Month: September 2009

Lunar Rambles MP3 by Terry Fox (circa 1977)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The hovering sounds of Terry Fox‘s “Excerpts from Lunar Rambles” (MP3) will strike many as otherworldly, and when their source material is revealed, they may appear, to the contrary, all too familiar. These slowly cycling sounds, rich in overtones, were made not by visiting UFOs but by an artist working “a metal bowl and steel plow disk.” But even with that fact sheet, it’s informative to take into consideration the date of the recording: April 1977. Long before today’s ubiquity of contact-mic performance sound and remixed field recordings, Fox was experimenting with a minimalism that had as much to do with its raw materials as with its pulsing, rhythmically informed, melodically-untethered music.

[audio:http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/close_radio/closeradio_018-Fox.mp3|titles=”Excerpts from Lunar Rambles”|artists=Terry Fox]

The following images are stills of Fox performing variations on the piece in the videos Lunar Rambles: Canal Street (left) and Lunar Rambles: Brooklyn Bridge (right), released in 1976 and available from eai.org.

Fox passed away in 2008. This audio recording, made available as part of the holdings at ubu.com, was broadcast on radio station KPFK in Los Angeles on the show Close Radio on April 25, 1977. More on Close Radio, founded by John Duncan and Neil Goldstein (and organized by Duncan, Paul McCarthy, Nancy Buchanan, and Linda Frye Burnham), at getty.edu.

Leafcutter John Dives Off the Deep End (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Hydrophones, simply put, allow for the recording of sounds underwater. As John Burton, aka Leafcutter John, puts it: “this is reason enough to worship and adore them.” In advance of a tour he’s doing on a canal boat (with Lisa Knapp), he’s been perfecting his underwater-recording gear, which in the case of his handy hydrophone involves putting heavily waterproofed contact mics inside a sturdy device. “I went out and bought a hot-glue-gun for this bit,” he writes of his Make-worthy activities, “and it was worth it.”

He’s provided four brief samples of his little water-music sports, including the “bathbomb” (MP3 — which, despite its thrilling name, is like a very close-up recording of rain), a brushed comb (MP3 — think of the world’s most tautly wound kalimba thumb piano), a rubber ducky (MP3 — all puckered up, and ready for cartoon activities), and “taps” (MP3 — by which he appears to mean not the military melody, but the spout out of which water flows). These four test recordings are each relatively short, so I’ve sewn them together here into one single listening experience:

[audio:http://leafcutterjohn.com/audio/bathbomb.mp3,http://leafcutterjohn.com/audio/comb.mp3,http://leafcutterjohn.com/audio/rubberduck.mp3,http://leafcutterjohn.com/audio/taps.mp3|titles=”bathbomb”,”comb”,”rubberduck”,”taps”|artists=Leafcutter John,Leafcutter John,Leafcutter John,Leafcutter John]

More on Burton/John and his hydrophonic experiments (with a full how-to on making your own hydrophone) at leafcutterjohn.com, and on his canal-tour partner, Lisa Knapp, at myspace.com/lisaknappmusic. Info on their tour, which began yesterday in London and continues through September 30, at guardian.co.uk.

Wonderfully Antiseptic Pop MP3 by Lusine

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Why not start listening to Lusine‘s new album, A Certain Distance, at the end — the closing track, as it happens, is the one made available for free download by its estimable label, Ghostly, whose generosity was recently cemented with its free iPhone “discovery” app (see ghostly.com/discovery). That iPhone app allows users to stream the entire Ghostly catalog, as filtered by mood, tempo, and the relative space along a continuum from digital to analog. By those measures, the coordinates for “Cirrus,” the Lusine song in question, would be something like: an introspective mood, a relatively upbeat tempo, and about 90 percent digital, allowing for some computer-etched vocal elements toward the end. It’s a blippy bit of electronic instrumental pop, sounding a bit like one of David Byrne and Brian Eno’s recent collaborations, except that a lead vocal line never arrives. It’s a brittle but vibrant brand of antiseptic electronica, and pretty darn addictive.

[audio:http://static.ghostly.com/media/mp3/full/lusine-Cirrus_4463.mp3|titles=”Cirrus”|artists=Lusine]

More on the release at theghostlystore.com. Visit Lusine (aka Jeff McIlwain) at lusineweb.com.

Dubstep Remix MP3s (Dr. Octagon, Nas), Straight Outta Cleveland

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

There’s a slowly building cache of dubstep being uploaded by Kansdesign to his soundcloud.com/kansdesign base camp — or, make that bass camp. The beat-intensive work is heavy with clubby reference points, but that’s not to dismiss the stuff as mere late-night party fare. One listen to his feral remix of “Blue Flowers” by Dr. Octagon, in which the original’s doe-eyed violin line is interwoven with space-alien synth pounding, is enough (MP3) to make even the most nightlife-evasive listener an instant fan. Likewise his take on Nas’s “Made You Look,” which dispenses with the original’s sure-to-please-mom backing track, and jumps hard with gun-shot downbeats and a sound that’s so eviscerated you’d think nanbots had shredded his amplifier (MP3).

[audio:http://soundcloud.com/kansdesign/bluefolwersdubstep/download|titles=”BlueFolwersDubstep”|artists=Kansism] [audio:http://soundcloud.com/kansdesign/made-you-look-kans-edit/download
|titles=”Made You Look (kans edit)”|artists=Kansism]

Cleveland’s own Kansism (aka Allen Wagner) also makes his home at twitter.com/kansism.

Portuguese Journey Through Sonic Minutiae (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The artist Ziur‘s name suddenly isn’t so retro-futuristic when your realize it’s just the last name of the musician it masks flipped around. That would be Braga, Portugal-based André Ruiz, whose album Granular World was recently released on the XS netlabel (xsrecordsptnetlabel.blogspot.com). The album takes for its cover art an image from the first landing, 40 years back, of humans on the moon. The intended association is that Ziur, too, journeys to familiar yet exotic and distant places. That’s borne out by the seven tracks on Granular World, which investigates tiny sonic spaces with an intrepid spirit that suggests bravura even when the overall audio effect is infinitesimal. A key example is “Granular II,” a harrowing if Lilliputian journey amid cracking noise and deep echoes (MP3), and through the mournful melodic twists of “In to the Light,” in which a single, almost voice-like sound can be heard making its way through the a valley of droning tones (MP3).

[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/xs64Ziur-GranularWorld/02GranularIi.mp3|titles=”Granular II”|artists=Ziur] [audio:http://www.archive.org/download/xs64Ziur-GranularWorld/04InToTheLight.mp3|titles=”In to the Light”|artists=Ziur]

Get the full set at the XS Records home at archive.org. More on Ziur at myspace.com/ziurr.