A lot of the podcasts that I listen to are technical in nature.  A smaller subset of them are non-technical, talk oriented podcasts.  And the smallest subset of podcasts are musical in nature…  In fact, there are only three music podcasts that I get regularly.  It’s those three podcasts that I am going to talk about today.

The first of these three is Rathole Radio produced by Dan Lynch who I first encountered listening to the Linux Outlaws podcast (but we won’t talk about that here…  I’ll save that for some other place and some other time).

Dan is a sound engineer and very accomplished musician whose musical interests seem boundless.  On Rathole Radio he has found a forum to explore an eclectic range of music, throw in a little social and political commentary, and invite other artists on to be interviewed.

Another dimension to the show: he streams it live while interacting with an audience on irc. And to make it more interesting a portion of the music that he selects for the show comes from recommendations from the audience.  (I have a small bias for this as several tracks I’ve suggested have made their way to the show…)

Overall, the live nature of the recording comes out in the podcast itself, giving the show a unique flavor that is as fun to listen to offline as it is to participate during the streaming.

The next podcast I want to talk about is The Juiced Penguin. this is a mostly randomly produced show of music.  It’s more like listening to a radio show without a lot of commercials, just an intro and an outtro.

The show has several contributors: terryf, Lord Drachen Blut and Randy (The Nose) Noseworthy.  The range of music they tend to work with is rock, hard rock, country and a little pop.

The show is a fun listen, typically about an hour with little to no overlap with music you might hear on other podcasts.  Note: this is an ogg only podcast (aka an oggcast).

The most recent addition to my podcatcher is The BugCast by Dave and Caroline Lee.  Originally Dave was the presenter of the show, with Caroline filling the role of researcher, however Caroline has moved into the role of Co-Host with her husband.

The show takes a similar approach to Rathole Radio in that Dave and Caroline frequently stream the show live as they are recording it and chat with listeners in an IRC channel.

However, where the show differs substantially is that it is not 100 percent dedicated to music.  The BugCast is a little more of a mixture of music casting with some talk mixed in.  The talk can range from opinions on topical news stories to a-day-in-the-life type stories.

The BugCast typically features music is more MOR to AOR in format, mixed with the occasional singer / songwriter, and occasional jazz piece. Aother feature of The BugCast is the inclusion of a ‘mystery’ comedy song.  They will frequently play a song without telling the audience the title or the artist to allow the punch-line(s) of the songs fresh and interesting.

And it is this mixture of chat, artist bios and music that makes the show a real joy to listen to.  I often have the feeling that most radio these days is pretty dry, but Dave and Caroline have been breathing life into a format that has been missing from the airways for a long time.

So, these are some of the shows that I listen to on a regular basis.  Hope you check them out and have fun listening to them.

But, now I have started working on new material for the site, including:

• Ten new reviews.  Eight of which are completed, and the remaining two just need some final tweaks.
• Several new essays.  These are mostly some pieces that I worked on as background material for a book I am working on…  However, with a little revision they should be worth posting here.
• Plans to work some of the material from this site along with more material into a second book.  This second book I expect to actually have finished by early next year.

Part of the reason that I have been away is that I haven’t been able to listen to as much music over the past several months.  Not that I haven’t been listening to any music at all…however I’ve really only been able to listen to music at home most of the time.  But wait, didn’t I review three Cowon iAudio devices just a few months ago?  Why yes, I did…and now it’s time to tell you a short story I like to think of as: The Rise and Fall of the iAudios.

Basically, all three devices are no longer functional, and the fact that the headphones I use are still functioning is something of a miracle.

Device #1 — the iAudio U5.  I stated before that I liked this device for use at the gym where I would typically have some podcasts and music loaded on it, and listen to it while I was walking or biking.  Since my workouts were nearly daily, the rate of churn on the device was very high.  It’s downfall?  The rate of churn.  This takes a bit of an explanation…

Unlike most of my readers, I don’t use the standard software for managing these devices because I run Linux on my computers.  Fortunately, the Cowon devices do not require that I use some special software with them.  I can just copy files to them just like you would a USB stick.   Now, around this time I had installed a new version of Linux of on my system…  And since it was fairly new, I was trying to give all the original applications and tools that it had configured.  Admittedly, I should have known better.  Almost everything that came with the Linux installation was excellent, except for the File Manager (Linux equivalent of the Windows Explorer) application.  I should have known better: I had used the File Manager before, and had issues with it.

