Anna Meredith

Anna Meredith [homepage] is a composer and performer of electronic and acoustic music. Her acoustic material has been performed around the world by many leading orchestras and ensembles. She has been composer in residence with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and is currently the PRS/RPS Composer in the House with Sinfonia ViVA.

Nautilus by Anna Meredith

She came to public attention through her 2008 work froms for the BBC Last Night of the Proms and has since written another BBC Prom commission, her first opera (Tarantula in Petrol Blue – with libretto by Philip Ridley) and collaborated with the beatboxer Shlomo – writing the acclaimed Concerto for Beatboxer and Orchestra. Anna is also a judge for the BBC Young Musician of the Year, a mentor for Goldie for the TV show Classic Goldie and a frequent guest and commentator for the BBC Proms and other Radio 3 and 4 shows.

James Blake

James Blake [wikipedia | homepage | youtube]is a British electronic composer from London, UK. James began his final year at Goldsmiths in September 2009 studying popular music while recording songs in his bedroom. Blake attended The Latymer School and released his debut 12” “Air and Lack Thereof” on Hemlock Audio in July 2009. It was a firm favourite with Gilles Peterson from BBC Radio 1. James was invited to do a special mix on Gilles Peterson’s worldwide show which included an exclusive Mount Kimbie track. On 6 January 2011, Blake was announced as runner-up in BBC’s Sound of 2011 poll[1]. His self-titled debut album was released in the UK on 7 February 2011
a review here.

The performance the other night at the Purcell Room was magical: I found this video on youtube, it’s not very good but the sound is ok:

Tim Exile

http://www.timexile.co.uk/
I’ve never heard about this electronic artist [homepage] before – but the other day I saw his name on the Ether festival program and got interested, so I looked for some his stuff online. Well, it’s a pretty interesting character I must say! Real sorry to have missed his performance at Southbank. Definitely worth checking out his stuff.. he’s now also working with electronic instruments seller Native Instruments (eg check out ‘The Mouth‘ virtual instrument: video#1 and video#2.. very funny!).

Following a sell-out success in June 2010, Southbank Centre presents Stanley Kubrick’s seminal film 2001: A Space Odyssey with live music.
Conducted by André de Ridder, the enormous forces of Philharmonia Orchestra and Philharmonia Voices join together to perform the film’s extraordinary soundtrack, as live accompaniment to a screening in Royal Festival Hall.
Long recognised as one of the greatest science fiction films of all time, 2001 – A Space Odyssey is celebrated for its technological realism, its innovative Oscar-winning special effects and a bold use of music. The film brought worldwide fame to both Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra and the music of Gyorgy Ligeti; it also created one of cinema’s most memorable images as a spaceship floats serenely through space to the strains of Johann Strauss’ Blue Danube waltz.

Here’s an excerpt from last night’s performance:

Thursday Club Xmas party [ event-site | facebook | flier | map ]

6:30pm sharp til 8:30pm, 2010/12/16 at Goldsmith Digital Studios

Live coding is a new direction in electronic music and video, and is starting to get somewhere interesting. Live coders expose and rewire the innards of software while it generates improvised music and/or visuals. All code manipulation is projected for your pleasure. Live coding is inclusive and accessible to all. Many live coding environments can be downloaded and used for free, with documentation and examples to get you started and friendly on-line communities to help when you get problems. Popular live coding software includes supercollider, ChucK, impromptu and fluxus. Live patching is live coding with graph-based languages such as the venerable pure-data. It’s also possible to livecode with a gamepad, e.g. with the robot oriented Al-Jazari. For more info see: http://toplap.org/

Enjoy live coded music from some of the UKs finest algorithmic musicians, namely:

slub – Slub celebrate a decade since they first got a whole room of people to dance to their code (at Amsterdam Paradiso), with a hard-edged set of abstract acid with extra breakdowns. [ http://slub.org/ ]
Wrongheaded – Conducting an algorithmic seance, where a ouiji board control interface issues instructions from beyond the grave. Dimly lit but for the flickering of gas-driven projector screens, the protagonists will be appropriately moustachioed as they bring you ethereal sounds from the underworld.
Thor Magnusson – Shaking, self-modified beats with ixilang, from the co-founder of ixi audio. [ http://www.ixi-audio.net/ ]
Michele Pasin – Audio/Visual temporal recursion with Impromptu. [ http://www.michelepasin.org/ ]
Forth + Yee-King – South Bank Common Lisp + SuperCollider synchronised in percussive improv. [ http://www.yeeking.net/ ]

Can’t say I haven’t missed the old line up, with “Jumping Jon” Egan, who used to dance around the stage in a trance-like manner while playing a variety of flutes… but still I had quite a bit of fun listening to this weird psychedelic family belting out spacey vibes. Even more cause they included several old Ozrics classics which I really enjoyed!

Here’s an excerpt I’ve taken with my phone:

If you happen to be going to London’s Kew Gardens, make sure you don’t miss this nice sound installation by Chris Watson. The installation is on till September 5th and it’s called Whispering in the Leaves:

Whispering in the Leaves features two sound pieces – Dawn and Dusk – composed by Chris from memory using his extensive archive of on-location recordings in Central and South American rainforests.

Designed specifically for the Palm House, Whispering in the Leaves is the audio equivalent of 3D cinema. Visitors will be immersed in a dynamic, spatial soundscape of primate calls and birdsong, backed with a shimmering wall of insect sounds. Some of the species heard are currently unknown to humans. Visitors will experience the heard but never seen.

Diffused through 80 speakers, the two compositions will be transmitted at hourly intervals throughout the day – Dawn in the morning and Dusk in the afternoon. Each lasts for 15-20 minute durations – the approximate time it takes for the transitions between darkness and daylight in the dense tropical vegetation.

The website makes available some of the nature recordings too.

…

The other day I went to a concert at the Southbank Centre in London, as part of the Leonard Bernstein season. Its the Mass by Leonard Bernstein. A bit hard to follow, maybe because of the mix of latin and english in the lyrics, but the musics and the theatrical bits were quite entertaining. (wikipedia link):

MASS (formally, “MASS: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers”) is a musical theatre work composed by Leonard Bernstein. Commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy, it premiered on September 8, 1971, conducted by Maurice Peress.[1] The performance was part of the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.[2] Mass premiered in Europe in 1973, with John Mauceri conducting the Yale Symphony Orchestra in Vienna.[3]

Originally, Bernstein had intended to compose a traditional Mass, but instead decided on a more innovative form. The work is based on the Tridentine Mass of the Roman Catholic Church. Although the liturgical passages are sung in Latin, Mass also includes additional texts in English written by Bernstein, Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz, and Paul Simon (who wrote the first quatrain of the trope “Half of the People”). The work is intended to be staged theatrically, but it has also been performed in a standard concert setting.

Reviews: [Reuters] [Guardian] [Independent]

Ozric Tentacles (commonly known as the Ozrics) are an instrumental rock band from Somerset, England, whose music can loosely be described as psychedelic or space rock. Formed in 1984, the band has released 28 albums as of 2009, and become a cottage industry selling over a million albums worldwide despite never having major label backing. [wikipedia]

This is ‘Saucers’, for the ‘Strangeitude’ album:

I saw them live a coupe of times already, never got disappointed with the performance..

“That’s what makes science great, and technology great and art great,” he said “It’s about playing with ideas.

“You try a few things out and see what happens, then try more and more and you come up with something that is genius,” he said.

Only by building it, seeing and shaping it, can they truly understand. Something any and every maker can identify with.

pdf version here