Ostracon Debut Limited Run on Cassette

Posted on August 16, 2010 by John CS 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 CS 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 CS 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.

Chromatic Textures Shown at 6X6 #5: Mystery

Posted on July 8, 2010 by John CS Keston

On Wednesday, July 7, 2010 my piece Chromatic Textures was shown at 6X6 #5: Mystery, an exhibition at Ciné Lab in Athens, Georgia. My work was accepted along with five other artists, “…including Denton Crawford’s eyeballs, Aaron Oldenburg’s plunge into asphyxia, and a performance streamed live over the Internet from California.” Here’s my abstract for Chromatic Textures.

Chromatic Textures is a study on the synesthetic nature of our senses of sound and sight. Video input is used to produce generative musical phrases. The visual media is analyzed by the GMS (Gestural Music Sequencer) to create the musical forms in real-time. The software includes adjustable probability distribution maps for the scale and rhythm. Adjusting these settings allows familiar structures to emerge. The settings chosen for this piece cause notes within a particular scale to play more frequently, however, it is still possible for any note within the twelve-tone chromatic system to occur. As a result, dissonant or blue notes can be heard at rare instances throughout the piece.
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Experimental Music Mondays Part 5

Posted on June 26, 2010 by John CS Keston

The June 28 installment of Experimental Music Mondays starts out with music from EMM regular Terr the Om (Nathan Brende). Terr the Om combines circuit bending and laptop mangling to create glistening, quirky, and bit-crushed on-the-spot compositions with a break beat sensibility.

Next is Siamese Bug made up of drummer TIm Glenn and guitarist Jeremy Ylversaker. Tim Glenn (HeatdeatH, Squidfist) and Jeremy Ylvisaker (Alpha Consumer, Dosh, Andrew Bird) have played together in Fog and Ourmine, Individually they’ve performed everywhere from Sydney Opera Hall to your nightmares. Expect to hear the sounds from contact mics on torn cymbals and vintage transistor interference through guitar pickups and pedal arrays.

The final act of the evening is by noise masters Juhyo. “JUHYO is a collaboration between Minneapolis artists Brian Kopish (Surrounded) and Bill Henson (Oblong Box). Together they create horrifyingly beautiful soundscapes of pure noise. Armed with an array of homemade oscillators, delay units, resonators, samplers and sheer volume; aimed with composition, discipline and conscious, focused intent; JUHYO exists as an entity of creative expression, freedom, subtle beauty and eardrum bleeding power.”