Another spoken-word entry, to complement yesterday’s. Hank Shocklee, one of the core producers of the Bomb Squad, the hip-hop studio crew that threaded noise into backing tracks for the likes of Public Enemy, Doug. E. Fresh, Son of Bazerk and other old-school rappers, spoke at length to an audience courtesy of Red Bull Music Academy about early looping techniques, how to use chaos to best complement Chuck D’s preacher-like voice and what was lost and gained in the move from analog to digital (MP3).
Beryl Korot (& Company) MP3
Sometimes the Disquiet Downstream takes a break from music and sound art for talk, albeit talk about music and sound art. Suzanne Anker brought together for conversation three art-world figures with an interest in science for one of her “Bio-Blurb Show” audiocasts at wps1.org. In addition to art critic Ciaran Bennett and artist/arts administrator Adrienne Klein, Beryl Korot participated. Kortot is Steve Reich’s wife and collaborator, having provided the high-tech visuals so central to works like Three Tales, which she talks about here (MP3). The file, first broadcast on May 15, 2006, runs for half an hour.
Silent-Industrial MP3
The tonal aspects of Asher‘s contribution to the Homphoni netlabel (homophoni.com) are just a few held notes amid a broader, but still decidedly sparse, range of what seem to be field recordings. It’s amazing how static, water, small motors and distant industry can become indistinguishable from each other, even at 207kbps. The track, titled “The Anguish Is Not the Same” (MP3), cycles in and out, with extended periods of silence. It’s unclear if those occasional tones, first heard on their own, then below the light noise, are tonal centers of the found sounds or generated notes added later. That ambiguity brings creative tension to a piece that might, on first glance, appear to be willfully devoid of it.
Archive.org Detritus MP3
The audio stacks of the Internet Archive at archive.org are less a record store than a thrift store, these spare pieces seemingly randomly dispersed, most without enough packaging material to explain the contents. Sometime in the past few days, a musician by the name of Tafkanhos uploaded something described as “free improvised quasi-ambient experimental audio,” a half hour of sound caught in limbo between shimmering and dank, claustrophobic and epiphanic (MP3). It would have been mysterious even if it weren’t unencumbered by virtually any sort of causal, interpretive or contextual data. In an age when every conceptual artist seems to have his or her own internal dramaturge, this can be very refreshing indeed.
Noise Continuum MP3
There’s so much of interest broadcast on Resonance FM that it’s almost absurd. Segments pop up as part of the website/radio station’s podcast, including, in mid-July, a segment of Pete Kemble‘s show, The Heard World. An entry titled “A Collection of Distorted Noises” is exactly that, with Kimball fracturing the sounds of a preacher and a dating program, among other sources (MP3). There’s also stunted comedy and much that is not so much noisy as indistinct, which when it comes to audio arguably has the same effect. It’s easy to state that spontaneous experimental radio isn’t dead, it’s just gone online. But the fact of the matter is that Resonance FM isn’t just online; it’s also broadcast in London, England. This is not what your father plays on the radio in his Oldsmobile. More info on Kemble at petekemble.com and on the Resonance podcast at resonancefm.com.