October 2010 Occasional lectures based on the Variations Podcast continue, including a free presentation open to the public on October 11th at Mills College: Songslines, 7:30pm, Ensemble Room. npr.org's 'A Blog Supreme' is featuring mp3 downloads of two of the sets I was involved in during last month's High Zero Festival in Baltimore: Wobbly, Drew Daniel, Keith Fullerton Whitman & Shayna Dunkelman & Tiffany Defoe, Andrea Neumann, Juanjose Rivas & Wobbly. Links to Keith Fullerton Whitman's solo modular set & Tomoko Sauvage's duet with M. C. Schmidt are in the sidebar. Video from Ayako Kataoka's Chaos Modulation @ High Zero 2010, performed by Ayako with Peter Blasser, Drew Daniel, Shayna Dunkelman, Ju Suk Reet Meate, Liz Meredith & myself (offstage, live mixing and sampling). The April 1, 2010 episode of Crack O' Dawn with myself and Barbara Golden, 'Women In Electronic Music 1938-1982' is now online September 2010 Matmos / Lesser / Wobbly - Simultaneous Quodlibet, available October 10th on Important Records. Based on a series of radio quartet improvisations recorded on tour in the Summer of 2008, and built out into an album that splits the difference between music that could have only been improvised and music that could only have been meticulously composed. What's the concept for this one? The concept is, friends should play music together. Playing some shows in NYC and the High Zero Festival in Baltimore later this month. A blog entry on Variations and Natural Electronics from my friend Gino Robair, and an interview with me about the series originally published in the Autumn 2009 MACBA Newsletter. August 2010 Episode 5 of Variations up streaming audio & PDF liner notes available at the Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona site, or follow the link to download as a podcast from iTunes. Also up now is Pastoral v.2, a much more comprehensive history of the electronic music that models or elaborates on the sounds of animal expression. Matmos & So Percussion's 'Treasure State' CD is finally out; of the three tracks I contributed to I'm particularly proud of having gotten to participate in making the track 'Cross'. June 2010 Available June 15th on Illegal Art. Interview with Vicki and I by Kembrew McLeod. Link to playlists of recent DJ sets at the Berkeley Art Museum, opening for Terry Riley, Carl Stone, Laetitia Sonami, and the Residents. January 2010 A host of recent concert and radio performances, including a short tour of California with the band Ear Nose & Throat (M.C. Schmidt, Jason Willett & Max Elibacher), the biggest Freddy McGuire Show yet, and an interpretation of the classic album of Beatleplundering initiated by Big City Orchestra, executed for their 30th anniversary by the one off trio of myself, the Evolution Control Committee and Phineas Narco. mp3's of the latter can be found at this link. March 5th will see another curated DJ performance of Pastoral at the three-story high main gallery of the Berkeley Art Museum, opening for Carl Stone. Episode Four of Variations is up now. Each episode's getting increasingly fragmented and difficult to get right as the series approaches the present. The only way to really close out the show will be to go completely subjective. October 2009 Thanks to the audience at MACBA for welcoming me to Catalonia. The lecture based on the Variations podcast series is also being presented to classes at Stanford, CCA, UC Davis and, next month on November 6th, at Artists Television Access hosted by Craig Baldwin in San Francisco. The USB keydrive edition of the League of Automatic Music Composers 'Archive 1978-1981' is now available from Alku. You could call them the first laptop computer band if the word 'laptop' had meant anything when they started playing, but even calling them the first networked microcomputer music band, they're still mazes ahead from most of what you'll hear coming out today. Contains twelve hours of the original cassettes of concerts, interviews & improvised rehearsals, gig fliers, photographs, manifestos, and a short film of the League playing at home with their equipment. Edited, compiled, and topped with painfully idealistic liner notes by myself. The CD on New World was a compilation overview for interested listeners; this is the release for true fanatics who want total immersion. Upcoming shows with Freddy McGuire have prompted an interview with Anne McGuire. June 2009 Second episode of Variations up now here. In full curational mode, guesting on Barbara Golden's Crack O'Dawn radio show on KPFA, I played three hours worth of classical noise from the sixties. There's a lot of early electronic music that has occasional furious moments, but this is a showcase of the pieces that focus entirely on overmodulation as their central organizing principle, forecasting the genre of Power Electronics that got going in the early 80's -- one which continues to make incursions into all aspects of popular music. John Cage, David Tudor, Max Neuhaus, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Erkki Kurenniemi, AMM, Philip Corner, Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young, Intersystems, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Iannis Xenakis, Gordon Mumma, Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley. A small mp3 archive is