Journey

March 6th, 2010

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I want to enjoy the jour­ney more!

When am I going to be happy with where I am as opposed to where I want to go? Not sure where this dichotomy will finally con­nect my dreams with the real­ity. It hurts more because the goal I’ve given myself isn’t really rooted in any one thing but relies instead on accom­plish­ing cer­tain steps along the way. Fin­ish­ing school, just around the cor­ner, get­ting into grad school/ get­ting a job.. finan­cial resources to be able to do those things I love most.. going trav­el­ling, eat­ing out with friends, going to funky dance par­ties… on top of pay­ing for all the essen­tials like hous­ing, inter­net, cloth­ing; yes, in that order.

Next. This four let­ter word is hang­ing over all of us con­stantly.. what IS “next”? Damn if I know, but it inter­rupts my thoughts every­day. I’m not one of those poor saps who can’t han­dle the pres­sure of respon­si­bil­ity or am not on top of my work, has poor work/life bal­ance, none of the above.. sim­ply I am not com­pletely sat­is­fied with the sta­tus quo. Essen­tially I have noth­ing to com­plain about and spend my life of leisure enjoy­ing the pur­suits of any aver­age 21 year old in the the big city.. but just not quite sure whats the point? Do you want to know the mean­ing of life? I’m not sure it exists. I think I will keep try­ing to ques­tion and pur­sue that utopic vision of hap­pi­ness. One where I’m happy with my job, have finan­cial means, free time to pur­sue hob­bies, have a fam­ily and so on.

Sit­ting here I know spring is com­ing, I can feel it shin­ning through my win­dows, the birds are singing and I just want to know whats “next”. Summer?

I’m going to say good­bye soon and I think I’ve learned all those quin­tes­sen­tial lessons that uni­ver­sity should provide.

Love life: Don’t even want to go there. I imag­ine now that it was prob­a­bly a mon­u­men­tal waste of time, but hope­fully the expe­ri­ence will prove invaluable.

School: They give you shit marks to demor­al­ize you, then you meet some amaz­ing peo­ple who change your per­spec­tive about it all and rewards come in.

Friends: The ones who shape your out­look and help you grow dur­ing this most impor­tant time in your life. Basi­cally if you are a douchebag– your friends usu­ally are too.

This list could go on I’m sure… I just want to say I feel smart but equally stu­pid some­times, as I’m sure every­one does. Point is keep your friends close and enjoy the ride.

I’m plan­ning my trip to Europe this sum­mer… that makes me very happy. I’m going to try and find myself on my solo jour­ney. I expect to have some kind of epiphany around the 4th week while sit­ting at a lit­tle cafe in Prague haha. I can dream, can’t I?

1. You Can’t Hurry Love — The Supremes

This post was written by tristan

Vasco Alves — Sound Machines

March 4th, 2010

6 radios, 6 keys, 6 tun­ing dials, 6 vol­ume con­trols, 6 AM/FM switches, 6 LED lights, 6 ante­nas, 6 audio out­puts and 1 power socket… This is the AM/FM Key­board 6 — A unique instru­ment designed and con­structed by Vasco Alves.

The piano keys are wired up to indi­vid­u­ally trig­ger the tun­ing of 6 dif­fer­ent radio sta­tions. Sounds emanated from these sta­tions can then be manip­u­lated indi­vid­u­ally using the built-in con­trols to achieve what is prob­a­bly best likened to a sound-collage. This enables one to cre­ate / play sound pieces based on what is being broad­casted at that very spe­cial moment. Every speaker has a tuner under­neath which adds the option to seek for more radio sta­tions or ran­dom noise — what­ever fits best with the cre­ated sound piece. Watch the video below to see it in action.

As you have prob­a­bly noticed, the instru­ment in the video is slightly larger and bulkier in size, and is less portable in design. That’s because you are actu­ally look­ing at the FMk­brd, an ear­lier model of The AM/FM Key­board 6. Aside from being less refined in its design, the FMk­brd also lacks the vari­ety of con­trols its suc­ces­sor offers.

