electronic music

A few photos from recent shows

Some photos from our Polly Moller and Company shows earlier this month. The first is from the Luggage Store Gallery:

This was our “trio format”, with myself, Polly and Bill Wolter on guitar.

There is always an art exhibition going on at Luggage Store, something that I generally welcome during music performances, as long as it is not in the way. There was an eclectic mix of works on display that evening (isn't there always?), and I particular liked this piece:

Next, we have a couple of photos from 1510 8th Street in Oakland:

These photos are from Les Hutchins, who played an electronic duo with Matt Davignon in the opening set.

I need a haircut.

RIP Karlheinz Stockhausen

We have lost another of our musical heroes this year:

German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen has died at the age of 79.

Best known for his avant-garde electronic work, Stockhausen was an experimental musician who utilised tape recorders and mathematics to create innovative, ground-breaking pieces.

His Electronic Study, 1953, was the first musical piece composed from pure sine wave sounds.

Electronic Study II, produced a year later, was the first work of electronic music to be notated and published.

But the composer rejected the idea that he was making the music of the future, writing in 1966: “What is modern today will be tradition tomorrow.” [BBC]

In addition to being a strong influence on my own music, Stockhausen worked his way into my regular rotation of music. I can recall many Sunday mornings in Berkeley with coffee, fresh bagels, the New York Times and Stockhausen's Kontakte. This was a groundbreaking work of electronic music, but it was also one that I enjoyed just listening to, the way others might enjoy classical piano music on a weekend. And so, at least for me, Stockhausen's music did indeed pass into “tradition.”

You can sample some of Stockhausen's music here – I recall NPR using Kontakte in their obituary piece as well.

Here is a lecture on “sound” from YouTube:

New Podcast: "Bi-fur-cation" demo


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Some might consider tonight's podcast a “rerun” of sorts, as this musical example was featured in the CatSynth article The Logistic Function and its Discontents. This is actually one of our most popular articles of our stats/records are to be trusted, combining mathematics, the work of Antoni Gaudí, and some of my favorite electronic-music techniques. Those who have not read the article are encouraged to do so – I hope to post a follow-up one of these days. Or you can just listen to the podcast as a musical curiousity.

New Podcast: nox30: Synthss, from Música Experimental Brasileira


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This Sunday we have another great find from the Interet Music Archive (archive.org). “Synthss” by nox30 is part of the compilation Música Experimental Brasileira ( Brazilian Experimental Music ), with artists from all over the country. You can listen to more tracks by nox30 and the other featured artists here.

We are constantly looking for interesting music to feature on our podcast series, but we welcome submissions and requests. You can use our handy submission form, or contact us to get your music featured on the CatSynth Channel.

New Podcast: Mercury Grid live at Woodstockhausen 2002


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With all the craziness from last month, we didn't have much opportunity to release podcasts for the CatSynth Channel. But we're going to start things up again with another live performance from the archives.

This was one of three short pieces I performed at the 2002 Woodstockhausen Festival at the University of California, Santa Cruz. It is entitled Mercury Grid and involved live control of sound using a Wacom graphics tablet (which I have used in most of my live performances up until this year). The sound was done using my Open Sound World software. There was also a video component, with live 3D graphics that reacted in real time to the music.

I have not listened to this piece for a while. It's better than I have given it credit for, and would like to revive it for future live performances. There is also a studio version, which you can find on my music website.

We welcome submissions and requests for our podcast series. You can use our handy submission form, or contact us to get your music featured on the CatSynth Channel.

Astoria

Just a quick note this afternoon, from Astoria, Oregon. Our second show of the tour (third, if you count 1510 in Oakland) will be here in Astoria tonight, at the Astoria Visual Arts center. And I will also be performing a solo set to open, again with electronics and my folk and toy instruments.

We have posters all over town, and a great write-up in the Coast Weekend, a local paper.

Astoria itself is an interesting little town, at the mouth of Columbia River on the Oregon coast:

The coast highway runs through and north across the river into Washington state.

Here are a few photos from town:

And here is the band at the “Astoria Column”:


Click to enlarge

More on the performance itself after it actually happens. Also, I might go backwards in time to our show and day yesterday in Portland…but in the meantime, Polly has already journaled the first two days of our tour…

Tour Kick-off show in Oakland

The tour for Polly Moller and Company began last night with out kick-off show at 1510 8th Street in Oakland:

We were a trio last night, rather than a quartet. Guitarist Bill Wolter joins us tomorrow for the trip north.

I also performed a solo set to open the evening:


(Photo by Polly Moller)

Once again, I am playing the ektar (single-string instrument).

This is the first performance in which I used two laptops (both PC and Mac), mainly because not everything I wanted to use last night ran on a single system. I also took advantage of the excellent piano present at 1510. I improvised against the electronics, trying to match the timbre and “vague pitches” – the piano was also picked up by the mic for processing. And I opened the set with a brief rendition of “Alley Cat” (which has been stuck in my head after the bad kitty chaos festival from a couple of weekends back).

I will be doing another solo set for our show in Astoria, Oregon.

New Podcast: Perseid-inspired electronic imrpovisation


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Tonight's podcast is a relatively short improvisation using the DSI Evolver. The initial section was inspired, at a vague conceptual level, by going out to see the Perseid meteor shower tonight (August 12-13, 2007), and then unfolds from there with the usual tweaking of knobs and parameters while listening.

Although this is a fairly short recording, it might become part of a larger piece to add to the upcoming album 2 1/2, with a fast techno/electronica beat section to follow. I'm not working on that tonight because I actually am trying catch a little bit of the meteor shower.

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!





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!