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.
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.
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.
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:
And finally, the posts most “liked” by Facebook users.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And here is a picture of “Big Yellow”.
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.
My first article for
Stretcher is an online publication that “encourages dialog about contemporary art and visual culture in the San Francisco Bay Area.” It was a great experience writing this article with them, and I hope it’s the first of many.
You can read the full article here.
Tomorrow night, Reconnaissance Fly will take a break from the studio for a live performance in Berkeley. We will be sharing the bill with our friends Vegan Butcher.
The Berkeley Arts Festival space is located at 2133 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA USA.
BAND BIOS:
Reconnaissance Fly is a band of composers who have reclaimed the best spam poetry (“spoetry”) for humanity, deploying jazz, progressive rock, funk, samba, free improvisation, a small Chinese gong, and an arsenal of wind instruments against the dastardly internet robots.
The five members of Reconnaissance Fly are Chris Broderick playing clarinet, bass clarinet and C-melody saxophone; Amar Chaudhary with keyboard and electronics, Polly Moller with flute, bass flute and voice; Larry the O on the drums, and Tim Walters on bass guitar and electronics. When not playing live around the Bay Area they are recording their debut album Flower Futures, awakening their inner Peter Frampton, and denouncing pineapple pizza.
http://reconnaissancefly.bandcamp.com/
Vegan Butcher plays music of John Shiurba. Only music written in January is allowed. The nine note January scale is used exclusively. The lyrics were written accidentally before John was completely awake. In addition to John on guitar, Suki O’Kane plays drums, Wil Hendricks plays bass, and Val Esway occasionally sings.
Suggested ticket donation is $10 at the door.
I have to admit, I like our music being described as “charmingly incoherent art-pop.” I hope we continue to use that.