This Friday, April 21, 2017 will mark the 4th event we’ve affectionately titled, The Taming of the CPU. This time we have the privilege of being hosted by the Icehouse Minneapolis. Tickets are on sale now and available at the doors (opening at 10:30pm). The performers include myself, Mike Hodnick (Kindohm), Lucas Melchior (MKR), and Chris Leblanc with Michael Lund doing their famous modular-analog-video-liquid-light show. Expect to hear a broad range of electronic music from Kindohm’s virtuosic live coding to MKR’s Ableton prowess. I’ll be towing an all hardware rig including Rhodes electric piano, Moog Sub 37, a Pyramid Sequencer, and several other bits and pieces. Here’s the official spiel:
Taming of the CPU 4.0 brings together three award winning electronic musicians with two like minded visual artist to create a futuristic, immersive multi-media experience. Huge sounding hardware synthesis is combined with intricate live coding, and lush laptop arrangements while modular video synthesis and liquid light shows are displayed and synchronized to the music.
Read on for more information about the artists including bios and video examples:
JOHN C.S. KESTON
John C. S. Keston (aka Ostraka) is an award winning composer of electronic, experimental, and instrumental music. His work embraces the chaotic ambiguities of environmental and sensorial influences providing context within unpredictable and everyday events. His unconventional compositions convey a spirit of discovery and exploration through the use of graphic scores, chance, generative techniques, analog & digital synthesis, sound design, signal processing, and acoustic piano. His music appears in The Jeffrey Dahmer Files (2012) and sound recordings in Pacific (2016). He also composed the music for the short Familiar Pavement (2015) presented at the MNKINO Film Score Fest. He has appeared on more than a dozen albums including two solo albums on Unearthed Music. His latest album, Isosceles (2016) has drawn comparisons to the Stranger Things soundtrack. John has exhibited original work at Northern Spark (MN); the Weisman Art Museum (MN); the Montreal Jazz Festival; the Burnet Gallery (MN); the In/Out Festival of Digital Performance (NYC); the Eyeo Festival (MN); The INSTINT Festival (MN); Echofluxx (Prague); WMC (Miami); and Moogfest (NC). John is also a professor of interactive media design at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.
KINDOHM
Minneapolis-based Mike Hodnick, aka Kindohm, is widely known for his live-coded dancefloor interruptions, wringing algorithmic rhythms and textures from a text editor using the open source software TidalCycles. Combining analog synthesizers and samples, Hodnick’s improvised performances encompass an array of styles from glitchy IDM to odd-time techno. In 2016, Kindohm released “RISC Chip”, an 8-track LP released on Conditional. Receiving positive criticism on Resident Advisor, Lisa Blanning writes: “Hodnick has a way of teasing inhuman funk out of his evolving patterns. RISC Chip succeeds in escaping its programmer’s niche, launching Kindohm’s work into the realm of music that exists for its own sake.” https://www.residentadvisor.net/reviews/20249 In 2014, Hodnick received the Minnesota Emerging Composers Award from the American Composers Forum, funded by the Jerome Foundation.
MKR
Since 2006 MKR has been writing and performing electronic music in the Twin Cities. Winner of the Minnesota Emerging Composer Award in 2012, his music exists at the intersection of dance music and more ambient and experimental styles. Oscillating between extremes, lush downtempo break beats evolve and yield to breakneck rhythms, melodies, and bass. At times warm, simple, and human and at others cold, digital, and impenetrable, the music of MKR revels in its influences and exposes a broad spectrum of timbres and moods.