Another interesting remix thread at the Freesound project, at freesound.iua.upf.edu. The first file, “bewonderen.aiff,” is a brief sample of a spoken Dutch phrase, translated “to admire,” contributed by Hans Timmermans. Then an Anton Woldhek showed up, attempting in his words “to remove some of the low end and other rumble.” A few weeks ago, dropthedyle arrived and “elongated and mangled” the Woldhek file. Why not join in and fiddle about yourself? There is much to admire at Freesound, an open-source soundfile-sharing project hosted at the website of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.
Game Boy MP3s
There’s so much bippity boppity lo-fi, lo-tech electronic music out there, it’s almost too easy to take comfort in the abstraction of beatless atmospheres. At least with music like soundscapes and field recordings, you can take refuge in your own imagination. The Gainlad netlabel is pumping out exactly the sort of music that should fall short of even low expectations, yet so much of it is addictively listenable. Case in point, Jon Bro‘s three-track Cleanser EP, which appears to have been constructed on a Nintendo Game Boy, or an equivalently underpowered chipset; not only does it sound like the soundtrack to some chaotic Wario adventure, it has these irascible little melodic lines that skip around with an assuredness that much video-game-indebted netlabel pop sorely lacks. Check it out at gainlad.gameboymall.com. Oh, and the label currently has a call out for contributions to a Halloween-themed compilation. Entries are due October 25, so if you’re up for the challenge, then get thee to an arcade, pronto.
Edible Matthew Herbert MP3
Here’s a puzzle of a recipe. What do the following ingredients yield: Dry coconut, Eden organic grape juice in a glass bottle, organic peanuts in a plastic bag, Mount Hagen decaffeinated organic coffee in a glass jar with a plastic top, and two out-of-season apples? Well, if you’re Matthew Herbert, and those food goods were delivered to your small Brixton studio by representatives of the BBC, then they yield a tidy little upbeat track titled “Esme’s Waltz” (MP3), a chock-a-block wind-up toy of countless little percussive elements. As on Herbert’s new album, Plat du Jour, all of those individual sounds were derived from contorted samples of edible items. The BBC page where the file is housed also includes streaming video of Herbert constructing the track (bbc.co.uk). Esme’s is the name of the store where the goods were purchased.
24-Hours MP3
Think time’s flying by? Give a listen to a recent experiment by musician Marcus Obst, and then ask the question again. A few days ago, Obst placed a microphone by his window and taped the world going by for 24 straight hours. He then compressed the 24 hours to just under 24 minutes, and pitched down the sound so it doesn’t sound like a Chipmunks marathon or, for that matter, a tape set on fast forward. It’s nothing like the former, and far more than the latter. The resulting MP3 (“24h in 24 Minutes and Less”) has the vibrant flutter of low-key electronic music, and none of the sonic garbage one might expect from such a simple experiment in field-recording-based sound generation. In fact, it’s quite seamless and elegant. As with much conceptual art, the file benefits a bit from the listener knowing the system that produced it; once aware of Obst’s conceit, one would be hard put to not picture time-lapse images of insects and flowers. He describes how he accomplished the project on his website, fieldmuzick.net. The file is downloadable at freesound.iua.upf.edu. Oh, and don’t worry. It’s only 28MB.
