hesdo July 2008 Touring with Matmos and Lesser was elevating yet grounding. And Martin's idea of playing improv radio quartets on the days we weren't playing concerts was the great idea. (On July 16th at 9pm and July 17th at 10am, Pacific Standard Time, Hollow Earth Radio will rebroadcast our set which begins with a 36 minute version of Robert Ashley's "The Backyard".) Thanks to Olie & all at Hollow Earth, Josh Hunt of Autofact, all at KPSU & Irwin at KUSF, Steve Goodfriend, Mark Lightcap and Dave LaDelfa for lugging his Yamaha SK30 out of his closet for me to play at the LA show. Joining Drew, Martin and Lesser for the live version of "Supreme Balloon" was the most fun in recent memory and I'm looking forward to releasing some of the improvised sets at some soonish point. In related news, Snowghost Music is offering the Kif Chimera Quintet for streaming. June 2008 The new EP is entitled Throat Solvent Renaissance. My recent DJ set at the Great American Music Hall. Though curated and layered, it's basically a presentation of the finished work of other people and so I wholeheartedly recommend purchasing each of the works featured to hear them in their original contexts. The May 29th Chopping Channel is here at this link, not sure if it's going on the mp3ography yet, the parts with our guest Katie Vida are definitely something. Hopefully we'll soon have the sequel to World Radio World. Preparing for a friendly four date tour of the West Coast. There will be a special tour-only CDR available called 'Learn Cryptography' by the Little Blue Books, a collaboration from last year with Jorge Boehringer, featuring hand drawn covers by myself, Dominique Leone and Lisa Light. March 2008 Almost one year ago, Thomas Dimuzio and I played a set for KPFA's No Other Radio Show, and a few CDR copies made the rounds to friends. The set has now turned up on the bizarrely affordable labor-of-love Dolor Del Estamago bootleg CDR imprint. If you like uncompressed audio, you can order the CDR directly from 'them'. If you're fine with files, you can find the release right here. February 2008 sometimes, small bits of various albums-in-progress grow lyrics. exiled as abominations or adopted by generous peoples? Split Bulbs / Wobbly 7" on Ache Records. Preparing something pronounced for the Friday Feb 22nd NYC show at the Stone in three weeks. January 2008 one new mp3 release from the Chopping Channel featuring Porest, recorded a few weeks ago on Over The Edge. and an mp3 release of the eighteenth and final album by Known In Bakersfield, my group with Tim Meany, recorded eight years ago and going mostly unheard until now. a sixty minute performance of 'Refuge' (version 3), Barbara Golden's 'Crack O'Dawn' on KPFA FM on January 25th, starts at around 79:00 on this archive. followed by Barb and I playing some records: Harmonia, Ghedalia Tazartes, Evol, Bernard Herrmann, Helmut Lachenmann. November 2007 The League of Automatic Music Composers 1978-1983 has just been released by New World Records, compiling for the first time archival recordings of what was probably the very first band to improvise live using microcomputers (aka what people started calling laptops about a decade later). The liner notes including my notes on producing and compiling their music are available here as well as in the booklet that comes with a physical copy. I'm going to miss physical copies. October 2007 The recent music feels like it only wants to be heard by the people who want to go to the concerts. Most other means of distribution are subject to horrible abuses, and I'm as guilty as anyone. People still need live music, though, so check for upcoming concerts and radio shows with Andrea Parkins, MaryClare Brzytwa, the Freddy McGuire Show & Chopping Channel featuring Porest (the latter show will mark the 20th anniversary of my performances on Over The Edge). May 2007 http://www.myspace.com/freddymcguire A week of Freddy McGuire: on Negativland's Over The Edge, KPFA FM, followed by two concerts -- San Francisco, California, the other in Dublin, Ireland. Details in Concerts. November 2006 Unannounced offstage dj sets for unsuspecting audiences continue, including recent sets opening for Matmos and The Knife. Listening to too many things by other people. And while I'm posting playlists, here at least is an old collage-music overview from the Illegal Art Exhibition opening in San Francisco a few years back. September 2006 New Sagan 7" single released on 333 Recordings. First 100 copies come with 3" cdr of a third track. What's finished. August 2006 Radio Disc 3: Natal Day from 1995 Performing a section of album in progress 'Refuge' for six people, 28 July 2006 July 2006 Steev Hise's new documentary, On The Edge: The Femicide in Ciudad Juárez, features a musical soundtrack edited together by Steev from various 2005 projects of mine: my duo with Thomas Dimuzio, my trio with Antimatter & Tim Perkis, and of course Sagan. That's the least of the reasons to see the film -- for anyone curious about the graffiti throughout the San Francisco Mission District that reads "R.I.P. Mujeres de Juárez", Steev's film provides answers and