The material point of departure for the accompanying track [1] is a new implementation of pulsar synthesis seamlessly integrated with the Distortion Product Otoacoustic Emission (DPOAE) and sieve algorithm [2]. The context of this implementation is my ongoing research project focused on historical techniques of pulsar synthesis – first introduced by Curtis Roads in his book Microsound – its conceptual and programming extensions and using it for composition. The nature and aims of the project are twofold. The first one is technical – an analysis of the original Pulsar Generator program, its source code, underlying programming paradigm and user interface ...

It’s an energy, it’s the light, it’s a fever. It could be a sound that’s heard in our ears. Now that the boundary of sound has expanded beyond what it was in my childhood, the distinction between good and bad sounds is no longer important. It just exists on its own and is valued by someone to be meaningful. Wherever you are, whatever you do, you can hear the sound, and you can record the moment when you’re listening. It’s an element of sound that I define. Of course, that’s not important or it might be important depending. I don’t know ...

This is a recording of a trio improvisation by Takahiro Kawaguchi (horns) Masahiko Okura (reeds) Masahide Tokunaga (alto sax) which was held at En-ban, a record store in Koenji, Tokyo, at 8pm on August 30th 2016. Okura and Tokunaga are wind instrument players who work in both composition and improvisation. Rather than focusing on any one fundamental output, the handmade instrumentation and musical content of each of Kawaguchi’s performances are unique. On this recording, he performs as a “mechanical wind instrument player.” Text translated from Japanese by Wonja Fairbrother. Audio mastered by Alan Jones.

A knife is cutting through air, relentlessly. However, it cuts very slowly, by degrees and in circles; it’s a wooden knife, not very sharp, like a butter knife but with teeth. The structure upon which this knife is attached has a light bulb resting on it, a light bulb with a rather complex metallic grid inside, vibrating softly with every degree of the knife’s turns. Then there is a strip of paper or a piece of thin cardboard, suspended; three toothpicks are leaning on and pushing this cardboard but they are not strong enough, the cardboard barely undulates. Sometimes a toothpick ...

An excerpt from a larger work comprising writing and performance that revisits and examines adolescent memories of suburban subculture. Oak trees and whitetail deer in Abundances we tame Razed woods and ticky tacky TV dins with the fam Excess, the new convenience Tinged with work ethic shame Same teenage rage all summer Restraint, virtue or sham?                               Americana 2006 Widescreen and lens flare evoke the epic or mundane, point out our hero amongst mass- produced hot dog buns. The popcorn-crunching audience files in prepared for thrill, everyone on their own path back home.                                   Lyric 2004 Well if you wanted honesty call me a faggot one more time I’m not OK trust me middle school sucks forget about LOL smooths friend awkwardness faggot ...

Excerpts from Day Three at the Sydney Cricket Ground: Starc bowling to Saha from the Paddington end – dot ball; off-drive: boundary; dot ball; dot ball; dot ball; back-foot defence: dot ball. Watson bowling to Ashwin – edged: boundary; dot ball; dot ball; dot ball; forward defence: dot ball; forward defence: dot ball. Hazelwood bowling to Saha from the Randwick Street end – front foot defence: dot ball; back foot defence: dot ball; back foot defence: dot ball; drive to mid-on: dot ball; dot ball; off-drive: three runs. Watson bowling to Saha – forward defence: dot ball; back foot defence: dot ball; forward defence: ...

In Long Distance Music, composers Max Eilbacher and Stefan Maier explore listening and composition across vast geographic distances. Drawing on Maryanne Amacher’s text-scores of the same name, Eilbacher and Maier reinterpret Amacher’s call for “new awarenesses” beyond normative spatial listening and investigate the prospect of telematic listening in the contemporary moment of supposed unprecedented “interconnectedness.” Having emailed on-and-off for a number of years with the intention of eventually collaborating, the duo’s attempts at working together were continually frustrated by competing projects, touring schedules, and, most of all, by the fact that Eilbacher and Maier do not live in the same city. ...

Commissioned and Performed by The Living Earth Show In Collaboration with Composers: Sharmi Basu Ava Mendoza Raven Chacon Morgan Craft Zachary James Watkins

This audio comprises binaural and stereo recordings. As a result of the mix, it is best experienced when listened to on headphones. The binaural audio is related to the research I conducted during my residency at EMPAC in Troy, New York in 2014. During two weeks in May 2014, I created different architectural configurations employing 16 moveable walls made out of materials with various acoustic properties. I placed many speakers around them to compose sounds that focused attention in different ways, an approach that reinforces sonic hierarchies. In November 2014, I focused on one particular wall/speaker configuration and invited choreographer Jocelyn Tobias ...

1 – An aphorism interrupted by some anecdotal wood 2 – An aphorism interrupted by some anecdotal wood 3 – An aphorism interrupted by some anecdotal wood 4 – An aphorism interrupted by some anecdotal wool 5 – An aphorism interrupted by some anecdotal oven 6 – An aphorism interrupted by some anecdotal wool 7 – An aphorism interrupted by some anecdotal wood – HP

In Collapsing Ourselves from 2014, Hong-Kai Wang and Mattin presented a formal exploration of a dialogue in disorienting spatial contexts: four tracks layered over each other with varying levels of audibility, Chinese, English, sounds from different spaces, digital artifacts, snippets of self-reflexive conversation. This was done not as a way to innovate a new compositional framework or sound, but rather to problematize the social experience of playing the recording back, listening to it, and reflecting on it. With this next iteration of the project, the process of superimposing four recorded conversations is repeated, though this time it was done with material ...

i’ve been obsessed with chris tucker’s early work recently the lines sound so much different in the present moment than they did to me in the past they now are more like prescient articulations of a horrifying future or a gonzo present each message opens up its own rift in time and space i get caught in these little eddies, the accumulation of which has become pessimist rush hour – WWIV

IMPORTANT: Do not click the “LISTEN” button that you see above. The only way to experience this piece is to never listen to any of the audio. Listening to the audio, or any part of it, will make you unable to experience the piece. You will not only be not experiencing the piece while listening to the audio, but the possibility of experiencing the piece in the future or the past will also be destroyed. Even if you go a long time without listening to the audio, but then you decide to listen to it sometime in the future, you will ...

