Last year I struggled to build up the enthusiasm to write a year end round-up blog. Thankfully this year has been crammed with so much adventurous, exciting, terrifying, cosmic, humourous and life-affirming music. So let's get right to the year end playlist - my longest yet!
With so much great music I don't have the strength to try and make yet another "albums of the year" countdown. No one wants to read another bloody list anyway. However, I would like to single out one release in particular that I thought was just phenomenal.
Let's Eat Grandma are a pair of teenagers from Norwich. They ostensibly make pop music but its draped in a thick layer of DIY sound-making and naive invention. The album seems to be all about playing in that blurry pre-teen phase of life and the instrumentation itself is strongly linked to conventional images of childhood (xylophones, recorders, the album even opens with a clapping game). Fairy-tale themes are prevalent throughout but they are tinged with dark, slighty Gothic edges think Roald Dahl rather than Disney. It's just so unabashedly unselfconscious.
I mean just watch this...
Love it.
If a pop record became my favourite of the year, albeit an off-the-wall one, then I shouldn't be surprised that 2016 broke another of my genre barriers. Hip hop has always felt rather alien to me but this year I finally got an in with the experimental soft rules from True Neutral Crew. I never thought hip hop could be so weird and inventive. This led to me exploring more of the acts on the Deathbomb Arc label and getting into new releases from clipping. and JPEGMAFIA.
While I'm on the subject of JPEGMAFIA that leads (rather uncomfortably) to the elephant in the room which would of course be the trials and tribulations of Western democracy in 2016. The 2nd Amendment tackled some of the, let's say, autocratic tendencies of 2016 politics. Moor Mother's Fetish Bones also feels like something that could only have been forged in this most turbulent of years. In one sense it's a harrowing listen and it's horrible that the hateful climate that fostered its creation is even allowed to exist. But on the other hand it's a real blistering gem that I feel privileged to have heard. Never before have I heard punk, noise and jazz combined in a way which is so bloodcurdlingly visceral. The noisy sphere was also served well by Puce Mary and the first new Pita release in far too long.
So what else was good... Well a bunch of What Was Music?'s old friends continued to produce the goods. Take a bow Matmos, Rashad Becker, Fennesz and Oren Ambarchi. Katie Gately had the best songs and Roly Porter seemed to do no less than simulate the birth of an entire universe in pure sound. The weirder end of electronic music (my bread and butter) was well served by the incomprehensible biomophic squelch of FIS; the uncanny synthetic voices of Matt Carlson and the Yorkshire sampling NYZ. At the acoustic end of the spectrum Eli Keszler hits things like no one else can hit things and Sarah Nicolls' vertical swinging piano was a joy to behold. I even managed to find time for a bit of reggae and some dub infused with a bit of J-Pop.
As tedious as the year end lists can be they are an incredible discovery tool. If I didn't pour through the year end lists from The Quietus, Wire, FACT, Late Junction, A Closer Listen and Boomkat. I wouldn't have discovered some truly outstanding sounds from Inventing Masks, Andrew Pekler, Billy Bao and Stian Westerhus.
Not making the playlist (mainly for time reasons) was Maja Ratke's epic Crepuscular Hour. It's well worth a listen (or ten). And I also can't miss out Andy Stott and Demdike Stare who released killer albums this year but their insistence on limiting themselves to releasing on physical media means they are sadly overlooked in the traditional Spotify playlist. It's worth remembering that Spotify is not the be all and end all...
On that note, this has been a great year for independent musicians/publishers with the Bandcamp platform going from strength to strength*. I'm afraid though I can't even link you to my favourite Bandcamp release of the year as it was a timed audio gag from Leyland Kirby's V/VM persona. A music hall inspired piano re-rendering of the deserving (if slightly po-faced) album of the year contender Love Streams by Tim Hecker. It put a huge smile on my face anyway as did the bonus "Christmess" album given out to fans. This kind of artist/fan connection is fantastic, let's hope this is the shape of things to come.
I also can't forget my own musical forays this year. As discussed in my few blogs from this year I've been inspired by the TidalCycles music software. Hopefully expect more sounds from me next year. I couldn't be more excited about the prospects of live-coded music making. The scene is open and friendly and despite the initial technical leap I think it could become a fantastic tool for amateur musicians. The pinnacle of the Tidal scene this year was this maximalist charmer from Tidal veteran Kindohm.
This E.P. from another live coder, Renick Bell, is also well worth anyone's time.
Right well 2017 is almost here so I'd better wrap this up. It's been such a brilliant year for music I almost don't want anything new in 2017 so I can pour over 2016's treasures a few more times.
Happy New Year!
* A negative footnote unfortunately, prompted by a somewhat unsavoury incident with Bandcamp and the publishers of the Dominic Fernow project Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement. The album Green Graves was uploaded by someone other than the rights holders. Bandcamp seemed fairly slow to respond and so this unscrupulous person managed to profit for a short time from someone else's hard work. Hopefully, this isn't a common occurrence but just be mindful of who you're buying from.
