Graham O’Brien CFCs Video Featuring Alicia Wiley and Eric Blair

Posted on October 25, 2010 by John Keston

ACB contributor, friend, and collaborator Graham O’Brien recently released an excellent solo album titled Live Drums available November 27, 2010 on NOECHO Records. On it he collaborates with a variety of artists, including the piece titled CFCs with Alicia Wiley and Eric Blair of No Bird Sing. This stop-motion animated video featuring the track was made entirely by 15 year old Malone Mischke. What is entirely surprising to me about the video is the artistic maturity, sensibility and confidence of the imagery paired with the music. Congratulations to, Graham, Alicia, Blair, and Malone!

In Out Festival Track Donation: Entropy Procedure by Ostracon

Posted on September 14, 2010 by John Keston

I’m pleased to share with ACB readers the track donation that we made for the In / Out Festival Kickstarter project. The track is titled Entropy Procedure by Ostracon and features myself on the GMS interfaced with Ableton Live, and Graham O’Brien on drums. It was delightfully engineered and mixed by Adam Krinsky, and mastered by the amazing Tom Garneau who, if you read his discography you will find, recorded and mixed Too Legit to Quit by MC Hammer (an unrelated but awesome bit of data for you).

We will be performing similar work to this at the In / Out Festival this weekend on Saturday, September 18, 2010 at 9:30pm at the Tank Theater in Manhattan. Please checkout the entire festival starting on Friday afternoon with free workshops and finishing with the Saturday evening performances. The evening performances are only $15 per night, or $25 for both nights with a total of nine performances. This is unlike any music I have produced in the past, so comments are encouraged.

Entropy Procedure by Ostracon

Ostracon Debut Limited Run on Cassette

Posted on August 16, 2010 by John Keston

Ostracon and Unearthed Music have decided to release the Ostracon debut on cassette tape for promos and a short run for sale at shows and online. The as-yet-untitled release includes around 47 minutes of instrumental duets between myself on electronics (mostly layers of melodies produced by the GMS) and Graham O’Brien on drums. We recorded in the historically preserved Studio A of the former Flyte Tyme studios of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis fame. I’ll have more details soon, but expect the cassette to be available by the middle of September just before our performance at the In / Out Festival of Digital Performance in New York City.

The immediate response I get from most of the people I have told is, why cassette? I have to admit to being heavily laden with nostalgia for this format. As a kid (and into adulthood), I taped jam sessions, records and CDs constantly, especially my own LP collection. I was acutely aware of how quickly the quality of vinyl records could degrade. Cassettes are small enough to fit in your pocket, or bring a dozen of them on a road trip. You can throw one out a window, pop it in the deck and provided it didn’t get run over by a truck it will sound the same. I melted records in hot car interiors, had them scratched and broken by myself, friends, or siblings, and wore them out from over playing. Now I realize that tape in the long term is even more ephemeral than vinyl. So, again, why release a modern recording on cassette tape?

Since making the decision I have noticed that it’s not as rare of an idea as I thought. There is definitely a movement back toward this barely antiquated format. I don’t have any meaningful reasons for choosing tape, but I know that I’m not the only one to have nostalgia for it. This might be a good excuse for others to get out their cassette player of choice and listen to some old favorites they haven’t digitized yet. Remember packing your tape before recording, or tightening the reel with a pencil? I’ll probably throw in a card with a download code for those without a cassette deck, but what are your thoughts? Would you love to get you hands on a cassette of new music, or would you seek out a downloadable alternative?

Pulverisateur Experiment by Ostraka on Audiotool

Posted on August 9, 2010 by John Keston

I made this ambient piece using Audiotool a couple of months ago thinking that I might add some more layers, but I’m pretty fond of it as is and thought I would share it here. My original goal was to try automating some parameters and processing in Audiotool, and learn about Pulverisateur in the process. Pulverisateur, which I unfortunately spelled wrong in my track title, is a modular style virtual synthesizer that I connected to a Tonematrix for Monome-like programming. It has an amazing sound and, to my ears, sounds as least as good if not better than Reason‘s Subtractor. The image above will give you an idea of the signal flow for the piece. Checkout the audio, or make a remix on Audiotool if you like what you hear.

Ostracon at In Out Festival, September 2010

Posted on July 26, 2010 by John Keston

Ostracon Video from Unearthed Music on Vimeo.

My project Ostracon (John Keston and Graham O’Brien) has been selected to perform at the In/Out Digital Performance Festival in New York this September, 2010. The schedule hasn’t been finalized yet, but we’ll be playing either on the 17th or 18th of the month at the Tank Theater, 354 West 45th Street, New York, NY 10036. Last year’s lineup included Monome creator, tehn (Brian Crabtree), and Peter Kirn of Creative Digital Music. From the In/Out Festival website.

In/Out is an annual festival that features leading performers, developers, artists, and tinkerers of the digital design community in hopes bridging the gap between the forum based world and the stage. The festival seeks to bring digitally driven performances into the limelight with two full days of workshops and performances.

This video is a live studio piece shot by Ai student Josh Clos, and recorded at Ai Minnesota by John Keston and Graham O’Brien. It’s representative of the music that we are generating during our live performances. For more checkout the Ostracon tag here on ACB, or visit our bio on Unearthed Music.