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.
Posted: January 26th, 2010 | category: Audio/Music, SIGHUP | Comments Off
Wherein our hero celebrates the changing of your wall calendar by unburdening himself of some crap that hung around through much of the past year.
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:
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.
