During the week of 16-20 April 2012, I led a workshop at Le Quai, École Superieure d’Art de Mulhouse, France, entitled “Threshold listening: Indoors and Outdoors.”
Bullock/Gauguet/Guhl in Switzerland, starting next Tuesday
I’ve got my first four Switzerland shows ever, starting this coming Tuesday in Zürich, with French saxophonist Bertrand Gauguet and Swiss electronicist and original member of Voice Crack, Andy Guhl. These shows bookend a weeklong field recording workshop I’ll be conducting at Sonic, the sound studies module of Le Quai in Mulhouse, France: http://sonic.lequai.fr/index.php?/nouvelle/workshops/
Many thanks to Bertrand for making the workshops happen and for doing a lot of legwork to help put the shows together, and to Andy for performing with us.
Bullock/Gauguet/Guhl
Mike Bullock (audio/video modular synthesizer) http://finenoiseandlight.net/
Bertrand Gauguet (saxophone, objects) http://www.bertrandgauguet.com/
Andy Guhl (cracked everyday electronics and video) http://andy.guhl.net/
10 April: Trio. WIM, Zurich http://www.wimmusic.ch/page16/page16.html
11 April: Duo with Andy. Atelier concert, St. Gallen
14 April: Trio. Plattfon, Basel http://www.plattfon.ch/
21 April: Duo with Bertrand. Atelier concert, Basel http://www.christophschiller.net/atelier.htm
22 April: Trio. Cave 12, Geneva, http://www.cave12.org/MICHAEL-T-BULLOCK-BERTRAND-GAUGUET
Quick, overdue update!
We’ve gotten off track with Shadowselves updates, dear readers, and we blame too much pie over the holidays.
Mike is performing and presenting workshops at CarnivOINC, a festival of new music at Oberlin College in Ohio. Other guest artists include Seth Cluett, Vic Rawlings, Tim Feeney, and Aaron Dilloway.
http://www.timara.oberlin.edu/pbloland/carnivoinc/index.html
UPDATE: CarnivOINC was great, with lots of serious work from the students and good music abounding. I also had the opportunity to talk with a group of dedicated, engaged students at Miami University of Ohio in Oxford, OH, before going to CarnivOINC. I was impressed all around and had a great time visiting both schools, as well as catching up with friends old and new.
A week underwater
Mike spend the past week recovering from a medical procedure, and while movies and music on loan from friends were helpful(thanks!), and he frankly needed the excuse to sit still for a while, eventually the meds started to wear off and he got itchy. Today was the first day in a week that he was able to sit behind his synth and do some recording.
Mode with modular video/audio synthesizer and VDMX.
Disquiet Junto
Following the runaway success of Insta/gr/ambient, Marc Weidenbaum of Disquiet blog has started a SoundCloud based, weekly series of mini projects called the Disquiet Junto. So far there have been two, and Linda and I have participated in the first one. The basic idea is Marc puts out an idea, like a challenge – a sample, a description of a desired source sound etc – and the participants make and post short pieces based on that seed idea. For me it was a chance to try our stereo hydrophony for the first time.
Check out the Disquiet Junto directly on its soundcloud page.
Linda on Instagr/am/bient – Disquiet blog
Click here to see the entire project: Instagr/am/bient
25 ambient musicians created original sonic postcards in response to one another’s evocative Instagram photos. This project was initiated by Marc Weidenbaum, and is hosted at his blog, Disquiet.
Linda writes about her contribution to the project:
‘My Instagram was used for Track 12; the music, “Some Found Things”, is by Warren Craghead III.
My track is #21, called “Near Cedar”. The photograph was taken by Christopher Bissonnette.
My Instagram was taken in early 2011 in Jamaica Plain, MA at a service station late one evening.
The piece that I composed for “Near Cedar” was a recording of traffic (as I waited near Cedar Street) combined with a processed vocal track.
I imagined the lighter patterns at the center of the photograph as periods in time, and in the composition they’re the repetition of the door chime of the bus. The vocal track in the background was inspired by the dark areas of the photo. In another track I filtered the sound of the bus brakes, which corresponds to the horizontal white area at the top of the image.
I recorded the traffic and bus using the iProRecorder app on my iPhone, and the voice element consisted of several heavily processed tracks, using VoiceLive Touch. I used Audacity for the final mix.’
Music for Dance or Movement
Mike’s most recent live set, performed at the Flopera House in Boston MA on 9 December 2011.
“This is the first full version of a piece, or series of pieces, I have been developing in the studio over the last few months.
The dance or movement in this case was purely potential, though there was the visual element of video projected on the wall. The video in this case was live analog video color processing of a camera facing out to the street. Made using modular synthesizer with recordings of bells and finger cymbals.
NB: the recording is rather quiet, but I managed to crank the gain up and then remove a lot of the hiss with software. Thanks to Linda for the recordings of finger cymbals and toy bells.”
“Goddamn Lights Up”: video for Lonesome Red’s Christmas Song (by Linda)
Our friend Lonesome Red, aka Ed Dormody, wrote a song about getting ready for Christmas and all that entails. Linda was inspired to make this video for it featuring stop motion animation and clips from the Nonantum Christmas Park, among other things.
Goddamn Lights Up from orangecookie image and sound on Vimeo.
The Fox by the Marsh
Another track from the upcoming Citizens for Confetti.
Felix in 38
Felix in 38 from orangecookie image and sound on Vimeo.
This is a time lapse video taken of Felix Kubin’s set at the 10th Anniversary of Non-Event at the Goethe Institut in Boston on 11.11.11.
I started the capture rate at every 10 seconds, and gradually increased it to every 3 seconds. This is the hour and a half set, time lapsed to 38 seconds.
