For the past several weeks SWARM has been conducting a series of experimental sessions with an unusual collection of objects. Unusual even by our standards – which is saying something. The centrepiece has been a variant setup of Bill’s Strange Fruit tower assemblage. We’ve altered the configuration of instruments and added more contact microphones. The tower mics all run through a little 8 channel mixer which runs to the main board and through a set of powered monitors. We’re also using two sets of large cans, an assortment of pvc drums, a portable suitcase sized xylophone and a set of tuned tanks (of the sort used for holding pressurized gasses). Also rototoms, and at one point the floor.

This is the first release of that undertaking. Next week there will be video.

Walking With Large Animals

We encourage very much the disassembly, reconstruction, dismemberment, recontextualization and subversion of this work.

ccMixter – Noise (Another Mix)

Also more music from artemisstrong .

Last week we did most of our shows in Moose Jaw and ended the run with the smallest show on the tour – 67 kids in Morse, SK ranging from kindergarten to grade 12. It was a little hard to get them going but we were assured that they were stoked. The coolest thing about the week was before an afternoon show on Thursday when a teaching assistant brought in a small boy – maybe 9 years old – who was completely blind. We introduced him to the instruments and he had a better appreciation for the show for having encountered the tools of noise making prior to the experience. The least cool part of the week was when I took a metal bedpan to the head and bled profusely in front of hundreds of school children.

Between Moose Jaw and Swift Current there’s a little town called Chaplin which has two main industries – the harvesting of salt and the harvesting of brine shrimp from the local salt lakes. Chaplin lake is on an important, protected, waterfowl migration route and there’s a whole big area of salt lakes where the birds rest on their journeys between the spring countries of the north and the southern climes where they winter. We drove throught the salt pans and marvelled at
the way the crystals climb the hardy grasses. We also found a cow skull and pelvis and some rib bones and vertebrae which we are now hauling around with us.

We spent the bulk of the weekend at a little bed and breakfast out in the middle of the vast prairie. You can see for miles in any direction from any of the small rolling hills which comprise the landscape and the sky out here dwarfs everything. There’s a river running through the property and, most exciting, a big heap of disused farm equipment which we spent hours today photographing and hitting. We’ve made some preliminary recordings (audio and video)
and there might be some fresh goodies up before too long.

Today we started the second leg of the tour which begins in Gravelbourg (a French enclave with a big brick cathedral) and ends in Saskatoon (home of Paddock Wood brewery, my new favourite).

is the most recent ccmixter incarnation of a piece of my work.

I like it.

You’ll like it too. (If you like that sort of thing)

thx. Gurdonark 

I’m trying Revver for video hosting. The video quality is higher than I’m getting with google video. There is, however, an ad at the end.

This is a 3d environment crafted and animated in Pilgrim R2. It looks okay all tiny, but is much more impressive at huge sizes with brilliant resolution.

There are high-quality stills in this gallery

Afterall

Hard copies of the cd will be distributed through the usual methods, but the whole thing is available online, collected below.

beautiful noisy introns

new beat attitude

i rise

babylon

lords of sleep

fine

sermon

chameleon phonics

The esteemed brother derives lovely music from cellular automata which is very nice.

It’s interesting to compare the catchy Prelude and Fugue in D minor with this piece of synth pop [generated by 4 hamsters].