Through a Wine Glass, Darkly (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The glass harmonica is one of the earliest ambient tools, long predating the arrival of domestic electricity, let alone of electronic music. The harmonica, generally a wine glass filled with a liquid, can be pitched according to how much liquid is in it. But pitch aside, the harmonica’s powers are twofold. First, there is the ability to play it at length, the finger making its way around the circumference of the class; with two harmonicas, one can simulate an endless note. Second, there is the wavering quality of its sound. The music emitted by a glass harmonica comprises a paradoxical noise, one that has the sinuous manner of liquid yet often seems shot through with bright, sharp overtones. James Fahy, who records as Ambienteer, recently ventured through a wine glass darkly and posted the results of his trip. Titled “Crimson,” the lengthy piece (just under 18 minutes) expands the glass harmonica’s vocabulary by treating it with digital effects (MP3), resulting in an aural field of texture and tone.

[audio:http://www.ambienteer.com/dl/crimson_96kbps.mp3|titles=”Crimson”|artists=Ambienteer]

Writes Fahy of his venture:

I made this dark and brooding piece in the early hours. It’s made from just a few samples of me playing with a glass of red wine. Using my hands to make it sing, I then manipulated it in Ableton Live, using only its internal effects. To experience the intended result, this track needs headphones and a dark silent space in which you can relax undisturbed.

As I let my mind drift, I started to hear additional frequencies, fleeting voices, but I couldn’t be sure if they were real or imagined. I hope you get something from it? It won’t be for everyone.

I’ve also made a stretch version of this, but at 120 mins in length, I’ve yet to decide if I’ll post it.

That audio above is the lightweight, 96kbps version. There’s also a 320kbps rendering (MP3). More details at Ambienteer’s website, ambienteer.com.

Shoegazy Cello MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

At some point, it may be necessary to retire certain sources from the Disquiet.com week-daily Downstream series of legal, freely downloadable MP3s — they’re be treated the way certain jersey numbers are when they’re retired by sports teams. The list of such luminaries to be hung on the proverbial wall would include eminent podcasts, such as Touch Radio and Phoning It In, whose bounty alone could fill up a week’s postings — and it would include certain prolific musicians, such as Ooray, aka Ted Laderas.

Laderas’ main tool is his cello, which he shifts through all manner of devices until he becomes a one-man orchestra, a strings-only affair that sounds at times like the Boston Pops doing a show of My Bloody Valentine. Well, that’s an imprecise comparison — the Boston Pops would play up the melodies buried deep in the shoegazer music that MBV helped define. Meanwhile Laderas, to his listeners’ pleasure, comes at that sonic legacy from the opposite direction. His thick, rich, ethereal pieces emphasize the textures, the sonorous miasma of shoegazer pop.

Take “Lalalalah,” which he posted recently. Unlike some Ooray work, which is lush beyond ambiguity, the piece is clearly played on a cello — there’s enough slow sawing to keep that self-evident. But in time that cello is heard as one among many, perhaps an infinite many, cellos laid out to the horizon as in a carnival hall of mirrors:

Original track at soundcloud.com/ooray. More on Ooray/Laderas at myspace.com/ooraygun and 15people.net.

Instrumental Jazz-Meets-Electronica MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Upright bass? Check. Taut, mechy beat? Check. Loungey echo? Check. Washboard chucka-chucka? Check. Light keys? Check. Sudden break? Check. Entirely refreshing? Check. The opening track from David Rinman‘s Beyond the Billows of Boom continues the Dusted Wax label’s string of jazz-meets-electronica releases in fine form. Titled “Based On Instrumental” (MP3), the piece mixes up brief samples of instruments — samples long enough to have musical form, but brief enough that the repetition plays up the tension between inherent acoustic resonance and the 20/20 hindsight of instant, continuous repetition. With each return to that funky little bass riff, the analog sound drifts toward digital, its looseness providing something retroactively formal. Rinman plays up the rhythm by switching out the drums, or introducing florid elements toward the end, including a bright keyboard line and some sublimated chanting.

[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/DWK058/David_Rinman_-_01_-_Based_On_Instrumental.mp3|titles=”Based On Instrumental”|artists=David Rinman]

Get the full set of tracks at dustedwax.org.

Wedding Party MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Some brides- and grooms-to-be pass out cheap cameras at their weddings, as a means to collect casual, nonprofessional, candid documentation of the momentous event. Tim Dwyer (who goes by Off Land) recorded his with a microphone — not just the ceremony but, as he puts it in the liner note to his album Anniversary, “pre-ceremony unpacking / chatter / music, post-ceremony celebration / music, and a hike up a mountain.” Dwyer later took those raw materials and formed a seven-track release of treated field recordings. Thus the water from the hike, likely, surfaces in “Streams” (MP3), though on many of the cuts the sounds have been transformed into something more textural than recognizable, such as the bell-like tones and fire-crackle static of “Ascent” (MP3).

[audio:
http://www.archive.org/download/rb083/04-Streams.mp3|titles=”Streams”|artists=Tim Dwyer] [audio:
http://www.archive.org/download/rb083/05-Ascent.mp3|titles=”Ascent”|artists=Tim Dwyer]

Get the full release at restingbell.net.

Tangents: Apple’s iOS, Recursive Remixes, Sonic ID

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Recommended reading, news, and so forth elsewhere:

The developers of the iOS app Sonorasaurus weigh in on Apple’s restrictions on developers. Let’s just say the situation is a tad more complicated than Steve Jobs suggested in his presentation today (via engadget.com: “10:14AM What about the ones we don’t approve? Well why is that? What are the reasons? 1: the app doesn’t do what you said it would. 2: It uses private APIs… and if they change the app will break… and the third reason? They crash.”) Here’s Sonorasaurus’ take, from sonorasaurus.com:

Why can’t I use the music from the iPod section? Why do I have to add files and maintain a separate library for Sonorasaurus?

The answer to this is basically that Apple does now want you to be able to use your iPod library. Applications like Sonorasaurus, and many other music apps, are restricted from using the songs in the iPod library.

We have done everything we can in terms of compromises by including iTunes File sharing and an HTTP Server, but until Apple lifts the iPod library restriction we are not able to give you the most convenient option possible.

Why the restriction is in place continues to baffle us. We have sat and tried to think of pros and cons to give the issue a sense of purpose and balance, but so far nothing seems to go in the CONS column.

News courtesy of Roddy Schrock of eyebeam.org in Manhattan: some codes for discounts on the institution’s summer classes (info at
eyebeam.org). “SUMMER” will get you $100 off; for two people taking a class together, “COLLAB” will reduce the cost to $300/person; and for three people taking a class together, use “GROUPIE” to get the cost to $250. Classes include Kaho Abe‘s alternative controls for game play.

SoundWalk2010 will be held in Long Beach, California, on October 9 of this year. Deadline for submissions is Sunday, August 1. More info at soundwalk.org.

Alan Lockett‘s write-up at furthernoise.org of the Moritz von Oswald Trio draws from the Disquiet.com “MP3 Discussion Group” of the group’s recent work (see disquiet.com).

The website rebakery.com is an ongoing “recursive remix project” (along the lines of the “remix tree” at freesound.org).

The website ohio.com notes a great New York Times correction: “A dance review on Friday … misidentified the author of the text to which David Neumann‘s Tough the Tough (redux) is set. The author is Will Eno — not the musician Brian Eno.”

Martyn Ware (of Human League and Heaven 17) is a partner in sonicid.com, along with Noel Franus and Dan Kirby. Their mission? “[T]o demystify sonic branding and identity and give it the same credence as other design disciplines.”