« vocal synth… appearing soon + interview | Home | vocal synth, free mp3 track, etc. »

post-SXSW post

I experienced so much good music in Austin the last couple of weeks.  My favorites were all from the classical / experimental / electronic realms.   Plus I got to meet a number of really interesting people.

personal faves

• So Percussion performing Steve Reich’s Mallet Quartet, with Mr. Reich in attendance for a post-concert Q&A.
• MURAL creative improv by Norwegians Ingar Zach and Kim Myhr, with Jim Denley (Australia) on woodwinds.
• Ellen Fullman’s Long String Instrument in the historic Seaholm Power Plant, with Travis Weller and Nick Hennies on the ‘box bows’.  I am kicking myself for not bringing a camera to this rarely-opened space.  The audience was seated in the turbine hall, beneath an enormous overhead crane running the length of the hall, its ominous, rusty 75-ton hoist hook dangling above our heads, and the concrete floor interrupted by huge eccentrically shaped holes once occupied by turbines, offering a spooky view downward thru several levels of subfloor to pools of dark water.
• Arc Attack.  These guys keep adding more crazy to the show, the coils are 6 feet tall now and the MC donned a full metal mesh bodysuit and danced between the coils, catching 500kV bolts of lightning modulated to play synth leads instead of thunder.  Craig Newswanger’s robotic drum kit really jams.
• AMODA laptop battle  3-minute sets judged by a panel and audience response in a 3-round elimination format.  I really liked the sounds from Ikipr, Mysterious H, and Cygnus.  Blixaboy won the judges and crowd with a funky approach, then shifted into minimal mode when encore time arrived.  Talking with some of the competitors afterward, it seems like you need to bring enough pieces prepared in advance to take you thru the final round.  One artist admitted to just playing a .wav file after making it thru several rounds.  Its the kind of thing laptop critics will jump on, but in fact it turns out that the audience isn’t oblivious to the difference between merely pressing play and a performance with live elements.
• DataPop 3.0 international chiptune showcase… crowd surfing to nintendo music, who would have thunk.  My man Mysterious H made the front cover of the newspaper
• SURVIVE orchestrated synthadelic slowjams… must see Austin 4-piece
• TENSE EBM from Houston TX…  awesome live show at Awthumfetht V, everybody in the place was up and moving
• Loud Objects … unclassifiable 1-bit noise art circuits assembled live with hot solder.  It was cool seeing Kunal and Tristan in Austin… we’ll see you soon at Bent Festival

Bodytronix (me + erich) played 4 gigs.  Here’s video.  You can hear the SP0256 vocal synthesizer starting at 1:05… The audio is a blend of a board tape (cassette) and the on-camera mic.  Our friends Tommyboy and VidKidz rocked on video projections.