Sounds from Innerspace

innerspaceboy · 10-15-2016, 05:37 PM

This morning I took a trip to my old hometown of Rochester and made my routine pilgrimage to my favorite record store - The Bop Shop. The owner, Tom put a record in my hands and told me that I had to own it.

Tom has always been a wonderful source for musique concrete, minimalist works, early experimental electronic recordings and other lovely treasures of the avant-garde. Many of my favorite LPs are original pressings from his personal collection.

The LP he held was John Cage • Christian Wolff, a 1963 album featuring Cage's side-long "Cartridge Music" - one of Cage’s earliest attempts to produce live electronic music by manipulating turntable cartridges. I've known Tom for years and he has never steered me wrong and this latest LP is no exception. Wonderful stuff!

I also spotted a box set in his shop which I snatched up without hesitation. Readers may recall my copy of Cyril Ritchard reading Alice in Wonderland which included a facsimile clothbound hardcover copy of the 1865 first edition with all of the original illustrations. Today in store, I discovered that Ritchard had produced a reading of Through the Looking Glass as well! And it too included a copy of the 1872 hardcover. How could I pass it up?

Upon returning home I was struck by a recollection that a Kickstarter project had been initiated for a first-ever "Earthling Edition" of the historic Voyager Golden Record, (our message to the stars). As the Kickstarter page describes:

Quote:

The Voyager Golden Record contains the story of Earth expressed in sounds, images, and science: Earth's greatest music from myriad cultures and eras, from Bach and Beethoven to Blind Willie Johnson and Chuck Berry, Senegalese percussion to Solomon Island panpipes. Dozens of natural sounds of our planet -- birds, a train, a baby's cry -- are collaged into a lovely audio poem called Sounds of Earth. There are spoken greetings in 55 human languages, and one whale language, and more than one hundred images encoded in analog that depict who, and what, we are.

The closest I'd come to the Voyager disc was the limited edition "A Glorious Dawn" single from Third Man Records. The single was composed and performed by Symphony of Science and credited to an auto-tuned Carl Sagan singing about the magnificence of the universe. And etched upon the second side of the disc is the image of the Golden Record.

As a tremendous fan of Carl Sagan's work and his legacy, and as a "cultural curator" of historically significant recordings, this anniversary Voyager project was something I knew I had to support, and to claim a copy for my library if at all possible.

The beautiful box set is being remastered by Timothy Ferris - the original producer of the Golden Record, and will include:

A cloth-covered box with gold foil inlay
Three translucent gold, heavyweight vinyl LPs in poly-lined paper sleeves
Three old-style tip-on jackets, black ink and gold foil
A hardback book showcasing the photographs and art featured on the original disc
A lithograph of Voyager Golden Record cover diagram, gold metallic ink on archival paper
A full-color plastic digital download card for all audio of the record in MP3 or FLAC

What a wonderful way to celebrate our message to space!

And it turned out that my hunch was aptly timed, as I found there were only five days remaining in the Kickstarter campaign, and pledging to the project is the only way to claim a copy of this special release! I pledged immediately and look forward to the album's launch in 2017.

Check out the short official video for the project and pledge while you still can!

innerspaceboy · 10-18-2016, 05:28 PM

I've been on a crazy musique concrete kick lately, buying up classics like Cage's Cartridge Music and the Panorama of Musique Concrete from '56.

And just arrived from the Netherlands - Popular Electronics: The Singles Collection

#664/1000, this velvet box set was issued in 2008 by Basta Records - the label which produced the magnificent three-volume Manhattan Research set. This compilation contains faithful reissues of 1950s musique concrete 7" classics from Dutch electronic music composers Kid Baltan, Tom Dissevelt, and H Badings.

The set contains:

Electronic Ballet Music: Cain and Abel (Philips 400 036 AE) (1956)
Electronic Popular Music (Philips 315 538 NF) (1957)
Electronic Movements (Philips430 736 PE) (1958)
and Electronic Music (Philips 430 791 PE) (1961)

Each disc includes the original sleeve and liner notes.

