Some Assembly Required

The Kleptones

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:37:38 PST

The Kleptones

The Kleptones are actually a single person, with a history of releasing concept based Mashup albums, such as 2004's "A Night At The Hip Hopera" and "24 Hours" (2006). He goes by the name Eric Kleptone, which sounds an awful lot like the name of the project, which is named after something other than Eric (read on for the full story), so I'm thinking there's probably not a large extended family of Kleptones out there... Too bad, as I'm sure they'd be a talented lot.

I forget how I got a copy of A Night At the Hip Hopera, but as you can imagine, I was a fast fan. It mixes the mashup concept with other sampling techniques, which is what I personally love to hear. A mashup/cut-up extravaganza as spun on the wheels of steel... now that would be something I'd like to hear more of.

More recently, The Kleptones have released a new mashup concept album called "24 Hours" which takes the listener through an entire day, using nothing but samples to tell the story. There's a new album in the works, as well, so keep your ear to the ground, and check out his past projects, in the meantime, HERE.

He's also a live DJ, and has made a name for himself as such, putting on fantastic performances combining lap top destruction, dancers, live video mixing and music. The 2007 release, "Live'r Than You'll Ever Be," attempts to document one such performance. Check it out HERE.

Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with The Kleptones...

*Name: The Kleptones

*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: No.

*Do you use a pseudonym? Yes!

*Members: It varies – has been as many as six, and as little as one, depending on the situation. I’m the only constant member though, and usually the only musical one. We have been embellished with video and live performance art from time to time, when budgets allow. At the moment, Eric Kleptone – I’m just finishing up a new album so the band members are all in my head, getting drunk and arguing long and loud with each other about basslines and delay tempos.

*Founding Members: Eric Kleptone!

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: I wouldn’t, but if I had to, “Digital Deconstructions”.

*Another genre descriptor: Not really. Call it what you want! “Mashups” is a dirty word now, as it’s slipped out of vogue, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a tag, there have been ones before, there’ll be other ones sometime.

*Is there a story behind your name? Not the descriptor, but the name “The Kleptones” - We stole it, unintentionally I hasten to add, from a photo of what we thought was a piece of stencil graffiti – it was actually the logo of a label from a few years back. Vicki Bennett from People Like Us was one of the people involved in the label, and got in contact – she gave her blessing to our appropriation of their appropriation, which was very kind! The “Earman” graphic that accompanies the text was actually originally sourced from an old RCA stereo test record sleeve also, so it’s another multi-layered appropriation. I love the concept of sampling the sampled, visually or aurally – taking a break from a 90’s hardcore or hip-hop record rather than the original 70’s funk 45 – you get a layer of digital grit that wasn’t originally there, on top of the surface noise of the original vinyl, and the hiss on the master tape etc...

*Location: Brighton, UK

*Original Location: Somewhere else in the UK!

*What is your creative/artistic background: A lifetime of playing in bands, being a sound and lighting engineer, and being a DJ and Producer in my own right. Eventually got tired of listening to everyone else and thought I could do better. Also a lifetime of collecting music and odd sounds came in handy too.

*History: The Kleptones have existed now for six or seven years. What I created prior to that isn’t important to anyone that wasn’t there at the time. With The Kleptones there is always an ear towards creating something that will stand the test of time a little more than just soundtracking the moment, up till now anyway. It seems to be working though, as people are still discovering older things we’ve done, listening to them with fresh ears and mailing us to say good things.

*Born: (no answer – see above)

*Motivations: The need to communicate. The need for an individual, personal method of expression. The need for a soapbox on which to stand. The need to differentiate myself from all others. The need to create. The need to work. Motivated by stupidity, ignorance and the “chew it up – spit it out” attitude that is prevalent in modern attitudes to art and culture.

*Philosophy: I don’t think it’s fully formed yet. We’re still on the path to enlightenment – when we get to the end, we’ll know why we took this route.

*How would you like to be remembered: A national holiday.

*Web address: www.kleptones.com

www.some-assembly-required.net

Episode 152, Some Assembly Required

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:42:23 PST

Episode 152, Some Assembly Required

01 DJ Tripp – “Close To Faith”
02 Brindle Spork – “Mommy Bomb”
03 Escape Mechanism - “Smoke Screen”
04 The Kleptones – “Break”
05 Steve Fisk - “Break On Thru”
06 John Oswald – “Case Of Death (Part One)”
07 Ros Bobos - “Very Truly Yours”
08 Invisibl Skratch Piklz – “Gimme My Goddamn Money”
09 Tristan Shout – “(Just can't get) enough music”
10 John Oswald – “Case Of Death (Part Two)”
11 Escape Mechanism - “Cycles”
12 People Like Us – “Repeat To Fade”
13 DJ Jay-R – “Close To Cassie's Cure”

Use this address, for your pod software:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/some-assembly-required/JSpD

Stock, Hausen & Walkman

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:34:56 PDT

Stock, Hausen & Walkman

Stock, Hausen & Walkman started improvising in the late 1980's, in the UK. The group very often worked with samples, so it's a shame I haven't found more of their records until recently. I first heard of them thanks to their Eerie Materials 7" (1998) and have been exploring some more of their work these past few months. You should, too.

Matt Wand spoke on behalf of the band, and we've got an interview coming up with him in the coming quarter as well, so stay tuned for that. He was a founding member, with Rex Casswell, in the UK, in 1987. Andrew Sharpley and Dan Weaver soon joined them, and eventually it was just Wand and Sharpley.

(pictured, left to right: Dan Weaver, Matt Wand, Rex Caswell, Andrew Sharpley)

The group was active, in various configurations, for around 15 years. Their last record was released in 2000, and there is as yet no news of a reunion. They released 7 or 8 albums, a few singles and several remixes for artists such as Buffalo Daughter and People Like Us. Check out their discography HERE.

They were the artists behind the Hot Air record label, as well (since 1991), releasing work by Otomo Yoshihide, Janek Schaefer, Dummy Run, People Like Us and of course Stock, Hausen & Walkman. Most recently, Matt Wand released a solo record on Hot Air, as Small Rocks. The CD was titled "Carbondating". Check out Hot Air on the web HERE.

As I just mentioned, Wand has continued as a solo artist, releasing things under different aliases (such as Small Rocks and Stahlgren & Ferguson). He's done numerous commissions for art installation and exhibition, as well, and is responsible for much of the artwork featured on various Hot Air releases.

Without further ado here's the SAR Q&A with Stock, Hausen & Walkman's Matt Wand...

*Name: Stock, Hausen & Walkman

*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: The illiterate or lazy among us (and I include myself) sometimes put SH&W or nearer might be SHAW (pronounced Pssshaww!! with an emphasis on the skeptical and dismissive tone of that sound).

*Do you use a pseudonym? Despite how it may seem 'Matt Wand' is the name I was born with (well, Matthew actually) but I can own up to hiding behind the dubious Outfits 'Small Rocks' 'Stahlgren & Ferguson' and a few others that might seem obvious on closer inspection.

*Members: Well NONE since 2002 when the plug was pulled, but originally 2 (Myself & Rex Casswell) then 4 (Dan Weaver & Andrew Sharpley joined) then 3 (Rex left) then 2 again (Dan went to Germany and we willfully ignored him as he was getting too much girl action and generally having far too good a time over there.) [What are the full names of each member?] I think that’s been covered apart from middle names, which I'm not sure I ever knew apart from mine which is David. Oh! no... wait I remember… Andrew’s is Quentin which in some ways is quite an awful middle name, way too upper class and just begging to be mocked… but then again there is Quentin Blake whose illustrations for the Uncle Books I love… so maybe not so bad?

