Here’s an excerpt from the fifth track on our upcoming release, Unauthorized Modifications by Ostracon. We will be celebrating the release with a live performance at the Honey Lounge in Minneapolis on June 24, 2011. Artists performing with us at the event include Dosh, Smyth, and Ghostband. Rogue Citizen will be doing live painting during the performance for added visual stimulus.
Dwarf Plutocracy (Excerpt)
Here’s an excerpt from the fourth track on our upcoming Ostracon album Unauthorized Modifications. The full track was released last September as a give away for the In/Out Festival, but since then it has been remastered.
Entropy Procedure (Excerpt)
Here’s a nearly two minute long excerpt from the third track, titled Particle Agent from our upcoming Ostracon debut, Unauthorized Modifications. The following description of the album from the press release offers insight into how this album was produced. (Photo of Graham O’Brien with Ostracon at the In/Out Festival in NYC, courtesy of inoutfest.org)
Ostracon is producer John Keston (AudioCookbook.org) on electronics and drummer Graham O’Brien (No Bird Sing). No keyboards are used in their music. Instead, Keston uses his custom sequencing software and hand manipulated light controllers to convert projected video signals into a stream of generative melodic structures. During their performances and recording sessions the visuals, electronics, and synchronized drumming are interwoven creating ephemeral structures that are familiar yet never repeated outside of each composition. O’Brien’s percussive statements firmly place the work into a non-linear landscape, grounded in an impossible to categorize igneous crust. UNAUTHORIZED MODIFICATIONS includes six pieces recorded and mixed at the former Flyte Tyme studios by Adam Krinsky. The the tracks, interspersed with angular melodic passages, sound mysterious, organic, and periodically invoke dystopian imagery.
Particle Agent (excerpt)
Here’s an excerpt of the second track from the upcoming Ostracon debut album, Unauthorized Modifications. This track is titled Photon Coercion. The album consists of drumming by Graham O’Brien and electronic sound that I produced using GMS, or Gestural Music Sequencer. GMS is Open Source software I developed that converts video signals into musical phrases. A video signal is analysed in real-time and then MIDI notes are produced based on brightness tracking and adjustable probability distribution algorithms.
This excerpt, in addition to looped phrases from GMS, includes a lead melodic voice that I played on the touch based synthesizer, Bebot. I fell in love with the expressive way you can bend notes independently on up to five voices (an impossibility on most conventional keyboards – unless you have one of these) using Bebot.
Photon Coercion (excerpt)
In late June 2011 I will be presenting the GMS and Grain Machine, as well as performing with Ostracon, at the Eyeo Festival. Eyeo is a new festival organized by Dave Schroeder, that includes an ever expanding and incredible list of speakers. I am honored, humbled and invigorated to be participating in this event. Here’s a blurb from the festival website:
“eyeo brings together the most creative coders, designers and artists working today, and shaping tomorrow – expect an amazing three days of talks, labs, demos & events fueled by the people and tools that are transforming digital culture.”
Just to give you an idea of the scope of the presenters, both Ben Fry and Casey Reas, founders of the Processing.org language (that I used to build the GMS) are on the roster among many other brilliant talents. Checkout the website for a list of the presenters so far. Here’s a track from the upcoming Ostracon album to illustrate what we’re producing.
Entropy Procedure by Ostracon