San Francisco Electronic Music Festival (SFEMF) Night 3

The 19th annual San Francisco Electronic Music Festival concluded yesterday, and we at CatSynth were on hand for the final concert. There were three sets, each showcasing different currents within electronic music, but they all shared a minimalist approach to their musical expression and presentation.

The evening opened with a set by Andy Puls, a composer, performer and designer of audio/visual instruments based out of Richmond, California. We had seen one of his latest inventions, the Melody Oracle, at Outsound’s Touch the Gear (you can see him demonstrating the instrument in our video from the event). For this concert, he brought the Melody Oracle into full force with additional sound and visuals that filled the stage with every changing light and sound.

Andy Puls

The performance started off very sparse and minimal, with simple tones corresponding to lights. Combining tones resulted in combining lights and the creation of colors from the original RGB sources. As the music grew increasingly complex, the light alternated between the solid colors and moving patterns.

Andy Pulse

I liked the sound and light truly seemed to go together, separate lines in a single musical phrase, and a glimpse of what music would be if it was done with light rather than sound.

OMMO, the duo of Julie Moon and Adria Otte brought an entirely different sound and presence to the stage.

OMMO

The performance explored the “complexities and histories of the Korean diaspora and their places within it.” And indeed, words and music moved freely back and forth between traditional and abstract sounds and Korean and English words. Moon’s voice was powerful and evocative, and quite versatile in range and she moved through these different ideas. The processing on her voice, including delays and more complex effects, was crisp and sounded like an extension of her presence. Otte performed on laptop and analog electronics, delivering a solid foundation and complex interplay. A truly dynamic and captivating performance.

The final set featured a solo performance Paris-based Kassel Jaeger, who recently became director of the prestigious Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM). Sitting behind a table on a darkened stage, with a laptop, guitar and additional electronics, he brought forth an eerie soundscape.

Kassek Jaeger

The music featured drone sounds, with bits of recognizable recorded material, as well as chords and sharp accents. The musique concrète influence was abundant but also subtle at times as any source material was often submerged in complex pads and clouds over which Jaeger performed improvisations.

It is sometimes difficult to describe these performances in words, though we at CatSynth try our best to do so. Fortunately, our friends at SFEMF shared some clips of each set in this Instagram post.

Much was also made of the fact that this was the 19th year of the festival. That is quite an achievement! And we look forward to what they bring forth for the 20th next year…

A Perfectly Clear Day 2018

Once again, it’s a perfectly clear day this year. Maybe a little haze, but otherwise a blue sky in San Francisco. But the sounds of the city are a bit sharper today, the foot traffic, the construction equipment, the screeching of the commuter rail and light rails pulling into their stations. And there is a bit of wistfulness, a bit of nostalgia in the most classical sense of the word.

A few things have brought 9-11 back to the fore the anniversary. First, there was the opening of the Cortland Street subway station which serves the 1 IRT line and which was pretty much destroyed in the attack. It’s the last major piece of the puzzle in the rebuilding of the neighborhood, which is a thriving and vital space that includes the transit center, the 9/11 Memorial, and of course 1WTC which has taken its proper place in the skyline.


[Photo by CatSynth]


[Joe Mabel (CC BY-SA 2.0 ), via Wikimedia Commons]

Let’s take a moment to emphasize that the building is called 1WTC! It never was, and never will be, the so-called “Freedom Tower”, a name that was obnoxious, jingoistic, and rather gauche. Same thing for the attempts to call the date “Patriot Day”. I always detested that.

The other time bringing today into focus wasn’t 17 years ago, but last year. I was back in New York by coincidence, and the Towers of Light memorial loomed over us in both Manhattan and Brooklyn as we went about simply enjoying being in New York. I posted this picture at the time.

If there is a dominant feeling at the moment, it is more one of homesickness for my home city, the one that will always be The City. And that trip one year ago truly emphasized all its aspect. A wedding on Governors Island with both lower Manhattan and Brooklyn waterfront surrounding us. I rode a record number of subway lines (yes, I’m a total transit nerd). We wandered in Borough Park as well as my usual haunts in Downtown Brooklyn, Chelsea, the West Village, and the Bronx.

17 years ago, the dominant feelings were grief, anger, and (I’m not afraid to admit it) a desire for revenge. That revenge never came – it was twisted by the rest of the country into a nationalistic (and often tacky) morass that turned into multiple wars that left us and the world poorer. The rest of the country rattles its swords, waves its flags, and the great cities suffer. I do hope one day the radical fundamentalism and radical nationalism that grip so many places in the world, including our own country in this moment, will dissipate. And I hope to return home again.

