CatSynth

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I was searching for track to feature tonight in honor of the Music and Cats theme of the Bad Kitty Chaos Festival, and eventually settled on this selection from Bast Babylone by zlknf:

lknf: free noise from an autonomous organism.
territory of new sonic landscapes in permanent questioning and mutation, quasi-silence purity to gliding noisaural imensitudes.
Bast Babylon EP available through Merzbau.

In this case, I am interpreting the theme as more “inspirational” than literal, i.e., music inspired by cats rather than created from cat sounds. Certainly, the references to Bast suggest a feline connection, as do the following quotes from the credits:

bast babylone is dedicated to bosch and sybilla.
zlknf thanks the electric masters for their gates are open,
her cats for their love is unconditional, merzbau for the immediate
cooperation and sympathy, and the Friends – AGAPE

Musically, this track reminds me a lot of the piece I did for Dorian Grey's Box, as well as several works in 2 1/2. Disturbingly so. Most likely it is common elements inspired by listening to computer music (ala ICMC and SEAMUS), but perhaps there is also a common element of the cats…

For subscription and listening options, click the “CatSynth Channel” icon in the upper right or the subscription link at the top of this post. And as always, enjoy!

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Tonight we feature the much-discussed performance from the 7th Annual Skronkathon two weeks ago. I did a solo electronic set featuring myself playing laptop (running [http://osw.sourceforge.net]Open Sund World[/url]), the Indian ektar and gopichand string instruments, a toy piano, the DSI Evolver, and of course my quacking toy duck (everyone loves the duck).

This recording was done my Matt Ingalls for the sfSound Radio broadcast. I edited it a bit, mostly cutting out the empty bits or embarrassing errors.

You can see a photograph from the performance here and more info about the technical preparations here.

For subscription and listening options, click the “CatSynth Channel” icon in the upper right or the subscription link at the top of this post. And as always, enjoy!

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This was a little bit of fun some friends and I had a picnic today with cell-phone feedback. Basically, one person calls the other in close proximity, and both parties set the phones to speaker-mode. What happens then is what you will here in tonight's exciting podcast release.

Yes, this is the sort of thing that can happen when you have too many electronic-music geeks and too much alcohol, but hey, it's fun for the whole family. It's true, whole families were having fun, or at least some members of whole families…

I am also launching the new improved CatSynth Channel website at http://www.ptank.com/podcast. It should be a lot cleaner and more obvious (i.e., it now says “CatSynth Channel” in big letters), plus you can listen live on site to any podcast episodes you want, no need for a portable player or iTunes/Windows Media Player, etc. Of course, you still subscribe using the feed icon above. In any case, enjoy the crazy music.

podcast mp3 electronic cell phone feedback picnic fun

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It looks like the Sunday podcast featuring another track from deCouto was not properly linked and thus did not load properly for everyone. I fixed it yesterday, so anyone who missed the latest episode should do so now. I apologize for the mistake.

podcast docouto mp3 lofi

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Tonight's podcast is another track from expire(ments) in patience bythe band DoCouto. From their page at the Internet Archive:

recordings made between 1995 and 2006. ocations include texas,new orleans,seattle and new york.

The track “patty hurts” was featured on a previous podcast.

This work was made available under a Creative Commons license that allows for free sharing and distribution. Click the icon below for license details:

You can subscribe directly via our FeedBurner feed at the top of this post, or for more info and options, click the CatSynth Channel icon in the upper right corner. And as always, enjoy!

podcast docouto mp3 lofi

Well, it's another Sunday, and another podcast for the CatSynth Channel.

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Tonight's podcast features some live internet improvisation using NINJAM, a system that allows people to share live audio in real time and thus jam together over the internet. To overcome network latency that has stymied most systems for online collaboration, NINJAM actually adds delay so that everyone's audio conforms to a particular meter and tempo, i.e., everyone's down beats are in sync though they may be a measure or two off from one another. This leads to either simple “groove” jams on one or two chords and a steady beat (think of the 70s jazz classic Chameleon), or freeform improvisation.

