Strings of tour dates and electronic music often mean crowd-friendly dance music, but there’s a growing, impassioned audience for more contemplative concert sounds, too. Composer-musicians Lesley Flanigan and Tristan Perich are pulling into the last stop on an extended tour of their work, here in New York Friday at Galapagos Art Space. For many, electronic music, in particular that made with computers, becomes about abstraction. For this duo, electronics become a chance to grow even closer to the tangible, acoustic sound – techniques they share in workshops as well as performances.

And would you believe… antique harpsichord?

In the tracks below, you can hear some of the results. Lesley’s work begins with harsh, crackling ambient sounds, but move into delicate, sung harmonies. Tristan’s work goes another direction entirely, combining his 1-bit electronics with elaborate keyboard textures. Those become a kind of post-minimalist jam; “Dual Synthesis” even begins to recall the composer György Ligeti’s micro-polyphony. Tristan’s harmonic language is inventive, set into abruptly-shifting, asymmetrical phrases and polyrhythms.

Allow yourself to slip deeper into their musical world, and the sounds become increasingly welcome.

I asked the two artists, known under their solo names as well as part of the ensemble Loud Objects, to send us some sounds and notes from the road. Be sure to catch them tomorrow night if you can, and I hope we’ll get more music from them soon, as well, especially with Tristan’s upcoming 1-bit album due soon. (And naturally, with Loud Objects and Handmade Music, we hope to share some of the electronics behind some of their sounds, too.)

Music to hear

Lesley Flanigan: “Snow” (for speaker electronics and voice) from her album Amplifications

Snow [MP3 download]

Lesley Flanigan: “Thinking Real Hard” (for speaker electronics and voice) from her album Amplifications

Thinking Real Hard [MP3 download]

Tristan Perich: “Dual Synthesis” (for harpsichord and four-channel 1-bit electronics) excerpts from live performance at Eliot Street Collective, Denver, CO

Dual Synthesis, excerpts/live [MP3 download]

Tristan Perich: “qsqsqsqsqqqqqqqqq” (for three toy pianos and three-channel 1-bit electronics)
from live performance at Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, NY

qsqsqsqsqqqqqqqqq [MP3 download]

Notes from Tristan and Lesley

We’re on the home stretch of our US tour; we’re sharing a blowout homecoming show with New Amsterdam Records and the NOW Ensemble on December 18th at Galapagos.

The tour has centered on two performances: Tristan’s new composition for antique harpsichord and 1-bit electronics (Dual Synthesis), and Lesley’s work for hand-crafted speaker feedback instruments and voice (Amplifications). We both deal with similar ideas of physicality of electronic sound, treating electric instrumentation as acoustic. Each of our sets has paired traditional instruments (harpsichord and voice) with our own primitive hand-built electronics (1-bit circuits and amplifying feedback circuits). A few of the early shows alternated with Tristan and Kunal Gupta’s noise soldering project, the Loud Objects.

We hit up a multitude of different kinds of spaces, from art galleries in San Francisco, Chicago and Nashville, community-run venues in Providence, St Louis, Denver and LA, colleges like Wesleyan and Ball State, a bar in Milwaukee, to a science museum in Little Rock and a ton of other spaces in between. We also got to debut our new albums: Tristan’s 1-Bit Symphony (which will be officially released by Cantaloupe Music in the Spring), and Lesley’s Amplifications.

It was great to check out the local experimental scenes, and share shows with our favorite musicians along the way, like Joe Grimm, Lucky Dragons, Jib Kidder, Travis Weller and Blevin Blectum. A bunch of people even told us they found out about our work on Create Digital Music.

Oh yeah, we also hosted a couple Loud Objects noise-toy making workshops along the way (you remember how we like to do this ).  One was at Noisebridge in San Francisco and another was at a prep school in Little Rock. We’re hoping to get involved with more schools doing this stuff. You can check out what we’ve been making on loudobjects.com.

Looking forward to finally getting back to NYC!

For more information:

www.lesleyflanigan.com

www.tristanperich.com

Feel free to forward comments / questions for Lesley and Tristan and I can send them their way for follow-up.

All photos courtesy the artists.

Andromeda MK-1 and MK-2 from Eric Archer on Vimeo.

Thanks to the miracles of express shipping, there’s still time to give the gift of music technology for various holidays. (And I do mean the holiday season, not just Christmas – for me, it extends neatly to my birthday on January 13, which in turn falls before the music tech holiday NAMM.)

Geeky goodness

There are really wonderful sound makers out there to give to beginners and enthusiasts alike. MAKE:Magazine has done a fantastic job of covering terrific, affordable kits that anyone can use. I haven’t seen anyone – muscially inclined or otherwise – resist the charm of the Drawdio, a noisemaker mounted on a pen, or the more-sophisticated SX-150 synth. Our friend Collin Cunningham at MAKE has done a nice round-up of their various sound-making toys. Anyone who reads this site I’m sure would love to get one, but even people who’ve never messed around with electronics might find some of the basic kits fun, too.

And new this year are some of the wonderful creations of Eric Archer and company, which we’ve seen shown off at Handmade Music Austin.

