Voltage

GHOST IN THE MACHINE

2010-03-09T20:26:46

I'm not a lifelong Tron fan, and like any geek I've been burned by movies that didn't live up to their hype. But still -- this looks cool:

The glitched, super-digital hardness of the music in that trailer comes courtesy of Daft Punk. I'm looking forward to hearing more of their score.

BON SOIRÉE

Maximus (mailto:voltage@artificeeternity.com) — 2010-02-26T14:22:26

Sunday, February 28, 2010

SPLICE @ The Quarterly Arts Soirée, Webster Hall

Join us on Sunday, February 28 for a very special edition of SPLICE at Webster Hall!

We'll be bringing our brand of eclectic electronics to the first-ever Quarterly Arts Soirée. The QAS is a day-long, all-ages creative festival that will fill the rooms of Webster Hall with live music, art, film, and theater.

The event benefits Orphans International, a charity providing homes and schooling for orphans and abandoned children around the world. OI's projects in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Haiti, and Tanzania support kids who are victims of war, disease, and natural disasters.
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The SPLICE showcase begins at 10.30pm, in the Balcony Lounge (on the top level of Webster Hall). Featured performers:

» GLOBULAR CLUSTER
Globular Cluster is a brilliant, newborn alliance of experimental musicians from New York's electronic underground. Their heart-melting transmissions are a spiraling vortex of audiovisual plasma, bringing light to the darkest reaches of the galaxy.

» MAXX KLAXON
From a secure, undisclosed location in Brooklyn, Maxx Klaxon broadcasts sensual synths, hard beats, robotic vocoders, and video propaganda. Comrade Klaxon's smart, dark songs about love and power are flavored with Italo-disco passion and electro-bass energy. The result: multimedia mind control that keeps the people moving.

» CURRENT_WORKING_DIRECTORY
current_working_directory is the electrogaze pop project of poet-inventor Ted Hayes, who utilizes an array of hand-made electronic instruments to combine the lushness of shoegaze with the texture of the electronic.

» BLACK SWAN
Obsessed with electronics, feathers, Native American art, pagan ritual, fetish, punk rock, and tribal percussion, Black Swan is the brainchild of Phoenix Perry and Margaret Schedel. Connoisseurs of the romantic and ethereal, they create music reminiscent of electronica and punk, steam boats, theremins, and breaking glass.

PLUS:

» DJ: SOME CALL HIM TIM (SPLICE, X-Ray, Brand New Idol)

» VJ: STATE GREZZI

SPLICE Showcase @ The Quarterly Arts Soirée
Sunday 28 February 2010
10pm-1am
Webster Hall - Balcony Lounge
125 East 11th Street (b/t 3rd + 4th Aves.)
$15 / All ages

RSVP on Facebook

UNSOUND METHODS

2010-02-08T17:42:57

The Unsound Festival, a celebration of electronic and experimental music based in Poland, has landed in NYC for a week. The festival mixes well-curated musical events with in-depth panels and presentations about the past, present, and future of electronica.

On Saturday, I attended The Hidden History of the Vocoder, presented by Dave Tompkins (whose book on the subject is due out next month). Read this post on Sasha Frere-Jones' blog to get a sense of some of the ground covered.

Tonight I'm headed to a screening of 2 documentaries: The Delian Mode, about unsung genius Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and The Future Is Not What It Used To Be, about Finnish avant-garde electronicist Erkki Kurenniemi.

There's lots more good stuff happening this week as part of Unsound; check out the full schedule here.

Previously: Delia at Work, The Man-Machine

THE EARTH ROTATES TO OUR DICTATES

2010-02-01T22:04:27

Here are La Roux and Heaven 17, performing Terence Trent D'Arby's "Sign Your Name Across My Heart" at the BBC's Maida Vale studio last Tuesday, January 26:

SPLASHING IN THE STREAM OF AN UNREMEMBERED DREAM

2010-01-26T12:36:19

The 3D film Magic Journeys was one of the star attractions at EPCOT Center when it opened in 1982; it later played at various other Disney parks.

I first saw it when I was about 13. The plotless montage of natural vistas, laughing children, and fantasy scenes, accompanied by syrupy singers, was kind of cornball. But it had a surreal, mystical vibe that transcended the cheesiness.

The sterling production values helped: it was shot in 65mm, at speeds of up to 75 frames per second, and projected in 70mm widescreen. The 3D effects (including aerial and underwater shots, model work, bluescreen compositing, and digital animation) were unprecedented and, for the most part, stunning.

With 3D television technology on the horizon, maybe Magic Journeys will finally be available for home viewing one of these days. Meanwhile, those of us who remember it fondly will have to make do with this super-lo-fi cam video made by someone at a Disney theater:

My favorite sequence, starting at 3:00, shows the main character, a nameless blonde boy, flying across pristine landscapes, as a sweeping, cosmic synth theme booms on the soundtrack. (A progressive trance version of this section of the music could be a dancefloor destroyer.)

Here are the lyrics to the Magic Journeys theme. And here, via Google Books, are excerpts of an interview with Murray Lerner, the director of the film.

Previously: Tomorrow Only Knows, Victorious Hipsters in 3D, Relentlessly Craving

I CALL YOU UP FROM TIME TO TIME

2010-01-24T14:02:12

The classic video for "The Telephone Call" perfectly manifests Kraftwerk's blend of minimalism, noir nostalgia, and melancholy:

For a final dose of techno-historical vertigo, read the comments, in which younger YouTube viewers puzzle over how dial telephones actually worked.

Previously: "We take back the culture of the '30s..."

