Equivalent to the product of three and five, one more than fourteen, four more than ten. A brief period of fame that a person enjoys before fading back into obscurity and also the number on our office door. AAA rated electronics from Mark, chanson from Julie, outlaw-anarchism from Ruairi and a tribute to America’s favourite bandy-legged retard from Andy.
Although in the past we have featured only online radio broadcasting, this time we look at a station still doing it on the airwaves in London. Resonance104.4fm makes public those artworks that have no place in traditional broadcasting. A radio station like no other, that is an archive of the new, the undiscovered, the forgotten, the impossible. It is an invisible gallery, a virtual arts centre whose location is at once local, global and timeless. And that is itself a work of art. Imagine a radio station that responds rapidly to new initiatives, has time to draw breath and reflect. A laboratory for experimentation, that by virtue of its uniqueness brings into being a new audience of listeners and creators. All this and more, Resonance104.4fm aims to make London’s airwaves available to the widest possible range of practitioners of contemporary art.
The service includes “radio artworks” made especially for and exploring the medium of radio. The music based output places an emphasis on alternative and experimental music with a bias towards the avant-garde (how many broadcasters are willing to devote programming to found sounds and field recordings?). The speech based output includes discussion, alternative news, documentary and literary spoken word. Subjects covered include anything from cultural theory to pensioners’ rights and mental health to visual arts. The station provides a service for practising artists and engaged consumers whose interests fall outside the mainstream media or for those whose access to media is restricted or limited due to cultural bias or lack of formal training. The multicultural service transcends age barriers, it’s youngest regular broadcasters are 16, it’s oldest 77, from communities as diverse as Brazilian, Serbian and Congolese who are encouraged to initiate and realise their own programming.
You can hear nonsense sound poetry recorded halfway up a mountain on the Isle of Jura, a preacher in Glasgow or a Babylonian Jewish Choir, a huge variety of unique spoken word radio basically. That’s not to mention great specific music shows such as Is Black Music, featuring maverick black musicians who are involed in non-commerial, alternative outside of the industry mainstream. The program broadcasts Black folk, country, avant-garde, classical and rock music. It encourages the promotion of unusual black music such as Urb Alt and Afro Punk, and is a good way to challenge industry, artist and consumer stereotypes.
Resonance104.4fm started broadcasting on May 1st 2002, established by London Musicians’ Collective. Its brief? To provide a radical alternative to the universal formulae of mainstream broadcasting. Resonance 104.4 fm features programmes made by musicians, artists and critics who represent the diversity of London’s arts scenes, with regular weekly contributions from nearly two hundred musicians, artists, thinkers, critics, activists and instigators. You can also listen online or download one of their various podcasts for maximum aural pleasure.
Jeff Mills is undoubtedly one of the founding fathers of techno music. In this transcript (Part 1 of 3) of a recent interview he has given to the Red Bull Music Academy Radio, you can read all about him starting out on Detroit radio in the mid-80′s, meeting Parliament bassist “Mad” Mike Banks, the evolution of techno, Underground Resistance, traveling for the first time to Europe, Axis, rescoring Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, The Rings of Saturn and treading that careful line between dance-music and high art. Click the record label art to get an idea of the tracks Mills is talking about with links to relevant Youtube videos. Listen to the radio show in full here or download it here. The accompanying tracklist is as follows:
Jeff Mills – Landscape (Utopian Dream) – Tresor
Jeff Mills – Blue Print – Tresor
Underground Resistance – Eye of the Storm – Underground Resistance
Underground Resistance – Predator – Underground Resistance
Underground Resistance – Base Camp Alpha 808 – UR
Underground Resistance – Final Frontier – Underground Resistance
X-101 – G-Force – Tresor
X-102 – Ground Zero (The Planet) – Tresor
X-102 – The Rings Of Saturn – Underground Resistance
Jeff Mills – Perfecture (Somewhere Around Now) – Tresor
Jeff Mills – The Bells – Axis
Jeff Mills – Transformation B (Rotwang’s Revenge) – Tresor
Jeff Mills – Robot Replica – Tresor
The Wizard
My name is Jeff Mills I originate from Detroit, I live in Chicago now, my main profession is to produce music and also to DJ. I try to explore as many different things as I can on behalf of electronic music. I was a street DJ doing residencies at many clubs and happened to be in one club during a live “simulcast” I think it was back in 1982 or ’83. It went so well that I was asked if I could come to the station to do an audition which I did and luckily everything went well so I was offered a job to do a radio show. I assumed the name The Wizard and curated a radio show for about 10 years. At that time the hip hop culture had really moved into the urban centres of the country in America. So much so that it was really dominating the clubs. The clubs that had the DJs that were remnants left over from the disco era and the funk era, these DJs were occupying all the dance clubs in Detroit but when hip hop came, young DJs like myself were somehow replacing those DJs that had been there for years.
