Monthly Archive for July, 2008

Sea Zombies - It Died In Africa (Digitalis Ltd., 2008)

Published
by
sean
on July 28, 2008
in review
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in brief: seafloor spreading drones dressed with stream-engine synths and a raving frenchman make for a delightfully sinister serenade.

at length:

Once upon a time, Type Records’ John Xela (Twells) created the sort of charming electronic ditties you could share with friends around the neighborhood hangout’s jukebox on Saturday night after the varsity game, or the perfect sort of beats for that all-night sleeping bag slumber party you planned with the softball team.  2003’s For Frosty Mornings and Summer Nights and Tangled Wool (CCO, 2004) were wholesome, warm hearted highlights of their respective electronic sub-genres.  Tangled Wool, it seems, marks the end of Xela’s snuggle-music period for the time being; with the release of 2006’s The Dead Sea and subsequent tape releases, it’s clear John Twell’s Xela has changed.  Here’s John Xela in 2006, interviewed shortly after the release of Dead Sea, an album of glorious Fabio Frizzi/Goblin/gore-flick adulation:

The people who know or knew me well growing up will be only too aware of my constant obsession with horror films… — Type Writer, Adam Park (2006)

I think about doing a metal album more and more, but I don’t know  whether I’m capable to be quite honest. I suspect if I did it would  verge more towards the noise and black metal end of the spectrum, I’m  heavily into that stuff at the moment - black metal wise music like  Burzum, Akitsa and Striborg really has my jaw on the floor and noise  bands like Prurient, Hair Police, Wolf Eyes - I’m really lapping it  up.
The doomier stuff too really made me took notice also, I’m a big fan of  Sunn o)))’s albums, especially ‘Black One’ [last.fm streaming],  seeing them live with Earth last year was mind-blowing… — Dead by Sea, Roger Batty (2006-09-12)

As a longtime fan of both Type Records and Digitalis, it’s been a pleasure to watch the ongoing Twells/Rose creative convergence.   Sometime around the release of The Dead Sea, we first saw the cross pollination take root with the Type reissue of North Sea’s splendid acoustic-folkdrone split with (the similarly splendid) Rameses III: Night Of The Ankou.  Just last year, Type pressed The North Sea’s first full length vinyl LP, while Digitalis has been releasing a steady stream of Xela and Svarte Greiner cassettes under their new Digitalis Ltd. imprint over the same time period.

It Died In Africa marks the pair’s first full fledged collaboration. Together as Sea Zombies, Twells and Rose have crafted a sinister blend of heavy noise and whispering synths.  The album’s vicious opener — ‘Repent’ — is a noisy,  lumbering behemoth of decayed electronics and shackled acoustics, a pitch-black dungeon drone reminiscent of Birchville Cat Motel, Axolotl or Robedoor’s subterranean aural explorations.  Despite the heavy, penetrating darkness, a warm, wheezing organ tone stands out amidst the muck, like patch of sunlight piercing through a crack in the dense cavern of sound.  “The Beginning of Wisdom’s” warm, focal synth loop makes for sunnier pastures on the flip side.  ‘Repent’ and ‘Beginning’ both are memorable primarily for their respective bright spots, with warm textures and colorful features dipping in and out of the mix between blast waves of distortion and guttural beats.

With two other tape releases on Digitalis Ltd., a split LP Barge and Type’s sub-label RITE, there’s no shortage of the new Xela sound.  Brad Rose is prolific as always, perhaps hoping to give Muslimgauze a run for his money.  Completists may be disappointed to find the new material all blending together imperceptibly, but considering the genre, this pattern is hardly surprising.  Aside from sounding too similar to the luminaries of the genre — including much Ajilvsga’s own catalog, Holy Objects in particular (sample @ 4:09) — Xela and Rose’s first collaborative effort is encouraging; It Died In Africa’s buried hooks make for a memorable listen, like stark white life-buoys peaking intermittently over the surging waves, providing relief from the exhilarating waves of noise and introducing some welcome dramatic momentum.

