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two to the one-hundred and seventy-sixth power

January 21, 2017 · by · in ,

 

… is the number of patterns you can make* on a 909 drum machine.  Inspired by a dinner talk with my friend Mike Dean, I made a nice little thing that is going to play every one of them back, from now until a very long time in the future**.

Given that I had a sequencer lying around, this was not that hard to do – when the page loads, I calculate the current time-since-start (January 21, 2017, ), turn that into a binary number, and then that number as the pattern.  Each bar, I increment the number, and ta-daaaa!  Music that will take more than a trillion trillion trillion thousand years to finish!

I saw somewhere recently the line that “music is counting without thinking” – this project sure makes the counting bit obvious.

 

* A real 909 can have either an open hat or a closed hat – I went with both, because it is much easier to make work.

** I was going to use Bignumber.js to represent the time, but I forgot that everything will get weird in 2038, so I just used typical timestamps.

2016: tracks of the year

December 31, 2016 · by · in ,

Let’s make 2017 better, team.

DJ Nigga Fox – Untitled

So, that’s some awkward googling.  This is a six track white label, only even given an artist by the record store I found it it – but it is nothing but insane rhythms and fuck-you samples.  You probably were not sleeping on the boys from Lisbon, but man, don’t sleep.

Ember Isles – Embers

A total 180 from the above, but 100 kinds of gorgeous from the Brooklyn indie/folk/harmonizers.

Maggie Rogers – Alaska

Blah blah Pharell blah blah hype blah blah what an amazing record.

Hannah Epperson – Circles (Iris)

The violin, the voice crack, the space, the timbre magic.

Charlotte Day Wilson – Work

It’s gonna take a bit of work.  Oh oh, ohhh work.  Is it ever.

Honors out to Hollas Longton’s firebreathing 4 Caprices, Siriusmo – Nights Off, Weekend Affair – Duel (Part 1), The Westerlies – Saro, KONCOS’s amazing cover of The Whistle Track, Krrum – Evil Twin, Emmalyn’s  cultural moment of #FreeTitties, and the music we need for the next four years – Tim Maia’s Rational Culture.

2016: shows of the year

December 30, 2016 · by · in

Let’s talk about sh – fuck 2016! – ows.

Objeck @ Batofar

I went to Paris, and ended up at a boat party … inside the damn boat.  Nothing quite like feeling the dancefloor tilt from side to side.  Objekt was, of course, excellent – electro, bass/techno, and acid house making perfect sense together.

RBMA Technopolis

Just your every day Bushwick warehouse party, with buckets of production by RBMA, and the leading lights of Brooklyn techno doing their thing.  Galcher Lustwerk killed it, Aurora Halal and Umfang were great, etc etc etc.

Discotechnique @ House of Yes

The rogues at House of Yes baited me in with the promise of Danny Krivit, then just played great disco all night long.  House of Yes can push the “we’re weird because we do circus stuff” a little hard, but they’re great people.

Honorable mentions to Mumdance & Logos playing to 25 people at Slake; to DJ Harvey’s freakout at Output; to Powell & Silent Servant at TBA; to Bunker’s party with DJ Nobu at Good Room; and to Brian Whitman’s going away party at The Echo Nest.

2016: albums of the year

December 29, 2016 · by · in

Yep, fuck this year.  Albums:

Roomful of Teeth – Partita for 8 Voices

Caroline Shaw.  What the hell.  I don’t want to say that this piece single-handedly restored my faith in “new music” … but this piece and this recording kind of did.  Astonishing.

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – EARS

Thank you Spotify and Fresh Finds for the introduction to Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, who’s music is everything I want from modular synthesis nerdery and has some mean saxophone parts.

Tim Hecker – Love Streams

Hecker moves a bit away from drone and a bit towards bass, noise, and processing, and the result is 16 kinds of excellent.

Honorable mentions to:  Suzanne Ciani – Buchla Concerts 1975; Mary Lattimore – At The Dam; James Holden & Camilo Tirado – Outdoor Museum of Fractals; Radiohead – A Moon Shaped Pool; Carla del Forno – You Know What It’s Like, and Oliver Coates – Upstepping

2016: sets of the year

December 28, 2016 · by · in

Still fuck this year.  Moving on..