Vasco is a leg­end. I think he is prob­a­bly one of the few peo­ple I know who is sin­cerely ded­i­cated and pas­sion­ate about his work. He works full time as a graphic designer whilst pur­su­ing an active ongo­ing inter­est in inter­ac­tive sound art out­side of office hours. Always keen to col­lab­o­rate, Vasco has per­formed with a large and mixed bunch of cre­ative types. For a full list of his past live per­for­mances, click here. You can also lis­ten to record­ings he’s done with Noise=Noise at Gold­smiths Dig­i­tal Stu­dio.

This Sound Bed was his final year project at LCC, where he grad­u­ated with a BA in Inter­ac­tive Design. For more infor­ma­tion and pic­tures of other instru­ments / art projects of Vasco’s, visit his web­site at www.vascoalvo.com

Below is an inter­view he did with JOTTA which I’ve pil­fered from the world wide web. Enjoy and be inspired! (Please keep in mind that I did not con­duct this inter­view, and that it was prob­a­bly done quite some time ago so any events men­tioned has prob­a­bly already passed!)

When and why did you move to Lon­don?
I moved to Lon­don in Sep­tem­ber 2004 to do a BA (Inter­ac­tive Design) at the Lon­don Col­lege of Communication.

How does the city influ­ence or effect your work?
In Lon­don things work dif­fer­ently from what I was use to in Lis­bon. Out of the good and bad bits about it I def­i­nitely became aware of new ways and meth­ods of work from my expe­ri­ence while study­ing and from peo­ple and friends I met along the way.

The mas­sive cul­tural scene is also very influ­en­tial. I’ve been lucky enough to see, dis­cover and learn about a lot of stuff that I like since I’m liv­ing over here. 

All your art­work is related to sound and music– do you also make music in the con­ven­tional way? That is — do you play any instruments?
I’m an extremely bad player but I have a few “con­ven­tional” ones: an elec­tric gui­tar, a bass and a really nice Bon­tempi Har­mo­nium that I found on the bin in Whitechapel at night. It’s not fully fixed yet but it has an amaz­ing warm sound. But even these have been played by so many peo­ple in uncon­ven­tional ways in past. What does con­ven­tional really mean these days? Any­way I’ve used the gui­tar and bass in a band con­text but I guess I’ve been most of the time more inter­ested in explor­ing new sounds than fol­low­ing chord struc­tures, although I occa­sion­ally used them and they can be very reward­ing too.
Recently I’ve been more into build­ing my own instru­ments and sound sources. I like them a lot because there aren’t (most of the times) any pre­de­fined ways of play­ing them and this can lead to a pure and more gen­uine way of pro­duc­ing sounds that inter­ests me a lot.

How did the con­cepts of these alter­na­tive sound machines come about?
Nat­u­rally. From work and being con­stantly aware of what sur­rounds me, from what I lis­ten to, from sketch­ing, etc. You end up pick­ing ele­ments that you like for some rea­son out of all these sit­u­a­tions and even­tu­ally by link­ing or adapt them to dif­fer­ent con­texts you can get inter­est­ing out­comes. Then you keep work­ing towards the essence of that new piece. Try­ing to get your state­ment across as sim­ple as possible.

Can you explain your process? Do you doo­dle or achieve inspi­ra­tion first? do you do a lot of tin­ker­ing with machinery?
I tend to keep things in my head for a long time before I put it down on paper or some­thing. It’s like a long and painful fil­ter­ing process or maybe more like a diges­tive sys­tem as most of the times it’s just crap that comes out. This is also when most of my research is done. But I must admit it’s not a very prac­ti­cal way of doing things. Any­way once I have a bet­ter idea of what my aim or my tar­get is I do all the doo­dling, sketch­ing and experiments.

Have you had any peo­ple hav­ing strange inter­ac­tions with the sound bed?
Yes. In the end of my degree show I didn’t pick up the bed from the exhi­bi­tion space that was given to us at LCC when I was meant to. The next day when I got there I found that some­one had lit­er­ally ham­mered it down to bits and dropped it in the back­yard bin. I still regret the fact that no-one thought of switch­ing it on and record­ing the sounds, it would have been such a bet­ter experience!

