Month: May 2009

Homebrew Beats from DJ Kong (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The forums at cratekings.com remain one of the best places to check out new tracks by aspiring beatmakers, who post their music for peer feedback. One recent highlight is DJ Kong (born Darrell Kelloway), who linked last week to his soundclick.com/djkong page, which hosts a couple dozen of his homebrew backing tracks, the best of which are listenable unto themselves. Kong has an acknowledged debt to hip-hop producers who bridge the gap between old-school sampling and radio-friendly hooks. But he isn’t just about RZA, Pete Rock, and Timbaland. His “For Duke” (named for Ellington, naturally) samples some classic jazz piano, suffused with loping beats and muted strings, and occasionally spurred on by a call-out (MP3). The young Canadian is definitely someone to keep track of.

[audio:http://7344442.streamer2.soundclick.com/jarry_lo/33/06/freemp3/djkong+forduke.mp3|titles=”For Duke”|artists=DJ Kong]

Original forum post at cratekings.com.

Tangents: Gus Van Sant, DJ /rupture Replies, XXXL Instruments …

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Recommended reading, news, and so forth elsewhere:

● The Use of Sound in the Films of Gus Van Sant (silentlistening.wordpress.com): Andreas Bick discusses the use of audio, notably soundscapes by Hildegard Westerkamp, in the films of Gus Van Sant (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days). Includes PDF of interview with Westerkamp in which Randolph Jourdain asks about the films.

● More Where DJ /rupture‘s Esopus Track Came From: DJ /rupture linked from his twitter.com/djrupture account (and from his negrophonic.com site) to Monday's disquiet.com coverage of his track in the new issue of Esopus — and he suggested that we can expect a full-length collection of this sort of atmospheric work in the future: "snippet of my Esopus piece- http://is.gd/z492 at some point, i will release an album of this stuff. ambient/noise/texture/scissors"

● David Byrne Bringing His ‘Playing the Building’ to London (bbc.co.uk)

● Joseph Bertolzzi‘s ‘Bridge Music’ Uses World’s Largest Instrument (naxos.com)

● Help Fund an 8-Bit Tribute to Miles Davis (kickstarter.com)

More online resources at disquiet.com/elsewhere.

Guit-tronic MP3 from Tokyo’s Chihei Hatakeyama

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The Room40 label recently released Saunter by Tokyo-based Chihei Hatakeyama, and provided a free download, “A Stone Inside a Box” (MP3). The piece is a layered work of guitar and electronics, a gentle stroll of a song, true to the album’s title. The melody is relatively present and strong, but in time — both during a listening, and especially after multiple listens — the soft audio bed comes into the foreground. To extend the travel metaphor, it’s as if the destination recedes and experiences along the way come to the forefront. Toward the end of “A Stone Inside a Box,” a bit of feedback flares up, like a fuse being lit. It’s at that precise moment that foreground and background meet, when the guitar line and the song-less textures join.

[audio:http://www.room40.org/mp3/chiheihatakeyama_saunter_4.mp3|titles=”A Stone Inside a Box”|artists=Chihei Hatakeyama]

More on the release at room40.org, and on Hatakeyama at chihei.org.

Chinese Noise Improv MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The Chinese netlabel post-concrete.com posted, back in March, four live performances by the duo Herba Abri, featuring Ronez (aka 周沛) on “amplified qin qin/scissors/pedals/design” and Mini Mok on “theremin mini/pedals.” The pieces are each rigorous excursions through feedback, whirligig tomfoolery, erratic effects-mongering, and riffs that venture toward toward rock’n’roll, but never fully congeal into songs. The sound quality and stereo separation are excellent, and you’ll feel like you’re right there in the studio with Mok and Ronez. Not available for streaming, but as Zip archives of either MP3 or FLAC files at post-concrete.com. More on Ronez at myspace.com/ronezzz.

DJ /rupture B&W-Inspired MP3 (from Esopus)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Each issue of the arts journal Esopus, edited by Tod Lippy and based out of New York City, includes a curated collection of songs on CD. The most recent issue — the magazine’s 12th, which takes as its subtitle as well as its theme “Black & White” — is no exception. The enclosed CD uses as its organizing principle an observation by Rudolf Arnheim from his book Film as Art back in 1957. Arnheim was a Berlin-born scholar, with an emphasis on the psychology of art and perception, who lived in the United States until his death two years ago at the age of 102. The quote is as follows:

    The composition of the film image is striking chiefly because only black, white and grey masses, black lines on a white ground, or white lines on a black ground, provide the raw material. A comparison can be made with music, in which articulate statements are possible only because definite pitches of sounds have been arranged in scales, and only these sounds are used in a composition.

Esopus invited 11 musicians to make music based on a black and white film. Among them was increasingly prolific writer/musician/artist DJ /rupture (aka Jace Clayton), who selected the black comedy El Verdugo (1963), by director Luis García Berlanga and writer Rafael Azcona. Screen capture (from youtube.com excerpt) here:

A sample of the resulting track is up at the Esopus website, esopusmag.com — it’s a miniature suite, opening with loops of billowy strings, before percussive interruption unveils a puncture, followed by pizzicato scintillate and manic industrial noise (MP3). True to Clayton/rupture’s mode, the piece never loses appeal as something with a song-like, almost pop, quality, even if its eminently listenable individual sounds are cut up to the point of abstraction. The employment of jump cuts and overlays makes an immediate opportunity for comparison to film technique, even if there’s nothing inherently comical in the end result.

[audio:http://www.esopusmag.com/player/issue12/12_07djrupture.mp3|titles=”El Verdugo”|artists=DJ /rupture]

The other participants on the CD are Sand Pebbles (Hud), Caledonia Mission (Hell’s Hinges), Me Succeeds (Nosferatu), Two Dark Birds (The Saddest Music in the World), Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson (It’s a Wonderful Life), Sam Amidon (The Furies), Lisa Cerbone (To Kill a Mockingbird), Ruby sins (Metropolis), Nat Baldwin (Raging Bull), and Nina Nastasia (Repulsion). (Thanks to Michael at bartalos.com for having introduced me to the publication.)