Cooky batter
You had to be very fast, you had to be technically really advanced, you had to learn the tricks that were happening from DJs from other parts of the country like New York or LA. I was lucky enough to have the time to really master these things and when the radio came it just broadened the idea of being a DJ that was very quick and could transform and do all those kind of things, to manipulate the music to the point that you create another version. I was one of those kids that did that. We were just beginning to start to get the very early releases from Def Jam, Cooky Puss, early Schoolly D things. So I was mixing that with funk, with Chaka Khan, Billy Ocean, I remember having to mix with Millie Vanilli, mixing all these things together with rock and industrial with anything I could get my hands on that was really happening in the street.
I was a DJ for many years before I went to radio, I had done residencies every day of the week at three or four clubs. At the time I was so busy as what we used to call a ‘street DJ’. I really didn’t have an off day. I have always had this skill of programming of being able to cue records very quickly and smoothly, to manipulate three turntables and tape machines were things I learned very early. Now I still have the ability to do those things but just the style of music really dictates how I approach it. As music over the years has gotten more minimal and faster in tempo and almost to the point where you are dealing with individual tracks like you would in a recording studio, so has the technique that you apply in order to program it for people. Three and four turntables has become a way of dealing with that. Not so much reorganising compositions, but using frequencies so you hide sounds within the track by manipulating the EQ and layering, and things like that.
Now That's Funky
Someone from the radio station I worked at, she said she knew a young guy who was in the studio and wanted to make a hip hop record and if I could go by to the studio and help him. As a favour to her, I did. I went by the studio and it was Anthony Srock and he was a big fan of Run DMC and the Beastie Boys and he wanted to make something in that direction. I said, ok, and we started working together. I wasn’t in the group I was just helping them at the time but what happened was that I was doing so much production I should have some interest in what we are doing here. We became good friends as a result of working in the studio and then we eventually decided let’s just get together and make more music like this and so the band Final Cut was put together. We produced the album Deep In 2 The Cut and I didn’t have much pieces of equipment like keyboards and things like that. The only person I knew with a lot of keyboards was Mike Banks. He was in a band where two bands had merged together and had merged their equipment together as well. So they had lots and lots of keyboards and those type of things. So I used to call them up and ask them if I could borrow certain keyboards to produce certain things for this album that we were working on. So he would come over to my apartment and bring the keyboards, would listen to the music that we were producing and thought it was very interesting. The album came out and we went to Berlin for a performance, it was ok. But I realised this kind of music, this kind of sound is not something I could really grasp onto. I left the group Final Cut, Tony Srock had wanted to take it in a less danceable more gothic kind of way. I wanted to stick to dance music so I left the group.
