Here’s my latest uploaded broadcast, another torrent for you to enjoy. Be sure to seed it after you download!
7/4/09 – Vanessa Rossetto’s “Dogs in English Porcelain,” DaveX learns to spell “Wirkungsgeschichtesbewusstein,” an Edgetone Records spotlight, and new stuff from The Land Of.
I lost another radio show this week. As many of you know, I have a troubled relationship with recording my broadcasts. When I’m not having the usual technical issues; I can occasionally blame depression, forgetfulness, internet outages, stray magnetic fields– Murphy’s Law definitely comes into play.
Here’s my current recording setup, and a breakdown of what went wrong:
My recorder is actually a cheap mp3 player, a PMP model from Polaroid which was supposed to catapult the struggling company away from the quagmire of being an instant-camera maker in the digital age towards challenging Apple for dominance in the portable music market. As you may have noticed, the plan didn’t exactly come together. I imagine it’s because this little player is constantly needing additional help (i.e. manual resetting with a paperclip) in order to shut down or start up correctly. The battery life isn’t the greatest, and the on-board memory (449 megabytes, zomg) isn’t anything to write home about, either.
Nevertheless, it does record directly from radio, converting my FM broadcast to a WAV file. This is useful.
But this week, the recorder ate the resulting file. I’m assuming that the battery died prior to a proper shutdown, meaning that I tried shutting the recorder down, but that it got stalled somewhere along the way instead. Without properly shutting down, it stupidly erased the file it was working on– voila! My 7/11/09 broadcast is gone, existing now only in the ether.
I try to console myself, noting that an alien civilization might employ advanced technology to somehow harvest my space-going radio waves some millions of years hence, cataloging my work amongst other interesting curiosities gathered from their cosmic beachcombing pursuits. On the other hand, I can’t make a file to share with you until they get on it, sorry! So here’s what you can do:
If I’m correct about the cause of this week’s recording being lost, a memory card might be just the thing to solve the problem. The recorder has a slot for a microSD card; I would assume that recordings made to such a card would be protected from erasure in case of a total power loss to the main device. Does anyone have a microSD card they’d be willing to donate to their favorite DJ? 1GB would double my current capacity– just the thing for these longer shows I’ve been hosting lately. Contact me for mailing details!
Listen to the broadcast here.
If you were ever curious about my sleeping habits, I offer you the following tidbit: it’s now 12:25 a.m. I’ll be going to bed in a few minutes. For more fun, note the time I start this week’s episode. Also, I just noticed that I failed to upload last week’s broadcast. I’ll try to fix this oversight as soon as possible– most likely on Monday. Now tell me “goodnight” and I’ll see you in a few hours.
“A few hours,” ha! It’s 2:38 a.m., getting my shoes on.
Well, I guess my DJ search has officially ended. Today, I met Eric and Tatiana, who were doing their first broadcast of “Mass Resistance.” I suppose it’s a techno or dance show, though I’d be hard-pressed to nail down a genre– club music isn’t exactly my strong point. They’ll be on-air from 12-3 a.m. weekly, so I think my work squatting the 3 a.m. hour has unofficially paid off. Maybe I have a 3.5 hour show now? I’ll have to ask.
Quickie: “Sweat Stained Fancy Heaps for First Rate Ladies” by Ritualistic School of Errors has to be one of the ugliest-sounding albums I’ve ever heard. On the other hand, it’s really well-assembled. This one will take a lot more time.
Playing Zelphabet now… trying to educate a caller a little bit… “what’s noise?”
Su Sous Toulouse En Rouge should be calling in soon. I’m looking forward to their live set.