available at the KPFA website, or you can pinch a much larger, higher fidelity mp3 directly from here. May 2009 Back in December I accepted a commission from MACBA (Museum of Modern Art Barcelona) to produce a six episode series overview on the development of appropriative collage in music. The first episode is up now here. New album with Thomas Dimuzio 'Passed Aside'. After being provisionally invited to participate in the Art Bears remix project nine years ago, getting to hear the components of an album I'd listened to countless times since high school was a serious education. Some music only becomes more mysterious when you learn how it was made. At that time I also worked as a Test Engineer for Digidesign, across the hallway from my friend Thomas Dimuzio, and while driving to lunch we'd play each other sketches, drones and various bizarre treatments as we worked towards our seperate remixes. Far more material was being generated than could ever be utilized for our short official contributions, so I proposed the idea of using these ingredients in a broadcast radio improvisation. The material was inexhaustible and we got carried away. Copies were presented by Thomas as a present to the understandably terrified Chris and Fred after their 25th anniversary performance as the Art Bears Songbook on May 19, 2008. I don't think you need to know the sources to enjoy this record, but I think you can hear how important we think these sounds are, and how they stay alive when they're played again in different ways. Passed Aside is available here. April 2009 New two track ep Sarglarar. I'd always read about the importance of microphone phase allignment, but until you're in the studio with the world's most legendary throat singing band I couldn't possibly have known what it really meant. Damn. Also, interview, with photos pulled mercilessly and arbitrarily from google images. There's no such thing as not having a press photo anymore. December 2008 Recent Live Review August 2008 Archival Over The Edge: Fake Bacon Breakfast Loop. Warning: improvised and tune-free. A trimmed section from the third hour was used for an old compilation track, and In hindsight the 'Dolls' section was the genesis of the Chopping Channel. July 2008 Touring with Matmos and Lesser was elevating yet grounding. And Martin's idea of playing improv radio quartets on the days we weren't playing concerts was the great idea. (On July 16th at 9pm and July 17th at 10am, Pacific Standard Time, Hollow Earth Radio will rebroadcast our set which begins with a 36 minute version of Robert Ashley's "The Backyard".) Thanks to Olie & all at Hollow Earth, Josh Hunt of Autofact, Sue Costabile Slagle for adding live visuals to my SF show, all at KPSU & Irwin at KUSF, Steve Goodfriend, Mark Lightcap and Dave LaDelfa for lugging his Yamaha SK30 out of his closet for me to play at the LA show. Joining Drew, Martin and Lesser for the live version of "Supreme Balloon" was the most fun in recent memory and I'm looking forward to releasing some of the improvised sets at some soonish point. In related news, Snowghost Music is offering the Kif Chimera Quintet for streaming. March 2008 Almost one year ago, Thomas Dimuzio and I played a set for KPFA's No Other Radio Show, and a few CDR copies made the rounds to friends. The set has now turned up on the bizarrely affordable labor-of-love Dolor Del Estamago bootleg CDR imprint. If you like uncompressed audio, you can order the CDR directly from 'them'. If you're fine with files, you can find the release right here. February 2008 sometimes, small bits of various albums-in-progress grow lyrics. exiled as abominations or adopted by generous peoples? Split Bulbs / Wobbly 7" on Ache Records. Preparing something pronounced for the Friday Feb 22nd NYC show at the Stone in three weeks. January 2008 one new mp3 release from the Chopping Channel featuring Porest, recorded a few weeks ago on Over The Edge. and an mp3 release of the eighteenth and final album by Known In Bakersfield, my group with Tim Meany, recorded eight years ago and going mostly unheard until now. a sixty minute performance of 'Refuge' (version 3), Barbara Golden's 'Crack O'Dawn' on KPFA FM on January 25th, starts at around 79:00 on this archive. November 2007 The League of Automatic Music Composers 1978-1983 has just been released by New World Records, compiling for the first time archival recordings of what was probably the very first band to improvise live using microcomputers (aka what people started calling laptops about a decade later). The liner notes including my notes on producing and compiling their music are available here as well as in the booklet that comes with a physical copy. I'm going to miss physical copies. October 2007 November 2006 Unannounced offstage dj sets for unsuspecting audiences continue, including recent sets opening for Matmos and The Knife. Here at least is an old collage-music overview from the Illegal Art Exhibition opening in San Francisco a few years back. September 2006 New Sagan 7" single released on 333 Recordings. First 100 copies come with 3" cdr of a third track. August 2006 Radio Disc 3: Natal Day from 1995 Performing a section of album in progress 'Refuge' for six people, 28 July 2006 July 2006 Steev Hise's new documentary, On The Edge: The Femicide