- Why do voices on art podcasts so often sound like they're emanating from a bunker? Perhaps its wishful thinking on my part. #
- There's a special quality to the group sigh at the end of the credits to a movie like Predators when there's no extra surprise clip. #
- So addicted to Uni-Ball Signo Bit .18 gel pens that the .25 feel downright muddy, inky, thick, garish. #
- Amazing the number of (visual) art galleries on @twitter & @facebook but not on @flickr #
- Man, the Autechre / Move of Ten album discussion is going great — 20 posts and counting, lovers and dissenters: http://is.gd/digqG #
- Second iPad sighting on the bus. Screen's filthy, like a car windshield after a summer drive across Texas. #
- A bunch of us are discussing the new Autechre EP, titled Move of Ten, at http://is.gd/digqG — feel free to join in. #
- 16: Number of minutes between @downloadsquad announcement of Firefox 4 (beta) & site's 1st F4-hack tutorial (removing "big orange button"). #
- 3 of my 4 fave Tbird extensions don't work in 3.1: CompactMenu 2 (3.1), MaximizeMessagePane (1.1), QuickText (0.9). Just ArchiveThis (1.4). #
- At certain volumes (very loud, very quiet), all hip-hop is instrumental hip-hop. Right now experiencing the latter via @pandora_radio #
- World out of sync today: iTunes (forgot I have it on manual), LiveSync (one filename was too long), Google Contacts (no idea). #
- That Feelies/Cure-ish new Battles song is only on the extendo version of the Twilight: Eclipse soundtrack. #
- July 4 fireworks are like popcorn: the longer the the gap gets between them, the sooner it's done. #
- Web 2.0 will have fulfilled its promise when we can easily cross-reference models of vacuum cleaners & isolating earbuds. #
- Man, poor Chicago. Just a few days after Aaron Dodd passed: RIP, free-jazz saxophonist Fred Anderson (b. 1929) http://is.gd/dff6H #
- OK, once during Red, as Molina/Rothko stared at a painting with his back to the audience, I did wonder if Doc Ock's mecha-arms would appear. #
- Enabled @wordpress "threaded comments" on Disquiet.com; conversations clearer now. Not clear how to let some users comment w/o moderation. #
- Sunday morning = John Fahey, Lovesliescrushing, Ava Mendoza. #
- I Am Love: Melodrama! Field-recording sound design! John Adams score! Tilda Swinton! Flashbacks! Daydreams! Yow. See this on a big screen. #
Month: July 2010
Field Recordings: Raw & Cooked (MP3)
Framework is a British podcast focused on field recordings and their employment in art. John Kannenberg, who is based in the U.S. and a not infrequent source of music and information at this website, produced the show’s most recent entry, which takes as its subject “the sounds of history that surround us — the sonic strata of cities,” in an entry titled Urban Archeology (MP3).
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/2010.07.04FrameworkRadio/Framework_July_4th_2010.mp3|titles=”Framework (Urban Archeology)”|artists=John Kannenberg]
Kannenberg can be heard providing brief introductions to all manner of related audio, from raw recordings to manipulated source material, and ranging from empty museums and industrial sites to public markets, tunnels, and other varied locations. Reactions on the listener’s part will alternate between binaural “you are there” wonder to the more challenging consideration of abstract sonic inventions, generally ones that combine the real-world sounds with synthesized ones.
A raw recording of a street market by Japanese artist Shinichiroa is particularly evocative, as voices move past in all directions and on all sides. On the other side of the equation, the Seattle-based duo of Steve Barsotti and Perri Lynch take sonic minutiae and construct from it a mysterious amalgamation; there’s an element of backward-masked treatments in there, which might be considered a self-conscious nod to the origins of the work.
Other participants in Kannenberg’s project include Kate Carr (second mention on disquiet.com this week), Roger Mills, Richard Lainhart, and others. More on the podcast at murmerings.com/radio. It is the second in a four-part series produced in conjunction with the World Listening Project (worldlisteningproject.org).
Christian Marclay Got Plastered in Berlin (MP3)
The Internet allows for varieties of atemporality, some of them semi-intended consequences (such as the manner in which Jorge Luis Borges’ Infinite Library seems within reach thanks to vast databases of culture), many of them unintended (for example how glitchy technology can summon of items from the past with no clear curatorial intention).
Speaking of the latter, neither Google Reader, the popular browser-based RSS-subscription software, nor the RSS implementation of the podcast produced by the Museum of Modern Art in New York are perfect software. Sometimes in Google Reader, a feed’s entire past entries, or some subset thereof, will pop up as if brand new. And for whatever reason (certainly not necessity), MoMA’s podcast feed often neglects to provide direct links to contextual URLs associated with the MP3s that it serves up. (This issue isn’t unique to MoMa, though given the museum’s stature, it’s a bit disconcerting.)
