Jim O’rourke is playing Tenori-on

Yamaha is going to launch a new musical interface called Tenori-on. It has been developed by Toshio Iwai and has been showcased in some festivals over the past years (Sonar for instance). It’s encouraging seeing such an experimental device going to mass-production.
In order to promote this new instrument Yamaha has distributed it to a bunch of musicians (and not the worst): Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Matthew Herbert, Mouse On Mars, Cornelius, To Rococo Rot, Jim O’ Rourke, Rei Harakami, Tortoise and Atom Heart… I guess it’s a good way for getting covered by the press.

A few videos, interviews, audio files are available on Yamaha’s website.

I wouldn’t have talked about all of this if Jim O’rourke hadn’t composed a beautiful ambient track with the Tenori-on. Here is the track: http://www.global.yamaha.com/tenori-on…

Tenori-on

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Insects are amazing creatures

Leaf insect
Photo by artour_a. He’s got a lot of great shots of insects.

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Photos of Les Digitales

There are now some photos of Les Digitales Festival that took place in Lausanne on June 28:
photos by Nicolas Bonstein (one of the kind organizers) / photos by Alexandre Dell’Olivo (who also played under the name of Radon).

Crowd at Les Digitales

Doing my noisy stuff…

tokoloten at work

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Sarkozy — champaign?

I’m wondering why YouTube is putting a video of Sarkozy into the Related Videos of mine… That’s weird.

The only link I can see between the 2 videos is that I’m playing with a champaign cooler and Sarkozy is obviously drunk after seeing Poutine at G8… but I guess he rather drank vodka then. Still weird…

Anyway, my videos on YouTube are hosted at this address: http://www.youtube.com/user/tokolo10

Below is the last one I uploaded (live at Le Bourg again).

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How embedding a flickr slideshow

Pretty simple! Paul Stamatiou developed a small page that generates the html code for you: flickrSLiDR. You just need to paste the code into your post (edit in html mode).

Below is my “Japan” set.

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The wireless age

Taken in Kyoto, summer 2003.

Kyoto, summer 2003

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The best synth/bass line ever?

“The message” was released by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5 in 1982, 25 years ago! I’m watching it and it’s so obvious it’s still influencing today’s hip-hop… think about Beans for instance.

Grand Master Flash vs Beans

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A tough concert at Les Digitales

So last thursday I played at the festival Les Digitales. This was the 3rd edition of the festival and as usual it took place in the beautiful park of Mon-Repos in Lausanne. Hopefully, no rain.
Last year I was in the audience so I was pleased to play this year. Unfortunately things didn’t went as smoothly as I had planned… Indeed when my turn came, I got a big issue with my sound card that seemed to be close to death. After 20 minutes trying to figure out what was the actual issue, rebooting many times my laptop, etc, the organizers asked Bacalao (next musician in the program) to start playing. So I got some time for fixing the issue and I actually had to reinstall the driver of my sound card (hopefully I had a local copy). I could play later but I definitely lost some concentration. Moreover, at the beginning of my set I had the (bad) idea to propose a small kid to blow into a straw and make bubbles in my champaign cooler (!). But then some other kids came and started talking to me: “Can you play Michael Jackson?”, and after a while “Can you play some other music?” ;-)… that was fun but didn’t help me much!! So I did quite a lot of mistakes and I completely missed the guitar part compared to what I had planned to do. At least it shows it’s really live music.

Anyway you can download the recording (26:24, mp3, 36.3MB).

And here are some videos (sorry for the bad quality).





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Short interview on Espace 2

Last wednesday I met Nicolas Julliard of the swiss radio Espace 2 for a short interview. Talking about my music is not something I’m very familiar with, so I hope I managed to give some interesting answers.
This was broadcast at noon on thursday June 28th as an introduction to the festival Les Digitales that took place in the afternoon.

Download the podcast (23:06, mp3, 10.6MB)

Nicolas Bonstein tells Les Digitales story, I love his philosophy.

Below is the text introducing the podcast as you can read it on the website of Espace 2 [in french!].

Les Digitales, l’électronique aux champs

Festival lausannois d’origine, Les Digitales ont essaimé dans plusieurs villes de Suisse avec un concept séduisant: faire jouer des musiciens électro en pleine ville, dans ces poumons de verdure que constituent les parcs publics de Lausanne, de Bienne et de la Chaux-de-Fonds.

Première étape ce soir au Parc Mon-Repos de Lausanne, avec une dizaine de créateurs issus de la scène régionale. Tous ont eu comme consigne de travail un seul mot, «Wasser», à décliner sur une demi-heure comme bon leur semble. Adepte des instruments bricolés, Tokoloten a ainsi conçu un hydrophone, un seau à champagne dans lequel est immergé un micro étanche. Pour d’autres, comme le Collectif I+, duo de violon et violoncelle électriques, le respect de la consigne est de nature plus métaphorique, dans la création de nappes de sons aquatiques.

Nicolas Bonstein, organisateur du festival, détaille l’origine et les enjeux de cette manifestation gratuite en plein air, tandis que Julien Mouille, alias Tokoloten, ainsi que Magali Correvon et Sébastien Golaz du Collectif I+ évoquent leur manière toute personnelle d’aborder la matière électronique.

Un dossier Musique par Nicolas Julliard

Télécharger la chronique (23:06, mp3, 10.6MB)

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MySpace: Crap + Art = Crart

Everyday I receive 1 or 2 friends request on MySpace and sometimes it leads me to crazy pages… When layout css hacking turns out to be a piece of… crart.

Here is the profile of secret shapes.

MySpace piece of crart

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