And, that indeed, proved the be the case…again.  Several times when I used the File Manager it ended up not copying files correctly to the U5, and wouldn’t allow me to remove the U5 from the system.  A couple of times it caused problems that required me to erase all the files on the system, run a checking program to find things that were broken, and then reload.

Then the fateful time: it corrupted the storage on the U5 so bad that it could no longer start correctly.  It just hangs during the start up.  When I plug it in, it gets partway through the start up, then restarts itself.  It does this over and over again.

I don’t know if the device can be repaired.  I need to contact Cowon to find out if I can send it in for repair – but at this point I’m pretty sure it’s toast. The repair would be to replace the system board in the device, which is basically the same as buying a whole new device…

Device #2 – the iAudio 7.  This is the one device that I may be able to repair myself — if I can find a screwdriver small enough to remove the screws.  The story of what happened to this device is the simplest: I went to see the recent Sherlock Holmes movie at the theater one night, and had the iAudio 7 in my jacket pocket.  As I went to sit down in my seat it fell out of my pocket onto the floor of the theater (fortunately this theater is really good about cleaning up between shows, so I didn’t have to worry about getting sticky gunk on it).

I picked up the device and put it back in my pocket, making certain that it would not fall out again.  After the movie was over, I went to use it, and found that that the power switch was broken. It’s extremely loose, and doesn’t seem to be engaging the switch.  So, I think it’s just an alignment issue.  If I can open it, I might be able to get it fixed.

Device #3 – the iAudio 9. This is probably the most pathetic of all three of these stories.  I’ve had a bad habit of not always checking my pockets before washing my clothes.  This has led to my washing my earphones four times at this point, and even putting them through the dryer once, and maybe twice.  Remarkably, the earphones still work.

However, the one time that I missed the iAudio 9 in the pocket of my cargo pants it was the end of it.  I found it when the wash was done, I tried to dry it out and see if I could get it working, but it was not to be.

So, that’s the story of the demise of the Cowon devices.  Fortunately, I think one of them is recoverable.  And, in the mean time I have had another device come to my rescue: my Android phone.  So now I’ve been using my phone for listening to podcasts and some of the new music that I download from the net.

Well, that’s all that I have for this story.  Time to get to work on finishing up the rest of the materials to post over the next few weeks.  I’ll be writing a few more posts in the next few days regarding the upcoming reviews and maybe a few surprises.

I have finished listening to The Faust Cycle, but haven’t had the time to write up any further notes and thoughts.  Honestly, it is taking more time than I expected because the ending is more attention demanding than the rest of the piece.  Unfortunately, I won’t be making it to a 14 part review as I had originally planned.  At this point, I am planning to write two more pieces, for 10 in total.

I started listening to some releases from Music Trade.  I am quite impressed with the releases on this label.  They set a very different standard for Net Label releases.  I will talk a bit more about them in a few future articles.  Another label that I have started listening to is Pavillon 36 Recordings.  I already reviewed the release from Pharmacore a while back.  I will be living with the few releases I have on my system for a bit, then reviewing them.

I don’t intend to keep this site totally about music.  It’s really supposed to be about Free (Libre) Art, Culture, and Music.  Hopefully over the next couple of weeks, I will be adding more content about free literature, and other subjects.

I am also thinking about adding some of my own fiction and poetry to the site.

I am still trying to figure out what is wrong with the RSS feeds, so if you were following the site via RSS, I will be working on fixing it.  (Something has broken a couple of things, and I am still working them out…)

There’s a few more things, but it’s maybe a bit too early to talk about them…so I will leave on a little mystery note, just to say that I have a lot more ideas in mind for the site, and a lot more content that I am developing.

