â—¼ Please consider backing (i.e., kickstarting) the magazine (or serial-book) project Holo, which focuses on the convergence of art, science and technology:
The publication is led by Alexander Scholz, Filip Visnjic (creativeapplications.net), and Greg J. Smith (vagueterrain.net). The Kickstarter campaign has some extraordinary pledge rewards: $400 gets you an original Zimoun “motor box,” for example.
â—¼ NYC Art Post-Sandy: Good news: Apex Art Gallery in Manhattan “sustained no damage” during superstorm Sandy (apexart.org). Apex is where the Disquiet Junto concert will be held on November 27 as part of Rob Walker’s “As Real as It Gets” exhibit. The exhibit’s opening is this evening, November 15. Bad news: Apex appears to be in the minority. Among the many institutions hurt by Sandy are the hallowed Kitchen on West 19th (“The theater and first floor lobby were hit hard,” according to its Facebook page), New Amsterdam Presents, which had recently moved into a 3,000 square foot space in Red Hook, Brooklyn (“our space was flooded with almost four feet of polluted sea water,” came word in a blog post at newamsterdampresents.com), and Eyebeam (“we were inundated with water which filled our entire ground floor and caused severe damage to the building,” via eyebeam.org).
â—¼ Warren Ellis’ Soundscape: In a recent interview at the fine tech/gadget website theverge.com, author Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Red, the forthcoming novel Gun Machine) as well as a frequent and ambient-leaning podcaster, makes note of generational shifts in the British soundscape:
For instance, here in Britain, the soundtrack of every single early morning (except Sundays) was the hum and crunch of a milk float. I don’t know if you had these in the States? Electric light vehicles stacked with crates of milk for doorstep delivery. Twenty years ago they were a permanent feature of the soundscape. Today they’re almost all gone, because home delivery got killed by cheap milk in supermarkets. So, if you’re of a certain age, there’s a gap in the ambient soundscape. That denotes futuricity (which may not be a word) just as strongly as the absence of great mountains of horseshit in our cities denoted a futuristic condition in the 1950s.
More from Ellis at warrenellis.com.
â—¼ In Brief: I now have an imdb.com page, thanks to work on the documentary film The Children Next Door. I handled music supervision and share sound-design credit with the talented Taylor Deupree, who composed the film’s original music. More at thechildrennextdoor.com. The movie was directed by Doug Block and produced by Lynda Hansen. So far it has shown at three film festivals: the Hamptons, Denver, and DOC NYC. â—¼ There wasn’t a lot of sonic activity in the second season finale of Alphas, though it’s worth noting that the homeless guy who instantaneously has his dormant powers woken up becomes another in the show’s growing ranks of third-tier mutant banshee Tuvan mercenaries. â—¼ Fringe has, in its final season, been relatively quiet in terms of its own sonic intrigue, in contrast with past seasons — at least since the explicit delineation of music’s role during the first episode of the season. But in last week’s episode (“Through the Looking Glass and What Walter Found There”), there was a new central gadget, a battery-operated radio tuned to a specific frequency that will, by all appearances, play an important role. â—¼ There’s now a Disquiet.com page at instagram.com/dsqt. â—¼ In an NPR Morning Edition interview this week on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of A&M Records, Herb Alpert mentioned the role that Les Paul’s multitrack recording played as an inspiration to his own development of the Tijuana Brass sound: npr.org. (Note: it’s in the audio segment, not the text summary). â—¼ I’m currently writing a book for the great 33 1/3 series about the Aphex Twin album Selected Ambient Works Volume 2. The publisher, Bloomsbury, has begun posting on its blog interviews with the authors of its forthcoming books. First up in this series is Pete Astor (the Loft, the Weather Prophets) talking about Richard Hell and the Voidoids’ Blank Generation. According to the tag at the bottom of the Astor article, my interview will be the next to appear, which is excellent. Both the Aphex Twin and Hell/Voidoids albums were released, it’s worth noting, on the same label in the United States: Sire Records (in 1994 and 1977, respectively).