Sunday, March 26, 2006

Some Assembly Required: Fundraising Special

Some Assembly Required: Fundraising Special

01 The Bran Flakes – “In The Final Hours There
Was A Frying Pan”
02 John Oswald – “Way”
03 Myeck Waters - “A little man in a striped suit”
04 Osymyso – “It's All About Fun, Right?”
05 Team 9 – “Only a lullaby”
06 People Like Us – “Stifled love”
07 The Evolution Control Committee – “I Don't Care”
08 Splatt – “The usual”
09 DJ Zebra – “Oh Brother Ray”
10 Negativland – “A Most Successful Formula”
11 Table Tones in Head Space – “Walkman”
12 Think Tank – “No Kiss Kiss”
13 Twink – “Pussy Cat”
14 Cassetteboy – “Anyway, Right, So I Said To Her”
15 Times Up – “The sound of muzak”
16 The Tape-beatles – “Mind Problems”
17 Party Ben – “Hot Hot Bowie”


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

Please support Some Assembly Required, at:
www.some-assembly-required.net/support.asp

March 26, 2006: Please Support SAR!

March 26, 2006: Please Support SAR!

Thanks to those who've made donations to the cause this week. We are in the middle of our very first proper fundraiser for the show, and I'm very thankful to those of you who have made donations. Every little bit counts, and its hugely encouraging as well. Its a shame that money has to be taken into consideration, but I've finally accepted that fact and am asking for listener support...

The podcast this week is our fundraiser special, so there's no artist feature - just a request for support! If you're a fan of the show and appreciate all the hard work that goes into it's production and distribution, please consider making a donation at our website. Using paypal, the financial transaction is quick and easy (and safe), and there are several different thank-you gifts to choose from, as well.

Check it all out at: www.some-assembly-required.net/support.html

You can also support the show with a check or money order - just send your donation to:
Some Assembly Required
2751 Hennepin Ave. S. (#145)
Minneapolis, MN 55408
Be sure to include a note about which thank-you gift you'd like to receive!

The playlist this week includes tracks by the following artists:
The Bran Flakes, John Oswald, Myeck Waters, Osymyso, Team 9, People Like Us, The Evolution Control Committee, Splatt, DJ Zebra, Negativland, Table Tones in Head Space, Think Tank, Twink, Cassetteboy, Times Up, The Tape-beatles and Party Ben -- representing a wide variety of sample based music, as always. I love spending the time coming up with diverse playlists, featuring artists using samplers and playback equipment to create new works of sound collage - help support the cause, by visiting the SAR website and making a donation.

What more can I say? Thanks again to those of you who have already supported the program - it really means a lot. Stay tuned for the new podcast in just a few, and be sure to check out the blog next week, for the SAR Q&A with Jason Forrest, aka Donna Summer...

Thanks for listening!
Jon Nelson

www.some-assembly-required.net/support.html

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Episode 93, Some Assembly Required

Episode 93, Some Assembly Required

01 Evolution Control Committee – “No time for yes”
02 Negativland - “You don’t even live here”
03 John Oswald - “Don’t”
04 Dsico - “Don’t need you tonight”05 Brain Science - “Never ever”
06 Wobbly - “Oh no”
07 Wobbly - “No regards”
08 Hal Willner - “No respect for the process”
09 Dsico - “Can’t knack the hiding”
10 DJ Design - “Never be the same”
11 Evolution Control Committee - “Don’t miss the great snatch”
12 Girl Talk - “Can’t stop”
13 Wobbly - “Can’t stop it, can’t stop it, can’t stop it, can’t stop it.”
14 Dsico - “Don’t say no la baby”
15 The Jams - “Don’t take five”
16 DJ Frenchbloke - “Don’t rock”
17 Tim Maloney - “Don’t sub in the sleepway”
18 Negativland – “The way of it”


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

More information about Some Assembly Required online, at:
www.some-assembly-required.net

March 20, 2006: Wobbly

March 20, 2006: Wobbly

Some Assembly Required, Episode 93 is on the way - with a "negative" theme - all the tracks were focused on negativity in some way. I must have been having a bad week that week - I can't remember why - but it ended up being a pretty good episode, in spite of it! Stay tuned...