CatSynth Video: Sarper Duman and his Cats

Sarper Duman returns to CatSynth with one of his beautiful serenades with his cats 😻. From his Facebook page.

If you want to wake up to every new day with a real and unconditional love, adopt an animal.. Even if they don’t see, even if they’re missing a leg, they have no handicap in loving and being loved.. 🖤🐈🎹
.
Her yeni güne gerçek, çıkarsız bir sevgiyle başlamak istiyorsanız, hayvan sahiplenin.. Görmeseler de, bir bacakları eksik de olsa, sevmeye, sevilmeye hiçbir engelleri yok.. 🖤🐈🎹

The moment where the tabby crawls onto the keyboard is priceless!

 

Secret Chiefs 3 and Cleric play Zorn’s Masada

Greetings, and L’Shana Tovah! Today we look back to a show from last weekend at The Chapel in San Francisco where two bands interpreted selections from John Zorn’s Masada songbook. It was part of a four-day residency by Zorn at the Chapel in celebration of his 65th Birthday.

“Masada” has morphed and grown as a musical concept since Zorn’s original Ornette-Coleman-inspired group from the 1990s. There have been follow-up projects, notably Electric Masada that we at CatSynth are most familiar with. But it is as much a songbook as a collection of ensembles. The “Masada songbook” contains hundreds of short compositions, sometimes just fragments, scales, or concepts. Originally intended to be performed by the ensembles, these compositions can be interpreted by other bands. And on this night, the bands took them in decidedly rock direction.

First up was Cleric. The Philadelphia-based “avant-metal” band currently features Matt Hollenberg on guitar, Nick Shellenberger on keyboards and vocals, Larry Kwartowitz on drums, and Daniel Ephraim Kennedy on bass.

Cleric plays Masada

As their background implies, the performance was decidedly metal, a full-on triple-forte projection with growling vocals and fast runs punctuated by heavy drones. Nonetheless, it was top-notch musicianship and an adventurous choice of music. Within the mix, I found myself mostly focused on Shellenberger’s vocals and keyboards, though Kennedy’s six-string bass took center stage visually, and Hollenberg’s guitar performance added a solidifying aspect to the music. It was a solid set, and certainly an interpretation of the Masada songbook we have never heard before (and may never hear again).

Next up was Secret Chiefs 3, who brought a decidedly different sound and presentation to the stage.

Secret Chiefs 3 plays Masada

Led by guitarist and composer Trey Spruance (formerly of Mr. Bungle and Faith No More) and heavily featuring Eyvind Kang on violin, the group weaved together jazz, rock, folk, klezmer, and Middle Eastern influences into their eclectic set. Rounding out the group on this night were Jason Schimmel on guitar, Matt Lebofsky on keyboards, Shanir Blumenkranz on bass, Ches Smith on percussion, and Kenny Grohowski on drums.

It was an inspired and highly dynamic performance from these hometown favorites, and the band seemed a good match for the Masada songbook. There is an explicit thread of mysticism and the esoteric in both Zorn’s music and the work of SC3, so this is not surprising. I even recognized a couple of songs from Electric Masada recordings. The orchestration was brilliant and clever, bringing out each of the musicians as well as the Jewish influences of the songs. There were contrapuntal moments where the musicians played different lines and rhythms but coming together for short emphatic choruses with syncopated lines. It was crisp, tight, but also fun. And one could sense that the audience – a packed crowd on both levels of the Chapel, was having a great time along with them. The set was also the perfect length, keeping up the energy without petering out or overstating their welcome, leading to a single climax note that ended the music and cued Zorn and the musicians from Cleric back to the stage for a final group bow.

All together with John Zorn

Overall, a fine night of music. As with many multi-day festivals, I regret not being there for the other nights, but glad I was able to make it to the one that I did. September is always the busiest month for music (and art) in San Francisco, and we will have much more to experience and share in the coming weeks.

Not-so-fun with Highways: Eureka…and Ukiah

There was a brief period of respite at the beginning of August between the end of the Outsound New Music Summit and the start of a new job.  Time was tight, so there wasn’t time for an extended odyssey in the deserts of southeastern California.  But the north coast, specifically Humbolt County and the area around Eureka, were well within range for a two-day trip.  I have never been that far north on the coast.  I got an Airbnb in Eureka.  I researched a mixture of industrial and natural spaces for photography and exploration.  I even got a new lens for the big camera.  And early on Saturday morning (or at least early by CatSynth standards), I was ready to go.

