A new SIGHUP release is now available.

Held in Frame is a collection of four solo performances done throughout 2009 with the Bugbrand AudioWeevil08. Some time last year, a bunch of threads coalesced into the idea to explore the AudioWeevil as a solo instrument: I had been listening to blindoldfreak’s Buchla-centric album 1 a lot, and was both intrigued by its focus on a single instrument and filled with modular-envy (which I’ve since quelled by starting a Euro modular system); a post about noise synths (a general term encompassing a whole bunch of DIY/small-run tabletop-sized synthesizers often based around 555 chips or CMOS hex inverters for oscillators) over at the 12k forum in which someone asked about using these devices for subtle musical applications; and I took up playing the ukulele and was drawn to the notion of folk music in its most general sense, just idling at home and strumming out tunes for the simple pleasure of playing.

So that’s what these are, an attempt at a folk music that is defined by the instrument and the player rather than any commonly-held definition of folk music. The recordings are all presented in mono, in keeping with the intended simplicity of the presentation. The Audioweevil is the primary sound source, run through a few effects pedals (I think the only three I used at various points here are the Boss PS-5 pitch shifter, the Catalinbread Semaphore Tremolo, and the Malekko E600D bucket-brigade delay). I used the Trogotronic 666 as accompaniment on the final track (it’s making that zippering sound).

A slightly different version of the first track, February 19 2009, first appeared last year on a compilation put out by my friend Mark over at the Just Not Normal netlabel (that version was processed to be stereo-ish, to better sit within the context of a diverse compilation). This release is streamable or downloadable from Bandcamp, in any format you’d like, including lossless audio files.

For anyone keeping track, Edison Moon has been available on eMusic and iTunes for the past two years, which I’ve added there through Tunecore. Tunecore is a fine service, but not for me. The sales I’ve generated through eMusic and iTunes have covered Tunecore’s annual database fee and little else, so I’m pulling the plug on it for now. Just not worth the cost to me, even if it isn’t too expensive and I do now and again net a random sale through those retailers.

I’m a little disappointed with how eMusic panned out, especially since I’m an ardent fan and member of eMusic’s subscription service and have been for several years. Their site should be much, much better than it is at helping customers find unknown music that might suit their tastes, and letting indie acts connect to new audiences. As it is , it’s just an ever expanding clearing house, with little to no curation involved. It’s getting frustrating just as a customer, they can’t even come up with a system to separate bands with the same name in their database.

Now that I’m using the Bandcamp storefront to sell releases, I’m happy cutting out a middleman, and I’ve made more sales from both Edison Moon and End Of just selling on my own than I ever did through iTunes or eMusic. For customers, I’ve set my prices at $5 USD, half of what iTunes charges, and you can choose from a whole slough of file formats. Bandcamp’s Flash download mechanism isn’t perfect, but it’ll do fine for now.

Which means all new commercial releases will be available from this page.

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.