Unless the Apple iPad cradles me in it’s cold, synthetic arms and sings me a lullaby, I will be disappointed. I want the Apple iPad to mow my lawn, protect me from bullies and figure out why my water softener makes that noise at 3 in the morning. Instead, it’s going to be “surprising,” according to insiders. Yee. Haw. I’ll still buy the damn thing, though. Curse you, Steve Jobs.
Pretty much sums it up for me. We should each have a robot by now. And I am not talking Roomba!
Perhaps a little late with my post for today as I have been waiting for my edited clip to upload to YouTube.
Faust is the watershed moment for so-called Krautrock. A derisive term to some, it is nevertheless the name given by brits to the early 70s music that was previously described as “Motorik“, “Kosmische” and (as I learned recently) “Apache Beat”.
This clip from the BBC4 documentary Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany shows Faust having a moment of creation at their farm in Wümme Germany. Their spontaneity and brilliance is apparent.
While waiting for Sonic Boom to get off their ass and order the 33 1/3 edition for Another Green World, I decided to pick up the one about Low. It’s great to get the details though the story arc is classic rock and roll. I am, however, annoyed at the author’s constant use of the word “autistic.” He never explains what he means by the term.
In that spirit, one of the middling tracks from the album (still tops everything else from the time).
A book edited by Bill Bryson (one of my favourite authors) will be released in 2010 to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society. Bryson is currently a fellow of the society, one of a number of celebrity fellows over the years. He also wrote the amazing book A Short History of Nearly Everything, essential reading for new moms and dads who will inevitably have to answer questions starting with the phrase “Why is…”
I mention this as the Royal Society was established by the members of the Invisible College. Contributors to the book include Canadian author Margaret Atwood, biologist Richard Dawkins, and astronomer and current Royal Society President Martin Rees.
As the review notes, our modern world was significantly changed and shaped by the scientific contributions of this group. I’m looking forward to this.
Bob and I have been working on a project that we are very excited about as it is taking us back to more experimental territory. It’s based on the experiments of Robert Boyle, a founder of the original Invisible College (mentioned in this previous post) It will be a while before seeing the light of day as it is quite ambitious.
The project stems from Boyle’s experiments with the air pump, the basis of which eventually became Boyle’s Law. In his treatise New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air, and its Effect Boyle conducted 43 experiments. Notionally, the album will be 86 minutes long consisting of 43 pieces whose sound is based on each experiment. If that sounds dry, consider experiment 41 which demonstrated the reliance of living creatures on air for their survival. This is dramatically shown in the classic painting An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump by Joseph Wright (image above).
I mention this as Denmark has a new opera headed their way.
The Danes seem so innocent, what with their lilting language, cute clogs and Little Mermaids. They don’t, however, shirk from provocation, what with their cute cartoons and now an opera about Charles Darwin.
The Opera, written for Danish performance group Hotel Pro Forma, is a collaborative effort between the Swedish electro outfit The Knife with Mt. Sims with Planningtorock.
The opera was developed extensively researching Darwin and included a trip to the Amazon to find inspiration and do field recordings. Some songs are based on Darwin’s personal correspondence while others compositionally employ biologist Richard Dawkins’ gene tree diagrams.
They have a sample track you can download for free from The Knife’s website by signing up for their newsletter. The piece is called The Colouring of Pigeons and as an opera affectionado I am surprised at how brilliant the track is. They self-admittedly knew nothing about opera when embarking on the project and it clearly draws on the Kate Bush influences however it is a completely fresh take on the genera. The piece shifts and moves from a tension at the start and settles in a flow that satisfies. I imagine Darwin contemplating hybridization. In one anxious moment he is filled with a sublime dread at the implications of his hypothesis and then transcending that moment once he begins to connect the dots of his theory. Utterly brilliant.
I am not going to have a moment in punditry by writing about the Microsoft non-announcement of a “new” tablet PC running Windows. All speculation and the criticism of products that don’t really exist yet except in science fiction is driving me a bit bananas.
What I do know is that if the Apple iSlate (if that is really what it will be called) has been under development at Cupertino for years as a pet project of Steve Jobs, it will define its own space in the technological world. Like the iPod. Or Newton.
The other thing is that I have been pining for an Mac touch screen interface for years since I tried out this baby some years ago. Working with a mouse to draw seems disjointed after experiencing this 21 inch wonder.
That’s why the rumors of a tablet style Mac have me heartened. To that end I have had a great deal of fun and success using my iPod Touch as a sketch book and a PDF and Word document reader. However, the most fun I have had has been using it as a modular synthesizer. Jasuto is a complex, graphically driven synth for the Touch and iPhone that has kept me more than occupied while tripping around the city. I am hoping to use it on the new album and possibly live. I’ll let you know how it goes. Prospects are good and confidence is high.
Bob and I question changing our name from time-to-time (not in a Walter Carlos way). When we chose Invisible College, it was in the spirit of science and experiment that was associated with the name. Modern scientific method can be traced back to the Invisible College of Pre-Restoration England and in particular Robert Boyle, one of its founders. Since then, the name has been taken up by UFOlogist kooks, various dubious educational instiutions, secret society conspiracists, and any number of publishing imprints. Still, aside from one known track by industrial outfit Black Lung, ours was the only association with electronic music.
Or so we thought…
It seems that artist and electronic musician Paul Schütze with collaborator Ian Russell adopted the moniker in 1981 in order to prove a point to a music critic (it’s an excellent album, BTW, which makes me happy). Read about it and give it a listen here.
Over the holidays I got a chance to take in the King Tut exhibit at the AGO. Though it is a lesser show than the one I saw as a wee lad some thirty years ago at the very same place (and long before the Frank Gehry designed renovation) I highly recommend it to anyone. It is one thing to stare at five thousand year old artifacts, it is quite another to see five thousand year old artifacts of such beauty.
What struck me about the exhibit was what lasted and what didn’t. The carved limestone, granite and calcite – an absolutely gorgeous mineral – persevered for the most part, save a few broken limbs, while the paint that adorned the faces and figures has weathered away. The limestone has lost a detail though kept faint traces of paint due its softness. For the most part however, the grandness of the ancient Egyptian civilization is immediately apparent in all its awesome beauty. It made me think about the traces we will leave behind.
I just spent the better part of this weekend sorting, cleaning and throwing out. Part of the mess was all sorts of media. CDRs, DVD-Rs, ZIP Drives (100MB of storage seemed sooo huge), EZ drives (still hooked up the SCSI port on my Emu EMI sampler), external hard disks – there are so many varieties stored in the studio. The problem is that without the technology to read the media the work on them is not at all accessible, let alone in any way apparent.
I just received the latest Scanner (aka Robin Rimbaud) release in the mail. Titled Conversations With The Dead, it is a vinyl only release. If not intentional, I don’t think the irony of name and form was lost on Robin or the release’s label Dust Science. Long after this civilization is gone, Robin’s 100 gram vinyl release my be the only part accessible to future generations if technological capabilities are swept way. You can’t listen to an iPod with a needle stuck to a cone.
Therein lies the irony with Tut as well. A minor Pharaoh, he was erased from the records by a latter ruler intent on worshipping a different god resulting in Tut’s tomb being spared by grave robbers. The world’s most well known Pharaoh was never intended to be.
Makes you wonder if in the future Robin will be the Tut to Beyonce’s Djedefre.
