big harp thing

Kudos to this here guy for figuring out how to make a drone machine part of your daily life.  If I had spent some brain power trying to create a device like this that was not battery powered, was 3000x bigger, and could blend in nicely in an outdoor mall … I probably would not have come up with anything like this, but that’s cool, I dig it anyway.  It beats wearing headphones around or putting a boom box on your shoulder pumping out classic La Monte Young while you’re hobnobbing and making maxxing+relaxing at your corporate shmorporate thing or trip to Spa Castle or whatever you do with your free times.

We’ve been nominated by the New England Journal for Aesthetic Research (it sounds important because it is) for a New England Art Award (also quite important) in the category of “Group show featuring local artists“.  Naturally they be talking bouts the 2009 MEGAPOLIS AudioFestation in Cambridge MA USA that went down mere months ago, where magical happenings were the norm and where love was hitting people in da faces from ALL ANGLES!  Why in the name of objects flying through space and striking the sun have we been nominated for such a thing such as this?  Obviously because of YOU, who knows about us through the InterMcNetz and who used laserbeambrainwaves to insert us into this ballot.

So VOTEVOTEVOTE and tell your friends to VOTEVOTEVOTEVOTE and tell your Gma to VOTEVOTEVOTEVOTEVOTE and then we’ll leave you alone for a couple more minutes.  Votes must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 24, to be counted. so make good things happen before it’s too late and then you have all sorts of regrets …

UPDATE: VOTING HAS CLOSED. THANKS, FRIEND – WE WINNED!

Yes, I’ve arisen from the plunging deep within the deeply deep depths of Centroamerica with … (hold it, HOLD IT) -

- not much to say. An empty knapsack lying on a dirt road in rural Nicaragua, riddled with mosquitos and filled with empty plastic sacks that once held refreshing fruit drinks. And you, riding a broken bicycle and carrying a cake that says ‘ GABY’. That’s you craving a flurry of fascinating diatribes regarding the most challenging issues of this day and time, followed by mostly appropriate non-sequiturs and sprinkled lovingly with deftly placed, witty-to-throughtful digressions.

And that’s what you deserve, and I’m here to climb the mountaintop with bugle-shaped laptop and megaphone-powered keyboard in hand to pronounce, ‘Sadly, you’ll get nothing of the sort!’ Yeah, I know, whatta load. But you know what they say, if you can’t disappoint yourself you might as well disappoint everyone else you’ve ever met and many whom you haven’t.

So, one might now say, ‘whatcha got’? Welly well I got some ‘ripe’ beef about field recording festivals cross the Atlantics, even nearby where the MEGAfest 2009 threw it down, and happ’nin’ now, true ->

-> then I’ll slap down one-ah those tenderlove this-and-whatevers about this here sound map commemorating the fall of the Berlin wall (FIELDRECORDISTS UNITE – it looks like you can still contribute) that is part of a bangup Netaudio festival in Berlin occurring as we speak ->>

->> after which I’ll climb the top rope for a triple-flip faceplant elbowknee ‘whack-a-mole’ crack’n’smackdown, AKA a mishmashed collaboratively musical thing powered by YouTube that may or may not work cuz my Internet is worm-slow.

Who got the beef now? BEEF I SAY WHO MAKES ME BEEF? Love ya see ya soon XXOXOXOXXox0010101

Our own Gregory Whitehead is making some good noise over at the Transom website.  It’s an utterly fascinating look at radio and the human psyche, and words here will not do it justice so go go go — and look for GW to make his way up to the Boston area for MegaFest in just over a week (and for you to follow).

Peep this fantastical 33-min documentary that touches on MegaFest-related themes including navigating and interpreting urban sound environments, cities as soundworks in progress, the sonic qualities of the urban machine, etc., and interviews good people from free103point9, who will perform at MEGAPOLIS the night of Saturday April 25:

Soundwalkers from raquel castro on Vimeo.

“There are some fundamental principles regarding the construction of an acoustically healthy society, one where we can exist within the sounds of life. Respect towards voice and words, sonic awareness, the awakening of the sense of hearing. To preserve the sounds that tend to fade out, while remaining open to the sounds that spring out of each technological stride. To build an aural idiom that interprets its own symbolism. To accept the silence, enforcing it in the due moments. And, above all else, to listen.”

MF2009 featured performer Gregory Whitehead’s recent radio opus entitled “Bring Me the Head of Philip K Dick” will be featured on BBC Radio 3 this Sunday (3/8) at 8 pm GMT or 3 pm EST; it will also be available online for the entire week following. From the BBC website (see link for the cast list):

“Gregory Whitehead’s dark, surreal and satirical drama, set in contemporary America, centres on a deadly futuristic weapon in the shape of the android head of science-fiction writer Philip K Dick. Invented by a shadowy research unit inside the Pentagon, the head – which believes it actually is Dick himself – is wreaking havoc on society and must be stopped before it finds its body.”

And from GW himself: “Featuring extraordinary performances from my Berkshire ensemble, and stunning music by Nick Zammuto and Laura Wiens.”

The New England Phonographers Union is a mix of local sound artists and field recordists who together work with untreated and unprocessed recording of the rich and diverse sounds available in rural and urban environments and everyday life. They perform this Thursday at the Axiom Gallery in JP.

The first part of the event is a live, in-progress investigation of the sound environment in and around Axiom’s locale. There will be a short break and then a second part will commence of edited sound sequences ordered and then sourced in improvisation as an ensemble.

This coming Friday sound artist and unconventional percussionist Jarrod Fowler (not that Jarrod Fowler) will throw a CD release party for his new release “‘percussion’ as percussion”.  The Pierre Menard Gallery in Harvard Sq., Cambridge will host this free event: come on by to enjoy works by Fowler, JLIAT, Seth Kim-Cohen and more along with a special DJ set by DeloFi (OH). Tasty refreshments will be provided. And you might run into some of the Megapolis organizers too.

Susanna of Rare Frequency fame conducted this interview with Jarrod in 2007.