narghile bio photo 2012

So I asked Andrew to make us a bio photo to be used for promoting some gigs coming up in the not so distant future and this is what he sent me.  I really like it, I think it totally captures our aesthetic.  I somehow doubt the people asking me for a bio photo were expecting something like this and i’m not sure they will be so enthusiastic.  I’m sure there is a reason we aren’t household names yet.

So last post I said I would put some photos up here. I have decided i’d like to re-functionalise [yep - neologism] my Tumblr site and put them all there. So for those who miss all my photo posts because yr not a facebooker… go here if it pleases you.  There are photos taken by me going as far back as my 2010 visit to New York.  There are some arty ones prior to that but they are less organised.

changing Griffin

Current PhD status is: Terrible.

I really don’t want to use my 11 wk old son, Griffin, as an excuse but it’s been pretty much impossible to get any headway whilst trying to balance his high needs with those of Stacey and her girls.  Once the school semester started it looked like I might get some time back however Imogen contracted Whooping Cough so now we’ve been in quarantine for the last week and a bit taking huge doses of Vitamin C, Zinc and very strong Anti-biotics to try and fight it off.  Not even sure if Griffin has it or not as he already has difficulty breathing due to his Laryngomalacia.  I’m somewhat paralysed by guilt at the moment also.  Guilt over how I should be focusing on getting this research together since that’s what i’m paid to do and guilt over how powerless I am to grant Stacey peaceful days and good nights sleep.  The guilt over prioritising these two contrasting responsibilities is provoking anxiety and I end up incapable of doing anything much.  I’m hoping I can break this vicious cycle soon… at least once semester starts I won’t be able to remain hermetically hidden.  What is that saying about stones gathering moss? I do at least have a sense of humour still though.  Someone posted this on Facebook which totally nails how I feel currently.

Secret Killer of Names - A blog about sound, image and text by Lloyd Barrett.

A new N4rgh1l3 video has been uploaded to Vimeo.  We needed something to submit to a Visual Music screening series curated by seensound.

It is something of a “Greatest Hits” of Narghile at least from a footage perspective.  Dense hypnogogia.  I feel like this might be a clearing out as we are starting to move in newer directions. On one hand i’m trying to put together The Ultimate Jitter patch for live performance (and have been for the last year or so) while Andrew has been quietly developing his obsession with surface textures.  I’m keen to see us move away from the hazy psychedelia towards a more textured collage approach to both sound and image.

Research progress

Working hard on my PhD

Progress on my research has been slowed dramatically due to some issues with the newborn outlined here.

There is however increasingly light at the end of the organisational tunnel as Stacey’s other two children are returning to school / starting kindy.

I’m currently collating my interviews, turning them into interview notes so that I can then make case studies.  At this stage i’m thinking of focusing on Australasian AV artists just for coherency.  The interviews I got while in Brooklyn which certainly help towards the taxonomy but I can see connecting threads here that don’t seem so apparent in the US.

I have to say, using Scrivener is making it so much more convenient as far as backups, updates and having everything all piled together.  I’m excited that they are working on an iPad version and hope it will play nicely with the desktop install.

Live A/V documentary

featured in the Grayson Cooke documentary on live AV in Australia

Speaking of research, Grayson Cooke has been collecting interviews with Australian AV artists and has uploaded a collection in Korsakow format.

It’s an interesting approach as a Beta for a longer documentary including artist footage.  I wonder if it can generate an edit decision list based on frequency / popularity of choices?

Anyway it’s a nice collection of thought on Australian AV practice and I get a few slots moaning about stuff.  I think I may have been in one of my slumps when this was recorded.

Conclusion

That’s all for this post… but I wanted to mention that i’m going to put up, in a separate post, some of my photography from the last year.  I realise only people on Facebook are seeing anything of late since I stopped using Flickr because it required my Yahoo account.  An account I closed down since Yahoo thought nothing of letting a hacker in India with an iPhone use it for spam.  Till then…

Secret Killer of Names - A blog about sound, image and text by Lloyd Barrett.