The SAR Q&A this week is with Jon Leidecker of Wobbly. I've been a big fan of Wobbly since around 1998. I'm racking my brain trying to remember how we met. I believe we did some spontaneous reviewing of eachother's work back when I released my first cassette album, and he wrote to tell me that Don Joyce had mixed it into an episode of Over the Edge, around 1998. From there, we've been keeping in touch about this crazy world of sound collage.

Wobbly has often collaborated with Negativland's Don Joyce, on his radio program Over the Edge, as well as in the performance group The Chopping Channel (featuring the talents of Don Joyce, Jon Leidecker/Wobbly and Peter Conheim). He's also a frequent collaborator with People Like Us, which has resulted in at least a couple of collaborative releases with her. He's a very active recording artist with over 6 official releases (on labels such as Alku, GISI, Illegal Art, Ovenguard, Phthalo and Tigerbeat6) and has collaborated with at least a dozen other artists as well, including myself (Escape Mechanism). Check out the Minneapolis Summit website for more information about the 2002 Wobbly, Tape-beatles, Steev Hise, Escape Mechanism release. The photos here of Wobbly are from that CD, and its recording session.

He's featured on over three dozen releases, including Illegal Art's Extracted Celluloid (1998), which is probably still my favorite track by Wobbly. My other favorite Wobbly CD is "Wild Why" (2002). There are also over two dozen MP3-only releases, so do the math - that's an awful lot of output for one artist. My head is spinning, and it's not just from the rapid bursts of sound which have become Wobbly's trademark...

Check out the Wobbly website for more information, including mp3s for downloading. Well worth the trip. Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with Wobbly...

***

*Name: My name is Jon Leidecker and I record and release music under the project name Wobbly.

*Do you use a pseudonym? Though Wobbly originally began as a group project in Santa Barbara in the early 90's, I'm the only continuing member and the band name has become a bit of a pseudonym, something to live with.

*Members: Myself; up until 1995 there were frequent contributions from Jason Brown and Chris Ball, as well as anyone stopping by the studio that day.

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: Collage music might be a helpful descriptor but I don't plan on being limited to it.

*Location: Currently residing in San Francisco. Was born in Washington D.C., moved to Contra Costa County in 1983, college in Santa Barbara, moved to San Francisco in 1994.

*What is your creative/artistic background: Wrote fiction until I was 13, then abandoned that suddenly for music shortly after moving to California.

*History: Solo cassette albums date from 1985. There have been other collaborations dating from the same time, notably Known In Bakersfield (with Tim Meany) which lasted from 1991 to 2000. I was also an active member of the group Sagan from 2003-2005.

*Motivations: It would take a great deal of effort to stop.

*Philosophy: Finding harmonies between seemingly independent or irreconcilable voices.

*How would you like to be remembered: Someone helpful.

*Web address: http://www.detritus.net/wobbly

***

Thanks to Jon Leidecker, for being the featured artist this week! Be sure to check out the Wobbly website, and tune in to episode 93 -- three of the 18 sound collage tracks this week are by Wobbly. Stay tuned...

That's it for now... We'll be doing our first fundraiser next week, so I don't think we'll be doing an artist feature, but stay tuned for the SAR Q&A with Donna Summer (Jason Forrest) the week after that. Please do consider supporting the program next week, as we muster up all of our courage and actually ask for money. It wasn't easy, let me tell you, but the program has become a bit of a burden, financially, so I'm taking some good advice and doing a fundraiser - don't worry, there will be lots of music/audio art, so it won't be like your typical pledge drive. In fact, I hardly talk at all (as usual). Anyway - if you've got the means, please consider supporting Some Assembly Required next week. It would mean an awful lot.

