Disquiet

field notes / Quote of the Week: R2-D2’s Descendents

Sound designer Ben Burtt on his work on the film Wall-E:

Eve is a very high-tech robot and so, unlike the motors and squeaks and metallic sounds you’ve got with Wall-E, Eve is held together with some sort of force fields and magnetism. A great deal of her sound is purely synthesized musical type of tones that I could make in a music synthesizer and treat it various ways, because her whole character was supposed to be graceful and ethereal, so she always has an electronic noise associated with her floating around.

Read the full interview with Burtt, who was also responsible for the voice of Star Wars’s R2-D2: moviesonline.ca.

downstream / Early Tamara Albaitis MP3

How does one pronounce the given name of sound artist Tamara Albaitis? Well, the answer is buried in the audio of one of her early works, in which she recorded herself saying her name three different ways and then mixed and matched the various pronunciations (MP3). There’s the correct way — “TAM-ara” — and two common but mistaken ways: “tam-era,” “tam-ARA.” As she explains in a brief description of the track, “I also included ‘ahh’s’ and ‘no’s!’ which is normally my response to their attempts.”

Albaitis is perhaps best known for her scupltural work, which often involves speakers, such as the one pictured here, the seven-speaker “Drop” (2007), which included a four-minute soundtrack and brings to mind the spidery forms of Louise Bourgeois:

As for the earlier, auto-biographical sound work, which dates from 2002, it focuses on audio at a syllable-by-syllable level, contrasting various content, from fly-buzz syllables to recognizable words and word fragments, with small amounts of post-recording transformations, like stereo play and effects that emphasize the electronic nature of the process. More on Albaitis at her website, burnthebox.org.

downstream / Tom Lawrence’s Irish Forest Field Recordings

The latest podcast from the Touch label is a brilliantly detailed documentary recording by Tom Lawrence, who’s in the Humanities and Social Sciences department at Dublin City University. Titled “Donadea Forest,” after the Irish location where the sounds were recorded, it captures, in a languorous half hour, bird calls, breezes, and the rain amid the trees.

One especially appealing segment introduces more traditional musical elements into what is otherwise a collection of field recordings. This is accomplished by working in chimes at play in the forest. Also complicating that portion of the overall piece is the presence of traffic noise — it’s a smart moment, as humankind makes its presence heard simultaneously as tone and noise, as organized musical sound and unintended aural presence.

To assist in the listening process, Lawrence has helpfully provided a time-code guide to the work’s five constituent parts:

00:00-04:27 Castle Crow’s Cacophony (31st December 2007, 7.20am)
04:28-10:23 January Gales 9th January 2008 10.45pm (contains references to 9/11 forest monument and the avenue of trees, captured with contact mics)
10:24-14:48 Forest Rain 12th January 2008 1.15am (extensive flooding)
14:49-20:36 Forest Harmonics 8th March 2008 6.20-11.50am (sampled forest chimes, forestry felling, and the ‘carbon chorus’ [surrounding motorways]).
20:37-30:47 The Dawn Chorus (recorded on National Dawn Chorus Day 20th May 2008, 4.35am)

The set of recordings was made between December 2007 and May 2008, and was just released on Touch’s Touch Radio series. The entire piece is available for download: M4A. More information at touchradio.org.uk. And more on Lawrence at his website, tom-lawrence.net.

downstream / How Drones Redeem Melisma (David Tagg MP3s)

Contemporary r&b has given a bad name to melisma. Once upon a time, that mode of moving a single vowel around the octave and back was an emotive rhetorical tool in popular music. These days it’s just sung and otherwise employed by tools, showy vocalists and instrumentalists whose emphasis on their own virtuosic prowess has the unintended effect of leaving listeners doubting their sensitivity. So, leave it to drones, of all things, to rejuvenate the melisma. Now, much drone music is more akin to static, an investigation of random data and texture. But there’s a growing field of drone-like music that has a melodic soul.

