January 31, 2009
Ah, the last week of our twentieth quarter, coming just a week after the anniversary of our tenth year of the show. A real feeling of closure. And next week it will be time to move even futher on. I hope you'll join me.
No Q&A this week. We've got some good ones with Thousand Void Crush, DJ T-Rock, Greater Than One, Alex H and DJ Earworm coming up though, so stay tuned...
Also, hey, we announced a Call For Artists last week. Some Assembly Required and mnartists.org are looking for fifty-second tracks composed of at least 50% post consumer audio. If you're a regular listener and/or contributor to this show, then you'll know exactly what that means, and I hope you'll submit something. Gotten some really good tracks already and really looking forward to hearing some more. Click HERE for more information.
Thanks for listening!
Jon Nelson
www.some-assembly-required.net
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Episode 137, Some Assembly Required
01 2 Many DJs – “Push it/No fun” 02 Mophono – “My Reflection Of Andre”
03 James Tenney – “Collage #1 (blue suede)”
04 team9 – “Screaming pro”
05 RX Music - “Boys & girls”
06 Doormouse - “One Man David Lee Roth Coverband”
07 The Tape-beatles – “Please Help Me”
08 Art of Noise – “Peter Gunn theme (the twang mix)”
09 DJ QBert – “Inner Space Dental Commander”
10 Paul Garcia - “American Justice”
11 John Oswald – “Dab”
12 Table Tones in Head Space – “Sunday”
13 Jason Forrest – “War Photographer”
Use this address, for your pod software:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/some-assembly-required/JSpD
Sunday, January 25, 2009
50/50: Call For Artists
Some Assembly Required And mnartists.org Present:
The Fifty/Fifty Compilation: CALL FOR ARTISTS
To celebrate Some Assembly Required's Tenth Anniversary, mnartists.org and SAR are teaming up to produce a compilation of fifty-second tracks, by as many as fifty artists...
To have your work considered for this online compilation, please submit your original works of sound collage, featuring at least 50% post consumer audio (sounds found in the media) by March 16, 2009.
Details below...
The Short Version:
Who: Everyone (outsiders, emerging and established artists from all genres are encouraged to submit little masterpieces).
What: Sound Collage tracks composed of at least FIFTY PERCENT recycled sounds, with a running time of exactly FIFTY SECONDS. See below for more details (“The Long Version”).
Where: The recycled sounds must be sourced at least 50% from the media environment (radio, tv, movies and other media). The compilation is being assembled in Minnesota. Submissions are welcome from anywhere in the world.
When: You’ve got FIFTY days to put together your 50-second tracks - so we’ll stop taking submissions at midnight on March 16, 2009. You may submit up to five tracks.
Why: Some Assembly Required is celebrating its tenth anniversary!
How: Send your submissions to one of the following addresses by 3/16/09:
Email: assembly (at) detritus.net
Mail: Some Assembly Required, 2751 Hennepin Ave. S. (#145), Minneapolis, MN 55408
Even More Details...
The Long Version:
Who: Everyone. Since we’re working with mnartists on this project, at first we were thinking to just ask artists from Minnesota, but then decided to extend the invitation to artists in all FIFTY states. Finally, we agreed that anyone in the world was welcome to participate.
What: We’re looking for FIFTY-second tracks composed of at least FIFTY percent recycled sounds. Further, those sounds need to be recycled from the media environment. Folks who listen to Some Assembly Required on a regular basis will recognize that these are the criteria we follow when selecting tracks to play on the show. All of the sample based music and audio art featured weekly on SAR is at least fifty percent recycled from the media environment. We also tend to favor tracks whose vocals are 100% sampled, so while some instrumentation and other sounds recorded or found in places other than the media environment are permitted, it’s extremely rare that original vocals, whether it’s singing, rapping or speaking, have been aired on the show. The focus is on what an artist can do creatively, with sounds he or she finds on the radio, the television and in the movies and other media…
Where: The compilation is being put together in Minnesota, but artists from around the world are invited to participate. The compilation will be made available online - so it will be available to practically everyone, “everywhere.”
When: The call for submissions is being made today (Sunday, January 25), and we’re giving you FIFTY days to put together as many as five, short (FIFTY-second) tracks and mail them to us (mailing address below) or submit them to us electronically (email address below). So, we need to see your submission postmarked by March 16, or it needs to arrive in our email inboxes by Midnight, March 16 in order to be considered.
Why: Some Assembly Required is celebrating its tenth anniversary, and we wanted to do something fun to commemorate the occasion. Also, I’ve been getting into really short tracks lately and wanted to encourage more submissions at the same time, so this seemed like an interesting project.