I first got into Baltan/Dissevelt under their Electrosoniks moniker when I found the Philips "Electronic Music" LP from 1962 at my local antique mall. Wonderful stuff!

innerspaceboy · 10-24-2016, 08:26 PM

For the past year, I've been using the incredibly powerful gmusicbrowser Linux application for audio library management and music playback. But the program has always crashed every time I exit.

This evening, I found an active bug report for the issue, and through some creative troubleshooting resolved the problem. Now the application runs flawlessly!

What drew me to gmusicbrowser was its impressively fast and fluid handling of large libraries (150,000+ tracks), and its 100% customizable interface which I've maximized to take advantage of every possible piece of metadata I could ever care to access.

This made my day!

Spoiler for Big snapshot.:

innerspaceboy · 10-28-2016, 06:30 PM

Celebrating the end of a long week with a few treats for myself. Just bought the last two Tom Waits LPs missing from my collection.

Now spinning: Tom Waits & Crystal Gayle - One From the Heart

And I just ordered a copy of The Black Rider to make my collection complete!

Happy Friday, everyone!

innerspaceboy · 11-03-2016, 09:04 PM

NP: Underworld - "Mother Earth" b/w "The Hump" Tomato Records ‎– PLUM 2001 (1992)

My holiest of holy grails for many years which has still escaped my grasp. Of course, that's because this is EVERYONE's Underworld holy grail.

Only 500 copies were pressed, mostly for friends of the band at the time. The two mixes of "The Hump" were derived from "Eclipse" released as a single under the brief moniker, "Lemon Interupt" but these b-sides shine brightly as the most desirable and elusive of the band's early recordings.

B1 "The Hump" (Wild Beasts) is Karl's lyrical edit, and B2 "(Groove Without a Doubt)" is an extended instrumental downtempo house remix which completely reinvents the track. After a relentlessly grooving 4-minute intro the mix peels back all the action and an incredibly funky syncopated slap bassline emerges, doubling down on all the energy of the introduction.

Every time I come back to this single in my archive, I swear I've got to claim one of the real deal for my library.

One day.

Spoiler for Click it. It's big.:

innerspaceboy · 11-06-2016, 07:03 PM

My wife officially declared it Christmas season and had me unpack all our holiday gear.

It seemed as good a time as any to set up my dad's 1950s ceramic tree in my office in his memory.
It gives a nice warm glow beside my amp and the red fringe lamp that he found for me all those years ago.

Cheers, dad!

The Batlord · 11-06-2016, 07:14 PM

Your wife is officially Walmart.

Tristan_Geoff · 11-06-2016, 07:32 PM

Innerspace: "Hey, honey?"
Wife: "Yes?"
Innerspace: "Are you... are you, Walmart?"

He then wakes up abruptly to find himself, 12 years old and in the bouncy ball dispenser at one of many Walmarts in the Buffalo, NY area. His entire patrician life has been a dream, and a very complex one at that, but has left him in dire confusion. What would it mean ...the correctional facility as an adolescent, the adult life lived in introversion... would this serve as a cautionary tale, or the treasures of what could be while through many hardships? He climbs out of the ball dispenser and towards the door. Walking out with the crisp autumn wind across his face, he starts to contemplate his future...

innerspaceboy · 11-06-2016, 08:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Batlord

Your wife is officially Walmart.

Sigh... yes. Though she's morally and ethically opposed to any and all things Walmart / corporate / capitalist, but it's her self-professed Hufflepuffness (and her ENFP-ness) that makes her lose her mind over the very notion of Christmas time.

innerspaceboy · 11-06-2016, 08:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tristan Geoff

Innerspace: "Hey, honey?"
Wife: "Yes?"
Innerspace: "Are you... are you, Walmart?"

He then wakes up abruptly to find himself, 12 years old and in the bouncy ball dispenser at one of many Walmarts in the Buffalo, NY area. His entire patrician life has been a dream, and a very complex one at that, but has left him in dire confusion. What would it mean ...the correctional facility as an adolescent, the adult life lived in introversion... would this serve as a cautionary tale, or the treasures of what could be while through many hardships? He climbs out of the ball dispenser and towards the door. Walking out with the crisp autumn wind across his face, he starts to contemplate his future...

...I...I would totally read that book.