I was tired today, so I deleted two draft posts after they felt too long and like a little bit too much work.
I did decide that I’d go ahead and post a couple of things I’ve made recently that I enjoyed creating, even if they are probably too nutty by half.
Both, like the music/sound collage pieces posted here, were created for @manual_txt, which I co-created with one friend and currently run with another (my co-creator may or may not still post; we’ve kept it very casual so I don’t bug either guy about it).
Tonight I posted “SIGNAL INTRUSION (For Silent Jim, Whenever He May Find The Dust)” on Soundcloud. It’s a 2:30+ piece I composed in the old-fashioned way (with a keyboard, writing out the notes on a software composition program that plays it back) then added some sampling and improvisation as I mixed it. We like @manual_txt ephemera to stay mysterious but I’ll tell you here that the sampled voice is from The Max Headroom Signal Hack, which I wrote about here.
A few days ago I decided to use another piece I wrote and some found footage to make a little @manual_txt movie. Like many @manual_txt tweets it’s about ghosts. It’s about dust. Featuring Pepsi.
I like to think if someone decided to loop @manual_txt media and listen to it for hours they’d go quietly insane and start seeing ghosts drinking Pepsi in the dust.
A guy can dream.
So appropos…just happens to be annual Bon Dance time this month and early August as we dance to honor ghosts of ancestors in Honolulu. Moliili Bon Dance festival antics on YouTube. Also, you lend great flavor and chords. makes me think of Boards of Canada’s ethereal/sinister pieces. Yum. I wrote for Gannet and Murdoch papers in NY and Vancouver and a Boards piece seems to have Margaret Atwood just out of frame, squirming to hum along. Bravo, Steve.
I love Boards of Canada. Also Hammock, Mogwai, Stars of the Lid, Eluvium, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Post-rock, ambient, drone, nu-classical like Max Richter and Johann Johannsson have dominated my listening for a few years now. I’m pretty flattered you’d think of Boards and appreciate it. I came this close to minoring in composition but it seemed too at odds with majoring in voice; composition majors really looked down on vocalists and the classes I took with them were stressful enough because of that. But I’ve been scribbling stuff off and on for years just because there’s something therapeutic in it.
I like the way you think. 🙂 G-uno