Superflat Single #72 / [710W3]

A new instrument has been lent to Moil Studios, a beautiful, huge, Hammond Organ. Check out Moil ink for a slightly more detailed description and a photo of the organ. On and off over the last week [710W3] has been sitting down at the keys, flipping switches and occasionally even reading the manual. Although no stranger to the keyboard, this multi-faceted dual keyboard with footpedals, string section and drum machine adds a whole new level to playing (not to mention sound!). This live unedited recording is a lengthy test pilot for a possible series of releases currently entitled: [710W3] vs. the Commodore

Listen to blipsandifs072.mp3 - 6.7 MB

Cruftworld #7: Cruftworld Theme Song

Anoraks UK, previously known as Tricot, turn in a crunchy instrumental number that has risen to become the cruftworld theme song. Unlike a lot of tracks in Cruftworld, this one is instrumental. And in a lot of ways, it's not really representative of the project as a whole, since it starts out so electronic.
But by the time the end rolls around, I hope you'll see why this track became the theme. It's about transition, about handing the reins over from a computer to a man. There are washes of distorted Mellotron here blending in with the naturally distorted guitar and bass. Dive in.

Listen to Cruftworld #7: Cruftworld Theme Song. - 4.4 MB

Superflat Single #71 / [710W3]

Between the Cruft we bring you the latest Superflat Single, just another form of cruft really. This is from the remains of Groundhogsday 2008. The thirteenth one by my books. This single was found deep in the rodents hole after the little beast ran scared from it's shadow and burried itself for another few weeks...or months (it's hard to tell in this city). Curse that Groundhog, my shoes are still wet.

Listen to blipsandifs071.mp3 - 3.8 MB

Superflat Single #70 / Kanade

Here's a track from us to you ... from our good friend in Japan, KANADE.

Haven't heard from us for a while? Well, I was in CANADA-EH for extensive consultations with d-boats and e-moil. We enjoyed the pleasures of a bachelor's garage, and also had a party when we got copies of the new ikude compilation from shima records in the UK, which has tracks by tachikoma and [710w3] on it ... and it's really a brilliant cd!! you must hear it! or at least download it from iTunes!

But back to the single at hand. This tune is a new version of "ES" from the latest CD by KANADE. He re-constituted material of a Japanese traditional musical instrument of "ES" in PRO TOOLS LE. He added a synthesizer sound and it was completed. "ES" means "Embryonic Stem cell".

Kanade's Equipment:

(The K in Kanade stands for KORG apparently!)

• KORG RADIAS


• KORG MS2000


• KORG MS2000R


• KORG microKORG


• KORG EA-1


• KORG ER-1


• KORG MONO/POLY


• KORG miniKORG


• ROLAND M-VS1


• YAMAHA SY-77


• AKAI S300XL


• CASIO FZ-1


• Digidesign PRO TOOLS LE


• Steinberg NUENDO


• Steinberg CubaseVST5/32

Listen to blipsandifs070.mp3 - 5.5 MB

Superflat Single #69 / The Drunken Boats

This is a reward for all our longterm fans who've been tuning in to Blips and Ifs for months. The last few months have been tough on all of us. It must be the summer. Our music is too cold and clinical to make when it's hot. We can make it in the winter but now it's 39 degrees C where I am, I just can't whip out an ice cold digital pad and shove it in a song. It melts too quickly.

We haven't given up. It's just that our music comes in waves. And to prove it, another wave is starting now. The D-Boats have been in the lab again, making music on borrowed equipment, grafting organic material and stem cells onto an old 505 to make it sound more lifelike. Last I heard, the 505 achieved sentience, hacked an iPhone and transferred its godlike consciousness into the internet, where it hangs out at sleazy bars trying to pick up underdeveloped audiotoys. This is the music they're playing in those bars.


Listen to blipsandifs069.mp3 - 3.7 MB

Superflat Single #68 / Tachikoma

Tachikoma and I were hanging out at Jona's Cafe the other day and I sort of mentioned a particular example I often refer to in my presentations. The following is an incomplete excerpt from my Introduction to Graphics Presentation.

"There are two types of graphics that computers use: Raster (also known as Bitmaps) and Vector graphics. Digital photos, scans and many web graphics are Raster. Common Raster
formats are JPG, TIFF and GIF. These graphics have a resolution, a grid of pixels (picture elements). Images printed from websites will either not look as good, or as big as they do onscreen. The other kind of graphics are shapes defined by mathematical formulas. Vector graphics can be resized without ever loosing quality of line, unlike Raster graphics. True vectors don't ever get jagged, blocky or pixelated. They output at the best of the ability of the device they are being displayed or printed on. Common Vector viewers include Flash Player and Adobe's Acrobat Reader. A photo-realistic vector graphic is possible, but would take a long time to draw, or are would be so complex making it inifficient compared to a Raster of equivilent detail. So in the end, Raster graphics can only be enlarged a certain amount before pixels or a blurring effect occurs, but vectors images could be shrunk down to the size of a postage stamp and then enlarged and burnt into the surface of the moon, with a laser, without any quality loss."

