The Secret Song by DJ Spooky

2009 (20 tracks, 1:18:56)

dance/electronica

Indian Electronica say this on their website:

This mix is a unique pastiche of political rhetoric, news clips, audio from old tv shows and yes, music (!); everything from hype crowd-rocking jams to laid-back vibes… its all in there for you to groove to.

While prolific and highly regarded as a writer and conceptual artist, Paul D. Miller is probably most well known under the moniker of his constructed persona as DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid. Miller has remixed and recorded with a panoply of artists ranging from Metallica to Steve Reich to Killah Priest, and has performed in a uniquely wide variety of situations throughout the world.

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So I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a very happy but safe New Year!!!

I have said it before but i will say it again, WHAT AN AMAZING YEAR IT HAS BEEN!

I have met some amazing people this year and was fortunate enough to build some amazing relationships with some of Melbourne’s musical maestros! So a huge shout out goes out to the following people in no particular order! Elf Tranzporter & TakaCO, Neda & Marrs, Ayna, Duschesz, Ms Butt, MAFIA, Sizzle, Cat Sweeney and the Burn City Queens, Elke & Jay, Bo, the crew at Miss Libertine, the Horn Crew,  the Sketch City Crew, Mantra, Candice Monique & The Optics, Deltron, Lotek & Flo, Ella & Loz, Nazthe Hollabak crew, the Hoopdreamz Crew, the Fat Kids Family, the Beat Broker Family and even though I have known the following peeps for a very long time I still wanna shout out cuz we are still working towards the same goal of bringing all of the Hip Hop elements out to the masses – Robotgirl, DJ Peril and Lama, you are all amazing! Huge shout out to Tulay for being one of Melbourne’s greatest engineers and magic bullet users!  Lucas you just have mad music taste so you deserve a shout out just for that! If i have missed out on anyone send me a message and I’ll edit this post! Huge love goes out to my Mentor Ms Forrester for donating her entire record collection to me…I promise to do great things with them!

Last but not least to all of my lovely girls even if i have been out of touch!  Gadgety, Ancha Ohh La La, Yaki Le Poux, RobotGirl – watch her dance, Mel McRockstar, Metalhead Maria, Fudge N Tea, Zsa & Hands of Man, Roita, Vic The Klepto, Binx and my Stylz!!

I would also like to thank Vegie Bar for all of the Tofu Wraps, Pelligrini’s for the best pasta, Moroccan Soup Bar for all the chick peas and Gurkhas for all the gurkha’s surprises!!

And I also want to give a shout out to Ladyfingers, MzRizk’s Masterclass Students and the City Beatz Crew! It was an amazing experience to work alongside all of you!

Now for all of the great news! If you would like to catch my crazy Hip Hop Sets look no further!! I have a regular night called 5 Elements that takes place at Miss Libertine every Wednesday from 8pm!

I have also been booked to support Lyrics Born at the Corner, so I am very excited at performing alongside Lyrics Born, DJ Spooky and Lowbudget!

I am  also performing at DJ Peril’s SoulClap tomorrow night!! Prepare to sweat from 11pm – midnight!!

Come to first floor on Friday the 8th of January to see me perform a soulful set alongside Candice Monique & The Optics!!

Nothing but amazing news for 2010! I hope you join me at some of these parties in the new year!
Many Blessings

MzRizk

“DJ/conceptual artist/author Paul Miller’s pseudonym is at once an arcane reference to William S. Burroughs’s Nova Express and a childlike recognition of the sometimes eerie, disembodied sounds he gathers—an immediate indicator of the gleeful enthusiasm with which both his “mixes” and his first book juxtapose cultures high and low, new and old, avant-garde and “street.”

Son of Howard University’s dean of law (who died when Miller was three) and a mother who ran an international fabric shop off Dupont Circle, Miller spent much of his childhood in Washington, D.C.’s nurturing bohemia before studying philosophy and literature at Bowdoin. That his thesis was on Richard Wagner—whose theory of gestamtkunstwerk (the total art work) presages much of today’s “new media” revolution—is no surprise.

The emerging aesthetic he describes is one in which the proliferating technologies of sampling and studio manipulation have eroded the distinction between music’s producers and consumers. From “dub” in Jamaica to the turntablism of the South Bronx, how music was manipulated by listeners after the fact has become as important as how it was “originally” made. The range of reference Miller brings to his description of these phenomena reaches back to Vico and Emerson and forward to Eminem, giving “DJ culture” the broad contextualization its innovations have long warranted.” (Source)

This is the CD that accompanies the book by the same name. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a huge fan of sample/remix/cut-up culture. Life is basically a remix.

The book comes strongly recommended.

