Experimental Music Mondays Part 2

Posted on March 24, 2010 by John C.S. Keston

This Monday, March 29, 2010 is the second installment of Experimental Music Mondays curated by John Keston. The line-up this time includes Pawlic (Jesse Pollock) and Terr the Om (Nathan Brende).

Sandwiched between them is Ostracon. This is the name I’m using for the plural version of Ostraka. This instance involves the usual characters, John Keston (aka Ostraka), Graham O’Brien, and the addition of Oliver Grudem who will be interjecting his enigmatic imagery as an input source for the generative musical phrases produced by the GMS.

The venue is the Kitty Cat Klub, 315 14th Avenue SE, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The music starts at 9:00pm.

Korg MS2000 Bricked by Firmware Update

Posted on March 16, 2010 by John C.S. Keston

ACB readers are sure to be aware from previous posts that my Korg MS2000 is one of my favorite and most indispensable synths. Embarrassingly I seem to have turned it into a drink stand during a firmware update. I used the firmware upgrade utility on korg.com to attempt the update. The process failed part way through and now my beloved instrument is a brick, well more like a cement block, that shows a blank back-lit display after turning it on. I’ve tried resending the update at all the available speeds that the utility allows with no impact on the results. I also tried a factory reset to no avail. I’m going to try again tomorrow with a different MIDI interface, but I’m afraid that this isn’t going to be an easy fix. I’ve searched the forums for a solution, but haven’t found anything. If anyone has any suggestion, please let me know. I’m desperate to get this thing up and running again.

Exploring The Sounds of Ice

Posted on March 14, 2010 by John C.S. Keston

This is one of the coolest (no pun intended) sound design projects ever. Marlin Ledin rode his bike and camped around the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior covering about 150 miles on the ice recording the creaks and groans of the shifting ice plates. Listen to his recordings and checkout photos and videos of his expedition at www.bikingtheapostles.com. Marlin describes the ice sounds:

The Lake Drums, as some people call them, are an amazing phenomenon that rank right up there with Aurora Borealis. Lake drums, or drumming perhaps, occurs when a shift in the ice creates friction between sheets of ice, like tectonic plates of the earths crust. The unique sounds created come after these shifts in the ice. I ventured out and captured some of these sounds with modern recording techniques.

Social Sound Design

Posted on March 8, 2010 by John C.S. Keston

Social Sound Design is a Q&A site for sound designers recently created by Andrew Spitz of { sound + design }. It looks like it has the potential to be an excellent resource. If you’re not familiar with Andrews site { sound + design } I recommend that you check it out as well. From SSD:

SSD is a Q&A site encompassing all the wonderful disciplines of sound design: film, game, art and installations, sound effects, new media, software, programming (Max/MSP; Pd, etc.), Arduino and micro-controllers, gear, feedback, recording, techniques and tips… as long as it involves sound design it is welcome here!

Experimental Music Mondays Call for Entries

Posted on February 28, 2010 by John C.S. Keston

I am curating a series of Experimental Music events hosted by the Kitty Cat Klub in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The first installment is Monday, March 1st, 2010. Subsequent installments are scheduled for the last Monday of every month. For the first show we have three performances.

Ostraka (myself) with Graham O’Brien on drums will be performing using the GMS. Terr the Om (Nathan Brende) will also be performing his distinct breed of electronic music, melding the output from his circuit bent toys with looping and real-time arranging in Ableton Live. Thirdly, Dialsystem consisting of brothers, Graham and Casey O’Brien will likely mesmerize listeners with their ethereal mix of bass, drums, and electronics. Music starts at 9:00pm.

I’m in the process of booking the upcoming events, so if you are a performer of experimental music and would like to get involved, please send your name, artist name, contact information, links to a biography, and links to audio examples to emm [ at ] audiocookbook [ dot ] org.