New Ostraka Track: Tunguska Dub

I produced this track soon after I got my DSI Tempest about five months ago. As a keyboard player one of the first things I did was hook up a MIDI controller to it. Although the Tempest is a legitimate, six-voice, polyphonic, analog synth it does not yet record chords into the internal sequencer. To get around this I simply synched the Tempest with Ableton Live and recorded the MIDI there. Obviously not an all-at-once-live-playing endeavor, but many of this machines limitations have pretty simple and effective work-arounds.

After five months of sitting on the track I finally decided to clean up the mix a little, give it the title Tunguska Dub, and preview it on SoundCloud. All of the drums, the main melody, the dub organ, and the wub bass are done on the Tempest. The SCI Pro-One is handling the main bass part, and the Super Jupiter is making the arpeggiated counter-melody.

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About John CS Keston

John CS Keston is an award winning transdisciplinary artist reimagining how music, video art, and computer science intersect. His work both questions and embraces his backgrounds in music technology, software development, and improvisation leading him toward unconventional compositions that convey a spirit of discovery and exploration through the use of graphic scores, chance and generative techniques, analog and digital synthesis, experimental sound design, signal processing, and acoustic piano. Performers are empowered to use their phonomnesis, or sonic imaginations, while contributing to his collaborative work. Originally from the United Kingdom, John currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he is a professor of Digital Media Arts at the University of St Thomas. He founded the sound design resource, AudioCookbook.org, where you will find articles and documentation about his projects and research. John has spoken, performed, or exhibited original work at New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2022), the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2022), the International Digital Media Arts Conference (iDMAa 2022), International Sound in Science Technology and the Arts (ISSTA 2017-2019), Northern Spark (2011-2017), the Weisman Art Museum, the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Walker Art Center, the Minnesota Institute of Art, the Eyeo Festival, INST-INT, Echofluxx (Prague), and Moogfest. He produced and performed in the piece Instant Cinema: Teleportation Platform X, a featured project at Northern Spark 2013. He composed and performed the music for In Habit: Life in Patterns (2012) and Words to Dead Lips (2011) in collaboration with the dance company Aniccha Arts. In 2017 he was commissioned by the Walker Art Center to compose music for former Merce Cunningham dancers during the Common Time performance series. His music appears in The Jeffrey Dahmer Files (2012) and he composed the music for the short Familiar Pavement (2015). He has appeared on more than a dozen albums including two solo albums on UnearthedMusic.com.

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