OSCILLATIONS: CHANGE BECOMES US by Wire

This is the thirteen studio album by Wire,  a group who has splintered,  broken up,  and reassembled without losing focus on its particular brand of art-house pop.  These are sounds and songs that can, at their best, be as thought provoking as they're catchy and sometimes sublimely weird.  Their first three releases (PINK FLAG,  CHAIRS MISSING,  and 154)  set the bar very high,  showcasing a fierce intelligence in the face of punk orthodoxy.  Even without original member Bruce Gilbert,  CHANGE BECOMES US (2013) is an essential listening experience for Wire fans.  The title is really about transformation through art,  even as it attempts to recreate a fourth Wire album that never was.  CHANGE BECOMES US recycles material from their two live albums,  DOCUMENT AND EYEWITNESS (1981) and TURNS AND STROKES (1996) that has never been recorded in a studio proper. and in doing so emerges as newly re-written.  A recent review in The Wire (no relation) claimed that this renewal had smoothed out or boiled (thanks D.H. Lawrence) the material here,  although I hear nothing of the sort.  The band certainly seems to be clinging to the creative tensions (punk? pop? experimental?) that first tore them apart and made them as artfully restless as they've always been.  "Doubles and Trebles" begins the record with continued youthful urgency:

                                   An outlining exile receives a recent dispatch
                                   when he's already in trouble,
                                   unable to relax.

Now that's Wire in a nutshell.
            

                           

PROCESS & MEANING?

Is this dog simply juggling or attempting to distinguish between treasures and tokens of worthlessness?  Seemingly there  are no value judgements being made here,  nor  is there any defense stance being taken.  "Being taken" is the operative phrase here,  as our monoculture consumes us as we consume "it".

THIS IS HOW WE DEFORM: SNAZZY FX DroneBank

While I first thought the idea of five frequency-tuned oscillators without cv inputs was a pretty lame idea,  after giving the DroneBank some attention I've become something of a fan.  A module like the 4MS VCA Matrix becomes essential here as various signals,  LFOs,  and control voltages really help to morph and activate those five oscillators,  as do different tuning combinations.  Additional modules that I've also found helpful here are wavefolders and wave-multipliers,  while sparse use of delay was nice too.  Using any or all of the five oscillators independently with the mix output also offers interesting possibilities. There you have it, a good thing,  as in a simplicity that complicates. Available at CONTROL in Brooklyn.

THIS IS HOW WE DEFORM: INTELLIJEL Planar

This is the first joystick that I really think is useful beyond quick rushes of sound and novelty maneuvers (I'm thinking here of my Synthi joystick as well as the Flight of Harmony Choices,  both of which are rather limited in their potential).  The Planar seems very sensitive and smooth in operation which gives it the feel of an instrument,  not a flimsy toy.  The limitations of the basic X/Y axis are brushed aside by not only a manual gate button (plus gate and "sense" outs),  but an abundance of signal and cv inputs/outputs.  All of which makes this module quite a bit of fun for the adventurous Eurorack noise-nik.

ROE ENNEY Sounds

BRIEF ENCOUNTER: ROE ENNEY

 ROE ENNEY is a sentient being who uses the visual arts and sound as stepping stones to expression.  Other musical projects include CLINICAL PISS and SLEEPING BAGS. What follows is our recent chat via email:

  I know that you play electric bass,  but you seem to now favor modular synthesis over other forms of sound generation.  Is this true,  and why?

Yes.

In order to consider how modular synthesis may represent the blue prints for style in acoustic and amplified sound composition. I find I explore attack in more detail than i do in acoustic playing and have possibility for more control over amplitude and my "effects" than in amplified sound. For this reason I encourage anyone who is serious about sound to explore modulars in order to gain new insight. After experience with them, you may find other instruments insufficient in certain capacities. My bass is still essential to my melody writing, and there are certain rhythms I can make with it that I cannot on modular. Bass was my first instrument and I have slept with my bass on several occasions, so we are intimate in that way. My modular seems like a more difficult to manage bedfellow.

  What is your favorite piece of gear?

It is really hard to say. I am certain if I choose, one of them will make me pay for it. I really love my recording interface now, because it makes my recording sessions so headache free.

 Technology and art.  How are they balanced in your creative endeavors?

They have a symbiotic relationship, with art being the creature situated more towards the top of the food chain. Technology cleans the ears and eats the parasites of my art.

  Is recognition of gender issues inherent to your work?

I think my work rejects glamour, glamour being deceptive, and also a big part of female culture in New York City. I haven't travelled as much as I'd like to, but I imagine women in other cities to be more interested and active in non-representational music.

 What can we expect from you in the future?   

I am going to continue recording myself and releasing the stuff. I have about four albums that I need to finish, all of them snapshots of very fleeting attempts to define my musical position before I've off'd and changed directions again. Introducing modular synthesis to my practice has manifested a cyclical struggle. Referring back to the blue print notion, modular synthesis seems to create a duality with the language it uses, different from any other type of musical literacy that I know, yet like hieroglyphs, feels intensely like the precursor to all other types of sound notation.


