Writing about the meeting place of technology and music, we cover potential: what’s possible, what might be in the future. So as he launches a new music column, our new contributor Kid Kameleon has coined a cheeky title: “created.” This isn’t just what you could create with digital music, but what has been made, as he discovers and reviews new sounds. And while words like “genre-defying” get overused, producer/DJ/journalist Kid Kameleon – aka Matt Earp – really is on a quest for music that pushes out from the boundaries drawn around it. Over this and future installments, Matt will help widen our own listening to the up-and-coming and unexpected. So let’s get started, by peering through the window of one label and one artist. -PK

TESTTOON & OUBYS

Testtoon and Oubys are separate but symbiotic (for now). Testtoon is a very new label run by Michael Severi from Antwerp, Belgium, in collaboration with his brother Rafael. Michael’s girlfriend Eva D’haenens creates the label’s art and graphics as part of Testbeeld, the label’s visual twin. Testtoon is only two releases into its existence so far, but according to Severi, its agenda is to “promote creative and original electronic music” with vinyl-only releases of ”only local or more unknown producers we like.” Severi’s current aesthetic for his own DJ sets as well as the label is “ambient, field recordings, and experimental,” and Testtoon couldn’t have found a better or more captivating artist for their launch releases than Oubys, from Brussels.

Oubys is the stage name for Wannes Kolf. From his succinct bio: “Kolf’s music is made with live improvisations, electronic treatment and field recordings. Influenced by early legends Faust, Heldon, Can and ambient guru Brian Eno, this music has a nice sense of subterranean depth and a pulsating progression.” Oubys has had two previous releases on the CDr label U-Cover (also out of Belgium), and his music has is perfect blend of textured soundscape, low thrumming bass and steady washes of atmospheric synths that combine in perfect proportion to yield richly immersing musical experiences. This world can be a space where it’s hard to sound original or interesting, but Kolf weaves just enough of a pulsing through many of his creations to give them the skeleton ambient music so often lacks. His first release for Testtoon was Terra Incognita in 2011, which falls somewhere between an EP and an album in length. It’s full of rich complexity reminiscent of Monolake and Chain Reaction, and it ends with the almost epic Blackland 2 (below). But it also takes in more collage-like sounds along the way, in tracks like “Hidden Base” and “Mitlt”.

The label’s second release is the Positronium EP, which heads in a slightly darker direction, more buzzing electricity than soothing sound beds. It contains an early version of the album track Positronium II, a remix by Oubys, and truly special restructuring by Substance of Hardwax, Berlin, a scion of German dub techno reaching back almost 20 years. A tantalizing snippet of it can be heard here:

That EP will be out by the end of February. For now Testtoon is doing the distribution themselves, so it can only be found in vinyl shops in Belgium and by mail order through a couple of internet outlets. But Severi is hoping to secure distribution soon, so untill then keep your ears on both Oubys and Testtoon’s SoundCloud pages for samples of new material. And give them both props for doing such small run and tangible releases in the age of digital music!

TEAL & BEASTIE RESPOND

Not terribly far from Testtoon’s sample-based ambience, a similar label/producer symbiotic relationship is going on, but for a different genre of music. The label is Teal Recordings, run by Simon Olsson, and the producer is Beastie Respond aka Tobias Pedersen. Both of them are in Copenhagen, Denmark, and both have associations with the Dunkle Bar there.

Teal is 4 releases deep so far, available both as 12″ records as well as digital, and much of its sound has been focus on that particular hybrid of house, dubstep, UK Funky and techno that doesn’t have a name yet but is currently saturating lots of clubs in London and beyond. Producers like Blawan, West Norwood Cassette Library, Hypno, and Kowton have all given some of their finest productions or remixes to the label – a favorite in this vein is the smokey jazz-club sampling shuffle-skip of Hypno’s Koko, a true gem.