Tachikoma got me thinking about a re-writable Moon surface, like a re-writable CD that can be erased and then drawn on again. I mentioned it at Jona's and Tachikoma wrote this song that night. It's a new favorite of mine. Like last weeks release it's very Tachikoma sounding, his classic pads massaging the anvil, the subdued clicks and beats keeping the hammer going and the stirup being driven to dreamtown with the tame crazy. There is so much happy in this song. Listen to it and then draw an image to be burnt on the moon and send it to blipsandifs@blipsandifs.com.


Listen to blipsandifs068.mp3 - 3.7 MB

Superflat Single #67 / Tachikoma

[710w3] correctly identified this track upon first listen, hope you will too.

I scrounged up my old sample CD that I made back in Jan. 2003, when I was living in the Banana House in Osaka, just beginning the Tachikoma project and making my first disc, "transients and artifacts." To anyone who heard that CD (or even my first disc on Shima which has some tracks from it), this song will be immediately recognizeable. I just wanted to make a song about being myself, using samples I made myself, and it ended up sounding like me. No surprise.

Listen to blipsandifs067.mp3 - 4.2 MB

Superflat Single #66 / Japanese Pop Songs

[710W3] used to look at this shoe a lot. It has a meaning. It means Class of '07, or '97, depending on how you look at it. The poignant isolation of this shoe in a barren tree greyscape is a perfect illustration of the Japanese aesthetic concept of mono no aware, or the impermanence of objects.

Japanese Pop Songs Ride Your Bike.

Listen to blipsandifs066.mp3 - 2.5 MB

Superflat Single #65 / Japanese Pop Songs

Theboats is a member of a collaborative street gang called Japanese Pop Songs. Their strictest rule is that their songs are not over two minutes. If you listen to them for just 3 seconds, you can be an honorary member. They have more myspace friends than you, though, and they already have a cowbell player. And they've been on CBC Radio 3. What more do you want? Geez.

Listen to blipsandifs065.mp3 - 2.5 MB

Superflat Single #64 / ikude

My girlfriend and I have a wierd musical project. We're making ambient music together, like, new age music which will relax you and make your qi become more malleable. It's music to give massages by. It's soft and pliable and generally pleasant to the ear, or it's supposed to be I guess. And the project is named "ikude," after a cool compilation CD that is coming out soon.

This song's the first completed one, made in my little kitchen-studio, as you can see from the cover art. This is the ideal song for stressed out people who are, let's say, working on creating someone's video-upload competition website while simultaneously being the head of a family and also running tech support for the world's first bloglabel and additionally shouldering the responisibilty of being the governor of Boomcity.

If you know anyone like that, buy them a beer and make them listen to this song.

Listen to blipsandifs064.mp3 - 6 MB

Superflat Single #63 / nakao::::

Another new blipsandifs poster has been recruited! His name is nakao:::: and he's from Japan --- his lastest track is posted here. Mostly made with software, this track reminds me a lot of the shimmering, rhythmic arpeggios of N. Takemura and carpark records artists. At first listen some people are gonna call this a "cold, digital" sounding track, but actually I suspect the sample source is something organic. A good way to think of this track is flipping through an animation flipbook at about 1/3rd the regular speed. Each picture stands alone, but the development from frame to frame is revealed.... the eye is no longer fooled.... it's audio photography....

This track is how a CD player sees music.

Listen to blipsandifs063.mp3 - 5.1 MB

Superflat Single #62 / Chez Jonesy

I'd like to introduce a new track by a new Blips and Ifs artist: Separation Anxiety by Chez Jonesy. Once a member of seminal Vancity smash-rock band The Impossible Machine, Jonesy has since begun his own side project, and apparently his own restaurant too. We hope to get more tracks by Mr. Jonesy up here soon, but if you just can't wait, and you have a hankering for Britney covers, you can check out his homepage. His sound, well, it's a little hard for me to describe, because I'm more used to listening to music that was created by heliotropic plants hooked up to trigger general midi synths. But I guess I could call it a mix of blips-like beats and virtual synths with a healthy, digestible serving of granola political activism. Better you just listen for yourself. Please welcome, all the way from the other side of the internet .... Chez Jonesy!

Listen to blipsandifs062.mp3 - 3.6 MB

Superflat Single #61 / Tachikoma vs. Slogic

The real collaboration efforts of Blips and Ifs are only really starting to take shape now.

This track, for example, is based on some analog synth loops created and emailed to me by slogic, from the UK. I added some crusty Casio drum samples and other pads and echoes and dubbed it down a bit. I imagine that this track is kinda what it would be like if slogic and I ever met in person ... especially the last minute ... it dissolves in a kind of haze. Heh.

The cover art for this single is another example of extensive collaboration. It's from a comic book, Outnumbered, released by our buddies at Critical Hit Comics. The book features graphical data input from [710W3] and the Boats too.

Little of this is obvious if I don't tell you. I could have made the track and cover by myself, but I didn't. Just wanna peel back the veneer and show all the strange gears and conveyor belts that are behind the blipping, iffing machine.




