Heathen Audio

.

2011-02-14T10:02:00.001+02:00

Heathen Audio - Jam 015 (@Berzei 50bis, Razvan's Birthday)

2011-01-16T14:45:00.009+02:00

Got home from Omnivores Friday night with a little bit of their nice boiled wine in my system. Got lost a bit around the neighborhood with all the people tearing down buildings and shit. But maybe it's for the good, although they didn't have to do it with the fire department and fucking water hoses in the middle of winter at 3 am. Or maybe that was a heroical fire-rescue-drill-something I was witnessing the other night.

Anyway, we had guests, this time for Razvan. Had another party here on New Year's Eve also but I had one little mistake in the set and not enough free space on the disk so the Pink Floyd bit got left out. I still have it but I decided not to post it (sorry Iunia but bring a USB stick with you when you come over to pick up that scarf) So this time I had a little karmic bitchslap intended for my perfection obsession. In the middle of the set I spilled an ashtray and the music got a little fucked, you can hear it from the moon. Nevertheless, fuck you karma, I'm posting it.

Ran Into Rod Stewart in the memory box, ugly old bastard, voice so unsuitable for 2011. Hauntology for the win! My ass. Listen to some techno. Or hauntology. Or Rod Stewart. Or whatever you want.

Also read something online about voices in music the other day. And definitions. Bollocks, in loads. Each house is individual, it grows around its designated guests. Each designated guest has an individual voice. Each individual voice has the right to express its opinion. U-Bahn. Underground. Your music. Fuck house music, you're house music.

So supposing you decide to push the play button and go down on the rabbit hole, supposing you manage to get over the skipping beats and the noisy fuck buttons bit, you'll find it in the narrative. I don't know what exactly, but please tell me if you do.

Tracklist:

01. Pablo Bolivar - Cosmic Traveller

02. Ben Klock - Check For Pulse

03. Marek Hemmann - Gemini

04. Marcel Dettmann - Drawing

05. Anja Schneider - Beyond The Valley

06. Kollektiv Turmstrasse - Mondschein Primaten

07. Phil Kieran - World On TV

08. Steve Bug & Cie - Iron Daily

09. Pablo Bolivar - Vibration

10. Justus Kohncke - Advance (Prins Thomas Diskotek Mix)

11. Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts - Can't Cheat With Concrete

12. Cio D'Or - Wildseide

13. Fairmont - I Need Medicine

14. Fuck Buttons - Olympians

15. Matthew Dear - Don And Sherri

16. Mark du Mosch - Overload

17. Modeselektor - Happy Birthday

18. Pantha du Prince - Saturn Strobe

19. Paul Kalkbrenner - Aaron

20. Soul Clap - Extravaganza

21. Efdemin - Lohn & Brot

22. Dominik Eulberg - Aurora

23. Hercules & Love Affair - Blind

24. Will Saul & Tamp Cooper feat. Ursula Rucker - Where Is It? (Steve Bug's 9 Minutes Of Freedom Mix)

25. Kalon - Man Is The Superior Animal

26. Joakim - Lonely Hearts

27. Azari & II - Into The Night (Nicolas Jarr Remix)

28. Glimpse - Feel OK

29. James Teej - Greenback feat. dOP

30. Lee Jones - Honey & Ginger

31. Jurgen Paape - So Weit Wie Noch Nie (Playhouse Mix by ATA)

32. Michael Mayer - Lovefood

33. Pablo Bolivar - Another Time (Audision Remix)

34. Efdemin - Just A Track

35. Superpitcher (Happiness (Lawrence Remix)

36. Paul & Fritz Kalkbrenner - Sky And Sand

37. Partial Arts - Trauermusik

38. Shonky - Nebula

39. Sian - World Within A world (Minilogue Remix)

40. Stephan Bodzin - Kerosene

41. Swayzak - Smile And Receive

42. Woolfy vs. Projections - Absynth

43. Stimming - One Weekend

44. Soul Phiction - Everytime

45. John Roberts - Lines

46. Rod Stewart - Stay With Me

47. Atjazz & Fred Everything - Back Together (Fred Everything's Beats)

48. Russo, Huxley - Bally Who

49. Excercise One - 1994

50. Robert Babicz - Come Closer (Kollektiv Turmstrasse Remix)

51. Coma - Green

52. DOP - Blanche Neige

53. Steffen Deux - New York Sun

54. Black Devil Disco Club - I Regret The Flower Power

55. John Daly - Time Again

Heathen Audio - Is This All We Can See. In This Whole.

2010-12-24T15:33:00.004+02:00

Is this all we can see in this whole?

More than Art and Less than Love

2010-12-18T17:00:00.008+02:00

I recently went through some rather revealing episodes regarding, well, everything that you can think of. The climax of it all was the realization that what we have become, as human beings, is an untested self-propagating pattern of existence.

We open our eyes to a world that is already expecting to transmit information into our system through our built-in skills to mimic, through our parents, through the education that we will receive in the course of our short existence, through mass-media and whatever else is out there that has the ability to influence. The only problem is that we are doing this to ourselves without having a general acceptance of the fact that what we are doing is right from the ideal observer's point of view.

The paradox of it all is that one cannot look at things through the ideal observer's point of view because in order to do this our level of consciousness and awareness of reality should lack any limit. But that limit is there and will always be because we educate it onto ourselves and our offspring. Luckily we have developed a rational mechanism that allows us to exit or at least modulate this untested existential loop we find ourselves in. It's called choice.

The type of choice I'm talking about has nothing to do with, for example, choosing to go to work by bus or by bike, this is a minor choice. What I'm talking about is the ability to perceive, observe and access one's own fractal of life, the entirety of one's past, present and future instances of existence, in order to modulate one's own path through life.

I'm sure that by now some of you definitely said to yourself, now this guy's a couple of planks short of a barrel. You're right, I am, but the funny thing is that so are you and everybody else out there because the complete barrel doesn't actually exist, it is only an ideal state of existence written on paper by grey old men since we discovered that first rational bone in our body.

Now then, let's get back to the fractal of life because some explanations are in order. First of all, I'm not talking about an exercise in imagination. The proof of the actual existence of this fractal of life lies in quantum physics: with the principle of quantum superposition someone really smart managed to state and subsequently prove that a given particle exists in an infinity of states until we observe it and collapse its "fractal of existence" into a singular state definable in x,y,z,t coordinates. OK, so far so good. Do you remember mathematical induction from high-school? It said something like, if you prove something for n=1 and if you also prove that if the statement holds for n it also holds for n+1 then the statement is proven for all n's as long as n is a natural positive number? That means that the superposition principle not only holds for 1 particle, but for an infinity of particles. OK, the boring part's over. Let me ask you this, what if these n particles are all the particles that you are made of? That would practically mean that as long as no one is there to actively observe it, your body exists in an infinity of states. Considering that reality is a multiverse, then this infinity of selves actually has a place to eat, sleep and fuck in.

But what exactly collapses our body into the state it currently is in. My guess is that consciousness does. But that raises another question, what happens when we sleep and our conscious self is practically turned off? We become one with the fractal of life and and receive glimpses of future and parallel states of existence. That would also explain the concept of deja vu. Deja vu is the confirmation of what those glimpses of the fractal of life tell us while we're sleeping.

Here's where it gets interesting. What if we were to wake up in another state of existence? Could we? Well, we might, but we might have to eliminate our conscious self first and that's what death and certain types of narcotics are for. I'm not advocating either, but coming back to what I earlier wrote about choice, what we could do is observe our fractal of life and carefully plot out the incremental steps. We could for example survey this fractal of life and find an instance of ourselves that managed to invent a swing that swings backwards and forward in time and decide that we want to become that someone. What we then have to do is observe the fractal further and carefully plot our next steps.

Now about myself, I'm a firm believer that human imagination actively constructs our future. What people imagined several centuries ago are in our hands today. Just look at the internet for example. And I'm also a firm believer that the despair and chaos we are currently facing is nothing but a crisis of choice. We brutalize our bodies and minds with alcohol, porn and violence because we cannot choose between right and wrong from the ideal observer's point of view and we indulge in shallow comfort. Our selfishness, ego and personal interests dictates that we do good for ourselves first and most of the time that good for ourself means evil for others. Imagine, if you will, that everyone in the world goes to sleep one night with the intent to imagine heaven in real life instead of murder, abuse and violence.

I decided to actively get involved in this process. I wrote a resignation request at the office yesterday and next year I'm auctioning everything that I own on Facebook and setting out for a random destination on the Globe. The random destination is not a fate thing, but who is to say that some areas on the Globe are more important than others.

We're more than the patterns we find ourselves in. We're more than primates that give birth to primates. We're more than art and less than love. We are what we decide to be each passing second.

Peace!

2010 in AV

2010-12-14T12:38:00.001+02:00

Heathen Audio - Jam 014 (@Berzei 50bis, Andrei's Birthday)

2010-11-28T15:41:00.009+02:00

A couple of days ago and totally out of the blue, Ionut told something about another party at the apartment. I liked the last one, a handful of beautiful people dancing, chilling, doing whatever they wanted. No entrance fee and no commercial bullshit, just people dancing and having a few laughs with people, like it should be.

Heathen Audio - Jam 014 (@Berzei 50bis, Andrei's Birthday) by Heathen Audio

More people showed up this time and we were supposed to have another musician, a friend of mine Even Steven, and a proper mixer, but apparently the guy with the gear stood Steven up. I ended up doing the whole set by myself. You'll find some Mario Basanov, that I recently like very very much, and a lot of techno to disco to house to techno with a little bit of Daft Punk, ESP, Villa Nah and Radiohead every now and then. I ended up mixing one of my own tracks in there too but I don't remember exactly when so you're gonna have to discover that on your own.

So Andrei Cristian Vlad as well as any other Andrei or Andreea out there, Happy birthday, enjoy the set and thanks for the party. I didn't get to chat with the people at all, perhaps next time if I get a guest musician I'll have more attention for that, who knows. Oh, and I should get some new music too, but I'll do that as soon as we get a proper internet connection.

Considering that the set is almost 4 hours long, I'm not gonna go to the trouble to tracklist it. If you like a track in particular, please comment on the soundcloud mix and I'll reply with the track name. Enjoy the 4 track jamming and happy birthday again!

All the audio materials used are copyrighted to their respective authors

Who Is Hanna Kulti?

2010-11-28T10:38:00.017+02:00

A lot of people are probably asking themselves who this Hanna Kulti character is. As you are probably already starting to guess, she doesn't exist. She is just an idea that I had to market an emerging Romanian party brand and electronic music community called The Bubble. My initial assumption for creating this artificial profile was that, online, if you start some fire in the right place, it will turn into a fuse that can be carefully guided to the desired barrel of explosive. That and the fact that everything is quickly becoming too 'public' and anonymity is a great asset to have and to know how to wield. In this case, the fuel for the campaign was the fact that everyone seemed to be shit broke and expecting something to happen. Some exotic millionaire that will land his/her spaceship on the roof of their house and give them enough money so that they can turn all their ideas into reality, perhaps? Please keep hoping, it will not happen. We have a better chance of building something worthwhile if we all contribute rather than waiting for the miraculous. In the words of some wise man "if you want your dreams to come true, don't sleep".

Only four people that I know of had access to Hanna's Facebook account and used her to build a base of people to interact with. The main idea that I had was to identify the active connectors of the Facebook community that started growing around electronic music and to brand some of their best pictures with the label logo in a context-sensitive manner. Aggressive, active marketing, actually performed by each targeted individual in particular and in our benefit - marketing by anonymity. Couple that with some mass online sharing as well as traditional promotional channels, and you've got a neatly controllable center of mass attention. Aaa, Grolsch was also in as a sponsor but that wasn't my deal, I only wrote a few words for their pitch.

So, every chat that you guys had with Hanna was either with Matei, Dominic, Cristi or me. The most sincere apologies to Giuser, for benefiting from his image and t-shirt. Here's one for you Sergiu: I know you know I know you know I know. He was the only one of the targeted connectors who responded in an extremely negative manner to the picture branding and actually threatened me with physical violence and he was probably the first guy who smelled that something fishy was going on, hehe. But of course, everything needs an exception that confirms the rule. Oh, I almost forgot, Matei decided to cook up a surprise and also brand me in the album. I'm linking this because I don't want you to get the idea that I also wrote the caption for myself - that would have been odd and deeply disturbing.

Now then, about Solar Disco, I arrived at the venue at around 9 and was surprised by how good looking the place actually was. It had a lot of decoration with good taste and a lot of class, including lights with motion sensors and DIY trees, as strange as that sounds. I had my audio board and a bunch of cables on me because Tazu's laptop was fried and he didn't have what to play on. He was supposed to use Matei's laptop and my sound board but guess what, Matei has a macbook and I have a firewire sound card, so - no go. A 2way cab ride later, the problem was solved, I got my macbook pro and we got to have a short soundcheck. Everything seemed to be in order.

It was getting close to 11 when Rodion, Maelstrom and Hugo Sanchez showed up. Everything was extremely chaotic: people were starting to show up in groups and some guys were still duct-taping a projector to the ceiling not to mention that none of the artists managed to get a sound check. You could almost smell the scent of uncertainty, brr.

Luckily, the guys moved quickly and before we realized it, Tazu was supposed to play. I reconnected the gear, made sure that everything was set up just like before but to both our surprise the Master tempo button in Traktor Pro was grayed out completely. I had to change from Traktor Pro to Traktor 3.3 on the fly and quickly show Tazu the shortcuts. He started to really jam it and very soon I noticed that people started filling up the dance-floor. It turned out OK for him, because he ended up having a fantastic set, great as a party opener.

