A Midsummer Night’s Supersilent

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Aug 022012
 

Supersilent, described as the stylistic intersection of Miles Davis, Tangerine Dream, Sonic Youth and Stockhausen has been collaborating with influential bassist/producer/composer John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin, Them Crooked Vultures) on a new project that takes the group to a complex and intensely powerful sonic space. The group performed at the Hafensommer Festival in Würzburg on August 1, 2012.  Check out the photo gallery on the official Hafensommer blog (and look for a shot of JPJ, pick in mouth, controlling Kyma from his iPad).

In an interview with the Main Post, JPJ revealed to the interviewers that he had attended kindergarten in Würzburg, so this was something of a homecoming for him.

As critic John Kelman wrote of the collaboration at All About Jazz:

It sounded, in fact, as if they’d been playing together for years, as Jones moved around the neck to create, deep, visceral and snaking lines beneath Sten’s sonic manipulation, Storløkken textural excursions and otherworldly electronic melodism, and Henriksen, who moved from kit to trumpet growl to falsetto and harsher to pocket trumpet (…) All of Which makes Supersilent a unique experience (…) a definitive moment in the history of the festival (…)

The Long Now

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Jun 212012
 

Cristian Vogel was commissioned by Grü Transtheatre to create a sound installation for their Last.Lost.Gru weekend. Here’s an excerpt of Vogel’s 72-hour duration granular time stretch of the infamous Doors song on his Kyma / Pacarana system.

The piece was played continuously for 72 hours over the emergency speaker system of the theatre from 15-17 June 2012.

An orchestra of bats

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Jun 162012
 

Echolocation, Robert Jarvis‘ sound installation for an ‘orchestra’ of bats and accompanying ‘choir’ of bat detectors will be performed at the Wolfslaar nature reserve, outside Breda (The Netherlands) on Saturday 16th June as part of this year’s Interference Festival. The fun begins after sunset, as dusk falls and the bats come out to feed. As they fly around and make use of their biosonar radar capabilities in search of insects, Jarvis uses Kyma to capture the bat signals and extract information from them to control a musical score. The result is an evocative surround sound musical experience as night falls, deepening each listener’s relationship with the environment and creating a magical and memorable experience for all. Some responses to previous performances:

I couldn’t believe that I was listening to real bats – what a variety of noises, and to see them in real time was an absolute knockout. The whole thing was fantastic.

I was enchanted by the bat chatter… what a genius idea, and so beautiful.

This is the kind of music that makes people think and transforms their experience of bats, of humans, of sound, of communication. This kind of transformative experience is the whole reason for art.

Echolocation by Robert Jarvis
16 Jun 2012 — 22:30
Open to the public and Free!
Wolfslaar 4834 Breda Zuid Oost Breda Netherlands

JPJ + Supersilent at Sonar

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Jun 152012
 

Prepare for possible disruptions in the Earth’s magnetic field in the vicinity of Barcelona on June 15 2012 when Supersilent joins forces with John Paul Jones at the Sonar festival for a live performance that may feature as many as four Kyma systems on stage!  Be prepared for wormhole effects as the electronic improvisers start spinning their dense clouds of sci-fi jazz and colliding super-massive visceral sound objects into each other.

In the words of reviewer, David Broc at playgroundmag.net: “…those who found a way through the thick jungle of dark drones, schizophrenic bass lines and undefinable structures, found themselves in one of the most intense moments of the day. ”

Photo by David Broc

John Paul Jones, one of the earliest discoverers of Kyma, has been composing, producing, and performing with Kyma and influencing its development for nearly two decades.  Jones has been working with Helge Sten for the past 3 years, and together they’re taking Kyma into dangerously powerful new sonic territories; last year, the Kyma meme infected two more members of the group: StÃ¥le Storløkken (keyboards, synth, electronics) and Arve Henriksen (trumpet, voice, drums, electronics), so at this point it’s on the verge of a pandemic.

Deathprod returns!

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Mar 302012
 

Helge Sten will be in Paris on 30 March 2012 performing as Deathprod for the first time since 2003 as part of the 8th Présences électronique festival, envisioned by ina GRM, the Centquartre and Radio France.  Deathprod is performing on Friday night at 21h30 in the main hall following acousmatic pieces by composers Arne Nordheim, Francesco Giomi, and Martin Tetrault.

Sten will be performing live, featuring pieces from Morals & Dogma and Nordheim Transformed. All pieces have been ported over to Kyma from various older samplers and updated to quadraphonic presentation.

Présences électronique is free and open to the public!

