Leonard!

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

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.

New year

Harold Pinter (1930-2008)

British writer, poet, playwright and actor.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/dec/25/harold-pinter-dies

I first came across Pinter's work sometime during 2005. It got stuck on me and never left. His work in all its formats channelled life experiences and observations into stories, poems, essays and plays that resonated with the fragility of the human condition (love, death, conflict) and the world around us. Pinter was passionate, raging, fiercely political and quintessentially human.

Now he's gone and there's a void.

Death May Be Ageing (April 2005)

Death may be ageing
But he still has clout

But death disarms you
With his limpid light

And he's so crafty
That you don't know at all

Where he awaits you
To seduce your will
And to strip you naked
As you dress to kill

But death permits you
To arrange your hours

While he sucks the honey
From your lovely flowers

The Gifting!

Tiefurt's taking too long to finish, so I made a nice little single for family on top of the obligatory Kris Kringle.

A fistfull of 10

My top ten albums for 2008 are as follows:

10.David Byrne & Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
A highly unexpected offering from dome head and Byrne nearly thirty years after their first collaboration My Life in The Bush of Ghosts. The early sampling techniques, exotica and one chord grooves which typified that first release couldn't be further away from this collection of pop songs about exploding cars, global warming and big nurses. The cover art and package design is the most clever and thoughtful I've seen all year.

Case In Point: Strange Overtones

09.Jenny Lewis - Acid Tounge
The girl with the most sultry voice on Earth makes a debut album that feels pretty inconsistent at first but eventually gets under the skin with all its sweetness and gristle. Its a good mish-mash of soul, folk and (alt)country with some pretty awesome songwriting.

Case In Point: See Fernando

08.Panoptique Electrical - Let The Darkness At You
My second travelling companion (Lauren was first and foremost) accompanying me on a recent European sojourn was the first release by Adelaide-ite and good chum Panoptique Electric, otherwise known as Jason Sweeney. Moody moody electronic droney music that's perfect for in-transit train rides through the gloomy Hinterland.

Case In Point: The Photographer

07.Sound Unbound - Various Artists
2008 was the year I got converted to the remix - its philosophy, aesthetics, politics and application. Paul.D.Miller's (aka DJ Spooky's) compendium of essays from all kinds of people was an ambitious (if somewhat over-reaching and strained) attempt at summing up digital music in the 21st Century, however the accompanying CD sold the deal for me. It mixes up everything (Allen Ginsburg, Duchamp, Xenakis, Cage, Sonic Youth, etc.) into one post-modernist broth, which is as entertaining as it is an interesting exercise in re-contextualisation and reappropriation.

Case In Point: THE WHOLE THING

06.Beck - Modern Guilt
Beck is Beck and Beck probably wont ever be as good as Beck was in 1996, though this is his most coherent album in years. Wish he would cheer up a bit though.

Case In Point: Chemtrails

05.Philip Jeck - Sand
I got into using a turntable this year because of a Philip Jeck gig I saw in Adelaide earlier this year. Whilst I'm now making an attempt to distance myself (or more appropriately: avoid plagurising) his style of layering vinyl textures and creating hypontic loops, Jeck's untouchable - he's got an amazing amount of control, restraint and discipline to his technique. He's also created some of the most beautiful stuff I've heard this year.

Case In Point: Unveiled

04.Calexico - Carried To Dust
Whilst Calexico won't ever top 2003's Feast of Wire this comes close that masterpiece of tex-mex/rock/dub/latino mash-up. Their show that we saw in Berlin back in October was wonderful, replete with an encore of 'Crystal Frontier' in the crowd.

Case In Point: Red Blooms

03.Portishead - Third
Enough said.

Case In Point: The Rip

02.M83 - Saturdays = Youth
I've followed M83 for awhile with their teenage-y post-rave soundtracks. This sounds straight out of Donnie Darko, and it's all fucking brilliant.

Case In Point: Kim & Jessie

01.Lambchop - (OH) ohio
My most adored band (alongside The National) released a beautiful album this year. The band's been stripped back to seven members from the fifteen that played on 06's Damaged and it's given the album a less lush and more immidiate feel than anything they've done since 1997's Thriller.

Case In Point: I'm Thinking Of Number Between 1 and 2

Save The Net

I have posted a link to this online petition as it is of particular importance to artists, creatively minded individuals as well as those who like freedom of speech.

