- Saturday morning sounds: hard drives, paper shuffling, refrigerator. #
- Just noticed the September 2009 issue of @dwell singles out the Technics SL-1200 turntable as a prime example of good, longstanding design. #
- If you Twitter it's #followfriday: Texan exotica beatcrafter @dbernalmusic & legendary musician @ryuichisakamoto — also in 日本語 @skmt09 #
- Morning sounds: shower, hard drive, plane. Nothing like summer fog to blanket and muffle noises. Always odd when there's fog but no foghorn. #
- If there isn't already an 8-bit electro-pop cover band called the Molly Ringtones, today would be a good day to form one. #
- Video of Alva Noto v. Japanese vending machine bleeds from mundane into magically mechanical and back http://is.gd/25H5w — RT @djrupture #
- RIP, director John Hughes, multiplex-DJ of my adolescence: http://is.gd/25tn9 #
- Was more excited by Radiohead tribute to Harry Patch when I thought it was for Harry Partch: http://is.gd/23MX5 #
- New Buddha Machine”“like loop box, with gothy overtones, literally and figuratively: http://bit.ly/1nUEIv — RT @buddhamachine #
- Afternoon sounds: footsteps, laughter, printer, techno*, traffic, typing. *Techno from CD boombox on chest of cyclist outside window. #
- It's my birthday, & pretty much the only thing I want/need is someone to make USB (or Bluetooth) keyboards work with Android phones. #
- House next door is for sale. New neighbors, new sounds. #
- Don't think any scifi I read when I was young correctly predicted just how much scifi there'd be in the future. #
- RIP, rapper Baatin (b. Titus Glover, 1974), of the great Slum Village: http://is.gd/1Z6Ff — RT @whyarcka #
- Entrance to King Tut exhibit at @deyoungmuseum is tomb-quiet, except for a dozen audio-tour devices, all whispering slightly out of sync. #
Month: August 2009
Netlabel Release from China’s Bypass (MP3s)
The China-based netlabel Bypass (bp.bai-hua.org) presents Noncompliance by Japan-based Mel, who’s previously recorded for Complementary Distribution, Test Tube, and other fine netlabels. Aside from the opening Noncompliance track, “Intro,” which offers free-jazz guitar squonking (credited to Junji) above light synthetic tones (MP3), the five-track album consists entirely of Mel, alone. What follows the anomalous “Intro” is percussive electronica, from a mix of gentle chimes and truncated beats on “Molecular Clock” (MP3) to the film-cue-ready dub-lite of “Steady State” (MP3). The latter track is particularly rewarding, with its momentary breaks for ear-rattling timpani. On each track, Mel displays a penchant for deploying a modest collection of melodic and rhythmic materials in a manner that suggests compositional development without overstating the promise.
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/bp041/01_-_intro.mp3|titles=”Intro”|artists=Mel]
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/bp041/04_-_molecular_clock.mp3|titles=”Molecular Clock”|artists=Mel]
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/bp041/05_-_steady-state.mp3|titles=”Steady-State”|artists=Mel]
Get the full album at bp.bai-hua.org. More at Mel’s website, myspace.com/melsound.
Folktronic Pop MP3 from Bacanal Intruder
The great Spain-based folktronic figure Bacanal Intruder has a new album out on Eglantine Records, and a free track, “Cantariola” (MP3), should be more than enough to get the uninitiated to check it out. Intruder is Luis Solis, who mixes scratchy samples, chamber arrangements of horns, strings and other instruments, plus sublimated vocals into an elegant cyborg pop. For every intoned vocal, there’s a blippy undercurrent; for every surface texture, there’s a plucked instrument. And that’s not counting the elements whose provenance (digital, analog, acoustic, virtual) remain impossible to pinpoint.
The combination is lovely, elegant, and intoxicating. The song is secretly brief. It has an almost suite-like format, the gentle opening (in which gossamer keys come to smother glitchy beats) and closing horn-like tones (suggesting nothing so much as Kid Koala covering David Byrne’s Knee Plays) framing the central vocal. The sections suggest a much lengthier listening experience than its actual 1:45. Making it all the more ready to be set on repeat.
[audio:http://www.eglantinerecords.com/files/audio/Bacanal%20Intruder%20-%20cantariola.mp3|titles=”Cantariola”|artists=Bacanal Intruder]
More at the relasing label, eglantinerecords.com, and at Solis’s website, ambulatore.com/bacanalintruder.
Synth Experiments by Adam Balusik/Room101 (MP3s)
The tension inherent in Longevity Acid Gene 1 by Room101 (aka Adam BaluÅ¡Ãk) is all about pulse. It opens with a dubbily percussive track, “LAG-1” (MP3), that’s all beat and stretch, all warbly synth elements, and pinprick pounding, and seesaw sine waves, and blips that are left to slowly fade. As such, its a gradated portrait of the spectrum of synthesis. Each track that follows “LAG-1” is another snapshot of a wide range of approaches. “LAG-1.2” (MP3) is a stereoscopic bit of strobing, like Underworld’s great “Rez” reimagined as the backing score to Nintendo DSi cartridge. The other standout track is “LAG-1.4,” as mundane as a throbbing drone can be (MP3), and all the more magnetic for its seeming ordinariness. The near hush of “LAG-1.4” is no less immersive than the glo-stick scene-setting of “LAG-1.2,” but “LAG-1.4” is concerned with surveillance, not resplendence — its pulse is virtually two beats, one at the opening, the other, after nearly five and a half minutes, at the close.
[audio:http://www.monocromatica.com/netlabel/releases/tube179/tube179-01-room101_-_lag-1.mp3|titles=”LAG-1″|artists=Room101]
[audio:http://www.monocromatica.com/netlabel/releases/tube179/tube179-02-room101_-_lag-1.2.mp3|titles=”LAG-1.2″|artists=Room101]
[audio:http://www.monocromatica.com/netlabel/releases/tube179/tube179-04-room101_-_lag-1.4.mp3|titles=”LAG-1.4″|artists=Room101]
More details at the releasing netlabel Test Tube: monocromatica.com/netlabel.
Kabir Carter MP3 of Recycled Silence
Sound artist Kabir Carter locates the sound in silence by pushing the silence until it speaks out. He’s posted an excerpt of one such experiment, “Opening Closed Loops” (MP3), and it’s a classic example of how the unheard is just that: sound around us that serves as an unacknowledged foundation for all that we acknowledge we hear. What Carter’s “Opening Closed Loops” isn’t is a field recording — that is, a record that provides 20/20 audio hindsight. What it is is a system, in which silence is created, projected, repeated, contorted, gaining tension, texture, nuance, and grit with each passing stage. According to his explanatory note, “The title refers to the “closed loop” that normal communications operate within; the aim of the work is to gradually build layers of feedback that push through a closed communications system to a more abstract, chaotic, and poetic acoustic space.”
[audio:http://www.kabircarter.com/Opening%20Closed%20Loops.mp3|titles=”Opening Closed Loops”|artists=Kabir Carter]
More at kabircarter.com.