VJ Heaven

How does the Wrapsol screen protector look after 3 months of usage.

IAMX- After every party I die in higher q of sound

Mrs Vee Recordings (www.mrsvee.co.uk) challenged its online community to create something audio and/or visual from scratch, in less than a week, every week in April 2010. I decided to have a go, so here’s my track/video. The music was composed in Sony Acid, using Poizone and Vanguard VST plugins, plus some samples of me banging on a dustbin and blowing down an old hoover pipe like a digeridoo. The video footage was shot in my parents’ back garden, then mixed live using Mute VJ software, and filmed directly off the auxillary monitor.

Music by Subsonic Park, video by ÜNN (www.184uenn.de) track after dark from the album inner city codes on eluxrecords

visit www.menigma.com for more information… just a small home mapping thing using the modul8 and after effects. Music by Paul Kalkbrenner

Hardly a day goes by, it seems, that someone isn’t talking about the death of the album, replaced by singles. When they say “album,” however, they tend to mean “pop album,” using as their primary metric sales of the very top end of the spectrum. In electronic music, the album has never been about sales. For one, singles have long ruled the dance floor, long before iTunes began peddling online downloads of a la carte tracks. But more than that, albums are a unit of time, a packaged statement of aesthetic thought. They’re a story. And after an explosion of flash-pot diversity, labels today begin to be valued for their longevity and endurance. Albums once justified the label. Now, labels are a reason for albums to exist.

Of course, actually figuring out how to do that is as challenging – in business and cuisine – as running a restaurant. You need enough diversity to keep people coming back, but without becoming chaotic or losing the plot. You need a quantity / quality list.

Ghostly International is to me one of the superstar musical chefs that’s done it right. This summer, they’ve reached the milestone of 100 album releases. That may sound like a lot, but Ghostly has had just over a decade in operation, meaning they’re averaging just around ten releases a year.

I’m not personally shelling out for one of the 50 in this series, but I really admire its design. It embodies Ghostly’s philosophy – and it’s also a symbolic milestone. With its beautiful, organic design, it’s a physical manifestation of the new, enduring album, the album that survives even in the age of torrent sites and iTunes singles and enormous hard drives and music as commodity. As Ghostly puts it:

The Ghostly Bento was inspired by Japan and its tradition of quality, service, and design—values that Ghostly has always cherished. “Manzoku” is a Japanese word that roughly translates to “satisfaction.” Thus, the Bento is an intimate celebration of satisfaction in multiple forms—tactile, visual, aural—packaged in a handcrafted wooden box, stained and etched with a stunning image by LA artist Dosa Kim.

Putting out pretty wooden boxes isn’t going to justify any label, but Ghostly is busy, as always, this month.

Here in New York at digital tech research hub Eyebeam, a handful of artists will gather to collaborate with the label on visualization of music, under the tutelage of digital artists Aaron Myers and Aaron Koblin, as covered previously on CDMotion:
Matching Visuals to Music: Round-up of Inspiration
I hope to be there covering what happens, and coding myself.

This Friday July 9 in San Francisco and Saturday July 10 in Los Angeles, Ghostly will celebrate its 100 discs with live events, featuring favored artists like Tycho, Shigeto, The Sight Below, and Mux Mool. (If anyone from CDM’s readership would like to go cover, we’d be much obliged!)
XLR8R.com, SF event, LA showcase

And if you want to include records other than just Ghostly’s in your listening queue, check out their lovely look back at the past decade at the end of last year – plenty of agreement in my own music library here.
Ghostly’s 110: Our Favorite Albums of the Decade

Meanwhile, if you want a look behind the scenes with a Ghostly artist, here’s what Christopher Willits is up to with Livid Instruments’ Block (see last week’s round-up) and Ableton Live with Max for Live, for our friends at XLR8R.

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Wherever they occur in the world, disasters’ material impact can be nearly as emotionally and personally challenging as loss of life. Floods in Nashville, Tennessee have illustrated this vividly, as irreplaceable instruments at facilities like the legendary Soundcheck Nashville have born the brunt of the rising flood waters.

For their part, Soundcheck has been running a flood blog covering recovery and equipment load out.

National Public Radio’s All Things Considered last night covered some of the damage, and how people are coping – including some of the instruments that are being saved.
Floods Wreak Havoc On Nashville Music Scene

Rolling Stone has similar stories:
Country Music Reels From Dangerous Nashville Floods

Unique instruments with unique sounds are, of course, inseparable from the artists who play them in their relationship to musical heritage. Entire communities in Nashville now face floods that threaten the livelihood of artists, as well.

Guitar Center announced this week their own efforts to help with clean-up and recovery, and released information about resources which may help. The project, entitled “Operation High Ground,” includes a number of componments:

• MusiCares will assist those in the Nashville area community to assist with emergency financial assistance. If you want to donate to the effort, you can visit a Guitar Center store or guitarcenter.com.
• Teams of specialists from Guitar Center and GC Pro will advise victims on gear repair and replacement; there’s a Tennessee hotline (877-687-5405) and rush shipment and distribution for those trying to purchase replacement gear in a hurry.
• “Guitar Center has partnered with local Nashville FM radio station 104.5, The Zone, to help musicians rebuild their devastated communities. Beginning in May, for a six-week period, 104.5 will be holding live broadcasts from storm-damaged areas. Guitar Center representatives will be on-site to evaluate damaged gear and provide advice and assistance.”
• A benefit concert with FM 103 WKDF and 3rd and venue Lindsley will raise money to “rebuild Music City.

Obviously, Guitar Center also wants to make sure they sell some gear here, but the repair and recovery efforts are real. And there is a chance to help artists in the community, and to save instruments. Listen to the NPR story above for a sense of how tenuous the repair effort is, albeit with some rays of hope.

Here’s more information on the MusiCares organization:

MusiCares: Providing emergency financial assistance to people in the music industry, they have the ability to help anyone in the music industry who was affected by the flooding. To be qualified you must have been in the music industry for at least five years. This includes tour bus drivers, writers, etc. The organization will help replace homes, music equipment, etc. Call Cortney Bailey at (615)
327-0050 or email at cortney.bailey@grammy.com.

If any readers in the CDM community have been impacted by the flood in Nashville or disasters in any part of the world, we’d like to hear your stories and do what we can to help. Do get in touch.

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