- Piece I wrote recently. RT @SactownMagazine Need reading material? Read our piece on Charlie Peacock. Here he is w/ Bono twitpic.com/5kvdm1 #
- RIP, violin teacher and critic (and, also, friend) Edith Eisler (b. 1925) http://t.co/SInmCPw via @operafella #
- File under "If I were in Tokyo": Maciunas/Fluxus exhibit at Gallery 360 Degrees: http://bit.ly/qiV55w (Events/concert, too.) #
- If you don't use Thunderbird or Outlook in Windows 7, please tell me what you use. Thanks. #
- Glad I didn't hit # while on hold with @godaddy — they're playing Squirrel Nut Zippers, missing whom is like being nostalgic for nostalgia. #
- Thank you, @godaddy: "If you would like to remain on hold without music, press pound now." #
Entering and Exiting the Electromagnetic Spectrum
Looper’s Delight: The Audio Relay unit that both serves up the Radius broadcast and provided its chance theme music
Some sounds are too good not to be looked into more closely — not just listened to closely, but inquired after. The great Radius radio show and podcast out of Chicago (theradius.tumblr.com) opens each episode with a lightly squelchy buzz of tone. It’s a fractured bit of ether that matches the show’s overall aesthetic, from the lovely simplicity of its logo (a volume knob at its most rarefied) to the elegance of its black-and-white website design, all the way down to how it has personalized the Soundcloud.com waveform visualization to match its greytone approach. And of course, there is the structured noise by composers and sound artists — among them Michael Woody, Margaret Noble, Sturqen, and Noé Cuéllar — that is the series’ subject matter. You can hear the opening sound and some of the subsequent podcasts at soundcloud.com/thethetheradius, and view the mentioned graphic elements as well as read more about the series at its website.
Having written about Radius podcasts in the past, I sent in an email asking about that opening noise. Truth be told, I didn’t at first even realize it served as a theme to the show. When I heard my first Radius podcast, I just thought that initial tonal material was part of the overall music being presented. Only later, with subsequent entries in the series, did I realize it was theme music.
Radius’ Jeff Kolar wrote back to explain what the opening sound is. He refers to it as the “Radius loop”:
The Radius loop file is a live field recording using Radius’ low-powered FM transmitter. Radius uses a mobile FM radio transmitter called the Audio Relay, a collaborative project between Temporary Services and Brennan McGaffey. More information about the Audio Relay can be found online here: theradius.tumblr.com/audiorelay.
The “Radius loop” is a field recording of the Radius transmitter powering up for the first unregulated broadcast on local 88.9 FM. I accidentally forgot to ground the radio signal, which caused the transmission to fade in and out, back and forth between the un-used commercial station, and the Radius pirated signal. The static glitch is the sound of Radius entering and exiting the electromagnetic spectrum once every 2 seconds.
A chance recording of a unique piece of technology functioning in an unexpected manner, a true glitch. It is difficult to imagine a more fitting sound to serve as the theme for the Radius series.
Techno & Nostalgia (MP3s)
Nostalgia is not an unfamiliar mode for techno. There’s a downbeat aura to its dance-floor drama, one as much about missed opportunities and lost love as it is about promise, hope, the future. The older that techno as a genre gets, even as the music itself progresses, the more its implicit vision of the future becomes an inherently nostalgic one, longing to be measured against past accomplishments. As the canon of great techno albums and great techno events solidifies, musicians must do battle as much with the past as they do with their contemporaries. This is true of any art form, but for one that, like techno, is founded on futurism, the idea of making peace with the past carries additional weight.
And, in the right hands, additional irony. There is no smirk to Extravagance, no wink, but there is a sense of distance from the subject matter that could just as well be called irony. Don’t judge the album’s cover, shown above, too quickly — what is wrong with pointing out that since the dawn of recorded music there have been forlorn lovers and listeners?
And what else to term a record, credited to Rad Manor, that before diving into commendable, slowly spun beats, opens with an ancient bit of radio pop (what sounds like, perhaps, a singing cowboy) whose archaic sensibility is echoed, literally (layers flange it beyond comprehensibility), and then supplanted by a somewhat morose piano that sounds like nothing so much as the funeral dirge for the singer (MP3). This first track, “Anselmo,” bears little immediate resemblance to the two that follow. It opens and closes with the familiar static of old vinyl, a kind of magical touch since the music heard above (perhaps “amid” is a better term) that vinyl is so radically different at the start end end of the track. But it’s nowhere as different as what follows. “Rave Names” and “White Lighter” are the names of two tracks of what would be more familiarly termed techno, the first of which is especially admirable for its disparate, arid percussion.
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/pf030/01Anselmo.mp3|titles=”Anselmo”|artists=Rd Manor]
Rad Manor is a name employed by Jacob Wright, who lives in Redlands, California, by way, reportedly, of Las Vegas, where perhaps he got his taste for old-school lounge music. Get the full release, for free download, at archive.org. Released late last month by the pandafuzz.com netlabel.
Remote in the Reeds (MP3)
The netlabel Stasisfield, at stasisfield.com, run by John Kannenberg, has ventured deep into rarefied sonic territory in the past, but its current release may be its most sonically remote yet. Recorded by Coppice, a duo from Chicago, it is an extended survey of small tones. Coppice is Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer, and they based the work, titled Vinculum (Courses), on what is described as “bellows and processed reeds” (the full materials were, apparently, an “8-channel installation with shruti box, free reeds, accordion, acoustic filters, and electronics”). As those materials might suggest, the sounds are delicate, venturing into the realm of pure tone, one after another, starting so quiet as to be mistaken for dog whistles, and slowly growing in intensity. Two things come into focus as the work proceeds. One is how the general absence of an attack, of a strong initial sonic signature, draws attention to textures within the tones. The other is how the concept of “intensity” itself is a purely relative one, because as “present” as the work becomes, that is largely in contrast with just how fragile it was when originated (MP3).
[audio:http://www.stasisfield.com/mp3z_09/SF-9001-vinculum.mp3|titles=”Vinculum”|artists=Coppice]
Originally released for free download and streaming by stasisfield.com. More on Cuéllar at noe.futurevessel.com and Kramer at josephkramer.wordpress.com. The work was recorded live on March 25 of this year at the Flea Theater in New York City, as part of Music with a View 2011, curated by Kathleen Supové.
Sketches of Sound 16: Jesse Baggs
Every month since April 2010, Disquiet.com has hosted a project called “Sketches of Sound,” in which illustrators 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 16th entry features this drawing by Jesse Baggs. Baggs grew up in Sacramento, California, close to Fulton Avenue, the street used by Robert Crumb as reference for depictions of urban alienation and decay. Unaware of his neighborhood’s deficiencies, Baggs was happily raised on a steady diet of comics and Star Wars. He has created illustrations and designs for a variety of clients, samples of which can be found on his web sites HardPressedInk.com and JesseBaggs.com. His most recent comic, Congressional Caffeine Caucus Catastrophe!, a meditation on politics, religion, and uppers, can be read on his blog.
The previous “Sketches of Sound” contributors were, in alphabetical order, Brian Biggs, Leela Corman, Warren Craghead III, Owen Freeman, S.L. Gallant, Brian Hagen, Dylan Horrocks, Megan Kelso, Minty Lewis, Natalia Ludmila, Darko Macan, Justin Orr, Hannes Pasqualini, Thorsten Sideb0ard, and Gustavo Alberto Garcia Vaca.