QuNexus and Serge

ether^ra AND NOTHING MORE : A Tribute to Brion Gysin

Buchla Music Easel Quick Start & Overview

Buchla 100 Clones

Soon to have a place in my 4-module Buchla boat, this oscillator and random generator should provide plenty of vintage-sounding mayhem thanks to Djangosfire.

I DREAM OF WIRES

Many modular synth freaks have been looking forward to this documentary for quite some time now. Its arrival in my mailbox is cause for celebration; four hours of electronic wonder will absolutely be devoured and enjoyed!

EURORACK ESSENCE

With the addition of Tiptop Zeus power to handle the  extra power drain to the top row of the massive Goike case and a number of modules, this case is now my only eurorack system continuing to evolve.

Cabaret Voltaire : red mecca

Timely again and again and again? See text at http://wovertices.tumblr.com

FUTURE ELECTRONS : blows against the empire

1970's BLOWS AGAINST THE EMPIRE by Jefferson Airplanes's Paul Kantner not only embraces the futurist step-up from "Airplane" to "Starship," but also utilizes electronics in an effort to provide what Kantner has termed "background landscaping." Though mainly used as embellishment, unlike the full-on electronic mini-opus of Jefferson Airplane's Chushingura found on 1967's Crown of Creation, tracks such as Home and XM use noise to effectively produce spacey sonics. Though inhabiting the scape-heap of the Airplane's secondary discography, these are nonetheless precursors to the use of electronics in, say, Hawkwind who are also primarily "folk" musicians steeped in futurist iconography.

NOIZETOIZE : Audible Objects Random Volt Generator / Antimatter Audio Brain Seed

My personal chaos theory demands as much sonic serendipity and random events as possible. These two new modules certainly fit the bill adding numerous options to my appetite for the seemingly  uncontrollable, fueling my belief in the Surrealist dictum that the laws of chance equal the laws of beauty...and perhaps the opportunity for a happy accident, a compelling epiphany. The Brain Seed is available at CONTROL in Brooklyn; the RVG from Audible Objects via Etsy.

ADDAC Marble Physics

Listen to the marble roll helping to produce compelling threads of noise that can be stretched and truncated...add a Trogotronic 333 envelope; CV it into a maelstrom of controlled chaos.

JRB ModuleModules

Jason R. Butcher, maker of very fine ModuleModule devices compatible with the Buchla 200e, has created two new modules for my system, the CVEQ and the Thumbstick. Jason can be found at http://fastheadache.blogspot.com

DEVICES : ADDAC EURO-MODULES

These recently purchased ADDAC modules, the Voltage Controlled Oscillator and the Complex Random with Expander are capable of wonderful things! The oscillator offers all manner of voltage control of parameters AND a wonderful sounding pulse wave; the Complex Random sends out voltage controlled (or manual) CV madness. With nine outputs(counting the expander's six), you can certainly create all manner of mayhem, both standard and Brownian! New toys=new joys!

w/o VERTICES on tumblr

Check out a new blog dedicated to my ether^ra sub-project, w/o VERTICES

http://wovertices.tumblr.com/

Double Andore

The Harvestman Double Andore is a dual envelope generator and much more. This track utilizes it along with ST Cloud Generator and the new Make Noise MMG. In spite of the rancor between them they got along quite well, sort of.

ether^ra side project

Template

I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create. 

                -William Blake 

Ways Of Seeing

                                       What you saw depended on where you were when.
                                                  -John Berger "Ways of Seeing" 1973

With time comes  mystery, multiple meanings and perhaps a sense of longing...My large scale drawing "The Kitchen is No Longer Reassuring" (1983, pencil on paper, 38" x 76") completed after my mother's death, explores loss and makes the point that ALL art is essentially about memory, a pointed  tug at what inhabits the liminal spaces of our now dreamt pasts. Spoons are zygotes, cracks swallow people, and chairs supply a support of sorts...and doors go somewhere? Perhaps this work offers a key to those dreams, a faintly recognized fragment that bridges a gap between us and ghosts.

Buchla 200e Track

Encore Electronics UEG

The Encore Electronics Universal Event Generator is a complex envelope  generator!...a  crazy LFO!...and a step-sequencer!...so much fun in a 30hp package!

ether^ra STOLEN FROM THIEVES VOL. II

The fine Game of Life label invited me to come up with 25 or so minutes of music for free download. Noise produced by eurorack modules, Buchla 200e, my Serge modular, and voice samples interbreed producing vaporous clouds, jarring dystopian jabs, and cut-up samples that are meant to be evocative of the 21th century's layered onslaught. www.gameoflifeproject.com   

Andrew Chalk : forty-nine views in rhapsodies' wave serene

Andrew Chalk's Forty-Nine Views In Rhapsodies' Wave Serene (Faraway Press) presents, using limited instrumentation(Polivoks synth, piano and organ), a microscopic world teeming with life and a wealth of inviting sonic detail. The aural equivalent of snapshots taken with a debased analogue camera, these 49 tracks remind the listener of the crumbling landscapes from Andrei Tarkovsky's masterpiece Stalker, haunted by memories that spawn a labyrinth of longings that drift and dissolve, and then start again with the next track. With titles like Halo Dispersed,  Sleeping Stillness, Land Of Nod, and Seaward Flow, Mr. Chalk makes his intention to present a liminal museum of miniatures, chipped with age, but imbued with poetry's patina, abundantly and compellingly clear. This is art that offers us an opportunity for epiphany. We should be thankful.

PERE UBU : lady from shanghai

"It's a wonderful world; it's a beautiful thing"-David Thomas

How true! The new cd from Pere Ubu comes to us imbued with much of Ubu's Modern Dance/Dub Housing skittering sounds and David Thomas' dada vocals...and while I sorely miss Allen Ravenstine's noise synth genius, Robert Wheeler's EML stylings are compelling, fleshing out the sound like the body electric. Drums drive the sound with melodic snippet from various synths poking through the swampy soup, scratching the consciousness like a errant mosquito. On a few tracks, Thomas' vocal are mumbled shards, much like the dancing broken funhouse glass that makes the climax of Orson Welles' classic film The Lady From Shanghai, from which Ubu borrow the title, such a nightmarish hallucinatory experience...and like this release, a beautiful thing.

MORE!

MORE modules in my ever-evolving sonic palette!...the amazing ALM Pamela's Workout and a used CynIndustries Four Transients(...Never enough envelope generators!) courtesy of the gentlemen at CONTROL in Williamsburg, Brooklyn(GO THERE and play!!!!!)

Schippmann VCF02 Multimode Filter

With blinding lights and 13 cv inputs, the mind boggles with the VCF02's modulation potential...and 2 inputs with separate attenuators!...who could ask for more?...and those lights!!!