The heat in Adelaide town...

...is turning my house into a place where a sound, studious mind cannot dwell. The kilowatts and black baloons of air conditioned respite temper only so much. I open a teapot to transfuse some sound into it, it coughs hot air up into my face. I place it back on the mantle piece to stew, something palatable has come on the television.

O great Sun King, give this weather to Perth! They have it too easy, what with ocean breezes from the seas of the sub-continent.

An oblique view of Sumi_: done

Still from documentation. After one-and-a-half years of re-thinking, re-conceptualising and re-everything...

It's finished.

Tastier stuff to follow later.

Leonard!

More studio views

Recording iterations for Infuser



Menage a T


Lauren

HC Gilje's Wind-up birds

(Via http://hcgilje.wordpress.com)


wind-up bird(s) from hc gilje on Vimeo.

This is seriously one of the most beautiful (yet simple) sound art works I have come across recently. Mechanical tappers realised using networked Arduinos and wooden resonators, actual woodpeckers started communicating with them after awhile! Read about it here: http://hcgilje.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/wind-up-birds

HC Gilje's work always impresses me, I'm a big fan of the blog: http://hcgilje.wordpress.com

Accumulation

It's quite terrifying how much text I've compiled/research/written for my Masters research. It's all becoming all too apparent as I slash, burn and revegitate this tome.

Two similar views of the studio

Things I admire #1: Lambchop

(Since we are all in a period of coming down and picking up again after the holiday season I thought it would be a good opportunity to offer up some posts which diverge somewhat from the usual content.)

I love Lambchop - I'm not big on the meat variant or the puppet, but rather a band led by Kurt Wagner from Nashville. Formally a weird acid-country-folk trio Posterchild, they later became Lambchop in the 90's recruiting a turnstile roster of musicians, with regulars settling in to provide a backing to Wagner's strange beautiful songs and husky vocals. From 1994 to 2000 they released a string of critically praised albums ranging from avante-alt. country (I Hope You're Sitting Down (1994), How I Quit Smoking (1996), chamber pop and soul (What Another Man Spills (1998), Nixon (2000)) and the droney and murky (Thriller (1997)). Since 2000 to the present, their music has become more consistent and understated - from the ambient twitchiness of Is A Woman (2002), the string laden double release Aw C'mon/No You C'mon (2004), the mortal revalations that haunt Damaged (2006) and the lovely most recent OH (ohio) (2008).

I've now been listening to Lambchop compulsively for the past three months. That's weird, because usually if I thrash an artist or band to death over the period I'll get tired of them and won't listen to them for the rest of the year. So why the exception of Lambchop? One explanation is that I reconnected with their music whilst I was overseas last year in Germany, their latest album providing a hushed backing to the romantic connotes of travel - be it sitting on a balcony on a rainy evening or watching the landscape blur from a train window. I hadn't been that engaged with them prior to this - in fact the only album I possesed was a copy of Is A Woman which I liked to throw into the background to colour the room whilst I was writing or something. Occassionally, a few tracks would pique my interest again, discovering them on compilation discs with music magazines or a stray download - I recall everytime being charmed to the degree that I would listen to a given track incessantly until I got distrated by something else. I think it obviously sank in whilst I was travelling though - the songs of OH (ohio) got into my blood, stuck in my head, twitched my synapses and got me humming on the way to buy a carton of milk. This effect is kind of like a revalation when you realise you've finally made sense of something or figured something out, realised you've fallen in love, you get resonated and can't vibrating (three months and counting.)

Now I own their entire back catalouge - bootlegs, b-sides, pratically everything. I'm attempting to convert friends, family whilst transcribing some songs to fit my vox. I highly reccomend these guys. Start with How I Quit Smoking, then Nixon, Is A Woman, Damaged and OH (ohio), then work backwards. I will happily direct you (discreetly) to the bootlegs if your interest permits.

Let us compare some grooves

I derive my sounds from all manner of sources, but I have a particular taste for vinyl run out grooves. I did a spectral analysis (via Audacity) of five discs (3 vinyl/2 shellac) from different eras/formats. The results are interesting, especially for those after some analog glitch and dusty noise.

Tiefurt: now streaming at last.fm

http://www.last.fm/music/red_robin

Currently available to stream via last.fm, a download release is coming soon.

redrobin :: tiefurt - issued 1st January 2009

Tiefurt
Slow Light / In Transit
Julius
Overground
1988
Kottbusser Tor
Meadow (distant lights)
Taunus (intermission)
Strange Light / By Elbe River
Surface Tension
Memorials
A Lasting Impression

All tracks by redrobin (aka: Tristan Louth-Robins)

Tiefurt
Recorded in Tiefurt, Germany (Sep 08). Mixed in Unley, South Australia (Nov 08)
redrobin: minidisc field recording, synthesiser.

Slow Light / In Transit
Recorded & mixed in Weimar (Sep 08), Germany & Unley, South Australia (Oct 08)
redrobin: ipod touch, max/msp.

Julius
Recorded in Berlin, Germany (Oct 08). Arranged* & mixed in Unley, South Australia. (Nov 08)
redrobin: minidisc field recordings, loudspeakers & resonant objects.
* arranged as site specific installation, subsequently recorded.

Overground
Recorded & mixed in Unley, South Australia (November 08)
redrobin: feedback system & tape recall, max/msp.

1988
Recorded and mixed in Munich, Germany & Unley, South Australia (Oct 08)
redrobin: TR-808 emulator, pocket synthesiser.

Kottbusser Tor
Recorded in Kreuzberg, Germany and Unley, South Australia (Oct 08), mixed in Unley, South Australia (Nov 08.)
redrobin: TR-808 emulator, minidisc & mobile phone field recordings.

Meadow (Distant Lights)
Recorded in Berlin, Germany (Oct 08). Additional recording and mixing in Unley, South Australia (Nov 08).
redrobin: minidisc field recordings, broken synthetic piano.
lauren playfair: mobile phone field recording.

Taunus
Recorded in Taunus Mountains (near Kronberg) (Sep 08), mixed in Unley, South Australia (Nov 08).
redrobin: minidisc field recordings.

Strange Light / By Elbe River
Recorded & mixed in Dresden (Oct 08), Germany & Unley, South Australia (Nov 08)
redrobin: ipod touch, max/msp, manual feedback system & tape recall.

Surface Tension
Recorded & mixed in Unley, South Australia (Nov 08).
redrobin: turntable, max/msp, manual feedback system & tape recall.

Memorials
Recorded & mixed in Weimar, Germany (Sep 08).
redrobin: minidisc field recordings & max/msp.

A Lasting Impression
Recorded & mixed in Weimar, Germany (Sep 08).
redrobin: synthesiser and notebook.
lauren playfair: mobile phone field recordings.

Salutations and thanks to Robin Minard, Rolf Julius, Phillipp Jacks, Asadeh Shayader, Adam Cooksley and my beautiful companion Lauren Playfair.

New year