How: As mentioned above, please submit (up to five) FIFTY-second tracks, composed of at least FIFTY percent recycled sounds (found in the media), and mail them by March 16, to: Some Assembly Required, 2751 Hennepin Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55408, or email: Assembly (AT) detritus.net
NOTE: Please send the highest quality soundfile you have. These are short tracks, so even if you’re submitting them as email attachments, feel free to send the largest, fullest version of the original track…
We’ll start collecting right away and won’t stop until March 16, at which point we will select our FIFTY favorites for an online compilation at mnartists.org
Please send questions to assembly (at) detritus.net
Thanks!
Jon Nelson
www.some-assembly-required.net
The Fifty/Fifty Compilation: CALL FOR ARTISTS
To celebrate Some Assembly Required's Tenth Anniversary, mnartists.org and SAR are teaming up to produce a compilation of fifty-second tracks, by as many as fifty artists...
To have your work considered for this online compilation, please submit your original works of sound collage, featuring at least 50% post consumer audio (sounds found in the media) by March 16, 2009.
Details below...
The Short Version:
Who: Everyone (outsiders, emerging and established artists from all genres are encouraged to submit little masterpieces).
What: Sound Collage tracks composed of at least FIFTY PERCENT recycled sounds, with a running time of exactly FIFTY SECONDS. See below for more details (“The Long Version”).
Where: The recycled sounds must be sourced at least 50% from the media environment (radio, tv, movies and other media). The compilation is being assembled in Minnesota. Submissions are welcome from anywhere in the world.
When: You’ve got FIFTY days to put together your 50-second tracks - so we’ll stop taking submissions at midnight on March 16, 2009. You may submit up to five tracks.
Why: Some Assembly Required is celebrating its tenth anniversary!
How: Send your submissions to one of the following addresses by 3/16/09:
Email: assembly (at) detritus.net
Mail: Some Assembly Required, 2751 Hennepin Ave. S. (#145), Minneapolis, MN 55408
Even More Details...
The Long Version:
Who: Everyone. Since we’re working with mnartists on this project, at first we were thinking to just ask artists from Minnesota, but then decided to extend the invitation to artists in all FIFTY states. Finally, we agreed that anyone in the world was welcome to participate.
What: We’re looking for FIFTY-second tracks composed of at least FIFTY percent recycled sounds. Further, those sounds need to be recycled from the media environment. Folks who listen to Some Assembly Required on a regular basis will recognize that these are the criteria we follow when selecting tracks to play on the show. All of the sample based music and audio art featured weekly on SAR is at least fifty percent recycled from the media environment. We also tend to favor tracks whose vocals are 100% sampled, so while some instrumentation and other sounds recorded or found in places other than the media environment are permitted, it’s extremely rare that original vocals, whether it’s singing, rapping or speaking, have been aired on the show. The focus is on what an artist can do creatively, with sounds he or she finds on the radio, the television and in the movies and other media…
Where: The compilation is being put together in Minnesota, but artists from around the world are invited to participate. The compilation will be made available online - so it will be available to practically everyone, “everywhere.”
When: The call for submissions is being made today (Sunday, January 25), and we’re giving you FIFTY days to put together as many as five, short (FIFTY-second) tracks and mail them to us (mailing address below) or submit them to us electronically (email address below). So, we need to see your submission postmarked by March 16, or it needs to arrive in our email inboxes by Midnight, March 16 in order to be considered.
Why: Some Assembly Required is celebrating its tenth anniversary, and we wanted to do something fun to commemorate the occasion. Also, I’ve been getting into really short tracks lately and wanted to encourage more submissions at the same time, so this seemed like an interesting project.
How: As mentioned above, please submit (up to five) FIFTY-second tracks, composed of at least FIFTY percent recycled sounds (found in the media), and mail them by March 16, to: Some Assembly Required, 2751 Hennepin Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55408, or email: Assembly (AT) detritus.net
NOTE: Please send the highest quality soundfile you have. These are short tracks, so even if you’re submitting them as email attachments, feel free to send the largest, fullest version of the original track…
We’ll start collecting right away and won’t stop until March 16, at which point we will select our FIFTY favorites for an online compilation at mnartists.org
Please send questions to assembly (at) detritus.net
Thanks!
Jon Nelson
www.some-assembly-required.net
Ten Years of Sound Collage
This Tuesday marks the passage of a decade of working on this show, and I'd be lying if I said anything less than this: I'm feeling very proud... I know it hasn't become quite the phenomenon I've sometimes fantasized it might, but it has become much, much more than I ever imagined it would, when debuting the program on January 27, 1999. It's been totally worth it.Check out our special 10th Anniversary episode, uploaded just a couple days early, with big thanks to the Evolution Control Committee's Mark Gunderson for his part in planning this week's show. Which gets me thinking... Maybe I should take this opportunity to thank a few people. After all, it's not every weekend you commemorate a decade's worth of work.