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DJ Spooky’s new album and DVD, The Secret Song, is now available for purchase in stores and online. It brings together diverse artists such as Abdul Smooth, Vijey Iyer, Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth fame), the Jungle Brothers, Rob Swift, Sussan Deyhim and many more.

Salt Satyagraha by DJ Spooky & Abdul Smooth by indianelectronica

What is so fascinating about dub? Watch this documentary to find out and learn about the development of a musical genre and style that had an incredible impact on modern music. This movie features a comprehensive overview with lots of prominent artists, musicians and producers  who have set or still set their landmark on the evolution of dub.This movie starts focusing on the roots of dub music in Jamaica before taking off to Europe where it has an enormous impact on the contemporary music scene.The list of interviewees includes first generation performers like Bunny “Striker” Lee, Sly and Robbie, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Scientist, King Jammy and artists of the contemporary european dub scene like Mad Professor, Aba Shanti I, Peter Kruder, G Corp, Kode 9 and and and…

Needless to say more…it’s all about the original drum and bass flavoured with heaps of echoes and reverbs.

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The compilation that introduced “illbient” to the world at large on the Asphodel label. Features Sub Dub, DJ Spooky, Byzar and We with their sonic soundscapes.

Currently reading Rhythm Science by Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky). Deep stuff.

Enjoy

Info

Some like it pot

Feinstein and Durbin removing bloggers from shield law bill from Daily Kos

We must not let Big Telecom segregate the Internet from Afro-Netizen

If Congress can kill outlandish Wall St bonuses, why don’t they? from Alternet

Blackwater’s Erik Prince stepping down, revealed as CIA asset from Vanity Fair

Yahoo spying policy would ’shock’ customers, according to letter

EFF sues feds for info on social network surveillance from CNET

New blogger payola disclosure rules starting from WA Post

Bank of America to repay entire $45b of TARP funds from NY Times

GAO issues warning on broadband stimulus grants from Tech Liberation

Op-ed: Higher ed fiscal crisis protects the wealthy by Peter Phillips

Interview about remixing Antarctica with DJ Spooky from Huffington Post

‘My name is Rachel Corrie’ and Israel’s waning impunity from Electronic Intifada

Brilliant mix put together by DJ Spooky for Adbusters (if you aren’t familiar with this publication, go HERE and you’ll get a good idea of what it’s about).

DJ Spooky has a message and it isn’t about more bling and the sad state of hip-hop.

Check out the track list below. Give it a few spins and digest the message.

Enjoy

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With a nickname – That Subliminal Kid – derived from a William S. Burroughs work that used the cut-up method to create, you get the idea that there is serious intention behind the turntables.

Check out the track “The Mongols Destroy Alamut” on Laswell’s Hashisheen for a more ancient reference to this method.

This album is considered one of the seminal works of the “illbient” genre. Think “ill” (meaning good) and “ambient” (see the Valis comps for more examples).

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The Bristol sound, also known as trip-hop, was born from the British hip-hop and house scenes of the mid-1990s. Artists like Massive Attack, DJ Shadow and Portishead took the hybrid genre and turned it into a hip-hop-influenced electronica that harnessed a fanbase that reached between the Atlantic. The listening experience, likened to a “musical trip,” is one intensely focused on the abstract, atmospheric qualities of the genre. It has grown over the years to encompass turntablism, acid jazz, electro and dance into a hybrid genre that continues to expand into the contemporary hip-hop scene.

So what’s the very best of trip-hop? 20 Watts’ JOHN LUPOSELLO has the answer in our eighth 20 installment. Watch for new 20s each Thursday, only on 20 Watts, and check out our previous 20s below!

hat Subliminal Kid (born Paul D. Miller, 1970), is a Washington DC-born electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called “illbient” or “trip hop”. He is a turntablist, a producer, an author and a postmodern intellectual. He borrowed his stage name from the character The Subliminal Kid in the novel Nova Express by William S. Burroughs. He is also a professor at the European Graduate School. Miller grew up in Washington DC and attended Sidwell Friends High School, his father was the Dean of the Howard University Law school and his mother is a writer. Spooky became interested in punk and go-go music. He attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, earning degrees in French literature and philosophy.Began writing science fiction and formed a collective called Soundlab with several other artists. In the mid-1990s, Spooky began recording a series of singles and EPs. His debut LP, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, is now widely regarded as a formative influence on illbient. Riddim Warfare (see 1998 in music) was an underground hit that include collaborations with Kool Keith and other cult figures in indie rock like Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore who also appears on DJ Spooky’s 2009 album release “The Secret Song.”He then worked with several other artists on various collaborations and mix CDs, returning in 2002 with Modern Mantra. That same year saw the release of Optometry, a widely acclaimed collaboration with avant-jazz players Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Guillermo E. Brown and Joe McPhee. (This album also features portions of a breaks record by Billy Martin of Medeski Martin & Wood.) In a classical vein, he has collaborated with the ST-X Ensemble in performances of the music of Iannis Xenakis. His film compositions have been performed by Kronos Quartet for the soundtrack to his remix of DW. Griffith’s 1915 film Birth of a Nation.