But the label’s breakout sound has surely been the beguiling Syncope by Beastie Respond. A beautiful piece of uncanny music that draws equally from Drum and Bass, Dub, Dancehall and Chilled Out Hip-Hop, it’s one of the best examples of the current trend of DnB producers using increasingly tricky rhythms to give the illusion of both 85 bpm hip-hop (or in this case, with a 4×4 beat, almost slow disco) and the frenetic poly rhythms of Jungle. It is a sound that’s most closely associated with the producer dBridge, his label Exit Recordings, and what’s been termed the “Autonomic sound” of this particular strain of modern Drum and Bass – a sound hugely influenced by the “is it head nod or dance music?” slippery-ness that is Dubstep’s most impressive achievement to date. And frankly it’s an amazing breath of fresh air to the genre of Drum and Bass, reviving many veteran’s interest in a sound that’s accesible enough for a new generation of listeners who till now only knew DnB as classic ragga, harsh tear outs, or cheesy over-the-top atmospherics.

Now, not to pigeonhole Pedersen into only this one sound – he’s got musical skills that stand out on some darker and more straight-ahead productions, as well, geared to a more traditional DnB audience. But his syncopations are at their most impressive in this rhythmic netherland, so it’s not surprising that Teal is releasing a second single from him in March. This one, the label’s 5th, is 2 tracks, “Be Quiet” and “No More”, and once again, “No More” is just killer, full of crisp clean sounds that tumble over each other, constantly pinging back and forth between a head nod and a skank.

Beastie Respond says he has some other tracks and remixes coming soon. If both record labels and producers the world over can embrace this sort of tricky, intelligent music that works both on the dancefloor and in headphones, then the future of electronic dance music is bright indeed.

Kid Kameleon is a San Francisco-based DJ, promoter, writer, blogger, historian, archivist, and fan of electronic music.
http://kidkameleon.com

Don’t miss Matt’s write-up of selections from 2011′s musical landscape – complete with a couple of recent choices from his more than 100 mixes:
The Music of 2011: Kid Kameleon Picks, Om Unit Mix, Techno Mix

When we say “handmade music,” we really mean this sense of crafting something , of touching something – not so much the technique or the technology as the intention behind what you do. In a striking film portrait of Nick Zammuto for nakedmusicians.com, the craft of living is spotlighted as much as the craft of music making.

Nick, is known for his role in duo The Books (with Dutch-born Paul de Jong), and their distinctive, rhythmic, homebrewed-original sound. Here, he covers his manipulations of everything physical and temporal. Sound sampling is a tangible process, the poetry of things put together and assembled in surprising ways. So, too, is his life in music, as he talks about raising kids and literally building a home. They are all of these activities a way of stopping and shaping time, of composing yourself and your loved ones into the future. The resulting sounds and stories might just make you want to move around.

You can learn more about Nick on his site:

http://zammutosound.com/

Burlington, Vermont-based filmmaker Matt Day is responsible for this gem.

And if you’re in the Eastern USA, you can catch Nick live:
FEB 3: Mass Moca, North Adams, MA
FEB 4: 92YTribeca, New York, NY
FEB 6:Brighton Music Hall, Allston, MA

Sounds from his new EP, via SoundCloud:
Zammuto – Idiom Wind EP – Make Mine, London UK by zammuto

I’m saddened to learn of the death of Richard Lainhart, the New York-based composer and artist who has been inseparable from the experimental electronic scene for many years. I knew Richard to be a gentle and imaginative soul, an inventive technologist, someone capable of dreaming up endless soundscapes and auditory worlds. He was also a great contributor to the CDM community, including playing one of the early installments of Handmade Music at Etsy Labs in Brooklyn. (Photo above; full video at bottom.)

I think it’s fitting to illustrate Richard with a terrific self-portrait on Polaroid, one that illustrates his sense of humor and artistic adventurousness:

Richard’s wife Caroline posted a note with the news, which most of us found via Facebook:

Richard Lainhart February 14, 1953 – December 30, 2011

Dear friends of Richard,
It is with a heavy heart that I that I must tell you Richard Lainhart, composer, musician, technologist, filmmaker, and digital artisan died Friday, December 30, 2011.

On December 17, Richard complained of pains in his side and was admitted to the hospital for tests which showed an intestinal cancer. He was operated on on December 21. After the surgery (which showed the cancer had not spread), there were infectious complications which took his life on December 30.

