Experimental Music Mondays Call for Entries

Posted on February 28, 2010 by John CS 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.

Upcoming Ostraka Performance and New Album

Posted on January 23, 2010 by John CS Keston

My experimental music project, Ostraka with Graham O’Brien on Drums, is performing on January 27, 2010 at Big V’s in St. Paul, Minnesota. I’ll be on laptop using my custom developed application, the Gestural Music Sequencer (GMS). I’m also using my iPod Touch controlled grain-table glitch generating Max patch for another layer of texture. Chain Fight and Juhyo round out the bill.

It’s also about time I mentioned that I’m in the process of producing a new Ostraka album that features Graham O’Brien on drums. We recorded it recently at Masters Recording, formerly Flyte Tyme of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis fame. The studio was just sold again and from what I understand will be called Madison Media Institute. In any case it was an amazing facility to lay down tracks. Here’s a shot of our setup in Studio A.

People on Shelves

Posted on December 19, 2009 by John CS Keston

Andrea Streudel just posted some really nice video documentation of the People on Shelves exhibit that was performed on December 9, 2009 at the West Bank Social Center, using music I created during the show. From the original post, “The world premiere of maw.shelves, a software for dynamic 3-dimensional projection. We overlaid another projector to place our real-time, full-body silhouettes on the “shelves”. Music was performed live by Ostraka.” Checkout Minneapolis Art on Wheels for more details.

Spark Festival 2009 Documentation

Posted on December 16, 2009 by John CS Keston

A website was recently launched by Andrea Streudel and Ali Momeni containing vast amounts of video and audio documentation for the 2009 Spark Festival. I’m going to be spending some time reliving some of my experiences there from last February. This is an incredible archive of materials from the festival. Something from virtually every performance, installation, keynote, and concert is available. To get an idea of the festival and the scope of the documentation I suggest watching the Spark Festival 2009 Overview.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest watching the footage of my group Keston and Westdal with Graham O’Brien at the Bedlam Theater during one of the nightlife events (complete with crazy dancers). More documentation of Keston and Westdal’s performance is available including more video and a complete audio recording of the show.

Visit the site to download footage or audio of practically everything that happened at the festival.

Live Music by John Keston at the WBSC

Posted on December 4, 2009 by John CS Keston

wbsc_js This Wednesday, December 9, 2009, 7pm – 10pm I’ll be performing music at the West Bank Social Center. The space can be found above the Nomad Bar, 501 Cedar Avenue South, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is accessible by an exterior door on the north side of the building. These events are entertaining mash-ups of creative ideas from a variety of artists producing interactive projection pieces. Checkout the video documentation from the last event where I played. I’ll probably be using a combination of vintage Hammond organ through laptop, gestural generative sequencing, and custom grain table madness, all arranged in real-time in Ableton Live.