lowercase music 352
tregoweth writes "Wired News has an article about "lowercase music" -- electronic music made with itty-bitty quiet sounds."
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lowercase music
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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"
be prepared (Score:2)
ha ha, get it? tunah
Damn! (Score:1)
There is hope (Score:2, Funny)
Electronica as a whole can benefit (Score:1)
Re:Electronica as a whole can benefit (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, in the US (I'm assuming you're in the US on the basis of what you say - no European would ever make the statement you did), Nothing records (of NIN fame) does quite a good job releasing the more popular Warp-esque artists.
You could also fire up Audio Galaxy and download tracks by (off the top of my head) Plaid, Squarepusher, Wagonchrist, Jaga Jazzist, Kim Hiorthoy, Tipper, Four Tet, Akufen, Daedelus, Andrew Pekler, Pole, To Rococo Rot, Pan American, EU, Arovane, Mouse on Mars, etc, etc (this list is completely random - pls don't flame me for leaving out your favorite artist).
Just to get you started.
what's it take to get a decent name? (Score:3, Funny)
Kids these days
Re:what's it take to get a decent name? (Score:2)
Remove "you like" and place in "to you", and you've got the only real judge of what constitutes art.
Art is, really, a creative activity that is belived to be art. What is art for me is probably not art for you, and vice versa. Such is life--and such is the abyssmal status of national funding for the arts.
Evil plot, that's what it actually is! (Score:2, Funny)
The RIAA strikes again!
Re:Evil plot, that's what it actually is! (Score:2)
Trust us...it's music. If you disagree, you must be stupid"
Even funnier than the parent post.
Although I think it's supposed to be spelled emperor.
Neat article (Score:1)
Quiet Sounds (Score:5, Funny)
I've been listening to this for quite a while, and I must say it's been a good change from the usual stuff labelled 'electronic'.
thats what I thought anyway, until I realised my headphones were broken...
fran [hotkey.net.au]
how about (Score:2)
I didnt like them. (Score:1)
Re:I didnt like them. (Score:2, Interesting)
I've always thought that electronica was one of the closest relatives to traditional classical music where the meter and timing and beat were very similar in both styles of music. But this new electronica doesn't seem to have any of that. It's more like... random recordings of random sounds, no better than the background noise of your room.
This fad will hopefully pass quickly.
It one is really interested in some interesting electronica, there's a really great sound coming out of India or at least is based on Indian music. Very cool. I wish I could remember the term off the top of my head.
Re:I didnt like them. (Score:2)
There is always more than one "fad" going through what you call "electronica" and I call TECHNO.
You can easily choose to ignore the ones you don't like, unless you get all your music news from Slashdot.
Re:I didnt like them. (Score:3, Informative)
http://phobos.plato.nl/e-primer/ [plato.nl]
VERY helpful, complete with sound samples.
Re:I didnt like them. (Score:2)
Re:I didnt like them. (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, the lowercase music I've heard and been fiddling with on my Mac is pretty cool, although the extreme pieces that feature lot's of silence are in my opinion just plain silly.
Does anyone remeber the radio program "Hearts of Space"? That is the kind of music I think of when I hear this lowercase stuff. I really do like most of it.
Thanx everyone for al of the great electronica tips!
Re:I didnt like them. (Score:3, Insightful)
Favourite minimalist band. (Score:5, Funny)
Upper case Headcleaner (Score:2)
Re:Upper case Headcleaner (Score:2)
actually my best friend owns a record label [lotek] and we sample some ofthe sounds out of old industrial for hardNRG uk hard house - from bands like coil, 242, skinny puppy etc...
at one point skinny puppy was the band that held the record for the most samples in their music - then 242 took the lead. love these guys...
Re:Upper case Headcleaner (Score:2)
Herbert (Score:3, Informative)
For a live show, he will take samples of himself breaking stuff and do all sorts of things with the noises. Lately he has taken to ripping up bits of corporate branding (soda cans, mcdonald's fries, etc.)
Re:Herbert (Score:2)
microsound vs. lowercase (Score:2)
that could sound lame (and i'm sure it often is - that's art for you), but think about it this way: it takes advantage of a much greater dynamic range, in much the same way classical music can (or any other typically uncompressed sound). it gets closer to what we actually hear, not what sounds 'best' (ie loudest) on the radio. and the really cool thing is that in many cases it gives us super-hearing, whether that's through contact-mic'ed field recordings or just very meticulous technique in the production environment.
aside from my personal efforts in similar areas, i think this is a great development. people forget that hearing is a full-fledged sense. people forget to listen to what they're hearing, and they miss a lot. and i'm really, incredibly sick of everything being compressed to within an inch of its life. if we hadn't been conditioned to it, we'd realize how much more it doesn't add to the music.
if you're in san francisco, check out quietamerican.org [quietamerican.org] and see when the next "field effects" will happen. at #3, aaron brought steve roden up from LA (his personal hero). the space is wonderful and the atmosphere perfect, filled with peple that listen. highly recommended. not too pretentious, either. (!)
nothing particularly groundbreaking about it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it (Score:2)
sounds like they never heard of "Music on a long thin wire"
Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it (Score:2)
The recording you're thinking of was Discreet Music released in 1975 on the Obscure Label (Eno's label). If memory serves, the event you are referring to was either from the liner notes or the back of the album; can't recall just now. Music for Airports was released in 1978.
