Virgin America, Underground

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The name alone suggests a purposeful oxymoron, an Underground up in the air. “Underground” is the name of a music channel on the in-flight, touch-screen entertainment system of the new airline Virgin America, which I’ve flown twice, and both times I’ve been taken with surprises like hearing an excerpt of the late Karlheinz Stockhausen‘s choral work Stimmung at 30,000 feet. The programming for “Underground” is handled by a company named Spafax (spafax.com), a representative of which forwarded me two recent playlists, following up some previous mentions I’ve made of the service.

The “Underground” playlists aren’t excellent just because of the individual selections (like a decade-old Photek drum’b’bass piece, before he veered into commercial remixes and indistinct hip-hop), or just because of the refreshing presence of numerous obscure acts unfamiliar to 99 percent of a given flight’s passengers and crew.

What’s also great is the freeform-radio technique of repeating artists within a given playlist. And for frequent flyers, it helps that month-to-month there’s some repetition, providing continuity. With music this good, your iPod battery may still be full by the time your plane lands.

Virgin America “Underground” Playlist
Starting January 15, 2008

  • “Ping Island/Lighting Strike Rescue Op” by Mark Mothersbaugh
  • “Hilli (At the Top of the World)” by Amiina featuring Lee Hazlewood
  • “Tonto” by Battles
  • “Poison Dripping Cinco” by hhyScumclash vs. Badawi
  • “Forest on Fire” by Tiny Vipers
  • “Good to Be Alive (Album)” by Matthew Dear
  • “Nxjx” by Norman Howard
  • “I Knew You Were Gonna Go” by Prefuse 73
  • “Market Place” by Badawi Quintet
  • “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare” by Mr. Bungle
  • “Massage Situation” by Flying Lotus
  • “Sunnyland (Live) [Spafax]” by New Ghost
  • “Admiral Perry” by David Byrne
  • “One Nation” by Photek
  • “Freeze” by Madlib
  • “Stella Maris” by Einsturzende Neubauten
  • “It Must Be a Camel” by Frank Zappa
  • “Crazy in Love” by Antique Gold
  • “Temple Frog” by Kiln
  • “Time and Units” by Norman Howard
  • “Bbydhyonchord” by Aphex Twin
  • “Zissou Society Blue Star Cadets/Ned’s Theme Take 1” by Mark Mothersbaugh

Virgin America “Underground” Underground Playlist
Starting October 15, 2007:

  • “Pray” by the Book of Knots
  • “Don’t Worry” by Skeletons and the Kings of All Cities
  • “Granny’s House” by Jennifer Gentle
  • “Dionysus” by Tin Hat Trio
  • “Go!!!!!” by Boredoms
  • “Hyakka Ryouran (Blooming)” by Yoshida Brothers
  • “District Line II” by Squarepusher
  • “Big Sur Moon” by Buckethead
  • “Eyewitness (Live)” by New Ghost
  • “Atlas” by Battles
  • “Little Umbrellas” by Frank Zappa
  • “Wash The Day” by TV on the Radio
  • “God-Music” by Kronos Quartet
  • “Surrealist Waltz, The” by Pearls Before Swine
  • “Cambridge 1969/2007” by Ono with the Flaming Lips
  • “Matta” by Brian Eno
  • “Neopolitan Suite: Dios and Diablo” by Don Cherry Quintet
  • “None of Them Knew They Were Robots” by Mr. Bungle

Janek Schaefer Performance-Lecture MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

“Confused but enjoyed it.” That’s how sound artist and musician Janek Schaefer characterizes the comments often left in the guest book at galleries where he shows/performs his work.

Sound Space was the name given a sound-art symposium that occurred earlier this year in England, and the webpage of the event (sound-space.info) contains audio documentation of much of the goings-on. One highlight among that audio is a recording of a presentation by Schaefer, who talks at length and gives specific audio examples of his work (MP3), which often involves field recordings and turntables.

Schaefer isn’t just an ingenious musician and a deeply curious and playful music-maker. He’s also very funny. At one point he talks about how he purchased a digital audio recorder, only to discover that it was packed full of recordings of everyone who had previously tested the device. He then plays back the audio. He also talks about how he often depends on the programming generosity of others, in particular David Tinapple, when developing a piece.

More on Schaefer at his website, audioh.com.

