“On lead synthesizer, a philodendron …” (And the crowd goes wild…)

Vegetation may not be the first association you have when thinking of electronic music. But two new albums, each released via Bandcamp, celebrate biological life of the green, leafy variety. One is a benefit compilation, with proceeds going to help trees and music inspired by that green goodness. The other uses plants as “performers,” generating its form from plant life in an installation and extended “live” release.

It seems a fitting time to think about trees and plants, as those of us in the Northern Hemisphere see the coming of summer. As I write this, outside my home office’s window, everything has become a calming canopy of maple leaves. And so, just as those trees have a chilling, soothing emotional impact, I confess that this is all really enjoyable music, gimmicks aside. The tree-themed compilation is not a bunch of aimless Earthy music; the plants are not, as you might assume, screechy noise. Instead, you get two full-length albums of terrific-quality ambient music.

Each also works to plant something living – literally. “Take to the Trees,” a compilation for Arbor Day, directs proceeds from sales to the Arbor Day Foundation for conservation and education. That means money from the release could protect and plant trees. The Data Garden Quartet is more literal: embracing the idea of “plantable music,” the ephemeral digital download code is printed on paper that can grow. For instance, on the recent “Cheap Dinosaurs” release, you get “hand-made seed paper with screen-printed album art and download code on reverse side.”

Download Cheap Dinosaurs, plant this art under a thin layer of soil in full sun to partial shade and add water. With proper care, blue lobelias will begin sprouting in the first two weeks and finally begin blooming about 4 weeks later.

Released on Sound for Good, a benefit label, “Take to the Trees” gives you four hours of music for a minimum of just US$1. The collection is eclectic, spanning fairly traditional ambient music to beats, breaks, and experiments. Some tracks sound influenced by the cadence of traditional Japanese music or Tibetan meditation. They evoke impressions of trees and forests, but often via electronic (even traditional analog) timbres, recalling the sensation of trees and experience as much as painting those scenes directly. There are epic, sprawling tracks and more compact, rhythmic compositions. Sometimes nature itself sneaks in, in jungles and mountain sojourns. More often, warm, fuzzy electronic pads glow like sunlight. Many, many artists participate, going far beyond the San Francisco scene, including our friend, technologist, blogger, and musician Mark Mosher. Jack Hertz, also a prolific blogger and performer, heads up the comp.

Artists:

John Koch-Northrup, Ian Boddy, Burning Artist, Chromasonic, Crystal Dreams, Todd Fletcher, Groupthink, HG Fortune and Inner Dreamer, inside/ outside, Oskar Menzel, Joe McMahon, Mesawzee Eagle, Mirada, Shane Morris, Mark Mosher, Mystified, redgreenblue, John Sherwood, Symatic Star and Tange.

http://sound4good.bandcamp.com/

If “Take to the Trees” is hours of human playing and human experience recalling the feeling of plant life, “Data Garden Quartet” turns to the plants to “generate” the score, in nearly two hours of extended listening. Blending minimalism and ambience, the product is a wash of sound, with waves of timbres crested by gentle buzzes, glitches, and hums, all in extended rhythms and cycles (sometimes recalling nothing so much as the occasional stroke of a Javanese gong).

The project looks to make natural phenomena audible, “information which we cannot perceive through our biological senses”:

The musical compositions you are about to listen to were generated by the electronic impulses produced by four tropical plants. This data, interpreted by humans with the help of computers, has been employed to organize sound into beauty perceivable by the human ear. While the means of producing this beauty can be described in technical terms, the natural creative force generating this experience is less apparent.

These 116 minutes were recorded during an installation at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in April, in a “quartet” of a philodendron, two schefflera plants, and a snake plant. (Images here are from that exhibition.) The team:

Sam Cusumano: electronics
Joe Patitucci: sound design
Alex Tyson: production, graphic design

More images, though I think my favorite of all is the wonder of the gawking young girl. It’s too easy for us to become jaded, and forget, sometimes, the magic of the things we make.

Quartet: Live at The Philadelphia Museum of Art [datagarden.org]
http://datagarden.org/about/

Data Garden also do an interview with Abigail Bruley for Creators Project:
Interacting With Plants To Create Polyphonic Music

The first rule of giving is that you need to make sure that the entity to which you’re giving is actually asking for support. In the wake of a devastating fire started during London’s rioting that wiped out a Sony warehouse, indie labels are indeed asking for such support, says a representative of fundraising efforts. Sony’s facility housed, under contract, massive stocks belonging to UK distributor PIAS, representing in some cases the majority or entirety of inventory of dozens of independent record labels. For smaller organizations, insurance funds may not arrive in time to continue day-to-day operation, at a time when small labels are often on the brink of being able to operate from one day to the next.

