Notices by mcc (mcc@mastodon.social), page 7

What I'm listening to today: "Mixtur Trautonium (exercise #4)" LudoWic

The Trautonium is an early electronic instrument from the 1930s. Instead of a "keyboard" like a post-1965 synthesizer would use players make contact between a resistive wire and a metal plate, allowing fine control more akin to a violin than a piano. In this piece, the musician works the plate (and the pedals?) for a complex and stunning tremolo effect, like a guitar pedal under direct human control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4U7Uue5Qdk

What I'm listening to today: "Distances", Fontaine Burnett

Mr. Burnett is a session musician; he's performed with Chaka Khan, the Temptations, the Weather Girls and a dozen other artists, meaning millions have heard him play without ever learning his name. During early COVID he started uploading home performances to YouTube, among them this absolutely lovely jazz piano solo on Roger Linn's "isomorphic" MIDI controller (a piano splattered onto a grid). Watch the fingers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V2Yro3QLLw

What I'm listening to today: "Mixtur Trautonium (exercise #11)", LudoWic

I linked one of LudoWic's Trautonium pieces on Wednesday; here's a more complex one, probably the most complex of these "exercises" he's uploaded, with a soothing, rhythmic clicking (which I can't even figure out where it's coming from) providing percussion. Watch during the little violin-like pitch vibratos throughout; that's not an instrument "effect", he's wiggling his finger on the touch plate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT4KBYPBPDg

What I listened to today: "The industries of the unused mind.", Soaring Tortoise Orchestra

In this video a man in a basement appears to be mastering an ambient track on tape, tweaking the mixing board. But if you watch carefully he's actually just picking up various objects on his desk and staring at them as if he does not recognize them. What is happening here? The music is cryptic, striding a line between epic and creepy, like a guitar solo is being haunted by ghosts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP2VnclaE54

What I'm listening to today: "Concept 1 96:01 01:00", Richie Hawtin

Under the name "Plastikman", Hawtin achieved fame as a "minimalist composer" who repurposed dance-techno techniques to sculpt stark sound landscapes. This bumping downtempo is from a previously *very* rare, self-published one-track-a-month limited-vinyl series he did while developing the sound of the Plastikman "trilogy"; now it's on Bandcamp.

Hawtin says he recorded this track on January 1, 1996.

https://richiehawtin.bandcamp.com/track/richie-hawtin-concept-1-96-01-01-00

What I'm listening to today: "Mixtur Trautonium (exercise #6)", LudoWic

One last Trautonium piece, this one run through two (!) Space Echos and demonstrating one of the most interesting things to me about the device, that it's capable of Theremin-like trembles and slides but unlike Theremins can do hard edges and discrete jumps. Again, like an electronic violin.

Short and low and has a captivating, melancholy emotion, this just really grabs your heartstrings and yanks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MY5Qt7xd5rY

What I'm listening to today: "Dirtknock", Madlib

Madlib is the hip-hop instrumentalist who provides the voice of Lord Quasimodo and the beats on MF Doom's MADVILLAIN. His deal is pretty much "he samples jazz, but like, in a different way than other people do it". Here's a lovely snack of a track from 2021, with various lounge vibes jostling against each other, starting and stopping like thoughts in a distracted mind. I think this is what "Jigsaw Jazz" was supposed to be

https://madlib.bandcamp.com/track/dirtknock

What I'm listening to today: "Get Your Snack On", Amon Tobin

Consider pre-"ISAM" Amon Tobin, who was on something incredibly unique. No one else has ever thought about drums the way Tobin did during those years. Back then we lumped him in with "drum & bass", but he didn't follow any of D&B's rules. He built something new from sampling the already frenetic energy of jazz drumming and somehow doubling it.

Here's my favorite track from that era. It plays like a manifesto.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw8s7nYSylc

What I'm listening to today: "Scratch and Frazzle", Ivar Tryti

I've featured Ivar the Elektron virtuoso in this thread before. Here he deploys an FM-synth groovebox to make a song with two rules:

1. It should evoke the soundtrack of Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal
2. It should be in 5/8 time.

(Watch the sequencer lights; you'll see his measures have 20 steps.)

Result: an industrial banger with beats that hit like bombs and a rhythm that keeps you constantly off balance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJa4RobxwU0

@dosnostalgic Good news it appears to be MS-DOS compatible. It supports Windows 3.0 but from the box it does not appear to require it. Just says "Compatible with Microsoft®" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSbLmdyK3ao

YouTube thumbnails divorced from context continue to be such fascinating artifacts

Nobody wanted this.

Hey, here's a tip

I miss Google Cache

Okay thanks to @supersat I now know that Google Cache isn't gone it's just literally hidden

All right! That took WAY longer than I meant it to (I made the decision to do this in July: https://cohost.org/mcc/post/2314519-what-news-means-in) but my Twitter account is now locked (https://twitter.com/mcclure111) and if you want to see my old Twitter posts, you can do so at my public Twitter archive here: https://twitter.runhello.com/

I made the archive with this tool, which I've just updated with the tool's final form: https://github.com/mcclure/twitter-archiver?tab=readme-ov-file#make-your-own-simple-public-searchable-twitter-archive . I might update this later to add a carousel of random handpicked good posts. I might not

Agree or disagree with the following statement: Gina Gershon is the female Joe Pantoliano

@joshuaelliott The thing that makes the theory perfect is the one time I can think of Gina Gershon taking on a conspicuously non-Joe-Pantoliano-like role, it was in a movie which *also* had Joe Pantoliano, meaning Gina Gershon could not be the Joe Pantoliano in that movie due to the Pauli Exclusion Principle

A statement I just made in a conversation… I suspect the person I am talking to thought it was a joke… it was not a joke

I can't think of any reason NOT to tunnel TCP over MIDI