Listen to blipsandifs061.mp3 - 4.2 MB

Superflat Single #60 / [710W3]

The central catalysts for this track was the vocal sample from a local choir (from over 30 years ago), the plucked instrument and the glitches. All of these sounds I chose because they were recorded here in Vancouver.

The untimely interruption about a minute into the song is an audio photo of 1000 semi-trucks on strike from a few years back. They backed up Clark Street for hours wailing on their horns driving at 2 km per hour. The original audio sample is quite beautiful. Each of the horns produced different notes and some even had melodic custom horns. The cacophony went on and on while all I wanted to do was record music. Inadvertently, I was.

Listen to blipsandifs060.mp3 - 3.0 MB

Superflat Single #59 / [710W3]

"I offered you the world, but you only want America."

You understand that, right? 'Granola' is the name of this genre. I don't know if anyone other than [710W3] uses this name for this. But it says a lot. Granola music is hard to chew but great for the digestion, I find. It's also enviromentally friendly. It's the kind of music you'd take with you if you were gonna climb a tree and live there so that the loggers couldn't cut it down. Or, if you were, say, teaching at a film school on Galiano and you spent all your money on smokes and had no food but you were stuck on the island for the weekend recording your album, you'd live offa granola. [710W3] can't offer you America, but all the Galiano he can afford is yours.

Listen to blipsandifs059.mp3 - 1.7 MB

Superflat Single #58 / Dub Bear

There's not much to say about this ultra-long rusty old dub from Dub Bear. The cover goes a long way. And the riddim goes a long way.

This one is a good one for riding on a bus. Or performing a repetitive activity. It's not exactly a video game soundtrack, but it's got some low-grade loops in there.

The game never over. Sometimes you think the game over but actually you incorrect.




Listen to blipsandifs058.mp3 - 10 MB

Superflat Single #57 / Tachikoma

It's been a long week here, a week off --- because of Chinese New Year. I've spent most of the time cranking out a ton of tracks like this one. This one's weird, even for me... for some reason I became obsessed w/ Casio "orchestral hit" samples but I just couldn't find a song of mine that they worked well in. So I ended up building a whole track around the orchestral hits. When I listen to it now, they don't even sound so prominent but they're there.

This has been a good week for me and this track feels like a kind of celebration, letting me strip back those pretentious 14th and 15th bits and getting down to the real raw sounds in the 6- or 7-bit range. The aw shit, quick draw mcgraw shit.

Listen to blipsandifs057.mp3 - 5.5 MB

Superflat Single #56 / Self Oscillate

Selfoscillate punches it up a notch this week.

His track here is mostly based on algorithmic sound generation, and the sound sources have been driven by fractal equations. So rather than playing synths by hand himself, he sent equations to trigger oscillators --- and if he'd sent those same equations to trigger random graphic generators, they'd've turned out looking like fractals.

We're extremely glad to have Selfosc trigger another single for us here, and the result, no matter what the math behind it, is intense: sprinkly little arcs of confetti and spectrum analysis flitter across your eardrums in this track. It's kinda like smoking a calculator.

Listen to blipsandifs056.mp3 - 5.1 MB

Superflat Single #55 / Dub Bear

This one goes on for a while. Most of my Tachikoma singles are short and digitally sweet. Dub Bear, unlike me, seems to enjoy getting his money's worth out of his Alesis Midiverb. I mean, why is he still using that thing?

Only he knows the answer. When I listen to this track, I try to pay attention, i really do. But then the track just keeps on looping over and over and you get lost in it. Dub Bear is obsessed with the filter amplifier and tweaks it incessantly, meaning that every time that analog skank comes back, it always decays differently.

I don't know why this guy can't compress his tracks down to a manageable length. Hell, I don't even know why he named it "crocodiles." Maybe you should just listen to it and figure it out for yourself.

Listen to blipsandifs055.mp3 - 9.2 MB

Superflat Single #54 / Tachikoma

If you compare the earliest Tachikoma tracks (from 2003 --- I consider the first album to be "transients and artifacts") to the ones from now, there's one key difference, that I've noticed, anyway. The drums.

The original drum programming uses many sounds like clicks and errors, which loop in a sort of minimalistic way, and sound quite thin since they're so short. Also, there're a lot of high-pitched microsound-like tones. I was cutting my own clicks at the time and building my own drum libraries. I'd also incorporate samples from old, silly-sounding drum machines like the Korg MiniPops.

But now I've found that my drums sound far more like gameboy tones. For most of them, they don't actually come from my gameboy, but from Casio drum machines or Commodore64 samples, and are bit-reduced by distortion modules to give them an early NES-like flavor. A key element to the Tachikoma sound is a tempo-synched, random LFO modulating the sample rate (or sometimes the bit rate) of that distortion model.

Classic example: this track. Actually, I guess by noticing it and naming it as something I do, I should really change it. And anyway, this track's about more than just sampling a gameboy; it's about living inside a gameboy made of clear amber. And that's where I do live.

Listen to blipsandifs054.mp3 - 5 MB