I want to go NOW!

This is BAD ASS. (more after the jump)

Liveblogging! Commentary for “ITDE” 11/7/09

I’m back! Last week, a combination of overwork and cold, wet weather had me feeling terribly low. I’m still a little hoarse, but more than capable of putting together a good show– so thanks for tuning in!

Hint: Totally blown away by Chefkirk/Ironing’s “Notorious” disc. Better pick one up before I add it to my Happy Neat-O List, don’t you think?

Thanos Chrysakis, Wade Matthews, Dario Bernal-Villegas — III (from “Enantio_ΔPomia”)
Thanos Chrysakis, Wade Matthews, Dario Bernal-Villegas — IV
Frank Rothkamm — Ectoplasm Rejects
Frank Rothkamm — Self-Levitation Science
Frank Rothkamm — The Betrothed of Wyoming
Frank Rothkamm — Overcome By Art
Wadada Leo Smith — Al Shadhili’s Litany of the Sea: Sunrise
Wadada Leo Smith — Pacifica
Wadada Leo Smith — Umar at the Dome of the Rock, pts. 1 & 2
Chefkirk, Ironing — Notorious (from “Notorious”)
Chefkirk, Ironing — American Science
Chefkirk, Ironing — Skin Trade
Chefkirk, Ironing — A Matter of Feeling
Chefkirk, Ironing — Hold Me
Chefkirk, Ironing — Vertigo (Do the Demolition)
Mike Hansen — The alarm went off sooner than expected
Mike Hansen — Once held a lighter high in the sky
Jim Ryan’s Forward Energy Trio — Jumpin’ In (From “FE3 Oakland”)
Jim Ryan’s Forward Energy Trio — Paper Flower (From “FE3 Oakland”)
Art Jerks — Like Things

Dear DaveX, what’s new with you?

I’ve got a few different entries worth of stuff to share with you all, but I’m going to try cramming it all into one post.

To begin with, the first Mystery Tapes are now in the wild. Some of these will be much easier to find than others, as I have been taking my usual absurdist approach to placing them. I nearly put #3 under a few dozen tons of concrete I watched being poured the other day… the paleontological ramifications of this were exciting, but even I had a hard time picturing anyone actually finding the tape in the future. Keep an eye out, and maybe you’ll find one!

I’m also working hard on my upcoming performance of John Cage and Lejaren Hiller’s “KNOBS” composition. This will be the world-premiere performance of the piece, so I’m taking it very seriously, and hoping to do a great job with it. The premiere will be helping to kick off the three-day “All Together Now” inter-arts festival at SIUC’s Student Center. I really hope that all my local readers can make some time on the evening of November 18th to come down to the Student Center Auditorium and check it out. It’s at 7:30, and will be free. Bring your kids, your friends, and your friends’ kids.

Getting ready for the performance has been interesting so far. I’ve never worked this in-depth with an actual score, so this is a new experience for me. The score is very precise, so I’ve been developing a method for keeping exact time during the performance, as everything occurs in five-second intervals. Making matters more complex is the addition of a troupe of modern dancers to the mix. Normally I’d avoid this sort of thing, but I think it’s in the spirit of the festival itself (which is a cooperative and improvisational event) and with John Cage, whose life-long partnership with Merce Cunningham often resulted in such collaborations.

At the same time, I’m literally “gearing up” for teaching a circuit bending workshop on the second day of the festival. The Create-A-Smile Thrift Shop was nice enough to donate a good amount of electronic toys for me to work on, so there will be more than enough interesting possibilities presenting themselves throughout the workshop. If you’ve got any interest in circuit bending, this is a free chance for you to give it a shot– just get up to the Student Center “E” Ballroom on November 19th in the evening time and check it out.

WDBX is having trouble AGAIN with the webstream, it’s just not working for Mac users. I talked with Brian about it, who assures me that he’s trying to find a new host for our stream– if you know someone reliable and technically-proficient who is not a total dumbf**k, not the sort of person who will let our stream be down every other day or encode it in a Microsoft-user-only format, or insist that 64kbps sounds great, please put them in touch with us. That would be AWESOME.

