Asynchronously Improvised MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The album All Are Welcome by Male comes with a limited amount of explanatory material, but alongside the names of the participants are one simple request and two declarative sentences.

First the request: “Please listen to as loud as possible.” While All Are Welcome ranges from meditative drones to contemplative guitar work to minimalist patterns, it is intended to serve not as background but as a richly detailed aural foreground into which listeners situate themselves. This is true of all four tracks, such as the John Fahey-esque “Dark Advances” (MP3), in which guitar lines slowly repeat atop a foundation of household field recordings. “I’ll Be Standing Soon” (MP3) opens with moody tones before layering in industrial noises and a sequence of beautiful horn playing that nods to Miles Davis, Jon Hassell, Ben Neill and Nils Petter Molvær, but that is more willfully stunted and austere than anything those gentlemen have recorded. The key word in the previous sentence is “layering,” but more on that in a moment.

As for the declarative sentences that accompany the album, they contain a seeming conflict: “All Are Welcome was recorded in one take, with each individual musician adding to the previous layer. There is no overdubbing on this record.” In fact, not only is there overdubbing on All Are Welcome, it is an exercise in overdubbing — but only in the most literal sense. The creation of the album was inventively collaborative, with the duo of Male (Jonathan Krohn and Benjamin Mjolsness) setting down a basic track, onto which a series of musicians individually recorded their own layer, one at a time. Think of it as asynchronous improvisation, the full effect of which is best experienced in the joyous cacophony of “Wrangler for Higher” (MP3), an oceanic noise that Glenn Branca or Michael Gordon might have dreamed up. (Out of curiosity, I corresponded with Male’s Krohn and confirmed that what’s really meant by the “no overdubbing” statement is that there were no post-production edits imposed on the live takes.)

The guest participants include Todd Mattei (guitar), Nick Butcher (tape), Mike Reed (percussion), Steven Hess (percussion), Josh Berman (that’s his cornet on “I’ll Be Standing Soon”) and Jason Adasiewicz (vibraphone), as well as Bob Weston (Shellac, Mission of Burma), who mastered the project; Jeremy Lemos handled recording duties. All Are Welcome is available on vinyl and as a free download. The free download (at xrkx.net/male) also includes the vibes-enriched song “Whip” (MP3).

Image of the Week: Byrne’s Building

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

One of several images by photographer Ozier Muhammad accompanying the New York Times story on Friday, May 30, about David Byrne‘s project “Playing the Building,” in which an old pump organ has been wired to turn the internal space of a massive Lower Manhattan structure, the Great Hall of the 99-year-old Battery Maritime Building, into a musical instrument:

The caption in the paper (nytimes.com) reads, “Solenoids attached to columns produce clacks and clanks.”

Quote of the Week: Synaesthesia of Danger

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Danger Mouse and his partner in Gnarls Barkley, Cee-Lo Green, spoke on Thursday, May 29, with NPR Fresh Air host Terry Gross about the construction of their new album, The Odd Couple. Asked by Gross about how the prevalence of sampling in hip-hop may have influenced the way Danger Mouse thinks about music, he replied:

I was in the bathroom the other day looking at a picture and I saw something in the picture that looked like a certain kind of face, and it was a child’s face, the way it was looking, but when you back away from it, it’s not that at all, it was just a tree branch, you know, and the arm of a bear, or something like that.

But what I saw was that, and if I took that little piece and made a big picture out of that, then it would be the way I looked at or what I saw that was beautiful about it or nice about it or whatever. And with music, it’s a similar thing for me, when it comes to sampling. I just want to work with stuff that’s affecting me.

Check out the full interview at npr.org.

Ancient Monolake MP3 (& Ableton Set)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Once upon a time, Monolake was a duo, consisting of Robert Henke and Gerhardt Beheles. Beheles exited the duo, which specialized in dank minimal techno, to start the company that created the now popular audio-production and -performance software Live. The company is called Ableton. Henke continued on as Monolake, and he also participates in the engineering at Ableton of each new generation of Live. Live is up to version 7 (7.07, to be more precise). For his latest free MP3 download at monolake.de, Henke reached deep into the software’s past to share a track titled “Ocean of Noise,” which he created back in 2003 — ancient history, by software-development standards — to serve as an example of the then new Live concept called “clip envelopes.” He writes:

This tracks is from September 2003. It was a demo for a new feature of Ableton Live 3, the so called clip envelopes. The track uses nothing but one single short sample of white noise. All sounds and all structural elements are generated by feeding that sample into the effects of Live 3, and modulating these effects with clip envelopes.

The track is far more to the ear than white noise — there is a heavy beat, the gurgling of what could only be thought of as water, and synthy drones with more apparent melodic intent than white noise is associated with.

Per Henke’s request, no direct link is provided here to the MP3. Please visit monolake.de to access it. The track is listed as the May entry in Henke’s ongoing free-MP3 series, so it may only be up through tomorrow. In addition to the MP3, Henke has provided the Ableton Live set that produced the sounds. A demo or commercial version of any edition of Live from 3 on up should be able to play it. (It is available in both Mac and Windows.) More on the software at ableton.com.

Pixelated Guitar MP3 by Fubsan

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Another excellent single from the Yoyo Pang! netlabel, ambulatore.com/yoyo, which specializes in one-MP3 releases. Think of them as free, virtual 7″s. The latest is “I Wish I Had a Watermelon” by Fubsan. Like the pevious YYP release, “Etxeko Improa”by Joseba Irazoki (see the April 2 disquiet.com entry), Fubsan’s is built around a guitar line. But where Irazoki’s piece was all droney and low-slung, Fubsan’s is pixelated and sparkling, locating that perfect spot where digital mediation merely amplifies the effect of strings in sympathetic vibration. To that is added a smattering of clicky, glitchy percussion and a background of whispery noises. More on Fubsan at myspace.com/fubsan and treehouse.catchtheleaves.org.