Announcement
yoctonaut will perform a set at Kraftwerk Reimagined in Pittsburgh, at Howler's on Saturday, May 5, opening for Raised By Machines and Universal Beat Union. Look--there's a poster:
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As I tend to do, I went off the edge of the cliff with this one: first full-length hometown yoctonaut set, first gig with the iPad, first gig with the Moog guitar, first gig approaching Kraftwerk as subject matter. Add in little time for rehearsal and no rehearsal with the other people on the guitary one I wanted to do, and it probably shouldn't have worked at all. And yet...it did. A benevolence looks out for fools and for musicians who make things difficult for themselves as a kind of reflex.
The yoctonaut set went well enough--some miscues, but no one in the audience is going to know the intended cues, so no harm. The inspired-by-Kraftwerk pieces were maybe more dance-oriented than the audience, but it was impossible to see them to gauge reaction. People applauded between numbers, so I must have done all right, but I had doubts about my track selection, thinking one minute in to most songs that I should have picked another. Typical yoctonaut gig. One thing I hadn't counted on was the accentuated high end of the stage monitors, which had snare and hi-hat digging into my ears. Alien Verbs is working out well, and I pulled out yMotorik, appropriately. Summer Db might not have been the best choice--now it seems to me to need a B section, and I should have gone with either a promising older piece I'm updating, or one of the Trailer Space ones.
Last tune, I did "Heavy Metal Kids," asking for assistance from Steve (Raised by Machines), Paul (Raised by Machines, Universal Beat Union), and Eric (Universal Beat Union)--a good move, since I ended up holding down the simple riff, and it would have been a bit thin if it had been just me. It was occasionally difficult to detect the Moog guitar in the monitors, and by the end I couldn't hear it at all--just 60Hz hum. It turns out I turned the filter resonance all the way down, and the subtlety of the filter got lost in the fuzz. There may have also been a loose cable involved. Freaked me out the next morning trying to figure out why things were still not working, until I identified that. But people seemed to dig it.
Raised By Machines was great, and the standout for me was Steve's solo improv on the Voyager, with heavy use of the expression pad and ring modulator. That was a fine section indeed. Fantastic.
Universal Beat Union was good, psychedelic, and triply, kind of like Maserati with keyboards and without Jerry Fuchs (RIP). Unfortunately, by that point it was late at night and I was entirely exhausted. But it was a great show with an appreciative audience, which is always a victory.
I thought I'd try a new approach with this one: no guitar, and two synths as the sound generators. So I wasn't completely on new ground I figured I'd do the Bureau of Nonstandards working method and remix on the fly in Ableton Live. I've been listening to a lot of beat-oriented stuff, and considering how abstract the synth can get, it seemed like a good idea to have some strong beats to drop in, but some preliminary tests sounded like they wanted a kind of post-human broken-machine-talking-to-itself fractured beat--the kind of thing that makes sense after some repetition, or after it's heard against some other context. So I worked up four or five channels of different drum machine sounds (secret weapon: Kawai K3M bass drum) and broke the patterns apart, across channels. I could mix and match fragments, have them at different lengths and sounds for variety, and have something for the audience to grab onto. Synths: Bleep Labs Nebulophone (mostly in Hypernoise mode) and Moog Filtatron.
The set itself seemed like a swimming upstream: In the event, the synths we doing different things than I had done in rehearsal, and I had to roll with that but it held together. It was great hearing the massive bass drums through the club's subwoofers. And apart from one screwup (I hit the timeline and stopped the Live set in the middle), it worked. People dug it. I fixed that mess up in post, extending that piece.
Now I've put it out: http://mauricerickard.bandcamp.com/. Give it a listen.
Update: here's some press from fine electronic music sites Matrixsynth and Analogik!
Announcement
Looking for an unforgettable Valentine's Day night out? It's an evening of circuit-bent electronic music, featuring Sydney Australia's Toydeath, the strategic chaotic assault of Half Nelson, your local bending conglomerate The Bureau of Nonstandards, and performance electronics from CMU's Robot Cowboy.
Expect radically repurposed toys: Speak and Spells, Barbie dolls, toy telephones, bullhorns, voice changers, all kinds of things. Don't just sit at home--come on out and hear the Furbies singing, each to each. Perhaps they will even sing to you. All ages, $7.
