Earlier this year, 1WTC (on the left of the photo above) officially became the tallest building in New York City. It was officially topped off in August at 104 stories. Even last year, the under-construction building dominated the lower Manhattan skyline, with both its reflective windows and bright construction lighting.
The healing of the city includes modern design and massive scale, and attention to the human level with open spaces and green elements. I am looking forward to seeing how things have progressed when I visit again later this year.
Today we look at a long walk from a long time ago. It was probably 1979, and in the summer, a time when I was often with my grandparents in the Bronx. I had already acquired the lifelong fascination with streets and roads that I retain to this day, and my great aunt (my grandmother’s sister) planned a long walk for us in a neighborhood that alternatively could be called “South Riverdale” or Spuyten Duyvil. It on the western edge of the Bronx along the Hudson River and just north of the northern tip of Manhattan.
[Click image to enlarge]
This walk is quite a vivid memory. It is odd to realize that I can retrace most of it on a map. I know that we started out from what was then the intersection of West 230th Street and Riverdale Avenue, heading south up the hill to Johnson Avenue. The hillside was steep and wooded (as it is today), but then enough that you could see the flat city blocks towards Broadway to the east. We eventually turned right onto Kappock Street, which curved its way further up the hill amidst more buildings.
From there, we turned north onto the service road for the Henry Hudson Parkway (NY 9A), which we followed for a distance. Though this mostly provided a view of the parkway itself, one could also look past it towards the Hudson River. Ultimately, we turned away from the parkway onto West 235th Street, crossing Johnson Avenue again in the “downtown” section of Riverdale. The exact route we took to get there is a bit fuzzy, but I attempt my best guess in the map above.
We stopped for a rest and refreshment (probably juice or milk as I hated soda), before continuing on West 235th towards Riverdale Avenue. It is on the side of steep hill with ledges separating lanes, so we walked along the higher section and descended the hill back to West 231st.
In November of 2002, I wandered back along West 230th Street out of curiosity to see how things had or had not changed. An old library building I remembered was still there, as were most of the larger commercial buildings. But the area around the intersection at the end of 230th was completely reconfigured, with wide green spaces separating different directions. The nearby high school campus had gotten a lot bigger. One small street from the start of the original walk, Ewen Street, appeared to have been completely removed.
It would like to re-create the original walk on a subsequent trip to New York, along with photos. It might even happen this year.
For those who have not been following along on Twitter or the band’s Facebook page, we have also been hard at work at our first album. We finished tracking this weekend (save for one overdub), and we’re looking forward to the next steps of mixing and mastering.
Luna sits in the command chair of our office/studio. Our common tools of late, the laptop, the Eurorack modular, and coffee mug sit nearby. The stack of CDs was for our recent radio show. This is of course the spot where most CatSynth posts originate as well.
The desk is quite a mess at the moment, which I don’t particularly like, but I haven’t had much time to remedy. I feel far more creative and relaxed in a clean space, but in this busy month we will do the best we can.
Tonight at midnight PST, I will be guest-hosting Matt Davignon’s program The World of Wonder on San Francisco Community Radio (KUSF in Exile). You can listen live here at midnight, or find an archived edition at the same location afterwards for those who aren’t awake at that time (it’s 3AM EDT in the US, for example).
The program will feature a variety of unusual music, including several friends from here in the Bay Area and New York, as well as some classics of modern electro-acoustic music. If you enjoy the musical offerings of this site, I invite you to tune in!
Today marks our 6th anniversary! It’s amazing to think that we have been going on with this for 6 years. The past year has been a good one, in terms of quality of the post and engagement with readers here on the blog as well as via Facebook and Twitter, and we’re looking forward to an even better year ahead.
And we are celebrating as we always do, with statistics.
1933 posts. 10714 comments. 463,958 visitors. 258 reviews of art, music and technology. 621 catsynth pics and videos.
57% of posts feature cats 19% of posts feature Luna
Most frequently-cited synthesizer brands: Korg (100) Moog (72) Roland (70)
Via Google Analytics, a map of where people are visiting from:
Top countries:
United States
United Kingdom
Canada
India
Germany
Australia
France
Italy
Poland
Netherlands
The non-anglophone country that sent the most visitors to CatSynth is Germany.