Thursday, 29 December 2016
Sunday, 13 November 2016
The Disintegration Loops
There's a part of me that enjoys music on a visceral level. The groove, the noise, the fist-pumping euphoria. Running in almost direct opposition to this is a more nuanced appreciation. Metaphor, existential meaning... You know, the pretentious bit of me that likes to write wordy blog posts. It's this sphere of thought that knows William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops is the zenith of musical achievement.
A lofty claim, and one that becomes even more unexpected upon discovering The Loops' origins. In the 1980's Basinski constructed a number of loops sampled from an easy listening radio station. In 2001, wanting to preserve these loops, which were stored on magnetic tape, he fed them through a digital recorder and then left them running. What he soon discovered, however, was that the tapes were being worn away by the machine, the thin magnetized coating on which the audio was stored was flaking off. This physical damage was picked up by the digital recorder and gaps and silences began to appear in the sound as the loops were repeated. Each track on The Disintegration Loops charts the process of one of these strips of tape being put through this process. These tracks (across the 4 CD's on the box-set that I have) are between 20 minutes to an hour long.
My attention-demanding, primitive brain does not care much for the resultant sounds. It struggles with the patience required for ambient music. It craves jump cuts, dynamism, energy, surprise. The Loops give it none of that. The same 10 second loop repeated hundreds of time over the space of an hour, there's a part of me that will always find that tedious. But life is tedious and our 24-hour entertainment culture cannot mask that. I think I need to learn how to appreciate the pure Zen of boredom. However, there is very significant change in The Loops. Both sudden and gradual silences introduced by the decaying tape. When the thinky brain starts pondering on this aspect, wow do I love this music!
Listening to each track one's attention can dip in and out but come the end there is nothing quite as moving as realizing the journey you've just been on. You realize how much the loops decayed while you were listening to them. Some pock marks in the sound you barely registered and others you immediately recognized as momentous battle scars. You became accustomed to these changes and forget that they weren't even part of the original loop to start with. More appeared though, 5 minutes later, sometimes 10 or 20. They continued to accumulate until, like all things. the loop came to an end.
The Loops are the perfect music as metaphor. I often like to imagine each loop charts the middle-to-end stages of a human life. We go through our routines that are generally uneventful. Something changes however. We start to forget little things, a misremembered name here, a forgotten birthday there. These build up until our character starts begins to alter. We don't recognize ourselves or those around us anymore. We become a ghostly fragment of our previous selves.
Not all of The Loops' cycles of decay follows this Alzheimer's like degradation. The stuttering noise that encroaches on Dlp 4 is like an arthritic limb that becomes a frustrating chore to move. Other tracks are terrifying in their sudden and quite prolonged silences, on Dlp 1.2 they hit like a cardiac arrest. The Loops are poignantly sad when viewed like this but at the same instance they are incredibly optimistic. They soldier on despite their wounds. They accumulate character like the gnarled face of a village elder. Dignified until the end.
Non-human readings of change and decay are possible too. The Loops are essentially a memorial to the audio format that birthed them. A fragile means of storing data with none of the certainties of mass digital storage. That which we created will turn to dust just as we.
Credit to needs to be given to the original loops. They are stunningly beautiful and show that there is great art even amongst what might be considered by some to be the most artless music. But I'm grateful for the decay process that defines The Loops as otherwise listening them is like gorging on too much rich food. Crucially the loops are not Ozymandian. This music isn't mocking civilization or man's achievements but instead their somber melodies chart the inevitable decay of the individual. They are delicate but also sometimes humorously pompous, Dlp 1.1 for example conjures up the image of a Captain Mainwaring character or a faded portrait of a general of the British Raj. These are of course my own cultural impressions. I would hope that other people would have their own varied impressions.
A major factor that may have contributed to The Loops entering the pantheon of "great works" was the horrific 9/11 terror attacks which immediately followed the completion of the tapes' digitization. Basinski captured this with a series of moving photographs taken from his rooftop. These adorn the cover and accompanying art book of the box-set and so will forever attach The Loops to the immense tragedy of that day. Personally, though I will always appreciate the loops on a general, individual scale. An ode to any soul departing this Earth.
To me this music is truly remarkable but to where should my plaudits and appreciation go. While the original loops themselves were masterfully arranged, the music is little without the damage those tapes suffered. So I've essentially just spent several paragraphs attaching poignant metaphor and impressive compositional insight to a natural process. (Incidentally this was what John Cage was getting at, somehow all my blogs eventually link back to 4'33"...) The Loops are somewhat of a symbiosis, man steered by nature into creating a transcendent listening experience. It's this aspect of The Loops that fascinates me the most and has inspired me to want to create my own approach to it. I'll talk about this project in my next blog.
Everything must end and The Disintegration Loops are the ultimate celebration of the inevitable. Right, now I'm off to find something I can dance to...
A lofty claim, and one that becomes even more unexpected upon discovering The Loops' origins. In the 1980's Basinski constructed a number of loops sampled from an easy listening radio station. In 2001, wanting to preserve these loops, which were stored on magnetic tape, he fed them through a digital recorder and then left them running. What he soon discovered, however, was that the tapes were being worn away by the machine, the thin magnetized coating on which the audio was stored was flaking off. This physical damage was picked up by the digital recorder and gaps and silences began to appear in the sound as the loops were repeated. Each track on The Disintegration Loops charts the process of one of these strips of tape being put through this process. These tracks (across the 4 CD's on the box-set that I have) are between 20 minutes to an hour long.
