Floppy disks were officially made obsolete this year, but that doesn’t mean they’re completely useless. Grab one with a metal door and pull out some scissors or a wire cutter, a pair of pliers and a metal ruler and start converting that outdated media into a spaceship from the future!
You know that one video by Dove that’s been floating around YouTube featuring the time-lapse video of a woman having her hair and makeup done, then being further altered in Photoshop to enhance her features, and finally ending up on a billboard? The multi-talented Benn Jordan supplied the music for it with a track off of his latest album, Kirlian Selections. It not only is representative of one aspect of his sound, you could see it as a metaphor for his musical composition process.
First off, Benn has a zillion aliases (The Flashbulb, Acidwolf, Flexe, Q-bit, DJ ASCII, Lucid32, and more) and an incredibly diverse output. He often starts composing with live instruments and then alters and morphs them via digital signal processing, much in the manner that our model was given virtual plastic surgery. He’s probably best known for his melodic breakcore with live instrumentation in the vein of Squarepusher, but he’s also done classical music albums with a focus on guitar, piano, and sitar; classic acid releases; aggressive drill-n-bass (he opened for The Dillinger Escape Plan in 2005) and his own brand of melodic acid which he’ll be performing live at Ramp Chicago with various instruments and synths. He outright nails anything he wants to accomplish musically, which explains why he’s an in-demand commercial music producer. However, he won’t just take on any project—it has to speak to him first. The aforementioned Dove commercial was one of them since it critiqued the media’s portrayal of beauty.
Sharing Benn’s diversified musical sentiment is The Deep Element, aka Surachai Sutthisasanakul who makes experimental electronic music that pushes the sonic envelope yet employs downright beautiful melodies at the same time. While he professes a love for the aggression and drive behind heavy metal, he’s not above compassion as shown by his volunteer work helping the victims of the Asian tsunami in Thailand. His latest project is a collaborative effort called [co]sen_tasi and is available on iTunes, and his next album, Currents, is due for a late spring release on shade:red.
Tired of laptop performers staring intently at their screens amid bleeps and clicks over the PA? Experiencing Surachai together with Benn in the same night is sure to be entertaining and a step above traditional live PA. Show up early to catch The Deep Element leading off a night of boundarypushing electronica and live instrumentation via Benn Jordan’s eclectic approach and engaging stage presence. Residents Liz Revision (aka Quantazelle) contributes minimal techno, glitch, and IDM and Emulsion adds his own personal brand of melodic electro and ambient.
Eclectic multi-instrumentalist Benn Jordan (aka The Flashbulb) performs his own brand of melodic acid live at Ramp Chicago with The Deep Element. Residents Liz Revision and Emulsion play minimal techno, glitch, IDM, melodic electro and ambient.
So yesterday a little after midnight someone started banging on the door to my apartment. When I opened it I saw about 3 cops who told me that I had to get out because the roof was on fire. So I grabbed my keys and cellphone and leashed up the dogs and joined the other residents on the street where we watched fire fighters battle the flames on the roof. After about an hour it appeared they had put out the fire but they couldn’t say when we’d be let back into the building so I dragged the dogs over to a friend’s house and crashed on the couch.
Today there are fans set up all over to dry out the building and garbage cans in the garage to catch dripping water. Luckily our apartment was on the other side of the building and escaped the water damage.
The rules are simple: using only 5 base samples, create a song. The hard part: no other audio may be used. This means no other digital audio, no synthesizers, no vocals, no instruments of any kind–just the 5 base samples. The fun part: you can process, chop up, fry, freak, and tweak the 5 samples in any way you want, using any tools you need.
Here’s the first set of tracks created by enterprising musicians: http://www.daevlmakr.com/Pages/5ways.html. It’s amazing to listen to how all the different artists created completely new tracks from the same sources.
So download the sample pack here: 5ways_baseloops.zip (8.2 MB), and get transmogrifying (I had to rename the two .aif files to .aiff to get them to play in Windows). When you’re done, email your track as 192kbps mp3s to
daemon@daevlmakr.com. Include information on your track plus a link to your chosen web presence and they’ll put it up on the 5 Way page.
Sat. May. 19 - 8PM - 21+ - BUY TICKETS HERE! The Note, 1568 N. Milwaukee Ave, Wicker Park.
C!BR 10 Year Anniversary Tour! CAPTURED BY ROBOTS
Captured! By Robots was started back in 1996. Jason Vance could not get along human musicians and he decided to build himself a band . . . a band of robots. Shortly before their completion, he accidentally spilled coffee on their CPUs. When he awoke the next morning, they had come to life and he had been given a Bio-Cerebral chip that allows them to control him. From that point on, he was JBOT, of Captured! By Robots.
