One-Minute Vacation MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

If you know the end of a story before it occurs, that’s called “tragedy.” If you’ve heard a raw field recording — not just heard, but paid close attention to one — many times, then eventually the sequence of sounds takes on a familiarity, a kind of de facto structure that might as well be called “music.” Each week Aaron Ximm posts on his website, quietamerican.org, sonic snapshots from around the globe. His One-Minute Vacation series collects unedited field recordings by volunteer Alan Lomaxes of the quotidian, an ever-expanding crew (MiniDiscs and harddrive recorders in hand) who document the sounds of today.

Sometimes musical elements are self-evident. Of the past eight weekly One-Minute Vacation entries, the majority have music inherent in them already, including a jig in an lrish bar (MP3); the mild cacophony of a video-game parlor, complete with a robotic lead vocal in the form of a someone (or -thing) reading bingo numbers (MP3); organ practice at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London (MP3); and a muffled orchestra heard above a torrent of Parisian fireworks that provide a kind of abstract machine beat, at least until the Bastille Day applause kicks in (MP3). The latter, arrhythmic to the point of distraction, is the sort of thing that British rapper Dizzee Rascal could get behind.

Fireworks provide a more subdued, but perhaps more threatening, background in a track of birds on Alcatraz reacting to the distant man-made thunder (MP3) — and, marking the contrast of humans’ impact on the environment, there’s a separate track of birds, noticeably more idyllic, recorded in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (MP3).

One track begins just after an orchestral performance in Bavaria, Germany, so no music is documented, but we do overhear people discussing the performance, itself a kind of recording (MP3), and I’d swear one of the speakers is a host from the BBC’s Hear and Now radio program.

Regulars to the One-Minute Vacation series, which is updated most Mondays, often try to listen to a track prior to reading the brief accompanying description, just to enjoy whatever abstraction is implicit therein, before letting the text cement the sounds. The wind chimes offered up on August 8 (MP3) are deceivingly self-explanatory. As it turns out, this is the first One-Minute Vacation recorded in an artificial world. The chimes were a computer simulation inside Second Life, the popular MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) — which helps explain why, toward the end of the track, some typing can be heard.

More info on the One-Minute Vacation series, and tons more files, at quietamerican.org/vacation.html.

Guitronic MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The netlabel iD.EOLOGY, based out of Germany, celebrated its second anniversary with its 25th release, Never Mind the Industry … Here’s iD.EOLOGY. It’s packed with 14 mostly German-language takes on rap, dub and other electronically enabled indie-pop, and one excellent studio-concocted instrumental. Pestopan‘s brief “Bon Appetit” (MP3), a completely satisfying track despite its less than two minutes of running time, opens with a rough guitar part. Of course, in this context, the conflicting elements that follow aren’t entirely unexpected: a well-placed swish of turntable, a loping beat, and eventually a deep thud of rave-style bass. It all adds up to the sort of rhythmic Rube Goldberg constructions that stream from the studios of the Neptunes and Prefuse 73, and makes a fine companion to Mark Rushton’s “Sunday Drift,” from Tuesday’s Disquiet Downstream entry (link). More info at ideology.de.

Mark Rushton MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

With its snatch of acoustic guitar providing an earthy, if distinctly computer-enabled, rhythm, “Sunday Drift” (MP3) couldn’t surprise more if it took a sudden pause for a glorious break of fog-splitting shimmer — which is exactly what it does. A free download off Mark Rushton‘s recent Hum and Drift album, the song uses that self-evident contrast (between pedestrian folksiness and heavenly aura) to its advantage, overlaying ’em for effect but playing them against each other as well. Also recommended is “Translucent” (MP3), an amorphous expanse of industrial noise, replete with the sound of approaching trains, light hiss and a pervasive unease. More info at markrushton.com.

Drone Pair MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

So many drones move expectedly from whimper to rapture, modulating and growing at their own leisure, one half-life at a time. As a result, it’s rewarding from the start to experience “Blue” (MP3), off AO’s new two-track set, Endlessly, Sweetly and Slightly, from the netlabel that goes by the name test tube (at monocromatica.com/netlabel). The piece, a 12-plus-minute drone, goes loud and wide quite quickly, as if it is dropping into view suddenly from an overhead cloud. It’s a piercing work, like something U2 guitarist the Edge might play late at night when he’s alone in his studio. “Blue” is paired on Endlessly, Sweetly and Slightly with “Thyme” (MP3), which sounds like a tentative edit of “Blue.” It has the same sort of blissfully muted histrionics, packed into eight minutes, which after “Blue” sounds downright terse. AO is reportedly from Japan, though test tube’s site offers little more in the way of information.

