- RIP, Jimmy Savile (b. 1926), original Top of the Pops host and Britain's "first pop disk jockey" http://t.co/lKen0kYy #
- Nice if @goodreads made API babies with movie/food/app services. Got enough books. Like to know what DeLillo fans are drinking. #
- RT gregdavismusic: @disquiet my eventide harmonizer is broken and I can't fix it #fourthworldproblems #
- Fans of Jon Hassell should reclaim the #fourthworldproblems hashtag from the science-fiction gags. #
- Thought passing siren was part of this drone I was listening to. #fourthworldproblems #noiselife #
- Pro tip: to increase volume of barber shop, close eyes. #
- Remix contests are great because it's great to focus on the individual stems that are provided. Sometimes the submissions are good, too. #
When Synthesizers Postulate about Interstellar Sheep (MP3)
When an album cover shows Minecrafty visions of interstellar pixel sheep, one shouldn’t be surprised that the music has the kind of canned bliss often associated with early digital synth music. There are two tracks on Le Voyage du quadrupède by Pecora Pecora, and the opening, “Vent ionique,” indeed has the pulse and sheen and automation of mid-period Tangerine Dream at its most pop-kosmische, but the second, “Las Valse de Gogol,” drops the metronomic activity in favor of something more sinuous and burbly and wavering. It still sounds primed to serve as the score to a midnight event at the local planetarium (a brief liner note provides the album’s program: “A quadruped takes off aboard the Pecora Pecora spaceship on a trip across the infinite and the discovery of a timeless planet”), but it’s also subtle enough for general use (MP3).
Get the full set of Le Voyage du quadrupède, for streaming and free download, at notype.com. More from and on Pecora Pecora, which consists of Valérie Bilodeau and Marcello Marandola, at descaillouxetducarbone.com.
Fourth World Music from a Border State (MP3)
Puppet State Shaman by Chairs, on the TVK netlabel, is border-state music. It’s Fourth World music, as sonic futurist Jon Hassell envisioned it. It is the sound of cultures rubbing up against each other and producing, as a result, these fractal associative patterns of chance aesthetic convergence and contrast. At times the music of Chairs, who are based in Houston, Texas, has the feel of a neighbor’s plaintive rituals heard through an inadvertently open window, of an old-world festivity restrained by the needs of privacy (by the challenges of assimilation), yet still seeping, relentlessly if patiently, into the world.
At its best, as on “Weightlessness in the U.F.O. Corridor,” the music is downright otherworldly (MP3). The track is a midtempo mix of bowed string instruments, glottal vocalizing, dark-of-night animal calls, and chiming percussion. It is a ceremony performed not on its originally intended instrumentation, but on a hodgepodge of stand-ins collected at local pawn shops and tracked down in the aisles of Home Depot and Walmart.
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/Chairs-PuppetStateShaman/Chairs-PuppetStateShaman-02WeightlessnessInTheU.f.o.Corridor.mp3|titles=”Weightlessness in the U.F.O. Corridor”|artists=Chairs]
Track originally posted at archive.org and chairsmusic.bandcamp.com, where the album’s eight tracks are available for free download and streaming. More on Chairs at facebook.com/chairsmusic. Visit the TVK netlabel at listentovegetables.org.
Sketches of Sound 19: Scott Gilbert
Since April 2010, Disquiet.com has hosted a monthly project called “Sketches of Sound,” in which illustrators, most of them comics artists, are invited to draw a sound-related object. I post the drawing as the background of my Twitter account, twitter.com/disquiet, and then share a bit of information about the illustrator back on Disquiet.com. Call it “curating Twitter.”
The 19th entry features this drawing by Scott Gilbert. Scott Gilbert is a cartoonist, illustrator, and primarily a librarian living in Houston, Texas, since 1984. From 1989 through 2002 he produced the weekly comic strip True Artist Tales, and collaborated with Harvey Pekar on American Splendor.
The previous “Sketches of Sound” contributors were, in alphabetical order, Jesse Baggs, Brian Biggs, Leela Corman, Warren Craghead III, Scott Faulkner, Owen Freeman, S.L. Gallant, Brian Hagen, Dylan Horrocks, Megan Kelso, Minty Lewis, Natalia Ludmila, Darko Macan, Caesar Meadows, Justin Orr, Hannes Pasqualini, Thorsten Sideb0ard, and Gustavo Alberto Garcia Vaca. ”Ž
The Sound of Airports, Planes, Trains & Train Stations (MP3)
What is better than a clear audio field recording that documents the insanely fast-paced Doppler whir of the German Autobahn en route to Dresden? A clear audio field recording of the sort that appears as merely one among many by transportation-sound enthusiasts. This is the group: The Sound of Airports, Planes, Trains & Train Stations. It is housed at soundcloud.com, and as of this writing has 141 members, of whom 18 have contributed such finds as “London Underground Oxford Circus to Green Park Station,” “The Sound of the Stockholm Tram,” and the aforementioned Autobahn ambience. Many, though not all, are set for free download. The most recent is 29 seconds of bleating train noise, captured by a Ukraine-based individual who goes by the name Deep Sweet:
The beauty of highlighting activity such as Deep Sweet’s is that it is not just a recommendation to check out something, but an invitation to participate.
Visit the group The Sound of Airports, Planes, Trains & Train Stations at soundcloud.com. Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/deepsweet. (Thanks to Brian Biggs of dancerobotdance.com for the tip.)