Horchata’s Amazonian Sonics (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Michael Palace likens the sound of his nearly hour-long drone work, Curuá Una, to “the slow loss and decay of the research station to the forest.” Palace, who records under the name Horchata, is referring to the almost reverential solitude of the piece, which was recently released on the Dark Winter netlabel (MP3). The track is a slowly swelling mass that suggests emotional burden as much as it does decay. It’s a heavy, leaden sound, rich with foundation-rattling depth and enlivened by occasional ringing tones, buried but not lost in the immersive audio. Palace reports that while some of the source material was recorded deep in the Amazon, that material has been subsequently subsumed by a healthy does of reverb, and is augmented further thanks to a host of synthesizers.

[audio:http://www.darkwinter.com/dw062/dw062-Horchata-01-Curu%e1_Una.mp3|titles=”Curuá Una”|artists=Horchata]

More details at darkwinter.com.

Images of the Week: Exploding Gristleism

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Tantalizing additional updates on the Throbbing Gristle / FM3 gadget Gristleism, a new handheld looping device that combines the utilitarian ingenuity of FM3’s famed Buddha Machine with music by Throbbing Gristle. Over at gristleism.com, a fantastic exploded view has been uploaded. It is clearly a tribute to the exploded view of the original Buddha Machines, which suggested that there was a little Buddha inside. In the Gristleism image, we can see an old-school microphone, the sort that Bing Crosby would have sung into, plus a TV screen, and a tape reel, and other objects:

There’s also a painted version of the exploded view:

And while we’re at it, also now available is the list of the 13 loops:

01 – “Persuasion”
02 – “Hamburger Lady”
03 – “Twenty Jazz Funk Greats”
04 – “Thank You Brian”
05 – “Maggot Death”
06 – “Rabbit Snare”
07 – “Lyre Liar”
08 – “Wimpy bar”
09 – “Sex String Theory”
10 – “Heathen Earth”
11 – “Industrial Intro”
12 – “R & D”
13 – “After After Cease to Exist”

More info at gristleism.com. Gristleism is available for pre-order now through various distributors, and is due for release in late November.

Quote of the Week: Three Locations of Sound, 1948

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

From the introduction to the new book In the Blink of an Ear: Toward a Non-Cochlear Sonic Art by Seth Kim-Cohen:

    The beginning is never the beginning. Before 1948, there was 1947, and so on. Nevertheless, thought finds it useful to indicate “here” or “there,” “now” or “then.” The thinking of this book accordingly begins in 1948 in three different places: the Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française in Paris; the Muzak Corporation in Fort Mill, South Carolina; and the Macomba Lounge in Chicago. By taking up its task and its story in these three locations, this book starts to construct a claim: that something changed as as result of what happened in these three places, in this one year. What this book proposes is that the events in Paris, Fort Mill, and Chicago were the iconic symptoms of a change in music, a change in music has it had been conceived and practiced, primarily in Europe and North America.

According to the publisher (Continuum, which also published the 33 1/3 series of novella-length album-centric books), the artists and musicians focused on in Blink of an Ear include George Brecht, John Cage, Janet Cardiff, Marcel Duchamp, Bob Dylan, Valie Export, Luc Ferrari, Jarrod Fowler, Jacob Kirkegaard, Alvin Lucier, Robert Morris, Muddy Waters, John Oswald, Marina Rosenfeld, Pierre Schaeffer, Stephen Vitiello, and La Monte Young. More information at the publisher’s website, continuumbooks.com. More on the author at kim-cohen.com. His One Reason to Live: Conversations About Music was published in 2006 by Errant Bodies.

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

/ By Marc Weidenbaum
  • Also plotting future MP3 Discussion Group topics. Suggestions welcome, certainly. #
  • Listening to foghorns. Imagining they guard our neighborhood, with Sutro Tower taking the other flank. #
  • Joe Carnahan directing remakes of Bunny Lake Is Missing and of A-Team. Please tell me Cliff Martinez does the score at least for Bunny Lake. #
  • The quantitative pleasures of ebooks: I am 45.2497952497953% of the way through Jonathan Lethem's new novel, Chronic City. #
  • Google apps I use continuously: Reader, Calendar, search, Tasks, Contacts. … Often: YouTube. … A little: Docs. … Rarely: Gmail, Wave. #
  • RIP, composer Victor Mizzy (b. 1916), goth hero for having composed Addams Family theme. (Also, a heap of Don Knotts flicks.) #
  • @sublamp Thanks for the ramen tip. I usually go to Daikokuya when I'm in L.A., and I'll check out Orochan next time. in reply to sublamp #
  • Got a Google Voice invite, but what I'd really appreciate is a Twitter Lists invite. #
  • The ramen tonight at Katana-ya was good, but I'd like to enjoy the illusion that "spicy" means more than a tablespoon of Sriracha hot sauce. #
  • We're doing a group-listen of the recent Gentleman Losers album, Dustland, over at Disquiet.com: http://is.gd/4r6at #
  • Back from APE. The first Alternative Press Expo in awhile at which I didn't stumble upon some homemade beats/atmosphere/sound-collage CDR. #

Taylor Deupree’s Sound-a-Day Project (MP3s)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The year is slowly coming to its end, and with it all manner of “[X] per day” projects, which seem to proliferate on the Internet. One such endeavor is the One Sound Each Day venture by musician and label owner Taylor Deupree. His little instances of sound have been the subject of Downstream entries in the past, most recently back in mid-August (disquiet.com). Among his October entries are field recordings and studio experiments. These four are among the month’s most quiet, and I’ve sequenced them here as a little suite, to allow for an extended listening experience. It opens and closes with “real world” sounds, one constructed (an airport games arcade: MP3) and one of nature (leaves being rustled: MP3), with two studio improvisations in between (a simple gamelan bell instrument: MP3; a loop of harmonium: MP3) — despite which differences in sourcing, all have a fragility that, when investigated, reveals endless audio details.

[audio:http://www.12k.com/onesoundeachday/october/oct_05_2009.mp3,http://www.12k.com/onesoundeachday/october/oct_02_2009.mp3,http://www.12k.com/onesoundeachday/october/oct_01_2009.mp3,http://www.12k.com/onesoundeachday/october/oct_12_2009.mp3|titles=”games arcade”,”gamelan bell instrument”,”harmonium”,”leaves”|artists=Taylor Deupree,Taylor Deupree,Taylor Deupree,Taylor Deupree]

Visit the project at 12k.com/onesoundeachday.