TEDDY BEAR ORCHESTRA (all teddy bear robot band)
Pretty self explanatory. Animatronic teddy bears playing instruments. This must be seen to be believed
AMERICAN DRAFT (mbrs Volta Do Mar / Arborvitae Records)
Beer and Rock. It was these two things that set the four members of American Draft on their path to creative delusion and tongue-in-cheek metal debauchery way back in February of ‘99. Featuring members of Volta do Mar (ArborVitae), American Draft started as a “side project” that lead to hours of home recordings and tales of incredible characters. Finally, in 2003, they have entered the studio of the ever-talented Mike Lust to document their convoluted version of a thing we call “Rock N Roll”. The descriptive and questioning phrases “Iron Maiden without the hair”, “Rock and Roll death machine” and “What the fuck just happened?” are commonly heard after a live American Draft experience.
Remember the Quizno’s Coyote? On an ordinary April afternoon, the patrons of the downtown Chicago sandwich shop were treated to a surprise visit by a wild coyote who attempted to jump the counter but decided to settle into the beverage cooler instead. Animal control took him away, named him Adrian and set him back into the wild, but not before he captured a bit of fame and made for a new addition to the “IM IN UR” photo-chop internet meme.
While coyotes aren’t on the endangered species list, Adrian wandered into human territory because his natural environment has been increasingly encroached upon by the relentless human transformation of the wild into single family homes and strip malls. Endangered Species Day was created to celebrate the animals that have been lifted offthe endangered list as well as raise awareness of those animals whose existence is threatened by the reckless actions of humans in their treatment of the environment.
9. Phylum Sinter: “Octaves of Eight” [unreleased]
10. RJ Valeo: “Jarus” September [Type]
11. Boards of Canada: “Aquarius” Music Has the Right to Children [Warp] 12. Landau: “Six Ways to Sunday” Thepicompromise [Merck] 13. Ochre: “Copacetia” Subvaritrax [subVariant]
14. Jimmy Edgar: “Re: City Alley” Access Rythm [Warp]
15. Fourtet: “She Moves She” Rounds [Domino]
So I’m now the “poster girl” of sorts for iG0–it’s a nonprofit car sharing program in Chicago (and in other cities as part of the Flexcar network). You pay by the hour at a rate depending on the plan you choose, and you never have to pay for gas or insurance–it’s AWESOME.
I first learned about it from an article online from one of the local Chicago papers and thought the concept was great. I was, at the time, living with my boyfriend in Bridgeport. He had a car, but we were right off the Orange line so we were pretty well taken care of, transportation wise. Then, one day we returned home after a vacation and his car’s windows were broken and the radio and tires were gone. Needless to say we were both upset for quite a long time, and it was the final straw for my boyfriend in terms of living in the neighborhood.
When did come around to logically discussing getting another car and / or moving, iGo was on the table, but we decided that we would move first and see how the new situation would pan out. After a few months in our new place in Wicker Park, I ran across a situation in one of my businesses where I would need a car to run some things I had imported into the country back from the airport. I remembered iGo and called to see if they could rush through a membership for me–and they did! Then I started using it to go shopping for big things that wouldn’t fit on the bus or el (like shelving from the Container Store), and for playing at shows or going to parties at night (the hours are free between midnight and 6am–it’s perfect for people like me who DJ or perform live at parties).
If you need a car for a few days on a trip, you would probably be better off with a rental car, but if you just need a car to run to and from places on the same day, it’s wonderful, and you don’t have to worry about finding parking when you get back (which, in my neighborhood is a HUGE pain). My boyfriend decided to get a membership for himself and he uses it to transport large things to his studio on the west side, as well as visit his friends on his “geek nights” that sometimes run into the early mornings (they watch nerdy movies, discuss comic books, and engage in geek bonding).
I also recently did an interview with the Conscious Choice magazine and explained to them why I joined and why I love iGo. I had spend about a year in the south of France in a small city and had come to love the pedestrian city lifestyle and was depressed about coming back to the states and trying to survive in its car-centric culture. iGo is a great way to both be environmentally conscious and keep more cars off of the roads–things that I totally believe in. So if you’re in the city and think iGo is right for you, sign up. It’s cost effective and environmentally responsible and will help make the city a better place to live.
Floppy disks were officially made obsolete this year, but that doesn’t mean they’re completely useless. Grab one with a metal door and pull out some scissors or a wire cutter, a pair of pliers and a metal ruler and start converting that outdated media into a spaceship from the future!
The rules are simple: using only 5 base samples, create a song. The hard part: no other audio may be used. This means no other digital audio, no synthesizers, no vocals, no instruments of any kind–just the 5 base samples. The fun part: you can process, chop up, fry, freak, and tweak the 5 samples in any way you want, using any tools you need.
Sat. May. 19 - 8PM - 21+ - 