Unsilent Night 2007 Itinerary

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Each year as Christmas approaches, strangers gather after dark in an ever-growing number of cities, lift high their old boomboxes and MP3 players, battery-powered radios and other sound sources, and participate in composer Phil Kline‘s Unsilent Night. There are four different audio-track components to the work (available for download at unsilentnight.com), all seasonally appropriate slices of ambient haze with echoes of carillon bells and lush pop. And when played on a variety of equipment, those individual tracks join together like voices in a heavenly robot choir.

The festivities are already underway, having started on the first of the month in Manassas, Virginia — and so, before another such opportunity passes, I wanted to publish, below, the Unsilent Night itinerary for 2007. I’m disappointed that I won’t be home in San Francisco on December 22 — I’ll be in Tokyo, where, I’m a little surprised to discover, there is no scheduled Unsilent Night. It seems like a communal event in which anonymous people use machines as vocal prosthetics to enact a secular rendition of a spiritual ritual would be, well, just perfect in Akihabara. Perhaps next year…

  • December 01: Manassas, Virginia
  • December 06: Santa Barbara, California
  • December 08: Charleston, South Carolina
  • December 08: Hattiesburg, Mississippi
  • December 08: Houston, Texas
  • December 09: Middlesbrough, UK
  • December 13: New Haven, Connecticut
  • December 14: Boulder, Colorado
  • December 14: Detroit, Michigan
  • December 15: Asheville, North Carolina
  • December 15: New York City, New York
  • December 15: San Diego, California
  • December 15: Seattle, Washington
  • December 15: Sydney, New South Wales (Australia)
  • December 16: Los Angeles, California
  • December 17: Hamburg, Germany
  • December 17: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
  • December 20: Melbourne, Victoria (Australia)
  • December 21: Baltimore, Maryland
  • December 21: Fredericton, New Brunswick
  • December 21: Santa Rosa, California
  • December 22: San Francisco, California
  • December 23: Vancouver, British Columbia

The Unsilent Night website also houses a gallery of images, including the one above, and video footage of past events.

IBM Proto-Chiptune Pop MP3, Circa 1962

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

It’s difficult to not picture trim young lab techs pogo’ing amid bunsen burners and microscopes when you listen to the synthesized pop music collected on Music from Mathematics: Played by I.B.M. 7090 Computer and Digital to Sound Transducer. A file posted by the freeform radio station WFMU back in 2003 compiles several tracks from the album, which was released in 1962 on the Brunswick label. And like the so-called “chip-tune” music of today that these experiments pre-figured, the ancient I.B.M. recordings have a certain nuance that comes from a certain lack of nuance (MP3). Chip-tune musicians eke melodies and rhythms out of out-of-date technology; the only difference with Music from Mathematics was that, at the time, the machine in question, the I.B.M. 7090, was state-of-the-art. In addition to familiar melodies, including a timely Christmas favorite (“Joy to the World”), the WFMU MP3 features numerous blippy sine-wave ditties.

The WFMU commentary helpfully identifies the cover’s designer as legendary Columbia Records art director Alex Steinweiss. It also playfully dismisses as “boffins” the people responsible for having programmed Music from Mathematics, but in fact contributors to the album included experimental composers James Tenney and Max Matthews. Just for reference, it is Matthews for whom the graphic-interface music environment Max/MSP is named, and according to additional information posted at the great record-cover gallery 317x.com, Matthews was responsible for the “Joy to World” transcription, among others heard here. The 316x.com site reproduces the album’s complete liner notes, which open dramatically:

The course of human development has always been marked by man’s striving for new techniques and tools in pursuance of a better life. This is most dramatically manifested in the fields of science and technology. But this dissatisfaction with available materials and methods and the corresponding search for new ones is also evident in the arts, and artists have continually sought to improve the tools of their trade.

Original WFMU post at the great ubu.com website.

Interviews Up: Steve Reich, Monolake, netlabel, circuit-bender

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This site was upgraded expertly by Nathan Swartz of clicknathan.com from my decade-old handcoded HTML to a proper WordPress install on July 26, 2007. Left lingering for me to take care of was a relatively small proportion of back articles, mostly from the “interviews” and “reports/essays” sections.

Just today I’ve uploaded five more of the backdated interviews: with Donald Bell, better known as Chachi Jones, bender of circuits; with Robert Henke, better known as the minimal-techno legend Monolake; with John Kannenberg and with Brad Mitchell (aka Pocka), both musicians who run netlabels (respectively stasisfield.com and kikapu.com); and with minimalist composer Steve Reich, dating from the release of the album Reich Remixed.

Just housecleaning.