Fifty Quid Soundboy

So, another night of synthesizer electronics in an east London basement. God, I love this city sometimes! I haven’t been to the City Arts & Music Project (CAMP) before, but it’s a decent venue, although the criminal absence of any recognisable bar snacks meant I had to send an accomplice out on a humanitarian mission to Sainsburys to bring back a large bag of peanuts. The number of beards in attendance was absolutely phenomenal too, even for London: I swear I saw guys who’d brought spare beards with them, checking them into the cloakroom so they could wear their main beard in the club. THAT’S how many beards there were last night. Anyway, a nice space, with respectably heavy soundsystem (it looks like they do regular reggae nights down there, I saw flyers for Mungo’s Hi-Fi and RSD) and there were friendly staff on the door and behind the bar.

The first act was a guy called Andre Vida. I’m going to break my general rule of not criticising things that fall completely outside of my frame of reference, and say that listening to a bloke make kickdrum sounds on a saxophone while laughing out of the corner of his mouth into a mic is Not For Me. This performance of thumps and jazz burps was very short, apparently because he’d forgotten to bring his loop pedal with him, which must have sucked, and while it was brave to go on stage without a core piece of kit, I felt that repetition and multiplication was actually the last thing this sound needed. Sorry!

Rene Hell – The Terminal Symphony by _type

Then there were the two musicians I had come to see. Rene Hell is an artist I don’t know much about, but I’ve played his better-known records to death over the last year, they’re absolute classics, Terminal Symphony in particular. He makes gorgeous, modern, classically influenced synthesizer music but tosses in a lot of noise and general mayhem, building up emotional swells and drawing things towards stately crescendos while firing off all manner of squawks, gurgles and bursts of noise and self-oscillation. His sound is instantly recognisable, (thanks in part to the pleasingly plasticky timbres of his Korg MS2000 – no retro-cosmic Moog fetishism here) and the wonderful thing about his set last night was just how closely the live sound matched his recorded work – this wasn’t being lazily squirted out of a laptop either, this was a proper performance, deploying rapid staccato piano sequencer patterns with a canny musicality while unleashing chaos from his main synth, working with such speed and confidence that his hands were almost a blur. For some reason this was also a short set of just three songs, perhaps because of the limitations of his super-minimal live setup although I couldn’t really say. What I can say is that I’m really glad I was there!

Finally (for me, as I opted to miss the final act of the night in order to be fresh for work) was noted Eurorack botherer Keith Fullerton Whitman. Given the variance of his catalogue (compare Generator to 101105, for instance), this performance was always going to be a bit of a wildcard (in a good way). Anyway, Jesus fucking Christ, it was incredible. Playing a hybrid analogue/digital setup of modular synth, Macbook and control surface, in quadrophonic sound no less, Keith blew my head clean off. It’s so hard to describe this kind of music, but some of the impressions I had at the time were: it’s raining cannonballs, swarms of screaming metal ghosts overhead, trouser-flapping bass, oh my god, crikey, etc. As I said, very hard to describe. At one point I remember the whole thing collapsing into a Tim Hecker style pillar of symphonic noise, before mutating into something else yet again…I listened to the whole set with my eyes closed, mostly because I’m tedious like that, but also because whenever I opened them I was distracted by the guy next to me who insisted on ducking, weaving, and bobbing his head up and down to a rhythm which, I assure you, was entirely imaginary. Perhaps he was listening to Black Eyed Peas on a hidden iPod?

Anyway, what struck me most about KFW (apart from the fact that he’s a fearsome live musician) was the sheer density of ideas in his music: in any given ten-second segment, there was sufficient material for lesser electronic artists to squeeze entire albums out of…good albums too, albums I would probably buy. This was an epic, violent performance, which finished on what I thought was a knowing flourish: a short tuneful rainbow of Emeralds-style sequencer arpeggios, an amusingly incongruous way to terminate an otherwise intimidating set.

Overall my impression of the evening was one of total mastery of instruments: Rene Hell’s obviously deep relationship with one of the less well known digital synths of the last decade; Keith Fullerton Whitman absolutely owning modular synthesis; and yeah, Andre Vida too, because despite my suspicions we were off on an excursion into the Beardyman / Scroobius Pip zone of emetic tweeness, you couldn’t fault his skills. All in all a classic, idiosyncratic night, and I look foward to seeing what the organisers put on in future….

This saturday I went down to the Science Museum to check out their new electronic music exhibition Oramics to Electronica: Revealing Histories of Electronic Music. If you’ve got any interest in this sort of thing at all, I recommend it. The Oramics machine itself rewards close inspection – the fucking valves! – and you can stick headphones on and have a go on a software emulation running on a nearby touchscreen kiosk. Although underwhelmed by the sawtooth drones that resulted from my half-arsed efforts with the thing, simply contemplating the occult complexity and sheer size of the real machine I was rather awed by the lengths Oram and her contemporaries went to to summon sounds that had truly never been heard previously. In this retromaniac era where it feels like most if not all electronic musicians are really only colouring in between the outlines already drawn by their predecessors, it’s humbling to stand this close to the product of real bloody-minded genius in all its unhinged opto-mechanical glory.