*Founding Members: Me & Rex Casswell, I put myself first as I thought up the name which is an atrociously bad pun BUT did kind of describe all we were about at the time... Firstly, we wanted to drag 'so called' high brow experimentalism down to the level of bad disco commercialism (Stockhausen represented and indeed still represents the most idiotic egomaniacal pompous facade to gloss over what is after all the kind of experimenting that anyone with a taperecorder and the luxury of free time & a brain can noodle away at and present the results now and again. It was hilarious when he popped his clogs and shuffled off to the lederhosen shop in the sky and every one started coming out of the woodwork saying how much they respected and admired him, in Manchester alone there was a deluge of performances of Stockhausen pieces in the academic establishments that did little but reveal the transparent silliness and pseudo-mystical conservative anti-intellectualism of the bulk of his work. Of course Those establishments didn't really touch his earlier (listenable) electronic works as that would mean calling in 'outsiders' with some of the long ignored (by them) knowledge of electronic music and they are only interested in giving a platform and work to their own so called 'Qualified' musicians not scruffy herberts that know their way around an oscillator… That’s how it is in the UK, always with the class war of some kind… Hope it’s better in the US). The Walkman bit was A) because we were poor and couldn't even conceive of having motor vehicles so our dream was to be able to get the bus to a gig and play with stuff that we could pull out of our coat pockets when we got to the venue, a dream of ultimate portability that is finally with us today which is a good job as I'm poor again and scrapped my car 6 months ago… plus B) Notoriety (and hence Fame) in those days seemed to come quickly from being sued by a big company and I thought that Mr. Sony might do that job for us..

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: Any, All and much much more or less… We had no set way of manipulating sound, cassette pause button edits & 4 track layering had been the way for most (including myself) since the mid seventies… In the end, my own 'live' technique was 2 split channel cassette players that contained all kinds of turntable & pause button & drum-machine 'n' FX style manipulations that were siphoned thru a 4 button switchboard to re-cut-up the sounds into a 4 second sampler with the spring taken out so that further triggering, slowing down, speeding up etc could be done realtime to that live cut-up… Mr. Sharpley favoured fast forward/rewind button cassette scratching of prepared cutup tapes. Rex and Dan were more instrumentalists with guitar and cello but were no less interesting or 'Cut-Up' in their thinking/performing (especially Rex Casswell, where are you Rex?? Think he might have hurt himself with his cut-up thinking).

*Another genre descriptor: I think Vicki (Bennett) said it, when she said that the word Collage has been in use for this sort of thing for over a century, she's right and I think Sharpley with his slightly more formal 'arts' education is a big fan of the word and the act of 'Collage'. Myself, I'm more a child of the Grey Underground so I go with the Gysin/Burroughs term 'Cut-Ups' as a brief, I can't speak for them really but I'm betting Rex & Dan would just say 'Improvising' and I like that one too, especially if it’s applied to the thought processes rather than just the anti-formal musical act, you can go a long way (as Mr. Oswald has proved) by re-badging what you do with a nifty moniker but that’s really just glib journalism or perhaps having some fun at the expense of Glib/lazy Journalists. The works themselves are what is important when yr in the mood to listen to that sort of thing, hopefully there aren't too many people that claim: "I only listen to Plunderphonics!"

*Is there a story behind your name? (See the answer to “Founding Members” above)

*Location: 2 from Manchester & 2 from Louth (Lincolnshire), hence the continuous fluctuation between Pastoral Beauty and Industrial Horribleness in the music.

*Original Location:

*What is your creative/artistic background: I could really only inform you properly about my own background and I don't feel that’s so important or even interesting in this context.

*History: Well, it’s a bit vague, I think the start of it was sometime in 1989-90 but Me and Rex had been working together within the 'purist improvisor' tyranny of another group with 3 other people for a year or so before we made a break for it… So, it could be as early as 1987?? The early incarnation of Me & Rex was Called '23 Women Artists' before the SH&W name, because cynically I figured we would get a good arts council grant with that name! As for myself (and probably the rest of them) I'd been tinkering with drum machines, echo boxes, 4 tracks etc in various groups and solo bedroom things since 1979, most notoriously (and completely invisibly to the outside world) W2F, a fluctuating combo based around myself with various anti-musical mates popping in to get weird here and there, with 4 cassette releases to its name (chronologically: Rehearsing Punk Jazz, Art-Itch, Original Soundtrack to 'The Southern Vegetable Mystery, We Help!) none of which were in editions of more than 10 and hence destined to remain in the lost sock drawer of history where it belongs. Nevertheless I regard those early experiments in obtuse cassette packaging as the seed-bed for Hot Air's future fancy graphicsophilia. OOPS! I already said that’s not interesting in this context and then go all misty eyed with senile memories of teenage artsy-fartsy bedroom antics, oh well, if you’re reading this the chances are you too are or once were an artsy-fartsy teenage bedroom dweller and you'll indulge this old git’s ramblings.

*Born: Is this a Tax Form??

*Motivations: I think at the time it was 'Other Interesting People' and mostly, but not all, those making noises. Particularly those making noises that we thought we could emulate to some extent without spending a few years in college to do so OR those doing things close to what we were already attempting ourselves. You don't want to feel entirely alone in what you are doing even if you are looking for something 'New'. At that time there were only a few people (let’s call them DOTS) that we could be aware of that between those DOTS mapped out an area we felt drawn towards. These days of course it’s almost impossible to do anything or even 'Be Interested' in anything that isn't already Mapped out, Blogged up, Contextualized and downloadable on the internet. That sense of a 'private' activity or thought process is very hard to come by now. I want to mention the US grouping 'Meltable Snaps It' and David Moss's duets album 'Full House' because recently I've been listening to that old stuff and loving it and remembering how much those people pointed us in a certain direction way back at the beginning. Obviously with 4 people's listening habits contributing to the 'Influences' mix there is no one source of inspiration... but I'd like to give a shout to Mike & the long defunct Decoy Records shop because back then your musical education didn't come from the ether… it relied on independent record shops that were prepared to stock really obscure and potentially unsaleable records... and I guess another shout should go out to all those physical formats like cassette, vinyl, CD because it was the existence of those formats and the few interesting people that had used those Audio/visual platforms in such crazy belligerent ways that made us want to do it so desperately ourselves.

*Philosophy: OK, you want philosophy now... well, here's a thought that may or may not be relevant... "MP3 is a codec designed to remove 'redundant' audio information, to make a sound file 5 to 10 times smaller, in effect to create 'MUSIC-lite' - a kind of diet music in which all the sound information our ears supposedly don't need to hear is removed. What I don't understand is why this Codec hasn't been developed further... how much better would it be if the software truly stripped out all the redundant material, Beethoven’s 5th reduced down to its first 4 notes, a repetitive dance hit cut right down to the one repeating loop that is its main constituent? Think how fast these files would be to download & how much less irrelevant or banal sound would be polluting our ears."

*How would you like to be remembered: As one of the often forgotten.

*Web address: www.simplesampling.com

www.some-assembly-required.net

Episode 38, Some Assembly Required

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:03:54 PDT

Episode 38, Some Assembly Required

01 Lecture on Nothing - “Potato”
02 Negativland - “Jolly green giant”
03 Wobbly - “Recarrots”
04 Stock, Hausen and Walkman - “Broccoli”
05 People Like Us - “Bran mash and crushed beans”
06 Evolution Control Committee - “Rebel without a pause (whipped cream mix)”
07 Antediluvian Rocking Horse - “Rigorous doughnut”
08 Evolution Control Committee - “I want a cookie”
09 People Like Us - “Cream crackers”
10 People Like Us - “Sugar and splice”
11 Escape Mechanism - “Coffee cake”
12 David Shea/DJ Grazhoppa - “Tasty cake”
13 Lecture on Nothing - “The heimlich maneuver”

Use this address, for your pod software:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/some-assembly-required/JSpD

Eddie Def

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:26:02 PDT

Eddie Def

Eddie Def has been scratching/producing since the early 1980's, producing solo records under his own name, and as Eddie Def The Last Kreep. With DJ's Quest, Cue and Marz, he performed as The Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters (since 1991), and has worked on a variety of other projects as well, including HempLords, The Good Scratching Record and DMT, to name just a few.

