Experimental film, experimental film soundtracks, experimental handmade instruments, experimental typewriter performances
- "Useless Machines", Francis Harris
Ambient-ish electronica with some lovely sound design. Waves of rolling pads like sunlight crawling through the bedroom window in the morning. This whole album has nice vibes actually.
- "Calculated Movements", Larry Cuba
This is a really cool proto-CG short film made in 1985. The artist is the same guy who did the wireframe-3D Death Star "hologram" in the first Star Wars film; this piece he made entirely on a specific obscure 80s microcomputer which the University of Illinois designed and convinced Bally/Midway (the pinball manufacturer) to sell in small quantities, and the piece took him three years.
This is like CGI by someone who'd never heard of CGI, or a music video by someone who'd never heard of music videos. (In a contemporary interview he tries to describe his process, and you realize he's basically inventing computational art in realtime from first principles.) The music holds up too, cool abstract vibraphone. If you'd told me this was made in 2010 by Com Truise I'd have believed you and wondered about how they did the film effect.
- "Rumble of Ancient Times (RoAT) - Jam 6", Jon Nathan
This uses some very noisy hardware (including a screamy-noise synth from SOMA which is, effectively, a really cool toy) to build something really smooth and inviting. Fluttering hums over a thumpy laid-back beat. It gives me the quietly determined feeling 90s cyber/hacker movies were always trying to reach for, empty streets late at night where people move intently through shadows. They stop for a moment and gaze up at the cloudy sky, but not for any particular reason
Prepared typewriter! This piece revolves around a mechanical typewriter that's been wired for sound, processed through a modular rack, then plucked, bowed and, uh, typed into. 20 minutes with long stretches of backyard ambiance so bring the part of your brain that likes ambient music, but if you're prepared for that it's glorious.
This happened in my city but I missed it! YouTube recommended me this video about three days after the performance recorded. I then mentioned to my wife that apparently I missed an ambient electronic performance performed on a typewriter, and my wife was like oh right, Lex? And I was like what? Apparently this musician posts on Cohost as @lexfeathers and was posting a lot here about the typewriter setup in the leadup and I missed it completely. Apparently I am super out of it!
- "2024-04-16 AV", Catface McVideo
This person makes handmade video synthesizers that create abstract analog video for CRT TVs. They have dozens of videos of short demos of their video synths accompanied by short analog ambient tracks. This piece in particular has a captivating, fuzzy vibe. Like if Boards of Canada had been making soundtracks for horror movies instead of childrens' educational films.
⬇️ Click below for Forbidden Planet (1956) / handmade instruments / "hidden track" ⬇️
- "The Monster Pursues", Bebe & Louis Barron
The Barrons were a revolutionary force in early electronic music, years ahead of everyone else and laying down the road everyone else would follow. And oh happy coincidence, in addition to simply being first, they happen to be really good! (See also this piece Bebe Barron recorded by herself in the year 2000.) This is from their masterpiece, the score to "Forbidden Planet" (1956). I think this is a longer version of a track the movie excerpts. It is "Lots".
- "robotic xylophone", Tout est cassé
Behold, a Contraption! This person has a YouTube channel full of art installations and homemade musical instruments. This is a fun, fascinatingly simple project where they attached a ziptie to a cheap motor, mounted it in the middle of some wooden pegs, and then drove the motor from a cheap Korg drum machine. They spend two minutes exploring all the different emergent Things you can do with this little setup.
COHOST BONUS TRACK?
- "grtrax1", Lime68k
This is from "hsptltrx", a 3-track release that (as the musician explained on Mastodon) was improvised in generative-music environment Max/MSP "while being bored at the hospital".
This track is a melange of alien-sounding chimes and mysterious thumpy noises. Gorgeous timbres, bells ring but you're in some other dimension where air and sound transmission work wrong