Sadar Bahar – Resident Advisor 507

Another one of those diggers comes through in a big way – and puts just how weird Blondie’s Rapture is into perspective.

Ben UFO – Live @ Unit, Tokyo, 23.04.16

Is there a better, more comprehensive DJ alive than Ben UFO?  Tough, tough, tough call.

Mike Servito – Beats in Space 840

Let’s just say that Mike is not Brooklyn’s favorite DJ for no reason, and leave it at that.

Honorable mentions:  Prins Thomas’ Beats In Space, Volvox’s techno monster for RA, Paula Temple’s mix for FACT, which is, if anything even heavier than the Volvox, and Jackmaster’s Beats In Space mix.

2016: concerts of the year

December 27, 2016 · by · in ,

Fuck this year.  With that said …

Radiohead at Secret Solstice

Woooooosh.  There were lots of other amazing bands at Secret Solstice, but the best band of my generation topped them all – all of A Moon Shaped Pool, then hit after hit after hit – for certain (Everything In Its Right Place, Idioteque) values of hits.

Mahler 9 at NY Phil

Some pieces of music are designed for youth.  Some are designed for old people.  And some are pretty much about death.  The NY Phil, led by the 87 year old Bernard Haitink, did this most eternity-focused of symphonies proud.  As Lenny said, ” … but in letting go, we have gained everything”

Julia Holter & Mary Lattimore at Bowery Ballroom

Holter remains a magician of the highest order – seeing her do her magic with a piano and a few backing members is only more impressive.  Lattimore’s harp pieces are likewise otherworldly.

 

Honorable mentions to Tim Hecker’s minimalist light show at Warsaw, Steve Reich’s 80th birthday at Carnegie Hall, Mantra Percussion & Gideon Alorwoyie covering Drumming (and Four Organs!, Mary Lattimore & Julianna Barwick at Trans-Pecos, and Glenn Branca’s monumental Symphonies at the  Masonic Hall.

agape

December 18, 2016 · by · in , , , ,

agape-00

Here we are, once again.

I did the first one of these in 2009, while doing my undergrad at UVic.  Seven years later, Agape is a recut of all my music since then – with a few secrets and classics thrown in.

Agape is longer (1:44:33), louder (0 dBfs), quieter (-55 dBfs), higher resolution (1080p), bigger (8.12 GB), and about 10,000 times more self-indulgent than my previous album.  And, of course, there’s a video – you can get it here, or get the audio as mp3, wav, or flac.

It has been an astonishing sixteen years in & around techno.  Thanks for listening – this one is for you.

agape-2

Movements

Part One: The Collective Motion of a Large Number of Self-Propelled Entities
(00:00:00 – 00:27:38)
i: Freshet
ii: Of The Valley, Of The Wind
iii: Swarm Theories

Part Two: Domain
(00:27:39 – 00:53:30)
iv: Hibernation
v: One Dimensional Objects Called Teeth
vi: Tawaret
vii: Fast Coalitions

Part Three: Apex Projects
(00:53:31 – 01:25:05)
viii: Twenty Four Thousand Eyes
ix: Mobilis In Mobili
x: Currents & Preparations
xi: Behemoth
xii: Jasmonate Threat Display
xiii: !Meddle

Part Four: Fiat Lux
(01:25:06 – 01:44:33)
xiv: Lift / Drag
xv: The Lone Survivor of the Previous Alien Universe
xvi: You’ll Flip,
xvii: The Future Depends On Us