All Music Guide calls him a turntablist pioneer. He's released at least five of his own records and continues to work with The Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters, under their new name, The Space Travelers. Now a five piece, the group features DJ Quest, Eddie K, Eddie Def, DJ Marz and DJ Cue. The group have about a half dozen releases, to date.

Eddie Def has made several appearances on turntablist compilations, including two of the Deep Concentration releases, Return of The DJ Volume 3 and the Scratch movie soundtrack. He was one of many DJs to be featured in that excellent 2001 documentary. The film features interviews with hip hop producers, scratch DJs and turntablists of all kinds, talking about the history and development of several different DJ styles, and the nature and creative potential of vinyl records. Check it out HERE.

Eddie Def and DJ Passion produce the "K.I.T.T.Y Radio Show," podcast as well, which can be found at bulletproofscratch.com. You can also check them out at their Myspace page HERE.

Without further ado, here's this week's Q&A with Eddie Def...

*Name: Eddie Def

*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: Eddie Def The Last Kreep.

*Members: The Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters were Eddie Def, DJ Quest, DJ Cue and DJ Marz.

*Do you use a pseudonym? (yes)

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: I don’t use computers at all, for music. I use a lot of keyboards and drum machines and effects pedals and stuff like that. I use a multi-track mixer, a Roland 1880. I do a lot of bouncing tracks, overdubs and stuff like that. I prefer to just be called an artist, because if you call yourself a turntablist, you’re kind of limited to scratching. I kind of outgrew that. I still do it, but you kind of get bored of doing the same stuff. So, you venture out and do different stuff.

*Is there a story behind your name? It’s just an old school name. I’m 37, so I started a long time ago. I guess back then, those were the kind of names that were out, you know like Mikey Fresh or Funky Bob… something like that. I used to abbreviate it, like D. E. F., to make it like Eddie “Does Everything Funky.”

*Location: Oroville, California

*Original Location: San Francisco, California

*What is your creative/artistic background: I started out being a DJ, getting into hip hop, like any other kid, tagging and graffiti and the whole breaking scene, and rapping, and I guess I just adapted to the DJ more. Then I met Quest and Cue, then we did the first break record of its kind. You know, the first strictly scratch centered DJ record. We did that, and then I started working with Buckethead. Then I did a lot of that Last Kreep stuff, which is Trip Hop music, to try to separate the styles. I got into turntablism in the early ‘80s. I think I started DJing when I was like 12, scratching at home and then joining mobile mixing disc jockey companies.

*History: We were the Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters (Eddie Def, DJ Quest, DJ Cue, DJ Marz) at first, and that came from a corny comic book background… like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We wanted a name that was far-out like that. We became the Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters, and then the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, they kind of jumped on the bandwagon of silly names, and then we wanted to change it, and we just changed it to Space Travelers. I grew up around Qbert, and that whole scene. Everybody grew up together. The whole Bay Area was like me, Quest, Qbert, Mix Master Mike, Disk, Shortcut. From this neighborhood to that neighborhood, everybody just kind of grew up scratching. Me and Marz released a solo break record called Sound Pollution, in 2008.

*Born: San Francisco, 1972

*Motivations: My motivation is always to try to give other people the first buzz that I got. Out of everything that I do, I love to do megamixes (mashups and stuff like that) to just bounce like nine tracks at the same time, with a bunch of mixing going on. I’m making music for everybody else, but I’m also really just trying to satisfy my personal urge, musically. So, I would say that I’m trying to give people that buzz, like “damn, I want to do that…” That’s probably why I do what I do – to get those reactions out of people.

*Philosophy: As an artist, just as a musical guy, just to always have integrity. Your own kind of style, you know? Always do it the way you want to do it. Don’t let a guy from a record label tell you like, you should put a little glitter on it, or add more base, or make it sound like Little John. You know what I mean? That’s the kind of stuff I hate. You’ve got your own s**t, you’re doing your own stuff, and then you get brainwashed by the business and you kind of lose your true sense. You know, your music starts getting stripped down, you just kind of end up sounding like a clone. I would say integrity. Musical integrity.

*How would you like to be remembered: That guy was, not to sound cliché, but like a true guy, a real motherf****r, who handled his business and his profession. That’s probably about it.

*Web address: http://www.myspace.com/djpassionandeddiedef

www.some-assembly-required.net

Episode 242, Some Assembly Required

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:06:48 PDT

Episode 242, Some Assembly Required

01 Wax Audio – “Enter You”
02 John Oswald – “Birth”
03 Cassetteboy – “Bring Back Cloaks”
04 Eddie Def – “Bobbafette (The Last Of The Gemini)”
05 Corporal Blossom – “Advice From God On Getting A Face”
06 Frenchbloke – “I Feel Kylie (again)”
07 Christian Marclay - “1930”
08 I Cut People – “I'll Be Back To The Future”
09 Mixmaster Mike – “Sektor Three”
10 Mixmaster Mike – “Well Wicked”
11 Splatt – “Mass Construction”
12 DJ Earworm – “Noone Takes Your Freedom”
13 Antediluvian Rocking Horse – “Chatterboxed”
14 Radar (1) - “Antimatter”
15 dj BC – “I'm Happy (On Sesame Street)”

Use this address, for your pod software:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/some-assembly-required/JSpD

Spacklequeen

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:06:23 PDT

Spacklequeen

Spacklequeen is Rhode Island's Dan Vena. He's one of many artists featured on the Illegal Art compilations which launched the label, in 1998 (they were Deconstructing Beck, 1999's Extracted Celluloid and Commercial Ad Hoc in 2000). He was the only artist to have tracks on all three releases, in fact, and was extremely hard to track down, so this feels like a good week for the Q&A...

Deconstructing Beck was hailed as a "brilliant exercise in guerrilla art-making" by Steven Shaviro, who eloquently summed up not only the CD, but the art of appropriation in general, in his article for ArtByte Magazine. I think I'm going to just cut and paste practically an entire paragraph from that article, in fact... I could dig out one of my own college papers on the subject, or summarize for the umpteenth time, but I think Shaviro puts it much, much more succinctly...

...We live in a world of ubiquitous images and soundbytes. The electronic media are to us what ‘nature’ was to earlier eras. It’s the background against which we live our lives, and from which we derive our references and meanings. In such a framework, the distinction between high art and popular culture becomes ever less viable. For any cultural work must come to terms, one way or another, with the mediascape that’s always Out There. That’s why appropriation is the major aesthetic form of the postmodern digital age. It’s everywhere, from rap records, to film and video, to installation art. Everyone now understands what Andy Warhol was perhaps the first to enunciate: that our lives have to do, not so much with fruits and flowers, or rivers and mountains, as with cans of Campbell soup, and images of Marilyn and Elvis...

Spacklequeen's Dan Vena is also a comic strip artist and illustrator. He's currently moved away from sound and is working primarily as a visual collage artist. He's also a self described luddite, which is refreshing in this world of high tech creativity. Although, it's not as surprising as you might think, anymore. The fact is, the technology has been getting more and more user friendly, to the point where you don't have to be an electrical engineer (or a rocket scientist) to make this kind of music and/or audio art, just a creative person with your own perspective.

Vena has gone out of his way to keep a very low profile, over the years. Perhaps this little feature will get the ball rolling in the other direction... Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with Spacklequeen...

*Name: Spacklequeen

*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: It's been shortened to "cklequ", to make myself even less accessible. An extra shot in the foot, if you will.

*Members: Dan Vena

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: Just deconstruction. Not so digital these days, but everything involves taking apart someone else's work.

*Is there a story behind your name? When I was just starting to DJ I needed a name. Everyone had a catchy name. I was just spouting nonsense ideas one night, looking for something that said "I am in no way serious about this", and for some reason Spacklequeen stuck. I don't know where it came from. Maybe it had a deep hidden meaning back then. But I doubt it.

*Location: Currently stuck in a rut in Providence, RI.