Ritualistic School of Errors — Fanfare: Wobbling Turn, Fine Physique
Negativland — Gimmie the Mermaid
Ritualistic School of Errors — Purpating Hindquarters Burst
Ritualistic School of Errors — Corkscrew Catheter for a Jelly Loaf
Halaka — Grocery, Singer, Girl
Halaka — A Man’s Head on Fire, Through the Tree
Halaka — Mossy Stone
Halaka — Dancing Between the Cracks of a Jigsaw Puzzle
Billy Gomberg — Exposures
Billy Gomberg — Verse
Billy Gomberg — Darkened
Su Sous Toulouse En Rouge — Post-Dramatic Stress Syndrome
Su Sous Toulouse En Rouge — Upside Down Crossing Guard
Su Sous Toulouse En Rouge — Recycled Excitement
Francisco Lopez — Untitled #210
Frans De Waard — Meet Melt
Katchmare — Lotus Village Plan, disc 2
Rabbit Girls — Sick Problems
Rabbit Girls — Skin and Fat
Rabbit Girls — Hardwired Entropy
Rabbit Girls –Device
The Lonely Procession — Murder Hauntings (excerpt)
Su Sous Toulouse En Rouge — LIVE phone-in performance on WDBX-FM
Halaka — Andrew Doubts His Ability to do a Feature Film
Halaka — The Loose Table is Tracked Down
Halaka — Part 4: Don and Andrew Try to Connect the Wind Machine
Halaka — Putting the P Back In Quality
Halaka — Set Design and Dealing With the Production Staff On a Very Small Budget
Halaka — Part 2: Don Recalls the Black Shirt
Halaka — Finally Giving Up on the Wind Machine
Don Campau — Tum-mo
I’m getting ready to cook a rather involved din-din right now, so I’m keeping this brief– today’s show will definitely be excellent. Most excellent. Bill and Ted excellent, for real.
How many microcassettes will I play for you? Two, if you’re well-behaved! (Three, if you’re very bad.) I’ve also got a Su Sous Toulouse En Rouge/Black Beast of Arrrghhh split cassette suffocating inside a case– it’s begging to be let out, and has been offering all manners of fascinating promises in trade for a night of freedom. Should I believe it can give me a more noble nose, and increase my metabolism by 37 percent?
Speaking of food– Halaka will also be present, in digital form, anyway. Their latest will present evidence supporting the hypothesis that we are all Halaka. Later tracks will directly contradict this, so you will need to listen and decide for yourself.
But wait there’s more. Su Sous Toulouse En Rouge are our phone-in guests today. They will be sending us little electrical pulses via a telephone of their choosing. You can hear the entire experiment live RIGHT FLIPPIN’ HERE.
Happy Independence Day! I’ve started this broadcast by freeing my listeners from “Bad Company,” surely one of the more obnoxious songs ever concocted. We’re currently digging Henry Kaiser, from the album “Lemon Fish Tweezer.” It’s one of my favorites, so I hope you enjoy it too.
I’ve gotten some complaints today that VLC has difficulty accessing the WDBX stream. I went ahead and sent a mail to our station manager to see if the station’s new net provider can help us with this… if you use VLC regularly, let me know so I can keep you updated on this!
Right now, I’m in the midst of my Edgetone Records hour. It’s pretty fun blending these tracks, there are so many interesting textures that the options are pretty well wide-open. I’ve got a mix of Charlotte Hug and gal*in_dog’s “Lift” layered over Steven Baker’s “Lunar Etudes Time Differentials” album right now, and it sounds great!
First impression: Haruki’s latest for The Land Of, “To Humble A Nest” is really freakin’ good.