The particular sessions used in this remix were from June 15 and 17 featuring several performers live at the Digital Media Factory in Santa Cruz California as part of the MFA Exhibition for the Digital Art and New Media (DANM) program at UC Santa Cruz. Though I am not a student, one of my best friends is, and so I had the opportunity to perform in several of the jams with local musicians as well as others over the internet.

Out of several hours of material, I made a 30-minute “remix” of several of the jams. The feel ranges from free-form to driving funk/jazz rhythms to a relaxed fusion/lounge feel (this happened when most of the musicians turned out to be keyboard players) and more.

All recorded mixes from the NINJAM AutoSong Archive, which are the sources for this track, are released under the Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike Creative Commons License v2.5..

Collaborators on the various jams include synthany, mvollrath, dbkick, tbfx, Funkify, leftyf, Oubien_ke, ekinox, hotdog, and chazz. (Sorry if I missed anyone).

Synthany is Synthia Payne and friends at the DANM exhibition, where I played as well. For my parts, I used E-MU Emulator X2 on my PC laptop, doing keyboard/piano, rhythms (using TwistaLoop), and even some bass when it was needed.

As always, comments are welcome. I'm not sure my brief discription really did justice to the topic or this particular example of online music collaboration, so feel free to ask more about it, or research the topic for yourself. In the meantime, enjoy.

podcast mp3 ninjam internet jam online collaboration ucsc digital arts improvisation funk jazz electronics

The Sunday's podcast is another great find from the Internet Archives. The album Requiems for a Submerged City is “An electronic tribute to the City of New Orleans and its people – to those who survived Katrina and to those who didn't.” Tonight, we feature the first track, “This is It” by Doc:

Doc opens his track and the album with an upbeat intro carrying some of the emotionally most charged moments from New Orleans Katrina/flood media reporting. After the initial blast of 'media energy' the track transforms into soft, relaxed, dreamlike ambience hosting a strange collage of media snippets, some tangible, some almost subliminal, floating gently in the stream of music.

Regular readers will know that we at CatSynth have been closely following, and often touched by, the events in New Orleans following Katrina. This was even more true after my visit in November, 2006. So am I happy to feature this collection as part of my regular podcast series.

I am also happy to announce that you can now subscribe to the CatSynth Channel far more easily via FeedBurner. From now on, every podcast post to CatSynth will include the “feed” icon below:

Click here to subscribe.

I will also be retrofitting previous podcast posts as time permits.

So not that it's this simple, you all no longer have any excuses to not subscribe to our podcast.

podcast new orleans
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Today's podcast is a track entitled “patty hurts” by the band DoCouto from a series entitled expire(ments) in patience. From their page at the Internet Archive:

recordings made between 1995 and 2006. ocations include texas,new orleans,seattle and new york.

This track uses a recording of Patty “Tania” Hearst with heavy electronic processing and overlaid with instrumentals. The result is a somewhat gritty mixture of hard rhythms and experimental voice work.

This work was made available under a Creative Commons license that allows for free sharing and distribution. Click the icon below for license details:

For more info about the podcast and to subscribe, follow this link or click the CatSynth Channel icon in the upper right corner. And as always, enjoy!

podcast docouto mp3 lofi patty hearst

Some of you may have seen my parody of Bush's May 1, 2003 “Mission Accomplished” theatrics, and a few of you may have even gotten the joke.

In any case, I posted a version to YTMND complete with remixed clips from the speech. Tonight's podcast is an extended version of that speech remix. As always, click on the podcast icon to the right, or the “Podcast” item in the right-side menu, to subscribe.

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george w bush
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Tonight's podcast is an excerpt from the “Synthesizer Summit” at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco. Basically, the performance is an improvisation by several artists playing hardware synths. If I recall correctly, the artists and their respective synths were:

Synthia Payne: Roland JP8000
Amar Chaudhary: E-MU Proteus 2000 (Mo'Phatt + Vintage) and Morpheus
LX Rudis: Oberheim Matrix 12
Jim Ryan: Arp 2600
Will Grant: E-MU UltraProteus

Note: many subscribers may have heard another excerpt fromt the Synthesizer Summit that I accidentally released a few weeks back instead of the advertised Woodstockhausen 2003 performance (that has since been corrected).

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experimental
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