Well I was wrong... they proved me wrong.... people did come out to the show! And it was good.
Also, I was wrong because I thought I was gonna play granular synthetic clouds but instead I just sang and played guitar.
It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
Anyways, another succesful Tachishowma. Thanks to Ehren Salazar and Hidden Agenda.... hope I get to play Hidden Agenda again....
Got the details.
WHERE: Wink, a Vegetarian Restaurant
EXACTLY WHERE: 151 Main at 8th near Broadway
WHEN: Tonight, 9pm - 11pm
WHAT: Electronic improvisation and anarchy
WHO: Tachikoma, de sho? mochiron yo! Tachikoma no 'biggu show" de arimasu....
HOW: Lots of electronic gadgets on a big table
WHY: I cry alone
And no, it's not going to sound like today's mp3!!!
Tachikoma provides another soundscape for our lives with the 29th Superflat Single from Blipsandifs. I listened to the track and heard the sounds of ship on the high seas. Something like the Bluenose. It could be any sailboat, but I thought a large Canadian one felt right for me. I'm not sure, but knowing Tachikoma's influences he may have created this track to sound more like a traditional Asian classic. When I heard it I was off the shores of Nova Scotia. You?
Listen to blipsandifs029.MP3 - 1.6MB
The show is confirmed! It's on. Let's do it to it! Tachikoma combining power engage!
It's at Wink, the vegetarian restaurant (Kemal, you hear that?) near Broadway, on Main. 9pm-11pm: a microshow.
This'll be another one of them "secret" shows for my "secret" fans who "secretly" prefer to listen to Coldplay. That song "yellow" is good. But actually, you should come out..... to this show... but who am I kidding? Those who go to the show won't read this blog post and vice versa. So the less I advertise, the better the turnout will be.....
This is all takin' me back to the time when I used to DJ for a roomful of ghosts, including the ghost of Phil Hartman. Good times.....
Wink, and you'll miss it.
On Feb. 22, Tachikoma is playing a cute miniature show at Wink, the vegetarian restaurant located on Main St. near Broadway. Curated by Ehren Salazar, the show will feature 5 performers doing 12 minutes of music each. The show will begin at 9 pm and end at 11pm.
A small show, but a good one. I'll be performing using a table-full of bizarre audio toys.....
I was listening to Portishead while walking home one evening. I noticed their sound is so clear and intense. I even had to turn the volume down, which was odd for a walkman. It got my mind contemplating collaborations vs. individuals in relation to art. The music behind Portishead is quite foreboding. Place Beth Gibbons in front and it takes away the creepy edge and just makes it cool.
I take pride in my solo work, I believe it to be very unique and fairly interesting as experiments if not art. Thought it's through collaborations that I find some of my greatest reward. It's that I can enjoy things made with my friends with less self indulgence. I may like my sounds and art, but I prefer them applied with others.
To me mixing artist is the best production. My career as a composer for films and videos has brought much satisfaction. Creating covers for the superflatsingles has also been pure enjoyment.
Blipsandifs is now discussing a fantastic collaboration with video blogger Brett Gaylor of Etherworks. So stay tuned...
Okay...So....Where have all the drunken boats gone??? I know... I know....
I'm at a computer all day.... there is no excuse...I have been down in the bunker every night this week.Down rattling cages and killing small animals to feed the beats.Which I subsequently recorded the sounds of.... and now I have some tracks to release into the frigid wilds of the internerd. Also, more PICTURES!!! (see above.)
No story here.go away.... sadness... randomness like a visit from:
*The boats
Work on the new Tachikoma album and live set begins this evening!
That's right. I've finally managed to wrap up the external audio manipulation projects that were taking time away from Tachikoma production. I'm happy to finally have time to start up the new album, which will be a departure in sound from previous Tachikoma stuff.... in some ways, and a throwback to the old school in other ways.
I realize that isn't clear. But I'm psyched just to be in the game, swinging. We've gotten so much good feedback on this bloglabel in the last couple of weeks that it's hard not to be energized and go out there and do what we can to make our media hallucinations into reality. At least 80% of the good ideas we've come up with haven't been realized in the Blipsandifs experience yet. It's good that there's still gas in the tank, but, starting today, I'm gonna drive my SUV around a little more. After all, a time is coming when all the gas in the world will be used up, right?
[And speaking of extended pretentious metaphors... there's even some non-musical Tachikoma production on the chopping block this month, which I still have to get to.]