My attention-demanding, primitive brain does not care much for the resultant sounds. It struggles with the patience required for ambient music. It craves jump cuts, dynamism, energy, surprise. The Loops give it none of that. The same 10 second loop repeated hundreds of time over the space of an hour, there's a part of me that will always find that tedious. But life is tedious and our 24-hour entertainment culture cannot mask that. I think I need to learn how to appreciate the pure Zen of boredom. However, there is very significant change in The Loops. Both sudden and gradual silences introduced by the decaying tape. When the thinky brain starts pondering on this aspect, wow do I love this music!
Listening to each track one's attention can dip in and out but come the end there is nothing quite as moving as realizing the journey you've just been on. You realize how much the loops decayed while you were listening to them. Some pock marks in the sound you barely registered and others you immediately recognized as momentous battle scars. You became accustomed to these changes and forget that they weren't even part of the original loop to start with. More appeared though, 5 minutes later, sometimes 10 or 20. They continued to accumulate until, like all things. the loop came to an end.
The Loops are the perfect music as metaphor. I often like to imagine each loop charts the middle-to-end stages of a human life. We go through our routines that are generally uneventful. Something changes however. We start to forget little things, a misremembered name here, a forgotten birthday there. These build up until our character starts begins to alter. We don't recognize ourselves or those around us anymore. We become a ghostly fragment of our previous selves.
Not all of The Loops' cycles of decay follows this Alzheimer's like degradation. The stuttering noise that encroaches on Dlp 4 is like an arthritic limb that becomes a frustrating chore to move. Other tracks are terrifying in their sudden and quite prolonged silences, on Dlp 1.2 they hit like a cardiac arrest. The Loops are poignantly sad when viewed like this but at the same instance they are incredibly optimistic. They soldier on despite their wounds. They accumulate character like the gnarled face of a village elder. Dignified until the end.
Non-human readings of change and decay are possible too. The Loops are essentially a memorial to the audio format that birthed them. A fragile means of storing data with none of the certainties of mass digital storage. That which we created will turn to dust just as we.
Credit to needs to be given to the original loops. They are stunningly beautiful and show that there is great art even amongst what might be considered by some to be the most artless music. But I'm grateful for the decay process that defines The Loops as otherwise listening them is like gorging on too much rich food. Crucially the loops are not Ozymandian. This music isn't mocking civilization or man's achievements but instead their somber melodies chart the inevitable decay of the individual. They are delicate but also sometimes humorously pompous, Dlp 1.1 for example conjures up the image of a Captain Mainwaring character or a faded portrait of a general of the British Raj. These are of course my own cultural impressions. I would hope that other people would have their own varied impressions.
A major factor that may have contributed to The Loops entering the pantheon of "great works" was the horrific 9/11 terror attacks which immediately followed the completion of the tapes' digitization. Basinski captured this with a series of moving photographs taken from his rooftop. These adorn the cover and accompanying art book of the box-set and so will forever attach The Loops to the immense tragedy of that day. Personally, though I will always appreciate the loops on a general, individual scale. An ode to any soul departing this Earth.
To me this music is truly remarkable but to where should my plaudits and appreciation go. While the original loops themselves were masterfully arranged, the music is little without the damage those tapes suffered. So I've essentially just spent several paragraphs attaching poignant metaphor and impressive compositional insight to a natural process. (Incidentally this was what John Cage was getting at, somehow all my blogs eventually link back to 4'33"...) The Loops are somewhat of a symbiosis, man steered by nature into creating a transcendent listening experience. It's this aspect of The Loops that fascinates me the most and has inspired me to want to create my own approach to it. I'll talk about this project in my next blog.
Everything must end and The Disintegration Loops are the ultimate celebration of the inevitable. Right, now I'm off to find something I can dance to...
Sunday, 9 October 2016
Neglected Currents
Wow it's been over a year and half since my last blog. Shame on me!
Although no-one was clamouring for it, for me these blogs are a very personal form of art therapy. The need to be creative always seems to oppress itself on my thoughts and so it's nice to have a place where it can just gush out.
What's roused me from my blogging slumber is a piece of music software I've discovered that I've completely fallen in love with, TidalCycles. TidalCycles (or just Tidal for short) is a way to make musical patterns with code. As earlier blogs attest, the mixture of art and technology is something I've always been passionate about and, slight techy detour here, the fact that Tidal uses Haskell means that I also have a vehicle for engaging with functional programming which quite handily benefits my day job.
Now this isn't the first time I've got excited by a shiny new toy, played with it for 5 minutes and then left it on the shelf to gather dust. I want to stick with Tidal though and so inspired by the Abandoned Art project I've decided that the way to force myself to practice is to upload a Tidal jam/session/mess to my Youtube account every 2 weeks. These will be my "Neglected Currents" immediately uploaded and forgotten about but will hopefully chart a history from humble beginnings to some quite interesting music.