Finally, I’m pushing the re-vamp of STARTLING MONIKER back a bit to December. Getting back to reviewing music is a goal of mine, but I’ve got a couple health-related goals that are going to need to be accomplished before I feel good about dedicating more time to sit at the computer. Winter is coming, and with it, my usual sense of dread and depression. I’m going to see if I can get ahead of it this time around, so bear with me. In the meantime, keep listening, keep commenting, and keep your head up. –DaveX

Liveblogging! Commentary for “ITDE”

Had a call this morning from someone, wanting to make a birthday request. As you most likely have realized by now, this is often a bit of an issue for me. Generally, I enjoy being helpful and getting something on the air that people can be enthusiastic about. What I don’t enjoy is being someone’s jukebox. So when the caller asked if I would play something by a band that I’m unfamiliar with (by streaming them through YouTube no less!) I had to tell them no. Then they whipped out the old “but I’m a community member of the station” bit on me. Okay, thanks. I appreciate your help keeping WDBX going. I’ll even go so far as to say that I’ll check out this band another time, and play them some other day if they work for the show. Nope– it’s gotta be now– it’s a birthday! And I’m a community mem–CLICK!

This happens all too often. Anyhow, I played “Satyrium,” and dedicated it to all birthdays occurring today. Figure that covers things. Moving on…

Sabrina Siegel is sick this week, so she won’t be able to join us for a call-in set. We’ll definitely be re-scheduling, so don’t worry. I’m going to play some of her stuff anyway!

I can’t say enough good things about the new Aural Terrains release, “Enantio_ΔPomia”. It definitely requires a lot of faith on part of the listener, even seeming “wrong” in parts, but just… wait. This is a really fine disc, and you’ll be glad you did.

I’m playing some of Audiomachie’s “Logomachie” disc now. This is a Vincent Bergeron project, with help from a number of talented collaborators. Lots of good ideas here!

T.D. Skatchit & Company — Voodoo Skatch
T.D. Skatchit & Company — Aurora Rising
T.D. Skatchit & Company — Carnival of Skatch
T.D. Skatchit & Company — From Beyond (for Toyoji)
T.D. Skatchit & Company — Popcorn Skatch
Domenico Sciajno, Kim Cascone — Satyrium
Sabrina Siegel — G (fill in your name) d’s Music
Aperiodic — Louder
Eddie the Rat — Food for the Moon Too Soon, pt. 1 (recorded live @ Artist’s Television Access, SF 3/16/01)
Eddie the Rat — Cannibal
Eddie the Rat — I Ovulate In Mode
Marcelo Radulovich — Swastikas
Art Jerks — Like Things
Art Jerks — Reach Out
Bodies of Water (Gordon Beeferman, Jeff Arnal) — I Dip My Hands Once Again In the Ocean
Rogue States (Gordon Beeferman, Jeff Arnal) — Pirouette On A Pin
Rogue States –In White Haze
Thanos Chrysakis, Wade Matthews, Dario Bernal-Villegas — V (from “Enantio_ΔPomia”)
Thanos Chrysakis, Wade Matthews, Dario Bernal-Villegas — VI (from “Enantio_ΔPomia”)
Audiomachie — Audiomachie
Audiomachie — Une ombre vacille en serpentin virevoltant
Audiomachie — Bruissement de griserie

Liveblogging! Commentary for “ITDE” 10/17/09

A new mixer in the studio? With inaccessible inputs, racked-mounted at my shins?? I’m going to cry now.

Alrighty, just got done with my “after-hours” set for Noise FeSTL folks committed enough to stay awake this long, and now I’m moving on with the remainder of the broadcast. Also going to catch up the playlist– that damn new mixer totally threw me off– why would they install a mixer with access to the inputs/outputs so obscured? My paranoid side has answers, but I better not leap to any conclusion.

I played some of Adam Cornelius’s interesting noise documentary, “People Who Do Noise.” I thought it would be interesting to hear some more people speak about this, even though listeners wouldn’t be able to see the film itself. It’s definitely worth your time, though– here’s their website.

