Month: April 2010

Zachary James Watkins Live Noise (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Noises are mysteries: formless sound that’s more likely to be ignored than paid attention to. Some noises are more mysterious than others.

Take this single track (MP3), nearly nine minutes of protracted noise, often little more than a high-pitched whine; it comes with a straightforward title: “Zachary James Watkins, 09.13.08, ArtSF, San Francisco, Ca.” Whether that’s September 13, 2008, or August 13, 2009, is unclear, and there’s little info beyond. A handful of associated keywords at archive.org, where the audio is housed, associate it with several outward-bound electronic clubs and promotion outfits in San Francisco.

[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/ZacharyJamesWatkins09.13.08ArtsfSanFranciscoCa/ZWatkins_091308_artsf.mp3|titles=”Zachary James Watkins 09.13.08 ArtSF San Francisco Ca.”|artists=Zachary James Watkins]

A visit to Watkins’ website, zacharyjameswatkins.com (found easily via a Google search, but there’s no link info actually associated with the archive.org page), currently yields an impressively long list of past performances, including one on September 13, so at least we now know the year when this was recorded.

All this searching fills the time during repeated listenings — a little bit of sleuthing duty while the ear, in the absence of information, lends a narrative to the slow build of scattered, electric sound in what proves to be an especially enticing live performance.

Electronically Enhanced European Free Improvisations (MP3s)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

If only there were a thin line between electronic music and European free improvisation. Instead, there’s more of thick, broad line — a gulf at times, really — between digitally processed music and the rich culture of abstract ensemble play. It’s a gulf occasionally, and increasingly, bridged by individuals like Ikue Mori and bands like Diatribes. The latter, consisting of d’incise (laptop & treatments, objects, percussions) and Cyril Bondi (drums, percussions), recently teamed up with the trio HKM+ (Ludger Hennig: laptop & software instruments; Christof Knoche: bass clarinet, live electronics; and Markus Markowski: prepared guitar, laptop & software instruments) and three other musicians: Piero SK (saxophones, metal clarinet), Robert Rehnig (laptop & software instruments), and Johannes Sienknecht (laptop & software instruments). The result is spectacular. At times, it’s spectacular simply because it’s exactly what such a teaming, what such a confluence, should sound like: hi-hats against droning synth tones, lightly brushed guitar chords against sharp textures, mouthy woodwind vibrations that seem to bleed into light static.

That’s the core of “1000 Bones” (MP3), the second cut on the album that resulted from this collaboration (released by the netlabel restingbell.net). Despite the large number of players, it rarely sounds like more than two or three people are going at it at any given time, except perhaps in the densest, most roiling moments of “Randeisen” (MP3). The sound is almost aways hushed, but not reverential, chaotic, but at the lowest imaginable simmer.

[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/rb080/02-1000_Bones.mp3|titles=”1000 Bones”|artists=HKM+ & diatribes & Piero SK &Rehnig & Sienknecht] [audio:http://www.archive.org/download/rb080/04-Randeisen.mp3|titles=”Randeisen”|artists=HKM+ & diatribes & Piero SK &Rehnig & Sienknecht]

The real highlights are when that simmer leads to evaporation, as on the vapor trail that is “Stromamt & Neige Improbable” (MP3), all glottal sax and cymbals that act like drone machines, and the opening track, “Luftfurche” (MP3), which somehow manages to be insectoid and elegiac, jittery and mournful, at once.

[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/rb080/05-Stromamt_Neige_Improbable.mp3|titles=”Stromamt & Neige Improbable”|artists=HKM+ & diatribes & Piero SK &Rehnig & Sienknecht] [audio:http://www.archive.org/download/rb080/01-Luftfurche.mp3|titles=”Luftfurche”|artists=HKM+ & diatribes & Piero SK &Rehnig & Sienknecht]

Get the full release, which includes two tracks in addition to the four featured here, at restingbell.net.

Images of the Week: From iPod to iPad

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

There is so much iPad coverage right now, it’s hard to say where to start, yet it would be incongruous not to note the object on the weekend of its release. Some of the best music-related coverage has been from createdigitalmusic.com, which is informedly skeptical but can talk with enthusiasm about apps such as RjDj and with curiosity about the role of the increased screen real estate (more on that in a moment), and the-palm-sound.blogspot.com, which has been characteristically encyclopedic in its coverage of various music-related apps.

