Name: What the H*eck are AirPods by Hex-Ed.
Duration: 3 min 30 s
Description: Please only listen to this track with tiny bud headphones or laptop speakers

DL OK
[REDACTED] https://twitter.com/rdctdrec

[REDACTED]

[REDACTED] Set 2021.7.3

for string quartet and electronics

Paris, Centre Pompidou June 7th 2017
Quatuor Diotima

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As a kid we had a television set with an antenna that rotated (you could rotate it from inside of your house). When the major channels would go off-air you could rotate it and pick up strange other channels from smaller cities around - from across the border, Buffalo and so on - and you would see strange things, that were kind of hard to see (there was a lot of static) and it was very intriguing to watch that kind of things. That was really the core, the crystal at the centre of this movie: my experience with that thinking “what if the images that you pulled up were really quite extreme, disturbing, possibly illegal, and what would you think then, would you keep seeking out those channels or would you call the police or what would you do, how would you respond to them?”

David Cronenberg on his movie Videodrome (commentary track of the Criterion Collection BlueRay)

The Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion was a television signal hijacking (probably the most famous and certainly the longest signal hijacking ever) that occurred in Chicago, Illinois, United States on the evening of November 22, 1987. The signal pirates, whose identities were never found, succeeded in getting their broadcast intruded onto WTTW (a local Public Broadcasting Service television station).
The pirate broadcast, which lasted 90 endless seconds, featured an individual disguised as Max Headroom (a sci-fi computer-generated television character quite popular in the 80s, coming from dystopian near-future dominated by television and large corporations).
Around 11:15 p.m. an episode of the British TV-Series Doctor Who was suddenly interrupted by television static, after which an unidentified man wearing a Max Headroom mask and sunglasses appeared. The man started to moan, scream and laugh, uttering various random phrases (the audio was distorted and crackling), including New Coke's advertising slogan "Catch the Wave" while holding a Pepsi can (Max Headroom was a Coca-Cola spokesperson at the time). He then tossed the can out of sight, presented his middle finger wearing a rubber extension, sang an excerpt of “I’m losing you” (a 1966 Motown hit recorded by the Temptations), hummed the theme song of Clutch Cargo (a clumsily-animated television series of the 60s), moaned painfully complaining about his piles, farted, put on and off a giant glove (similar to the one worn by Michael Jackson at the time). He then partially exposed his buttocks, howling: "They're coming to get me!”, while an unidentified female accomplice wearing a French maid outfit started to spank him with a flyswatter. The transmission then blacked out for a few seconds before resuming the Doctor Who episode in progress.

“The 1987 Max Headroom Broadcast Incident” features a string quartet “enhanced” with transducers and preparations. 
The digital processing of the instruments is largely inspired by the same modulation techniques that were - and still are - commonly used for radio and television transmission. 
The piece, an hommage to obsolete or soon-to-be deprecated technologies and to the media-dominated, dark future that the “cyberpunk” sci-fi of 80s foretold, is dedicated to the memory of Fausto Romitelli.

Mauro Lanza - "The 1987 Max Headroom broadcast incident" (2017)

written, produced and recorded by Lyra Pramuk 
additional mixing and mastering by Ben Pramuk
artwork by Helin Sahin

Download:
https://lyrapramuk.bandcamp.com/album/scrytch

Scrytch

raw improvisation
produced by Ben Pramuk
recorded summer 2018, Berlin

vibrant (improvisation)

Fountain

Tendril

Gossip

Cradle

Friday 31 January 2020
 CTM 2020 – Liminal 
Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin

From the historical figure of the castrato to the contemporary phenomenon of the digitally modulated voice, liminal genders have long intertwined with the production and performance of music. Castrati singers, boys castrated before puberty to preserve a high and uncanny singing voice, were outlawed when music recording technology began to proliferate, and around the same time that homosexuality, as a modern sexual and gender category, began to emerge.

The gramophone, and later the hi-fi stereo, tape player, and iPod, isolated the sung voice from its resonating body, producing an uncanniness similar to that of castrati—ambiguously gendered people with larger frames but unthickened vocal cords whose modified sexual characteristics created a singular and often perplexing sound. In the twentieth century, the adoption of synthesizer technology to music by trans composer Wendy Carlos further threw the voice into liminal space, creating sounds that did not stem from any visible resonating body. Trans uses of music technology proliferate in this century, where musicians like Sophie, Fever Ray, Terre Thaemlitz, and YATTA confound the ear with complex and contradictory performances of vocal gender.

CTM 2020: Voices Without Bodies by Sasha Geffen

Please only listen to this track with tiny bud headphones or laptop speakers

What the H*eck are AirPods

My Head Is Bleeding

Electronica B • Minor Crush

for Microtonals Accordions ©Xamp
Electric Guitar, Amplified Harpsichord, 
Piano, 3 Percussions, 3 doublebass,
& Wind Ensemble (with NO electronics)

For my beloved friends <3
Tribute to Mark Fell

Conducted by Julien Leroy
With Duo Xamp (F.Vicens & J.-E.Sotty)
R.Reber (Guit.), P.Hattat-Colin (Pno.),C.-U.Kim(Clav.),
& Musicians from the CNSMDP Orchestra
Live Recording by Jean Marc Lyzwa 18th September 2020
Paris CNSMDP
Edit & Mix Samir Amarouch
Master Charles D. Wajnberg

Electronica B • Minor Crush , for 21 musicians | 2020 • J. Leroy

Musician / NeRRd.
I make bad games here:  https://i-have-an.itch.io/
Website: https://wrattc.wixsite.com/chriswratt

What the H*eck are AirPods

Hex-Ed.

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