Music

CD Review: John B, Catalyst (We Like The Music)

I'm finally getting around the first of the promised CD review series here at CatSynth. Just one of many articles waiting in a growing queue while “life happens…”

Remember the Rathergood.com chillin' kittens? Of course not. But it was a cute animation done by folks who brought us the “Viking Kittens”, featuring a jazz combo of cute kittens “chillin' out” on the beach to “We Like the Music (Latino mix)” by John B.

John B is a UK-based electronica artist, more recently known for his remixes of 80s synth pop, 80s-style spiky hair, and working alongside “cutting-edge artists” like Justin Timberlake. However, before selling out, he released several interesting “jazzier” albums between 1999 and 2001 on his Beta Recordings, including Catalyst. This album is not easy to get. The Beta Recordings sight kept giving me SQL database errors (and indeed the entire site acts a little odd in Safari and Firefox). Amazon.com does not appear to carry this release. I did manage to find one via eBay's Half.com store in July.

Catalyst is a 2-disc album featuring John B's, drum&base and “electro-funk” work from 1999, mixing either real or imaged jazz/funk phrases and recordings with electronic beats. Some are extremely fast and high-energy, others are more dreamy, trance, or chill-out music. Somewhere between the two extremes lies the track “We Like the Music.” It's lot more electronica/drum-and-bass than the Latino mix, but it has the same brass licks. I definitely like the Latino mix better used by the Rathergood.com kittens, the latin rhythms and softer feel has a lot more “character” to my ear. Unforunately that version is one the even-more-difficult-to-find Redox – Catalyst Reprocessed. I have also been unable to find it at any of the digital distribution sites. So for now, I'll probably have to stick with the kittens.

New Podcast: MERZ0004 – zlknf – Bast Babylone (May 19, 2005)


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I was searching for track to feature tonight in honor of the Music and Cats theme of the Bad Kitty Chaos Festival, and eventually settled on this selection from Bast Babylone by zlknf:

lknf: free noise from an autonomous organism.
territory of new sonic landscapes in permanent questioning and mutation, quasi-silence purity to gliding noisaural imensitudes.
Bast Babylon EP available through Merzbau.

In this case, I am interpreting the theme as more “inspirational” than literal, i.e., music inspired by cats rather than created from cat sounds. Certainly, the references to Bast suggest a feline connection, as do the following quotes from the credits:

bast babylone is dedicated to bosch and sybilla.
zlknf thanks the electric masters for their gates are open,
her cats for their love is unconditional, merzbau for the immediate
cooperation and sympathy, and the Friends – AGAPE

Musically, this track reminds me a lot of the piece I did for Dorian Grey's Box, as well as several works in 2 1/2. Disturbingly so. Most likely it is common elements inspired by listening to computer music (ala ICMC and SEAMUS), but perhaps there is also a common element of the cats…

For subscription and listening options, click the “CatSynth Channel” icon in the upper right or the subscription link at the top of this post. And as always, enjoy!

Bad Kitty Chaos Festival #4: The Round up

&cWell, it's Sunday afternoon and time for the round-up of the Bad Kitty Chaos Festival #4. The theme is Music and Cats, and Luna starts us off with a “CatSynth pose” next to a soon-to-be-bent Casio SK-10:

Meanwhile, Willow from sammawow has her own keyboard shot, where she channels the Ramones. Gotta love those 70s haircuts. We will probably feature some more photos of Willow as part of our regular “CatSynth pic” series.

Luna doesn't really play much, she mostly just likes to hang in the studio, as we've seen many times in the past:

For Gree, music is about purrrs. Purrs can indeed be a wonderful musical sound, there are several electronic treatments of purrs in the album I am currently working on entitled 2 1/2.

Next we take a little detour from art towards science. Living the Scientific Life asks the question “Can Animals Predict Impending Death?”, and features the much discussed case of Oscar who seemed to predict when residents at a nursing home were near death.

Oscar is also the subject of this week's contribution by TherapyDoc.

More music (or “mewsic”) can be found at the home of Kashim and Othello, where the boys try their own version of a faux reggae classic.

Meanwhile Victor Tabbycat presents Fursday along with Bonnie Underfoot.

Those Bengals are back, with all the Bengal cuteness, over at Pet's Garden Blog.

