Last night there were trains. They're still whaling away in the distance, but sound travels so much better at night when everything is asleep. There is some serious movement going on and no audiophoto has been made.
Thanks to all who came out to my show at The Butcher Shop..... even though the schedule was messed up, the overall show was amazing / traumatizing. I thought everything went super well.... and hopefully I'll even get a chance to post some photos of the gig soon!!!
So many new things have been added to the instrument collections of blips and ifs this holiday season. Like Tachikoma, many new percussion instruments have arrived at my house as well. Though made for kids, there is nothing like the ding-a-ling-a-ling of a good wholesome triangle or pair of cymbals. These days platstic powered kids toys are interesting too. [NEE-NAW-NEE-NAW!BLEEP] Push button action sounds are getting so loud and crazy! As a by-product this does make them easier to sample...
Happy New Year from all of us at Blips and Ifs.
Tachikoma show? It's a go. The details that are known are as follows:
Tachikoma is playing sometime between 8pm and 12pm on Thurs Dec 29 (aka tomorrow/today) at The Butcher Shop located at 26th and Main. He is playing a 12 minute set inna electronic and vocals stylee.
The other artists and exact orientation of artists inside the four-hour time block are undetermined as of this time. Too much noise in the signal.
Please be there to support musicians who cannot afford the entire 15 minutes of fame promised by Andy but instead have to settle for 12. And settle we shall!
.....
slightly later update; here is the official press release. Note time change to NINE PM (9)
official announcement -
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 29th, 9 pm, $5-10 sliding scale
HIDDEN AGENDA 2010 cabaret
at the Butchershop Floor (195 E. 26th Ave @ Main, www.butchershop.ca)
"An evening of performance and works by emerging local artists.
Seriously." Hosted by Ehren Salazar.
Featuring Tachikoma, Birdband, da Bjork-Man, Taz Van Rassel, EC Moffat,
at
least one Heartfelt Apology and a mess of special guests TBA. Quite
possibly your last chance to catch live music at this particular
Butchershop.
It certainly SEEMS like I have a show tomorrow. And I'm all ready for it. But is the show ready?
It's supposed to be at the Butcher Shop at 26th and Main, tomorrow, Dec 29, in the evening sometime. But if it is on, this will be the last show at the Butcher Shop ---- the cdn govt is cracking down on legal businesses, as the Globe and Mail reports ---- and I can't get in touch with Rowan, the organizer, by email or phone.... butchershop's phone line is disconnected it seems....
BUT!
I hope it's still on!!
So come!!
if you want more info, call the Tachikoma Hotline at 778 322 0173, anytime today or tomorrow, and i'll give you the most up-to-date information. Engage Tachikoma Special Internet.....
I got a few live shows planned in the coming days. Some are confirmed, some are pending.... but the status of all of them will be constantly updated during the days to come, on this here blog.
DECEMBER 29 / 2005
Tachikoma is performing live at The Butcher Shop. Rumor has it that this will be the LAST show at the Butcher....
DECEMBER 31 / 2005
Tachikoma is performing live at an early show headed by Rusty in connection with Boom City Bull, an up-and-coming comic. This show will be the launch of the comic, and will finish in time to let you get to any New Year's parties you have in mind.
JANUARY 21 / 2006
Tachikoma is curating Tachikoma Night at Blim, featuring both The Boats and [710W3] from this ol' bloglabel.
FEBRUARY ? / 2006
Tachikoma is performing a short set as part of Signal And Noise 2006 at Video-In.
The Geofront let me down. The lack of a buzzer prevented a potential studio jammer (The Boat) from making it to our last practice before Z-mas. Damn. In the new year, shit is gonna be more organized.
Another extra-long Tachikoma multi-song live session is laminated in digital audio for your listening pleasure. This track is a perfect one to drop right now, because it delivers all the post-broken-beat drum programming that the TriggerFinger makes possible in the Geofront. This recording was produced by Tachikoma using an Mp3 player loaded with old Tachikoma tracks and filtered by an Alesis AirFX for the backing tracks, and The Boats' SP-303 sampler for the unquantized drums.