He struggled valiantly to overcome his infection, but it was not to be. We are all in shock and cannot grasp the idea of his not making music, talking music, teaching, posting and playing.

Caroline Meyers
Richard Lainhart’s wife

Richard leaves behind a massive body of work and digital footprints; I’ve selected some of those below, including music, a wonderful set of images working with digital manipulation and Polaroids via Flickr, and his series on creative sound design tutorials.

Playing Messiaen:

Audiovisual work:

Richard’s most recent album, via Bandcamp:

Most recent SoundCloud contributions, including the winds after Tropical Storm Irene (that sound certainly is part of my sonic memory of 2011)

Sounds of my World – Post-Irene Winds 8-28-11 by rlainhart

200e-Continuum Percussive Study 2 by rlainhart

Sounds of my world – Rainforest V, New York Electronic Art Festival, 7-30-11 by rlainhart

I adore his photographic work:

A bio:

Richard Lainhart is an award-winning composer, author, and filmmaker – a digital artisan who works with sonic and visual data. Since childhood, he’s been interested in natural processes such as waves, flames and clouds, in harmonics and harmony, and in creative interactions with machines, using them as compositional methods to present sounds and images that are as beautiful as he can make them.

Lainhart studied composition and electronic music with Joel Chadabe at the State University of New York at Albany. He has composed music for film, television, CD-ROMs, interactive applications, and the Web. His compositions have been performed in the US, England, Sweden, Germany, Australia, and Japan. Recordings of his music have appeared on the Periodic Music, Vacant Lot, XI Records, Airglow Music, Tobira Records, and ExOvo labels. As an active performer, Lainhart has appeared in public approximately 2000 times. Besides performing his own work, he has worked and performed with John Cage, David Tudor, Steve Reich, Phill Niblock, David Berhman, and Jordan Rudess, among many others. He has composed over 100 electronic and acoustic works. In 2008, he was commissioned by the Electronic Music Foundation to contribute a work to New York Soundscape.

Lainhart’s animations and short films have been shown at festivals in the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, and Korea, and online at ResFest, The New Venue, The Bitscreen, and Streaming Cinema 2.0. His film “A Haiku Setting” won awards in several categories at the 2002 International Festival of Cinema and Technology in Toronto. In 2009, he was awarded a Film & Media grant by the New York State Council on the Arts for “No Other Time”, full-length intermedia performance designed for a large reverberant space, combining live analog electronics with four-channel playback, and high-definition computer-animated film projection.

quotes

“Lainhart crafts sounds in a tonal, musical fashion – sustained tones, drones, melodic fragments – and electronically manipulates them into beautiful tapestries of sound.” (Waterfront Week)

[His] “music reflects the spirit of possibility that once defined electronic music, bringing with it a sense of past, present and future that transcends time, technology and cultural assumptions. The spell- binding music seemed to evoke feelings that can’t quite be named, and suggest music I might rather imagine for myself in silence than trust most composers to compose.” (The Village Voice).

“He’s evolved a singular vision as a composer, performer and engineer of darkly seductive minimalism.” (Peter Marsh, BBC)

And here is Richard’s performance for us at Handmade Music on the Buchla 200e synth and Continuum Fingerboard, from 2007:

http://www.otownmedia.com
http://www.vimeo.com/rlainhart
http://www.youtube.com/rlainhart
http://richardlainhart.bandcamp.com/
http://soundcloud.com/rlainhart
http://twitter.com/rlainhart
http://www.facebook.com/rlainhart
http://www.downloadplatform.com/richard_lainhart

Texas-born, Detroit-raised, New York-based artist Matthew Dear has a new EP, to be followed by a full-length in 2012. It’s worth mentioning now for two reasons: one, the driving, “chugging” rhythms of the single, “Headcage,” will pop into your head and stay there, led by Dear’s vocal ability to croon and groove simultaneously. Second, the opening of this video may well make your mind go squish. The work of London-based director Morgan Beringer, seen previously milking monochrome textures out of another Matthew Dear collab, the film makes it look like some very colorful part of the Earth’s crust turned a film into magma. It settles down, but the opening frames are to me transcendent, especially when set to a similarly-morphing sonic backdrop.