Hmm… Karthik reports trouble with the WDBX stream. I haven’t had any other complaints; anyone care to verify this?

Philip Samartzis, Michael Vorfeld — Wams
DaveX — Live at WDBX-FM, 10/17/09, “After-hours set dedicated to Noise FeSTL attendees”
Philip Samartzis, Michael Vorfeld — Krause
Thanos Chrysakis, Wade Matthews, Dario Bernal-Villegas — I (from “Enantio_ΔPomia”)
Thanos Chrysakis, Wade Matthews, Dario Bernal-Villegas — II
Francois Bayle — Erosphere, pt.1
Novasak — Right Hook to the Jaw
Novasak — BHT (to maintain freshness)
People Who Do Noise, directed by Adam Cornelius
DaveX, Brandon Beachum — Live at WDBX-FM, 10/17/09, “Long Wire Demo for Brandon”
Stenchworm — Sex With a Chainsaw
Stenchworm — Screaming Machine
Stenchworm — Psychic Apparitions
Stenchworm — The Howling Blizzard
Stenchworm — Anxiety Attract

Coming up… Noise FeSTL 2009!

If you haven’t gotten your NoiseFeSTL tickets yet, you’d better hustle! I won’t be able to make it this year, but there’s more than enough weirdness and ear-damage to go around regardless. This year, Karthik has encouraged me to do a telematic “after-hours” set, so this Saturday’s show is one you won’t want to miss! I’ve worked up something special, so be sure to tune in.

Here’s the full Noise FeSTL 2009 lineup:

FRIDAY:
Swim Ignorant Fire
Justice is Revenge
Plasmic Formations
Solar Shadows
The Man and the Scientist
Lucky Bone
To-Night Golden Curls
Public shallows
Charlie
Ghost Ice
Realicide
Teeth Collection
Custodian
Peter J Woods
Instinct Control

SATURDAY:
Green Pasture Happiness
Dr. Rhomboid Goatcabin
BOAR
Human Shallows
Daytime Television
Spunky Toofers
Sigulda
Willful
BOKEH
Yawn
Baculum
Danny McClain/Dave Stone
Diaphragmatic
Brain Transplant
Jigsaw Rhetoric

SUNDAY (3:00 PM matinee show):
Day Care
Wilmer Incognito
Agrarian Pillbox
Color blind
Dawson Family Players
Grandmother
Infirmary

SUNDAY (Later Show):
Clusterfuck
Off Right
Malaria
Tom Vasilj
Tony Renner
Oblive
Greg Sabo
John Tamm-Buckle
Dark Inside the Sun
Hefner

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The cat is out of the bag– I announced my annual call for New Year’s submissions just moments ago on the Oddmusic list, so unless you’re a subscriber, you’re already behind the curve. I know, it’s only October; I thought I’d give folks a little bit of time to prepare something extra nice.

I’ve always felt somewhat down around New Year’s, but it wasn’t until 2005 that I decided to make something out of those feelings, by asking artists to send in their “future” recordings:

“As in years past, I am somewhat upset because I have once again failed to receive my personal jet pack. When I was a child, it was more or less promised that by the year 2000, I would not only have a jet pack, but would be partially robotic, vacationing on Mars, eating sea kelp grown by intelligent machine farm workers in the ocean, and living part-time on the Moon. None of these things has happened. In fact, humans have not been back to the moon since I was a child. For all the fascinating and intelligent people in the realm of experimental music that I come in contact with through my radio program and this list, I ask you to please focus on helping to create a healthy and innovative future that we can all look forward to. Without the possibility of an intriguing future, it is hard to dream (or to work towards) better days and a more pleasant life for us all.”

I’m asking again this year– set your time machine for sometime yet to come, and bring us back a recording of that tomorrow. Imagine something startling, new, and worth aiming for. I’m counting on you!

