The first track of Amoral Mayor Earwig EP, how a hot air balloon works, starts out straightforwardly enough. Some quiet acoustic guitar plucks, repeating and slowly adding some more layers of guitar. Sure, there’s some digital delay but mostly it’s just guitar. Some bitcrushing distortion eases into the left speaker just enough to raise an eyebrow, but it keeps with the guitar thing. Oh nice, some drums. Maybe even live. Strange processed guitar in the background, almost voice-like. A single reversed cymbal, very quick. Drum break. Quite distorted. Wait, how did we end up here? By the time the second track, i saw two of me, starts our hot air balloon has caught the jet stream. No turning back now.

Amoral Mayor Earwig EP and Bishop-Whitney EP could be two sides of a single album. I tend to listen to these together. El Hacedor is perhaps a little more mysterious, a little mellower. All three are intriguing and highly enjoyable.

Links

Beak on MySpace (bonus downloadable track, Limozeen)

This is part of a series of netlabel reviews.

Yuki Yaki’s blurb for Heavy Weights has this fanciful description: The tracks will take you on a dive cruise, each of them has its own little valley and its own moon. So: Take your time. This is exactly how I feel about it. The underwater aspect is suggested by the cover, which looks like a Shogun trilobite, and continues through the tracks with glossy, undulating textures. When this album starts I feel like I’m returning to a space that has continued to exist in my absence.

A couple of months after finding Heavy Weights, Vate (released on the 1 bit wonder netlabel) popped up in the archive.org feed. I literally cheered when I saw that there was more Glander to experience. Vate shows how dialed in to his technique Glander is, without at all being formulaic. The same masterful use of repetition is there but there’s a slightly grittier edge to the textures, and I almost get the sense that the camera has a wider angle lens, as bizarre as that is to say about music. These tracks are funkier, too. For instance, listen to the syncopation in the second track, Hmbrg, or the staccato gurgles in Drift. While Heavy Weights is a deep sea dive, Vate is a swooping flight through an urban landscape.

I’m still trying to understand why Glander’s use of repetition is so satisfying. On closer listening, the repeating textures are actually continually varying in small ways, and the different layers flow in and out of the foreground, creating complex interactions. There’s also a constant, but subtle, change in the surrounding space. Sometimes the textures will echo, and then it’s like they come close to you and have a very focused feel, and then drift outward into a cavernous space. There will be long stretches where you might not have noticed even that there were no drums, and then the kick will return at just the right moment.

Both of these albums, along with the bonus tracks available on Glander’s site, reward close listening as well as zoning out and using as background to working and working out.

Links

Glander (download individual tracks that have been on various compilations)

This is part of a series of netlabel reviews.

In 1995 British modern music magazine Wire sent Stockhausen some tracks by electronica acts (Stockhausen was an early pioneer of electronic music), including Aphex Twin and asked for his response. The article was called Advice To Clever Children. Here’s part of his response:

I wish those musicians would not allow themselves any repetitions, and would go faster in developing their ideas or their findings, because I don’t appreciate at all this permanent repetitive language. It is like someone who is stuttering all the time, and can’t get words out of his mouth. I think musicians should have very concise figures and not rely on this fashionable psychology. I don’t like psychology whatsoever: using music like a drug is stupid. One shouldn’t do that: music is the product of the highest human intelligence, and of the best senses, the listening senses and of imagination and intuition. And as soon as it becomes just a means for ambiance, as we say, environment, or for being used for certain purposes, then music becomes a whore, and one should not allow that really; one should not serve any existing demands or in particular not commercial values. That would be terrible: that is selling out the music.

Clearly this was a man who took his art seriously! I wonder if he disliked Satie, the originator of ambient music (“furniture music,” as he called it).

About Aphex Twin he said he should immediately stop with all these post-African repetitions, change tempi and at least have a direction if there had to be repetition. For each of the artists, he recommended a piece of his own to listen to for ideas. Aphex Twin’s response was irreverent and humerous:

I thought he should listen to couple of tracks of mine: Didgeridoo, then he’d stop making abstract, random patterns you can’t dance to.