On the positive side I helped bring a baby boy into this crazy world, made some pretty decent music and got a few steps closer to submitting my exegesis.

So what other music rocked my world this year?

Mr Maps – Wire Empire  (bandcamp)

Released in the middle of the January Flood, this was the release that made me like Mr Maps for reasons other than them being friends.  Where they once soundtracked long-distance conversations now they underscore the make-up sex.

Marcus Schmickler – Palace of Miracles (boomkat)

Very hard to listen to all the way through but it does to my ears and brain what Maryanne Amacher used to do.

Hauscka – Salon Des Amateurs – (amazon)

I’ve certainly heard plenty of nice prepared piano but none put in the service of a groove like this.

Ekoplekz – Memowrekz (boomkat)

While many internet critics gushed about Oneohtrix Point Never my favourite old skool elektronix comes from Bristol this year.  Rough like early Cabaret Voltaire – groovy like early Aphex.  WIN!

Golden Retriever – Arda Viraf (bandcamp)

More spacey head music this was a most pleasingly cosmic riff on early to mid 70s Terry Riley

Ricardo Villalobos & Max Loderbauer – RE:ECM (ECM SITE)

A total mind-blower but in a creeping subtle way… remixing ECM to sound like nothing on earth (except maybe some of David Toop’s late 90s Virgin albums like Pink Noir)

Disasterpeace – Rise of the Obsidian Interstellar (bandcamp)

The best chip-tunes album i’ve ever heard.  Complex detailed composition that remains immediate and catchy.

Richard Skelton – The Complete Landings (bandcamp)

Seemingly aleatoric bursts of cello writhing like weeping willow tendrils this paean to Skelton’s dead partner is also a portrait of the West Pennine moors in Northern England.  Something so mournful yet life affirming and dare I say magical emerges… this was the soundtrack to the birth of my child and the clear favourite this year.

Secret Killer of Names - A blog about sound, image and text by Lloyd Barrett.

At 5.30pm the contractions begin. Stacey starts preparing her birthspace while i'm totally oblivious.

Stacey enters the birth pool around midnight. Between contractions she appears very peaceful in "the zone".

Around transition, entering into second stage (pushing) Stacey roared while I held her. This was apparently a good thing to do. Richard Skelton played on the stereo... very effective!

At this point Stacey is worried that she can’t do it and we tell her she already is doing it.

Stacey informs us that she can feel the head is out. He is still in the caul.

I hop in to help birth my son. Another push from Stacey and he is mostly in my arms. Only his feet remain inside her. The caul has broken off from around his head.

I pass him through her legs and mumma meets baby face to face for the first time.

We wait somewhat anxiously for him to cry.

 

Which he eventually does with gusto.

Griffin Cael Larner, born 1.22am Saturday 3rd December, 2011 weighing 2.72kg

 

Mumma and Bubba get some much needed rest.

 

Secret Killer of Names - A blog about sound, image and text by Lloyd Barrett.

Secret Killer of Names - A blog about sound, image and text by Lloyd Barrett.

Top of the list is Richard Skelton’s “The Complete Landings” – an album that totally transcends drone / folk / experimental labels and just is amazing and evocative.  The closest thing I can connect it with are the William Breeze viola sections on Coil albums from the Seasonal EP’s but this manages to stretch it out and sounds in many ways more aleatoric.

Also awesome is the new Dead Voices On Air album “Michael and the Angel’s fought”.   Spybey’s output has been returning to his more glorious early 90s quality of late and this album is deeply ambient without being saccharine.  No attempt at Krautrock drums and no mere skiving off his Zoviet France past… this is great immersive and quietly challenging.

The Dadavistic Orchestra is a collaboration between The Black Dog and Psychic Warriors of Gaia members and as such it is unsurprisingly ambient.   What is surprising is how well the elements coalesce, while very spacious (every track is around 11mins long) there is much subtle motion going on.