Send your submissions to:

WDBX c/o DaveX’s New Year show
224 N. Washington St.
Carbondale IL 62901 USA

As in years past, I am somewhat upset because I have once again failed to receive my personal jet pack. When I was a child, it was more or less promised that by the year 2000, I would not only have a jet pack, but would be partially robotic, vacationing on Mars, eating sea kelp grown by intelligent machine farm workers in the ocean, and living part-time on the Moon. None of these things has happened. In fact, humans have not been back to the moon since I was a child. For all the fascinating and intelligent people in the realm of experimental music that I come in contact with through my radio program and this list, I ask you to please focus on helping to create a healthy and innovative future that we can all look forward to. Without the possibility of an intriguing future, it is hard to dream (or to work towards) better days and a more pleasant life for us all.

Reactive Music, revolutionary sound

HarS wrote (with greatly catching enthusiasm) about ubiquitous mobile devices, and their involvement in a future “turning point” for music consumption and production.

“For pretty much anyone currently alive on this planet the concept of music cannot but be indissolubly linked with the possibility of the unlimited identical repetition of a relatively limited number of sound recordings. We call them songs, or tracks, numbers, pieces, compositions. These you may hear again, and again, and again. The listening to (which significantly differs from the – soundless – ‘remembering of’) music at any time other than that contemporary to its creation (when you’re at a concert, or playing the piano) roughly has been a common practice only since technologies of recording became available for the public. This consumption of music recordings is a consumption of music as an immutable form; of music as rigidly filled out stretches of time; of intervals that permit the identical displacement of themselves, both in space and in time: you may listen again, at the place and time of your choice.”<!– I have no idea whether somehow someone in some context ever researched along similar lines, but it seems obvious that this continuous exposure of human beings to a limited number of sound recordings (which, adding but a little bit of abstraction, I think of as 'temporal emotive identities') has a big influence on who and what we (think) are. It is therefore that surely, in a time and age with no sound recording and playback technologies available, music must have been a thing very different from what we know it to be. –>

I think you might see where he’s going with this.

“The recent possibility of delivering ‘music’ to popular and widely used consumer devices not as immutable, unchanging recordings, but in the form of more or less open-ended, dynamic processes, the sounding result of which will always be different, is the potential new turning point in the way in which we consume (and produce) music that I hinted at.”

He’s brought the discussion to both the “soundasart” and “oddmusic” Yahoo groups, where the reaction has been everything from outright dismissive to full agreement. My links direct to the opening message of each thread.

Here’s my take on the matter:

“I gotta say, Harold– this is probably more one of those instances where the potential revolutionary aspects of a device are presenting themselves to excitable folks like you, me, and a handful of others; but is just another case of “won’t catch on because the listening public has zero imagination”. Hell, I’d love to see someone use a combination of wireless and GPS capabilities in a handheld device to create textural works where large crowds hear portions of a single work, which shift as they move amongst one another.

You could create music that reacts not only to your own data (accelerometer, location, etc) but that of others, taking into account what they’re listening to, and creating on-the-fly amoebic conglomerates of sound. Train stations could develop into a pulsing meta-noise building in climax as hundreds of listeners board a packed subway car, sharing a sound event, and hearing their eventual release scatter as the train delivers them to their individual destinations, each taking a grain of this social sound with them into their day to be developed further. Cities might develop “signature” sounds, with “aural hallmarks” eventually making its way into the lexicon of every travel guide.

We might someday debate the relative qualities of a strain of New York sound as we similarly discuss a San Francisco sourdough, or a true Chicago pizza. Even more interestingly, rural locations might develop radically different local sounds– the work of years of a listening hermit’s solitary activities resulting in a previously-unheard evolution toward an unimagined sound destination!”

What are your thoughts on this?

Updates and a Download OR How I Spent My Weekend

Here’s my latest torrent file, for the 10/10/09 broadcast with Matt Weston. I’ve also added some links to the playlist, and finished typing it out fully– you’ll notice the inclusion of Matt Weston’s set and the New Haven Improvisers Collective airplay for their “Inflection” disc. Sometimes, the liveblog has to take one for the team during a broadcast, but I usually catch it up pretty quick when I get back home.

However, my Saturday had other plans. I decided to take the kids to the St. Louis Zoo; so I spent the vast majority of the day tromping around trying to find giraffes, unsuccessfully cajoling a capybara into revealing his mug for my camera, and trying NOT to hit any endangered sharks with my backpack. (Yeah, I’ve done this.)

