May 1, 2008 at 8:05 pm · Filed under Music, Overlap
The third installment of the LISTEN/VISION series is coming up on Wednesday, May 14. This time, we are super happy to share that Carsten Nicolai (Alva Noto), Frank Bretschneider and Olaf Bender from the Raster-Noton imprint will perform live, both individually and as a trio called Signal.
About Raster-Noton: Raster-Noton is a platform, a network covering the overlapping border areas of pop, art, and science. After surviving the storm that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, East German sound manipulators Carsten Nicolai, Frank Bretschneider, and Olaf Bender pooled their resources as Raster-Noton and jacked into international art currents. Their minimalist electronic CDs and sound objects have sent power surges through a global grid connecting like-minded artists from Coil’s ElpH to Tokyo’s Ryoji Ikeda.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
San Francisco Art Institute Lecture Hall
800 Chestnut Street
San Francisco
$15 general public, limited free seating for SFAI students
Please join us for this very special event, co-presented by Overlap.org and Volume Projects with generous support from the Goethe Institut.
April 20, 2008 at 11:10 pm · Filed under Culture, Music
After picking up coffee at Farley’s this morning, I went to Aquarius Records to browse through my favorite section of the store, Exotica/Novelty. That’s where I found The Ghost Orchid, a bizarre collection of paranormal voices and sounds recorded on magnetic tape. Curated by the world’s leading EVP researchers, these tracks are known today as examples of Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP), or the recorded voices of the otherworld.
Recordings from The Ghost Orchid range in both topic and length, from singing to multilingual responses in English, Latvian, German, or Russian. Often, the recordings are a scrambled combination of several different languages. They were captured in various methods: some came as mysterious appearances on home tape recordings; others were interruptions to public radio broadcasts; and many were direct, shockingly insightful responses to EVP researchers who engaged in dialogue with these so-called “voices”.
Superstitious folly? I couldn’t exactly tell by the cover art alone, but once I started listening to snippets, I became hooked and listened to the entire album. I heard conversations between EVP pioneers and the “voices,” who disclosed answers regarding specific individuals, events, life after death, and even their own origin.
Here’s one example: Friedrich Jürgenson, a painter/singer who enjoyed recording his own singing and that of wild birds, noted that strange noises and voices often appeared when he played the recordings back. After questioning the validity of these occurrences, he suddenly realized that they were no accident when he heard the voice of his (deceased) mother in one playback, saying: “Friedel, can you hear me, it’s mammy…”
Before I give too much away, I’ll stop here and let you pick up your own copy for review. It’s a trippy, unearthly experience which I wouldn’t want to spoil for the rest of you — especially those who are interested in field recordings and found sounds.
Yamaha is sponsoring a free event at 1015 this Friday, April 18, which includes live performances by the likes of Pole, Robert Lippok (of To Rococo Rot), Sutekh, Safety Scissors, and I am Robot. This event will serve as a launch party for a novel instrument that wowed the crowd at SIGGRAPH in 2005: Tenori-On.
A touch-sensitive sequencer with a LED matrix interface, Tenori-On offers a fun way to visually represent music while you make it. It’s easy to create and manipulate loops, manage layers and and even import samples via an SD card slot. Tenori-On looks like a fun piece of gear for live shows too — you can string a few of them together or hook one up to your laptop, mixer, etc. via MIDI. Best of all, friends and audiences can actually see the music progress with the dancing LED lights on the double-sided tablet. Designer Toshio Iwai will give a live demo of the instrument at the party.
I first encountered the work of Bay area artist David Kwan at last month’s LISTEN/VISION 02 event, where I experienced Solaris, an audiovisual piece focused on the diaphanous reverberations of muted light forms.
Kwan, who teaches at Mills College in Oakland, is now taking part of Interplay, a new exhibition at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley:
Terra Firma is a complex video installation deployed by an automated system that “composes” a continuously changing landscape derived from video footage. The footage is generated from four different video sources that project images of empty landscapes to create a single on-site landscape in the gallery. Kwan’s visual continuum of shifting permutations creates a sort of “non-place” suggestive of our own interior psychological space. For the viewer, these images can provoke a nostalgic memory of our archetypal landscape. (description via Kala’s website)
Interplay
Featuring works by: David Kwan, Nora Pauwels, Bartosz Posacki and Steve Reich
April 17 - May 24, 2008
Reception: Thursday, April 17, 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Gallery Talk with the Artists: Tuesday, April 29, 7:00 pm
A great lineup is in store for Yuri’s Night at Nasa Ames. Of note on the audiovisual side is a psychedelic drawing interface installation by Joshua Ott,Ezekiel Honig, and Morgan Packard (see screenshot above).