I’ve yet to hold an iPad, and will soon (not today, but once the crowds dissipate) make my way over to the Apple Store, or the nearer Best Buy, to check it out. (For the record, its strict DRM system and the absence of true multitasking, not to mention the fact than any 1st-gen Apple device is likely to be improved upon relatively quickly, should it prove to be successful in the marketplace, means I will likely not be an early adopter.) One thing I’m paying attention to in particular is how the expanded screen size is adapted to by developers. Here are two images of Sonorasaurus, one of the better DJing apps, originally made for the iPod Touch and iPhone (below) and now available on the iPad (above):

The relative size of the images doesn’t do justice to the amount of space available for developers to play with on the iPad, as compared with the iPhone/Touch. But sometimes more is too much. One thing that’s made the iPhone/Touch such an enticing tool and toy for users is the relatively high quality of the apps developed for it. The small size of the device combined with its excellent touchscreen quickly led to a mutually appreciated sense of design standards shared by numerous app developers — interfaces have, by and large, been elegant, uncluttered, intuitive.

With the larger space, there is now room for navigation aids, for multiple windows, and for divergent styles. The latter isn’t of concern — the more the merrier — but the elegance that is inherent in so many iPod apps may prove to be in shorter supply on the iPad, and what ramifications that might have for users will be interesting to gauge.

Sonorasaurus has started off conservatively, bumping up the size of the original app, which will be a welcome development for anyone who has tried to manipulate its tiny controllers. It also adds waveform visualization (which shows BPM as spikes in the audio), along the lines of the Touch DJ app.

More on Sonorasaurus at sonorasaurus.com.

Quote of the Week: Meep vs Beep

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A brief letter in the New York Times this morning tackles two recent popular subjects at once: (1) the characterization of the “beep” as a quintessentially human-constructed sound and (2) the proper onomatopoeia for what the Road Runner says in the classic Warner Bros. cartoons:

While the real roadrunner doesn’t beep like its cartoon counterpart, contrary to Virginia Heffernan’s column (“Beep!”), there is an animal that beeps: the human. Since the inception of the Warner Brothers Road Runner more than 60 years ago, its “beep beep”(some think it’s “meep meep”) has been supplied by human voices, the Looney Tunes artist Paul Julian’s being the first.
BILL STOLLER
Pleasantville, N.Y.

Stoller’s letter, while fully correct, shows Heffernan to still be half-correct. Her original point wasn’t solely that the “beep” sound is constructed by humans (the implication being that it is machine-made), but that it bears the intrinsic mark of human-made-ness. The latter point remains factually accurate even if the Road Runner’s trademark sound is recorded by a guy with a microphone and a copyrighted audio style manual in a studio somewhere in Hollywood.

The correction makes me wonder about animal sounds in general. I try to keep an eye on developments in bioacoustics, and am wondering if there’s evidence of animals that employ objects as tools to make sounds — for example, whether the woodpecker’s pecking (which requires a solid object) has a meaning between woodpeckers, or between woodpeckers and the animals that treat them as prey.

As for “meep” vs “beep,” I’ve always figured that “meep” sounds less aggressive than “beep,” which is why it seems, to many people, to be more tonally accurate.

Heffernan’s story: nytimes.com. Stoller’s letter: nytimes.com.

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

/ By Marc Weidenbaum
  • Great moment in Fringe last night, when opening theme (along with the graphics) is remade as if it had been recorded in synth-happy 1985. #
  • The rain seems muted — looks so much heavier than it sounds. Our house is solid, but not that solid. The disconnect is downright eerie. #
  • Is there a way to search for a specific word within a Twitter list? #
  • #ff @soundscrapers @robotdancerobot @tommoody @fashioningtech @carlstone @rjwheaton @robinrimbaud @dbernalmusic @rootstrata @audiobulb #
  • Wasn't gettin 1st-geniPad but @rjdj dev may open my wallet. Wondering how realtime audio processing works on device less mobile than iPhone. #
  • The @touchmusic podcast appears in its RSS feed before its website. Glitchy goodness now at http://is.gd/baMVv & later at touchradio.org.uk #
  • Cesar Chavez Day reminds me that most holidays are moments of (something like) silence: fewer people, emptier buses & streets, closed shops. #
  • RIP, Paul Dunlap (b. 1919), whose film scores include The Angry Red Planet, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, The Naked Kiss, & Lost Continent. #
  • Tuesday evening: Cold, hard, fast, sudden rain on a flat, tarred, converted-industrial-site roof. #
  • Nice touch at end of last night's Damages, when lullaby melody is truncated, left unresolved — a model of how the show functions overall. #
  • Happiness is talking with cabbie about Miles Davis on ride across town while rain drizzles & Live at Fillmore blares as we cross Fillmore. #
  • When garbage trucks arrive Monday mornings I hear the "backing-up beep" yet it's an aural illusion triggered by engines & pulsing lights. #
  • Sinatra sounds surprisingly like Mantovani when filtered through the thick interior walls of a nearly 90-year-old house. #
  • Not sure where the wash of distant traffic and the hum of nearby hard drives end, and where the high-pitched noise of my own ears begins. #