Sea Zombies - Beginning of Wisdom (excerpt)

also, I found this amusing:

North Sea “zombie worms” feeds on the bones of dead whales. (bbc)

Image: Natural History Museum

North Sea ‘zombie worm’

Fire on Fire, Live @ Portland’s Space Gallery

Published
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sean
on July 24, 2008
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Fire on Fire released their first EP on Michael Gira’s Young Gods Records a few months back.  The group is packed with Portland, Maine folk fixtures, notably Big Blood’s Colleen Kinsella and Caleb Mulkerin, amidst a serving of fellow Cerberus Shoal alumni like Chriss Sutherland (who released a stunning solo release of his own with Digitalis around the same time).

“Forget about this,” she says, “it’s for interest only”

Published
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sean
on July 24, 2008
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In a continuation of the good news emerging for Radiophonic Workshop enthusiasts, the BBC reports the existence of 267 previously unreleased Derbyshire tapes uncovered shortly after the composer’s 2001 death.  Delia Derbyshire, early electronic/tape music pioneer, is the most celebrated of the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop composers, largely responsible for the iconic “Ron Grainer” Dr. Who theme.  Earlier Derbyshire work has been reissued on a variety of Radiophonic compilations, with a recent reissue of her KPM LP, Electrosonic, in 2006.

Lost tapes of the Dr Who composer By Nigel Wrench (BBC)

Now David Butler, of Manchester University’s School of Arts, Histories and Cultures has revealed for the first time the existence of 267 tapes found in Ms Derbyshire’s attic when she died in 2001.

They were, until last March, in the safekeeping of Mark Ayres, archivist for the Radiophonic Workshop - and have lain unheard for more than 30 years.

Most unexpected of all, however, is a piece of music that sounds like a contemporary dance track which was recorded, it is believed, in the late sixties. — Lost tapes of the Dr Who composer By Nigel Wrench (BBC)

Delia Derbyshire

Most surprising, as the BBC article notes, was the discovery of an experimental “dance” track, prefaced by Delia with the bashful quote referenced above.  Radiophonic composers are known for being innovators, decades ahead of their time, but the Delia’s experimental dance tape sounds almost like a fully realized Warp recording, only composed while electronic was music still in its infancy.

Mr. Wrench’s article unfortunately doesn’t explain why these tapes were languishing so long with Mark Ayres — Radiophonic archivist — before they were eventually passed along for restoration to the University of Manchester and David Butler.  Despite widespread coverage in major news outlets, Create Digital Music commenters have voiced a great deal of skepticism regarding the authenticity of the new tapes.

According to the BBC story, they haven’t been “found”; they were presumably retrieved from her attic as her affairs were put in order, back in 2001, and left with Mark Ayres (the official Radiophonic Workshop archivist, who is presumably above suspicion) until last March. What’s unclear from the story is where they’ve been between then and now, although the implication is that they’ve been with David Butler - presumably also above suspicion. — gwenhwyfaet

Another commenter calling himself David — presumably the same David now restoring the lost Derbyshire tapes at the University of Manchester’s School of Arts, Histories and Cultures –  generously fills the gaps left by the BBC’s brief initial report with details-a-plenty, even linking to a lengthier article and presentation from the University’s Centre for Screen Studies.

We were stunned when we heard the rhythm track that you’ve all heard on the BBC site - I’m still knocked out by it! The track in question is from a 10.5″ reel that runs for just over 15 minutes - the only identification on the reel is a label that says ‘NOAH’s dance - basic rh.”

