Leisure Cove

"Oh My Darling" by Pet Cemetery

2009-12-23T19:20:00.004-05:00

Everyone's favorite summertime fun band Pet Cemetery got together to record a few songs on Sunday, which will hopefully see the light on a 7" sometime soon.

In the meantime, here's one of them, with footage from yesterday's field trip to Fort Tilden. Enjoy!

Anti-Oscillator

2009-12-21T11:28:00.007-05:00

I have a Wiard/Malekko Anti-Oscillator on loan for the next week or so. For reasons I don't fully understand, there are only one or two demo videos of this module out there, neither of them particularly thorough-- that will change in the next few days...

EDIT:

More soon!

"Rock and Roll Attack" by Thee Iran-Contras

2009-12-19T23:25:00.003-05:00

Audio: 6/8/06

Video: 12/18/09

From the Contras' "That's We Rapping" CDr.

Sci-fi winter

2009-12-15T23:46:00.002-05:00

I'm planning on reading science-fiction and science-fiction only this winter. So far, people have recommended I check out "The Player of Games" by Iain M. Banks and "Inverted World" by Christopher Priest.

I'm pretty much stumbling in the dark with this stuff-- can anyone recommend anything else for the list?

Ideally, I'd like to be on the road to becoming the next host of this show by February:

Foundsound update: RFID Reader Wired & Working!

2009-12-14T00:27:00.001-05:00

New distro boards!

2009-12-09T00:41:00.008-05:00

David from Bubblesound was kind enough to show me the "build your own bus board" ropes tonight, helping me solder together three chain-able boards. Aren't they pretty?

Seriously, seriously big thanks to David for helping me with the project. Fingers crossed, I'll finally be able to power all of our modules simultaneously! Look for an update to that effect tomorrow night.

UPDATE:

Good news: everything powers simultaneously. Bad news: the power supply isn't strong enough for two rows of modules. Hmph. Luckily, Modular World just (literally-- this was released yesterday) put out a new 2000mA supply that will do nicely.

Found Sound Update

2009-12-04T01:16:00.000-05:00

Waveshield: mostly soldered

Triple Wide Extender: Extending

Radio: Removed from cabinet

New home for the machine

Next up: Get 1/3 of it to work, starting with the waveshield (which does the audio playback). The project is due in two weeks!

"Buchla bottle" sounds

2009-12-03T22:02:00.003-05:00

Quickly becoming one of my favorite sounds: FM + LPG:

Audio: 12/3/09

Video: 11/29/09

Great shows this month

2009-12-01T11:17:00.020-05:00

There are a few extremely fun parties happening in the next few weeks:

This Thursday, CDM is celebrating its 5th anniversary with a free-beer EVENT on MacDougal Street. There will be live music. There will be a dance contest. The winner will get a new laptop. (UPDATE with new info)

Then, on Friday, friend-of-The-Shamblers Jordan S. (late of 349 St. John's St. Radio) is bringing his new noise act "Family" to the BlackWave (John Ryan Theater) basement in DUMBO, 25 Jay Street, 9pm. FREE!!

The following evening, at the Lakeside Lounge, WFMU is celebrating the launch of their new webshow, Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban (with Debbie D). There'll be DJ sets from all of your (well, all of Jess and I's) favorite station DJs and the usual good-time-shenanigans of a WFMU party. Plus, it's free.

A week later, the In/Out Computer Music Festival is happening at The Tank. Performances, workshops, hobnobbing with your favorite micro-celebrities... I'm really looking forward to this one.

Following that, the Lollapalooza-of-Chiptune Blip Festival will be returning to the Bellhouse, December 17-19. I've yet to see this kind of thing done live, but have been jazzed about what I've heard (yeah, I went there). Three days might be a little extreme, but I'm willing to give it a go.

(Coincident to Blip Fest on 12/17, Richard Lainhart-- he of the 200e/Continuum fame-- will be putting on an audio/visual performance IN QUAD on Centre Street in money making Manhattan.)

THEN, on the 18th, Bardo Pond and White Out (w/ Thurston) are playing at the fanciest place in town, Le Poisson Rouge. 7pm, $10. You're going, right?

What a month! Hope to see you all out and about!!

QMMG arrives!

2009-11-24T23:47:00.007-05:00

QMMG! QMMG!

First patch with the module-- two steady tones fed into channels 1, 3 and 4. What you're hearing is the sound of the QMMG's filters in LP, BP and HP modes, modulated by Maths and the 143-1. (More patch details on the Vimeo page.)

I love it so far! Looking forward to getting better acquainted with it over the long weekend.

Hello Ben & Kellie!

"Study Music"

2009-11-22T15:02:00.010-05:00

I took the GREs this week, which means I haven't done much in the past couple of months beyond going to work, coming home and studying. Fun, fun, fun.

In any case, I've found that studying to monotonous, repetitive music works for me, and figured this out by having essentially the same patch up on the modular for three weeks, bleeping and blooping away. Every day I'd turn a knob or add a cable, slowly building it up from a single droning oscillator to this-- where it was on test day:

New Mexicoe at Glasslands on 11/30!

