Quote of the Week: Scanner’s Alarm

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

From the product description of the new Philips’ Wake-up Light 2008 clock:

Combining a reading lamp with an alarm clock, the new Wake-up Light offers a more pleasant way to wake up by gradually illuminating as it turns on to simulate a sunrise and follow the natural rhythm of the body. This is further enhanced by the diversity of alarm sounds to choose from to accompany the waking experience, from sounds derived from nature to a gentle, ambient waking alarm.

Those sounds are by none other than Scanner (aka Robin Rimbaud), who describes the project further on his site, scannerdot.com:

This month I’m finally allowed to speak openly about a major project I’ve been collaborating on for the last year with Philips in The Netherlands. Available in the stores now in Europe is the new Wake-up Light 2008 which evokes sunrise for a more pleasant and natural waking experience.

As a dawn simulator, no matter what time of day you wish to wake up of course, the Wake-Up Light combines a reading lamp with an alarm clock and offers a far more pleasant way to start a day, simulating a sunrise to echo the natural rhythm of the body. With the light slowly increasing in intensity over 30 minutes prior to the set time it produces a far gentler entry into the day. I consulted on the project and then designed several sound environments to balance this awakening, using natural sounds through to chimes and more musical shapes. Once fully illuminated, the lamp recalls a sunset on the horizon via a divider between the luminescence and the dark part of the object. So finally I’m able to get inside the bedrooms of unsuspecting people, into their innermost sanctums and fuse into their environment without detection!

More on the alarm clock at design.philips.com.

Drone MP3 (From Foley Filesharing Forum)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

It’s a good sign that an emporium of sound files is not just business as usual when (1) the goods are free and (2) among the standard categories (“Animals,” “Nature,” “Industry and Machines”) are such sets as “Unreal Ambiances” and “Sound Art.” Welcome to soundsnap.com.

The categories on the sound-file trading post get more promising the deeper you dig. “Unreal Ambiances,” for example, is subdivided into “Alien Atmospheres,” “Drones,” “Horror,” “Musical Atmospheres,” “Other Ambiances,” and “Rumbles.” Individual tracks are themselves tagged for more precise classification, so a given drone, such as “Drone Landscape 6 JO,” uploaded by Soundsnap participant Jon Oh, is listed as “drone, ethereal, metallic,” a pretty good summary of its hovering, ghostly quality (MP3).

Aspiring filmmakers can think of Soundsnap as a one-stop foley-filesharing forum, but it’s more than that — it’s a community of sound enthusiasts. (Found via lifehacker.com.)

MP3 Digestif

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

If Fantastic Voyage had been an existential work of sound art, instead of a lovably cornball sci-fi flick, it would be the fifth episode of the excellent podcast series Le Menu Gastrophonique. The series (as first written about here last month: disquiet.com) investigates food from the perspective of the sense arguably least associated with food: sound.

All the episodes thus far have focused on cooking, but the fifth takes as its subject what happens after you eat: “If you even asked yourself this question, we invite you to travel with le Menu Gastrophonique on a journey into the digestive system”¦from top to tail!” Yes, tail, a nice, healthy plop at the end (MP3). More info at papier.brouillon.free.fr. Made available as part of resonancefm.com.

Desolate Orchestral MP3 by Ka-baalim & Bunk Data

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The way seeming orchestral tuning-up turns into a blanket of traffic sounds is enough to make “The Red Queen” (MP3) a heavy-rotation item worthy of any dark-ambient playlist. The track pops up several into a new, free release by Ka-baalim & Bunk Data. The album is just as baroque as might be inferred from its the inimitable title, The Insomniati: Two ‘when you forget you’re dreaming and never wake up’ — just packed as it is with dramatic readings intoned over blank-industrial noise, like overheard portions from some cybersecular ritual. But “The Red Queen,” bereft of any narration, has its own narrative, into a expanse that mixes desolate noise with hopeful melodic fragments.

Also included in the set is a remix by Phil Western (Download, Beehatch, Skinny Puppy). More on Ka-baalim at kabaalim.com. More on Bunk Data at bunkdata.com. Get the full set at the releasing netlabel, darkwinter.com.

Monolake MP3: Straight Outta the Hard Drive

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

For many musicians, web-posted MP3s are a means by which to send a virtual postcard to fans, bringing them up to date on where the individual’s artistic activities are headed. For Monolake (aka Robert Henke), however, free MP3s are often more like missives from the past.

As part of his occasional and ongoing free-MP3 service at monolake.de, Monolake recently posted a 20-minute-long minimal-techno track that he says dates from two years back, and that he only came upon recently while looking through his hard drive for something else entirely.

The piece, titled “Decay,” for which he does his best to limit enthusiasm (he essentially says it would have been fresh had he made it a decade prior), is a bouncy, percussive-dolloped bit of minimal techno, with muted cymbals and a hazy surface of sonic cloud cover. “Enjoy it as nice background,” writes Henke. “I tested it for washing dishes, sorting invoices and watering flowers. It worked quite well.”

Henke posts these free tracks with certain rules, including an admonition against linking directly to the MP3 file, so just proceed to monolake.de/downloads. This one should be up for the full month of November.