Without further ado here's the first one:
As a first attempt, it's ok I guess. I managed to forget a lot of the syntax and had to keep stopping to consult my notes. That being said there's some interesting stuff in there, thanks mainly to the power of Tidal and it's pre-prepared sample library.
What I truly find revolutionary about Tidal is that this is the first piece of music software I've used where the main question is not "How do I make the sounds I want?" but "What do I do next?". My history with making music comes from using software that allows you to meticulously order and place sound in preparation for one finished piece. Tidal (and live-coding in general) focus on improvisation. It takes just a few lines of code to produce quite a complex rhythmic pattern and then the challenge immediately becomes focused around how this pattern should morph and change. I've always been interested in improvisation especially within the context of electronic music. Most electronic music I listen to is far too composed and introducing an improvised element into it I think can be a spark for the creation of more dynamic music that sounds, dare I say, alive. This also the first piece of music software I've used where the only barrier between brain and the music is how fast you can type.
Here's to what I hope will be a fruitful time with Tidal. See you in 2 weeks!
Although no-one was clamouring for it, for me these blogs are a very personal form of art therapy. The need to be creative always seems to oppress itself on my thoughts and so it's nice to have a place where it can just gush out.
What's roused me from my blogging slumber is a piece of music software I've discovered that I've completely fallen in love with, TidalCycles. TidalCycles (or just Tidal for short) is a way to make musical patterns with code. As earlier blogs attest, the mixture of art and technology is something I've always been passionate about and, slight techy detour here, the fact that Tidal uses Haskell means that I also have a vehicle for engaging with functional programming which quite handily benefits my day job.
Now this isn't the first time I've got excited by a shiny new toy, played with it for 5 minutes and then left it on the shelf to gather dust. I want to stick with Tidal though and so inspired by the Abandoned Art project I've decided that the way to force myself to practice is to upload a Tidal jam/session/mess to my Youtube account every 2 weeks. These will be my "Neglected Currents" immediately uploaded and forgotten about but will hopefully chart a history from humble beginnings to some quite interesting music.
Without further ado here's the first one:
As a first attempt, it's ok I guess. I managed to forget a lot of the syntax and had to keep stopping to consult my notes. That being said there's some interesting stuff in there, thanks mainly to the power of Tidal and it's pre-prepared sample library.
What I truly find revolutionary about Tidal is that this is the first piece of music software I've used where the main question is not "How do I make the sounds I want?" but "What do I do next?". My history with making music comes from using software that allows you to meticulously order and place sound in preparation for one finished piece. Tidal (and live-coding in general) focus on improvisation. It takes just a few lines of code to produce quite a complex rhythmic pattern and then the challenge immediately becomes focused around how this pattern should morph and change. I've always been interested in improvisation especially within the context of electronic music. Most electronic music I listen to is far too composed and introducing an improvised element into it I think can be a spark for the creation of more dynamic music that sounds, dare I say, alive. This also the first piece of music software I've used where the only barrier between brain and the music is how fast you can type.
Here's to what I hope will be a fruitful time with Tidal. See you in 2 weeks!
Saturday, 18 April 2015
Wave Goodbye To Gotham
My last blog was focused on discovering beauty from within chaos and blind fortune. This time I've gone in completely the opposite direction with a piece of music that has been somewhat laboriously ground out. Thoroughly composed. This takes me back to how I would write acousmatic music when I was studying at the University of Leeds. One year to compose 30 minutes of material. Every slight detail of the sound fussed and fumbled over. Grand, over-arching concepts that were almost impossible to realise. It's my default setting.
This means the involvement of SuperCollider this time was limited solely to that of an audio processor. I'd tinker, create a sound I liked in SC and then record it. I used Audacity for arranging all the recorded material. Audacity is a convenient DAW for the amateur muso as it's free, although it's severe limitations (such as no pan automation) may make me switch to an alternative for future projects.
For my experiments with SuperCollider I'm interested in taking up one compositional technique and exploring it as fully as possible. I've already discussed my reasons for purposefully limiting one's tools. This time my focus was on using a technique called Waveset transformation. Keeping things brief the Waveset concept was developed by British Composer Trevor Wishart in 1994 and was used to create his seminal works of electronic music such as Tongues Of Fire. The technique involves dividing sound material into a number of short waveforms which are then transformed and re-constituted to create new sounds. At its most basic this technique creates recognisable effects like pitch-shifting and time-stretching. However, play around with it a bit more and a whole range of more sonically interesting sounds become available. I hope I've captured some of this in my music. All the technical know-how came from Alberto de Campo's Waveset code and his fascinating article on Microsound in the SuperCollider book. I can not recommend this text highly enough. I won't go into more detail here but for those interested I highly recommend both the SC book and also Trevor Wishart maintains a very detailed website on his practices.
Now that I'd chosen a technique, the next step was to limit myself to narrow range of sound sources. For this I chose to use samples from a CD I had bought (somewhat against my will) from the self-titled "Times Square Hustler", Sindakid.