2009-11-20T14:55:00.004-05:00

Tell your friends! This is going to be a fun one (not to mention a FIRST SHOW for The New Colossus). Hope to see you there.

Maths arrived!

2009-11-12T21:08:00.006-05:00

Our Maths module-- the new dual VC-envelope/slew limiter/envelope follower/tone generator/Swiss Army Knife from Make Noise-- just arrived! Look how skinny it is:

The first run of these (not too sure how many was in it-- I've heard anywhere from 50-70) sold out in a day-- this module is #076.

Looking forward to putting together a demo video later next week. It's going to take me a little bit to get my head around this one...

"Look At Them Beans!"

2009-11-09T15:33:00.002-05:00

Heard this on the Tennessee Border show yesterday, while Jess was fixing beans for lunch:

Found Sound

2009-11-05T00:12:00.000-05:00

I'm always a bit quiet on the blog when I'm in school, but I'm finally getting towards the end of my program, which means I'm indulging myself and taking classes that I can't totally justify professionally, but that satisfy some of the creative-librarianship tendencies that got me to apply in the first place.

I've had the idea for a found sound archive for quite some time, but I wanted to build a really good interface for field recordings. Something you can touch and move. I'm building a prototype as a final project for my Programming for Interactivity class. Here's the gist:

I bought this cabinet with a built-in radio online:

The ultimate goal is to build in an RFID reader and fill the drawers with RFID-tagged objects, and an SD card with field recordings linked to those RFIDs. When an object is placed on the reader, the related sound recording will play back. It sounds simple, but there are a bunch of intermediary steps that I haven't totally worked out yet. Like how to play back the sound. Ideally, I could just wire the Arduino to the speaker on the built-in radio in the cabinet, but I think I need an intermediary. And all the intermediaries I find seem to output in mono, which is fine, except that it's field recordings, and in a perfect world, you'd be playing with this thing, wearing headphones, and you'd pick out an object, like a little bird, and you'd put the bird on the reader and then you'd be surrounded by birdsong and you'd forget where you are for a split second. Mono is just not going to cut it. But that's okay. This is the prototype, right?

Updates as I have them. My first task is to get the RFID reader to read an RFID tag. Wish me luck!

Marathon clips

2009-11-01T23:20:00.009-05:00

The marathon runs right through our neighborhood, and is always a good place for people watching.

Here are a couple of clips from this morning, set to old chestnuts from the Colonial catalog:

(I'm not too sure what the story is with the black border on the videos-- I'm not savvy enough to have put them there myself!)

Party Frog & Lucas T. Ford Make The Halloween Scene

2009-10-31T20:55:00.000-04:00

Shamblers Halloween party mix

2009-10-31T20:22:00.000-04:00

Sounds best loud.

Happy Halloween!!

Hey Scott NM

2009-10-31T00:12:00.003-04:00

There's a new 71-disc Miles Davis box set coming out?

Whaaaaaaaaaaat?

Music I heard on WFMU this afternoon that I think Jess will like

2009-10-27T16:07:00.009-04:00

I couldn't find videos for "Peanut" (from our favorite Sonny Sharrock LP, "Black Woman") and "Endlessly Fascinated" (brand new!!) by the unstoppably good Psychedelic Horseshit.

"Peanut" was on Mayor McDowell's "Long Rally." The rest were on "Three Chord Monty" and Brian Turner's Show.

We're in Wine Country

2009-10-25T15:02:00.001-04:00

Not a metaphor. We're really here.

"Downtown New York"

2009-10-22T10:36:00.015-04:00

I saw "After Hours" for the first time last night and, noticing that Rockets Redglare was in it, I started snooping around the internet for stories surrounding his involvement.

What I found instead was this link to clips from "Downtown New York," a then-contemporary public access show with which I was otherwise unfamiliar.

Watching clips of Soho from the latter half of the 80s reminded me of this Glenn O'Brien article (to keep the NY public access theme going), about his realization that the neighborhood had become "too hot" for his handling. The gallery scenes from "Style Wars" come to mind as well (fast forward to 2:53)-- the time around which the neighborhood replaced its art makers with art buyers.

Things change, I'm not saying anything new, but it's been on my mind recently and is one of those facts that manages to surprise me whenever I'm reminded of it.

Eucalyptus - our new roommate

2009-10-13T21:37:00.005-04:00

Cassette loop drone

2009-10-12T17:19:00.006-04:00

I chopped together a blank tape loop yesterday, and have been using it with the 4-track pretty much nonstop since:

Same video, processed through the modular:

The Dustys at Terminal 5

2009-10-10T02:03:00.006-04:00

The Dustys came through town on Thursday. Unfortunately, the cheap-o tapes I bought moments before their set were toxic. The second I put one into the dictaphone, this happened:

Avoid, if at all possible, Trisonic C-90 tapes. They might look amazing--and why else would you buy them?--but they're useless. They will wreck whatever you put them into.