Please, if you have any ideas or comments, let me know either via the comments to this article, or by using the Contact Me form.

Thanks for hanging in there!

Artist: Ergo Phizmiz

Title: The Faust Cycle (or The House of Dr. Faustus)

Today’s section is “The Abduction of the Object”. By this point, I have lost most of the narrative thread of the story, only to say that I do know what the object is, and was surprised by this turn of events, as it represents possibly the only aspect of an actual plot line that isn’t part of the setup, or a set of narrative twists and turns.

Ergo is chasing a Linnet in a part of the house he doesn’t recognize.  He doesn’t remember what he did with the parcel, and now imagines that if he happens on Dr. Faustus, he doens’t relish telling him that he’s lost the package.  As he chases the Linnet he finds himself in an auditorium with a cross dressing person on stage, reciting odd sing-song-ish poetry than rolls on and on endlessly and barely making any real sense.  The audience is a bunch of (again) people dressed in bird suits.

It’s after the cross-dresser that Faustus appears on the stage, wheeling out what appears to be a life size doll: Eloise. With the emergence of Faustus on the stage, we are presented with a series of processes for the construction of an automaton. I won’t explain here, however this section links together several of the more unusual recurring elements of the piece to give us an idea of how Faustus has accomplished a miracle:  Eloise is an automaton.

While we and Ergo have been introduced to Eloise before, now she is quite appealing to Ergo.  She has become a thing of beauty, something desirable.  So desirable that he storms the stage, knocks out Faustus (with a trombone he steals from the orchestra) and grabs Eloise and runs away with her.  And thus ends chunk 4 of The Faust Cycle, with possibly one of the most standard plot points of a narrative.  However, it doesn’t seem like a cop-out.  It works, we have seen Eloise before, and by now (nearly 12 hours into the piece) couldn’t have imagined that this was going to happen.

Much of the music and sound collages in this section were put together by James Nye & Ergo Phizmiz. And in this case, the majority of it has been used to illustrate the construction of Eloise and automata’s.  This is possibly one of more distinct and specific examples of an interweaving of the narrative elements with sound collage techniques.  Part of the sound collage reveals another source of the elements of The Faust Cycle: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Onwards..

Cover: I Step Into The Advent

Title: I Step Into The Advent

Artist: Mikael Fyrek

Label: Kahvi Collective

Release Date: 11/10/2009

Catalog No: Kahvi 276

License: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND-SA

Mikael Fyrek is another example of one of the extremely fine electronic musicians that has been on the net for quite sometime.  This release is his fifth on the Kahvi Collective, and it exemplifies what one person can do with a home studio and more than a dash of skill and creativity.

With titles like All That Ever Shall Come To Pass and Is Past But A Fleeting Moment this is a recording about time, and timelessness. So, it’s no wonder, this release has elements that remind me of early Klaus Schulze (Timewind) and Vangelis (China or Albedo 0.39).  The early electronic musicians, especially the “space music” style have largely informed Mikael’s work on this recording. Paying homage to these artists, while maintaining his own distinct style is no mean feat, but one that he makes sound effortless.

I can’t select a favorite track from this EP.  As with much of Mikael’s work, I find myself attracted to each track, and to the whole release overall.  However, I can say, this is definitely a release worthy of listening to, and adding to your ambient or “space music” collection.

So, let’s get to my first choice.

Okay, this really isn’t a single release, it’s actually a pair of EP’s released by one of my netlabel artists: Transient.

Title: Work / Play

Label: Monotonik

Release Date: 18/12/05

Catalog No: mtk157

License: BY-NC-ND

Transient is an artist with a long history on the net.  He’s been releasing his own mixtures of glitch / bleep / IDM styled music for over five years now.  I can’t correctly recall where I first heard his work.  I suspect it was on another Monotonik release that I came across, and was inspired to go back and seek out all of the recordings I could find of his work.

This pair of EP’s represents an interesting pairing of works that Transient did.  The Work portion was recorded on breaks during his job on a Palm handheld.  The Play portion was recorded at his home studio.