…

Captain Howdy is right again to point out that this track sounds so different to Delia’s known output or that of her contemporaries at the time - but it’s also worth remembering that - not least following their collaboration as Unit Delta Plus - she did have access to Zinovieff’s fledgling synthesizer the VCS3 and other electronic textures - and much of what we know of her output is limited to a relatively small body of work - but she was active in all kinds of contexts throughout the 1960s and there are several pieces in the archive that expand our understanding of what is characteristically ‘Delian’. — David

David’s explanation, posted yesterday, is worth reading it full.  I look forward to hearing the story in more detail, and eventually hearing the restored tapes in their entirety.

Skip James

Published
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sean
on July 24, 2008
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Some critics and historians have stated that Skip James’ sound emerged from a “Bentonia school” of blues performers noted for falsetto vocal delivery, elaborate finger picking on the guitar, and dark lyrical thematics, creating what David Evans described as “…some of the eeriest, loneliest, and deepest blues sounds ever recorded” (13). James’ musical development was indeed influenced by the presence of blues artists in and around his hometown, and the styles of other Bentonia musicians, notably Jack Owens, are quite similar to that of James in terms of vocal delivery and instrumental technique. However, the idea of region as a overriding force in the creation of blues musical styles, while doubtlessly accountable for certain instrumental and musical consistencies within individual areas of the country, can nonetheless be at least partially discounted by the reality of the early twentieth-century bluesman’s lifestyle. As Stephen Calt describes him, the bluesman of the period was often only a semi-professional performer, playing for a few extra dollars (or sometimes just a hot meal) at juke joints and plantation parties after long days as a sharecropper, timber cutter, or levee worker. Steady jobs were scarce in the South at this time, and men were often forced to travel to wherever work was available, their music accompanying them on their journeys. Therefore, even an isolated “plantation town” like Bentonia was sometimes host to performers from all across the South, and this mobility allowed different blues styles to travel to and influence musicians throughout the region (14). This puts the idea of a wholly unique “Bentonia sound” within the domain of reasonable doubt, and thus the “Bentonian” elements within the music of Owens and others from the region can be regarded not as the manifestation of a regional stylistic phenomenon, but as a conscious emulation of the music of Skip James, which is the only music from the “Bentonia tradition” that has truly endured and which was itself influenced both by the work of migratory musicians like Henry Stuckey and Rich Griffin, and by the influential recordings of performers like Leroy Carr (James himself recorded a memorable version of Carr’s “How Long Blues”). It was James’ unique utilization of the stylistic properties of blues music, rather than the influences of a particular regional style, which gave his work its unparalleled formal distinction, and which made it unmistakably his own. — Can’t Find No Heaven: The Mysteries Of Skip James by Matt R. Lohr

Gypsy Jazz

Published
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sean
on July 23, 2008
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‘Down there in the Gypsy camp a banjo was jiggling with a popular melody.., one had the impression of distant dance music, dizzying waltzes one the sweetness of an accordion. Camp fires were everywhere, each with its cooking pot. Everywhere chickens were stewing and banjos going wild…’

This was the setting in which Django grew up - in a world that today has become the stuff of legend, the world of the bohemian and the vagabond on the doorstep of a great city… — Django Reinhardt a biography by Alain Antonietto

Django featured with the Quintet of the Hot Club of France and performing ‘Swing’ (1939)

also: profile, longer version of video above & NPR’s Django Reinhardt: A Gypsy Legend

Terrastock Seven delights

Published
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sean
on July 23, 2008
in filler and live
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The continued vitality of microlabel experimental, psych, drone and folk is perhaps best witnessed in the continued success of live festivals like Terrastock 7 or Bottled Smoke.  Both festivals, unfortunately, were outside my reach.  Thankfully, Terrastock and BS event hosts have been thoughtful enough, with the festival chaos and crowds dispersed, to remember their most geographically challenged followers, sharing the musical spoils with photos and videos aplenty.