in Ciudad Ju‡rez, features a musical soundtrack edited together by Steev from various 2005 projects of mine: my duo with Thomas Dimuzio, my trio with Antimatter & Tim Perkis, and of course Sagan. That's the least of the reasons to see the film -- for anyone curious about the graffiti throughout the San Francisco Mission District that reads "R.I.P. Mujeres de Ju‡rez", Steev's film provides answers and more questions about some of the damning "side effects" of free trade that are hitting us all, South of the border. Chopping Channel: "How Radio Isn't Done", 23 March 2006. Don Joyce, Peter Conheim, Jon Leidecker, Thomas Dimuzio. This one's mainly about Velma Wallenrod and Bud Choke selling up parallel storms, with comedy this profound there's barely even any need for the Chopping itself to come to the fore. Thomas is hosting links to individual files, or you can grab a single 58 MB .zip file here. (Note that Thomas has also reposted Rotate Vortex.) Also, Choir has gotten bumped to revision 2 -- liked it enough to want to fix & add a few things before moving on (the mention below still links to the original version). June 2006 Here's one made at home: Thousand Year Choir. And program. Here's one performed before Ryan Junell's SloMo Video Festival: DJ set of forcibly stretched hits, May 20th, 2006. June 21st: three hour DJ set with four CDJs at the opening of the Matthew Barney exhibition at SF MOMA on June 21st. Remix for the latest album by Evol -- out now on Alku. April 2006 People Like Us & Wobbly, recorded by BBC Radio 3 live at the Spitz, London, 8 May 2004: Mixing It. March 2006 First solo shows in nearly one year announced on Concerts page. February 2006 KPFA 94.1 FM, Berkeley, Pacific Standard Time, March 2nd, Thursday night at midnight: Barbara Golden's Crack O'Dawn: Antimatter / Wobbly / Perkis trio. April will see the return of the Chopping Channel: Don Joyce, Peter Conheim, Jon Leidecker (hi) and special guest Thomas Dimuzio, who has a new series of mp3 concert archives up at his site. For now, here's the 30 June 01 episode of Over The Edge, 'Chopping Channel Rehearsal' where we desperately attempt to get our materials together for our debut concert the following week. There are some slow parts, this was radio, we were Don Joyce, Peter Conheim, David Wills and myself. Three 70-75 MB files: Part One, Part Two, Part Three. July 2005 In the immediate future, another collaboration with Dimuzio, another set with Antimatter & Tim Perkis (which is evolving into a completely seperate project from the album Tim and I have been working on), and a improv duo set with Elliot Sharp. May 2005 Mini-west coast Sagan / DAT Politics tour coming up late May / early June, the Oakland 21 Grand show and Los Angeles Knitting Factory show also contain surreptitious opening Wobbly sets. The Freddy album's done, working on packaging. Next up, two solo records, the album with Tim Perkis, and the second Sagan album (the first with me as a fully participating co-composer -- it's also worth noting that I don't play on a note of the six hours of live mp3's that come with the debut, those were all recorded before I joined the band in late 2003). I'm also assembling an archival CD release of the work of The League of Automatic Music Composers, the first band to improvise with networked computers in a live context. Here's another interesting link: The History of Experimental Music in Northern California. The Skylined site that's been mirroring my mp3's for the last two years doesn't look like it's coming back up anytime soon, but that doesn't seem to be bothering anyone... many more thanks to them for hosting the music for so long. February 2005 Sagan's Unseen Forces video is being featured as a free streaming webcast from the consistently consistent New Music Box website until Feburary 15th. December 2004 Sagan, Keith Fullerton Whitman & KFW/Wobbly live sets here, courtesy of OCDJ and WFMU FM. I'm thinking Keith should put out his set, but as for now it's free. Two recent bemused local press mentions for Sagan in the Bay Guardian and SF Weekly. I remember the interview with Mike touching on the tension between improvisation and composition brought on by the age of recording, the path from 60's live electronic performance to 70's mainstream synthesizer space music, and the discipline of real time video art... I shouldn't be surprised that all that was dropped to favor our drinking stories. I've heard that David Tudor once said that he abandoned piano for live electronics in the 60's as part of a search for a music he could perform live while drunk. November 2004 Micro-mini East Coast Sagan tour: Providence, Brooklyn, NYC. Hit and run. Details on concerts page. More early next year. Working continues on: The Tim Perkis / Wobbly collaborative album, the Freddy McGuire Show (compiling most of the radio broadcasts, concerts and studio sessions onto one disc), and two new solo pieces: one EP, one LP. August 2004 The debut album by Sagan is called Unseen Forces and it will be released on September 20th. The album was already about 80% finished when i joined the band late last year -- even though I only contributed keyboards to three or four tracks, I'm proud of the album and looking forward to the upcoming mini-tour this Fall. We play the Cosmic Music; there