This work is representative of what I like best about netlabel releases: the style tends to shift from song to song, however there is a cohesive whole to the work being presented.  The overriding concern with a netlabel release isn’t cornering an artist into a single style, but allowing them to explore the full range of expression with the only measure being the overall quality of the release, which Transient has in spades with these EP’s.  Check out the stream below from the Internet Archive, or download the full release from the links above.

1. toasted
2. all you can do
3. chip ship
4. sporty flute spoof
5. play
6. direct
7. oblong
8. minty fresh
9. i’m going to explode
10. trashybin

Artist: Ergo Phizmiz

Title: The Faust Cycle (or The House of Dr. Faustus)

The subtitle for this section is “The Bird Machines”.  I listened to part of this section over the weekend, and the whole thing again today.

This section starts with Ergo waking up in a hallway, observing Marcel Duchamp teaching a group of small birds.  A gramophone approaches, music playing, baboon like legs clanking against the floor.  Ergo watches from a corner, not wanting to interrupt the happenings.  He watches as the gramophone changes records via it’s fused in record changer.  The new record is “Dr. Faustus Book of Birds”.

The selection that is presented next is a musical interpretation / narrative of this selection of birds.  When the record ends, a book is extended from the bell of the gramophone.  Upon opening the book, Ergo finds himself in another hallway full of doors, with a film projected at the far end.  He looks through the peep holes in the doors, which is accompanied by a rather lengthy sound collage. There is a narrative about ducks, followed by another sound collage, before going into a song.  When the song concludes we are taken into another lengthy sound collage: first of birds, then bells, chimes and carnival music which concludes this section of the piece.

My attention to detail may not be quite as great in this section, as I said I listened to it twice, but was so lost in the collages and the musical interludes that I didn’t pay as much attention to the narrative relationships.  The  one thing that I did notice was the restoration of Ergo to the main house now, instead of being in the sewers or the ballroom.

The other thing that impresses me in this section is the emergence of the birds.  I’ve been thinking that many of the creatures and animals have some form of symbolic meaning.  Obviously, this is all the stuff that dreams are made of, but frequently dreams are a manifestation of our real lives.    No matter what, these narratives are thickly layered with all sorts of things that can be interpreted.  But the task of trying to assemble and interpret all of this would be a daunting task.

Onwards…

• Six articles on The Faust Cycle have been posted, and there will be six more of them.
• I posted my commentaries on: the Cowon iAudio 7 & 9 players, A Brief Word About Security, and the iPad & iBooks.
• I continued serveral series:  Finding Music Online, Shoestring Classical Series.
• I posted part two of my January Classical Listening article.
• I reviewed a new release by Pharmacore on the Pavillion36 label.
• And I started re-working the Links & Locations portion of the site.

I was highly encouraged this week to have had several wonderful conversations.  Ergo Phizmiz picked up on my series about The Faust Cycle and has been following it.  Embe from Netwaves noticed my site and has added it to his blogroll (with the condition that I not blog about U2 — not much of a risk there…), and I have added Netwaves to my Links & Locations.  Travis from Hiddenplace Music commented on the start of my commentaries on The Faust Cycle.

While I was out for dinner with a friend Saturday, we ended up in a coffee shop where I came across a magazine I hadn’t seen before.  The focus of the magazine is on contemporary African music.  Just a single issue of this magazine has given me a wealth of new labels,and material to start tracking down and researching.

The only other outstanding thing that I haven’t done yet is to write up something on my Droid.  Hopefully I will get around to that this week (I am still looking at music applications for it).

This next week will probably be a little slower.  I have the following things to do:

• Finish The Faust Cycle.
• Finish overhauling the Links & Locations section.
• Do some research for the Shoestring Classical series.
• Start checking on some newer independent material that I started reading about.
• Prep a new series for the site.
• And, I’m trying to find a new item to add to the site.

So, until next week, lets see what happens.

Oh, and if you are a fan of LOST – don’t forget the 3 hour start to this season on Tuesday.

