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18 August, 2014

What about those Three Blind Mice, do you still remember them?

Leslie Clarke makes music by only clicking his fingers. He would play his fingers and sell tapes around Melbourne for a dollar or two and give the money to charity. I bought a tape some years ago and recently stumbled across it in my studio. I found a tape deck and digitised the music while listening to it.

Leslie Clarke — The Man Who Plays Music on His Fingers (sides 1 & 2) [21.7MB .mp3 file]

It's an interesting listen. The tonal range Leslie achieves is incredible and the tunes are easily identifiable. Each track is introduced by Leslie and he opens the tape by introducing himself and explaining his technique. Each song isn't titled explicitly but alluded to like it's a shared story Leslie and the listener have heard with Leslie asking questions about each song and their subjects, often asking the listener if they remember them. 

The tape itself is perfectly white and unlabeled. It is housed in a piece of paper folded around the tape with a stamped title on it (above). No artist credit is present.

When looking into the songs I found this video, which Leslie covers on the tape:

I love the lyric 'Kingdoms may come, kingdoms may go, whatever the end may be. Old Father Thames keeps rolling along, down to the mighty sea.' Nature as perpetual and anthropomorphised.

The only stuff I could find on the web about Leslie was this site from 2006. I emailed the contact listed but haven't received a reply. If anyone finding this has any info on Leslie, please let me know via a comment!

Earth, Ferris Wheel, Guitar, Cow

Here is a mix I made of music from some of my favourite video game soundtracks. This is quite a broad task so I limited myself to tracks that used recorded music rather than music made through sounds synthesised by the game media itself.

Music for Opposable Thumbs [128MB Mediafire link].

Tracklist (game titles are in bold):
Yu Miyake — Lovely Angel [Katamari Damacy]
Akira Yamaoka (credited as Konami Kukeiha Club) — Promise (Reprise) [Silent Hill 2]
Yutaka Minobe — Backbiting [Rule of Rose]
Shunsuke Kida — Maiden Astraea [Demon's Souls]
Tatsuhiko Asano — Bonfire [Doshin the Giant]
Tim Haywood — Trials of the Gad [Shadowman]
Akira Yamaoka — Chouchin Song 2 [Shadows of the Damned]
Tim Follin — Dolphin's Intrigue [Ecco the Dolphin : Defender of the Future]
Masafumi Takada — Island Edge [Killer 7]
Masaya Matsuura — Prince Fleaswallow's RAP [Parappa the Rapper]
Akitaka Tohyama — You are Smart [Katamari Damacy]
Deavid Soul — Up-Set Attack [Jet Set Radio]
Unknown — The Bear's Trials [Tokyo Jungle]
Vocal: King Robo — Katamari Dancing All Night [Katamari Forever/Katamari Tribute]
M.O.O.N. — Crystals [Hotline Miami]
Laugh and Beats — Vib Ribbon Blues [Vib Ribbon]
Masatoshi Moriwaki — The Virgin Child Makes Her Wish Without Feeling Anything [No More Heroes]
COIL — The Legendary Theme (Acoustic Version) [Gitaroo Man]
Ryou Watanabe — The Theme of Girl [Noby Noby Boy]  

I chose tracks that are unique, unconventional and predominantly not orchestral as well as being music I enjoy in it's own right. Three tracks are from the Katamari Damacy series of games but I included them due to my deep love for this game and for the fact that hearing the a track from the soundtrack on an .mp3 blog ('You are Smart', included in this mix) was what made me initially decide to buy the game site-unseen from America (the game didn't get an Australian release until it's sort-of sequel, 'We Love Katamari' about 18 months later).

Postcards From Before

Ten years ago Elizabeth Boyce, an art school colleague of mine, did a project called Postcards From Before which involved interviewing people about the spaces they lived in and loved. I volunteered to be a part of the project. Liz recently contacted me asking for my current address as she was resolving the project and sending postcards to the participants (here is her blog about it). Mine arrived yesterday.

The first five cards read:

I remem
 
ber: feeli
 
ng somet
 
hing like
 
envy...

Initially I thought the postcards were unordered fragments of a whole but after leafing through them sequentially I realised they were feeding me a linear story, card by card. These were partially a document of things I had said around 10 years ago and my memory of those times is pretty hazy and a little uncomfortable. Should I continue reading the card's stories in sequence, seeing what these regimented letters conjure up?

I flip through the cards getting a vague sense of what I said and Liz's interpretation. The format of the postcards limits the amount of text on each card and breaks each word at the edges. The text is made up of tiny little dots, some flowing together and others being isolated. They feel like a physical manifestation of memories  — patchy, fragmented and full of gaps. The fact that the stories are broken up by the format and physical space of the postcards enhances this — individually each moment is vague and abstract, like those seemingly arbitrary moments that you end up unintentionally memorising that appear completely context free and seem to pop into your head almost of their own accord.