The film score was written by DJ Spooky. Kronos Quartet also performed DJ Spooky’s remix of Steve Reich’s composition “City Life.” DJ Spooky has collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto on several projects including The Discord Symphony which toured Japan extensively in 1997. The concert and album were released as an enhanced CD containing both a full audio program and multimedia computer files. It features spoken-word performances by Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Patti Smith, David Sylvian, DJ Spooky, David Torn, and Bernardo Bertolucci. Miller also participated on Ryuichi Sakamoto’s anti war project “Chain-Music” along with Towa Tei (formerly of Dee-Lite), Christian Fennesz, Carsten Nicolai, Pansonic, and Cornelius, in 2007. It is a concept project based on collage that makes an anti-war statement through music exchange. ‘Chain-Music’. 2005 saw the release of “Drums of Death”, DJ Spooky’s CD based on sessions he recorded with Dave Lombardo of Slayer. Other guest artists include Chuck D. of Public Enemy and Vernon Reid of Living Colour. The record was co-produced by Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto. In 2006, he produced two extensive compilations of classic Jamaican music from the archives of Trojan Records, the 40 year old Jamaican record label founded by Chris Blackwell and Lee Gopthal. The U.S. release, In Fine Style: DJ Spooky Presents 50,000 Volts of Trojan Records focused on “selections” from the archive, while the UK and worldwide release, Riddim Come Forward was a continuous mix. The compilation features a roster of Jamaica’s most renowned artists and producers like Lee “Scratch” Perry, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, U-Roy, King Tubby and Prince Jammy. In 2008 his work Being Black (featuring Ursula Rucker) was included on the compilation album Crosstalk: American Speech Music (Bridge Records) produced by Mendi + Keith Obadike. Hey is just one of 9 artists who participated in thetruth.com’s Remix Project, where he remixed the Sunny Side song “Tough Love”. DJ Spooky joined the 9th annual Independent Music Awards judging panel to assist independent musicians’ careers. He was also a judge for the 3rd Independent Music Awards. DJ Spooky has said that much of his work “deals with the notion of the encoded gesture or the encrypted psychology of how music affects the whole framework of what the essence of ‘humaness’ is… To me at this point in the 21st century, the notion of the encoded sound is far more of a dynamic thing, especially when you have these kinds of infodispersion systems running, so I’m fascinated with the unconscious at this point.” DJ Spooky’s CD The Secret Song is slated for release October 6, 2009 on Thirsty Ear Records. It has guest appearances by Thurston Moore, The Coup, Mike G. of the Jungle Brothers, Rob Swift of the X-Ecutioners, Mike Ladd, Vijay Iyer, and many others. String arrangements for the album were done by film soundtrack composers Peter Stopinchsky and Graham Reynolds with the Golden Arm Ensemble, and edited/sampled by DJ Spooky.

