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suspicions of provenance

09.01.2024 by M Donaldson // Leave a Comment

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Hakobune‘s guitar is processed like one hundred Guthries, ringing with reverb abandon as chords stretch into warm, elongated vibrations. The 2019 album Rain Studies is a full-spectrum affair; it alternately plays and washes away intruding sounds. Its CTwins-spirit is best transmitted on “Tenkyuu,” which sounds like muting everything but a single guitar track on Victorialand‘s mixing desk.

I suppose these comparisons are a little unfair. I feel I’m projecting my influences onto Hakobune, the Tokyo-based sound artist who also goes by Takahiro Yorifuji. But, in a way, the guitar is baggage, and a limited sound palette is never free of suspicions of provenance.

Hakobune strikes me as a guitarist falling under the spell of electronic drone music but opting for the novocaine instead of the noise. Rain Studies could refer to the mix knob on a reverb unit pushed all the way to ‘wet,’ but it’s also chilling (both interpretations accepted), like rainfall. “Tenkyuu” is the difference—the other tracks simply blend as one liquid sheet supplants another. No doubt these ‘studies’ were recorded as the rain fell outside, watched through a drizzled window as the guitar reflected and chimed its accompanying song.

On the periphery, John Coulthart wrote about echo guitars, an initial attempt at a ‘Young Person’s Guide.’ He mentions the Watkins Copicat, developed in the late ’50s and arguably the first independent tape-loop-based echo unit. A chance encounter inspired UK music gear innovator Charlie Watkins to explore the possibilities of tape echo:

… a pair of customers, returning from a visit to Italy, [regaled] Watkins with talk of a performance they’d seen there. The singer Marino Marini, who was enjoying a worldwide hit with his cover of Dominico Modugno’s hit “Volare,” had run his microphone through a pair of reel-to-reel recorders with one continuous tape loop rolling between them to recreate his distinctive vocal echo. The sound had knocked their socks off. *

The Copicat followed, as did an influence on musical styles like surf rock and the kosmische exploits of Manuel Göttsching and many others. The popular Echoplex emerged alongside other tape delay machines, leading further outward to dub and studio-as-instrument forms.

In my Spotlight On interview with David J, I remarked that my favorite sound might be a tape echo filtering away into infinity. David signaled his agreement.

Categories // From The Notebook Tags // Ambient Music, Cocteau Twins, David J, Hakobune, John Coulthart, music gear, Spotlight On, tape echo

Time Travel, Expressed

02.21.2024 by M Donaldson // Leave a Comment

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I should talk about my podcast work. It’s going well! My main gig is the Spotlight On podcast, hosted by music industry vet and erudite interviewer Lawrence Peryer (LP). Several months ago, I was promoted (I suppose that’s the word—it’s a two-man operation) from editor to full-on producer/manager of the show. That means I’m handling nearly everything outside of hosting.

I’m having a blast and am thankful that I’m working on such a terrific podcast. I’m always learning, a state I strive for in any project I take on. In addition to production and marketing duties, I suggest and book some of the musician guests, but LP tracks down the majority, who are mostly new to me. Fortunately, LP’s musical taste converges nicely with mine, so I’m discovering loads of new artists through the podcast.

This week’s guest is the German jazz drummer Mareike Wiening. This is my first encounter with her, and I am digging her jazz tidings. Check this out:

Mareike Wiening on drums, abstract photo

You can listen to her episode and all the others from the Spotlight On webpage. Or, if you want to be a superstar in my book, subscribe via wherever you get your podcasts.

Pro tip: Be sure to peruse the show notes. Compiling show notes is one of my favorite chores, and I give them a lot more attention than I probably should. I always slide in links to one or two fantastic articles or things tangentially related to the show.

A few months ago, there was a last-minute guest cancellation, so I became the guest. LP and I freeformed for a bit and released our gab session as an episode. I’ll embed it below as it’s found nowhere else on this blog, and I think it’s a fun chat. Some hot takes (well, ok—more like lukewarm) get dropped, too.

Another thing I’ll embed today is Opening Space, an album from Open Spaces on the Oakland-based ambient label Constellation Tatsu. Its Bandcamp release date of March 3, 2020, may seem prescient—mere days before the initial pandemic lockdowns—as producer and audio engineer Chris Hancock explores placing his music in imaginary environments. It wouldn’t be long before contemplating environments outside of our four walls was a hot new trend.

Open Spaces, the project name, designates Chris’s experiments in 360 audio, including heady-sounding technologies like, as noted on his blog, “binaural recording and ambisonic spatialisation software.” The opening track—”Opening Spaces,” natch—is a salvo of an example, flitting bird songs right out of Herzog’s jungle accompany a warm, harmonium-like drone before nature gets reversed. Time travel, expressed best as sonic art form.