That’s the picture painted by Dan Salter, who tells CDM about the effort Label Love, which in the immediate aftermath of the fire was already communicating with labels and beginning organizing efforts. Along with Hannah Morgan, Dan is leading efforts to help keep the lights on at labels, and to communicate with the rest of us about what’s going on.

Note that this is not organized by PIAS; you can read their official statements by following the distributor’s official site. (PIAS say they are also working on cleanup and efforts to benefit labels, but no official statement has yet requested funds; they’ve mainly thus far clarified what’s happened and how they’re responding but stopped short of asking for donations, beyond volunteers to help cleanup the site.)

Updated: An official PIAS-organized fund is detailed below. In addition to providing loans to labels, a statement by PIAS and the Association for Independent Music suggests that the effort will also help coordinate third-party drives like Label Love.

If you’re not up to speed with what’s happened, see yesterday’s post:
150 Indie Labels Lose Stock as London Warehouse Burns; Details Emerging, Reports, and Benefits

CDM: First, who are you? Whom do you represent?

Dan: We’re not actually affiliated to PIAS, we are a little group of bloggers & music fans that wanted to do something to help.

Have you communicated directly with any labels? What have they told you, if so?

We’ve been in touch with a number of the labels. We write & run a number of music blogs so we already knew quite a few people involved but many more have got in touch since Monday. Some of the stories are heart wrenching, people’s whole livelihoods have been put at risk by what’s happened.

Insurance will presumably be distributed through SONY. That said, do we know if stocks were covered by insurance? I know that Sony had told PIAS they’re working on keeping stocks flowing.

We’re not totally clear on the insurance situation, as you say it might be a question for PIAS, but I do know that even if insurance is paid it may come too late for many of the smaller labels. These companies run on a day-to-day basis and this kind of break in their cash flow could be terminal.

What do we know at this point about losses that may be suffered by labels? How are they coping?

I’m not sure of the overall situation but we’ve been contacted by a number of labels who have lost pretty much everything & have said it’s very touch and go as to whether they can survive this.

Who made the decision to begin fundraising? Was this something that came up via fans of the labels, or that the labels asked for? What’s their response?

A lot of these people affected are people know personally and are friends with when we heard the news we responded by thinking about what we could offer as gig promoters and the idea of benefit shows was born.

How will funds be distributed once collected?

100% of money donated through PayPal will go to the labels affected. Money raised from the events less costs will also be distributed to the labels.

Ideally we want to distribute the money in relation to the percentage of stock lost by each label. If we can’t get the relevant information to do that then we will split it evenly between the PIAS clients.

If people want to help now, what are some ways they might do so? How can they give or volunteer?

They can either donate through our PayPal account, link is on http://cognitivedissonancerecords.com/labellove/ or if they want to offer their services they can mail us at labellovebenefit (at) gmail (dot) com

Some people were circulating the idea of buying downloads from their favorite labels who have been affected. Would you encourage that, as well?

It’s a great idea but we would encourage people to use independent sites like Rough Trade rather than iTunes or Amazon as they take a far smaller cut & the labels will benefit more.

And more broadly, can you tell us a bit about yourself and how everybody’s doing over there? Much appreciated!

To be frank, our minds are a little bit blown by the scale of the response to our suggestion. We initially envisaged doing a few small gigs around London, we never expected to be dealing with the sheer volume of offers & support that we have, it’s been amazing & humbling. Right now there’s only a couple of us at the core of this and we work full time as well but we’re hoping to have a team together soon to help us cope with what’s happened!

Updated: an official PIAS and Association of Independent Music (AIM) fund has been announced.

This morning, we are announcing the creation of a fund to help independents affected by the catastrophe. They will be able to draw upon the fund to help cover the interruption to their business and the cost of getting back onto their feet.

The fund is being provided by some of AIM’s larger member labels, other well wishers and from AIM’s reserves, and will be made available to affected smaller labels pro-rata to labels’ [PIAS] turnover this year, as required.



