random sound calvacade #26

another round o' tasty vittles from the incomparable colin-padrick charles. the williwaw source material for this fine bit o' stürm-und-tanzen is pierpont, the first offering from shimmering coaster of light - you know, the school-bus song.

mister charles also went under the guise of saint pokie, making better musicks with Reactor, ten fingers and the truth than one could think possible.

the original bombast and all its bombastic brethren from the shimmering coaster of light collection can now be procured through the usual unusual means - the bartering of hogsheads to bushels - and thereafter heard in its unconfounded entirety at your whim and leisure. That is, if you ain't got it, you can gets it. And boy howdy, you'll gets it but good.

chicago is calling, will you accept the charges?

Distance be damned!

On heave-ho hiatus for far too long, beloved comrade williwaw will once again take part in Chicago Calling Cuatro, sending a flurry of zeros and ones through this Series of Tubes to that home so far away from home, Brown Rice, 4432 north kedzie ave, chicago usa, on Friday, 2. October 2009, after 10 pm. That's after 4 am on Saturday for those playing the trans-atlantic version.

The night - tonight, truth be told - is truly a night of stars, no matter what the clouds may think. Making a joyous din will be a true horde of haughty compatriots:

Ritwik Banerji - saxophone
Jimmy Bennington - batterie
Steve Dalanchinsky - poetry (New York City)
Jon Godston - soprano saxophone
Jayve Montgomery - saxophones and percussion
Gregory O’Drobinak - Arc of the Oven
Jim Ryan - kalimba (Oakland)
Michael Staron - bass
Ernesto Sturm Diaz-Infante - bajo sexto (San Francisco)

random sound calvacade #25

the incomparable colin-padrick charles once upon a time took some williwaw into the ol' computational perambulator and came out with something tasty and fresh. this particular bit was found in an otherwise disposable box of old backups, mostly floppy disks that are neither floppy nor playable anymore. the williwaw source material is the phonocrat, the second offering from a portrait of shelves, which can be heard in its unperambulated entirety at the williwaw sound emporium.

mister charles also went under the guise of saint pokie, making better musicks with Reactor, ten fingers and the truth than one could think possible.

20. june 2009

random sound calvacade #24

hot off the battlefield!

a mere minute from the sixty-plus minutes of amplified dialogue 'twixt williwaw and chuck falzone - oh! the interlocution! - at the brown rice performance emporium on saturday 09. may 2009

soon the evening's eloquence in its entirety can be enjoyed in delectable morsel form at the williwaw ensemble sight and sound cavalcade

williwaw vs. falzone

williwaw and chuck falzone (flying luttenbachers, my name is rar-rar, buck pig) present a loving set of impressions of the Symbol of their shared hometown in an evening of amplified 'ukulele & guitar tête-à-tête.

Following in fine binary form is the equally enticing duo of erica dicker on baroque violin - can you smell the scordatura? - and ryan ingebritsen on all manner of electromechanical manipulations.

The show opens with un peu de la trompette by Daniel Godston.

williwaw vs. sonic bridge, II: the rematch

Bring on the telematicism! Ever building bridges, our comrade williwaw once again will take the stage and the Skype with stalwart cohorts in an effort to create a wondrous interequatorial din:

TUESDAY • 24. March 2009
ELASTIC ARTS
2830 N. Milwaukee Ave, 2nd Floor

The local entourage features Dan Godston, Jayve Montgomery, Amanda Gutierrez, Noé Cuéllar and Joshua Manchester (along with beloved comrade williwaw). Other sites include Tucson, Arizona, Ciudad de México, D.F., and Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. Here's the view from Buenos Aires at Sonic Bridge I on 23. January 2009:

¡he aquí, la tecnología!

williwaw takes part in Sonic Bridge a trans-border bending between Chicago, New Orleans, Mexico City & Buenos Aires on 23. january 2009. Local transmission will be from the tender confines of brown rice (4432 north kedzie ave, chicago usa). Global transmission can be found here.

strooooke!

a nugget of a gem of a pearl was recently uncovered - driver has no cash playing in 1992 - and put upon this series of tubes. behold, the beginning of that long ago night, where we find our heroes in battle with billy squier and his ribald command, stroke!