What are you work­ing on at the moment?
I’m cur­rently redo­ing my web­site and turn it into a more com­plete plat­form in order to do updates with ease and with a more func­tional and up to date news sec­tion. I’m work­ing on some music too; it’s def­i­nitely one of my pri­or­i­ties at the moment. I’ve been think­ing for some time now, about mak­ing a new ver­sion of the FMk­brd, with more fea­tures but my elec­tron­ics’ skills are very basic and there­fore it will take longer than I wished. 
I am also help­ing some friends put on some gigs at The Sas­soon Gallery in Peckham.

Which artists are you into at the moment?
I don’t like to think about it that way. I like what I like because of every­thing I’ve seen until then. I would rather name a few moments I enjoyed recently, that had a strong impact on me. Chris­t­ian Marclay’s exhi­bi­tion at Bar­bi­can Cen­tre. The Dead C and Sonic Youth live at the ATP fes­ti­val curated by Thurston Moore. Jonas Mekas’ films (fol­lowed by his inspi­ra­tional talks) in Lon­don this sum­mer. Karl Kleim (light instal­la­tion) with Sleeparchive (sound) live. Derek Jar­man exhi­bi­tion at the Ser­pen­tine Gallery. Ger­ard Richter’s room at Tate Mod­ern amongst others.
I must men­tion some of my friends’ work too. I try to be into peo­ple like — Jucapinga, André Bas­tos, Miranda Ios­si­fidis, Pedro Rufino (and Andre Avelãs), Zul­mira Gamito, Guy Archard, Tom Kavanagh, Joe Pat And Jimmy Trevor — as much as I pos­si­bly can, they are one my biggest influences.

What do you like to do out­side of mak­ing art?
Work­ing full-time as a graphic designer, eat and even­tu­ally sleep.

What music do you lis­ten to?
This is a hard one; I don’t know where to begin…

Where do you hope to be in five years time?
Still work­ing with sound but hope­fully with much more time to spend on it…

What would be your ulti­mate brief?
A self ini­ti­ated one.

This post was written by Michelle Oh

Throwback

February 27th, 2010

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(Took this pic­ture on my then super awe­some Razr phone… on a train cross­ing into Mon­treal in 2007. Next to think­ing in the shower, noth­ing beats solo train rides.)

It’s a nos­tal­gia music week. I have a crazy amount of music and I went through a bunch of it this week­end, about time actu­ally. Any­ways– these are a few old favourites…  the fact these bands start with “M” is just a coincidence.

Julie+Doiron+juliedoiron

Julie Doiron — No More
Mag­no­lia Elec­tric Co. — Mont­gom­mery
My Morn­ing Jacket — Off the Record
Mid­lake — Roscoe
White Rab­bits — The Plot
Nicole Atkins — The Way It Is
Fox Jaws — Karmonica

*Bonus*
rings_1
Crowded House — Don’t Dream Its Over ( I swear this played as a com­mer­cial to travel to New Zealand on TV in Hong Kong when I was a kid. Yes, its from Lord of The Rings –only one of the most badass movie trilo­gies ever.)

This post was written by tristan

Magical Numbers

February 24th, 2010

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Their first self-titled album The Magic Num­bers stands apart for my ear­lier music explo­ration days… I can dis­tinctly remem­ber see­ing a review of this on Pitch­fork years back (found it! link) and lis­ten­ing to one song– that was enough for me to run out and get the album.

Their fol­low up didn’t really strike a cord the same way the first one did. A time and a place? I don’t know– I hope maybe some­day they’ll come back.

The 3 minute mark on Love Me Like You and the 3 minute mark on Which Way to Happy both stand out for me on this album.

Down­load
1. Love Me Like You
2. Which Way to Happy

This post was written by tristan

Bend and Break

February 20th, 2010

The+Morning+Benders

Too lit­tle too late?

This makes the cold evening warm. It makes the future seem more cheerful.

1. The Morn­ing Ben­dersExcuses

This post was written by tristan

Breakbot Valentines Mix

February 19th, 2010

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Always bring­ing the funk. Who the fuck cares if you bob your head and shake it on the sub­way? They smell any­way. Uhhh GO CANADA.

Down­load

This post was written by tristan

One Life Stand

February 17th, 2010


before One Life Stand


after One Life Stand

When was the last time you lis­tened to your Hot Chip tracks..?