The visuals were also some of the most beautiful moving images I had seen in a long time. Thanks HD 59686 for the quick glimpses of planet surfaces covered in fractal craters, interstellar jellyfish swimming in zero gravity and god knows what else. I had a little bit of fun playing with them as well, pushing buttons in sync with the music but just as I started warming up the screen went blank, luckily Saru was right there to make the program play again. Great work! For a long time I've been thinking that it would be nice to be able to assign a visual element to every instrument in a piece of music and to be able to control them in real time, both the audio and the video - real-time audio visual composition, if you will. More on that later, perhaps.

Other than that, I had to leave pretty early because I had a birthday party in the apartment on Saturday to sleep for (more on that in another post) and to be honest Tazu was OK, but I've listened to better music than Rodion, Hugo and Maelstrom.

To whoever is reading this, please except my apologies if Hanna's short existence managed to cause any discomfort. Also, a lot of apologizes to my associates for this article although I'm sure that they will understand that Hanna's existence is no longer relevant or necessary - the party went on without her and it was a blast. She is to be thought of as a symbol for every possible investor out there and nothing more than that, I guess. It's time to be yourselves.

One final note - I had no financial benefit out of this at all. More than that I lost my purple/white/grey/black/pale ochre scarf, my mac charger and an RCA cable. But, leaving my empty refrigerator aside, I'm happy to have done this because I'm pretty sure that nobody ever managed to do something like this online so far. I'll get back to my shitty job of editing Excel tables and configuring SMS bulk campaigns on monday so if anybody else needs some ideas or help please contact me online. ~~I don't take money so find something else to pay me with, perhaps a cute girl that I could fall in~~ love ~~with~~ :)

P.S. Wake up. Stop believing that you can find real life online.

Peace!

The views stated here may not necessarily be the ones shared by the other organizers of this event. This article should be considered a personal view on what went on last friday at popa nan 82.

Heathen Audio - That's How Life Is

2010-11-22T18:59:00.005+02:00

I've been pretty productive in the past couple of days. Here's a teaser.

John Roberts - Glass Eights

2010-11-17T02:45:00.011+02:00

Autumnal, introspective dance music.

...

Nude Society

2010-10-26T15:34:00.014+03:00

Last Friday I was supposed to perform as a DJ at the Nude Society night in Embryo's basement. It's now called Subsol and the owners did a good job with cleaning it and warming it up. It wasn't the first time someone organized a party in this particular venue and the last time I remember going there, my balls nearly froze off after only one drink. This wasn't the case on Friday, both the place and the crowd were as warm as possible.

Now about this Nude Society thing, prior to the night of the event, people started talking on-line about taking your clothes off in public and things like that. It struck me as a bit odd because it was never about nudity per se, but about lack of selfishness and ego towards the people around you. It was intended to be about people dancing and interacting with each other without an extra layer of self-interest other than the dancing and interacting itself because that's what a party environment can offer - total freedom. As long as the people involved are totally open to one another, anyone of you might as well trust the people around enough to also take your clothes off for example. But until that level of trust there are lots of other layers of ego to shed.

Now then about the party, Troe opened up with some energetic techno, he messed up one or two transitions but let's not be too hard on the kid, he's only 18, he's got enough time to grow and he shows a lot of promise. Next up were Dom and Cosmin from Surround Around Sound. We know them, we love them and the organizers probably had some pieces of lung to clean up off the ceiling from all the girls screaming to their death during their gig. Some little birdy also joked about the fact that Cosmin and Troe might also have to chip in and repaint the place, but let's not get into all the alcohol imbued, gory details of the matter. Cos Mir was also great, he kept the floor moving for another hour and a half and then Matei (recently rebranded as FAQ) came on with his abrasive beats and kept the party going until almost 6 in the morning. You can find his set here, enjoy.

My night started on an awkward foot from the very beginning. I was supposed to gig on CD players but my laptop destroyed 6 or 7 disks one after another with one hour before the event. I ended up going to the club one hour later then I was supposed to with my laptop, and with 2 readable disks filled with random tracks which I decided to label Yin and Yang for no reason whatsoever. By this time I should mention that I've been having a lot of financial trouble for the past 3 months because I was consecutively stiffed 3 times for decent amounts of money. I know, I probably lost the attention of half the readers by mentioning this, I'm sure no one wants do read about normal people. You want supernatural stuff, fame, guys with 50 inch cocks and girls with 3 tits, not guys that are having money trouble right? The more shocking the better?

Anyway, for those of you that took my attempt at honesty just as it was intended, I should explain the reason why I am mentioning my financial concerns. When I got to the club I was shit broke, like I happened to find myself a lot lately. I had absolutely no money and about a quarter of a pack of cigarettes. I was on the artist list of course and I could drink off the bar but I never liked to exaggerate. I always found the DJ's who whack their heads off with the free liquor that the club owners provide somewhat of a different spirit. I don't want to judge or anything like that, it's just not my thing.

So I grabbed a drink, danced a little, said hello to a few people, and surprise - one of the guys who recently stiffed me for money was standing right at the bar. To keep the story simple, 3 months ago I paid him half the money for some gear, then he disappeared, then I posted his photo on-line with a "have you seen this guy?" text and then he resurfaced and promised that he would pay me back on the 18th of October (which of course he didn't). Apparently he was the designated sound engineer for the night. He has good skills as a sound engineer as far as I could remember so I was curious about what he had done with the place. He confessed that he didn't have time to measure the room beforehand so that's why the sound might appear a bit dull. The difference was negligible, but the sound could have been better, I guess.

Anyway, I'm mentioning this guy because of a lot of small events that happened throughout the night left a mark, and most of them were related to him. After about an hour or so, my cigarettes ran out. I had no cash so I started asking around for cigarettes, feeling like a beggar. The guy had his of course and, except the fact that he looked a bit thinner and had a different haircut, he appeared to be in his element. Good for him. But what kept haunting me for the whole night was my own ego which kept insisting on comparing the state that I was in, a guy with nothing in his pockets, with the better state in which I kept assuming that he was in. A part of me wanted to beat the shit out of him and felt entitled to do so while the other, more stable one, kept reminding me that money is irrelevant and that this too will pass.

Around 5 I discovered that I didn't have a much needed audio cable. Neither did the sound engineer so I ended up using the wifi in Embryo to download drivers for Cos Mir's sound board, installing them, and hurrying back down to SubSol to find out that there was no one left to hear me play. I kind of gave up something, then and there. I don't know what, it may have been another layer of my own ego, it may have been hope of ever making something of myself out of DJ-ing or it may have been anything. But hey, who gives a fuck that you can sync 5 tracks together simultaneously as long as no one is there to hear you play except a handful of close friends .

Overall, Nude Society 2 was a wonderful party with a lot of dancing, freedom and huge disco smiles. So I didn't record my last set because I didn't get to have one. A fitting end I guess, to all this Heathen Audio affair. A lot of thanks to the guys from Embryo/Subsol for helping it happen and to everyone that came and partied their ass off.

Keep in touch with this blog for a bit more though, I am about to release another jam and my first and last album as soon as I finish working on the cover art. It will be available for free download for 7 days and after that I'll say my heathen goodbyes to music.

P.S. Someone told me that a group of 5 people came to the party a bit later and paid a total of 3 RON entrance fee. If anyone of you guys reading this is part of that group of people, please know that I don't judge you for anything and that I'm glad that you managed to get to the party in the end. I just wouldn't have done it this way. I would have paid the fee to support the artists because that money will eventually recirculate and it will probably end up being spent as an entrance fee to one of your own parties. Peace!

The views stated here may not necessarily be the ones shared by the other organizers of this event. This article should be considered a personal view on what went on last friday at subsol.

Heathen Audio - Jam 013 (@Berzei 50bis, Alin's Birthday)

2010-10-02T16:01:00.018+03:00

Heathen Audio - Jam 013 (@Berzei 50bis, for Alin) by heathenaudio

Friday evening we had a small pre-party at the apartment for Alin's birthday. Nothing pre-rehearsed, just some jager shots, a handful of beautiful people and two handfuls of beautiful vibes.

I admit, the image above is a bit exaggerated, we didn't end up throwing people around the place in their underwear. But it could be like that, everyone has the freedom to do anything they want. Just think about where you want those limits to be and bend them a little. Perhaps you'll be a little closer to that freedom from yourself that's waiting just around the corner.

The tracklist will be here soon, it has a lot of stuff that I've been bouncing around at parties lately and that I didn't get to record. Something old, something new, some 4-track mashing-up and emotional theatricals - you decide what you like.

{later edit:

Tracklist:

01. Sally Shapiro - I'll Be By Your Side (Tensnake Remix);
02. Sascha Funke - We Are Facing The Sun;
03. Pablo Bolivar - Microbio;
04. Superpitcher - Joana;
05. Superpitcher vs. The Congos - Say I'm Your Number One (Superpitcher Remix);
06. Junior Boys - FM (Tensnake Remix);
07. Superpitcher - Happiness (Lawrence Mix);
08. Andre Lodemann - Searchin' (Charles Webster Remix);
09. Pablo Bolivar - Simulated Physics;
10. Oliver Koletzki - Music From The Heart;
11. Younger Brother - All I Want (Cicada Remix);
12. Unai - Moderne Love;
13. James Teej feat dOp - Greenback;
14. Martyn - Elden St (Sebo K Watergate Edit);
15. Pablo Bolivar - Another Time (Audision Remix);
16. Lovebirds - Mandrill;
17. Solomun - Samba;
18, Andre Lodemann - Coming Home;
19. Will Saul & Tam Cooper feat. Ursula Rucker - Where Is It? (Steve Bug's 9 Minutes Of Freedom Mix);
20. The Embassy - Lurking (Tensnake Remix);
21. Lovebirds - Out Into The Night;
22. Jori Hulkkonen - Man From Earth (Astronomer Remix);
23. Pablo Bolivar - Across The City (Westpark Unit Heavy Dub Mix);
24. Nina Kraviz/ Groove Armada - Pain In The Ass/ I Won't Kneel (Heathen Audio Mash-up);
25. Toby Tobias - In Your Eyes (Tensnake Remix);
26. Ferrer & Sydenham Inc - Timbuktu (Ame Original Mix);
27. Marek Hemann - Tagoma;
28. Theophilius London - Starry Eyed (Remix);
29. Solomun - Small Talk;
30. Tortoiseshell - This Girl.

}

All the audio materials used are copyrighted to their respective authors

The Aesthetic of No Return

2010-09-15T23:15:00.020+03:00

After a couple of months of questions and psychic maelstroms of all shapes and sizes, some things appear to be falling into perspective. About music, about life in general and about the todays after our tomorrows.

Do you like music? (yes, it is a retarded question, but please humor me with an answer). If you do like it, chances are that you have tons of mp3's lying around in every corner of your external memory (i.e. the memories of the gadgets and devices that you use to enhance your every day life) not to mention the hundreds of cassettes, CD's, etcetera, lying around in those dusty boxes you keep on the bottom shelf.

I've always asked myself why do we do this? Why do we keep hoarding music and what good does it do for us? Leaving aside the extremely pragmatic individuals that collect only to sell at a higher price later, most of us collect music for the sake of that first emotional reaction that we had when we first came into contact with whatever was on said tapes and mp3's. Do you remember the shivers you had on the back of your neck when you kissed that girl and Jennifer Rush was playing? We don't collect objects, we collect past emotions, and we do this because most of us don't have an iPod in their skull that can play any track at anytime by willpower alone.

This urge to remember/record the good or the extremely emotional is what shaped and defined the world we live in today. We can see this in every art form that we look at - painting, sculpture, music, everything has a clearly defined output in time and space, a feature built-in for the majority - those of us who want to take that emotion home with them. A typically human intent, I would say, to bring temporary order into a reality that knows about no such thing.

Now ask yourself this, how much music has man recorded so far? The answer is: enough to never be able to listen to. If you happen to be a perfectionist and you want to say that you KNOW music, then my friend you are fucked. As long as mankind manages to record more than 122 years and 164 days of unique compositions (the age of Jeanne Calment, the oldest person registered to date), there will still be some music that you will never get to experience. Bugger.

This train of reasoning might seem fair at first glance, but if you read between the lines you will stumble onto the indisputable truth that music is a recursive phenomenon - from time to time, it draws upon its former selves to feed it's future ones. You know it because you're living this so called remix of a remix of a remix every day. But let me ask you this: isn't this back to the basics cycle a consequence of the very fact that we discovered a way to record music?

Imagine some people trying to build a house. They're not the first people ever to attempt this so what is the most likely thing that they'll do? They will appeal to memory of course. They'll take a look around, see what the neighbors are doing and then they'll start to build. They'll use those huge rectangular windows from a specialized magazine, the slant on the roof from that house they keep talking about since they went skiing, that wooden floor from the old house they grew up in when they were little. The successful ones will hire an architect who does the exact same thing for them. He knows a lot about the buildings built so far so he can dive more skillfully through this collective entity called architecture in search for an aesthetically pleasing remix of a remix.

At first look, this cycle could go on forever and there will always be 'new' things to look forward to on the horizon. But on the other hand, you can't recycle a plastic cup a billion times and still get that crisp feeling that you got from the original one.

Original, now that's a pretty big word, especially in music. And it's especially hard to get there considering the fact that you're in the belly of this snake that keeps eating itself from the bottom end, over and over again. So are we doomed to a stale life of non-originality then? Are we doomed to listen to our grandchildren fuck with the melodic emotions we know and love in search of something new? I say no.

Music exists outside time, therefore there is no need for us to ground it in physical form. There is no need to chain the beautiful in order for it to continue to exist. That huge collection of recorded emotions might be useful to the fabled planetary intelligence that the post-humanists keep talking about but does it do us any good considering that we're always connected to infinite intelligence? What if we were to free ourselves from what we know? What if we were to let artists embrace their role spontaneously without expecting a clearly defined end-product as the result of their aesthetic rapture. What if we recognize music as the real-time relational entity that it is and allow a bigger place for spontaneity in its accepted practices.

