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Tech NewsThe Drone & the Drone
Radio Free Ul-quoma is the somewhat imposing name under which Andrew Gladstone-Heighton of Gateshead, England, posts his material at his soundcloud.com account. Perhaps the “Ul-quoma” part is intended as a reference to Ul Qoma, the twin city of Besźel in China Miéville’s great novel The City & the City. Gladstone-Heighton’s most recently uploaded track, “Codeine,” … Continued
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Tech News
Drone Month at AudioMo
There’s a month-long audio challenge in June called AudioMo (more at twitter.com/AudioMo and audiomo.net). The intention appears to be to get music-makers making music, along the lines of National Novel Writing Month and February Album Writing Month. Here’s a description of AudioMo from its website: AudioMo is a month long audio challenge, normally held in … Continued
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Tech News
Deep South Ambient
Ambient music can have an unfinished quality, because it leaves so much space open. “Three Aimless Clouds” by Michael Ash Sharbaugh is less aimless than much such music, though, thanks to several qualities, key among them a rising, siren-like tone that marks the opening of the track, and a melodic insistence that trails throughout. The … Continued
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Tech News
8-bit Bossa Nova
There is a lot of intriguing music streaming in the feed of the São Paulo, Brazil–based musician who identifies as Asvfuks on the SoundCloud service (and on Instagram, among other places). The track “A Divisão Do João,” by way of example, seems to be based on a snatch of music by João Gilberto, the bossa … Continued
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Tech News
“Så Kan Det Gå” (A Glitchy Swedish Puzzle)
“Så kan det gå” by the Swedish musician Alveola Ämting lays a tremulous vocal amid a light shimmer of broken static. Her granular sounds, a gentle if brittle smattering of nano-sonic fissures, give way as time passes to her halting, slow-paced intonation: I was not looking for trouble But I got caught by a siren … Continued
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Tech NewsAn Arcade of Reflection
The composer Bryant O’Hara participates in the Sunday Assembly — a kind of non-religious church, as it were — in Atlanta, Georgia, where some aspects of the secular service involve music. He wanted to think of another means to introduce music into the communal activity, and came upon the idea of a collaborative video game … Continued
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Tech News
A Free Leyland Kirby Album for 40 Days (and Nights)
In time for his 40th birthday, Leyland Kirby uploaded a 40-track set — one composition for each year — of short works under the umbrella title We Drink to Forget the Coming Storm. It’s an elegiac collection of nameless songs, each comprised of, as he describes it, “the same elements piano, digital strings and synthesized … Continued
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Tech News
Texture First
Rawore’s “Industrial Sands” is pure texture as foreground, a slow roil of granulated sound running at length — like a sour pipe organ heard through a veil of vinyl surface noise. It’s sound as fabric, to be enjoyed not for some pre-determined melodic procession but for slight variations playing out in realtime. Track originally posted … Continued
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Tech News
When Is a Beat a Drone?
Leslie Rollins’s “30 Minute Drumming for Journeying” appears to be exactly that, a rhythmic sonic space to get mentally lost in. Technically it isn’t a drone, in that it has a steady, distinct beat, but a drone can also mean a steady repetitive sound, and on that count this is most certainly a member of … Continued
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Tech News
Sludge Arcade Techno
Glia’s “[[ LOW ]” is expert sludge techno, the beat the sound of gears dripping with dirty axle grease, trying to make traction but slipping often enough to make the whole thing sound temporary, fragile. The track doesn’t linger in the dark, either. The playful addition of some arcade-quality sounds, as much pinball as Galaga, … Continued
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Tech News
Elizabeth Veldon’s Winter Drones
Elizabeth Veldon, a Glasgow-based musician, has been posting a series of winter-themed drones with titles like “glengoyne surrenders to winter and all the valleys fill with snow” and “a winter song for faze (sleep, sleep/ snow had fallen)” and “the lower levels of angels, even, are bathed in grace (for lilly).” They sound true to … Continued
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Tech NewsLive Arvo Pärt Cover by A Winged Victory for the Sullen
A Winged Victory for the Sullen is the name employed by Adam Wiltzie (of Stars of the Lid) and composer Dustin O’Halloran when working in tandem. They have, together, committed wonderfully drone-informed explorations of what might be called contemporary classical, except to the extent that so many of its participants welcome the word “classical” with … Continued
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Tech News
Post-Classical Sequel from Christina Vantzou
The second album from Christina Vantzou is due out on February 24. Titled No. 2, it follows her earlier No. 1, which was released in late 2011. The new album is on the label Kranky, which is home to such notable musicians as Jessica Baliff, Greg Davis, Grouper, and Keith Fullerton Whitman, as well as … Continued
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Tech News
Molly Berg + Stephen Vitiello % Yui Onodera
Molly Berg contributes varied breathy, glottal vocalizations in her collaborations with Stephen Vitiello. There is the sound she emits from her vocal cords, and the sound that she makes with her clarinet. Both can veer into an etheral, heavenly zone, or can settle in a more tactile, percussive space. The combination with Vitiello’s equally untraditional … Continued
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Tech News
Past and Future Ambient
Ambient music has never been much improved upon by veering too far from Brian Eno’s initial conception of it — that is, of a music that serves equally well as both foreground and background. But there are more vectors to ambient than merely its relative prominence in the listening experience. Even as ambient music has … Continued
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Tech News
The Drone at Light Speed
Still yet swift, the track “A String of Lights Beneath the Lake” by Australia-based musician Tuonela combines the hazy apparation that is drone music with an urgent momentum often considered anathema to drone-ness. If still waters — to borrow a metaphor suggested by the track’s title — run deep, then still music might yet travel … Continued
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Tech News
New Year Dub
One of the beauties of SoundCloud.com is the casual nature of much of its content. Musicians upload not only finished recordings but works-in-progress, which serve as windows into their creative process, arguably providing a more intimate, fluid, and digitally natural listening experience that do sites whose structure is more clearly modeled on the brick’n’mortar system … Continued
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Tech News
One Prayer Bowl Ringing
The sound of one prayer bowl ringing is quite a bit more than the familiar lulling waveform when that ringing is sent through myriad processing routines. This is why while Jason Charney’s “Pratītya,” named for the Buddhist concept of “pratītyasamutpāda,” veers from its opening ring tone, that which follows — overtones, and cicada chatter, percussive … Continued
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Tech News
Disquiet Junto Project 0103: Tinsel Song
The project: Make a song based on last week’s “sonic tinsel” project. Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join … Continued
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Tech News
A Very Scanner Christmas
When you hear that Robin Rimbaud, aka Scanner, has recorded a cover of “White Christmas,” perhaps the first thing that comes to mind is surveillance audio of Santa making his annual sleigh ride — a sound art version of the Official NORAD Santa Tracker. Scanner made his name — that name — early on by … Continued