Metta | Sonic

Bluebrain “The National Mall” Location Aware Album—my experience encapsulated/reviewed

Washington-based band of brothers, Hays and Ryan Holladay of Bluebrain, have been mixing up DC’s electronic based music scene with innovative, site-specific, crowed-sourced projects for the past couple of years.

I have had the pleasure of seeing numbers of their lives acts, in more traditional concerts (One at Comet Ping Pong) and art performances at the Capitol Hill art’s space—The Fridge where the band used crowed-sourced sounds for an interactive concert to influence and inflect their DJ performance using the OSC+Midi mobile application touchosc back in June of last year. Bluebrain are all about artist collaboration and uniting the viewing public and other artists to influence the shape of the performance sonically speaking. Using technology to unite the listening public is a natural evolution for the band and to create a location specific geolocation album.

Now to the present project this dynamic duo released just today that the Washington Post calls:

…The world’s first location-aware album — an app designed for smartphones that uses Global Positioning System technology to trigger different swaths of electro-pop based on physical location. Titled “The National Mall,” the app-album can be heard only in Washington by iPhone-toting listeners strolling around the monuments and museums [surrounding the National Mall].

Source—wapo.st/khR59i

Seeing and experience is believing and understanding what actually this application does.

The Holladays produced an intro trailer video to familiarize the public with the experential aspects of the app when used while touring the mall; a new app mico-site has also been developed to help the public familiarize them with what a location specific album is all about.

The performances of Bluebrain have impressed me so I was instantly excited to experience this new form of album after watching the info trailer.

I downloaded the application/album off apple’s itunes store

with my iPhone 4 and traveled to the Smithsonian metro stop and once on land, open to they sky I fired up the National Mall album and I get hit with a densely textured sound wash that instantly makes me more aware of movement of people, trees moving in the wind, kites floating, clouds, contrasts of movement and stillness. With this fist soundscape I could tell the Holidays do indeed live in the city. This first soundwash was site specific, it was intended for not only the mall but for that specific piece of ground I stood on, as soon as I started walking I noticed a slight shift in the provided sound morphing anew to greet my newly arrived surroundings.  The soundscape made me want to walk, to see, to experience my surroundings. Walk past the merry-go-round: I hear a more circular repetition than from the sounds I just heard before. I stop walking—I found this locks in the soundtrack and brings your experience about watching not moving to the next spot. As with the merry-go-round horse nays could be heard, the animals of the vintage ride have come alive, a new.

The magic of this album is that, the surroundings of the National Mall are not new to me, as I grew up here and since have not been a tourist in my native city for a very long time. This album opened my jaded eyes  and I did experience the national mall with a new unfolding experience I have never had before.  I walked from the Capitol to the Washington Monument all along the National Mall  album morphing slightly into a new montage as I cross paths of new sites. With the Hirshhorn Art Museum, sounds of water and flow as I greet the fountain in the center rotund.  At the Space Museum sounds of shuttle launches and com chatter blend in. At the WWII Memorial meditative music morph in and allow contemplation. Closer to the the Capitol I walk I hear a new style the music takes on—jazz and coral motifs great my ears as my eyes see new surroundings.

The album in a whole was seamless, only a few glitches I came about in my one day experience with the app. There were brief moments (a few seconds) of silence when the GPS was finding a new location or when I went from sitting for a bit to walking—there are sitting and walking themes, the app is smart, it locks in if you are moving or walking or sitting still. The only flaw I could find was when I wanted to background the application to take a photo with my iPhone 4, this would pause the music of the album and I would have a hard time getting the music back up playing , so to fix this I would go to the last place I knew the album was working correctly, shut the application down and restart—that did the trick and the album would start again. So backgrounding the album app, and then running other apps (that may be location based as well) cause some minor album palyback errors, but as I described there are good solutions to dealing with this very small issue.

I give Bluebrain a two thumbs up for producing a seamless album that unfolds itself as the listener experience their (new found)surroundings of the National Mall. This jaded local DCite who has been to the National Mall since he was 2 found a new experience in listing to music and experiencing DC anew. 

Thank you for such an opening experience.

Here are some photos, I took, of the National Mall (and surrounding areas) as I was listening to the National Mall album morph from one sound texture to the next as I went from place to place.

FLUID-Radio>John McCaffrey – Wraxall

John McCaffrey of Part Timer/Scissors and Sellotape fame returns to the Fluid ranks once more, delivering another sublime selection of haunting frequencies for your listening pleasure.

…………………………………………

Track List:

Hildur Gudnadottir – Whiten
Emmanuele Errante – Terra
Luup – Cream Sky (Hummingbird remix one)
E+I – November Sunset
Ous Mal – Tuulensouja
Ezekiel Honig – Past Tense Kitchen Movement
Julianna Barwick – Envelop
Dakota Suite + Emmanuele Errante – No Greater Pain
Federico Durand – El Pequeno Huesped Sigue Dormido
Origamibiro – Ballerina Platform Shoes
Szymon Kaliski – And Longing
Matteo Uggeri + Andrea Ferraris – Friend Sleeping, People Swimming in the Pool, Doors, Workout and Water Bottles
Tokyo Bloodworm – Canaanite Coast (Peter Stenberg remix)

…………………………………………

The Echelon Effect

David Walters. London based solo project creating soundscapes and beauty. Utilising live and programmed sounds to create instrumental epic sounding music. Sometimes huge sometimes small.