more questions about some of the damning "side effects" of free trade that are hitting us all, South of the border. Chopping Channel: "How Radio Isn't Done", 23 March 2006. Don Joyce, Peter Conheim, Jon Leidecker, Thomas Dimuzio. This one's mainly about Velma Wallenrod and Bud Choke selling up parallel storms, with comedy this profound there's barely even any need for the Chopping itself to come to the fore. Thomas is hosting links to individual files, or you can grab a single 58 MB .zip file here. (Note that Thomas has also reposted Rotate Vortex.) Also, Choir has gotten bumped to revision 2 -- liked it enough to want to fix & add a few things before moving on (the mention below still links to the original version). June 2006 Though the name 'Wobbly' is usually reserved for labor intensive compositions or live shows, over the past few years there have been quite a few very enjoyable DJ gigs where my equipment is limited to what's already on site, just two to four decks and a mixer. These outings aren't archived on the concerts page, and seldom announced in advance, but sometimes the results still turn out baffling enough to share. Here's one made at home: Thousand Year Choir. And program. Here's one performed before Ryan Junell's SloMo Video Festival: DJ set of forcibly stretched hits, May 20th, 2006. June 21st: three hour DJ set with four CDJs at the opening of the Matthew Barney exhibition at SF MOMA on June 21st. Matmos on the other hand will be doing an actual bona-fide 'live set' involving metals vibrated by proximal dry ice. Finally, I've contributed a remix for the latest album by Evol -- out now on Alku. May 2006 Archivalish mp3 album posted -- the second disc from the 1998 3 CD set "Radio". These were edits and collages of live musical performances on KCSB FM performed in Santa Barbara between 1991 and 1994. I'm working my way back to there, and in the meantime the link is here. A recent live set of original music performed on the No Other Radio Show will be temporarily archived here, containing bits from the next three solo albums. April 2006 People Like Us & Wobbly, recorded by BBC Radio 3 live at the Spitz, London, 8 May 2004: Mixing It. March 2006 First solo shows in nearly one year announced on Concerts page. February 2006 KPFA 94.1 FM, Berkeley, Pacific Standard Time, March 2nd, Thursday night at midnight: Barbara Golden's Crack O'Dawn: Antimatter / Wobbly / Perkis trio. April will see the return of the Chopping Channel: Don Joyce, Peter Conheim, Jon Leidecker (hi) and special guest Thomas Dimuzio, who has a new series of mp3 concert archives up at his site. For now, here's the 30 June 01 episode of Over The Edge, 'Chopping Channel Rehearsal' where we desperately attempt to get our materials together for our debut concert the following week. There are some slow parts, this was radio, we were Don Joyce, Peter Conheim, David Wills and myself. Three 70-75 MB files: Part One, Part Two, Part Three. One of the many things that Aurora does is take pictures. December 2005 The Limited Party ep has been completed. Unfortunately I'm not sure it warrants a release, though one track has been given to tb6 as a remix for Eats Tapes (which is how the whole piece got started). When the entire eye comes all the way out of the head it's generally bad news, music hasn't been terribly kind to me this year. But it's far, far too late for a divorce. Giacinto Scelsi. Specifically, the 3 disc box set on Accord conducted by Jürg Wyttenbach, and the historical compilation on Editions RZ. July 2005 In the immediate future, another collaboration with Dimuzio, another set with Antimatter & Tim Perkis (which is evolving into a completely seperate project from the album Tim and I have been working on), and a improv duo set with Elliot Sharp. Recent listening: Archives GRM 5 CD box, Gérard Grisey's "Les Espaces Acoustiques", Hosono's "Cochin Moon", Perotin, Tibetian Bells III, always revisiting all things Cluster from 71-84, Free Design's "Friends (Thank You All)", Bayle's "Erosphere" over and over and over. Also: Charles Ives' "Universe Symphony" as realized by Johnny Reinhard is only available from this website; if you have even the slightest suspicion that you want this, order it immediately. May 2005 Mini-west coast Sagan / DAT Politics tour coming up late May / early June, the Oakland 21 Grand show and Los Angeles Knitting Factory show also contain surreptitious opening Wobbly sets. Can't let go of working on those two new solo albums, the material fits together in too many fun ways to choose just one. Details on Concerts page. News & a download from Alku: Holla-holla We have done an all-time-Alku-allstars mix for an exhibition As we will only produce the physical ones for this particular event, it is also available here, as a 224kbps MP3 file (56.7 MB): http://openserver.cccb.org/~foofoofoo/audio/ALKUjiggerypokeryMIX.mp3 if you want to check the tracklist, you may get it here (2.7 kb): http://imbecil.net/alkujiggerypokerymix_tracklist.pdf Danke. Enjoy. March 2005 Kenneth Goldsmith's mighty Ubuweb is hosting the entire Tape-beatles discography online in mp3 form, including our 2001 