Once I had completed end of, I decided I wanted a change in style and technique for whatever came next. At the time, I had been listening to a lot of melody-heavy ambient music, like recent releases on the 12k label and stuff by The Fun Years, and so gravitated toward that kind of approach at first. I also wanted to move away from using old records as source material, especially since the wax cylinder archive changed its licensing policy last year, and so everything here was made by me.

Cue sheet in its current form is at least the second if not third complete release I made using that working title. Early versions have all been discarded and ransacked for bits I could reuse, several of which have made it in to the final draft. As it turns out, the final release is more consistent with the style of the last two commercial albums than I had expected. After creating material, I gradually refined it back to something more consistent with the general SIGHUP style, not intentionally, but I guess I’ve created a discernible SIGHUP style for a reason (or at least can’t escape it outright).

There are still overtly melodic elements contained within work, just fewer of them than I had originally intended. The release reminds me in a way of something like Brian Eno’s Apollo, moving from stretches of minimally shaped sound to downright tuneful bits. No slide guitar, alas, but there is some ukulele. I like how the music has turned out, it hangs in the air in an appropriate way.

Update Aug 23, 2010: I’ve taken these tracks down to make room for others on Soundcloud, in keeping with the rapid publishing angle of what I’m doing there. I expect the best among these tracks will resurface as a full release.

I’ve been interested in the idea of rapid publishing for a few years. I used to do that sort of thing when posting to forums, finish a track and share it with the community. Many of my older releases – Low End of Wide Open, Machines, Coma – were done in that piecemeal way. One of the reasons I stopped doing that was my focus moved to larger projects, and forums are isolated, tucked away corners of the web for the specifically minded. Hopefully, Soundcloud proves to be more inviting to a broader range of listeners.

I believe the sound quality is better from Soundcloud’s site rather than through the embedded player if you want to make the jump. As it stands, I haven’t set these up for download. I likely will in the future, at least the one’s that pass muster during this prototyping stage.

The music that will be placed on Soundcloud will all be solo performances done on my shiny new modular synthesizer, similar to the approach I took on Held in Frame, although I’ll be a bit freer with post-processing, multitracking, etc. I’ve started recording tracks using only the modular primarily as way to learn how to play it. One of the things I love about a hardware modular synthesizer, especially in contrast to years of using software only, is that what sounds you make is less important than inventing ways of making them. The system I have is comprised of only a few modules, and each one can perform a whole variety of functions, so it’s invigorating working with the various trade-offs – i.e. if I use my envelope generator as an audio source, I’m now down one envelope and have to adjust the musical approach accordingly. I suppose in much the same way that the brain reroutes pathways after a stroke and the like. And I like that yanking a cable can itself be a musical act. I haven’t taken any photos of it, but through the miracle of the fantastic RackPlannner app, I have this mock-up:

I’ll be adding music there as I make it. Probably two more tracks will be added this weekend. On the first of these two tracks already posted, there’s clipping distortion in places, but I decided I liked the effect and kept it in. As always, I’m attracted to slow-moving music, full of minor noises and drones, so that’s mostly what folk can expect from these.

Update Aug 23, 2010: I’ve taken these tracks down to make room for others on Soundcloud, in keeping with the rapid publishing angle of what I’m doing there. I expect the best among these tracks will resurface as a full release.

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.

This year’s entry gives me a certain “Um, Steve, are you feeling alright?” kind of vibe. I got M-Tron Pro early this year, became enchanted with a guitar loop, and struck upon this. I envision it as a soundtrack to an old PSA film reel, in mono no less, something they might have shown to kids in Health class in the 70s, something about poor Misty not feeling right down there, and there’s Johnny, obliviously spreading the clap to all the girls in Grade 11. A little like Larry Clark’s Kids, except with more soft focus. Here it is:

Stupid Riff 2009 – 70s PSA edition

And here are all past entries:

Stupid Riff Dub 2008

Stupid Riff 2007

Stupid Riff 2006

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.

I’ll be collecting these patches and putting them up for anyone interested in picking them apart. There’s a dozen available now, more will be added as I make them.

Get them here: http://www.sighup.ca/mulch/

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.

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).

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.