Andrew Liles is a name associated with the more recent Nurse With Wound material and his own relentless release schedule perhaps errs on the side of overkill.  But what makes his bandcamp releases special is that he tailors them to the download market by compiling completist editions (similar to Skelton) and adding alternate mixes like the great binaural mix for All Closed Doors.

So releasing my music on Bandcamp, I feel like i’m in fine company.  However a quick look at my statistics gives me pause for thought.

For the period April 25, 2011 to November 23, 2011:

Total number of plays: 218

Complete plays:83

Partial plays: 83

Skips: 52

A “complete” play means the track was played past the 90% mark. A “partial” play means the track was played past the 10% mark, but stopped before the 90% mark. A “skip” means the track was stopped before the 10% mark.

So that seems OK.  What about the “Buzz”?  This covers visits to my page without plays.

Total Visits: 526

So less than 1/2 of the people who visited my page even hit play on the player.  That seems a bit odd.  Maybe this doesn’t take into account bots and referrers?  So what about the all important sales and downloads…

Total Sales and Downloads: 17

Only 17 out of  a potential 526?  I have 3 albums up there at the moment that people can download for free!  So what is the ratio of free downloads to sales?

7 sales.  10 downloads.  People sure do like streaming their music then.

And that also means only 3% of the people visiting the page can be bothered downloading or purchasing it.

Only 41% actually click to listen and only 15% listen to tracks all the way through.

Lawrence English wrote a great article on Collapse Board about how to go about being an independent musician in this day and age and I know that i’m not really ticking many, if any of these boxes.  I hate being a tireless champion of myself, don’t like playing live and can’t afford to travel around.  Lawrence was, himself, berating Pimmon, Tim Coster and I because we wanted to sell our merch cheap at the recent gig claiming we were “underselling ourselves”.  However even free doesn’t seem cheap enough for the majority.

I’ve said before that I make music primarily for myself.  I don’t actually get all those artists who say they can’t listen to stuff they have done after they have done it.  I totally wouldn’t bother making anything if this was the case.  I make music I want to hear that I don’t hear.  I buy music that I want to hear and would buy my own music if someone else was making it.  But this makes me seriously wonder what the point is in releasing material at all.

My latest is something i’m very proud of.  As far as constructing a workable solution to electro-acoustic music that can be performed actively in public without stress and listened to passively at home, I feel i’ve nailed it. Remnants is the true sequel to Mise En Scene, an album that Francois Couture described as “among the top five albums of electro-acoustic music of 2006.”  But sadly only a handful of people might actually be able to comment on that.

Secret Killer of Names - A blog about sound, image and text by Lloyd Barrett.

The four studies I performed (in order) were:

A Study in AV Spatialisation

I used VPT for the first time! While I had some definite teething problems with the mask and midi presets not saving, setting up ready to go before the gig allowed it all to go pretty smoothly during the performance.  Video is from Artmatic – sound is a remix from Remnants track “For the Shepherd”  There is no direct technical link between the video and sound, rather I prefer for that link to be established in performance and in the link between artist, artwork and audience.

A Study in AV Transduction

With this piece i’m demonstrating the practice of converting audio to current and transducting that current to video by way of a Synchronator.  I send 3 separate channels with pure waveforms that are modulated in various ways to the R, G and B channels which get converted into video.  Unfortunately the presets failed to save (I see a correlation here… something is up with Max saving presets… any ideas?) so this was a really boring set… most disappointing considering my pre-gig sound-check of this was awesome.   In addition the feed going to the projector via a digital vision mixer came out really washed out and bland.   I will rework this using a CRT television and upload when done.

A Study in AV Translation

For this one I used still images, something AV artists rarely seem to do.  Harking back to notions of visual composition established via Xenakis and his Upic system, these images were translated by Metasynth which generates audio based on compositional parameters that I have set (in this case it is a 1:24 ratio).  The idea was that the audience can see the connection between image and how it is translated into sound.  This piece needs more work… at the moment it is quite boring and the Elder Futhark rune system i’m using as a compositional device doesn’t really translate that well it would seem via technology (and rainbow colours!)  I will upload a video when I complete a better version of this study.  The idea is solid but the material is still lacklustre.