While we’ve applauded recent moves in art history and media studies challenging the hegemony of the visual, why does the waxing art world topicality of “listening” seem to be inversely proportional to sound practitioners’ waning interest in it? Does it really have to turn up on e-flux before people pay attention? Haven’t musicians, composers, and sound artists all over the world been thinking listening for centuries?… The contributors to Issue 2 face the immense material complexity of listening head on – physically, technically, formally, politically, socially. Their contributions continually orbit the question, ‘What is Listening?,’ all the while deftly dodging all ...

Last fall, I was touring and performing my piece “Falsetto” every night. It’s a strange, physically difficult, fumbling, deliberately incompetent (or maybe a different type of expert) performance played almost entirely with small bells found at thrift stores, purchased with the criteria that they must in some way sound unusual or broken or just “not nice,” and also that they cost less than $5 each. The sound of the bells is great. When layered, it’s a complex, weird, and unpredictable sound made with exceedingly humble means – literally just jostling a bunch of crap around that I found at Goodwill. However, ...

In Peter Ablinger’s work, the listener is often asked to cross the distance between sounds. These types of comparative actions fall into at least three categories. One of these categories is a comparison between two sound sources: a recording and a reproduction. The term Ablinger uses for these reproductions is “phonorealism.” Another type of comparison is between a sonic memory and the sound that is present. I’ll play two examples later that activate specifically musical memories through a process called “verticalization.” We’ll start, though, with yet another type of distance that is to be traveled, this time in the sonic imagination, ...

A conversation between Khyam Allami and Sharif Sehnaoui recorded at OneHertz Studios, Beirut, late 2017 Two musicians with very different backgrounds and itineraries in music discuss their visions and some of the ideas behind their distinct practices and methods. The conversation is set within the greater context of advancing contemporary ideas into the space of Arabic music. Here, Arabic music is not thought of as a fixed thing but rather as a historical and cultural background that lends various shades of meaning to each artist’s work. Though there was not quite enough time to fully expand upon the ideas discussed, the conversation ...

1. 00:00 Base Mutant was recorded to tape in the basement at 16th and Moore, between January and April of 2014. I made around six versions, trying out different BPMs and filters, but this one sounded best. Like the other tracks, this one was written on a Yamaha PF-500 and a MC-909. On the 909, I primarily used the synth voices “SonicVampire” and “Dial,” both of which were programmed by long-time Roland Engineer Nick Tidy. Aside from doing sound design for Roland— including 909 as well as 303 voices— Tidy composed soundtracks for a number of shareware games, most notably “Starscape.” ...

Voice, drums, recordings here and there. Composed July – August, 2015 I started this piece walking down by the Limmat on a cold, windy day. Whitecaps chopped the water and I was a bit out of breath from fighting the wind and trying to keep warm by moving at a brisk pace. Under the Hardbrücke the deep resonance there swallowed me up. A long rowboat chained to the concrete pilings of the bridge whipped to and fro in the strong current. I headed up the stairs to my studio. Schulhaussingen happens twice a year at my kids’ school. I usually go and I ...

Field recordings, MP3 compression 2013 Recordings often ask you to listen out-of-body by immersing yourself in the stereo image that the medium is reproducing. As if music were a window whose objects you could only perceive by imagining yourself on the other side. Immersion Loop asks you to stay where you are, to view the surface of the window and feel its effects in your space. The music is immersed, not the listener. Go about your business as though this sound is equal to all others: chatter, wind, traffic, footsteps, radios, appliance noise, etc. – JTP

EL: soo first in terms of editing, mix of the track any thoughts? Me: I just listened through again and was wondering about the order of the question sets EL: ok Me: like what if we move the first question set to after the talking set? Me: it’s hard to say though if that would make any difference as it stands it’s not too bad it’s just really austere in the beginning and a little silly at the end EL: hah Me: though the pink noise helps actually quite a bit after the describing food section EL: its a cleanser Me: totally a palate cleanser …

Aaron Harbour of Et Al. interviews Ginger Wolfe-Suarez, expounding on her exhibition at Diane Rosenstein gallery, A Thing Repeated Is Not Always The Same. August 31, 2015 – EL

Often, interview questions unduly influence the way in which one considers an interviewee’s response. By framing the responses with silence, a greater interpretive space is left open. Conducted over Skype, September 2012 – EL

Southwest Key Programs’ website was unavailable on the night of June 19th. “Under Renovations,” a static page read.[1] The next day, Southwest Key offered a second static page in place of its full corporate site: a few FAQs and a statement that the Program “does not support separating families at the border.” Southwest Key Programs does not support separating families at the border. For 30 years, our work in offering youth alternative justice, immigrant children’s shelters and education has served to improve the lives of thousands of young people. We believe keeping families together is better for the children, parents and ...

On June 6th and 18th of 2015, I recorded the sounds Enrico produced from manipulating empty aluminum cans. Discouraged by the boomy sound of Enrico’s living room (let alone the noises coming from a few hyperactive neighbors) we decided to take the car out and go in search of a quiet spot in the country. On the crest of a hill we found an almost anechoic slope, populated by dense tall grass. We wanted the recording to be “pure” – as dry and close up as possible in order to verify with plenty of sonic detail the reasons an object ...