Take for example David Tagg’s Skin Diagram, a free download from the archaichorizon.com netlabel. All six of its tracks are built in one way or another on a steadily flowing foundation of thick, tubular drones, like the nearly subaural tone that threads through “Life Drone” (MP3) and the gentle cloud-like patterns that inform “Deep Breathing” (MP3). In all the tracks, a single sound can be followed as it snakes its way — or slowly swells and wanes, or otherwise is transformed without losing its essential quality — around the composition.

Tagg is credited on the album as having played “electric guitar, low pass filter, ring modulator.” Perhaps explaining the high sound quality, Skin Diagram also includes a credit for a mastering, which is not the norm for the often low-budget projects that appear on netlabels (the credit goes to Brian Grainger, who records elsewhere as Milieu). Get the full set at archaichorizon.com.

downstream / Freebie Beat Dimensions MP3

There’s a fairly solid new compilation out of purposefully instrumental beat-music, mostly hip-hop and dance but some verging into other areas, from lounge to flat out electronic. None of it is waiting around for someone to lay down a vocal; it’s all beats for beats’s sake. The set’s titled Beat Dimensions Vol. 1 and was compiled by Cinnaman and Jay Scarlett, with contributions from a host of drum-machine mavens. Cinnaman and Scarlett call the stuff “beatstrumentals”; on this website, it’s all categorized as “i-hop.” Fifteen of the album’s 23 cuts appeared over the course of three previous Beat Dimensions 12″s. It’s all a little far on the r&b side of the funk continuum (these producers learned a lot more from the Time than they did from the Bomb Squad), but the best of the material includes Aardvarck’s slowly stomping “Nose” and Simon Muschinsky’s funky “Activate,” as well as cuts by Super Smorky Soul and Pursuit Grooves.

To celebrate the collection’s release, its label, the Netherlands-based Rush Hour, had a little fun. At the promotional web page rushhour.nl/beatdimensions there’s a spinning little star burst, inside of which it reads “try to find the hidden beat.” And if you click on the correct elements in the album cover, it lights up like a pinball machine and a tasty, eminently loopable 41-second beat MP3, credited to SirOJ, is made available for free download — with synthy key swells, 8bit blips, and de rigueur modal flute elements. (SirOJ contributes an 8bit-influenced track to the album as Slumgullion.)

Other participants on Beat Dimensions Vol. 1 include , including Dimlite & Ill Dubio, J Todd, Up Hygh, Mweslee, Morgan Spacek, Hudson Mohawke, Dyno, Byron & Onra, Tom Trago, Hearin Aid, Flyamsam, Black Pocket, Veebeeo, Mike Tibbert, O. Boogie, and Sepalot. Liner notes were provided by Rafael Rashid, who was behind the book Behind the Beats. More info at Cinnaman-Scarlett’s myspace.com/beatdimensions. More on SirOJ at myspace.com/slumgullion.

field notes / tangents / Electroplankton, Alaska, cabaret …

Quick News, Links, Bits, Reads: Playing catch up on links I’ve accumulated. … Is the Nintendo DS video game Electroplankton out of print? Someone’s selling it for over 70 bucks, used, on amazon.com. (Thanks, Jeff.) … Speaking of which, amazon.com has updated its underacknowledged free-download service, now as part of the blue-light specials at amazon.com/mp3deals. …

Alex Ross headed to Alaska to meet up with composer John Luther Adams (newyorker.com). Adams recounts a specific moment when the intensity of Alaska’s importance to him and to his music became clear: “I knew that I wanted to hear the unheard, that I wanted to somehow transpose the music that is just beyond the reach of our ears into audible vibrations. I knew that it had to be its own space.” … Stephen Holden, the New York Times’s resident cabaret beat reporter (how many other newspapers have a cabaret beat?), bemoans the decision by the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan to end the 14-year tenure of resident pianist and singer Daryl Sherman. Marking the distinction between live piano and the presence of an in situ entertainer, he writes, “The Waldorf still has live piano music in Peacock Alley on the way to the hotel’s Lexington Avenue entrance, but that serves as ambient background tinkling” (nytimes.com). …

Mac-only, so I have yet to try it, but Bitnotic says to be an ambient generator (bitnotic.com). … An automated soundtrack service (soundtrack.pumpaudio.com). … The Mosquito has been banned by at least one county (engadget.com). … There’s no apparent way to search within a genre at emusic.com (if only I could search for “instrumental” within “hip-hop”), but if you’ve got some small number of points left in your monthly subscription, there’s a service that’ll find, say, albums in a certain genre with fewer than a certain number of tracks (search.dslgateways.com).

