by Alvin Anez
Download - The Ice Storm
2011
digital image
640 x 427 pixels
Showing posts with label audio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label audio. Show all posts
6/28/2011
HOMEWORLDS
by Noah Fuller
HOMEWORLDS is an exploration of family secrecy that seeks to alter the limits of both family and archive. It constructs and complicates the story of my recently discovered family in Holland, resulting from my grandfather’s affair over 50 years ago.
In the process of learning about my Dutch relatives I recorded interviews, conversations, and letters with my family, friends, colleagues & therapist. Over 20 hours of audio were edited into small clips, and grouped in themes.
The physical installation involves five radios from different eras, each of which can be tuned through to find five radio stations onto which I've broadcast my audio recordings. The radios all play at once in a single room, creating a cacophony of voices. Viewers move through the space, spending time with different radios, tuning them through the full FM spectrum, and catch pieces of the family archive.
Below is an audio clip which recreates the over-lapping nature of the installation, followed by the separated tracks.
HOMEWORLDS
Bernard and Ruth Fuller, circa 1940
Letter From Annie Kluen
Bubbie
Dad
Therapy
Dutch family, circa 1980
7/13/2010
Cozy Space Mugz
audio by Green Gerry
image by Micah Moore
Download - Cozy Space Mugz
chick-fil-angster
2009
film
408 x 567 pixels
2009
film
408 x 567 pixels
5/12/2010
Hell
by Nate Blanco
Interview by Michael Pollock
Download - Hell
"Death," another song by Nate, was posted last week along with part 1 of the interview.
Listen: Death
LL: Are there real instruments on “Hell?”
NB: There’s a drum in the background, and everything else is just my voice. I recorded the drum part first - it’s a big floor tom - then I layered vocal parts on top of it
LL: How many layers are there? Because it gets intense at parts.
NB: At one point I think there’s 5 layers. At most points there’s 2-3 going at a time
LL: Do you do that on your computer as well or do you do layer it on a recorder?
NB: It’s all done on my computer. I use garage band, which is surprisingly good for the kind of stuff that I do.
LL: Can you tell me about your website, Digital Cassette Records?
NB: Yeah, this is a website that we just started, maybe about a month ago. For a while, in this very room, a lot of us have been playing music, completely improv, just jamming out mostly. My friend Nick and I, we invite people over all the time. We record jams - a lot of them are pretty good and we want to be able to release them and get people to hear them. We used to release CDs. We were making good stuff that wasn’t realistic to release as CDs. It’s a lot of work for me and I’m not that good at promoting or giving people CDs or trying to sell them.
LL: Not good on the street?
NB: No, not at all. So I thought having a place where people could come hear the tracks, where I could post stuff on a regular basis would be a really great thing to have.
LL: The people that you mostly play with are close friends? Do they live here?
NB: Mostly close friends. My friend Nick who is the person I play with the most often, he did live here until 2 weeks ago. Sometimes it’s just him and me. The other people who are regulars are close friends and a few solid people who come kind of often but other times it’s just random people. One day Nick met this girl in the street. He was working at this canvassing job and met this girl and invited her to come over. She brought her friend and instruments. That was actually one of the best jams we ever had. Pretty magical. That jam was the inspiration for the song “Hell.” At one part during this jam we were all so on and on the same page. Three different people are playing guitars and other people are playing hand drums and everyone is singing at the same time. I just started improvising the lyrics that became the song “Hell.” I was singing them in the same way, I think that was one of the best parts of the night. I wish that would have been recorded. That jam session was actually not recorded. The recording of the song “Hell” was me trying to recreate it. I really like it because I was impressed with my own lyrics and ideas and wanted to remember them.
LL: When I heard “Hell,” I wasn’t sure if it was you or not.
NB: Which happens a lot with me. Even with songs where I think I’m singing in my normal voice I’ve had people who listened to it many times and knew that I made the song but they ask, ‘Who is that singing on there?’ or ‘Did you write the lyrics or did he write them?’ I’m like, ‘That’s me, you’ve know me for years you don’t recognize my voice?’
