This Friday, April 7, 2023 I will performing with Suwal Singh on tablas at the Rök Eatery in St. Paul, Minnesota from 6:30pm to 9:00pm. Cover charge is $5. This will be our second time collaborating as a duet. The instrumental music includes tablas from Singh and me on keyboards and synths. My setup includes the Numa X GT stage piano, my Prophet REV2, and the Dirtywave M8. Here’s a short excerpt from our last performance.
The Dirtywave M8 has been consistently sneaking its way into my music workflow these days. One of the things I really enjoy doing with it is sample glitching. There are so many generative techniques possible when it comes to the tracker and how it is integrated with the sampling instrument. Things like chance, playback rate, direction, start position, randomization and anything else that makes the sample instrument get weird are really interesting and effective approaches to sample manipulation.
In this clip I have several rows of chains which include instruments, each with different samples and ways that the samples are being juggled and twisted. This involves chance and randomness applied to everything from delaying the note to reversing the playback direction. All the samples are sounds that I either recorded or made using synthesis or other sound design techniques. The range of possible textures is remarkable even without a wide range of samples to work with.
Keston and Honick performing SYNTAX at iDMAa 2022 Weird Media
I’m pleased to share that I will be giving a concert of the piece SYNTAX in collaboration with Mike Hodnick AKA Kindohm at the Performing Media Festival on March 10 at LangLab in South Bend, Indiana. This video excerpt of the piece was presented at NIME 2022, and we performed the piece in-person at ICMC 2022 in Limerick last July, and at iDMAa 2022 Weird Media last June.
SYNTAX is an exercise in programming computers to program ourselves. Mike and I each composed four movements for a total of eight generative, animated, graphic scores. We follow the unpredictable yet familiar visuals making each performance similar, but distinct from the next.
The piece questions technological idealism in an age of ecological disruption and data-driven exploitation. By deliberately coding and submitting to an “inversion of control” we’re evoke the warnings of media theorists like Douglas Rushkoff, that we risk a future wherein our behavior might be irreversibly dictated by the algorithms in the software we use instead of by our own volition. If you can’t catch our performance in South Bend, we’ll be performing it again in Kalamazoo, MI the next day at the Dormouse Theatre.
AudioCookbook Live is underway over on Twitch.TV with the next episode to feature musician Eric Julio Carranza on February 21, 2023. In the meantime enjoy these captured version of the first two sessions from the series:
ACB Live Volume 2 featured Chris LeBlanc on visuals, John C.S. Keston on synthesizers, and Charles Hainworth on cameras and streaming.
ACB Live Volume 1 featured a solo performance John C.S. Keston on synthesizers, with Chris LeBlanc on cameras and streaming.
Read on for a few screen grabs from volume 2: Continue reading
AudioCookbook Live, Volume 2 is happening tonight, Tuesday, January 17, 2023 at 7:30 and will feature video artist Chris LeBlanc. This fundraiser for The Link is a free streaming concert with optional donations. I will be improvising music based on LeBlanc’s improvised visuals creating a vicious cycle of mind melding, psychological, feedback loops. A special thanks goes out to Charles Hainsworth for donating his time and expertise in videography and streaming. Check it out on Twitch.TV/AudioCookbook at 7:30pm.