The album continues to mine and develop these notions with gently pulsing drone work and elegantly located sound markers. “Compassion” adds distant percussion booms and a seemingly improvised but effective dream vocal from Michelle McCosker for a piece that made me think of Dead Can Dance warming up at soundcheck. And then “Some days are easier than others” (caps absconded) opens things up with a string-plucked motif driving a polite but shady crawl. In the last third, additional melodies and bass lines subtly appear and wash the clouds away with peeks of sunlight. It’s a generous production on its own merit, but it must have sounded downright ebullient in its time within the confines of closed-in spaces.

Categories // From The Notebook Tags // 360 audio, Jazz, Mareike Wiening, Open Spaces, podcasting, Spotlight On

This Must Be the Place

01.01.2023 by M Donaldson // Leave a Comment

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Somehow we’ve made it to 2023, a special moment for those who believe in the 23 enigma. I’m a 3/23 baby, so I probably should believe it more than I do, especially as someone who once dove hard into the lore of William Burroughs and Robert Anton Wilson. Now I’m pretty sure it’s all confirmation bias. But there are other reasons to look forward to 2023, as well as reasons to dread a new year with caution. To help hedge my bets, I’m focusing on three personal highlights of 2022 as I hope they’ll set the pace for the year ahead:

Cooking. Way back in 2021, the hot peppers growing in Caroline’s vegetable garden inspired me. I learned how to make hot sauces, starting simple but then graduating to exotica. For example, the ghost pepper pineapple-pear hot sauce was the biggest hit, like nothing I’ve ever tasted. After months of assorted hot sauce concoctions — including some I came up with on my own — I realized that I was now essentially cooking. I’ve always wanted to confidently learn my way around a kitchen but never thought I could. It turns out hot sauces are a gateway drug to cooking! So, last year I embraced my inner chef, learning to cook all sorts of tasty vegan dishes. I’m getting good at it, too. Now I’m at the strange point where I’ve filled my YouTube history with cooking tutorials, the only gifts I’ll take are things like fancy olive oils, and Paprika has become my most used app. Needless to say, Caroline is thrilled with this development. My biggest triumph of 2022, across all categories, is probably the time I made a vegan version of palak paneer from scratch.

Interviewing. I edit podcasts, and one of those is the exceptional Spotlight On interview show. Over time as the editor, I’ve noticed how much the host, Lawrence (LP), has progressed as an interviewer. He listens, shows genuine interest in his subjects, and is empathetic enough to understand where to pull back or move forward in the rapport of the conversation. This observation inspired me to try my hand at interviewing following LP’s technique (which I know he’ll argue is not an intentional technique) as a guide. So I started a blog series of conversations with music-makers and artistic types, focusing on process, inspiration, and the creative path. It’s gone great. I’m surprised at how much I enjoyed doing this series, and, listening back, I feel like I ended up doing okay as the interviewer. Thanks, LP! Please have a listen to 2022’s conversations with More Ghost Than Man, Elijah Knutsen, San Mateo, Jogging House, Innerwoud, Greg Davis, and Ströme. This series will continue into 2023 with more exciting people and insights into what it means to create art.

Social Media. Regular visitors to this 8sided lair know of my “complicated relationship with social media.” As someone who once used ‘zines to “find the others,” interacting with niche pockets of like-minded weirdos on the internet always had an appeal. At one time, these folks were on Friendster, then on MySpace, and eventually ended up on Facebook and Twitter. I gave up on anything owned by the recently rechristened Meta a while back but persevered on Twitter with ebbing and flowing frequency. Now, I don’t want to revisit the changes at Twitter (you know), but near the end of October, I finally decided to give that platform the heave-ho. I still desired an outlet — posting on Twitter was actually a good way to test out thoughts that may end up as blog posts — and a place to meet those others. So, with hesitation, I signed up for Mastodon. I say ‘hesitation’ because we’ve all heard how difficult it is to sign up, how it’s so complicated, and that there are a bunch of freaks on there who yell at you when you don’t put a content warning on your lunch photo. It took me about an hour on Mastodon to learn that none of that is true — quite the opposite, really. And it then took about 24 hours to find plenty of cool ‘others,’ lots of like-minded weirdos, and a community of friendly people who engage with enthusiasm. I’m also experiencing true decentralization for the first time (this ain’t no Web3 snake oil), and I now realize I was missing out on a major component of the Punk Rock Dream. For the first time in maybe a decade, I’m excited about being on social media. As Mr. Byrne once crooned, “I guess that this must be the place.”

Categories // From The Notebook Tags // cooking, hot sauces, Mastodon, podcasting, Robert Anton Wilson, Social Media, Spotlight On, veganism, William S. Burroughs

8sided.blog

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8sided.blog is an online admiration of modernist sound and niche culture. We believe in the inherent optimism of creating art as a form of resistance and aim to broadcast those who experiment not just in name but also through action.

It's also the online home of Michael Donaldson, a curious fellow trying his best within the limits of his time. He once competed under the name Q-Burns Abstract Message and was the widely disputed king of sandcastles until his voluntary exile from the music industry.

"More than machinery, we need humanity."

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