Eye Of The Storm
Somewhere around that time Mike’s band had left to go to LA, they had disbanded as well. Mike and I had kept in contact so we began talking about the idea of getting together, merging our studios together. He had already thought of the name Underground Resistance but he didn’t do anything with it. He registered the name, asked me if I thought it was great, I said yeah let’s do it. And that’s how we started. I was in college – in school and he worked during the day so we could only record at night. So we would record literally from 8 o’clock at night until 7:30 in the morning. We had so much equipment that we could produce multiple tracks at the same time. We had so many tape machines and multitrack machines and so many keyboard setups. Our studio was in the basement of Mike’s mothers place so we had taken the entire basement and set up small work-stations. We would be working on Sonic EP in that corner, and here would be Yolanda, something here, something else here… That’s one of the ways we would produce so much music at the same time.
Yolanda - Your Time Is Up
I had lots of experience with editing in cutting tape. He had lots of experience in playing keyboards, MIDI and all those things. We just merged. I had brought some compositions from some of the things I had produced and he had brought some older works and we merged those two together, and from there comes the diversity of the tracks when we first started. There were things like Waveform EP which were very dark that comes probably from the Final Cut direction. And there were things like Yolanda that came from some of the things he was doing with his band before we got together. So we could produce lots of different types of things from very early on. We knew that we could produce in multiple directions. We just worked endlessly, once we had finished with something we would start on something immediately. We would never stop really.
More to come in Parts 2 and 3. From that Waveform EP…
This week’s winter Ibiza snaps do not strictly stay true to their core. Our resident gastronome Andrew Livesey was on a fact finding mission in Barcelona combined with a bit of a birthday bash. Things turned a bit weird evidenced by some of the pictures he sent but Andy has asked to use the most parent friendly selection as possible as he is sure his mum reads the blog.
There is something inherently satisfying about the sound of a pebble breaking the surface of a pond, so satisfying in fact that a few years ago certain DJs and producers encapsulated, mutated and repeated it to create the global phenomenon of ‘minimal’ techno. Having somewhat passed us by we found the sound more befitting of a misty spring morn, camping lake-side in the yorkshire dales than set in an overcrowded nightclub.
A thoroughly satisfying plonk requires a few certain conditions, calm water, a fairly weighty round pebble and a perpendicular entry path. Physicists at the universities of Valencia and Twente have been studying this plonk and have found that a sonic boom is behind it’s well rounded sound. When the stone enters the pond the first reaction is a cylindrical sheet of water called the “crown splash” which is sent up into the air encircling the falling object. Then the stone sinks and leaves in its wake a cylindrical cavity of air. The water surrounding this then begins to collapse in on it, starting at the centre, and creates an hour glass shape. When this form then collapses the result is a jet of air which shoots up the centre of the ever diminishing cavity faster than the speed of sound creating a miniature sonic boom. This combined with the slap of the the water collapsing in on itself gives rise to that sound synonymous with fishing holidays, walks on stoney beaches and, in cases where the falling object is not necessarily a pebble, certain trips to the w.c.
Burchberry Dogwood
It was in the 1950s that aircraft started to break the sound barrier on a regular basis and it wasn’t until 1969 that Concorde took the first supersonic commercial flight. Seen as a barrier there to be broken, Concorde undoubtably did so in the most grandiose manner; but the aircraft was not however the first human invention to cross the supersonic milestone. In fact this invention came from our cat loving friends the Ancient Egyptians in the form of a whip. The tip or a cracked whip will accelerate to speeds way faster than the 340m/s that sound travels at. For the mathematically minded we can see how the thinning and unfurling whip will increases to faster and faster speeds through the equation E = (m(v^2)) / 2. Something which the archaeological crusader Indiana Jones singularly failed to point out even with his copious use of whip and academic background.
And to find the first living thing to break the sound barrier you must venture into the forest covered Canadian Rockies in search of the Burchberry Dogwood, a small plant which spits its pollen out at nearly twice the speed of sound. The force which this plant generates is more than 800 times greater than that which is experienced by astronauts as they leave the earth’s orbit.
Nowadays unmanned craft and missiles can travel upwards of 20 times the speed of sound. Although pioneers in their own right, the designers of the weapons, the masterminds behind Concorde and minimal techno DJs are merely following in the footsteps of ejaculating plants.