But, as you said, Eno wasn't the first to get involved in this sort of music. Check out http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/ [hyperreal.org]. It has some pages that go into a lot of the background, thoughts, etc. about ambient.
Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it (Score:2)
Ahhh, there's a name I haven't heard in a while. He produced several records for the Talking Heads and others.
obTrivia: Didn't he composes the now-famous Windows 95 start-up sound?
Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it (Score:2)
Frank Zappa did something quite similar with is bands: he would use hand signals to change a performance of a piece and make a rock song into a reggae song or a jazzier piece or what-have-you. In some ways, John Zorn [tzadik.com]'s "game pieces" use this same method of improvisation (although Zorn's "games" really are games: there is a competition and winners are picked at the end of the performance.
koan pro (was Re:nothing particularly ground...) (Score:2)
You should go and check out Koan Pro [sseyo.com] from sseyo [sseyo.com] which describes itself as "the award winning vector audio, interactive audio and generative music authoring system".
Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it (Score:2)
Consider how much of this music is made, often with Powerbooks running Max/MSP or Reaktor, or Logic Audio with a lot of VST instruments. Now, with Max/MSP and Reaktor, creating algorythmic music that does in fact change from playback to playback is relatively simple.
Max and Reaktor are both modular environments for music. Max is fully extendable, if you need an object that doesn't already exist, you can write your own in C++. Br00tal. It's the environment of choice for artists like Autechre and Tetsu Innoue.
Reaktor is less powerful, but is nearly as cool, and I use it because it doesn't get quite as low level as Max and I don't have my brain wrapped around Max just yet. (There are 1200 pages of documentation for Max/MSP for a reason.) Taylor Deupree uses Reaktor and I went to a roundtable discussion on Loops in music at Pier 1, NYC, a few months ago, and he played for us one second of sound, looped, but with a random start point on the sample. The sound evolved but did not repeat, at least not in a way that we could understand. Very cool to listen to.
If you are really interested in computer music that evolves, I highly recommend Autechre - Confield. It's not microsound, though there are micro-elements, but it's a mindblowingly different album, made by a pair of guys who have been pushing the edge of techno for over ten years and have finally fallen off the deep end into territory that is just paradigm shattering. For an equally complex but much more traditionally listener friendly release, check out Autechre's also recently released Peel Sessions 2.
(Peel Sessions 2 has the best minimalist cover art ever. It's white text on white background; you can only read it by angling the cover so that the difference in gloss shines at you.)
Autechre play live using two powerbooks, two Nord Modulars, and heavily custom max/msp patches. The recent live sets I've downloaded off of *soulseek* are generally comprised of 4 15 to 20 minute songs that are definitely evolving and changing.
The microsounders do this too. In my experience, there are two kinds of post-techno musicians:
1) those that improvise and "jam" with their machines
2) those that hyperedit and plan everything with extreme precision.
I tend to be in catagory 2, spending 8 hours on sequencing constantly changing drums for a 2 minute song. But many of the microsounders in question build libraries of sound files, and libraries of audio environments and when they play live, it is improvised.
With all that said, I figure I might as well continue:
Anyone intersted in what's going on in computer music should look into these software packages: max/msp, reaktor, supercollider, melodyne, ableton live, absynth, Audiomulch. While I also use stuff like Reason, these programs are more "forward thinking" and non-traditional.
Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it (Score:2)
I'll just drop another one into the list, namely PD. PD (or Pure Data if you prefer) is written by Miller Puckette [ucsd.edu] who worked on Max, and has since re-written it as PD. Can be downloaded from here [ucsd.edu] and there is a very useful site here [pure-data.org].
PD is particularly nice because as well as letting midi + audio flow between the blocks in a particular patch, it will also let you handle 3d graphics primitives thereby letting you create generative video as well as sound.
Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it (Score:2)
Although I've never had a reason to listen to Cage since then, I applaud his different "wavelength". Another artist, not nearly as odd-sounding, was Steve Reich - he's a long way from "quiet", but his minimalist style is quite intriguing. After I left the university, one of his works stuck with me..."Music for Mallet Instruments, Voice, and Organ." It was about 10 years later than I finally found the CD- an import. So, while you have minimal sound with these guys (cited in the article), you have minimal change with Reich (at least with some of his work, anyway).
Re:and furthermore (found sounds)... (Score:2)
Awesome.
