I recorded some sounds from this giant dumpster in the alley behind my house. It’s there so my neighbor and I can dispose of some construction waste that will not be taken away by the city, including wood posts stuck in cement that I dug up while replacing old decaying fencing.
At the time the dumpster was almost completely empty allowing it to resonate for an extended period of time. If I get a chance I will make some more recordings of this metal behemoth.
This recording was made on my PCM-D50 as Keston and Westdal rehearsed with Graham O’Brien on drums for a recording session this week at McNally Smith.
On Tuesday, June 30, 2009, I announced that my solo album, Precambrian Resonance, is available for pre-release orders. In addition there are full-length previews of many of the tracks on the album available on Unearthed Music. Traditionally UEM makes more and more track previews available until the release date, when all the tracks are made available for previewing. Here’s one of my favorite full-length pieces from the album, Three Phase Oscillator. Please visit the Precambrian Resonance release page to hear more.
This deranged-lofi-noise-fest was extracted directly from my voicemail. I suspect that it was left by the same person who has left other strange voicemails for me in the past. In this case I have learned that the sound source was a guitar being played with a mobile phone as a slide while the same phone was leaving me a message. So, while the guitar produced the sound, the mobile phone was a slide, a microphone, and a recording device all in one.
These last three sounds are examples representative of what I’ll be producing during a performance outside of the Weisman Museum at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis this Thursday, July 9, 2009. The performance is scheduled during the Art(ists) on the Verge opening. My part is to create audio accompaniment using the GMS during a projection piece by Andrea Steudel that includes live acting by David Steinman.
I have discussed releasing a solo album centered around the musical output that has emerged as a result of creating One Sound Every Day on ACB. That day has finally come. I have agreed to release my solo album under my moniker, Ostraka, on July 28, 2009, coinciding with my 365th sound. The album is called Precambrian Resonance (Unearthed Music, 2009), a title I used for the ninth sound posted in the OSED category.
It includes fifteen tracks that all began as experiments posted on ACB. Ten of the tracks are full-length compositions, while the remaining five are shorter “micro-tracks” that were originally featured on ACB. The album is available immediately as a download-only pre-release through my label partner Unearthed Music. Here’s the opening track, Illuminator Console.
This segment from the piece Ostracon by Keston and Westdal was recorded on June 21, 2009 at the Kitty Cat Klub with Graham O’Brien on drums. This was toward the end of the piece and the laptops weren’t doing anything except providing a click for Graham. All of the obligations to the arrangement had been met, so with a small, but dedicated audience we let ourselves wander into an extended improvisational outro.
Ostracon Outro Without Laptops
Recently I used my home made binaural microphone to record the sound of plucking a spring that I was holding in my teeth. The sound was resonating in my nicely in my skull so I imagined that the best way to record it would be to insert microphone capsules into my ears.
The results weren’t bad, but not exactly what I thought they might be (you never know until you try). Anyway, here’s a segment of that recording in case your curiosity has been piqued.