Some early testing of my new piece Machine Time, influenced by the analogue cybernetic systems and music of Roland Kayn and Jaap Vink. The piece's evolution is nudged along by me at various points, but the overall system also influences itself to advance and retreat in various directions, from ambient ripples to microtonal droning saws. Premiere at Signal Flow festival (Northern Lights project), Derry, Playhouse Theatre, April 27th.

Machine Time

Machine Time 2

Submit booking, licensing, and label correspondence to keston@audiocookbook.org

John C.S. Keston is an award winning composer of electronic, experimental, and instrumental music. His work embraces the chaotic ambiguities of environmental and sensorial influences providing context within unpredictable or everyday events. His unconventional compositions convey a spirit of discovery and exploration through the use of graphic scores, chance and generative techniques, analog and digital synthesis, experimental sound design, signal processing, and acoustic piano. His compositions parallel indeterminate improvisation activating what remains immutable within traditional forms of notation driven music. Performers are empowered to use their phonomnesis, or sonic imaginations, to contribute to the work.

His music appears in The Jeffrey Dahmer Files (2012) and he composed the music for the short Familiar Pavement (2015) presented at the MNKINO Film Score Fest. He has appeared on more than a dozen albums including two solo albums on Unearthed Music. His latest release, Isosceles (2016) has drawn comparisons to the Stranger Things soundtrack. In 2011 he won the Minnesota Emerging Composers Award for electronic musicians. In 2013 he won the Jerome Fund for New Music for his project documenting binaural duets with the Singing Ringing Tree in the UK. 

John has performed and exhibited original work at Northern Spark, an all night arts festival with over 200,000 attendees (MN); the Weisman Art Museum (MN); the Montreal Jazz Festival; the Walker Art Center; the Burnet Gallery (MN); the In/Out Festival of Digital Performance (NYC); the Eyeo Festival (MN); INST-INT (MN); Echofluxx (Prague); WMC (Miami); and Moogfest (NC). In addition, Keston has worked with Atmosphere, Jon Davis, Martin Dosh, Peter Hennig, Joshua Herbst, Cody McKinney, Graham O'Brien, Adam Svec, and Nils Westdal to name a few. John resides in Minneapolis where he is a professor of creative multimedia at the University of St. Thomas and founded the widely read sound design resource  <a href="http://audiocookbook.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">AudioCoobook.org</a> where he shares sounds and writes about his unique approach to composition, production, and performance.

Composer and electronic sound person from Dublin, Ireland, also based in Derry, NI, where I work at Ulster University.

Machine Time 2

BrianBridges