Mouse takes on the competition in this slideshow at This, That and The Other Thing (who hosted Carnival of the Cats last weekend). Don't worry Mouse, the toys are no match for you.

“When you?ve gotten bored of attacking your toys, there?s always your own foot to play with…”, as we are reminded at Dophin's Dock. Sage advice.

Have you ever considered a cat's whistkers? Well, you should. And this contribution from the Magick Cat Cauldron will help introduce you this amazing piece of feline machinery.

Samantha says thank you to everyone who helped with her surprise party. Sounds like it was a smashing success.

At Self Help for Cats, Herman Panther likes to sleep cuddled with his humans, “like a lover.” Reminds me of a bit of “kitty live” with our own little panther here, who loves to snuggle up in bed on my left side and fall asleep purring.

Aloysius joins our cats-and-music theme with his epic poem. Sing, Great Cat, the tale of Aloysius, mighty hunter of the line of Pangur Ban!.

Gemini sets off a bit of an argument at Chey's Place. Maybe time for her own blog? After all, there is no such thing as too many cat blogs.

Over at the Cat Realm, Karl dares us all with a challenge. Visit them to find out more. Oh, by the way, nice shades!


Finally, Biscuit has not come home, and Megan and bad kitty cats are losing hope that she will return. This is really sad news for our friends who started this “festival” – we hope that she does defy the odds and return, but our sympathies are with them now.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this week's Bad Kitty Cat Festival of Chaos. Next weekend, we'll be hosting the old favorite Weekend Cat Blogging.

Bad Kitty Chaos Festival #4

Luna and I welcome everyone to participate in Bad Kitty Chaos Festival, fourth edition. As Megan suggests, we are having an optional theme of Cats and Music:

To participate, you can [strinke] use the handy submission form, or leave us a comment right here on this post. We'll have the big roundup this Sunday!

UPDATE: Megan and the Bad Kitty Cats have another crisis on their hands. Biscuit is missing. We hope she is safe and comes home soon. In the meantime, please leave a comment instead of the submission form.

And lest we forget, it is also Weekend Cat Blogging #113 over at masak-masak, where Ms G the “elusive ginger kitty” hosts. Samantha and Tigger host this weekend's Carnival of the Cats; and of course the The Friday Ark is boarding at The Modulator.

New Podcast: Performance at 7th Annual Skronkathon


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Tonight we feature the much-discussed performance from the 7th Annual Skronkathon two weeks ago. I did a solo electronic set featuring myself playing laptop (running [http://osw.sourceforge.net]Open Sund World[/url]), the Indian ektar and gopichand string instruments, a toy piano, the DSI Evolver, and of course my quacking toy duck (everyone loves the duck).

This recording was done my Matt Ingalls for the sfSound Radio broadcast. I edited it a bit, mostly cutting out the empty bits or embarrassing errors.

You can see a photograph from the performance here and more info about the technical preparations here.

For subscription and listening options, click the “CatSynth Channel” icon in the upper right or the subscription link at the top of this post. And as always, enjoy!

Last night's performance at Works/San Jose

Well, once I managed to get 451 S 1st Ave after navigating the the highways and streets of San Jose, things went pretty smoothly. With such a small rig, set up was quick and easy, taking only a few minutes:

Just the laptop, keyboard, fish and audio interface.

As usual, I don’t have any pics of the performance itself – though I expect to receive some from others. Here is a great shot of John Moreira warming up:

The highlighted wire on the right is the connect from John’s guitar to my laptop for electronic processing.

The performance itself went well, no major issues. Polly’s flute sections were particularly strong. Overall, our playing wasn’t quite as tight and aggressive sounding as it was during the rehearsal, and of course no kitty antics – that does really add a lot. But it was a good first public show for our little group, hopefully first of several to come.

KIOKU was great, musically and visually:

Interestingly, I already knew the laptop artist Christopher Ariza from the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) in Barcelona two years ago. Small world.

Preparing for tonight's performance: Cats, Rehearsal and Software

First, I have to remind myself to ABC: Always Bring a Camera. I missed several photo opportunities before and during our rehearsal in San Francisco on Wednesday. There were some great shots on the new Central Freeway terminal ramp. And then the “kitty moments” during the rehearsal with Polly Moller and John Moreira. I did snap this cell-phone pic of John Moreira's cat Crescenda rolling around among our cue sheets and amps. She and her fellow cat Pearl joined us several times during the rehearsal, but Crescenda's little act stole the show.