*Original Location: Ridgefield, CT, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY, Northampton, MA

*What is your creative/artistic background: I make it all up. I have no training aside from an art class in high school, and certainly no musical training. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Somebody had let a friend of mine know about this upcoming release of remixes of Beck's music thinking he would be interested and he passed the information on to me. I ended up sending a few different tracks. I don't know if I had even included my real name when I sent them. I never thought they would use it. I had no permanent address at the time, so had used my parent's address and phone number. Months later my mother got a phone call from somebody looking for Spacklequeen, which confused the hell out of her. After that I just signed up for the illegal art mailing list. Every time I heard of a new release, I'd send in a fistful of tracks. I know I never was able to send the format they wanted. Technology and I don't agree. Back then, the best I could do was cassettes. But for some reason they kept putting the tracks on the albums. Maybe it was because I sent so many…

*History: As long as I can remember I've been trying to create in some form. I got into working with sound I guess around the time I was pretending to be a DJ in mid/upstate NY. That would be in the mid/late-nineties. At the same time I was doing some comic strips and illustration type drawing, and these days I work with visual collage. The music aspect was short lived, but never entirely abandoned. I never really seem to have the proper equipment for what I'm trying to do. Which may explain why that didn't last. I was working with nothing. Now I've moved on to simpler more readily available materials, like scrap lumber and a stack of old magazines. Even I can figure out how to make that work.

*Born: 1975, Connecticut

*Motivations/Philosophy: If I don't do something I will quite literally lose my mind. It's therapy. I have to do it.

*How would you like to be remembered: As a halfway decent human being.

*Web address: Currently offline

www.some-assembly-required.net

Episode 37, Some Assembly Required

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:21:54 PDT

Episode 37, Some Assembly Required

01 Negativland - “Perfect scrambled eggs”
02 Laso Halo - “Stanley”
03 Spacklequeen - “Eggs eggs, arms legs”
04 Wobbly - “Do not milk or touch me”
05 Invisibl Skratch Piklz - “Invasion of the octopus people”
06 Evolution Control Committee - “Yakaroni and cheese”
07 The Tape-beatles - “Number one cheese spread”
08 People Like Us - “Caciocavallo”
09 People Like Us - “Sardines”
10 Mag Wheels - “capt. outside/I know you Peanut butter Jelly”
11 Peanut Butter Wolf - “The chronicles (I will always love h.e.r.)”
12 Negativland - “A nickel per fish sandwich”
13 The Tape-beatles - “The human machine”
14 The Tape-beatles - “Byways of ghostland”

Use this address, for your pod software:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/some-assembly-required/JSpD

ATOM

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:52:37 PDT

ATOM

ATOM is Connecticut's Matt Inconiglios. He's an artist, designer and DJ whose mashups have been featured on many a Christmas themed Bastard Pop compilation, as well as the recent Muppet Mashups release. There are over 50 MP3s available at his website HERE.

As a graphic designer (working with everyone from Philips Electronics, to Timex and Volvo), he's created logos, corporate identities and design for apparel (check out fusionTHINK). He spins regularly at places such as Barcelona SoNo, in Conneticut, and runs his own record label, specializing in House music. Check out Cotopaxi Music H ERE.

Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with ATOM...

*Name: ATOM

*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: ATOM aka Precious Roy aka Matt Inconiglios.

*Do you use a pseudonym? Yup - see the first two questions above.

*Members: My full name is Matthew Adam Inconiglios.

*Founding Members: Just me, and the voices in my head.

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: Digital deconstructions.

*Is there a story behind your name? The story behind "ATOM" is this... way back since I was a little kid, I used to draw pictures of techy things like jets and cars, etc. I figured my projects should have a name of some kind. While thinking of names, I thought my middle name, Adam, might work. It didn't look techy though. But then I realized when I said "Adam" it kinda sounded like "atom"... and there you have it.

*Location: Stamford, CT... about 40 min. outside of NYC, USA.

*Original Location: New York

*What is your creative/artistic background: Artist: sonic & visual. DJ/music self-taught. Graphics via Paier College of Art.

*History: About 10+ years now.

*Born: Mineola, NY. My birthdate is 04MAY72.

*Motivations: Because I hear wiggly bouncey sounds and I need to get them out of me.

*Philosophy: Make something interesting and have fun.

*How would you like to be remembered: An impatient perfectionist, with a penchant for all things fun & odd.

*Web address:
http://www.myspace.com/atommatt
http://www.fusionthink.com

www.some-assembly-required.net

Episode 241, Some Assembly Required

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:57:38 PDT

Episode 241, Some Assembly Required

01 ATOM – “Pinball Number Count (ATOM's Math Problem Mix)”
02 Wake Up and Listen - “Ray of light”
03 DJ Tonk – “118th Hustle”
04 Buchanan & Goodman – “Buchanan & Goodman On Trial”
05 Jason Forrest – “Under Covers”
06 The Evolution Control Committee – “Darwin at Fifteen”
07 Go Home Productions – “Return Of The Weather Episode”
08 Negativland – “You Must Respect Copyright”
09 Ruckus Roboticus – “How To Handle Grownups”
10 John Cage – “Radio Music”
11 The Bran Flakes – “I Have A Friend”
12 Pedro Rebelo - “...Just Cartoon Music”
13 Realistic – “Music In The Round”
14 The National Cynical Network - “Snapshot in Time”
15 Norwegian Recycling - “Radioghost”

Use this address, for your pod software:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/some-assembly-required/JSpD

October 4, 2009

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 09:36:12 PDT

October 4, 2009

No new Q&A this week - although I did try (as I always do). Stay tuned for next week's Q&A with Bastard Pop artist Atom, not to mention features on Spacklequeen and Eddie Def...

While I've got your attention, I really feel I must inform you of two very big, recent happenings... The first is that KUOM, the radio station which was the first to allow me to experiment with this programming, has just this past week broadened the scope of its influence by adding two new FM signals to its already influential (and historic) AM signal (the much loved AM 770). You can now access Radio K at any time, day or night, on the radio in Minneapolis at 104.5 FM and 100.7 FM in St. Paul. Congratulations to all the individuals who have worked so very long and hard on this project, over the course of many years...

The other big story recently, is that Jon Leidecker (aka Wobbly) has uploaded the third installment of his series, Variations, chronicling the history of the sample in music and audio art. It's been very educational, even entertaining, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been waiting anxiously for each new installment. Check out Variations, Episode Three, HERE.

Tune in again next week for a brand new episode of Some Assembly Required, along with our Q&A with Mashup artist, At0m...

Thank for listening!
Jon Nelson

www.some-assembly-required.net

Episode 151, Some Assembly Required

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:30:52 PDT

Episode 151, Some Assembly Required

01 DJ Food – “Hour Glass”
02 Klarc Qent - “Stepson of word jazz”
03 The Tape-beatles – “I Can't Do It”
04 Lenlow – “To the Taxmobile!”
05 Wax Audio – “Bushbeats”
06 Beatrix*JAR - “Meany”
07 The Bran Flakes – “Dreamy Lore”
08 Beatrix*JAR - “Easy Monday Office”
09 team9 – “The doorbell encore”
10 Girl Talk - “Once Again”
11 Jeffrey Sconce - “Lady Charon”
12 People Like Us - “World Of Stereo’
13 DJ BC – “Mother Nature's Rump”
14 Girl Talk – “Hand Clap”
15 Myeck Waters - “Sex 'n drugs 'n elves”
16 The Tape-beatles – “Positive Will”
17 DJ Jay-R – “Michael remembers Cheryl”

Use this address, for your pod software:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/some-assembly-required/JSpD

Sparo

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 09:55:58 PDT

Sparo

Sparo is London's Virgil Howe. I'm familiar with his work thanks to the hip hop compilation, "Deep Concentration 4," but he's also a producer, drummer and singer, playing with bands such as The Dirty Feel and The Killer Meters, who have a new album due out this Fall (2009).