The article is funny and it’s easy to dismiss Stockhausen as not understanding the context of electronic dance music, but I think it’s to his credit that he took the exercise seriously enough to think about their works as compositions to be critiqued instead of dismissing them outright. What’s fascinating is that in ‘95 Aphex Twin was making fairly repetitive drum machine-based loopy tracks and over the next few years became more and more abstract to the point sometimes of alienating all but the most dedicated listeners. I don’t know if he just got bored with what he was doing before or if he took Stockhausen’s advice to heart after all. Stockhausen’s aversion to machinistic repetition are put into relief by this quote from the well written Guardian obituary:

Stockhausen recalled how as a boy he heard marching songs played incessantly on the radio [in Nazi Germany]; an experience which left him with an abiding hatred of regular repetitive rhythms in music.

To be thorough, I should say that while this may be true, it’s also been part of the zeitgeist of avant garde music since the beginning of the 20th Century, or at least since World War I, when composers reacted against the atrocities they had experienced as well. It would be interesting to follow the schism where dance (that is, non-modern, popular dance) was left behind by the avant garde and taken up by the rest of the music world.

I’m not sure how I’ve been influenced by Stockhausen. I have only a couple of recordings, one of which is the Helicopter String Quartet, performed by the Arditti String Quartet. Musically it’s not something I return to often, but the idea is magnificent: each member of the quartet plays aboard a separate helicopter (yes, in flight!) and the audio and visuals are shown on stage for the audience on the ground, including the sound of the rotors. It’s such a crazy idea and spectacle — the very fact that it could be pulled off is amazing to me. It certainly showed me how the barriers we construct around the concert can be broken in dramatic fashion. I think his influence on me has been indirect, as he was tremendously influential on previous generations of composers, especially in his feeling of the importance of music in society, and in striving to create something new.

The highest calling of mankind can only be to become a musician in the profoundest sense; to conceive and shape the world musically. — Karlheinz Stockhausen

Photo: Stockhausen Publicity photo 1975. Chrysalis Records

The Helicopter Quartet (excerpt) as performed by the Austrian Ensemble for New Music.

Homeosis Slideshow

Konterkonzept EP

According to Lagerfeld, “it was created by exclusively using hardware synthesizers to set a counterpoint to the prevailing approaches of laptop and software.” He seems to be onto something. This stuff just crackles with energy from the first few seconds and carries through to the end.

While the requisite minimal techno repetition is there, it exists simply to lull you while subtle surprises slink in and out of auditory view. Lagerfeld knows how to take his time and explore an idea, and then move into territories that at first are unexpected, then seem inevitable. This is true of the structure as well as the sound design.

Note: for some reason archive.org’s stream of this EP is playing back at a slower speed. Preview this one from the mp3 downloads instead.

At first I waited patiently for new posts at Milieu but new reviews came in at a trickle (I know all about how hard it is to keep blog output consistent). I was curious to hear more since these first few albums had been so good. Archive.org’s netlabel section appears to be the nexus for this stuff. At first I poked around, looking at the various netlabels listed on the front page, or looking for artists on the same labels as the ones I liked. This yielded some interesting music but eventually I just drank from the fire hose directly and subscribed to the recent additions rss feed. Now I see new albums as soon as they appear, about 5 – 15 per day. There are certainly plenty that either aren’t that great or just aren’t my thing. I’ve learned to quickly weed out what I’m not likely to be interested in based on the description. The first thing that entices me to listen to a release is the artwork. Good album art is often a pretty good indicator of the music’s quality, believe it or not.

What possesses talented artists to send out into the world the fruit of their hard work for free? Downliners Sekt, one of the first netlabel groups I heard about, have this to say about it: “We bored as fuck with the music industry. We give our music away. We aim to share not only the music but the whole experience.” This is an interesting motivation and one which gives the netlabel thing a subversive edge. There seems to be something vaguely rebellious (dare I say revolutionary?) about circumventing the almighty dollar in this transaction between artist and listener. There’s also something pure and even generous about it. In the removal of the chase after profits, artists are completely free to express themselves without regard for the market. I can’t imagine there’s much money to be made in some of these out-there genres anyway, so it lightens the load to not worry about even trying. “Don’t quit your day job” is no insult in this context but rather a way to keep ones artistic freedom intact. I have enormous respect for these artists because I’ve kept my day job but still struggle to keep the other end of the bargain (namely, continuing to make music after hours).

