For Immediate release – 6 October 2009 – San Francisco

Curated by Jeff Owens from Ghostly International, Overlap presents Chris McNamara. Echoes from the Windsor-Detroit techno scene modulate off Lake St. Clair and emerge into the sound forms of “Vague Cities”. McNamara’s muffled beats, gentle harmonies, and light-like shimmering textures envelope you wholly, while creating a space to breathe and be.

Chris McNamara is a Windsor ON. / Ann Arbor-based video artist, writer, DJ, new media instructor, and founding member of Thinkbox (http://thinkbox.ca), a label/collective that currently includes Christopher Bissonnette (Kranky), Steve Roy, Rob Theakston, Bill Van Loo and Mark Laliberte. Chris spent much of the last decade making sounds and moving images for both live performance and for museum and festival settings. He has shown his work in numerous festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Ann Arbor Film Festival and the Independent Film Festival of Boston. His multi-media installations have been exhibited in a number of settings including Toronto, Vancouver, Halifax, Zurich, Berlin and most recently in Plymouth, UK. Chris’ latest projects are nospectacle (a live pa/dj group with Walter Wasacz and Jennifer Paull) in Detroit and Noiseborder – a new music ensemble based in Windsor, ON.

This release marks Overlap and Ghostly International’s first release collaboration. Jeff Owens, Label Manager for Ghostly International, passed along Chris McNamara’s work to Overlap founder Christopher Willits and both agreed it needed to be heard. “Chris’ compositions are precise while patterns slowly emerge and build upon each other to create a rewarding listen to patient ears. It reminds me of snowy Detroit winters or watching a person’s daily experience with public transportation slowed down to a more manageable pace and that everything is going to be ok…,” said Jeff Owens. Overlap.org’s founder, Christopher Willits said, “Chris McNamara’s ‘Vague Cities’ is Overlap’s first curatorial collaboration with another label. A big beautiful welcome to our diverse catalog of media growing at Overlap, Chris McNamara creates the sound feeling of an early morning post-rave bliss.”

Chris McNamara, Vague Cities

Track List

* 01 Trimalchio
* 02 oooohdear
* 03 Sleeping Car/Shunting Yard (formerly titled For Markus)
* 04 et puis
* 05 Subsandtaxis (Markus Guentner rmx)

*Release: http://shop.overlap.org/album/chris-mcnamara-vague-cities
*Album Image: http://ur1.ca/behx
*Cover art by Christopher Willits: http://ur1.ca/bei6
*Chris McNamara Myspace Page: http://ur1.ca/bei4

Overlap Salon, San Francisco – Dia de los Maxos

On 28 October, Overlap.org’s series of Max/MSP/Jitter/Live Salons will continue in a collaborative event with the Bay Area Computer Music Technology Group, hosted by the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. This will be an evening of informal lectures and performances: a brainwave system for the creation of music presented by Jef Stott; Edison making music with Max, Monomes, Live and low-bit samplers; Preshish Moments detailing and performing with his custom hardware controller and Max/MSP system for manipulating audio.

28 October, 7pm – 9pm
Overlap.org and BArCMuT hosted by Gray Area Foundation for the Arts: http://www.gaffta.org/
55 Taylor Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

For more information: connect@overlap.org

About Overlap.org

Overlap.org is a platform for experimental media – releases, events and projects.

Overlap releases experimental music and videos, produces unique events, and provides users with a blog to share experimental media with others. Overlap.org is based in San Francisco and our mission is to grow and support experimental culture locally, and throughout the world. 18 exclusive Overlap releases have featured a vast diversity of audio and visual artists experimenting within the convergence of different genres. 14 different Overlap events, and 8 Overlap Salons have brought people and new ideas together in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, and London.

Overlap was founded by musican/artist Christopher Willits and came to life with the help of Jon Phillips, Kenric McDowell, Louis Rawlins, Lucky BK, Barry Threw, Vlad Spears, Simon Hampson, Ryan Kleeman, and other devoted artists.