Tachikoma releases won't be the only thing on the Blipsandifs podcast, neither; We'd like to announce that we've signed Galiano-based digital reggae artist Dub Bear to Blipsandifs. Unlike all the other Blipsandifs artists, Dub Bear will be releasing EXCLUSIVELY on Blipsandifs. Dub Bear's sound is difficult to describe; suffice it to say that he got dub like honey.
So don't touch that non-existent dial.....
Blipsandifs is happy to continue building on our Atlantic connections by releasing this track from England's slogic. A comrade and collaborator of Mad:ox, slogic built this minimal track using only 3 hardware devices. Classic anorak behavior from the country famous for defending hardware synthesis to the end. I'm not dissing them; I'm just saying that Englishmen with hardware take their hardware seriously.
What I never expected about Blipsandifs is that we'd become a Commonwealth bloglabel. Except for selfoscillate, all our releases have been from subjects of the queen.....
Anyway, thanks to our newest contributor. Blipsandifs is always looking for amazing new artists like slogic to add to our roster.....
Listen to blipsandifs028.MP3 - 3.3MB
My crappy little mp3 player is now currently filled up with all the blipsandifs mp3s I find. It's funny, I never seem to get tired of music I've made. Not that I make all the music on this blog; I wish I made less. But the great thing about making music digitally is that the computer always remembers what you played better than you do.
(pause)
Damn. It's hard to crank up my thinking device to full media-analysis power when I'm sitting here in the office taking a too long lunch break. I come up with way better theories when The Boats are at my house yelling at me for turning down Can at 1:30 am. Too bad I aint got no internet at my house.
I gotta find some way around this.... maybe composing blogposts at home in the Geofront? I'm not sure.
But anyway, big things are brewing this weekend. GHD is approaching. I'm not even going to touch on what The Boats are gonna do for that but.... it's big. Hopefully some people will post about it after the fact......
Mad:ox recently told me that he got a chance to play a live gig as part of a festival. The festival is in England, where he lives, so it's probably quite different from what goes on at a Canadian musical festival ... i.e. there's probably a lot of Morris Dancing.
Mad:ox asked me what gear I was using at the recent Tachikoma shows, because he doesn't play live a lot and wondered what he should bring and play with. I realized it was kind of a long and boring answer, so naturally I decided to post it on this here blog.
My approach to the performance of live electronic music is as follows: I generally have a certain number of 'clocked' devices that output synched audio tracks or midi tracks, and I also have a certain number of 'unclocked' devices which I play live, use to filter the clocked audio, or use to intentionally trigger sounds in conflicting tempos.
Let me give an example and it'll be much clearer;
For the most recent Tachikoma show at The Butcher Shop, my clocked audio device was an MP3 player with instrumental, 'karaoke'-style backing tracks on it. I arranged my songs in order and triggered them with the play button. The unclocked device I used was an Alesis AirFX: this is a line in / line out filter box that simply processes in real-time whatever audio you send through it. Also, another unclocked device was my voice, singing into a microphone. The advantage of this situation is; the 'boring', prerecorded materials are invisible to the audience; they can't even see I’m holding an MP3 player. The 'exciting,' visually noticeable interaction with the songs comes from the unclocked devices. Audience members saw me wave my hand over a box, and heard the backing tracks change; they also saw me sing along in real time.
It doesn't matter what your clocked devices are; they could be a dozen synths all receiving midi in real time, or a cd player with your instrumental backing tracks. The key point is that the clocked devices are generally boring, if that's all you use. If people can see you twisting knobs, banging keyboards, or vocoding yourself, they'll make a connection between the sound and the visual. If all they see is a guy bent over a laptop, even if there was an enormous projection of the screen of the laptop behind him, it still wouldn't be that exciting to watch.
I just was offered a show, today, too; at that one, on February 7th, I'll be performing a 15-minute track of improvised electronic music. I'll be playing Gameboy, Nord Micro Modular, MS2000R, analog drum machines, and electronic toys. None of these will really be the 'master clock' ... they'll all just play together, out of synch, and weirdly. The real visual element of that show is that I'll be bent over a table full of blinking boxes and patching/unpatching in real time, like some kind of mad scientist. I'm mentioning this because the ethic I've developed in the last 6 months is ... never play the same show twice. Never show up to a show using the same gear you used at the last show. Just apply the principle of clocked and unclocked devices; don't get married to one device when you can get the midi for free.
And so on.
