Sounds from Innerspace

Josef K · 05-08-2015, 10:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by innerspaceboy

Wow, that's wild! Did you buy it on vinyl, CD, or a digital DL? I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts on it once you've given it a few listens, and I'd be more than happy to provide you with any info for suggested additional UW listening.

I got it on CD. This is really good - I'm especially loving the first track. I've heard good things about their first three albums, but should I bother with anything past that?

innerspaceboy · 05-09-2015, 10:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Josef K

I got it on CD. This is really good - I'm especially loving the first track. I've heard good things about their first three albums, but should I bother with anything past that?

They've done a lot of great work, some of it uptempo atmospheric drum and bass and other material is more chill like what you're listening to now.

Unfortunately, many of their mixes and DJ sessions are not produced or distributed commercially. Still, fans have assembled a lovely package of 15 of their best sets which is widely circulated on major public trackers.

This package includes the unofficial DJ Kicks Volumes 2, 3, and 4, the Amsterdam Dub Sessions from 2000, and other lovely recordings from K&D and their many aliases.

Pick it up, explore their work, and enjoy.

innerspaceboy · 05-09-2015, 07:48 PM

Three straight days of 87-degree heat. What better thing to do than to format and rebuild my audio workstation!

Back in 2012 I built a $375 PC with a 3.8GHz AMD Quad-Core processor and 8GB DDR3 - more than sufficient for a music server and for audio transcoding.

But for those last several years, I made due with a 32-bit OS that could only see half of my RAM when I was on the Windows side of the system. (I dual boot to Ubuntu as well.)

Today I FINALLY sat down and migrated to a 64-bit OS to fully-utilize my system's resources. Wiped it clean and started fresh.

Here's the brilliantly minimal desktop environment - I've stripped the UI of everything but the essentials.

And here's Media Monkey Gold running cleaner than ever!

Spring cleaning - it feels great!

innerspaceboy · 05-19-2015, 08:21 PM

Straight away - an apology for my absence of late. I've been working day and night on my latest projects, and knew it was time to stop in for an update.

For those curious how the wedding project was going - All of the rings have been crafted and each turned out better than I could have hoped for.

The coin ring craftsman I commissioned did an outstanding job with the mint proof. The image wasn't even warped in the slightest. And the silversmith I found to accept the challenge of resizing the piece from a 14 all the way down to a 7 did an expert job and for a delightfully low price.

Here is the coin ring before sizing:

And after:

But on to the next project!

This past weekend, my girlfriend and I developed a terrible nostalgia streak for the kids shows we watched in the 80s and 90s, as well as some more-recent favorites from the first years of Adult Swim.

We tossed our televisions back in 99 and have seen very little since so those two decades really have a strong connection to our childhoods. That's what inspired this new project.

We've got an old but working CRT in storage, and I'm going to build the MAME cabinet equivalent of 80s and 90s television. 106 complete program archives with a dedicated media center interface for easy navigation. When the project is complete, we plan to make it a Saturday morning routine, complete with marshmallow cereal.

We pooled a master program list via the Wikipedia and channel listing archives and narrowed it down to just over 100 of our favorite series.

Monday and Tuesday's archiving yielded the first 600 GB of content. The playlist thus far comprises 1,137 hours of retro-television - 44 different series from our master list and over 3,800 commercial-free episodes.

I learned quickly that the majority of these complete series archives are fan-compiled - that is, no official DVD collections exist for most of these programs, so you couldn't go out and buy them even if you wanted to.

As such, some series are top-notch while others are a mixed bag of video quality. But honestly, the occasional VHS scan lines add a touch of realism to the project and give it some life. They remind the viewer that the community brought together hundreds or even thousands of fans' VHS tapes and built these archives from the ground up. Joel Hodgson was right -

The RetroBox Project will be a lot of fun... though I anticipate I'll be stocking up on hard drives in the near future.

innerspaceboy · 05-25-2015, 09:20 AM

Six years in the making, Author Christian Wheeldon's magnificent account of The Musical Life of Manuel Göttsching is now available to the public. Weeldon takes the reader on a journey through the rebirth of German music in the 1970s, the fusion of rock, minimalism and electronics, and through all of the pioneering music that followed.

