FundamentallySound Blog

Rather than continue to complain about San Francisco and the USA, today I thought I'd make a list of all the things that I do like, and very much, about this area:

-Blue Bottle Coffee. Some of the best coffee I've ever had, in the world. And it's roasted across the bay in Oakland, then sold out of a converted garage in an alley in Hayes Valley.

-I love the combination of geeky aspiration and cultural idealism in San Francisco technology organizations like Cycling '74, Creative Commons, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Wired News, Movable Type, etc.

-A lot of underrecognized, underpaid, and overtalented digital musicians. Wobbly, Greg Kowalsky, Dorsey Dunn (he's moving to LA though), Ava Mendoza, Cenk Ergun, Safety Scissors, and the list goes on and on and on.

-The large population of interesting writers.

-Cute guys in all directions, there's just something about California. But especially one cute guy in particular.

-Aquarius Records

-The Asian influence in San Francisco. It is a Pacific Rim city after all.

-The bicycle culture here, and my favorite bike shop Box Dog Bikes. I'm always amazed when riding my bike to the train station at how many other bicyclists there are.

So there. I am capable of saying positive things now and again. I should do it more, my continual complaining is starting to bore even me.

Posted by at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I remember once in Amsterdam my friend Joel Ryan offhandedly commented that the culture at Stanford is strangely conservative. I thought of that right now as I'm on the train at the Palo Alto stop, looking at the Stanford types who are boarding and I notice they tend to have an expression of quiet entitlement and self-satisfaction combined with a slight nervousness. Their facial expressions say they've earned what they have and their relentless busy-ness in their seats is telling me they are still in the game, still competing right now, and don't forget that.

And I started comparing this with the highly-educated academicians I met in Holland who always seemed relaxed, gregarious, and radically open-minded. And I realized the difference is money: the elites of the educational field in Holland didn't seem as blatantly and annoyingly rich as their American counterparts. How does one manage to still care about the finer points of a STEIM performance by a little-known electronic musician from Antwerp with a CD released on an obscure label from Kobe when there's stock performance to think about. I mean, really.

But the fascinating people are those that are highly moneyed and able to hold onto their intellectual edge keeping a naivete about the world. I want to meet those people. And hey, I can be their ear to the ground, their man on the street if they want, helping keeping tabs on the kids' trends. For a fee of course.

Posted by at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Last night at the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, I had the pleasure of running into my friend and teacher Alvin Curran who is back in town for a few months in residency at Mills. The concert itself was all over the place, but a few standouts were a noisy and precise live diffusion by Ava Mendoza and the presentation of a piece by Cenk Ergun.

These days I'm just spending most of my time getting a project ready for Berlin, and working on duo projects with pianist Heather Heise and dancer Sara Wookey.

Posted by at 8:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm going to be in Europe for about three weeks from mid-February. I can't express how ready I am to be back there, even if it is a record cold winter. I've already purchased my thermal underwear so I should be prepared. Maybe.

I'm working hard on material for the shows I'll be doing. I'm making a sound and image piece, with the images all taken from a set that I shot of the sun rising at the beach in San Francisco, like this one:

I'm really interested in using natural untouched images but handled in a very abstract way. I'm going to tie their movement into SuperCollider so that the timing matches the sound. It's simple and I prefer that. I think just injecting a huge image of a California beach inside a small concrete Berlin performance space in the dead of winter is a nice gesture.

Here are the shows I'm doing:

Oslo:

-February 22, at Spasibar

Hamburg:

-February 24, at Hoerbar, the experimental music series of B Movie

Berlin:

-February 26, Zentrale Randlage, the Joint Venture series

-March 5, at Ausland

I hope to have more details soon, as in the other acts, times, costs, and so on. If you're over on that side of the world, I hope I see you there.

Posted by at 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Gore Vidal has written an extremely lucid summary of the poor state of this country (via TruthDig.com).

Posted by at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Too much efficiency gets me down. Trains that only go to the stops with the highest ridership are boring. I want subway systems that go to stops only grandmas and gangsters use, like in Tokyo: the over-subsidized train consortium made lines that weave through neighborhoods where there's not much besides an underground music store above an okonomiyaki restaurant. But when you're craving the Boredoms and an eel okonomiyaki with a view of a graffiti-covered steel wall, you're in luck, you know you can get there, and fast too. Just you and the obaa-san, riding the train, not knowing what or how to say anything to each other.

