The Usual Monday Bullshit...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
This made the rounds a couple months ago, courtesy of a @GreatDismal tweet, if memory serves me. For some reason I keep coming back to it. This agency, MK12, owns After Effects in a manner far beyond that of mere mortals, and their Vimeo channel is absolutely littered with ludicrous examples of their skill. This particular video, which combines completely off-the-hook sound design with AE trickery the likes of which you rarely see, is the best of the bunch, though.
I’m working on a group of generative artworks that kind of have the same feel to them; being done in real time and purely procedurally, they won’t be at this level of sophistication, but visually they’re in the same ballpark. I’m using the covers of several 50s era electronic music records as touchstones/starting points. Each work will consist of a 19” LCD monitor (4:3, not 16:9) with a Beagleboard strapped to the back, running Processing, in an aluminum frame. It will have the ability to generate, on the fly and with motion, four different pieces. I have the code running on my Mac right now; the first Beagleboard arrives this week, and I’ll put up a video when I’ve got the whole mess running. I anticipate many, many headaches getting the proper combination of Linux and Processing to work, and I also assume I’m going to have to dumb the works down a bit, as a Beagleboard doesn’t have a lot of horsepower.
In other news, the RT60 record is completed, song-wise. I have to go back and mix a couple tracks again, but for the most part it is done. I’ll have some more info about that in the immediate future; Jeremy and I have to decide how we’re gonna roll things out, but Bandcamp will no doubt be involved.
In AD news, we ran in to a weird issue with the Axon update; when we moved the OS X version to VSTGUI4, it got really laggy, visually. Adam is (as I write this) trying to figure out what’s causing the slowdown. As soon as that’s out of the way, we should have the update out pretty quickly. While he’s working on that, I am, of course, working on the UI update to Replicant.
So, that’s what’s going on around here. You know what we haven’t done in a while? Had a Hawt New Music thread. I could seriously use some new tracks to listen to while I’m pushing pixels. What’s caught your ear lately? And, as always, try to put at least a little editorial in your post rather than a big fat list of names. I don’t want to have to google some band that turns out to be some Norwegian death metal bullshit, and I assume nobody else does either.
18 comments
My wife and I have been loving the new http://kidneythieves.com/ kidneythieves record - it's been on constant repeat in the car. For want of a better description, I guess it could be tagged "industrial rawk", but without all the negative connotations that phrase breeds.
Sure, the production is great, the mix by Sean Beavan is excellent, but the best part? Great SONGS! Remember those? Lots of kiddies today don't seem to...
i was at chuck norris' house over the weekend and he was jamming this wicked acid techno.. kind of long songs that are live jams and they tend towards the weird more than the 'traditional'. you might like it.. might not.. it should fit right into "music to listen to while doing other stuff on the computer" and it's a free download in wav or 320 mp3 so that's a plus. (how's that for a roundabout way to make a shameless self promo plug) the album/artist is called "DICA"
http://soundcloud.com/buriedintime/sets/dica
http://www.buriedintime.com/
other than that i've been hooked on Autechre's Moves of Ten and Oversteps. The Dead Weather's Sea of Cowards has gotten some air time around here as well. Jack White can bring it now and then and that record has a few heavy hitters on it.
Also, at chuck's house yesterday he played Deru's "Pushing Air" and i hadn't listened to that in a while and was reminded of what an excellent record it is.
Mount Kimbie "Crooks and Lovers" is excellent on the post-dubstep tip (i.e. wobble bass free zone).
Caribou tends a big litmus test artist - if you like his stuff I think "Swim" is excellent - electronica that actually has some songs hidden inside.
Undo released their debut lp last month "As Always, But Never Before". If you think you might want to listen to Pink Floyd and Aphex Twin having a mutant baby, then selling that baby to buy a classical guitar that can then be run through the large hadron collider, then perhaps you might enjoy this record. Good songs, unusual production.
http://soundcloud.com/undosound/sets/undo-1
http://bit.ly/cQQGuW
New (old) Future Sound Of London - "From The Archives vol. 6". It's more of the same, but nobody else does what they do as well as they do.
http://www.fsoldigital.co.uk/shop/process.php?pname=ShowAlbumDetailsProcess-Start&CategoryID=CategoryID&AlbumID=120
I asked 13 artists and bands to make covers of songs from my debut-album without hearing the original tunes first. And to make it stranger I just gave them the chords and lyrics and asked them to use at least two lines of each and of verse as well as chorus. No melody, no beats or bpm. I got 13 tunes a week later that had little to do with originals.
It is released free under a CC-licence as it is basically new songs.