It is quite interesting how the set of posts receiving the most blog comments and those receiving the most Facebook likes are completely disjoint. The former tends towards Wordless Wednesday and Luna, while the latter tends towards cat-and-synth pics and art/music reviews. Certainly something to reflect on as we move forward into this next year.
Cats are smart. They set aside time to do nothing. I suspect Luna will be resting like this a bit during the weekend. As for me, however, I will be quite busy as usual. Today we are working on our final track for the upcoming Reconnaissance Fly album. Tomorrow I will be at Touch the Gear for the Outsound Music Summit.
And somewhere in between we will be hosting Carnival of the Cats. If you would like to participate, follow the link or use the handy BlogCarnival submission form. Alternatively, you can leave us a comment below and we’ll add you to the carnival tomorrow.
Last month, the five members of Reconnaissance Fly took a break from the recording studio to bring their “charmingly incoherent art pop” to the Berkeley Arts Festival in a concert that also featured the band Vegan Butcher.
The evening began with the debut performance the Vegan Butcher, with John Shiurba on guitar, Wil Hendricks on bass, Suki O’Kane on drums, and Val Esway on “occasional voice.” The band played several compositions by John Shiurba, all of which were written in January and exclusively used the “nine-note January scale.” The pieces all had inventive titles like “These Ones Are All Stretched Out And Bifurcated”; and Shiurba stated that he wrote the lyrics before we was completely awake.
The first song started out with a soft repeating pattern with quiet drums and a gentle guitar motive. Just when one thought this might continue indefinitely, loud drum and guitar hits announced the arrival of full-on rock mode. There was guitar with distortion and minor harmonies over a slow driving rhythm, overlaid with oddly modal melodies. The overall effect was reminiscent of psychedelic rock of the late 1960s and early 1970s – indeed, I thought I heard a bit of Nico / Velvet Underground in Val Esway’s vocals. You can hear the band for yourself in the following video:
Then it was time for Reconnaissance Fly to take the stage. From the start, our energy and vibe was quite different from Vegan Butcher’s dreamy and otherworldly sounds. Our current set based on spoetry (spam poetry) jumps around from style to style quickly, and has an overall humorous character. We opened as we usually do with “Small Chinese Gong”, which set the tone. You can hear a brief excerpt in this video:
All the recent studio work has paid off for live performances. We were much tighter on the challenging medley “Electric Rock Like A Cat / sanse is crede nza” than in previous performances, including those tough unisons. “As Neat As Wax” always stands out in live performances, too. This was also first time in a while that we included “The Animal Trade in Canada” in our live set, with a much stronger interpretation than in the past.
Reconnaissance Fly features Chris Broderick on woodwinds (clarinet, bass clarinet and saxophone), Amar Chaudhary on keyboards and electronics, Polly Moller and voice and flute, Larry the O on drums, and Tim Walters on bass and electronics.
Overall it was a great show for both bands. For those of you who didn’t have a chance to hear it live, we will be playing together again on August 24 at the Starry Plough (also in Berkeley), along with Jack O’ The Clock.
Today we have a little musical improvisation I created primarily using the Metasonix R53 (aka “Big Yellow”) along with several other analog modules, including with Wiard Anti-Oscillator and the E350 Morphing Terrarium. It was a relatively spontaneous expression, a bit raw, but I thought it came out well.
We are exactly one week away from the start of the 11th Annual Outsound Music Summit. It opens next Sunday is the perennial Touch The Gear Night and continues throughout the week with a series of concerts. Some of the novel themes in this year’s series includes a poetry and music night, and “Thwack, Bome, Chime”, a concert dedicated exclusively to modern percussion. You can see the full schedule here, along with ticket information. All events are taking place at the Community Music Center (544 Capp Street) in San Francisco.
As a community partner, CatSynth will be provided live updates at all events via our Twitter @catsynth, and provide more in-depth after-the-fact coverage here on the blog. I will also be personally participating in Touch the Gear next Sunday, where I will be showing both iPad apps and analog modular synths that have been part of my solo work this year.
From there, we turned north onto the service road for the Henry Hudson Parkway (NY 9A), which we followed for a distance. Though this mostly provided a view of the parkway itself, one could also look past it towards the Hudson River. Ultimately, we turned away from the parkway onto West 235th Street, crossing Johnson Avenue again in the “downtown” section of Riverdale. The exact route we took to get there is a bit fuzzy, but I attempt my best guess in the map above.