Later on, I went to the hospital to have my “brush with death,” i.e., some rather alarming chest pain that had me flashing on all those “if you think you’re having a heart attack” PSAs I’ve played in the past. Although it turned out to be a torn/strained muscle at my sternum, I still ended up spending a fair amount of time in the late-night ER, listening to a belligerent drunkard’s attempts to walk on his broken foot. I got a bruised-up arm (IV port, shy veins) and a lidocaine slurpie for my troubles (an intern was more or less running a concurrent examination with the actual doctor, and had become convinced that I had acid reflux, haha) but was otherwise discharged with a clean bill of health at 3 in the morning. It’s not often that I fit an improvisational drummer, a hippo, and an emergency room into one day– but I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere.

Here’s DJ Mo at the zoo:

Liveblogging! Commentary for “ITDE” 10/10/09

I’m kicking off today’s show (#369!) with a few seven-inchers from Generate Records, percussionist Jeff Arnal’s label. Since I’m playing these, I figured I might bring in some older stuff he’s on as well, so you can look forward to a few deeper cuts this week too!

Speaking of percussionists, Matt Weston is scheduled to make an appearance here in the Hi-Life Room today! I’ve heard that his Lemp Arts set may have been cancelled, though, so we’ll have to see if he still makes it here.

YES! Matt Weston is IN the Hi-Life Room. Amazing things will be happening very soon.

Just finished playing a large portion of George Korein’s “Another Corpse” album.

Gordon Beeferman — No Meat
Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Jeff Arnal — Brooklyn Mantra pt.1
Gordon Beeferman – Far Interlude
The Focus Quintet — Dedicated
The Focus Quintet — Foreward
The Focus Quintet — Acknowledgements
Rev.99 — The Price of Bananas
George Korein — Rotodrone Encroaching!
George Korein — Squawking Corpse Rotodrone
George Korein — Squawking Sinking
George Korein – Flying Corpse: Liftoff
George Korein — Flying Corpse: Peak Altitude
George Korein — Flying Corpse: Evasive Manuevers
George Korein — Flying Corpse: Acceleration
George Korein — Flying Corpse: Crash Landing
George Korein — Flying Corpse: Flying Corpse Flies Again
Neil Rolnick — Hammer & Hair
Matt Weston — LIVE performance at WDBX-FM 10/10/09
New Haven Improvisers Collective — Schrodinger’s Wolverine
New Haven Improvisers Collective — You Me Who
New Haven Improvisers Collective — Suspended In Amber

New torrents for YOU

There’s five– collect ‘em all.

9/5/09 — “It’s Too Damn Early” salutes BKPR, and jams to Peter Gordon’s “Life is Boring”.

9/12/09 — Harold Schellinx phones in a sound tour of his home, and Trash Ant provides the most art-damaged cassette tape EVER.

9/19/09 — Improv saxophonist Randall Hall classes up the Hi-Life Room with THREE live sets, and a hands-on demonstration of extended technique. What does bubble wrap in the bell of a sax sound like? We do the things Mythbusters won’t try. Play along at home, and clap when you hear us say “John Cage.”

9/26/09 — Live phone-in set/interview from Swamp of Pus label owner Novasak, plus an interview with George Korein. Also, lots of previously-unreleased Korein recordings, and an extended selection of Glenn Weyant awesomeness.

10/3/09 — DaveX enjoys a bit of the Nashville SoundCrawl early, and interviews the organizers. Later on, Kim Cascone teaches kids a lesson about time zones, but still gets his interview in under the gun. Will DaveX be convinced to move to Linux? Find out in this exciting episode!

Liveblogging! Commentary for “ITDE” 10/3/09

I’m currently playing “The Language of Ghosts,” in anticipation of Kim Cascone’s phone-in performance. It’s fun– every time I play this track, I get a different sense of it. I’m going to have to remember to ask him about the full screenplay from which it is taken.

How lame is it that no matter how many interviews I do, that I’m always nervous beforehand?

Looks like I was worrying for no good reason– Cascone has missed his phone-in. We’ll see how this plays out. In the meantime, enjoy the show.

