Sunday Synth Jams: This video captures the savage percussive noise assault of Cartier Santos Sweet Lady, live at Make:Tokyo Meeting 04.

Fluorescent Lamp controlled with

• /I/F GAINER
• /Finger move
• /Hand move
• /Voice volume

If you happened to be at this show – leave a comment and let us know what you thought of it!

via omnibotoom

This is a video showing a prototype of the Lumièrophone, a screen with embedded sensors that create sound in real time based on what is projected on it.

This demo shows it in action using the Walter Ruttman films Opus I and II.

Description:

Bastard offspring of now-famous ambient loop player the Buddha Machine, GRISTLEISM is part Industrial sound machine, part noise instrument.

Featuring thirteen original and uncompromising loops, GRISTLEISM delivers a mix of signature TG experimental noise, industrial drone, and classic melodies and rhythms.

Available in three colours – Black, Chrome and Red – the palm-sized unit (size: w67mm x h69mm x d35mm) features a built-in speaker, volume control, pitch-shift control and loop selector switch.

GRISTLEISM features more loops and almost twice the frequency range of the Buddha Machine. GRISTLEISM is powered by two AA batteries and is the world’s first and only portable TG aural exciter.

Pricing (UK):

• Standard Edition: 19.99 GBP
• Badged Limited-Edition: 24.99 GBP
• Tri-Colour Limited-Edition box: 99.99 GBP

Background:

GRISTLEISM was born from a collaboration between Industrial Records, Throbbing Gristle and Christiaan Virant, the creator of the original FM3 Buddha Machines and comes in two versions – Standard issue and collectible Badged Limited-Edition. Both versions are packaged in a exquisite ‘chinese paper-cut’ wrapping, featuring a repeating TG logo pattern, foil embossing and UV ink.

The Standard version will be available in December 2009 at music retailers worldwide, while the Badged Limited-Edition, featuring an enamel GRISTLEISM badge on the casing and an exclusive card of Gristleism’s, will be available late November exclusively from the Throbbing Gristle webstore. Only 600 of the Badged Limited-Edition will be produced. You will be able to select which colour you want for as long as it remains available, thereafter they will be dispatched randomly.

In addition, a Boxed-Set of all three GRISTLEISM units in the three colours will be available through the Throbbing Gristle webstore. This special 3-unit Tri-Colour Limited-Edition is presented in a bespoke silk covered, logo embroidered, three-compartment box and comes with an exclusive ‘numbered certificate of authentication’, a card of Gristleism’s and a Gristleism enamel pin badge. Only 100 of the Tri-Colour Limited-Edition box will be produced.

The Badged Limited-Edition and Tri-Colour Limited-Edition box may be reserved by pre-order immediately from www.gristleism.com or www.throbbing-gristle.com.

CATALOGUE / PRODUCT NUMBERS:
Gristleism Black: IR2009005B – UPC: 718122861217
Gristleism Chrome: IR2009005C – UPC: 718122861316
Gristleism Red: IR2009005R – UPC: 718122861118

DISTRIBUTION:
UK / EUROPE: Cargo – www.cargorecords.co.uk
USA: Forced Exposure – www.forcedexposure.com

GRISTLEISM TRACK LIST:
01 – Persuasion
02 – Hamburger Lady
03 – Twenty Jazz Funk Greats
04 – Thank You Brian
05 – Maggot Death
06 – Rabbit Snare
07 – Lyre Liar
08 – Wimpy bar
09 – Sex String Theory
10 – Heathen Earth
11 – Industrial Intro
12 – R & D
13 – After After Cease To Exist

The Grooming

Film by Felipe Waller, made for Morphodidius’ Loretta’s Room.

The horror-techno-beat jive-music is from Marc Verhoeven.

Special appearance by Elizabeth van den Akker

via warlip:

Sunday Synth Jam: A little experimental noise improvisation from rezzn8r:

built a thingamakit the other day, so thought I’d try it out with the moogerfoogers.

nothing serious, just havin’ fun!

