Well, it’s taken quite a while, but it’s finally here. Reconnaissance Fly’s debut album will be coming out a week from today on January 17, and is available for pre-order now!
To celebrate, we will be having our album-release show on Saturday, February 1 at Berkeley Arts.
If you’re in the Bay Area, come join us for this event. But wherever you are, please give our album a listen…and then buy it.
We’ve had the Mixing Bowl (DC), the Orange Crush, the Can of Worms, so why not the Spaghetti Bowl?
The interchange connects I-15, one the major north-south highways in the western U.S., with US 93, US 95 and I-515, which head eastward into downtown Las Vegas. It was reconstructed in the late 1990s into the version we see in the above photo.
I have actually not spent much time in Las Vegas, and none of that time was on a highway in in a car. Indeed, I had a miserable experience about 12 years along the strip (South Las Vegas Boulevard). While I won’t get into the details of that trip, it did prevent me from exploring more of the actual city and what it has to offer. I would be willing to give it another chance, especially if I could also explore out into the desert.
Original title en français: Miss Papée qui prend des cours avec Franco
From francolamuerte·159 on YouTube, via matrixsynth.
“Teaser ! Savoir comment accorder un oscillateur analogique sur toute l’étendue de sa plage d’octave, ça vous intéresse ? En tout cas, moi j’ai connais une que ça intéresse vivement : ma fidèle et unique Miss Papée !”
It looks like Miss Papée wants to touch the MiniBrute 🙂
Luna is inspecting the latest musical acquisition here at CatSynth HQ, a vintage Minimoog synth. She is always curious to check new arrivals out, with some close sniffing along with visual inspections. Then she looses interest. She is, after all, a cat.
The astute (and synth-savvy) observer may also notice a Mixtape Alpha sitting on top of the Minimoog. Both instruments offer interesting possibilities, the the tiny Mixtape Alpha is more practical for live performance.
First CatSynth post of the new year, this one features both Grumpy Cat and Keyboard Cat (in toy form).
Not surprisingly, I have one of those keyboard cat toys. I have used it in performance and it might make an appearance this Saturday at SOMArts’ 100 Performances For the Hole. Stop by between 7-8 to catch my 4-minute feline-themed set!
[click image to enlarge]
Once again, it’s time for our traditional end-of-the-year image at CatSynth. The past couple of years have all been good, rich, full, and sometimes complicated. But 2013 has been particularly significant, certainly one that I will long remember. As the title says, it has been a transformational time on multiple dimensions for me, indeed it has touched almost every aspect of my being. There will be more to say on that in the coming days. Music and art have been going very well, too, and one of the main challenges of this coming year will be to build on the successes of this past year but in a more directed way. If that sounds vague, it’s because I haven’t quite figured it out yet.
For Luna, things pretty much are the way the always are. Such is the life of a contented house cat. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Thanks to everyone who reads and supports this project, whether here at the blog, on Facebook, or through the many personal friendships that grown from here. You are all what makes this work worthwhile!
So this is mostly how Luna and I spent our two-day Christmas break.
Relaxation and comfort was the primary agenda. I didn’t even keep up the tradition of going out for Chinese food.
We hope you all had a good holiday as well, however you choose to spend it! And if you haven’t had a chance to check out last weekends SF SPCA holiday windows post, we recommend that you do so.
Today we look at the second of my two performances in New York this past November. This one took place at Harvestworks, a non-profit organization in lower Manhattan that supports musicians and helps them work with technology. It was also a bit of a homecoming for me, as I had interned at Harvestworks in the summer of 1993 – yes, 20 years ago!
The concert was actually part of artist-in-residence Rachel Mason’s ongoing work, and featured a collaborative performance with Michael Durek of The Use that exploited Harvestworks’ surround-sound system. The piece included a mixture of videos, both found online and created specifically by Mason, and live music that featured electronics from Durek and voice by Mason. You can see their full performance in this video.
Rachel Mason and Michael Durek, Harvestworks, November 30, 2013 from CatSynth; on Vimeo.
It opens with a found video of an odd fellow talking about using electro-magnetism to detect ghosts. He explains basic electronics to the video (at one point getting his units wrong), with Durek slowly entering with discrete tones on the theremin. Soon the texture becomes thicker and moves into more beat-based music that I have heard in The Use’s more recent work. Rachel Mason’s vocals were quite expressive and melodic. The videos changed to show Mason in interesting costumes walking around both Brooklyn and Joshua Tree, two particular favorite environments of mine.
Then it was time for me to take the stage. I also used video, a very simple live-processing patch in Jitter that combined generated images with live input. For this piece, I had a set of cat-themed playing cards, which I would draw, show via the video processing, and then interpret for the next section of music, either as a literal specification for a patch on the Dave Smith Evolver, or more abstractly with the analog modular synth and Garrahand drum. You can see the full performance in the following video.
Amar Chaudhary at Harvestworks, November 30, 2013 from CatSynth; on Vimeo.
Overall, it was a great show, and we managed to have a full house, which is always a nice experience as a performer. I certainly hope to be able to work with these artists and with Harvestworks again in the future.