Where is the sound? (Score:1)
I don't guess it matters, because after reading the article, It sounds even more lame.
Emperor's new clothes (Score:2)
"...this 'music' may be about the same thing as the Emperor's new clothes..."
This and much more. New art forms have about the survival rate of baby spiders.
I am surprised that the phrase appeared so late in this discussion.
What about sound quality? (Score:4, Insightful)
In example, instead of your sample range range being from 0-65535 it is 0-4096, it may be 'lowercase music', but it could also be represented in just 12 bits instead of 16. The vinyl enthusiats must HATE these guys!
Re:What about sound quality? (Score:2, Funny)
This is bullshit (Score:3, Informative)
It got to the point were everyone and their third rate techno musician was spicing up tracks with 'lowercase' sounds.
Before the 'glitch' revolution, there was already a large scene of musicians who used computers to create tracks out of supposedly non-musical sounds. They were called 'experimental musicians', 'soundscapists' or 'musique concrete people'.
It's nice to see Wired drawing some attention to these guys, but it's hardly new and I also dare say the scene of people who like this kind of stuff is quite a bit larger than '10.000 people world wide'.
Re:This is bullshit (Score:4, Funny)
They were called plenty of other, more colourful things as well. :)
this isn't about glitch. (Score:3, Informative)
this is lowercase, or microsound.
it might seem like an academic distinction, but glitch can be quite noisy and abrasive, and generally people lumped in this lowercase catchall aren't.
This isn't revolutionary though. Kind of behind the times if you ask me... Weird that Wired chose to pick up on it now, next thing you know they'll be interviewing Kid606 and talking abou the rise of laptop punk
Re:this isn't about glitch. (Score:2)
Re:This is bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
Re-read the article and determine whether it was written to draw some attention to a music genre, or as advertising for DigiDesign and Apple.
Re:This is bullshit (Score:2)
The article left out the Raster-Noton folks, like N0t0, and musicians like Ryoji Ikeda, Gas, and some of the Mille-Plateaux artists who really got "laptop music" (the term I've always heard) off the ground. Still, a good start.
Re:This is bullshit (Score:2)
'Clicks and Cuts', 'Micromusic' or whatever the hell has more in common with techno. In fact, I personally call it 'experimental techno', for good reason, too. Check out some stuff by Taylor Deupree (mentioned in the article) for instance, that's techno with Cool Sounds (tm).
A quick history lesson: apart from musique concrete and its offspring, in 1999-2000 there was a subgenre of techno called 'heroin house', on labels like Chain Reaction (a Basic Channel offshoot) that, also in fact, put out the first releases by people like Vladislav Delay, who later got lumped in with the glitch crowd, then, when he did a cheeky house-ish album, with 'microhouse'.
At the same time, there was a strong 'experimental electronics' scene, with imprints such as Raster-Noton (home of the only true glitch meister Carsten 'alva.noto' Nicolai) that started to take pointers from popular dance music. Some clever Wire journalist then figured these two movements ('experimental techno' and 'experimental electronics') yielded similar sounding result and called the 'movement' Glitch.
Over in the US, a similar convergence between academic experimentalism and techno was produced by people like Taylor Deupree, Kit Clayton and Sutekh.
None of this has anything to do with IDM. In fact, most of my IDM loving friends *hate* this experimental electronica, because to them it's boring and repetitive (to me, IDM is convoluted and tiring, but then that's just me).
Anyway, this is a rant. Mod me as such. The point is, I wasn't referring to IDM at all.
My computer's fan sounds louder. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:My computer's fan sounds louder. (Score:2)
Surprise! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Surprise! (Score:2)
Re:Surprise! (Score:2)
Worse:
I went to a screening of The Matrix on an IMAX screen, where the audio was farked up. They stopped the film to fix the sound system. Something went extra wrong, and they pumped digital noise (maybe the PCM audio stream directly into audio in) at full 50,000 watts volume. AAAAAAAAA!!!! All the tweeters blew out; not sure about my hearing.
Re:Surprise! (Score:5, Funny)
one of the early phillips demo CD's did this to demonstrate the new-fangled CD players dynamic range... it went like this..
Orchestra playing softly....
Orchestra playing softly....
Orchestra playing softly....
Orchestra playing soft *********FUCKING BIG CANNON!************
As I recall, a lot of audiophile's speakers were replaced after the cones practically leapt across the room.
monty python (Score:3, Interesting)
They would start the show normally.. but throughout the show, they'd slowly turn down the volume.. causing the viewer slowly turn it up.. then at the very end they'd crank the volume.
My definition (Score:2, Insightful)
Lull are a good example of this sort of thing. (Score:1)
http://www2.mailordercentral.com/isotank/
The body of this comment follows the genre (Score:2)
0 1
1 0
0 1
Microsound info + SuperCollider now Free (Score:2, Informative)
(from the SuperCollider site)
What is SuperCollider?
