Lots of stuff to update, as I’ve chosen to go blog-quiet for the last little while. But now I break that silence.

To start, a new SIGHUP album has just been released.

SIGHUP – end of

Entitled end of, it’s another collection of noises, drones and old records. There’s a bigger blurb on the release page, so I’ll spare you the pain of reading it twice. Here is the track listing and run times:

1. if nowhere else (13:26)
2. saints brimful (12:33)
3. city heart (8:35)
4. end of (15:50)
5. coda (4:54)

The album can be previewed in full via the flash player on the Bandcamp page, or can be purchased in mp3 or various lossless codecs for only $5USD. Paypal only I believe. I had originally tried setting up a store on more local server, but did not enjoy doing so, and went Bandcamp instead since it makes so many things so easy.

I also recently appeared on a compilation, this one free to download.

Au clair de la lune (digital edition), released by Infrequency. http://www.infrequency.org The compilation collects interpretations of a phonautograph recording made by Édouard-Léon Scott on April 9, 1860, as recovered and digitized by Firstsounds.org. You can hear the original on the Firstsounds website. Some really good tracks involved. Mine, called Pierrot répondit, closes the set.

For the fun of it, here’s a little something I did on a recent day off, posted previously only via Twitter. An exercise to see what I could come up with using a single sample.

Here’s the sample: http://www.sighup.ca/misc/note1.mp3

And here’s the result: SIGHUP – simple

I spent a good portion of the weekend overhauling the SIGHUP main site this weekend, time to get away from all that empty white space, which served me well enough for the last four years but I was in the end sick of it. For those familiar with this blog, I’ve also updated the template here to reflect the colours of the main site a little better. I am winded now, back to that silence.

A new SIGHUP track is available today as part of a free compilation put out by Intelligent Machinery Productions. You can the whole compilation here:

Thoughts of the Long Now compilation

If you are just interested in my bit, here it is:

SIGHUP – For you and your big sunglasses

If you are wondering, the track title is mostly meaningless, just struck me as funny to make something as a tribute to the vapidity of the big sunglass wearers in these times of celebrity worship and overheated consumerism.

As for the compilation, it’s long (2.5 hours) and for me, a bit uneven. IMP head honcho John’s goals for these compilations are different than mine, and I believe his our predicated on encouraging communal efforts and broad participation. I’m much more interested in the monolithic aesthetic/artistic gesture. In that spirit, if you find yourself unable to sit through the whole thing, here is my revised and preferred playlist from the compilation. No slight intended to those participants I’ve excluded, this list is just a reflection of my personal tastes and interests:

01 SIGHUP – For you and your big sunglasses
02 BpOlar – Gospel 4 Si
03 dust – Headphone Drone
04 gurdonark – Sub-Atomic Joy
05 vespers – december (candles for the dead)
06 Controlled Dissonance – Bin Full of Cables
07 Slug (37 2 C) – Solaris
08 Mystahr – Drowne

I think that set makes for an excellent and engaging listen (or disengaging, as some cases may necessitate).

Usually on the last day of a calendar year, I post a stupid riff, some aimless bit of crud I, for some inexplicable reason, had sitting in my works in progress folder for a sizable portion of the year. This year is a little different in that I’ve pretty much gotten in to the habit throughout the year of deleting any stupid crap I can’t seem to do anything with.

However, there is one thing that has been sitting around for a while, something I can’t quite finish right but can’t quite let go of. So in the vague spirit of Stupid Riff Day, I give you my attempt at applying my general ambient noise approach to a dub stylee. I don’t think it’s completely without merit, but I also don’t find it very satisfying. If I don’t post it, though, the damned thing just won’t leave me alone. So here it is, SIGHUP’s Stupid Dub Day 2008.

SIGHUP – StupidRiffDub2008

And for the sake of walking down memory lane and enjoying some of my more awful musical moments, here be the stupid riffs ought six and ought seven:

Stupid Riff 2007

Stupid Riff 2006

[Update] Synthtopia has taken up the stupid riff mantle. First step toward memehood.

For anyone there, I’ve signed up to Twitter. I had initially resisted, because blogging meets text messaging just didn’t scream worth to me. But so far (about four days), I’ve found it kind of fun. It’s a little like Facebook without the sick “I see dead people” feeling.

Should you go looking I can be found here:  http://twitter.com/Steve_Hamann.

I’ve been interested of late in doing some works for moving images, but have no real experience working with video. To that end, I’ve started messing around with video editing software to acclimatize myself to the process. Strange process to some degree for my audio-centric brain, in that it bears similarities to working with audio sequencers, but it all seems fundamentally less flexible. I’ll get used it, no doubt.

Below is the fruit of my first weekend’s labour. Don’t expect much, since it’s really just a proof-of-concept for me, but I liked it as a sort of postcard. I found stock footage of a dandelion, which I quite liked (made public domain on archive.org on the good graces of one C. E. Price), and looped/edited it to 10min, the track I did recently in ten minutes. The haphazardness of the track seemed appropriate for this video.