You can stream and download the single via SoundCloud:

Matthew Dear – Headcage by ghostly

More on the upcoming release from Ghostly:
Matthew Dear: Headcage

The music writing echoes a bit for me Eno and Byrne on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts; perhaps channeling that, the album art by Michael Cina for Dear has washes of indistinct color, like a kaleidoscope set into motion, then blurred. Ghostly reports Dear co-produced the single with Van Rivers and The Subliminal Kid, vets of the acclaimed self-titled Fever Ray. The rest of the album is full of other vocal and producer collaborations. More on this when it arrives.

What is sound? What does it mean, and why does it matter? It’s never too fundamental, too basic a question to ask ourselves again when we make music. So, I’ll leave this trailer otherwise largely without comment, except to say, it’s well worth watching (or re-watching).

Touch the Sound, produced by German director Thomas Riedelsheimer in 2004, focuses on the work and world of nearly-deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie. See a trailer, below, and excerpt, above. Thanks to Morgan Hendry for the tip.

IMDB link

On this topic, and the inspiration for this link:
For a Deaf Artist, The Process of Sound Art, Transformed: Short Film

And I suspect there’s a reader out there who can tell us more about the experience of sound and music (and the technology thereof) for the hearing-impaired?

Updated: Watch the entire movie on Hulu, if you’re in the United States:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/200692/touch-the-sound

And there’s a TED talk, as well:

Revealing a deeper understanding of what sound means in our world, how it works as “currency” and “ghost,” Performance Artist Christine Sun Kim explores sonic media without the benefit of hearing. She finds how to make its presence more physical, to find greater dimensions of movement, and to make a personal connection beyond what most of us might find in the everyday sense. As she describes it to NOWNESS:

There are social norms surrounding sound that form our speech development and our way of handling sound with care. They’re so deeply ingrained that, in a sense, our identities cannot be complete without sound.

In a beautiful short film, you can watch her process in her studio, thanks to filmmaker Todd Selby:

Cult photographer and filmmaker Todd Selby’s latest short is a revealing portrait of performance artist Christine Sun Kim. Deaf from birth, Kim turned to using sound as a medium during an artist residency in Berlin in 2008, and has since developed a practice of lo-fi experimentation that aims to re-appropriate sound by translating it into movement and vision. “It’s a lot more interesting to explore a medium that I don’t have direct access to and yet has the most direct connection to society at large,” says the artist. “Social norms surrounding sound are so deeply ingrained that, in a sense, our identities cannot be complete without it.” Selby filmed an exclusive performance from Kim in a Brooklyn studio as the artist played with field recordings of the street sounds of her Chinatown neighborhood, feedback and helium balloons, and made “seismic calligraphy” drawings from ink- and powder-drenched quills, nails and cogs dancing across paper to the vibrations of subwoofers beneath. Working with sound designer Arrow Kleeman, Selby carefully choreographed the film’s ambient score to reveal the Orange County native’s unique relationship with sound. “Her work deals with reclaiming sound because it’s a foreign world to her and one she’s not comfortable in,” explains Selby. “I wanted the film to act as an artistic conduit for her to tell her story to the world.”

Interview, via NOWNESS Facebook Page

Via our friend Rucyl on Saturn Never Sleeps, by way of Rashid Zakat’s The Awesome Farm.

Todd Selby x Christine Sun Kim [Nowness.com]

I was once a speaker at DEAF, which stands for Dublin Electronic Arts Festival. Not thinking, I told the customs officer in Ireland that I was a musician attending the DEAF Festival. He had some cheeky comment. In this context, of course, what he took for granted can take on an entirely different meaning. If you have background in understanding accessibility and design, for people with different sense capabilities in vision and sound alike, I’d love to hear them. The world of sound technology most of us inhabit describes a very narrow range of expectations for vision and sight.