Fuck what you upload on soundcloud, we want to feel what you're playing tonight. We don't want you to come to play with your lesson ready or your chord progressions memorized. Just let music flow through you in realtime and don't be afraid to improvise as long as you are confident that you have the skills to do it. And please, look at the faces of the people around you while you're doing it. You'll know if it's good or not because those people, no matter how stoned they are, will respond in realtime.

Unfortunately, our current social context doesn't allow too much room for completely spontaneous events to happen. If you want to try a quick improv in a place you went to just for a beer with some friends, the staff will most definitely have something to object. But still, if you consider its whole implications, true spontaneity is brilliant. Not to mention the fun to be had in throwing completely spontaneous events throughout the city. As long as no one is afraid of it, it gets us energized, it wakes us up and makes us ready for something else. Ready for change, ready to build houses that reconfigure themselves spontaneously. Ready for originality.

The unknown actually attracts. Only our conscious mind is afraid of it because it is trapped in a recursive ritual of comparison to our past memories and emotions. But the magic happens after you pass through memory's event horizon. The magic happens only after you've said your goodbyes to memory in favor of an aesthetic of no return.

Heathen Audio - End Of Summer

2010-09-01T22:06:00.010+03:00

This summer's suns made good for all our sins.

Heathen Audio - Jam 012 (@Poolsize Party 1.0, Belvedere)

2010-08-08T21:09:00.033+03:00

This weekend was way better than most. I was part of the line-up of a party organized by friends, for friends. Two local crews, the guys that organize the Rebirth electronic music festival and Fonotonic plus the guys from Surround Around Sound, hooked up to throw a party at this great place they recently discovered. It's quite close to Bucharest, with a pool and a beach, quite nice.

Logan was also gonna play, so were the guys from Surround Around Sound and I've always liked their beats, so the premises were well set. There were 15 or 16 people in total on the flyer plus Giuser as an attendee/DJ (I don't have a link for him because he doesn't exist on-line, but the dishes out some mean house {later edit: I believe you can now find Giuser on-line}). Besides that, the event was the only decent thing happening close to Bucharest instead of the seaside - a recipe for success.

I had to play at 10:30, on Saturday morning. If it were up to me I would've chosen to play around sunrise because I would really like to see how the change in ambient light reflects on the tracks I choose. But, anyway, 10:30 was OK too for some psychedelic house. By the way, if this genre doesn't exist yet, somebody should invent it.

So get this, 5 minutes before I was supposed to play, when the guys from Beauxdans were finishing up their really nice set, after I already had everything set up and was wondering if I could start to add samples to what was playing without anyone noticing, I loaded a track and I clicked on the tempo fader in Traktor to match it when I noticed that my mouse cursor was gone and the fader started moving by itself. Two minutes after that, I got the equivalent of a Mac "blue screen of death" and I restarted my laptop. Then I restarted my laptop again. Then I restarted my laptop again after checking everything that could affect the existence of my signal in the mixer. Repeat times one billion. Insert a shitload of curses (and some thanks to the guys from Beauxdans for keeping the music up well after their set). And some dicks to the guys at Apple.

After the fun was over, I finally started to play until Mr. Disko snuck up behind me and cut in with a track. I lost my flow. Do you see the karmic irony? I guess the rule of thumb is: never cut in over someone who's performing or even think about inserting samples over some other people's stuff without at least giving them a heads up first. I learned my lesson, next time I'll just ask if it's OK.

Anyway, here's the petit set and you'll find the tracklist below.

Tracklist:

01. DOP - Ikarus;

02. Glimpse - Feel OK;

03. Marek Hemmann - Tagoma;

04. Flight Facilities feat. Giselle - Crave You;

05. H.O.S.H. - Better and Sweet;

06. Telex - How Do You Dance (M83 Remix);

07. Groove Armada - Time and Space;

08. Exercise One - 1994;

09. Jay Haze - Who (Odessey Edit).

After my slot, I got to listen to Kapnobatai who surprised with some of the most complicated and beautifully hand-crafted percussion sounds I've ever listened to, you should definitely check him out too. Slow-motion emotion.

Some time after his set, I got an idea for a mash-up, and I started playing it. I intentionally left the tracks on different tempos so that I could synchronize them by nudging, just like on vinyl. Check out how the two lines of beats gently chase after one another. And also please check out Tina.

Unfortunately I got a bit too surprised that it sounded actually OK and I wanted to continue the build up with You Wanted A Hit from LCD Soundsystem, but to my surprise I had forgotten to copy my LCDS tracks on my laptop. But I like how it turned lout - it sounds live, natural. You're gonna have to make due with this version until I reconstruct the mash up with a proper ending.

The party went on until 19.00 and whoever managed to catch the end, had the chance to hear some pretty good improvs. So what was actually a marketing stunt, a 24 hour pool party, turned out to be a 21h blast of high quality beats and fun. Apparently version 2.0 is just around the corner. I can't wait.

All the audio materials used are copyrighted to their respective authors.

Heathen Audio - Jam 011 (@Berzei, 50bis)

2010-08-08T20:18:00.018+03:00

This mix happened on one of my practice sessions on a regular Thursday. There will be no track list, fifty percent because I don't remember much of it, I worked with 4 tracks at once {realistic later edit: but they weren't always playing simultaneously and I tried to coat everything in a nice reverb mesh, like overlaying layers, from closest to farthest, interacting with each other} The other fifty percent because you really should listen to it as a whole. Happy listening!

{even later edit: I remembered the tracks. They're fewer than you might have thought, but I tried toying with them as much as I could.

Tracklist:

Glimpse - Feel OK;

Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts - Helicoptere;

Solomun - Forever;

DJ Sprinkles - Ball'r (Madonna-Free Zone);

Marek Hemmann - Gemini/Kaleido;

Jay Haze - Who (Odessey Edit);

Superpitcher - Lovers Rock (improv);

Marek Hemmann - Tagoma;

Solomun - Boys From The Hood;

Glimpse - Enjoyable Employable (improv);

James Teej - Seven Day Mend (improv);

Marek Hemmann - Kaleido (improv);

DJ Sprinkles - Ball'r (Madonna-Free Zone) (A Bit Too Much Sax improv);

Joy Division - Dead Souls;

Nine Inch Nails - Dead Souls.

}

All the audio materials used are copyrighted to their respective authors.

Heathen Audio - For Lovers

2010-08-01T20:12:00.006+03:00

For lovers.

Heathen Audio - Jam 009 & Jam 010 (@Club Control)

2010-08-01T15:37:00.009+03:00

From the looks of it, I haven't posted anything since May 10. Two months of radio silence, now that's somewhat of a record for me. I don't know why I didn't keep posting, either blogging is old news or I've been too brain dead in the last couple of weeks from doing absolutely nothing that I just didn't find the required mood to write in.

To tell you the truth I haven't actually been doing nothing, a lot of stuff's going on. I moved to a new apartment on the border of gypsy-land, I opened for Poni Hoax and I also played at Street Delivery for the Romanian Organization For User Rights, I helped some friends with some text for a promoting platform for homegrown Romanian artists (it's called Local Records and it's a blast, you can find it here) and a lot of other stuff that I'm sure are of no interest to whomever is reading this.

To quickly catch up, I uploaded two sets on soundcloud that you might not know about. The first one is a short jam I made at home in a rather altered and emotional state. I used up to 4 tracks at the same time and I tried to simulate depth as much as I could using different layers of reverb. I'll let you judge by yourself If it worked or not.

I got good feedback on the Culoe De Song/Florence and The Machine mash-up so you can download it here as a standalone version, ready for mixing whenever you are.

The second set is the one I played in Club Control, when Poni Hoax had a gig in Bucharest at Street Delivery. To be honest, the whole experience was pretty strange. For about an hour, I played music only for myself, the guy with the visuals and the guy with the sound wich was a bit depressing. It was a typical start-of-summer night and it was obvious that no one was in the mood to hang out in a basement. Still, about halfway through the set, people started showing up and the night tuned out OK. At 5 or 6 in the morning I was still in Control mashing up John Cage vocals over Haberdasher's ruff beats.

At the end of the set, this girl came over me and she gave me a napkin with something written on it. I wanted to take a picture of it and upload it here, but I lost it when I moved. In a ruff English translation, it said something like "You're a nice guy and your music is really nice if it wasn't the same all the time. There were some people here who left because they wanted something to dance to. But seriously, your music is OK and sorry." I don't know what she was that sorry for but anyway, the set's here so you can decide for yourself if it's danceable or not.

Tracklist:

01. John Daly - In The Stars (Alt.Mix);

02. Roland Appel - Angel;

03. Lowtec - Untitled;

04. Lowtec - Untitled;

05. D-Pulse - More;

06. Woolfy vs. Projections - Starlight;

07. Fet et Moi - Paris Is For Lovers (Symphony Bootleg);

08. James Teej - Seven Day Mend;

09. (umm, I forgot);

10. Nick Hoppner - Umbrella Pitch;

11. Glimpse - Things To Do In Denver;

12. Roland Appel - Dark Angel;

13. Sascha Funke - We Are Facing The Sun;

14. SCSI-9 - Blue Wolf From Up North;

15. Shonky - Rudolf & Capulet;

16. Nina Kraviz - I'm Gonna Get You;

17. Solomun - After The Rain Comes Sun;

18. Sasse - Soul Sounds (Dirt Crew Remix);

19. Coblestone Jazz - Traffic Jam;

20. Junior Boys - In The Morning (Hot Chip Remix);

21. (fuck, I forgot AGAIN);

22. Solomun - Hypnotize;

23. Glimpse - Feel OK;

24. Culoe De Song/Florence & The Machine - Bright Forest/You Got The Love (Heathen Audio Mash-up).

All the audio materials used are copyrighted to their respective authors.

Heathen Audio - Jam 008 (@GrooveOn Radio, The Weekend Gangbang)

2010-05-10T22:48:00.023+03:00

Tracklist:

01. 6th Borough Project - Closer;
02. Lowtec - Untitled;
03. No Regular Play - Ladyluck (Slow Hands Remix);
04. Floating Points - Truly;
05. Anton Zap - Spain;
06. Lowtec - Soliloques;
07. Soul Clap & Le Loup - I Want You;
08. Tevo Howard - Everyday House Music;
09. Wolf + Lamb - Want Your Money;
10. Tazz - Acid Love;
11. Damian Lazarus/Deniz Kurtel - Moment/Fall (Heathen Audio Mash-up).

Last Thursday, Pisi Love asked me if I wanted to appear as a guest blogger on their Weekend Gangbang show on GrooveOn Radio. I got there around 9 o'clock, fresh out of bed because I was a lot behind with my sleeping schedule. Logan was there spinning some some spacey, euphoric tracks he had recently dug up. It sounded OK but, considering my acute need to sleep, not even live electricity could make me move.

The acoustics and the vibe of the place was top notch - 2 rooms and an improvised bar, really intimate, sound proofed, just what you need to bounce some low house grooves in. A handful of people were there, chilling out on the pillows in the back. The guy who's behind GrooveOn told me that they had 180 listeners since morning. If you were one of them, congratulations, you are part of a select group of individuals :)

John Rylee from The Funky Mamas followed my set with some sleazy beats and good caterinca. If you want his or Logan's set, you could probably get them from GrooveOn, if you want mine, there's a button somewhere up there that's trying to get your attention.

All the audio materials used are copyrighted to their respective authors.

Heathen Audio - Goodbye Privacy

2010-04-10T18:16:00.008+03:00

Heathen Audio - Jam 007 (@Post Cochet, Glitterati)

2010-04-03T15:22:00.021+03:00

Tracklist:

01. Donnacha Costello - Leaving Berlin

02. Anton Zap - Velo

03. Omar-S - Just Ask The Lonely

04. Wolf and Lamb and Smirk - Therapist

05. Move II Swing - Ohhh

06. Osborne - Ruling

07. Wolf and Lamb - If You Had (Shaun Reeves Edit)

08. Cobblestone Jazz - Traffic Jam

09. Nina Kraviz/Groove Armada - Pain In The Ass/I Won't Kneel (Heathen Audio Mash-up)

10. Culoe De Song - African Subway

11. Jake Fairley - Evaporator

12. Mary & The Boy - Are You Still Dancing Can Can

I mashed up some of my favorite tracks close to the end of my set on Friday, at Post Cochet. I pushed the REC button on time to catch the whole thing but the best part of the night, Logan's performance, managed to escape unrecorded. Too bad, the place was jumping up and down until 6 in the morning. A lot of love to Logan Fisher and his heavy duty dance music, to Pisi Love for making it happen, to the boys and girls happy to let us vocode their voices all night long and to you, of course, for dancing your asses off.

Enjoy the mix, the end is a bit fucked up because the crowd started warming up and I made some room for Logan.

P.S. You also get a bonus:

Use it in a club, bounce it out of some headphones, do whatever you want with it - it's gorgeous.

All the audio materials used are copyrighted to their respective authors.

Heathen Audio - Jam 006 (@Studio Martin, Kompaktorama)

2010-03-20T19:59:00.012+02:00

Last night I got a chance to mix thanks to Loredana and the guys at Studio Martin. I tried to be as seductive as possible, too bad only a handful of people were there to enjoy the music. Maybe next time more people will show up, hm? Until then, enjoy.

01. 6th Borough Project - McLovin
02. Floating Points - Love Me Like This (Nonsense Dub)
03. Lowtec - Untitled
04. Levon Vincent - These Games
05. Nicolas Jaar - Time For Us
06. BLK JKS - Mystery (Osborne Remix)
07. Omar-S - Psychotic Photosynthesis
08. Nina Kraviz - I'm Gonna Get You
09. Shur-I-Kan - Tubular
10. Sasse - Soul Sounds (Dirt Crew Remix)
11. Nicolas Jaar - El Bandito

Thanks again for all the support!