Word’s already out, but belatedly, David Byrne has said that he and Brian Eno are working on their first album-length collaboration since My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (nydailynews.com). … As I mentioned earlier this week (disquiet.com), the Our Lives in the Bush of Disquiet remix collection I curated has been downloaded over 20,000 times (archive.org); what I didn’t know at the time is that it’s also now available as a collection of ringtones (beemp3.com). …

R.I.P.: Tristram Cary (born 1925), eminent British electronic composer whose music apeared in Dr. Who, Quatermass & the Pit, and other films (bbc.co.uk, guardian.co.uk). … Bebe Barron (born 1920), who is best known for her work with her husband, Louis Barron, on the score to Forbidden Planet (createdigitalmusic.com, echoes.org, cinefantastiqueonline.com). I never met Bebe Barron but I did have the pleasure of editing the interview with her, written by the now deceased composer Richard Zvonar, that appeared in the magazine e/i (ei-mag.com) several years ago. … Jimmy Giuffre (born 1921), experimental jazz woodwind player (nytimes.com, telegraph.co.uk). His Jimmy Giuffre 4 outfit, with electric keyboardist Pete Levin (brother and musical colleague of prog bassist Tony Levin), has been credited with venturing into ambient territory. … Henry Brant (born 1913), spatial-music specialist (sfcmp.blogspot.com, dallasobserver.com, allaboutjazz.com, artsjournal.com/postclassic). … Michel Waisvisz (born 1949), STEIM founder (createdigitalmusic.com, rarefrequency.com, synthtopia.com). … Alexander Courage (born 1919), composer of the Star Trek theme (nytimes.com). … And as noted recently as a Sunday “Image of the Week” (disquiet.com), Albert Hofmann (born 1906), who first synthesized LSD in a laboratory setting, passed away (telegraph.co.uk). … The Yahoo! group that began a decade ago as an online discussion place for music covered in the British magazine Wire is being closed down as usage has dropped to about 30 message per month (groups.yahoo.com). … And while it’s not a resurrection by any means, perhaps a new magazine will fill in where the defunct hip-hop-production periodical Scratch once reigned (beattips.com).

Grey Market: The Spliff Huxtable blog (subtitled: “Hip Hop Production for the Heads”) posts a heap of Pete Rock instrumentals (spliffhuxtable.com) and at Passion of the Weiss, Jeff Weiss posts an instrumental of the great recent Busta Rhymes track “Don’t Touch Me (Throw Da Water on ‘Em),” produced by Grind Music team of LV and Sean C (MP3, passionweiss.com).

field notes / San Francisco Symphony 2008-2009: Bates, Ligeti, Gubaidulina

The San Francisco Symphony’s 2008-2009 season seems lighter on contemporary fare than was the previous year. Five events stand out, chief among them the world premiere of the SFS-commissioned The B-Sides by Mason Bates (May 20, 22 and 23, 2009). Bates performs electronic music under the name Masonic; more info on him at masonicelectronica.com. (Bates is also contributing new work to a series of performances by the Bay Area vocal group Chanticleer, March 20 - 22, 2009, at the SF Conservatory of Music; on that bill, as well, are pieces by young composers Shawn Crouch, who has done some work for computer, and Tarik O’Regan, whose “Scattered Rhymes” and “Virelai: Douce dame jolie” appeared on an album earlier this year alongside material by Gavin Bryars.)