Funds will be made available as interest-free and security-free loans repayable within a year. 



Total initial funds available are £250,000.



[PIAS] are first and foremost focused on supporting their labels. AIM will be coordinating the fund, and also other offers of help in the form of promotions and benefit gigs.



Source: AIM, via their site musicindie.com.

The likes of Mute and Beggars Group also repeat what Label Love are arguing: that smaller and emerging labels may not yet be prepared to whether the immediate aftermath of these events without additional help. The fund would appear to help the cash flow problem.

CDM regular Zaxx Davros sends word of a new, sprawling compilation to benefit Joplin, Missouri in the aftermath of that town’s devastating tornado. Charity compilations seem to be growing in number, but perhaps that in itself is worth mentioning. As social networks and (ahem) blogs spread, increasingly crowd-stimulated micro-donations drive charity. One-click giving is no substitute for getting involved in communities as a volunteer and getting out on the ground, but as a way of keeping charitable organizations funded and engaged, it shows promise. Some readers have pointed to criticism of some of those organizations, like the various entities of the Red Cross, for using funds as discretionary resources beyond the immediate disaster. In this case, the Recession Recordings charity goes directly to the affected area, the City of Joplin and the Community Foundation of Southwest Missouri’s own fund. (That, in turn, may be a sign of a growing trend.)

At a time when musicians ponder the value of their own work, these sorts of compilations have a secondary function. They make the release more of a collective, communal act, and assume that the digital download not only has value, but a value that will be invested back into a communal need. Make of that what you will; we’ll watch to see how such efforts do over time.

As for the music itself, I’d describe it as a delightfully-chaotic, eclectic mix of work, often raunchy and low-fidelity, from experimental sounds to the occasional blip of a chip to music channeling ambient and folk music, noise and IDM. It seems an informal gathering of producers trying lots of different things, which has its own special charm.

This compilation gets sent out manually after a donation; my guess is someone will come up with a site that makes choosing charities easier. A Music Hackday job for someone, perhaps?

While I’m unable to cover every charity that comes across my desk, this one is doubly meaningful to me – my parents lived through and were involved in recovery efforts of the last supertornado outbreak on April 3, 1974; they worked in Brandenberg, Kentucky.

If you’re a CDM reader impacted by flooding or tornadoes in the US, or face the challenge of natural disasters elsewhere in the world – our hearts go out yet again to our friends in New Zealand today — we’d love to hear from you.

Listen below:

http://www.recessionrecordings.com/joplin-mo-charity-album/

Could busking – street music performance – be a tool for social change? It’s an idea I’ve heard artists mull before. Here’s one opportunity to do just that next month, in April, in support of building badly-needed school facilities in southern Zambia. And yes, digital musicians can participate, thanks to terrific, affordable, battery-powered amplification.

I do hope this could launch a discussion, though, on how to organize this kind of action, and how to make busking work for good.

Ben Matthews, founder of the charity, writes:

LearnAsOne,a UK-based charity dedicated to funding schools in Africa, announces the launch of its first annual BuskAsOne, a week of busking events around the world from 19-25 April 2010. The charity is hoping to raise £22,800 to help build schools in rural Zambia.

The busk is open to any musician, singer or instrumentalist, so if any readers of Creative Digital Music would be interested in joining in with BuskAsOne, they should register at www.learnasone.org/busk where they will find all the tips and guidance they need for a safe, hassle-free busk.

In July, the LearnAsOne team will return to Zambia and share stories, photos and videos from the schools to show it supporters exactly how the funds they raised are spent.

The communities that LearnAsOne work with are extremely dedicated. They are happy to make tens of thousands of bricks by hand and contribute labour for free to give their children the opportunity to go to school. But they can’t afford raw materials such as cement, roofing sheets and windows. This is where the busking money comes in. £22,800 will allow LearnAsOne to fund four new buildings – two new classrooms and two teacher’s houses. This will secure the education of 60 children every year.

The video at top features an orphaned eight-year old young woman who must walk 14 km every day to attend her school.

I had some follow-up questions for Ben:

Why the connection with music specifically?
At LearnAsOne we try to come up with fundraising ideas that allow people to take part in things they enjoy and also raise money to fund schools at the same time. There’s WalkAsOne, a series of sponsored walks for people who are active. BakeAsOne, a month of cakes sales, for those who like their baking. And BuskAsOne, for musicians.