Monday February 14. 8PM. $7. All ages. Garfield Artworks, 4931 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA.
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BoN set: seemed successful, a balance of noise, structure, and technical difficulty.
Robot Cowboy: *quite* a show. Glad I didn't go on after him. One to watch.
Half-Nelson: the jazz soundtrack for a Demerol overdose in an abandoned factory.
Toy Death were great fun--good bends on the instruments, costumes, choreographed moves. Apparently they do shows for kids, and they go over quite well.
Last night: rehearsal/planning for 2011 gigs with belly dancers. Now: Kids' play date. Tonight: neighbors' family-friendly party. 2010's going out on a fun note. Here's to a great 2011 for everyone!
I just combined a Krautrock-inspired drum pattern I wrote in '08 or '09 with a belly-dance pattern from '05, and it all works.
"A Robot's Christmas in Wales": It's a yoctonaut Christmas song! Valid for humans and robots, in Wales and elsewhere, for Christmas or anything else you're celebrating. If you'd like to download it to your MP3 player, head over to http://www.yoctonaut.com/ where it's a free download--including a picture of the Robot in the song. How can you lose?
Merry Christmas || Happy Solstice || Happy New Year, Humans || Robots!
Guitar building update: According to the fretboard radius gauges, the Eastwood Saturn neck is a 12". Radius of pretty much every bridge I've seen, including the roller bridge I'd wanted: 12". Good news, especially since you can't file down a roller bridge.
Res-O-Glas guitar body on its way. (Apparently I got the last white Belmont body of this run.)
Design Options - Res-O-Glas Guitar Parts, Custom Guitar Kits, Made in the USA, Fiberglas guitar
I already thought the Bureau of Nonstandards set Tuesday night was a good one. Listening back to it, we tapped into something really special with this one. (Warning: blast of noise at 5:30, and occasionally thereafter.)
Announcement
The Bureau of Nonstandards will bend, repurpose, and manipulate its way into your organization's todo list on Tuesday, November 30, as we open for the legendary Ben Miller / degeneration (Destroy All Monsters, Sproton Layer), and appear with local ambient/experimental mainstay Requiem.
Garfield Artworks, 4931 Penn Ave., Pittsburgh, PA. Tuesday, Nov. 30, 8PM. $7, all ages.
Ben's work is rightfully legendary, and The Bureau of Nonstandards will be there as well, bending, repurposing, and manipulating.
Ben Miller :: music for the head
Announcement
Inspired by this past summer's Pittsburgh Jandek performance? Sure you are. So why not learn a few Jandek tunes (or spoken word pieces), grab an instrument, and come on down to the Eighth Annual Open Mic Jandek Cover Night? It's an intimate venue, so there'll be only low-powered amplification, and you probably shouldn't bring, say, eight SUNN stacks or a 70s prog-rock drum kit. But your guitar, bass, flugelhorn, accordion, bullroarer, or waterphone ought to be just fine. I dunno, surprise us.
As ever, the only rules are that you have to cover a Jandek song, or come to listen. Lyrics will be available if you need a refresher. And it's all ages, and free. 8:00PM, Friday, November 5, 2010.
(Note: new venue as of 11/1/10!)
3138 Dobson St., Pittsburgh PA 15219 (Polish Hill)
New Venue! Thanks to Lili Coffee*Shop in Polish Hill!
The Eighth Annual Open Mic Jandek Cover Night
Open Mic Jandek Cover Night will proceed as planned at Lili Coffee*Shop in Polish Hill. Thanks, Lili Coffee*Shop! May you Put Your Dream On This Planet.
Announcement
The Bureau of Nonstandards reconvenes next week, for a public hearing with Duluth's circuit bending wizard Tim Kaiser, local Gameboy-bender 8cylinder, and Dream Weapon. We'll bring nonstandard blips, bleeps, and bends, along with an appearance by the cheapest-ever Moog product.
Save the date and put it on the agenda; we'll think outside the box, add value, and take it to the next level.
8PM, $6 all ages.
Garfield Artworks, 4931 Penn Ave. Pittsburgh, PA