Howe also remixed an album of tracks by his father's band (Yes guitarist Steve Howe), in 2003. I was mildly interested, being a fan in highschool, until I read that the remixes were made using the vinyl LPs as source material, as opposed to the original session recordings. In fact, at least one of the tracks actually references over a half dozen different songs by the band, making this more of a Plunderphonic response to Yes, as compared to your typical remix. That adds a whole extra dimension to the project, from my perspective at least. Check out "Yes Remixes" HERE.

As a drummer, he's played with everyone from Bryan Ferry and The Pet Shop Boys, to The Future Sound Of London's super-group Amourphous Androgynous. He's produced a series of singles and mixtapes for independent hip hop label Scenario Records, in the UK, and recently joined the London based trio, Little Barrie. Check them out HERE.

Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with Sparo's Virgil Howe...

*Name: Sparo

*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: I go by my own name, Virgil Howe, now when I produce. I changed from 'Sparo' at the end of last year, 2008, when an artist called himself Sam Sparro and went straight in at number one! I have used the name 'Verge' for certain projects; some remixes, including the Yes Remix album I did, and my piano tunes.

*Members: I also play drums with Little Barrie, Amorphous Androgynous, The Killer Meters and The Dirty Feel.

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: See “History” below.

*Is there a story behind your name? The name Sparo was given to me by an alien being from Sirius, the dog star, who contacted me in my early teens whilst I was in the remote countryside. It came as a vision to me in the middle of the night. White light was streaming through the curtains and a voice told me that one day there would be only truth, that there were already efforts being made to ready earth for their arrival and that I would help them by creating music that would inspire interstellar communication. I hope they don't mind me changing it!

*Location: London, England

*Original Location: London, England

*What is your creative/artistic background: I have a live act which incorporates my production with me drumming and guest musicians. I call it a Psychedelic Disco Show as I've moved away from the Hip Hop scene and more toward the electro/disco side of things. I play drums with a backing track running from Ableton Live, my bass man Kerim Gunes and an array of amazing vocalists and Mcs; Jen Howe, Karime Kendra, Dave Sanderson, Foreign Beggars, as well as singing and triggering bleeps and sounds myself.

*History: I started playing pretty young, my parents told me my eyes lit up with excitement the first time I hit the keys of our Moog synthesizer at the age of four, so I suppose it all started there! My dad, guitar legend Steve Howe, always encouraged me to write music. Showing me chords and recording techniques in our home studio, so I've been very lucky. Brought up around the prog rock maddness of Yes, I've never felt restricted by genres, and the idea of having lots of different projects on the go seems totally normal to me as my dad's a complete workaholic. I love all elements of heavy metal, drum and bass, hip hop, electro, 60’s soul, funk, ska, rock n roll and psychedelic music. I started producing around the same time as drumming, the mid-90s, up till then I had been playing the piano. I dabbled with Jungle/Drum and Bass, cutting a few dubplates. But not really knowing how to break into the scene, I moved onto Hip Hop as my friend Barney bought an Emu SP1200 sampler. As we only had that and a small mixing desk and no Mcs, it all became quite experimental sounding. I then got a MPC200xl sampler, which I made the Yes Remix album on, in 2003, mastering the album in Abbey Road from Mini-disks! I now use Ableton Live, still with my MPC2000xl and synths, also doing some recording with a Roland 2480 hard disk recorder.

*Born: I was born and am still based in London.

*Motivations: I'm motivated by loads of things, I obviously want to impress people with my sounds (my wife Jen in particular!), but I also want to make music that I would like to hear. Whether I'm chilling out or travelling and want to hear something mellow, or I'm out in a club and want to hear something banging I want to be able to make that kind of music.

*Philosophy: I know what I want to hear and I'm getting closer to knowing how to make it sound like I want. I think that is all you need to start making music, knowing what you want to hear. It’s just getting it to other people who hear what you hear, that’s the hard part!

*How would you like to be remembered: I think music is the ultimate time capsule, it lives on forever. We still have all the great composers work being played by orchestras all over the world. The revolutionary sounds of the 60’s still sound just as fresh today. So I have no doubt that if you can make something special, it will live on forever.

*Web address:
www.myspace.com/sparoworlds
www.facebook.com/pages/VIRGIL-HOWE/19690562705?__a=1

www.some-assembly-required.net

Episode 240, Some Assembly Required

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:29:59 PDT

Episode 240, Some Assembly Required

01 Moby – “Natural Blues”
02 Invisibl Skratch Piklz – “Insect Mind Numb”
03 Voicedude – “Good, Good Thing”
04 Steinski and Mass Media – “The Motorcade Sped On”
05 Oval – “Mediation”
06 The Bran Flakes – “Van Pop”
07 Negativland – “A Most Successful Formula”
08 Bobby Martini – “I Can't Dance To The Policy Of Truth”
09 The Coherent Encoherence – “Burst Appendix”
10 Sparo – “Bullit”
11 Fatboy Slim – “The Rockafeller Skank”
12 Ground Zero – “Rush Capture Of The Revolutionary Opera – 1”
13 Ground Zero – “Rush Capture Of The Revolutionary Opera – 2”
14 DJ EZG – “Rockerfaction”

Use this address, for your pod software:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/some-assembly-required/JSpD

Aaron Valdez

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 10:53:52 PDT

Aaron Valdez

Aaron Valdez is a film and video artist working with sound and video found on cable television and the web. Since 2007, he's been working with a group calling themselves Wreck & Salvage (pictured, left to right, Adam Quirk, Aaron Valdez, Erik Nelson). The trio of film and video artists are scattered across two different continents, working together to help promote eachother's work of video appropriation. Check out Wreck & Salvage HERE.

Valdez has been involved with a number of film series in Iowa City and Austin, Texas. He's also the co-founder of a great, if short-lived project called Lost In Light. The website is still up and active, making available a wealth of lost movies, shot on 8mm and Super 8 film, by home movie makers for a period of over fifty years. The site offers an archive of home movies and educational films, showcasing everything from anonymous family portraits and vacations, to amateur travelogues and some more creative fare like the home movie about a trip to Mars, shot in 1968 by a group of young kids with a knack for homemade science fiction!

Valdez has worked with everything from found footage, to Super 8 and 16mm film, multiple projection performances and installation, as well as hand-painted film, video installation and video blogging. We're limited to playing the audio from his film collage, but you can check out an example in Episode 150, or visit his website HERE.

Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with Aaron Valdez of Wreck & Salvage...

*Name: Aaron Valdez

*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: Wreck & Salvage, W&$

*Do you use a pseudonym? No.

*Members: Erik Nelson, Adam Quirk, and Aaron Valdez

*Founding Members: Erik Nelson, Adam Quirk, and Aaron Valdez

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: Appropriated video. I generally just tell people video remix though I've noticed in the video world people use remix and mashup more and more to describe editing in general without the implication of the material being appropriated.

*Is there a story behind your name?: (Wreck & Salvage is) a play on the idea of the mediated world as a big U-pull-it junkyard. We all come from working-class backgrounds so we wanted a name that represented that. Owner-operated, fiercely American, get dirty and bang the hell out of it.

*Location: Valdez is in Michigan, Quirk is in Brooklyn, and Nelson is in Vermont/the Netherlands.

*Original Location: Valdez originally from Houston, Quirk from Evansville, Ohio, and Nelson from Pittsburgh.

*What is your creative/artistic background: We all have creative writing, music, art, and video/film backgrounds in varying degrees that came together when personal episodic web video began around 2004-05. We all found each other through our work on the web. I was producing a video podcast just using re-edited cable television. Nelson & Quirk came up with the idea to use the growing pool of internet video to base new work on. That's where we began.

*History: Collectively as Wreck & Salvage since 2007. Individually, since the turn of the century.

*Born: 1975-79.

*Motivations: We make things because we like to play. I think there's an overall Dadaist sense of humor to everything we do. Pop culture and politics are big motivators, a lot of times it's just finding a single video that inspires you to manipulate it or expand on it.

*Philosophy: Go to work. Practice informs philosophy.

