Aural Pleasures
Imogen Heap Performs “Me, the Machine” at Wired
Imogen Heap demonstrates her amazing new musical gloves at WIRED 2012. “Using a unique gestural vocabulary, motion data-capture systems, and user interfaces to parameter functions developed by Imogen Heap and her team, artists and other users will be able to use their motion to guide computer-based digital creations. The Musical Gloves are both an instrument and a controller in effect, designed to connect the user fluidly with gear performers usually use, such as Ableton – think Minority Report for musicians brought to you by the DIY/maker revolution.”
Inspired when Kelly Snook invited her to the MIT Media Lab in 2009 and she tried on Elly Jessop’s musical glove, she and her creative team, headed by Kelly Snook, began developing a glove that would enable “more expressive control of the tech in studio and on stage, something I could wear and create sound fluidly with, more organically, humanly somehow.”
The gloves offer an integrated, transcendent experience for the live performer, wherein she uses her motion, gesture, and body to create and control electronic music in an organic process, almost “touching” the notes, as if they were visible around her and her bodily movement, her physical interactions, literally performed the music.
“Heap told Wired 2012 that before she got her hands on her ‘magical gloves,’ she would make music with an array of instruments and virtual instruments, along with Albeton music software: ‘Basically, inside this software I can play virtual instruments and loop things, add layers and textures that I spend hours working on in my basement. But I wanted to bring those sounds on stage with me. I strapped keyboards onto me, had microphones attached to my wrists so that I can mic up wine glasses or guitars or whatever I wanted to record. The problem was, how could I do this on the move?’”
After a demo explaining how these gloves operate, she performs the song “Me, the Machine” from her new album, a breathtaking experience in context of what has gone before, and beautiful and alive. To learn more about the gloves, read the full write-up on Imogen Heap’s Website.
Lyrics after the cut:
See more after the cutUnder Byen – “Unoder” Music Video
“We Might Be Dead By Tomorrow”
This music video for Soko‘s “We Might Be Dead By Tomorrow” is just so simple, sincere, and beautiful. I was lucky enough to see her perform live with Jherek Bischoff last weekend, which was one of the highlights of an amazing show.
“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” Opening Titles
The opening titles of David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. This awesome sequence was created by motion designer/director Onur Senturk. The song is a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” with vocals by Karen O and music by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross.
“Clump” by iamamiwhoami
A mysterious, beautiful, frenetic, and vaguely sad music video from iamamiwhoami.Tags: electronic music, experimental music, hauntingly beautiful, iamamiwhoami, jonna lee, meadow, music videos, mystical, nature, surreal
Tunage/Pleasure for Your Ear-Holes
+ Austra – The Beast
+ Fever Ray – The Wolf
+ Soap&Skin – The Sun
+ White Ring – Suffocation
+ SWANS – I Crawled (Live)
+ How to Destroy Angels – The Space in Between
+ CocoRosie – Gallows
+ Bjork – Army of Me
+ Portishead – Machine Gun
+ Massive Attack – Butterfly Caught
+ Lia Ices – Daphne
+ Black Tape for a Blue Girl – Fin de Siecle
+ Florence + The Machine – Cosmic Love
+ LA Vampires & Zola Jesus – No No No
+ Jarboe – Kiss of Life
+ Ruby Throat – Naked Ruby
+ Derniere Volonte – Songe d’un matin d’ete
+ Salem – Frost
+ Hybryds – Opheilia/Ulunda
+ Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble of Shadows – La Mort d’Arthur (Instrumental)
+ Helium Vola – Zur Heilung
+ Coil – At the Heart of It All
+ Sonic Youth – Halloween
+ Chinawoman – Friday NightSongs can be listened to below.
Casey LaLonde’s “Thank You”: Album Art
This is the packaging design for Casey LaLonde’s album Thank You centering on a cyborg deer which I quite like:
Click to enlarge Tags: CD artwork, deer, illustrations
Two Songs
Currently among my favorites.
+ “March Funèbre” by Soap&Skin, off Lovetune for Vacuum
+ “Keep the Streets Empty for Me” by Fever Ray, off their self-titled debut album
Tags: dark ethereal, electronic music, experimental music, fever ray, hauntingly beautiful, music videos, soap&skin
Short Film: “Embrio”
Embrio is an experimental short film made entirely by Jean-Sébastien Monzani (story, direction, film, & music), with amazing acting by Stéphanie Schneider.
What draws me to Embrio is its quality of implicit horror, conveyed through the actor’s subtle, ever-changing expressions (she really is the heart of the movie) and the eerie, intense, atmospheric soundtrack. Sans a conventional narrative, Embrio explores the compulsions, fixations, obsessions, and psychological reactions of a young woman, and, though very well-composed, it also has a rawness, depicting naked sensations and emotions with all the vagueness and ambiguity of good psychological horror – all within a clean, bright, well-lit, nearly sterile environment. It draws us deeply, physically, into the experience of the woman, and gets under our skin.
Tags: experimental, psychological horror, short films, surreal horror
Trailer for “Sanatorium Altrosa”
This is a delightful trailer/short film for Sopor Aeternus & the Ensemble of Shadows‘ remix album Sanatorium Altrosa (Musical Therapy for Spiritual Dysfunction), which came out in 2008. It features the brain behind Sopor, Anna-Varney Cantodea, dancing to aurally enticing clips from the tracks.
Someone once asked me, regarding Anna-Varney, “Why do you like that guy? He’s so freaky.”
Hmm…okay, Anna-Varney Cantodea may be one of the more bizarre-looking artists out there, but I think she has a sort of strange beauty which is exactly her own, and isn’t just conventional beauty dressed up in macabre trimmings; she is able to evoke the deepest recesses of human anguish and horror; and her music is quite different from anything else out there. She is one of the rare musicians whose music actually has influences from what I imagine medieval and Renaissance music to have sounded like, and it has such an old-world, dark romantic vibe, with poetic, exquisitely melodramatic lyrics. Also, she is not “that guy.” She is just Anna-Varney.
And while we’re on the subject, some illuminating quotes by Anna-Varney:
“I grew up in a painfully ‘straight’ environment with straight women and straight men, where there was nothing whatsoever in between. I felt like an alien that had crash-landed on a hostile planet inhabited by carnivorous primates (and as it turned out: I was bloody right).”
“You have to understand that from my point of view it is complete nonsense to write any material in order to help other people. It’s totally pointless, because all I can really do is to write about myself, honestly and to a certain degree even ruthlessly.”
{On the rumor that she is infatuated with Darth Vader…}
|
“But seriously, the blame is on some (French, I believe, though I cannot quite remember) independent magazine I did an interview for years ago. They tried to be creative, I suppose, so they closed their questionnaire adding a brief game of ‘making-free-associations’ by throwing this totally clever (ahem) list of words at me. The first concept they came up with was ‘black’…and I immediately was in complete awe of such overwhelming and totally unmatched creativity. ;-)
Now, as a good Goth, what was I supposed to reply? DEATH? Deprrrrrression? DARKNESS, even??? Grrrrrr…please! Give me a break, boys! So, instead, I decided to play clever bitch and gave them Darth Vader as an answer. Unfortunately, I had no idea that this would officially turn me into a Star Wars fan. But that’s what ‘Wank-a-pedia’ now says, so I suppose it must be true then. ;)”“A good album should be (amongst other aspects, that is) kind of like a tombstone…a sepulchre, where a part of the artist lies buried.”
Tags: anna-varney cantodea, dark romantic, insane asylum aesthetic, lovely quotations, neo-victorian, neoclassical music, retro, sopor aeternus & the ensemble of shadows, trailers, victorian mourning
