electronic music

New glitch music video: Totem Codes “Death House”

Started making glitch videos again to go with some music I recorded a couple years ago. Here’s the first, for the song “Death House.” Putting it out there under my new project name Totem Codes. All analog electronics, using Arturia Matrix Brute and Drum Brute. Play loud with headphones for maximum bass response. Video created using analog tape and long chain of analog and digital FX, re-amped from CRT TV using digital camera at HD setting. All video disintegration and pixilation intended!

Here’s the YouTube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlAkw1KlZLY

Stylus live track released on SoundCloud

stylus-track-joy and sorrow

Washington, DC’s turntable orchestra Stylus played a memorial concert honoring circuit bender, multi-instrumentalist and founding member Keith Sinzinger on February 1, 2019, at RhizomeDC. Group director Jim Adams composed another score based on Morse code, called “And All Thy Joy and Sorrow Shall Never Pass Away,” which was performed by four turntablists using Califone turntables and copies of the District of Noise loop LP marked for Keith’s solo tracks. Turntablists for this incarnation of Stylus were Jim Adams, Chris Videll, RA Martini, and myself. Steve Sanford made a live digital recording of the piece, which Jim posted to his BLK w/Bear SoundCloud account. You can listen to it here.

New video “No Eyes Remain” on YouTube

My new music video “No Eyes Remain” on YouTube depicts a far future where humans explore outer space as pure energy forms. The video text reads “no eyes remain to record the facts,” taken from my unpublished poem “Early Observatory,” part of my “Civilization’s Lost” series examining the fragility of human language, culture and civilization. The electronic soundtrack is Tone Ghosting’s “TGV.” Best played loud through speakers or headphones with a wide dynamic range. Click the link above to play the video.

 

“After the Guillotine” text and video poem published in Five-2-One

guillotine-521

Literary journal Five-2-One usually appears in print, but its daily supplement, The Sideshow, appears online. My poem “After the Guillotine” appears there starting today in text and video formats. The video features my reading of the poem, along with an electronic backing score. Warning: grim subject matter may not be appropriate for all audiences! You can view it all here.

guillotine-text-521

“Quasar Pulsar” video on YouTube

It’s been a while since I posted new video content, so today I uploaded the “Quasar Pulsar” video to YouTube. I’ve been placing stills from it in various journals over the past year (Otoliths, Angry Old Man, H&, etc). This one is pretty long at nearly 13 minutes, but the colors and movement may make it interesting enough to endure. Electronic soundtrack by Tone Ghosting. The text is the last stanza from my poem “Shit on a Stick Corporation”: “Quasar pulsar/beep beep/to the stars and all.” It refers to the noise pollution of televised advertising escaping into space, which some alien race light years away will have to deal with eventually. Why would aliens visit the Earth? To tell us to keep it down.

Turntable ensemble STYLUS at Sonic Circuits 2017 this Sunday, 9/17

sonic-circ-17

It’s time again for the annual Sonic Circuits, DC’s festival for experimental, improvised, and outside musics, held this year at Rhizome from Sept 15-17. That’s three nights of local, national, and international freak jams. Turntable ensemble Stylus will be performing a new work by band leader Jim Adams on Sunday, Sept 17. As one of the turntablists, I’ll be appearing with the group. The ensemble will be expanded with a guitar section and feature visual projections. If you’re into “difficult” music, don’t miss this!

This official word about the group (from the festival website) will describe it better than I could: “STYLUS is a Washington DC-based turntable ensemble that performs with multiple vintage classroom turntables as their instruments, using locked-groove + prepared vinyl to create a sound that is minimalist, pulse-like + hypnotic yet also dynamic + punctuated. STYLUS performers to date include mainstays of the Washington, D.C. avant-garde, free improvisation, modern composition, noise, + electronic music scene….STYLUS performers for the 2017 SCDC Festival are JS Adams, Jeff Bagato, Chester Hawkins, Janel Leppin, Ryan Martini, Gary Rouzer, Keith Sinzinger, Stéphane Récrosio, vinyl, Jeff Barsky, guitar, John Howard, guitar, Guillermo Pizarro, digital, Mei Mei Chang, visuals.”

“STYLUS will perform “(AT to ER) Apt to Err_Who am the Only One,” a new composition in collaboration with French lo-fi guitarist, Stéphane Récrosio (astatine / acetate z e r o), utilizing commissioned, limited-edition lathe acetates. The performance will include live infrared-video work from Mei Mei Chang and be dedicated to former STYLUS performer, Andrew McCarry (1984 – 2016) . STYLUS warmly embraces the modern compositional elements of turntablism + the contemporary sound-art of Christian Marclay + Philip Jeck. Other influences include such historic constructs as the Futurist manifesto L’arte dei Rumori, Dadaism, Automatism + Russian Constructivism along with Louis Braille, Samuel F.B. Morse, Milan Knížák’s Broken Music, the graphic scores of Cornelius Cardew + Fluxus performance, plus the prepared instrumentation + happenstance of John Cage.”

Pegasus Paradise music video

Last week I posted a new video to the Bionic Eyes YouTube channel. This one is a music video for the title track from the Tone Ghosting cassette Private Jet Experience  on Coffeehead Duck tapes. You can check out the label (and purchase copies) here:

In this video, nymphs and chimera romp across a candy-colored cyberscape as shattered neon waves crumble around them. Plenty of hyperdelic glitch washouts and damaged montages clutter the screen. Everything melts down into a plastic surface where the biological destiny of the body is denied, and the prurient gaze is subverted into an alternate plane of confusion. This is the longest video I’ve posted so far, so hopefully the colors will carry you to the rhythm, and the rhythm will carry you to the end.