In other words, forget academic rigor. Never take the appropriate next step. Talk about Chinese urban design, the European space program, the landscape in the films of Alfred Hitchcock in the span of three sentences – because it’s fun, and the juxtapositions might take you somewhere. Most importantly, follow your lines of interest. Finally, I want to reiterate that BLDGBLOG is fundamentally about following, and not being ashamed by, your own enthusiasms, whether or not they are rigorous and appropriate for the academic mores of the day, or even interesting for your family and friends. – Geoff Manaugh
High Houses are proposed as part of the reconstruction of Sarajevo after the siege of the city that lasted from 1992 though late 1995.
BLDGBLOG (pronounced “building blog”… maybe) is written by Geoff Manaugh, it’s subject matter is “architectural conjecture, urban speculation and landscape futures.” Read by millions since its launch in 2004, BLDGBLOG is a leading voice and uniquely futuristic vision, offering and enthusiastic, idea-filled guide to what lies ahead in our built and technological environments. With stunning images and original content, BLDGBLOG is part conceptual travelogue, part manifesto and part sci-fi novel. Under the guise of writing his blog about architecture, Manaugh has crafted a tribute to the world-transforming power of the imagination itself. Along the way, he incorporates some of the most ambitious minds of our time involving everything from urban design to climatology, music, astronomy and pop culture. On reading the blog you start to interrogate everything you take for granted about the environments we create for ourselves.
Arctic glacial core samples
Geoff Manaugh has provided the reader with an excursion into a new world – part digital fantasy, part reality at the intersection of art, technology, design and pure ideas. The blog is personal, idiosyncratic and, best of all, incredibly interesting. It uses architecture as a lens for delving into related aspects of society and takes enjoyable turns into the stretches of imagination. It’s an urban fantasy made from the remainders of a very large equation. The modus operandi of his work – the fervid linking between seemingly disparate realms of emotion, experience and academic discipline feels appropriate for our densely networked, accelerating, neurotically twittering era…
Plainview: I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.
I saw some fairly long sections of the film, read the script, and just wrote loads of music. I tried to write to the scenery and the story rather than specific themes for characters. It’s not really the kind of narrative that would suit that. It was all about the underlying menace of the film, the greed, and that against the fucked up, oppressive, religious mood and the kid in the middle of it all. Only a couple of parts were written for specific scenes. I was happier writing lots of music for the story and having Paul Thomas Anderson (the film’s director) fit some of it to the film. – Jonny Greenwood
Plainview: Did you think your song and dance and your superstition would help you, Eli? I am the Third Revelation! I am who the Lord has chosen!
If you haven’t seen this film wait for a day when you are ready for a surreal, jaw-dropping, no-holds-barred barrage of hyper-reality. A story about family, greed, religion, and oil, centered around a turn-of-the-century prospector in the early days of the business. Daniel Day-Lewis clearly immerses himself so far into the role of prospector Daniel Plainview that it is frightening. The movie takes place in early 20th century arid Texan and Californian plains – where oil has been discovered and is primed to be exploited. Plainview and other prospectors are rapidly spreading across the land, trying to convince the unwitting local farmers and ranchers of old western settlements that their oil drilling will bring prosperity to their towns. The period setting of emerging capitalism is juxtaposed with a twisted and haunting modern classical score that only adds to the bizarre drama which unfolds onscreen.
Eli Sunday: Don't bully me, Daniel!
It was surprising to find out after listening to the soundtrack that it was composed by Jonny Greenwood the guitarist from Radiohead (a band that despite their constant acclaim, in all honestly passed me by). Greenwood’s score is captivating and greatly contributes to the literally tectonic forces which lie beneath the drama. The music is performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra led by Robert Ziegler, the Emperor Quartet, and special mention must go to the minimalist brooding performances from Caroline Dale on cello and Michael Dussek on piano. The score was considered a shoe-in for the Academy Award for Original Music Score at the 2008 Oscars, but it was ruled ineligible due to its use of pre-existing material. The score features elements from a previous Greenwood composition and works from Arvo Pärt and Johannes Brahms.
