Welcome to the April 08 Issue of Furthernoise.org (Roger Mills, Editor). Along with a host of new reviews, we bring you news of upcoming events and performances as well as an audio player stacked with all the best tracks of the issue.

David Tagg - Waist Deep Seas of Milk (review) New York musician, David Tagg, has seen The Future of Modern Guitar. And this sonic seer’s astral projections are sumptuously spread across the ambient expanses of Waist Deep Seas of Milk, though all trace of twang, pluck and strum is dissolved in FX haze and spun out in endless echo returns. Review by Alan Lockett. Continue reading

Join us, and nations all over the world for International Noise Awareness Day - Hear for the Future :: April 16, 2008 :: Twisted Village 12b Eliot St., Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Beginning at 2:00 pm there will be in-store hearing tests administered on an audiometer :: 2:15 – 2:16 (EDT) International Minute of Silence :: 8:00 pm Concert – Brendan Murray, Asher, Jed Speare.

The concert will feature an investigation into the earliest known recording, from 1860, predating Edison’s by 28 years. A recent article in the NY Times on Edourard-Leon Scott de Martinville’s phonautogram included the sound file of this recently played-back recording. Continue reading

Transmitting live from the Ocean below the Antarctic Ice: “Providing an acoustic live stream of the Antarctic underwater soundscape is a formidable challange. After all, more than 15000 km lie between Antarctica and our institute in Germany. Underwater sound is recorded by means of two hydrophones by PALAOA (Perennial Acoustic Observatory in the Antarctic Ocean), an autonomous, wind and solar powered observatory located on the Ekström ice shelf (Boebel et al., 2006).

The data stream is transmitted via wireless LAN from PALAOA to the German Neumayer Base. From there, a permanent satellite link transmits the data to the AWI in Germany. Continue reading

Ossatura with Ensemble Noamnesia :: March 20, 2008; 8:00-9:30 pm :: Slought Foundation, 4017 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA.

Slought Foundation and Soundfield NFP are pleased to announce an evening of new and experimental music featuring Rome-based ensemble Ossatura and Philadelphia-based Ensemble Noamnesia. Ossatura features Elio Martusciello (electronics), Fabrizio Spera (percussion and electronics), and Luca Venitucci (accordion and electronics). They will realize graphic scores by Anthony Braxton, Franco Evangelisti, and others, in collaboration with Ensemble Noamnesia. Continue reading

Harmony in the Age of Noise :: April 23 - August 10, 2008 :: Opening: April 23; 4:00-5:30 pm :: Tisch Library Rooftop, Tufts University, Medford, MA.

Close your eyes and listen. It is the Age of Noise: hums, buzzes, whines, traffic, ventilation systems, disc drives, cell phones, sirens, aircraft, muzak, televisions, radios, car alarms, leaf blowers, jack hammers, compressors — biproducts of an overheated visual culture bombard us endlessly. It’s no surprise that many people withdraw from our public hearing space and retreat into iPods or buildings with windows that don’t open. Harmony in the Age of Noise intends to empower the sense of hearing and deconstruct this sea of noise. In transforming this barrage of sounds into information about the way we live, the piece attempts to restore harmony and balance to the senses. Continue reading

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla: Never Mind That Noise You Heard :: February 8 - May 4, 2008 :: Stedelijk Museum CS, Oosterdokskade 5, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The exhibition Never Mind That Noise You Heard provides an opportunity to see (and hear!) recent videos and installations by the collaborative artist team of Jennifer Allora (b.1974, USA) and Guillermo Calzadilla (b.1971, Cuba). In the exhibition, the Stedelijk Museum CS is presenting two large installations: Wake Up and Sediments, Sentiments (Figures of Speech), alongside four video works. The production and usage of sound is central to all of these works, which were created between 2004 and 2007. Continue reading

Announcing DIY sound-workshop: Constructing live electronics with Jo FRGMNT Grys (de) :: March 25 - 28, 2008 :: Kunstarkaden, Sparkassenstr.3, Munich :: Registration Deadline: March 15, 2008.

The workshop is focused on the construction of sustainable, customized and networked instruments. Participants are invited to build up to three different musical devices: 1) Powerful analog Special Noise Unit (SNU), a kind of chaos - musical - noise - generator - touch - oscillator-instrument. (It’s even produces FM radio); 2) Simple step-sequencer SEQ8 to give electricity certain patterns; and 3) Mini-FM-transmitter to conquer your proximity. Continue reading

I posted about some work of Rodrigo Derteano’s last week (here) but this third work I omitted as it didn’t quite seem suitable to include with the other two works.

Recomputing Space is a sound installation which employs field recordings as a psychogeographic study of urban sound. “Following the commands and rhythm imposed by an algorithm, two persons walk around in chosen locations in the city, recording a mix of noise, language, music and the sound of their own steps. The chosen locations are public places, such as public squares, parks, tram stations etc. Continue reading

You can read a review of Paul Hegarty’s Noise/Music A History by Greg Smith on Serial Consign. Noise/Music, as you may remember from our announcement in October 2007, looks at the phenomenon of noise in music, from experimental music of the early 20th century to the Japanese noise music and glitch electronica of today. It situates different musics in their cultural and historical context, and analyzes them in terms of cultural aesthetics. It’s a fascinating book.

And now we have a review, which I hope will encourage you to pick up a copy. As Smith writes:

Noise/Music is most easily appreciated as a “disturbingly succinct” history of 20th century music and perhaps the most appropriate text to compare the work to is Michael Nyman’s “Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond”. Continue reading

“As Kahn rightly notes, there is no noise without the thought of noise, and ideas about sound can therefore “make an audible event called noise louder than it might already be” [2] - noises come from specific places and specific conceptualisations. At some level, the use of noise is a bid (however unwitting) to master it (at least in Western modernism), and reduce its quality as noise: “avant-garde noise, in other words, both marshals and mutes the noise of the other: power is attacked at the expense of the less powerful, and society itself is both attacked and reinforced” [3].”

Full With Noise: Theory and Japanese Noise Music; Noise Music; The Hallucinatory life of tape [posted on Mediateletipos]