Turns out that there was a bit of a time zone-related mixup, so Cascone phoned in during my interview with SoundCrawl organizers Aaron Doenges and Kyle Baker. I ended up calling him back (thanks, *69!) and doing a short interview with him in the last 15 minutes of the show. Looks like we’re going to re-schedule his set for another time, which is great, because I am really looking forward to hearing it!

Kim Cascone — Music for Dagger and Guitar
Alvin Lucier — Still and Moving Lines of Silence In Families of Hyperbolas; Marimba
Alvin Lucier — Still and Moving Lines of Silence In Families of Hyperbolas; Vibraphone
George Korein — Content Provider, pt.1
New Haven Improvisers Collective — Roger and Out
Oubliette — Amon Hen
Oubliette — Amon Lhaw
Kim Cascone — The Language of Ghosts (monologue)
Paul David Thomas — Bologna
S. Pena Young — Looking Glass
Christopher Bailey — Divertimento in Eb
Robert Fleisher — Loretto Alfresco
Aaron Doenges — The Suicide of Freddie Mac
Dean Rosenthal — Antinomy (Henry Cowell)
Joo Won Park — SoundMobile (I. Forward)
Kyong Mee Choi — Tranquility
Interview with Aaron Doenges, Kyle Baker; Nashville SoundCrawl organizers
Michael J. Schumacher — Room Piece XI
Interview with Kim Cascone

Coming up in 5 hours

1) Interview and phone-in set with Kim Cascone!

2) Way early preview of the Nashville SoundCrawl, and an interview with the organizers!

3) Quite possibly, the beginnings of an interesting international tape experiment!

4) John Cage vinyl, hell yeah!

Be sure to listen live on 91.1FM, or at our webstream. As always, I’ll be liveblogging here and chatting in SLSK.

Liveblogging! Commentary for “ITDE” 9/26/09

I’m looking forward to hearing from Novasak and George Korein today! (Hopefully, you are as well.) Up until now, I’ve been playing mostly unreleased Korein recordings. As expected, they’re a lot of fun, and also very strange. In my perfect world, there would exist a box set of George Korein/Henry Kaiser collaborations– perhaps some millionaire recluse will fund this project, and make my dreams a reality!

For a much more down-to-earth project that needs a bit of funding, I should definitely mention Glenn Weyant’s recent decision to commit 100% of the profits from his double-disc release of The Anta Project and Droneland Security to the No More Deaths/No Mas Muertas fund. I’ve mentioned this on-air, so if you didn’t catch all the information at that time, click through to Glenn’s explanation and help out if you can. This is undoubtedly a worthy cause, made all the more compelling by Weyant’s lovely music.

I’ve turned Novasak loose on Southern Illinois. Be sure to visit his Swamp of Pus label to thank him later!

Sarah Peebles, David Toop — White Powder/The Spiders
George Korein — Sewerspire
George Korein — Brain Problems
George Korein — Anxiety
George Korein — Bump
George Korein — Cluster Groove
Art Jerks — Like Things
George Korein — Screed
George Korein — Jettisoned Bedding
Glenn Weyant — The Velvet Red Bug: July Ghost Constructions
Glenn Weyant — August Construction, The Street Where They Live, pt.1
Glenn Weyant — August Construction, The Street Where They Live, pt.2
Glenn Weyant — August Construction, The Street Where They Live, pt.3
Novasak — LIVE phone-in set for WDBX-FM, 9/26/09
Daryl Shawn — Cut Away the Stone
George Korein — LIVE phone-in interview, 9/26/09

Liveblogging! Commentary for “ITDE” 9/19/09

First off, happy Talk Like a Pirate Day! In-studio guest Randall Hall is joining us this morning, with a series of live improvisations on saxophone– some processed live, some not. We’re going live in about six minutes, so I hope you’re tuning in!

Currently in the midst of Hall’s first set– this is really terrific stuff. Having a bit of board trouble, but ultimately, everything is going well.