SuperCollider is an environment and programming language for real time audio synthesis. You can write programs to generate or process sound in real time or non real time. SuperCollider can be controlled by MIDI, the mouse, Wacom graphics tablet, and over a network via Open Sound Control. SuperCollider can read and write sound files in AIFF, WAV, Sound Designer 2, and NeXT/Sun formats. SuperCollider supports sound cards using Steinberg's ASIO driver api.
As for the microsound list ... very many people involved in lowercase, glitch, and experimental music in general are on there exaggerating the importance of the scene every day.
If you liked the sample clips. . . (Score:2, Funny)
Before you all jump on the hate-them bandwagon. . (Score:3, Funny)
Electronic music is the new outlet for kids who ten years ago would have sat in a garage with a bunch of friends and a guitar. It offers a sometimes cheap and always flexible way to release your musical boognish.
That being said, these people probably shouldn't have been written up anywhere outside of their best friends' websites. Any movement for which "there may be 10,000. . . fans around the world" probably isn't worth paying much attention to. The article seems to be more focused on the fact that the musicians use Macs. Surprise, nobody!
I'm not making a "you don't know what the next big thing is" speech, because, quite frankly, this is far from it. People still prefer 4/4 beats and sound samples with the word "booty" in them. But I wonder how many of those out there ridiculing these guys now are going to be the same ones that whine to their friends two years down the road when their favorite minimalist techno band sells a song for a car commercial.
Re:Before you all jump on the hate-them bandwagon. (Score:2)
:)
The future of commercial music (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The future of commercial music (Score:2)
Copyright infringment (Score:2)
You'd better get ready for my RIAA lawyer, because everytime a moment of 'Silence' is heard, royalties are due! So the next time you hear nothing but 'Silence' think of me, the poor artist, who should be compensated for this (lengthy) piece of work, but who's work instead got stolen just because the compression ratios of the piece turned out to be particularly favorable.
You jest but... (Score:4, Informative)
17 years earlier John Cage wrote "433", a work for no instruments which required the performer to walk onstage and do nothing for 4 minutes 33 seconds, there is an excellent introduction to Cage's work in this field in this Washington Post Article [washingtonpost.com].
Frank Zappa's Cover (Score:2)
Frank Zappa did a cover of 4'33" which was actually just a little over 5' long. I guess it was the extended dance remix.
John Cage (Score:2)
We've always had this sort of thing. (Score:3, Informative)
The internet radio station Cryosleep is a great example. It's "100% No Beat Guaranteed." Listen at www.bluemars.org [bluemars.org].
A lot of Underworld music is very downtempo and quiet. Try listening to:
Underworld - Stagger
Underworld - Thing in a book
Underworld - Tounge
Underworld - Skym
Or you could always try the sounds of Autechre or Brothomstates. It may have somewhat of a beat but it's often extraordinarily quiet. Try:
Autechre - Bronchusevenmx24
Brothomstates - We kill da enemy
Finally, there's a lot of old-school pre-Everything Is Wrong Moby out there that's really "lowercase." Try:
Moby - House Of Blue Leaves
Moby - Slight Return
(Yes, I've been a Moby fan before he got popular.
Hope this helps in your quest for fine music.
-Evan
Re:We've always had this sort of thing. (Score:2)
iTunes users can go to Radio Tuner > Ambient > Cryosleep
Re:We've always had this sort of thing. (Score:2)
TECHNO is not the same as electronica. (Score:4, Informative)
The fact that you've "been into the whole techno" thing demonstrates the usual laypersons' ineptitude in describing electronica.
Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music [ishkur.com] should straighten you out a little. While I don't like Ishkur's attitude that he can classify music better than anyone else, it does serve as a goode exposure to what's available in the electronic genre. Also, the music samples are the BOMB.
Techno is one of the major classes of electronic music along with breakbeat, house, jungle, and drum and bass.
As far as ambient, or illbient for that matter, being considered the same as downtempo and lowrecase, that's crazy.
I'd have to disagree with you that a lot of Moby's early works are really "lowercase." Most of his works are ambient and house(rave):
Moby - Ambient
Moby - Early Underground
Moby - Collected B-Sides
being three examples.
Autechre, IMHO, should be considered Intelligent Dance Music (IDM) and it's not very "lowercase". I thought my head was going to explode listening to it and processing all of the sounds.
On a final note, I'd use Shoutcast radio [shoutcast.com] as a source of Internet Radio within the electronic genre. Highly Recommended:
Digitally Imported [digitallyimported.com]
Re:TECHNO is not the same as electronica. (Score:2)
First off - thanks for underlining the techno thing. I find real techno very hard to listen to but when I try to explain to people the kind of music I play (as a DJ) they often go "oh like techno?". Jeez...