30 mars à 21h30
au Centquatre (Nef Curial)
104, rue d’Aubervilliers ou 5, rue Curial – Paris, 19e
 

The Kyma International Sound Symposium is  four inspiring days and nights filled with sound design, ideas, discussions, and music, and it offers a wide range of opportunities to increase your Kyma mastery: from introductory master classes, to hands-on question-and-answer sessions; from thought-provoking presentations, to inspiring concerts and after-hours discussions with new-found friends and colleagues.

This year’s symposium KISS2012 will be on banks of the mighty Mississippi River, September 13-16, organized by St. Cloud State University School of the Arts and Symbolic Sound. The KISS2012 theme, reel time || real time, puts the spotlight on reel time (sound for picture), real time (live performance), and all timescales between, including sound design for games, live cinema, live improvisation ensembles, live performances from a score, sound design for live theatre, live signal generation for speech and hearing research, interactive data sonification, interactive sound art, and more!

Flowering of Resistance

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Dec 012011
 

Post-human investigator Steven T. Brown‘s new video, Flowering of Resistance, pays tribute to thinkers throughout history who have had the courage to shake things up.

In it, you can hear how he uses Kyma to generate a slowly ‘flowering’ timbre, beautifully shaken up and interrupted with stutter effects to match the shaken images.  Selected for inclusion in the (sub)Urban Projections Festival held in Eugene, Oregon on November 9-23, 2011, Brown dedicates this video to his fellow participants in the Occupy movement all over the world. He concludes with the reminder that:

The power to resist the status quo in a non-violent fashion is as important to the healthy functioning of a democracy as is the ability to forge consensus.

Minibus Pimps ride to Mannheim

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Nov 142011
 

The Minibus Pimps (aka John Paul Jones, Helge Sten, and a minibus’ worth of electronics, instruments, iPads, and two Kyma/Pacaranas), will be performing at the Alte Feuerwache in Mannheim on Monday November 14, 2011 at 8 pm as part of the Enjoy Jazz 13th International Festival for Jazz and More.

Photo by Alf S Solbakken

To paraphrase from Michael Engelbrecht Abgelegt‘s review of the duo’s debut performance at Punkt (the original is written in German and is roughly translated here):

Unique lighting choreography outlined the duo like spirit figures in an Asian shadow-puppet play.  To old-timers, the music of the duo evokes Led Zeppelin, “Metal Machine Music” and “Walk on the Wild Side”. The two made use of “Kyma”, a computer music language, to quickly create sound algorithms no one has never heard before.

I have rarely in my life, under live conditions, experienced such a clearly contoured, perfectly staged dramatic Noise as one piece of music. Noise, yeah, noise! Much as one might expect from an old pioneer of the avant-garde, but this is by Helge Sten and the ex-Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, a man with new ideas exploring new technologies.

This was not a soulless demonstration of a computer program: sounds were unleashed, the old tendencies of experimental rock music and “drone music” were picked up and catapulted into the year 2011. What a poignant ‘wall of sound ‘!

Twice the duo kindled a violent storm (gale force 13).  Those who did not take flight witnessed the way the noise textures become strangely melodic. A worthy finale (no guitars are burned these days but a few wild spirits are lured from machines) – the last concert on the big stage of Agden theater!

Helge Sten seemed to be remembering his “dark ambient” work as “Deathprod”. John Paul Jones seemed to tap into the wild energy of an older time without falling into the nostalgia trap.  Was it Neil Young who said, “It is better to burn out than to fade away”?

Human Chimes

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Nov 092011
 

Composer Jon Bellona used Kyma to generate sounds for his interactive installation, Human Chimes, on the first night of the (sub)Urban Projections Festival in Eugene, Oregon on November 9, 2011.  Despite inclement weather (40 degrees and rainy), you can see people enjoying the interaction of the sounds, their positions, and the visual projections.  Jon was also the technical director for the entire (sub)Urban Projections Festival.

Musicacoustica Beijing

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Nov 012011
 

University of Oregon director of interactive music technology, Jeffrey Stolet, premiered his new piece Hendrix de Aguadilla for Kyma and iPad (Kyma Control app) on the opening concert for Musicacoustica in Beijing on October 24, 2011. Earlier in the day, Stolet gave a presentation on Kyma and the SumOfSines Disco Club (his new book about the Kyma system), describing how Kyma is being used and taught in higher education.  The next performance of Hendrix de Aguadilla will be in Chengdu, China on November 1 2011.

© 2012 the eighth nerve Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha