Wednesday, December 30, 2009

sqrt(ur mother) @ the Replay in Lawrence KS 12.22.09



The let me play a show in Lawrence! Can you believe that? I broke out a laptop, a XY midi controller, the old ass Oxygen 8 mk1, and the electronica kit I bought. The 12" being used for a cymbal trigger is a Jane Fonda Workout Record. I don't have good audio, just the camera mics, but here is a little sample. I will put the rest of the show up when I get them edited. (I have now added the other two parts of the set, part 3 has a good example of the drums).






Thursday, December 24, 2009

holiday party favors


hey yawl,

happy fill in the blank whatever you like holidays!

there's a zip file here (just right click and download) full of some of my favorite choons of 09 (maybe one or two from 08 that have been on constant repeat this year, too). after summing it all up, it's ironic, for me at least, to conclude that 09 was all about dubstep, or the fringes of it anyway (and now that i think about it, it's all sort of becoming house anyways, which seems to be the ultimate ruler of the electronic music food chain for the last, i dunno, 30 years). it's kind of a love/hate thing as most honest relationships are, but i just can't keep myself from masturbating over 2562, Martyn, Mount Kimbie, et al. anyways, there it is, so give it a listen if you want. at any rate it will make a good time capsule one day. are there enough commas in this paragraph?

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

quickie: akai pads

one of the things I like about an mpc is how wonderfully sensitive and tactile the pads are. So it's easy to chop a sample across pads and do the crazy shit Pete Rock does in that youtube video (just search pete rock mpc, it'll be the first result).

however, the Akai MPK controllers I have seemed to lack that same feel. You have to really depress the pads some to get them to trigger a note, which means it's much tougher to glide over the pads triggering shit. (More like you have to stand over it, hammering on the things.) Which pretty much precludes triggering more than 2 drum sounds at a time (without serious finger-strength that I don't possess).

enter:

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=123862

I don't know if anyone else is using one of these pad controllers / combo key/pad controllers, but the idea just seemed so simple I did a face-palm when I read it. Worthwhile, if your controller's pads suck ass.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Christmas Time is Special to all


Thanks Gad there have been no 8bit Jesus links this year . . .

Who is going to be in NC over the holiday break? I will be in Asheville from the 23rd till the 27th. Hit a playa up if you are around.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Plugit, STEP IT UP HONKY



Our posting frequency is dwindling. Call to arms, motherfuckers.

Right now SonicCouture, this company that does mostly weird sampled instruments, is having a two-for-1 sale. Plus with any purchase you get their 303 plugin. Not bad to get 3 plugs for $80. I'm seriously considering this one. Because I really love pads (maybe everyone knew that already). And that shit sounds ridiculously awesome (listen to the samples). The main dude who's still actually doing this with an ensemble, Stephen Scott, is coincidentally from Corvallis (where Oregon State University is seated). They also have a glass instrument collection with an instrument that samples a homemade version of Harry Partch's cloud chamber bowls, and 3 different-priced versions of Gamelan instruments. Brian. To get the deal you have to enter a promo code: SCXMAS09.

OhmForce just made another of their plugins, a synth, freeware. Go cop that shit. Looks to be far more useful than Frohmage, which has its place, but that place is somewhere inside a hooker's asscrack after the champagne has dried but before the condom gets stuck.

I also have been fucking around with Sonalksis plugins lately. Pretty sweet, especially this guy. It's one of those plugins (like Waves' RComp) that when in doubt, you can throw as an insert pretty much anywhere, and you've got to struggle to come up with (subtle) settings that make something sound worse.



I also have been testing out the tips in this SOS article for working in Live, and it's re-energized my workflow to some extent, or at least, it makes me feel like I'm getting results faster when trying to come up with arrangements or pattern variations. I figure you can always line up some pattern changes with the beatbox method they mention to legato-switch between clips, then dump all the MIDI to another track as a clip and edit it, to help fine-tune those moments where the pattern change doesn't meld quite so well (e.g., two identical hits on either side of a pattern change). Gunna try that tonight and see how well it works. The group tracks stuff and added native devices in Live 8 are definitely worth it, if anyone's on the fence about upgrading.

Glitch babies - leave some tips on working better, faster? I think we could all agree that we should be making more music faster, while not compromising the quality. My latest one is just printing shit and not caring so much. You can save versions pre-print, of course, but just fucking bouncing it down usually helps you make decisions faster and not labor over every goddamn detail (which you can always do later, after inspiration leaves you and you feel like reorganizing something).

Monday, December 14, 2009

an album that shaped me

For me, Brian's set the tone here - any one of us could pick Big Loada, Tri Repetae, or pretty much any other album by the Big 3 Warp Motherfuckers or Those Other 3 Planet Mu Guys (I'm thinking of Paradinas, Jega, and Funk here) as a formative album. I don't think we'd be here talking about this crap otherwise. I propose we try to go for albums that the others probably haven't heard, or didn't really like. So we don't all end up having a big circle jerk to Booth/Brown et al. (We can save that for later, sweeties.) This means shit like Stone Cold Rhymin', Dark Side of the Moon, Thriller, etc. are off-limits, too, unless there's some new spin to bring to them. Go all David Cross as Pitchfork on it and come up with some story involving whale orgasms and tiny tiny pomegranates, I don't know. (Read that link if you haven't, though - shit is hilarious. Two different Warp acts are mentioned.)

Shortly before the time period Brian refers to in his tales of Col. Bruce Hampton, one of the main things I did after high school was ride around in a friend's Jeep with as many as 4 other people. Pretty much every day we'd go up to the Parkway after school and either smoke cigarettes or get stoned, and just ride around and listen to music. Weird array of shit, too. Sometimes it'd be hippie crap; sometimes it'd be stuff like Warren Zevon or Ween or Johnny Cash ... there was one guy that really loved Jethro Tull (Brian knows who this is), so we ended up listening to a lot of different stuff from the late 50s all the way up to the present day (at that time, about '96/'97).

Occasionally, especially when you're young and stupid and on two or three different kinds of drugs and haven't heard all that much music, you have some sort of near-transcendent experience with certain sounds, and it's not necessarily a reflection on the quality of the music, even, just the way those sounds fit with a particular time and place, and they open the door to the Black Lodge or turn wine into urine or some equally explosive shit happens inside your brain. Once that happens, it's kind of impossible to ditch those records in any meaningful sense, short of ECT / lobotomy. (This imprinting is partially how I attempt to explain to myself the presence of Rammstein in Lost Highway - I think Lynch got way deep into meditation one day and somehow Rammstein was playing down there, so he had to honor the idea.)

For me, one such album that has stayed with me, and probably influenced me more than I know:


There was a tape that we listened to (until it broke) of all of Ruby Vroom and a few songs from Irresistible Bliss as well. I still hear a lot of these songs in my head today at those random moments when I catch myself moving a body part rhythmically without thinking about it. It was one of the first (non hip-hop) albums I heard where it was very, very obvious that sampling was a large part of what made the "backdrop" of the production, and it actually worked. That (of course) led me to whip out the SK-1 my family had owned since I was 6 or 7 and do what you normally do with an SK-1 (fart melodies, etc). So in that way, it probably primed me for what was to come.

More than that, some of the lyrical content (although I'll readily admit a good portion of this album is pretty nonsensical and/or silly) made the first real mark on me of time-relevant culture disdain. I'd read Nietzsche and Jonathan Swift and other such downtrodden satirical stuff, but it required a certain degree of synthesis to apply that to the world in which I lived. "Screenwriter's Blues" was probably the first good musical satire of a portion of my culture, where instantly I perceived it as scathing, humorous, and just plain "fucking A" - without any intellectual bridge-building required.

And if you all think this album sucks, then I blame the LSD.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

An album that formatatived me

I think Andrew mentioned something about people posting formative albums or something like that. This album formed me something strange.


This was purchased with Christmas money sometime in college, before I really started hanging with what is now the BFC click. I was hanging out with the good doctor, and he noticed the advertisement box with these in it, and thought the bronze guy on the cover looked pretty, so my space cadet ass bought it. And boy was I glad I did.

"One Ruined Life of a Bronze Tourist", by Col. Bruce Hampton - a preview

I quote the album- "this is what it is like to go on a flight benieth the pole in an under sea spaceship. " There really isn't a better explanation.

Absurd and comical. Bluegrass, mixed with cocktail jazz, mixed with honky tonk rock and roll, with a strange ambient noise undertone in almost all the songs. The artistic opinion on Jazz was also well appreciated, given the amount of jazz guitar heads at the UNCA music department at the time I discovered the album (fuck your A MixoLydian scale over a Fm13th your fuck). A rant about a man living in the roof of my mouth also terrorized my brain for many years. If people ever wander why I did the crazy shit I have done, or that many of you have seen me do, it was because I was trying to reach the "next level" where ol Col. Bruce was in the early 70's. He was on a different level, one that I now hope I never understand.

Friday, December 11, 2009

I MISS YOU.


i have stopped listening to music and looking at art, but am ready to start again because i miss the good times.

in the meanwhile here is a link to a remix a friend of mine did you RRoy_orbison's annything you want. I'm gonna beef it up a bit for the clubs... (((LINK LINK LINK LINK)))

hope yr all well...
luv
twizzla

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

hook-upz; 2562 ; joy orbison; candy bars; gaynksta rap




hey y'all.
i need everyone who reads music blogs to comment with a few of their favorite blogs.
we need a legit blogroll on here and i need intell for a promotional air raid.

on another tip, check out these mixes, they are the snickers:

joy orbison mix here

2562 mix here

i can't say much for joy orbison's actual releases but 2562 has a good amount of 12"s and two full lengths: aerial and the recently released unbalance, both of which go really well with a (small) joint, a diet coke, and a snickers.

by the way, did i mention 50 cent has officially announced that he and lloyd banks have been together romantically since the inception of the g-unit?

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

zSHARE - Flying Lotus - Weezy.zip

zSHARE - Flying Lotus - Weezy.zip

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does nine inch nails not have some totally brilliant moments?