Henry Kaiser — Get Moose and Squirrel
Henry Kaiser — Red Shadows
Henry Kaiser — Aquirax Aida
Henry Kaiser — Novelty Act
Henry Kaiser — What the Dead Men Say
A_dontigny — Crowding Into the Behavioural Sink
A_dontigny — Holzwege
A_dontigny — Turner
A_dontigny — All-Over
A_dontigny — Wirkungsgeschichtesbewusstein
Grey Park — 10 Dollar Habit / Immediate Resignation
Vanessa Rossetto — Dogs in English Porcelain
John Oswald — The Speed of Space (excerpt from “Grayfolded”)
Son of Gunnar, Ton of Shel — A Charming Decoy
Bloom — Discussion
Bloom — Rent Asunder
Bloom — Sam
Jim Ryan — Six Days (from “Subjects of Desire”)
Steven Baker — Plumb Deed
Steven Baker — Still Near
gal*in_dog, Charlotte Hug — Tietl
Haruki — Greasy Coats and a Pair of Scissors
Haruki — Don’t Moan Unless Asked
Haruki — A Door A Door
Haruki — If I Wrote You
Marco Oppedisano — The Ominous Corner
Marco Oppedisano — Imaginary Portal
I’ve got some John Oswald– from “Grayfolded,” which utilizes samples taken from hundreds of versions of the Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star.” I’m also playing some new stuff from Vanessa Rossetto, straight from her Music Appreciation label. If that wasn’t enough to guarantee your undivided attention, I’ll also be highlighting the Edgetone Records label; so expect tons of improvisational music, outer limits jazz, and other challenging noises.
Here’s my latest batch of torrents. As always, you have choices:
“ITDE” 6/27/09– Realize all your dreams, and treat yourself to the full show. This broadcast features the debut of “Lawrence Welk’s Secret Shame,” Praey’s last pre-reunion tour set, obscure Finnish sounds, and Dictaphonia 2’s B-side!
Karthik Kakarala, Tony Youngblood, and DaveX LIVE– Karthik witnesses the awesome power of a fully-operational ~Ore~, and lives to tell the tale. Or does he?! Abused guitars, and multiple circuit-bent instruments will fill 23 minutes of your life with aural goodness.
Praey, LIVE– Fresh from the Lost Cross, Praey attempts to enlarge the Hi-Life Room via standing sound waves. Success!
Describing Yoshihide Sodeoka’s Video Metal DVD– Ranking highly amongst strange “ITDE” experiments, this segment finds DaveX and company engaged in describing the visual contents of a film to the blinded radio listenership. Weirdness without comparison!
Today’s show was a tremendous amount of fun. It also kept me on my toes! A few hours prior, I found out that my former ~Ore~ co-host Tony Youngblood was going to be in town, so I invited him to play a circuit bent instrument (of his design, the same one I employed during the Noise Summit) with Karthik Kakarala and myself. Our set went well, ranging from a lengthy drone intro to harsher electronic noises, and finished off with more primitive sounds… definitely a unique arc for the sound to take. BTW, fellow oddmuse Skincage wins the Rhythmer naming contest– I’ll be engraving “Lawrence Welk’s Secret Shame” front and center as soon as I can!
A bit later, Praey played their last set together, 10 minutes of awesome. Praey isn’t what I’d ordinarily refer to as “experimental” music, but there are some noise elements and subverted rock traditions going on– but mostly, I just wanted to hear some friends do their thing, and hey– we already had the mics set up!
For this broadcast’s finale, I screened a copy of Yoshihide Sodeoka’s new DVD “Video Metal,” currently out on the Table of Contents label. My intention was to broadcast the sound, and for everyone to provide color commentary to the listening audience in regards to the visuals. At one point in time, I referred to “Evil Erector” as being akin to zooming into an MRI taken of someone inside Tron. Anyhow, about halfway through our descriptions, I realized the sound was off– in-studio, the monitors are muted when we use the microphones to avoid feedback– but in this case, the sound was off for the listening audience as well! Thus, for a good portion of the DVD, listeners only heard our descriptions! I’ll be posting the audio for this broadcast later on, so you can check out our bizarre descriptions of this amazing DVD.
I’ll let you know when my show recording goes live, until then, take care! –DaveX
We’re live!