*How would you like to be remembered: Beneath of layer of static on a VHS tv tape between the Home Shopping Network and Highway to Heaven in a $1 box at a garage sale.

*Web address: wreckandsalvage.com

www.some-assembly-required.net

Episode 150, Some Assembly Required

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:31:27 PDT

Episode 150, Some Assembly Required

01 The Bran Flakes – “Step by step”
02 Beatrix*JAR - “French Binaural”
03 Aggro1 - “I'm in summertime mode”
04 Barbed – “Doubleclick Countryside”
05 Extrakd & Eddie Def – “Brain Confusion”
06 Jeffrey Sconce - “The Insect Year”
07 Aggro1 – “Depeche Mode vs. David Bowie vs. Beatles”
08 Kid Koala - “Roboshuffle”
09 Lecture on Nothing – “(Untitled)”
10 Steev Hise – “Slicing Up Amerika”
11 The Who Boys – “Tales of Townshend & Wilson”
12 The Tape-beatles - “I Can't Help You At All; Sorry”
13 Escape Mechanism – “Coffee Cake”
14 Aaron Valdez - “Big Screen Version”
15 Wax Audio - “Major Combat Operations”
16 Party Ben – “Computer Talk”

Use this address, for your pod software:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/some-assembly-required/JSpD

David Morneau

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 15:55:32 PDT

David Morneau

David Morneau is a composer living in New York City. He's composed music for dance, chamber ensemble, nintendo gameboy and piano, winning the 2004 Ruth Friscoe Prize in Composition for his piano piece, The Rhythm Variations.

Morneau holds degrees in music composition from Cornerstone University and Western Michigan University and has been featured in music festivals such as the SPARK Festival of Electronic Music and Arts, in Minnesota, Electronic Music Midwest, in Kansas, The UK's Expo Brighton and SoundImageSound, in California.

His 60X365 project was a year-long exercise in daily composition. The result was three hundred and sixty-five works, each clocking in at exactly sixty seconds. For the next phase of the project, Morneau has extended an invitation to composers from all backgrounds and experience levels, to try their hand at reinterpreting these musical miniatures, in whatever style might strike the individual composers fancy. Find out more about 60X365: Re-Imaginings HERE.

Read more about David Morneau below, and at his website, HERE. Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with David Morneau...

*Name: David Morneau

*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: no

*Do you use a pseudonym? no

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: Since I do all of my composing using a computer, “digital deconstructions” is the way to go. Sometimes the techniques I use will resemble traditional tape manipulation techniques (reversing, cutting & splicing, looping, etc). Other times the techniques will be purely digital and based on algorithms and other computer-specific tricks. It’s important to note too that I also work in forms and styles outside of sample-based music. I compose a lot of music “from scratch” as it were. Many times I am composing for live instruments so there is nothing digital about the music at all. My background is fairly traditional, writing music for soloists and chamber ensembles. It is only relatively recently that I began working with digital music and exploring the possible sounds and ideas found in this realm. No matter what I’m composing though, quotation and allusion are important parts of my language as an artist. I don’t know why. Whenever I can quote, borrow, or otherwise reference a melody or theme or motif from existing music I will. When I began making the move into computer music forms I discovered that sampling was a quick way to get at whatever it is I like about quoting and alluding. Generally (though not always) I like to take one or two small kernels and explore them thoroughly rather than trying to cram as many different ideas into a single piece as I can. On the continuum between John Oswald and Girl Talk, I’m definitely closer to Oswald’s end of things.

*Another genre descriptor: I find myself using the word appropriation more than others. I think it’s because I like the conscious act of taking, the deliberateness, that it implies.

*Location: Originally from upstate New York. I’ve lived a bunch of different places, including the Midwest for 15 years. Now I’m living in New York City (Queens specifically).

*What is your creative/artistic background: I began composing in high school for a project with the Drama Club. After the first public performance of my music I was hooked and wanted to keep composing. I went to college and then graduate school to study composition. For a long time I had little or no interest in electronic and computer music. I was writing a lot of music for piano and various chamber ensembles. I played in a brass quintet for a while. We would travel to different churches to play music in their services. I arranged a fair bit of our music and loved to work in references to other pieces—particularly to things that probably weren’t all that appropriate for a church service. A confluence of events in graduate school at The Ohio State University piqued my interest in computer music. One of these was a series of collaborations with choreographers in the Dance Department who wanted original music for the MFA projects. This really pushed me into exploring digital music techniques of all kinds. One project in particular (Lifedance) was all about influential events and ideas, so I used it as a chance to work with appropriation (sampling music that was influential to me). I was just discovering mash-up and John Oswald and Negativland and had been looking to try my hand at these ideas. I ended up composing a 30 minute symphony of sampled music. After that, appropriation became another tool in my bag so to speak. The other major project that allowed me to work out some ideas about appropriation music was a podcast I did called 60x365. Every day for a year I composed a new one-minute piece and posted it online. One of my goals was to try out many different ideas and techniques as I went. Needless to say there are a lot of sample based pieces in that set. Some are blatant pop-music assemblages. Others are subtle beat samples. And still others are probably closer to musique concrete than anything else.

*History: I have been composing for almost 20 years.

*Born: I was born in 1975 in Oswego, New York.

*Motivations: Honestly, I don’t know. It’s fun. It helps me relate to the world around me. It helps me understand things about myself. I know it’s a cliché, but I compose because I don’t know how to do anything else.

*Philosophy: I’m fond of saying that the two core values in my work are eclecticism and collaboration. Neither of these needs much explanation. I like many different kinds of music and want to work with them all. I collaborate because working with others gives me ideas and pushes me in ways I don’t get from working alone. In the context of a conversation about sample-based music I should probably talk specifically about my philosophy for appropriation. Like many who create this kind of music I believe that the reworking of other’s ideas is essential to the growth and advancement of culture. Since a recorded sound can be viewed as the digital manifestation of someone’s idea, sampling that digital information can be the first step to transforming it into something new. The problem, of course, is that we live in a world of lawyers and money so using somebody else’s work in this manner is often a no go (if you want to be 100% legal). Like virtually everyone else featured on this program I’ve decided to appropriate anyway. I know that it’s illegal, but I don’t care. Free exchange of culture is just too important. Composing becomes an act of protest, which I’m okay with.

*How would you like to be remembered: It would be enough just to be remembered. Although if I can ask for more, I’d like to be remembered as someone who created interesting and exciting music and who was a cool guy to hang out with.

*Web address:
http://5of4.com
http://60x365.com

www.some-assembly-required.net

Episode 239, Some Assembly Required

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:31:54 PDT

Episode 239, Some Assembly Required

01 DJ Earworm – “Love and Wonder (Club Edit)”
02 Jeffrey Sconce – “Robot Triangle”
03 DJ Revolution – “Hard Rock”
04 David Morneau – “morneau_60x365_SAR”
05 I Cut People – “21st Century Crap”
06 Aggro1 – “A Shout out for the Magic Rocket Man”
07 John Oswald – “7th”
08 People Like Us – “The Sacred Erm”
09 The Freelance Hellraiser – “Wonder Woman”
10 Wayne Butane - “Untitled (Backwash)”
11 DJ Astro - “Invizible”

Use this address, for your pod software:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/some-assembly-required/JSpD

Voicedude

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:31:19 PDT

Voicedude

Voicedude is DJ Joel-Steven. He's a voiceover artist and Mashup producer from California, with dozens of Bastard Pop tracks to his name. Check them out HERE, and at his Myspace page.

In addition to recording Mashups and voiceovers, Joel-Steven keeps busy with a variety of radio and theater work, including writing, producing and acting, and has done everything from emceeing and DJing, to performing and consulting for the folks at Disneyland, in Anaheim California.

His original, holiday-themed track, "All I Want For Christmas (Is Peace On Earth)," was included on the Canadian Bullseye Records release, "Takin' Care Of Christmas," released in 2001. Check it out HERE.

Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with Voicedude...

*Name: Voicedude

*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: DJ Joel-Steven

*Members: Just little, ol' me: DJ Joel-Steven. aka 'Voicedude'.