LL: Like, ‘Thanks, Mom!’ Does your mom listen to your music?
NB: I don’t know. I’ve given her CDs. Whether she listens to them or not, I don’t know.
LL: So she hasn’t given you feedback?
NB: Not really, except for the standard mom things like, ‘That’s great.’
LL: ‘That’s so professional’ is my mom’s favorite.
NB: Right. I don’t know if you’re saying that, Mom, or if you’re just saying it because that’s what you do as a mom or if you actually listen to it. But I also feel like, how could she possibly not like it because she is such a mom she’s going to love anything I do even though I don’t think it’s music that she would normally ever listen to.
5/07/2010
Death
by Nate Blanco
Interview by Michael Pollock
Download - Death
I talked to Nate about his music in his Brooklyn apartment while his roommate hammered at a guitar pedal, trying to fix it. "Hell" will be posted next week along with part 2 of the interview.
LL: When did you record these songs?
NB: They were made at a similar point. They are actually recorder a few days a part. So “Death” was recorded a couple days before Christmas, then “Hell” was recorded a couple days after Christmas while I was in Pennsylvania at my mom’s house.
LL: Are they Christmas songs?
NB: I wouldn’t say so. I wouldn’t say that Christmas feels like death or hell to me. I kind of enjoy it, but some people might get a kick out of that.
LL: Are they home songs? Do you think you wrote them because you were at home or were they something you were thinking about before and that is just when you happened to have time?
NB: “Death” was definitely just on the spot. I was actually having a pretty crappy day. It was the first full day I had been home. I had gotten there the day before and no one else was there yet and I was really bored all day. I couldn’t leave the house because I didn’t have a car to use so all I was doing was watching T.V. and using the Internet. I started to feel a little crazy by the nighttime and couldn’t sleep. I was almost going out of my mind and needed a way to channel it I guess. Something to do to distract me from the way I was going crazy and it all went into the song.
LL: How did you make the song?
NB: The song is done in two parts - both parts were completely improvised. The part that I did first is the noise that you hear.
LL: The static?
NB: Yeah that’s done on the spot with my computer. It’s actually a recording of a bunch of different videos and I was switching back and forth between them really quickly. I was trying to make something out of it, kind of in that death mind frame that I was in, kind of going crazy on it. And then I improvised the piano on my computer.
LL: So it was all done on the computer?
NB: It was all done on my computer, yeah. None of those sounds are real instruments.
4/19/2010
Family Road Trip
by Hank May
Interview by Hannah May
Download - Family Road Trip
The first time I ever heard my brother's song “I'm Going Home to Night” was back in the summer of 2005. I was about to start college and Hank had just turned fifteen, and we were in the car with my mom heading somewhere on the freeway. Hank had played some of his songs for me before but this one was stronger and more confident than his earlier recordings, and it marked a new beginning in Hank's lifelong commitment to rock and roll. This time, his voice didn't shy away from his articulate, surreal lyrics. Over the past couple of years I’ve heard Hank play “I’m Going Home Tonight” in backyards in Studio City, at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, on Arkansas porches during family reunions, in a loft in Bushwick, and most recently in the basement of a bar in Flatbush. Sometimes he’s accompanied by a trumpet and drums and an upright bass and his best friend on guitar, and sometimes he’s all by himself. Sometimes he screams so hard he has to pause the show to puke, and thankfully there’s usually a friend nearby prepared with a plastic bag.
Now Hank’s about to wrap up his Sophmore year at Bard College and over the past few years he’s created a collection of gorgeous, passionate, intelligent songs. Even though he spends most of his time in the woods of upstate New York, the songs on the upcoming album belong largely to the city where we grew up. Hank describes the beauty of pigeons, asphalt, and broken glass, and the songs are complex and intricate enough to accurately mirror life in Los Angeles. L.A. becomes a "treacherous city," full of crooked cops and privileged kids with selfish grins, but it's also home, a place where “the sound of traffic keeps you safe at night.” I got my brother to answer a few questions about his song writing process and what's in store for Rock Dove's future.