"The two-fingered drum set" is what Kid Acne called it. Really, there's nothing like the feel of an audio photo of an antique snare at your fingertips.......
This'll be a text-only post, just to report that the Geofront recieved upgrades of Sirius Satellite Radio content feed as well as an M-Audio "Trigger Finger." 24-7 commodore drum machine programming!
Supreme, Suprema and that stupid dog with the telepathic speakers on his collar reinforce some gender roles in this omake image from Awesome Universe Handbook volume 1.
[Some people have commented on all the comic-related images from the blog in the last couple days. I'm just throwing them in to display examples of visual art I like, and to document the JPGs that pass in front of my eye-hole every day. I read so much damn manga on the conpyutaa..... ]
I got a free 2.0 megapixel 2nd-hand digital camera. Get get get!!!!!! Now I can blog it up future-style..... no more daguerrotypes and woodblock engravings for me!!!
Now all our images won't have to just be screenshots from the Geofront!
Get!
November has come, and gone.... and produced this track.
I heard this track in November, freezing my ass off outside the Tachikoma show at Video-In. I remember noticing at the time that it was highly polished, and that the man-machine called [710W3] had obviously devoted a large part of his RAM to processing the midi involved. Before the track was over, I declared my respect for the track to the man-machine, but he only said, in that metallic vocoder voice of his; "Oh man, you didn't even even hear the END.... that's the GOOD part...."
Then he crawled off to quietly self-destruct in the rain.
I was just re-re-reading Penguin Brothers, a classic misanthropic manga. This scene is a brilliant one, although it looks a little cliched out of context.... as if we couldn't guess who was behind that mask!!!
(Isshiki-kun de sho ka, ne.....?)
Also did you know you can click on the photo to see it much bigger? True story.
Not the regular kind of symbolism, but the actual literary movement kind. This is an example of what I would call Symbolist art. It's from "Superman meets Swamp Thing", written by Moore, naturellement. It's symbolist because there is no beast with two huge fangs that appears in the book; rather, this image just seems to be a titanic hallucination in Superman's mind....
.... oh, didn't I tell you? I'm subjecting comic book images to graphical analysis... it's the latest trend....
Tachikoma used to live in a town called Sanda in Hyogo-ken, Japan. This song is a literal translation of the town's name; "Three Rice Fields." Please note that this track represents the highest evolution of the form of guitar playing that I developed and named "granular guitar." That is to say - all the guitar sounds here are "natural," not "processed." Organic granular synthesis... you don't see that every day.
Unless you're at the beach.
Well, the show went pretty well, I have to say. For me it was a test of the Tachikoma Live Performance hardware, and it pulled through adequately, except that I was running out of singing-ability by the end of the show. It was quite minimal, the hardware was: just vox, MP3player, and AirFX.
Some people were like, "oh i wish I coulda come but it was so late, and you were playing for such a short time..." ... 'tis true, verily; but I don't care, and I wanna say to them, "you missed out, especially since all the OTHER musicians were so much more amazing..." and they really were...... especially the imaginary landscapes of toys that don't exist, that was cool..... in fact, any musicians from the VideoBlim show, if you wanna email me, if we talked about that, my email address is bandrejectfilter@yahoo.com ...
Perhaps the most important decision made after the show was to activate Tachikoma Live: Vampire Edition. (Which explains the photo.) This is really just a working title but most of my friends know what it means; that there is a future kind of Tachikoma show to come that is identical to the last one, except that all the music is spooky gothic music and I am dressed in black and tossing roses about and glowering at people..... true story.
No, seriously, it's a true story....
Get psyched for the Tachikoma show tonight! Featuring new and old material.... Original Tachikoma data and errors.... details below.....
