Quote of the Week: Spock’s Song

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Star Trek‘s Spock, reminiscing in a short comic published in the May 2009 issue of Wired:

    By the time I joined Starfleet years later, I had become quite proficient at the harp.

    However, I noticed an interesting effect of the music on the human mind. For Vulcans the music was a means of purging emotions by giving them logical, ordered musical forms…

    Whereas for humans, the music was a trigger of emotions. I saw otherwise calm and reasoned shipmates become quite animated when exposed to music.

The comic is by Paul Pope and K/O, and the Wired issue was guest edited by JJ Abrams, director of the upcoming new Star Trek film. K/O is a pseudonym for the screenwriters of the new film: Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, both longtime Abrams associates who worked on Alias, Mission: Impossible III, Fringe, and other projects. Read the full comic, six pages in all, at wired.com.

Microsonic MP3 from [neuma]

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Mourning Star is a single-song release by [neuma], but that single song is intended to be heard in three parts. The song/album’s cover divides it into exact sections, the timing down to the 100ths of a second. Part one ends at 4:01,394 and part two at 8:06,318. The full length is a little over 10 and a half minutes — 10:03,111, to be precise. The song is an exercise is atmospheric microsonics. It opens with quiet noise, before adding a thread of rudimentary knocking, less a rhythm than a pounding, and then fading in some synthesized tones, before the whole thing fades out like a dying radio signal (MP3).

[audio:http://biodata.microbiorecords.net/b_23/%5bneuma%5d%20-%20Mourning%20star.mp3|titles=”Mourning Star”|artists=neuma]

What’s remarkable is that the transitions in no way threaten the piece’s internal consistency; each change is a step forward, not a step aside. In the end, the triptych is a matter of noise, beats, and tones — the holy trinity of contemporary experimental electronic music. More info at the releasing netlabel, biodata.microbiorecords.net.

Stephen Vitiello / Andrew Deutsch Installation Score MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Up on Stephen Vitiello‘s website is a segment of a score he created for an installation currently on view at the Warehouse Gallery in Syracuse, New York. The show is titled Sound Scores: Paper, Wood, Stone and Glass, and it’s a collaboration between Vitiello and Andrew Deutsch. In this excerpt, a rung bell keeps the very slow pace, while all manner of wheezy and delicate sounds follow one another (MP3). All the sonic materials are sourced from found-object sculptures constructed by Deutsch.

[audio:http://stephenvitiello.com/mp3/excerpt_from_syracuse_installation.mp3
|titles=”Shifting or Sifting (bells, bowls and bits of glass)”|artists=Stephen Vitiello and Andrew Deutsch]

More information at thewarehousegallery.org, from which the image below is borrowed. The show runs from April 2 through June 6. More on Vitiello (right) at stephenvitiello.com, and on Deutsch (left) at art.alfred.edu.

Leafcutter John Remix Contest MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Leafcutter John has a remix contest going on. The source material is the five constituent parts of his slocore folk tune “Big Black Eyes” (MP3), available for downloard as an archive (ZIP). The segments consist of a guitar and vocal tone; the background vocal of atmospheric syllables, with a Tropicália vibe; deeply echoed piano; sparse slide guitar; and the proper vocal, with quieter guitar. As of this writing, there are over two dozen entries, and the contest runs through April 30.

Among the highlights are the Bluermutt mix, which extends the instrumental introduction, introducing light electronic patters (MP3, myspace.com/bluermutt). The Hardy Tree added scratchy vinyl and chamber-music instrumentation (MP3, myspace.com/thehardytree). Rotted Karma makes the effort to cut up and reconfigure the piano into a more solid harmonic line, and also plays with layers of vocals (MP3). Seabuckthorn puts the vocals and guitars into some rapid reverberation (MP3, myspace.com/seabuckthornmusic). Fabio Keiner‘s is more demix than remix, slowing down the various parts, for a morguey soundtrack of drones, Tuvan vocals, and slack guitar (MP3, jamendo.com).

Sunken Foal‘s is perhaps the most thorough re-imagining thus far, with bent synthesized tones, a chaotic rhythmic undercurrent, an elevation of the chorus, and an appreciation for how the various instrumental moments, notably the piano, can be employed to dramatic effect (MP3, myspace.com/wesunkthefoal).

[audio:http://leafcutterjohn.com/audio/big_black_eyes.mp3,http://leafcutterjohn.com/audio/BigBlackEyes_bluermutt_rmx.mp3,http://highpointlowlife.com/leafcutter/BBEthehardytree_remix.mp3,http://highpointlowlife.com/leafcutter/big_black_eyesRottedKerma.mp3,http://highpointlowlife.com/leafcutter/BBEAndyCartwright.mp3,http://highpointlowlife.com/leafcutter/BBEfabiokeiner.mp3,http://highpointlowlife.com/leafcutter/bbeSunkenRMX%201.mp3|titles=”Big Black Eyes”,”Big Black Eyes (Bluermutt Mix)”,”Big Black Eyes (The Hardy Tree Mix)”,”Big Black Eyes (Rotted Karma Mix)”,”Big Black Eyes (Seabuckthorn Mix)”,”Big Black Eyes (Fabio Keiner Mix)”,”Big Black Eyes (Sunken Foal Mix)”|artists=Leafcutter John,Leafcutter John and Bluermutt,Leafcutter John and the Hardy Tree,Leafcutter John and Rotted Karma,Leafcutter John and Seabuckthorn,Leafcutter John and Fabio Keiner,Leafcutter John and Sunken Foal]

More details, including an ongoing list of entries, at leafcutterjohn.com.

Tara Rodgers Image-as-Sound MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is the second sound art piece I’ve come across that takes as its source the January 20, 2009, inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States. For it, Tara Rodgers investigated the pixels of an aerial view of the National Mall on the day of the event, and converted the RGB color data to, as she put it in a brief description at her safety-valve.org website, “sound and noise. … [E]ach line plays back left to right in stereo, from top to bottom in the photo” (MP3). The photo that served as the score for Rodgers’s “Aerial View of Inauguration, In Sound” appears here:

[audio:http://www.safety-valve.org/audio/012009.mp3|titles=”Aerial View of Inauguration, In Sound”|artists=Tara Rodgers]

The resulting audio is understandably pixelated, each split-second sound a perfectly formed, standalone object in time. They bounce like several dozen little balls on a taut metal surface, like rain drops caught in slow motion.

The other Obama sound art entry was by Christopher DeLaurenti (disquiet.com).