The Secret Song is a manifesto about our overloaded digital culture. DJ Spooky on location for film shoot, for his film Terra Nova: The Antarctic Symphony. Antarctica. Antarctic Peninsula, 2008DJ Spooky composed the score for the 1998 film Slam, featuring poet/actor Saul Williams in the lead role. The film went on to win both the Cannes Camera D’Or and the Sundance Festival Film Festival Grand Jury Prize. He also made an appearance in the 2008 feature documentary by Nik Sheehan about Brion Gysin and the Dreamachine entitled ‘FLicKeR’. His work as an artist has appeared in a wide variety of contexts such as the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Biennial; the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum, Paula Cooper Gallery and many other museums and galleries. In 2007 his work appeared in the Africa Pavilion in the 52nd Venice Biennial. This remix of music from Africa was also distributed freely online, and promoted by the blog Boing Boing. “You give away a certain amount of your stuff, and then the cultural economy of cool kicks in,” DJ Spooky said. In 2004 DJ Spooky released a book, Rhythm Science published by MIT Press. The same year saw the launch of his film/music/multimedia performance piece “DJ Spooky’s Rebirth of a Nation”. A live audio/video re-mix of D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation which includes footage from choreographer Bill T. Jones and a score newly composed by DJ Spooky, “Rebirth of a Nation” was commissioned by the Lincoln Center Festival, The Festival d’Automne a Paris, The Spoleto Festival USA, and the Vienna Festival. DJ Spooky continues to tour the world performing this work. “Rebirth of a Nation” was released as a film in 2009. Sound Unbound, a collection of writing about sound art, digital media, and contemporary composition, edited by DJ Spooky, with writings from Brian Eno, Jonathan Lethem, Chuck D, Steve Reich, Cory Doctorow, Saul Williams, Pierre Boulez, Mendi & Keith Obadike, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jaron Lanier, Moby, and many others, came out on MIT Press early 2008. Longtime collaborator Roy Christopher was Assistant Editor on the project. DJ Spooky is also a professor of music mediated art at the European Graduate School where he co-teaches (with Michael Schmidt) Intensive Summer Seminars in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. In August 2009, DJ Spooky visited the Republic of Nauru in the Micronesian South Pacific to do research and gather material for a project in development, with a working title of The Nauru Elegies: A Portrait in Sound and Hypsographic Architecture. DJ Spooky’s multimedia performance piece Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica was commissioned by BAM for the 2009 Next Wave Festival; The Hopkins Center/Dartmouth College; UCSB Arts & Lectures; Melbourne International Arts Festival; and the Festival dei 2 Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. With video projections and a score composed by DJ Spooky, performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble in the United States, and Alter Ego Ensemble in Europe, Australia and beyond, “Terra Nova: Sinfornia Antarctica” is a portrait of a rapidly transforming continent. Spooky’s Rebirth of a Nation was commissioned in 2004 by the Lincoln Center Festival; Spoleto Festival USA; Weiner Festwochen; and the Festival d’Automne a Paris. It was the artist’s first large-scale multimedia performance piece, and has been performed in venues around the world, from the Sydney Festival to the Herod Atticus Amphitheater, more than fifty times. The DVD version of “Rebirth of a Nation” was released by Anchor Bay Films/Starz Media in late 2008. Of course you can get in touch with Spooky via his website at:

www.djspooky.com

DJ Spooky scratched a name for himself over a decade ago with Songs of a Dead Dreamer, that classic experimental electronic game-changer. Ever since, his production has remained ineluctably theory-loaded; but that academic streak has never been so clear-eyed or well-incorporated as it is on the new Secret Song. Spooky references Veblen and Keynes, considers the Iranian election through Farsi poetry and downbeat, translates economic theory into Mandarin, and reworks “Dazed and Confused” into a strings-laced dub edit. How he’ll translate the studio-geeked collage of genres and guest spots (Thurston Moore, Jungle Brothers) is a mystery. But Songs itself proves that That Subliminal Kid usually reaches the high bars he sets for himself.

spirituality is just a different bandwidth

Paul D. Miller. Academic and musician in a digital world

Radiohead. George Bush. Chinese lyrics. A complex narrative of the current economic chaos without getting boring.

DJ Spooky, a.k.a. Paul D. Miller, has always been a bit of a wild card. Aside from being the creator of illbient sound — an offshoot of hip-hop heavy electronic music that uses dark themes and dissonance — he’s a noted writer on digital music culture in the academic world. His latest album the Secret Song, is no stranger to this notion of shifts in culture in relation to the fine art of sampling. Using a myriad of influences from the literary to the real, Miller  weaves together a fine piece of intelligently crafted atmospheric music without getting too cerebral. Blending sounds from ATM machines, to other familiar dub and hip-hop riffs and rock legends like Sonic Youth, Miller articulates current social thoughts on commercialism, materialism and other human obsessions.

Tell me a little bit about Secret Song. Did you try anything new with it, or take any risks?

There’s so much that we don’t really think about – how we wake up and put on clothes made by workers in Indonesia, China, The Phillipines, or the way our computers are made from small fragments of labor — computer chips are made from precious metals mined in strange spots all over the world, the metals used for soldering the motherboards of your hard drive together comes from all over the place, the metal “coltan” that comes from mines in Congo that are in the middle of awar zone, the way bits and pieces are assembled from all over the world into one device someplace in a factory in China. That kind of thing fascinates me. It’s just sampling “materials” instead of sounds, and I wanted to make an album that reflected that kind of thing.

What was it like working with Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore? What kind of synergy is created when experimental rock collaborates with sounds in electronic music? Think you’ll do this again?

Thurston is an old friend, and I’m a fan of what he’s been up to with Sonic Youth. We’ve done concerts and projects together before, so this is just an extension of the vibe. There’s art rock, so now I do “art hip-hop”  — it’s that simple.

Your books weigh heavily and are strongly regarded in the academic community. How do you balance the academic with an artistic life?

