Well, it’s taken quite a while, but it’s finally here. Reconnaissance Fly’s debut album will be coming out a week from today on January 17, and is available for pre-order now!
To celebrate, we will be having our album-release show on Saturday, February 1 at Berkeley Arts.
If you’re in the Bay Area, come join us for this event. But wherever you are, please give our album a listen…and then buy it.
We’ve had the Mixing Bowl (DC), the Orange Crush, the Can of Worms, so why not the Spaghetti Bowl?
The interchange connects I-15, one the major north-south highways in the western U.S., with US 93, US 95 and I-515, which head eastward into downtown Las Vegas. It was reconstructed in the late 1990s into the version we see in the above photo.
I have actually not spent much time in Las Vegas, and none of that time was on a highway in in a car. Indeed, I had a miserable experience about 12 years along the strip (South Las Vegas Boulevard). While I won’t get into the details of that trip, it did prevent me from exploring more of the actual city and what it has to offer. I would be willing to give it another chance, especially if I could also explore out into the desert.
The recent New York trip officially came to an end when I brought Luna home on Thursday. Changing locations is always a bit disorienting for her, but she quickly readjusted to her familiar home surroundings. She has also been very attached, looking for every opportunity to cuddle in my lap or at least sit next to me.
Yes, I do need to finish unpacking. It’s actually been quite busy since I returned, including a late-night gig with Surplus 1980 on Thursday and a show tonight with Reconnaissance Fly in Sacramento. But after that things calm down quite a bit. So we will have a proper but belated celebration for Luna’s birthday next week. Meanwhile, she is getting all the comfort and cuddles I can provide.
Finally, a sad note. We were heartbroken last week to hear about the passing of our friend Tillie. Tillie was from the kitty clan in Nova Scotia that also shared Mickey with us, and their mom has been one of our big supporters here at CatSynth. We often noted back and forth how much Tillie and Luna looked alike. We send the whole family our deepest sympathies for their loss.
It’s time once again for the annual pilgrimage to New York. In addition to family and friends, there will be much art-seeing and urban exploration, and two electronic-music performances. If you are in New York over the next two weeks, I invite you to come check them out.
Tuesday, November 26, 7:30
Ambient-Chaos presents Schyuler Tsuda, Amar Chaudhary (San Francisco), John Dunlop, RMA Trio
121 Ludlow St, Second Floor, New YorkRobert L. Pepper (PAS) presents a night of Ambient-Chaos featuring Schyuler Tsuda, Amar Chaudhary (San Francisco), John Dunlop, RMA Trio. THE EVENT STARTS EARLY!. So please be there by 7:30 to settle in and enjoy the frequencies.
Saturday, November 30
Rachel Mason, The Use, and Amar Chaudhary at Harvestworks
Harvestworks, Broadway&Houston, New York5.1 Surround surround performance at Harvestworks with Rachel Mason and The Use (Michael Durek), additional A/V element from Jay Van Dyke; and a set from Amar Chaudhary a.k.a. CatSynth.
I did want to include some analog modular elements in these performances, so I put together a miniature version of the rig featuring a cross section of modules, with an emphasis on live processing (Make Noise Echophon) and chaotic oscillation.
The best way to keep up with CatSynth in New York is via Twitter @catsynth. But you can also follow us on Instagram. And of course we will continue with periodic blog posts.
It was a rather eventful weekend here with a film project and then a bit of unexpected excitement around a show at Berkeley Arts last night featuring Pitta of the Mind. In the end, everything went well, though Luna would have preferred less excitement. Here she is coming out of hiding after my friends from the film project left and reclaiming her territory.
She is quite fond of this toy piano. I have even heard her press the keys, though I haven’t been able to capture it yet.
The latest, and second-to-last, episode of the World of Wonder is up and posted for your listening pleasure.
For a complete playlist, please visit Spinitron.
This show will be coming to an end soon, with a final show on October 10. It has been a great experience, but no longer sustainable given an increasingly frequent performance schedule, maintaining this site, and making sure to set aside enough time each week to take care of myself and Luna. It is possible that I will start up an independent podcast in 2014, so stay tuned…
Today we mark seven years since CatSynth first went online!
Here was the photo of Luna from that first post on July 19, 2006.
As we do every yeah, we celebrate this occasion with some stats.
2,278 posts.
12,218 comments.
538,771 visitors.
760 “cat-and-synth” posts.
Some overall stats for the past year:
Our top day for visitors was January 26, 2013. This was during NAMM.
The greatest number of visitors came from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany.
The top cities are San Francisco and New York. The top city outside the U.S. is London.
iOS and Android are among the top five platforms used by our visitors, surpassing Linux.