Eli Sunday: I am a false prophet! God is a superstition! I am a false prophet! God is a superstition! I am a false prophet! God is a superstition!
There are an array unconventional sonic textures and uniquely angular melodies which shape this score. The soundtrack to There Will Be Blood will appeal to serious movie-music fans, who will appreciate this rare find: an intelligent, beautiful and deeply cinematic orchestrated score. The moment I realised this soundtrack is a masterpiece is where they first strike oil and the action is accompanied by a huge, incredible percussive sound – look (and listen) out for it next time you see the film. It’s not often it can be claimed of a film, but it would simply not be so great were it not for Greenwood’s music. He deepens the image, gives character to the shot and establishes feeling. Dialogue is sparse in this cinematic epic which lasts well over two and a half hours. And thoroughly cinematic it is – it shows, it doesn’t talk it’s audience towards a conclusion and thus with it’s music inexorably bound in its telling, by showing gives us meaning and feeling.
Plainview: Do you? I drink your water, Eli. I drink it up. Everyday. I drink the blood of lamb from Bandy's tract.
Greenwood engulfs us in the world of the gothic and takes us across a fascinating, ethereal place where nothing is certain with one exception: that doom is fast approaching for everyone within the film. No one stands a chance against the ravenous nature of greed and exploitation. You might be unprepared for the outbursts of melodic darkness contained in both the film and score combined, but the result is that the film’s theme will last in your conscience long after the final credits roll. Nonesuch Records offers a digital download of three bonus tracks upon the purchase of the soundtrack from its web site – highly recommended, get a preview with the title track we’ve put up for you here.
In the eighteen months since its inception, testpressing.org has become the go-to archive for cherry-picked music and interviews best described as Balearic in the broadest sense. Whether it’s eclectic mixes from seasoned professionals or photocopied features from long since recycled magazines (Ibiza vibes in mixmag ’93 anyone?) that draw you in, Test Pressing is the net’s ultimate musical curiosity shop.
Wither me testings
Particular gems are the old magazine scans which crop up on the pages of test pressing. An article from The Face in 1985 reports on ‘E’, taking stories from The Ranch, a gay club in Dallas, Texas where you could apparently get the drug over the counter for $20 plus $1.23 sales tax. Also worth checking out is their ‘Producers Series’ which focuses on a different notable music producer. Have a look at the Brian Eno and Andrew Weatherall selections to get an idea. They compile a mix of the producers work for your aural pleasure – it’s wonderful, have a listen. Joins the dots between Bill Withers and acid house. Thanks to Dog for the heads-up.
Although the previous incarnations of our future sounds articles have focused solely on physical instruments, today we have a look at something solely software based. It’s caused stirs since first conceptualised in 2000 and is now winning awards for innovation across the board. The concept underlying Melodyne is Local Sound Synthesis. Peter Neubäcker, creator of the program, first thought of the idea philosophically, with the desire to free sound from time. The question was posed symbolically – What does a stone sound like? – relating sound to a stone, which has a form but to which time is not really relevant. From this question came the idea that sound may exist independently of pitch and time. The program it self varies from other audio processors in that it doesn’t work to make audio samples longer or shorter but instead to view the clip as a landscape where different sounds can be found in different time locations. That landscape can be travelled through freely with the pitch of the sound at any location being an arbitrary characteristic of that sound. This manages to isolate what have previously been defined as inseparable aspects of sound: pitch, time, and timbre. It allows users to do what seems intuitively impossible, to manipulate individual notes within chords independently. Check out the video below for a better description of what is going on…
When I first started photographing four years ago, photography was less product oriented and more about developing a perspective of the world. I was drawn to the personal meditation I found therein. Photography gives us a chance to reframe the viewfinder and thus reframe the way we think thoughts about the world. Walking through an exhibit, I decided to use photography as the medium to develop self. I singled out qualities that I hoped to embody and began to photograph them. A month was given to only photographing joy, the following month to sharing. I found in the end that the images were all identical. But I wasn’t. I think all art has the power to transform. Eventually my interest in the image itself and my interest in photojournalism began as I realized the potential of turning reality into art through recognizing the beauty that exists (even in the most horrific of circumstances). – Kitra Cahana via. Eight Diagrams
Kitra Cahana is a young emerging documentary photographer who had an early start in her career when, at the age of 17, while photographing the Israeli Disengagement from Gaza, one of her photographs landed on the front page of the New York Times.
