Next weekend I’m playing a secret show in Stockholm (feel cool if you know about it), and the weekend after that I’m going to Hannover to do a small exhibition, and a live concert with Gijs Gieskes and gwEm. Good bananas!
I think the exhibition is going to be pretty cool. I’ve dot matrix printed 7 meters of music for it. And there’s going to be 7 meters more. And then probably in fact 7 meters more! And you can never go wrong with that. Maybe.
Custom8 has been a big success! I’ve been breaking a lot of sweat to process all the orders for the past 2 weeks, and now I’ve almost caught up with all the orders. So yeah – ready for more! Tell me what’s missing in your life, and I fix it.
The idea for Custom8 is to spend no more than one hour per release. That gives me enough time to find the right songs for most orders, and maybe record a song that I might only have on a floppy somewhere. From my point of view, this is what you pay for: 1 hour of work. Not music. For me, the songs are already there.
Although, some people ask for customized songs. Perhaps the text is not clear enough here. But if I think I can do the song in around 1 hour, I do it anyway.
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It’s a lot of fun with the variety of orders. One guy was a Goto80-collector and took the opportunity to order some super rare releases, bonus tracks, and such. Other people ask for specific blends of certain bands and artists. Or songs that are similar to other songs I’ve made. Here’s some examples of what the orders look like:
music for parrots
parallel universes, shuffling beats, domesticated sounds
experimental hip-hop, LA beat scene, deep house, early dubstep, german techno, sludge/stoner metal
I would like a custom album in which each successive piece of music is more complex than the previous one. So, it should start with the simplest track and end with the most complex one. The genre/style of these pieces is not important; what matters is their complexity.
cinematic love songs pure minimal *ONLY THE BEST*
dark future decadence campfire music. hypnotic sleazy erotic body synth, not too kitschy. eerie, suggestive.
Bruce Springsteen vs. Captain Beefheart drone Calypso in the Heino style dubstep David Bowie 70s does David Bowie 90s as heard by David Bowie 80s EBM Balenesian Klezmer metal Russian Pop written by PJ Harvey dub Harry Partch does breakcore on a modified Dutch Harmonica (or harmonium) glitch
the typical pop-rock sounding first album of a young parisian hipster band
tunes without ‘beats’. I mean, sans sounds that imitate drums. At least half of the tunes should be slow. Make me cry.
something that gives me a boner.
For those of you who missed the cassette that sold out way too fast – Files in Space is now available on CD! Packaged into a 5.25″ floppy with iLKke‘s design, this is one not to miss!
> Get it at Bandcamp (or stream it)
> Listen to the 5-minute summary
> More info
Yeti Sound Machine was a performance for kids that me and Raquel Meyers did in Paris earlier this year. This is the book with some of the PETSCII graphics from the show. Get it at Lulu.
> Also check out her teletext book, Thread of Fate
9 days later and Files in Space is a sell out. All 100 cassettes are gone! You can still get it on Bandcamp as MP3/FLAC. I’ve been told that iTunes will, after a long thought about Unicode sourcery in databases, make the songs available aswell. But renamed to fit a 1960’s text protocol instead. Such retro.
Spotify thought that the last track (with C64-data encoded as audio, sounding sort of like a fax noise) was corrupt, so they’ve been delayed too. But it might end up there eventually, I suppose. Maybe even with proper song titles.
> Photo by echolevel
First, the new 8-Bit Operators compilation based on Depeche Mode will be out soon. Enjoy the Science features songs from gwEm, Herbert Weixelbaum, Aonami, Frau Holle, Gameboy Music Club, and many more. Listen to the promo mix!
Secondly – Bagarre Les Tous is a 12″ vinyl on Dataglitch that features Computer Truck, Divag, Eat Rabbit, The Cheat Code , Bacalao, Buskerdroid vs Microman, Rachitik Data, and me. The release party is in Paris on December 20, but I won’t attend unfortunately.
It’s typwriter week at text-mode.tumblr.com and you won’t wanna miss this one. We’ll post our characteristic mix of old/new and classy/trashy that we collect from countless books and sites. So far we’ve done 1512 posts, including plenty of typewriter art. We’re worse than the NSA, ffs.
When the Piratbyrån-book was published, F.A.T also did the Data Klubb for which I submitted some personal data and filmed some. Also check out the great teletext stuff tele-F.A.T. Good stuff by Geraldine, Raquel and bigup2dance!
Me and A. Bill Miller wrote a paper on ASCII art and presented it at CAC3 last year. Now we’ve put it online at chipflip.org/06 so check it out!
(logo by Spot/Up Rough)
(enjoy)
This is my talk about 8-bit users at Merz Akademie in Stuttgart. I try to explain why it’s so often framed in nostalgia or appropriation, and why we should talk about it in a different way to stay up-to-date with state of the art philosophy!
I wrote more about the talk at Chipflip, and if you want more background you can read my MA thesis on chipmusic. If you dare!
The talk was part of a series called Do You Believe In Users, organized by Olia Lialina. Check more videos of e.g Jason Scott at Merz Akademie’s Vimeo.