Make: Holiday Gift Guide 2009: Music Machines [Make:Blog]

Synthtopia did a nice line-up of instruments under US$100, too, from the mighty Game Boy to delicious noise instruments and Stylophone remakes. I couldn’t agree more (this is one of those stories I wish I had written, but – hey, nice, I didn’t actually have to write it this time)!

10 Cool Electronic Music Instruments Under $100 [Synthtopia]

One kit that I believe was left off these lists is the Loud Objects productions. They’re simple, elegant, but capable of making some fascinating sounds. Having tested them with attendees at Handmade Music events, I can say with confidence that they’re a great way for people to get started making electronics – and you can even have a couple of beers while doing it and pull it off. That could make them a nice way to hook someone you know who isn’t a dedicated electronic musician.

Loud Objects Kit [Loud Objects]

There’s so much goodness on all these lists, in fact, that we may just need:

1.) An ongoing guide to gifts, to help spread the electronic sound addiction to everyone we know, year-round, and…

2.) Some ideas post-holiday for all of us in the Northern Hemisphere to enjoy our winter hours inside, tinkering with strange sonic toys

Thoughts?

In the meantime, since I (cough) did a poor job this year putting together holiday shopping lists, any other blog lists you’d like to showcase? I’ll collect them all. Rush shipping is worth it, right?

Wonderful things happen when you invite lovers of noise together in a room. Musicians and non-musicians, electronics geeks and first-timers, folks pick up a soldering iron — often for the first time — and cause utter mayhem. So we again had a fantastic time at Handmade Music last month. I’ve just gotten the photos in, so decided to share.

We’re looking for folks to bring stuff to Handmade Music on 4/16 – see the bottom of the article and give us a shout if you have software or hardware creations to share. They don’t even have to work, entirely – this is the place to find people to help give advice, so we like even partly-functioning inventions.

Even if you live far, far from Brooklyn (like back in Old Amsterdam), the featured March projects are within reach:

• Loud Objects Noise Toy was the star of the evening. Lesley Flanigan and Tristan Perich of Loud Objects — superstar composers and sound artists themselves — were onhand as patient teachers and guides in the ways of Noise.
• glitchDS on PC and Mac: The DS homebrew creator Bret Truchan delighted with not only his mobile gaming creations, but a netbook running a new PC cellular automaton MIDI sequencer, ported to Processing. More on that soon. (See the image captured by Make Magazine’s Collin Cunningham.)
• Pulsantes I got Jaime Munarriz’ strange Processing + Pd pulsating rhythmic toys working on a PC – thanks, Jaime, for the virtual contribution!
• jReality Peter Brinkmann demonstrated the sonic capabilities of audiovisual virtual reality framework jReality. Intense stuff – you don’t even need to use Cartesian coordinates. Elliptical, baby!
• Networked Objects: Eric Beug brought by his DIY wireless synth modules and an iPhone for control. This progress is under development, so I hope it makes a repeat visit.

By the way, in case you wondered what happens when a bunch of people play all their newly-built Noise Toys at once? It sounds something like … this (and sorry, my digicam mic was entirely incapable of capturing the resulting sonic chaos):

More photos from Collin Cunningham and our event co-host MAKE Magazine:

Hey, You! Yeah, You!

So, folks in automobile / railroad / Zeppelin distance of New York, we’d love to see what you’re working on, be it a Max/Pd patch, Processing sketch, circuit-bent instrument, DIY controller, sensor project, or wearable SweaterSynth. Definitely bring cables, and (if you’ve got one) a portable PA; otherwise plug into our PA and projector.

Next engagement: Thursday, April 16 (this coming Thursday).

Form below, or head directly to our form on Google Docs:
Handmade Music Call for Works: Form

Once a month, CDM goes from its virtual state to a sort of augmented reality existence in Brooklyn. (In Williamsburg, no less, which has itself been augmenting itself into neighborhoods formerly known as Bushwick.) Tonight is one of those times.

If you’re in Brooklyn, you should come enter our physical dimensions so you can:

• make your own NoiseToy with Loud Objects’ Tristan Perich, and take it home for the low, low price of ten clams. (Dollars, though I think clams are actually worth more at the moment. I’ll eat the clams.)
• witness strange, wonderful things happen in the areas of audiovisual virtual reality and free, new sequencers for Mac and PC
• watch me make a fantastic musical Processing sketch work, shipped over the Interwires from Spain!
• hang out with us and discuss our other projects that don’t work (because, really, that’s part of the process

TONIGHT = 7:30 pm (drop by late if you must) = Brooklyn, here

If you are separated from Brooklyn by time and space, fret not. I’m working on a site that will start to document these projects, and we’re extending our geographical dimensions so that these events start happening in other cities / countries / continents (perhaps among the all-Firefox crowd in Antarctica, where I gather they use Linux as they actually are penguins).

Also, a lot of these hardware and software projects are available for your consumption — sometimes free (as in beer and freedom), so we can all share the love.

For instance, learn about / acquire a Noise Toy on the Noise Toy site!
http://www.loudobjects.com/kit/

But it’s my belief that the future of CDM really depends on the interplay between physical and virtual reality in all sorts of dimensions. That is, so long as in the process I don’t become unstuck from time. I’ve watched Lost / Doctor Who, and that often ends badly.