Musically, I had a minimal setup – a subset of what brought to the Skonkathon two weeks ago – just the MacBook, the E-MU 0202 | USB and a MIDI keyboard. The Mac was running the new script-based Open Sound World to process live guitar input. The processing worked quite well, I think, with several wavetables, ring modulation, and a rather nasty little FM algorithm (it's a lot like those distortion-modulation “sound mangler” pedals). Both the guitar and processing needed to fit within pieces with voice, flute and existing electronic material.

UPDATE: You can read Polly's account of the rehearsal and Crescenda here.

The one concern was the frequent OSW crashes – it wasn't a huge problem during the rehearsal because the system can reset itself very quickly (far more quickly than the older UI-centric version), with only a few seconds of dead time. But still, that's not cool. I suspected something related to the MIDI input handling. Fortunately, last night I was able to track down the crashes last night. They were indeed in the MIDI handling, some issues exposed by the multi-processing with the Core2 Duo. Easily found and fixed by playing the patch with a lot of MIDI control, with the laptop and keyboard on the coffee table. Actually, I made some interesting lo-fi music with the built-in mic and speaker and feedback while testing and debugging. This will probably form the basis of my next piece.

Skronkathon photo…and upcoming show

Well, there's me, attempting to appear ironic, at the 2007 Skronkathon two weeks ago. I'm playing the ektar, a single-string folk instrument from India, one of several instruments used during the performance.

This is one of several photographs taken at the event by Polly Moller. And it is quite timely, given that we will be performing together this Friday in San Jose:

It all starts at 7:00 p.m. at works/san jose,
451 First Street, San Jose, CA 95112
Cost: $5.00/$3.00 donation

july 27th music night with KIOKU, polly moller & company and dajis

based in new york city, the musical group kioku presents traditional
asian folk music within a new context of collaborative experimentation
and improvisation. the trio consists of wynn yamami (east and
southeast asian percussion, including japanese taiko, korean gongs,
and filipino kulintang), christopher ariza (live laptop electronics),
and ali sakkal (saxophones, percussion). while committed to the
preservation of musical traditions, kioku (japanese for “memory”)
acknowledges the plasticity of tradition and freely adopts musical
techniques found within improv-based and new music circles.

converging from oakland, san francisco and santa cruz are polly
moller, john moreira, and amar chaudhary, combining flute, bass flute,
voice, guitar, and electronics to create otherworldly improvisatory
atmospheres and backgrounds for polly's gripping text.

who is dajis? a dj with a selection of ambient and experimental music.

CatSynth 1st Anniversary

Today we celebrate CatSynth's first anniversary.

It's been one year since we posted this photo on July 19, 2006:

The idea came from a friend who said something like “dude, you should do a website about cats and synths.” So I did. Really didn't have too much idea what I would write about. I quickly learned that there was quite an abundance of pictures of cats and synths, and sites like matrixsynth had been collecting such images for a while. Indeed, one of the first external “CatSynth pics” to be posted here was of matrix's own cat JD:

Sadly, we recently learned that JD passed away this month. We offer matrix our sympathies. It's always sad to hear about cat friends passing away (or human friends, for that matter), and we at CatSynth have seen our share this past year.

I expect to post more this evening reviewing the year with photos, not-so-useful stats and the other things we at CatSynth like to think we do well…





Today's preformance. Listen live online!

For those interested in either attending (if you're in the Bay Area), or listening online this evening, here's the vital stats on my show today:


Sunday, Jul 15 2007 12:30 PM – 11PM

21 Grand
416 25th St @Broadway
Near 19th Street BART
Oakland

7:00 Amar Chaudhary solo digital

In conjunction with 21 Grand's 7th anniversary celebration, the 7th annual Transbay Skronkathon BBQ is an all-day marathon music and BBQ extravaganza. Admission is free, but we'll pass the hat for the benefit of the Transbay Creative Music Calendar. We'll have a couple of charcoal grills out in the alleyway for your gustatory pleasure (BRING STUFF TO GRILL!) and a double load of the Bay Area's best creative musicians inside for your listening pleasure.

If you are unable to attend, you can listen to a live internet stream, provided by sfSoundRadio. It works easily in iTunes or Windows Media Player, or other standard media players. My performance will be a 7PM US Pacific time (-0700). Listen in if you can!