Windy & Carl @ Terrastock 7 (Ned Raggett)

Terrastock is not just a festival, it’s a family. There’s a feeling of community that you won’t get anywhere else and you can’t help but feel caught up in it all. This isn’t Boneroo, Lollapalooza, or Austin City Limits. People aren’t here for spectacle or to be seen - they are here for the music and the community that surrounds the psych genre whose umbrella is the zine Ptolemaic Terrascope. That sense of community extends from the biggest acts to the smallest. This is, when you get down to it, nothing more than a big house party at (founding editor of PT) Phil McMullen’s pad. The pad this year just happened to be in lovely Louisville, Kentucky in the Mellwood Arts and Entertainment Center - a former factory turned multi-use facility. — Ramon Medina, TX

Wooden Shjips (alt)

Windy & Carl (1/2) (2/2)

Mike Tamburo

Kinski, Sharron Kraus w/ United Bible Studies, Mono (pt.1, pt.2), Grails, Tara Jane O’Neil (pt.1, pt.2, pt.3), Ignatz, Pelt, The Black Twig Pickers (alt), Paik, Makoto Kawabata (pt.1, pt.2), Sleeping Pill (Yo La Tengo), Black Forest/Black Sea (pt.1, pt.2), Terrastock 7 @ flickr & Terrastock 7 flickr group (yahoo ID required)

Windy & Carl live photo courtesy of Ned Raggett, used under Creative Commons license

(h/t narikiri, greatest youtube user ever)

Ben Burtt, godfather of Hollywood sound, breathes life into Wall-E

Published
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sean
on July 22, 2008
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Ben Burtt, four time Academy Award winning sound designer and voice of ET and R2-D2 — among others — explains the unique challenges in developing Pixar’s Wall-E character.  While Burtt’s R2-D2 robotic vocalizations have already successfully translated human emotion into beeps and boops, these same electronic flourishes were stretched to an extreme for Wall-E.  Burtt’s abstract vocalizations, sounding something like a toddler speaking through a vocoder, needed to stand on their own for the entire first third of the film.

Burtt’s work has always distinguished itself, making a profound impression on audiences, despite tough competition from the industry’s best storytelling, cinematography and special effects accompanying his work, diversions that could easily overshadow less accomplished sound creations.  Wall-E, for the first time, truly makes Burtt’s sound creations the central focus of the film.  Lovers of sound and music absolutely must see Wall-E.

Mix Sound for Film Feature: WALL-E

The trick has always been to somehow balance the human input to the electronic input so you have the human side of it. In this case, for Wall-E, it ended up being my voice because I was always experimenting on myself sort of like the mad scientist in his lab, you inject yourself with the serum. After weeks and months of experimenting it was easier to try it on myself as we worked it out. You start with the human voice input and record words or sounds and then it is taken into a computer and I worked out a unique program which allowed me to deconstruct the sound into its component parts. We all know how pictures are pixels now and you can rearrange pixels to change the picture. You kind of do the same thing with sound.

I could reassemble the Wall-E vocals and perform it with a light pen on a tablet. You could change pitch by moving the pen or the pressure of the pen would sustain or stretch syllables or consonants and you could get an additional level of performance that way, kind of like playing a musical instrument. But that process had artifacts in it, things that made it unlike human speech, glitches you might say, things you might throw away if you were trying to convince someone it was a human voice. That’s what we liked, that electronic alias thing that went along with it, because that helped make the illusion that the sound was coming from a voice box or some kind of circuit depending on the character. — Ben Burtt Interview, Wall-E

“The characters’ voices were the hardest because people are highly critical of voices and hear them differently than sound effects. We’re experts at interpreting voices and the emotions behind them. I built special circuitry for my computer that allowed me to record my voice, digitally break it down into component parts, and reassemble it … processing the sound as if it were a musical instrument. The trick with robot voices is to retain the human element so people can identify and care while also giving it a machine-like quality—you don’t want the audience to think it’s just an actor in front of a microphone. That was my biggest challenge.” — If A Robot Falls On A Deserted Planet, Does It Still Make Noise?