VNC — Fight/Destroy/Ambulance
VNC — Your Heart Cannot Stay Asleep
VNC — Field of Anchors
Andrew Coltrane — Death Letter
The Raytownian(s) — We Are In A Corporate State (pt.2)
Belltonesuicide — Your Mouth is an Open Sore
blanco estira nuestro (+) hermana Helice — position lines within an afternoon movement
Fried Marlenstahl — Etude pseudo-electronique #1
NXP — Spiders
Rez Epo — Seen Her in the Very Heart of the Ocean
Hanson Ono — Incomprehensible Frustration
Death Factory — Memorial
Douglas Ferguson — v96+7gDL
Melissa Lovely & Justin Waters Here and Thereian Duo — DIY ask DIY
Pony Payroll — Nah
Karthik Kakarala, DaveX, Tony Youngblood — LIVE @ WDBX-FM, 6/27/09
BIOS — After the Universe Consumes Us All the Singularities Felt Particularly Useless
Conure — Hobart
Jeff Gburek — Kreuzberg–Neukoln–Kleve
Praey — LIVE @ WDBX-FM, 6/27/09
Jeff Gburek — Grace-Hollogne-Liege
Yoshihide Sodeoka — Video Metal, “Evil Erector”
Yoshihide Sodeoka — Video Metal, “Psychedelic Death Vomit”
Yoshihide Sodeoka — Video Metal, “Electric Hair Doom”
This week’s broadcast of “It’s Too Damn Early” is shaping up to be a lot of fun. Following his own version of a MySpace Secret Show at the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center, Carbondale’s man-about-town Karthik Kakarala will join me for a bit of radio improvisation. I’ll be making the broadcast debut of my newest instrument– I’ll let you know its name during the show, so you have until tonight to send in your (potentially) winning entry.
I’m also going to be playing from Yoshihide Sodeoka’s “Video Metal” DVD, just released from the magnificently cool Table of Contents label. My in-studio coterie will provide color commentary on the visuals– and here’s a hint– if you want some good audio samples, get your recorder running before the show. Sodeoka’s video’s are truly amazing, there’s no telling what adjectives we’ll be forced to employ while describing them!
I’ll also be playing from Dictaphonia 2, some more of the BIOS double CD, and some “autistic drone music” (their words!) from Ville Moskiitto via the Harha-askel label.
I was fortunate to pick up a Kay R-12 “Rhythmer” at a yard sale last week. It’s not every day that I have the opportunity to pick up a vintage drum machine for a buck! Upon trying it out at home, I discovered that it functioned, albeit with an additional high-pitched whining sound occurring throughout the chosen rhythm. This had to go, but I wasn’t at all sure what was causing it.
The next day, I cracked open the Rhythmer, figuring that I might get lucky and spot some sort of loose connection; basically, I hoped that my extremely limited electronics repair abilities wouldn’t be too severely called-upon. It’s true– I’m less truly knowledgeable about electronics than I am a helpful combination of lucky and willing to experiment. After all, I only spent a dollar, right?
I didn’t spy any obvious broken parts, so I employed my next “technique”… start poking wires in there! Now, before I continue, let me bring you a short announcement from Reed Ghazala, father of circuit-bending:
“Trying to circuit-bend any device operating on the “house-current” of your wall outlet is OUT OF THE QUESTION!!! This holds true even in the instance of AC adapters. Circuit-bending is for BATTERY-POWERED CIRCUITS ONLY.”
There’s a reason Ghazala says this– it’s so you don’t set your instrument on fire, send blinding blue sparks into your eyes, or perform an act of auto-electrocution. It’s serious!
I did it anyway.
My first poke with my little wire tester miraculously cleared up the whining noise problem, go fig. Things were going well! Being somewhat excited now, I decided to get my bending tools (i.e. miscellaneous junk) together and approach the Rhythmer the next morning with the intent to fully bend the bejeezus out of it. This is generally where a commentator says “he’s going ALL… THE… WAY!” but I’m going to save that for later.
