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My ten-minute, live on the wheels mix of 8-Bit Construction Set tracks, alluded to in an earlier post, is now online. [14.28 MB .mp3] The raw materials for this Steve Reichian (or Ritchie Hawtinlike) techno-minimalist epic are the lock grooves from the "Atari side" of the disc, faded together in a continuous flow; I didn't have as much luck with the "Commodore side." Apologies to Messrs. Arcangel, Davis, Beuckmann and Bonn for this arty-fied nonsense, but it had to be done.
Great moments in home taping, part whatever: Margaret Leng Tan plays a Philip Glass composition on toy pianos live in the studio on the Stork's (still-much-missed!) WFMU radio show. [3.12 MB .mp3] Recorded by me with a cheap boombox, aiming the mic in the general direction of my speakers at a time when I was between decent cassette players (around '97). Make no mistake, this is a cheesy recording (and I only caught the last 2 minutes), but the music is simply the best.
In an earlier post I linked to some sample tracks by BASIC and other musicians from humanworkshop.com, a Netherlands-based sample and .mp3 trading forum, which has just released a CD of site artists. Track 14, about 30 seconds of BASIC's "Narrow Minded Fool," caught my ear, and after a few listens I pegged a couple of the sources (I know, music nerds, big whoop)--"Accidentals" by Broadcast (1997), a kind of post-Portishead ambient pop outfit from the UK, and "Gui La Testa (Duck You Sucker!)" from The Big Gundown, John Zorn's otherwise not very good 1986 tribute to Ennio Morricone (or is it just that anything with a jaw harp makes me think of that?). I dug out those tracks from the crates (as we say) and did a short "educational" mix, consisting of the BASIC sample followed by Broadcast, Zorn, and the BASIC again, just to hear how everything overlapped. We're talkin' some serious chronological folding here, with the non-hippie '60s as the epicenter. [.mp3 removed]
An email for a "Bands Against Bush" event received late last night led to an orgy of random linkage; here's what came up, some of which bears further investigation:
Cotton Ponies (boston garage rock)
cotton ponies download page (2 songs)
Googled "cotton ponies":
Deadly Productions Records (hardcore techno label based "in the Poconos"--reps another, different cotton ponies) w/ links to:
Widerstand Records (hardcore label out of Austria) mp3 download page listed:
doppelganger mp3 "Can't See Cali4nia With The Marlon Brando's Eyes" (Atari Teenage Riot-ish)
Leisure B & BASIC (nice neurofunk/drill track on mp3); widenstand mp3 download page for Leisure B & BASIC also listed homepage for:
humanworkshop.com (Dutch ambient D&B label) with link to sample page:
My first house track! This might be classified as "Latin Horror House." [mp3 removed]
ADDENDUM: These recent pieces are "hand crafted" in the sense that no existing loops were used (a la Sony Acid or garageband). They're done with a shareware program where you plug in individual notes on staves and choose from menus of low-quality instrument sounds. It should be fairly obvious from the somewhat halting, robotoid delivery but it needed to be mentioned that these are "my" dumb (but hopefully good dumb) melodies.
New tune: "Streetsong 2" [3.48 MB .mp3]