Wheeldon's is the first proper book to examine the life of Manuel Göttsching, and is an absolute triumph at the task. From the back cover:

[The book provides] previously unpublished interviews the author conducted with members of Ashra, as well as correspondence with other key personalities and selective historic sources.

But even more effective are Wheeldon's rich and impassioned analyses of each of Göttsching recording sessions. He provides an historic account of the socio-cultural circumstances surrounding each album's production, and descriptions of the music which will undoubtedly inspire readers to seek out and enjoy these albums for themselves.
A few examples from the opening chapters of the book -

On Ash Ra Tempel's self-titled record from 1971:

Ash Ra Tempel's first track is freeform and as untamed as any open, mud-spattered festival jam ever hammered out. A musical locomotive underpinned by the impressive, primal rumble of Hartmut Enke's bass, there is a sense that Amboss could derail at any one of several moments as a result of its own pile driving brute force. After a brief atonal guitar impasse the band steam back into action, finally rattling and clanging towards a furious, exhausted climax after 20 sweat-soaked minutes.

On The Cosmic Jokers' self-titled debut LP from 1974:

Soothing guitar work from Manuel introduces the final part of the original first side. The waters of a gently lapping chemical ocean gradually become more turbulent and as proceedings gather pace we plummet beneath the surface into a swirling wormhole, hurtling towards some far corner of the universe at breakneck speed. Schulze's booming synthesizer suggests myriad multi-colour fragments of giant rock colliding in an asteroid field and a rather kitsch intergalactic voice confirms that we are now charting the far reaches of the great beyond.

I repeatedly found myself putting the book down to scribble notes for future listening. A book exploring the incredible impact of Manuel Göttsching music is long-overdue, and thankfully Wheeldon's guided tour of his catalog will spark a renaissance of listenership and musical discoveries for both long-time fans and for young listeners eager to develop a better understanding of the foundations of ambient and electronic sound.

The book was printed in a short run, so don't miss your chance to claim a copy for your music library. Find out more at Manuel Göttsching Book - 'Deep Distance' - Available now.

Author Christian Wheeldon with his, the first-ever
publication celebrating the music of Manuel Gottsching

innerspaceboy · 05-30-2015, 02:30 PM

I spent the last two years fully-embracing the cloud. And why not? Cloud computing offers many wonderful features. Google's suite of apps create a seamless user experience from one personal device to another. Sites like Discogs.com empower users to access and share their record catalogs everywhere they go. Goodreads.com networks book-lovers from all around the world and democratized the used book market by facilitating the search and purchase of titles. It created a market where even the tiniest, tucked-away bookshops could compete directly with bookselling giants like Barnes & Noble.

I use Google Docs for drafts of articles I'm writing and really enjoy the flexibility of calling them up on my phone, tablet, or my media workstation throughout my day. And I've absolutely lived on Google Calendar for many years now.

Cloud-based archival storage services offer users data redundancy and reliable sync-and-forget-it backup systems with a 99.9% recovery rate – far more reliable that entrusting all your precious data to a single external disk.

But recently, I've been rethinking the cloud, particularly about the amount of control and privacy a user relinquishes when their content is no longer stored locally. iTunes was the worst atrocity to come of the cloud, as many users are starting to understand. The DRM fiasco crippled the usability of the software, and as users learned from the U2 incident, their music libraries were really at the mercy of Apple. Spotify and streaming services are not much better, with drastically-limited media selections and, again, the content is never really yours.

The entire era of cloud-computing was less about empowering the user and more of an exercise is usury. Let's face it – storage has become incredibly inexpensive. And the popularity of lossy-compression for casual listening has only made it easier and cheaper for users to have it all. There was no longer a need to up-sell a customer base to a bigger and better device every six months, because the average smartphone suits most users just fine as an all-around media player.

For those with more discerning tastes, a simple and inexpensive home server is sufficient to grant instant-access to terabytes of lossless audio and HD video libraries from our tablets and phones anywhere with 4G service.

The industry had to invent a new way to maintain a steady influx of customer revenue. Enter the streaming service and world of online backups. These subscription-based services keep the customer paying month after month for storage and instant-access. Adobe was perhaps the most curious company to go this route, releasing the latest version of its software suite rebranded as the Creative Cloud. The customer scenario was much the same for Adobe – previous versions were everything their customers needed, so why would they need to upgrade ever again? The solution was clear – monthly subscription fees.