From a listener’s standpoint, I feel like I’ve discovered something really special when I hear some of this music. I suppose it’s a kind of elitism — there’s delight in knowing I may be one of very few people in the world enjoying it, except that I’m excited to share it. I imagine this is what DJs who collect rare records over many years must feel.

One question I’ve had is why even bother with a netlabel if you can upload your tracks directly to archive.org anyway? A traditional label provides up-front money for recording expenses, etc. and marketing, and to some extent, a brand to identify with. As far as I can tell a netlabel really just offers the last one. But perhaps that’s even more important in this realm: in a sea of free music and finite time to evaluate it, netlabels are like audio curators. If I see a release from some random guy in Estonia I may pass it by. But if it’s with 1 Bit Wonder, a netlabel who has released some great albums that I’ve enjoyed, with their signature orange accented monochrome album artwork, I’ll be much more likely to give a listen. Some netlabels will produce compilation albums which is a great way to get an idea of their aesthetic and to learn about related artists.

I’m not sure what this all means for the record industry. I would imagine (if they’ve even heard of netlabels in the first place) that Radiohead’s newfound independence, and their experiment with online album downloads, where fans can literally name their price, is making label execs far more nervous.

There are grey areas between free online downloads and commercial CDs. In addition to Radiohead’s big splash, some traditional labels have an online-only branch that sell albums by (perhaps) unknown artists for almost free. For example en:peg, an offshoot of n5md, sells all its albums as high quality mp3s for $2 a piece. I discovered en:peg when looking for more information on Virculum, a bassist who contributed the beautiful track “wwlit alma” on the Electronica Unplugged compilation by the Aerotone netlabel. I purchased his album songs for insomniacs from en:peg for two bucks. It’s great stuff and it made me happy to send some cash to an artist I appreciated.

What is the value of an hour or so of carefully crafted recorded music? Some say it should be free in the first place — just an ad for a band’s live act. I see real problems with this attitude. I’ve always seen these as separate entities. I think an album has its own intrinsic value and not all music was even meant to be performed live. But putting music online free of charge would seem to indicate that these artists feel their music is worthless. That assumes that worth is only measured in dollars. But there’s a different kind of transaction going on when a listener downloads and enjoys free music. The listener is getting something, but the artist is too — knowledge that somewhere someone has been affected in some way by their expression. Music (and art in general) at its most basic level is a communal experience and although the community in this case is invisible and incredibly dispersed, netlabels may be a new expression of this traditional function of music.

Perhaps a way of contributing to the “transaction” when downloading free music is sharing my discoveries and adding my impressions back to the ocean that is the internet. Come back soon for reviews of my favorite netlabel albums.

1. Trumpet, Tenor Sax, Trombone, Baritone Sax
2. Flute, Bb Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, Flugel Horn

This gives the first group of instruments a bright tone, and the second group a mellower tone. Sometimes you can hear the two groups playing up that contrast, other times they all intertwine as a single large texture.

Playing this is really fun. There’s something about being surprised by the outcome as you’re improvising. Even just repeating a chord yields constantly shifting texture since the notes of the chord keep getting assigned to different instruments. For example, the first chord may have the trumpet on the top, the tenor and bari in the middle, and the trombone on the bottom. The next repetition may have the tenor on top, the trombone and bari in the middle and the trumpet on the bottom. I originally wanted to set it up so it was smart about ordering the voices consistently, but this was so cool that I decided to keep it. There are some glitches, like when you try to play low notes thinking the trombone will play them, but they get assigned out of the range of the trumpet (resulting in silence). But hey, I usually play too many notes so that’s maybe not a bad thing! It would be interesting to create a “unison” mode, where it makes sure all the instruments are playing, so if you play a single note it sends it to all 4 players (2 notes would get split between 2 players). Some kind of automatic pitch bend variation would be neat as well, giving each player its own slightly different personality. Same with the mod wheel: slightly delay the volume swells or scale them just a bit differently for each voice, etc.

