Posts Tagged: music
Electronic Objects
Loud Objects #1
Loud Objects #2
Loud Objects #4
Loud Objects #6
I finally made it to the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival for the first time. Seeing electronics legend Dieter Moebius was very cool, but perhaps the most interesting performance of the evening was by NYC outfit Loud Objects. The performance consists of members wiring up an electronic sound circuit in real-time, soldering irons and all, on an overhead projector. I’m not sure how much variation there was in the sound source but, it was fascinating to hear it go from silence to crazy changes to the signal as you watch them add wires and chips to the circuit.
Hiptych #1
Phil Manley Triptych #1 (click image to view large)
Experimenting with doing more with less, fidelity. Hipstamatic-wise, that is. Some shots from the Psychic Paramount show in Oakland the other night.
Loud Raw Time Warp
I remember listening to a long, tinny mp3 a friend passed along of some noise-rock band. Even through the bad fidelity, the mesmerizing intensity of swirling time distortion hooked me. When Val pinged me again, this time with tickets, I wasn’t going to let a Monday night prevent me from checking them out live. So off we went to downtown Oakland to hear The Psychic Paramount. Dizzying. Crushing. Time-stretching. Fantastic. Transcendent. Inspirational. Click an image below to view the slide show.
Oakland Noise
Now that I’ve got your attention… Shots from a concert of sound artists at Liminal Space in Oakland last Friday. Thomas Carnacki performed a piece with video projections. Opening the evening was Zachary James Watkins, followed by Vulcanus 68. Grinding, howling soundscapes, architectural imagery, and nice little art space. I’m looking forward to next time.
Zachary James Watkins
Vulanus 68
The Atmosphere
Starship, The Musical
Sign of the Vintage Cross
Shuddering Triad- RED
Precious
Particle Wave
It burned
In a Memory
Apex of No One
An Imperceptible Shift
Sight, Word and Sound: Connections in Unexpected Places
Dean Santomieri at Berkeley Arts Festival, August 13 2011
- Dean Santomieri at Berkeley Arts Festival, August 13 2011
Dean Santomieri at Berkeley Arts Festival, August 13 2011
Berkeley Arts Festival, August 13 2011
Berkeley Arts Festival, August 13 2011
When I was interviewing for my present job, the conpany’s live-work balance and tendency to hire interesting and creative people were offered as plusses. I didn’t think too much about it at the time. I was just interested in the job. But it turned out to be true; there seem to be a larger than expected number of musicians and artists working there. It has helped me to reconnect with art activity that I have lost touch with after years of grad school, parenting, and full-time work. A case in point was last Friday evening when I ventured out to the Berkeley Arts Festival to see one of my co-workers perform his spoken word/sound art. The venue presents visual works on the walls along with the performances on the stage.
Dean Santomieri is well-known in the performance scene around the Bay Area. I’m sorry not to have been familiar with his work prior to getting this job, chatting at work, finding lots of common interests, and exchanging recordings. In any case, the performance last Friday was wonderful. Dean is a great writer and story teller, and he accompanies himself with a battery of electronics and guitars, creating a aural environment that nicely supports the spoken word without ever getting in its way. The writing, what I might call magical realism, drew me in right away, eliciting a curious mixture of delight and trepidation.
And it was inspirational too. I’m not giving up photography, but I’m pledging to myself to fire up the old electronics and get back to work. And speaking of photography… I wish I had sat closer and gotten a shot of Dean playing that crazy, electric resonator guitar. I will next time.
Brain Re-wiring
Manny and the Gretsch
Recently, Sarah and I went back to Fresno to attend a loosely organized get-together of people from the arts and music scene of the late 80’s and early 90’s. At least that’s how I think of it, because we left town in 1993. In fact, many people live elsewhere now, but come back to town over Christmas break to visit the family.
This year also included a bonus: a reunion gig of The Miss Alans, a popular Fresno band that really nearly broke through, but not quite. The reunion gig really turned out to be the centerpiece of the weekend. I was not really part of the TMA scene back then, but was really looking forward to seeing the couple members of the band that are friends and to seeing them play. One of the great things about the show was having an opportunity to really work on taking concerts photos in the low-light and high-contrast conditions. I had never had much luck with this before. But with my D300s, I was able to get some shots I was really happy with.
Then an awkward thing happened. During the last song of the show, guitarist friend Manny hopped off the stage to get a beer or something, and suddenly one minute I was slugging beer and taking photos, and the next I had a live guitar in my hand with the band vamping, waiting for someone to do something with it. Unfortunately, long ago were the days when I played guitar almost at all, much less in front of lots of people, and my brain was no longer wired for serendipitous improvising. So, deer-in-headlights syndrome was the result.
Yes, I was a little embarrassed by the whole thing. Even writing about it now is cringey. And it made me wonder why I even still have instruments taking up space in the closet and next to the computer. I had the realization that it was really time to get rid of this clutter in the house and in my psyche, this part of my ancient past.