Pendulum (Randall Hall, Jonathon Kirk) — Vxatk
Randall Hall — LIVE at WDBX-FM, 9/19/09, first set
Pendulum — R. Hydrae 1
Pendulum — R. Hydrae 2
DaveX interview w/ Randall Hall
Pendulum — It collides
Randall Hall — LIVE at WDBX-FM, 9/19/09, second set
Jack Wright — Untitled solo, from “As Is”
Randall Hall — LIVE at WDBX-FM, 9/19/09, third set “Schism”
Guiseppe Rapisarda — Ex Tubae Corporae
Randall Hall introduces “It’s Too Damn Early” to extended techniques for saxophone

Upcoming show– Randall Hall!

You definitely won’t want to miss tomorrow morning’s broadcast of “It’s Too Damn Early” with live in-studio guest, the amazing improv saxophonist Randall Hall.

Come for the electronics, stay for the slap tongue! Here’s your webstream link, should you be fool enough to stay home.

mystery tape update

I’m still ripping tapes– just finished number 27 a few moments ago. This has been a truly interesting project. I’ve got the dedicated PC sitting in my garage, so I bop down there every hour or so and change out tapes. Occasionally, I’ll find things in mid-rip, so I put on some headphones to hear what’s going on. Needless to say, I’ve had some interesting aural moments! Last night, I slipped on the headphones just in time to hear Tujiko Noriko whisper “I love you” quietly in my ears. It took me a moment to realize what the heck was going on, and then I had a good laugh. What timing!

I’ve also run into odd moments from my infamous “Ghost Show,” some awesome improvised drones, and some sort of spectacularly failing phone-in interview that I’ve yet to place. I’m going to have to refresh myself on this one– it seems to have involved quite a few people in-studio, but I can’t remember what the exact situation was.

As for the mystery tapes themselves, they’re coming right along. I decided to number the series (there will be 41 total) and scatter them to the wind over a long period of time. I haven’t decided on the exact method yet, but it will probably involve me carrying a tape around everywhere until it just feels right. Some of these are much more strange than others, too! While a good lot of these are “just” straight shows, there are a bunch that document extended improv sessions at WDBX, with little or no identifying information whatsoever.

mystery tape(s)

While ripping all these tapes, I realized that there still remains the question of what to do with them afterward. I’ve decided that since I currently have plenty of tapes to dub over for future recording projects, I would very much like to let these random recordings out into the wild to inspire and confound the lucky people who happen to find them.

As such, I’ve started scratching off the labels of each newly-ripped tape, and affixing a printed label– “mystery tape” in its place. Later, I plan to overdub a short greeting at the beginning of each tape, providing contact information and my congratulations to the finder. I may also number these tapes.

Naturally, some of these tapes will find their way into the usual places– thrift and junk stores are a good bet. But there are around 50 of them… so I may have to get clever and start leaving them in unusual places.

Cassette ripping– yes, it’s crazy

A few months ago, I mentioned that I’d been going through my cassette tape archive, and had discovered a heap of taped broadcasts still awaiting transfer. Shortly after writing that entry, I contacted my go-to guy for “hey do you happen to have a _____,” this being my helpful friend Karthik. As it happened, he did have a machine dedicated to ripping cassette tapes directly to my PC, and was happy to loan it to me once he had a chance to retrieve it from storage. Some of these tapes had been waiting patiently since 2002– no big deal waiting a bit longer!

Last weekend, Karthik showed up with the machine, and I’ve been ripping tapes successfully since last night. I did encounter a couple problems along the way, though.

First off, the manual is about 50% Chinglish. My favorite part is on page 44. “This is the main funtion of the Plusdeck2c.” For some reason, stating the main “funtion” of the unit halfway through the manual just cracks me up, and I made no shortage of dumb jokes about this for the rest of the evening. That the phrase appears as a bullet point seems to increase the hilarity– I may need this on a t-shirt.

Secondly, the PC I chose to mate with the cassette ripper has a thin-profile case. In other words, only PC components for the gnome hobbyist fit inside. I ended up using one of my various Dremel tools to chew a neat hole in the side of the case, allowing the PC power cable to emerge. It’s not exactly elegant, but plopping the ripper directly on top of the PC was a fair enough workaround, especially since I lay this PC down flat anyway.