LL: Hank, when can we expect an actual album? Or does making a real album even matter, in terms of how you've been distributing your music so far (mostly online through your website)?
HM: I really want to make an album, but I'm growing tired of the songs that i had originally planned to include. The album loses songs by the month. Songs are discarded quicker than they are written.
I think a real album does matter. I'm not happy with the way I've been sharing my music, throwing up half-ass recordings that I never completed.
LL: So the songs on your website might not make it onto the album?
HM: Those will probably make it onto the album. Maybe not "Passing Out Coupons on Hollywood Blvd."
LL: No! I love that song. Anyway, how do you think being in college has affected your song writing?
HM: College is not an atmosphere conducive to prolific songwriting. It has slowed me down. Living in a building with lots of kids and paper-thin walls keeps me from screaming my songs, and I scream them at home in Los Angeles in May Day, the room my father carved out of the garage for me and others to use as a studio. That sort of freedom to scream inspires the lyrics a lot of the time.
But living in the woods has brought the plants, animals, and tranquility into my lyrics, "City Boy" and "Speed Trap" as clear examples.
LL: Yeah, I was going to ask about "Speed Trap" in particular because it seems to be about ambivalence to city life.
HM: Yes, and "City Boy" too, but less ambivalence and more disgust.
LL: Do you want to talk about some of your influences, musical and otherwise? I know you reference a Sherwoord Anderson story in "The Roaring Land."
HM: Not really, but yeah Winesburg, Ohio is in that song, and so is Speak/Memory, for the record: "The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness" and also the lines about a home video of your family without you before you.
LL: Ok, what about a favorite show memory?
HM: Rock Dove shows began as polite and humble affairs. We were sober for the first couple. But they quickly turned wild, angry, and infinitely more fun. That was around the time that the Hank May moniker was dropped and Rock Dove was born. The first show as Rock Dove was the first show that caused me to puke (maybe not, but that's a good lie).
LL: The puking seems to have settled down.
HM: Yes.
LL: But I always loved seeing Djavan ready with a bag.
HM: I've built up a tolerance to rock and roll. Our greatest show was at Bridget Rodman's house for Winter Wondercall in a small living room packed with kids and Djavan between me and the crowd with two crucial jobs: protecting my pedals from the mosh pit and holding the plastic bag for me to vomit in while still strumming.
Many noses bled that night.
LL:if you could see any band play that you've never seen before, who would it be?
HM: Living or dead?
LL: Either.
HM: Elliott Smith. I've been listening to Elliott Smith all day. But yeah, Elliott Smith or a Modest Mouse show during the mid-90s.
I'd do some terrible things for that time traveling trip.
LL: Also, if you could go on tour with an current band, who would it be?
HM:I'm thinking American Princes or Magic Hassle[Our cousin David Slade's bands].
LL: That would be so much fun.
HM: I know right!?
LL: I would be so jealous. Off topic, but did you see mom's Dublin photos and dad's new hat?
HM: YES. At first I saw it sort of hidden under an umbrella, I think, and then I saw it fully exposed. Wonderful hat.
LL: It's really something. So, do you usually start the songwriting process with lyrics, or with music? And how collaborative is the process when you include instruments like trumpets and cellos?
HM: The songs usually begin as musical skeletons to be dressed with the flesh of my lyrics, which either come separate from the music or out of the melodies themselves.
I usually write all the parts and then teach them to my friends. However, Patrick Taylor writes his own bass lines and Luke Silas comes up with most of the drum parts, but I write the trumpet parts on Finale. And I write the guitar parts and teach them to Xander [Whistler], and he writes guitar parts for me to play in Pilgrim [Xander's band]. I think we should start a third band that's entirely collaborative.
LL: Ok, one last question: if Rock Dove was a food, what food would it be?
HM: Is that a serious question?
LL: Yes! Well, no. Kind of.
HM: It would a pot brownie and a shot of whiskey.
