EcieShow Music

Showing posts with label mechanical music. Show all posts

Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO's Mutated Christmas Album

This 1999 collection of eccentric electronic instrumental Christmas music by Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh doesn't sound much like Devo, or, for that matter, Christmas music. It does sound really nice, tho. As the song titles indicate, the tunes suggest famous Xmas carols, and sometimes just barely at that, e.g.: the cartoonish "Midnight Windup Toy". And isn't "Soylent Night" the greatest title?

Mark Mothersbaugh - Joyeux Mutato

01 Jingle$, Jingle$, Jingle$
02 Blue Joy

03 Midnight Wind-Up Toy
04 Bell Boy
05 Happy Woodchopper
06 Only 12 Shopping Days Left
07 Peace And Goodwill
08 Enough Xmas For All
09 You Better Watch Out...
10 Let There Be Snow
11 I Don't Have A Christmas Tree (Soylent Night)
BONUS: Devo - Merry Something To You [a barely minute long jingle from a 2010 Warner Bros xmas comp]

I was reminded of this album after li'l bro Paul Fab told me about the big ol' Mark Mothersbaugh exhibit he saw recently at the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art. (That's Paul at the exhibit, above.) It's a career retrospective of Devo memorabilia and Mothersbaugh's prodigious visual art output. Check the short (exclusive! not on YouTube!) video below Paul shot of some crazy contraptions: "I believe he calls them Orchestrions. It's a gallery (his kooky rugs on one wall) with four Orchestrions which all play together. They're mostly old organ pipes, but also many bird calls, whistles, metal bells and other noisy things. They're cobbled together with visible electric (and barely electronic) controls all left out and taped into whatever position they're supposed to be in. Every 5 minutes they start playing. What a cool sound."

Damn! Can't wait to see it. Once it finishes its Denver run, the exhibit will be on tour for a couple years. (I did quite like Mark's "Beautiful Mutants" gallery show in 2009.) Thanks to Paul for the pic and vid.

"Christmas Memories Played on Antique Musical Boxes"

Victorian-era robots! Plinkety-plonkety music not played by human hands!

If the phrase "music box" conjures up images of that tchotchke in your grandma's living room with a ballerina twirling around on top as "Moon River" plays, you may be surprised to hear how lush and orchestrated these beauties sound. We don't know exactly what singers and musicians of the pre-recording era sounded like, but as these big boxes, sporting such impressive names as the 'Symphonium,' were actually found in household parlors of the late 1800s, listening to them is a bit of a time machine into them long gone days before radio, records, or the internet provided in-home musical entertainment, and song titles all started with "O."

The tunes featured on this 1977 release are short, sometimes under a minute, so for the big hits like "Silent Night," they wind 'em up and play the song two or three times in a row. And if you hate Christmas music, there's plenty of unfamiliar songs here that don't feel especially seasonal and could feed your mechanical-music jones all year 'round.

Christmas Memories Played on Antique Musical Boxes

1. O Tannenbaum
2. O Sanctissima
3. Silent Night
4. Among Shepherds-The Holy City-Every Year Anew
5. O Come Little Children
6. O Tannenbaum
7. O Come Little Children
8. See the Conquering Hero
9. Cloister Bells-Ave Maria
10. O Come All Ye Faithful
11. Monastery Bells

Another vinyl gem unearthed by this blog's ol' pal Brer Windbag. And if you're looking for some appropriate Victorian-era literature to read whilst listening to this, how 'bout this 1882 book of children's short stories that usually feature the children dying. Features the feel-bad classic, "The New Mother":

"Anyhow Stories"

O come little children, indeed. "The Imitation Fish" is another cherished tale to make your kids miserable. And who wants to set "The Paper Ship" to music?
Thanks to Count Otto, and Windy!

T.V.O.D.