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: To me, they're just mashups (or remixes if it's all from one source). On my Voicedude business card, it says 'creator of aural pleasures'...

*Is there a story behind your name? I took that name as a mashup artist since I do voiceover work. 'Voiceman' was apparently already taken, so I chose something that reflected my Southern California roots....

*Location: Born in L.A., and mostly raised in Orange County ('the O.C.') And 'yes', I've worked at Disneyland (a lot in the 90's, in fact!) And I've also done work for The Angels and The Ducks. And 'no', I don't go to the beach every day - rarely, in fact!

*Original Location: (Los Angeles)

*What is your creative/artistic background: Been editing (reel-to-reel, Tascam multis, etc.) since the late 70's. Had my own home recording studio in the 80's (mostly for originals). Been digital editing after being introduced to ProTools in the 90's.

*History: Nothing all that spectacular was required of the radio network I was working for (as head of Production), but using ProTools lit a spark of creativity for me that has never left. At the end of the decade, D-Land asked me to do a 1999 / Millennium mix for the Grad Nights. It took 52 studio hours to create a 3 1/2 minute megamix, to which they built a laser and fireworks show shown at Sleeping Beauty's Castle. Discovered mashups in mid-2004, and started making my own ever since...

*Born: I was born in LA on March 26th, 1959. (OK... say it! I'm a 'Geez'! Even I can't believe my age!) I was almost born in the Death Valley desert the day before, due to rolling our VW and trailer on the famed Route 66. My first club DJ gig was in 1978, (I had a good fake ID at the time...).

*Motivations: I have perfect pitch, so often I'll hear a song on the radio or somewhere and I'll begin to sing a different tune over it. This is the best way I know to see how well these songs work together.

*Philosophy: I am a musician, so first and foremost it has to work musically. Too many off notes of weird sections and it'll usually end up in the trash bin before anyone else ever hears it. Secondly, I'm sort of known for my thematic mashups; Johnny Cash's "The Man In Black" over Will Smith's "Men In Black", for instance. This also provides for some clever lyrical interplay in some sections. I also love a good culture clash. If the two source materials elicit a 'those two don't belong together' response before they hear it, then the better the reaction when they hear how well they actually do fit! But just because two songs are in the same key doesn't mean that they'll work well together. The real proof usually comes when the 'bridge' of a song kicks in. A bridge can take a song in just about any musical direction - that's the whole point of them: to liven up and refresh a song after the verses and choruses are established. But when one song's bridge fits over another song's bridge - well, that's synchronicity designed by the muses!

*How would you like to be remembered: As someone who has left this world a better place than the way he found it. Seriously I have saved a life or two in my time (the first time at 13!), and I've raised two lovely & talented daughters, but I'm talking about something really meaningful, perhaps even profound. Artistically, I'd like to leave behind just one 'evergreen', something that'll still be around long after I am gone. Gee, I've only been a professional entertainer for 33 years, so hey, I've got time! I'm still rather young, after all!

*Web address: http://voicedude.podomatic.com/

www.some-assembly-required.net

Episode 149, Some Assembly Required

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:32:22 PDT

Episode 149, Some Assembly Required

01 Negativland - “The Gun And The Bible”
02 Fortyone – “Oh Boy A Gun!”
03 A plus D – “Hung Up Night”
04 DJ Food – “Do We “
05 Dad's New Slacks - “Ice Teal”
06 Aggro1/Sam Flanagan – “Michael Jackson vs. Pussy Cat Dolls”
07 People Like Us - “Smash & Grab “
08 Rob Swift - “The Ablist”
09 DJ Earworm - “What's My Name?”
10 Big City Orchestra – “This is BCO”
11 Negativland – “Untitled (Debut CD)”
12 Silica Gel – “Oddly Bloodless”
13 DJ Z-Trip & Radar – “Untitled (Future Primitive Soundsession, Vol. 2)”
14 Stunt Rock – “First chance I get…”
15 Public Works – “Persuasion”
16 Voicedude - “Papa Was A Rolling Stone Named Jack”

Use this address, for your pod software:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/some-assembly-required/JSpD

Don Joyce

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 06:59:35 PDT

Don Joyce

Don Joyce is a member of the band Negativland and the host of "Over The Edge," on KPFA, in California. His work as a sound collage artist has been well documented, since the early 1980's. Negativland have released over a dozen albums, not to mention their Over The Edge series, and Joyce has produced at least one solo album (1994's "We'll Be Right Back," from Staalplaat's Mort Aux Vaches series), as well.

Joyce was the very first person I interviewed for the program, when Some Assembly Required was in its first year, in 1999. I believe I played an unedited recording of our phone interview that year. A little over a year later, in early 2001, the produced version ran as part of a feature on Negativland, as the third artist feature to run in syndication (check it out HERE).

Since then, I've interviewed fellow Negativland member Mark Hosler twice on the show (and turned two of those three interviews into articles for local publications, City Pages and Ruminator). Meanwhile, the band have been on at least a couple of tours and released over a half dozen new albums (not to mention re-releases and DVDs). We had Hosler out to Minneapolis in 2004 to present some Negativland videos and give a talk as part of that year's Sound Unseen, and sponsored the band's art show at Creative Electric (also in Minneapolis) in 2006; and during all of this, Don Joyce has continued his radio work at KPFA, on his long-running radio program. Over The Edge has been on the air since 1981.

They've been keeping very busy since 1999 and it seemed like a good time to do another interview with Don Joyce, who suggested we turn this week's online Q&A with him into a feature for the radio show as well. Thanks to his direction, I've learned how to record my computer's "voice" reading his answers to the Q&A and produced it all to fit between tracks off of Negativland's 2006 Over The Edge release, "It's All In Your Head FM," along with some creative (and musical!) interpretations of their work by The 180 Gs, accompanied by the very Negativland tracks which inspired them... Check out Episode 238 HERE.

I'm as pleased to present this new Q&A with Don Joyce as I was to present that very first interview back in '99. His dedication to his craft has long been an inspiration, and I've admired his work in radio and as a member of Negativland for close to twenty of the thirty years they've been working at it...

Check out the "animation" of this Q&A in Episode 238, along with an update on the band Negativland. Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with Don Joyce...

*Name: Don Joyce

*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: (Don Joyce programs/hosts “Over The Edge”, and is a member of Negativland.)

*Members: (In addition to Joyce, many members of the band Negativland have made frequent guest appearances on Over the Edge. The program also features characters such as Crosley Bendix, Pastor Dick, C. Elliot Friday, Dick Goodbody, Dr. Oslo Norway, Dick Vaughn and the Weatherman.)

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: Well, mixed feelings is the byword here. I love the micro-manipulations digital editing provides, but I still prefer the carts for playback in performance mode. Nothing is faster or more foolproof than the physicality of analog carts for performing a live mix, especially for how they can be paced and continuously interspersed in a mix without losing their place.

*Another genre descriptor: (Receptacle Programming, Culture Jamming)

*Is there a story behind your name? In the early '80s, I wanted to try live mixing on the radio. I hoped it would sound like it was over the edge of expectability in terms of the general radio entertainment out there in the air, so the name seemed appropriate to my hope.

*Location: I remain situated here in Oakland, very close to the Berkeley line, but nevertheless in Oakland.

*Original Location: New Hampshire.

*What is your creative/artistic background: I was a geometric painter and then an electric light artist who got into radio for its potential as an expressive medium made out of sound, then saw its potential as a mixed mediums live "performance" format as well. Electric sparks of live "thereness" that painting lacks.

*History: I first tried college radio as a DJ, then OTE began on KPFA in 1981. For a short while it was a regular DJ show with odd records played, then morphed into a live mix of live and pre-recorded elements, a fragmented collage of found sound sort of thing. I only met Negativland agents through OTE and they came up to play, and that's when it changed from my DJ record playing operation to everything getting mixed together live from multiple sources with improvised content.

*Born: 1944, Keene, N.H.