A Study in Cross-Modal Binding

Based on the writings of Mitchell Whitelaw on AV i’ve appropriated his term for this study which hits on the most basic use of A+V that i’ve demonstrated before.  Coming more from the Live Cinema angle I have a series of videos culled from a year of using my Canon 550d in a diaristic fashion inspired by Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage.  The audio is mixed with the video in realtime.  Any and all meaning derived from the work is in the mind’s eye of the beholder… an open negotiation between artist and audience i’m actually quite into.

Thanks to Andrew Thomson for looking after the cameras during the performance.

Secret Killer of Names - A blog about sound, image and text by Lloyd Barrett.

With “Mise En Scene” there was a fairly strict set of considerations to meditate on, and with my Secret Killer of Names material I am trying to find beauty, harmony and structure within a variety of chaotic noises.  While what i’m doing now is quite obviously a culmination of what has come before, compared to previous work it might seem to have little theoretical, thematic or conceptual rigour… being a series of sketches without being specific meditations on anything in particular.

The work I will debut at Micromono13 and ultimately release as the sophomore “Lloyd Barrett” album - is a reflection on the current political climate worldwide.  The Occupy rallies, the Anonymous hackers, the situation and how people seem to be, even if for a short time, rejecting it.  The basis of my approach harkens back to the audio magic of Brion Gyson and William Burroughs.  Sounds are analysed for their spectral content, their shape and movement over time.  The machine sounds that permeate our environment, the virtual sounds we escape to in lieu of a real world to love and care for, the sounds of commerce and wars that we have been drafted into without a right to disengage or disagree.  The consensus of the sheep as controlled by the shepherd.  This content is then applied to the sounds of humanity in joyous play with real world toys in real world environments. The result is an audio-magical collage that i’ve further shaped into a dramatic suite with implied narratives inspired by the literary works of Neal Stephenson, Harlan Ellison, Philip K Dick and Charles Stross. It is not a luddite’s rant but a repurposing of the machine as a tool for new philosophies and new forms of beauty.  As Occupy and Anonymous use digital technology to work towards replacing a broken system so the sounds are replaced with new occupants that tell a different story.

Metasynth was used heavily in the foundation stages, for spectral analysis and application of spectral profiles to different sound objects.  This material was transferred to the Korg MS-1 and the Roland SP-404sx so that the pieces could evolve abstracted from the material, as opposed to fitting an abstract compositional template.  At this stage extra layers of processing occurred specifically using “The Mouth” and “The Finger” modules in Reaktor.   Some additional sounds were generated using the “Razor” synth module and “Geo-Synthesizer” on the iPad.  Initial versions were incredibly meandering and loose, however with the helpful critique of friends and colleagues I honed the tracks down into a more manageable form that suits passive home listening experiences and is adaptable for live environments.

To augment the aural the limited edition CDr version is presented with Matte photographic paper featuring some of my recent attempts at Macro photography.  The package is somewhat experimental and unwieldy but why would anyone want anything normal in this day and age?

So what’s happening over the next two weeks?

1) Micromono13 – TONIGHT!!! 10 November.  Institute of Modern Art Brisbane.  7PM

Really chuffed (and quite nervous) to be supporting my electronic music guru Pimmon and fellow Half-Theorist Tim Coster on Thursday 10th November. This is a Room40 happening at the IMA and I will be performing at 7pm so don’t be too fashionable.  There is often free booze on before hand because it is like an art-show – don’t quote me on that though  I will have some pre-release physical versions available on the night.

