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Surplus 1980 10″/CD release. Please support us!

I am excited to be part of not one but two upcoming recording releases. In addition to Reconnaissance Fly, I will be appearing on the next release of Moe! Staiano’s Surplus 1980 project. This is also my first recording that will be released on vinyl :).

Surplus 1980 is a post-punk band of a rotating line up of some fine musicians, many extending from great bands to be heard on this project including members from the Ex, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and Faun Fables, among others, including Mute Socialite…Musicians, besides Moe! Staiano (drums, percussion, guitar, bass, piano, vocals), on this release will include guitarist Bill Wolter and Melne Murphy, Bassists Alee Karim and Vicky Grossi (also doubling on violin), percussionist Jordan Glenn, keyboardist Amar Chaudhary, alto clarinetist Aaron Novik, and on oboe, Kyle Bruckmann. Possible vocal guest from G.W. Sok, formerly of the Ex (and currently with the French band Cannibales & Vahinés).

You can find out more at our Kickstarter page, and please consider supporting us so we can make this release happen!

A Perfectly Clear Day


[By David Jones [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons]

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.

I also had the opportunity to visit the new 9-11 memorial that opened last year.

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.

Fun with Highways: South Riverdale

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.

Reconnaissance Fly website is live

Reconnaissance Fly’s official band website is up and running!  Check it out, with links to upcoming shows, musical samples, even a recipe or two.

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.

Weekend Cat Blogging: The Messy Desk

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.

Weekend Cat Blogging #373 is hosted by Pam at Sidewalk Shoes.

Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this Sunday by When Cats Attack!

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

DJ CatSynth on The World of Wonder (KUSF in Exile)

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!

CatSynth 6th Anniversary

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.

Our top commenters for July 2011-July 2012:

Kitty 141
Tillie and Georgia 135
meowmeowmans 132
Gattina 77
Snowcatcher 61
AVCr8teur 55
Beth F 50
Sue St Clair 46
Marg 45
Beth @ 990 Square 44
Daisy the Curly Cat 39
SandyCarlson (USA) 39
Cafe au lait 37
Judi 33
Louis la Vache 33
Mitch 32
Maria @ LSS 32
The Chair Speaks 31
caite@a lovely shore breeze 29
Indrani 29
Robin from Israel 27
Sweet Purrfections 26
Carol @ There’s Always Thyme to Cook 24
Sukhmandir Kaur 24
Katz (And Other) Tales 21
Li 19
Cats of Wildcat Woods 18
Daisy Deadhead 15
Fuzzy Tales 12

Our most commented articles this past year:

 

Happy Birthday Luna! 36
Happy Gotcha Day, Luna! 27
Wordless Wednesday: Green Window 26
Wordless Wednesday: Cat and Koi Street Art 24
Wordless Wednesday: Installation views of upcoming show 24
Wordless Wednesday 24
Wordless Wednesday: Portals 24
Wordless Wednesday: Blue Barrels 23
Wordless Wednesday: Oakland Maze 23
Wordless Wednesday: View from Brooklyn 23
Wordless Wednesday: Ominous Sky 22
Wordless Wednesday: Ferguson 22
Dona Nobis Pacem 22
Wordless Wednesday: Union and Octavia 22
Wordless Wednesday: Looking Upward 21
Wordless Wednesday: Quicksilver 20
Wordless Wednesday: LACMA 20
Wordless Wednesday: Jungle Cat 20
Wordless Wednesday: Doll and Fish 19
Wordless Wednesday: Mystery Sunburst from New York 19

 

And finally, the posts most “liked” by Facebook users.

Broadside Attractions | Vanquished Terrains at Intersection for the Arts 40
CatSynth pic: Happy Minimoog Monday (On Tuesday) 37
CatSynth pic: Bengal Cheetah Cat on a Moog Little Phatty 22
CatSynth pic: Bessie and Korg Monotron 21
Pas Musique and Thomas/Levin duo, Luggage Store Gallery 21
CatSynth pic: Mog Moog 20
CatSynth pic: Missy and Nord 20
Paul Stapleton improvisation sets, Luggage Store Gallery 17
CatSynth pic: Mimi and Korg MS-20 16
CatSynth pic: Techno Puff (JL Cooper CS-32) 16
CatSynth pic: Binary Heap 16
CatSynth pic: VideoCat and Korg Mono/Poly 16
CatSynth pic: Video the cat with Wurlitzer and Fender 15
CatSynth pic: Steerke and Korg Mono/Poly 14
ReCardiacs Fly, Surplus 1980, PG13 at Hemlock Tavern 13
CatSynth pic: Lenny 13
Robert Reich at #OccupySF 13
CatSynth pic: I smell a rat 12
Alan Turing and Computability 12

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.

 

Weekend Cat Blogging #370

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.

Weekend Cat Blogging 370 is hosted by Samantha, Clementine and Maverick.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted by us!

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Reconnaissance Fly and Vegan Butcher, Berkeley Arts Festival

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.


[Photo by Michael Zelner.]

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.


[Photo by Michael Zelner.]

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.