The patch is pretty simple. The heart of it is the poly object, which keeps track of note ons and offs and assigns a voice number to each note, round robin fashion. I just directly mapped the voice number to the midi channel. Garritan maps the modulation wheel to the loudness of the playing of the instrument. I copy the incoming controller data to all 4 midi channels so all the instruments in the ensemble are affected equally with the mod wheel. Pd is set up to listen to the hardware usb midi port and output on the IAC bus, which Logic is listening to. I made sure to route the same hardware port to a monitor object in Logic’s environment to avoid duplicate events (otherwise Logic would see the same events Pd does, and the ones Pd is forwarding through). I was inspired to go ahead and try this Pd idea by this post on Thomas Dolby’s blog where he describes how he uses Max (the commercial cousin of Pd) in conjunction with Logic in his live performance.

I did go back and tweak the live improvised recorded data, mainly to take things out (did I mention I tend to play too many notes?) here and there to allow for more contrast and breathing room, and to clean up some of the recorded mod wheel data, and to give the 2 sections a slightly tidier ending. It needs more controller tweaking (pitch bend, vibrato) to make the performances a little more life-like, but this is mostly just a demo of the live playing patch.

Relax at the Poconos.

This week I finally received the Garritan Jazz & Big Band. I was lucky enough to get in on their “group buy” sale at the last minute. This library has some fun, unique features, designed to coax a little bit of life out of sampled instruments. For instance, my favorite feature is the playable brushed snare stir: if you hold down the key, the stir keeps looping statically, but if you apply aftertouch, a stir sound with more pressure gets mixed in. This is a great idea, and very playable, and sounds surprisingly realistic. Some other nice features: control over the breathiness of wind instruments, key clicks, variable vibrato rate, and even samples of the player taking breaths between notes.

This sketch started with a bit of playing around with the soprano sax sound. I just recorded an improvised phrase with no metronome click and was dabbling with some of the aforementioned controls to hear what the effects were. I muted this and forgot about it as I loaded up the brushed drum kit. That snare stir immediately evoked a mood: a small club, late at night, the evening winding down. It demanded a slow tempo (60 BPM… clock ticking speed).

After setting that atmosphere and finding the right reverb, I knew I needed an upright bass. It’s funny how early experiences lodge themselves into your habits. I remember hearing Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” on my transistor radio as a kid (yes, I actually had a transistor radio) and always loved that bass line. Those glissandi in tenths were just so moody and distinctive, and groovy. When I first started playing around with synths at music stores as an adolescent, when I encountered a fretless bass sound, I’d immediately start playing those tenths. Well, it appears I still do, since that’s what’s going on in this bass line, except without the glissandi. Just simple diatonic steps in mixolydian mode. Incidentally, here’s a bit of serendipity: I just looked up who played that bass line on “Wild Side”: a session player named Herbie Flowers. I happened to name this track “Anenome,” after some beautiful flowers Ally gave me recently. Spooky.

I recorded some trombone but I thought it sounded off and was about to throw it away. Ally insisted on hearing it before I trashed it and said she liked it. I played her the first sax solo as well (on its own). She asked if she could hear it over the rest of the music, even though it was in a different key, recorded at a much faster tempo, etc. To my surprise it not only worked, but now the trombone, which I thought was silly, made sense, in an odd sort of way. Slowing down the sax melody gave it a radically different character, and showed me a nice aspect of this sound library. Usually the sustained portion of sampled instruments is lifeless and pretty grating after a while. It can tend to subconsciously lead you to play mainly staccato passages. This sax sound, while it won’t fool a sax player, is pretty expressive, even for longer sustained notes. I went back in and improved the control over the vibrato, pitch bends, and amplitude (volume) shaping over phrases. I even added those breath sounds where appropriate.

After filling things in with some cymbal, kick, and piano, this sketch has a bit of a dramatic shape to it. It’s rough around the edges but I’m just happy to have done some more music after a long hiatus.