The possibilities of a microphone and the world are limitless, so as this week we looked at a recording of music made with playgrounds, a mic, and Ableton Live, readers responded in kind with a fantastic spectrum of sampling-inspired, real world-produced musical wonder. From comments, a few examples:

Diego Stocco, a favorite sound designer on this site, ventures in his latest installment into a dry cleaner. Clean, wrinkle-free clothes and great music – see, you don’t actually have to choose. See top.

“Vega” by CDM reader Cordovan Music (Gregory Reeves), is an eerily-lovely ambient score made from LA’s freeways – and perhaps an ominous, if beautiful, portent of a lot of us driving on said freeways for NAMM in January.

Vega by Cordovan Music

From the experimental and minimal ambient release “Photic”, “Vega” is made entirely from field recordings taken on Los Angeles freeways.
About the album:
Gregory Reeves is a Los Angeles-based electronic artist, composer, and musician. His work can be heard on A&E, History Channel, FUEL TV, Universal, EA Games and many more. His sound art and installation work includes pieces for the Gaffa Gallery, Sydney, as well as creating a soundscape for the huge geodesic dome at the Peats Ridge festival in Australia, New Years eve. Electronic releases under various aliases have received winning reviews in XLR8R, URB, JazzTimes, and Rolling Stone. Remixes include Bob Marley and the Wailers (“One Love” from “Roots Rock Remixed” on Tuff Gong/Quango), Sarah Vaughan, and others.
“Photic” is a collection of minimal, generative ambient works. “Vega” is made entirely from manipulated field recordings taken on Los Angeles freeways. “Dark Field” uses convolved urban sounds to create a brooding ambient soundscape (the piece was originally composed for the DUOscope multimedia installation in Sydney). “Anemone” was created using undersea video footage to generate musical events, while “Haiku in C” is based on classical Japanese Gagaku music. For fans of Brian Eno, Murcof, and Loscil

Reader Cillian John, in the more pedestrian-friendly city of Stockholm, looked instead to escalators.

On and on by cillianjohn

He writes:

The urban environment is full of inspiring noises. I particularly enjoy the mechanical rhythms you hear all round.
The rhythmic element of this track is a field recording of escalator I recorded while on a trip to Stockholm.

Audiovisual remix superstar Pogo, aka Perth, Australia-based Nick Bertke, is embarking on a mission to “remix the world” as has inspired the headline of this post. Check out the spectacular results, and perhaps even get involved (thanks, BenAlex):

http://www.pogomix.net/remixing-the-world/
Kickstarter on Tibet

(I’m awaiting further details, but I am personally angered by the apparent mistreatment of Bertke which recently resulted in a 10-year deportation from the United States of America – and even that only after seemingly-extreme prison time and detainment that required the intervention of the consulate of New Zealand; you can follow on his blog. I’ve been deeply frustrated by the apparent targeting of artists, whatever the requirements of the law, in the US and Canada. More on that soon; anyone with expertise or experience in these matters, I’d love to hear from you. I feel it’s worth bringing up, as I’m sure that someone would have done so in comments as this story has spread.)

I’m sure there are many, many other examples, but this seems to me a nice place to begin – and fertile ground for inspiration to make something yourself.

Sonic and musical inspiration are never far away, especially with a microphone in hand. For the latest example, Ableton Live meets a local playground.

Jason Richard, aka “bassling,” used field recordings in the park to compose a track. He writes:

I’ve been recording playgrounds and remixing the sounds in Ableton Live to create tracks. To help people understand what they’re hearing, I’ve been making short videos showing some of the process.

It’s an idea I’ve had in mind for a while and the centenary is deadline to work towards. I’m inspired by the Italian Futurists and Alan Lamb, who mentored me in 2006 as part of the Unsound Festival.

The playground is part of a series of videos of local playgrounds, intended to celebrate the 2012 centenary of Leeton in New South Wales, Australia. (That’s southeastern Australia, for the uninitiated.)

More information:
http://bassling.blogspot.com/

It’s really nice having the video to serve as a guide to the music, I think. So, what field recordings have inspired you? Let us know.

In a twist on generating music from dance, artist and coder João Pais sends us Pd-generated scores, transformed into twinkling sounds by music boxes. As it happens, the music boxes are the same featured in Friday’s story on Ritornell.

