Yep, telling you again. I am dropping music from beyond outer space at DANCE OF THE DEAD this weekend. Lots of spooky samples, graveyard basslines, minor keys, and so on…as well as serious sets by Toby Emerson, Joshua, AFK, and Nigel Haze. Don’t sleeeeeeeeep.
Been reading. We’ll start with William Gibson’s ZERO HISTORY: it’s somewhere between SPOOK COUNTRY and PATTERN RECOGNITION. It’s not as breathless as PATTERN, but not as bloodless as SPOOK COUNTRY. It has the same amazingly tense anticlimax as both its predecessors and it has the same amazing use of language and culture. It also has space penguins.
And it’s a bit pat: Gibson is maybe wrapping his loose ends too tightly, but given the incredible level of serendipity that the intertubes creates, maybe that’s ok. It is, regardless, vital reading for the year 2010. Gibson throws you into the NOW more than maybe any other author.
Download Here.
Can’t stop recording sets, it seems. Can’t stop making sets about mythical women, it seems. This one walks between Detroit jams, perfect pop, and endless bass washes.
1: The MFA – We Will Destroy You [Border Community]
2: Empire Of The Sun – Walking On A Dream (Limbo Remix) []
3: Yousef – Come Home [Cocoon]
4: Agoria – For One Hour ft. Scalde [Infine]
5: The Mole / Franciso Triano – T-Strings Of Life [Fur Trade / Transmat]
This is a project about simple harmonies, video game noises, big breaks, and dancefloor monsters. It’s a four track EP that will leave you thinking of your days with the NES, of that time you dated that guy who was really into chiptunes, and that time you played one of these tracks and everyone loved it and danced for hours. . Well, I guess that last one hasn’t happened, yet.
onefourfiveone – onefourfiveone by Fractal
This one is self-released through SoundCloud: there are 100 downloads of each track, at full bandwidth, and then they’re gone forever. Get ’em while they’re hot.
This was originally part of a set that Matt Sinesthetix and I started, in something like 2007. We never finished it, but I turned this into it’s own thing, and used another part in THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS. I am deeply in his debt for his influence on these sets: we got pretty cataclysmic. This set, SHATTER turned into a set about madness, nuclear war, and the end of the world.
1: Hybrid – Secret Circles [Distinct’ive]
// Burial – Untitled / Outro [Hyperdub]
2: Kenji Kawai – Kugutsuuta Aratayo Ni Kamutsudo Hite [JVC Victor]
// Burial – Wounder [Hyperdub]
3: Fractal – Totem (Pass 1) [Tide Pool]
// Bela Bartok – String Quartet No. 5 – IV [DG]
4: Igor “Two Fingers” Stravinsky – Ascalapha Odorata (Fractal Mix) // Four Tet – A Joy [Warp]
5: Portishead – Machine Gun [Island]
6: Hybrid – I Chose Noise [Distict’ive]
7: Obakeh – Ghosted (AFK Ambient Mix) [Pacific Front]
// Mortar & Pestle – ItsaChickthing (Luke Chable Remix) [Heavy Rotation]
8: Burial – In McDonalds [Hyperdub]
We were discussing MP3 compression in my (amazing) recording class, and I got to thinking: has anyone ever made custom perceptual coding models? As in, get a person to come in and do hours of listening tests, then craft the encoder to their hearing? Would this give better results?
Secondly, has anyone ever done “I am sitting in an mp3”? I’ve seen the “I am recording a youtube video” cover of I Am Sitting In A Room, but is there a pure audio equivalent?
Hey sports fans: I’m playing at Sunset for Halloween, from 0200 to 0400. This means, of course, spookgressive haus of the highest order. Also on the bill are AFK, Toby Emerson, Joshua , and Nigel Haze.
Other upcoming / potential shows include the opening of CRUSH at Sunset, a trademark collection of chaos with Matt What at Hush in December, and opening up a Sub:Division show. More as it breaks!
– The trailer for the new Bioshock is astonishing.
– Some madman built a 16-bit ALU…in Minecraft.
– Patrick Stewart & Ian McKellan on Waiting for Godot
– Shigeru Miyamoto & Shigesato Itoi on Mario turning 25, where ideas come from, and the creative process in general.
The secret project I’ve been working since January is ready! Meet the Hush Top 50.
Since you asked, it’s a compilation of the fifty tracks that did the most damage to the Hush dancefloor, over the ten years that that club has been open, as selected by a list of residents, guests, and old friends. It’s got stories, audio links, and DJ profiles. If you’re not already there, go check it out! Now!
(I am indebted to David Tillson for his wisdom and aid, Amanda Farrell-Low for her journalistic chops, and Justin Humber for holding my hand as I tweaked the website he built.)