Why the combination of blandly boastful New York rap and the computer music techniques of an eccentric British composer? An amusing juxtaposition I guess. Also if you can try and seek out Trevor Wishart's piece Vox VI you'll understand another reason why this combination makes me smile. I'll just say that it contains a rap with the lyrics "It's the New Complexity finger-snap"...
With technique and source material I aimed to sketch out some music that told an autobiographical tale of my first experience travelling solo in New York city in 2013. As I previously alluded to, on my first visit to Times Square, filled with wonder and naivety, I was offered a CD by a passer-by. I graciously accepted. However, this was no jobbing musician just trying to get themselves a modicum of exposure. No this guy wanted money. Fair enough. At this point though I realised I was surrounded by a much larger group than I'd realised. Once one of them had tasted blood, others quickly moved in. Forcing their own CDs onto me or asking me for their own payback even though they'd produced nothing. I could have just walked away but somehow couldn't. I eventually got away after arguing for several minutes over whether I was supposed to split a 10 dollar bill with one of the hangers-on. Needless to say I was on my guard for the rest of the week I was there.
I wanted to make music that somehow captured my feelings about this event. It begins with a fairly innocuous and humorous opening (the sound of a cash register till opening clearly illustrating what's on everyone's mind) but the realisation that things are not initially what they seem quickly sets in. After this, jarring contrasts between overwhelming sound and absolute silence convey one particular concern that I'd actually paid $30 for a blank CD. After a while things begin to calm down, I get over being swindled and can move on, but the event keeps replaying itself. Tiny goblins snigger with demonic joy when the rapper says a naughty word. The sounds become more parodic, I realise I can use music to mock my tormentor and give myself power over what had happened. Suddenly the asinine machismo becomes about as threatening as a benign seagull wheeling overhead. It all ends though on a poignant note. The original Sindakid record contains a strange, boastful yet pensive confession, summing up the corruptive influence of the de facto Metropolis. I included this verbatim.
All the bad things, all the good things that I said I wouldn't do I did 'em in New York. [..] When I was living in the Bahamas I said I'd never do this, I'd never do that. I came over here the first job I had was selling crack.Maybe I shouldn't be the one making fun...
...or maybe he is just a douchebag.
Wednesday, 4 February 2015
Cage Ex Machina
Over the next few months I'm planning a short series of blog posts documenting my attempts to compose some brief musical sketches composed all or in part with SuperCollider. The general aim is to learn the language but also to acquaint myself with some of the myriad methods for composing music with computers.
However, before all of this, without even intending to, I've managed to compose my first piece of music in 6 years. Except, I feel somewhat guilty actually claiming this as my composition because it was born from a typo. A dumb mistake given life by an internal process I don't fully understand. I think this sums up why I've fallen in love with SuperCollider. Even making mistakes can lead to fascinating sonics.
The story is that during my early experiments with the language I managed to produce a sound somewhat akin to distorted, Congotronics-esque percussion. Inspired and ready to lay down some pulsating rhythms, I tried to tweak the sound I was listening to by changing the pitch of those pseudo-drums. Without realizing I accidentally entered a 0 for a parameter that scales the frequency of the sound (I've shared the actual code at the end of this post). Well you don't need a particularly strong grasp of audio synthesis to know that multiplying your sounds by 0 is not really what you want to do.
I expected silence. What I got was something else entirely. Strangulated tones, metronomic clicks and garbled noise. From this disorienting soundscape a series of squeals and beeps occasionally coalesced into fragments of melody. In fact the sound possessed an almost human sense of dynamic pacing, loudly bursting forth to surprise you before retreating into the gloom. This glitch, this aria for processor, continued for about a minute or so before it lost all momentum, ticking along to itself for an infinity. All this took place in a microscopic and hermetic sound space devoid of any natural colour as if I was able to listen in to my laptop's own private raving.
I couldn't help but be inspired by this truly Cageian moment. Chance encounters and sound for sound's sake at its very best. I had to record it. But of course being a meddling little humanoid I tweaked with some inputs, recorded a few more variations, made it faster and slower, added a second voice. I edited these short recordings together to make a piece of music with a few interesting variations but still maintained the odd character of my original mistake.
Mixing it proved quite difficult. Being paranoid these unnatural sounds were too loud I think I overcompensated and mixed it too quietly. Oh well I'm sure the little voice inside my laptop didn't want me messing with its beautiful song too much anyway.
I hope you'll enjoy the mistake that's probably more expressive and adventurous then anything I'll write on my own. Happy Colliding!
The Code:
However, before all of this, without even intending to, I've managed to compose my first piece of music in 6 years. Except, I feel somewhat guilty actually claiming this as my composition because it was born from a typo. A dumb mistake given life by an internal process I don't fully understand. I think this sums up why I've fallen in love with SuperCollider. Even making mistakes can lead to fascinating sonics.
The story is that during my early experiments with the language I managed to produce a sound somewhat akin to distorted, Congotronics-esque percussion. Inspired and ready to lay down some pulsating rhythms, I tried to tweak the sound I was listening to by changing the pitch of those pseudo-drums. Without realizing I accidentally entered a 0 for a parameter that scales the frequency of the sound (I've shared the actual code at the end of this post). Well you don't need a particularly strong grasp of audio synthesis to know that multiplying your sounds by 0 is not really what you want to do.
