Cruftworld Issue #7

Available for your downloading and viewing pleasure is The First Cruftworld Zine Release.
(In Medias Res --- we're starting with Issue #7).

This is the result of my musings on a strange topic: what if, instead of trying to create personas to record music under and get reviewed in various music zines, I created my own zine as a fictional construct which contained all my various pseudonyms and recording projects?

Long question, boring answer. Another way of saying this would be: what if we viewed a city's music scene as a single MMORPG server, and all the bands interacted like Warcraft guilds?

Either way, I came up with the cruftworld project. This world is composed entirely of bands that I myself create all the music for, or, in a few cases, includes my friends' bands. All the listings of gigs and everything is fictional. I feel it's necessary to explain this in the beginning because I don't want to defame anyone's reputation.

Lots of the bars, bands and personalities are inspired by or parodies of corresponding places and people in Vancouver's music scene or the Pitchfork-influenced world indie scene in general. Some references will be more obvious than others.

I've invested quite a lot of time into the creation of this world and have recently purchased a metric ton of music gear to realize the tunes. The PDFs will be accompanied by MP3 available for download from this site, beginning shortly. If you followed my remake of Public House's "Remains of the Lost Amphibians" cassette, you should be able to understand the related review in this PDF.

Anyway this is the long intro by the dungeon master at the beginning of the game before the first yellow Cheeto stains have been rubbed on the first Clix model. From now on, everything else will be in character and no more fourth-wall breaking.

Thanks to [710w3] for his entirely analog layout work.
And stay tuned to this location for more Cruft content.

Cruftworld #4: Fifties

Here's the last installment from the original Public House cassette. This was a total throwaway song that we just recorded because we had extra time left over. It was written by me as a faux-sellout joke song. But in the end it turned out to be the most popular song from the tape, and my friends from the time can even remember the (deep, meaningful) lyrics.

However, it has a certain charm. I was happy to get the chance to play a solo for this one --- as I recall, I played it on a borrowed Japanese Telecaster. And as for my updated version, I've thrown in a harmony line in the chorus that I can't believe never made it into the original.

Anyway, I got no time to go into more detail because I'm moving to China tomorrow. But I will say that this cruftworld series is definitely going to continue in 2008 "if the good lord's willin', and the crick don't rise."


Listen to the original Public House Recording of Fifties - 2 MB

Listen to the 2007 version of Fifties - 2.3 MB

Cruftworld #3: Desert

This is my favorite remake so far.

The story behind this track is quite easy for me to remember --- at some point, during a very early Public House rehearsal, I went to the bathroom and wrote this song... probably because I was getting the idea for it but couldn't write it all down in the room with the boys jamming.

It's built around a somewhat unusual mode, ultra depressing lyrics (I was 16), and a simplistic song style. But I still like it. The violin seems to fit well and Jay's drumbeat at the end still sounds cool to me. Plus the dynamics are good.

As for my new version, I had no problems departing heavily from the original Public House version. It's got a lot of noodling, a cool keyboard sound from my DX7 (which I had to sell to my buddy Lars), whispered parts, acoustic guitar, weird breakdowns... listen for yourself. I dig it. I'm in the desert.

Listen to the original Public House Recording of Desert - 4.1 MB

Listen to the 2007 version of Desert - 6.9 MB

Cruftworld #2: Far Far Away

The cruftworld project, my attempt to create an entirely fictional music scene, is well under way. Here's another musical installment for your sampling pleasure.

As with our previous release, there's two versions of the same song: the original one from 1994, and my new version from this year.

I really like the old version. It begins with a weird effect which is Public House's violist, Geoff Deere, playing sliding harmonics on his instrument, which is being processed by a combination of delay and phasing. Eventually the band crashes into the song, which is a simple verse-chorus-wash-rinse-repeat structure. If you listen closely during the chorus, you can actually hear [710w3]'s first recorded appearance: I forced the rest of the guys in the band to let him sing backup on this track, and I think it worked out pretty well. My favorite part of the old version is Chris Bekkers' guitar augmentation which appears around the beginning of the third verse. My least favorite part is the lyrics, which I wrote, which seem to be my tangled recollection of creepy kids' book "Bridge to Terabithia" mixed with a healthy dose of teenaged sexual frustration.

The new version here is quite similar. Of course I'm lacking the viola, so I just started off with the bassline, and put a bit of phaser on my rhythm guitar track. And as usual, I multitracked the vocals heavily, and laid some breaks in the background since I haven't got a drum kit. It's surprising how well our old Public House songs work with a classic break instead of a live drummer --- I don't think the loops sound as 'fake' or 'computery' as they could. And rather than trying to compete with Bekks in the lead guitar department, I just added some noodling for flavor. Enjoy.