I know I’ve neglected them for awhile. Ready For The Floor was one of the most over­played songs remixed and deformed into a bazil­lion ren­di­tions on a bazil­lion indie clubs that even­tu­ally made its way to shit­tier and shit­tier clubs before it was even­tu­ally every­where and I came this [ ] close to delet­ing that track entirely from my com­puter… but theeen along came One Life Stand! I was so pleased because they’ve finally found a way to still sound ulti­mately Hot Chip; still dancy, still catchy, still repet­i­tive, but with a refresh­ing twist of je ne sais quoi that’s enough to reawaken my long lost love for them. Lis­ten and you can prob­a­bly visu­al­ize their slow but sure babysteps towards a harder, bet­ter, faster, stronger Hot Chip.

Here are a few tracks off the new album for you, they will rape your ears and you prob­a­bly won’t resist. Watch out for the fun trop­i­cal beat inserts in One Life Stand, the epic build-up open­ing to Thieves In The Night (if it sounds famil­iar it’s because it’s already spread­ing like some kind of STD as we speak), the chaos in Take It In as well as the breezy light­heart­ed­ness of Alley Cats that’s per­fect for cold days dream­ing of Spring.

1. Hot Chip — One Life Stand

2. Hot Chip — Thieves In The Night

3. Hot Chip — Take It In

4. Hot Chip — Alley Cats

Click here to down­load every­thing in one go via mediafire

Also pub­lished at Oh Really?

This post was written by Michelle Oh

WARPAINT

February 17th, 2010

I recently started lis­ten­ing to Warpaint, who are SO good. With quite a lot of bands I either really like all their stuff but they all sound kind of the same after awhile, or I’d maybe really really like one or two key pieces and that’s it. Warpaint is amaz­ing because they do such a wide range of styles but they do them so effort­lessly that they make it sound cohe­sive, like it all belongs.

The track Bil­lie Hol­i­day is all ethe­real and lo-fi acoustics while Bur­gandy is this beau­ti­fully haunt­ing pagan post-rock-esque trib­ute. Stars reminds me of a much more suc­cinct Blonde Red­head. Ele­phants has psy­che­delic ele­ments to it that’s uniquely com­ple­mented by shoegaze vocals. Krim­son makes me want to cry, in a good way. Other artists they’ve been com­pared to include: Atlas Sound, Surfer Blood, and Trailer Trash Tra­cys.

Right click + save file as to down­load and enjoy!

1. Warpaint — Bil­lie Holiday

2. Warpaint — Burgandy

3. Warpaint — Stars

4. Warpaint — Elephants

5. Warpaint — Krimson

Click here to down­load all in one go

Also pub­lished on Oh Really?

This post was written by Michelle Oh

I Blame You

February 15th, 2010

Its catchy and its stuck in my head. I blame you. But also, thanks. One more thing– I’m going to dance like this from now on, I see it as an improve­ment from my usual mish­mash of 50s swing, 70s funk and early 90s post-modern inter­pre­ta­tive dance.

Dia­mond Rings

Down­load

1. Dia­mond Rings — All Yr Songs

This post was written by tristan

Difference

February 12th, 2010

See­ing as how Valen­tines Day is just around the cor­ner… Do you know what your odds of find­ing true love are? Well, you can find out.

Link

Its funny, I had this exact ques­tion in first year when I was tak­ing an urban stud­ies course. You can find out how many peo­ple of the oppo­site sex are liv­ing in the same area as you by going to your country’s sta­tis­tics web­sites, thats Statscan here in Canada. Then you break it down by peo­ple close to your age. And from that you take off another 50% of those peo­ple because odds are you won’t be attracted to them or have any­thing in com­mon– then maybe other fac­tors like they are already with some­one.. basi­cally the point is.. the num­ber gets pretty small.

Now this isn’t to say that “find­ing true love” isn’t pos­si­ble, far from it, just that if you do find it– well, lucky you! haha

In not so roman­tic news, what is up with cha­troulette? Its gross and fas­ci­nat­ing.. and dudes come on– the P to V ratio is hor­ri­bly skewed. Note to all those naked guys– put your pants on, no one wants to see that.

This post was written by tristan