Then a funny thing happened. My climate scientist friend Bill is taking guitar lessons and insisted we get together to try to work on some kind of modal soloing ideas he was introduced to at his guitar lesson. I didn’t really want to do this, think about this, face this. But I did. So, tonight we did that. We traded twos and fours over some progressions, and it was hard, but we both really got into it and had a great time. We came away exhilarated. So now we are planning on jamming every week, figuring it out, and getting it down.
Yeah. Face the fears.
Bill Frisell and Friends
Wendy and I worked together at a small tech company for a couple of years. We’ve stayed in touch since then and recently she pinged me about getting together to catch up. She suggested checking out the first night of Bill Frisell’s residency at Yoshi’s Oakland. Sarah wanted to come along too, so we all got there early to have dinner and thereby get good seats for the show. It was actually the first time I’d eaten there, and I wasn’t disappointed. The calamari appetizer, the edamame and, the sushi were all really good.
I knew Wendy wasn’t a big Frisell fan, so I was a little surprised. But this was part of her project to do something different from her usual routine each day for a year. Luckily for her, Thursday night wasn’t experimental music night, but rather Frisell’s more country music-oriented project. The announced line-up included bassist Tony Scherr, drummer Kenny Wollesen, avant-guitarist Marc Ribot and pedal-steel player Greg Leisz, as well as a special surprise mystery guest from Nashville: Buddy Miller.
The result was a country set of songs layered with beautiful steel guitar work, extended harmonic space, and a sprinkling of Frisell’s melodic lines.With three guitarists and a steel player, there was not a whole lot of room for Frisell to stretch out, and I’ll admit to a little disappointment not to get more from him. Marc Ribot also contributed and sang several songs, giving the set a darker and noisier edge on several songs. Ribot plays guitar like a man having a seizure, and that angular energy gives you the feeling that something unexpected is going to happen any second.
With all that, Buddy Miller was really the star of this show. I had seen Miller when he toured with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, and enjoyed his work on that project, but I didn’t really get a sense of his depth. Last night was different. From his wonderful singing and solid playing, to his hilarious stage banter, he’s a great musician and tremendously entertaining.
Miller and Frisell have recently finished recording together in Nashville with a number of guest artists and singers. Much of this set consisted of songs recorded in that session. Needless to say, I’m already really looking forward to the CD coming out.
Extracting the Root
I forgot to post earlier about the latest piece I added to the Sound page:
It was a collaboration between myself and Mike Mogan in the late 80’s. I am not sure of the year. It actually made it onto a cassette release of a compilation of Fresno indie music. I’m not sure what kind of music to call it, but it was influenced by early, so-called world music, Peter Gabriel, and ECM jazz stuff. I can’t remember what the title is a reference to. It was actually quite a challenge to record as it was done on a Tascam “Portastudio 244” 4-track cassette recorder. There were quite a few parts and stereo imaging of things, so there was a lot of careful bouncing tracks down. It is hard to believe we managed to do it with somewhat decent mix levels and minimal tape noise.
Mike played rhythm guitar, the cool double-tracked guitar solo, and synthesizer. I played rhythm guitar (the part with the dubious timing), acoustic 12-string guitar, and did the drum machine programming. It was my first drum machine, the E-mu Drumulator. This thing came with a stock set of sounds that was a basic drum kit. Eventually, you could add, I should say change, sounds by swapping out the computer chips onto which he sounds were recorded. Here I have the ethnic percussion chip set going. It sounds a bit dry and forward in this mix. I think we actually recorded a sync track for the drumulator on the tape and printed the stereo percussion part straight to the mixdown.
Introducing Sound
I have finally introduced Sound to SightWordSound. It’s extremely rudimentary, but it’s a start. So, if you go to the Sound page, you can click on bulleted links there to hear mp3 streams of some of my stuff.
In my typical fashion, my prowess for commercialism and self-promotion has lead me to begin by uploading whacked out experimental sound pieces that will probably drive most people away. But fear not. If anyone comes back for more, I’ll eventually get some old song stuff up here, too. I have hours of tapes going back to some of the earliest garage and experimental days. It will be a treat to be able to share with people, particularly you far-flung players on these recordings, where ever you now live.
Blogger’s Block and Video Fun
I am having a mid-life crisis. That is my excuse for not writing anything in such a long time. I also notice that the longer one goes without writing something, anything, the easier it is to continue not writing. So, my new strategy is to participate in that time-honored practice of bloggers the world over: recycling content. So, in the spirit of writing something, anything, in order to make it a habit, i have written this as a preamble to the video below. I think it’s an inspiration to middle-aged breeder hipsters like me. And maybe it is an homage of sorts to Art of Noise.
Once i figure out how to embed this feed here, i’ll do it. In the meantime, here is the link.