Weston Olencki

written for and performed by Laura Cocks. 
recorded July 2021 in Brattleboro, Vermont. 
Full recording coming in 2022. 

All electronics were generated via Google's ddsp timbre-transfer neural synthesis engine. I compiled a digital model of the members of TAK ensemble using a corpus of audio samples they provided. Then, I passed individual voices of a pre-recorded quintet of Lauras (aka flute sounds, mostly multiphonics) through a different model of each player. The resulting monophonic audio attempts to both learn the characteristics of the respective virtual performers and "mishear" the polyphonic harmony as a single line. Itself a poorly rendered model of this original material, Laura's 6th solo part (performed live) essentially "puppeteers" digital phantasms of her friends, weaving live and simulated flutes through an AI's approximation of a classical chamber ensemble. 

Huge thank you to Marina, Charlotte, Madison, & Ellery for your sounds & for your virtual presences!

virtual chamber music (for flute and ensembles) - II. Runciter Assoc. (shadow music, for TAK)

In this week's episode, Marina and Madison interview Weston Olencki about his upcoming album "Old Time Music," coming out this spring on Tripticks Tapes. They also talk about Weston's relationship to country music, AI and machine learning, and more. 

The music on today's episode is from "Old Time Music," as well as Weston's piece "Virtual Chamber Music," performed live by Laura Cocks with an AI version of TAK Ensemble as their backing band. 

This episode was produced by Charlotte Mundy, Marina Kifferstein, and Madison Greenstone, and edited by Marina Kifferstein.

For more about Weston Olencki: http://www.westonolencki.com
For more about TAK: http://takensemble.com
For more about Weston's collaborator Sam Salem: http://www.osamahsalem.co.uk/

025. Weston Olencki

inter-spatia (2020/22)
Catherine Lamb

performed on March 18th, 2022 at Nykirken, Bergen, Borealis Festival

Microtub (Robin Hayward, Martin Taxt, and Peder Simonsen), Rage Thormbones (Mattie Barbier and Weston Olencki), with MO Abbott and Henrik Nørstebø

tuba trio + trombone quartet

recorded by Weston Olencki

inter-spatia (with Microtub and Rage Thormbones)

For two electro-mechanically controlled banjos, homemade magnetic resonators, solenoid motors, AM radio transmitters, vintage transistor and tube radios, railroad spikes, mason jars, carriage bolts, South Carolina red clay distortion unit, 60Hz ground hum, field recordings, and neural net re-synthesis of seminal old-time repertoire and Markov-driven Scruggs-style banjo picking. Various additional samples drawn from the field recording archive of photographer O. Winston Link, Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians, and miscellaneous historical tapes, cylinders, records, and wire recordings made in the Carolinas.

Samples from O. Winston Link's "Sounds of Steam Railroading" (Vol. 1 "Self-titled" & Vol. 3, "Thunder on Blue Ridge") [1957] expressly used with permission from the O. Winston Link Museum, in Roanoke, VA. Archival preservations made of the steam engine's final months of operation throughout the Appalachians.

“the by and by” was compiled by generating predictive audio models using OpenAI's Jukebox engine. The script learned a Carter Family classic and regenerated its material with the virtual and digitized voices of Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Charley Pride, Elizabeth Cotten, Jimmie Rodgers, Buck Owens, Loretta Lynn, Uncle Dave Macon, Willie Nelson, etc.

The reanimated voice of Roscoe Holcomb was made using Google’s DDSP timbre-transfer algorithm passed through a corpus of voice samples made by Charlotte Mundy.

//

Released by Tripticks Tapes (TTT 017). 
Developed and recorded between 2020-2022,
mostly in Brattleboro, VT and Greenfield, MA.

Concept and production by Weston Olencki.
Lovingly mastered by Alan F. Jones (Laminal Audio).

With Anna Webber, tenor saxophone (track 1).

Cover photo by Ginevra Shay.

Notes on each piece in track comments. 

//

Following the conceptual avant-hillbilly trajectory of their previous SUPERPANG release "Verd Mont", "Old Time Music" is composer/improviser Weston Olencki’s newest collection of historically-driven sound works. The album’s three pieces are rooted in the specific intersections between musical instruments, their associated genres, and broader cultural/material histories: the tenor saxophone with jazz and recording studio technology (tenor madness), the banjo with bluegrass and the mechanized modernism of the Carolinas (a vine that grew over the city…), and the pump organ with Sacred Harp hymnody and the aging marble industries of Olencki’s home in Vermont (Charon guiding the weary…). “Old Time Music” explores just that: sound that binds itself to remembrance, futurism, (nonlinear) time, and the living musical traditions of America.