I performed October 30, 2012 at GNU Experience Gallery in Fort Collins.
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Here’s a recording of that set:
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Here’s a photo of the set-up:
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Starting at the blue glass, going clockwise up onto the table:
Wine Glass with two piezo mics (same set-up as the Disquiet Junto show in August)
Bad Vibes 3 oscillator synth
Audible Disease Convulsion 2
POD 2
Mixer
Zoom H4n (for recording this!)
Novadrones (2 of them crosswired)
Cassette player with previously recorded sound collage
Gristleizer
Midiverb 4
(not seen) induction mic
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I'm going to be flogging this for a while: because I want you to listen to this stuff! http://t.co/ns7DWwfS My 30 fave netlabel releases '12 11:48:03, 2012-12-27
RT @sklawlor: @vuzhmusic I read your blog of the cds you liked from this year, downloaded a bunch of them and hope to feature tracks fro … 10:20:56, 2012-12-29
Listening back to the recording of August's Denver @djunto concert. My favorite part is audience laughter in the middle of @c_yantis' set. 14:33:00, 2012-12-29
Made a list of netlabels I admire and would like to release on: 99% of them have "we're not accepting demos from anyone" on their About page 23:36:57, 2012-12-29
Neighbor brought over free tickets to Lincoln, didn't have heart to say there's no way I want to see that movie, so I said we were busy. 14:05:31, 2012-12-31
Fave new $$ albums of the year: Swans – Seer, Macintosh Plus – Floral Shoppe, CarterTuttiVoid – Transverse, Ed Ka-Spel -This Saturated Land 22:01:49, 2012-12-31
Old comrade Kirchenkampf has FINALLY left behind CDrs & got a bandcamp http://t.co/L7vAPij0 New release is very ambienty older 1s bit edgier 13:33:59, 2013-01-01
One moron among many. @repcorygardner & others would rather run the US into the ground than accept that not everyone is an extremist con 19:15:07, 2013-01-01
Masked Hunter on G
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Reduvius personatus http://bugguide.net/node/view/11385
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I am imagining Cage writing ‘Music for Piano‘ and wondering why one of the paper imperfections keeps moving around.
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(photo by Carrie)
RT @maddow: The NRA has rickrolled the whole country into watching just another standard Wayne LaPierre stump speech saying we need more … 18:44:57, 2012-12-21
RT @jinjurly: unsurpriseface. RT @lisang Really troubling NYT piece on hard work NOT paying off due to class / economic barriers http:// … 10:22:03, 2012-12-23
2012 was a good year for me. I was very productive creatively.
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It was also a good year for netlabel music, I found a ton of good stuff to listen to. For the last several years, I’ve done a write-up of some of my favorite netlabel things released during the previous twelve months. I’m doing it again this year with this blog post, but before moving on to my end of year recommendations, I would like to call attention to the work I was personally involved in during 2012.
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Two of my albums came out this year:
“Buddha Reduction” on Vuzh Music
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and…
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“One of the Drone Boys” on Linear Obsessional.
Both are free downloads with CC licenses allowing for non-commercial derivative work.
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Inarguably the biggest thing I did this year was curate and open an exhibition of sound art, which was visited by hundreds of people in Fort Collins, Colorado, made possible through the financial support of Front Range Community College and guided by my Museum and Gallery Studies instructor Jennie Kiessling. It was titled Sound Through Barriers, and included performances by Jeph Jerman and Cheryl Leonard. The exhibition & performances are extensively documented at the website with TONS of photos and TONS of sound recordings and a big curatorial statement that distills some of my thoughts about listening. Hope you’ll read it if you haven’t.
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I also started performing live, after having been an exclusively a composer of recorded music prior. Here’s a video of one performance:
http://youtu.be/iOnXNknsrgQ,
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and here’s another one of the performances (audio only this time) on SoundCloud:
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– Vuzh Music released eight albums this year by the following artists:
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I also was happy to release seven generations of new work on Dystimbria, my netlabel where each new release uses appropriated material from the previous release(s). The artists this year were: AODL, Mutant Beatniks, Post-Avantist, Cinchel, Miquel Parera Jaques, David Nemeth and Phillip Wilkerson. All of their tracks can be downloaded freely from the Dystimbria.cc.
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OKAY, so that ends the part where I talk about my own projects from the year, and start recommending netlabel music!
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Just like last year’s best-of, I’m only going to recommend free downloads, because that’s primarily what I listen to.