Turn on the t.v., watch a movie, what do you get? Inane sitcoms, "Transformers," cops chasing serial killers for the umpteenth time...but what's this?! Video being put to good use for a change, producing such feasts for the eyes and ears as

Nintendo audio played by player piano and robotic percussion:

"This system allows for Nintendo gameplay audio to be played through an acoustic player piano and robotically controlled percussive instruments. The piano and percussion play live during actual gameplay." It's true, watch the game in the upper left to see how it triggers the robot instruments.

I wrote about Gnarboot's nutty album in 2011, but this video from earlier this year isn't so much kooky as it is pretty sick 'n' twisted. Imagine David Lynch making children's programming. Over an eerie electronic score, the title phrase "Cats In Pajamas" is chanted mantra-like by a childlike vocalist, as people in cat masks mysteriously appear and disappear. My three-year-old came over to my computer when I was playing this, intrigued. After all, it's kitties, right? But when the scary knife-wielding clown showed up, she ran from the room. Thanks a lot for scaring my kid, Gnarboots!

Speaking of sick and twisted...the gold standard of such, The Everyday Film, who released an album we reviewed earlier this year, have now added video to their arsenal of weapons of mass hysteria. It's for the short version of their song "Goool" and, like a slideshow of early Jandek album covers, features a series of blurred, discombobulated photos in as compelling a video realization of alienation and disconnection as you're ever going to see.

Need a laugh now? Another M4M fave, the absurdist mad scientist and his "singing" robot duo the Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra, have also released their debut video, "Frankenstein's Laundromat," another welcome bit of their trademark electro-poppin' surreal humor. This is a preview of the forthcoming album, "Experiments With Auto-Croon."

Swedish female duo The Haggish Moue have a bunch of videos up on the youtubes, and I watched 'em all. Not sure if I really need to listen to their wistful brand of electro-psych on it's own, but the largely-instrumental (+ somewhat ethereal vox) music works great as a soundtrack to spacey video art acid trips that you can get lost in. Let's fall into space...

"Bangs Glitter"

AJNA: A Giant, Strange Mechanical-Music Contraption

From Sweden comes some fantastic new videos of AJNA, a large musical robot that looks like Dr. Who's police box tricked out with drums, sound-making thingies, and visual artworks. The first video is a minute-and-a-half intro to the beasts' wonders, but the second video sports a full band - a contemporary chamber group, really - getting down to business with AJNA to produce some truly striking, lovely sounds and sights that are rich in dark, esoteric atmosphere.

The song "Karlak" was written by Jens Peterson-Berger of the great band Originalljudet, and features the harmonium, one of my favorite obscure musical instruments. Known mainly for its use in Sufi music (e.g. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) and Nico's post-Velvets solo albums, it sounds somewhat like a goth, droney cousin to the accordion.

I Will NOT Be Appearing On Radio Misterioso...

...this Sunday nite. Two hours of radio hijinks will be postponed to a later date. But the good news is, thanks to super-swell maniac Phil C., "The Lavender Jungle" comp is back up.

And there's some great stuff up on the youtubes. Another valued tipster, Niels, hepped me to this clip of "Flying robot quadrotors perform the James Bond Theme by playing various instruments including the keyboard, drums and maracas," a spectacular example of the ever-evolving genre of mechanical music.

HERE is a 16-minute explanation for you techies.

And I didn't have a March Fourth post this past March 4th re: alternative marching bands, because I didn't have any material. Well, I got one now: this swell vid about a band I wrote about HERE, a 5 minute documentary on the mysterious, highly experimental Itchy-O Marching Band, revealing their home/custom-made instruments.

ROBOTS PLAY EXOTICA

- You got robots in my gamelan!

- You got gamelan in my robots!

Two great tastes that go great together: Gamelan Galak Tika (pronounced 'Galactica'?) & Ensemble Robot, from Boston's MIT and UMass, respectively, combine forces for 19 minutes of free awesomeness that you can download here:

Gamelan Galak Tika & Ensemble Robot: Heavy Metal

A few other instruments like violin and electric guitars join the machines and the Indonesian bells 'n' gongs for a thoroughly mysterious and wonderful sandwich spread of rock 'n' roll, island exotica, and avant-garde. Now, with added chunks of sci-fi futurism! A combo this bizarre shouldn't exist. And yet it does:

And speaking of robots playing heavy metal...

