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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.

week 147

July 2, 2016 · by · in , , ,

– In the middle of The End of The West, I went to Iceland!  I can recommend it.

– Some fine Canadians are working on an instrument called the MUNE.  It looks…OK.  These things are very hard, and almost never do what you think they will, but this has some nice touches.  (Rotation!  Buttons and sliders!  )

– Bad Music Tech Idea # 345345:  You can’t listen to an album unless you’re with a friend.

remix is gone, but amen is here

May 30, 2016 · by · in , , , ,

On May 31st, 2016 the track/upload endpoint will be removed from the public API of Spotify / The Echo Nest, ending an era.

I don’t want to dwell on the importance of track/upload, and its partner in crime, Remix, that much – though I will probably do so later.  For now, I want to say that the show must go on – because myself, along with the brilliant Brian McFee, Ben Lacker, and Peter Sobot, have built something like a replacement.

It is called amen, and you can get it here.

It’s a Python library that uses Brian McFee’s librosa library for analysis, and then allows Remix-like editing and remixing based on that analysis.  The analysis takes place entirely locally, so you’ll need to do some slightly heavyweight installation to get it working, but you won’t need to send a track to the internet any more.

This is a 0.0.0 release:  things work for us, but things might get weird for you.  If so, get at us on github, and we’ll try to fix things as best we can.

Remix has had a pretty good run on the Internet.  We hope amen will do as well.

week 146

May 1, 2016 · by · in , ,

– Another month, another amazing Monthly Music Hackathon.

– Game Boy Phase.

– Web Audio gets rewritten and looks ‘way better.

– If you go to midwife school or nursing school, you will practice on a robot called the VICTORIA S2200, complete with a flexible birth canal, synthetic blood, and “An incredibly smooth and supple innovative new skin [that covers her anatomically correct body from head to toe.”  Well.

– Live AR audio earbuds.

week 145

April 17, 2016 · by · in

– Went to the always great Theorizing The Web, got to hear two of my internet heroes (Laurie Penny and Ingrid Burrington) speak.

– Jawdropping article by Malik Jalal about being on the drone kill list.

– Hello Alfred hits a new low / high in dehumanizing service workers.  (Though they are W-2, but, well, you be the judge.)

– Unsurprisingly, Kyle McDonald makes an amazingly meta VR bungie-jumping thing.