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I’m again calling special attention to those releases with licensing allowing for derivative work. I am currently working on a new set of music based entirely on samples of netlabel music with this kind of open licensing. I’m drawing samples from a diverse set of artists and transforming them into new works. This process has been very exciting, not only for me creatively, but also because it deepens my appreciation for the original works. I appreciate artists who allow for derivatives, extra hoorays for them! Derivative-friendly licenses get a happy Bush badge, unfriendly licenses get an EVIL CHENEY badge.
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Again I’d like to encourage more promotion of this type of underground music. How is anyone supposed to find out about underappreciated music if you don’t tell someone about it? Don’t assume that any of this music, or any other netlabel music you find has no problem attracting listeners, often very few people ever listen to this music. Unknown artists really made an effort to do good work, and they want listeners, so do your part and tell someone if you like a netlabel release. Please.
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This list is not qualitatively ordered, it’s alphabetical, so please don’t glean any kind of meaning from placement.
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– PLEASE share any of your favorite netlabel releases from 2012 in the comments to this post. I and the readers of this post may have missed something really good.
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– Andreas Brandal – Apparition
Control Valve license unknown
Andreas’ intriguing sound pairs a subtle musicality with abstractions and drones. Minimal repeating phrases and saturated squalls of howling sound, all with a keen sense of flow and composition. Very nice, I like a lot of this fellow’s work.
I always check the Control Valve netlabel for new things, they’re one of my favorites in terms of content, but the website design is frustrating. I can’t deep link direct to the album, because of the way the netlabel presents its releases. Here’s the label’s website: http://www.controlvalve.net/ To get this release, you’ll either have to go to ‘releases’ on the main site, and search for the album or you could go to this archive page and download the .zip (it’s not a normal netaudio release page).
Control Valve also doesn’t provide release date or licensing information for its releases, I wish they did.
Just three of the many releases by this prolific artist during 2012. I’ve listened to as many as I can. Alex’s stuff is always interesting, a common strategy of his is to select a collection of materials non-standard to sound making and improvise with them while running these sounds into a looper. Audio for Noisy Rooms uses insistent electronic synthesis, Trevenec focuses on bell sounds, and Words I Regularly Misspell… is the most melodic of the things I’ve heard from him, even going into a long, repeating sung refrain at the finale.
Begins with a splendid 22 minute track of mind-clearing, slow-burning, intense, harsh noise. The final two tracks are not as harsh, but equally deserving of attention.
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– Gurdonark – Open Spaces
We Are All Ghosts cc by
Each Gurdonark release is similar in content, simple, plucky little melodies played with soft synth pads, this time with prominent glissandi used in the compositions. I enjoy listening to each Gurdonark release to get a feel for Robert Nunnally’s progression as an artist, but I also simply enjoy the music for itself.
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– He Can Jog – Pocket Suite
Pocket Fields (conflicting reports of license, on archive it’s listed as cc by nc nd, on other places it’s cc by nc sa – the artist assures me he’s derivatives friendly.)
A nice abstract journey in static-y tone clusters and glitches. Feels somehow melodic and rhythmic, but it’s neither. I’m not sure how he pulled off that effect!
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– The Implicit Order – Gaps in the Land
Wholeness Recordings cc by nd
Talk about your ‘hauntology’… the Implicit Order wrote the book on spooky nostalgic collage music. This road-trip themed release is as good as it gets, very nice work. Although it does nag me that his work is built on appropriated samples from copyrighted sources, and yet his own work is licensed disallowing others to remix it.
Miquel Parera Jaques is one of those artists whose releases I always listen to, and usually I end up really liking a lot. The first two releases listed here feature Jaques’ mind-massaging complex electronic wave forms slowly transforming… utterly and completely mesmerizing stuff. It’s hard to concentrate on anything but the sound when this music is on. The last release here is something a bit different, as it uses algorithmic computer functions to generate midi signals to control a pipe organ. It reminds me of some of the stochastic synth work I’ve heard from academic sources, but of course the organ sounds lend a contextual weight, which Miquel outlines in his artist statement. I would like to have seen more variation in terms of rhythm / tempi and timbre in this work, but it is fascinating that this very different work elicits some of the same mesmerizing effect as the electronic stuff.
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– Hannah Marshall – Tulse Hill
Linear Obsessional cc by nc sa
These are improvisations for cello with de-tuned strings. Many of the pieces are structured with simple repeating tone phrases, but rhythmically they sway in an organically determined imprecise meter… this is something that interests me very much, something I’ve explored and continue to explore in my own music. I keep listening to this and my appreciation keeps growing. Splendid work.
