The Type label supplements its regular releases with a series of podcasts. That’s not unusual for a record label. What distinguishes Type’s series, as exemplified by a new mix by Aeioux (aka one of Type’s two founders, Stefan Lewandowski), is how a typical podcast may mix upcoming music from the label amid other recordings, like semi-random clips from the Smithsonian Folkways archive (here there’s a vocal experiment from Aldred Wolfsohn and office-setting field recordings), not to mention acclaimed individual electronic tracks, such as excerpts from Stars of the Lid and Tim Hecker (MP3). Filtered amid those and additional borrowed material are teases for Peter Broderick‘s upcoming Something Has Changed, a noisy contraption of found sound and rough processing (which follows a bit of Allen Ginsberg‘s spectral poetry), and Helios‘s A Rising Wind, a contrasting slice of downtempo electropop. More at typerecords.com.
Venician Enrico Coniglio Field Recording MP3
There’s a gap between the Touch Music record label and its ongoing MP3 series, TouchRadio. While Touch album releases generally focus on processed sound, the sound on TouchRadio is generally unprocessed. The recent entries on TouchRadio have been raw field recordings, framed by the discerning ear of the recordist and by the broader context of the Touch cultural engine.
TouchRadio just released its 30th entry, a 23-minute audio tour of Venice, titled “Sapientumsuperacquis” (MP3). The microphone technology was in the hands of Enrico Coniglio, who describes the situation as follows in the accompanying text:
As part of an ongoing series of recordings of unusual sounds of the Venice lagoon, these tracks were made on 29th april 2008 at 2100 in a night-depot of boats of the public transport service at “Riva dei Schiavoni”, not far from San Marco square.
Headphones are recommended. Recorded 24/96, with binaural stereo mic.
“Sapientum super acquis” is the title attribuited to the “Magistrato alle acque” of the Serenissima Venetian Republic, an organ istituited on 1501 by the “Council of ten”, that had the job of keeping safe the delicate natural/artificial balance of the lagoon, and looking after the “health” of the water.
Today the water is mostly polluted because of Porto Marghera, one of the biggest industrial areas in the whole Europe.
The burbling of water provides a thick scrim through which are heard industrial noise, conversations, the creak of waterborne structures, footsteps and more. It’s the perfect background music for an afternoon spent reading a China Miéville novel, the sort of tale in which the dank urban setting exists thanks to a tentative compromise with the fetid mote that surrounds it.
The track was originally posted at touchmusic.org.uk.
Image of the Week: Steampunk Sequencer
This is the Sequential Resonation Machine, created by Joseph Casbarian:
According to the post at oddmusic.com, the machine is a kind of mashup of a sequencer and a pipe organ. Three MP3s on the site provide brief examples of what kinds of music it can make: MP3, Sorcerer’s Apprentice-style note accrual; MP3, eerie horror shuffle; MP3, dopey cartoon waddle. (Via makezine.com.)
Quote of the Week: Roots Maneuver
From the title track of the brand new Roots album, Rising Down:
Look at technology they call it downloading
I call it downsizing somebody follow me
Does a computer chip have an astrology?
And when it fuck up could it give you an apology
The most accomplished rap act that consists of a traditional rock band lineup, the Roots are the rare group in hip-hop to generally forsake sampling in favor of live jams. Given hip-hop’s basis in non-traditional musical equipment — tape loops long ago, then beat machines, now digital sampling — it’s often interesting to listen for critiques of technology in their music.
In the liner notes to another song on Rising Down, “Becoming Unwritten,” Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, the band’s drummer and producer, penned a critique of densely produced hip-hop: “Unless you’re working on a Bomb Squad production for the 20th anniversary followup to ‘[Public Enemy’s album It Takes a Nation of] Millions [to Hold Us Back’ then the rule of ‘100% Power!’ need not apply. Sometimes as a musician you have to play the back and supplement your main subject.”
String-Based Ambient MP3 Collection
The 22-track, various-artist String Ambient collection benefits from a more literal enaction of its title than some record labels may have elected for. There are, indeed, harps and ukuleles and acoustic guitars put into action on this set of varied atmospheric music. But there are also electric guitars, as heard on Djinnestan‘s “C Plus A,” in which pin-prick texture is about as much amid the quiet that could be certifiably attributed to anything string-based, (MP3), and Glenn Brown‘s “A Crystal Fascination I,” which works a melodious but retrained solo into its spacey system (MP3). Terge Paulsen employs an EBow to achieve the monolithic sustain of the richly industrial drone poem “Blues for Lhasa” (MP3).
Thanks to heavy use of electronic effects, the divide between acoustic and electric string instruments is a nuanced one on String Ambient. The detuned zither that serves as the sole identified tool on Jon 7‘s “An Eerie Paradise” is plucked with the tentativeness of a kalimba, each note reverberating into a cloudy background of extended tones (MP3). Likewise, the hall-of-mirrors echoes that characterize “Cathedral (excerpt)” by Caleb Dupree originated on piano (as the liner notes state: “yes, a string instrument!”), which will surprise just about any listener (MP3).
More info, including track-specific instrumentation, at the releasing netlabel, webbedhandrecords.com. The individual tracks are stored at archive.org.