I expected silence. What I got was something else entirely. Strangulated tones, metronomic clicks and garbled noise. From this disorienting soundscape a series of squeals and beeps occasionally coalesced into fragments of melody. In fact the sound possessed an almost human sense of dynamic pacing, loudly bursting forth to surprise you before retreating into the gloom. This glitch, this aria for processor, continued for about a minute or so before it lost all momentum, ticking along to itself for an infinity. All this took place in a microscopic and hermetic sound space devoid of any natural colour as if I was able to listen in to my laptop's own private raving.
I couldn't help but be inspired by this truly Cageian moment. Chance encounters and sound for sound's sake at its very best. I had to record it. But of course being a meddling little humanoid I tweaked with some inputs, recorded a few more variations, made it faster and slower, added a second voice. I edited these short recordings together to make a piece of music with a few interesting variations but still maintained the odd character of my original mistake.
Mixing it proved quite difficult. Being paranoid these unnatural sounds were too loud I think I overcompensated and mixed it too quietly. Oh well I'm sure the little voice inside my laptop didn't want me messing with its beautiful song too much anyway.
I hope you'll enjoy the mistake that's probably more expressive and adventurous then anything I'll write on my own. Happy Colliding!
The Code:
Tuesday, 30 December 2014
2014
Yes it's that time of year again. Time to ring in the new by reflecting on what has been. I must admit that getting motivated to write my yearly music round-up has been a bit of a struggle. Somehow 2014 hasn't felt like a bumper year for music. I think Pete Swanson summed this up best with this tweet from a few days ago:
Outside of music there has been one concept that has dominated my thinking and outlook on the world this year. That would be the Wunderkammer or Cabinet of curiosities. The wild, over-the-top miscellanea of the natural and ethnological worlds curated by eccentric characters. Something about it just hits home. Maybe because I've moved into a good-sized flat with a lot of room (for London anyway) and I just want to fill it with stuff. This year I've marvelled at the surreal juxtapositions of Svankmajer's cabinet at an exhibition in Barcelona; discovered puzzling collections of magick artefacts at the Pitt Rivers museum and swooned over the sublime and ridiculous collection of modern dandy Viktor Wynd.
Anyway, back to the music, I've decided to spice up this year's list of my favourites albums by constructing my own little Wunderkammer pairing some cool albums with some similarly themed pictures I've taken at displays in Barcelona and the Pitt Rivers in Oxford.
---
A breastplate made of feathers and a shrunken Orang-utan head
Kemialliset Ystävät - Alas rattoisaa virtaa
A multi-coloured, bonkers confection that is just the right side of weird.
---
Erotic figures hidden in ceramic fruit
The Soft Pink Truth - Why Do the Heathen Rage?
Matmos' Drew Daniel returned to his Soft Pink Truth project, mapping aggressively male musical genres to the sphere of more inclusive dance and club musics. This time it's the sometime racist and misogynist elements of black metal that are lambasted by funky synths and satirical sampling. Subversive, without ever losing it's sense of sheer fun. Put on your corpse paint and start raving!
---
A mask made of broken kitsch
VHS Head - Persistence of Vision
VHS Head (as the name suggests) makes music by splicing together audio from old VHS tapes. As such it is dripping with that classic Carpenter-esque sound of grimy straight-to-video horror movies. It's the aural equivalent of binge watching David Cronenberg films in a disco. Yes the touchstones are 80s and 90s nostalgia but when the music is this ridiculously fun and enjoyable who am I to argue.,
---
The desecrated skull of our enemy
Pharmakon - Bestial Burden
Another year, another crushingly powerful release from Pharmakon, although this very nearly never saw the light of the day. This album was forced to be born after a truly terrifying emergency surgical procedure had to be performed on the artist. As such, this is blunt, direct music about being a mass of flesh and blood that threatens to fail you at a moment's notice. Take heart though, as gruelling as Phamarkon's pained screams are the more art reminds us of death and disease, the more we can feel truly alive.
---
Sentient dust
Actress - Ghettoville
What may be the last album from the Actress outfit, Ghettoville represents little more than the dust and rubble of a blitzed civilization. Dancefloor beats reduced to funeral dirges and wailing elegies. Brixton after a nuclear war perhaps. However, there are shafts of light that pierce the darkness. From the ruins we can re-build.
---
...uhhhh
Ok I've given up on this mental exercise now. As consumers of art one of the greatest joys to be had is that of establishing connections between thoughts and ideas, such as my painfully laboured idea of linking obscure, musical ephemera to weird and magical objects. We like to ascribe deeper meaning when perhaps in reality there is nothing more than surface. There is no greater example this year of a piece of music so caked in possible meaning that we could barely even attempt to unravel than Valerio Tricol's Miseri Lares. A strange, poetic horror story told only through veiled sounds and mumbled voices. Infinitely fascinating.
---
That's it? Only 6 top albums this year?
