Homebrew 8-Bit Community Music-Making MP3 from Dotdummy/Hexawe

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Just about every new upload at the netlabel hexawe.net comes in pairs. One is an MP3, the other a Zip archive. The MP3 is a playable file, the Zip a collection of goodies. The MP3 is the headliner, but it’s also the tease. Most visitors to Hexawe are likely in pursuit of the basic netlabel goods: free music, produced by musicians who engage willfully in the ever-expanding community of so-called “copyleft”-inspired cultural activity. It’s a world of individuals and bands who share their music and their techniques, and who generally espouse a philosophy in which it’s expected that others will use their materials to produce something new. Call it Generation Remix.

The MP3s on Hexawe are uniformly fun, but the Zip file is where the action is. Take for example the most recent, as of this writing, upload to Hexawe, a single electro-pop instrumental track titled “Trinity of Dignity” and credited to Dotdummy. The song is a treat, a blippy bit of arcade-ready music that takes you on a mysterious, drama-packed night run through Pixel City (MP3). Dotdummy (aka Bradley Leo) acknowledges the piece’s theatrical structural when he describes it, in accompanying text, as “a rite of passage in three acts.”

As for the Dotdummy/”Trinity” Zip file, like all those at Hexawe, it contains multitudes. See, the Hexawe website is focused solely on music produced on an elementally simple bit of audio software called Little Pig Tracker (aka LGPT), and the Zip files at Hexawe contain the source code, and often the samples and cover art, for the associated MP3. This means that users can remake or remodel a given tune to their own taste. In the case of “Trinity,” the Zip file includes cover art, three additional images, the LGPT code, and instructions on how to use the code to make your own tunes (ZIP). More details on Little Pig Tracker, including the software itself, at 10pm.org/nostromo/lgpt. More on Leo/Dotdummy at dummydrome.com.

Image of the Week: Masked Noise

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The following shot accompanied an article in the Daily Emerald in advance of this weekend’s Eugene Noise Fest:

The photo is by Don Haugen, the event’s founder, who records and performs as Warning Broken Machine. The image is, I believe, of IDX1274. The Daily Emerald is a student newspaper at the University of Oregon. Full story at dailyemerald.com. More on Haugen at  humanmonster.com. More on IDX1274 at idx1274.jeeran.com and myspace.com/IDX1274.

Full Eugene Noise Fest 2008 lineup at humanmonster.com/eugenenoisefest08. It took place yesterday and continues today, November 9, 2008.

Quote of the Week: Builders Dissociation

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Early on in the theater work Continuous City by the multimedia performance group the Builders Association, a techworker named J.V. (played by actor Rizwan Mirza) tries to sing “Happy Birthday” over an Internet video-chat service called Xubu to one friend, while another friend, also in the virtual chat room, sings along. J.V. is in the San Francisco area, while one friend is in London and the other is in Virginia. Frustrated by their inability to sing in sync, J.V. (pictured below at the computer and in the image labeled “Berkeley”) says:

“That lag is killing me.”

The brief, throwaway line serves as a kind of map, or agenda, for the show, which traces the globe-spanning travels of J.V.’s business partner, Mike, who remains in constant communication with work and home via Internet video, but who slowly loses his emotional connection to both — and at times his sanity as well.

Continuous City has its final San Francisco performance this evening at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (where I saw it last night), before it moves on to the BAM festival in Brooklyn later this month. More on the work at thebuildersassociation.org. Heightening the meta-reality of Continuous City, the group has set up an ersatz version of the Xubu software at xubu.cc.

Build Your Own Buddha Machine 2.0 (MP3s)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

To close off the recent flurry of big Buddha Machine news (disquiet.com), the device’s creators, FM3 (Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian) have made available for free download all nine of the little sound-art gadget’s loops. They come packed in one tidy archive (ZIP), weighing in at just over 4mb. The entries range in length from 10 seconds to just over a minute.

Following up on that Disquiet.com FM3 interview from earlier this week (disquiet.com), Virant explained via email that the titles of the first Buddha Machine’s tracks were “all based on the instruments used to create the sounds” (“Ma,” “Zheng,” “Sheng,” “B1,” “Yang,” “Xiao,” “Zhong,” “B2,” “Wu”). As for the version 2.0 tracks (“Mao,” “Li,” “Piano,” “Ceng,” “Xi,” “Gen,” “Yu,” “Dui,” “Huan”), the titles are, he said, “more lyrical (except for, obviously, ‘piano’) and based more on the ‘feeling’ they evoke in the listener.” Virant also said there’s at least one more announcement coming — after which, new Buddha Machine 2.0 news will likely come in the form of remixes by musicians inspired by the new edition’s pitch control.

Some of these 2.0 MP3s have popped up as individual downloads in earlier Buddha Machine news in recent weeks, but this is the first time they’ve all been available on the English-language FM3 site (fm3buddhamachine.com). What’s telling is how many textural and sonic differences there are between them than was the case with the the original, version 1.0 machine’s nine loops. They’re also less inherently ruminative. Version 2.0’s “Li” has the pulsing momentum of the revived Battlestar Galactica TV show’s opening theme music, and the piano on “Piano” and loosely strung guitar on “Ceng” are identifiable enough as “real world” instruments to keep the tracks from ever feeling as purely ethereal as version 1.0’s consistently abstract drones.

So, while you await delivery of your new Buddha Machine, download the sonic source code and set them to loop in your favorite MP3 player. More information at fm3buddhamachine.com. (The original nine loops remain available for free download as an archive of WAV files: ZIP.)

MP3s of Mexico City Emissions

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

While You Sleep, by Mexico City-based Juanjosé Rivas, opens with an immediately compelling track, “Nocturnal Emissions,” in which fragments of human voice phase in and out, like a near-dead fluorescent light bulb flickering overhead (MP3). It’s a solid introduction to a collection of pieces that each make music out of interference and noise, static and dissolution, repetition and randomness. For example, the first half of “Benzodiazepines” is an exploration of slowly mutating white noise, a cicada-cycle reverie of fuzz that suddenly turns into the bouncy, aural equivalent of a Slinky (MP3). And the dog-unfriendly, super-high pitch on “After Awakening” is more like some oversized piggy bank set atop a pneumatic drill, those jangly vibrations shaking in a manner that’s absolutely mesmerizing (MP3). Get the full set at the releasing netlabel, mandorla.com.mx.