Month: August 2012

New Matmos Single (MP3)

Free download as the duo moves to Thrill Jockey

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The Matmos duo, long of San Francisco but now based in Baltimore, is helping Thrill Jockey celebrate its 20th anniversary by signing with the label, a move from Matador. The Ganzfeld EP is due out in the autumn. An album, The Marriage of True Minds, is due out in “early 2012.” They’ve posted a version of a song from the EP, “Very Large Green Triangles (Edit),” for free download. It’s a varied beast of a piece, less a song than a suite, with orchestral segments, the duo’s trademark emphasis on brittle percussion, and vast swaths of chanting; it features vocals by Ed Schrader. The scope might to some extent be influenced by Matmos’ recent theatrical endeavor, participating in Robert Wilson’s “multimedia colossus,” The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/thrilljockey. More on what’s up with Matmos, aka Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt, at vague-terrain.com and thrilljockey.com.

A Drone of Bees

A midday swarm in San Francisco's Outer Richmond District

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This afternoon, at around 2:50pm California time, I was in the backyard with my 23-month-old. She was just starting to use some chalk we’d gotten her yesterday when I heard this unfamiliar sound: a drone, a kind of buzzing. I looked around and slowly what came into view over the north fence was something that resembled a small dust storm, and that revealed itself soon as a lot of bees. A whole lot of bees. I grabbed my kid and pulled her into our house, one stick of chalk still in her little hand. Closed the windows. Ran to the back bedroom and looked out. Our backyard was engulfed with bees, just filled with them, like a side-loading clothes dryer filled with marbles and running at full speed. I shot 45 seconds or so of video on my phone, though I’m not sure there’s much to see. I post it here for environmental posterity. It makes more sense in still frames, though there are moments when the swarming becomes apparent. The sound was muffled by glass, but the droning was quite clear — frighteningly out of control, and yet eerily suggesting some sense of control. There is no chaos to a swam of bees. It feels directed, agreed upon, consensual. Within a couple minutes the bees had moved west to another neighbor’s yard. As I type this there are still a lot more bees than usual in our backyard. And the ones in the neighbor’s yard (to the north, where this originated) are moving around weirdly fast. Usually they just go from bush to bush, but they are zooming left then right then back then forth, zigzagging like crazy.

The experience reinforced for me how central the drone is to natural sound, how it is primordial, in contrast with song, which speaks of civilization. And yet this drone was the sound of a civilization, a swarm of bees acting as one, a nomad hive. As readers of this site know, I spend a lot of time listening to drones — to the natural environment, to the built environment, and to music built from drones. This bee drone, felt and heard firsthand, was entirely unfamiliar.

The experience also emphasized the value of sound in one sense of one’s environment. The only reason I so quickly recognized the nearing bees was because of my awareness of the various drones and related sounds that are normal to our neighborhood. The bees stood out before they were too close because I heard one particularly odd drone among many — a bad note, as it were.

Video posted at vimeo.com/disquiet.

Sketch for 99¢ Xylophone

Another economical work-in-progress from Analogu01

/ By Marc Weidenbaum


When this website’s Downstream section expanded from five days a week to seven, one of the main reasons was to allow for more frequent repeat appearances by individual musicians. And part of that inspiration was the recognition that much online music is of the “sketch” variety — not “sketch” in the slang sense of “dubious character” but in the more general sense of a draft that proceeds what might be considered even a rough draft. This is the case, for example, with the website of Analogue01, whose music for abacus got some attention here back in mid-July, and who has now committed an elegant and noteworthy miniature for muted xylophone. In his brief post at analogue01.com he describes the source material for “Sketch for 99¢ Xylophone” as “Maybe the worst sounding instrument I’ll ever play” and then adds a clarification: “But for 99 cents it sounds great, especially if I forget about playing notes.” The result is a piece that ekes out modest variations between what were intended to be notes, and in the process pays close attention to — and often transforms digitally for further inspection and enjoyment — unintended percussive possibilities.

Track originally posted for download at analogue01.com (where the above image first appeared) and soundcloud.com/analogue01.

Requiem for a Tablehooter (MP3)

K.r. Seward's contribution to a cheap-synth compilation

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

There is a tick tock, artificial wooden block metronome sound that is the telltale heart of a certain era of synthesizers — an era that some have come to call “tablehooters” and that are celebrated on the compilation album Cheap and Plastic, put together by Hal McGee as part of an open call. The project’s instructions (e.g., “Yes, you CAN use circuit bent keyboards”) are viewable at its facebook.com page, where the 36 contributors are listed. Among them is K.r. Seward, whose entry takes the tick tock as its central, part goofy, part maudlin compositional tenet. It plays like the theme song to a Saturday morning cartoon about vampire shut-ins and the mummies who love them. His instruments included two Casios, what he described as a Radio Shack rebranding of a Casio, and two Yamahas.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/krseward. More on the compilation at facebook.com. More on Kevin R. Seward at audiokayness.blogspot.com.

Disquiet Junto at At Water’s Edge (MP3)

The stillstream.com radio show focused on the recent John Cage project.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Rebekkah Hilgraves hosts the weekly “At Water’s Edge” show on the ambient Internet radio station stillstream.com, and its August 4 episode focused on the 30th Disquiet Junto project. In her studio was Junto member and participant Joe McMahon, who did a great job explaining not only the hows and whys of the Disquiet Junto, but also the specifics of his particular entry in the 30th project (MP3). In the process, Hilgraves played about two hours of tracks from the 30th project, which was an exploration of themes of sounds within perceived silence, in honor of John Cage, who would have turned 100 this year.

[audio:http://media.blubrry.com/atwatersedge/p/www.rebekkahhilgraves.com/audio/at-waters-edge/AtWatersEdge_20120804_SoundsFromSilence.mp3|titles=”At Water’s Edge (2012 August 04″|artists=Rebekkah Hilgraves with Joe McMahon]

More on the episode at rebekkahhilgraves.com. More on McMahon at soundcloud.com/joe-mcmahon