Talking about modular synthesizers, and a lot more
/ By Marc Weidenbaum
It was a pleasure this week to have been featured as the guest on the great Podular Modcast, which as its name suggests is a podcast about modular synthesizers. The Podular Modcast is hosted by Tim Held and Ian Price. Price wasn’t available when the episode was recorded, but he does appear early on in the segment, telling a touching story about Aphex Twin, a subject that then leads into Held interviewing me about my Aphex Twin book, *Selected Ambient Works Volume II* (33 1/3, Bloomsbury), and announcing that it has been licensed for translation and publication in Japan, something I just learned this past week. I spent five years at a manga company bringing Japanese books (comics and novels, and related titles) to America, so it’s nice to send one back.
Held and I then talk about modular synthesizers, how I got into accruing (assembling? agglomerating?) one myself, after witnessing Marcus Fischer perform live in Portland when I did an Aphex Twin reading there back in 2014. We discussed the tactile as well as visual feedback of modular synthesis, and other topics. I had a great time speaking with Held. You can listen with the above embedded audio player, or at [podularmodcast.fireside.fm](https://podularmodcast.fireside.fm/disquiet).
Agnes M is Agne Matuleviciute of Vilnius, Lithuania. “A Window” is a short piece she posted recently on her SoundCloud account, providing little context beyond noting it’s a work for theater. The backbone of it is a steady, generously slumbrous tonal sequence, a sleepy stepwise bass line played out, presumably on a keyboard. That line persists for almost the entire piece, as different things are laid atop it, at first filters and effects and little extra notes here and there, an improvisation in a higher register, a fracture of noise.
As it proceeds, more and more intercedes — the sound effects get more insistent, the variety and artful chaos increase. There is simulated wind, and what might be horses neighing, and much much more. The track itself gets twisted back on itself, that bass line momentarily disappearing below the ratcheted-up phalanx of sounds. Eventually that line reappears, lending a sense of full-circle closure. Much as the variety of noises had held the line at bay, when it returns it in turn suggests those noises as a passing dream.
Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/aagnesm](https://soundcloud.com/aagnesm/a-window). More from Matuleviciute at [instagram.com/agne._](https://www.instagram.com/agne._) and [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_zu-Q109CwaSxv9ad0Mx0g). The track was produced with Martynas Vil ([soundcloud.com/martynasvil](https://soundcloud.com/martynasvil)), who’s based in London.
Rotating shards courtesy of Boston-based Erika Nesse
/ By Marc Weidenbaum
Erika Nesse makes fractal music. She imposes intricate, self-reflexive patterns upon pre-existing material, breaking it like mirror that has shattered, except this shattered mirror has been reformed into a gleaming, spinning, geometrically intricate and fascinating mirror ball. The ball goes round and round, speeding up, slowing down, shifting suddenly, and all the while shooting back tiny sliver segments of the source material that is reflected in it. Well, sonically speaking.
In Nesse’s hands, a simple vocal tone can be turned into a momentous rhythmic figure, shifting endlessly between variations subtle and stark. This piece, “Kyrie (Geometric Clouds),” takes its fractal methodology from the image that serves as the track’s cover art. As Nesse decodes the image in a brief accompanying note: “An audio clip is split into fragments. Up and down represents the location in the clip where the fragment starts. Left to right represents time within the track. Many layers of the fragment starting at different times are stacked together, creating an echo effect.” Listen for the patterns. Then take a deep breath, step back, and listen to it as a multi-movement composition with echoes of Scott Johnson (vocal cutups) and Philip Glass (hyper-charged minimalism).
Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/conversationswithrocks](https://soundcloud.com/conversationswithrocks/kyrie-geometric-clouds). More from Nesse, who is based in Boston, Massachusetts, at [fractalmusicmachine.com](http://www.fractalmusicmachine.com/fractal-explanation/) and [erikanesse.bandcamp.com](https://erikanesse.bandcamp.com).
This seven-minute performance video by State Azure focuses tight on a few modules in a larger synthesizer rig. There is no mess of spaghetti wires. There is a limited set of blinking lights. There is a single hand adjusting knobs on a single device. The accompanying liner note references some on-screen technical details, some off-screen support equipment, and some minor post-production activity. Otherwise, “Starfall,” as the track is called, is just this: a blissfully thin expanse of near-static time, a live ambient performance in which a seeming hush is nudged into the foreground and left to sway slowly this way and that, to pause for a moment, to let little details linger. It’s the music of a planetarium after hours. The lights are simply from the music equipment, not the stars, and those are more than enough.
This is the latest video I’ve added to [my YouTube playlist of recommended live performances of ambient music](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-). Video originally posted to State Azure’s [YouTube channel](https://youtu.be/fqQNS2sKj_Q). More at [stateazure.bandcamp.com](https://stateazure.bandcamp.com/) and [soundcloud.com/state-azure](https://soundcloud.com/state-azure). State Azure is based in the U.K.
What happens when you bring a harp to a digital-workstation fight?
/ By Marc Weidenbaum
What happens when you bring a harp to a digital-workstation fight? Watch this video of Mary Lattimore in the magazine *Fact*’s Against the Clock series to find out.
Fact’s long-running series pits one musician at a time against themselves. In each edition ([there are 150 or so as of this writing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpI6PoZGhSo&list=PLg5ScSqSDXsvXVvNqW42AjfOmPjIupYZH)) of Against the Clock, the featured musician makes a track in one sitting of 10 minutes or under, recorded and presented uncut. The overwhelming majority of videos are from the fields of techno and hip-hop, and related beat-driven music. Even when a seeming outlier such as James McNew, representing his band Yo La Tengo, shows up, as he did in a video [last month](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSkLmgI3vMI), the result is beatcraft, not necessarily the indie rock a Yo La Tengo might expect.
Just yesterday, Against the Clock featured the harp player Mary Lattimore, who in ten minutes is seen looping her harp atop itself over and over. What the session yields is a beautiful track, but not until Lattimore, who records for the Ghostly International label, has eked all manner of sounds from the beast of an instrument. Not only does she send cascades of plucked strings against themselves, plotting out deep spaces with varying volume levels — a cathedral made of sonic pixels — but she bangs against it with a metal ring and scrapes the strings, among other techniques, to make the most of her singular tool. At times she puts aside the harp and concentrates directly on the looper in which she is collecting and collating elements of her live playing.
Video originally posted at [Fact’s YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpI6PoZGhSo&t=628s). While the response so far has been largely positive, not every beat-oriented Aginst the Clock watcher was a fan (“i’m not watching this vid series to see someone play the harp for 10min….. jeeez” wrote one commenter). More from Lattimore, who lives in Los Angeles, at [marylattimore.net](http://www.marylattimore.net) and [marylattimoreharpist.bandcamp.com](https://marylattimoreharpist.bandcamp.com/).
By the way, the only reason this video isn’t included in [my ever-expanding YouTube playlist of fine live ambient performances](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-) is because toward the very end there is a brief interview with Lattimore. The interview is informative. It’s just that including a video with dialog would break the intended flow of the playlist.