The audio is of the entire set time-compressed to fit the video.
This is a time lapse video taken of Felix Kubin’s set at the 10th Anniversary of Non-Event at the Goethe Institut in Boston on 11.11.11.
The capture rate started out at every 10 seconds, and was gradually increased to every 3 seconds. This is the hour and a half set, time lapsed to 38 seconds.
The audio is of the entire set time-compressed to fit the video.
Duxbury Beach hydrophone
These sounds were recorded at the Duxbury, MA, beach using an Aquarian Audio hydrophone and a Tascam DR-680 recorder.
I made this video, Vagues/Ondes, for one of the recordings using VDMX by Vidvox and the Rutt-Etra video synth emulator plugin by _vade. It was presented at the EMS/EMF conference in New York City in 2011, where I played additional audio using more hydrophone recordings and an analog synthesizer.
Vagues/Ondes from Michael T. Bullock on Vimeo.
Hallowe’en Root Stew
Hallowe’en Stew
We are a little in love with Autumn here at Tranquility Base, aka Shadowselves HQ. It creates in us a strong urge for root vegetables, and we tend to make a huge stew out of many such seasonal treats from the dirt.
Cut up and scoop out:
1 delicata squash
1 acorn squash
1 butternut squash
1 red kuri squash
1 smallish pumpkin, approx 8-10 inches diameter. We baked our pumpkin separately without cutting and scooping until after it had baked (see below).
Peel and chop:
1 burdock root
1 large parsnip
Chop:
1/2 large sweet onion
6+ cloves garlic
Circa 2 inches of ginger root
Also gather:
I pack of WestSoy Seitan, or other Seitan to your liking
Lots of olive oil
4 Tbsp miso paste
12 oz hoppy beer (in this case, Dogfish Head 69 min IPA)
1/2 cup apple cider
1/2 cup Ginger People ginger juice
Put all squash, burdock, and parsnip in baking pans; sprinkle liberally with olive oil and spices. We used a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, pepper, paprika, sugar and South African Smoke. Bake for 1 hour at 350 F. Place the pumpkin in its own pan to bake at the same time. After you pull them all out of the oven, enjoy the rich earthy aromas for a few more minutes and then set the burdock root aside for garnish later.
Sautée onion, garlic, ginger, and seitan until the onions are golden brown and the seitan is starting to brown on the edges. Use plenty of oil! This stuff can really burn, especially the onions.
Prepare a broth of the miso in 8 cups of boiling water. It should be a little thinner than what you’d usually do for miso soup (if you usually do miso soup, though it’s still kind of new to us), so adjust according to the miso you use. When boiling, lower heat and add beer, cider, and ginger juice. Return to a boil and let simmer. Add contents of sautée pan and the root vegetables when they are all ready. You should do the broth last because it doesn’t take long to prepare. Let the whole thing cook for maybe 30 minutes to thicken, or until you can’t stand the suspense any longer.
A few minutes before serving, it works great to add a bunch of crusty bread to the stew. This is a great time to use that baguette you bought a couple days ago which is already turning into a whiffle ball bat. It will discover new life in the stew.
Serve with the burdock root as a garnish. We estimate we will get 8-10 servings out of this pot, if not more. Great with a glass of cider, optionally spiked with St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram, our official autumn tipple. Happy Fall!
Citizens for Confetti: Vent Leger
Vent Léger from orangecookie image and sound on Vimeo.
Voice and Harmonium by Linda Aubry Bullock
mastered at The Circular Ruins by Mike Bullock
Citizens for Confetti:Lumière
Lumière from orangecookie image and sound on Vimeo.
Citizens for Confetti is the voice and electronics project of Linda Aubry Bullock. Here are a couple of videos from her forthcoming EP, to be released through Shadowselves.
In Linda’s own words:
“The title of this project comes from a phrase that I found when I randomly opened a book of Stanislaw Lem, The Cyberiad. I was in bed with a cold and in the space where I couldn’t nap but was too sick to read.
“‘By now the Adviser had four chests of medals for suggestions made to the King. A microspy Trurl sent to the land of the Multitudians returned with the news, that, for its most recent achievement – it gave the King a ticker-tape parade, using citizens for confetti – Mandrillion had publicly called the Adviser his “pal”.’
“So, the phrase, taken out of context, is not as cheery as I imagined. I liked the imagery that came to me, a vision of happy people with a purpose, a sunny day with many scintillating colors, and decided to use that. However, the darkness of the real meaning of those words always lurks around and it seemed appropriate to acknowledge.
“When I started recording in the spring of this year it was a decision after years of wanting to do things with voice, but not having a clear idea. “Something with voice” – always vague. I then figured if I processed my voice and just started experimenting with sounds, it would be better. Processing the voice meant using a microphone, which was great because I had some thoughts about extended, slow, patient “small” sounds, amplifed.
“I started recording at my in-laws house in the spring when they were away. For words, I used fortune cookies, sayings cross-stitched on a pillow, some Lem. I looked at the water in the marsh, the early-spring trees, the carpet in their living room. I liked how my voice was sounding like a synthesizer, a harmonium. I worked at being patient with myself as well.”
Who we are
Shadowselves is a clearinghouse for the ongoing work and interests of Linda Aubry Bullock and Mike Bullock. On a weekly basis, we’ll update this site with samples of our current and ongoing projects; documentation from performances, installations, and workshops; and writings about what we’re into right now.
MTB: First Disappearance (excerpt)
A video for an excerpt from Mike’s recent CD Mild Disappearances, on Songs From Under the Floorboards.
First Disappearance (excerpt) from Michael T. Bullock on Vimeo.