I read some articles about HDR (High Dynamic Range) in photography which consists in shooting several pictures of the same scene at different exposures and then merging all of them in Photomatix for instance. Anyway I don’t really care about the technic but the end result is really great, not always but often.

Look at this, it was surely not such a great picture at the beginning.

from pingmag.jp

I tried to obtain the same effect just by playing with tones, colors, contrast, etc, on the picture below. I obviously failed but the result is not so bad actually.

This is Bangkok.

We’re getting close to Les Digitales, a small open-air festival which focuses on electronic experimental music. It takes place in Mon Repos which likely is the most beautiful park in Lausanne. So it’s next thursday (28th of June) from 4 to 10 p.m. and it’s free. After 10 p.m. it moves to Le Bourg for some other concerts. There are 9 groups/artists playing in the park: Iria Flavia / Collectif I+ / Effedege / Radon / Tokoloten / [sic] / Consor / Larytta / POL (in this order I guess). I play around 6 p.m. If you like listening to special music in a special place it’s worth coming.

Here are the flyer and the press kit [pdf].

Ok the idea is not very new: a guy enters a taxi and the driver is actually a rallyman… but this japanese TV show goes a bit further (as always)…

The taximan asks for 660 Yens at the end!!

I’ll be playing live at Fréquence Banane, the radio run by the students of the University of Lausanne, on saturday (June 9). I know that Larkian will be there (that’s him who proposed me to participate, thanks!) but I have no idea who else plays and how long is the program. I haven’t prepared anything yet, so I guess it’s gonna be a lot improvised. That might be interesting…

Saturday June 9th, FM 92.4 from 22:00 to ? for listening to it.

Perhaps my favorite photo taken in Morocco.

Some people are asking me what was my setup for the live act I did last saturday. Here it is.

The core of my setup is an Apple Powerbook running Ableton Live with a M-Audio FW410 sound card. I’ve got a TC Electronic Konnekt 24D but the driver doesn’t work well as of now. This time I also brought my Mackie 1202 mixer.

For the noisy part at the beginning of my set, I used a Playstation-like USB game pad for controlling Live. The software I use for mapping the USB data to midi is Steim Junxion. So this game pad works as a midi controller and lets me mute tracks, launch samples, play with effects, etc.

Then comes the second part with the guitar. Here I use a small magnet motor that I put on the guitar’s strings and that makes them vibrate. This is a good way to get harmonics too. The sound from the guitar first goes to a distortion pedal RAT II (I love distortion pedals!), then goes through a multi-effects Adrenalinn II and through a Loop Station Boss RC-2 for loop recording. The signal eventually goes to the mixer.
There’s also a short jack plugged into an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff (the russian one) going to the sound card and hereby to Live. The signal is completely saturated (on purpose) and I use a granulator VST effect on it. On top of that I run a synthesizer and some samples within Live.

The final part (electronica/abstract hip-hop) is fully computer-based. One track for the beats: I use Battery from Native Instruments with a bunch of VST effects (LiveCut and Frohmage for instance). 2 more tracks: one for a synthesizer and one more for the lyrics. I control all of that with a small Doepfer midi controller.

That’s it!

For the visuals, I developed a Processing patch. I already wrote about this in a previous post.

P.S. I posted this screenshot on my Flickr page and I saw yesterday that Joshua Davis added it as a favorite. Cool!

I’ve got 2 short videos of my set at Le Bourg. I’m wondering how I’ve got such long arms(?!).

Great night yesterday at Le Bourg. We didn’t expect so many people to come actually! So I guess it was a success.
I was the first one to play. Everything went smoothly and I managed to project visuals. I recorded my set, you can download it here: http://www.furibond.com/sounds/tokoloten_-_live_@_le_bourg_lausanne.mp3
3 parts: Noise - Ambient - Abstract hip-hop/electronica

Thanks to Les Poissons Autistes and Le Bourg who organized this event! By the way you should check Le Bourg’s program which is always interesting.

In a previous post, I said I was planning to make a hydrophone… I eventually built it yesterday! It’s nothing else as a contact microphone embedded into a box actually. It just passed the waterproof test successfully. I haven’t yet checked the sound it produces. I’ll have to find out which are the best post-effects to use on it… resonator, granulator… we’ll see.

On Mai 19 takes place “Les Chaises Musicales” at Le Bourg. 6 artists from the swiss electronic/experimental music scene will play. Les Poissons Autistes kindly proposed me to participate. Sets will be 30-minute long, I’m now preparing mine that should be made of 3 parts: 1. Noise / 2. Ambient / 3.Beats! I will be using some cool stuff like a game controller, a magnet motor, contact mic… and I plan to run a Processing patch for doing visuals. Lots of things to control for my small brain!

The line-up is:
22:00 DJ Philipella (one of the 2 heads of Les Poissons Autistes)
22:30 Tokoloten (me)
23:00 Les Poissons Autistes
23:30 Sanatorium
00:00 Bio
00:30 Hopen
01:00 Larkian
01:30 DJ Philippella