I started off by cracking open the Rhythmer open again. At the time, I failed to appreciate how difficult it would be to type the word “Rhythmer” over and over again. I wish I had photos of it’s guts, because they’re a bender’s dream– rows and rows of resistors, neatly spaced with huge gaps practically screaming for a molten solder jizz-baptism. The Kay company wasn’t interested in compact design, apparently! After prodding around for a while with my tester, I found seven good bends. I decided to stop there, frankly, because I’m not exactly hot with a soldering iron AND because I only had seven switches that I had rescued from some sort of Rat Shack TV switcher device earlier.
The switches looked really nice! Three-position toggles, fluid movement… but unfortunately, the pins were all pretty mangled from the de-soldering/yanking/cursing/poking my fingers process of removing them from their original board. I still managed to get all my wires soldered on, but it was a huge time-sink and a pain in the ass. I’m sure you’ve already noticed that these aren’t in the photo, right? That’s because of those dang pins! No matter how I tried, I couldn’t get the solder joints as strong as I wanted them to be. I didn’t relish the thought of cracking open the Rhythmer every time a bit of solder decided to flake out on me, so I junked them and rewired the whole mess to the bank of RCA jacks you see at the top of the photo.
Each top/bottom pair of jacks completes a bent circuit when connected by a cable. Rows 2-8 are the original seven bends, with the first row being reserved for the left-hand assignable trim pot. That means that I can “turn on” any of the bends by connecting the top/bottom jacks directly, or control that particular bend by running the cable from the top position of the pair (say, number 7) to the top position of number 1, then from bottom 1 to bottom 7… putting the pot in series with the bend. Naturally, this more open arrangement of jacks also means that I can explore some of the fun sounds that arise from connecting different circuits in series as well. There’s a lot more possibilities than seven now!
I also added the right-hand trim pot, hard-wiring it to the 8th position, which speeds up the rate of the selected rhythm. In fact, the rhythm speeds up enough to easily demonstrate John Cage’s rhythmic fact about the underlying rhythmic nature of sound– drum beats become tones. It’s great, and definitely my favorite bend so far. Adding the left-hand trim pot into the mix gives me an incredible amount of control over the precision of this bend. Another great quality of the Rhythmer is how different many of the rhythms are from one another. Because they make use of different sounds to build the actual rhythms, the same bend will often have unique results depending on what rhythm is selected from the front panel.
I also discovered the possibility of body contacts on the Rhythmer, something I’d assumed would result in me being fried.
“He’s going ALL… THE… WAY!”
Yep, body contacts. I’d forgotten that touching any ONE of the RCA cables wouldn’t be completing the circuit. Of course, I wouldn’t want to grab TWO…. but one at a time is enough to get some fun sounds going. You can hear the results in my sound sample, I’m using my thumb to create part of the beat at the beginning. The sound sample is about 11 megabytes, so give it a listen.
If you happen to come up with a better name for this thing than “Rhythmer,” leave it in the comments section! The best suggestion will get engraved front and center on the Rhythmer panel. Come on folks– you can do better than “Rhythmer,” right?!
Here’s some new “It’s Too Damn Early” episodes and pieces that you may enjoy:
“ITDE” 6/20/09 — In which DaveX overcomes his nightmares in order to interview Hal McGee. Marathon plays live, and the Infant Cycle’s secret message is intercepted by dogs.
“ITDE” 6/13/09 — Warm Climate plays radio guinea pig for DaveX, gang-pressing a cell phone into field trials. Halaka brings the weird, Dictaphonia v.1 goes one further.
DaveX interviews Hal McGee — Pretty straightforward. Too lazy to download the full show? Skip right to the microcassette-themed goodies.
Marathon, Live at WDBX-FM — Again, the title gives it away. Is there no more mystery? Help stamp out DaveX’s yammering and just download Marathon’s drone-noise live set.
Warm Climate, via cell phone, 6/13/09 — Who needs foreplay? Shoot your wad all at once, and head straight for Warm Climate’s inaugural phone-in set for DaveX. It’s kinda rough– go ahead, blame DaveX!