Adobe-survey-CC-pricingCNET Adobe CC Pricing Survey (2012)

The elephant in the room of cloud computing is the compromise of one's privacy and security. Facebook users know all too well that every minute detail of their publicly-broadcasted lives is being sold and re-sold to advertisers banking on hyper-targeted marketing.

But you know all this – you don't buy in to cloud archive services. You've implemented all the standard privacy tools and ad-blocking plugins and your web experience is fairly secure and advert-free. But what about those who don't have the luxury of their own media server or truly unlimited data plans for their portable devices? How should they freely access their large libraries of media anywhere they go?

There is a solution. Seagate manufactures a device specifically tailored to meet the needs of this particular niche of customers and to resolve their unique problem. The Wireless Plus 2TB portable HDD (STCV2000100) is surprisingly compact and lightweight. It features an internal 10-hour battery and its own personal WiFi network. Pair it with each of your personal devices and you've got 2TB of content with you EVERYWHERE – on or off the grid, with no monthly fees.

Currently priced at ~$190, the Wireless Plus offers an incredible amount of freedom for its price point. For users like myself with our own media servers, there really isn't an urgent need, (save perhaps for taking your entire library with you on a camping trip.) But for those tired of shelling out monthly fees for remotely hosted content – this is the device you've been waiting for.

innerspaceboy · 05-30-2015, 09:37 PM

Steve Albini may not be an expert at public speaking. But he IS a 40-year veteran of the music industry - working as a singer, songwriter, guitarist, record producer, audio engineer and music journalist for most of his life. He lived and worked through the age of commercial rock radio and payola, through the birth of MTV, and through the most formative years of filesharing and torrenting right up to the present day.

Albini has worked on an estimated 1500 albums, which certainly qualifies him to speak on the state of the changing music industry.

Below is his Keynote Address at Face The Music in 2014. The first 30 minutes comprise his essential arguments - exposing the self-perpetuating system of major labels, commercial radio, and the convoluted laundry list of associated professionals who were all guaranteed to profit from a band's record, usually leaving the band with nothing.

He demonstrates that the old system was in place to serve everyone EXCEPT the band and its fans - the two inconsequential and often ignored parties of the music industry.

Albini then outlines how the internet and improved recording technologies rendered the old system obsolete and empowered artists. The web and filesharing gave bands, for the first time, a direct and personal relationship with their listeners and exponentially increased the reach of their music.

In closing, Albini describes the resulting listening culture as discerning and passionate, with the ability to pursue their own niche musical fetishism, and that these listeners find a way to reward the artists they love in return.

The old industry giants loudly proclaim that the new system is "broken" and a "crisis" that must be remedied. But in reality, the bands and their listeners are better off now than ever before.

This address shattered my shame about filesharing, and restored my faith in music.

innerspaceboy · 06-01-2015, 07:34 PM

This week arrived two absolutely astounding additions to our library. Each is a milestone in its own right so I’ll waste no time getting right to them.

The first is a modern classic from the legendary NinjaTune label. Originally released in 2004, Skalpel’s self-titled double LP was repressed through beatdelete in 2013. The DJs behind Skalpel, Marcin Cichy and Igor Pudło were dissatisfied with the humdrum music of their native Poland.

“The Polish music scene is very poor at the moment. Nothing really interesting happens. The majority of music on TV and radio is kind of ‘World Idol’. Very little individuality – just copies of American music.” (interview, R4NT.com)

Their response was to create their own sound – “resurrecting the dusty & smokey spirit of polish jazz of 60s and 70s, re-imagined for 21st century audiophiles.” (NinjaTune.net)

I’d nearly pre-ordered the 2013 180g 2LP beatdelete reissue when it was announced, but had let the opportunity pass. Thankfully, a member of one of the vinyl communities I frequent recently posted a shot of the album which inspired me to give it a second listen. I was camping at the time, but came prepared with my Sennheiser circumaural studio monitors. Around 11pm I laid back, closed my eyes, and lost myself to the album. The 5-wheel camper and fold-out mattress was instantly transformed into something more like this:

By the middle of the third selection, I’d already tracked down a sealed copy and processed my payment – certain that this was an essential for my library.