Basic vibe: I’m into IDEAS. Music and art, literature and digital media; whatever drives this kind of creative process. At the end of the day, it’s all about ideas. I think that concept — ideas — is the most elusive quality of 21st century life. You have one idea, and you do a google search and you realize that there’s 20,000 other people with the same motives and same drive. What makes you different? That’s something I’m thinking about a lot these days. We’ve moved so far into mass production of experiences; copies, copies, copies!!! That we’ve somehow lost the thread of how we got into this 21st century headspace of the “net” as a reference point for all experience. As an artist, I think its cool. But hey, I’m just creating material all day, every day, so my whole take on this kind of thing is that it’s all about making everything connect. Sound, image, literature, etc. Nothing is out side the framework of digital media at this point. Including “spirituality” — it’s just a different bandwidth.

What do you hope to say about digital culture with Secret Song?

Music is what connects so many thing. It’s deeper than language, more flexible than painting or sculpture, and more elusive than literature. I wanted to do something that would shine a light on this kind of 21st century strangeness of being able to hear anything anywhere, and what that means for creativity. I guess you could say I’m just looking at the post playlist mentality.

You sample failed ATM transactions in the album, is the global economic downturn a big theme in the Secret Song?

The “Global Financial Crisis” is what the album is all about. There’s a trickster scenario going on with the idea that music made of samples can really speak to the fragments of the ponzi scheme that is modern financial life. I’m inspired by writers like Ben Elton with his novel Crisis or J.G. Ballard’s Super-Cannes, stuff like that, but when you really look at how our modern economy works, nobody really knows what makes it all tick.

Remix music gets a lot of flack from copyright law. What do you think it says about human creativity when a whole music culture justifies itself by creating something new by recycling previously existing ideas? Is this a digital renaissance, a paradigm shift, zeitgeist or other artists getting ripped off?

Everything is sampleing: we borrow words, we stress connections and quotations in everyday life, we exchange information at every level by citing facts. It’s all sampling. Copyright law is written for a world of physical objects, and we’re moving into a realm where control of software and how it unfolds, whether you’re Google or Danger Mouse, will make or break the way your bottom line rises or falls. I love the complexity of it all. I wake up every morning and think about how wild it is that I live in the 21st century and the whole planet can relate news and information and music and style at the click of a mouse. This is just the beginning, and copyright law will be sidelined more and more as countries like China, India, Brazil and others come into this mix who are less invested in the normal American/European model of copyright protection.

Now that music is digital, do you think it detracts from the music in any way?

Too many people are listening to frequencies that are missing. Most people experience music these days through their data player, and that means they are basically hearing a really compressed file. Which is crazy! When you think about how complex vinyl was, it’s pretty intense that we’re actually moving into a digital realm where we’re still trying to recreate the signal to noise ratio of audio fidelity that our parents took for granted. But, at the other end of the spectrum, a lot of really high end digital media can be BETTER sounding than anything that was recorded in the past. It’s eerie to see Miles Davis sessions put into super high quality software patches (drums, horn, bass line separated and put into multiple file formats where anyone can take that material and sound just as good). But again, I can only say: this is the beginning, and the Secret Song is just a mirror held up to a society that has been uprooted by the very technologies we use to hold everyday life together. Dig?

Free download from Sussan Deyhim. It’s about the elections in Iran and it’s one of the lead singles on the new album.

http://www.soundcloud.com/dj-spooky/azadi-the-new-complexity

Translation of the Chinese lyrics for “The Secret Song” are at:

http://www.djspooky.com/art/the_secret_song.php

DJ Spooky Website

http://djspooky.com/

DJ Spooky Myspace

http://www.myspace.com/djspooky

Compilation of experimental sounds compiled by the ubiquitous Bill Laswell. Vinyl and sonic destruction.

Anyone have Valis II to share?

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Our friends at Lowell’s 119 Gallery have the right idea: have a film party to celebrate the closing of the polls. No doubt it will be another turbulent Election Day — shake that anxiety and give yourself a political wake-up call, Dj Spooky style.

Dinner & a Movie at the 119: Rebirth of a Nation
Tuesday, November 3 / 6:30 – 9:30 PM
119 Gallery, 119 Chelmsford  Street, Lowell
Admission: $15, includes film and dinner
Purchase tickets at the door or at www.119gallery.org
Dj Spooky’s Rebirth of a Nation is a film project based on a remix of D.W. Griffith’s infamous 1915 silent film Birth of a Nation. The original film was based on a novel and theater play by Thomas Dixon entitled The Clansman. What Dj Spooky is doing is applying dj technique to cinema in a way that parallels, deconstructs and remixes the original, so it is literally, Re-Birth of a Nation. Dj Spooky’s dramatic mood-piece has been touring for several years and has drawn acclaim around the world. From the Herod Atticus Theater at the base of the Acropolis in Greece, to the London IMAX – Europe’s largest movie screen – Dj Spooky has presented the remix as an engagement with film, music, and contemporary art. He likes to think of it as “film as found object” in the same sense that artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, and David Hammons, amongst many others, have fostered creative investigations into the idea of found objects, cinema, and “appropriation art.”
Come enjoy this ground-breaking film right here in Lowell.