sat-4-crop

Tracks

Fractal – Rocket Summer [Primal]
Fractal – Power Up (Plushapella) [Tide Pool]
Chris Fortier – Despegue (Fractal Ambient Remix) [Fade]
onefourfiveone – D
Adam Antine – Streets Of Wind (Fractal’s Paris Daytrip) [Elefant]
Eleven – May
Eleven – August
SCULPT – CDN3SCSV
Nero – Lost (Fractal Remix) [Pacific Front]
Eleven – October
Eleven – December
Eleven – November
Eleven – January
SCULPT – CDN1NNFC
SCULPT – JSS21HHV
Bartok – String Quartet No. 1 (Fractal Remix)
Elkin ‘Billie’ Longton – My Woman [Tide Pool]
Fractal – Richard Feynman
Fractal – Paul Dirac
SCULPT – CDN2FSTV
Montreal Compression Exercises – Racecar
Dream City – Night
TH TMPST – Be Not Afeard (ft. Iain Gillis)
TH TMPST – Full Fathom Five (ft. Heather Harker)
TH TMPST – Now My Charms (ft. Kira Hall)
onefourfiveone – A
SCULPT – CDN3SCSV
Micah – Terras (Fractal’s Esper Remix)
Nero – Lost (Fractal Remix) [Pacific Front]
onefourfiveone – E
onefourfiveone – C
Herimitage – Herim2tage
Herimitage – Herim1tage
Eclectrix – Alkalosis (Fractal Remix)
Fractal – Hold
AFK – Emily’s China (Fractal Remix)
Fractal – Motoko
Dream City – Night
Fractal – The Weather
Elkin ‘Billie’ Longton – My Man [Tide Pool]
Fractal – Hold
Fractal – The Weather
Eleven – March
Dream City – Burnaby
Dream City – UBC
Dream City – Main Street
Dream City – East Side
Robyn – Call Your Girlfriends
Harker & Dyer – Ave Maria
Fragile Things – Sunbird
Fractal – The Tiger (West Street Whiskers 2016 Remix) [Tide Pool]

sat-12-crop

Credits

All tracks written / produced / remixed by Thor Kell.

Additionally:
Despegue written & produced by Chris Fortier. Fade Records, 2006
Streets Of Wind written & produced by Adam Antine. Elefant, 2011
Nero – Lost written & produced by Nero. Pacific Front, 2008
SCULPT – CDN1NNFC includes clarinet by Nathan Friedman.
SCULPT – JSS21HHV includes vocals by Heather Harker.
Bartok – String Quartet No. 1 written by Bela Bartok, performed by the Hungarian String Quartet.
TH TMPST – Be Not Afeard includes vocals by Iain Gillis. Based on music by Jean Sibelius, words by William Shakespeare.
TH TMPST – Full Fathom Five includes vocals by Heather Harker. Based on music by Jean Sibelius, words by William Shakespeare.
TH TMPST – Now My Charms includes vocals by Kira Hall. Based on music by Jean Sibelius, words by William Shakespeare.
SCULPT – CDN3SCSV includes vocals by Claire Stewart.
Micah – Terras written & produced by Micah Lukasawich.
Eclectrix – Alkalosis written & produced by Mike Dean.
AFK – Emily’s China written & produced by Davin Greenwell.
Fractal – The Weather is based on samples from Charlie Van Kirk.
Dream City tracks are based on samples from Connor Ashton.
Sunbird performed by Jillian Hanks Meyer.
Robyn – Call Your Girlfriends written by Robyn. Vocals performed by:
Tasha Faravar, Cassandra Lemoine, Julie Nadalini, Mary-Ellen Raynor, Aisling Ryan-Alward, Danielle Sosnowski, Lindsay Suddaby, Alexis Taylor, Marlee Clark, Amy Wood
Harker & Dyer – Ave Maria written by Franz Schubert, performed by Heather Harker and Andrew Dyer

Video from the BBC’s Life series.
Photos from NASA, ESA, Daily Overview, Wlppr

01:44:33
August, 2014 – December, 2016
Montréal, Québec & Brooklyn, New York

week 150

October 2, 2016 · by · in , ,

– The Fluid Piano is the best thing you’ll see all week, month, and maybe year.

– I finished a small set of experiments using Amen today – there’s some fun stuff in there – playing back the row from the Lyric Suite, randomizing harmonic content over normal percussive content, making a semi-endless dub, and a small glitch explosion.

week 149

August 28, 2016 · by · in , , ,

For, as ever, certain values of weeks.

  • Ada Palmer’s TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING is dazzling – so dazzling, in fact, that I don’t know if it is good or not.  Needs a re-read.
  • https://parallel.fm is an interesting riff on the “social listening” thing that Turntable did so well.
  • Music from the flow of tidal waters:  http://www.floodtide.eu
  • Rachel Bittner’s sox.py will rapidly become essential, assuming that it has not done so already.

week 148

July 23, 2016 · by · in ,
  • The Zont is a very neat synth concept – a cartridge-based sort of thing, which makes it both sort of modular, but not really
  • Resonate.is has a very neat stream-to-own concept.  I don’t know if it will do anything in the market,  but it is a lovely, transparent thought.