The Federal Government's newly proposed Internet censorship regulations are frankly, myopic and draconian. I urge you to support this petition.

http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet/442

The release from Get Up!:

The Federal Government is planning to force all Australian servers to filter internet traffic and block any material the Government deems ‘inappropriate’. Under the plan, the Government can add any ‘unwanted’ site to a secret blacklist.

Testing has already begun on systems that will slow our internet by up to 87%, make it more expensive, miss the vast majority of inappropriate content and accidentally block up to 1 in 12 legitimate sites. Our children deserve better protection - and that won't be achieved by wasting millions on this deeply flawed system.

OBAMA

What a great historic day.

What a nerve wracking morning, I got barely any writing done.

The Son's Room, By This River

Something of a different post. A couple of weeks ago I saw Nanni Morreti's masterpiece "The Son's Room" (2001) which features Eno's "By This River" as the soundtrack. "The Son's Room" is an incredibly sad film, it's about a family grieving the death of their son. The video below shows a scene in the film when the song is first introduced, where the father is buying a record for his dead son - it's Eno's Before and After Science from which "By This River" is taken. The song also features at the end of the film to a devastating and beautiful effect. Rent it out if you're curious.



So. Following this viewing a couple of weeks ago, I decided to attempt a cover of it in the wee hours after Lauren had gone to bed. It's a pure Garageband production as it was a spare-the-moment idea, with a couple of overdubs I felt it was done > replete with a discrete Eno-ish synth pad.

By This River (Brian Eno cover)

The ongoing fascination with Eno continues. Since 2004.

EAF: ARTERIAL > TLR discovers his gut limit

I thought there was a smaller that usual crowd at the EAF for an opening. There was a good reason.

Thursday evening presented 'Arterial', a performance/installation work where the performers (senVoodoo) bleed from the wrist across a long strip of photographic paper. I lasted about three minutes. The sound of dripping and a horrid 'sticky foot' sound nearly made me pass out. I inspected the delicate blood patterns after the performers had left the space, feeling a little more at ease albeit with a twisted stomach and a desire to consume more wine.

An impressive work nontheless.

A weekend productive

After watching Blade Runner for the first time in eons last night, I feel inspired to clear the decks of a scurvy afflicted lot of work. How a quasi-Blade Runner reference and pirate metaphor is relevant isn't really important, what matters is an impending post-graduate presentation this coming Wednesday, sound pieces for Linda Lou Murphy, preparing a tutorial and networking in Germany. So far so sporadic, as I get distracted by Elvis Costello's new album, a splendid vista from my ninth floor uni office and a torrent of emails requesting my thoughts on life the universe and everything. Good thing I had some coffee, and why do I have a DVD of The Mighty Boosh in my bag? Oh well, I'll probably head down to Mapo on Gouger Street for a drink later and forget about my priorites.

:/

Drunken folder and notes

Helpmann Academy meetings are a curious affair - arts agendas suffused with a surplus of fine wines. Pity about Edward James' notes.

Totally possible Germany

Tickets booked.

Sorted.

Accomodation.

Sorted.

(Requires a bit more money - then good.)

Tristram Cary - obituary

Stephen Whittington has written a Tristram Cary obituary for The Advertiser

Tristram Cary (1925-2008)

Tristram Cary was universally recognised as one of the founders of electronic music and a source of inspiration for subsequent generations of musicians working in what has become one of the most important fields of contemporary music. His influence on music was global.

Although Cary's background was in classical music, the technology that he pioneered has permeated most styles of music-making today, from pop to techno to experimental. From the late 60s on the instrument that he co-designed, the VCS3 synthesiser, became an icon of the emerging art of electronic music and was widely used both by avant-garde classical composers and rock artists including Brian Eno, The Who, Pink Floyd and King Crimson. In 1974, Cary emigrated to Adelaide where he directed the Electronic Music Studio at the Elder Conservatorium, University of Adelaide, turning it into the leading facility of its kind in Australia. Cary is best known as a composer for his music for film and television, most notably for the BBC series 'Dr Who'. He created the music for the first appearances of the Daleks (1963 and 1966), and these soundtracks are now regarded as classics of their kind. Cary also wrote film music for Ealing comedies ('The Ladykillers'), Hammer horror films ('Blood from the Mummy's Tomb'), and Disney ('The Prince and the Pauper'.) In addition Cary composed a considerable amount of concert music both with and without electronics.

Cary was awarded an OAM for his services to music (1991), an Adelaide Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award (2005), and a Doctor of Music by the University of Adelaide (2001.)

Tristram Cary R.I.P (1925-2008)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristram_Cary