The natural applause that closes the recent MP3 up at William Fowler Collins‘ website, wfowlercollins.ath.cx, signals that the recording is, indeed, of a live performance. Up until that moment, you may not be certain, though a cough midway through also gives it away. There is, so common these days yet still so strange, such an array of simultaneous sounds working in harmony that it’s initially difficult to recognize the music was made by one person: Collins, on electric guitar, with microcassette recorder and steel slide. It was taped at Mills College Concert Hall in April 2004 during the SignalFlow Festival, and it’s a through-improvised tour from cascading opening notes to echoed rages of noise to an arid territory of ringing near-silence, with hints of everything from Jimi Hendrix to Glenn Branca to Michael Brook. What’s remarkable isn’t the range, though, but how naturally the piece flows over the track’s five-plus minutes. Part of this is owed to that reverb, which allows one theme to repeat while another is introduced. But the real credit goes to the composer-performer, who charts the course and sticks to it, even when the going gets rough. The track is an excerpt from Collins’ Evening CDR (West Mountain Road Recordings, 2004). Get the file directly here.
Dale Lloyd MP3s.
Dale Lloyd‘s Turba / Lateral Minor is characteristic of the netlabel that released it, and just to be clear: that’s a compliment. Like many a Stasisfield Records free download, Lloyd’s recording not only keeps quiet noises in the foreground by lending them interesting surface textures and by occasionally engaging in piercing sounds and rapt silences, he also wraps those lovely ruptures around a tidy conceit. In this case, that means listening in two ways. First there’s “Lateral Minor,” a 12-minute piece that floats a variety of sonic abrasives above a throaty, base-level hum, broken up by the odd splice of vacuum space. Then there’s “Turba,” which is five distinct tracks, all under under six minutes, all with a unique subtitle (“circumstantial,” “evolutional,” “remedial,” “imitable” and “congenital”), each built, like “Lateral,” from a mix of environmental and electronic sounds. Reportedly each “Turba” track works a different magic on a similar set of source material, not that you’d necessarily surmise that from the results. Guess you’ll have to listen again, and again. Download the full set here, and visit stasisfield.com.
Outer Space Field Recordings
Perhaps all too often, the sounds of outer space serve as a weak metaphor for electronic music. It’s why “space music” is virtually a genre name for all manner of headphones-only listening, despite the fact that, as we all learned in grade school, space is a vacuum. Well, here’s some real sound from the heavens: the European Space Agency has posted recordings from the audio sensors on the HASI probe (Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument) as it descended to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, this past Friday, January 14. There are currently two HASI MP3s on the esa.int website: (1) a sequence of radar echoes as the Huygens approached the moon’s surface (download MP3), (2) a “laboratory reconstruction” of what the Huygens’ microphones witnessed (download MP3), sewn together from multiple recordings, not unlike the mosaic panorama images of Titan’s surface that were reprinted in newspapers across our planet this past weekend. The former sounds like a whirlybird that’s about to spin out of control, and the latter has a harsh, mechanical feel. Together, they’re one giant step for humankind, and one contextually rich sample source for remixers. More info on the esa.int webpage, “Sounds of Titan.” (Link via boingboing.net, here.)
Chemical Brothers Remix Contest
Slightly off topic, given that it’s not in MP3 format, but let’s go three for three and close the week with another open-source remix challenge (yesterday’s entry on Wired magazine’s contest here, and the day prior’s entry on Recon’s contest here). This one’s from the Chemical Brothers, whose “Galvanize” single is now available for cut’n’paste play as a promotion for their new album, Push the Button (have seven years passed since Money Mark’s album of that name?). Download the track’s vocal, by rapper Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest, and various preset Chemical Brothers loops. Fiddle about. Upload your finished version. Winner takes the latest edition of ACID Pro’s audio-production software and other treats. The files are in WAV format, which doesn’t require proprietary software to audition, and they range in length from one second to nearly 20, and in content from disco-ready beats, to humorously simple snare dashes, to tasty vinyl scratches, to extended (well, 18-second) snatches of atmosphere. It’s all at the acidplanet.com website, more specifically here. Contest ends February 21. In the meanwhile, log on and check out the entrants.
Open-Source Remix Project
OPEN-SOURCE REMIX PROJECT: While on the subject of open-source remix projects, following up from yesterday’s Downstream entry (here) by Chris Coode (aka Recon, aka Motion), it would be negligent to fail to mention ccmixter.org. That’s a self-described “community music sharing site featuring songs licensed under Creative Commons,” which is currently housing remixes based on Wired magazine’s Rip. Mix. Sample. Mash. Share. CD, included in the November 2004 issue. The R.M.S.M. set featured tunes by, among others, Matmos, Thievery Corporation, Dan the Automator and Danger Mouse, all of which are downloadable from the ccmixter site in full (here) and as sets of pre-cut loops (here). Now, a free Matmos song is, on its own, reason enough for a Downstream entry, but of course ccmixter.org is more than just a handful of cuts; it’s a permutation engine. So, sure, you can pick up the Matmos song (“Action at a Distance,” MP3), a brief spell of digitally filtered guitar (filtered through Ennio Morricone’s laptop, that is), or you check out any number of tracks that use the Matmos as a sample source, like teru‘s “Matmos Slow Loop” (MP3), which references the guitar’s echo but adds a stable drum beat and builds something unexpected: a pop song. The project is easy to get lost in, in part because its interface requires some getting used to, and in part because participants are uploading new tracks daily. As particularly interesting ones arrive, you’ll find ’em here, in the Disquiet Downstream.