All the audio materials used are copyrighted to their respective authors.

Heathen Audio - Jam 005

2010-02-14T22:46:00.008+02:00

Tracklist:

01. Shumi - The Wind And The Sea;
02. Mathew Jonson - When Love Feels Like Crying;
03. Mungolian Jet Set - A Blast Of Loser;
04. Partial Arts - Trauermusik;
05. Mlle Caro & Franck Garcia - Dead Souls;
06. Pantha Du Prince - Saturn Strobe;
07. Yusef Lateef - The Three Faces Of Balal;
08. Will Saul and Tam Cooper feat. Ursula Rucker - Where Is It? (Steve Bug Remix);
09. Hot Chip - One Life Stand (Carl Craig PCP Remix);
10. Aufgang - Sonar;
11. Mlle Caro & Franck Garcia - Always You;
12. Four Tet - Plastic People.

All the audio materials used are copyrighted to their respective authors.

Heathen Audio - Ouroboros

2009-11-18T01:28:00.010+02:00

The confessions of your jagged senses travel through you. They make the tiny metal shards hidden in your bloodstream vibrate, life-like. They'll make your heart beat so hard that you'll feel it in the white of your eyes. And then you'll stop... and then you repeat.

Heathen Audio - Jam 004

2009-11-02T00:01:00.011+02:00

Tracklist:

01. Jesse Somfay - Borrealis;
02. Andrew Weatherall - Fail We May, Sail We Must;
03. The Field - Silent;
04. Moby - Pale Horses (Apparat Remix);
05. Fuck Buttons - Olympians;
06. Jesse Somfay - Good Morning Strange Light;
07. Ego Express - Ananda (Heathen Juxtaposition);
08. The Field - The More That I Do;
09. Jacek Sienkiewicz - Displaced;
10. Heathen Audio - Dreamferry Intro.

All the audio materials used are copyrighted to their respective authors.

Heathen Audio - Dublin

2009-09-24T02:26:00.009+03:00

It was the 31st of May 1941. The sound of approaching aircraft started buzzing just above the Irish skyline. Navigational errors, equipment malfunction and weather may have played their own part in the raid. But the bombs fell anyway, and they were relentless...

Synesthesia

2009-09-01T22:02:00.007+03:00

Music Animation Machine

let yourself feel. from Esteban Diácono on Vimeo.

A Skeleton of Lines and Dots

2009-08-29T01:43:00.020+03:00

Today I was supposed to go to Berlin for a couple of days and later to Linz for Ars Electronica 2009. Due to an expired passport I ended up staying home, plastic-wrapped luggage and all. After a couple of hours of (not so) mild depression, I remembered that I was thinking about buying Kompakt Total 10 and that I had downloaded a preview copy that I never got around to listen to.

I was planning to go to the Kompaktorama night in Barghain this evening so this compilation is nothing but a mild panacea. Still, the Kompakt Total series always had a positive effect on me and this goes for a lot of their other releases as well. The only explanation that I can find for this mysterious phenomenon is that most Kompakt music is superficial and that it lacks concept. Although lack of concept is a concept in itself. According to Joseph Kosuth, "all art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually."

Brain-bending aside, don't you find it odd that it's starting to be more and more about the trip? It's as if the delicate balance between concept and sensation that you see in any good piece of music is starting to accelerate in favor of the trip. Could it be that there are no more good ideas to be applied in music. Is conceptual music at a stand-still until someone discovers molecular music or genetically engineered harmony? OK I admit, all of the above will probably never be more than imaginative bullshit, but let me tell you something that's not.

Do you know why we just witnessed this explosion in the form of minimal music? Here's the picture: through a computer we find out more and more details about the world around us. Obsession for the "rules behind" made way into physics, chemistry, sociology, biology, whatever you want. You can use a computer as a microscope and point it in any chosen direction. What this did is to provoke a twist towards the detail-oriented world of reductionism.

Now then, art always reflects present, past or future times. Taking this into account, minimalism is an artistic exaggeration regarding our present and future environment. What minimalist artists do is to push that microscope as far as it can go, until it's picturing a world of straight lines and dots (relevant video here).

What concept can one find behind a dot? The answer is: none. But as I said earlier - lack of concept is a concept in itself. Ergo minimal.

On this skeleton of lines and dots we've crafted modern music and on this skeleton we trip. Where can we go from here? Where do you go from a skeleton that does not exist?

To Berlin?

Heathen Audio - Jam 003

2009-08-08T19:15:00.010+03:00

Tracklist:

01. Marconi Union - Hatsunori;
02. Jóhann Jóhannsson - IDM 1403. Printer;
03. Soulphiction & Move D - The Limelight;
04. Bloody Mary - Black Pearl (Sascha Funke Remix);
05. Agoria feat. Scalde - Solarized (Heathen Juxtaposition);
06. The Boats - Cars, Bikes, Boats, Babes;
07. Masomenos - Piano;
08. Mary & The Boy - No More Bad Trips For Little Mary;
09. Omnimotion - Love Song (voice: Vilayanur Ramachandran);

All the audio materials used are copyrighted to their respective authors.

Kettenkarussell & Hans Ohm

2009-08-01T18:27:00.029+03:00

It's official - I'm fed up with disco. It was quite an enjoyable ride, with its absolute positivity and dance-floor devouring synths, but it's simply not enough. No matter how positive or energetic disco will ever be, I just can't ignore its cheesiness anymore.

I was trying to figure out why the other day and the only reasonable explanation I could come up with was the diva syndrome. Disco is the number two diva-centric music genre after main-stage pop. Kill the vocal in a disco track and what you're left with is a couple of cowbells and a synth line that is literally ashamed of not being the voice of a singer itself. Heck, even Lindstrøm's music is diva-centered. His live act doesn't have any vocals because he doesn't need any - he is the diva.

With this in mind I sailed towards the uncharted electrical currents of the www. I wanted something new but I didn't know exactly what it was. I knew two things about it though: it had to be positive and it shouldn't, even remotely, hint towards the existence of divas.

What I found are two fantastic sets by artists that I'm ashamed to say I know absolutely nothing about. Yet!

Kettenkarussell's EKG bleeps buried me deep into a new micro-sonic landscape and kept me there for two and a half hours non-stop. Truly rhythmic, masterfully chopped up and pasted back together - it's one of the greatest live sets I've heard this year. Fucking brilliant.

Kettenkarussell

The next set I stumbled upon was an IDM-ish jewel by Hans Ohm entitled Archi-Textures. If your thinking about Akufen's identically named release back in 2000, stop right there because you're not going down the right path.

Archi-textures is a well-crafted collage of several different silent movies. What surprised me the most about Ohm's work is his total disregard towards the cohesion of his musical ideas. This leads to contrast between consecutive musical fragments and to a hallucinating listening experience. If you're not into IDM though, you should just stick to Kettenkarussell, Ohm sometimes gets a tad too glitchy for sensible ears.

Hans Ohm: Archi-Textures

Heathen Audio - Jam 002

2009-06-21T21:23:00.016+03:00

Tracklist:

01. Bozzwell - Marlena's Eyes (Popnoname & Deeppulse Remix);
02. The Rice Twins - Can I Say;
03. Ada - Lovestoned;
04. Jonas Bering - Behind The Silence;
05. Oxtongue - Windows;
06. The Modernist - A Protest Song.

All the audio materials used are copyrighted to their respective authors.

Spotlight: Bogdan

2009-04-16T17:02:00.012+03:00

"First, he needs to be convinced that popularity is not a bad thing".

This is what Bogdan's girlfriend told me a couple of hours before his debut performance. We were at The Ark, in the rocking pre-hours of the second Rokolectiv day and, except for the crew and a couple of artists, there was nobody else around. It was still early, but that wasn't a problem. We knew that true party people only come out at night.

Bogdan was talking to one of the organizers. They were both smiling, but you could tell that he was a little anxious. While waiting for his soundcheck, we had a few minutes to kill.

"I heard that you're afraid of being popular, is that true?", I asked.
"Well, I'm just trying to get out of this musical niche I have been in for the past two years. I've been making music out of passion until now, but it's already too much. I mean, you can't make this kind of music and keep it all to yourself, you know?" He smiled, lighting up another cigarette. His eyes wandered off for a bit and you could tell that balearic, spaced out beach parties were on his mind.

One of the sound engineers called out his name and Bogdan hurried towards the stage. He couldn't wait to test his dub on the unsuspecting set of JBL speakers. With all those cables around, his hands were shaking as if an earthquake had just hit and he was its intended target. "I have something against the idea of a musician mastering his own work", he said earlier. "I consider myself an artist from a creative point of view so I'm not supposed to be a sound engineer, too. It would be a plus, but when it comes to this job, I'd rather leave it to the specialists."

As his trademark dub started flowing from the speakers, Bogdan jumped off to the center of the dance-floor to check out if the quality of the sound suited him. "I was a little worried about this track sounding a bit too distorted", he confessed after a few minutes of minor adjustments. He was also wondering whether his software was stable enough. "I'm all for legitimate music production. I'm jammin' on an Ableton Live 7 trial version which didn't crash so far and I hope it won't cause any problems. I'm also using a demo VST plug-in called PSP Vintage Warmer. It's really simple, nice looking and it's all I use for mastering. So you could say that I'm totally legit."

After the successful sound-check one could see that there was almost no anxiety left to bother Bogdan. It was as if his worries had turned into enthusiasm and he couldn't wait to start his act.

People started to arrive in groups and the venue was quickly filling up. Everyone was excited about the event and there was not a single frown as far as the eye could see. After the first performance was over, everyone was lined up waiting for the big debut. As Bogdan took the stage he was greeted by a round of applause, and the music soon followed.

Gentle at first, Bogdan's dub was a breath of fresh air on the dance-floor. There was a hidden energy beneath the layers of lush chords, slowly accumulating and guiding every one of our dance steps. Enticed by a pinch of bass at the right time, the audience went from swinging blissfully from side to side to a cheering mass of synchronized dancers. You could hear Bogdan's serialist influences in his new dub-infused approach to music. Every series of chords evolved one into the other in perfectly natural manner, while keeping it's rhythm and flow. The people on my right were talking about a second Phil Glass. Apparently he was Romanian and he had a fetish for dub.

Almoust an hour into the performance, Lindstrøm came onstage to set up his gear and shook Bogdan's hand. Later I found out that he had also congratulated him for keeping the rhythm nice and slow, the way that true dub should be. Bogdan ended the performance with his "Tuesday Dub" and he stepped on the dancefloor only to find a mesmerized audience, ready to congratulate him. Some even asked when the new album was going to hit the market.

It was a splendid debut from an emerging artist who's music is best described by the short story he told me prior to the event: "A while ago, I was at home, shuffling through my music when one of my own tracks started playing", he said. "I was just about to change it, when my mother - who was also in the room looking for something - told me I should let it play. She apparently liked it and sat down on the couch to give it a listen. After a couple of minutes, I asked her what made her like this track so much. Then she said the most amazing thing. She said: I didn't think there could be any romance left in this type of music anymore."

Bogdan - City Life

Bogdan - Tuesday Dub

Heathen Audio - Jam 001

2009-04-10T03:13:00.011+03:00

Tracklist:

01. Intro;
02. Mujuice - Blink;
03. Shur-I-Kan - Tubular;
04. Will Saul & Tam Cooper - In And Out;
05. Poni Hoax - Budapest;
06. Supernovac - I:Cube;
07. Mary & The Boy - Are You Still Dancing Can Can;
08. Outro.

All the audio materials used are copyrighted to their respective authors.

The Second Renaissance Of Man

2009-04-03T10:20:00.012+03:00

One thing that sets us apart from the other species in this world is our subjective perception of sound. It is scientifically proven that the human hearing apparatus has the ability to translate audible material into complex emotion (see the recent Max-Planck-Institute paper on this subject here). Both evolution and natural selection is to be thanked for this almost mystical transducing ability. But where do we go from here? What is the next step in the evolution of human hearing?

To answer this question one should first take a quick trip down evolution lane and try to understand why our sense of hearing has evolved into its' current complex form. It is safe to state that hearing, in it's incipient form, was a warning mechanism. Our (very) ancient ancestors used their ears to find out whether there were any predators lurking behind the bushes or if a giant boulder was hurdling towards them, threatening to flatten their rat-like skulls.

The ability to hear in surround was a great addition to this warning apparatus giving our ancestors the added ability to pinpoint the direction and distance from which the danger was coming, thus allowing them the needed time to run the other way.

The big step away from the 'I use my ears to save my life' equation was the appearance of language in its' primitive form. Protolanguage provided the necessary stimulus for a new stage in the development of hearing and the evolutionary focus shifted towards the translation of sound into meaning. In time, the brain was upgraded with the capacity to recognize patterns and shifts in timbre and pitch (by repetition and context placement, for example, 'blarb ug glurp' quickly became associated with 'this mammoth is too spicy').

Alongside these first steps towards the ability to speak, something else occurred that would shape the concept of human into the harmonically infused reasoning machine we know today. Music.

It is still unclear when and in what circumstances music first appeared, although it is safe to state that that it occurred prior to the advent of recorded history. Darwin states in his Origin of Species that it is possible that the human voice itself was the first musical instrument. This is also quite a logical deduction considering that our voice has the ability to mimic sounds. Taking mimicry into account and our ancestors' shamanistic beliefs, one could say that early humans used their voices to copy natural sounds as an aid in their ritual behaviors, thus giving birth to music.

