My next release is Floptrik, which will be out on 3.5″ floppy and Bandcamp, published by the great electro label CPU Records. It includes 10 songs, and the floppy contains eternal remixes for 5 of the songs, and visuals for the other ones. Here’s one of those visuals: Fist of Trade with PETSCII-animations by Raquel Meyers (first released here).
RAMBLINGS
Photos from Philly
Marjorie Becker (aka Chiptography) took some photos at 8static fest. Good times, with crazy singalong actionz to heal the wounds.
For those who don’t know, Marjorie has a very impressive collection of photos from chip-related events.
Essay for Rhizome about videotex art
I wrote a text for Rhizome’s Net Art Anthology. It’s an online exhibition that just started, and will go on for two years to show old and new net art.
I was asked to write about Reabracadabra, made by Eduardo Kac in 1985. It’s made for videotex, an early network technology sort of like a two-way teletext that was successful pretty much only in France, with the Minitel.
It’s a fascinating (and forgotten) technology, and I’m glad Rhizome helps to bring this forth. I for one am going to keep on digging into the videotex world at t3xtm0.de if not somewhere else.
80864 out now!
My new album, 80864, presents 2 years of experiments with the TR-808 and C-64. It’s out on 12″ floppy style vinyl, cassette and for download. If you buy the vinyl you also get 7 bonus tracks digitally. I think at least half of the vinyls and cassettes have already been pre-ordered, so don’t be lazy! Read more about it here.
Bandcamp for downloads, vinyls and cassettes
Spotify for streaming
0407 – more info
Yesterday Data Airlines put out my new album, 0407. It’s a collection of 29 songs from 2004-2007, put out by various netlabels, demoscene groups or by .. me! Check it out here:
> Bandcamp
> Spotify
> Promo-mix
> Videos on YouTube
The songs were previously featured in:
> Copyslave (20kbps rec, 2004)
> Contech (8bitpeoples, 2005)
> Digi-dig (Da ! Heard it, 2006)
> Zyndabox (Candymind, 2007)
> Updown (DWD records, 2007)
> Microdisco vol 4 – crime (2007)
> Barryland (goto80.com, 2007)
> Ximplef (Dramacore, 2007)
> Wet pulse (Ageema music club, 2007)
> _2_4X4 (Audiovisual theorem, 2007)
> Son of music (Dexandthecity, 2008)
> Cherry CD (No label, 2011)
Videos were made for some of the songs, as you can see in this YouTube playlist:
Some of the songs have also appeared on compilations, in art projects, and in the demoscene. Ter4 was made for the Amiga-demo GBG by Up Rough and TBL, and was in fact a remix of a song called 3 that I released under the name Extraboy on Subnatura. Ter4 was also used in the video Pilgrim’s Progress, an art installation by Scott Jon Siegel, another Amiga-demo by Nori K, and some other things.
Decibel Detective was used in the Ferret Show (2012), where it was performed together with Uwe Schenk’s jazz band and Raquel Meyers on live PETSCII visuals. Audio recordings of this was released on Upitup aswell. But it was first released in Microdisco vol 4 – crime (2007).
Back in those days I often won demoscene competitions. Chasing Pop won the Amiga music competition at LCP2005, and Datahell won the C64 music competition at Floppy 2005. Several songs were featured in C64-demos by Fairlight: Emanation Machine in a demo with the same name (#1 at LCP2003), Phh in Drop the Basics (#3 at X’2001), Semieasy in Postcards from Stockholm (#1 at LCP2004).
As you can see, some of the songs were obviously made before 2004. The most clear example is probably Truth, which was part of my C64-drum n’ bass mix Monkeywarning (Monotonik, 2002) but also appeared in Album of the Year, a C64-music disk from 1999. And the song was actually made in 1998.
This is all normal. It can take years to release music. Everything is 2004! Or maybe everything is 2008?
Anyway, get yourself a cassette while they last and prepare for new stuff coming later this year!
DUBCRT coming soon
On Sunday my next cassette, 0407, will be released on Data Airlines. Phwah, cassettes are so mainstream I hear you say. Well, then I’ve got something for you (soon) – a C64-cartridge by the name of DUBCRT. It has music, generative PETSCII-graphics, LEDs, and hidden parts presented in a mysteriously interactive mega interface. Made by me, iLKke and 4mat, and organized by DataDoor.
More about this later. For now, let’s focus on cassettes!
New Cassette Coming Up
I’m putting out a new cassette soon and one of the most exciting things about it is actually the art work, hehe. All the illustration and design was made on a typewriter by the new typewriter master, Lord Nikon.
So keep your eyes open for this one. Will be released by Data Airlines.
PETSCII-presentation in Poland
As some of you know, I’ve written quite a lot about chip music and the demoscene: in books, papers, a master thesis, and so on. For the past years I’ve been more interested in researching text graphics, and published a paper together with A Bill Miller in 2012.
Now I’m doing a presentation about PETSCII at an academic conference Behind the Scenes in Lódzki, Poland. I did it together with Markku Reunanen (who maintains the demoscene research site) and Tero Heikkinen (who wrote the PETSCII editor together with Markku). Unfortunately I’m not attending in person, but Markku & Tero know how to do it right!
At the same conference Gleb Albert is doing a presentation of his new research on the 1980s cracker scene. It seems to be an in-depth look at this sparsely researched subculture, and especially interesting since it considers ideology. Read more here.
iTunes Renamed My Album into Moon and Linear Clouds
So it took iTunes about a month to publish my album, and rename it. Into “moon and linear clouds”, as Tim Koch put it. Just like they didn’t accept the names of Files in Space, they didn’t accept the OTL-like name of this either. Protip, Apple: if you co-invent a standard you might want to follow it.
Anyway – it’s there now. And also on Spotify. And maybe some other places too. But the cassettes are sold out.
ANTI-HUMANISM
So, last weekend I was in Copenhagen to perform at the party for Lu Yang‘s exhibition ANTI-HUMANISM. It was a wild night, with Meneo bringing the crowd into pure naked extacy, as always.
I started the evening with two improvised sessions, where I continuously took requests from the audience about what music to do. I sat in an office/slave-like setting (see image). Sort of like a mix between Dataslav and my recent improv-explorations. And it went really well! I’ll see if I can get some recordings of it online.
I was also asked to write a text about 8-bit music for the catalogue of the exhibition. You can read it here: A retrospective on the stories and aesthetics of 8-bit music