These words are knitted together with such care but gaps still remain like the inevitable incompleteness of memory. No document of memory is every truly accurate and complete. The postcards show that the gaps could potentially make imemories even more beautiful and interesting.

I'm staggered by the altruism in these postcards. The idea that someone would take your ramblings and painstakingly spell them out by hand over 50-odd postcards and then give them to you is incredible — a single one would have been an absolute gift on it's own. I had to make doubly sure that they were bespoke and not reproductions as I'm so accustomed to stuff (especially text) being generated by machine.

I chose some cards to scan and decide not to keep them in sequence to further emulate what I imagine is my version of today's memory. I think I'll send some of them on to other people in a similarly altruistic act as Liz has done and further fragment and share these components of a perpetually incomplete memory.

EDIT: Here is Liz's post talking about my cards and responding to this post.

Less Angry More Bird

Image from here. Proof positive that staring into the eye of a Cockatoo is
not dissimilar to staring into the cold unwavering insanity of the abyss.

What madness is this!? Two posts in almost as many days?! Two mixes at that!?? Indeed. That is what it is.

However, this mix is a lazy one, crafted by chance over craft. These songs were selected by the criteria that every song has to have the word 'Bird' in the title. I did whittle it down a bit, so I wasn't completely hands-off. Originally I chose 'Bird' as an overall keyword and this produced roughly 3 and 1/2 hours of music (one of the songs was a half-hour field recording of birds). Searching by song title alone reduced it by 45 minutes so I then played it through and made some cuts. The current mix is around 1 hour.

Unified by Bird [112.2MB 256 kbps .mp3 file via Mediafire].

Tracklist (links to albums in titles or notes)
Sandra LeBrun Holmes — Morning Star And Devil Bird (This is from NASA's Voyager Golden Record)
fLako — Bird
Acanthus — Flightless Bird
Diamanda Galás — Birds of Death
The Trashmen — Bird '65 (Taken from Lux Interior's legendary radio show 'The Purple Knif Show')
White Noise — Firebird
Guitar Vader — Bird Ship
Hideaki Sakurai — Birds And Beasts (From the Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance Soundtrack which appears to be out of print.)
Lizzy Mercier Descloux — Birdy Num-Num
Rip Rig and Panic — Howl! Caged Bird
The Robocop Kraus — A Man's Not A Bird
The Residents — Birds in the Trees
John S. Hall & Kramer — The Birds
Hedningarna — Täppmarschen (Sorrow Is A Lonely Bird)
Martin Denny — Yellow Bird (winner, most expensive collectable album)
Coon Creek Girls — Little Birdie
The Dynamic Batmen — Robin The Bird
Cornelius — Bird Watching at Inner Forest
Múm — The Ballad of the Broken Birdie Records

I kept the tracks in the same order iTunes sorted them and I'm not sure what it's reasoning was as there does seem to be a kind of shape developing over the mix with certain types of songs clustering together.

[BONUS] When originally selecting via 'Bird' appearing in song/album/composer the mix opened with this song from the We Love Katamari (also known as Katamari Tribute) soundtrack. It started the mix beautifully, but I let it go due to the word 'Bird' not appearing song title.

Yū Miyake (remixed by Beautiful Hummingbird)— Cherry Blossom Color Season (fanfare mix) [12.1MB .mp3 file] [Buy]

EDIT: Changed link to directly link to the mix.

Recent Mix: 'Conceived as a Solid Dome'

2012 took an entire year to complete. Sometimes you just have to make something for the simple fact that making it frees you from having to make it any more.

This is a mix I have been playing with for a while, having trouble finding a consistent thematic approach and I don't think that I would have finished it unless I forced myself to publish it.

It is loosely inspired by the presence of the 2012 Geminid meteor shower (which I missed seeing) and includes work by INFNTLP, Richard Brautigan, The Soundtrack from the movie 'Drive', Clara Mondshine, Plankton Wat, Geinoh Yamashirogumi, Young Marble Giants, Naked Spots Dance, Terrible Truths, Les Espions, Can, Philip Glass remixed by Dan Deacon, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Animal Crossing Soundtrack, Stan Brakhage and Laibach.

Download [116.7MB 256 kbps .mp3 file via Mediafire].

EDIT: links altered and re-posted due to 'I before E except after C' issues.

Last Metcard-device related post

Metcard device, 'Not in use' adhesive label, packing tape, second 'Not in use' adhesive label, grey Gaffa tape wrapped-around device.

Perhaps in the future old Metcard machines will form the core of layered tape and label juggernauts.

UPDATE: We instinctually shun the technologies of our descendants

Currently (as of 12:58:13 PM AEST, Monday 14th January 2013)...

... Apple computers auto-capitalise 'facebook'.