Tangents (Appendices, Sophocles, CSI)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Quick Links and News: (1) A new, 10th-anniversary edition of Brian Eno‘s book A Year with Swollen Appendices is apparently due out in January from the publisher Canongate (canongate.net); it’s said to include a CD of a story written and read by Michael Faber with background music by Eno, which supposedly originated in a recent issue of the British magazine Prospect (via hyperreal.org and thescotsman.scotsman.com), though as the hyperreal.org report mentions, there’s currently no evidence of such a collaboration on the Prospect website. … (2) A roundup of coverage of the recent Ars Electronica festival at createdigitalmusic.com. … (3) An automaton orchestra called Partially Artificial Musicians, created by Kurt Coble, at pamband.com (via gizmodo.com). … (4) A music-generator based on computer automata, or digital approximations of simple life forms, at tones.wolfram.com (via boingboing.net); it’s a neat idea, but the music is pretty Casio-sounding. … (5) Researchers can tell what you’re typing by the sound of your keyboard clicks (pcworld.com), plus (6) a short-lived sound art exhibit that amplified the sounds of the ionosphere (mit.edu), by Carrie Bodle (both via engadget.com). … (7) This is a late mention, but back in July it was reported that Jem Finer, of the punk-folk band the Pogues, won the New Music Award prize, which will allow him to implement his Hole in the Ground sound art piece (guardian.co.uk; thanks to Andrew Jaffe for the reference).

… Good Reads: (1) A review of a sound art exhibit at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, featuring work by Celeste Boursier-Mougenot, Christian Marclay and Stephen Vitiello (sptimes.com). … (2) A profile of composer Else Marie Pade, “grand dame of electronica” in her native Denmark (link), who turns 81 this year. .. (3) A researcher at UC Berkeley is developing software to “simulate the sound of any percussive instrument, real or imagined” (coe.berkeley.edu/labnotes).

… Select New Releases: Due out this week, or thereabouts. Most of the record labels’ websites feature streaming, if not downloadable, examples of the music. (1) The Black Dog‘s “Remote Viewing” single and Silenced CD (Dust Science) … (2) Broadcast, now a duo (James Cargill, Trish Keenan), follow up the “America’s Boy” single with Tender Buttons (Warp), which Keenan describes, on the Warp site, in these terms: “The potential of folk, nursery rhyme and electronica to provoke memory and imagination.” … (3) Build an Ark‘s Remixes 12″ includes, among other treats, Daedelus remixing Build an Ark’s version of Sun Ra‘s “The Stars Are Singing Too” (Plug Research). … (4) Christian Marclay (turntables), Yasunao Tone (prepared CDs and players) and Christian Wolff (cassettes, bass, percussion, melodica) collaborate for Event (Asphodel), music for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. … (5) Steve Reich‘s Different Trains, for string quartet and tape recording, gets a performance by the Smith Quartet (Signum). … (6) Sutekh‘s techno Two Vireos (Soul Jazz). … (7) The third volume of Instrumental Icons (Koch), all vocal-free edits hip-hop hits.

… Disquiet Heavy Rotation: (1) Empty Rooms (Ant-Zen) is the score for a play based on Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. The music, by the duo Silk Saw, is an ever-changing stream of casual noises pitched and layered until they’re threateningly claustrophobic: rhythms that refuse to directly assert themselves, voices just out of focus, sharp rising tones that cycle through like an air raid’s going to cut short the performance. You have to admire a troupe willing to be upstaged by the likes of this. … (2) Rapper Tony Yayo‘s “Drama Setter” (G-Unit/Interscope) is an Eminem production, and it sounds like none of the latter’s catalog so much as the guitar-laden feat of momentum that charged the soundtrack to the film 8 Mile, the same trenchant bit of musical, well, drama that can be heard in the trailer now airing for 50 Cents’ forthcoming movie, Get Rich or Die Tryin’. Stripped of Yayo’s vocal, the instrumental cut of “Drama Setter,” available on a 12″, modulates up and down to the sounds of guns being cocked and windows getting broken.

… Quote of the Week: From a note sent by comic-book writer Warren Ellis to his email list this past week: “It’s not as strange a piece of TV as CSI, which has gotten genuinely odd in its old age. I saw a re-run from last season recently, and there’s a two-minute sequence of William Petersen sluicing blood off a body on a metal tray put to ‘Sfevn-G-Englar’ by Sigur Ros. That’s all it is. Slowed down visuals of water washing blood off brushed steel. Twenty years ago, that would’ve been an art film. Now it’s a musical interlude in a major US network show. Mainstream culture eats its young to gain its strength, like a cannibal warrior, and the intent of the fringe becomes the tool of the mainstream.”