Tangents (freesound, Luaka, Accelerando)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Quick Links: (1) The Freesound Project is “a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds,” at freesound.iua.upf.edu (via makezine.com). Among the highlights is a “remix tree,” in which users add samples of previous entries, forming an outline-style branching tree of derived sounds. … (2) Also via makezine, the WorldEar project, a somewhat utopian sound-art project that proposes piping ambient sound from cities around the world to each other, to be played in public transportation (link). … (3) When the Hard Rock Cafe opened a new location in Manhattan on August 12, some 100 Gibson guitars were smashed to commemorate the event (link). It’s billed as the biggest guitar smash ever. Guinness might have been on hand to record the world record, but shouldn’t Christian Marclay have been, too? … (4, 5) Via gizmodo.com: a MIDI-controlled beer-bottle organ (link) and a neural synthesizer (link). … (6) Engadget.com covers said synthesizer as part of a roundup of boutique synths (link). … (7 – 9) Boingboing.com was on a music roll this week, including: sonic blaster used by LAPD (link), a proto-historical version thereof (link) and “laughing” records (link). … (10, 11, … ) Createdigitalmusic.com points to eBay circuit-bent goodies, microtone data, and more (link).

… Good Reads: (1) The New York Times on the theremin (link). … (2) The BBC on “DIY DJs” (link), part of a series on “digital citizens” who create their own culture. … (3) At Wired.com, the future of hearing aids and a related exhibit in London (link). “Social noise has tripled since the 1980s and most people struggle on a regular basis to have conversations in noisy places,” says one audiology professional (via lifehacker.com). … (4) In Artforum, a report on a William Basinski exhibit/performance in Los Angeles (link).

… Select New Releases: (1) Among the contributors to Luaka Bop Remix, from the label run by David Byrne, are John McEntire, Fila Brazilia, Mario Caldato, Masters at Work, Carl Craig and Scratch Perverts. Among the remixed are Tom Ze, Los Amigos Invisibles, and Zap Mama teamed up with Erykah Badu. … (2) Rapper Common‘s Be will reportedly be made available as an official instrumentals version (Geffen), which means it’s essentially a solo Kanye West album, as West produced the full set. … (3) Broadcast‘s single “America’s Boy” takes as its subject the war in Iraq (Warp). … (4) From Aphex Twin’s label, Rephlex, comes Quantum Transposition, credited to the mysterious Arpanet. … (5) The Black Dog‘s drowsy dub Trojan Horus 12″ (Dust Science) … More new release info at brainwashed.com/releases and icemagazine.com.

… Disquiet Heavy Rotation: (1) Koji Asano‘s Sanctuary on Reclaimed Land, his 36th full-length album on Solstice, finds the itinerant musician — who has resided in London, Tokyo and Barcelona over the course of his career — performing live in a warehouse in Osaka, Japan. He was invited to be an artist-in-residence, and he decided to record live piano in a sizable empty warehouse, processing the music and its reverberations with his computer. Despite muddy, distant sound (due, likely, to the diffusion of the warehouse’s inherent acoustics), it’s a majestic piece. … (2) Judging by the album Pounded Masses (Hymen), if there’s a Bermuda Triangle where grime, IDM and industrial music meet, that’s where Somatic Responses has chosen to set course. They may never make it back alive, but their distress signal is mighty entertaining. … (3) The top Disquiet Downstream entry of last week was Chris Herbert‘s deceptively quiet “Chlorophyl” (MP3, entry)

… Quote of the Week: “The noise around them is a random susurrus of machine-generated crowd scenery, the people motionless as their shared reality thread proceeds independently of the rest of the universe.” The word “accelerando” is a term in musical notation that directs the performer to gradually speed up the tempo. Accelerando is also the title of science fiction writer Charles Stross‘s humorously hyperbolic new novel, from which that quote was taken. The book, which describes the intense fast-forwardization of humanity, is in stores now, but it’s also downloadable for free at accelerando.org.

Amazon + RSS = MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

There’s a handy RSS feed (link) that alerts you to what free music downloads have been added to Amazon.com. Amid unfamiliar names in the past week or so is one that’s a fairly regular subject of Disquiet Downstreams: Greg Davis, whose “Curling Pond Woods” (link) is a bit of low-key folk whimsy, guitar and piano amid field recordings of antic birdsong. At least that’s how this suite, all of six and a half minutes in length, begins, before rising in a digital approximation of orchestral grandeur, and adding a sour synth line and a sturdy backbeat. It’s the title track of his great album of last year, from Carpark Records. Also available, and from Curling Pond Woods, is “Brocade (Rewoven)” (MP3), an experiment in phase-shifting acoustic guitar that comes across like some long-awaited collaboration between Robert Fripp and Steve Reich.

Sound Design MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Judging by a recently uploaded example, Chris Herbert‘s forthcoming album on Kranky is to be looked forward to. At six and a half minutes, with little to no contextual setting by Kranky, the song, titled “Chlorophyl” (MP3), opens a narrow sliver of a glimpse into another, considerably private realm. Utterly quiet, with a pulse-soothing beat, it takes several listens to reveal itself, like a dark room slowly brought into focus. First come the contours: a crackle that suggests old vinyl, a warm blanket of earthly hush, and that unwavering but organic beat. Then come the details: little snaps in the sound bed, the vinyl crackle transforming into more of a door creak, thin layers of wisps as simultaneously compact and flaky as fine phyllo. And then there’s that beat, so steady that over time, as the other sounds make themselves more apparent, it softens and recedes, becoming the equivalent of invisible. Kranky and Herbert encoded the track at 192kbps, relatively generous for a promotional download, but necessary given how much aural information is buried in there. Kranky explains that Herbert lives in Birmingham, England, and is a member of a collective called Modulate AV. More info, though not much more, at kranky.net.

Atari-Powered Post-Dub MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The guys in the Seattle-based group Foscil name a single piece of equipment in their bio at Fourth City Records: the Atari ST, on which they reportedly did all the composition for their self-titled album, which came out yesterday. A full track, “Coelacanth,” is available for free download (MP3), and while the ancient fish of its title is even more old-school than Foscil’s retro Atari setup, the name does set the tone for a song that ekes dub out of timestamped boomchika beats, resuscitating them with life-enabling echo. But Foscil isn’t merely interested in the antiquated; it uses its Casio-flavored rhythmic foundation for something verging on post-rock chamber music, with horn harmonies locating a sweet spot between Herb Alpert romantic background soundtracks and Tortoise’s lo-fi chamber pop. More info at fourthcity.net.

Homebrew Experimental Tape MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

So, musician and tinkerer Gijs Gieskes isn’t entirely clear about what he’s up to, but among his recent experiments is an apparent second attempt to create a sequencer using standard cassette audio tape… and, as if that weren’t extraordinary enough, he works a Game Boy into the contraption, too. As Peter Kirn first reported over at createdigitalmusic.com, Gieskes’ written descriptions don’t quite do his accomplishments justice, but a handful of photos (here) and some MP3s help. The two MP3s are about two minutes long each. One works the sound back and forth in a thick field of video-arcade noise, and that syrupy, elastic give of tape is evident throughout (MP3). The other works some voice into the mix, sounding like a Dr. Demento interstitial on fast forward (MP3). Both employ the popular Game Boy sound software LSDJ (Little Sound DJ, at littlesounddj.com). The effect is altogether, in a word, manual, an unlikely manifestation of the human touch. More info, and other experiments, over at gieskes.nl, though be prepared for a web interface as self-obscuring as Gieskes’ musical pursuits. If the widely covered tape mixes of DJ Aptem (see item two here) struck your fancy, then Gieskes is your thing.