Considering that every human discovery or ability has a tendency to be first applied with a military purpose in mind, I believe that music had its first appeal to the masses as a battle stimulus. Having heard a few log drum hits and ritual shouts from their leader, the prehistoric tribe - armed to the teeth with sticks and stones - was now fully ready to win the battle, grab all the spoils and rape all those hairy female prisoners.

Enter stage three, the translation of sound into emotion. It is my opinion that we have the printing press to thanks for this. In the early 1470s, music started to be printed using this great invention. Music printing had a major effect on how music spread. A printed piece of music could reach a larger audience than any manuscript ever could and it did it in a cheaper fashion as well. This greater spread of music caused a boom in instrument manufacture and so the era of instrument craftsmanship began. Stradivarius anyone?

This was not only a Renaissance of Art but a Renaissance of Man. As the masses awed by the beauty of music grew in number, the mind of man was slowly restructuring itself. The hearing center of our brain was starting to build bridges to the areas responsible for the handling of emotion. As generations passed and music became more complex and better understood, these neural bonds thickened. Several worldwide conflicts, political shifts and scientific spoils later, we find ourselves today, benefiting fully from the emotion-inducing abilities of music.

It is important to understand that the modern era human hearing apparatus (and by this I'm also referring to both the hearing center of the brain and the aforementioned bonds) is the most complex listening device evolution came up with so far. But it has only one fault. I'll get to this in a minute.

The boom in instrument manufacture mentioned earlier is reflected in modern times as well. The advent of the computer, the Internet and digital music technology is the equivalent of reinventing the printing press. Worldwide spread of music is growing exponentially (file-sharing), instrument manufacture is also at an all times peak (new devices and improvements in digital music are implemented almost every month) and sound systems are becoming so immersive that some are almost better than the sound of life itself (Funktion One comes to mind).

So what stimulus does our hearing have to become even more than it is today? Man doesn't have any natural enemies anymore so the need to carefully listen to the bushes is gone. Spoken language can't become any more complex than it is now, unless we suddenly get the ability to communicate with bat-like ultrasounds or infrasounds, like elephants do. Where do we go from here?

One possibility would be to believe that our brain will start to link other areas of itself together. Imagine, if you will, that the hearing center of your brain is connected to the visual cortex. Why stop here? Let's also connect it to the olfactory system (the sense of smell) and to the neural pathways responsible for erotic pleasure.

Although it's nice to imagine that while listening to electronic music abstract visuals take over your field of vision, everything smells like daffodils and you're heading towards your third erotic climax, this is not a real possibility. Why? Because our brain has the flaw of being structurally organic. In order for a descendant of ours to even become sexually aroused at the sight of music, several generations would have to have constant orgies while listening to music in order for the neccesary neural bonds to structure themselves.

Meet Adam. He's 25 and a happy resident of Nubucharest. It's the 5th of April 2099 and he was just about to listen to some music. He didn't have the luck to be born with a silver spoon in his mouth so he has to resort to a rather primitive method of quenching his musical thirst. He picks up the audio out jack of his beloved AudioMate. Before pluging it in the built-in audio port in his cerebellum, he wonders with what marvelous compositions will his antique toy amaze him this time.

The AudioMate is calibrated to his exact musical preferences, but today Adam feels like taking a trip away from his usual electronica. He sets the AudioMate to 'free mode', dims the lights and pushes the 'start composition' button. Having the entire Unified Theory Of Music stored in it's cloud server, the AudioMate starts it's unique live act. Right before the start of the first chorus, Adam remembers to push the 'record' button. He lost so many good pieces because of his forgetfulness, but he won't lose this one.

One hour into the composition process, the Mates' display starts blinking red. At the same time Adam hears a prerecorded female voice overlapping the music: 'Critical error. Please unplug your AudioMate now. For further assistance, consult our dedicated helpline. Have a nice day!'. He quickly pulls the plug out and starts to curse.

Considering that AudioMates were no longer being manufactured, he would have no choice but to buy himself an iNanite shot now. All his friends told him that it's the new craze. Apparently, iNanites are not like the temporary nanites that doctors use, they're permanent. They travel up the blood stream to your brain and deliver electric impulses straight at the source. He had a few doubts about the control mechanism though. You're supposed to turn them on and off by blinking twice in quick succession. Still, what if you get something stuck in your eye?

Leaving fiction aside for a moment, I believe that we are, hearing-wise, a few steps ahead of The Second Renaissance Of Man. Just like the printing press was the cause of the emotion-inducing capabilities that music can now offer, so will technology in a (hopefully not so) distant future allow us to perceive music with all our senses. Moreover, we are limited by our organic nature when it comes to the speed with which our bodies evolve. So why not let technology become our necessary stimulus?

I'm not saying that we should become part of the sound system, but that we should focus on building better bridges between our bodies and the tools we now have at our disposal. Imagine a world in which you could listen to your favorite music through electrical signals sent directly to your brain, stimulating all your senses at once. A world in which you could transform your emotions straight into music thanks to a newly discovered man/machine interface. A world in which you could share those emotions and that music in your head with anyone.

Before you get there though, just remember: when you put your headphones on... don't blink twice.

Will Saul - Aus Music... All Night Long

2009-03-26T23:54:00.008+02:00

Aus Music is the brainchild of Will Saul and Fin Greenall (also known to electronic music afficionados by his Sideshow moniker). Starting from its advent Aus Music succeeded in gathering a core of very talented artists under it's musical wings. Lee Jones (well known for his most recent Electronic Frank), Sian and David "Broon" Brown (half of Swayzak), together with the founders themselves, are Aus Music's core entourage, so to speak.

This double disk compilation has a solid purpose in mind: to keep you up and dancing Aus Music...All Night Long. Its impressive list of contributors hints that this label isn't shy at all when it comes to doing just that.

The exclusive track series opens up with a performance from Sideshow himself and Cortney Tidwell in charge of vocal hypnosis. You can almost taste the dub as Tidwell's warm voice builds layers of delight over Sideshow's percussive work. As mesmerizing as it is gentle, you'll find yourself humming Television's blurred chords and lyrics in no time. Next up, Roland Appel balances the scales in favor of his disco groove and piano fetish. Wonderful.

Although Appel's exclusive Snow In Springtime is hard to follow, the next three tracks do it in a dance-floor friendly fashion. Sian's deep drones and Shur-I-Kan's bubbly arpeggios may seem like a new take on old notes, but they can definitely make the floor move. One the other hand, Brooks's sinister synthwork marks a shift to the dark side. When Iwanchu hits the speakers, you can tell that a change is about.

Enter the mysterious Pearson Sound. Syncopated, tribal and dupstep inclined, Indelible uses it's syncopated beats as a true movement catalyzer. Appleblim & Ramadanman follow up with an innovative dubstep take on house and Martyn puts a temporary end to broken percussions with his eerie For Lost Relatives.

Back in the realm of straight 4 by 4, Lawrence's take on Aria and Lee Jones's Lab, although lacking the energy of any of the tracks so far, mark a perfect entrance for Will Saul & Tam Cooper's melancholic Heartwave.

Courtesy of Aus Music, so far you could hear it all but the fat lady sing. If you can imagine Martyn as a fat lady though, you're about to stand corrected. Electric Purring, ends this wild chase in style and syncopated finesse. It's the perfect full stop for a lush, extremely diverse and ultimately beautiful compilation.

If your musical thirst isn't quenched yet, plug in disk number two and let the chase continue. From Lee's harmonically infused four to the floor musical backbone, to Sideshow's dub imbued electronica and Will Saul's dance-floor destined techno-with-a-dash-of-house, things can't get any more melodic than this.

Pixel - The Drive

2009-03-24T20:40:00.020+02:00

Border-lining the edge of musical sanity, Jon Egeskov conjures up "The Drive" to show us that he is quite an artisan when it comes to minuscule sound.

After that first push of the triangle-shaped button, the journey commences. It starts as a drone, perhaps granular in nature, but eternally oscillating. Resonating and self-replicating over every other frequency of the audible spectrum, the drone is the only available constant. Although it's color changes perpetually, it's shape does not. It reminds you of that hum you always hear when you're driving. The carefully masked beats become the sound of rhythmic road bumps, pulsating slowly under the tires of your glitch-mobile.
You almost don't notice those microscopic cracks until they fully set in. They puncture patterns in this alien landscape you're still not familiar with. It could be musical pointillism at it's best or nanoscopic dwarfs drumming on a tip of a needle, right next to your ear.
The road bumps get bigger and the major scale is obsolete. So is it's minor twin. There's only the nanoscale and everything follows its rule in this tension-filled glitchscape.

Too bad you can't hear sound through a magnifying glass.
...

Spotlight: Popnoname

2009-03-13T15:06:00.004+02:00

After the release of his recent "Surrounded By Weather", Jens-Uwe Beyer took a little time away from his weather-watching to answer some of our questions regarding Popnoname and the concept behind his work so far.

H.A. How was the feedback on your new album?

The feedback is good worldwide. I’m very happy about this, because I didn’t try to produce a certain genre, like music for the club, for the sofa or for the bathroom. I felt free producing the "Surrounded By Weather" album. It was not the style that was important, but the mood I had when I was working in my studio. I think this freedom overcomes it all. It was done in one flow.
Emails, Myspace/facebook/soundcloud messages or DJ’s at the club confirm it everyday. The press is also good, although it’s funny to see what parallels they make. They want to put my music in between different references so as to explain it, so my music is like:

... Sure there are nods towards Lindstrom or more obviously Royksopp...
... vocally there's even a hint of Erland Øye but this is fused with the shoegazer sentiment of early Ulrich Schnauss or James Holden...
... Even the most po-faced early Mode/Human League/Foxx fans should poke their nose in here...
... and a new feeling for Krautrock or Glam Pop - once created by "La Düsseldorf" ...
... vocal harmonies à la "Beach Boys" ...
... naar Brian Wilson. Naar Pet Shop Boys...
... un Terry Riley ou un Brian Eno acquis à la cause techno, un Robert Wyatt qui se serait entiché du ronronnement rassurant d'un beat millimétré...
... Wyatt/Eno que Depeche Mode ou PSB...
... 80er House – und Synthpop – Zitate wie die Junior Boys...
... Krautdisco a la Studio, Todd Terrje oder Prins Thomas zuzudecken...
... trabajos del legendario Jean Michel Jarre y, quizás también con el propio Ryuichi Sakamoto...
... con Neu! se habia conseguido, pero no atrapado....
... La Düsseldorf fué considerada –textualmente– por Bowie "the soundtrack of the eighties" ... ... Sogar ihr Sänger übt so lange, bis er klingt wie Neil Tennant...
... So ergeben sich kleine Parallelen zu Künstlern wie Turner oder Notwist...
... Quersumme aus britischem Songwritertum zwischen Rufus Wainwright oder Aqualum ...
... Das erinnert etwas an Phantom / Ghost...

I think there is a big distance between Beach Boys and Ryuichi Sakamoto, but it’s funny to see all these different perceptions of my music.

H.A. It was quite a surprise to hear you sing this much on "Surrounded By Weather". What made you take this big step in favor of pure pop?

It overcomes me. In the beginning there is always a tone, like an ambient track – it might as well be the noise, the surrounding or the nature. I listen to it and my fantasy begins to nurture a musical idea. Sometimes it becomes a techno track. Sometimes I hear a pop song in it. It’s the same with the lyrics: when I have a sentence, or a theme in my mind, we listen to the track a lot and then we begin to write down the lyrics. I write the lyrics together with Michael Heydebreck.
"ID-card" was written when I came back from Hamburg – I was in a strange mood, and threw away my ID card and money... and everything for good, because I was so angry with myself and with the world; otherwise it’s also a love song. The lyrics on "Touch" are more friendly – I had yellow flowers on my desktop and it was a good reason to write a song about it... a love song, as well ;)

H.A. What do you think the purpose of lyrics on a track is?

It’s different from artist to artist and from one song to another, of course! Music becomes more clear if there is a singer and a message. Music can send messages. The lyrics are not as important as we may think, but they’re another means of expression. For me there is no purpose in the lyrics. When I want to sing, I sing, when I don’t I just let it be.

H.A. Autotune is starting to be preferred by a growing number of worldwide producers for "photoshoping" their singers' voice. Do you use it?

... When I have a bad day ;) No, for me Autotune is a tool or an instrument, like the guitar or the hammer. If you draw with a pencil you will have an eraser by your side, for example. It’s a question of what you want and what you don’t want.

H.A. Should there be less technology and more creativity in modern electronic music?

Yes!

H.A. What is your stance on the soon to appear Melodyne, the ever present quantize feature and this entire tend towards "perfection" in music?

I know what you mean – Melodyne scares me. It’s the same with the new Logic program, for example. You have everything and you can do anything you want. You can change everything, like guitar chords from major to minor, or the male voice into female voice, but in the end – what are the most important things to making good music? A grasshalm in your hands or a bongo drum, different people who are playing together, who find the same edge of expression.
Listening to the nature is music for me, at this moment. I’m in Mexico, living in a house in the middle of the jungle, from where I can listen to the ocean. The electronic aspect is handled by the windmill on the house. It’s real music... surrounded by weather!
Perfectly produced music is dead, or has just become a part of the soundsystem.

H.A. Except for your voice, what other instruments did you use in the production stage to make your new tracks have such an acoustic vibe?

A Fender Strat guitar, an old Höffner bass and I also know how to use a sampler machine...

H.A. How can you tell when one of your tracks qualifies as releasable material?

When I’m in the mood for another track. Every musician has to find his way to finish a track. You can sit in the studio one year for a track or you can make a whole album in that time. Both are alright. I leave a track when I can’t finish it. After some time it comes back to me. If it’s a good track, then it needs to be continued or finished,
so I say: "OK, let’s do it!”

H.A. "Perspective" reminds me of the work that "The Field" is doing. Is Popnoname 100% Jens-Uwe Beyer or do you work with other artists as well?