For more information about downloading with torrent files, see my earlier post.
I’ve made it into the station, following an extraordinarily creepy nightmare. Let me just say that any deceased children attempting to contact me via my computer keyboard will not receive the best treatment from me at this time.
Listeners, on the other hand, have got it good today! Hal McGee is due to phone in for an interview soon, and Brandon Beachum is busy setting up for a performance in the next room. He was short one 1/4″ cable, so I found one for him– to call it “vintage” is exceedingly polite.
That was Hal McGee, folks. Definitely one of my better interviews– it’s so nice to speak with a person who is as obviously in love with sound as I am myself– I’d like to encourage you to visit the Dictaphonia 1 page; pick yourself up a digital copy of this fascinating compilation!
Right now, Brandon Beachum is warming up his giant amps right here in the Hi-Life Room. He’ll be going live as “Marathon” momentarily, so don’t miss out.
As I mentioned, today is Kurt Schwitters’ birthday– happy 122nd!– so I’m playing some Merzbow in his honor… the connection being the “merz-” see? Masami Akita didn’t dredge that up out of thin air… so it pays to know your history.
At present, Brandon is having some difficulties with his gear. Something may be broken. In such a case, I generally take it as an opportunity to do something completely different and aurally flog the defective equipment within an inch of its existence. Public humiliation for malfunctioning technology! Brandon is being a bit more sensible, systematically attacking the problem one knob and cable at a time. We’ll see how this goes.
It’s a gear crisis, but we’re all working to ease Mr. Brandon’s troubled spirit. Soon, listeners, soon!
David Lee Myers, Marco Oppedisano — Hyperpituitary Giant
David Lee Myers, Marco Oppedisano –Pheremones
David Lee Myers, Marco Oppedisano –Roog
David Lee Myers, Marco Oppedisano –Fling Away the Shell
David Lee Myers, Marco Oppedisano — Throttle Body Lifter
David Lee Myers, Marco Oppedisano –An Infinitely Hot and Dense Dot
Merzbow — Run Chicken Run
The Infant Cycle — Trombone
The Infant Cycle — Secret Hidden Message
The Infant Cycle — (and then the dog replied)
BIOS — Forever Dividing and Evolving
Sandor Szabo, Kevin Kastning — Hyperbola
Marathon — LIVE @ WDBX-FM, 6/20/09
Locrian — Barren Temple Obscured by Contaminated Fogs
Dave Wright — Cattle Gas
Richard Orlando — Farrington Street Blues
Mark McGee — Capoeira Blitz Squad
Sonic Disorder — Ugly Chemical Junk
Douglas Burkett — Spin Cycles
Jamison Williams — Francois Boucher (1703-1770)
Zebra Mu — Micro Junk Cassette Slicer
Tomorrow’s broadcast of “It’s Too Damn Early” will feature an interview with Dictaphonia curator Hal McGee, and a live in-studio performance of local artist Brandon Beachum’s “Marathon” project. If that wasn’t enough to get you wet; I’ll also be playing from the brand-new Dictaphonia 2 tape, spending some time with one of my favorite new releases from the OKS Recordings of North America label, and celebrating Kurt Schwitters’ birthday with some Merzbow love.
Tune in around 3:30 a.m., CST– I’ll most likely be a bit early getting started.
Today’s show will be a long one, as I am covering for Kids Kamp until 8 a.m. Having “just” returned from St. Louis on a trip to see Peter Brotzmann’s Full Blast Trio (and Yowie!), I’m going to do the best I can to present a decently-coherent set. There may be rough patches, so hold on.
My phone-in guest today is Warm Climate, who have promised to make the best use of cell phone technology to play us all a little something around 4:30. I expect everything with go well with our phone-to-radio setup, but I still hope you’ll cross your fingers that no glitches occur.