Our top commenters over the past year:
| Tillie and Georgia | 187 |
| meowmeowmans | 142 |
| Gattina | 70 |
| Snowcatcher | 57 |
| Kitty | 56 |
| CatSynth | 53 |
| Beth F | 45 |
| Sukhmandir Kaur | 42 |
| AVCr8teur | 42 |
| Louis la Vache | 40 |
| Sue St Clair | 39 |
| KatzTales | 37 |
| Cafe au lait | 34 |
| Marilia | 33 |
| The Chair Speaks | 29 |
| Sweet Purrfections | 27 |
| Cats of wildcat woods | 25 |
| Marg | 24 |
| Team Tabby | 23 |
| Beth @ 990 Square | 22 |
| SandyCarlson | 22 |
It’s great to see longtime readers continue to participate over the years, and always good to see newcomers as well. Interestingly, the number of comments has gone down significantly over the past year. My conjecture is that an increasing amount of the engagement around CatSynth has migrated to our Facebook page, and to Twitter, where we have lively communities of commenters. In terms of Facebook, here are our most shared/liked posts over the past year:
It’s gratifying to see a mixture of “cat-and-synth” posts and art/music reviews in this list. It supports my belief that mixing all the different topics together into one stream is worthwhile. I particularly enjoy our many cat enthusiasts commenting on the music reviews or highway posts.
We hope to continue this project for a long time, and hope it continues to be a valuable and worthwhile resource. And a big thank you to all our readers and fans! You make this a joy to work on.
Last Sunday was the big annual Pride celebration in San Francisco, and with the recent court decisions restoring and expanding marriage equality, it was the largest and most celebratory that I had seen in my five years here. It was already quite crowded when I arrived at usual perch along Market Street at 7th.
Marriage equality and the court cases were of course a common theme in signs and displays.
But there was also lots of perennial displays and entertainment. There are beauty queens, for example.
And the obligatory bare-chested men.
The above float does signify one of the big complaints about the event, that it has become very commercial and “corporate”. How should one react to a festive float like this one below, which has a positive message, but it also sponsored by one of the much-despised big banks?
In corporate displays, perhaps none was larger than Facebook, with hundreds of employees marching in colorful t-shirts, and Mark Zuckerberg doing a goofy dance on a bus (sorry, I did not get any good pictures of that). On the positive side, many community organizations were also represented, including the San Francisco SPCA:
The Contemporary Jewish Museum also had a contingent centered around their current Allen Ginsberg exhibition.
There was music, including a rolling live performance from Hedwig and the Angry Itch.
Many ethnic-based groups march in the parade. This year I managed to catch Trikone, a representing LGBT South-Asian Americans (i.e., individuals whose heritage comes from the Indian subcontinent).
Individuals from many countries were also more prominent.
This is a long all-day event. The parade always goes much longer than planned, and then there is the big festival in front of city hall. Certainly there were plenty of complaints to be heard about the crowds and slowness of things. But overall it was a very positive day.
Today, June 10, is the eighth anniversary of Luna’s adoption, otherwise known as her “gotcha day.” We woke up to find this wonderful graphic waiting at The Cat Blogosphere:
After eight years, Luna continues to make every day a delight I certainly hope I do the same for her.
We will celebrate this evening, but in the meantime, please join me in wishing Luna a Happy Gotcha Day!
Last weekend, SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) remained open all night Saturday into Sunday, ahead of its three year closure and renovation. Thousands turned out for this event, and plenty has already been written about it. But here are a few words and photos from my own experience.
I finally had the opportunity to see the Lebbeus Woods exhibit. I am glad I did. Woods’ architectural sketches were fantastic and whimsical, but still had a sense of modernism to them with strong lines and geometric shapes. There was a sense that these ideas could be realized as actual structures, even if most of them never were.
I did a quick tour through the permanent collection to see a few favorites one last time, including this piece by Yves Tanguy. There were other familiar works, like the room of pieces by Clyfford Still. But the room with minimalist works (like the chrome wall piece by Donald Judd) were not on display.
Then it was up to the rooftop courtyard for nighttime views, mingling, and some live performances. The first group branded themselves as “eco-sexuals”, with a performance that blended eco activism with a variety of things one might associate with the word “sexual.”
SUE-C and Kevin Slagle presented a series of beautiful hand-made films.
And Rick Prelinger presented some of the home movies collected from his archive, particularly those documenting U.S. cross-country road trips.
Then it was downstairs to the reception room for more performances. First up was jazz singer/chanteuse Veronica Klaus with a very retro set of jazz standards:
Emcee Marga Gomez delivered her interstitial schtick from a desk on the side, in the style of late-night shows.
More performances followed, including some randomized musical readings by Sofía Córdova and a performance descending the landmark SFMOMA staircase by Chris Sollars. Both fun, but challenging to photograph. The next performance by Dia Dear was fairly mindblowing both visually and sonically:
Up next was a trio featuring Dale Hoyt with David Lawrence and Liz Walsh.
They presented a sing-a-long with a somewhat more wistful view of the museum’s closure, lamenting the time away and those who might never have the opportunity to come back. THey closed with a version of Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” (made popular as the closing song in the movie Dr. Strangelove).
As it was approaching 3AM, I decided it was time for me to depart. The celebration continued with more performances into the morning and next afternoon and a final processional to mark the closing of the museum. They will be having off-site exhibitions over the next few years at other locations in the Bay Area, and I look forward to seeing them.