Time-Limited MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Today’s MP3 listing is something of a Disquiet.com exclusive. Saul Stokes, a San Francisco Bay area electronic musician, made available earlier this week a five-file batch of MP3s that document his solo ambient-electronic performance from just a month ago, on September 19, at the San Francisco Musicians Union Hall (Local No. 6), south of Market Street. He initially distributed the link (here) via his email list, but has subsequently agreed to let Disquiet.com share the URL with its readers. The page isn’t even linked to from Stokes’ homepage (saulstokes.com). Note: this link is only assured to work through Saturday, October 25. After Saturday, you may get lucky, or the link for these files (again, here) may simply have been wiped clean. Why? Because the tracks will be given a commercial release as an album, titled Radiate, by dataObscura, a CDR sub-label of the Holland/Canada transatlantic label Databloem Records (databloem.com).

The concert, which I attended, started with a strong laptop set by Foundry Records head Michael Bentley (aka eM). Stokes followed with a set on his homemade equipment, enhanced with a running video by Scott Pagano. Pagano develops computerized systems that create generative images, visuals that fluidly meld multiple sources and often have the look of a dreamy, abstract ride through a desolate metropolis, or perhaps a time-lapse sequence of fantastic urban transformations. Stokes’ restrained, shadow-toned performance, which involved several devices of his own invention, including a wand-like trigger apparatus, ran continuously for close to an hour. He has subsequently edited it into a five-track suite, and the divisions highlight the unique properties of each segment — my favorite is its closing, and most emphatic, entry, “Hard Landing” (file). One trademark of Stokes’ music is the sequences of loosely repeated figures, somewhere between a melody and a percussive motif; despite their loop-like presence, these were in fact performed live by hand. By the way, Stokes’ video artist, Pagano, has his own website (neither-field.com), so if you have enough processing power on your computer, you can listen to the Stokes files, watch the Pagano video clips, and recreate the September 19 Musicians Union show at the privacy of your own desk.

Illuminated MP3 Album

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

On October 20, Audiobulb Records uploaded a new various-artists electronic-music collection in MP3 format. Titled Exhibition #2, it’s currently highlighted on the label’s website, audiobulb.com. The set features 11 tracks, ranging from gentle stereoscopic play, Claudia’s “Sleepyhead (Roomix),” to vaguely disturbing vocal mishmash. Disastrato’s “2 Orgasms Before Each Suicide + A Deformed Smile = Ixtab” uses what seems to be the voices of children; Autistici’s “Tiny Machines Engaged in an Unsuccessful Vasectomy,” judging from its layered moans, may better deserve the Disastrato title. Also using a vocal cutup is Build’s “A Protective Plastic Coating,” which has the abstract-rap feel of Amon Tobin’s nonsense “Verbal” single and the more chaotic songs by the UK techno outfit Underworld. Many of the record’s tracks emphasize elastic, seemingly autonomous rhythms and light, pleasing melodies. David Newman runs Audiobulb from Sheffield, England. He describes Exhibition #2 as follows: “This album provides compositions based on subtleties, attention to the little details and a non-reliance on repetitive rhythmic structures. Within the album you will find the sound of minimal ambience, micro clicks and deconstructed samples.”

The album’s shortest piece, at less than two minutes, features renowned the renowned Tetsu Inoue working with Daimon Beail on a series of brief elements that shift by as if someone’s switching stations on a radio with faulty wiring. By far the most restful entrant here is Erik Schoster’s “Study No. 1 (For Chris Penrose & Eric Lyon),” which is truly ambient: absent of a downbeat, ethereal even as it develops texture. If you’re low on bandwidth or disk space, or otherwise want to limit your downloads, be sure to check out the album’s first track, “So Gone” which is credited to Diagram of Suburban Chaos. The song (here) starts with exactly the sort of stuttered snippets that have you checking whether your speakers are on the fritz, or your laptop’s motherboard is overloading. As a result, you’ll find it doubly centering when a gentle tune wafts in and, around the one-minute mark, a drum beat arrives to steady the track’s course.

Quote of the Week: Noise Matrix

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Audio technician Dane A. Davis tells Wired magazine, in its November issue, about his sound designs for the Matrix film trilogy:

It’s all about telling a story with noise.

The article is online here. The issue also includes a brief interview with DJ Kid Koala and a piece by punk Svengali Malcolm McLaren about his affection for 8-bit electronic music.

Dobro Trance MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Canadian composer and guitarist Benoît Charest wrote the music for the masterful new French anime, Les Triplettes de Belleville, which is a bit like saying he wrote its captions, since the film is almost entirely free of dialog, so much so that the occasional bit of spoken language — a vaudevillian song or the spiel of a TV news anchor — goes without subtitles. One of the many musical highlights in the film is a kind of household-goods industrial music, featuring a newspaper ruffled rhythmically into a microphone, a muffled vacuum cleaner that moans like a pneumatic Theremin, and a refrigerator, its shelving grates plucked like a harp that’s entered rigor mortis; joining the trio is a woman who specializes in playing slim wooden mallets on the carefully tuned spokes of a bicycle wheel. That track, sadly, is not readily available for MP3 download. However, on Charest’s website (bencharest.com), he hosts a dozen full-length cues from various of his film-soundtrack assignments, and one in particular evidences a taste and talent for electronic music that was hinted at by Bellville‘s bit of found-object wizardry. Be sure to give a listen to “Dobro Trance,” one of two clips from the film Ne Dis Rien (it’s the second of the two files listed under that film — all these clips are available via the “téléchargement” tab on Charest’s homepage). The track is just what its title suggests, spacious music that uses, of all things, the dobro guitar as its main source material. Eventually a drum machine kicks in, but it’s worth waiting around for the dobro’s return later in the seven-plus-minute track. The music brings to mind the solo cello work of ECM recording artist David Darling and the ambient slide guitar of Bruce Kaplan, and, of course, the spaghetti-western scores of Ennio Morricone.

Transparent MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Stasisfield is an Evanston, Illinois-based record label focused on what it calls “minimal instrumental experimental music.” So far this year it has released eight sets of free MP3s, the latest of which is London-based musician Thanos Chrysakis‘s three-song Transparent Geometries & Close-ups, beautiful, church-like, long-form compositions that emphasize patience and reverberation. The set is linked to from Chrysakis’ page (here) on the Stasisfield site (here).