The Somethin’ Else Electronic Music Potluck

This Friday, June 11, 2010 is the first in a series of events put on by Jon Davis called The Somethin’ Else. This instance is subtitled Odd Couples and features duets that have one artist producing electronics with a second, in contrast, mostly acoustic player. The performers include the following:

Jon Davis & Elaine Evans
Brett Bullion & Chris Smalley (Burnsville)
Steve Goldstein & Scott Fultz
Tim Glenn & Jeremy Ylvisaker (Siamese Bug)
John Keston & Graham O’Brien (Ostracon)
Adam J To & Dejen Tesfagiorgis

The event is located at the Stevens Square Center for the Arts, 1905 3rd Ave S., Minneapolis, MN (above the 3rd Ave. Market). The music starts at 7pm and goes until 10pm. All ages are welcome. A $5.00 cover is optional if you bring food or drink to share. It’s a potluck!

I’m excited to be performing at the show with my project Ostracon (John Keston on electronics and Graham O’Brien on drums) at 7:30pm. Expect to hear some angular GMS layers combined with Graham’s on-the-verge-of-chaotic drumming.

Experimental Music Mondays Part 4

Part four of the Experimental Music Mondays series begins at 9:00pm on May 31, 2010 at the Kitty Cat Klub in Minneapolis with Heizerbaum & Panderton featuring Andrea Steudel from MinneapolisArtOnWheels.org, with sound artist Luke Heizerbaum (actually I don’t think that’s his real last name, but let’s go with it). Expect to see some fascinating projections including images from a microscope of a vinyl record as it spins on a turntable.

Next up is Ostracon (John Keston on electronics and Graham O’Brien on drums). We perform generative, improvisational compositions using the GMS (Gestural Music Sequencer), that converts video input into musical phrases. “Keston captures, layers, loops and processes melodic segments in real-time out of the stream of notes created by his gestural input, tailored with probability distribution algorithms. O’Brien accompanies these angular, electronic structures, with dynamic playing that, at times, verges on the chaotic. More about Ostracon can be found at audiocookbook.org and unearthedmusic.com.”

Closing the evening is Twenty Thirteen, “a trio, made up of Chris Robin Cox (Junkyard Empire, Minneapolis Free Music Society) playing electric trombone, Bryan Berry playing guitar through tons of effects and loops, and Kahlil Brewington laying down bad ass funky drums. The music is ambient, yet groovy as hell, and incorporates influences as diverse Portishead, Bitches Brew era Miles Davis, and classic hip-hop, drum n’ bass, and dub beats. It’s like nothing you have ever seen live. The band sometimes performs with a fourth member: a television, which sits facing away from the band, and channels can be changed by audience members; the band providing the soundtrack for a television they do not watch. It’s a bit of a social experiment.”

Experimental Music Mondays: Ephemeral Structures

This Monday, April 26, 2010 is the third installment of Experimental Music Mondays at the Kitty Cat Klub in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The line-up includes violin soloist Kip Jones, Ephemeral Structures, and Primidonahue (Michael Donahue). The music will start at around 9:00pm and there’s no cover to get into the club.

Yesterday afternoon I had a fantastic session with Ephemeral Structures. Although we have all worked with each other in several capacities, this is only the second time the group has performed in eight years. The result of yesterday’s session were pretty inspiring, so we are considering producing an album. The project includes Kyle Herskovitz (also know as DJ Zenrock) on turntables, Nils Westdal on bass and electronics, and me on electronics. The photo shows Kyle playing his turntable with a rubber band. I’ll share a segment of what we captured in a upcoming entry.

Notice to Mac OS X 10.5 GMS Users

After installing Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 6 I discovered that the GMS wasn’t transmitting MIDI signals to Ableton Live via the IAC drivers. I updated the mmj drivers and noticed that two versions of the MIDI in/out devices showed up in the drop down menus. I removed the mmj drivers and found that they are no longer necessary. This is makes it a little easier to install and configure the GMS to work with Ableton Live, Reason, or other applications. If you’re running the GMS under Mac OS X 10.6 it might be worth trying the latest version of Java for Mac with the GMS v0.11. If anyone gives this a try, please let me know if it works.

Sound Crawl 2010

This Friday, April 23, 2010 at around midnight I am very excited to be performing a rare solo set at McNally Smith under my Ostraka moniker.

I’ll be using a number of custom developed tools, including the GMS and my tentatively titled WTGM (Wave-Table Glitch Machine).

The event is called Sound Crawl and is being billed as “the official sound track for Art Crawl”.

Other artists include James Patrick and Timefog, Oliver Grudem, and Minneapolis Art on Wheels. More information and a complete schedule is available at:

http://blog.mcnallysmith.edu/soundcrawl/2010-schedule/