DJ Spooky, a.k.a The Subliminal Kid, a.k.a Paul D. Miller, has always been on my mind. But that’s how he gets to you.

Paul D. Miller giving you that classic smirk. Image courtesy from rcrdlbl

Luckily for me, I’m getting a chance to interview him in the next couple of day s about his new album The Secret Song, which is largely a commentary on digital music culture.

If anyone’s interested in pitching a couple of questions to me I’d love to take them down. Alternatively, keep checking back and the real interview will be posted here rreeeeallll soooon!

Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble at (Le) Poisson Rouge in NYC.

The Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble — the group that made the splendid recording of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians in 2007 — is at it again. This time the group has commissioned a bunch of artists to record, remix and reinvent Terry Riley’s seminal work, In C.

You can get a taste of what they’re up to by checking out the project’s web site, which  was launched today.

In this project, a slew of invited artists took  GVSUNME’s recording of In C and remixed it to create their own version. The only rule was to produce a 4- to 8-minute track. Contributors include: Jad Abumrad, Masonic (Mason Bates), Jack Dangers, Dennis DeSantis, R. Luke DuBois, Mikael Karlsson/Rob Stephenson, Zoë Keating, Phil Kline, Kleerup, Glenn Kotche, David Lang, Michael Lowenstern, DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, Nico Muhly, Todd Reynolds, and Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR).

Their versions  are being assembled into a album, In C Remixed, due out digitally on Oct. 27 and on CD on Nov. 17. It’s available for preorder here. The ensemble is also performing the reinventions live, and will bring the show to NYC’s (Le) Poisson Rouge on Sunday evening, Nov. 8. $15.

On the 13th I traveled to downtown Brooklyn to experience the Brooklyn Book Festival. I realized this summer that my apartment has an uncanny ability to hold heat; I would suffer indoors, thinking that if it was this hot indoors, imagine how hot it must be outdoors, in the sun! But eventually I would move outdoors and find myself amazed that it was cooler outside than in. You would think that I would have learned my lesson, but I did not, and this happened over and over again. So imagine my surprise when I sat in my apartment on the 13th, cold for the first time this summer. Thinking that fall had arrived, I threw on a (lightweight) sweater and wandered out to experience the literary culture of Brooklyn. Fooled again, the days of rain we had previously experienced broke into a glorious sunny day, and I found myself in the awkward position of standing under a hot sun, wearing a sweater. Lesson learned: whatever I think the temperature might be when in my apartment; it’s probably the exact opposite.

Luckily, the Brooklyn Book Festival was more than enjoyable enough to make me forget my unfortunate clothing choices. I made it there just in time to hear a panel read/discuss Tin House’s new edition, Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia. Dale Peck (one of the writers I studied under at The New School) and Francine Prose read, among others. Then Emily Gould interviewed Dmitry Danilov. The whole thing was pretty great and under the influence of inspiration, I ended up buying Rasskazy and the 10th Anniversary Issue of Tin House.

Then I wandered around for a bit. I was surprised that I did not see anyone that I knew, since the majority of my graduating MFA class lived in Brooklyn and by the amount of Facebook/Twitter status updates, I knew I would have friends there. It was one of those lovely days when I did not want to seek out others, The Mister was in Cambridge for the weekend and I had become accustomed to the unusual solitude. I enjoyed the day of wandering, stopping when I wanted to inspect something, continuing when nothing was catching my eye, doubling back and entering and leaving panels as my enthused levels rose and dipped. I even took some time out to finish reading a book that I couldn’t put down.

