Blowout

This issue of BLOWOUT was edited by Thomas McDonell and includes the following contributions:

 

DJ Filetype SWF, was a persona/performance of Joel Holmberg's circa 2010-2011. He appears again here with a special 15 minute set, DJing contemporary websites with autoplay. "You're in the mix, with DJ Filetype SWF."

 

Mungo Thompon, “...this is a 2-minute sample of a new piano piece I’m working on, basically a computer shuffles a 52-card deck of cards and plays the corresponding notes on the 52 white keys of a player piano. (A human couldn’t play it, I don’t think.)

 

So the first tones you hear are just the piano running through the deck, lowest card paired with lowest key (2 of hearts = low A), highest card paired with highest note (ace of spades = high C), then it starts to shuffle the deck, and it gets 

increasingly randomized. There’s a pause between each shuffle. It will go forever and repeat a shuffle in about a trillion years. 

​

Can u remind me because I can’t remember, what is an audio magazine?”

 

Mae Whitman, “This is a story from archy and mehitabel by Don marquis...it's not perfect but I wanted to get it to you.”

 

Malcolm Oliver Perkins, “Floating Bridge,” wurlitzer, guitars, and vocals by Malcolm Oliver Perkins, synths by Michael Rosen, drums and percussion by Ross Chait, production by Michael Rosen, mixing by Daniel Schlett, and mastering by Joe Lambert.

 

"Rich Tan Man" was recorded by Elizabeth Orr in Newburgh, NY, and features Julie Grosche. 

 

"17 - 23," by Eric Laska, was recorded live June 30, 2017 at San Serriffe, Amsterdam. Software oscillator presets 17 - 23. Audio mastered by Alan Jones. Ricky Laska is the founder and editor of Lateral Edition, a bi-yearly installment of audio material that "aspires to enrich the dialogues among contemporary practices in sound - improvisation, digital music, 'sound art,' etc. - and other areas of current media and visual arts." The Lateral Edition is an an inspiration to Blowout. 

 

OOFJ is Katherine Mills Rymer and Jens Bjørnkjær who here explain and demonstrate part of the process by which they make electronic and orchestral music. 

 

Nick McDonell was researching civilian casualties in West Mosul in June 2017 when he made this recording on Pepsi Street - so named by local Muslawis for its proximity to a soda bottling factory. The conversation that can be heard is between his interpreter, a member of Mosul Civil Defense, and a civilian on the way to retrieve his uncle's body from the rubble of an airstrike. The high-pitched cracking sounds are incoming fire from an ISIS sniper, the lower pitched are outgoing fire from the Iraqi Army's 9th Division; the deep crashing which can be heard at 1:17 is a nearby airstrike.

 

The Inter/Sexual Twilight in 3 Romantic Composers' "Nocturnes," by Genaro Feliciano Pereira: 

 

"As Classical musician and pianist of Zimbabwean and Portuguese origin I consider the construction of a concert program as a creative adventure.

 

I am inspired to select pieces from eclectic and diverse fonts: put together so that - the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The story connecting the pieces is for example built on historical, aesthetic, esoteric, or psychedelic links.

 

It is this rich interconnectivity between seemingly disparate texts that inspires me.

 

Is a female spirit hiding inside the works of male composers? The nocturnes of Chopin flaunt his feminine side: always with the right hand singing the range of female opera singers. The same is true of composer John Field but with the very same means we are left with a totally different impression of this Irish composer's relationship to the feminine.

 

The inter-sexuality is fascinating as each composer explores his relationship to women and thus to himself through his use of the piano vocal range and written textures. Field, a notorious alcoholic, chose to live in Saint Petersburg Russia where he invented the nocturne as a form. The essential style is that of a single melodic singing line over a simple accompaniment to which Chopin was often to add a contrasting faster middle section again showing his dramatic or exhibitionistic side (often in conflict with his introverted side).

 

Antonio Fragoso, a talented Portuguese composer seemed to have fragility built into his name and the young man perished aged 21 from influenza. His sumptuous night piece is full of the passion and the androgyny of youth. 

 

The liminal colourations of the "Nocturnes" are said in fact to be pieces best played as the light of day is dying. IN this twilit moment what truths can be singularly revealed, what shadowy figures may turn out to be other than they appear and indeed who in the near-dark is playing such a melancholic melody...?

 

Composers: John Field (1782-1837) / Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) / Antonio Fragoso (1897-1918)

 

Works: "Nocturne in e minor" / "Nocturne in c sharp minor op 27 #1" / "Nocturne in D flat major"

 

performed / presented by Genaro Feliciano Pereira "

 

Borna Sammak sings along to "Nations Of The World" by Yakko Warner of the Animaniacs. 

 

Lydia Glenn-Murray's ringtones are downloadable through the bouncing icon. "Instructions for iphone: download, open in itunes, sync phone, go to settings > sounds > ring tone, select, enjoy! Made in collaboration with the brilliant and wonderful Indah Datau, Phil Davis, Jake Eisenmann, Douglas Murray, Nathan Carlos Norris, Ulysses Pascal, Emily Jane Rosen, Brittany Soo Hoo, and Joanna Swan."