The second (and equally-outstanding) recording is a selection from minimalist composer, Terry Riley’s catalog. I already have A Rainbow in Curved Air, The Church of Anthrax (with John Cale), The Ten Voices of the Two Prophets, and know very well that I need his most-celebrated work – In C.

But this particular record – Persian Surgery Dervishes, had escaped my radar. It was only after I saw numerous copies surface among members of a social network that I decided this was something I needed to hear.

At first listen, I was completely enveloped in a wash of pulsing electric organ loops. Each side-long track sounds as if it were an exercise in the tape loop technique developed by Riley and Pauline Oliveros (later popularized by Fripp and Eno). However, the rapid, cyclic melodies heard on each side of the album are in reality two LIVE solo performances of Riley in LA and in Paris performing on a just-intoned Yamaha organ. Even more astounding is that the second performance sounds far different from the first, but is simply Riley demonstrating the importance of improvisation. The two recordings are each of the same composition.

Dervishes is beautifully meditative and is really an album you can loose yourself in. Like most great minimalist compositions, the listener loses their sense of time and the piece becomes the atmosphere of the room.

Special thanks to all of the users who posted their copies of this exceptional record – Andrew G, Tintin E, Andrew T, Luke B, Chris A, and likely many others!

Now get lost.

innerspaceboy · 06-06-2015, 11:07 AM

This morning I decided to revisit an album I’d honestly neglected when I’d first picked it up 15 years ago. Slowdive’s Souvlaki is heralded as the quiet answer to My Bloody Valentine’s epically-loud shoegaze masterpiece, Loveless. Released in 1993, it has remained to this day one of the definitive albums of its decade.

The opening track, “Allison” is widely-acclaimed as the strongest selection of the album. Straight away it sets the pace for the dreamy majesty that is to come. The next two tracks - “Machine Gun” and “40 Days” begin with a sharp attack and relentless guitars and both tracks dissipate elegantly over powerfully-long 16-second fade outs, creating a wonderful sonic-staging of a band performing in the void of outer space.

Still, this isn’t a perfect album. “Sing” is an attempt at a more freeform, atmospheric piece, but while Nick Chaplin’s bass maintains a simple, melodic structure, the rest of the band appears to disregard it. The resulting instrumentation seems out-of-focus, and whether intentional or not, the lack of a tonal center takes away from the music. "Here She Comes” had similar potential, but ends abruptly after only 2 minutes. Neil Halstead closes the track speaking the title into silence, and you’re really left wishing there was more.

But other tracks like “Slowdive Space Station” return to the strength of the album’s start. The song features a wash of heavily-reverberating guitar drones and indecipherable vocals that would make Elizabeth Fraser proud. Rachel Goswell’s speech echoes from a distant star system and by the end of the piece the guitars have slowly decayed into beautiful noise reminding the listener why Souvlaki is one of the essential albums of the shoegaze/dream genre.

The remainder of the album is similarly trademark of the shoegaze scene. All of the elements are there - from the backmasked drums on “Melon Yellow” to the infinitely-sustained tones and delicate melodies of “Some Velvet Morning.” This is a quintessential dream record.

And that’s one of the things I love most about music. It doesn’t judge its listener for shelving an album for over a decade without ever giving it a fair chance. It simply waits there quietly to be rediscovered, knowing you’ll fall in love with it when you’re ready for its beauty.

innerspaceboy · 06-07-2015, 06:27 PM

UPDATE for Sunday, June 7th, 2015. I am as of this day betrothed to a lovely lady journalist with sharp wit and who loves to engage me in debates about 20th century music or on why Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo is clearly the superior film of the breakdance genre.

The proposal took place in the Hamilton House this afternoon - a 19th century mansion, (her favorite spot in the USA) during our visit to Genesee Country Village for her birthday. Of course we both attended in full period regalia and were asked by the staff if we'd like to join their team of volunteers.

It was a wonderful weekend getaway, and the staff were so emotionally moved by the proposal that they escorted us beyond the ropes up the spiral stairs to the 3rd story of the estate where we had a magnificent view of the entire village.

And not to be exempt from my musical duties, I assembled a birthday playlist for the drive home that had her dialing it up to eleven and singing at the top of her lungs in delight.

A good time had by all. Cheers everyone!

Spoiler for Click here for pics of the proposal: