Archive for the ‘Experimental’ Category
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5
Jun
2010
Hauntology
I’ve been listening to Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti a lot today, after having discovered them through this boomkat review. The album is absolutely stunning and while discussing it with a friend, it raised the question of a recently very prominent and fashionable trend in underground music: emulating sounds of the past, not just in style but in their entire aesthetic altogether. (See Nite Jewel, Best Coast, The Advisory Circle, etc.)
The concept of Hauntology was then brought to my attention by a knowledgeable member of the electronic music community. From Wikipedia:
The idea suggests that the present exists only with respect to the past, and that society after the end of history will begin to orient itself towards ideas and aesthetics that are thought of as rustic, bizarre or “old-timey”; that is, towards the “ghost” of the past. In this, it is has some similarity with the cyberpunk literary movement. Derrida holds that because of this intellectual realignment, the end of history will be unsatisfactory and untenable.
The name and concept fundamentally come from Marx‘s assertion that a “spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of communism.” Derrida holds that the spirit of Karl Marx is even more relevant after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the demise of communism, that the West’s separation from the ignorance of the suffering still present in the world will “haunt” it and provide the impetus for a fresh interest in communism.
Fascinating!
24
May
2010
Best EP of 2010?
So far, at least. Grouper‘s split release with Roy Montgomery, of which her part is the stunning Vessel EP, is a masterpiece. The other day I came across the official video for “Hold The Way”, the third track of her EP. Directed by Weston Currie, it begins with a short version of the first track, “Hollow Press”, overlaid with a distorted recording of some speech, before the song begins for real. Extremely dark, it fits the music perfectly. Enjoy:
22
May
2010
Tricks with python and music
From Music Machinery:
One of my favorite hacks at last weekend’s Music Hack Day is Tristan’s Swinger. The Swinger is a bit of python code that takes any song and makes it swing. It does this be taking each beat and time-stretching the first half of each beat while time-shrinking the second half. It has quite a magical effect. Some examples:
Every Breath You Take (swing version) by TeeJay
You can find more examples in the original blog post. The results really are truly impressive. I’m looking forward to playing with Tristan Jehan‘s code, and also having a look at his PhD thesis:
Machines have the power and potential to make expressive music on their own. This thesis aims to computationally model the process of creating music using experience from listening to examples. Our unbiased signal-based solution models the life cycle of listening, composing, and performing, turning the machine into an active musician, instead of simply an instrument. We accomplish this through an analysis-synthesis technique by combined perceptual and structural modeling of the musical surface, which leads to a minimal data representation.
Fascinating stuff!
15
Nov
2009
Live mix from Red Box Recorder
A friend who goes under the name Red Box Recorder did a live mix last Friday and I’ve decided to host it here for your enjoyment. It’s 22 minutes long and contains music from him, most of which I didn’t recognise. Give it a listen!
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You can stream it using the player above, or download it in its entirity here: http://ventolin.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/redboxrecorder-live.mp3
He’s currently on the Irish net-label Acroplane, where you can get his most recent album, Colour Codes, which comes with a PDF booklet of art by Max McLaughlin.
7
Oct
2009
Die Stimme des Klaviers
Peter Ablinger, an Austrian composer currently residing in Berlin, has done something rather interesting: he made a recording of a child reading the Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court, then invented a mechanical piano player capable of reading notes in a very high time resolution from a computer.
The computer performs a frequency analysis of the sound spectrum, aided by Ablinger himself, which is then fed into the piano player and out comes the child’s voice.
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(Video in German with English subtitles)
While I wouldn’t have much hope for people trying to work out what the piano is “saying” without the aid of seeing the words as they’re heard, I think it’s a pretty interesting experiment. The auto-player in itself is something to be marvelled at. Neat!