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– Meteer – Decameteer
Withering Trees netlabel cc by nc sa Meteer – Novometeer
Withering Trees netlabel cc by nc sa Meteer – Octometeer
Withering Trees netlabel cc by nc sa Meteer – Three Word Seminary
BFW Recordings cc by nc nd
We were lucky to have a bunch of Meteer releases this year! Three Word Seminary is ambient electronica with an edge… expertly made. The three -meteer releases – named after the last three months of the year – are the same, but with a more experimental / exploratory edge. I think I’ve listened to Novometeer the most, but they’re all good. If you don’t know his work, you are cheating yourself.
Thomas Park does country music. He’ll put a boot up yer ass, it’s the American way. There’s little identifiably “country” about this music, the genre’s conventions are strained really thin, curt steel twangs twitch in repetitive spasms and the slide guitars shimmer confusedly.
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– The Noisemaker – Space Drones
Inside Outside cc unspecified
A pair of completely lovely drones, can’t say it’s especially “spacey” though. The first sounds like its source might be a high tempo drum machine looping a single tom hit run through liberal amounts of chorus & delay. Somehow this builds into an enveloping atmosphere of shimmering overtones. The second track is a low frequency hum, a higher frequency whine and a repeating ping. The simple things make me happy sometimes.
A reissue of one of my favorite abstract noise-ambient albums from my tape collecting / trading days. This is a drop-dead classic of abstract ambient-noise. Unmissable.
Begins with an eight second blast of loud harsh noise, just enough to scare the shit out of you. The remainder is a very compelling exploration of strange textures coaxed out of piezo mics and failing equipment, with some recordings of live performances thrown in for good measure. The bare minimum of acid-etched sound, no ornamentation.
Sparse electronic atmospheres. Yummy oscillations, drifty quasi-melodic tones, slowly creeping crunches & clicks. Says here it was made with Soundcollider.
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– Chris Whitehead – South Gare
Linear Obsessional cc by nc sa
A composition that organizes selected phonographic elements and multi-tracks them together with a smattering of humble percussive interactions with actual spaces. Terrific.
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– Xesús Valle – Gently Annoying
Audiotalaia cc by nc sa
How do you even describe this album? It’s peculiar and diverse and offputting and catchy and… and… gently annoying. An intriguing collection of off-kilter music that grooves by its own secret inner logic.
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My Last.FM stats for the last year (I’m last.FM user vuzh)… you were thinking I don’t actually listen to this stuff, were you?
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Netlabel links:
RT @MMFlint: This morning a crazy man attacked 22 children at an elementary school- in China. But all the crazy man had was a knife. Num … 19:40:16, 2012-12-14
There is no fucking such a thing as a soul. There IS such a thing as a gun. “@glennbeck: It is not the gun. It is the soul.” 19:41:58, 2012-12-14
It's almost as satisfying to delete some netlabel music that I don't like as it is to download some that I haven't yet formed an opinion on. 21:25:23, 2012-12-14
Listening to Schoenberg. Wifey says it reminds her of something she dreamed when she was 16. 21:26:50, 2012-12-14
RT @_srl_: For those going to the SRL show next week in la it's BYOEP (bring your own ear protection) earplugs not enough bring 30db ear … 22:14:20, 2012-12-14
RT @MMFlint: HERE'S THE WHOLE MOVIE: I said what I had2 say in 2002. Nothing's changed. U can watch this pirated version 4 free: http:// … 11:55:38, 2012-12-16
Try masturbation next time, asshole "the gunman was unhappy about a lot in life and decided this was his best way of releasing his tension" 22:22:37, 2012-12-16
RT @snooksarmy: Add "the concept of masculinity" to the list of things we need to talk about (gun laws, mental health care, etc). http: … 17:59:15, 2012-12-17
RT @ubuweb: The wonderful band Klimperei has made their entire oeuvre free for download (think Bastien, Comelade, Residents) [MP3]: http … 18:06:00, 2012-12-17
In previous tweet from @ubuweb find "Les Plus Belles Valses de Klimperei" and download immediately. 18:07:23, 2012-12-17
RT @disquiet: Gun absurdities from Megan McArdle make me all the more proud we responded to her piracy absurdities back in 2010: http:// … 19:02:21, 2012-12-18
@nofi It was a big project, and frankly the first is the weakest of them all (it's chronological… I figured out what I was doing as I went) in reply to nofi07:41:34, 2012-12-05