[website] [bandcamp] [facebook] [twitter] [youtube] [last.fm]

We Will Spin Forever — Bad Panda Records Release #072

[mp3] [ogg] [flac] [wav]

Video shot by Paul Beard

Edited by David Walters

Music Released Under Creative Commons License

Another Amazing Album in The Echelon Effect’s Catalog

Electronic Independence—Interview w/ Ulrich Schnauss

When post-shoegaze magician – the peerless electronic wunderkind – Ulrich Schnauss invited us to his apartment in London, he specified it would have to be at night due to his predilection for ‘nocturnal’ activities.

We thought that seemed mostly normal for a musician until he came to the door (clad in leather jeans) and dragged us up to his pitch-black attic.

Thankfully all of our Warhol-period Udo Kier fantasy/nightmares were unwarranted the moment we walked into his studio: an impressive collection of synthesizers and effects units used to layer hundreds of manipulated sounds and craft some of the most breathtaking, bombastic records released in recent years.

Ulrich was kind enough to show us some of his favorite instruments and demo the tasty tones from his forthcoming album.

-SCREEN VINYL IMAGE_ @ the Artisphere ()Arlington, VA—on 3.12.11()

Often riding a hazey line between noisy psychedelia and darkwave electronic, Screen Vinyl Image’s latest single [‘Too Much Speed’] takes catchy hooks and blasts them out using their signature blend of maxed amps and analog synths. Too Much Speed rocks a driving drum machine that carries memorable melodies of Automatic inspired pop under heavy layers of noise and drone. On Stay Asleep, a pulsing electro beat pushes Low-Life era synth hooks and shimmering guitars into epic Slowdive grandeur, and just as the sounds begin to fizzle off the song overdrives into 4 minutes of twisting noise and crackling samples.

FROM—Custom Made Music

Too Much Speed (4 Track Demo) by screenvinylimage

—*`,

Sonic Circuits hosted an event with Screen Vinyl Image as headline, video is of the last song of the evening for SVI:
Screen Vinyl Image
The Plums
Buildings
Degallado

Official Site: Artisphere
Official Site: Sonic Circuits

+-~..

Underworld @ 930 (DC) 10.25.10

Set List: Courtesy of the Underworld Gigography 

1-Downpipe
2-Always Loved A Film
3-Dark Train / Nu Train
4-Two Months Off
5-Scribble
6-Bird1 / Strumpet
7-Rez
8-Cowgirl
9-Between Stars
10-Diamond Jigsaw
11-King of Snake
12-Born Slippy NUXX
13-Dirty Epic
14-Moaner

FACT mix 224: Justin Broadrick

Legendary Birmingham musician Justin K. Broadrick dons his Pale Sketcher guise for this Monday’s FACT mix.

Broadrick has, frankly, seen it all. An early member of grind veterans Napalm Death, he made his name in the late ’80s as a core member of Godflesh, the nihilistic voice of council estate England as transmitted through some of the heaviest music of the era, and a thorough influence on the modern day work of Shackleton and Kevin ‘The Bug’ Martin – the latter of whom Broadrick has frequently collaborated with, as Techno Animal, Curse of the Golden Vampire, and in several other groups.

The two main projects of his 20 year plus career have been Godflesh and Jesu, an equally heavy but harmonically richer evolution of Godflesh with a focus on ascending to undiscovered heights as opposed to plunging pebble-dashed depths, but there’s always been an orbit of other incarnations, one of which, Pale Sketcher has been Broadrick’s focus since last year, when he introduced the project through Ghostly International. As FACT’s Robin Jahdi observed on his review of Pale Sketches: Demixed, it “presents a new sound” from Broadrick, taking in “elegant textures and heartache; melodic evolution and overall lushness.”

It’s his Pale Sketcher mask that Broadrick dons for this FACT mix, leaning strongly on hip-hop (Lootpack, Dr. Octagon, RZA) while travelling through various electronic forms that inform the project, including Boards of Canada, dBridge, Oval, Caustic Window and Chain Reaction. There’s even room for forthcoming Pale Sketcher material for Ghostly. It’s a legend at work; tuck in.

FACT mix 224 - Justin Broadrick by factmag  

Tracklist:

Donnacha Costello – ‘Always A Part’
Caustic Window – ‘A1′
Fairmont – ‘Walk Home’
Lootpack – ‘Questions’
Seefeel – ‘Spangle’
Dettinger – ‘A1′
Burial – ‘Archangel’
Slowdive – ‘Shine’
Dr Octagon – ‘Moosebumps’
Oval – ‘Do While X’
The Field – ‘Kappsta’
Various Artists – ’7′
Cabaret Voltaire – ‘Doublevision’
Pale Sketcher – Unreleased Dubplate 1
The Aggrovators – ‘Find A Dub’
Boards Of Canada – ‘Music Is Math’
Mark Kozelek – ‘Leo And Luna’
Pale Sketcher – Unreleased Dubplate 2
RZA – ‘Grits’
Babybird – ‘Saturday’
Cabaret Voltaire – ‘Jazz The Glass’ (
D Bridge – ‘The Question’

+-~

Directed by Eoghan Kidney
Produced by Fionn Kidney (vimeo page)
Playhouse provided by Daft.ie

Music ‘Downpipe’ Mark Knight & D.Ramirez v Underworld

*-~

(Source: youtube.com)

Scattered by Michael Larsson
{Created 2007}
-)~—’.