Songsmithing the Econopocalypse

I have been flummoxed by, but so far unable to write anything about Microsoft’s hideous product Songsmith. It is the death of music and the end of art. It is what the world will sound like when every last real, individual human is replaced with soulless replicants (next tuesday, at this rate).
But some genius by the name of Johannes Kreidler has used Songsmith to score the soundtrack to our crumbling economy and declining society.

Watch it here:

I did and laughed until I cried. Then I cried and cried.

Found at WFMU’s Beware of the Blog, the Boing Boing for music geeks.

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More on Lynch: Mashed in Plastic

Apropos of my last post comes this amazing site of David Lynch inspired mashups, featuring MU heavyweights RIAA, Colatron and others.

The site’s pretty dense, but there’s lots of audio and video to sample and more than one download option.

Check it out.

Thanks again to Music for Maniacs for pointing the way!

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.

UBU Hour Radio Programs

Radio supergenius Rolf Semprebon and his band of radio theater acrobats perform amazing feats of radio play daring-do once a month on The UBU Hour.

The productions are pretty amazing, with rich sound effects and editing and fine voice performances from the talented cast.

They’ve taken on no less than the Neo Con agenda, the second coming of Jesus and the Bush Family.

My favorite is The Man Who Didn’t Give a Shit, a dense, highly scatological saga about a man’s inner turmoil as to whether he sacrifice his values to rise to the top in his company, with shit.
It’s like a filthy The Fountainhead, as co-written by Franz Kafka on Ex-Lax.

I’ve run into Rolf at the station at odd hours, merrily cutting and pasting away and he promises more on the Moron Saga of Dubya Tush and the Tush family, and more filth.

Check out their nearly complete audio archives here.

The UBU Hour

The first Monday of the month, from 11 pm to Midnight.
Experimental radio theater with dada/surreal elements…

On KBOO, 90.7 FM in Portland OR

Big City Orchestra

Pal Ninah Pixie sends me the following:

Brand-New WEB RELEASE from BIG CITYE ORCHESTRHAE

LULLABY

NOW AVAILABLE from the UMBRELLA NOIZE COLLECTIVE

download full tracks + album cover art:

1. Passing Note
2. uBung
3. Virginal
4. Wind Chest
5. Wood Wind
6. Faster
7. Chance Music
8. Tirez

cast: dAS, Ninah Pixie, Andy Cowitt, Michael Wertz, Cliff Neighbors, Melissa Margolis, Insect Deli, Dark Muse
cover art & design: Michael Wertz (www.wertzateria.com)

Don Joyce and Negativland

A couple of commissioned pieces from Negativland that they did for New American Radio in the late Eighties/early Nineties. Both pieces saw later release in truncated forms, yet neither has ever come out on disc in the form offered here. The most radically different ( and longer) of the two is Advertising Secrets, which is vastly different than the 7″ that eventually came out on Eerie Records. Guns isn’t that different, but varies somewhat in mix and sequence and doesn’t have the Then and Now/ A-side/B-side orientation, as it appeared on the SST issued vinyl EP.

Advertising Secrets utilizes a big chunk of the already bizarre concept album TM Productions: Tomorrow Radio as a launching point, so it’s doubly weird.

From New American Radio:

Don Joyce and Negativland: Guns! (1989)
A dense, pulsing “action song,” whose verses deal with America’s intimate relationship with firearms: “The gun and the Bible carved this nation out of the wilderness,” a man exclaims. A tradition unfolds that links the voices of the past as we know them through television cowboy movies and gangster films, to the modern Annie-Get-Your-Gun, the business woman of the ‘eighties with her handy sub-machine gun. An evolving patchwork of movie excerpts and TV ads, statements and information about guns, and of certain phrases repeated like bullets.
Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

Negativland: Advertising Secrets (1991)
A dynamic blend of rhythmic elements and original audio constructs — actual ad jingles, lines and phrases — commentary by and about advertisers — books on tape materials about how commercials are conceived and created — plus various out-takes from commercial productions which depict the sophisticated process (and elaborate cynicism) of the professionals involved. “My motivation is to inspect and depict some of the paradoxical aspects of media advertisement which both attract and repel me as an artist in America — a society whose entire economic well being rests solely on consumerism and the need to manufacture want.” (Don Joyce)
Commissioned by NEW AMERICAN RADIO.

Go get them here and here.

Note: I posted these separately last Summer, but am re-upping them by request.

Negativland’s Mark Hosler Interview

Mark Hosler was in town to present his Adventures in Illegal Art: Creative Media Resistance and Negativland lecture and multimedia show.
Mark gave a brief history of the ‘band’ (he says he doesn’t think of themselves as a band), told mainly through their many run-ins with the media and their lawyers. He also showed us the many, seldom seen videos the band has been doing in collaboration with others. Who knew that the infamous U2 single had a video? Not many since they have been court ordered to never, under any circumstance show it in any way. It was great.
After the show was a brief Q & A.

Mark was kind enough to drop by the KBOO studios and man a mic on The Outside World, this week hosted by Dr. Zomb, who used to be an occasional contributor to Negativland’s Over the Edge program. The interview is very informal and Mark plays some real Negativland rarities, including the bizarre acapella, gospel-tinged cover band The 180-Gs.

You can download the program here:

Mark Hosler Interview.mp3 (80.75 MB)

Negativland’s MySpace page (more up to date than their official website)