Listen to the original Public House Recording of Far Far Away- 5.1 MB

Listen to the 2007 version of Far Far Away - 6.3 MB

Cruftworld #1: People

A new project is underway here at Blipsandifs. It's my little attempt at building a role-playing game where all the characters are bands...

It's a bit hard to explain in detail, and I'll drop more hints later. But it's starting off with me preparing cover versions of the cassettes my highschool band recorded back in the nineties.

I was in a band called Public House, and our first cassette was called Remains of the Lost Amphibians (a title selected randomly from the cover of a National Geographic).

Our lineup was:

Wayne Taylor: Vocals, rhythm guitar
Chris Bekkers: Lead guitar
Geoff Deere: Viola, mandolin, backup vocals, keyboards
Jay Lewis: Drums, percussion
Frank Henville: Bass, keyboards, backup vocals

(and 710W3 from blipsandifs even sang backup vox on one recorded track)

As an example of what we sounded like, here's the original version of the song "People," written by Wayne Taylor, and recorded in 1994.

Listen to the original Public House Recording of People - 3.5 MB

And here's my updated version, made on a computer, recorded mostly live (except for the drums)


Listen to the 2007 version of People - 5.8 MB

Thanks to 710W3 for production assistance and cover design.

Please stay tuned for more crufty goodness from me.

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

Still Buzzed.

Another review hits the web. I like this one too. I don't remember describing our music as "illbient," but, it's cool.

Growing Buzz.

Please check out the first review of Signalform + Tachikoma that I could find. Not glowing, but not particularly critical either, and quite a good read!

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

Basement Tapes from Brett

My good friend, Brett Gaylor, is working on a feature film. I think that we here at Blips and Ifs have a strong siding in this agument his film is based upon. Please check it out, and contribute even! The feature film is collaboration, united creation, remixing and the mashing up. Brett may be fascilitating the creation of a feature film, but the world is making it. Join in...

http://opensourcecinema.org/

Audio Field Test #8

Super Flat Origami:

This is more of a public note to myself then anything...I just like the thought of it. I was pondering in a day dream what it might be like to have software that could show you how to fold origami. Draw in a form and concept and it would unwrap it and show you how to fold it out of paper. My seach online provided fruitless. Seems this will have to become some form of Audio Toy and I'll have to make one. I can imagine a sort of software like Google's Sketch up, but somehow you wouldn't have to actually draw the object in 3D...just give an impression and the computer would do the rest by guessing or something. I'd imagine the software wouldn't be very good and a randomize or variance button would be good. Click it and it alters the design slightly, plus at anytime the model could be pulled and formed by the user. Again, I'm just thinking out loud here...


The following is an excerpt from "The Mathematics of Paper Folding:
An Interview with Robert Lang" By Margaret Wertheim

"MW: Is there a limit to the complexity of the models you can make with origami?

RL: Mathematically there’s no limit. Theoretically, you can take a finite sheet of paper and you can fold a star shape that has an infinite, arbitrarily large perimeter —10,000 miles, if you like. That shape’s points would have millions of layers in them. So, that’s a problem you can do mathematically but not in practice because, in the real world, paper has a finite thickness and you’re limited in what you can do by the tensile properties of the paper. In the last five to ten years, as people have designed more complex figures, their ability to fold these figures has also been enhanced by improvements in the field of papermaking. So you can now get extremely thin, strong shapes that probably couldn’t have been folded fifteen years ago."

So there you go...Pretty cool thought though eh? You just program in a flaming sword +2 against goblins and VOILA!!! You have your self the foldable blueprints for a flaming sword +2 against goblins. I'm telling you this is gold. You'll see.

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

Ikude: The Compilation

The release of a compilation on Shima Records, which contains tracks by [710W3], Tachikoma, and other Blips contributors, is just around the corner. You can learn more and even check out the album art at Shima's Myspace Blog. The album art is particularly cool... I can't wait to get my hands on this CD!

In other news, the Tachikoma cd is now finally available for ordering. To all my friends who read this blog, if you want to buy a copy, send me an email soon ... I only have 50 ...

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

green and black is all you need.

Ever checked out selfoscillate's information dissemination page?

http://www.selfoscillate.de/

I just love the way it looks.

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

Google Job Opportunities

What an opportunity. I'm sending my resume as I type. Google Copernicus Center is hiring! And the best thing is that it's on the moon. I checked it out on Google Moon and if you zoom in really really close you can see the construction underway! Check it out by zooming into the Appollo 16 landing site (there is a link for you) and then 'travel' Northward a little and you'll see it.

http://moon.google.com/

Now that you've seen the moon site, and understand the intricasies of this post, check out this opportunity for us all to get jobs on the moon! So amazing it's almost unreal. Now is the best time to apply since by the time we'd finish training the shuttle ships will be ready for to carry us home, to our new home anyway. Our new job is on the moon. Swell. I just emailed my resume. Crazy!

http://www.google.ca/jobs/lunar_job.html

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