December 2, 2006: Twink

December 2, 2006: Twink

Thanks to everyone who came to see Ruben Nusz and I at our art opening last night at Rosalux! We felt a lot of love and really enjoyed ourselves. Thanks for coming down! The show is called Create, Destroy, Repeat and will stay up through December 17th at Rosalux Gallery, in Minneapolis, MN. There's more information to be found at www.rosaluxgallery.com

This week's featured artist is Twink! Stay tuned for the SAR Q&A and get ready to download this week's podcast (episode 123) which will probably be finished uploading by the time I finish typing... If you've been enjoying our weekly artist feature, I hope you'll drop me a line and let me know! It's always nice to hear from people who are reading, not to mention listening. You can find my contact info at the SAR Contact Page. Hope to hear from you!

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Twink

Twink is Mike Langlie's "Cutetronica" project which up until recently had been primarily concerned with recycling children's pianos, recording music played on the toys/instruments. His latest record though is composed of fragments of sounds from dozens of the children's records which had inspired that work.

It's silly, often danceable, sample-based music featuring lots of recognizable (and just as many unrecognizable) sounds from all the children's records we grew up with. So, it's definitely a bit nostalgic as well. There really aren't an awful lot of experimental projects which are also intentionally FUN, so Twink is filling an underserved niche!

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


*Name: Twink, aka "Twink, the Toy Piano Band!" I've been trying to use the longer, descriptive version when possible, to prevent confusion between me and the other Twinks of the world.

*Members: It's basically my solo project, but I often work with musicians I like, who I consider part of the "extended" group. Something unexpected comes out of every collaboration. I've got a limited bag of tricks so it's nice to have people push me in different directions.

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: Twink was started to focus on my toy piano collection, but over time I wanted to try other things with a similar fun and whimsical feel. The songs typically take happy, simple melodies and subvert them somehow. I've been collecting lots of vintage kiddie records for inspiration, and finally wanted to try doing something with it all. It's all such great stuff that's unfortunately overlooked by most adults that don't really consider it real music. Over a few years I recorded the vinyl to my Mac and sliced it all up into bits and pieces. The album "The Broken Record" was put together almost entirely in Propellerhead's Reason program, so definitely digitally constructed (with some poor attempts at scratching on rickety school house turntables!). The concept was trying to re-contextualize the older material into something that average listeners today would find palatable, and also dig new meaning out of. I've been doing taped audio collages since I was a kid, so it was just a matter of time before I made a real project out of it.

*Another genre descriptor: I didn't make it up, but I like the term "Cutetronica."

*Location: Originally from upstate New York, now living near Boston, MA. I'm a graphic designer, and have dabbled in comics, zines, video, sculpture, etc.

*History: Twink was officially born in 1999. I've been in a bunch of more relatively normal bands before that, but got fed up with the "scene" and limitations of the genres. After a long break from music I decided to just do something for my own amusement. Luckily other people seem to like it.

*Motivations: It boils down to having a fun project to explore. I certainly don't make money from it, but it's a nice outlet for my music and design experiments.

*Philosophy: It's okay for a grown man to play silly music with toys? I guess I've always been interested in breaking expectations. And justifying my Hello Kitty side.

*How would you like to be remembered: Fun-loving, hard-working rabbit-man.

*Web address: www.twink.net

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Thanks to Twink for being our featured artist this week - download this week's podcast (episode 123) to hear an example off of his album, "The Broken Record," along with 11 other exellent sound collages. Check out Twink's website while you're at it!

Enjoy this week's podcast - and don't forget to drop me a line. My contact info can be found HERE. Tune in next week for our feature on Aggro1...

Thanks for listening!
Jon Nelson

www.some-assembly-required.net