As for the rest of the exhibition, there is a collection of vintage synthesizers and peripheral equipment, much of it donated by Peter Zinovieff (founder of EMS, makers of the unbelievably rare and desirable VCS3 "Putney"), and a video presentation which I skipped due to hunger / possible ADHD. The gear collection has its highs: for this particular synth spod, the presence of a real VCS3 turned a mere museum visit into a genuine pilgrimage, and the TB303 on display was suitably worn and rave-battered (which makes me happy…I think that to keep those old acid boxes and Roland drum machines in pristine condition, boxed-with-original-accessories with an eye to future resale value is to damn their souls to purgatory)…but also I felt there were some lows and missed chances: we all know what an Atari ST looks like (don’t we?).

The worst and in my opinion strangest omission for a music-themed exhibition was the absence of any speakers or pairs of headphones to enable visitors to actually hear what all these circuits and gizmos sound like: demonstrating the TB303′s "aggressive sound" instead of merely describing it on a little note card, etc, could transform this exhibition from a mere trainspotters’ delight (which it certainly is) into something approaching a sonic crown jewels (Synth Museum R.I.P.), something which shows visitors and their kids just where so much of today’s ubiquitous soundscape ultimately comes from, and why we should still marvel at it even in a world where Renault Zafira adverts are accompanied by tasteful breakbeats and detuned oscillators. Likewise, the Science Museum giftshop made no reference to the exhibition, curious given the number of unbelievably relevant recent releases, a few copies of which surely wouldn’t be hard to come by, or for that matter, dispose of at the counter?

But reservations aside – I don’t know what constraints the exhibition team were under, after all – it’s a tremendously fun exhibition. The Oramics machine restoration work must have been arduous, and the generosity of the people who have lent machines to the Museum is heartwarming, especially in the case of Peter Zinovieff who lost the majority of his original studio to a flood. This was a great way to spend an hour – gawping at machines I would never otherwise get to see in my lifetime, and reflecting on the mighty and weird achievements of Daphne Oram and the BBC Radiophonic workshop, the likes of which we shall never etc etc. Get down there and take a look.

I love where I live.

"Tell me what you’ve found out about London," I said, and she did. By the time she had finished, we were almost there. We looked out at woodlands and marshes, ruins and the traces of streets and arterial roads, at the junctions of which smoke drifted up from the chimneys of huddled settlements. Suze began excitedly pointing out landmarks: Heathrow airport, its hexagram of runways only visible from the air, like the sigil of some ancient cult addressed to gods in the sky; the Thames Flood Barrier far to the east, a lonely line of silver dots in the Thames flood plain; Hyde Park with its historic Speaker’s Corner, where the Memorial to the Unknown Socialist rose a hundred metres above the trees, gazing in the disdain of victory at the fallen or falling towers of the City; and, as the airship turned and began to drift lower, our destination, the proud pylons of Alexandra Port.

The sight of Alexandra Port set the hairs of my nape prickling. It had been one of the early centres of the space movement which was the common ancestor of the Outwarders and ourselves; there were people alive today whose journey into space had begun in its crowded concourses, waiting for the airship connection to the launch sites of Guine and Khazakhstan. Its mooring masts were their Statue of Liberty, their Ellis Island.
Or their Botany Bay. My fingernails were digging into my palms. I turned away and prepared to disembark.

From the terminal’s roof we could see an almost panoramic view of London, its rolling hills hazy with woodsmoke. The trees were interrupted here and there by towers whose steel and concrete had survived two centuries of neglect, and by broad corridors around ancient roadways. To the east the Lee Water broadened out to the Hackney marshes and the distant gleam of the Thames. On the nearby hills to the west the ruins of the old brick buildings and streets were still, barely, visible as crumbling walls and cracked slabs among the trees.

It was all just like in the old pictures, I thought as we descended to the concourse: the People’s Palace, retro-styled even when it was new, back in the twentieth century, and the newer, twenty- first century terminal buildings and workshops sprawling across the crown of the hill under the high pylons. The only evidence of modern technology I could see was the escalator down which we rode and its continuation in the walkway which carried us to the exit. Their seamless flow of plastic – not nanotech, just clever – would have baffled the complex’s early engineers.

The Cassini Division, Ken MacLeod

Lol…better than my effort…narrower in scope and better for it. Check it out:

A great, immersive listen and well worth your four quid:

‘faryad bar dictator’ ‘فریاد بر دیکتاتور’

1 track – Download only – 8:56

Mastered by BJNilsen

As you may know, Sohrab managed to leave Iran late last year for Germany, where he appealed for political asylum having been interned in Brandenburg. This appeal has failed and he is trying to raise funds to appeal against this latest ruling.