Artist: Ergo Phizmiz

Title: The Faust Cycle (or The House of Dr. Faustus)

So today’s listening was a turning point on The Faust Cycle for me.  Actually, it wasn’t a single turning point, but rather multiple turning points.

First was the introduction of The Faust Cycle Podcast.  My first impression about this was: what a wonderful thing to do.  Sharing this work with a group of kids, getting them the experience of making free-form music, and experimentation.  Getting them excited about the process of recording this type of work.  It’s a completely wonderful way to expand these kids horizons, but also extend the community of the Creative Commons and Libre Culture to another generation.

The inclusion of their podcast in The Faust Cycle itself adds another, very interesting, dimension to the piece.  Those who are familiar with the writings of Jorge Louis Borges, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and James Joyce, to name a very few (it can be argued that I am referring back to Laurence Sterne again as well),  have undoubtedly heard of the term meta-fiction.

Meta-fiction is typically fiction about fiction, or at least is self-aware in one way or another.  The introduction of the podcast in this context adds another type of meta-fictional element: this is now an audio piece that is aware of itself, aware of the elements that have gone into it’s production.

Of Kinetoscopes & Dung

Now, back at the main piece we arrive to the next twist of the narrative: Ergo finds that he has become human again and is no longer a puppet.  He realizes that he has no idea what amount of time has transpired: hours, days weeks?  And he realizes that he’s about to burst, and sets off to find a lavatory to relieve himself.  And, after finding an appropriate room, with one enormous push he is emptied.

While this activity is normal and necessary, he has a realization that he feels more empty than normal, that something is wrong.  While playing a harmonica, trying to figure out what is wrong, he hears wailing from the pipes beneath where his soul has gone with his bowel movement.  After noting the irony, Ergo realizes that he must get his soul back and thus flushes himself down the pipes.

What transpires in the sewage system below can only be described as hellish in ways we haven’t encountered thus far. Ergo watches several kinetoscopes of films about Lucifer, but is unable to decide what they mean.  However, after the 2nd film, he hears a piano off in the distance, and decides to follow the sound to find his soul.

The piano we hear, is the same James Nye piece that has been used throughout: An Evening In Hell.  Ergo finds himself in a ballroom, where many people are dancing and humming.  As he stands in the corner, where only the piano has noticed his presence, he suddenly hears a voice in his ear reciting nonsensical poetry.  He looks around to find the source of the voice, only to find a pig, which when patted squeals and expands to the size of the room then falls to pieces.

Lonely Violin music, and an interpretation of “Le Tango Perpetuel” and “An Evening in Hell” close this section of the piece.

Onwards…

Artist: Ergo Phizmiz

Title: The Faust Cycle (or The House of Dr. Faustus)

This section of The Faust Cycle has been sub-titled Culinary Philosophy. The narrator, Ergo Phizmiz himself (which I have failed to mention previously), finds that while he was asleep he has been relocated in the house.  Of course, it has been difficult to realize that this has happened several times, because although he has a sense of being moved in his sleep, he still wakes up in the same room — or at least a room he thinks is the same room.

When Ergo awakens this time, he has an encounter with Mr. Suasage, after having eaten one of his suasages by mistake.  Ergo promises to replace Mr. Suasages suasage,  only to be informed that he is now 200 miles inside the house of Dr. Faustus. From here,  Ergo makes his way to the train station riding on a chair.  He attends a dinner with clocks, pigs, Mr. Suasage, and others.  And he misses the train.

The narrative of this section seems to have taken a turn.  It now seems to have been inspired, or is paying homage to Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass.  And, in the same manner this section uses humor and unique visuals to put us into a new world where the impossible becomes possible.

Musically, this section is highly filled out with works by James Nye, and samples from varying classical pieces — including a very hamronically complex symphonic piece that I cannot place for the life of me (although I am certain I have heard it before…it certainly sounds Russian, so I might believe it to be Prokofiev…but I won’t swear to it).

Overall, this section reminded me of listening to a Tom Waits style piece that instead of mixing the musical and narrative elements ala Alice, leaves the pieces seperate to stand on their own, allowing the listener the space to reflect on each element individually and in relation to each other.

Onwards…