Compressorhead

are a metal band - literally - whose videos show them jammin' on Motorhead, The Ramones, and AC/DC. They do live shows, and apparently an album is in the works.

Behold! The Kaleidocosmicorgrig - The Strangest Instrument EVER?!

I don't usually pay $10 for obscure old records - that's like real money - but how could I resist this description from the back cover: "This is a recording of The Kaleidocosmicorgrig... it is 35' in length, 12' tall, weighs approximately 2 tons... a contrivance of pedals, keyboards, pulleys, mousetraps, electrical wires, wind machines, magnets, bellows, fishing weights, stovepipes and bicycle wheels, arranged so as to control a parlor piano, 30 tuned bottles, 13 10-foot tuba pipes, a fine bass drum, 2 tambourines, a mariachi marimba, a wooden xylophone, Swiss glockenspiel, castanets, maracas, wood block, cymbals, bonkers, zonkers, and taxihorn."

Sounds too good to be true? Many eye/ear-witnesses have testified to its one-time existence, in a Shakey's Pizza Parlor near Disneyland, California. This 1970 album, recorded live, consists largely of frantically energetic instrumentals (with a lot of Greek influences for some reason); great versions of two Latin classics, "Tico Tico" and "Malagueña;" a few originals; some silly lyrics (from what I could make out - the vocals are not well recorded, but it hardly matters); and a final group sing-along that does not feature the giant whatsit. The album is on red vinyl, and originally came with a strawberry-scented incense stick (did I mention this was 1970?)

Orchestrions - mechanical music orchestras - were popular a century ago, before recordings became hi-fi. I have other albums of this sort, but this beast is clearly the granddaddy of 'em all. Featured here are the old-fashioned tunes you'd expect, but also recent soundtracks hits like "Zorba The Greek" and "Never On Sunday" (see what I mean about the Greek influence?) that suggests that Nick O'Lodeon (aka Nick Cornwell) was actively programming his machine by punching new piano rolls, creating new music boxes, and building the robots necessary to play contemporary music. Unless it was all theatrics, and Nick was playing live, but I don't think so - sure, he was playing and singing some live, but the rapid-fire piano and xylophone sound like they're playing too fast for human hands.

So what's it sound like? Pretty much like what you'd think it would sound like - berserk circus music filtered thru a '70s California hippie sensibility. It's a lot of fun, upbeat, and to say the least, unique. Who knew such things existed in our universe? Far out, man!

Nick O'Lodeon Plays Actual Music On His Kaleidocosmicorgrig

A DRUM MACHINE...BUT NOT THAT KIND OF DRUM MACHINE

Jens Peterson Berger of the great Swedish band Originalljudet has built a crazy contraption that puts a new spin on the term "drum machine" - this ain't no TR-808, folks, but a large robotic acoustic drum playing thingie (I want!), as demonstrated here:

Which is then joined by an orchestra for some lovely robo-classical musics:

Another fine example of human musicians jamming with homemade gizmos, a la Frank Pahl, and Pierre Bastien.

FUN WITH SUN BOXES

Fayetteville's Craig Colorusso doesn't "compose" music so much as build gizmos that allow Mother Nature to write her own jams: "Sun Boxes are...twenty speakers operating independently, each powered by the sun via solar panels. There is a different loop set to play a guitar note in each box continuously. These guitar notes collectively make a Bb chord. Because the loops are different in length, once the piece begins they continually overlap and the piece slowly evolves over time."

