Places Above the Air is a collaboration between myself and Jesse Whitney. Out today, the album features eight tracks of “a surreal blend of IDM, ambient techno, and Berlin School work, with the song titles encapsulating a passage from the Egyptian Book Of The Dead” (as translated by Normandi Ellis). Mastered by Will Killingsworth at Dead Air Studios. Pick it up on Bandcamp or give it a listen below.
Jesse also produced this video for the second track, yet I see with the eye of the sun as if it came to rest on my forehead.
Although the video quality is not what I’d like I recorded the audio in multitrack then, mixed it, and applied some rudimentary mastering. As a result the archived videos sound better than the original stream. Enjoy!
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.
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, 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.
