Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra
"Take Away These Early Graves Blues"

From the album Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything
Out 21 January 2014 on Constellation

cstrecords.com/cst099
tra-la-la-band.com/

Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything

Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra • "Take Away These Early Grave Blues"

The lead track from our brand new album 'Commit'.
We've wanted to let you hear this for ages now, so come.

Out 17th March 2014, via our record label Cease:Stop.

'Commit' the new album.
Out 17th March 2014, via our record label Cease:Stop.

SHOWS:

04 May - Aberdeen - The Big Beach Ball
06 June - Inverness - GoNORTH Festival
28 June - Aberdeen - Live At Captain Toms (Live Streaming Music Show)

'No Longer Dying' Official Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR-NiYIDYNg
Facebook: www.facebook.com/IndianRedLopez
Twitter: www.twitter.com/IndianRedLopez

No Longer Dying (Free Download)

algorve III. Neone

Context: http://media.thi.ng/2014/talks/we-are-the-incanters/index.html

Recording of the Sonic-PI livecoding demo given at Retune 2014 conference (slightly extended with extra synth stacks after the conf, but still recorded as another live coding session - no cheating!).

Sourcecode here:
https://gist.github.com/postspectacular/d9c951efb166a2e82f53

Check out Sonic-PI yourself, it's amazing!
http://sonic-pi.net

Sonic - Pi - Retune14

The piece was composed using three violin parts responding live to one another through multi-track recording; the semibreve 'tactus' shapes the pace of the harmonic shifts, and is derived from the 'organum' of the thirteenth century (see Perotinus of Notre Dame), which also gives a drone quality through a 'cantus firmus' made of the 'finalis' of the Phrygian (Gregorian) mode transposed down to 'A'. 

This 'organum triplum' is made of three violin parts using mostly two-part polyphony each, with inevitable harmonic overlaps and departures; for the recording, I played all three parts, reacting to note or chord changes in one part and deciding when or not to change note or chord against the other parts. 

Like 'Static Music' and 'Music for Ensemble', the music is concerned with the lack of gestures, or rather, with the possibility of a musical landscape which, in spite of changes within it, maintains stasis; similarly to the works of Morton Feldman, memory is made to become disoriented, and the slowly shifting harmonic patterns recur but do not bring about momentum or a narrative, but, rather, blend the whole into a motionless, almost frozen sound-scape.

The piece was premiered in Aberdeen on 3rd October at SonADA 2014, in multi-media format with a synchronised video of original images from various locations in Northern Scotland. 

Organum(ModusPhrygius)

Playing around with Sonic Pi, a basic live coding environment. This is a sample of my first attempt.

This was an adaptation of one of the tutorial codes:

define :metro do
use_bpm 30
  cue :tick
  sleep 0.5
end

define :drums do
with_fx :slicer do
  sync :tick
  sample :drum_heavy_kick, rate: 0.75
  sleep 0.5
  sample :drum_bass_hard, rate: 0.3
  sleep 0.5
  sample :drum_cymbal_closed, rate: 0.3, attack: 0.3, release: 0.2
  end
end

define :synths do
with_fx :ixi_techno do
  sync :tick
  use_synth :tb303
  use_synth_defaults amp: 1, mod_range: 15, cutoff: 60, pulse_width: 0.2, attack: 0.03, release: 0.6,   mod_phase: 0.25
  play_pattern_timed chord(:C, :m7), 1, amp: rrand(0.1, 0.8)
  sleep 0.25
  play 38
  end
end

define :bassline do
with_fx :slicer do
sync :tick
sample :bass_thick_c, rate: 0.6, decay: 0.75, amp: 0.75
end
end

in_thread(name: :drums){loop{drums}}
in_thread(name: :synths){loop{synths}}
in_thread(name: :metro){loop{metro}}
in_thread(name: :bassline){loop{bassline}}


Testcoding

A_Rival | Chip-hop defined | The album 8-Bit Pimp has original beats composed entirely of 8-Bit samples from a Nintendo Entertainment System Sound Chip

Circuitry

Silver Arm are a British four piece who are currently working on their debut album. They are influenced by "Bedfordshire woodpecker, early 80s American hardcore, British post punk, fictional languages, heavy metal, The Supremes, the building of pyramids, The Stooges, Devo, tales of rural terror both historical and current, The Mothers Of Invention, The 13th Floor Elevators, the traditional biscuit and shoe-making industries, Fugazi and Sonic Youth..."

They define this week's featured demo track Dead Tongues as "an unhinged blast of intense psychedelic noise; a two-minute storm that will have your fists in the air while it melts your mind and rips off your face like a machine-gun toting horse."

Website: http://www.fearofsilverarm.com/

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/silverarm

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FearofSilverArm

Twitter: https://twitter.com/fearofsilverarm


Soundcloud Page

Silver Arm - Dead Tongues

As featured on Futuresequences "sequence 6" compilation, this is a track based around a small section of piano looped, accompanied by a bow'd glockenspiel & delayed guitar. It explores the story of Christ's ascension. Its free to download here: http://futuresequence.bandcamp.com/track/ascension

Testcoding

David Officer