2) Four studies in audiovisual performance – Saturday 19th November – The Loft.  Z-Block.  QUT Creative Industries Precinct.  Musk Ave. Kelvin Grove

I will be performing four studies for audiovisual performance generated as part of my PhD research.  Really happy to also share the room with my friends from Botborg and Hetleveiker who both make amazing audiovisual work.  As Scott is currently in Brisbane i’m also chuffed that he will be doing a Superusers performance as what he has put on youtube is really exciting.  It starts at 7pm…should go for a couple of hours and will be airconditioned

3) Four studies artist talk – Friday 18th November - The Loft.  Z-Block.  QUT Creative Industries Precinct.  Musk Ave. Kelvin Grove

If you can’t make the Saturday night i’m also doing a short performance and artist talk at 5pm on Friday 18th… same place.  More information on the studies over the next week or so.

Secret Killer of Names - A blog about sound, image and text by Lloyd Barrett.

The track above is a work in progress entitled “Halting State”.  I’m trying to turn my Metasynth experiments into tracks.  Somewhat flustered as I have around 5wks before I am blessed with child and never ever have time to make music ever again (joking – well… we’ll see!)

In other news I’m really incredibly chuffed to be supporting Pimmon and fellow halftheory artist Tim Coster at Micromono 13.  Thanks Lawrence for putting me on the bill.  Expect sounds not to dissimilar from above.

November 19 I have The Loft booked at QUT for a special Audiovisual show.  More details on that one very soon.

Secret Killer of Names - A blog about sound, image and text by Lloyd Barrett.

This is Melbourne

The car is on fire, and there’s no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
And a dark wind blows

The government is corrupt
And we’re on so many drugs
With the radio on and the curtains drawn

We’re trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death

The sun has fallen down
And the billboards are all leering
And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

It went like this:
The buildings tumbled in on themselves
Mothers clutching babies
Picked through the rubble
And pulled out their hair

the cultural capital of Australia

The skyline was beautiful on fire
All twisted metal stretching upwards
Everything washed in a thin orange haze

I said, “Kiss me, you’re beautiful -
These are truly the last days”

You grabbed my hand
And we fell into it
Like a daydream
Or a fever

We woke up one morning and fell a little further down
For sure it’s the valley of death

I open up my wallet
And it’s full of blood

(from Dead Flag Blues by Godspeed You Black Emperor)

With all this revolutionary action and heavy-handed government / corporate responses i’m cogent of one of those little coincidences that really shouldn’t be such.  I was reading the other day about writer Harlan Ellison suing over a new film with Justin Timberlake called In Time.  The crib notes are the similarity between the premise of that film and his classic short story “Repent, Harlequin” said the TickTockMan.  Now Harlan in person comes across as a aggressive misanthrope but he is without too much question my favourite short-story writer.  His work is both speculative and rarely merely sci-fi.  His perspective is often political, frequently grounded in human rights issues but rarely paying any heed to left or right wing categorisations.  For a misanthrope, his stories are very humanitarian focused.

Anyway, it’s a great story and i’m willing to bet In Time is merely the shell of Ellison’s story, absent of the angry fervor in much the same way that V for Vendetta, the film compares to the original Alan Moore comic.  I won’t spoil it for you but what I would like to point out is that “Repent Harlequin” is actually something of a meditation on another literary work, “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau.  Ellison opens his story with the following excerpt:

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.

Now obviously many of us are, if anything, merely the children of hippies.  We were not there as the civil rights movement suffered similar birth pangs in the face of aggressive totalitarianism masquerading as democracy.  We merely watched the movie which sanitised the fact that eggs indeed were broken for the revolution and I know my parents had little to do with it.  For perhaps the first time in my life, I am seeing something occur on a worldwide scale that perhaps does have some meaning for my relatively comfortably middle-class intellectual life.  So far I have been erring on the side of caution, what with a baby due in around 6 wks time and the whole being paid to do my creative work and write about it PhD situation.  My means of expression is poetics and sound.  That is not to say that it is far from my thoughts and the music i’ve been producing of late has an increasing zealotry reflected I think by the times.  Less gallery work more molotov.  Thoreau’s work from 1849, and Ellison’s story from 1965 remind us that there is much precedence to this.

Secret Killer of Names - A blog about sound, image and text by Lloyd Barrett.