The thingamakit works much better in the dark, but it sounds ok with sunlight, too!

kanukanakina – one of the odder electronic music videos we’ve seen lately, features the circuit bent sounds ‘of comemelinhos‘ hacked noise machines, including some sort of torso-tron and a crawling baby synth.

My main problem with digital music applications is the silence that is there to start with.

If you record nothing at all onto analogue tape and play it back there’s still something there. I always needed some noise to begin the working process with, a tone or some hiss seeping through the faders of a beat up old Alan and Heath and then take it from there.

However now digital music applications are becoming more of a tool for creating noise, sometimes at the most micro of levels. What we’re hearing now in music is that the sounds have become more and more complex. You can tell by listening to underground electronic music these days which is incorporating a higher bandwidth of hi frequencies and sub bass as well as contemporary notated music which had been leaning further to incorporating prepared instruments, electronic sounds and extended techniques. Both genres overall just incorporating a wider spectrum of noise, harmonics, overtones, beating tones etc.

What is happening is people are yearning for more noise and it’s becoming more and more acceptable to hear it, so we are actually improving our ears by being able to hear sound in a different way.

There are all sorts of reasons that analog, at its best, sounds so good, ranging from the sense of reality that a little background noise establishes, to nostalgia, to the ear-pleasing nature of analog distortion.

When you listen to a digital recording with headphones, something that’s extremely common today, you’re hearing a new type of silence in the music.

Do you think that pristine digital recordings are making musicians yearn for new types of noise and new types of sounds?

Image: cameralucida

Sunday Synth Jam: touch.listen.synth is a demo of a gorgeous touch-contact synth/noise machine.

Check out Alex Inglizian’s cliplead blog for detailed pictures.

via cretin4321

Here’s another Sunday Synth Jam for you, featuring the Ciguar, a cigar box synth, fed into Ableton Live.

via BrianWilliamGreen

This is a demo of a custom Copper Pad synthesizer, by Platonic World.

via Chris Carter – Cosey Fan Tutti & Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson jamming during the Throbbing Gristle LA Soundcheck, at the Ricardo Montalblan Theatre in Los Angeles.

When Metal Machine Music was released in 1975, people did not know what to make of it. The album, influenced by the drone music of La Monte Young and John Cale,  consists entirely of guitar feedback played at different speeds.

Two guitars were tuned in unusual ways and played with different reverb levels. Reed then placed the guitars in front of their amplifiers, and the feedback from the very large amps would vibrate the strings — the guitars were, effectively, playing themselves. He recorded the work on a four-track tape recorder in his New York apartment, mixing the four tracks for stereo.

Reed recreated Metal Machine Music live with his Metal Machine Trio at the Gramercy Theatre in New York earlier this week:

The small venue was probably only half full and its patrons consisted mostly of intellectual types and hard-core Reed fans. Long before the band came on, the sound system was playing an unnerving dissonant loop that seemed to keep getting louder. When they took the stage, Reed and his band, tenor saxophonist Ulrich Kreiger and Continuum (a touch sensitive MIDI keyboard) player Sarth Calhoun wasted little time for pleasantries before they dove into the apocalyptic rush, although Reed announced appreciatively beforehand, “I just want to tell you how happy I am to see you all here tonight.”

There were no “songs,” but instead the musicians churned out a continuous blaring fog that rose and decreased in its deafening intensity, marked by shrill electronic shrieks, long demented sax solos and Reed’s occasional yelling voice.

At the end of the show the controversy surrounding the album had manifested itself visibly: almost a quarter of the original audience had left. Many people who had stayed seemed to have done so as a matter of pride. Their faces looked pained and anguished. Some people had a look of pleasant calm, however. The band themselves had been grinning through their performance, having a good time as the music got louder and more unbearable.