Although I've been a bit down on choosing what I deem empirically the "best" albums of the year - hey, maybe that's a sign of emotional maturity - there has still been a lot of music which I've really enjoyed. And any good Wunderkammer needs to be filled with lots of stuff. So further plaudits need to go out to some other bits of beautiful shelf clutter:
- Richard Dawson for making an epic mythology based on teenagers getting drunk at Featherstone Castle.
- Klara Lewis for the most impressive debut release of the year, already a master sculptor of sound.
- Susanna & Jenny Hval for their hauntingly beautiful songs. See my taste is not always just abstract noise.
- Scott Walker & SunnO))). While I wouldn't rank this collaboration as highly as either Scott's Bisch Bosch or SunnO)))'s Monoliths & Dimensions, anything from these masters of gloom is always something to be cherished.
- Russell Haswell, Kemper Norton, Flying Lotus, Afrikan Sciences... oh wait you're expecting my 2014 playlist.
Wishing everyone all the best for 2015!
Kind of feel like a lot of music stayed in their designated corners this year.. I hope 2015 is WAY messier
— Pete Swanson (@pete_swans) December 19, 2014
Outside of music there has been one concept that has dominated my thinking and outlook on the world this year. That would be the Wunderkammer or Cabinet of curiosities. The wild, over-the-top miscellanea of the natural and ethnological worlds curated by eccentric characters. Something about it just hits home. Maybe because I've moved into a good-sized flat with a lot of room (for London anyway) and I just want to fill it with stuff. This year I've marvelled at the surreal juxtapositions of Svankmajer's cabinet at an exhibition in Barcelona; discovered puzzling collections of magick artefacts at the Pitt Rivers museum and swooned over the sublime and ridiculous collection of modern dandy Viktor Wynd.
Anyway, back to the music, I've decided to spice up this year's list of my favourites albums by constructing my own little Wunderkammer pairing some cool albums with some similarly themed pictures I've taken at displays in Barcelona and the Pitt Rivers in Oxford.
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A breastplate made of feathers and a shrunken Orang-utan head
Kemialliset Ystävät - Alas rattoisaa virtaa
A multi-coloured, bonkers confection that is just the right side of weird.
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Erotic figures hidden in ceramic fruit
The Soft Pink Truth - Why Do the Heathen Rage?
Matmos' Drew Daniel returned to his Soft Pink Truth project, mapping aggressively male musical genres to the sphere of more inclusive dance and club musics. This time it's the sometime racist and misogynist elements of black metal that are lambasted by funky synths and satirical sampling. Subversive, without ever losing it's sense of sheer fun. Put on your corpse paint and start raving!
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A mask made of broken kitsch
VHS Head - Persistence of Vision
VHS Head (as the name suggests) makes music by splicing together audio from old VHS tapes. As such it is dripping with that classic Carpenter-esque sound of grimy straight-to-video horror movies. It's the aural equivalent of binge watching David Cronenberg films in a disco. Yes the touchstones are 80s and 90s nostalgia but when the music is this ridiculously fun and enjoyable who am I to argue.,
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The desecrated skull of our enemy
Pharmakon - Bestial Burden
Another year, another crushingly powerful release from Pharmakon, although this very nearly never saw the light of the day. This album was forced to be born after a truly terrifying emergency surgical procedure had to be performed on the artist. As such, this is blunt, direct music about being a mass of flesh and blood that threatens to fail you at a moment's notice. Take heart though, as gruelling as Phamarkon's pained screams are the more art reminds us of death and disease, the more we can feel truly alive.
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Sentient dust
Actress - Ghettoville
What may be the last album from the Actress outfit, Ghettoville represents little more than the dust and rubble of a blitzed civilization. Dancefloor beats reduced to funeral dirges and wailing elegies. Brixton after a nuclear war perhaps. However, there are shafts of light that pierce the darkness. From the ruins we can re-build.
---
...uhhhh
Ok I've given up on this mental exercise now. As consumers of art one of the greatest joys to be had is that of establishing connections between thoughts and ideas, such as my painfully laboured idea of linking obscure, musical ephemera to weird and magical objects. We like to ascribe deeper meaning when perhaps in reality there is nothing more than surface. There is no greater example this year of a piece of music so caked in possible meaning that we could barely even attempt to unravel than Valerio Tricol's Miseri Lares. A strange, poetic horror story told only through veiled sounds and mumbled voices. Infinitely fascinating.
---
That's it? Only 6 top albums this year?
Although I've been a bit down on choosing what I deem empirically the "best" albums of the year - hey, maybe that's a sign of emotional maturity - there has still been a lot of music which I've really enjoyed. And any good Wunderkammer needs to be filled with lots of stuff. So further plaudits need to go out to some other bits of beautiful shelf clutter:
- Richard Dawson for making an epic mythology based on teenagers getting drunk at Featherstone Castle.
- Klara Lewis for the most impressive debut release of the year, already a master sculptor of sound.
- Susanna & Jenny Hval for their hauntingly beautiful songs. See my taste is not always just abstract noise.
- Scott Walker & SunnO))). While I wouldn't rank this collaboration as highly as either Scott's Bisch Bosch or SunnO)))'s Monoliths & Dimensions, anything from these masters of gloom is always something to be cherished.