live jam with Jon Nelson and Steev Hise, Minneapolis Summit: you can find that page online here. The extensive packaging for the Tape-beatles albums has not been put online; if you can find the physical discs, you shouldn't hesitate to buy them. The Freddy album's done, working on packaging. Next up, two solo records, the album with Tim Perkis, and the second Sagan album (the first with me as a fully participating co-composer -- it's also worth noting that I don't play on a note of the six hours of live mp3's that come with the debut, those were all recorded before I joined the band in late 2003). I'm also assembling an archival CD release of the work of The League of Automatic Music Composers, the first band to improvise with networked computers in a live context. Here's another interesting link: The History of Experimental Music in Northern California. The Skylined site that's been mirroring my mp3's for the last two years doesn't look like it's coming back up anytime soon, but that doesn't seem to be bothering anyone... many more thanks to them for hosting the music for so long. February 2005 Sagan's Unseen Forces video is being featured as a free streaming webcast from the consistently consistent New Music Box website until Feburary 15th. December 2004 Sagan, Keith Fullerton Whitman & KFW/Wobbly live sets here, courtesy of OCDJ and WFMU FM. I'm thinking Keith should put out his set, but as for now it's free. Two recent bemused local press mentions for Sagan in the Bay Guardian and SF Weekly. I remember the interview with Mike touching on the tension between improvisation and composition brought on by the age of recording, the path from 60's live electronic performance to 70's mainstream synthesizer space music, and the discipline of real time video art... I shouldn't be surprised that all that was dropped to favor our drinking stories, every article has to have an angle I'm guessing. I've heard that David Tudor once said that he abandoned piano for live electronics in the 60's as part of a search for a music he could perform live while drunk. Any control that is relinquished, is done so to explicit effect. November 2004 Micro-mini East Coast Sagan tour: Providence, Brooklyn, NYC. Hit and run. Details on concerts page. More early next year. Working continues on: The Tim Perkis / Wobbly collaborative album, the Freddy McGuire Show (compiling most of the radio broadcasts, concerts and studio sessions onto one disc), and two new solo pieces: one EP, one LP. A reminder to fellow Americans thinking of leaving the country: You're needed here. August 2004 The debut album by Sagan is called Unseen Forces and it will be released on September 20th. The album was already about 80% finished when i joined the band late last year -- even though I only contributed keyboards to three or four tracks, I'm proud of the album and looking forward to the upcoming mini-tour this Fall. We play the Cosmic Music; there is no Cosmic Music. The CD release party is at Bottom of the Hill on September 24th. Hrvatski's recent SF visit resulted in one furious gig and two extended studio jams; expect some vinyl soon. Shiina Ringo - 'Karuki Zamen Kuri No Hana', 'Shoso Strip', and the song "Ringo Catalog" -- nonstop. June 2004 Revisionist. The Multiple Peady 12" single has finally been released, well over two years after being mailed to Boniato; it's a suite of remixes of material from 2002's Playlist ep. It was intended to be released simultaneously with Wild Why. So although it's not new, it's still fun -- especially the remixes, I thank my friends for doing them. May 2004 Back from the shows in London and France; the Paris performance in particular. Many thanks to Vicki, Alan Gask, Aelters & Lucille, Felix Carey, Douglas Benford, Jocelyn and Frederick. Wild Why v3.5 is this month's mp3 release, the Over The Edge radio performance from September 2002 edited down to a reasonable 137 minutes. Unlikely to change any previously held opinions of the piece. William Duckworth's Talking Music, Trevor Wishart's On Sonic Art, James Tenney's Meta/Hodos. April 2004 The duo with People Like Us in London on May the 8th: This is a live performance to be recorded by the BBC for broadcast on Radio 3's Mixing It. Tickets are free for those who reserve them in advance, so please do: phone 08700 100 300 or e-mail mixing.it@bbc.co.uk. This month's mp3 release still awaits mastering; April is a blank. Empire Notes blog. March 2004 This month's mp3 release is the 'Squibbons' ep by Aelters & Sagan, recorded live on 30 June 03, and edited by myself down into tiny things in late December. Basically Aelters at the helm with everyone else steamrolling over the top. It's very good and available for download here. January 2004 Five new Disco Remixes up here. President's Resume. Previous News if you're all consumer: copies of 'playlist' are now available from illegal art copies of 'live 99>00' are available from phthalo copies of 'wild why' and 'wide open spaces' are available from tigerbeat6 or all four are available from aquarius records, the Illegal Art Wobbly Webshop, or the highly recommended Mimaroglu Music Sales. okay