Cheer Accident — Sun Dies
Cheer Accident — Mescalito
Cheer Accident — And Then Your Realize You Haven’t Left Yet
Cheer Accident — Blue Cheadle
Randall Hall — To Be Neither Proud Nor Ashamed
Warm Climate — Live phone-in performance on WDBX-FM
Halaka — Everyone Told Me I Was Great
DaveX — Jam Up/Jelly Tight
Barry Chabala — Acoustic Guitar: “m”
Violet — Spring
Fiver’s Stereo — Back Woods Preacher
Hal McGee — Inverse Square Ratio
3D-Man — Untitled Guitar Solo
Chefkirk — no input for microcssette
Ironing — MicrocaBettestrabE
Concrete — Distant Envelopment
Jeph Jerman — Metamatic
Blind Umizato — Microcasstte 04132009
Dave Fuglewicz — Liquid Glass
Big City Orchestra — Treasure for Daddy
Waterdigger — Hal McGee Has Stipulations
Jeff Gburek — Kreuzberg Neukolln Kleve
Jeff Gburek — Grace Hollogne Llege
The Infant Cycle — Secret Hidden Message
The Infant Cycle — (And Then the Dog Replied)
Luc Houtkamp — Flow Chart
Luc Houtkamp — New Wabash
Raquel Castro — Soundwalkers (DVD)
Randall Hall — HARD
Rahsaan Roland Kirk, John Cage — Sound
Things have been moving quick for the “It’s Too Damn Early” performance schedule lately. Here’s what you can look forward to in the next two weeks:
This Saturday June 13, enjoy a live phone-in set from Warm Climate. Noise complaints from pesky neighbors thwarted their last performance, so all that pent-up musical frustration might lead to one hell of a set. Later on, I’ll play from Side 2 of Dictaphonia– Ironing, Jeph Jerman, Concrete Violin, Chefkirk, Big City Orchestra, and more!
On June 20th, I will be doing a live interview with sound art pioneer Hal McGee, who recently released the first volume of microcassette compilation series “Dictaphonia.” We’ll be discussing the unique properties of the microcassette format, the Florida noise scene, and getting Hal’s update on volume 2 of this fascinating project.
Local musician Brandon Beachum will also make the radio debut of his solo noise project, Marathon. If you enjoyed his contribution to the 1st Annual Noise Summit, you won’t want to miss him playing live in the Hi-Life Room at WDBX-FM.
Update: DaveX sez– I can haz spelchekr?
I’ll mention it again– WDBX-FM is back online! Naturally, I’m excited– a higher quality stream, and the hope of some better service sounds great to me. I’m a little directionless today, but I think the Merzbow mind-wipe I’m currently perpetrating (from the fifth volume of the “13 Japanese Birds” series on Important, yah!) should help me clear the way for something good to germinate.
Just had a phone call from Las Vegas. According to the caller, Vegas area radio is in pitiful shape, with even UNLV aping corporate models. So today, I’m proud to say that “It’s Too Damn Early” has been chosen– over the Liberace Museum, over Round Table Pizza, and even over watching drunks fall off their stools at the many casinos. YAY!
I just confirmed a live set for Brandon Beachum’s solo project, Marathon. He’s going to be performing live this June 20th, on the show.
Merzbow — Requiem for the 259,000 Quails Culled at a Farm in Toyohashi pt.1
Merzbow — Requiem for the 259,000 Quails Culled at a Farm in Toyohashi pt.2
Miriodor — Ecart-type: Standard Deviation
Miriodor — A Determiner: To Be Determined
Ville Moskiitto — Kupariluostari
Ville Moskiitto — Kuhnuritanssi
Thanos Chrysakis — Inscape 24
Thanos Chrysakis — Inscape 25
Upsilon Acrux — Transparent Seas
DaveX — Keeping My Hand In
Su Sous Toulouse En Rouge — brugmansia tea
Kathy Burkett — Dachsooka Radio Buzz
Istituzioni Ambienti Naturalismo — Nastro #13b
Otolathe — Unorchestrable
IWANTTOKILLEVERYHUMAN — One Dogless
Mike Khoury — Solo Violin
Black Beast of Arrrghhh — Micro-boogie
Horseflesh — Hyper Flies
Vagina Teeth/Jesus Teeth — The Sky and the Sea Bed
William A Davison — Garbage Guitar and Objects 090410
Homogenized Terrestrials — Air
Krysten Davis — BBBBAD
Rabbit Girls — Epithlamium
Rabbit Girls — Hymenaeus
Rabbit Girls — die Hochzeit
Randall Hall — Reflecting Pool
DJs Tim Ready and Micah Moses presented the Prog-O-Caust this past Saturday, on their Radio23 program “Public Sensory Radio.” I missed checking it out live, but you can join me in digging part one from their own archive.
These guys definitely appeal to my misanthopic side– dig this bit from Ready’s absolute takedown of Dream Theatre:
“…never has a band so ill-adept reached so far past its grasp for the moniker “genius”! Sterile, indeed; for 20 years overplaying and soloing to no end, and never for a moment did the seed of creation take- Oh, how pitiful to masturbate so incessantly and be capable of only ever shooting blanks.”
I also love his description of James LaBrie… perfect!
“Somewhere between Don Dokken and John Ashcroft, his shrill mauling of already terrible material produces something gorgeously rare- The Thing Which Can Not Be Parodied. With more octaves than restraint at his disposal, LaBrie shrieks and caterwauls like a show-off Castrati trying to convince the Pope that all little boys can still be useful, nuts or no nuts.”
I’m happy to report that WDBX is streaming online again! It has been a bit of a wait, but we’re finally at a respectable bitrate as well– 128kbps, not too shabby. The stream is being provided by Mayer Networks, a local IT firm. Right now, I’ve been unable to open the stream VLC, but the Windows Media Player (yeech) and WinAmp seem to handle it just fine.
For those who are especially interested, the stream is in the Microsoft Media Server protocol– I’m going to have to do a bit more digging, but it seems like you can record this sort of stream directly using a program called Gmms.
Mayer Networks will be load-testing in the next few weeks. What better way to give them a real run for their money and have all of us tune in online for this week’s “It’s Too Damn Early” broadcast?
My good friend and former co-deejay Tony Youngblood hipped me to the free download of one of his latest ~Ore~ broadcasts this morning, an all-iPhone-app improvisation experiment originally broadcast this April 26th, on Nashville’s WRVU-FM. It’s called “I, Phone” and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.
From the ~Ore~ episode guide’s description:
“Here we have six performers playing apps such as Noise.io, RJDJ, Balls, The Zombietron, Brian Eno’s Bloom, the Thereminator, Mobile Synth, SpeakEZ, Ocarina, iPhone voicemails, Bebot, and more. William Davis from Oh No It’s Howard, his friend Brian Zimmerman, Ryan Adams from Sunshine Bros., Pimpdaddy Supreme, Irony from Nerd Prom on WRVU, and myself make one hour of pure iPhone goodness.”
Of course, experimental music obsessives will want to visit ~Ore~’s MySpace page as well– there are download links for many of the broadcasts, many of which are in the classic ~Ore~ model of an extended improvisation based on some bizarre theme. Some of my favorites:
“Good Sir” — Storytelling and weird music collide in slow motion. Listen gets to decide, success or failure?
“Turn the Page” — Wherein six vocalists find their behaviors controlled by inert objects. Namely, a stack of action cards making odd suggestions.
“Random and Nameless” — Maybe you have to be an ~Ore~ vet to dig this one, where all hell breaks loose and everything goes pear-shaped. Amusing for listeners, but probably a gut-wrencher at the time. Also notable for holding the current “most participants in-studio simultaneously” record.