It’s funny that you say that. I’m sure both Axel and I don’t think it sounds similar. But before I finished my album I sent "Perspective" to Axel (The Field) asking what he thinks about the track and whether I should put it on my album, as well. He phoned me and said - "In any case!" His flatmate in Stockholm also loved the song a lot.
Axel made a Popnoname gig in Cologne when I was in Tokyo. He only had one drum machine. We are good friends, but Popnoname is 100% Popnoname.
I’m Popnoname - you should be Popnoname, as well…
I work with a lot of musicians like ADA, Von Spar, The Modernist, Dee Pulse, John Stanier (drummer of Battles) onstage or in sessions.
But to this point all my releases are produced by myself. Maybe this will change with the third album.

H.A. Where does your work stand in an already crowded German electronic music scene?

Don’t ask me that – I’m in Mexico!

H.A. Since Klaus Schulze's pseudo-techno, electronic music has gone a long way, where do you see it going from here?

Most of the electronic music nowadays is boring – not boring like ambient-boring, but because it’s produced for people who don’t want something new. They want the "perfect" sound for their "imperfect" life. That makes no sense.
Music could be a message. If you have to expess something through music, do it! If not, let it be...
Klaus Schulze made electronic music with his heart, and it was revolutionary because nobody had done it before. Machines became instruments. He had the same energy with some machines like other people with a whole orchestra or with a band.
Anyway... good music is here to stay – bad music will go down.
In which direction electronic music will go, that is exciting. After all I don’t know, but we will see and it will be nice to be part of it!

You can find out more on J's homepage and myspace

Popnoname - ID Card

Diego Stocco - Music From Sand

2009-03-01T14:27:00.001+02:00

Diego Stocco - Music From Sand from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.

Spotlight: Ali Renault

2009-02-25T22:33:00.002+02:00

While being notorious for its broken beats and heavy bass sounds, London has always held many musical delights. Don't be awed to find out that disco had its own ways of resounding the butterfly effect, as well as being cherished and re-invented by a small circle of enthusiasts. Ali Renault, who happens to be half of the more notorious Heartbreak, mingles the dark waves of electro with his long-time love for italo and rock while sharing bits of how things stand where he comes from.

H.A. Italo, one of the world’s first forms of electronic dance music, got its name from fully developing itself in Italy during the late ‘70s/early ‘80s. What’s the story of its revival in the UK?

I don't know if I would call it a revival, it’s more like a fetish among select freaks if you ask me. Naturally everyone who is into italo here knows one another because there are so few of us. I think a lot of people have heard of italo without fully understanding what it is. It’s a very fashionable word unfortunately.

H.A. You founded Cyber Dance along with Casionova and Spruxx so as to promote italo disco productions. How was the scene, if any, back then?

We made the 'Elecktryck Magyck' EP in 2005 and found it hard to get a distribution deal. I suppose we didn't slot into any category and we were unknown artists so distributers were unsure of taking us on. We ended up sourcing the distribution ourselves and did eventually receive help from Juno, abroad with Flexx in Belgium and now with Rubadub in Glasgow.

H.A. Your releases are either splits and/or come in limited copies. Are you trying to stay true to the underground or is that only justified by financial means?

Both really. Most of the records I've been featured on have been put out by labels that I run with friends so as you can imagine there's no money to go around. The first Cyber Dance record was funded by three of us scraping together money from anywhere we could, in my case a student loan. We knew there would be no profit and didn't know what we were doing but we had to give it a go. The releases are limited because we can't justify pressing any more due to manufacturing costs and the fact that not enough people buy vinyl anymore. Our releases are deliberately vinyl only in an effort to keep this precious format alive.

H.A. As you started spinning records 12 years ago, your preferences slided from Detroit/Chicago techno towards italo. How come it was this way?

I took on this retro approach because I wasn't finding much music that excited me within any current scenes at the time. I had a break from DJing for a while around ‘97/’98 when I started producing and messing around with synths, which also turned my ear on to old electro records and the more pop angle of synthesizer productions from the ‘80's. When I found italo, it all made sense very quickly.

H.A. Please describe your love relationship with sythesizers and how’s it been going on.

I don't know if its a 'love' relationship, more like a means to an end. I don't have that much gear really, I've slowly built up a humble studio set up over 10 years borrowing bits from friends and forcing myself at times to spend money I don't have on mediocre equipment.

H.A. Your approach on italo surely beat it the slow way. Are you against speed?

Not at all. I only took on the slow approach for the Dissident label because I initially thought it was going to be a cosmic disco sort of vibe and I had never really produced that kind of thing so I thought they would go for a Miami Vice night drive approach as an alternative. All my tracks that aren't affiliated with Dissident are of a more regular speed.

H.A. A true lover of the genre would now find his resources either through CBS’ Top 100s or through UK’s premiere italo disco radio station, Magic Waves. What’s the relationship and which are the differences between the two?

There isn't any relationship between the two although Ferenc allowed us to play some CBS mixes on Magic Waves that we were into. Of course, sadly, the CBS isn't operating anymore. Magic Waves is really just a radio stream with a basic messaging service for people to make inquiries on. There's no forum. This is because we believe that the music should speak for itself.

H.A. What about now, are there many labels promoting this sort of sound in London? Just how international is this current, after all?

There are quite a few labels that promote the 'nu disco' sound for want of a better description but not italo as such in London. Most of the labels that push the sound we're into tend to come from Holland, Belgium and Italy to name a few.

H.A. Another project of yours, Heartbreak, is certainly the most succesful of them all, getting more and more favourable press reviews during the past year. Where do all the credits for this go to?

My good friend Sebastian Muravchik and myself.

H.A. There are certain things in the appearance of certain artists (such as your team-mate Casionova’s long hair, the tees you often wear and even some of the Heartbreak sounds) that cross-reference rock. Is there a particular connection between the music you make and the attitude you guys display?

Yes. A lot of us used to be into heavy metal as kids and we all still listen to metal today. Heavy Metal was our first love and you never forget your first love.
Musically what we are making is heavy metal on synthesizers. People enjoy our music as italo disco, which shows the similarities and relationship between italo and metal we think. They share the same energy and fantasy.

H.A. Side-digging your work, we've been trashed by another side-project you run, Cestrian. What would be the reasons behind it for which we should try and still enjoy it?

Whilst I admire the soft fantasies of italo music, I also enjoy sonic audio violence. You don't have to like it of course.

H.A. Spacey sounds and myspace top electro hits compilations go together like… ?

Rhubarb & custard.

Ali Renault - Our World Is...

Ali Renault - Victory Horn

POPular?

2009-02-19T03:12:00.002+02:00

A couple of minutes ago, I logged on to my last.fm account. I checked out the available events for this weekend, answered a few messages and thought to myself "Hey, why don't you check out the last.fm artist charts for a change, that should be interesting?" A couple of clicks and a cigarette later, I was surprised. Why? You'll find out in a bit.

Ever since Wendy Carlos's 1968 "Switched On Bach" and Yamaha's mass marketing in the 80s, the synthesizer took the world of music by surprise. Owing it's popularity to it's small size, it's mobility and it's "design-a-sound-from-scratch" features , the present day synthesizer actually makes it possible to carry an entire band, if not several, in your shoulder bag.

I don't know about you, but the music that I like the most is electronic in both it's nature and it's design. Of course I take my regular trips into world music, acoustic african rhythms or neo-classical masterpieces, but I do that mostly because of my curiosity to research the field of music as deeply as I can. At my core, I am all for synthetic. Infinite sound possibilities equals infinite ways to have fun, right?

Now imagine my surprise when I visited the last.fm chart, clicked on the 'top artist' button and found that the first electronic music artist to appear on last.fm was charted at #22. At a staggering 70000 listeners, behind Coldplay (curently ranked #1), Daft Punk and their geometrical live act, are the cream of worldwide electronic music to date (in the world of last.fm, at least). Does that mean that Daft Punk are fucking brilliant? Yes. Does that mean that electronic music is popular? Very unlikely.

According to the dictionary, popular means suitable for the majority. Taking that into account, and the twenty one indie-or-not rock bands that hold their place in front of Daft Punk on last.fm, I dare say that, despite worldwide efforts, electronic music is stil a niche genre. Of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's actually the first thing that gives synthetic music it's mystical alure and it's atuned-to-the-underground feeling. If it weren't for it's heathen appeal, drugs and it's wild-parties-in-the-middle-of-nowhere roots, electronic music would not be where it is today.

Don't you find it intriguing that so much pure pop is starting to be infused into modern electronic music? Isn't it strange that disco is quickly becoming the newly recrowned prince of the electronic scene? Should we be concerned whether twenty years from now we will all be listening to a standardized auto-tuned pop voice squelching it's overused chords on a globally accepted rhythmical frame? A simple no would suffice for all of the questions above. But if you ask yourselves "Is electronic music becoming popular?", you'll quickly find that a plain no is just not enough.

Electronic music is just taking it's first steps towards mass approval, and there's a lot of evidence to back that up. Disco for example, and it's second coming, can be considered as the first electronic music genre to withstand the test of time. It had it's experimental beginings, we almost forgot it, and now it resurfaced in a much more mature and enveloping shape. Another good example would be techno and the growing number of techno producers out there that don't turn away from the lessons taught a while ago by the Beatles and other pop groups when it comes to catchy music. If we could also find a trend that borrows ideas and procedures from the current all-time king of music (rock), then the picture would be complete. But wait, we have Soulwax and their likes. They manage to explore the connections between rock and electronica in an astounding way (Any Minute Now and Nite Versions, for instance).

However we look at it, electronic music is a serious contender for the crown and it's quickly learning from it's peers. It somehow manages to sample everything good in all genres and to envelop that something into it's own synthetic principles. A word of warning though, no matter if electronica is headed to the first place in the charts or to the sixth, no matter if in 10 years we'll have that worldwide technotronic trend some of us are phantasizing about or not, we should all try to remember one thing: to try to have a wild party in the middle of nowhere at least once in a while.

Spotlight: Matias Aguayo

2009-02-13T14:59:00.002+02:00

Matias Aguayo's work is starting to shape itself slowly, but firmly, into an unique blend of modern music. With their characteristic subliminal vocals that seem to slither between an unearthly percussive ensemble, Aguayo's realeases show us that rhythm is key. We managed to have a chat with the man behind the music to try and find out where did the inspiration for his signature sound come from.

H.A. There are a lot of rumors about the supposed "death" of minimal, yet your releases are more alive than ever. What's your opinion on this?

I think generalizing statements about cultural developments, or a certain "zeitgeist" are always wrong somehow, because they only reflect something thought on the base of a certain context and so on, coming from a person living from a certain place, with certain perceptions. Death of disco, death of high energy – for some people this music never died and never will, and why should one context be more state of the art than another. On Youtube, for example, we can see there are a lot of "alive" things out there that the readers of music magazines never imagined, just because they are not delivered by the distributers who send journalists the promos to write about.

The introspective character and the rigidness of "minimal" is something that doesn't appeal to me, I prefer to dance to other grooves for sure, for others maybe it's a revelation then. I don't get it, but it doesn't mean it is dead.

H.A. A lot of minimal techno producers are against the idea of any vocals in minimal tracks. How come you use hums and vocals so often in your productions?

I don't care about rules in music and I see no reason why I shouldn't use the tools I've got, my voice being one of them, or why I shouldn't implement any other element that appeals to me. Why is there an interest to put control over your own music? Especially in this age of more and more control, music should reflect another position than: I just have to do tracks between 125 and 128 bpm, all with a bassdrum, and no vocals – it's 2009!!!

H.A. Do you use your own voice, or other singers'?

In most of cases I use my own voice, but there have been some collaborations featuring the voices of others, like Ladybumbox on the first "Cómeme" release and Lerato on the second. I am getting deeper into collaborations, especially with our "Cómeme" label based in Buenos Aires and directed by Gary Pimiento and me. We are into the idea of collaboration between the involved musicians who somehow express a common vibe.

H.A. No matter how hard I've tried, I just can't understand those catchy lyrics on the chorus of "De Papel". Are they real words, or just gibberish?

I sure won't reveal the secret, but there is a musical logic in vocals, beyond a literal message with solid words. There is so much music to enjoy and feel, where you don't get the words, because they are in a language you don't know. This type of communication appeals to me a lot. I find it very musical, in the sense of the open spaces that music creates, being very direct and abstract at the same time.

H.A. After listening to "Argento", I have to ask, do you use beat-boxing by any chance?

If you mean that I do beats with my voice, yes. Beat-boxing sounds more like a genre to me or let's say a discipline, like skateboarding or BMX. I wouldn't like to compete with that, I am not good at imitating instruments. I just find I can express a rhythm better with my voice than with a drum machine sometimes.

H.A. Most of your tracks seem to rely mostly on your beats and percussion instruments while leaving everything else aside. Do you consider this as your signature?

I wouldn't say I leave everything else aside, but yes, I like to focus on rhythm. In the end it is dance music, and the rhythm is the energy that makes your body move. Every element of a dance rhythm should implement the possibility to be answered or to be accompanied by different body movements. At least that's what I like about dance tracks I dance to.

H.A. How do you design your beats?

I play them. Doing music with the help of a computer can somehow be boring in the sense that it can really turn more into "design" or "programming". That's not too much fun for me, so I try to make the process as enjoyable for me as possible, therefore the use of the mic.

H.A. What's the story behind "Walter Neff" and what does it have to do with Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity"?

I love that film, specially the dialogs. But the track has not much to do with it anymore, it developed, acoustically, from the name itself and the character taken as a person appearing in different contexts, doing the "dirty jobs" you don't wanna do. Walter Neff appears in the parody "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid", later in an appartment before it burns down, and then again, trying to make a little money playing in nightclubs and singing "right, right, right"...

H.A. What makes Kompakt your label of choice?

