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Extraordinary Feedback Kalimba Drone Raga (MP3)

RP Collier is a virtuoso of his own makeshift gadget

[ June 7, 2013 / Department: downstream / Comment: 1 ]

20130607-thumbpiano

Highly recommended, easily one of my favorite things I have posted in months. This “Feedback Raga”is an intense, Fourth World rhythmic drone created on a makeshift thumb piano, or kalimba. The device was made by RP Collier of Portland, Oregon. By his own explanation, the thumb piano is “made from a metal clamshell box with hairpin tines attached to a flat metal dish resonator,”the dish acting “like a feedback antenna.”A piezo microphone transforms the notes into dense, overtone rich columns of noise, and the feedback bends notes into one another and develops this overwhelming undercurrent of electric activity — an undercurrent of current. The picture above is from Collier’s flickr.com set.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/rpcollier. More of Collier’s music at rpcollier.bandcamp.com. Collier sent me the links via email earlier this week, right after I had posted the Alarm Will Sound rendition of composer Asha Srinivasan’s chamber orchestra ragas.

By Marc Weidenbaum

[  Tag: / Comment: 1 ]

One Comment

  1. Larry Johnson
    [ Posted June 8, 2013, at 8:52 pm ]

    With the artist’s permission, I uploaded a remix here: https://soundcloud.com/l-a-j-1/power-raga-feedback-raga-remix

    Reply

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  • Marc Weidenbaum founded the website Disquiet.com in 1996 at the intersection of sound, art, and technology, and since 2012 has moderated the Disquiet Junto, an active online community of weekly music/sonic projects. He has written for Nature, Boing Boing, The Wire, Pitchfork, and NewMusicBox, among other periodicals. He is the author of the 33 1⁄3 book on Aphex Twin’s classic album Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Read more about his sonic consultancy, teaching, sound art, and work in film, comics, and other media

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