Resistance in Gaza - through tears by Kitra Cahana
I went down to Gaza on a whim with a fellow photographer. I had a flight scheduled to go home to Montreal for the following week, but failed to show up at the airport when I realized how significant it would be both personally and professionally to stay in Gaza. Without a plan or a press-pass (because I was 17 and too young) and with little more than my camera body, I found a lot of support with the photographers who were already based in the settlements. I was able to fully learn from the outstanding photographic sources living around me without the stress of working for somebody. The Disengagement was the first major story that I found myself in the middle of. There was no way I couldn’t have done it. When I was first trying to convince my hesitant mother that I needed to stay, I just said: “This is something I know I have to do,” and she understood. – Kitra Cahana
She worked as the Thomas Morgan photographic intern at the NY Times and later received a one-year scholarship to live in Treviso, Italy working at Benetton’s research communication centre, Fabrica. During that scholarship she worked on stories around the world on Pacific Islands of Vanuatu and Niue and in Africa in DR Congo, Ethiopia and Kenya.
Gondar, Ethiopia by Kitra Cahana
I recently returned from an independent project in Ethiopia and Israel where I photographed the Falash Mura, a group of approximately 12,000 impoverished Ethiopians, who are immigrating to Israel under the auspices of the Israeli government. The story itself is fascinating and has many political as well as humanitarian aspects to it, which has challenged me on multiple levels. It has forced me to take time aside and meditate on my story and its flow. While unsure of my outcome, I am more understanding of the process of story-telling and the conflicting responsibilities that a story can pose to the narrator. – Kitra Cahana
She recently won 1st prize in the prestigious World Press Photo’s Art and Entertainment section for her work with Colors magazine. Rainbowland shot by Cahana for Colors 76 – Teenagers documents The Rainbow Family, a non-hierarchical group that holds free gatherings around the world.
Rainbowland by Kitra Cahana
I’ve sat through a lot of lectures distracted by the interesting light that falls on my professor’s face. But distractions aside, I find that being a student has allowed me the space to think about photography. To not only look out into the world for vision but to also look inwardly and bookwardly for understanding. I think the school year gives a nice balance for the growing photographer. The school year is devoted to reflection while the long, juicy, passion-filled summer breaks are devoted to story making. I appreciate being able to take my time developing an emotional maturity before taking on a full-time career. – Kitra Cahana
In July 2009 they brought 25,000 people together for a week in the wilderness in New Mexico, U.S.A. Kitra was there for Colors. It’s a great edition dedicating itself to the ambitions, dreams and defeats of teenagers in the rest of the world – to their choices, their body, their relationship with themselves and others – to the looks and dilemmas teenagers face, the society they grow up in, the tribes and groups they join or align themselves with.
The Rainbow People by Kitra Cahana
Knowledge is a tool that is wholly empowering. It gives us a context to see what is in front of us and the ability to live on multiple levels. That translates into the ability to create layers in photographs and to make use of symbols that can turn a normal image into a historical or religious reference. So far, studying has only broadened the number of stories I want to photograph and the depths to which I want to cover them. It gives me the language to speak about my images and the ability to refer meaningfully to what it is I am doing. – Kitra Cahana