Until then, enjoy episode 93, which is uploading as I type. Don't be overwhelmed by the theme of negativity. Its just a concept, not a suggestion - don't succumb! Choose to be positive and positive things are bound to happen. If you really believe. really...
Thanks for listening!
Jon Nelson

www.some-assembly-required.net

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Episode 94, Some Assembly Required

Episode 94, Some Assembly Required

01 Myeck Waters – “Hello you guys”
02 Animals within animals – “Hello”
03 The Bran Flakes – “The hello show”
04 Evolution Control Committee – “Hello”
05 People Like Us – “Hello Reg”
06 Cyberphobe – “Hallo”
07 Wobbly – “Hello underground”
08 Social Security – “Hi, bye”
09 Osymyso – “Welcome to Musicland”
10 The Bran Flakes – “Welcome to the human race”
11 Wobbly – “Welcome”
12 Escape Mechanism – “Wake up”
13 Magwheels – “Wake up”
14 The Tape-beatles – “Good morning reprise”
15 People Like Us – “Hi there”
16 Osymyso – “Introspection”
17 People Like Us – “Take a walk”


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

More information about Some Assembly Required online, at:
www.some-assembly-required.net

March 13, 2006: Animals Within Animals

March 13, 2006: Animals Within Animals

Uploading earlier made a world of difference, so I'm going to continue to upload each week's podcast on Sunday afternoons. What this means for those of you who use iTunes, is that (hopefully) the podcast should be available there by Monday, or Tuesday at the latest. So, enjoy! Episode 94 is on the way...

This week's Some Assembly Required Q&A is with Animals Within Animal's co-founder, stAllio! I have no idea how to punctuate that sentence - because he actually spells his name that way, with an exclamation point - so I guess I should put a period at the end, but it didn't seem right, somehow... Anyway - stAllio! is a writer and copy editor, living in Indiana, and he submitted some very detailed answers about Animals Within Animals for the SAR Q&A, which I will publish here in their entirety...

Animals Within Animals is a collective which boasts over thirty members, though the core membership is somewhere between a more traditional five-piece (at least when playing live), to a group of just over 25. They currently have three releases under their collective belt, and have appeared on a half dozen compilations, including Dictionaraoke and Free Speech For Sale. With a roster of this size, I could go on and on about all the different projects and activities, but this is going to be a much longer post than average, as it is, so... Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with stAllio! of Animals Within Animals...

***

Animals Within Animals

*Name: Animals Within Animals

*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: We generally abbreviate it AWIA. Personally I'm not big on using uppercase letters so I abbreviate it awia. We're cool with however you want to spell it, but I like to spell it that way because it lets me rip off the logo from the aiwa corporation.

*Do you use a pseudonym? Generally, all the group's collaborators use pseudonyms. Obviously stAllio! is not my given name (though I understand Stallio is Italian for Stanley, and in Italian, Laurel and Hardy are called "Stallio e Ollio").

*Members: AWIA is a loosely organized collective. Membership rules are very relaxed. Some of our members do little other than collect (or create) a few samples. Other members (like me) also put in a lot of time actually producing the music that we release. As such, it is very difficult to give a true (and meaningful) number of band members without categorizing them into groups such as active, inactive, potential, etc. If we included everyone, including those who have technically not done any work yet, it would be something like 30-40 or more people, but only a small number of us play a significant role in the group. When we play live, we typically have 2-5 or so get together onstage. Only a handful of the 30-40 people have been involved with our live shows.

*Founding Member: The band was founded by me and Lander Kitt. For years, we promoted Lander Kitt as an extremely reclusive artist who never traveled, appeared in public, or even answered his email. There was an interview with him around '99 or so, but that was the extent of his public communication. Eventually it was revealed that Lander Kitt was in fact a brown tabby cat, which was why he never left the house or answered emails. Lander eventually passed away this January. I must note that anytime Lander was credited with performing in a track, the track did involve sounds he'd generated, whether by meowing, walking across a keyboard/sampler, purring, etc. I even thought about releasing a Lander Kitt solo album, but he was a quiet cat and not easy to record, and with his passing that will now never happen. It might have been interesting, though. Other members from those early days include Dr. Butcher M.D., murkbox, Mainline Crux, and Chicklet McSexy. They are all humans.