But those categories you list seem a little iffy. You differentiate between "Jungle" and "D&B" (which IMHO is a fairly subtle distinction) but lump everything else into "House"? Hmmm.... what happened to Trance? Prog? Breaks? hell even HipHop & Rap are missing. I think you need to get some new categories
One thing which also annoys me is the made-up word "electronica". I mean it's so meaningless - kind of a catch-all word for "all that stuff we don't really understand". How can one category cover everything from Moby to Scooter to Timo Maas and back to Eno? There's way more variation in there than even words like "Rock" can cover. For instance, I would liken the Prodigy to a metal band, just with no guitars. Yet that's "electronica". Yuck!
Oh and DI is pretty good if you like cheesy euro-trance
Re:TECHNO is not the same as electronica. (Score:2)
I know it is unorthodox, but I like to view "Jungle" as not a genre but a flavor of D&B.
D&B is a genre, it is anything that leans more on the rhythm of the drum, uses the heavy bass for the "melody", and has that specific syncopation on every other beat that the rythmic structure is architected around.
There are "flavors" you can mix in:
Jungle - loose dirty breaks, ragga sounds, stratching and high pitched bleeps.
Jump-Up - Simple, repeated rhythm. Rounded repeated bass melody. Gangsta rap, get up and dance.
Techstep/Hardstep - Tight controlled breaks. Sci-fi samples, rolling bass, unadulterated computer evil.
Atmospheric - Slowed down, relaxing bass. A few jazz or trance elements usually thrown in.
Intelligent - Complicated non-repeating breaks to make your mind reel. DJ Unfriendly, who cares if you can dance to it.
Most good D&B is a mix of these styles, and other styles that I don't know much about. Subgenrefication of electronic music is really more for giving people adjectives to talk about music in terms of style than for categorization. Each of these subgenres is a mix of things that go well together and produce a really nice feel in combination.
Unfortunately, alot of people are so attached to "the new sound" that they only listen and dance to very specific styles/subgenres
Re:TECHNO is not the same as electronica. (Score:2)
That's what I love about dance music...so many genres, sub genres, sub sub genres. Your flavors make sense. I was listening to the new Kosheen album the other day. Great stuff, some of it laid back d&b, almost Roni Size style. Other stuff (some wicked prog remixes) going right back into 4/4 trance territory.
Re:TECHNO is not the same as electronica. (Score:2)
In your quest for tunes pick up some of the Tranceport series, they have been getting progressivly more progressive (!), the first (Oakenfold) is straight up 1999/2000 melodic trance, the most recent (Quivver) is moody and dark, with some occasional (fantastic) melodic moments. Highly recommended.
Re:TECHNO is not the same as electronica. (Score:2)
Someone can be 'into' a type of music, yet still label it incorrectly, because they are not into the 'scene' surrounding the music. For example, I could care less whether Smashing Pumpkins are Rock, Alternative, or Pop of some various sort... if I said 'Starting with Smashing Pumpkins, I've been into this Rock thing for a while' a lot of purists would leap down my gullet because I get the f***ing label wrong.
Don't be so tightassed. Techno is what made 'Electronica' popular, before Techno it was fringe. Now a lot of people refer to all Electronica by referring to the first sub-genre that boomed. So what. A person does not have to read magazines, websites, and cd liners obsessively to like a genre of music. Telling someone 'they are not a real fan because they get a term wrong' is stupid, IMO.
Raven
More great music (Score:3, Informative)
Boards of Canada: In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country. This somehow manages to be ambient and melodic at the same time. I never get sick of listening to it. It's a 4-song single, so it should only be 5 or 6 bucks in a store (I got the vinyl for $6, and was pleasantly suprised to find a beautiful marbled light blue record). If you're into this kind of music, you need to buy this right now.
There's a great 3-disc set called "Ohm" which has a huge cross-section of music spanning the history of experimental electronica (for lack of a better term). Some of it is kinda annoying, but some really gets under your skin, in a good way. I sometimes find myself hitting "repeat" on a song that doesn't even have one chord change in the first place.
I don't like it as much as Eno's stuff, but if you're a King Crimson fan, you might want to check out Robert Fripp's "The Gates of Paradise." He experimented with some ambient stuff in "Exposure," and with this album has gone full blown.
I picked up this great german LP at a records store in Minneapolis for $2 called Gas Pop. One of those might be the name of something, I don't know. It's wonderfully anonymous. I later saw it in a store in western Montana (albeit for $17), so chances are good that it wasn't just a, like, 10-record pressing. Very nice to listen to. Wait, there's a URL listed [mille-plateaux.net]. Apparently the band/guy's name is Gas and the release is Pop.
It isn't quite ambient, but William Orbit's "Pieces in a Modern Style" evokes the same mood. It's basically a bunch of classical pieces that are arranged, performed and programmed by him with in electronic means. It effectively raised the ante for electronic music everywhere. I like his version of Barber's "Adagio for Strings" better than any symphonic version I've heard, and his take on Gorecki's "Piece in the Old Style 3" is likely to sit in your head the whole day. Yet, instead of being annoyed with it, like a jingle, you find that humming the melody actually calms you.