The loops-of-different-lengths approach reminds me of Eno's "Music For Airports," and there is a similar meditative effect with this music. The ambient sounds of nature (the beach, insects, etc.) are a crucial component - these are, quite literally, field
rec

ordings. I first listened to this stuff Monday morning after a crazy Thanksgiving weekend (complete with a live "Yo Gabba Gabba" concert and thousands of screaming toddlers!) and it was as nice as dipping into a warm bath. Aaaah...

Listen or buy:

Sun Boxes Seven Inch

or listen to a continuous stream.

Pierre Bastien's Musiques Machinales

(Vote for "M4M Idol"! You've got 'til Oct. 6.)

It's a "Two-For-Tuesday"! On Wednesday! Here are two absolutely spellbinding albums by French composer Pierre Bastien, who, since childhood, has been fascinated with the idea of incorporating machines into music. His first experiment was with a spoon attached to a metronome striking a pan. Since then he has come far indeed, constructing Erector Set-like rockin' robots, and on his "Mecanoid" album, brilliantly incorporating (non-hip hop) turntablism. Over the repetitious rhythms of his machines he often blows cool Miles-like jazz horn. The results, on his "Musiques Machinales" album, range from the Steve Reich-like minimalism of "Chez Les Crânes" to "Marchin' Band," reminiscent of "Rain Dog

s"-era Tom Waits. Scratchy fiddle and, on at least one song, what sounds like a musical saw also feature in his cabinet of curiosities. Like Frank Pahl and his Scavenger Quartet (whose "We Who Live On Land" album I recently posted in it's entirety) gorgeous melodies such as the one on "Vipers" from "Musiques Machinales" sell these obtuse ideas. Magical.

PIERRE BASTIEN "Musiques Machinales"

PIERRE BASTIEN "Mecanoid"

TOYS VS ROBOTS: THE MAD GENIUS OF FRANK PAHL

UPDATE 7/25/11: album back on line

F rank Pahl is one of the most criminally underrated composers/mad scientists at work today.
And while I still maintain that "We Who Live On Land," the album he recorded with The Scavenger Quartet that I wrote about a couple years ago, is one of the best albums of the '00s, I do thoroughly enjoy a more recent album of his, "Elementary," with the trio Little Bang Theory.

"Elementary" is performed entirely on toy instruments. It's all instrumental, and wanders over a fairly wide emotional range - no cute kiddie stuff here (not that I mind cuteness). The song writing is pretty ambitious, with some fairly lengthy "suites", tho with toy instruments you inevitably have a built-in nostalgic sweetness that keeps pretensions at bay. Utterly wonderful stuff, but it's in print, available from his site and elsewhere, so not gonna post it, but I did included a couple songs off it as BONUS! tracks, included with this other excellent Frank Pahl album that doesn't seem to be for sale anywhere.

Frank Pahl and Klimperei "Music For Desserts"

Pahl sez about this 2001 release: "What can I say? This is my favorite. All tracks began with home made automatic instruments. [French group] Klimperei laid down their sympathetic magic and I mixed."

And that's something I didn't realize when I first reviewed The Scavenger Quartet album: how many hand-built robot instruments are featured in Pahl's music, mixed in with all the strange, often antiquated human-played instruments. Da man plays: "Piano, Piano [Prepared, Prepared Barrel], Organ [Binary Air Quartet, Microcontrolled Air Quartet, Hohner Organette], Clarinet, Tipple, Marimba [Toy], Cello, Guitar [Tenor], Harmonium, Euphonium, Harp [Peacock, African], Flute [Bulgarian], Trombone [Toy], Trumpet [Toy], Bass Drum, Whistle, Ukulele, Ukulele [Automatic, Buzzsaw, Binary Quartet, Family], Zither, Zither [Automatic], Percussion, Percussion [Automatic], Performer [Autoglock, Binary Doorbell Quartet, Washing Machine, Jason Ortega's Auto Chime, Double String Trio, Virtual Pet: Gerbil, Humming Choir Loop, Shrutti Box]." No, I'm not entirely sure what all that means either, but it does give you an idea of how unique this music is, without losing a melodic approachability.

Cathegory