Tangents (soundscaps, Auster, Kurzweil)
Quick Links and News: (1) The MacArthur (so-called “genius”) grants were awarded this past week, among the recipients UC San Diego history professor Emily Thompson, “an interdisciplinary scholar whose work focuses on the often-overlooked subject of sound and fills an important gap in contemporary American history, reaching into domains as diverse as urban design and cinema studies” (macfdn.org). From her webpage at the UCSD website: “Her research explores the cultural history of sound, music, noise, and listening, and focuses on how these phenomena and activities intersect with technologies like the phonograph, motion pictures, and architecture.” Her book The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 was published by MIT in 2002. Her Music Quarterly article “Machines, Music and the Quest for Fidelity: Marketing the Edison Phonograph in America, 1877-1925” inspired Tone Test, a chamber opera by Nicholas Brooke that premiered at the Lincoln Center Festival in July 2004 (operaprojects.org/tonetest.htm). Author Jonathan Lethem, whose fiction and non-fiction have both referenced Brian Eno, also won a MacArthur. … (2) William Thompson helped pay for his degree in music by joining the National Guard. Deployed in Iraq, he is composing music on his Apple laptop and uploading it to the web at wativ.com. (Thanks to Rob for the tip.). … (3) NPR on the military’s sonic weaponry (npr.org), plus (4) a science-art project using sound and other factors to conduce parapsychological phenomena (haque.co.uk), both via boingboing.net. … (5) Sound performances with fluorescent light bulbs (at createdigitalmusic.com). … (6) The Internet Archive, at archive.org, which contains a massive collection of freely downloadable netlabel releases, has reorganized its homepage, emphasizing four key categories, two of which are the live concert archive and the general audio archive. … (7) Highlights from the upcoming season at the Miller Theatre in New York: George Antheil‘s Dream ballet (October 7); Alarm Will Sound‘s John Adams retrospective (December 3); a Gyorgy Ligeti festival (various dates), which will include a cadenza by John Zorn; a Giacinto Scelsi 100th-birthday celebration (November 4); Magnus Lindberg (March 24); and an evening focused on African and European musical exchanges, featuring work by Kevin Volans, Iannis Xenakis, Steve Reich and others (January 21). More info at millertheatre.com. … (8) Six members of Roxy Music are pictured on the cover of The Thrill of It All, David Buckley‘s band biography published earlier this year; Brian Eno is not among them. (Thanks to Eric for the tip.) … (9) The state of music education, courtesy of Kyle Gann (artsjournal.com/postclassic): “Yesterday I started to tell a class about this Greek composer named Iannis Xenakis, and someone piped up, ‘You mean Yanni?’ Whew.”
… Good Reads: (1) What’s Matthew Herbert up to? Sampling cancer (mg.co.za). … (2) An overview of the Decibel Fest in Seattle (thestranger.com). … (3) An overview of the Washington, D.C., area’s experimental scene (washingtonpost.com), covering, among others, Scott Allison, Pete Blasser and Mikroknytes. (Thanks to Mike for the tip.) … (4) Bob Moog spoke with the magazine Robotspeak (robotspeakmagazine.com) about making theremins as a kid, people who he felt pushed the envelope of his namesake synthesizer, and the downside of analog electronics.
… Select New Releases: A few new releases of note this week: (1) Are You (Variations) from minimalist Steve Reich (Nonesuch). … (2) Some websites suggest that Robert Pollard‘s soundtrack to the new Steven Soderbergh movie, Bubble (Recordhead), is due out Tuesday, though others list it as an October release. … (3) Vladislav Delay‘s The Four Quarters (Huume).
… Keeping Score: (1) Philip Glass is reportedly scoring The Inner Life of Martin Frost, a film to be directed by author Paul Auster. … (2) David Holmes (Out of Sight, Ocean’s Eleven) has scored The War Within, about a suicide bomber, directed by Joseph Catelo. … (3) Raz Mesinai has scored Sorry, Haters, a post-9/11 drama starring Robin Wright Penn. … (4) Gustalvo Santaolalla (The Motorcycle Diaries) is attached to North Country, about the first sexual harassment case in the United States.
… Disquiet Heavy Rotation: (1) Due out October 10, Christopher Bissonnette‘s stellar Periphery (Kranky) is acoustic-derived ambient music, built from recordings of piano and orchestra. … (2) Steve Reich‘s Are You (Variations) (Nonesuch) includes his usual, excellent mallet-driven minimalism, plus a piece for eight cellos, performed by one cellist to taped accompaniment. … (3) The Disquiet Downstream entry of the week was Pestopan‘s tasty “Bon Appetit,” for sampled guitar, turntable and beats (link).
… Quote of the Week: The quote of the week was an extended silence. Ray Kurzweil, the keyboard inventor and deep-futurist, was lecturing Friday evening at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco, as part of the Long Now Foundation’s free series. The subject was that of Kurzweil’s new book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, how change occurs over time at an exponential, rather than merely linear, rate. In an apparent attempt to emulate the topic at hand, he spoke rapidfire throughout, spewing streams of data about human evolution and technological adoption and what it means when the two meet up. In the Q&A session at the close of his talk, a question from Stewart Brand brought Kurzweil to a sudden, silent, uncharacterisic halt. The question was, What does Kurzweil think should remain slow?