In California the train I take to work is full of clean smart professionals and it only make stops at stations that connect places like the Google campus or Apple computer headquarters with the rest of the world. These companies are in the middle of nowhere, down here on the Peninsula. I guess this is a good place to think a lot. There certainly aren't any distractions, just sunshine and clean air.

Posted by at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just rediscovered Ryuichi Sakamoto's album Smoochy last night after sort of forgetting about for years. What a great album, brings back memories of many happy hours spent walking around Tokyo listening to it on my MiniDisc player.

Posted by at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is an idea I've heard tossed around for years now and it seems like someone is finally doing it, in Japan of course. At Oto Kinoko in Kyoto, you can try the sounds, choose the ones you like, and then buy the CD. Brilliant!

Posted by at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you subscribe to the podcasts that I produce (there's a link at the upper right hand side of this page), you'll find three pieces available for download today. The first two are from an internet sound trade that Anne Laplantine and I did a couple of months back, starting with my cover of her song Care and next, her inspired remix of that cover. Thirdly, there's a one minute piece I put together today from a recording I made of a little music box playing Somewhere Over The Rainbow, then re-contextualizing it through a new SuperCollider patch. I'm kind of proud of it, and am going to expand it out for my live performances.

Posted by at 9:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today I was having a coffee outdoors on Hayes Street when, out of the corner of my eye, I see a man with tight leather pants, puffy tuxedo shirt and black vest power walking down the sidewalk. There's nothing unusual in that around here, but there was something about the way he walked that had an air of confidence beyond the norm, and then I looked up to just catch the sun reflecting off a shock of blonde shaggy hair to realize that it was Peter Berlin.

An apparently shy man who made his fame off of selling self-made erotic photos, often double exposures of him admiring himself, eventually catching the eyes of Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe. Now in his 60's, he still looks great, at least he did today. I've never watched his films from the 70's but have caught a bit of the strange movie That Boy on the monitors at Tube Steak.

He sounds like a textbook narcissist, in a 1982 interview he says, "...most of the time, when gays come up to me and say 'Oh, you’re really great.' I say, 'What else is new?—I know that.' I look in the mirror every day." Wow! And he seems to say it in such a matter-of-fact way. But I guess he was just telling the truth, so, it's not really vanity then, or something like that.

Posted by at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Like today. I finally made it to Ritual Roasters in the Mission. A coffee here, a slow walk back up Valencia checking out Community Thrift, ATA, Aquarius Records, Den, and some of these new shops that seem to have appeared in the last week. Maybe beers at the Phone Booth later. Sometimes San Francisco is alright, I should quit complaining so much.

Posted by at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One reason I wanted to take pictures at the ocean today was because it was the first full moon of the year, and the moon was huge even as the sun was coming up behind it. It was satisfying to know that I was seeing the sun's rays before the rest of the American continent, and not that much later than Japan and Australia.

I took about 25 snapshots of the moon setting over the ocean as the day broke, and my plan is to use Processing to meld these images together into a video, with a palette of misty messy pinks and blues with rays of sunshine and a moon that slowly changes position over time. I think the results could be spellbinding and meld perfectly with my recent music.

I have to say, a one hour bike ride to the ocean before dawn on a Sunday morning, with a trip to La Boulange for a delicious pastry and coffee afterwards is a wonderful way to start the week. Maybe I should make a habit of this.

Posted by at 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm off to the beach to take pictures of the sunrise this morning. I'm going to try to put together the snapshots in Processing to make a video to go with my latest music projects.

Posted by at 6:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now if we could just prove the same was true of Bush's brain... (ba-doom, ching!)

Posted by at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I think Fassbinder's Whity and Sokurov's Moloch are both expressionistic films, but totally camp at the same time.

Posted by at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since a teenager, I've been attracted to the idea of expressionism, especially that of the German/Austrian variety. I like thinking of how one can squeeze out the power of an aesthetic concept in the most minimal way, whether it be the cubism of Picasso or the gut-wrenching tonalities of Schoenberg's Sechs kleine Klavierstucke. There's a sensuality to it, even in the works of Webern. Tying minimalism to expressionism might seem a bit odd, but they're both dealing with an attempt at getting to the heart of the matter with limited means, it's just that minimalism is a bit more angular and cerebral while expressionism is sensual, messy, and generally rather unfriendly.

I recently learned about the work of Egon Schiele. His work is striking and tight and impassioned, I would add him to my list of expressionists. I wish I could get to New York to see it at the Neue Galerie.