Catherine Campion and Kate Iverson come immediately to mind. Both have been invaluable in promoting the show, both here in Minnesota and to the rest of the world. In fact, if it weren't for Catherine, we'd probably still be on just five stations, and feeling pretty good about that! With her help, the show has been heard on as many as sixty stations at one time, and we've enjoyed being broadcast on over two dozen individual stations, each week, for a solid five years.
Thanks to Steev Hise as well. In the early days, his support and encouragement were instrumental, especially with regard to establishing and maintaining a web presence. More recently, stAllio! made a big difference, by helping with the development of the current website. KUOM deserves a big thank you as well, for giving me the opportunity to prove the show on their internet stream, and then for being the first to broadcast Some Assembly Required.
I'd mention all the artists who have been interviewed, but you can just check out the list HERE. The interviews and Q&A's, to me, are the most important part of the show. Without them, this would just be a weekly playlist, and a big part of my goal when starting the show was to promote the artists whose work I felt was so important. I feel like that goal is well on its way to being met, and I hope to be able to continue to do this for at least a little while longer.
There are a lot more people who deserve a nod, but I'll try to keep this short and sweet. Check out this week's program (Episode 224) for more about the history of the show, and for just a little insight into what in the world it is I think I've been doing for the past ten years...
Thanks for listening,
Jon Nelson
www.some-assembly-required.net
Episode 224, Some Assembly Required
(Tenth Anniversary Episode)
01 The Evolution Control Committee - “No Time For Yes”02 Wayne Butane - “Backwash (segment)”
03 Escape Mechanism - “Culture”
04 Escape Mechanism - “What's Happening”
05 Realistic - “Post-Corporate Fantasy”
06 The Evolution Control Committee - “Rebel without a pause”
07 John Oswald - “Pretender”
08 Unknown - “Closer to da club (50 inch nails)”
Use this address, for your pod software:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/some-assembly-required/JSpD
Friday, January 16, 2009
The Real Tuesday Weld
The Real Tuesday Weld
The Real Tuesday Weld (aka The Clerkenwell Kid), is a British "Antique Beat" band, founded by London's Stephen Coates. He's responsible for at least a half dozen full length records with the band, including 2008's Kix, out on Six Degrees Records, and recently had a track featured in the film, "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist."
In 2007, The Real Tuesday Weld did a commissioned piece for the Rothko room at The Tate Modern, in London, and re-scored the surrealist film "Dreams That Money Can Buy" for the British Film Institute. They're known for their work on TV, in advertising, documentaries and with film makers such as animator Alex Budovsky, with whom they've won several awards. You can check out some of these animations, along with MP3s and Podcasts at their website.
Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with The Real Tuesday Weld...
*Name: The Real Tuesday Weld
*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: The Clerkenwell Kid
*Do you use a pseudonym? See above
*Members: Stephen Coates, Jacques Van Rhijn, Clive Painter, Don Brosnan and Jed Woodhouse. Up to ten depending on the situation.
*Founding Members: Stephen Coates
*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: Shellacficionados
*Another genre descriptor: Antique Beat
*Why you use this descriptor: We like to re-interpret old sound in a new way and filter new sound in an old way.
*Location: London
*Original Location: Lancashire
*What is your creative/artistic background: Art student. I studied painting and design at the Royal College of Art in London.
*History: Ten years. Late last year (2008), I wrote and presented an eight hour series on Propaganda and cold war music for Resonance - the London arts station. We will be playing various festivals this year as live band and DJ. I am about to start work on a new record but at the moment I am working on music for film which is what I intend to be doing more of in the next few years
*Born: Early seventeenth century, England
*Motivations: It's a combination of inspiration, desperation and perspiration.
*Philosophy: Trying to create a little world for people to peep into.
*How would you like to be remembered: There is a corner of some foreign field that is forever England.
*Web address:
www.antiquebeat.co.uk www.tuesdayweld.com www.theclerkenwellkid.blogspot.com
www.some-assembly-required.net
The Real Tuesday Weld (aka The Clerkenwell Kid), is a British "Antique Beat" band, founded by London's Stephen Coates. He's responsible for at least a half dozen full length records with the band, including 2008's Kix, out on Six Degrees Records, and recently had a track featured in the film, "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist."In 2007, The Real Tuesday Weld did a commissioned piece for the Rothko room at The Tate Modern, in London, and re-scored the surrealist film "Dreams That Money Can Buy" for the British Film Institute. They're known for their work on TV, in advertising, documentaries and with film makers such as animator Alex Budovsky, with whom they've won several awards. You can check out some of these animations, along with MP3s and Podcasts at their website.
Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with The Real Tuesday Weld...
*Name: The Real Tuesday Weld
*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: The Clerkenwell Kid
*Do you use a pseudonym? See above
*Members: Stephen Coates, Jacques Van Rhijn, Clive Painter, Don Brosnan and Jed Woodhouse. Up to ten depending on the situation.
*Founding Members: Stephen Coates
*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: Shellacficionados
*Another genre descriptor: Antique Beat
*Why you use this descriptor: We like to re-interpret old sound in a new way and filter new sound in an old way.
