Technique

Three remixes by one of my favorite bands of all time from their cool, baggy, Joe Bloggs, acid, bleach tips, MDMA, MIDI period.

1. Manchester group 808 State's acid remix of Blue Monday.
VIDEO
Blue Monday (So Hot Mix)

2. Chicago house mix of Fine Time by Steve "Silk" Hurley.
Fine Time (Silk Mix)

3. Detroit techno mix of Round & Round by Kevin Saunderson.
Round & Round (Detroit Mix)

Paging Dr. Marble

Matt Marble is not actually a doctor, but he is a candidate for the Phd in Music Composition at Princeton University who resides in New Jersey and Oregon. He also is a "sound-worker", an artist, and an enthusiastic dancer. Matt also curates the excellent Faces of Sound blog and produces experimental and popular musics. You know, musicing, trancing, languaging, the us'. He's currently working on his doctoral thesis on the music of Arthur Russell.

I asked Matt to give me some recommendations for books on sound several years ago, but never followed up. Instead of bugging him all over again, I asked him to write a little something for e-Blog.

Top 5 Books on Sound

Notations 21 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
by Thersa Sauer

Since John Cage's Notations came out in 1969, there has been surprisingly little documentation of graphic scores. Theresa Sauer's book offers a glimpse into the contemporary marriage of eyes and ears. She features the classics (Yuji Takahashi, Earle Brown, David Rosenboom, and Karlheinz Stochhausen) through to contemporary sound artists (Steve Roden, Steven Vitiello, Marina Rosenfeld, and Slavek Kwi). The design shines on the visual and it is well done. If only there were an audio CD accompanying! But Thersa continues to champion this work, via her blog, which serves as a forum for disseminating and inspiring ongoing audio-visual goodies.

Related: Agape (Alex Waterman); The Sound of Painting: Music in Modern Art (Karin Von Maur); Sound and the Visual Arts (Jean-Yves Bosseur); Scratch Music (Cornelius Cardew); Scores: An Anthology of New Music (Roger Johnson); Tools of Mind (Matt Marble)



Listening: An Introduction to the Perception of Auditory Events - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
by Stephen Handel

If you're interested in the science of sound (acoustics), of how we experience sound (psycho-acoustics and physiological anatomy), or the underpinnings of Western European music, then Stephen Handel's book is the most current (1989) comprehensive general-reader-friendly book out there. A great reference book if you're likely to reference such things.

Related: Microsound (Curtis Roads); Acoustic Communication (Barry Truax); Ecological Psychoacoustics (Marie-Reiss Jones); Auditory Imagery (Daniel Reisberg)

Water Sound Images: The Creative Music of the Universe - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
by Alexander Lauterwasser

We think of sound as invisible. But following in the footsteps of Ernst Chladni and Hans Jenny (inventor of the visually compelling Cymatics), Alexander Lauterwasser asks us to see how these vibrations give rise to incredibly beautiful and naturally pervasive forms. His studies vibrated water with Tibetan Monk chanting, Bach, Stockhausen, gongs, and other musical curios. He goes on to make connections between such forms and the developmental forms of plants, jellyfish, shells, clouds, and animal patterns. The book is simply beautiful. It works more as poetry and mytho-dream web than as any credible science, though it has a foot in that world. But artistically it offers an alternative way of listening to, looking at, and playing with sound.

Related: Cymatics (Jans Jenny); Harmonography: A Visual Guide to the Mathematics of Music (Anthony Ashton); The Book of Music and Nature (David Rothenberg); Rhythmanalysis (Henri Lefebvre)

Origins of Music - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Edited by Nils Wallin et al.

You might be interested in this book if you're curious about... animal communication, animal music, the relationship between language and music, the evolutionary function of music. A broad anthology, featuring anthropologists, musicologists, biologists, archeologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, linguists, and composer François Bernard-Mâche. "What is music for, and why does every human culture have it? What are the universal features of music and musical behavior across cultures?"

Related: Healing Sounds of the Malaysian Rainforest (Marina Roseman); Sound and Sentiment (Steve Feld); Hearing Cultures (Veit Erlmann); Auditory Culture Reader (Michael Bull)

Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion, and Trancing - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
by Judith Becker

Borrowing Pauline Oliveros' notion of Deep Listening, Ethnomusicologist Judith Becker offers one of the most intriguing plunges into global trance musics. With a gentle empericism Becker globally connects the dots between sounds, actions, emotions, and our heightened psycho-physical experiences of music. She draws much from Empirical philosophy (William James), post-structuralist French sociology (Pierre Bordieur), and contemporary cognitive science, but in a language that leaves the door open and stays compelling. The accompanying c.d. is just awesome, featuring: Sri Lankan ritual music, the Italian Tarantelle, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's trance practice, the Hindi Gazal, Balinese witch ritual music, Sacred Harp singing, Pentecostal gospel music, and South Sulawesi ceremonial music.

Related: Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations Between Music and Possession (Gilbert Rouget); Rhythm, Music, and the Brain (Michael Thaut); Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear (Steve Goodman); Unlocking the Groove (Mark Butler); African Rhythm (Kofi Agawu)

A couple of my favorite songs of late.

Amazing acid rework of nowave guy James Chance's Incorrigible by Liv Spencer (House of House and Still Going) and DJ Spun.
Incorrigible (Liv Spencer And DJ Spun Mix) RONG

We Like cats hit dub
Meow Hear Me Roar MARRIAGE

My Cousin Roy gave me this record for my birthday and it's incredible.
Neurotic Drum Band
Robotic Hypnotic Adventure (Runaway Remix) WURST
Thanks Roy!

Last but not least Omar S doing classic acid.
Mid 90's FXHE RECORDS

Make yourself happy and buy all these records.

FFFFFRIDAY

HOLOCENE TURNS 7 Friday June 4th
Miracles Club
Reporter
Operative
Golden Retriever
Linger & Quiet
Brkfst Sndwch

21+ Free.

Liaisons Dangereuses - Peut Etre....Pas

Great proto-house by way of early 80s synthed out NDW, a double classic. Big influence on the Chicago house scene (along with "Los Ninos de la Parque"), spun by Ron Hardy at the Music Box and Farley Jackmaster Funk on WBMX, been igniting dancefloors worldwide ever since. There's some pretty great live footage on youtube too:

Jeff Mills is in the house... yeah!

Two videos from Jeff Mills from 2003. Note the APESHIT TR-909 playing. I have no idea if what Mills is doing is "doing" anything, but as a proper 909 performance, its absolutely transfixing.

When the On Land Festival was announced last year, Keith Fullerton Whitman offered that his set was going to be like "Heldon meets Jeff Mills (without the drum machine)", which kind of offended me. These videos were my retort, however Keith's retort was his set at the festival. For me it was a "Yes, electronic music is still this radically structured, horizon-cresting Utopian Moment!"-style experience. And I love those experiences.

Keith is releasing a couple works for modular synthesizer in the vein of that set. One is currently in the works as a tape on Root Strata.

See a similarly composed clip below, but don't sleep on Keith's very generous Soundcloud page, as well.



"Generator 6" & "Generator 2" (excerpt) by Keith Fullerton Whitman

All fruits ripe

Dubby, psychedelic, Irie, I-tal new music from my bredren/sistren We Like Cats also known as Honey (Valet), Adam (White Rainbow) & Eva (Inca Ore). First song from their upcoming release Proper Eats on Marriage Records more to come. jah!
Buy here

We Like Cats
Money Dubby Money

Also check out this new mix by local weirdo Pete Swanson of Monday night yoga fame.
via Type

Pete Swanson - Type Podcast 3by_type