My own music [rootrecords.org] falls right around here. It's somewhere between ambient and downtempo, maybe a cross between William Orbit and Moby. Plus it's open source!
If you haven't gotten into the downtempo scene, now's the time. I've been addicted ever since I heard Thievery Corporation's "Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi." Chances are, you've heard it too (tracks have been in a lot of movies), but I get more out of it with every listen. Gorgeously complex drum beats. After the Thievery, get:
Peace Orchestra "Peace Orchestra" when Kruder and Dorfmeister split up, Peter Kruder made this album under the Peace Orchestra moniker. I think it's genius. If you give it a listen, go straight to the song "Shining" and you'll be hooked.
Nightmares on Wax "Carboot Soul" Contrary to the title, this album is the opposite of freaky. It's sort of a cross-over from hip-hop into downtempo, but it's its own thing and can't be pigeonholed. There are a few of the songs where there's a female voice that's either sampled or recorded, but whatever it is, he makes it so that the sound of the voice (and really the sound of every instrument on the album), hmm, let me put it this way: I can't think of anything more pleasant to listen to.
Distribution source. (Score:3, Informative)
However, if you decide that you do actually like what is going on with this and want to track down recordings of this nature then I would recommend that you go and check out smallfish records [smallfish.co.uk] (or even better drop in if you around the Shoreditch area [smallfish.co.uk] of London). They've got about 18,000 records on-line at the moment with short reviews and (albeit very low quality) sound samples of them all and they specialise in the more obscure electronica. Also there is a mailing list [smallfish.net] available that automatically drops off details of the new releases on a weekly basis (~150/week).
Lowercase music? (Score:2)
Head up arse syndrome strikes again...
But then, this was found on Wired.
Nothing new here..... (Score:2)
Kids these days...yeesh. We used to call this sort of stuff the "voice of God"...And used it as a crude diagnostic tool to determine if hardware was alive or not. You can get the same effect by holding an AM radio near a computer, and tuning the radio to a clear portion of the dial.
Infact, I diagnosed a bad power supply in an SGI Indigo 2 a few years back using this method.
What I would really like to see is a formal explanation of the faint warblegoogly noise produced by idle analog synthesizers with ring modulation.
Cheers,
Re:Nothing new here..... (Score:2)
Heard this before somewhere :). (Score:2)
On the other, they'd compress wickedly well for distribution...
Re:Heard this before somewhere :). (Score:3, Informative)
These tracks, like all 'noisy' tracks, compress like shit, actually. MP3 encoders completely destroys them, as (I'm guessing) they figure it's unwanted noise or something. Even at 256k, some 'glitch', 'micromusic', 'lowercase' or whatever the hell it's called today, gets mangled beyond repair.
Which is just one reason why experimental musicians don't need to worry about losing sales to file sharing.
Re:Heard this before somewhere :). (Score:2)
Heh, think of MP3 defects as an unintended remix. It's mostly noise anyway, so what's the problem with changing it around. There have been artists who distributed their (vinyl) records without sleeves, in the hopes that the inevitable scratches and so forth would add a little "character".
I believe some of these glitchy folks have already played with encoding something over and over again until it becomes unrecognizable. MP3 decay does have a unique and recognizable effect on sounds (kinda like how JPG artifacts are recognizable).
Of course the artists could just distribute PROGRAMS instead of audio files. I've seen a lot of that lately. For instance this CD by Kim Cascone [cycling74.com] that comes with some of the software used to generate the CD. I played with that shit for hours!
Integrated soundcard (Score:2)
My favourite track is sharing files from the HD on a peer-to-peer service while a VNC terminal makes rythmic use of the spare network bandwith.
But I guess it's too loud and intruding to be real low-key, so I've only got the slow oscillation in the flow of water through my apartements radiators - which only makes me sleepy at best.
Ah, a little content, and a lot of non-content (Score:2)
If I really like the song (Score:4, Funny)
WOW I am a trend setter (Score:2)
New from Ronco! (Score:3, Funny)
Aged Hippie #2: Yeah man.
Aged Hippie #1: No dude really, Ministry '94 really fucked up my hearing, you have to cank it up.
Aged Hippie #2: (whispers)It is up.
Ronco Announcer: This is lowercase music! Hear tea kettles as they cool off. Listen to the air inside a snare drum when no one is playing it or how about this classic; Mixer Feeding Back With No Inputs. Yeah, lowercase music rocks... (emphasized whisper)gently like a leaf on still water!
You Have got to be joking. (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyone who has bought this crap...you've been duped.
I mean think about it this is no more music then me listening intently to my CPU fan. If I wanted to relax to the "sweet sounds" of a teakettle, I'd make some damn TEA! I can't believe people have actually spent money on buying these albums!!
