I’ll be playing at the Sheffield Placard event tomorrow (16th July), trying out a performance system I’ve been working on in Max/MSP. Some more details coming soon (perhaps afterwards with a recording).
The event will also be streamed live.
http://lurk.org/placard/
This is a collection of sounds I made over the summer – just slow shifting tones and textures…I’ve been struggling to write anything about them. I really enjoy listening on headphones, quite good for sleeping too. I’ve got a few of these lined up for Unclassed Media once we’ve had some time to sort through them…please do have a listen and contribute if you like.
Tonight is the London date of the Plaid/Southbank Gamelan Players tour, and the last one before we take it to Italy next month. I feel lucky to be involved in this as I’ve been somewhat obsessed with gamelan for some time (have ended up working towards a PhD on gamelan and electroacoustic music which is why I haven’t been making much Ardisson stuff lately, but more on that another time) and it was through comparisons to groups like Plaid that I first came to hear it.
This particular show will be split up into three sections – a suite of gamelan-only pieces, including some contemporary Javanese and British works, some new Plaid tracks using samples of and synthesisers tuned to the gamelan, then the main attraction, a collaboration with Javanese composer Rahayu Supanggah. It was commissioned last year for the Ether festival, involved sending material back and forth in quite a short space of time (I hadn’t joined the group yet and would have loved to see the process), and it’s interesting to hear the interaction between each others’ personalities and musical backgrounds. Following a few dates this summer, unfortunately without Pak Panggah, it feels like it’s really come together and definitely worth checking out.
More on Rahayu Supanggah, Plaid, SBGP
Some interesting photos on flickr.
Plaid featuring the South Bank Gamelan from Ben Dowden on Vimeo.
If you’re in London you can catch us tonight at the Village Underground, details here: http://www.eatyourownears.com/events.php?event=557
This is a short, rough mix I made a while back after playing at the (now sadly closed) Foundry for a disco_r.dance night. It’s all unreleased material, and fairly down tempo. The first half consists of sketches for an album/EP I started while visiting Indonesia to study gamelan a couple of years ago.
Getting a set together for 030303 again in Utrecht…I haven’t been able to play with the 303 and other hardware for a few years because Ableton’s sync has been really unstable, drifting within a couple of bars. Couldn’t figure out where it had all gone wrong, loading up Cubase on my old PowerBook recently was absolutely fine…no problems setting something up in Max either, but I wouldn’t want to try and play a full set in it – not for this kind of thing anyway. I have about 7 years worth of old Ableton sets kicking about and I’ve got used to just dragging stuff about.
The solution? Switching back to Windows! Downloaded a copy of Windows 7 and installed using Boot Camp…it took the best part of the day to get everything sorted…had to reformat, once all installed a bit slow moving stuff back and forth as Windows insisted on being installed on an NTFS partition…it was worth it though…once I had Live up and running the sync was absolutely fine…little jitters every now and again but nothing major, and hasn’t drifted at all yet. It’s been really nice building up a set again like I used to, with the 303, 606 and 909 going into their own channels in Ableton with compression etc…might even start writing some acid tracks again when this is all over!
030303 have updated their website with some videos I’d forgotten about from the last time I was over there…so here they are! Really looking forward to getting back there.
This is a mix I made when I was in South Korea last year. Mostly unreleased tracks and loops from the last 5 years or so, a couple from around 2002.
Tracklist:
Itaewon Intro
Curtain/Pleasant
Not Now/Purple
Trees
Time
Tributary
Strap
Stop That
Gatwick
Keo/Slope
The End
???
Problems Upstairs
Some links I’ve found for plugins that will work on Intel Macs while re-installing after a disk failure:
Audio Damage Rough Rider, Fuzz Plus and Pulse Mod
Betabugs (Crayon Filter and Monsta Chorus)
Big Tick Audio: Cheeze Machine
Flux Bittersweet and Stereo Tool
Greenoak (Crystal and Delayifier)
Slim Slow Slider Multiband Compressor
Soundhack Delay Trio + Freesound Bundle
If you have any more please comment and I’ll include them here (thanks Paul and (hint))..
I released this as a free download on my website in 2006.
Tracklisting:
1. Acid Police (6:03)
2. Cold Breeze (4:31)
3. Interlude (0:35)
4. Dead Rats (3:24)