There are Symphony programs of György Ligeti (Requiem, famed for its deployment by Stanley Kubrick in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, on March 5 - 7, 2009, and the attenuated wonder that is Lontano on September 4, the season’s opening night, plus 6 and 7, 2008 — the latter, unfortunately, scheduled against one night of the annual San Francisco Electronic Music Festival) and two works by Sofia Gubaidulina (the world premiere of an SFS-commissioned work that apparently didn’t have a name at the time of the publication of the season schedule, on February 18, 20 and 21, 2009, and her Violin Concerto No. 2, in tempus präsens, having its U.S. premiere on February 27 and 28, 2009). If I’m missing anything else that I shouldn’t be, please let me know.

Here’s the writeup on last year’s season: disquiet.com.

downstream / Five Broadcast-Based MP3s from Thomas (Mystified) Park

There’s no didgeridoo on the five-track album Altered Signals by Mystified (aka Thomas Park), but there may as well be. Much of the music heard here has the slow, otherworldly onomatopoeia of that aboriginal device. The collection opens with the title cut: the crackle of data, the ping of noises echoing in a long, narrow chamber (MP3). Then comes “Bell Cloud,” which is all industrial chatter (MP3). In “Vocal Tremors” you can hear the deeply submerged speaking amid the crumpled metal (MP3). “Octavepus” is a heavenly drone, a kind of android Tuvan singing (MP3). And “Science of Change” is like some unimaginably large prayer bowl, its resonance echoing at an extravagantly sedate pace into the distance (MP3). According to the set’s release notes, much of the source material originated in some form of broadcast, suggesting there was already some aural decay at work before Park got his hands on the elements from which Altered Signals was built. More info at the website of the releasing netlabel, darkwinter.com, and at Mystified/Park’s mystifiedmusic.com.

field notes / Image of the Week: AirPiano

The AirPiano, created by Omer Yosha:

“Specifications: Polyphonic, MIDI protocol, Up to 24 keys / 8 faders, USB connectivity.” More info at airpiano.de (via createdigitalmusic.com, hackaday.com, engadget.com).

field notes / Our Lives in the Bush MP3s / Over 20,000 Served

The remix project Our Lives in the Bush of Disquiet has been downloaded over 20,000 times, as of today. I uploaded the set in early September 2006. It is an homage to the then 25-year-old (and now 27-) album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Brian Eno and David Byrne. Bush of Disquiet consists of a dozen remixes I solicited of two tracks off that album.

The songs are all available for free download in various formats (192Kbps MP3, 64 Kbps MP3, Ogg Vorbis, VBR MP3) at:

archive.org/details/OurLivesInTheBushOfDisquiet

Here’s the lineup, with links to the 192Kbps MP3s and to the websites of the contributing musicians:

1. (MP3) “Help Me Help Me” — AllThatFall
2. (MP3) “If You Make Your Bed in Heaven” — Roddy Schrock
3. (MP3) “Leftover Secrets to Tell” — Pocka
4. (MP3) “Secret Life Remix” — Stephane Leonard
5. (MP3) “The Black Isle (Byrne/Eno Remix)” — (dj) morsanek
6. (MP3) “Hit Me Somebody (Help Me Somebody Remix)” — MrBiggs
7. (MP3) “Being and Nothingness (A Secret Life Remixed)” — john kannenberg
8. (MP3) “Somebody Help Us” — My Fun
9. (MP3) “Hey” — Mark Rushton
10. (MP3) “My Bush in the Secret Life of Ghosts” — Prehab
11. (MP3) “Not Enough Africa” — Ego Response Technician
12. (MP3) “Helping (Help Me Somebody Remix)” — doogie

More info at disquiet.com/bushofghosts. Thanks to all the contributors, including Brian Scott (of boondesign.com), who produced the beautiful “cover” (shown above) and “back cover” for the collection. The project would not have been possible without the instigation of Eno and Byrne, who posted the raw materials of the original songs at bush-of-ghosts.com/remix.

On Bush of Disquiet’s one-year anniversary, September 4, 2007, it had been downloaded almost 6,000 times (see disquiet.com), which means that the rate of downloads has increased.