David Baird of Peer Pressure Productions has posted every issue of Biodegradable, a zine I helped publish 20 years ago. Get them here. Biodegradable is a window into skate punk culture of Huntsville AL circa 1988, with reports of the hottest skate spots and reviews of albums (that’s what they were back then) from iconic bands such as Jodie Foster’s Army, Suicidal Tendencies, Dead Milkmen, 7 Seconds, and Fugazi. But there’s more than late-80’s skate culture. There’s also plenty of teenage angst in the form of blood and gore drawings (vol. 1 iss. 3) and what was then a kick-ass literature section. I kid you not! Poetry was on everyone’s mind back then, it seems. We even managed to squeeze in a review of the Kronos Quartet! Other not-to-be-missed highlights include an interview with the Sex Clark Five (vol. 1 iss. 4) and the Mail Art sections in later issues. Twenty years from now I’ll be digging out posts from the Field Guide and waxing nostalgic…or blushing…
Max with a Lisp
Brad Garton has just released an updated Lisp interpreter that runs inside MaxMSP. More info here. Brad seems to be on a mission to make MaxMSP a veritable music operating system in its own right: Lisp, Chuck, RTcmix…
Checking out the Lisp object reminded me of my first forays into algorithmic composition and just how fun it can be to create work using simple processes. And how hard it can be to create compelling work that way!
Garton’s lisp object also gave me an excuse to pull out my copy of The Little LISPer. The book is an excellent example of learning by doing. After a brief introduction, the reader is asked to interpret LISP commands of increasing complexity and guided by a simple process of inquiry. There are no dry explanations only concrete examples. It’s made a lasting impression on my ideas of teaching and learning. Comparable to learning/teaching/performing Zorn’s Cobra–you do it, and then you know it.
Transformer di Robot…er?…er?…
I finally got around to posting audio examples for some bent electronics projects over on the main (static? abandoned?) hollandhopson.com site (find them here and here). And I thought I’d share this 2:50 hit single I uncovered in the process.
[audio:http://www.hollandhopson.com/download/bent_electronics_examples/voice_xformer_07.mp3]This is a single take from a circuit bent voice transformer. I’ve written catchier tunes, to be sure, but I doubt I’ll ever get more techno than this. I can’t wait for the extended dance mix, the mashup and the celebrity DJ remix!
Sub-Antarctic Audio
The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research is now streaming the sounds of the underwater antarctic soundscape as captured by 4 hydrophones. I’ve tuned in and heard gorgeous swooping tones, shimmery drones, and staticky clicks. The stream seems a bit unstable at times, but definitely worth checking out.
Ogg stream – better quality
Tellus on UBUweb
Selected volumes of the sound-art cassette series Tellus are now available on UBUweb. About 10 years ago I helped transfer some of the Tellus master tapes onto CDs for the Harvestworks archive. There are some true gems in the Tellus series. It’s great to have them more widely available.
Hopson and Cosco at Upstate Artists Guild Gallery
I’m really looking forward to this show. It’ll be my first for 2008 and my long-overdue first appearance in Albany since moving here. See you there!
Year-end round-up let-down
I always enjoy reading best-of-the-year lists and thought I’d add to the glut. But looking through my music collection I realized how few new releases I bought this year. I simply can’t make a best-music-of-the-year list because I hardly heard anything released this year! A strange statement for a musician to make, but here’s why.
My music buying habits usually follow two, possibly contradictory patterns which I’ll call direct-from-the-source and bottom-feeding. Direct-from-the-source is from the artist herself. Go to the show, listen to the music, talk the artist, buy the CD. Or when I’m on the bill, I’ll often get another artist’s CD by trading one of mine. With the birth of my son at the end of 2006, I’ve attended and played far fewer shows than usual in 2007. Hence, fewer 2007 CDs to hear.
Bottom-feeding is my tendency to scour the used CD racks. Since moving from Austin to Albany, though, my selection of decent used CDs has plummeted. Luckily, there’s lala.com, my single biggest source of CDs for 2007. Of course, bottom-feeding results in far fewer new releases, though I picked up a handful at Amoeba Music in Berkeley.
So, I’m a cheap-skate and a shut-in. But I’m a music loving cheap-skate shut-in. A glance back at those iTunes stats shows I added over 9 days of music to my collection during 2007, and that doesn’t include some of the CDs I acquired but plan to trade away. I listened to more music than ever this year–apparently most of it was “The Song of the Long Tail.”
Those iTunes stats revealed another trend for 2007. If 2006 was the year of the music blog (keep ’em comin’ destination: OUT, Music for Robots, fluxblog, End(-)Of(-)World Music, UBUweb) then 2007 was the year of the free album. Radiohead’s In Rainbows was the most visible here, though I have yet to download it. I did enjoy albums from eDogm and insubordinations and free music standbys such as Steve Coleman and Bob Ostertag. Amiestreet was another reliable source for free or almost free music. And the great aggregator remains Free Albums Galore.
One of my New Year’s resolutions is to make more of my own albums available online for free. You’ll hear about it at the Field Guide when I do. And another resolution? How about I get out a little more in 2008?
Pay What You Want for MaxMSP?
Cycling ’74 got a shout out from the New York Times in this article about Radiohead’s Pay What You Want CD release scheme. Pay What You Want for Max 5? Hmmm…an appealing idea. Pay What You Think It’s Worth? I don’t think I could afford that.
Stockhausen Remembered
Karlheinz Stockhausen died last week. A sad day for electronic music. (And they don’t seem to be making megalomaniac artists like they used to…but maybe that’s not such a bad thing.) I remember hearing pieces such as “Gesang der Jünglinge”, “Kontakte”, “Telemusic”, “Mantra”, and “Stimmung” for the first time and their impact has certainly continued. Create Digital Music has put together a nice obit with links to other memorials. See ya in your helicopter in heaven, Herr Stockhausen.
Maps at amiestreet.com
I’ve been intending to write about amiestreet.com since this blog went live. The full story will still have to wait, but I decided there’s no better angle for it than as full participant. I’ve been downloading music at amiestreet since last Spring. Now I’ve finally posted some tracks of my own. My CD Maps is now available. Download it, recommend it, watch your street cred soar. (More on that later…)
Or listen right here.