more of this ribaldry can be found within you own personal williwaw vision quest.

invasion of the bus-riding film-making robots

our comrade williwaw was looking for silent movies about robots, and boy howdy! were there robots, robots making movies. Behind the green curtain is this explanation:

This robot makes short films based on its visual experience. Its eyes travel about the city on buses while the body sits in a gallery. The eyes collect snippets of video, and transmit them to the body when their buses come within range of a Cafenet wireless internet node. The robot body splits the video into individual frames and analyses each one, obtaining twenty numbers reflecting the arrangement of colour, shape and detail within the frame. These numbers are treated as coordinates in a twenty dimensional space, in which distance is somewhat related to visual difference. For twelve hours a day the robot traces a zigzagging path through this space. This path passes through a series of images, which become a video sequence. Visitors to the gallery can see this video, called variously the robot's "dream" or "stream of consciousness". At the end of the day the robot looks over its days work and joins the best parts together as a finished film. The robot uses neural networks and heuristic rules to choose waypoints for its daily dream, but the finished film is mainly selected for the smoothness of its movement through the space. The robot will remember everything it sees until it has five million images in its mind, after which it will replace its least favourite images with new ones. In addition to getting images from the eyes, the robot creates false memories by combining and manipulating well-liked and overused images. These notes are incomplete.

the audio is the first and third parts of a plagal cadence in honor of billy hayes, who passed into the ether at the end of august, from the september outing at brown rice, which can be heard and/or downloaded in its entirety at the williwaw sound emporium.

the twenty-third film on wayne shorter

If Glenn Gould merits twenty two films, how many does Wayne Shorter merit? Ten? Twelve? A hundred and six? Well, let this bit of bufoonery serve as the first of many hopefully to come, a bit of williwaw playing Shorter's Fall, recorded at brown rice during the ides of autumn, september 15th for all the calendar lovers in the house. the somewhat illegible (d'oh) text are haikus by Richard Wright; the more legible visuals are a train trip in Zürich.

random sound calvacade #23

reasonable fresh sounds... for a change!

the following segment from the williwaw set at brown rice on 15. september 2008 was a false start on several fronts, but nevertheless, the train kept rollin', so there's three and a half minutes of mistake-ridden bits to behold!

the source is Seemless by the never-heralded rock ensemble bale, which included craig abell-champion, michael verzani, an alesis hr16, scott spears, demir o'steen, peter pollack and, for one afternoon, victor cortez. actually, this is just the introduction to that song, rendered as mere drizzle. ooze, even.

this snippet and the rest of the night's williwaw folly can be heard and dowloaded with great abandon at the williwaw sound emporium

punctus contra shiva

our beloved comrade returns to Brown Rice on Monday, 17. November at 9 pm, for a duet - nay, battle royale - with Dan Godston on trumpet and sonic sundries. Is pure randomness actually pure order? All will be revealed! It'll be something, by golly.

williwaw had previously joined Godston and Jayve Montgomery for the second set at the Brown Rice on the 15. September. Hopefully that bit of interplanetary exuberance can be soon relived at the williwaw sound emporium.

october folly

to paraphrase a review of the first williwaw release, sixty minutes of dolby (c) reduced noise, details are sketchy on the recent outing of williwaw at the final outing of third annual chicago calling arts festival at AV-aerie. there were some technical difficulties during the evening - strangely not associated with williwaw's usual festooning horde of failures. one of the difficulties involved playing the short films, which allowed the bounty of williwaw to fill time and space with ben billington on a few pieces of batterie, jon godston on soprano sax and greg o'drobinak on a device of his own fiendish crafting, the arc of the oven. we didn't even notice when the films finally started to roll. there is apparently no sonic proof of the evening, but there is this photogravure (courtesy rebecca mcallister):

o'drobinak, godston, williwaw & billington at AV-aerie, chicago usa.

random sound calvacade #21 & 22

the hull, cap'n, she's gonna blow!

even more heavily vaulted assignments: this dainty number for piano-forté was a rounded binary assignment. if you're not sure what a rounded binary form is, you're in luck. it received no comments. it might not have even been an assignment. the memory is fuzzy, and not logically speaking...

