"ad hoc committee" forming, Club Bit Map returns!

It was a great noise night at the Puka bar last Monday!

From that I got an opportunity to book the February and March shows.

Here's what I have planned.

Feb. 28 - "ad hoc committee" a group of 5 noise artists will be grouped in various ways and given tasks drawn from a hat! Tasks such as, "you have never seen the instruments you are playing, you have 3 minutes to learn to use them or your head will explode." or "you learned everything you know about music by watching two YouTube videos. Now play Eruption by Van Halen."

It has the potential for being an interesting evening.

The committee is forming!

Update: The Brutal Poodle, Johnny Left and Anonymous Bosch are on the ad hoc committee! These members of the Brutal Poodle ensemble rocked the stage at the Hi-desert experimental festival. I can't wait to see them in Long Beach!

Club Bit Map returns March 28th at the Puka bar. Bent electronics over dance beats. The recordings of electonic music pioneers repackaged for the dance floor. With a dance lesson on how to dance to move to this ... "stuff." Paul Wilkins from Clowns and Foetuses is one of the guest artists for this. We have one more opening for a circuit bender. I will keep you posted on that.

toodles,

phog

PS An object at rest....

Tales from the front in the epic battle of heat and cold. The BernzOmatic.

New Link to Tracks, 23 Duets CD is up for download.

Hey there,

The 23 Duets CD is up on CD Baby for download. As it is said "hard copy to follow" the CD object is coming soon. Click on the badge on the right and spice your ipod with these tracks.

The CD description is a work in progress. Here is what I have so far:

23 Duets by phog masheeen is your opportunity to enter a wonderland of pulsing noise. Using dry-ice, shop vacs, trumpets, electronics and a home built aerophone called "the Duodenum" (featured on the cover of 23 Duets) phog masheeen drives deep into the territory that only comes to view when field recordings, groove boxes and trumpets are collaged together in a post-modern mural of sound. Utilizing the esthetic of "distortion is the new reverb." phog masheeen paints with heavy strokes on a sound-field canvas. Swirling shapes, textures and colors are bent into shape by means of the digital audio workstation. Sometimes swirling like a dust devil on a dry lake, the music is on an unpredictable course that delivers the listener to the uncharted Hi-desert of the mind.

If you want one track to get a "Flava" for the 23 Duets experience. Try track 3 "Air Lock," it features some dynamic dry-ice playing and pillowy bending of the "duodenum." The "duodenum" is an instrument synthesized from a re-purposed motorcycle exhaust that is fitted with a trumpet mouthpiece receiver. It has a tone that will starch your socks.

The recording environment for this CD was all over the map. Samples were collected at a palm oasis in the mojave desert, trumpet parts recorded in a quonset hut also in the desert. There the recordings were made during the summer and the hut was just a shade cooler than a ceramics kiln running at full power. You can feel the heat in the sound and performance. Look to track 8 titled "You Can't Stop A Weed Species" for the oasis and the K-hut.

Bullet holes is based on a sample recorded by a cell phone. That recording was from the return trip to a ad hoc gun range in the desert to recover steel objects that were riddled with bullet holes. The sound of the shards of bent metal scraping against each other in the back of a jeep on a bumpy road provided the genesis for "Bullet Holes" Track 9. The track "Bullet Holes is an exploration of the potential of a new genre..... country noise.