And as far as it being "art", I can tell you right now that this is simply going to be another thing for the "art people" to be pretentious about. So you can call it "art" and tell me that obviously I don't understand because I can't comprehend it's true beauty. But obviously you people are only intent on listening to the sound of your own heads up your arses.
I find all this genre nonsense... (Score:2, Insightful)
Okay, before you give me a response, I've heard these things before:
Point- It helps us understand what other music we'd be interested in and find it. ;). You are going to enjoy music more if you throw those categories out the window and just listen.
Rebuttal- Why don't we compare musicians to other musicians? That's more accurate and would probably get us closer to something we'd like. Frankly, there are more similarities between say, some Aphex Twin and Stockhausen than Aphex Twin and Moby, but they are lumped together and you are less likely to find out about Stockhausen than Moby because of that. That's a shame, because Moby sucks balls
Point- By putting things in genres, you can understand the lineage of music.
Rebuttal- This is true only to a point. Unfortunately I think it's been a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because we've had these categories people have started classifying themselves and putting themselves willingly into little boxes. Remember though that the great musicians didn't give a shit about these categories...Coltrane, Coleman, Mingus, etc. weren't out to create 'Free Jazz,' they were just bringing in aspects of their culture and other cultures together. That's a much more broad-minded grasp of music. The really funny thing to me that people do today is take little bits and pieces of different genres very consciously and try to call it something new, they categorize it before it's even out there. "Yeah, it's my new Funk/Jungle/Experimental Digital Hardcore/Polka band!" Why not just play some fucking music??
Anyways, this is a brief digression for a nerd site like this, but thought it'd be interesting to get some REAL discussion going about musical styles.
BTW, I have to ditto the poster above who said that the article was little more than an ad for Macs. I guess more generally it was an illustration that Wired probably shouldn't be doing pieces on music. Or they should realize that the technology is just a tool, no matter how much it has empowered people to create new music. For real music coverage, instead check out The Wire [thewire.co.uk].
Double Standards.... (Score:2)
granular synthesis (Score:2)
http://zor.org/synthesis [zor.org]
or
http://www.granularsynthesis.live.com.au [live.com.au]
He creates music made out of itty bitty bits of music - 20ms samples (grains of sound), and just creates textures and sonic landscapes using these bits. It's all based on an old synthesis method called granular synthesis.
It is mostly computer generated, although some composers have been known to use this method on analogue audio tapes with a razor blade and sticky tape!
the other name for the genre is MICROSOUND (Score:3, Informative)
I wish I'd seen this topic earlier...
The other name for the genre is MICROSOUND, I would know, I'm on a mailing list by that name, that Richard Chartier, Taylor Deupree, Kim Cascone, and other "big name" microsounders are on. The name of the list, by the way, is Microsound.
Microsound is often a stark beautiful experience, akin to minimalist painting. I am very fond of Tetsu Innoue's "cuts and clicks" album, for it's ever shifting sound, and Bernhard Gunter's "Monochrome White / Polychrome w/ Neon Nails" double cd, which is a dense texture of sounds that are just outside the range of human hearing. The first disc is higher in pitch than the second disc, but it is the second disc that sounds higher, simply because you can hear it. Very moving, at least to me, despite all lack of melody.
Another great record, one that took me about 2 years to appreciate is Otomo Yoshihide & Sackhio M's "Filament". Yeah, this involves one of those "no input mixer" people. It really sounds liek the private conversation of two computers, not meant for human ears. At the time I got it as a birthday present from a friend of mine (who shares my interest in fringe experimental music) I was listening to a lot of Merzbow, who is the "god of Japanese noise music", which is a great deal denser and louder than any of this stuff, and I didn't know what to make of it.
A few years later, it clicked and now I love it, and even create some myself!
So, uh. This is news? (Score:2)
If this barely-there variation on minimalist techno is all the rage, it's high time that I auctioned off my microstoria CD. The bugger's so goddamned quiet I can't make much out of it even with my headphones on. Infintely more aggravating than even the power electronics that I've got. Speaking of which, Wired should slap together an article on MSBR and Government Alpha.
At any rate, since Mouse on Mars' brilliant _Iaora Tahiti_, glitch and its variants (looking at you, Vladislav Delay) has been downhill with few exceptions.
another slashdot article about electronic music! (Score:2)
Hmm, another /. article about music I've been listening to for years. I hope some of you folks check this stuff and other electronic music out, there's so much cool non-RIAA stuff out there, and so much stuff that will challange pre-conceived notions, etc., etc.
Though I always called this type of music "MINIMAL" (written in all uppercase for irony ;-) and it's been around longer than "Macs" (true, most electronic musicians use Macs but that's not important).
