Yesterday was the official release of the long awaited release by NYC chip band Anamanaguchi. The Dawn Metropolis website features videos for the songs with visuals by me and pixel art by Dave Mauro. Pretty much from the moment the site went live the buzz has been crazy. Yesterday morning I was seeing emails, txt messages, forum posts, reviews, tweets and every other type of communication blowing up. The compression on the videos is a little funky but… that is being worked on and Pete tells me new ones will be up soon!
Oh and what’s in it for me besides that I’m just a nice guy?
Easy! I have made them promise to take outpt and I on their world tour!
Blip Festival 2008 is over and I have to say it was a huge honor to be part of it again!
The musicians, the visualists and everyone involved were top notch.
I could fill this page with “thank you”s but will spare you, my few readers, and just give a few necessary mad props to these folks:
- Josh, Jeremiah, Rich, Mike, Suzan, Jean, Ricardo, 2PP, and everyone behind the scenes who made it happen
- TCTD for the blogging
- No Carrier for inviting me to sing on his dance hall track at the pre-blip party and having me in the mix during the Minusbaby set
- noteNdo for helping me with nordloef’s set
- Julian (C-Men) for helping me with Trash80’s set and making the custom 3D rotating “EPIC” graphic!
- and most of all Outpt - who I am forever grateful for her contributions to my sets. Without her help, I could have never done the visuals the way that I wanted to - especially for the Nullsleep set which was, if I may say so myself … EPIC
And here’s a pic (courtesy of Outpt) of the trio that brought it:
Nullsleep, Paris and Outpt
The line up for the chip tunes music event of the year has recently been announced!
Check it right here!
This is one that you really, really, really don’t want to miss so you may want to mark your calendar right now: DEC 4-7 in NYC
Line up, tickets, directions, pics and everything else one could want are on the site.
I am totally honored to be playing again this year - doing live visuals on the gp2x and gameboy advance. In case anyone pays attention to such details, I am not listed as Voltage Controlled which was originally the name of collaborative project that I was once involved in and although the other collaborator at one time gave me permission to use the name, I think it better to stop now. But enough of that boring stuff!
Check the site and see what’s in store!
Peter Swimm has launched a new blog: True Chip ‘Till Death showcasing the best in chip related news, software, hardware, tutorials and so on. Only a few days old it’s off to a great start. Check it out! I’ve already subscribed!
Due to the popular demand, BlipFestival Reformat the Planet will be on Pitchfork.tv for another week! I think that means somewhere around the 29th of Aug?
This has been a great opportunity for people to view the documentary and has raised some questions!
Yes… I have received questions from friends and family who have until now only heard about all of this. So… here’s a mini FAQ regarding my little appearance in the movie…
Q. I thought you used hand held consoles. What’s up with the laptop?
A. Right. When the interview was done I was making the transition and didn’t have anything to show and tell on a hand held. The following year at Blipfestival I only used hand helds - a GP2x and a Gameboy Advance.
Q. Yo Mr. Open Source! What’s with the Mac? What’s that software you are running?
A. Calm down my friend!
The software is Pure Data which IS open source (and multi platform).
Again at the time of the interview my POS HP laptop died badly (where I was running Debian Linux) and I had to borrow the Mac which by the way, runs Pd just fine.
Q. Are you always so gay?
A. No, sometimes I’m much gayer.
Q. Are you always so punk?
A. No, sometimes I’m much punker.
Q. Are you really THAT OLD?
A. No, sometimes I’m much older!
Many people have asked me when and where they can see the movie Reformat The Planet - a documentary by 2 Player Productions about the first Blipfestival, the chiptunes scene, etc.
Good news!
For one week (starting today I guess) - it can be watched online (the whole thing) at Pitchfork.tv
Enjoy it while it’s up there!
Shameless self promotion: my graphics are featured throughout (back when i was doing everything with Pd instead of consoles but still…)
When I was in Hawaii, my friend of many years Timothy Hendricks (23 degrees) generously gave me his TR-909 (of course I still consider it a LOAN). Tim and I have done a lot of music together back in the day. Reggae and House. His group 23 Degrees tore up San Francisco in the mid 90’s.
Not only do I love the 909 sounds (think Acid House!) but it is of the time period that it has MIDI plus Roland Sync and…. Trigger Output! I love triggers because I use them to control other analog devices. Although you can sample all the sounds, I find that there’s things that I can do with control voltages and triggers that I would never have come up with in a strictly MIDI set up.
So… as a welcome to my new house guest (the 909), I have set up my gear and will start recording some new tracks soon I hope!
