chimes.
More info at myspace.com/organixlives, where “Rising Sun,” along with a handful of other originals, is available for streaming. The harder-edged “Organix Visionz,” with its melted-vinyl breaks, is especially recommended.
Dissolute Ukrainian Electronic MP3s
If the idea of electronic music from the Ukraine brings to mind crackling radio static, melodies seemingly sampled from rusty old circus carousels, and vintage synthesizers that have seen better days, then the album Disaster in Room 208 won’t do much to disabuse you of your prejudices.
But rest assured that all of those elements are very much in the album’s favor. Recorded by OK_01 (aka Oleg Kovalchuk) and released on the Surreal Madrid netlabel, Disaster in Room 208 collects six tracks that are all the more enticing due to their threadbare nature. “Happy End” mixes scratchy noise, distant syrupy strings, and a sweet guitar line, never quite letting any of the layers match with the others (MP3). “Driving – Screws” opens with a brief retro-rock moment (think Billy Childish at his most dissolute) before the sound gets warped, as if the FM station was shifted slightly and the music suddenly exposed some mischievous alternate agenda — insert Cold War surveillance imagery here (MP3). Likewise “Rocky,” which plays with a squelchy sine wave like it’s a theremin, above a chipper chip-tune rhythm and a recording of water that lends the imminent threat of a short circuit (MP3).
And that’s just half the set. Get the full thing, and more more details, at surrealmadrid.net.
New Highpoint Lowlife MP3s from Mandelbrot, Marcia Blaine
The new album on the Highpoint Lowlife label, Magnetism, That Electricity, is less a various-artists collection than it is a set of four individual EPs — one on each side of a double vinyl set (also available via DRM-free digital retail and as a CDR). Two free full-song downloads on the label’s website, highpointlowlife.com, provide enticing entry points. Mandelbrot Set, as represented by “Astronomy and Allied Sciences 1b,” moves from a monastic drone to a thick slurry, from a pulsing swath of minimalism to a layered embrace, packed with variously paced strings, like some Gypsy ritual (MP3). “The Ratio,” by the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, is plucky and rhythmic to the swampy vibe of Mandelbrot — a blippy confection of phaser sound effects, stereoscopic synth tones, and virtual-waterdrop percussion (MP3). Also featured on the album are tracks from Fisk Industries and Village Orchestra.
Image of the Week: Byrne’s Squawking Floor
Art student turned pop musician turned sound artist David Byrne takes the idea of flooring the pedal literally with an upcoming installation:
Byrne describes the piece at journal.davidbyrne.com:
I’m currently working on a piece for a benefit supporting the local arts organization, The Kitchen. The event, scheduled for May 21st at the Puck Building, will honor artist and DJ Christian Marclay. I like much of Marclay’s work, so my piece is sort of a tribute to him — or at least it’s fairly inspired by his work. My piece will be comprised of a kind of carpet of one hundred guitar pedals, which benefit attendees must walk on in order to enter the main dining and performance space. A guitar will be plugged into and run through all the pedals, and then into an amp. We’ve tested a portion of it to see if there are any unexpected problems and I was surprised to discover how well it works. Of course, the sounds are fairly random, and stepping on one or two of the distortion or fuzz pedals raises the screaming noise level pretty high, but that will be adjusted. Happily, some pedals will loop whatever is going on at the time of their activation, and so there will be constant sound changing all the time.
One thing Byrne is still sorting out: dealing with guests who wear heels.