If he fails, it is probable that Sohrab will be flown back to Iran and arrested at Tehran Airport… Europe is reassessing its policy to ‘immigrants’ on a daily basis, partly because of the rise of the political right, but also because of the influx of refugees from the ‘arab spring’. The vast majority are being unceremoniously shipped back to their point of origin…

This release is a fund-raiser to help pay for a lawyer to help with his appeal against the ruling. 100% of Artist and Label money from this release will be donated directly to the appeal fund.

You can donate more if you wish simply by purchasing multiple copies of this release.

The protest was recorded in Tehran in the autumn of 2009.

On June 12, 2009 the Iranian presidential elections were held, and the results were strongly contested by the population. For the first time after the Islamic Revolution, Iranians expressed their dissent by organizing huge demonstrations against the regime. But the protest was not limited to demonstrations in public spaces; every night at 10 o’clock, citizens gathered on rooftops to continue their protests, chanting “Allah u Akbar” (“Allah is great”). At times, these chants would be interrupted by other, more indignant, chants of “Mag bar diktator” (“Death to the dictator”). During these protests, the dark Tehran nights were haunted by the ghost-like shadows and their eerie voices. Dreams, memories, emotions, and hopes roam around like ghosts on the rooftops of Teheran.

More info at the Touch shop here.

Electronics Mix 2011-05-21 by 50quidsoundboy

1. John Chantler – The Luminous Ground A3
2. High Wolf – Swallow Pills With Ganga River Water
3. Sohrab – Shouting At Dictators
4. Hacker Farm – Austerity Measures
5. Keith Fullerton Whitman – Generator 7b
6. Red Electric Rainbow – Ferris Wheel
7. The Automatics Group – Auto 17
8. Rene Hell – Adagio For String Portrait
9. Tim Hecker – The Piano Drop
10. Conrad Schnitzler – Metall 1
11. Carrillion – Sunny Lanes (Part II)
12. Sleep ∞ Over – Casual Diamond
13. Ekoplekz – Temporal Drift
14. Peaking Lights – Amazing And Wonderful
15. Creation Rebel – Diverse Doctor
16. Keith Fullerton Whitman – Disingenuousness
17. Eleh – Bright & Central As The Sun Itself

I’m getting a lot of joy from listening to this:

The music on Broadcast isn’t “dubstep from the eighties”, like you could just take all your Native Instruments plugins and replacing them with DX-7s and Junos…it’s something altogether more exhuberant and original. Some similarities to Ford & Lopatin / Games in reference points and sound pallette, but far less nostalgic or glitched/degraded sonically. It sounds fresh. There’s a lot of Bristol bass in there, not the lairy braggadocio of Joker’s music, just a kind of upfront boldness in the drums and the subs (and yes, you could call the synths “neon”). I don’t think anyone else sounds like this right now, it’s a fantastic album!

Therac-25

The Therac-25 was a radiation therapy machine produced by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) after the Therac-6 and Therac-20 units. It was involved in at least six accidents between 1985 and 1987, in which patients were given massive overdoses of radiation, approximately 100 times the intended dose.[2] These accidents highlighted the dangers of software control of safety-critical systems, and they have become a standard case study in health informatics and software engineering.

Technicians could, in most cases, bypass the irritating malfunctions simply by pressing the "p" key, for "proceed." Doing so became a matter of habit. Inside the treatment room Cox was hit with a powerful shock. He knew from previous treatments this was not supposed to happen. He tried to get up. Not seeing or hearing him because of the broken communications between the rooms, the technician pushed the "p" key, meaning "proceed." Cox was hit again. The treatment finally stopped when Cox stumbled to the door of the room and beat it with his fists.

Four days later, "Malfunction 54" flashed on the screen again during a treatment, this time while a sixty-six-year-old bus driver, Verdon Kidd, was receiving therapy at the Tyler cancer centre for skin cancer on his face. He became disoriented and then comatose, and died three weeks later. Treatment stopped on the Tyler Therac-25 the day of Verdon Kidd’s accident, on a Friday. The hospital staff, physicist Fritz Hager, and his technician, who had worked the machine in both accidents, stayed at the console long after everybody else had gone home for the weekend, typing and retyping the prescription into the computer console, determined to re-create Malfunction 54. They went to the bottom of the screen and then moved the cursor up to change the treatment mode from x to e, over and over, for hours. Finally they did it.

From a great book, a marvellous description of a sound – the sound an antigravity device for lifting whole cities into space makes when it fails:

A spindizzy going sour makes the galaxy’s most unnerving noise. The top range of the sound is inaudible, but it feels like a multiple toothache. Just below that, there is a screech like metal tearing, which blends smoothly into a composite cataract of plate glass, slate, and boulders; this is the middle register. After that, there is a painful gap in the sound’s spectrum, and the rest of the noise comes into one’s ears again with a hollow round dinosaurian sob and plummets on down into the subsonics, ending in frequencies which induce diarrhea and an almost unconquerable urge to bite one’s thumbs.

How could you make that sound?

James Blish, "Starman Come Home" / "Cities In Flight"