Here’s some pics:
From left to right… Top is a Moog Prodigy, below is a Moog Source. Next is a Korg 770. Behind that is an ARP 2600. In front of the ARP are two Obeheim modules: a SEM and an analog sequencer. In front of these is a Roland 606 drum machine (two triggers out!). Below is a closer pic of these:
Below are some effects, a StudioMaster Mixer and monitors.
Left is an Akai S-950, top of the keyboard stand is a Casio CZ-1000 and below a Yamaha DX11
Last night I was fortunate to attend the 12th Anniversary Tribute Concert in Memoriam of Pandit Pran Nath.
The performance was at the Dream House on Church Street and featured the Just Alap Raga Ensemble of
- La Monte Young - Voice
- Marian Zazeela - Voice
- Jung Hee Choi - Voice
- Da’ud Constant - Voice
- Charles Curtis - Cello
- Jon Catler - Fretless Guitar
- Naren Budhkar - Tabla
- The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath (from the Just Dreams CD)
The tickets were a present from my good friend Anne who knew how much I would like to go. Many years go she and I were fortunate to see Pandit Pran Nath perform in San Francisco.
Pandit Pran Nath was the disciple of the legendary Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan. This relationship in itself is quite interesting - Pandit Pran Nath a Hindu and Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan a Muslim Sufi (of the Chisti order I think). It is no surprise that the music that they made (referred to as the Kirana style) is deeply meditative. Also it is no surprise that this music appealed to a perfectionist of tones, La Monte Young.
As you can imagine it was hot last night (June in NYC) and as everyone packed into the Dream House the heat combined with the tambura made me breath deep and slowly. After some time the musicians entered, paid respects to Pandit Pran Nath and then sat and soon after the music began. I don’t know what I was expecting having never heard La Monte Young sing but as he started I was amazed and captivated. His voice reminded me of Pandit Pran Nath. The music slowly unfolded as the other singers joined in. Singing in unison at times and at other times in a call and response fashion. When they all sang in unison it was beautiful.
The composition “Raga Sundara” composed by Young is a slowly unfolding piece. Although I am not a scholar on this music, it sounded as if the majority of the composition (if not the entire thing) is an Alap (what is generally the opening section of a classical piece). Over the period of the performance, I felt myself in a meditative yet attentive state - enjoying the amazingly harmonious pitches. I was surprised by the presence of cello and guitar in ensemble - but they were beautiful additions. In particular, seeing a guitar I first was confused but as soon as I noticed that it was fretless, I knew that it would work and it did. After a quickly passing hour plus, the performance ended. The musicians rose, paid respects and left the room and Anne and I went out into the pouring rain and talked about the performance for another half an hour or more.
There will be a second performance on the 27th of June. If you are interested in Indian Classical music or Just Intonation or anything tangential to these, I encourage you to attend.
Some links of interest:
Congratulations to our friends at 2 Player Productions!
[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.480045&w=425&h=350&fv=clip_id%3D665366%26server%3Dwww.vimeo.com%26autoplay%3D0%26fullscreen%3D1%26md5%3D%26show_portrait%3D0%26show_title%3D0%26show_byline%3D0%26context%3D%26context_id%3D] from www.vimeo.com
Note: Flash Player 9 is needed to view the clip. Linux version is here.
Their first feature documentary “Reformat the Planet” is an official entry in the South by Southwest Film Festival.
This film documents the 2006 Blipfestival and the chiptune music scene with performances by some of the top chiptune musicians in the world. My graphics (performing as Voltage Controlled) are featured throughout the film along with other video artists. It has been an honor to be included as a visualist in many chiptune music performances over the last few years.
On a technical note - the visuals that I created at the time of the filming of this documentary were done using a laptop with Pure Data and Gem (and sometimes PDP). Since then, my live visuals are done using a GP2X and Gameboy Advance.
Also check out the awesome videos by 2PP of Blip Festival 2007 on vimeo.
The Micromusic HQ Launch show turned out to be awesome.
The music line up was: Nullsleep, A_Rival, Chibi-tech, Starpause, Trash80, Tumult and X|K and they all did great sets. I would have been happy to vj the entire show but shared the night with another vj (oops, can’t remember his name).
The venue turned out to be nice - good sound and even had their own video mixer which sure beat having to use my ghetto switch box.
Some pics are below, more are floating around the net…
Soundcheck of x|k with some of my visuals, photo by Trash80:
Nullsleep by Starpause:
Voltage Controlled (me) by Starpause:
