Sketches of Sound 18: Scott Faulkner

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

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 18th entry features this drawing by Scott Faulkner. A lifelong resident of Washington State, Faulkner graduated from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, where he contributed his first published comics to the student newspaper. There he also discovered the work of some of his cartooning heroes, Matt Groening, Lynda Barry, and Charles Burns, and moved to Seattle to join the vibrant ’90s alternative comics scene. Today, he works with the cartoonist collective The Bureau of Drawers, and more of his work can be seen at his website, vinylsaurus.com.

The previous “Sketches of Sound” contributors were, in alphabetical order, Jesse Baggs, Brian Biggs, Leela Corman, Warren Craghead III, 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.

Kid Koala on Scratchboard and Scratching

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Kid Koala is one of the mainstays of the Ninja Tune label, his expressly nostalgic and maudlin approach to turntablism fitting comfortably between texture-oriented art music and mood-setting party music. His latest release, Space Cadet, is a follow-up to an earlier such venture, Nufonia Must Fall: it’s a graphic novel with a score. He recently discussed the overlap between his comics and turntablism — between the scratchboard on which he made the drawings, and the scratching that is the foundation of his music — as part of a wide-ranging, and highly recommended, interview on the record label’s podcast. It’s downloadable as an M4A file — essentially an MP3 with embedded images, and a slightly more finicky nature in regard to playback.

Among the influences on his work discussed during the podcast interview is Carter Burwell, best known for his scores for Coen Brothers movies. Koala talks about the difference between scoring a movie and scoring a book, noting that while the music is intended to be listened to while one reads the graphic novel, he’s not particularly dictatorial about the speed at which the book is read, or how specific instances in the score are intended to align with instants in the narrative.

He’s touring in support of the album. The evenings are something he’s described as a “seated headphone concert,” in which the audience settles into “space pods” and listens to the music on devices that allow them to adjust the volume. Interestingly, Amon Tobin, arguably the other main artist on the Ninja tune roster, is also doing a multimedia tour right now, though Tobin’s audio-visual effort, titled Isam, is far more technologically demanding than Koala’s (it’s described at amontobin.com as a “25′ x 14′ x 8′ multi-dimensional/ shape shifting 3-D art installation … enveloping him and the audience”).

Video originally posted at youtube.com. More on the release at kidkoala.com and ninjatune.net.

Morning Chimes from Iceland (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Jóhann Friðgeir Jóhannsson, who hails from Ísafjörður, Iceland, and records as 7oi, has in the track “Yup” crafted the perfect little morning-music instrumental. One could do worse than to set one’s alarm clock to “Yup,” and let its slow accrual of chime-like tones set the pace of the day. The initial pulses have the appeal of a metronome made of soft cotton, and in time it gains layers, each slightly apart from each other, lending it a kind of minimalism-lite appeal. Jóhannsson also posted the above video (best viewed in HD), which tracks the slow expansion of the composition.

Audio originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/7oi. Video at vimeo.com. More on Jóhannsson/7oi at sevenoi.com. Another track by him, “Wsps,” was featured here back in April of this year.

The Sounds Behind the Sounds (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

There’s a tremendous narrative juncture early on in Mathias Delplanque‘s “Radio Station,” when the droning electronic music that has been playing thus far is stopped, and we hear what seems to be the button on a cassette player pushed. We then exit a composed world and enter the “real” one, as presented as a series of footsteps and other “real world” sounds. The distinction between real and composed fades quickly, though, as droning, semi-melodic music returns, interpseresed with voices speaking and cars passing by (MP3). Is this subsequent musical sound the work of the individual whose footstapes we heard? Is it the soundtrack of the individual’s life. Are the two mutually exclusive? The sounds, as it turns out, were all collected in May 2008 by Delplanque at JET FM (Nantes), a radio station. The result is a non-narrative, impressionistic documentary on the sound world of the radio station — the sounds, as it were, behind the sounds.

[audio:http://download.cronicaelectronica.org/cronicast083.mp3|titles=”Radio Station”|artists=Mathias Delplanque]

Track originally posted at cronicaelectronica.org More on mathiasdelplanque.com. Learn more about the radio station at jetfm.asso.fr.

The Two Worlds of Alva Noto (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Alva Noto is both the odd figure out, and the compositor of odd figures. In the month of September these roles coincided, as he was both initiating a new art installation at the esteemed Manhattan gallery Pace (under his given name, Carsten Nicolai — thepacegallery.com) and posting an hour-long mix on the dancefloor-friendly website residentadvisor.net. The exhibit features a work for an inflated parachute (see image below). The mix collects two dozen tracks into a purposefully seam-laden whole, one that dispenses with the idea of a steady beat in favor of peculiar congruities, sudden silences, and expanses of stasis. It opens with the locked-groove rigor of Andy Stott’s rarefied “Execution” and proceeds through several of Noto’s own works, and everything from MIA to dance-oriented Boys Noize, somehow working in a bit of Angelo Badalamenti (from the Mulholland Dr. soundtrack) and currently ubiquitous Steve Reich — his pastoral “Reed Phase,” which follows some squelchy Nine Inch Nails, appears briefly on its own, and then settles under the latter-day disco of MMM.

Registration at residentadvisor.net is required for free download of the mix. More on Nicolai/Noto at carstennicolai.de and alvanoto.com.