Part of the appeal of this minimal electronic music for me is that it takes machine/electronic sounds and "places them with intent". Usually we are surrounded by noise that we have no control over, but what if you could control it. For example your P4 on your desk is making a bunch of noise, mostly fan noise. What if you could take that noise and chop it up and play with rhythms and so forth? Maybe make a short beep into a beat, make the hard drive access noise into another beat, etc.
My favorite stuff is from Taylor Deupree's 12k label [12k.com] and mille plateaux [mille-plateaux.com].. I like to play it on the computer while working, just barely mixing with the sounds of the fans and the keyboard, and adding in a little rhythm or unpredictability to take away the monotony of the usual machine sounds. Was that little beep from the OS or the CD? Has my fan speed suddenly changed? Etc.
My CD recommendation at the moment would be Frank Bretschneider & Taylor Deupree: Balance on Mille Pleateaux. It really isn't a pure minimal CD, it has a techno beat, but the sound is very clicky and micro, with static and beeps, etc. It's an awesome CD, very listenable, and comes with a video for one of the pieces consisting of pulsating white square on a blue background that visually represents the music.
Old Art, New Name, New Fad (Score:3, Informative)
I've done tons of experimenting in this area for probably 15 years, so have a lot of other people.
If you want to join in this "new" fad, buy one of those nice PZM ambient sound microphones from Radio Shack. They're the small mics on the square metal plates, and they work well for picking up discrete sounds ("discrete" was always the term I used for this type of work).
Gold mines of sounds I've found:
- Water running in my metal sink
- Hum of refrigerators and other appliances
- Chopping up a fresh potato (especially the audio whilst knife is still slicing through potato)
- Sound in underground tunnels under busy city streets
- The sound in my front bathroom at work (great creepy ambient stuff there)
- The sound of the air flow in the attic of a building near here
- Socked feet walking on carpet
- Sound inside a Pepsi can while blasting "Master of Puppets". (Resulting recordings don't sound even a hint like Metallica. Serious resonating going on here, the whole album is great for resonating soda cans, and other pieces of thin metal.)
Nothing new, move along. Eno is god.
Re:artical is really about (Score:2)
i thought it was a Mac advertisement.
Re:the subtle aproach (Score:2)
Re:The Shit They Call "Art" (Score:2)
I've been playing guitar, building gear, fooling with synthesizers etc. for years and years (see URL link), and after doing music on the Net for a little while, I stumbled across something unexpected. It was called 'Noise'. I went, "hey, really? I bet when I was a stoned teenager I did better 'noise' than that", and then I looked into it a little. And wow! One guy was putting wireless mics in a clothes dryer with bricks. Someone else had written a passionate statement of what NOISE, true NOISE really was. It was uncompromising- no beat, no melody, you had to be getting into producing a blast of brutal sound or you weren't Noise... and I realised, hey, that was part of MY musical background. There were other people into that. It didn't matter that any sane person would turn the result off with a spastic lunge at the 'OFF DEAR GOD TURN IT OFF' button. What mattered was, there were people who WANTED what I used to do with sound.
Result: Hard Vacuum [ampcast.com]. Knowing there were people who were hardcore fans, I took some of my gear (a three-band compressor I'd built and a shortwave radio) and, in just one long intense session, recorded a whole CD's worth of noise performances, making heavy use of shortwave interference, satellite noises and circuit disruption. For one of the tracks I pulled the plug on the equipment to stop it, resulting in a classic 'weeeeoooooooSNRK' dying electronics noise. It was great! I drew on all the twisted teenager delight in abrasive unmusical noise, combined with a lot of years of musical development telling me when to change it up, keep it moving, go for different effects and results.
That album has been one of my most successful albums. There's stuff I've done where I spent days laboring over detailed little sequenced parts or played until my fingers were blistered, that still hasn't been as popular as this crazed noise crap that was seemingly effortless and talentless.
Why is this? Because there are people for whom raw noise expresses their feelings, their selves- seemingly normal people whose inner 'music' is like RAARRRRRRSSSJJJKKKKKFFTTTTZZZZZBK and most people can't do that, not sincerely, not with understanding. You get people trying to do 'noise' by making little techno ditties using noises for beats, and it is like comparing a wolf with a poodle- somehow even insulting, you want to go 'do you even understand this?'. And with me, it's the wild breed of Noise in its purest form, and anyone into Noise instantly gets a hit off of that and instantly KNOWS 'yeah, this guy gets it'. And I keep meeting people like that. One guy wanted me to come out to do live gigs with him. You'd think there wouldn't be many people into this, but the ones that are, are seriously into it.
And that's what this 'lowercase' stuff is about. It's not the same genre (though I bet they'd understand my noise work, even if it's way too loud for them), but it's the same deal. If you don't like it, well congratulations, join the majority, and you forfeit any possible claim that you understand what's going on here. It's not being done for you. It's never gonna be done for you. If they wanted to make music for YOU, they'd be doing something completely different.