The only other panel that had me completely engrossed was Sound Unbound with Toure and DJ Spooky. It was basically a long discussion about the history of music and how it intersects with literature and culture; the shuffle function relating to Burroughs’ Cut Up Method and how we as a culture are used to non-linear experiences and how the Robert Moses and the Cross Bronx Expressway impacted Hip Hop by dislocating the middle class and changing the social spaces. I learned that Alex Steinweiss was the father of album covers and that before him all albums came in plain white sleeves. There was also lots of discussion about the legal ramifications of sampling and DJ Spooky’s love of the gift economy. He even handed out free CDs to the audience. I was about to buy Sound Unbound by DJ Spooky, but the price tag was a little much for my pocketbook, so I decided that instead I would partake in the loan economy and check it out of the library. I just got an email yesterday from the Brooklyn Public Library saying that it arrived; I can’t wait to dig into it. I’m sure it will be insightful and full of interesting tidbits. Both Toure and DJ Spooky were so intelligent and well spoken that I would attend any other lectures/panels where they’re speaking. Also, DJ Spooky has a new multi-media project that will be performed at BAM this December, Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica, which showcases the sound of ice. Sign me up!

Photo by Laurie Olinder

Bora Yoon holds a small purple box in her hands. “It’s the Buddha Box II, which is a meditative box that Brian Eno made very famous, ” she says. “Many people think that he made them, but he just went to China and bought a lot of them.”

She flicks a tiny switch on the side of the device, and a very low-fi transistor drone emerges from its plastic speaker. “It’s just small little repeating loops of sustained tone, just something to help you, wherever you are, to meditate.”

The Buddha Machine is just one of the many strange items in Bora’s sonic arsenal. At her apartment studio in Brooklyn, there are disassembled wind chimes at her feet, effects pedals, singing bowls, a hand-cranked radio on the shelf, a conch shell, a toy xylophone and tin cans. She composes lyrical soundscapes with these objects, her ethereal voice, the viola, violin, guitar and Max/MSP.

When we visited her last week, Bora shared with us a piece she’s working on now, which is based on her travels in Thailand and the sound of a new instrument she’s created with LEMUR, called the Subwoofing Spoons. In this first video clip, she discusses her compositional process and the origins of the spoons:

In the next clip, Bora performs the piece, using the Subwoofing Spoons, her voice, viola, the chime sticks and the Buddha Machine. Some neighborhood dogs make their own contribution:

As a composer and performer, Bora’s graced the stages at BAM and Lincoln Center, and filled the sacred space at Church of the Ascension with sublime sound. She’s collaborated with other artists such as guitarist Kaki King, DJ Spooky and Ben Frost, and her album ((PHONATION)) contains her piece PLINKO: A Cellphone Symphony, which was profiled in the Wall Street Journal.

We’re so pleased that Bora Yoon is performing at the MMiX Festival. You can find out more about her on her web-site: http://borayoon.com/

(Keep your speakers turned up when you visit!)

- Jocelyn

Joaquin Alvarado touts public tv 2.0 at Namac. He's the new Senior Vice President for Diversity and Innovation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

(thanks are due to Jay Walljasper for some kind edits and augmentations)

The commons describes a social practice that unleashes people’s capacity to create things together and take their lives and livelihood into their own hands. It is a social form that has long lived in the shadows of our market culture, but which is now on the rise.

But how does the commons relate to questions of culture and creativity, which we tend to think of as individualistic pursuits. What do we mean when we talk about cultural commons?  First, we mean something that we create together, whether we are talking about wikipedia, which participants research, write and manage together on-line, or ancient traditions forged and passed along by a particular group such as, say, the Hopi nation.    Secondly, we mean a way of creativity that embraces values like sharing, community and stewardship as opposed to privatization, enclosure and exploitation.

The founders of the United States embraced the ideas of the commons when it came to ideas.  They understood that the best fresh ideas are generated out of  previous ideas, and therefore should remain in the public domain (a cultural commons).  Indeed, copyright and patent law in the early days of the nation expressly aimed to move new cultural creations into the public domain as soon as possible.  Today’s long terms for copyright, (as much as 70 years beyond the life of the original creator) are a relatively new phenomenon.

It’s only very recently that the rise of intellectual property law has tipped the scales toward private ownership of every conceivable aspect of what we create, from breakthroughs in science and other academic fields to traditions in art and pop culture.  Today people are attempting to claim exclusive rights to spices, healing herbs or yoga poses that have been used for centuries. Compare that to Benjamin Franklin, one of the founders of the U.S. Patent Office, who  refused to patent the famous Franklin stove.  Why?  Because he said he was merely building on ideas of stoves that came before.

Novelist Jonathan Lethem documented how the free exchange of ideas works in art in an essay for Harper’s Magazine, “The Ecstasy of Influence” in which he traced patterns of borrowed influences through music (Delta bluesman Son House to Chicago bluesman Muddy Waters to British rock bands), animation (without Fritz the Cat, there would be no Ren & Stimpy Show), literature (Pyramus and Thisbe is the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which in turns was the the inspiration for West Side Story).  To prove his point about the mutually collaborative nature of new ideas (as opposed to “eureka” theory, in which ideas are concocted out of thin air), he strived to footnote the influence of every line of his essay.