*Location: London
*Original Location: Lancashire
*What is your creative/artistic background: Art student. I studied painting and design at the Royal College of Art in London.
*History: Ten years. Late last year (2008), I wrote and presented an eight hour series on Propaganda and cold war music for Resonance - the London arts station. We will be playing various festivals this year as live band and DJ. I am about to start work on a new record but at the moment I am working on music for film which is what I intend to be doing more of in the next few years
*Born: Early seventeenth century, England
*Motivations: It's a combination of inspiration, desperation and perspiration.
*Philosophy: Trying to create a little world for people to peep into.
*How would you like to be remembered: There is a corner of some foreign field that is forever England.
*Web address:
www.antiquebeat.co.uk www.tuesdayweld.com www.theclerkenwellkid.blogspot.com
www.some-assembly-required.net
Episode 136, Some Assembly Required
01 Lenlow – “Chocolate Cake Revisited”02 Mag Wheels - “Wake Up”
03 Antediluvian Rocking Horse – “Rigorous Doughnut”
04 People Like Us – “Morning, Pedro”
05 The Evolution Control Committee – “Breakfast”
06 The Button – “Pour orange juice”
07 The Real Tuesday Weld (Clerkenwell Kid) – “Bathtime in Clerkenwell”
08 stAllio! – “Bathtime fun”
09 The Tape-beatles – “Good morning reprise”
10 David Shea/DJ Grazhoppa - “Morning Jacks”
11 Evolution Control Committee – “Toast love”
12 Negativland – “Wake Up America (Live)”
13 Escape Mechanism – “Wake up”
Use this address, for your pod software:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/some-assembly-required/JSpD
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Alyce Santoro
Alyce Santoro
Alyce Santoro is a multi-media conceptual and sound artist currently living in Texas. A graduate of the Rhode Island School Of Design, she has a background in marine biology and scientific illustration.
I recently received a CD housed in a case made out of recycled audio tape. The strands of magnetic tape were woven together to form an envelope to hold the album. Santoro's release, titled "Between Stations" (check it out HERE), was composed using a playback/performance device of the artist's own creation. The "Fabric Reader" is fashioned out of a recycled portable tape player, designed to play back sounds recorded onto lengths of magnetic tape which have been used to construct clothing out of the same "sonic fabric" used to make the case the CD arrived in.
One of the more imaginative attempts at performing sound collage, to say the least! Check out a couple of short videos titled, "How To Build A Sonic Fabric Reader" and "Sonic Fabric," for more information, HERE.
She has other projects and videos at her website, as well. Check it out HERE. Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with Alyce Santoro...
*Name: Alyce Santoro
*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: This is a little bit complicated! Sonic Fabric is the name of the project. My sonic partner, thee fabulous musician Julian Mock, and I work together on the sound collages. We consider ourselves a multi-media "collective"... The collective is called The Center For The Improbably & (Im)permacultural Research. So for now, we're calling our collaborative work Improbably Projects!
*Do you use a pseudonym? I sometimes go by Alyce B. Obvious.
*Members:
Alyce Santoro: http://www.alycesantoro.com
Julian Mock: http://www.julianmock.com
*Founding Members: Alyce Santoro. Brief history... I had an electric pick-up installed in my flute while in high school in the mid-80's... inspired by Laurie Anderson's tape-bow violin... so that I could play in some friend’s punk band. I have been part of numerous experimental, improv ensembles over the years, and have worked with samplers and effects in my solo work... but this stuff composed entirely of collections of samples really began when I got the idea to weave with cassette tape... at first it was much less about listenability, and more about the notion of stored memory, literally weaving snippets of the human experience into a "sonic fabric"... I was so into cramming as much as possible onto the tape... I wasn't thinking at all about playback.