Eureka is a direct shot up US 101 from San Francisco, about a four-hour trip in good conditions.  It’s a major freeway up to the border between Sonoma and Mendocino counties, and then a mixture of an expressway and a two-lane road through the redwoods, with spots of freeway near major towns.

I never made it to Eureka.

The beginning of the trip was enjoyable and largely uneventful – and the Russian River gorge section after crossing into Mendocino County is spectacular.   North of Ukiah, I felt like I was actually transitioning into exploration, as this was somewhat novel territory (technically, I had been as far north as Legget in 2013, but that was in the evening and rushed).  Once CA 20 joins with 101 north of Ukiah, the combined route begins a long, steep grade into the hills.  It is here where things started to go a bit wrong.  The temperature gauge on the car, usually quite steady, suddenly shot up beyond the red “H”.  This is definitely not good.  I shut off the air conditioning and things calmed down a bit as we got into the new Willits bypass, a Super-2 limited access highway.  North of the bypass, 101 becomes a steep windy road through the woods; the temperature gauge shot up again.  This was definitely not good.  I limped back to Willits to give the car a break and figure out next steps.

I’ve been through Willits a few times, but never really stopped there.  The little downtown has some cute old brick buildings.  But I had no time to play – I needed to find a repair shop.  Nothing showed up in Yelp as open.  I probably should have called AAA at this time, but I did find an open shop in Ukiah, so I limped back.  I drove conservatively, with the windows open, the vent fully open, and one eye on the temperature gauge.

I was relieved when I finally pulled into Tony Lopez Automotive.  It was out a strange little industrial side-street south of downtown.  Tony was clearly not pleased to have someone wander in with car trouble just as he was getting ready to close, but he was also chivalrous and ready to help out a damsel in distress.  We got the car cooled down; and after a bit of diagnosis, he identified a small but pernicious radiator leak.  The diagnosis took some time, and while I was sitting I noticed a rather interesting pile of old car parts.  I snapped an iPhone photo, which became a Wordless Wednesday featured a couple of weeks ago.

I regret not grabbing my better camera out of the car to get a higher-quality image, but it was not my priority at the time.  And I do like the abstract quality the pixelation provides.  Tony did notice the fancier equipment still in the car, though, and it sparked a conversation about my writing and photography and about this site.  I wonder if he has checked it out.

Once things were ready, I left town – I would have loved to stay, but I was eager and anxious to get home.  I also left Tony Lopez a glowing Yelp review.  If you on 101 in the vicinity of Ukiah and need auto help, please patronize his shop and tell him that Amanda from San Francisco sent you.

The trip back to San Francisco was sad but uneventful, and in this case uneventful was good.  I didn’t record the trip back on Highway☆, but here is the exact same trek that I did record on a short but happier trip in July.

The engine temperature stayed within an acceptable range, and it was fine over the next few days in San Francisco, but the radiator definitely needed to repaired ASAP.  This experience also cured me of any sort of “fun with highways” wanderlust for a while and I have remained close to home since then (except for μHausen).  But the bug is starting to come back, and I might have to start exploring again.  I might even make it to Eureka one of these days…

See more of Northern California and many other fascinating places in our Highway☆ app, available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. 

Highway☆ on Apple App Store    Highway☆ for Android

CatSynth Video: Particle Smasher + with Cat

By electro-lobotomy on YouTube, via matrixsynth.

“The Particle Smasher + is a sound generator and sound processor. Please visit my etsy shop for more info..
https://www.etsy.com/shop/ElectroLobo…

“Particle Smasher +
Sound Generator and signal processor. Experimental sound device with touch controls and a filter wave shaper section.

Features:
* 2 Oscillators
* Modify switch for oscillator 1
* 2 Modify switches for Oscillator 2
* Power starve knob
* Choke knob
* 3 way variation switch
* Gain Knob for input
* Feed knob
* 2 feedback switches
* Effect bypass switch
* 1/4″ audio input
* 1/4″ audio out jack
* DC power jack ( 9v center = – // sleeve = + )

*I will include a detailed diagram of unit and it’s functions.

**9v battery to DC jack is included. (Battery not included)

*The unit can also be powered with a 9v power supply with a negative tip.”