bonus! there are little cheats to attempt to "warm" the cold, virtual sound of MIDI, some of which can make the most dainty of numbers (well, 0's and 1's, that is) sound posilutely rocking. this li'l bonus doesn't reach the histrionic heights, but it could truly be considered (enter booming radio voice) the remix.

random sound calvacade #20

yes, little jimmy, the merry-go-round did break down...

more heavily vaulted assignments: this one was for the same class as a previous entry in the calvacade, but this was for brass quintet. no one could ever call this one more complex than need be. yes, it is the merry-go-round broke down. without a satisfactory brass pad available on this crude MIDI mimickry, the tune was rendered with a hideous synth pad, in back-handed honor of gershon kingsley.

williwaw dancer, your life is calling

williwaw will be taking part in the third annual chicago calling arts festival, playing sonic counterpoint to an experimental film by rona mark.

SUNDAY | 12. OCTOBER 2008 | 7 PM
AV-Aerie 2000 W FULTON #310

also taking part in the evening's aesthetic panoply are lisa abbatomarco, laura evonne steinman, dave awl, rachel thorne germond, insook choi, carol genetti, sid yiddish and the clean boys.

shameless reminders á go-go

Gather ye 'round the hearth that be Brown Rice (4432 N Kedzie Ave) for a wee bit of amplified 'ukulele enchantment on Monday, the 15th of September. Gather ye for sonic histrionics, aural exorcisms, and all manner of frolicks. Gather ye then and there, lest ye be damned for all eternity, or until the next show, whichever comes first.

download the flier, tell all the people you love, hate, love to hate and yes, even hate to love about it

in just one click, you can find the recent write-up on your comrade in smooth-sailin' JAZZIZ magazine at the home of williwaw print and hear all manner of antiquated williwaw sound as well as semi-related blatherings of sight and sound right here. Oh, this series of tubes!

random sound calvacade #19

hey nineteen - the calvacade rolls on!

the other of the two tweakings of space sounds, and yet another part of the ever-burdened series, our very lives are being compressed. this one is based on the acoustic detritus produced by a Jovian Bow shock.

random sound calvacade #18

on a slow day in psychoacoustics, the ever-so-credible phonaut turned the ever-so-ignorant-of-such-things williwaw on to the recordings of astrophysical activity. here's the first of two completed tweakings - yes, more of the ever expanding our very lives are being compressed series. blame the university of iowa - no, not for everything, just for explaining the source material, earth proton whistlers.

random sound calvacade #17

now here's a gem - the first composition assignment of the artist known possibly as williwaw. this meager opus for violin and pianer was played by two classmates who did a much better job of making it sound musical than this gosh-forsaken musical instrument digital interface crap, but that's what you get in this cold, virtual world, alas.

... Teacher Dave's one comment on the assignment:

more complex than need be

quality computing is job one million and six

dead links! cursed dead links! discovered dead links at williwaw sound emporium over conversation playing a loft rummage sale over the weekend - a most curious and circuitous way of quality assurance. the links are fixed, and the kids are not ready is now ready for your downloadabilities. finally. sigh.

random sound calvacade #16

experimenting with a new flash media player here as it seems as though the other simple one has gone all craptacular on us - sigh. these deceptive sounds were not taken from another yawntastic art installation, but from Binion's Horseshoe, where our comrade almost got punched in the face and elsewhere for trying to take a picture of the ghost of Willie Mosconi

horse : excerpt one

fresh sounds

the artist rather occasionally known as williwaw will be making a return to the stage, well, not exactly stage, but space, and time, and the continuum that lies beneath.

williwaw
monday 15.09.2008 nine pm
at brown rice
4432 north kedzie avenue

brown rice is the intimate (possibly even cozy) performance space curated by daniel godston and friends that lies just beyond the door under the sign that reads "perfect rubber stamps" (previously known as the candlestick maker curated by michael zerang)

following on the albeit distant heels of the return of driver has no cash and the recent rise in frequency of williwaw in print, will be the return of amplified 'ukulele research. thrills, chills and spills - none of these will be there, but your sonic exorcism is guaranteed.