It can be heard and downloaded here:
http://kufrec.bandcamp.com/
(as well as the original album)
More info about the artists can be found here:
http://www.kufrec.com/unheard.html
The whole thing is part of my Danish release of the debut-album.
If you just check out one tune, listen to 'Almost night' by French DS. He is a 19 year old chap from northern Sweden doing a bit of BoC like stuff. He did however perform the lyrics in the smartest way of them all!
Regards
Rasmus
I've been listening to Retribution Gospel Choir
http://www.retributiongospelchoir.com/
I saw them supporting Bob Mould back in December - I just love the rawness of the performance. Gotta say they're even better in the flesh.
Liumin -- Deepchord presents Echospace
I won't get into the typical record review BS, but if you like Deepchord, Quantec, Basic Channel, etc... there's lots to like about this release.
As I tend to make my living off the kiddies on the dancefloor, I often return over and over again to certain artists who remind me that this kind of music does not have to be mind-numbingly simple or just a re-hashing of something done (and done better) in Chicago or Detroit 25 years ago.
This month, I keep returning to Stimming. His productions are organic and intricate, and reek so heavily of his singular esthetic that I want to punch myself in the kidneys for churning out the relative nonsense I am paid for.
Not necessarily new, but relatively new to me, I just got in to Telefon Tel Aviv. The album Immolate Yourself is made of pure blippy electronic melodic WIN. RIP Charles Cooper.
Tricky's a huge influence on me. My band is based largely around a structure he introduced. I have a slightly sandpaperish singing voice (not nearly as rough as Tricky's) and the way he dealt with that was to create this interesting adrogynous duality with Martina Topley-Bird. That template was one of the founding aesthetic tenets of my band, although we didn't do it in any obvious way.
I do think he has stumbled quit a bit in the last decade and I do think he lost himself a bit in the haze of ganja, but I'm not gonna call it Emperor's New Clothes, 'cause I think that's overly dismissive of what I do believe was genuine vision.
- c
Bah, whatever with that. He didn't invent that shit. Back that truck up to Frank & Ella's many duets and load 'er up.
-CR
OK, after my post I thought I’d put on a recently acquired album and listen through, and it turns out I love it already. It’s Barry Adamson - Back to the Cat. It’s only a couple years old, which is like "hot off the presses” for me. I’m not quite sure how to describe it; lounge, 60’s soundtrack, Spandau Ballet, jazz, but seemingly without irony or worship of “authenticity”.
Please sign me “Too old for irony”.
I'm loving the new Grinderman album. With Grinderman (and the last Bad Seeds album, 'Dig!!!, Lazarus, Dig!!!') Nick Cave really hit the nail on the exact kind of music I'd love to make. On one hand, you've got raunchy blues - but under that, the experimental production is ace. Snipped of noise puncture the sounds of the bar-room, sirens coming from Warren Ellis' strings sing piercing melodies.
Love this shit.
In the early Oughties, Tricky played at Metro in Chicago when I was the LD.
I was at that show. And I'm with beauty boobs....I think the first two Tricky records still hold up as classic. He was just such a freak at the time - one of my favorite pieces of music criticism was someone reviewing Pre-Millenmium Tension and saying Tricky with a sampler was the best guitarist in the world at the time (certainly bs but I liked the point).
I think he fell into the classic conundrum of putting out some wonderful art and then realizing he can either keep repeating the recipe (Nearly God, etc.) and try keep it interesting (horrible guest star turns) or try to evolve somehow. Kind of like A Tribe Called Quest who made the same brilliant record 3 times and then started pretty much sucking.
Having a 16 yr old Brit girl cover "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" was just so brilliantly twisted and perfect at the time.
My favorite minimal house album for the year has been Tim Xavier's "Viperfish". The cut off the album for me is definitely "Sequence Madness". Dubby, acidy, minimal house music. Great production, interesting style, very hip.
Another 5 star tune has been Miniminds' "Time And Space (Original Mix)" off the 1605 Prvo Poglavje compilation. Although this isn't the most original house tune I have ever heard, it is just done right. Cool use of the reverb, everything is very clean and punchy.
I've also really been digging Ramon Tapia's tech house. My personal fav is off Sunka Sanka (part 2) titled "Start It Up". Kind of leaning more towards the 'disco' side of tech house, but it's still trippy with a decidedly funky bassline.
Of interest.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/sep/19/tricky-mixed-race-interview
Not an album, but a new mix: Burial and Kode 9 mixing on Mary Anne Hobbes's last BBC radio show.
http://www.gorillavsbear.net/2010/09/09/mix-burial-kode9-for-mary-anne-hobbs/
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