It was quite interesting to see the different ways in which performers deal with doing electronic music live, in a way that an audience can relate with. Watching people on stage twiddle knobs (or finger a laptop trackpad), especially when it’s impossible to correlate the twiddling with something audible, can be a mind numbingly dull experience. Many performers add live video, projected on a large screen behind the performance, which interacts with the music in some way. Frank Bretschneider was one of the more compelling examples. His music was great to start with — strongly in the IDM domain (ore more specifically, microscopic music), but full of surprises yet with a recognizable beat. The first 5 minutes were actually very repetitive, with a blue screen and a horizontal white line that scanned down the screen in sync to a pop when it hit the top again. But just as I was ready to leave, things started shifting, and new elements, both visual and aural started to appear. The entire piece was completely abstract, but after that initial shift I was captivated. It reminded me a bit of the early German abstract animator, Oskar Fischinger. It also reminded of me how much can be done with a limited palette.

A couple of the performances also incorporated dance and acting with live music and video. The first was Troika Ranch at Zero One. Troika Ranch is a dance collective started by fellow CalArts alumns, Mark Coniglio (who was also a teacher of mine) and Dawn Stoppiello. This piece featured some stunningly beautiful synthesis of dance, with live interactive video and music. For me the most effective moments were the ones that seemed to use the technology in the most childlike manner — a dancer making “bloop” sounds which generated video bubbles which floated from the top of her head, another scene where a dancer’s movements were traced with an animated caligraphic pen, while the music shifted and swayed.

ORBIT was such a great piece because it had so much heart, and had such moments of pure stage magic. I really have to thank Ally for introducing me to it. Technology was used in service of the story and the art, rather than the other way around as these kinds of pieces can so easily slip into. I can’t really describe it and do it justice (which is sort of unfair since Saturday was its last performance; read the Chronicle review for an overview), but I will say keep an eye out for Erika Shuch and her collaborators.

So, no podcast this week, but I have a feeling all this input will be churning in my brain and will end up splattered in bits and pieces in some future posts.

Radio 360 (iTunes)
“Music for Strange Moments.” They appear to be a label, but they also play artists on Ninjatune, Sub Pop and others. They seem to focus on electronica with vocals, which is a nice change after listening to hours of instrumental electronic music. They have a slightly annoying habit of playing their audiomark in the background in the middle of ever other song or so, and also using the dreaded computer voice to announce track info. Their segue music is by someone named DJ Darkhorse. It’s nice that they have created a recognizable format, but I think these could be shortened. All in all a very enjoyable and consistent podcast. The latest episode is particularly good — it’s called “Best of Part One.” Not sure what part one is, or when part two starts, but it’s groovy.

betterPropaganda (iTunes)
“Music mix of the best and newest sounds from the most forward-thinking record labels out there.” This is put together (monthly I think) by Jonah Sharp, who seems to be an interesting figure in the experimental and electronica scenes. Each episode seems to center around a theme (eg. acoustic guitar). I’ve listened to a couple. One was excellent. The other I just wasn’t into. Yet I’m intrigued.

Electronic Periodic (iTunes)
“Our aim is to produce free, quality podcasts compiled from electronic compositions in various styles including ambient, IDM, electro, trance and experimental.” For a “periodic”, it’s pretty irregular of late (January, April, two in July). However, it’s good, drone-ish ambient music which sometimes goes more into the IDM territory.

Percussion Lab Presents (iTunes)
“Percussion Lab is a 24/7 stream of the illest underground electronic and hip hop music. Every month we feature live and DJ sets by established and up and coming artists and DJs.” The quality of this one really depends on the particular DJ that’s “spinning” (somehow I doubt the person is really spinning vinyl for the podcast, but you never know). That being said, the last few have been solid (perhaps good enough to forgive them for the use of the old chestnut “illest”). The last episode highlighted artists playing at the BAPLab festival in Brooklyn, which took place on July 22 (missed it by a week).

CLD THE E (rss) (last.fm)
“The streaming to escape from tomorrow. Electronica IDM Techo: from Tokyo Japan.” It made my day Friday when I discovered that my favorite internet radio station had a podcast. I’ve discovered so much great music listening to this stream over the years. Sometimes it goes so far afield that I have to switch to something else, but that’s what I like about it. It’s incredibly eclectic. If you want to challenge your ears, this is your gauntlet… eh.. thrown down.