Ostracon Debut Excerpt: Particle Agent

Here’s a nearly two minute long excerpt from the third track, titled Particle Agent from our upcoming Ostracon debut, Unauthorized Modifications. The following description of the album from the press release offers insight into how this album was produced. (Photo of Graham O’Brien with Ostracon at the In/Out Festival in NYC, courtesy of inoutfest.org)

Ostracon is producer John Keston (AudioCookbook.org) on electronics and drummer Graham O’Brien (No Bird Sing). No keyboards are used in their music. Instead, Keston uses his custom sequencing software and hand manipulated light controllers to convert projected video signals into a stream of generative melodic structures. During their performances and recording sessions the visuals, electronics, and synchronized drumming are interwoven creating ephemeral structures that are familiar yet never repeated outside of each composition. O’Brien’s percussive statements firmly place the work into a non-linear landscape, grounded in an impossible to categorize igneous crust. UNAUTHORIZED MODIFICATIONS includes six pieces recorded and mixed at the former Flyte Tyme studios by Adam Krinsky. The the tracks, interspersed with angular melodic passages, sound mysterious, organic, and periodically invoke dystopian imagery.

Particle Agent (excerpt)

Ostracon Debut Excerpt: Photon Coercion

Here’s an excerpt of the second track from the upcoming Ostracon debut album, Unauthorized Modifications. This track is titled Photon Coercion. The album consists of drumming by Graham O’Brien and electronic sound that I produced using GMS, or Gestural Music Sequencer. GMS is Open Source software I developed that converts video signals into musical phrases. A video signal is analysed in real-time and then MIDI notes are produced based on brightness tracking and adjustable probability distribution algorithms.

This excerpt, in addition to looped phrases from GMS, includes a lead melodic voice that I played on the touch based synthesizer, Bebot. I fell in love with the expressive way you can bend notes independently on up to five voices (an impossibility on most conventional keyboards – unless you have one of these) using Bebot.

Photon Coercion (excerpt)

DGK at “Try This #3”, Friday, April 15, 2011

If you didn’t have the opportunity to “Try This” the first or the second time, now’s your third chance. If you already “Tried” DGK, you know what’s up and will be there on Friday. Click here for details. Here’s a piece of DGK history from “Try This #2”.

DGK at Try This 2 (Part 1)

John Foxx on Electric Independence

A fantastic new episode of Electric Independence features an interview with synth-pop pioneer John Foxx in his amazing East London studio. Some of the gear he demos in his studio includes an Arp Odyssey a Moog Modular, a Korg Mono/Poly, and the Roland CR-78 drum machine.