The piece is RISS, a “performative installation/concert” produced outdoors in Berlin, with a 30-meter score generated by Pd from movement.

João describes his work: “The patch was simple, it analysed the sounds, and made a score using data structures. then I printed the score, and spent lots of hours puncturing all the holes.”

The video documents those sounds, in a project produced by the collaboration of composer and artist Christian Graupner, dancer/choreographer Phuong Nguyen, and João Pais. (For his part, João has been utterly invaluable in helping me with some Pd patches – I need to post some abstractions based on that work soon for everyone.)

More info:
http://www.humatic.net/art/p/riss/index.html

And I know this is just the tip of the … music box iceberg. Sorry, that’s a really horrible mixed metaphor. There are lots of people using music boxes, yes.

Experimenting with twinkling timbres made both by acoustic and electronic means, the music of Ritornell (the duo of composer Dr. Richard Eigner and pianist Roman Gerold, Austria) is effortlessly expressive and spontaneous. Little wonder that that spirit could translate even to a small object.

Designer Katharina Hölzl made business cards into both a signature identity for Ritornell and a physical manifestation of how they play their music. They’re not just a physical gimmick, though: audiences get to participate with music making in the production of live, performative loops. (Sadly, no site for Katharina – you just have to get hold of one of her designs!)

Description of the project:

Ritornell’s business cards are inspired by the project’s live show. The improvised concerts evoke a lively atmosphere by the combination of filigree electronics with playful timbres of diverse acoustic instruments and utensils such as egg whisks, toilet brushes, chopsticks or sewing needles. As an integral part of their set list, Ritornell invites the audience to bring along their private musicboxes. Arranged in a big circle, the players’ speed of turning levers is conducted: the results are as shimmering as you would expect.

Katharina Hölzl designed very special business cards to recreate this playful sonic universe. With the aid of laser assisted milling, nine micro compositions consisting of circles, triangles and Ritornell’s contact information were applied onto a long musicbox paper stripe. Before handing out the cards to interested adressees, each individual subdivision is played back via an especially designed musical box – thus providing every business card receiver with a tailor made musical experience.

More information on the project:
Ritornell for Musicbox

Punched cards of this kind of a profound relationship to generative music and computer music. For its part, the very genesis of the computer comes from punched cards: the punched cards in early mechanical looms used for textiles would inspire Charles Babbage. It’s possible that Max Mathews’ first digital audio, and other computer music that employed punched cards, would not have done so without the precedent of the textile industry.

And, of course, the music box and player piano also owe their genesis to punched cards, and thus the pre-digital mechanical reproduction of music. In an era before MIDI, composer Conlon Nancarrow made his own piano rolls, punched to his custom specifications, to play parts that would otherwise be impossible – before complex, glitchy, tracker-made electronic music. (Kyle Gann has a great piece on Nancarrow.) Those piano rolls have echoes in the interactive work of digital artist Toshio Iwai, and in the mechanical, push-button simplicity of the falling tracks of gems in music games from developers like Harmonix. By adding hand-cranked audience participation, though, Ritornell brings the mechanism into the realm of jazz.

And speaking of jazz influence, it’s well worth looking at the rest of the music of Ritornell.

As glowing ambient worlds cross paths with cooly-casual jazz, Ritornell’s music is to me endlessly evocative. Jazz gesture and good humor merge with waves of richly-imagined sonic textures. It’s music that’s both cinematic and improvisatory, dreamlike but well worth repeated listens. (I find it quite hard not to put it on loop, with warm swells of timbre against percussive rhythms, it fits perfectly with the deep mustard and gold hues of the last wave of autumn leaves in November.)

With the slightly-distant allure of Vienna-based vocalist Mimu added to the mix, the music is a kind of ambient pop reverie.

Don’t miss the music videos, shot seemingly through a thick, warm mist. And check out the rest of the music on the site. I hope we hear more from these folks.

Listening:
Golden Solitude, an eclectic, jazz-inflected sonic journey of an LP

Full discography

Richard Eigner also did drums on “German Haircut” for Flying Lotus’ epic Cosmogramma

http://www.ritornell.at/