Apart from practically growing up with them during my years and years in Cologne, a natural development so to say, I also don't know many other labels where I could feel musically as free, and where I could feel such a support and interest by the people who run the label. The fact that POP is so appealing to them is important for me, too. Kompakt are no strict followers of nerdy techno-seriousness at all, that easiness makes them also appealing to me on top.

I also love to work with Souljazz Records, real music lovers, and I am very happy with what we are developing on "Cómeme" with help of friends from Argentina, Mexico, Santiago de Chile, Cologne, London etc.

H.A. What exactly is the BumBumBox you mention on your myspace?

"Bumbumbox" are parties we started to do on the streets of Buenos Aires, from 2007 on. Later on we went to Santiago de Chile, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Montevideo, Asunción, Medellín etc. We started to do them with a small soundsystem containing several boomboxes, and mp3 players... listening and dancing to sets friends sent us from all over the world... the non-commercial character of it allows a lot of musical freedom, and the participation of people from such different places and their own visions let those parties get a lot of musical richness and diversity. We wanted something else than the standarized music consumption in clubs, so we did the parties on the street.

Also the fact that people you don't know join the party is great. We love the idea of opening spaces, other possibilities of diffusion or relationship to music, the street and what can happen there, opening to a less selected and standarized audience. Musically, this has been also very inspiring and led us to the idea of creating "Cómeme". The "street sound" led us to produce music in another way, so we posted it on Myspace, people started asking if it will come out on vinyl, and we started to think about working on that. New necessities and new ideas will lead us to next steps, and this unpredictable thing is something we all love, including the artists Rebolledo, Diegors, DJs Pareja, Petro, etc.

H.A. Minimal is ...

Cumbia is... House is... Techno is... Champeta is... Salsa is... Reggae is...

Spotlight: Dusty Kid

2009-02-10T21:06:00.002+02:00

Although quite busy working on his debut album, Paolo Alberto Lodde (known to connaisseurs as Dusty Kid) managed to shed a little light on his past, his present and his analogue fetishes.

H.A. Is there a connection between your stage name and the fact that you consider The Chemical Brothers an influence to your music?

The name was conceived by Stefano Noferini because every time I left his studio – which was full of records covered in dust – I had my hands totally covered in it, too. I found that name connected to some western poor kid that cleans cowboy boots and is also connected with my fetish for guys' knickers :P

H.A. Leaving your piano and violin experiences aside – do you rely on your talent only or do you actually put in days of hard work in order for your tracks to have their distinctive feel?

The first one, but it doesn't work everyday, unfortunately. A good track is just about the moment you start to create: follow your mind and fantasy, don’t bother to copy the records of other people.

H.A. Does the quality of the equipment you use make a big difference regarding the overall quality of your tracks, or could you hit us with a club killer by only using a circuit-bended Gameboy wired to the speakers?

My first record was made on a keyboard conceived for karaoke and pianobar in 1997. After that I made all the Duoteque records with a 45 Euro audio card and an old PC, while everybody asked me where I learned to use Pro Tools and its outboards! That’s why I think a laptop is enough to create good music today. It's just up to the composer to make it interesting. Now I’m in love with my Roland Jupiter 6 keyboard.

H.A. How was work on Moby's – “Disco Lies”, guessing that every big name in town is now after your skills as a remixer?

I get lots of remix requests everyday, it's true, from little artists to big names. But, at the moment, I cannot work on this anymore. I prefer to work on my own music. Of course, if Madonna would ask me for a remix one day, I couldn’t say no! Still, I'd rather collaborate with someone instead of remixing him/her. I think this deal now is just a way to sell more records: if you're satisfied of your track why would you ask someone else to remix it? if you're not satisfied, why would you wanna publish it?

H.A. The Quick One: In a fight between a digital musician and a pure bred analogue one, who is gonna be the winner? (No hitting below the belt allowed)

The digital one is gonna be the loser!

Moby - Disco Lies (Dusty Kid Remix)

Dusty Kid - Milk

You can find some of Paolo's tracks and touring information on his myspace.

Spotlight: Ugress

2009-02-06T04:29:00.002+02:00

With his 3 released albums of great quality, Gisle Martin Mayer (self proclaimed future ruler of the world, technology afficionado and sole architect of Ugress) is quietly, but quickly, trying to take over the electronic music scene. Considering that we don’t see Norwegians trying to rule the world quite so often, it was only natural that such a grand plan would catch our attention. We collided with GMM while he was plotting his next steps in world domination and, several mind control techniques later, managed to gather a few words of wisdom about file sharing, gadgets and the future of the music business.

H.A. While reading your blog we couldn't help but think: are you secretly hoping that robots will rule the world one day?

Not exactly robots alone, I plan on ruling the world myself, with the help of my loyal robot army.

H.A. You seem like a person who's keen on innovation. Apart from the robots of all shapes and sizes, what is the first thing you currently can't wait to get your hands on?

The Melodyne DNA (Direct Note Access) software, to be released later this year. It lets you pick out and manipulate individual notes and harmonies from a sample or a track. So you can take a piece in E major and change it to A minor, or remove tonal information completely.

H.A. So far, did you go for the newest available technology in the making of your albums?

Always. I even upgraded to the latest Logic Pro 8 right in the final stage of production for the latest Ugress album. Of course I have backups and ready rollbacks in case something goes wrong, but I love living on the edge, where things can break down, pushing technology to the limits. My live-show setup: four laptops (audio and video) running in sync over MIDI wifi. It is begging for problems... :)

H.A. Did you also take some trips down old synthesizers' memory lane?

Not directly but I sometimes borrow or buy old synths, sample them into my library, and pass them on. I have samples and sounds laying around, which sometimes makes the foundation, or hook, for a new track. The bleeps and bloops from the Regression 22 track on my last album all come from analog samples. I also bought a used Korg Prophecy last year, it works great as a robust MIDI controller for the live show.

H.A. What is it you miss the most from your old studio setup that you entirely sold away?

I don't miss any hardware, except perhaps the studio monitors for checking mixes. But I really miss a dedicated place to go for concentration and focus, and the ability to work at loud levels all night.

H.A. What is the hardware setup that gave birth to Unicorn?

A PowerMac G5 with a MOTU Traveller, playing on Mackie HR824's. I also used a Rocktron talk-box and microphones of course, but I cannot remember the mics for the vocals - we borrowed a bunch of mics from a neighboring studio, and tried various ones for various tracks and vocalists.

H.A. How can you tell when one of your tracks is releasable material?

I think you can tell that a track is standing on its own at some point, it has a "soul". I guess this is the moment a track goes from status "idea" to "not finished". From there you have to sort of figure out what is missing, or what is wrong with the track, how to make it complete, taking it from a "not finished" level to the "finished". I don't have any formulas for knowing these things, it is just a sense of "completeness". And I am probably often wrong, haha.

H.A. Which are the main advantages and disadvantages of going completely digital?

The main advantage is the extreme degree of freedom and portability, which makes me very productive. Right now I am in a small cabin in the Southern coast of Norway, with my laptop on a HDSPA connection via my cellphone. I have my sound library and projects on a portable HD, so I have my whole studio and a 1 mbit connection anywhere in the world. I am working on setting up my own online merchandise store, doing interviews, keeping in touch with fans, planning the next live show, and writing music for a television show. In a few hours I will go out to my friends who are spending the whole day lounging in the sun on an island, a few minutes through the woods from the cabin. I can take my whole life anywhere. If I was studio based and dependent on hardware, I wouldn't be able to travel down here and spend the sunset with friends.

One potential backside is that my work becomes completely entangled in my life; I am not able to separate one from the other. For a person in an office job, I can imagine you really don't want your work to follow you everywhere you go. But I am a musician and a composer, that is my life, I prefer to have it all combined. I never know when inspiration hits, or when I can have a dry period. I don't mind working 18-hour days, since I get to do what I love anywhere I want. A digital existence makes this very possible.

H.A. What is the wacky invention you are most proud of in your current live-show setup?

There are several items, I have a huge train controller originally designed for Playstation that is very large, tangibly and physically. I use it as a MIDI controller. I also have a bunch of electronic lightning/plasma lightning based toys that are slightly modified and adapted to make a certain visual impact. For example, at one point in the live show we turn on all these silly electronics and suddenly my setup comes alive with blinking, buzzing and glowing electronics. It looks like a cartoonish laboratory. Very awesome! :)

H.A. What are the biggest difficulties you came across while trying to market your music?

Reaching out to people, being heard and noticed, is the hardest part. Being a small artist in a small country and being only one person means that there are limited options for marketing music. Those competing for these options are fighting hard. Naturally, the bigger companies and artists with a large marketing budget win because they can afford to hire publicists and promoters for plugging their music. I'm not complaining, but just observing this as a fact. I release music on my own, with great freedom, but the price I pay for that is a lower budget and less resources for mass marketing.

H.A. Honestly (and let's hope the FEDs aren't watching), did you ever download music, illegally?

Yes, of course. If someone mentions or recommends a track, and I can't find it using any legal options, or none of my friends has it, then I turn to torrents to see if I can find it there. This is the reason for piracy - accessibility and variety. Digital music stores should be better and easier to use than pirate torrents. Until that day comes, people will be pirating. File-sharing is potentially dangerous because if it runs completely free, it can kill off the only income for many artists that don't tour. At the same time, file-sharing really helps the DISTRIBUTION and SPREAD of music, which is really beneficial to all artists. The music business is really changing now, much because of file-sharing.It is a tricky balance to keep, so that both fans and artists would feel comfortable.

H.A. What is your take on music sharing: punishable by death or just a minor risk of the trade?

It is a natural consequence of a stupid and ignorant music business, that never saw the potential of the Internet. The major labels really fucked it up for themselves - and still do. They did not provide a way for the river to run, so the river found its own way. Until the music business provides a great system for digital music distribution, I do not think that music sharing should be punishable, with the exception of a warning and perhaps a ticket for those who own really share big libraries. Reducing file-sharing to something evil, or something good, is naive. File-sharing is a problem but also a solution. It is our responsibility as artists (the sender) to provide something that works for the fans (the receiver). It is not the other way around.

H.A. What are the advantages you think Web 3.0 will bring to the process of music distribution?

Oh wow I could talk for hours about this. But quickly summarized, with lots of trendy buzz terminology: I think that web 3.0 will further decentralize control and distribution, being independent will become more and more important. Every node in the network will become both a consumer and a provider. Torrents / p2p technology will be used for everything. Microtransactions (a few nano-cents every time your music is copied from one machine to another) will become the most important income source for artists. Renting software and hardware will free up technological barriers for poor artists. Mash-ups and convergence not only between genres but also between medias will make control and limits of distribution impossible, and new software technologies will emerge to help artists create new sorts of art and music, and utilize the system for ways of distribution we cannot imagine today. We really should have a few rounds of beer to talk about all this, I am so excited for the future.

H.A. How do you plan on making Uncanny Records stand out from the vast choice of labels and record companies?

Well that question is pretty simple. I refer back to question 1) regarding total world domination. When I rule the world everyone will love me unconditionally, worship my music and buy my albums over and over every day. Those that don't will be executed painfully.

H.A. Name three things that you would like your listeners to associate with your Uncanny releases.

Good music, a great escape, uncanny reality.

H.A. One sentence answer, give us an idea of what Ugress 4 will be like.

Biophonic cinemasplosions.

This ends our small but hopefully conclusive chat with the maker of Cinematronics, Resound and, of course, Unicorn. To all the fans out there, keep watching the Ugress website. Sooner or later, Ugress 4 will pop up.

Attention! Music

2009-02-05T15:38:00.002+02:00

A lot of people have talked about the subject of how we perceive music in a complex context, yet there is one clear thing yet to be noticed in this age of stimuli overcharge. What I'm talking about is the effects that music has on an already busy mind. I will take a Jungian approach to this subject and refer to my own recent experiences, some of which I hope will be ones also shared with you.

The last year has been extremely hectic for me, both music-wise and in concern to the amount of information I managed to digest. Everyone reads blogs, some of us a lot, some of us a lot less and a few of us can't even live without scrolling their retinas on a blog, at least every hour or so. It has become a habit of mine, to get off work, put some (new) music on, boot up my mac and start reading every recent post on my blog reader and I'm quite sure that this is the case for a lot of you.

Considering that, after it's big bang, the blogosphere is continuously expanding and embedding more and more fields of interest each passing day, my blog reader has grown from a tiny collection of feeds to what I would call an RSS giant. Of course, my giant is incomparable to the ones of some people I know, and probably even to your own.

Here is where the interesting part comes in. If you do a quick search on the concept of attention you will find that it is "The process whereby a person concentrates on some features of the environment to the (relative) exclusion of others" (Webster definition). William James writes in his Principles of Psychology that "Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrain state which in French is called distraction, and Zerstreutheit in German."

James wrote his book in the 1800s but many of it's points of focus are still under debate today. One of these focus points is whether attention can be "split" or not. Scientists have not yet come to a conclusion regarding this subject but there is a wide belief that there are two types of attention: overt attention (it's the type of attention used when you actively focus on something) and covert attention (this type of attention is complementary to overt attention and usually creates a sensory panorama from the stimuli sources you do not willingly focus your attention on).

About myself, I have to say that I am extremely attentive when it comes to electronic music. I am also extremely interested in knowledge and about securing even the most tiny piece of useful information, from every source that I can find. I would say that both of these points of interest hold the top place in my scale of cognitive wants. Also, it is safe to assume that some blogs are useful sources of information. Not all of them, heaven forbid, not even most of them, but some are a good fountain of knowledge.

I said earlier that, for some time now, I use to open my reader and also put some music on. What I didn't mention is that I also try to adjust the volume of said music so that I can be aware of it and the post that I'm reading, at the same time. Also, I tried to actively focus my attention on both stimuli at once. Practically, what I have been doing is to try and split my overt attention into two equal parts.