*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: We're more digital than anything else, but …different members work differently. We have some members (like unszene) who work primarily with tape. Other members (most notably bobby vomit) work mostly with vinyl. Our first release, "Yard Ape," was mostly analog, recorded on a 4-track, but our subsequent material has been predominantly digital.

*Another genre descriptor: I generally describe it as somewhere between collage and hardcore/harsh noise.

*Location: Much of the band is located in central Indiana, primarily Indianapolis, but also Muncie, Bloomington, and surrounding areas. All the members of the "live" version of the band generally live in this area, but because of the group's open collaborative nature, we have worked online with a number of people from both coasts as well as Canada. We have never met most of these non-midwestern members in person.

*What is your creative/artistic background: I have a BA in writing and work as a copy editor in the publishing industry. I was always interested in music but wasn't good with traditional instruments, so I wasn't really able to do much with music until I got into recording tech and computer composition, etc. Several of our other members have art degrees and/or have backgrounds in rock music, dance/rave music, etc.

*History: AWIA was founded in 1999. I'd already been making music for a few years at that point.

*Motivations: This is really hard to answer. I create because I am compelled to and it's fun. I make the kinds of music and art that I find interesting (and that I can figure out how to do). I've always been interested in ironic juxtapositions, so when I got into sampling and collage it felt very natural. Hopefully, my answer below gets at what you're looking for.

*Philosophy:
I founded AWIA because I'd been making solo music for a few years and I wanted to collaborate with other people. I wanted my collaborations to be productive, so that if I only made 1 or 2 tracks with someone, I would have somewhere to put those tracks, rather than having 20 unfinished side projects. So, I created Animals Within Animals as a "catch all" project, sort of modeled after the band Pigface, where I could put anything I 'd done with other people and call it a "band."

Not long after that I started to get really into Negativland and audio collage, and so everything I did in that vein got the AWIA name stamped on it regardless of whether other people worked on it. Eventually, I realized I wouldn't be able to keep the collage side out of my solo work and stopped doing that.

Some time after that, AWIA started doing live shows, primarily for the recycled rainbow events in Cleveland. At that point, the band changed again, becoming much more raw and noisy (which was sort of where we'd started out).


It's hard to say exactly what AWIA is or what we're about at any moment. It's partly about doing interesting work and collaborating with other people. We don't always collaborate as much as I'd like--many of our tracks only have one "producer," regardless where the samples come from--but I like hearing what other members are doing, being influenced by that, letting our records go in directions I wouldn't have expected.


I like making stuff that's funny, stuff that's political and humorous at the same time, or stuff that creates cognitive dissonance; and I also like finding unusual sounds and making beats and stuff like that. I don't want to be stereotyped as jokey or novelty music. I really despise that term "novelty music."

For me, AWIA's music is about samples and noise. Beyond that, it's really about whatever we want it to be at that moment. The stuff we're working on now is kind of about merging the divergent aspects of the group, the meticulously composed studio work vs. the really raw, noisy live version of the band. Part of it is remixing our old live material into new compositions. Right now I'm really interested in exploring a kind of hyper-editing where I take lots of different little noises and splice them together in a rapid fashion. It's kind of like musique concrete except there's a funny/obscene vocal sample every 15-30 seconds. Other members might put a different spin on it. And after we're done with our new record (tentatively titled "Parts is Parts"), I can't guess what might come next.


*How would you like to be remembered: Fondly. Simply being remembered in a field like this is significant. If people are still listening to AWIA however many years from now, that in itself would be great.

*Web address: animalswithinanimals.com

***

Thanks to stAllio! and Animals Within Animals for this week's SAR Q&A! Check out their website for lots more information about the band's many members and side projects.