*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: I suppose Tape Manipulations describes Sonic Fabric pretty aptly in the literal sense! Though we certainly do digital deconstruction and sample from vinyl, as well as tape. Ultimately, it all gets recorded back onto tape, which itself is then turned into something else entirely. Let me take a minute to distinguish between the three "albums" created (so far...) especially for the purposes of SONIC Fabric... The first one was called The Sounds Of (1/2)Life and was composed entirely of samples I collected from my own personal greatest sonic inspirations... everything from Laurie Anderson, The Beatles “Revolution #9,” Jack Kerouac reading Haiku, recordings of my high school punk band, ocean surf, Tibetan monks chanting, etc. Most of the samples were collected from commercial recordings, and were mixed together on my old-timey analog 4-track... I never expected anyone to actually hear the recording... It was particularly personal, and pretty much completely random in the way in which it was compiled. The second one was custom made for Jon Fishman, Phish percussionist. Jon is a friend, and we were at a party in Vermont, talking around the bonfire about my plan to make fabric from tape, and he asked if I'd be willing to do something with his personal collection of 300 tapes. I said sure, and took his box of tapes - I was astounded at what I found in there - bootlegs of Jimi Hendrix jam sessions, Prince recorded live in a club in London, in front of a small audience, rare Sun Ra stuff - It was too much - I couldn't bear to actually pull the tape out of the cases... So, like a scientist, I took a sample from each and every tape in the box, and layered them all together. Again, this was not done with any sort of musicality - It was all about getting all of his inspirations crammed onto tape so I could weave it into a kind of ritual garment. (Video of Jon's live performance with the "musical suit" available on my youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbNR7bT0yyE). Collage collection #3 is Between Stations. This is the first time I made a collage keeping in mind that someone may actually want to listen to it. The samples are all original, collected by hand, or gathered from copyright-free sources, such as freesound.org (to which I am very grateful). Between Stations is intended to be a sonic interpretation of a day in the life of a post-9/11 New Yorker... One travels between neighborhoods on the subway, appreciating the flavors of different neighborhoods, cultures, and rhythms of the city - all the while daydreaming of other, more bucolic settings. Woven into these collages is a sense of calm that comes from a feeling of connectedness to the larger community as a whole.
*Another genre descriptor: I refer to much of my work, including this sonic stuff, as Philosophoprops. All of it is really just props to start a discussion about philosophy, quantum physics, sonic memory, etc....
*Why you use this descriptor: Years ago, I titled a grant proposal for the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, Props For The Installation And Diatribe Of Entity 3B. It was then that I realized that my work really consisted of props for use in elucidating the intangible. (I got the grant : ) ).
*Location: I relocated from Brooklyn to the mountains near Marfa, TX two and a half years ago. It's crazy out here... lots of ex-pat New Yorkers and folks from LA living the wild-west post-urban artist-community life. We're near Big Bend Nat'l Park and the Mexico border. Julian and I are trying to get completely off the grid... my studio (which is in a converted 1970's school bus) runs off solar. We do rainwater harvesting, food growing using permaculture techniques, etc. I moved out here, honestly, because of the ambient soundscape. In Bklyn, I was living right next to the Bklyn/Queens expressway, and there came a point when I could no longer hear myself think. Out here, I can HEAR everything... hard to explain, but the subtleness of the soundscape allows for some pretty intricate sonic invention.
*Original Location: I'm originally from the woods of northern New Jersey. Close enough to Manhattan so that my punk band could play at CBGB's (on Tues nites at 6 pm, usually : )), and far enough away so that I grew up in a log cabin.
*What is your creative/artistic background: I've played flute since I was 10. As a kid, I loved both art and science, and felt extremely compelled to challenge what I was learning in school about the two halves of the brain - a creative half and an analytical half, usually with one side being dominant - I wanted both sides to be equal, and had to study math and chemistry extra hard to make up for what I considered to be a deficit. At some point, I decided I wanted to make art about science, so I got a degree in marine biology, then went to grad school at Rhode Island School of Design for scientific illustration. While living in the extremely vital mid-90's loft scene in Providence (The Forcefield/Fort Thunder guys lived right across the street...), I started using silkscreen, sculpture, sound, film... almost everything but the traditional pen and ink... to make art about science. As time went on, my work got increasingly conceptual...
*History: I've been making multi-media work since the mid-90's. I've been working collaboratively with Julian Mock on sound and video projects for the past 2 years.
*Born:
Me: Englewood, NJ 1968
Julian: Corpus Christie, TX 1970
*Motivations: I am motivated by a deep sense of the interconnectedness of all things... art, science, religion... all different ways of making sense of the big mysteries of existence. Not only is it all interconnected, we're all contributing, unwittingly or not, to the way it's all unfolding, via our thoughts, feelings, and actions. I think if more people could get a sense of not only the responsibility that this implies, but the empowerment to really be able to effect change, I think the world would be a happier and more peaceful place. Pretty much all of my work alludes to this notion in some way.
*Philosophy: I draw from tenets in Buddhism and quantum physics that suggest that, at the most basic level, everything is made up of little more than sonic vibration. My philosophy... or maybe it's more of a hypothesis... is that by bringing together disparate, unlikely, improbably-related sound and image, a new whole is generated that sheds new light on the original parts - and that, somehow, by doing this, the audience (and myself as well) will be inspired to see things in a way that they may not have considered before.
*How would you like to be remembered: As a paradoxical, interdimensional, highly improbable, cosmic phenomenon.
