Fragile Steve Roden MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The way that Los Angeles-based musician and sound artist Steve Roden presents his music is a perfect match for the music itself. He has long been a proponent for what he terms “lowercase” sound: music constructed from some of the quietest raw materials available, the sonic equivalent of sculptures made from dust.

And he announced his latest release as follows: “to be honest, i don’t remember making this recording at all.”

He isn’t joking. The comment comes from the brief liner note he penned to accompany the track, which is titled “Amnesia (Live in Berlin, 2004), based on his deduction, long after the fact, that the piece was recorded during a gig there. The piece was released this week as a free half-hour download from the Term netlabel, a spinoff of the 12k record label. The casually funereal track moves from a creaky rhythm to a light whir of noise (MP3). In the process, Roden continues to redefine “headphone music” — what once meant a dense psychedelia best experienced in the sonic equivalent of a private arena now refers to music so fragile that it should be experienced in the anechoic chamber of one’s own noggin. More info at 12k.com/term and at Roden’s website, inbetweennoise.com.

Bioshock Video Game Score MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

There’s a temptation to link to the score to the recent video game hit Bioshock and to not mention that it is, in fact, the music for a violent, shoot’em’up at all and to instead just pay attention to the sounds themselves — how wind-like noise fills in the background of the strings on the opening theme, only to be matched by what sounds like a piano impersonating thunder; how on a track titled “Dr. Steinman” shrill violins buzz like an invaded hive; how on “The Docks” the sound of creaking boards mix with distant sea-shanty snippets and overlays of orchestral dissonance. With the exception of a handful of tracks that emphasize underscoring — the somnolent layering of strings on “Empty Houses,” the variations of tuned cacophony that constitute “This Is Where They Sleep” — this is only background music in the literal sense, in that it serves as background music for an entertainment. Still, the music, composed by Garry Schyman, has much to its credit, as do the game’s developers for selecting something other than the standard digital percussion and synthetic ambiance.

A dozen cues from the score are available as a single Zip archive from the Bioschock website (Zip). I came upon the tracks thanks to a mention in the music section of scifi.com. There’s a solid interview with the game’s audio designer, Emily Ridgway, at music4games.net, in which she talks about the Bioshock‘s unlikely orchestral music, its equally unlikely use of mid-century tunes like “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” by Patti Page and “Papa Loves Mambo” by Perry Como, and how work by John Cage and Bernard Herrmann, among others, figured in stages of the game’s production. More info at 2kgames.com/bioshock and at garryschyman.com.

Prefuse 73 Self-Mashup MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

It’s become increasingly common for record labels to release mixes of snippets of a given album in advance of its release. There’s something about these mixes that can seem preemptive at best, but perhaps they’re a good idea. Maybe uploading a preview edit will discourage “MP3 bloggers” from uploading whole tracks, since many of those writers are simply looking for a solid piece of audio on which to hang their observations.

Take, for example, the “Megachopped Suite” MP3 of Prefuse 73‘s new Preparations, available for free from its releasing label, Warp Records. The opening bit sounds particularly like Prefuse’s production work on Japanese beatboxer Afra’s Digital Breath, which is a major plus. Later come snatches of gadgety pop music, hip-hop shout-outs, blissful choruses, classic-pop samples, and glitchy edits (MP3). Given that chopping and slicing are part and parcel of Prefuse 73’s music in general, this Preparations primer qualifies as a self-remix rather than just a teaser montage (something Moby did for his most recent album, Hotel).

The album’s due out in the U.S. and Canada on October 23, when we can hear the various elements in their original contexts. It’s already out in Europe. More info at the Preparations minisite, warprecords.com/p73, which — lest one forget the MP3 file’s promotional intent — also houses some psychedelic wallpapers and a full-length video.

Madeline Puckette’s Electropop MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Madeline Puckette writes perky little songs in which she breathily sings atop electro-pop backing tracks of her own composition. She doesn’t quite bury her voice in the mix, but she’s more than comfortable letting the electronica, often a blippy mix of pin-prink percussion and warbly effects, share the stage. (She received her BFA in Music Technology & Fine Art at CalArts.)

Puckette’s even comfortable giving the background material its own moment in the sun. Up on her website right now, the instrumental half of her song “Someday” is available as a free download (MP3), as is the a cappella section that results from the musical postmortem.

The track has a certain 1980s appeal, with echoes of Berlin (the band, not the city) and Liz Phair (the melodies, not the instrumentation), but with wispy, ragged little updates that are all Puckette’s own. She’s uploaded the vocal and vocal-less “Someday” files with the intention of inviting remixes from fans and fellow musicians — but as with many instrumental backings of pop songs, the track is entirely listenable to all on its lonesome. More info at her website, madworldrecords.com.

City of Speakers

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Graffiti, much along the lines of skateboarding, can often feel like a nostalgia act these days, what with the preponderance of retro-urban imagery such as boomboxes and turntables. Rather than celebrate street life as it is, these murals tend to celebrate street life as it once was. Of course, such historical tendencies don’t necessarily detract from a given piece of art’s visual impact.

There’s a particularly vibrant, large-scale graffiti mural across the alley from the gallery 111 Minna in San Francisco (111minnagallery.com). It’s always striking to me how the distant speaker cabinets in the upper right corner (see detail above) serve as corollaries to the layered backdrop of office and apartment buildings. A skyline of speakers — that’s a suitable image for this city.