Home Audio Lighting Installation

My friend Mara hosts a music show every month at her place, where she invites friends to perform pieces they are working on and experiment with sound.  I offered to make an installation for the last one.  I wanted to play with light and shadows, and create an ephemeral feeling for the singing and sound going on in the space.

I've got a week left to create something for the next one...stay tuned!!

Double Die Antwoord

Its been a while since I've posted anything about Die Antwoord, and its important to me to remind everyone how amazing they are.  So here you go:

Love this Giant

Of course David Byrne and St. Vincent should collaborate!! Why didn't I think of it myself! I can't wait until the whole album, Love This Giant, is out.  But until then we have this video.

Murder of Crows

Last week I went to see the life changing, mood altering "sound play" entitled Murder of Crows at the Park Avenue Armory.  In the vast hall there is a small, dim pool of light, with a circle of chairs.  Half occupied by speakers, half are empty, inviting visitors to sit and be enveloped in a world of sound.  You can sit in the chairs, lay on the floor, or walk through the forest of speakers clustered in the center of this large room.

In the center of the circle is this lone phonograph, with a woman's voice speaking from within. 

Major Lazer/Dirty Projectors

Those are two of my faves. Also two completely different ends of the musical spectrum. Amber Coffman of the Dirty Projectors works with Major Lazer on this great song from their new album coming out on November 6!

Astral Converted

This past Friday I went to see Astral Converted at the Park Avenue Armory, my favorite art venue in the city.  The choreography is by Trisha Brown, set design by Robert Rauschenberg, and music by John Cage. Quite a combination!

"...eight metal towers, two each in heights of 2, 4, 6, and 8 feet.  They would be self contained and house all our theatrical gear, most of it from the auto industry: car batteries, headlights, stereo systems and sensors.  The sensors were pointed to trigger the lights and sound to turn on or off when a dancer passed.  Small control boards were added to achieve a degree of randomness to the dancer/sensor relationship."

"The costumes are shiny silver and white skintight unitards marked by white reflector stripes that augment visibility in the piercing striated lighting of the headlights. The women have a white triangular piece of fabric attached to the inseam of their costumes suggesting a skirt. Bob always differentiates between women and men.  In this case they look like a species, both genders present, and out there somewhere in deep space."

Excerts from "Collaboration: Life and Death in the Aesthetic Zone," by Trisha Brown, an essay that appears in Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective (1997)

White, Pink, and Brown Noise

SimplyNoise - Free White Noise Generator

This is helping me write my paper today. I prefer the pink and brown noise over the white noise. There's also a thunderstorm you can listen to.

To read more about the colors of noise, the Wikipedia article about it is really interesting.

Song of the Day: La Verdad

Today I can't stop listening to this song. Juana Molina, La Verdad.  I made a Juana Molina station on Pandora, and its been playing all this great music including some sweet Afro-Peruvian beats.

The Jumbletron

Umshini Wam

Chicago Folk and Roots Festival

I'm still catching up on sharing all of the photos from my trip to Chicago and all of the great things I did and saw, like the Robie House, and the Pitchfork Music Festival.

Summers in Chicago are great for many reasons, but one of the best things is that there is so much free music happening everywhere.  I went with the great Julie Meckler to the Chicago Folk and Roots Festival next to the Old Town School of Folk Music.  We saw a lot of great musicians from all around the world, but the best part of the whole thing was the Puppet Bike!

We also saw this guy, Baloji, a Congolese hip-hop/rumba/soul/rap artist.  I love his outfit.

LE JOUR D'APRES / SIKU YA BAADAYE (INDEPENDANCE CHA-CHA) from BALOJI on Vimeo.


And the Soul Sonic Sircus!!  Take jazz, hip-hop, acrobatics and a performing Pit Bull and put it all together and that's what you get. They are so amazing that I didn't take any good pictures of them because I was too busy watching.

Pitchfork Music Festival!