For more information, please visit: http://overlap.org

Press Contact

* Sponsoring Organization: Overlap.org
* Contact: Jon Phillips
* Contact email: info@overlap.org
* Phone (USA): +1 510-499-0894
* Website: http://overlap.org
* Press Kit: http://overlap.org/about
* Press Release: http://ur1.ca/d2mi

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 Oooohdear from Chris McNamara's : Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (338)

OUT NOW on San Francisco based label TwoCircles!

Stolen Nature adeptly bridges the synthetic/organic abyss with uniquely composed granular textures, aleatoric rhythmic patterns and modal jazz structures. The release’s arcane theme is unfalteringly cohesive and conceptual from beginning to end. Miller’s compositional sensibility on Stolen Nature has reconciled the poles of unadulterated, native sounds and processed, algorithmic music. These two adverse ideas are adroitly synthesized into a hybrid entity that lives and breathes on its own. The stochastic electronics laden deep in Stolen Nature’s structure seem to have a sentient quality that hauntingly reflects recent developments in the field of artificial intelligence. The intricate machinations featured on Stolen Nature are inclined to deep personal sentiments and emotion. Cullen’s application of traditional instruments takes the antiquated oral tradition and fuses it into a futuristic context.

http://www.twocirclesrecords.com

Here is the phonetic breakdown of a moment in the present; it’s a literal expression of the traces we constantly leave ‘meanwhile.’ These traces are reminiscent of colorful and occasionally dirty stains. Their positioning in space can be really disorderly; they’re not always completely devoid of form, but if they do possess some kind of collective composition, it’s due entirely to circumstance.
The overall impression that reveals itself, as a result, to the gaze of a chance bystander may have some kind of sense, but there’s no real need to go looking for it.

01) Cll th Abmlnc m Bd
02) Rush Therapy
03) Mahjong
04) Birdie’s Life
05) Alzheimer Counter
06) Mildret, the Tea-Potesse
07) Indeed
08) Ice Tea Department
09) Sasha’s Chopped Piano
10) Humanoid Basketball
11) Copymarket Hyperwriter
12) Flying Worm
13) Keine Mautstrassen
14) Olympic Sportkids
15) Heavy Snowfall Cyclists
16) Müsli and Cigarettes
17) T th Pschtrc Clnc

Direct links:
Archive.org (VBR, .zip)
Heavy Mental (256 kbps, .rar)

Yellowhead — Mealwine at Last.fm

The .microsound community recently embarked on a new project to honor the life of writer David Foster Wallace, known widely for his intelligently sprawling novel Infinite Jest.

Instructions were to take one of the films attributed to the protagonist’s father and create a soundtrack. I was attracted to the surrealism in the description of Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators and almost immediately had an image of what the film would be like.

Not having read this novel yet, the source of my inspiration was the description itself:

“Baby Pictures Of Famous Dictators” – Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad. Poor Yorick Entertainment Unlimited. Documentary or uncredited cast w/ narrator P.A. Heaven; 16 mm; 45 minutes; black and white; sound. Children and adolescents play a nearly incomprehnsible nuclear strategy game with tennis equipment against a real or holographic (?) backdrop of sabotaged ATHSCME 1900 atmospheric displacement towers exploding and toppling during the New New England Chemical Emergency of Y.W. CELLULOID (UNRELEASED)

I took 45 minutes as my guiding point and imagined the film was a tableau, a “moving still life” of sorts. It’s a 45 minute long game, a slow motion still life of a disaster reflected in the childsplay of fooling around with physics.

We see a setting that never changes, of innocent children (we assume the same as in the pictures referenced by the title) against a backdrop that is ever changing, sharing an appetite for control. They become the embodiment of the Famous Dictators, playing games, like children, with adult toys of power and war.

A chemical emergency could imply this is related to nuclear power or physics. Are the children playing a game that caused the emergency? Are they blissfully unaware? Or are they working to solve the problem by a series of complex nuclear games? It’s unclear if we will ever know.

The soundtrack is not a reflection of the action seen onscreen, but rather the literal voice of each proper name. As their structures compost, weaving as they play the game, new forms are illuminated.