fresh print

comrade alexander gelfand has been a naughty kitten, and soiled his mittens with some fresh proverbial ink on williwaw in jazziz magazine. the textual portions of his fine penning can be found, wonderfully transcribed by my aching tendons (no thanks to the state of OCR software - c'mon, boffins, let's sort this out once and for all) in the williwaw newsbits section. the real article features/frightens with a larger than four-by-six-inch likeness of the artist known sometimes as williwaw and the following pull quote from said likeness

It turned into a horrible - well, not horrible ... let's call it a beautiful train wreck of sound

random sound calvacade #15

yet another vegasmasses entry into the calvacade: this particular excerpt comes from the last entry in the lumbering volumes, simply entitled end. fair warning: this excerpt does get much louder in the middle, so let the subtlety ride on, peace frog.

end : excerpt one

random sound calvacade #12, 13 & 14

more from the vegasmasses volumes. these excerpts come from the great lumbering track trop, recorded -gasp- at the Tropicana casino. though notes are sketchy at best what sort of CoolEdit waveform editing was used to crush, kill and destroy the recorded sound, it highlighted here the underlying drone of the casino, how it really plays upon a simple harmonic system that continues melodic motion without any harmonic motion, regardless of where the recorder wandered. credit should be given to the ever-so-credible phonaut, who encouraged many early parts of the overarching our very lives are being compressed series, including these particular masses. three more excerpts for your mixing, matching, lathering, rinsing and general pleasure.

trop : excerpt one

trop : excerpt two

trop : excerpt three

random sound calvacade #9, 10 & 11

after watching some of Olivo Barbieri's Site Specific short film series, the calvacade turns its attention to another most particular series: vegasmasses. wandering around the strips - old and new - of las vegas (visiting the undeniable Overlord of the Mightiest Rock, peter pollack) with a minidisc recorder, the sounds of many casinos were captured, crushed and yes, even compressed.

the beauty of las vegas casinos is the attention to aural and visual detail: every doorknob, faucet and throw pillow follows the theme, every sound from every slot machine is in the same key, creating a mellifluous din.

two volumes of large sound masses were originally passed among the precious few, magnifying the aural detail. here are not one, not two, but three excerpts from the lumbering track grand. mix, match, lather, rinse, enjoy.

grand : excerpt one

grand : excerpt two

grand : excerpt three

random sound calvacade #8

diggin' deep into the vaults, way down in the hole, if you will, comes today's random sound calvacade - a bit of musical-instrument digital-interface, or midi action. cleaning out some old files, a chorale study for a music theory course was found - circa 1989, maybe 1990. plopped the old pencil copy into the 'pooter, and behold! the accompanying words for this meagre study were:

intra orbis terrae
opprimat meam animam
ex mearum ostiarum
sanguis incipiat fundere

it has something to do with the earth and a crushing head wound. yes, that's all it really ever is: sabbath, bloody sabbath.

random sound calvacade #7

from the nineteenth day of the fourth month of, eh, let's just call it 2003, is this excerpt of a live sound-action battle between williwaw and the sound and fury known as chad robinson (who currently rocks bells for dark fog). like several recordings made at the esteemed candlestick maker (recently reopened as brown rice - love any/all references to Don Cherry), the recording was very quiet, until the sound and fury unleashed his batterie - reconstructing some semblance of balance was not wholly successful, but the wholly impromptu sound action is somewhat audible. this is the fifth of what has been called eight great indecisive moments. behold!

random sound calvacade #6

d'oh! started the new without completing the old - an unfinished project? never! here's another excerpt from the first installment of our very lives are being compressed (based on the inaugural voyage of the williwaw ensemble). tweaked often, but never twittered.

random sound calvacade #5

the return of the our very lives are being compressed series, ahoy!

as with previous parts of the series, something quite unexpected happened when every thought and action was placed into the smallest dynamic space - on, off, red, green - the compressed life; when we try to resurrect the soft amid the deafening din, things go awry. lame poetics aside, the source material of this excerpt is not a uke through numerous pedals, amps and blown speakers, but a comedy routine by a member of the Second City troupe, recorded without permission because bored hands are the devil's playthings. sadly, then, this is 'ukulele free, but amplified? oh, mercy!