I thought it’d be a good following to the post about Rotators; John Cage performing his brilliant “Water Walk” composition on NBC in 1960.
From johncage.info: “The materials required are all related to water. Some examples: Bath tub, toy fish, grand piano, pressure cooker where steam is being released, ice cubes and an electric mixer to crush them, rubber duck, goose whistle, 5 radios, etc.
The score consists of a list of properties, a floorplan showing the the placements of instruments and objects, thrre pages with a timeline (one minute each) with descriptions and pictographic notations of occurence of events and a list of notes “regarding some of the actions to be made in the order of occurence” (from score). Timings are not accurate: “Start watch and then time actions as closely as possible to their appearance in the score” (from score).”
Well, I don’t really see how a grand piano can be related to water, but that’s fine with me.
And I can’t resist posting this video of Frank Zappa showing Steve Allen how to play bicycle. It was in 1963, Zappa was 22 years old. Search “Frank Zappa bicycle” on YouTube for seeing the whole show.
Following my post about Dekotora, I thought I’d talk about japanese artist Ujino Muneteru who could have been a Dekotora driver from an aesthetics standpoint.
Since 2004, he’s been building instruments called “Rotators” which are a well crafted mix of sundry household appliances. When I discovered “Rotators” I was amazed how carefully assembled they were. It wouldn’t make sound yet it’d be still beautiful pieces of art. But it’s actually designed for making sounds. Muneteru controls “Rotators” through a kind of mixer which turns on/off the instruments. Beat patterns are made by sticking small cubes on vinyl discs and using custom turntables.
“I set up everything on the table and control everything from the Rotatorhead, so it ends up looking like a cooking show on TV. As for the instruments, the permanent members of the Rotators are: the blender, for its heavy, low frequency sounds - like a punchy kick drum; the drill, set up too for its snappy, tight snare drum sound; and the hair dryer, which is always involved with my performances because it resembles a fuzzy bass but sometimes takes the role of vocals. Then, I control the Rotatorhead and program it to play in a variety of ways.”
Great sunny afternoon in Fribourg last saturday. The Jardin de Lucien was a very nice place; great view, a big tree giving some shadow and cool people. The line-up was pretty eclectic, from acid techno to french song. I can’t say I performed well; my computer crashed after 10 minutes and I had to reboot my setup. It got quite crowdy in the evening and two policemen came shortly after midnight to stop the party… it was supposed to end at 11:30 pm. I hope nothing bad happens to the organizers who really did a great job and contribute in making Fribourg an interesting spot.
This is the nice flyer made for the event that takes place tomorrow in Fribourg and that I’m part of. Click here for the full programme.
I’m not having much time for preparing my set and I can’t actually re-use what I did at oblo last saturday. It was quite experimental and wouldn’t work well in such an “open-air” event with no sound check. As usual, I’m planning three parts. I bought a small glockenspiel few days ago that I’m gonna use for the first part. It might sound a bit like Jodi Cave. Second part will be feedbacks mixing, something I already did at oblo. For the last part I sampled some short sequences of a Yakuza movie and bits of contemporary classical music both from the 60’s that I’m gonna mix with distorted abstract hip-hop beats. One night left to complete that setup…
Marc of adozen.org kindly invited me to play at an event he’s organizing in Fribourg for the “Fête de la musique”. It takes place at Le Jardin de Lucien on saturday from noon to midnight. There’ll be a dozen of live and dj sets. I’m supposed to play at 7:30 pm. I hope the sun shines.
When it comes to remixing a song from a big group like Radiohead, there are tons of guys producing ugly 4/4 club remixes and a few who create something truly original. James Houston, who’s just graduated from the Glasgow School of Art, definitely belongs to the second category.
“Based on the lyric (and alternate title) ‘Big Ideas: Don’t get any’ I grouped together a collection of old redundant hardware, and placed them in a situation where they’re trying their best to do something that they’re not exactly designed to do, and not quite getting there.”
I played yesterday at oblo. Below are some pictures and a video.
Very few people came but from what I heard they enjoyed the show. Unfortunately I couldn’t do visuals as there was no plug that fit my video output.
As usual I can’t say much about my set. I had definitely too much reverb and my guitar’s microphones which I had tuned to be extremely sensitive didn’t behave as expected (because of air moisture?). No pre-recorded stuff, every single sound was done live… I think it was not too bad actually.
Dave Phillips did a great mix of recordings he did while travelling in Thailand and Vietnam. Insects, water, storm… At the end he distributed this text to the audience. Interesting.
Some time after the show, Dave put some insane music like a fantastic “Eye of the tiger” sung by a crazy pakistani guy and some pop tunes from Thailand… That was pretty cool.
Thanks to Phroq who organized the event. By the way he’s gonna play at oblo on July 5th with Michael Gendreau. I’ll be there!
I’ll be playing at oblo in Lausanne on saturday. The main act will be Dave Phillips presenting his field recordings work. I’m glad to do a support act for him but I know he’s gonna tell me if I’m bad at it!
So I’m now preparing my setup… I bought a microphone a few weeks ago so I’m planning to do a lot of live sampling. I’ll bring some noisy objects and try to find some more there, that’d make interesting sound. I’m also planning to interact with the electromagnetic field produced by guitar’s microphones. The issue is that it’s so unstable that it behaves in a different way everytime I relaunch the setup. The last part is still open. I thought I’d make something with a contact mic and feedbacks. But again it’s quite unstable and there’s no way to reproduce twice the same sounds. I need rehearsals… few days left.
Oblo is a great place for listening to experimental music (quiet people, good sound system) and watching visuals (did I forget to say it’s a cinema?). So I also planned to add visuals to my music. I slightly improved the Processing patch I used one year ago for another concert. It’s a generative process that makes abstract drawings reacting to the sound.
If you like experimental music and don’t care about Eurofoot (Greece vs Russia on this day), you might want to come to oblo on saturday. I don’t know anyone yet who listens to experimental music and wouldn’t miss a football match.
I’ll be playing saturday afternoon (3:00 pm) at La Maison de Paille in Lausanne (I think it’s very near the Espace Autogéré) for Appendice, a radio show broadcast on Fréquence Banane (92.4 FM). This is supposed to happen outside. My friend James d’O et Patricia Bosshard (Mur//Mur//) play as well.
Sets last for 20∼25 minutes. Appendice is about experimental live music, so I’m gonna do something a bit more experimental than usual. No Jackie Chan or zombies this time, I’ll bring the contact microphone I’ve just built, magnet motors, TV remote and Wii stuff.
