Video: Are You Hiding by Camp Dark

Posted on March 14, 2015 by John C.S. Keston

A couple of months ago I spent about 18 hours over two days recording synthesizers for the upcoming Camp Dark album Nightmare in a Day. It was a blast and the music is gorgeous. I wrote in more detail about the project here. The latest video, edited by Adam Svec, is for the song Are You Hiding. This one ends with a long passage of Moog Sub 37 running through the Minifooger Delay as I twisted the Time and Feedback knobs.

Are You Hiding” is the second video in a series to promote the release of Camp Dark’s new album, Nightmare In A Day (Icehouse MPLS on Friday 5/15). The story was inspired by holiday trips back to South Dakota. The song navigates the trajectory of playing roles of earlier versions of you. This veneer eventually falls apart when the years become visible. A person can only hide in plain sight for so long before they are spotted. It’s an anthem of empathy for those who experience this distance between former and current selves. “Are You Hiding” features performances by Graham O’Brien, Adam Svec, Dan Choma, Matt Leavitt, Matt Friesen, and John Keston.

Erik Thompson included the video in his “Top 10 Must-See Minnesota Music Videos This Week” series at the City Pages. Oh yeah, and we’ll be performing at the Icehouse in Minneapolis on May 15, 2015 to celebrate the release.

Elektron Analog Four, Moog Sub 37, and DSI Tempest

Posted on December 9, 2014 by John C.S. Keston

You may have noticed that my contributions to ACB have been sparse as of late, so I really appreciate Tom Player’s fascinating articles comparing electronic orchestration to the real thing. I have been busy teaching interactive media at two institutions and just finished an artist residency at Metropolitan State University working with students in the Experimental Music and Intermedia Arts program headed by professor David Means (I’ll be sharing more about that later).

In addition to teaching and other academics I have performing regularly and maintaining a studio practice when my schedule allows. Recently this involved the addition of two new instruments: the Moog Sub 37 and the Elektron Analog Four (A4). The Sub 37 arrived back in September and the A4 in November.

This weekend I had a couple of hours to interface these new additions with my DSI Tempest analog drum machine. These three instruments seem to complement each other really well. The Tempest is gritty and a little unpredictable, the Sub 37 is instantly gratifying and expressive, while the A4 is precise, clean, and technical. Here’s an excerpt from one of my experiments last weekend.

AVGM: Rheology

Posted on August 25, 2014 by John C.S. Keston

Here’s another movement from my composition Vocalise Sintetica that I performed at Echofluxx in Prague and later during Northern Spark 2014. I named the movement Rheology after the study of the flow of matter in the liquid state. The audiovisual content was created with a Max patch I developed called AVGM (AV Grain Machine). The instruments that I used to create the accompaniment include: DSI Tempest, Bass Station II, Korg Volca Keys, and Memory Man Delay.

Vocalise Sintetica at Echofluxx 14, Prague

Posted on June 30, 2014 by John C.S. Keston

On May 7, 2014 I performed Vocalise Sintetica at the Echofluxx Festival in Prague. The piece is made up of four movements: I. Machines (00:00), II. Liquid (18:43), III. Vocalise (28:55), and, IV. Sintetica (38:41). Each movement is a playlist of five audiovisual objects that are instantly available to be projected and amplified while being granulated in real-time by a performer using a multitouch interface. The performer may loop their gestures applied to the audiovisual objects in order to bring in additional synthesized sound layers that contrast or mimic the audiovisual objects. My performance at Echofluxx was made possible by a grant from the American Composers Forum with funds provided by the Jerome Foundation.
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Audiovisual Granular Synthesis of Water Objects

Posted on June 19, 2014 by John C.S. Keston

This is a screen capture from a Max project I developed that does interactive, synchronized, granular synthesis of corresponding sound and video that’s tentatively titled AVGM for Audiovisual Grain Machine. I have used the software during aperformance at the Echofluxx festival in Prague and at the Katherine E. Nash gallery for the opening of The Audible Edge exhibition during Northern Spark 2014.