The Bush of Ghosts remix site seems to be working better than it had recently been. You can, on the Listen page, pick the Filter format, choose from a range of subjective-aesthetic continuums, and then map the songs as they appear on that multi-dimensional stylistic grid. For example, a grid with familiar/abstract on the X axis and slow/fast on the Y axis will yield a field of individual tracks that align according to those constraints. Bzalt‘s “What People Think” (MP3) appears further along the abstract line than Tonk‘s “Negen” (MP3), though both are at about the same pace. The relevant data appears to be in order, and both tracks are recommended. Tonk is concerned with lending a bit of a sturdy backbeat to some familiar Ghosts elements, like the whorl of a native vocalist and the ecstatic scatter of percussion; Bzalt, meanwhile, creates a rich spacious zone that uses the original material more for its texture than for its text. New tracks are being added daily, all built from the multi-track elements of two songs off David Byrne and Brian Eno‘s 1981 album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which was recently re-released. Check ’em out at bush-of-ghosts.com/remix.
Laptop Music, A Brief History
I was invited by newmusicbox.org to write an overview of “laptop music.” My intial instinct was that this would be less an introduction than a requiem. Isn’t the phrase “laptop music” sorta “over”? Well, as it turns out, no. Quite the contrary, more people are making more music with more software than ever on laptops. The piece, “Serial Port: A Brief History of Laptop Music,” was published yesterday on newmusicbox.org. It’s divided into five tidy sections:
(1) Inside the Box: The computer comes out to play; (2) Fast Backward: A brief prehistory of laptop music; (3) Tool or Toolbox: The laptop’s ever-changing role; (4) Plastic Devices: Critical laptop innovators and recommended CDs; and (5) The Incredible Shrinking Computer: Music in the palm of your hand.
One person has asked me, subsequent to its publication: “I do a lot of my music work on my iMac. My turntable is plugged into it even. Does this still count as ‘laptop music’? I mean, it’s Reason and Live and hopefully soon Reaktor.” (Those last three capitalized words are the names of different music-making software packages.)
That distinction was very much on my mind as I wrote the article. To me it comes down to continuity of technological experience. The laptop has allowed people who both make music at home and perform in front of audiences to use the same equipment, and thus it has allowed them to develop a heightened sense of intimacy with their equipment. That’s what uniquely makes the laptop, among various computer-music tools, akin to an instrument.
So, no, an iMac doesn’t count as a laptop just because one makes music on it. But if that single computer becomes one’s primary apparatus, both as a studio unto itself and as a performance tool that one plays in various environments, then it certainly might as well be a laptop.
Bush of Ghosts Remix MP3
As of this writing, some 31,586 songs have reportedly been downloaded from the public-domain website dedicated to the re-release of David Byrne and Brian Eno‘s 1981 album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Two Ghosts songs, their 20 to 24 individual tracks laid bare, are available for free download, as are dozens of remixed versions by semi-anonymous contributors.
And as of this writing, the site’s community’s favorite track (as well as the top fave by the site’s organizers) is CGrossmeier‘s fairly generic dance entry, “There’s No Escape,” laced with a bit of turntablism. The title is actually longer than that. In the dropdown window it appears to be “There’s No Escape I,” but when you select it to play, it appears in a different window, where the title appears to be “There’s No Escape From…” something or other. Such is the website’s interface: for all its blank backdrop and simple pulldowns, it isn’t all that functional at the moment. At least in the Mozilla browser, the Listen page seems to get hung up a lot. You can select various filters (abstract, rough, slow), but nothing necessarily results. Likewise, a search for a specific name of an artist may yield a null return, even if the name appears in the Top 20.
Still, there is good stuff to be heard. Particularly recommended: “My Hero Is Echo” (MP3), credited to Asbestos, scrapes some distant chant over flutters of threadbare percussion and an undulating bass element so slow you can almost see the sine waves, before the whole thing ascends into the ether.
Mecha Noise MP3s
There’s always a beat in the noise, some routinized element of a given signal that is inherent either in its source (like, say, the tumble of a motor) or in itself (e.g., the peak and valley of a sound wave). Prostir by .at/on (aka Kiev-based Holota Anton) is four tracks that often combine these two types of rhythm-based noise, most notably in the whir and rattle of the second track, “x” (MP3), which rotates like some sad old machine left to its own devices. Also included are some of the plugins that Anton created in the process of recording Prostir, so you can roll your own. More info at the website of the releasing netlabel, minusn.com, and at the artist’s site, aton.ho.com.ua.
Heartland Ambient MP3s
Mark Rushton has posted a half-hour live recording of him with bassist Jon Harnish. Between Rushton’s overdubbed intros and outros, he and Harnish, playing in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, perform two pieces: one a rush of rustling wind chimes and gauzy effects, the other a grungily processed drone with more telltale evidence of Harnish’s bass (MP3). This ‘cast was uploaded in mid-May. Back in March, Rushton posted a three-piece recording (MP3), the central entry of which employs loops from the Buddha Machine by the duo FM3 (read the Disquiet.com interview with FM3 here). He’s added a thumping heartbeat to the sampled sounds, and it’s a pleasure to hear that meditative source material in a new context. More on Rushton at markrushton.com.