Other artists like Jon Tejada, Lusine, Deru, and [a]pendics.shuffle will keep the tunes going alongside all of the technological wizardry that one can expect of a Bay area geek spectacle. See you there!
March 27, 2008 at 11:20 pm · Filed under Music, Travel
This year’s wedding season has kept things busy at the shop, been crankin’ out letterpress invitations and working on extraordinary save-the-date projects too. A sweet break is in sight: just booked tickets for Mutek in late May. Tim Hecker, Onur Ozer, Murcof and more will be headlining the festival… hooray!
LISTEN/VISION 02 is part of a unique series presenting *unreleased* audiovisual compositions. These exclusive pieces — specifically commissioned from an international pool of contemporary artists — are not available anywhere on CD, DVD or on the Internet.
Featured Artists:
GREGG KOWALSKY – “Rosebud for Red Magus” – 2006 – 18:17 min.
Gregg Kowalsky resides in Oakland, California where he completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in Electronic Music and Recording Media at Mills College. Kowalsky’s compositions range from drone and noise pieces to the psychedelic, which are highly influenced by the thick, humid air of South Florida where Gregg lived for most of his life. He is interested in filling the spaces his music occupies through dense, live mixes. He has composed for film, dance, acoustic ensembles and sound installations. Gregg’s debut full-length album “Through The Cardial Window” was released on the Kranky label in Spring 2006.
http://ossobucco.net/
DAVID KWAN - “SOLARIS” - 2006 - 10:07 min.
Kwan has presented work at the Berkeley Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive, Headlands Center for the Arts, Artist Television Access, The Lab, and Mission 17 in San Francisco; Jack Straw New Media Gallery in Seattle; Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart; and Baracke am Deustchen Theater in Berlin. He received a BA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College where he teaches music, art and intermedia. http://www.meridiangallery.org/davidkwan2003.htm
CHIKA and I8U - “Infinity02″ - 2008 - 30:38 min.
CHIKA is a visual artist working within New York’s expanded cinema community and VJ scene. Her videos implement geometric minimalist patterns and original graphics in unique, repetitive combinations. I8U is a sound artist based in Montreal, Canada. Her work reveals powerful, opaque and complex sound environments where analog and digital meet.
http://www.imagima.com
SAWAKO – “untitled” – 2006 – 15:18 min.
Sawako is a Tokyo/NYC-based sound sculptor who understands the value of dynamics and the power of silence. She culls sounds from everyday life — field recordings, instruments, vocal and electronic sounds — and sets them floating in a digital space imbued with organic textures. Her unique sonic world has been called “post romantic sound” by Boston’s Weekly Dig. http://www.12k.com/sawako.html
February 6, 2008 at 10:21 pm · Filed under Music, Overlap
I am in love with the Lumerians‘ self-titled debut album. Five potent tracks slowly unfold into succulent psych, with perceptive bass lines and focused percussion layered with the spacey warmth of organ and guitar.
The cover art, printed locally at Logos, tenders a visual précis of the music: frozen ice, both rigid and softly rippling, imparts a myriad of subtle shades and patterns that emerge and develop like an intoxicating trip.
It’s a damn fine album that’s miles ahead of anything else you’ve heard lately; the limited pressing of 500 clear vinyl records makes this one you shouldn’t wait to buy.
Just picked up tix for the Boredoms show at the Fillmore in San Francisco!
Sadly, I missed their Brooklyn rock-out session with 77 drummers last year. I am super excited to finally experience their delirious onslaught of noise in a live setting!
The third installment of the LISTEN/VISION series is coming up on Wednesday, May 14. This time, we are super happy to share that Carsten Nicolai (Alva Noto), Frank Bretschneider and Olaf Bender from the Raster-Noton imprint will perform live, both individually and as a trio called Signal. 
Here’s one example: 
