raudio launched

october 10, 2004.

Last thursday, october 7th around noon, in a sunny Amsterdam, in front of the RAI building (the International Conference and Congress Center), we quietly launched Raudio, Park's brand new one audio thing mainstream.

Here's a picture of the launch:

 

The first, un-themed edition, entitled "a pronunciation checklist exclusive", contains a number of tracks contributed by Michael Peters, who allowed me to make a selection from his My2k recordings, Michael's sonic diary for the year 2000; he also pointed me to some other interesting tracks to include, and he send me a CD with his recent cut-up radio work. Tracks from 'Cut-up Radio' are not yet included in the stream, but a selection might very well sneak in over the coming weeks, as the stream will keep on growing. More about 'cut-up radio' later!

Researcher and sound organizer Erick Gallun is present with several tracks from his "Sound Field Furrows"collection, which caught my attention earlier this year. While scanning my hard disc for 'pure sound' files, I came across another track by Erick, called "noise jam". I recalled this being Erick's answer to some sort of a challenge on a mailing list (one of 'the usual suspects', say :-), to come up with something that is musically interesting, using only white noise as a sound source. Not that I think that this is a 'challenge' that even would be in need of an answer, but Erick's noise jam is a nice ... well ... noise-jam ... (his answer to the challenge actually was: 'rhythm'), and I wrote him to ask if he would allow Park to include it in the stream.
Erick indeed was kind enough to allow us to use noise jam, as well as the Sound Field Furrows collection, to which he provided some interesting background information.

" Sound Field Furrows was the result of a two-year long process of creation and experimentation that started when I saw an exhibit of the sculpture and paintings of Eva Hesse at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art," he wrote [email dated sept. 23, 2004]. "I decided to try to create similarly 'formless' and 'constructed' works, but with sound rather than with paint and cloth and latex.  I had originally decided to name it 'Repetitions Nineteen' in honor of one of her series of works and my plan was to construct forty pieces and choose the nineteen I liked best.  As is often the case with such projects, I had moved fairly far from the original concept by the time I finished and some of my favorites were not strictly constructions in the way that I had originally constrained the works.  For example, I first started using only samples that were less than five seconds in length.  Eventually, though, I had made some particularly interesting field recordings that last several minutes and that I felt would lose some of their richness if chopped into chunks less than thirty seconds.  I made pieces out of them anyway, and was so happy with the result that I decided to rename the work and include the newer pieces.  So, of the twelve pieces only seven or eight are true to the Hesse-inspired concept, but I feel that the work is better for it."

Erick sent me a CDr containing, among other things, the recordings and pieces that eventually did not make it into the SFF collection; quite a few of these will surely slip into the Raudio stream later this month ...

A third 'bulk contributor' to this first edition of Raudio is a young Italian, Dario Sanfilippo, recording under the name Tirriddiliu, which, according to the liner notes to a net-release of his deliranti in circostanze astratte collection, is a word in a sicilian dialect for a very bad, hyper-active child, which destroys everything (a little bastard). Indeed, Tirriddiliu is noisy, very noisy, but the little bastard actually also is pretty smart. I'm pretty fond of deliranti in circostanze astratte. I love the collection's energy. Guaranteed to wake you up; and maybe even make you think. Raudio streams all of it ... Oh, and btw, if (like me :-) you don't speak Italian: the title means "raving in abstract circumstances".

Dario recently set up Experimental Music Contents (EMC), a Wiki meant to share knowledge about experimental music with anybody interested and create a database containing informations and contents about artists, labels and anything related to this topic.
Go have a look, and add content! [ note june 2008: The EMC server is no longer available. ]

John Tenney, a long time professional violinist living in California, that more recently became interested in field recording (phonography) and the use of software and computers for sound editing and sonic creation ("to stay out of trouble," he wrote me, "since I often get bored!!" ...) contacted me after hearing Vicky's Mosquitos. He sent me a CD with a series of sixteen of his own creations that focus on the use of computerized voices, "using online demos from various companies".

My pieces are like little radio plays," John wrote, "using the voices, 'soundscape' backgrounds [...], sound effects, background music (like free samples of the horrible 'industrial' music you can buy online now to accompany PowerPoint presentations etc.), and strange sonic items from the internet and elsewhere."

Many of John Tenney's 'compu-plays' are little gems, with at times hilarious dialogues. Raudio's first edition includes two of them: 'At the café' and 'What you want'.

Also part of our "pronunciation checklist exclusive": Here I am, a fine example of 'naive rock expressionism', written and recorded by Ben Minnotte; a taste of Splogman's Grand Tour; the last song ever written by Kendal Zier (if anyone knows how to contact Kendal, who should be living in Edmonton, Canada, do let me know ...); and many more ....

Contributions for upcoming editions are welcome! I'm specifically interested in relatively short and unpolished/unfinished tracks, to weave into a 'coherent' pure-sound-one-audio-thing (but please do not send sound files by email)! Also looking forward to your suggestions, remarks, observations ... and then do stream, stream, stream ...

[ Next related entry: other, and good news! ]

tags: raudio, amsterdam

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