*Web address:
http://www.alycesantoro.com
http://www.sonicfabric.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/alyceobvious
Sonic fabric stuff for sale: http://improbable.supermarkethq.com
Between stations CD: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/alycesantoro http://www.myspace.com/soundsimprobable
www.some-assembly-required.net
Alyce Santoro is a multi-media conceptual and sound artist currently living in Texas. A graduate of the Rhode Island School Of Design, she has a background in marine biology and scientific illustration.I recently received a CD housed in a case made out of recycled audio tape. The strands of magnetic tape were woven together to form an envelope to hold the album. Santoro's release, titled "Between Stations" (check it out HERE), was composed using a playback/performance device of the artist's own creation. The "Fabric Reader" is fashioned out of a recycled portable tape player, designed to play back sounds recorded onto lengths of magnetic tape which have been used to construct clothing out of the same "sonic fabric" used to make the case the CD arrived in.
One of the more imaginative attempts at performing sound collage, to say the least! Check out a couple of short videos titled, "How To Build A Sonic Fabric Reader" and "Sonic Fabric," for more information, HERE.
She has other projects and videos at her website, as well. Check it out HERE. Without further ado, here's the SAR Q&A with Alyce Santoro...
*Name: Alyce Santoro
*Are there any additional names used to describe this project: This is a little bit complicated! Sonic Fabric is the name of the project. My sonic partner, thee fabulous musician Julian Mock, and I work together on the sound collages. We consider ourselves a multi-media "collective"... The collective is called The Center For The Improbably & (Im)permacultural Research. So for now, we're calling our collaborative work Improbably Projects!
*Do you use a pseudonym? I sometimes go by Alyce B. Obvious.
*Members:
Alyce Santoro: http://www.alycesantoro.com
Julian Mock: http://www.julianmock.com
*Founding Members: Alyce Santoro. Brief history... I had an electric pick-up installed in my flute while in high school in the mid-80's... inspired by Laurie Anderson's tape-bow violin... so that I could play in some friend’s punk band. I have been part of numerous experimental, improv ensembles over the years, and have worked with samplers and effects in my solo work... but this stuff composed entirely of collections of samples really began when I got the idea to weave with cassette tape... at first it was much less about listenability, and more about the notion of stored memory, literally weaving snippets of the human experience into a "sonic fabric"... I was so into cramming as much as possible onto the tape... I wasn't thinking at all about playback.
*Tape manipulations, digital deconstructions or turntable creations: I suppose Tape Manipulations describes Sonic Fabric pretty aptly in the literal sense! Though we certainly do digital deconstruction and sample from vinyl, as well as tape. Ultimately, it all gets recorded back onto tape, which itself is then turned into something else entirely. Let me take a minute to distinguish between the three "albums" created (so far...) especially for the purposes of SONIC Fabric... The first one was called The Sounds Of (1/2)Life and was composed entirely of samples I collected from my own personal greatest sonic inspirations... everything from Laurie Anderson, The Beatles “Revolution #9,” Jack Kerouac reading Haiku, recordings of my high school punk band, ocean surf, Tibetan monks chanting, etc. Most of the samples were collected from commercial recordings, and were mixed together on my old-timey analog 4-track... I never expected anyone to actually hear the recording... It was particularly personal, and pretty much completely random in the way in which it was compiled. The second one was custom made for Jon Fishman, Phish percussionist. Jon is a friend, and we were at a party in Vermont, talking around the bonfire about my plan to make fabric from tape, and he asked if I'd be willing to do something with his personal collection of 300 tapes. I said sure, and took his box of tapes - I was astounded at what I found in there - bootlegs of Jimi Hendrix jam sessions, Prince recorded live in a club in London, in front of a small audience, rare Sun Ra stuff - It was too much - I couldn't bear to actually pull the tape out of the cases... So, like a scientist, I took a sample from each and every tape in the box, and layered them all together. Again, this was not done with any sort of musicality - It was all about getting all of his inspirations crammed onto tape so I could weave it into a kind of ritual garment. (Video of Jon's live performance with the "musical suit" available on my youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbNR7bT0yyE). Collage collection #3 is Between Stations. This is the first time I made a collage keeping in mind that someone may actually want to listen to it. The samples are all original, collected by hand, or gathered from copyright-free sources, such as freesound.org (to which I am very grateful). Between Stations is intended to be a sonic interpretation of a day in the life of a post-9/11 New Yorker... One travels between neighborhoods on the subway, appreciating the flavors of different neighborhoods, cultures, and rhythms of the city - all the while daydreaming of other, more bucolic settings. Woven into these collages is a sense of calm that comes from a feeling of connectedness to the larger community as a whole.
*Another genre descriptor: I refer to much of my work, including this sonic stuff, as Philosophoprops. All of it is really just props to start a discussion about philosophy, quantum physics, sonic memory, etc....
*Why you use this descriptor: Years ago, I titled a grant proposal for the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, Props For The Installation And Diatribe Of Entity 3B. It was then that I realized that my work really consisted of props for use in elucidating the intangible. (I got the grant : ) ).