Highlights of the day: Hanging with the fabulous Julie Meckler.  Seeing James Blake and Animal Collective.

Yay, Animal Collective!  I was excited to see them live.  They were great, as were the big beautiful flowers hanging from the stage.

And the weird videos too.

"Optimist," by Zoe Keating

I love Radio Lab, all the stories and interviews they create are amazing, and keep me inspired when I'm working into the late hours in my studio.  I especially like it when they share music.  This is a great track, which you can download for free from their blog.

Zoe Keating is a friend of the show. We've performed live with her around a dozen times, give or take. And on our last tour (Symmetry), Zoe would often play this piece, Optimist, which she wrote for her son Alex when he was negative four months old. Every time, the audience fell into a trance. Those are the moments from the tour I really remember, getting to sit quietly on stage and watch the audience watch Zoe.

Ryoji Ikeda: The Transfinite!

I went to see Ryoji Ikeda's show at one of my most favorite places to see art in New York City, the Park Avenue Armory.   The artist uses data, sound, rhythm, scale, light, and shadow to overwhelm the senses and create a complete environment - a world you are drawn into upon entering the space, in which it seems that nothing else outside of it exists.  I absolutely loved this show, and hope to see more of Ikeda's work soon!

John & Wayne in Brooklyn

I was invited to see John & Wayne, of Aquarian Nation Records, at a house show they played in Williamsburg last week.  Its a unique and special experience to see a band you like playing in the intimate environment of someone's home.  I had previously seen Francis Dunnery, another Aquarian Nation friend, play a house show before, so I knew it was going to be a fun time.

Here's a video of their song, The Sign to Coventry, about the time they crashed their car driving to Coventry. This video was filmed and produced by my friend, Stephen Harris, also on the Aquarian Nation Record Label.

Desperately Seeking Symmetry

I've been listening to Radiolab while I've been working on my 3d model of my school project.  This episode is really amazing, and explores issues such as how we perceive ourselves, how others perceive us, and what happens when these things are mirrored, flipped, or rotated.

This hour of Radiolab, Jad and Robert set out in search of order and balance in the world around us, and ask how symmetry shapes our very existence--from the origins of the universe, to what we see when we look in the mirror.

Along the way, we look for love in ancient Greece , head to modern-day Princeton to peer inside our brains, and turn up an unlikely headline from the Oval Office circa 1979.  

Click here for more.

Songs Outside My Window

Last night, I was sitting on my couch reading about masonry walls as one does on a regular Saturday night.  The window was open, because it finally getting warmish here in NYC and humid, which tells me that its almost beach weather (!!!).   Around midnight, I heard the most beautiful sounds of singing floating up from the street and into my living room.  I looked outside, and it was coming from the Ukranian Orthodox Church on my block. The entire congregation had gone outside, standing together on the balcony with candles, singing songs (which I didn't understand, but assume they must be about Easter).

What a welcome surprise.  Thank you!

Julie Meckler On BandCamp

Check it out here.

Song of the Day: The Ruby Suns - Dusty Fruit

review: PAPER THICK WALLS

A piano, a violin, a man, a woman, the color blue: mix it all up and you get the up and coming Chicago based band Paper Thick Walls.

Find more artists like Paper Thick Walls at Myspace Music

There's a diversity in the songs, yet unified by their own unique style.   But the song where their true originality and beauty shines through is in Infinite, where there is an almost clashing mixture of verse and chorus sounds that is unexpected and great, and then at the end it floats off on a tangent of ghost like voices.  Its the fact that it catches you off guard that makes it my second favorite.

But my absolute favorite song on the album is Masters At The Sea which makes me feel like what I would imagine it would be like to be out at sea, surrounded by the vast, unending, powerful, terrifying ocean, the big wall of sound like a wave.  When you hear the sad, urgent call of the guitar, violin, and piano, you know you are about to hear a tale of adventure, sadness, and beauty.

Click here and here for more info and to listen to more songs by Paper Thick Walls!!