For the health of my wallet and for my continued good standing in society, I will go to work this morning instead of returning to bed. 07:51:54, 2012-12-05
RT @snooksarmy: Being a str8 white male, I can only guess at what it must feel like to be in that line, to cross that threshold from "se … 08:04:23, 2012-12-06
RT @pochanostra: Twit from Mexico City: Dear American artist; face your cultural fears: travel South & join the continental arts com … 17:42:57, 2012-12-07
RT @MMFlint: You want the "right" not to join the union? Fine. Then I want u to cancel your health ins, work every wknd and reduce your … 17:51:57, 2012-12-07
SantaFe Brewing's Imperial Java Stout. Too sweet. Tastes like chocolate pop. Too bad, I like their IPA. 17:57:26, 2012-12-07
Youtubing 80s metal because of Genesis P'Orridge. Wifey says Ozzy's "the Ultimate Sin" sounds like "Eye of the TIger" ("only not as good") 22:02:56, 2012-12-07
Aces High! Wifey: "I fucking hate Iron Maiden" Now playing "Number of the Beast" 22:11:02, 2012-12-07
Judas Priest "Painkiller" Me and Lumpy are rockin' out. Wifey & Lily not so much. 22:17:15, 2012-12-07
"Using music like a drug is stupid." — Karlheinz Stockhausen 18:29:28, 2012-12-08
Been feeling the urge to write, but my focus is off (probably S.A.D.) so I keep trying & giving up! 18:40:26, 2012-12-08
I understand backlash-there's some weirdness to the new GUI, but I think the new @soundcloud has promise. Willing to give it time to improve 18:44:14, 2012-12-08
Earlier today: listen to SoundCloud stream & discuss Mill & liberty w/ philosophy teacher. Now: listen to Stockhausen & install plug-ins. 13:29:30, 2012-12-09
Good reading, w/ good criticisms on both sides http://t.co/ShypiB6X Stockhausen vs Aphex Twin / Scanner etc. Responses a bit defensive tho. 13:34:26, 2012-12-09
So I guess as of today it's now legal to possess and grow marijuana in Colorado (according to *state* law) 19:52:09, 2012-12-10
Likelihood that I'll take up a regular pot habit because of this: nil. Likelihood I might smoke it once in the next decade: slightly up. 19:53:18, 2012-12-10
RT @naxuu: you're not finished mastering until you want to throw your song down a stairwell and leave it there neglected and cold and un … 22:04:46, 2012-12-10
The new release at Vuzh Music is by Alex Charles.
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“Drum” is a work using acoustic percussion instruments to create a soundscape that mimics some sounds common in electronic abstract / drone music.
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It’s free to download, so why don’t you? Huh?
– http://www.vuzhmusic.com/releases/drum.html
I’m going to be trying to collect a lot of my short stories/memories about sound into a longer piece of writing. This is one of the stories that might make it in, it just happened today:
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I was at the farmer’s market at the Boulder County Fairgrounds. I had to pee, but the only restrooms are in the buildings which are a ways away from the place where the farmer’s market was held, so I drove over there. The buildings at the fairgrounds are used for various gatherings, auctions and trade shows and so forth, something different all the time, so I wasn’t surprised to see some event happening as I walked in the doors. What I found inside was that the large gymnasium-like room was full of hundreds of elderly people, but the room was hushed, almost completely silent. The people were seated at small tables distributed regularly throughout the large space, and I noticed that they were all playing some sort of card game that required some accoutrements I didn’t recognize. I walked across the space to the restrooms, did my business and came back out, the only sounds I heard was the occasional slight shuffle of a chair or a cough. People were milling up to a table and getting drinks from bottles of Coke and eating chips and dip, but no one was speaking or making any of the usual sounds people do when they’re gathered together. Near the door, I noticed a young woman seated by herself at a small table, apparently engaged in some function of the game, but not busy at the moment. I asked her “What game is it being played here?” She said “It’s bridge,” and told me a thing or two about the game’s workings. I mentioned that it was striking how quiet it is in the room given the number of people. She told me that she performs a function in the game, but that it’s only every now and again, and that she knows when it is time for her to stand up and be ready to act by listening for a change in the way the room sounds. “It’s almost like you ‘feel’ when you are needed” she said.
