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Alex Strain paid a visit to Galloway Street to meet me in person for the first time and set to the task of sorting production issues and having a little sonic fun. Much delight was had with his new toy: the Yamaha CS-30 synth. For someone who works probably too much in the digital audio world to hear this heavy bit of kit producing sounds of of this world via strictly analogue processing was fresh to the ears. Recent fascination with FM matrix routing meant we conducted an experiment in Frequency Modulated routing and noise modelling. We recorded a bit of it which you can hear here:

The Amazing Analogue FM Journey

Alex and I are hard at work with a few more tunes which upon completion will herald the release of a new ‘collaboration website’ to showcase our work. We have quite a few tasty treats on the boil! As always stay tuned…

I recently found a great ‘manifesto’ by Mark Amerika that puts a clear perspective on the change and activity of the music world today. It neatly lays out the idea for ‘Avant Pop’ as a movement and relates strongly to a lot of what we do as artists. I connect instantly with this:

[A]rtists who create Avant-Pop art are the Children of Mass Media (even more than being the children of their parents who have much less influence over them).

It also touches on the globalized and networked nature of being a creative participant, rather than having traditional delineation of ‘producer’ and ‘consumer’:

The emerging wave of Avant-Pop artists now arriving on the scene find themselves caught in this struggle to rapidly transform our sick, commodity-infested workaday culture into a more sensual, trippy, exotic and networked Avant-Pop experience. One way to achieve this would be by creating and expanding niche communities. Niche communities, many of which already exist through the zine scene, will become, by virtue of the convergent electronic environments, virtual communities. By actively engaging themselves in the continuous exchange and proliferation of collectively-generated electronic publications, individually- designed creative works, manifestos, live on-line readings, multi- media interactive hypertexts, conferences, etc., Avant-Pop artists and the alternative networks they are part of will eat away at the conventional relics of a bygone era where the individual artist- author creates their beautifully-crafted, original works of art to be consumed primarily by the elitist art-world and their business- cronies who pass judgement on what is appropriate and what is not.

It’s an interesting read. You can find it here. More here.

Occasionally this blog shares the good oil on what counts a interesting listening, and I’ve a few to recommend today. About two weeks back R and I made a quick holiday to Brisbane to soak up some warmth in respite from the long slog that is Armidale’s winter. I can’t tell how thankful I am that spring is finally arriving, sun and warmth make all the difference to your spirit and motivation. Anyway, one of our purposes for heading north to the city was to see some live music:

Room40.org played host for Tujiko Noriko, who played at the Judith Wright Centre on the 20th of August. Playing to an audience seated or lying on the floor with eyes closed, Tujiko delivered an interesting set of ‘avant pop’ by simply singing along with her laptop as it played the backing tracks. Her voice was so captivating, full of confident yet understated melody that lulled you into some sort of magical place – it became the central focus of the performance. The most amazing moments were when the backing track became paired down to minimal elements allowing us to focus on the drama of her performance. It certainly was a treat to see and hear, and largely unlike the usual live bombastic noise we’re used to with rock and pop experiences. She has a new album out which I picked up, U. A particular standout (as it was at the gig too) is ‘I Can Hear The Heart’, which is both dark but reaching toward the light. You can find out about the album here:

Worth mentioning also is the support act, Melbourne’s II. Armed with just two guitars and an array of effects devices, they played two loop-based long-form improvisations that merged post-rock warmth with ambient strangeness. Their moments of gold were produced with sensitivity to melody’s relationship to emotion, yet keeping it interesting with abstraction. You can get more here:

Now patiently waiting for Spring to emerge…

http://thetheatricaltrailer.com/

Let this blog turn your attention to the above link, clicky click! The Theatrical Trailer is home to the works and thoughts of local friend Alex Zaia. Alex and I have been trading riffs on the guitars for a little while now, and he’s also providing some tips on how to make my various web project stand tall rather than wobbly.

Check out his photography, he’s building quite a varied library of eye-tingly goodness.

More from Alex soon.

Here’s an old essay that still hits strong today:

The Abolition of Work by Bob Black

The main point is a great one: that this entire mess of stress and chaos that we call our ’society’ is indeed one of a choice. We have collectively chosen to work ourselves into stupidity and have also invented a structure of belief that this is the right thing to do! As a person who is creative and loves to play around with music this makes complete sense to me: that life could be so much better. I don’t see change possible on a large scale while ever we collectively hold onto our self imposed misery.

The essay is long, but worth a read. His other points on the website are interesting, but I don’t agree with a lot of it (which has become culturally dated and is negative). Share the point though: why are all of us agreeing to this needless slavery?

On a side note: this blog appears to be having loading troubles. Please bear with me while I try to get to the bottom of it…