TRANSVALUATING PLASTIC

2010-01-22T03:24:21

This piece, by the Guardian's Simon Reynolds, is a very nice overview of how the electropop of the 1980s was resurrected and transformed in the 2000s.

It traces the musical threads of the last decade, from Adult. and Daft Punk, thru Tiga and Fischerspooner, to La Roux and Lady Gaga... with a sensitive understanding of how each of these artists (and many more) has seized on particular elements of '80s music for inspiration in crafting their own unique sounds and styles.

SOUNDCLASH

2010-01-08T16:47:41

Geeta Dayal reviews the book Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear by Steve Goodman:

Goodman analyzes "environments, or ecologies, in which sound contributes to an immersive atmosphere or ambience of fear and dread--where sound helps produce a bad vibe."

Goodman catalogs a litany of military uses of sound that seem like sinister science fiction fantasies. The "Urban Funk Campaign" was a suite of audio harassment techniques used by the military in Vietnam in the early 1970s. ... The Windkanone, or "Whirlwind Cannon," was a sonic weapon planned by the Nazis. The “Ghost Army” was a unit of the U.S. Army in World War II that impersonated other units to fake out the enemy, employing an array of sonic deception techniques with the help of engineers from Bell Labs.

"The Scream" was an acoustic weapon used by the Israeli military against protesters in 2005. That same year, the Israeli air force deployed deafening sonic booms over the Gaza Strip—producing powerful physiological and psychological effects. ...

Last September, police in Pittsburgh utilized a device known as the LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) cannon against G20 protesters -- the first documented use of one of these acoustic cannons against civilians in the United States. ...

Sonic Warfare is a heady, sprawling read, densely packed with detail. Goodman's wide range is, in part, influenced by his background. In addition to being a writer and theorist, he doubles as an accomplished producer of dubstep under the alias kode9, wandering a subterranean world of bone-rattling bass pressure, towering speaker stacks, and crowded rooms.

ALL FOR FREEDOM AND FOR PLEASURE

2010-01-04T16:35:26

Ta-Nehisi Coates (and commenters) discuss what he calls White Music You Were Allowed To Like -- that is, new wave and synthpop jams from the early '80s that crossed over to gain a big African-American audience:

Despite hip-hop ruling us in the 80s, and the general prohibition on "liking that white sh*t," there were always certain groups that broke through. No idea why. But among them were Tears For Fears. ...

I always loved that part in ["Shout"] after they sing the first hook, and the first verse drops. I don't know why it was OK to like them, but not, say, White Snake. In the early 80s, there were a lot more "white" bands that crossed over to us. But by, say, 1988 it was over. You had to be George Michael to make it through.

Turns out the generally agreed-on groups map pretty closely to the music from that era that I like: Tears For Fears, Kraftwerk, Human League, Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, and certain cuts by Queen, Genesis, and Wham!/George Michael.

On the other hand, I was never much for Hall and Oates (but I appreciate Chromeo's revival of their sound).

Previously: The Detroit-Berlin Axis

BEST OF 2009

2009-12-31T22:18:18

BEST ALBUMS

Arvo Pärt - In Principio
DJ Hell - Teufelswerk
Glomag - Roland and the Lamprey
Kutiman - ThruYou
La Roux - La Roux
Pet Shop Boys - Yes
Tiga - Ciao!
Vitalic - Flashmob

BEST ALBUMS OF THE DECADE

Adult. - Resuscitation
Daft Punk - Discovery
Dangermouse - The Grey Album
Interpol - Turn On The Bright Lights
Ladytron - Light & Magic
La Roux - La Roux
M.I.A. - Arular
The Mitgang Audio - The View From Your New Home
Mount Sims - Wild Light
Solvent - Apples + Synthesizers

BEST SONGS

Das Racist - "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell"
Deadmau5 - "Strobe"
DJ Hell - "Electronic Germany"
Glomag - "The Ecstasy of Gold"
I, Synthesist - "Waterfall" - Maxx Klaxon Remix
La Roux - "In For the Kill"
Pet Shop Boys - "Love, Etc."
Simian Mobile Disco feat. Beth Ditto - "Cruel Intentions"
The Subs - "My Punk" - Jokers of the Scene Remix
Tiga - "Gentle Giant"

BEST SONGS OF THE DECADE

Daft Punk - "One More Time"
Depeche Mode - "A Pain That I'm Used To" - Jacques lu Cont Remix
Goldfrapp - "Strict Machine"
Kanye West - "Love Lockdown"
Ladytron - "Seventeen"
LCD Soundsystem - "Losing My Edge"
Tiga - "Pleasure From the Bass"
Sally Shapiro - "Time to Let Go" - Lindstrøm Remix
Scissor Sisters - "Comfortably Numb"
Solvent - "My Radio"

BEST VIDEOS

Carl Sagan feat. Steven Hawking - "A Glorious Dawn"
Lady Gaga - "Bad Romance"
La Roux - "Bulletproof"

BEST LIVE SHOWS

Simian Mobile Disco @ Highline Ballroom (2009.04.23)
Leonard Cohen @ Madison Square Garden (2009.10.23)
HÄXAN @ Monkeytown (2009.10.31)

BEST MOVIE

The Hurt Locker

BEST MOVIES OF THE DECADE

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Donnie Darko
In the Mood for Love
Memento
Mulholland Drive
Spirited Away

BEST TV EPISODE

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - 2x22 "Born to Run" (series finale)

BEST BOOK

Jonathan Lethem - Chronic City

BEST TECHNOLOGY

Ableton Live 8

Previously: Best of 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004