simonsound

On the 29th of September I’ll be performing a live sound track to the 1920’s film ‘The Cabinet of Dr Caligari’ as part of the Radio Reverb Orchestra. The 20 plus strong orchestra will be conducted by Grant Newman the images and the performance will be pretty much free form with little rehearsal. I’m not sure which instrument I’m going to use but I think I can pretty much take anything along. I think its all electronic but don’t quote me. Expect to see lots of weird and wonderful sound making devices. This event is also part of Brighton Live the free music festival taking place between the 24th and 29th of September.

The Radio Reverb Orchestra event takes place at the Duke of Yorks cinema on the 29th of September at 23.00.

UPDATE: I went along to the first (and only) pre show meeting last night where I found out a bit more about the event.

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I love this website. ‘Paleo-Future - A look into the future that never was’ finds amazing films and images from the past that attempted to imagine how the future might be. The latest find is a series of French postcards from 1910 credited to an artist called Villemard. There are some fantastic images like flying firemen and police, mechanical tailors and hair and makeup assistants and ‘The Avenue of the Opera’ which shows members of the public flying in winged cars.

My favorite image however is ‘Hearing the Newspaper’ which shows a couple sitting down to listen to the daily news on a gramophone. I guess you could say that this is one of the few predictions that came true as many national papers now offer podcasts. And talking of podcasts, even though it hasn’t been implemented yet, it won’t be long till the new iPods are capable of downloading them wirelessly. This is great news for podcasting as anything that simplifies the process of finding and downloading can only make it more accessible to a wider audience.

I went in to Edgeworld Records in Brighton (one of the record stores mentioned in the Yamaha press release) today to check out the Tenori On. As you can see from my picture they have a very nice stand and they even have a Tenori On in a box, but as the owner of Edgeworld records told me “no one from Yamaha has been in to set it up”. So for now it stays in the box. I did try some gentle persuasion to see if he would let me take a closer look but to no avail.

As soon as I get my hands on one I will let you know all the details. I’m sure there will be some news from the main launches in London and Manchester somewhere on the web over the next 24hrs.

Thanks to Curtis for the photo.

Yamaha release the much anticipated Tenori On, a musical interface based around a grid of touch sensitive buttons/LED’s which can be seen from the front and back, in the UK next week and I for one will be keen to try it out. I’ve followed Toshio Iwai’s work since his Elektroplankton sound ‘game’ for the Nintendo DS which offered every DS owner the opportunity to create some underwater inspired electronica. Whilst Elektroplankton was a lot of fun it was always hampered by the fact you couldn’t save your work. The Tenori On solves this problem and adds a lot more functionality.

Update: Official Tenori On website is now live. Some cool videos of the different modes, interviews with musicians and all the specs confirmed (no infra red). I also heard from a friend who is performing at the Manchester launch today. He’s had a Tenori On since last week and confirms that it is easy to use, immediate, spontaneous and great visually.

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I just found out I’ll be performing Percy Grainger’s ‘Free Music’ as part of a Theremin quartet on September 27th.

Percy Grainger was a Australian composer born in 1882. His work was inspired by folk music and featured traditional tonality, gliding intervals, polyrhythms and electronic instruments. Free Music was his attempt to break free of the traditional way of scoring using graphical notation. The central idea of Free Music is the gliding tone.

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Really cool ad from Honda in Brazil. It invites you to ‘Put your headphones, close your eyes and enjoy the ride’. It dispenses with any visual and relies purely on sound using what it claims is ‘3D Holophonic sound technology’. It is great to see brands embracing the evocative power of sound, although its not new for Honda, their ‘Power of Screams‘ (warning, this link will launch video automatically) ad used a choir to recreate the sounds of a Honda Civic to powerful effect.

What the Future Sounded Like is a brilliant documentary that tells the story of British synthesizer manufactures EMS. EMS was setup in the 60’s by pioneering electronic composers Peter Zinovieff and Tristram Cary (famed for his work on the Dr Who series) and engineer David Cockerell. The 60’s was a time of sweeping change, experimentation and optimism with many musicians and composers using electronic oscillators, tape manipulation and music concrete to imagine what the future might sound like. Read the rest of this entry »

simonsound are crazy about Trunk Records. Run by Jonny Trunk, a recording artist in his own right, the labels past releases have included the soundtrack to U.F.O, strange abstract recordings from Basil Kirchin, the theme music from Kes and a host of cool library recordings.

Jonny has recently been very busy taking his Dirty Fan Male project on the road. Dirty Fan Male is a series of readings made up of letters sent to UK Porn models and is very funny. It was the word of mouth hit at Edinburgh Festival.

Trunk Records have a host of great recordings including Music of the Future, Abstractions of the Industrial North by Basil Kirchin, The Tommorow People theme and incidentals, and a very exciting Bod project that will include words, music and pictures.

If you like your music collection to contain something a little different, then Trunk is the label for you. simonsound reccomend it.