Brian Eno wrote about Metal Machine Music in his 1995 diary, A Year With Swolen Appendices:

Metal Machine Music was released the same week — twenty years ago — as Discreet Music.

Discreet Music soft, calm, melodic and reassuringly repetitive, without a single sound other than tape hiss about 1500 Hz, whereas MMM is as abrasive and unmelodic as possible, with almost nothing below — and yet they occupy two ends of what was at the time a pretty new axis — music as immersion, as sonic experience in which you float.

The roots of Ambient.

It’s interesting that Eno sees Metal Machine Music as one end of the spectrum of ambient music.

For most, though – Metal Machine Music remains a challenge to endure:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dr. Rek rocks the house at the Bent Festival 2008 Minneapolis.

Looks like it was a great performance and event!

via DrRek:

from the new DVD from Absurdity.

Biz ’s ongoing circuit bending documentary project

Shot by Mike Una, Edited by Dr. Rek

this is my karaoke bent toy seti

ts rather absurd

Not sure what you’d call this noise thing….but it looks dangerous.

via horchacha:

variable 0-12v regulated power supply for the motor w/ direction speed
6v power supply for tube heaters
150v high voltage supply
two neon lamp oscs
rf pentode tube mixer/vcf/vca
beam modulator tube trouble maker
tubes filled with photocells control
pitch of oscs, vcas and vcf
spin that disc bro
yo

Semiconductor’s Black Rain is sourced from images collected by the twin satellite, solar mission, STEREO. Here we see the HI (Heliospheric Imager) visual data as it tracks interplanetary space for solar wind and CME’s (coronal mass ejections) heading towards Earth. Data courtesy of courtesy of the Heliospheric Imager on the NASA STEREO mission.

Working with STEREO scientists, Semiconductor collected all the HI image data to date, revealing the journey of the satellites from their initial orientation, to their current tracing of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Solar wind, CME’s, passing planets and comets orbiting the sun can be seen as background stars and the milky way pass by.

As in Semiconductors previous work ‘Brilliant Noise’ which looked into the sun, they work with raw scientific satellite data which has not yet been cleaned and processed for public consumption. By embracing the artifacts, calibration and phenomena of the capturing process we are reminded of the presence of the human observer who endeavors to extend our perceptions and knowledge through technological innovation.

Commissioned by Animasivo Mexico City, 2009

via califaudio

From the upcoming DVD from absurdity.biz’s Circuit Bending Documentary Project.

Available at the 2009 Bent Festival and soon on the intertubes,

This video demos MONK ROCKER, a circuit bent Buddha Machine.

via asmhaxor:

This is my first attempt at circuit bending.Made from an authentic (not FM3) Buddhist chanting machine (as seen). Recorded with external analog rev/delay. Concept and design by Kevin K Chen. Not for sale.

This is a demo of the 555 Noisemusick kit from Maker Shed.

The 555 Timer is one of the oldest integrated circuits still available. It’s also one of the few ICs you can buy at the mall! Its hardiness — and the fact that you can drive a speaker directly from the output on pin 3 — have made it a natural choice for electronic music experiments in noise since the seventies.

The 555 Noisekit utilizes two 555 timers.

If you’ve built the 555 Noisemusick kit, leave a comment with your thoughts!

The 55 Noisemusick kit retails for $20.

via KeyOfGrey

Experimental musicians and instrument inventors John Berndt and Neil Feather have developed their own musical language since 1992 as THUS.

Here they perform Helecopter Soufflé in Baltimore, 2008. Neil Feather plays his Vibro Wheels and Melocipede instruments and John Berndt also plays Vibro Wheels.

via highzerofoundation

This is a demo of a semi-modular noise generator made using 4 simple circuits:

• toy keyboard
• filter > fuzz > noise oscillator >, circuit bent pre-amp (removed from toy karaoke)
• loud object >>>
• flashing lights circuit. Works as 2 step seq, lfo modulator, noise oscillator (removed from toy)

via Vtolus