These nine names were used to drive various parameters specific to each person’s voice, guiding things like frequency, filters, delay effects and envelope (in each case, the longest, most familiar version of the English proper name was used):

• Adolf Hitler
• Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin
• Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini
• Mao Zedong
• Ho Chi Minh
• Francisco Franco Bahamonde
• Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz
• Saddam Hussein
• Tojo Hideki

The analysis of the text file containing the names was done with perl, which wrote out various ChucK files. The entire piece is one large ChucK session recorded to a file, then normalized.

When I started the piece was a lot less “bright” than it ultimately became, but in a strange way I feel like it took on its own character, and mourns both the tragedy of these dictators and the loss of DFW.

The player on the project page is a great way to listen to the soundtracks everyone has done, and allows for direct downloads of the works.

Originally from Infinite Jest Project @ .microsound

I’m very happy to announce the release of a project I did this summer called Tekuchesti, (a transliteration of текучести, which is a Russian word meaning “fluidity”), a piece in shuffle time for listeners and improvisers.

Download the entire work, and remember to listen on shuffle. Weird request you say? Read the liner notes below for more detail…

Please also visit the release page at Constanta and check out the other artists on this new boutique netlabel, which features some unique approaches to the microsound/glitch/experimental/drone genres; beauty through subtlety and simplicity. I personally enjoy op.cit.’s and To4ka.Dna’s most recent releases.

Here is my description and instructions for performance (these notes are also available in Russian through Constanta):

In tectonics, slices of the earth can be reduced bit by bit to their constituents, all in motion consistent with the plate. Below these fractured mantle pieces is a thick world of geology: elemental chemical reactions, intense temperature changes, varying strata of materials. There may be violent upheaval or capitulation of forces, or just still and silent veins of metal. If we could travel as a massless beings through the earth to the antipodal, each layer of Hell opens not a Dantean dream, but a surreal tour of random pockets describing the origin of the solar system.

Tekuchesti represents “fluidity” in physics, describing instability or fluid states. The piece consists of constructions mostly taken from free electro-acoustic improvisations, first recorded to create large elemental plates of experience, and secondly edited and combined into subdivisions of space. There were no structural or material limitations placed on the recording or editing of the improvisations, they simply happened.

Just as there are myriad structures and surprise events, there are the lack of these events, represented by the isochrons; dating scatterplots of history, constructions made from the lack of material to represent that which has passed on. The sonic architecture of each isochron in this piece is taken from relationships found in the five Platonic (or “perfect”) solids, found everywhere in nature, above and below the crust.

This piece is meant to be played in random order, where the slices intermingle anew each time to create an emergent form. Playing it in order will reveal some of the underlying structure, and is a perfectly acceptable way of listening – the shapes of the plates become much more clear, but it is an altogether different listening experience. Improvisers are encouraged to play along as well, but if done in a live context, it must be played on shuffle, as this will give the improvisers less expectation of what sounds will appear.

The work also ties in an immediate tectonic experience: I live only 10 miles from the epicenter of the 5.4 magnitude earthquake which hit the LA area on July 29, just shortly before the album was finalized. It also represents the “solid ground” – both as shared vision and literal Earth – between me and the constanta-label.ru headquarters in Perm, Russia.

Constanta on the web: http://constanta-label.ru
Constanta on myspace: http://www.myspace.com/constantalabel

Originally from Craque: “Tekuchesti” out now on Constanta

In 2001 the debut 12″ for Craque titled Trolling for Olives EP was released on Metatron Press, and now it’s available for free on last.fm.

All five tracks are both streamable and downloadable, I figured I’d do them all since the original is still available for purchase on vinyl and it’s got some dope tracks!

And I don’t know how many of my fans actually read this, but here’s the first hint that you can expect several new releases coming up in the coming months. At least three different labels will be hosting new Craque albums, so keep yer ears open!

Originally from Craque: “Trolling for Olives” now free download

here’s a little comic from plankton about the creation of 15yr petting zoo from his blog double date collective.

Originally from planktizzle