What do you think the role of musicians can be in this case?
The main role is to help raise funds to build new classrooms and teachers’ houses at Simakakata in southern Zambia. But there is also another way musicians can help. We believe that everyone who donates has the right to see their money in action, so we use our website to share stories, photos and videos from every community we work. By displaying a poster while they are busking, or mentioning our website on their blog, MySpace or twitter feed musicians can ensure donors see the difference their spare change will make in Zambia.

Is there some sense that this kind of support for schools can eventually lead to self-sufficient school construction funding in places like Zambia?
Self-sufficient school construction is unfortunately just a dream at the moment. The Zambian government simply doesn’t have enough budget to construct all the schools the country needs, which is why many communities rely on the support of NGOs such as LearnAsOne.

Our aim is to fund schools in a sustainable way. We only work with resourceful communities who can prove they really want a school. At Simakakata they had made 60,000 bricks by hand before we first met them, and the community are happy to provide labour for free. But they simply cannot afford the raw materials such as cement, windows and roofing sheets. That’s where the busking money comes in.

After the construction is completed the school will become self-sufficient in many ways. If there are proper classrooms and teachers’ houses the government will provide trained teachers for free. And as the teachers arrive the government is more likely to provide the school with text books they need. Our goal is simply to provide the infrastructure the school requires and then move on to help another community. And then another.

More on Busking?

I discussed some of this project with our friend and artist Onyx Ashanti, who has himself reflected on ideas for how busking could work as aid. He noted that you may need to do some more research here, like working out how to get charity status or get around noise ordinances. (Here in NYC, for instance, you can’t just go out on the street right away, though it’d be interesting to combine this with established outdoor performance events.)

There are also questions of how to establish financial accountability.

This is a great start, though; I hope it inspires some conversations about the role of busking, ways in which street performance can be de-marginalized throughout the world, and ways in which that art can better support artists and other causes. And if you do decide to participate in this event, let us know. Electronic music has deep ties to street performance, from the roots of many or our musical idioms to the one man band tradition. It’s about time to re-forge that connection.

Few names inspire love from digital musicians quite like Elektron, makers of the Monomachine, Machinedrum, and SIDstation drum machines. So when Elektron’s founder Daniel Hansson passed away in an auto accident last summer, it came as a shock to the tightly-knit, passionate musical community who loved his work and lost him too young. (It didn’t help that it came within weeks of the loss of Argu, the ingenious discoDSP and Image-Line software developer, also in a car accident.)

Tragedies like this are doubly sad, because in that loss we miss the opportunity to celebrate people whose work we love. So I’m pleased to be able to talk about a celebration of Daniel Hansson today.

The artist community who use Elektron’s stuff have put together a really epic compilation of music in tribute to Daniel. It’s all user-driven — Elektron didn’t do the organizing; the musicians did. The lineup has some of our favorite people contributing, famed and obscure alike:

Autechre, Beautiful Planet Earth, Boom Bip, dDamage, Daedelus, Dntel, Erase, Emnine, Future Image, Honey Claws, How Dragons Disappear, John Starlight, Jon Martensson, John Tejada, Kero, Landstrumm, Material Object, Micronaut, Music International, Orsan Kart, Pelektor, Proxy, scutopus, TS3K, and The Brown Moth, Tiga, The Sea and Cake, TreD Grp, Van Basten, AEVSVS, Wanker’s United

Many of these (The Sea and Cake, Boom Bip, Tiga, Proxy, John Starlight and others) are exclusive tracks.

You get 30 songs for US$5, donated to Daniel’s favorite charity, the World Wildlife Fund. (Additional WWF donations are welcome.) You’re even entered to win a SIDstation. (Yeah, I know — some of you are still smarting from not having won a Tenori-On, just as I am from having had to give it away. At least here, you can lose for a good cause, which is what I intend to do.)

45tribute

Another 25 songs are available free — really free, licensed Creative Commons.

(25 + 30 does not add up to 45, it’s true — 45 was Daniel’s favorite number and was in the name of his C64 group, Zone 45.)

Help Spread the Word

The organizers don’t have a PR budget for this, so we’re their PR — and, hey, I’ll bet we can do a better job, anyway. So do spread the word around.

Thanks to Ryan Faubion, the project manager and curator, for putting this together and letting us know about it, and to forum member / compilation contributor Wendell Edwards aka scutopus for the heads-up.