Stay tuned for episode 94, featuring a track by Animals Within Animals and 16 other appropriation-based sound collage artists from around the world. Enjoy!
Thanks for listening,
Jon Nelson

www.some-assembly-required.net

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Episode 95, Some Assembly Required

Episode 95, Some Assembly Required
(Featuring an interview with Jason Freeman)

01 Freddy Fresh – “Humdinger”
02 John Oswald – “Pretender”
03 Lecture On Nothing – “Addiction”
04 DJ Frenchbloke – “Destiny Kennedies”
05 Escape Mechanism – “Paranoid”
06 Lenlow – “Chocolate Cake Revisited”
07 Jason Freeman – (untitled)
08 Jason Freeman – “Dorkbot"
09 The Bran Flakes – “Fun Land Five”
10 DJ Shadow – “Walkie Talkie”
11 DJ Nikoless – “DJing for dummies”
12 Go Home Productions - “Annie's Stoned Rush”


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

More information about Some Assembly Required online, at:
www.some-assembly-required.net

March 6, 2006: Jason Freeman

March 6, 2006: Jason Freeman

Episode 95 of Some Assembly Required is on the way...
In fact, I'm trying something new this week. I uploaded the file before blogging, and about 12 hours earlier than usual. It is approaching noon, Sunday, as I type this. I usually wait until after midnight, in order to be able to say it was done on Monday, but what I'm learning is that if I want the podcast to be available by Monday at iTunes (which is its primary download location, I've found), then I need to start uploading the file earlier. This week 12 hours early, next week even earlier, if it looks like it needs even more time. We'll see...

The artist featured this week is Jason Freeman, who submitted to the SAR Q&A, very briefly, and is interviewed on the program as well. Freeman is another professor to be featured here, at the Some Assembly Required blog. I first heard about him while remodeling a basement in South Minneapolis. All Things Considered (NPR) was on the radio in the kitchen, and the owner of the house yelled down to me to come up and listen to an artist interview. She'd recently asked what I did with my spare time, and I'd told her all about Some Assembly Required. She was right to think I'd be interested in hearing that interview with Jason Freeman, and a couple of months later, I contacted him about doing my own interview, for Some Assembly Required.

The project we discuss in Episode 95, is something he calls Network Auralization for Gnutella (or N.A.G. for short). It's interactive software art, and its programmed to work with the user to create a musical sound collage. An individual types in a keyword or two, and the program looks for matches at Gnutella (an online file sharing network). After downloading matching MP3 files, the software then manipulates the audio files based on the structure of the Gnutella network itself.

I wasn't sure I understood that last part, so I went online to find more information... After reading an article about the project, at New Music Box (the Web Magazine from the American Music Center), I think I know enough to be able to explain it thusly: Audio files are prioritized by the length of time it takes them to download, so the selection of audio is first made by the program's user and then influenced by the program's design... So, files which download more quickly are heard more often, as they mix in and out, in conjunction with how many other sound files have registered, as a result of the user's selection criteria. I think...

Pretty complicated, huh? Perhaps not so difficult to try though. It sounded pretty user friendly, at least when explained to me by the man who designed it. The results are pretty noisy, but thanks to the concepts which drive them, they can be interesting to listen to. There are a couple of examples to be heard in this week's podcast of Some Assembly Required, along with an interview with Jason Freeman. Network Auralization for Gnutella was made possible with a grant from New Radio and Performing Arts, for its Turbulence website, where you can find more information about the project. And now... the very brief SAR Q&A with Jason Freeman...

***

*Name: Jason Freeman

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

*Location:
I'm now based in Atlanta, but am originally from Miami.

*What is your creative/artistic background:
I hold a doctorate in composition from Columbia University in New York and currently am a professor at Georgia Tech.

*Motivations:
I see my interactive "software art" as a way to reflect about the music we listen to and the ways we listen to it. By algorithmically generating collages from existing material, I also hope to reveal new connections and relationships between them.

*Web address:
http://www.jasonfreeman.net

***

Thanks to Jason Freeman, for participating in this week's SAR Q&A. He goes into far more detail in our interview, for Some Assembly Required, Episode 95 - coming up next - so be sure to check that out...

Let me know if you have any comments/suggestions about the site, the podcast, the blog, etc. We're growing quickly this year, and always working things out - so listener feedback is key! Please get in touch with me via my email address at the contact page, at the SAR website.

Thanks for listening!
Jon Nelson

www.some-assembly-required.net