Thus this past week, a 2006 recording of Christian Marclay‘s “Graffiti Composition” appeared amid a variety of other MoMA podcast entries, mostly lectures, though there was a Dadaist sound-poetry event in there. Performing Marclay’s work was a quintet of accomplished guitarists: Melvin Gibbs, Mary Halvorson, Lee Ranaldo, Vernon Reid, and Elliott Sharp, who also served as musical director (MP3).
[audio:http://www.moma.org/audio_file/audio_file/102/ChristianMarclay_Graffiti_091306.mp3|titles=”Graffiti Composition”|artists=Christian Marclay]
The composition dates from two decades earlier, back in 1996, when Marclay was invited to a festival in Berlin. He was present at the MoMA event, and recounted how the work was produced:
“I had 5000 posters, these blank oversized music sheets, plastered all over the city of Berlin for the duration of the festival, which was a month. Every other night a crew went out and plastered more posters. I didn’t know what would happen, and documented the process. Interestingly enough, a lot of people left traces on these posters. And a lot of people actually left musical notations.”
He later selected 150 exemplary cards, and the set was published in 2002 by the Paula Cooper Gallery. Two dozen of those cards served as Sharp’s score for this performance, a wildly rangy affair in which all manner of guitar techniques, most of them focused on noisy minutiae and improvised contrapuntal play, are called upon.
Marclay added, in his introduction to the night’s event, that he feels uncomfortable being considered the work’s composer, calling himself instead as the facilitator. In other words, the word “graffiti” in the title of the piece isn’t just a statement of process but of provenance; the graffiti, the world, is the composer, and Marclay’s cards — one of which is shown above — are recordings of activity, some willful, some chance, all framed by Marclay’s conceit. While a lot of people did scrawl notes on the paper, some of the cards feature subsequently superimposed posters, or writing more generally recognized as graffiti, or the rips and abuse of daily wear.
With a little sleuthing, this contextual URL was located: moma.org. (Above image from the Paula Cooper collection, borrowed from artnet.com.)
Truman Peyote’s Blissful Pop Noise (MP3)
If Super Mario Bros. were to turn on, tune in, and drop out, they might just sound like Truman Peyote. As heard in a recent podcast from the great Phoning It In series (MP3), the group plays psychedelic pop noise, a mix of overclocked keyboards and numerous unidentifiable sound sources whose muddy, blissfully ritualized affect is all the more lo-fi, humble, and evocative thanks to this particular mode of distribution. See, the modus operandi at Phoning It In is to have acts play their sets, literally, over the phone line to KDVS radio in Davis, California (where I had a radio show many years ago myself). What vocals there are are filtered through enough equipment to make Tom Waits’ megaphone seem like a crystalline representation.
[audio:http://www.phoningitin.net/files/shows/KDVS/2010/Truman%20Peyote%20-%20Phoning%20It%20In%2006_07_10.mp3|titles=”Live on Phoning It In (June 2010)”|artists=Truman Peyote]
The Boston-based (and, according to this recording, Los Angeles”“bound) group’s MySpace page lists it as consisting of Eric Farber and Caleb Johannes and a handful of occasional supporting musicians, and this particular performance features Johannes, Miles Coe, and Sydney Howard.
More on the group’s performance at phoningitin.net. More on Truman Peyote at myspace.com/trumanpeyotemusic and twitter.com/tptptptptptptp.
MP3 Discussion Group: Autechre’s Follow-Up EP
The Disquiet.com “MP3 Discussion Group”returns with its first full-length-recording consideration since pondering Oh, Oval’s recent return to commercial recording in almost a decade (see: disquiet.com). This time around, we’ve been listening intently to Move of Ten, the new EP by Autechre, the duo of Rob Brown and Sean Booth — it follows quickly on Autechre’s full-length album Oversteps. The 10-track Move of Ten has characteristic titles like “pce freeze 28i,” “ylmo0,” and “Cep puiqMX” — what sonic characteristics it shares with previous Autechre releases is up for discussion.
Participating with me in this week’s MP3 Discussion Group are:
Alan Lockett: “I write music reviews and commentary on ambient/drone, the more adventurous end of techno/house, post-dub, and IDM. Based in Bristol, epicentre of the Dub-zone in the Wild West of England, I can mainly be read on igloomag.com and furthernoise.org.”
Joshua Maremont: “I record as Thermal and pursue my musical and other obsessions in San Francisco.”
Tom Moody: “I am a visual artist who also makes music, and blogs at tommoody.us. My informal ‘statement of musical principles’ can be found at tommoody.us. All my music is at tommoody.us.”
The conversation will play out in this post’s comments section, below.
A little note on the MP3 Discussion Group format: This is by no means a closed conversation, so do feel free to join in. The initial posts by participants were all written before they had an opportunity to see each other’s take on the release in question, but after that it’s intended to play out in real time.
More on Autechre’s Move of Ten at the website of its releasing label, warp.net. It’s available now as a download. Physical release will arrive July 12.