*Location: I relocated from Brooklyn to the mountains near Marfa, TX two and a half years ago. It's crazy out here... lots of ex-pat New Yorkers and folks from LA living the wild-west post-urban artist-community life. We're near Big Bend Nat'l Park and the Mexico border. Julian and I are trying to get completely off the grid... my studio (which is in a converted 1970's school bus) runs off solar. We do rainwater harvesting, food growing using permaculture techniques, etc. I moved out here, honestly, because of the ambient soundscape. In Bklyn, I was living right next to the Bklyn/Queens expressway, and there came a point when I could no longer hear myself think. Out here, I can HEAR everything... hard to explain, but the subtleness of the soundscape allows for some pretty intricate sonic invention.
*Original Location: I'm originally from the woods of northern New Jersey. Close enough to Manhattan so that my punk band could play at CBGB's (on Tues nites at 6 pm, usually : )), and far enough away so that I grew up in a log cabin.
*What is your creative/artistic background: I've played flute since I was 10. As a kid, I loved both art and science, and felt extremely compelled to challenge what I was learning in school about the two halves of the brain - a creative half and an analytical half, usually with one side being dominant - I wanted both sides to be equal, and had to study math and chemistry extra hard to make up for what I considered to be a deficit. At some point, I decided I wanted to make art about science, so I got a degree in marine biology, then went to grad school at Rhode Island School of Design for scientific illustration. While living in the extremely vital mid-90's loft scene in Providence (The Forcefield/Fort Thunder guys lived right across the street...), I started using silkscreen, sculpture, sound, film... almost everything but the traditional pen and ink... to make art about science. As time went on, my work got increasingly conceptual...
*History: I've been making multi-media work since the mid-90's. I've been working collaboratively with Julian Mock on sound and video projects for the past 2 years.
*Born:
Me: Englewood, NJ 1968
Julian: Corpus Christie, TX 1970
*Motivations: I am motivated by a deep sense of the interconnectedness of all things... art, science, religion... all different ways of making sense of the big mysteries of existence. Not only is it all interconnected, we're all contributing, unwittingly or not, to the way it's all unfolding, via our thoughts, feelings, and actions. I think if more people could get a sense of not only the responsibility that this implies, but the empowerment to really be able to effect change, I think the world would be a happier and more peaceful place. Pretty much all of my work alludes to this notion in some way.
*Philosophy: I draw from tenets in Buddhism and quantum physics that suggest that, at the most basic level, everything is made up of little more than sonic vibration. My philosophy... or maybe it's more of a hypothesis... is that by bringing together disparate, unlikely, improbably-related sound and image, a new whole is generated that sheds new light on the original parts - and that, somehow, by doing this, the audience (and myself as well) will be inspired to see things in a way that they may not have considered before.
*How would you like to be remembered: As a paradoxical, interdimensional, highly improbable, cosmic phenomenon.
*Web address:
http://www.alycesantoro.com
http://www.sonicfabric.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/alyceobvious
Sonic fabric stuff for sale: http://improbable.supermarkethq.com
Between stations CD: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/alycesantoro http://www.myspace.com/soundsimprobable
www.some-assembly-required.net
Episode 223, Some Assembly Required
01 DJ Schmolli - “Mash Me Amadeus”02 The Evolution Control Committee - “Music for Selling”
03 notv - “Harder Than It Used To Be”
04 Steinski - “The Big Man Laughs”
05 B'O'K - “Going out”
06 DJ Abilities - “Two Men And A Lady”
07 The Button - “What's prayer”
08 Harbor - “Hopeless Teenage Dreams”
09 Escape Mechanism - “Most Wonderful”
10 Alyce Santoro - “Commute”
11 The Bran Flakes - “Mutual admiration and love”
12 RIAA - “Come As The Eighties”
13 DJ Haste - “Surgical Spirits (Operation on the Turntables)”
14 Forty One - “Love Everyone”
15 Overdub - “Come As The Starlight”
NOTE: The Playlist above is correct. (The Playlist included under the "Lyrics" heading on the MP3 of this week's show incorrectly switches track 7 and 9).
Use this address, for your pod software:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/some-assembly-required/JSpD
Saturday, January 03, 2009
SAR Q&A: 2006-2008
The following 100+ SAR Q&A's represent the artist features uploaded from 2006-2008, in alphabetical order...