What I noticed is this: at first, it was pretty hard to have two trains of thought running through my head at the same time. I often found part of my attention morphing into the sensory panorama I mentioned earlier and I struggled with trying to stop that from happening. In the end, I believe I did, but with a couple of notable consequences. First of all, I started having frequent headaches (in my entire life, the only headaches I have ever had were from either alcohol or other substances). Second of all, although I think this experiment did not have any consequence on me intelligence-wise or perception-wise, it definitely had several from an emotional point of view.

I started feeling edgy, grumpy, tired all the time and pissed off at everything. Considering that I am usually as zen as Ghandi, this was something new to me, and it's occurrence actually amazed me. The climax happened in the last two days, in which I managed to sleep for only one hour and a half. Yesterday night, when I finally managed to get some real sleep, I had the most restless night in my entire life. I woke up a couple of times, the most notable ones being the one in which I felt like my head was splitting open and I was overwhelmed by a sense of vertigo, and the one in which I opened my eyes and I instantly grabbed hold of the bed because I saw the room as being extremely tilted to the right. I don't know if this was self-induced or if it was only a consequence of the sleep deprivation period, but what I can say for sure is that it was so much more than your average nightmare in the middle of a night.

Another experiment I read about, done by actual scientists not by some musician trying to reach a conclusion, was one in which study people were asked to read something while a TV was playing quietly in the background. These people usually said that what they were reading was boring, whereas people who had a silent background found what they were reading to be stimulating. The third group had the TV playing loudly in the background, and this group identified the TV as the source of distraction, and thus were unable to say whether the reading material was boring or stimulating.

So, in the matter of attention versus attention, I will state one thing. It is my belief that overt attention is composed of layers, and each layer is sense-based. You have one layer for sight, one for hearing, one for touch, etcaetera. You could feed each of these layers with an individual source of stimuli and train your mind to get away with it, but one problem arises: all senses are not equal. It's a matter of bandwidth actually: you give your eyes, the biggest bandwidth because they pick up the biggest amounts of data, you also give your ears the second biggest bandwidth because they also supply you with a big load of information (with blind people it may even include the visual one). The fact that senses are not equal leads to a dissonance on an unconscious level, like playing a C and a C sharp at the same time, if you will. This dissonance acts as a tension on your emotional background, a tension that grows in strength as the active attention split continues, and that breaks out in periods of rest.

In this age of sensory overcharge, it is important for us to acknowledge the existence of this tension in each and every one of us. A lot of people, for example, read and let the TV go on in the background, some listen to music while they study, others talk on their cell phones when they drive their car, but the only thing that they accomplish is to have their overt attention split, and to wind themselves up like a compressed spring waiting to blow up.

If you look at the folder named 'not yet sampled' in my soulseek download space, you will find a shitload of not-listened-to-music. This is the direct consequence of the viral spread of producers and artists after the advent of digital technology, and I would like to listen to it all someday. But, probably because of the fact that we are constantly trained to be consumers by every poster and commercial we see, in myself (and in each of us) lies an "I want more!" urge, and it lies right next to that tension I talked about. This urge makes me want to go through everything at once, listen to all the music in my "not yet sampled" and in the world at the same time and, why not, read a blog too while I'm at it. This is wrong, the first thing to do isn't to consume like wildfire, but to prioritize and put everything in a natural sequence, because even if the time we have on this earth is little, it's enough to actually do everything that might cross your mind, one thing at a time.

The key is to listen to your body's needs and act according to them, not to overcharge your senses. If you don't, you just might wake up every other night continuously falling out of bed with no idea as to why that is happening.

A Violin In Space

2009-02-03T00:31:00.002+02:00

We currently understand sound as what we perceive by vibration, transmitted either through solid matter, through a liquid of choice or through gas. Being able to walk on land, and breathe, the latter choice is, of course, the one most suitable to us. Recently, I find myself haunted by the idea of sounds in conditions other than the ones that surround us all.
Let's take, for example, the conditions on Earth's sister planet, Venus, similar in size, gravity, and bulk composition to our own. Imagine that you could travel there and take an instrument of some kind with you. Let's assume it's a highly resistant one so that it doesn't burst into flames or implode from the high temperature or from the high atmospheric pressure, and that you can also manage to somehow expose your ears without your eardrums abandoning ship.
The first question that comes into mind is what would you hear, when you try to play those first couple of notes? If I were to think about this scientifically, I would say a single word: nothing. Imbued with an atmospheric pressure about 92 times higher than that of Earth, it would be reasonable to assume that Venus is a bitch to play a chord on.
Now let's try to look at this from another angle. Let's imagine an instrument already tuned to produce the perfect C in Venusian conditions and let's bring it back to Earth. What would happen when you hit that first note? Would it generate enough amplitude to rip the Earth in half, or would it just make your neighbor Charlie and a few other hundreds of people explode?
Lets' move on to field recording, shall we? But, before we do that, let's fast forward a couple of thousands of years into the future. Let's say we're living in the year 8000, the United States just elected their first Vietnamese president, everyone is worried about solar system warming and more and more people have been opting for a full body replacement, after it was scientifically proven that having a natural growing body was the leading cause of cancer.
In the world of Fine Arts though, things couldn't be better. Improvements in recording technology and transportation allow those brave of heart to venture into the vastness of the Milky Way in a search for the perfect set of samples to use for their work. We are looking at a revival of galactic disco as the public's number one choice, after more and more fabulous edits and releases start to surface from every corner of colonized space.
Let's take a closer look at this galactic disco, and see what we can find. For starters, the obsolete beat has long since been replaced by something new and exciting called 'the bang'. In case you're wondering, a 'bang' is the sound of an exploding star, cleanly recorded, and ready for your listening pleasure. Another interesting element of galactic disco is it's black bass, but only a few very talented producers use it because of that fact that it is still incredibly dangerous to record the sound of a black hole. Yada yada yada, the strings are sampled comets, and the voices come from outer space.
If you've managed to read this article so far, then you probably started wondering, and I quote, "What the fuck is this guy talking about?". This is about the fact that the world we live in today, in spite of all it's problems, offers an infinity of possibilities to every producer or aspiring musician out there. This is about the fact that, besides the millions of possibilities that have been tried so far, there are countless others that have a door in front of them waiting to be opened and it's a shame to ignore them in favor of a downloaded pack of samples or a four to the floor exoskeleton. This is about creativity, and realizing that sound, by definition is still limited, and that those boundaries are there to be bent if not even broken.
Why don't we try to capture vibrations through plasma, instead of air and wood and drum heads? Why didn't we send a violin in space instead of all those fucking monkeys? Why do we obsess over oil, the recession or global warming, when the only thing that's running out, is human spirit?

Why People Think Computers Can't

2009-02-01T17:58:00.002+02:00

"...We mustn't only look at works our culture views as very great, until we first get good ideas about how ordinary people do ordinary things. We can't expect to guess, right off, how great composers write great symphonies. I don't believe that there's much difference between ordinary thought and highly creative thought. I don't blame anyone for not being able to do everything the most creative people do. I don't blame them for not being able to explain it, either. I do object to the idea that, just because we can't explain it now, then no one ever could imagine how creativity works..."

"...Do outstanding minds differ from ordinary minds in any special way? I don't believe that there is anything basically different in a genius, except for having an unusual combination of abilities, none very special by itself. There must be some intense concern with some subject, but that's common enough. There also must be great proficiency in that subject; this, too, is not so rare; we call it craftsmanship. There has to be enough self-confidence to stand against the scorn of peers; alone, we call that stubbornness. And certainly, there must be common sense. As I see it, any ordinary person who can understand an ordinary conversation has already in his head most of what our heroes have. So, why can't "ordinary, common sense" - when better balanced and more fiercely motivated - make anyone a genius?..."

"...What if we built machines that weren't based on rigid definitions? Wont they just drown in paradox, equivocation, inconsistency? Relax! Most of what we people "know" already overflows with contradictions; still we survive. The best we can do is be reasonably careful; let's just make our machines that careful, too. If there remain some chances of mistake, well, that's just life..."

"...The secret of what something means lies in the ways that it connects to all the other things we know. The more such links, the more a thing will mean to us. The joke comes when someone looks for the "real" meaning of anything. For, if something had just one meaning, that is, if it were only connected to just one other thing, then it wold scarcely "mean" at all!
That's why I think we shouldn't program our machines that way, with clear and simple logic definitions. A machine programmed that way might never "really" understand anything -- any more than a person would. Rich, multiply-connected networks provide enough different ways to use knowledge that when one way doesn't work, you can try to figure out why. When there are many meanings in a network, you can turn things around in your mind and look at them from different perspectives; when you get stuck, you can try another view. That's what we mean by
thinking!..."

"...It will be a long time before we learn enough about common sense reasoning to make machines as smart as people are. Today, we already know quite a lot about making useful, specialized, "expert" systems. We still don't know how to make them able to improve themselves in interesting ways. But when we answer such questions, then we'll have to face one, even stranger, one. When we learn how, then should we build machines that might be somehow "better" than ourselves? We're lucky that we have to leave that choice to future generations. I'm sure they won't want to build the things that well unless they find good reasons to..."

(source: Marvin Minsky, MIT)

A Journey To The Center Of Your Mind

2009-02-01T04:22:00.002+02:00

"...there's this three pound mass of jelly, you can hold it in the palm of your hand, and it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space, it can contemplate the meaning of infinity and it can contemplate itself contemplating the meaning of infinity..."

Vilayanur Ramachandran

(source: TED)

Felix Kubin

2009-01-24T03:28:00.000+02:00

"...One of the most meaningful aspects of your work is the large number of collaborations with other artists, at several levels. What are the main reasons for this philosophy? Is it the proactive side of the question, or a continuous will for experimentation? In music people are usually very collaborative; it has to do with the social aspect of music. With fine arts people are more on their own. They are taught not to show their "tricks" and to keep away from other artists who could be a danger for their career. I find that very outdated but I understand the reason: their artworks are treated like shares on a stock market. The unique artwork has to be as expensive as possible to describe the "value" of the artist. In music, collaborating was always necessary until the rise of the solo entertainer and electronic musician..."

"...I also owe to the fact that some artists didn’t do anything more than just putting their laptop on stage and press „play". In ten years this will be looked at as a very bizarre minimalism in the history of electronic music..."

"...I still like utopias and I am glad that they have come back into the consciousness of the younger generation. The Germans don’t trust their youth very much, they never did. That is one of the biggest problems here. Another problem I see in general is the disappearance of criticism in culture but especially music. Since the aggressively positive Myspace culture and since magazines get „paid" by companies to push their products, everyone is becoming smooth. We need more abrasiveness, I guess..."

(source: http://www.chaindlk.com/interviews/index.php?interview=FelixKubin)

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

2009-01-22T20:12:00.001+02:00

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

by John Perry Barlow

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.

In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.

Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

Davos, Switzerland

February 8, 1996

(source: http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html)

The Age of the New

2009-01-16T04:56:00.002+02:00

Through the course of our history, we have come to define music as an art form. This was brought up by ages of relentless pursuit of new audio possibilities and new ways to perform and receive even the faintest tone of sound. A lot of progress has been made in the development of music as a means to transmit emotion. From the strings and keys of the old, to the beats and synths of the new, music, as both an art and a science, became more and more efficient in creating emotional reactions. This fact was made possible by the almost continuous progress in audio technology, the always-multiplying means to make music reach it's targeted audience and its ever-increasing world wide demand.

Everything sounds utopian up to this point, but the current state of things is far from it. For the point of the following post, I will dare call music a homeostatic system ( homeostasis (def.) - the ability or tendency of an organism or cell to maintain internal equilibrium by adjusting its physiological processes). I say this because, up to this point, music managed to adapt itself to all changes in it's surrounding environment (technological, sociological and historical), maintaining an equilibrium in it's core and purpose, while altering specific parts of its behavioral patterns. As an example of these alterations, you can consider the fact that music reacts to economic turbulence just as well as any of us. A recent article I read said that music tends to be harder, and more aggressive in times of economic growth, and also lighter in times of distress (consider the disco period back in the old days and the current nu disco trend). It turns out that music adapts and shapes it's form according to the state of present things.
So how does our current uber-consumerist mentality affect the quality of the music we experience? Let's look at the big picture:
1. The old music industry is on a downward trend in favor of online distribution and spread. This is not a bad thing, because it allows music to spread a lot faster than it would through other means of distribution (the old ways had the reproduction speed of an elephant while the new and improved ones have the speed of rabbits on Viagra).
2. There has been a tremendous increase in live performance events since 2006. This allows music to reach the ears of afficionados in it's most pure of forms. We all know the power of a live act and the fact that home listening is like an aspirin pill in comparison to the ecstatic sensation you feel when attending a good festival.
3. Consumerism is at an all time peak in every aspect of life. Through ingenious advertising and devious marketing plans, we are being shaped into the scariest omnivore this planet has ever seen. This goes for music too. I am sure that there are a lot of people in this world that have thousands of tracks on their hard-drive they have never even listened to, and as ashamed as I am to say this, I am one of them. On the other hand, from the point of view of music, this only means that the interest in music is at an all time maximum.
So if music distribution, form and consumption is growing exponentially, then how does the homeostatic system stay in balance? Quality, or at least the lack of such a thing. In order for the system to stay in equilibrium, it's main physiological process, the act of forging quality in music, is in a free-fall.
Modern music implies lack of perfection, quantity and stimuli overcharge. One question remains. Can there be anything done concerning this, or has the point-of-no-return been crossed already?

Genesis 2.0

2008-05-21T02:46:00.000+03:00

Intai a fost sunetul, caci inainte de a lua cuvantul, cineva si-a dres vocea.