What a Picture Sounds Like (MP3s)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

What does this picture sound like?

Not what does it look like — it looks like what it is, which according to Tim Prebble, who shot it, is Tanah Lot in Bali, photographed during a visit in March 2007. A year later he posted field recordings of the environment, including some rowdy ones captured during New Year celebrations (at his website, musicofsound.co.nz).

And more recently, as part of a new experimental series (titled simply Synaesthesia — i.e., the confusion of senses) at his musicofsound.co.nz site, Prebble asked his readers to compose works that are suggested by the image. Three audio segments have been uploaded as of this writing, associated with the Tanah Lot photograph. Martin‘s is a dirgey drone supplemented by echoed vocals and a slow, noisey rhythm (MP3). The track by üav works in bell tones and kettle-style drums and otherworldly halos of sound (MP3). And a piece by ccu is more fragile and closely mic’d than the other two, a mix of taut ringing sounds (perhaps from a kalimna) and rough surface texture (MP3). All three, especially when heard with Prebble’s photograph in mind, suggest rituals at dawn or dusk. There’s further discussion in the post’s comments section.

[audio:http://www.musicofsound.co.nz/SY002/SY002Martin-thehiddenlobby.mp3|titles=”Synaesthesia 002″|artists=Martin] [audio:http://www.musicofsound.co.nz/SY002/SY002%20uav.mp3|titles=”Synaesthesia 002″|artists=üav] [audio:http://www.musicofsound.co.nz/SY002/sy002ccu.mp3|titles=”Synaesthesia 002″|artists=ccu]

Read more in detail at musicofsound.co.nz. (There was one previous one, also at musicofsound.co.nz.)

Filtered Classical Music (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Contour Editions is a new record label based out of New York City. Its first three releases consist of two free album-length downloads and one long-form video. There are also plans for “physical” releases. Gil Sansón‘s Por la Adversidad a las Estrellas, Contour’s inaugural free release, is a series of three transformation tracks, each taking a different source material as its starting point. The first track on the album, “Por la Adversidad a las Estrellas 1,” is a ghostly mix of quavering tonal elements and eerie little brittle noises (MP3). There are hints from whence it came — elements of vocal tones, as well as that certain randomness that suggests a natural field recording — but the truth is still surprising.

[audio:http://www.contoureditions.com/releases/ce.onl_0001/ce.onl_0001/Por%20la%20Adversidad%20a%20las%20Estrellas%201.mp3|titles=”Por la Adversidad a las Estrellas 1″|artists=Gil Sansón]

Writes Sansón of the procedure that yielded the track:

“[It] makes use of samples of contemporary classical works that were submitted to looping and filtering processes. additionally, a rainfall field recording emerges slowly from the mixture of voices and instruments, and gradually becomes the main character of the piece.”

Two other tracks on the album transform electric guitar and a piano piece by Kenneth Kirschner. Full Sansón release at contoureditions.com.

Echoed Guitar via RjDj (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

“RjDj” is the name of a great iPhone (and iPod Touch) application that is, in fact, less an app than it is an environment for apps. At a practical level, what that means is that RjDj hosts various “scenes” that produce sound, the best among them being apps that take audio input and turn it into something new — imagine walking down the street, for example, and hearing the world repeated and stuttered and digitally magnified and transformed. To close out 2009, the crew at RjDj put together a Best of RjDj compilation of 19 choice examples of RjDj in action. Among them is this entry by Nil Jones, in which acoustic guitar is echoed into something deeply psychedelic:

You need to have Flash installed to listen directly on the site. Install Flash or you can download the recording instead

 

There’s more information about the track, along with an MP3-download option, at rjdj.me/user/nilcjones. And there’s more about the EchoChamber scene, which was developed by Georg Bosch and employed by Jones in the production of his track, at rjdj.me. The “cover” image to the EchoChamber scene, shown to the right, displays some of the various ways that touching and tilting and shaking the iPod/Phone enacts various modes of audio manipulation. Get the full Best of RjDj 2009 compilation for free at rjdj.me as a Zip file. Note: the RjDj app is free, but some scenes require a small fee.

Mangled Cassette Players (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The first blast comes a few minutes in. Up until that moment, it’s all rough noise, certainly, but on a nanoscale, the rough noise of two dust mites going at it under your bed at 3am. Then comes this sharp, ragged, dastardly sound, like an unrequested wake-up call enacted vigorously with a torn paper bag — and from then on, all bets are off. There’s wild squiggles, and a thick white noise, and high-pitched tones to set off your inner canine, and an ever-present sense of warping that proves to be the work’s telltale component.

That warping is the sound of cassette-tape machines being artfully mangled (MP3). Occasionally there is the Chipmunks sound of a taped voice being played at a speed unintended by whoever first committed it to tape, squeaky-fast voices semi-buried amid all that chaos. This is “Cittacaura” by David Kirby, an Atlanta-based musician who runs the excellent netlabel, Homophoni, on which the track was recently released. “Cittacaura” is Kirby at work on his instrument of choice, a quartet of tape recorders, recording the material as he performed it, live, in early September in the confines of a studio.

[audio:http://homophoni.com/david%20kirby%20-%20cittacaura.mp3|titles=”Cittacaura”|artists=David Kirby]

More, including a recording of the track compressed in the “lossless” FLAC format, at the release page: homophoni.com.

(The above art, which accompanies the release, is by Andrea Sanders, at whose blog, iloveallofyou.com, there is a series of instructional artworks — art that is produced as a series of instructions that are can be enacted by anyone. Number six in the series is an intriguing project for multiple microphones.)

Images of the Week: Zimoun 2009

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

These are details of four installed sound-art works produced by the artist Zimoun in 2009:

“25 prepared dc-motors / wire isolated 1.2mm”

“216 prepared dc-motors / filler wire 1.0mm”

“5 prototypes / 5 prepared dc-motors on different materials”

“5 pvc-hoses 1.0mm, compressed air”

Each work takes a multiple of small mechanisms, arranging them elegantly with an eye toward minimal affect and maximized geometry. When turned on, each results in a sound work with a varying degree of chance.

More at zimoun.ch.