Other than that, everything works fine. I had to screw around with the levels a bit, but I have to admit that the included software does a fine job of making cassette ripping into a set-it-and-forget-it experience.

It’s also fairly exciting! I’ve already ripped two shows from 2003, and two from 2002. One of the 2002 shows is from 7/26, which includes two improvisational mixing sets of mine. I’m pretty cheesed about the playlist:

EKV - Testimony
Kid Koala - "Nerdball" and "Fender Bender"
Hoppy Kamiyama - Fresh for the Jet Set
Art Bears - Collapse
Dave Fischoff - 926
Tuxedomoon - Dark Companion
Jackie-O Motherfuckers - The Pigeon
The Saboten - Unmitigated Audacity
DaveX - Happy Birthday Archie
Forma 4 - Reproduction
Kalma - Toob Steak
:::::::IMPROV PORTION OF SHOW (list of materials used, in whole or in part):::::::::
Jimmy Swaggart - May the Circle Be Unbroken (speech in Detroit, Mich.)
John F. Kennedy - Nuclear Tests Speech, Nov. 1961
James Bailey - Train to the 8th Dimension
Gen. Douglass MacArthur - Keynote Speech, 7/7/1952
John Coltrane - The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost
Eccentre - Gray Landmarks
:::::::THEN, BACK TO REGULAR FORMAT:::::::::
Jimi Hendrix - Star-Spangled Banner
Rasmussen - Zac McKracken (Commodore64 Remix)
Adrian75 - Elves in my Bathroom
Keith Jarrett - Live in Lausanne, 1973.. solo concert
::::::::::2ND IMPROV PORTION OF SHOW (list of materials used, in whole or in part):::::::::
Rune Lindblad - Optica 8
July Fourth Toilet - Noise Maker Pomposity
Contrastate - Northern Twilight
Merzbow - Bamboo Honey
Hoppy Kamiyama - Insect's Dream
Kalma - Scrubbing Lockdown

Right now, I can’t be sure of how much of this show was on the tape, but I’d imagine this is only half of the show. Hopefully, another tape from this date is in the pile as well. I also saw five tapes from 1/28/06, the day of my infamous six-hour broadcast. Some of the tapes seem to indicate eleven sides were originally recorded– I’ve only located nine, so who knows where the gap will be?

Liveblogging! Commentary for “ITDE” 9/12/09

Today’s show is an exciting one. Harold Schellinx, Found Tapes curator and sound artist par excellence will be phoning in later. I’m very much looking forward to speaking with him– this should be a very interesting interview!

Right now, we’re digging on Miriodor’s album “Avanti,” out now on Cuneiform Records. Recently, I organized many of my albums by label, with Cuneiform being in the short list of labels I have looked for on my first pass through my collection. As such, I’ve made the rather interesting step of listening to albums in big bunches from a single catalog– in short, there’s been a lot of that RIO sound in my house lately! Next week, I’ll definitely be bringing in some more.

Speaking of sounds in houses… Harold will be taking us on a sound tour of HIS house very soon! This is going to be a lot of fun.

Miriodor — Envoutement
Miriodor — Bolide Debile
Robert Dow — Precipitation Within Sight
Hans Fjellestad — Pica
Hans Fjellestad — Phone Damage
Hans Fjellestad — Cabrito
Randall Hall — To Be Neither Proud Nor Ashamed
Harold Schellinx — LIVE Phone-in for WDBX-FM, 9/12/09
Yuko Nexus6 — Journal de Tokyo #1
Yuko Nexus6 — Voici le tempes de lecture
Yuko Nexus6 — J’aime beaucoup la cassette #1
Yuko Nexus6 — Journal de Tokyo #2
Yuko Nexus6 — Phonographe #1
Yuko Nexus6 — J’adore la boucle #1
Yuko Nexus6 — Berlin 1936
Trash Ant — Astral Projection
Trash Ant — Subliminal
BKPR — Burden
BKPR — Kollateral
Judy Dunaway — The Rubber Forest
Judy Dunaway — The Balloon Factory