- Russell Haswell, Kemper Norton, Flying Lotus, Afrikan Sciences... oh wait you're expecting my 2014 playlist.
Wishing everyone all the best for 2015!
Sunday, 23 November 2014
You will soon be able to judge me like I judge everyone else
As you may have noticed from a distinct lack of activity from me this year, music has not really been at the forefront of my life. Maybe that's fatigue from the listening excesses of previous years or perhaps it's because this year I've taken more of an interest in the visual arts. So while my yearly summary blog is going to be somewhat light-weight (I actually think I'll struggle to name 10 truly exceptional albums for this year) I'm determined to rectify this next year.
One of the ways I think I'll get better engaged with music is by returning to actually trying to make some of my own. In fact, I have become quite obsessed with the idea of spending my time producing things. Maybe I want to see us, as a culture, move away from mass consumption (perhaps best epitomized by the phrase binge-watch entering the Oxford English dictionary) toward a culture of home production (which in typical 21st-century-have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too fashion is also a growth industry). Or perhaps my motives are a purely solipsistic attempt to justify and extend my existence... Or maybe I'm just a bit bored. Anyway, like it or not, I want to make more blogs, more little pieces of music, more ideas, more...stuff.
So what kind of music am I going to be making I hear you ask?
Well, I believe that is the very question that has stopped me making any music since I left university 4½ years ago. Thanks to the digital innovations of the last few decades there is a nearly endless array of possibilities for music making. Not to mention the various levels of skill, or lack thereof, required for your various modes of production. But that's an idea for a future blog... The point being I felt suffocated by choice into a position of complete inaction.
To cut my long-running dilemma short I decided that I just had to pick something and stick with it. What I settled on in the end was to create electronic music using SuperCollider a programming language built for "real time audio synthesis and algorithmic composition." Yep, I, perhaps intentionally, have chosen one of the most in-depth and challenging tools for making computer music when I could almost certainly achieve the same results on my phone. So why SuperCollider? Well I'm very attracted to the complete flexibility of having total control over the entire sound synthesis process. Also, being a professional software developer, I just quite enjoy coding and it is a default state that I'm comfortable with. This means learning a new programming language (something coders generally love doing) which requires an investment of time and effort that brings us back to my initial idea that I'm interested in crafting something, albeit a digital something (nothing?). Finally, I was particularly inspired by this collection from the SuperCollider community whereby they created fully formed musical pieces in SC in the space of a Tweet (and it seems the practice continues). It's little ideas and constraints like that that I find particularly inspiring and don't be surprised if you see a few Tweet-sized compositions from me in the near future.
So there you have it. I've laid out my intentions. Hopefully I can stick to them. Posting them here on my blog should keep me honest and if you don't see updates here then feel free to yell at me.
Right, now I've fulfilled my blogging obligation I'm off for a cheeky binge-watch.
One of the ways I think I'll get better engaged with music is by returning to actually trying to make some of my own. In fact, I have become quite obsessed with the idea of spending my time producing things. Maybe I want to see us, as a culture, move away from mass consumption (perhaps best epitomized by the phrase binge-watch entering the Oxford English dictionary) toward a culture of home production (which in typical 21st-century-have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too fashion is also a growth industry). Or perhaps my motives are a purely solipsistic attempt to justify and extend my existence... Or maybe I'm just a bit bored. Anyway, like it or not, I want to make more blogs, more little pieces of music, more ideas, more...stuff.
So what kind of music am I going to be making I hear you ask?
Well, I believe that is the very question that has stopped me making any music since I left university 4½ years ago. Thanks to the digital innovations of the last few decades there is a nearly endless array of possibilities for music making. Not to mention the various levels of skill, or lack thereof, required for your various modes of production. But that's an idea for a future blog... The point being I felt suffocated by choice into a position of complete inaction.
To cut my long-running dilemma short I decided that I just had to pick something and stick with it. What I settled on in the end was to create electronic music using SuperCollider a programming language built for "real time audio synthesis and algorithmic composition." Yep, I, perhaps intentionally, have chosen one of the most in-depth and challenging tools for making computer music when I could almost certainly achieve the same results on my phone. So why SuperCollider? Well I'm very attracted to the complete flexibility of having total control over the entire sound synthesis process. Also, being a professional software developer, I just quite enjoy coding and it is a default state that I'm comfortable with. This means learning a new programming language (something coders generally love doing) which requires an investment of time and effort that brings us back to my initial idea that I'm interested in crafting something, albeit a digital something (nothing?). Finally, I was particularly inspired by this collection from the SuperCollider community whereby they created fully formed musical pieces in SC in the space of a Tweet (and it seems the practice continues). It's little ideas and constraints like that that I find particularly inspiring and don't be surprised if you see a few Tweet-sized compositions from me in the near future.
So there you have it. I've laid out my intentions. Hopefully I can stick to them. Posting them here on my blog should keep me honest and if you don't see updates here then feel free to yell at me.
Right, now I've fulfilled my blogging obligation I'm off for a cheeky binge-watch.
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