*Motivations: I think when sampling began in pop music, in the '80s, it was bound to appeal to artsy artists on the basis of its abstraction potential, and it did. Beyond the instant appeal of a sound manipulation/technique that seemed to typify and yet demystify mass produced music, sampling began the bigger musical process of a deconstructional expansion all over the recorded past. Everyone from pop stars to avant musicians were involved, and still are.

*Philosophy/How would you like to be remembered: "In the future, nothing will remain intact."

*Web address:
Over The Edge: http://negativland1.netfirms.com/ote/
Negativland: negativland.com

www.some-assembly-required.net

Episode 238, Some Assembly Required

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:32:47 PDT

Episode 238, Some Assembly Required
(featuring an update on the band Negativland, with Don Joyce)

01 180 Gs – “Intro (Everything's Going Fine)”
02 Corporal Blossom – “Poprocket”
03 Negativland – “What Is Your Idea Of God, Let Us Have Faith,...”
04 Negativland – “Dr. Oslo Norway: What Am I Talking About?, Humans Invented It...”
05 Negativland – “In The Beginning, So Many Different Kinds Of Gods, Feeble Intellect, A Sense Of Self,...”
06 Negativland – “Old Is New”
07 Negativland- “Christianity Is Stupid”
08 Frenchbloke – “Britpopped”
09 180 Gs – “Christianity is Stupid”
10 Negativland – “I Am God”
11 180 Gs – “I Am God”

Use this address, for your pod software:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/some-assembly-required/JSpD

People Like Us

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:19:42 PDT

People Like Us

People Like Us is the UK's Vicki Bennett. She started out on a cassette four track, in the early 1990's and has released at least a couple dozen records and collaborated with about as many artists since then. She's also expanded into film collage and radio, hosting WFMU's "Do or DIY", since 2003.

She's shown around the world at places like The Tate Modern, The National Film Theatre, The Sydney Opera House, Pompidou left and The Walker Art Center, here in Minneapolis. Most recently, alt.gallery presented a People Like Us retrospective, in Spring of 2008. It was our invitation which brought her here in 2002, and the interview we recorded with her at the time has only just recently gone online. Check it out HERE for even more information.

There have been over a dozen People Like Us records since our 2002 interview with the artist, often in collaboration with artists such as Kenny G, Matmos, Ergo Phizmiz and Wobbly. She and Phizmiz actually moved beyond sampled vocals on their 2008 release, "Rhapsody In Glue," choosing to in fact SING for a change. It was a very pleasant surprise, and one I've found myself recommending people give a listen. Check out their "Honeysuckle Boulevard" as well, while you're at it.

People Like Us continue to delight, and from the looks of things that shouldn't change any time soon. Recently awarded the Great North Run Moving Image Commission, she has also just received a Grants For The Arts commission to create a new live set this year... More to come!

Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with People Like Us...

*Name: People Like Us

*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: No

*Members: 1

*Founding Members: Vicki Bennett

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: I'm a collage artist (I've used all of the above and more, and prefer a more umbrella term rather than refer to the tool I use).

*Another genre descriptor: "Collage" covers just about every medium going, across many decades. I prefer not to be any more exclusive than that. I have my own genre description - "avant-retard".

*Why you use this descriptor: Avant-Retard means to go forward and backwards at the same time, very fast. It also means that you look into the past to make the future. It also means that avant garde=highbrow/academic and retard=backwards/unintelligent can merge seamlessly.

*Location: England.

*What is your creative/artistic background: I've always made collage - in paper, photographic, tape, digital audio, film and video form. I've been doing all of these since 1990, and truly started doing what I visualised in the late 90s when I was able to access the kind of tools needed to be more detailed and proficient in what I had in mind.

*History: Since 1990.

*Born: Late 60's, England.

*Motivations: Because it's the only think I've ever done for one, and also being an artist allows relatively independent thought and movement for the majority of the day, week, month and year. So not only is this a very convenient way of being for someone who is virtually unemployable (!), rebellious and awkward, but it also allows me to make things up as I go along and work from project to project basis, and therefore change direction and medium with relative ease. In theory anyway. In practice of course it isn't quite so idealistic.

*Philosophy: To be able to connect and communicate efficiently. I use collage (objects and forms that previously exist in another form or context) because it seems an appropriate tool for the age I live in, and feels like a good way to interpret what is around me, and pay homage with what has gone before, in order to shape it into something yet to come, I hope. I'd say it's folk art or even folk music of our time.

*How would you like to be remembered: As someone that gummed up the internet.

*Web address:
http://www.peoplelikeus.org is my artist address and
http://www.wfmu.org/peoplelikeus is my WFMU radio show homepage.

www.some-assembly-required.net

Episode 43, Some Assembly Required

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:33:19 PDT

Episode 43, Some Assembly Required
(Featuring an interview with People Like Us)

01 People Like Us - “Caciocavallo”
02 People Like Us - “Oompah Pumpah”
03 People Like Us - “Repeat to fade”
04 People Like Us - “More plunderblunders”
05 Over the Edge - “Bright giant love balls and roll call”
06 People Like Us - “If someone touches you”
07 Over the Edge - “Nice music”
08 Cyclobe - “I believe in mirrorballs”
09 People Like Us - “Dolly pardon”
10 People Like Us - “Whistle song”

Use this address, for your pod software:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/some-assembly-required/JSpD

Think Tank

assembly@detritus.net (Jon Nelson) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 18:03:05 PDT

Think Tank

Think Tank is songwriter, musician and producer, Paul Robb. Originally from Minnesota, he's a founding member of the synthpop band, Information Society, and has also recorded with Barbara Cohen as Brother Sun Sister Moon. Think Tank has at least five releases on Glow and Hakatak Records.

I first heard Robb's work on commercial radio, in the late 80's. Their sample of Star Trek's Mr. Spock, on the Information Society track, "What's On Your Mind (Pure Energy)," really caught my ear in highschool, and then in college, Think Tank's "A Knife and a Fork" got stuck in my head for the longest time as well.

He keeps busy composing music for film and television, working on projects such as Trey Parker and Matt Stone's 1997 film, Orgazmo. He also remixed the South Park theme song, and does commerical work for companies such as Polaroid and Sprint.

After their summer tour (2009) in South America, a recently re-formed Information Society will be releasing a digital-only remix EP called "Modulator'. Also be on the lookout for a 25th Anniversary live DVD, called "It Is Useless To Resist Us".

Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with Think Tank's Paul Robb...

*Name: Think Tank

*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: At various times, the project has been called the Captains of Industry, Wirehead, Diabolical Johnson, Satan's Little Helper, Shining Path, BitCrusher, the Crusher, and Wesley Krusher (which is the name I am using now).

*Do you use a pseudonym? See above :-)

*Members: Just me, Paul Robb

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: Digital deconstructions seems as good as anything!

*Is there a story behind your name? Think Tank was originally going to be the name of the Information Society backing players, like Gary Numan and the Tubeway Army...

*Location: New Brighton, Minnesota in the hizzy. (I live in LA now, sadly.)

*Original Location: Minnesota

*What is your creative/artistic background: I've been doing electronic music since I was 17, in 1980. Before that I played saxomophone in school.

*History: Initially, Think Tank was a dummy name for an Information Society white label 12" called "A Knife and a Fork", which was released prior to our second album, "Hack." It actually charted in Europe, and has ended up on dozens of compilations. But since then, Think Tank has been a sort of a catch-basin for all my work that’s not vocal-based pop.

*Born: February, 1963

*Motivations: Generally speaking, Think Tank tracks were the ones that were more underground, less poppy. Eventually, though, Think Tank became the catch-all for my own output that wasn't tied to a particular project (e.g., INSOC or Brother Sun Sister Moon).

*Philosophy: Whatsoever I play, it's got to be funky. Uh!

*How would you like to be remembered: As really excellent in bed.

*Web address:
www.hakatak.com
www.paulrobb.com
www.informationsociety.us

www.some-assembly-required.net