Then come the remixes. George Neufeld literalizes the beat (MP3), turning it into a more standardized 4/4, and seemingly running the whole thing through a flanging effect that softens it into a lounge-ready track. Versions by Hakan Lidbo (MP3) and Pseudónimo (MP3) — as well as what appears to be a group effort, credited to Tampopo Noodleking, Granlab & Tend (MP3) — likewise emphasize the downbeat, though the Tampopo edit approaches some of the light chaos of the original.

The EP closes with a sort of sequel, “Momento B,” also by RichVomDorf, which follows the more standard techno sounds of the remix, but comes close to returning to the sparseness that got the whole thing started, especially with a horn line that could have been ripped from a second-line parade for a beloved robot (MP3).

The originating track and, for contrast, the Pseudónimo mix are streaming above. Visit broque.de to check out the full set.

The slow sawing of Laderas’s bow on the live piece “Milky” certainly brings to mind the rooted, sinewy acoustics of a cello, but the feedback-enriched haze of “Downtown Pajama” is about as far as could be imagined from the instrument beloved by such composers as J.S. Bach and Benjamin Britten. And on Magnifications, the latter listening experience is far more the norm than is the former.

Of course, Laderas doesn’t play a cello; what he plays is the Oo-Ray, a system of his own invention that places the cello amid a tidy battery of electronic tools that allow him to loop, clip, distort, and, per the title of this collection, magnify the rich overtones of his sound source. His technology doesn’t transform his cello any more than his cello serves his technology; they are partners. There is a soaring quality to “Angostura” that would be impossible to achieve without the digital effects that Laderas employs, but the piece bears no trace of CGI detritus, no green-screen lifelessness, no automated coldness.

The cello is not his instrument; the Oo-ray is his instrument. If Bach and Britten wrote suites for the solo cello, what Laderas summons up is orchestral by comparison. If those composers momentarily turned the “always a bridesmaid” figure of chamber music into a leading lady, Laderas reveals her as an angel.

Each track on Magnifications is an exercise in maximalism, that place where the teachings of minimalism — attention to tone, to repetition, and to the pleasures of incremental change — are opened wide and played to immersive effect. To listen, for example, to “If We Aren’t Blind” is to hear droning, circular patterns that bring to mind some epic experience. The saw-toothed burrs and whirring motion suggest a bellows more than they do a handful of strings. It’s all like some massive troupe of bag pipers heard from a distance as they play in a deep valley with its own immense, natural echo.

Laderas has jokingly said that he pursued the Oo-Ray in the hopes of becoming “the acoustic My Bloody Valentine,” by which he meant the rock band synonymous with the term “shoegazing,” a willfully hazy breed of pop that buried melodies behind thick, billowy screens. Of course, no matter how deeply one peers into Laderas’s plush compositions, there are no proper songs hiding behind them. What he has done is closer in approximation to some of Brian Eno’s early experiments in sound for its own sake, where that famed producer attempted to forge a pop music devoid of song-ness — to celebrate the tonalities of rock by minimizing the presence of rhythm, harmony, and melody. Laderas, likewise, has on Magnifications — from the wildly flanging madness of “Eagre” to the heart-racing extravagance of “Slow Motion Death Scene” — made shoegazing music that lifts its gaze from the stage floor and peers far off to the horizon.

More on the release at luvsound.org.

Visit Oo-Ray/Laderas at 15people.net.

There is a Buddha Machine Effect, in that the longer you listen to a Buddha Machine loop, the less generic, the less plain, that loop comes to appear. Perhaps the second Buddha Machine was arguably necessary, because by the time it was released, the first Buddha Machine had, to its most frequent users (the word “user” seems more appropriate than does “listeners”), become familiar, recognizable.

The longer you employ a Buddha Machine, the more you become attuned to its loops — not only in your own practice of listening, but as the Buddha Machine is employed by other musicians. It’s proven to be a useful sound source for music-makers, and a search for “Buddha Machine” on many music forums yields homebrew experimenters. Take, for example Sinehead, a German who makes his public home at the sound-sharing site soundcloud.com/sinehead. His “FM3 buddha machine countryside” is a singular, linear experiment in pastoral collage. One of the beautiful things about soundcloud.com, in contrast with, say, myspace.com, is that each track (see below for an example) is given its own waveform image.

And thus, even before you venture into Sinehead’s Buddha experiment, you understand its structure: there’s a slow build, and then two separate lengthy sections, each with its own unique contours. In this case, the slow build is a rising tide of loops, with a single gentle thud suggesting imminent momentum. That first lengthy section brings a click track and more regular thud that organizes but doesn’t overpower the roiling loops. And the second lengthy section doubles the beat’s speed.

Get the full set at stasisfield.com.

Roden explains that the card shows “engineers testing radio reception from within the depths of ‘endless caverns’, new market, VA. the men in the image are listening to the radio, nearly a mile from the entrance to the caverns. the back states clearly that ‘musical reception’ was ‘exceptionally good’.” More at the original post, inbetweennoise.blogspot.com.

“I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. I didn’t know where I should be focusing my attention.”

Here’s a shot of the exhibit:

Full article at pittsburghlive.com. More at the museum’s website, cmoa.org (the museum link, judging by the URL, won’t function after the exhibit closes, on July 26).

Elliot 803, Colossus MK2 Rebuild, Dragon 32, BBC Micro, SORD M5, MSX-HX10, Atari 800XL, Amstrad CPC464, IBM 029 Key Punch, Brunsviga Adding Machine, Bulmers Adding Machine, Block & Anderson Adding Machine, Crete Teleprinter, ICL Line Printer, PDP 11, PDP 8, 380Z Research Machine, RM Nimbus Power, MAC 5500/275, DecTalk

With a name as suggestive as “Applegate,” it almost seems like the Pixelh8 moniker is unnecessary, though the addition of the “h” definitely signals some interesting ambivalence on the musician’s part. The sample track on his pixelh8.co.uk website offers what appears to be a series of excerpts of Obsolete?, all gleefully mechanistic and deliciously lo-tech (MP3).

More on the event at the museum’s website, tnmoc.org, and courtesy of an interview at newscientist.com, in which he explains:

“I’ve gone right back to the beginning of what computers can do in terms of sound. It’s not just about sound chips, but the electromechanical sounds they make: the fans, the tape readers, the teleprinters — crunchy sounds.”

More info on Restive Sonic at restive.za.net and myspace.com/restivesonic.

Six of the top-10 posts for June were for Disquiet Downstream (i.e., free legal download) entries. The most popular was (2) Durán Vázquez’s terror film for radio. The other five were (3) heavenly string reverberants from Oo-Ray, (4) Jakob Newman’s FM3 Buddha Machine mix, (5) an aggressive 8-bit (that is, old-school video game) entry from Lazerbeat, (6) blues great Junior Kimbrough remixed by Grassy Knoll, and (7) an album on the Dark Winter netlabel by Exuviae.

An image from (8) Yukio Fujimoto’s beautiful sound-art exhibit in Birmingham, England, made the top 10, as did (9) the June 13 roundup of my twitter.com/disquiet postings, and (10) the announcement I’d updated the site to WordPress 2.8.