STUFF:
                 "Damnatio Memoriae" cassette album released on Phaserprone (2011)

                 Cassette single for Discriminate Music (2012)

                  Interview on Root Blog,  by Root Strata

PROCESS

While I'm fairly sure that most people could care less about the process of making nearly anything,  especially art,  there is something in the dynamic of creation that intrigues me and pushes me to "make stuff"  of little or no value to a populace immersed in their IPhones.

"I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's.  I will not reason or compare;  my business is to create."     WILLIAM BLAKE

"No one has ever written or painted,  sculpted,  modeled,  built,  invented,  except to get out of Hell."
      ANTONIN ARTAUD

"In the creative act,  the artist goes from intention to realization through a chain of totally subjective reactions."      MARCEL DUCHAMP

"Creativity is a sudden cessation of stupidity."        EDWIN LAND

"Creativity cannot prosper in the past,  nor within a wall to possibilities.  It's a rejection of lives lived within single word descriptions (like "cute" and "awesome") and a need to name ."     ANONYMOUS

MAGNIFIERS: MERZbook by Brett Woodward

This fine volume from Extreme (Australia/1999) attempted the impossible by producing the ultimate appreciation of the rise of Japanese noise as created by Masami Akita aka Merzbow,  whose output  has been nothing short of staggering.  MERZbook originally came out as part of the Merzbox compendium of Masami's  cassettes/CD releases, collaborations, artwork,  interviews,  and writings.  As it was hardly condensed at 50 compact discs,  it's subtitle "The Pleasuredome of Noise" seems entirely warranted for this package's sheer immersion into Masami's response to Japanese culture,  attitudes to sexuality,  power, politics,  information overload,  and even music..  Merzbow takes  essentially formless blasts of noise and sculpts them into a varied sonic palette that he's re-worked innumerable times only to find a stubbornly secretive, yet evocative medium that rewards repeated listening as it also alienates those  who run from the chaos of our contemporary world.  It may be the most modern "music"  ever,  even as it comes decades after the Italian Futurists first announced their love of speed,  technology, and  violence via sonic blasts from their intonarumori. Brett Woodward and an army of designers/consultants did a fine job at giving a semblance of form to an amazing amount of material (written, aural,  and visual) that constitutes this project.  Listen and look.  It's still a vital confrontation.

LAST BROOKLYN NO FUN FESTIVAL

I recently unearthed this flyer from the final NO FUN festival held in Williamsburg,  Brooklyn.  It's a virtual who's who of experimental sound,  noise-rock,  electronica,  and just plain amorphous noise.  I attended the sunday finale,  and all I can say is I'm glad that Karl from MainDrag Music insisted I accept his gift of earplugs.  

THIS IS HOW WE DEFORM: SPUTNIK West Coast Random Source

I guess it was only a matter of time before someone (in this case,  Robbie McDonald) translated Don Buchla's elegantly screwy electrical ode to unpredictability to the Eurorack format.  Its design is exactly the same as Buchla's,  but of course eighth inch cable inputs/outputs are featured throughout (no bananas).    I could certainly use an explanation here,  but in the randomness sweepstakes why not throw caution to the wind? For those who cherish chance,  the West Coast Random Source is available at Brooklyn's very dependable brick and mortar modular synth outlet,  CONTROL.

A clarification from Robbie McDonald:

The module is a 100% clone of the original Buchla 200 series,  266 Source of Uncertainty.

The schematics, sans the obsolete parts, were put to pcb in eurorack format by fellow wiggler Roman Filippov. Roman did all of the hard work, I just built the module from the pcbs he created. I had two of them,  but felt that I only needed one. 

With that being said, Don never created a users manual for the 266 but those two sections are pretty straight forward.

The Integrator is a simple Glide/Portamento circuit. You run cv into it and it smooths out the variations in the signal. 

The sample and hold grabs the voltage of a continuously varying signal and holds (locks, freezes) its value at a constant level until the next pulse arrives. Once the pulse arrives the varying signal is again locked into place. 

For the S&H run a pulse or gate into the "pulse in", put a envelope generator or one of the "fluctuating random voltages" into the "c.v. in", and run the c.v. out into 1v/oct of an oscillator. Boom, hours of stepped randomness! 

FIRST SYNTH: CASIO VL-TONE

Yup,  this is where This Second Sleep and brother project ether^ra got their start,  and while this "electronic musical instrument" is mighty limited,  it certainly served as an aural stimulus to our teenaged brains and bodies.  Just imagine a device that made the chords on an electric guitar seem rather quaint by comparison,  and heralded our advance into a netherworld,  that of noise.  Casio of Japan produced this odd little toy or novelty with a slogan that couldn't have been sillier:  "You've  Got  a Whole Band in Your Hand",  but somehow it took off,  selling one million  units between 1979 and  1984!  Not bad for a cheesy sounding,  lo-fi, monophonic synth/sequencer/calculator with a ridiculously small push-button,  two octave "keyboard".  Yet, it was pretty cool for $150.  I have no memory of how we even acquired it,  considering our level of derision for the commercial world (and lack of jobs) at that time in our lives.  The corn really started to pile up when we saw the presets:  piano,  violin, flute,  guitar,  and most importantly,  fantasy (but at least there was a modicum of sound modulation there when tweaked with an LFO or ADSR envelope).  I really did like the ultra cheap drum sounds though.  I bet Cabaret Voltaire did too.