is no Cosmic Music. The CD release party is at Bottom of the Hill on September 24th. Hrvatski's recent SF visit resulted in one furious gig and two extended studio jams; expect some vinyl soon. June 2004 Revisionist. The Multiple Peady 12" single has finally been released, well over two years after being mailed to Boniato; it's a suite of remixes of material from 2002's Playlist ep. It was intended to be released simultaneously with Wild Why. So although it's not new, it's still fun -- especially the remixes, I thank my friends for doing them. May 2004 Back from the shows in London and France; the Paris performance in particular. Many thanks to Vicki, Alan Gask, Aelters & Lucille, Felix Carey, Douglas Benford, Jocelyn and Frederick. Wild Why v3.5 is this month's mp3 release, the Over The Edge radio performance from September 2002 edited down to a reasonable 137 minutes. Unlikely to change any previously held opinions of the piece. April 2004 The duo with People Like Us in London on May the 8th: This is a live performance to be recorded by the BBC for broadcast on Radio 3's Mixing It. Tickets are free for those who reserve them in advance, so please do: phone 08700 100 300 or e-mail mixing.it@bbc.co.uk. This month's mp3 release still awaits mastering; April is a blank. March 2004 This month's mp3 release is the 'Squibbons' ep by Aelters & Sagan, recorded live on 30 June 03, and edited by myself down into tiny things in late December. Basically Aelters at the helm with everyone else steamrolling over the top. It's very good and available for download here. January 2004 Five new Disco Remixes up here. President's Resume. November 2003 Vicki Bennett has made her entire back catalog of commercial CDs available for download here. Also: The Art Box is now available for pre-ordering at ReR Megacorp. All three studio albums by the Art Bears, remastered, a live disc, and a 25th anniversary two disc set of remixes by the following: John Oswald, the Residents, Christian Marclay, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Biota, Otomo Yoshihide, Bob Drake, Jon Rose, Ossatura, Warric Swinney (of the Kalahari Surfers), When, Thomas Dimuzio, Annie Gosfield, Jocelyn Robert, Musci / Venosta/ Mariani, Massimo Simonini, Herb Heinz, Martin Archer, Utsunomiya (of After Dinner), Stevan Tickmayer, Brian Woodbury and myself, even; the piece was completed in August of 2000, although due to a labelling error on my part an earlier rough mix was used for the master. Enthusiastically sending people early versions of your mixes for them to archive: young idea. September 2003 The September 19th episode of Over The Edge featured the latest performance of Thomas Stereo: myself, Don Joyce, and Mark Gunderson of the ECC. Visit the Serpent X Archive. Link to the September edition of the Illegal Art mp3 compilation here. July 2003 Fred Frith's Keep The Dog album is finally out on ReR Megacorp. Fred's best songs from the late 80's ended up distributed across a variety of album projects, and here they all are in one sequence, performed by the following lineup: Fred Frith, Jean Derome, Claudia Engelhart, Charles Hayward, Rene Lussier, Bob Ostertag, and Zeena Parkins. I constructed the original montage from about 20 DATs recorded during their European tour in 1991, and passed it to Fred, who used it as a template for further editing. He went much further than my overly respectful edit, though overall he did keep the parts I was happiest with. I do miss the Schorndorf performance of 'True Love'. Okay. May 2003 "Wide Open Spaces" is an album length release from People Like Us, Matmos and Wobbly recorded live in concert on October 5, 2002. mp3's of the CD version are still here. New concerts not sure what the solo sets will be yet, may 21st promises a duo with Otomo Yoshihide. Meanwhile I'm busy not working on anything. Les Rita Mitsouko debut/'Bestov'/'Femme Trombone', Goran Bregovic 'Tales and Songs From Weddings and Funerals', Autechre 'Draft 7.30', Renaldo and the Loaf 'It Was What It Was', Max Neuhaus 'Fontana Mix Feed', Glenn Gould's Stowkowski radio documentary, Roland Kayn, Dumitrescu, Henry Jacobs, Jon Hassell (78-87, excluding 'Power Spot'), Deerhoof, Tietchens, Ruth Welcome, Thomas Dimuzio's 72 minute remix of Gordon Lightfoot's "Ode To Big Blue". March 2003 Thomas Dimuzio's excellent 'Mono:Poly' on Asphodel compiles his live performances of the last few years, including track 10 of 2001's album with Yasuhiro Otani and I. Kevin Blechdom's 'Your Butt' ep on Dudini contains a mix of our collaboration 'I Am Nasty'. Soon to be released remixes include my troubling hooked-on-Schoenberg Pidgeon Funk remix for Sutekh & Safety Scissors, and remixes of Pepito and Opopop for on Alku. January 2003 Remember, 'created without a laptop in sight' actually means 'created with two powerful digital audio workstations running on an old PC and a G3 Mac hightower'. Thanks to Jo for taking down the press release from the tb6 site, even though it's already poisonously too late. 20 Aug 2002 "...incontinent..." review of live 99>00, the Wire, May 02 "...a brutalist spade to your skull..." ad for live 99>00, www.boomkat.co.uk "...simply takes too much effort..." review of Wild Why, Vital Weekly #335 Aug 02 "...incontinent..." review of Sonar performance, the Wire, Aug 02 okay