Monolake-Ahern Termulator X MP3 (Belgrade 2008)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Over at monolake.de/downloads, Robert Henke continues his free-download series — updating it regularly, despite his numerous distractions, such as touring minimal-techno clubs, creating sound-art installations, and serving as part of the Ableton Live audio-software development team.

The latest MP3 is a half-hour live performance (Dis-Patch Festival in Belgrade, Serbia, October 18, 2008) under the moniker Termulator X, the name a computer-music pun on the old Public Enemy DJ. Termulator X teams Henke (better known as Monolake) with Jay Ahern. Once upon a time, a duo performance might mean something with chamber-music efficiency, like piano and cello, but in these multitasking times, the two perform on a veritable symphony’s worth of equipment: Ahern (Roland TR 808 Rhythm Composer, Roland TB 303 Bass Line, MIDI Clock & Panic Button, Master Sync), Henke (Effects, Filters, Processing and Mixing, Monome / MAX Step Sequencer, Physical Modeling Feedback Horn Instrument, Software Synthesis Engine).

Despite the heavy tech, the track is a rarefied treat, built on terse, pneumatic percussion and laced with light, tremulous synth pulses. Even as it builds over time — and build it does, from dessicated chatter to a rampage of electrons — it retains an arid, stripped-bare core (MP3). One note of relative caution. The track was compressed at a generous 320kbps, making the file over 70mb.

The performance was previously broadcast last month as part of Mary Anne Hobbs’s BB1 show (bbc.co.uk/radio1, maryannehobbs.blogspot.com).

Food Synesthesia MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The ongoing podcast series Le Menu Gastrophonique focuses on the sound of food. Each entry consists of field recordings made not out in the natural environment, but deep inside kitchens — and, at least in one case, the human digestive system. As such, it seeks to document Erik Satie’s conception of the music inherent in everyday household objects and activity.

That conception of happenstance sound as music goes a step further in the series’s 10th entry, which focuses on a woman who lost her sense of smell at a young age, but developed a coincident synesthesia that, to her mind, gives sonic properties to food. This podcast includes an interview with her about her experience of food and music, and where they overlap (MP3, resonancefm.com).

Justin Shay Phones It In (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The Phoning It In radio show and podcast gives new meaning to the whole idea of lo-fi: featured musicians literally phone it in, performing over their telephone. The series’s archive is pretty deep, so for starters check out Justin Shay‘s performance, dated June 29, 2006 (MP3, phoningitin.net). Shay employs a Loop Station to build expansive passages from delicate, quivering layers of sound. His Phoning It In set includes two pieces, one almost song-like thanks to the presence of a rustic woodwind, the other all the more ethereal thanks to its absence. Both have an introspective, casual ambience that is amplified by Phoning It In’s techno-primitivism. More on Shay at virb.com/justinshay.

Touch the Buddha

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The picture pretty much says it all: the Buddha Machine is now available as an application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. That is, the lofi sound-art gadget has been virtualized for the Apple phone, which already hosts, among other music-minded apps, Brian Eno’s Bloom. The sounds in this app are from version 1.0 of the Buddha Machine. More details at fm3buddhamachine.com. Get the app at itunes.apple.com (iTunes and iPhone required). Interview with Christiaan Virant of FM3 on the recent Buddha Machine 2.0 release, right here at disquiet.com

Electro-acoustic Birdsong MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The mix of birdsong and electronic synthesis that serves as the soundtrack to Ven Voisey‘s installation “Cuckoo Radio” (the subject of yesterday’s disquiet.com “Image of the Week”) presents light play between two distinct realms — between the animal kingdom and the domain of human musicianship, between organic and constructed, between field recording and composition. But those differences are less compelling, in the end, than are the delicate parallels that Voisey locates, how bits of digital information can be heard at play in the natural world, and how tones, fragments, and rhythms produce a memorable, if one-sided, series of collaborations.

Because the bird melodies are so, well, chirpy, and because much of the electronic material is more soundscape than song, it’s especially effective when the human side of the equation allows for something hummable. The track titled “2 o’clock: I love you,” for example (there are a dozen tracks in all, beginning at 9am and ending at 8pm, one per hour), includes a little burble of a tune, albeit just for a moment (MP3), before diving into something more along the lines of ruminative glass-harmonica drones, and “3 o’clock: isn’t it ironic?” has the plinky verve of a child’s toy (MP3).

There is also, throughout, a touch of Morse code — at times serving as tuned percussion (MP3), at others as a glitchy fissure (MP3). The Morse “dot-dot-dash” patterning seems appropriate, since it’s presumed that the birdsong itself contains some sort of coded data, though what exactly the birds are saying to each other we may never know.

More information on Voisey’s work at v—v.net.