Live Soundscape: Treehouse Improv

I did live soundscaping at the SEA Change Gallery, as part of an interactive event put on by Cherie Blackfeather called Imagination Reclamation ~ Coming to Our Senses, as part of a month-long series of events called Apathy Rehabilitation Project put on by The Village Building Convergence.

It was a lot of fun. I was perched in a little, cozy treehouse-like perch above the gallery floor with my laptop, mixer, sampler. Buddha Machine, etc.
The mix consisted of multiple Buddha loops, Aeolian wind harp sounds, some tape collages I made over 15 years ago, Elizabeth Claire Prophet and a ten-second sample of Flora Purim run through an audio blender, some heavily processed didgeridoo loops, cats, bees, birds and a chorus of frogs.
The following audio is the off-the-board recording, so you miss all of the wordless play sounds of the event participants. I only edited out one chunk in the middle where I played something I didn’t make myself, so I could climb down the ladder to take a pee, eat some hors d’oeuvres and go outside to smoke a cigarette.
Fun show. Many people at the event looked like neon colored mudmen, they were so splattered with paint.

Play
Download (1 hour 40 mins, 137 megs @ 192kbps)

Rapture Mix: Something Terrible’s Happening

Here’s something Tommy Hollywood and I mixed up the other night when we co-hosted The Outside World.
The Rupture happened while we were doing the radio show?. Was anyone Left Behind to listen to it?
Those of us still here can listen to it now.

It was an old Christian record entitled The Rapture, some sounds from War of the Worlds (the 50’s movie), stellar noise, bug noises, Tommy synth loops, elks mating and so much more.

Echoplex Kitchenette w/Horns

Part 1

Part 2(Horn Interlude)

Part 3

From 1984 (or thereabouts) comes Echoplex Kitchenette with Horns.
It features David Harlan on synth and electronics, Andrew Lindsay on voices and keys, Richard Lindsay on noises, electric guitar and kitchen utensils and possibly Paul Wilson on larynx and inspiration.
Recorded live in Mr. and Mrs. Charles R. Lindsay’s kitchen and featuring a homemade echoplex unit. With horns.

Download all:
Echoplex Kitchenette (w/Horns)

John C. Lilly

E.C.C.O
Silent

Weird ambient electronic album with brief snippets of evolutionary scientist John C. Lilly speaking on his theories and intoning exercises.
I don’t know much about this.
The only people who can be tangentially credited with the concept appear to be engineer Tetsuya Ishikawa and producers Yasuhiko Suga and Tetra Tanizaki with music by P.B.C., Spice Barons and The Heavenly Music Corporation, all of whom I have never heard of.

I just found it at a thrift store and found it a bit odd, especially since I rarely find interesting music at thrift stores anymore.

It’s also definitely out-of-print, so fits my personal download policy.

Update: I initially wrote an unenthusiastic review of this album when I first found years ago it – but have definitely grown rather fond of it on subsequent listens. Note how many times I’ve played bits of it on shows over the years.

Download (re-upped 10/12/11. You’re welcome :/)

The Weatherman’s Family Tapes

Over at Negativland’s new, snazzy website, The Weatherman (aka David Wills) has been releasing tons of his famous family tapes for your listening enjoyment. These tapes have been the basis for many songs by Negativland, Over the Edge radio shows and many of his family’s unique phrases have been incorporated into the lexicon of Negativland/OTE. Many of his family tapes figure prominently in the releases The Weatherman’s Dumb Stupid Come Out Line and The Willsaphone Stupid Show.

Right now he’s got up a very lengthy, two part tape featuring his family playing Scrabble together and other surprises. It’s strangely hypnotic. I suspect it probably sounds like most people’s family and one could easily all asleep listening to it and be transported back in time to some weird childhood memory. The Weatherman’s Grandma sounds uncannily like mine, who passed away in 2001.

It probably helps that I’m listening to it with Viragelic playing in the background.

Consider it ambient Christmas spoken word.

Music for Dreaming Androids

A few months ago, I was pressed to fill in at the last minute for someone from the hours of 3am to 6am.

I hadn’t prepared anything, but concocted a show around the audio book of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. This is perhaps my favorite PKD novel. It took me a long time, but I can now easily enjoy this novel as a completely separate work from Blade Runner, my favorite movie. I would love to someday see this novel get a movie treatment that followed the plot and tone of the book to the degree that Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly did the novel it came from.

The audio book, with readings my Matthew Modine and Calista Flockart isn’t too bad.

I mixed it with drone-y ambient music (much of it the work of Bill Laswell and Mick Harris, with a smattering of LaibachKunstDerFuge) and audio clips about Philip K. Dick and other surprises.

my intent was to create something that both insomniacs and dreamers alike could enjoy.

Rather than stitch the whole show together (It is three hours long), I thought I would serialize it here, as long as folks are interested.

Download Part one

Sonic Stew for Richard Wright

Here’s a spontaneous radio stew that was brewed up at a moment’s notice on last night’s Outside World, with ingredients selected by Yaney, Mssrs Dodge and Phillip and mixed by yours truly.

We played this at about 2AM, seemingly only to some nice lady who wandered in off the streets and was tripping out to it in the back studio lounge.
Play

Download ( 23 mins., 32 megs, via)

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