The Scientific Commons

A great example of a cultural commons from the field of science is the Human Genome Project, a massive collective effort on the part of scientists around the globe to decode human genetics.  New information discovered in the project was shared for all to use and to improve upon in their own research. The project was competing with a private venture that sought to decode the genome, and then sell the data that was produced.  The private venture didn’t succeed, and thankfully so because the high cost of their data may have stymied many subsequent scientific and medical advances.

The Human Genome Project used a commons approach that was based on two assumptions: 1) genes are part of nature and thus belong to all of us;  and 2) that sharing and collaborating information would be more productive than privatizing it.

Busting Out of the Market Mindset

Many of us in the U.S. have grown up in a time that when market economics and privatized ownership were hailed as the formula for all progress, innovation, and prosperity.  Private wealth is worshipped, while our common wealth has been dismantled. If something is not owned by an individual, we are told, it will fall prey to misuse, disuse, or overuse—the tragedy of the commons. Many people today have lost sight of the common as both a practical way to share things valuable to all of us and as a cooperative model of how we can relate to one another as creators and users of culture.

Examples of thriving systems managed according to the principles of the commons, rather than the privatized market, exist all around the world today, from fisheries off the coast of Greece to forests in Tanzania and Indonesia, to the open source software movement.

But most of us have been taught that the commons began to fade away in 17^th and 18^th century England, when private landowners claimed and enclosed (literally with fences) land used by commoners to graze livestock.  Yet the commons endures to this day throughout the British countryside in form of legally-protected rights of way that entitle anyone to cross private property on tens of thousands of miles of paths throughout England, Scotland and Wales.  This is also true in the cultural realm, where we make imaginative journeys thanks to stories, songs, ideas, knowledge and research belonging to all of us.  It is not trespassing to take advantage of the creativity of Plato, Buddha, Leonardo daVinci, Shakespeare, Bach, Darwin, Florence Nightingale and many others.

Those fences of the 18th century England give us a powerful image and metaphor for the “enclosure” of culture going on today at an alarming pace. Here are a couple of examples.  Media companies want to slow down your access to websites that don’t pay a premium fee for their place on the internet,  a troubling violation of the commons principle of  net neutrality that will allow huge enterprises to dominate the flow of information.  Another is example is the Walt Disney Corporation, which has built its empire on appropriating and ultimately copyrighting material from the public domain—from The Little Mermaid and Robin Hood, all the way back to  Mickey’s first cartoon “Steamboat Willie,”  which was taken directly from Buster Keaton’s character Steamboat Bill. But try using an image of Mickey Mouse in your own work, and you’ll soon hear from the Mouse’s lawyers.

Creative Commons Licenses

No one wants to deny people the chance to make an honest living off their creative work. But the recent proliferation of copyright and intellectual property privileges means that many artists, scientists and other creators are denied access to material they need to do their most valuable work—an even graver threat to their livelihoods, and to the needs of society as a whole.  The Creative Commons license was created to address this dilemma, allowing sharing, remixing and reuse that is not possible within the more restrictive copyright framework, but still protecting creators’ opportunity to realize profits when their work is bought and sold.  I’m making a film called What We Got:  DJ Spooky’s Journey To the Commons to highlight all that we share, from air, water and land to our art, culture and discoveries.  I want to practice what I preach by sharing the movie we make online so that others can remix and repurpose it under the terms of a Creative Commons license.

Adapted from a presentation given at NAMAC

here comes another memorable remix from another remixcontest on acidplanet in 2001 (I nearly forgot that I participated in so many remixcontests, jeezz – my old dat´s & cdrom´s are full of it..).

but this time it wasn´t just for the remixing-fun:
I remixed DJ Spooky (the godfather of illbient and one of my personal heroes when it comes to electronic/electroacoustic music) in his ‘Under the Influence’ contest and guess what happened?
I won 3rd price!
and I was just like whoa??

the rules in this contest: there were none.
only rule was to remix a track from his collaborational album ‘Under the Influence’ with remixes & collabs from artists like f.e. moby, fsol, sonic youth, ryuichi sakamoto, kool keith, amon tobin, etc..
because I wasn´t able to choose one single track I sampled pieces & fragments from each track on the album & created a monster – a 5 minute-melting pot of grooves & styles including f.e. dopebeats, breaks, illbient, idm, dub & jungle.

here´s the result – have fun & enjoy!
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

btw.:the 3rd price was a software-package including audio recording- and editing software and tons of sample-cd´s.
I was so happy that I had to do a track with that won stuff – here it comes! enjoy!

hell g. – you cannot see the future with tears in your eyes