Carl Stone Field Recording MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Composer Carl Stone has been writing a column — that is, he’s been blogging — for the newmusicbox.org website since August of this year. He’s posted on such topics as the use of a turntable in advertising, the end of the Osaka Festival Beyond Innocence, the sound art of Yukio Fujimoto, Curtis Patterson’s score for a film about Frank Lloyd Wright’s relationship with Japan, the composer and radio producer Ted Szántó, and hearing text as sound.

The attraction of this online residency is not just his experience as a musician, but the fact that Stone spends much of his year in Japan, where he teaches electronic music. He writes of his expatriate experience, “For me, the urban soundscape of Tokyo is the largest payoff I get by living in an already great city.

In a September 20 post he captured the Japanese festival Asagaya Matsuri not only in photos and writing —

… Others join the din with whistles and wooden clappers. An ensemble of drums and flute play while perched atop an elevated scaffold in front of the train station. Add the occasional sound of an ambulance along with the normal sounds of traffic—incredibly they don’t close the roads but let the paraders mix in with the cars—and you get a wonderful sound stew which I offer up herewith for your enjoyment.

— but in a four-minute audio field recording that is all ritual chanting and whistling, all whirling momentum (MP3). “I travel everywhere around town,” he writes, “with my trusty pocket recorder tucked away, well, in my pocket, ready to grab whatever interesting sonic environments I happen to stumble in to.” Read the full post at newmusicbox.org.

Clovis Heald’s Slacker Exotica MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

What to make of the surface noise that’s fairly high in the mix on the languorous song “Conceptual Crush”? The song appears on Clovis Heald‘s Wading for Motorcycles, which is being released as a tape cassette (you read that correctly) by Moore & Moore (moore.perris-beauchamp.com). The run is limited to 100, but lest the idea of a limited edition strike you as anathema to everything that’s good about music these days, Heald has posted six of the album’s 11 tracks for free download.

At their best, as on the album’s “A Very Small Bedroom,” a gently looping instrumental, the Wading songs summon up the modest, mundane pleasures of a Kid Koala or a Tommy Guerrero (MP3). Likewise “Cardigan Lonely,” with its sedate, Rhodes piano basis and the light chimes and cardboard-box drum beat that tag along (MP3). As for “Crush,” on which Heald sings, that surface noise may be a sample of raw turntable static, or it may be part and parcel the slacker exotica that infuses the track with the feel of a hungover Sunday afternoon that lasts all summer. Either way, it’s seductive.

He’s joined on “Calling in Sick,” which has the waxen guitar of a Brian Eno pop tune, by drummer Josiah Wolf (of the band Why?), who contributes what sound like the martial drums of a deeply dispirited army (MP3). Also guesting are the Bomarr Monk and Odd Nosdam, on “Our Song,” which is so tremulous it feels like it might dissolve if listened to too often (MP3); so much for strength in numbers.

Please keep in mind that one of the odd tenets, the odd results, of so-called slo-core, to whose ranks Heald’s album is an exemplary addition, is that terms of seeming derision are in fact high praise. Everything that is wan and slight and decrepit and worn out about Clovis Heald’s Wading for Motorcycles is what makes it wonderful. Get the full set of downloads at the apt URL druggedconscience.com/clovisheald.

I remember the most recent cassette tape I bought, which was back in 2004 or 2005: Japanese avant-hop figure Turntabrush’s Direction of Rainbow. And I got it on cassette because it was only available as a tape, the tape being part of a “trilogy” of related releases, the others being on CD (View of Rainbow) and 12″ vinyl (Rainbow EP). I bought a few cassette singles (aka “cassingles” — talk about memory lane) and DJ mixtapes in the decade prior, but the next previous cassette I can clearly remember buying was a Kinks compilation. I bought it way after dark at a truckstop in the desolate southwest in the spring of 1995. Just minutes thereafter, a police officer pulled us over for speeding (Tucson beckoned) and asked if we had anything illegal. I told him I’d just bought a tape a few miles back and that it appeared to be a bootleg Spanish pressing of a classic “British Invasion” rock band. He said, “Heck, if that was illegal they’d have hauled me and my computer away long ago.”

Sorry for the tangential reminiscence, but that’s the state of mind that Heald’s Wading for Motorcycles produces.

Martin Neukom’s Golden Ratio MP3 Set

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Perhaps as many artists have pursued truth in the golden ratio as entrepreneurs and adventurers have sought gold. Martin Neukom‘s new 13-track collection on the domizil.ch netlabel, Studie 18, is among the most recent such investigations.

The pieces are intended to be listened to in surround sound, and playback information is provided for those fortunate enough to have a 5.1 surround sound system available. However, the works’ algorithmic rigor and beauty is not lost on standard headphones.

Each piece plays out as the result of one of Neukom’s investigations of patterns. Many have the pointillist detail of data in motion, like the water-drop effect of “Studie 18.11” (MP3) and the Lilliputian xylophone of “Studie 18.3” (MP3). The held tones that distinguish “Studie 18.7,” for example, are multiplied and varied, but occasionally overlap so as to become indistinct from each other (MP3). And the romper-room glissando of “Studie 18.10” is attributed to the Doppler effect (MP3).

The collection comes with a detailed, and elegantly designed (by Medusa Cramer), PDF that documents the math behind each of the tracks. The image up top, for example, provides a visual explanation for “Studie. 18.11.” Writes Neukom, “The perception of one sequence is influenced by another sequence.”

More on Neukom at the website for the Zurich-based Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology, where he heads the computer music department (icst.net).

Quote of the Week: Destroy Athens

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The following is the description-cum-manifesto of the “Destructive Sound Events” curated by ILIOS as part of the first Athens Biennial:

A sound monster will occupy certain Athenian territories and will transmit a destructive sound wave. Here we don’t talk about bringing THE truth to you, we are not the good ones and the rest are the bad ones, no pioneers, no avant-guard, no entertainment, no substitution for the fake, there is just action, physical action, action that one can hear, see and even feel it as vibration.

The event will be held on October 13 and 14 in Athens, Greece. Participants in the “Destructive Sound Events” will include: Costes, Antimatter/Z. Karkowski, Scott Arford, V/VM, Dave Philips, Michael Gendreau, and FamilyBattlenake (the latter in a DJ set). “Destroy Athens 2007” is the theme of the biennial. The performances are a parallel presentation to the biennial and are hosted by remapkm.com. More info at athensbiennial.org.

Open/Other Music/Minds

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A handy guide to a confusing quartet of musical organizations, color-coded for clarity’s sake:

Other Music: Downtown Manhattan (and online/download) record store. Kind of like San Francisco’s Aquarius, just on a different ocean (othermusic.com).

Other Minds: San Francisco-based new-music promoter and organization, run by Charles Amirkhanian (otherminds.org). … Also a philosophical conundrum (see plato.stanford.edu).

Open Mind: Fine used (and new) record store in San Francisco, relocated in 2007 to Market Street from Divisidero Street (at yelp.com). … Also a Swedish vinyl resource with an emphasis on psychedelic music (openmindrecords.se).

Open Music: Many things, including (1) a foundation focused on “how new forms of visual expression on the page can lead to previously-unknown forms of musical expression” (openmusic.us); (2) a programming language and music interface (ircam.fr); (3) an open-source (i.e., community-built) music directory (musicmoz.org); (4) a Creative Commons application of communal software conventions to music publishing (magnatune.com); (5) an archive of “out-of-copyright sound recordings” (openmusicarchive.org); (6) an ensemble with a rotating membership, led by flute player Bob Downes.