Posted by at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Macworld is fun, no doubt about that. It was my first time to go. But by the end, I realized, it's almost more fun to read all the rumors of possible gadgets than to see what is actually being done. I'd like to keep believing that one day Apple will make the world's coolest cell phone that works seamlessly all over the planet.

One of my best finds at MacWorld though was this little iPod case, so simple, so perfect. It just does one thing, it holds your iPod. Thanks to Lee for buying one for me.

Posted by at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Just a note to say that the pieces Minimum:Maximum and Orient:Occident by Hans Otte are the best pieces I've heard in quite a while. Thanks r.!

Posted by at 9:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I really think it has to do with an inherent conservatism in the culture of this country. It's conservatism in the sense of knowing clearly one's place and not stepping beyond those boundaries. One can see this when walking through the Castro in San Francisco and noticing how cookie-cutter all the gay men look or walking through the Financial District and overhearing the similar tones of voice and subject matter of all the businessmen. In this same way, in America, there are those who are interested in surprising/experimental/"other" music and those who aren't. The ones who are dress in their own fashion and speak their own language, clearly separating themselves from those who don't. The number of people who cross boundaries, the number of businessmen who might attend an experimental music concert, are practically non-existent. My friend Nathan, now living in Berlin, expressed to me once how happy he was to live in a place with real diversity while in the Netherlands, and it took me a long time to understand what he meant. In Europe, and especially in countries like Holland, a huge part of the population is curious, willing to try something they have never tried, creating a complex borderless diversity full of surprise and unpredictability. Where here in America, diversity exists, but it is a depressingly clearly bounded diversity, with no crossover. Diversity happens as long as we can clearly identify it as diversity, as long it fits into the neat little diversity box. How boring.

Posted by at 9:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've often thought of San Francisco's lack of fashion awareness to be a rather healthy thing, by limiting oneself to only the basics, obligatory tight jeans, vintage shirt, sneakers, face unshaven, and silver studded belt, one could focus on the more important things, like making art and music. But now I'm a little disillusioned, now I just wonder if it isn't a sign of how lazy everyone is.

Posted by at 5:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I had a quick dinner at Osha Thai Noodle last night with Dorsey Dunn, an American sound artist from Japan, via New York, now living in Oakland. We were talking about how the only way one is ever able to get noticed in this area is by crafting a schtick out of your art that is a caricature, a joke, an over the top noisy slapstick routine. Dorsey says he's moving to LA. I still daydream about Berlin. Probably anyplace is better than San Francisco if you want someone to really listen to your work. That is unless you're Fred Frith.

Posted by at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

No, it probably doesn't. At least that's the feeling of my friend Jay Lesser. And I tend to agree.

But, the world does need more music, now more than ever, especially well-crafted, smart, and fun music. Music for dancing, thinking, bathing, fucking, spacing out, relaxing, airports, kitchens, or working. Music as intellectual game, physical rumble, or soothing wash. Music for a purpose. And it doesn't need to come on a CD, it can come as a podcast, or an internet stream, iTunes music store, or in the worst case, maybe even a CD.

Posted by at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I've finally added a page with sound samples of my music and some commentary/reviews to the site.

I should have done this long ago, but have always been a bit shy about my work facing the cold glare of the world. I mean, I performed live a lot, have released stuff, but still have always felt that I was never quite pushing my music enough. Well, 2006 is the year to open the floodgates and put it all out there for everyone to hear, enough of this childish reluctance. Now if I could just find a proper way to release it.

Posted by at 2:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Lee and I spent five days in Denver, his hometown. How to summarize this city? My first observation was that it looked like Pittsburgh, just cleaner. But after spending time there, it reminded me of medium sized Dutch cities like the Hague, but with less diversity. It's full of seemingly friendly people, who are more than happy to assist you should you forget your bag next to the luggage carousel or post-office attendants who wrap your CD inside the package with old newspaper so that you don't have to spend the money on a proper CD mailer insert (thanks Debbie!).

Then there is the Denver Contemporary Art Museum, a tiny cramped space next to a Japanese shopping center, full of dozens of video projectors shining video art onto every available surface. This was a really nice surprise, especially the Peter Welz pieces inspired by his work with William Forsythe.

Denver was a nice surprise, a distinctively American cowboy town that is somehow also very pleasant and inviting. I didn't know this combination was possible.

Posted by at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I don't know what's going on with my movable type system, but I'll fix it after I get back, until then it doesn't look like anyone can leave comments.

Lee and I are off to Denver, it's my first time there. Is this something I should be excited about? Hmm...

Posted by at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)