also: Ben Burtt: The man behind R2-D2 and Wall-E’s beeps by Tom Russo

& Exclusive: Ben Burtt’s WALL-E Sound Masterclass.  The world’s most renowned Sound Designer teaches RT by Ben Burtt

(h/t usoproject)

sanguine

Published
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sean
on July 22, 2008
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The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp is a 1632 oil painting by Rembrandt housed in the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Blood is a hot, sweet, temperate, red humour, prepared in the meserais veins, and made of the most temperate parts of the chylus in the liver, whose office is to nourish the whole body, to give it strength and colour, being dispersed by the veins through every part of it. And from it spirits are first begotten in the heart, which afterwards by the arteries are communicated to the other parts.

Music a remedy.… Faventinus are almost immoderate in the commendation of it; a most forcible medicine Jacchinus calls it: Jason Pratensis, “a most admirable thing, and worthy of consideration, that can so mollify the mind, and stay those tempestuous affections of it.” Musica est mentis medicina mœstæ, a roaring-meg against melancholy, to rear and revive the languishing soul; “affecting not only the ears, but the very arteries, the vital and animal spirits, it erects the mind, and makes it nimble.” Lemnius, instit, cap. 44.

…besides that excellent power it hath to expel many other diseases, it is a sovereign remedy against despair and melancholy, and will drive away the devil himself…  Many men are melancholy by hearing music, but it is a pleasing melancholy that it causeth; and therefore to such as are discontent, in woe, fear, sorrow, or dejected, it is a most present remedy: it expels cares, alters their grieved minds, and easeth in an instant. Otherwise, saith Plutarch, Musica magis dementat quam vinum; music makes some men mad as a tiger; like Astolphos’ horn in Ariosto; or Mercury’s golden wand in Homer, that made some wake, others sleep, it hath divers effects: and Theophrastus right well prophesied, that diseases were either procured by music, or mitigated.

The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) — Robert Burton (1577-1640)

feat. Ilya E. Monosov, Valerio Cosi, James Blackshaw, Black Twig Pickers, Yo La Tengo, Burning Star Core, Steven R. Smith, & Tape

tracklist

 
icon for podpress  sanguine [40:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (6)

Trunk Records to release collection of John Baker recordings

Published
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sean
on July 17, 2008
in filler
. 1 Comment

Thanks to Trunk Records, BBC Radiophonic Workshop composer John Baker — standout amidst the station’s slew of early electronic pioneers — is receiving the individual attention his recordings deserve, at long last.  The John Baker Tapes, a two disc cd collection along with a vinyl issue of highlights, is scheduled for release in July and August, featuring previously unreleased Radiophonic material, soundtrack materials and home recordings.  Considering the BBC’s notorious ineptitude at properly preserving the Workshop’s recordings, and the scarcity of information about John Baker’s career more generally, this Trunk release is a great relief.

John Baker hard at work at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop BBC, manipulating sounds in June 1965

Along with information about the scheduled July and August releases, Trunk includes a wonderful biography penned by John Baker’s brother, Richard Anthony Baker.

At the start of 1963, he joined the Radiophonic Workshop, which had been founded by Desmond Briscoe five years previously. In the early days of electronic music, its pioneering work of developing new and different sounds was greatly in demand by programme makers.

John invented many techniques. He recorded onto reel-to-reel tape the sound of everyday objects, such as the twanging of a ruler on a desk or a cork being pulled from a bottle. By changing the speed of the tape, he could alter the sounds’ pitch and was then able to compose a melody from these sounds by, for instance, making a minim fill four inches of tape, a crotchet, two, a quaver, one, and so on. More cleverly, if he wanted to introduce a jazz feeling to the tune, he cut a note slightly short so that it anticipated the beat. The work was painstaking and demanded a steady nerve. But it was the job for John. He loved it and was never happier.

additional reading/listening:

John Baker samples @ last.fm & BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop feature, Four sound effects that made TV history

(h/t Gutterbreakz)