Thanks for listening,
Jon Nelson
A plus D
Aggro1
Jim Allenspach
The Angel
Animals Within Animals
Antediluvian Rocking Horse
B’O’K
Barbed
DJ BC
Big City Orchestra
Beatrix*JAR
The Beige Channel
Ros Bobos
The Bran Flakes
Wayne Butane
Buttfinger
The Button
DJ Cal
Greg Carr
Cassetteboy
Cast of Thousands
The Coherent Encoherence
Coldcut
Copycat
Corporal Blossom
Daniel Steven Crafts
Brian Joseph Davis
Thomas Dimuzio
Steve Dirkx
Divide and Kreate
The Droplift Project
Dsico
DJ Earlybird
Escape Mechanism
The Evolution Control Committee
DJ EZG
Omer Fast
Steve Fisk
John Fleetham
DJ Food
Jason Forrest (Donna Summer)
Fortyone
DJ Foundation
Joe Frawley
The Freelance Hellraiser
Jason Freeman
Freddy Fresh
Futuro
Gel-Sol
Girl Talk
Glockenspiel
Go Home Productions
Dickie Goodman
Grateful For The Dead
Steev Hise
I Cut People
IDC
Idiom Creak
Jabberwocky
Junkshop Coyote
Douglas Kahn
Hugo Keesing
Kid Koala
Lecture on Nothing
Lenlow
Listen With Sarah
DJ Lobsterdust
Tim Maloney (Naked Rabbit)
Christian Marclay
DJ Marvel
The Piss
Mr. Meridies
Matt Mikas
National Cynical Network
Negativland
DJ Nikoless
Wes Nisker
notv
Nubile G and the Spurious Whiz
Owen O'toole
Oh Astro
Orchid Spangiafora
Bob Ostertag
Osymyso
Party Ben
Phatbastard
Ergo Phizmiz
Public Works
DJ Qbert
DJ Quest
Rachmiel
Realistic
RIAA
DJ Riko
Tom Roe
RX Music
Kelly Patrick Ryan
Savage Ohms
Sawako
Janek Schaefer
John Schnall
Jeffrey Sconce
Secret Mommy
Silica Gel
Social Security
Soundhog
Natasha Spencer
Splatt
The Square Root Of Evil
Stark Effect
Steinski
Carl Stone
Stunt Rock
Rob Swift
The Tape-beatles
team9
James Tenney
Jan Turkenburg
Twink
V/Vm
Value Village People
Myeck Waters
Wax Audio
Wax Tailor
David Weir
The Who Boys
Wobbly
Wolfram
DJ Zebra
Want more?
You can find a list of all the (30+) phone interviews we've done with SAR artists over the years (most of which are available to listen to online), at the SAR Interviews page.
Check it out HERE.
www.some-assembly-required.net
Thanks for listening,
Jon Nelson
A plus D
Aggro1
Jim Allenspach
The Angel
Animals Within Animals
Antediluvian Rocking Horse
B’O’K
Barbed
DJ BC
Big City Orchestra
Beatrix*JAR
The Beige Channel
Ros Bobos
The Bran Flakes
Wayne Butane
Buttfinger
The Button
DJ Cal
Greg Carr
Cassetteboy
Cast of Thousands
The Coherent Encoherence
Coldcut
Copycat
Corporal Blossom
Daniel Steven Crafts
Brian Joseph Davis
Thomas Dimuzio
Steve Dirkx
Divide and Kreate
The Droplift Project
Dsico
DJ Earlybird
Escape Mechanism
The Evolution Control Committee
DJ EZG
Omer Fast
Steve Fisk
John Fleetham
DJ Food
Jason Forrest (Donna Summer)
Fortyone
DJ Foundation
Joe Frawley
The Freelance Hellraiser
Jason Freeman
Freddy Fresh
Futuro
Gel-Sol
Girl Talk
Glockenspiel
Go Home Productions
Dickie Goodman
Grateful For The Dead
Steev Hise
I Cut People
IDC
Idiom Creak
Jabberwocky
Junkshop Coyote
Douglas Kahn
Hugo Keesing
Kid Koala
Lecture on Nothing
Lenlow
Listen With Sarah
DJ Lobsterdust
Tim Maloney (Naked Rabbit)
Christian Marclay
DJ Marvel
The Piss
Mr. Meridies
Matt Mikas
National Cynical Network
Negativland
DJ Nikoless
Wes Nisker
notv
Nubile G and the Spurious Whiz
Owen O'toole
Oh Astro
Orchid Spangiafora
Bob Ostertag
Osymyso
Party Ben
Phatbastard
Ergo Phizmiz
Public Works
DJ Qbert
DJ Quest
Rachmiel
Realistic
RIAA
DJ Riko
Tom Roe
RX Music
Kelly Patrick Ryan
Savage Ohms
Sawako
Janek Schaefer
John Schnall
Jeffrey Sconce
Secret Mommy
Silica Gel
Social Security
Soundhog
Natasha Spencer
Splatt
The Square Root Of Evil
Stark Effect
Steinski
Carl Stone
Stunt Rock
Rob Swift
The Tape-beatles
team9
James Tenney
Jan Turkenburg
Twink
V/Vm
Value Village People
Myeck Waters
Wax Audio
Wax Tailor
David Weir
The Who Boys
Wobbly
Wolfram
DJ Zebra
Want more?
You can find a list of all the (30+) phone interviews we've done with SAR artists over the years (most of which are available to listen to online), at the SAR Interviews page.
Check it out HERE.
www.some-assembly-required.net
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