Ad Hoc was founded on the ideal of building the world you want to see using the resources at your disposal, and beyond showcasing great music, we want to help musicians and music lovers figure out how to do things themselves. To kick off the first installment of our new "how to" column, "Figuring It Out," we asked NYC-based promoter and "music export" expert Charlotte Von Kotze to give us some advice for non-American bands looking to tour the States without burning through their savings. Charlotte came to New York from her native Paris to work as a project manager at the French Music Export Agency, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing French artists to the states, and currently works at the music marketing agency Giant Step while curating shows under the moniker Duchess of Broken English.
If you follow a particularly zeitgeisty, technology-obsessed sector of the Brooklyn music scene, you may have encountered artist Tabor Robak while watching the glistening digital animations he's done for Fatima Al Quadiri and Ford & Lopatin, or while reading about conceptual pop group #HDBOYZ, self-described as "the world's first boyband in high definition." The 26-year-old Portland native's website, which contains everything from visual renderings of imaginary geological specimens to a 90-minute video of continuous, summer blockbuster-ready explosions, reveals that the dude's imagination would seem to have no end-- especially where dreaming up Avatar-seductive, virtual environments is concerned. Most recently, Robak conceived the game component of Gatekeeper's equally digital-centric Exo LP, an extended, first-person journey through star-studded galaxies, labrynthine space stations, and imaginary ecosystems so vivid that you can almost feel the water perspiring from the trees. Ad Hoc spoke to Tabor about collaborating with Gatekeeper, the beauty of "fourth-wall breaking moments," and why he hesitates to call Exo a game.
This morning, Brooklyn electronic duo Gatekeeper unveiled the virtual gaming environment that 2011 Rhizome grant winner and new media artist Tabor Rybak dreamt up for Exo, their debut LP on Hippos in Tanks. The game visualizes a distinct, interactive environment for each of the album's 12 tracks, and can be experienced in all its dramatically contoured, high resolution glory by visiting the website they created specifically for the project.
Word on the Internet is that the French film maker Chris Marker has died, just one day after his 91st birthday. He wasn't the kind of cultural figure who made headlines on the regular, but he made the kind of movies that college professors show first-year film students in order to get them thinking differently about storytelling. (At least, that's how I found out about him).
From his 1968 cult classic La Jetée, which inspired Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys and was constructed almost entirely from still images, to 1983's Sans Soleil, a globe-trotting mediation on memory and geographical place, the notoriously reclusive philosopher/auteur seemed to point endlessly to the interrelation between photographic images and the human faculty of recollection-- the idea being that both attempt more or less successfully to preserve that which has already ceased to exist. To commemorate the life and work of one of film history's most tragically un-sung out-the-box thinkers, we thought we'd post all 30 minutes of La Jetée. (Though by all means, please check out the much higher quality Criterion Release).
Panda Bear, Deakin, Avey Tare, and Geologist premiered this stuttering first single from their much-anticipated Centipede Hz last night, on a weekly web radio show they have cooking with Domino and The Creators Project this month. The show, which runs every Sunday at 9pm ET, through August 19th, combines AnCo-curated mixes and guest DJ sets; on the website they created for the project, the band has even created a downloadable sample set of stems from Centipede Hz, inviting users to create and submit their own mixes.
To commemorate the life and work of kraut rock and electronic music pioneer Conrad Schnitzler, who passed away from stomach cancer last year, a collective of friends and collaborators led by Gen Ken Montomery has announced a multi-venue mini-fest in NYC this week.
Starting at 6pm on Friday, East Village gallery Audio Visual Arts will broadcast 60 continuous hours of the late composer and Tangerine Dream member's work into the immediate environs of its 1st street location as the entire program streams on the CON Mythology website. Just around the corner, on Saturday and Sunday, Anthology Film Archives will screen some of his films and animations.
Finally, Harvest Works will be home to an octophonic (read: eight-speaker) installation showcasing several of his multi-channel compositions throughout the weekend, beginning with a "live Cassette CONcert" by Gen Ken Montgomery on Friday. We're not sure exactly what that entails, but apparently Schnitzler recorded cassette box sets of his music designed to be played in a performance setting in lieu of Schnitzler himself.
Earlier this year, Moscow-based culture mag Look At Me received over 600 submissions for a contest promising ten young Russian artists a chance to get a track produced by one of ten North American indie musicians. The producers included Ad Hoc faves like Teengirl Fantasy, Maria Minerva, Nite Jewel, and Dent May, and even heavyweights like Arcade Fire's Jeremy Gara. The collaborative mix-downs, which are streaming for free on SoundCloud, include Dent May's recording of a self-described "porngroove" band from Vladivostok (KrisMirror) and Maria Minerva's production of likeminded Muscovite synthesist Rosemary Loves A Blackberry. One of our faves is this sample-based, Teengirl-assisted cut from Творожное озер (pronounced "Curd Lake"), a Siberian "chillwave" project inspired by the "Soviet acoustic pop scene."
Ah, "Albatross." The softly beating drums. That sweetly sliding lapsteel. The pre-Stevie, instrumental diddy that didn't sound all that much like the Fleetwood Mac that most of us remember, but was somehow so heartbreakingly poignant that Vietnam War vets used to request that it be played at their funeral. They probably still do. The Lee Ranaldo Band's noise-laden cover of the song with J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. fame was simply too good not to bring to your attention, even if its release represents a slightly cringe-worthy continuation of the Sonic Youth family's ongoing relationship with Starbucks. (via Pitchfork)
In the spirit of trans-generational NYC solidarity, Brooklyn minimal wave duo Innergaze just did this remix for legendary '90s house producer Pal Joey, who is perhaps best known for classics like "Dance" (under the name Earth People), and "Hot Music" (under the name Soho). This week, Pal Joey comes out with a new EP under moniker Walk The Dog. Innergaze's treatment of single "I Can't" casts smudges of synthy graniness over his subtly chromatic original.
I Can't EP drops this week via Cocomachete, and is available for purchase via Beatport.
As Hubble, guitarist Ben Greenberg of Zs and Pigmy Shrews (R.I.P.) has been mining the surprise accidents and micro-variations that can arise when you play a short melodic phrase over and over, at superhuman speed. His debut LP under the moniker, Hubble Drums, was one of the most quietly powerful and ideosyncratic electric guitar records of last year, and while I knew this guy was fast, it honestly never occured to me that he might be able to acheive similar results on an acoustic. "Hubble Potatoes," which appears on the Trouble-curated mixtape for this Summer's You Are Here Fest in Brooklyn, actually makes us even more impressed with his technique, because every note that we hear is a played one, as opposed to the possible product of digital delay. The raw acoustic sounds within make for a stark but pleasing contrast with the dizzying heights that this music can transport us to, and we look forward to Greenberg's upcoming acoustic 7" this fall, on Company.
The You Are Here Fest kicks off next Thursday, July 12th with Zs and Miho Hatori's New Optimism. Hubble will hit the maze the following Thursday, and you can check out the entire line-up after the jump. The festival mixtape is available for a donation to the You Are Here Kickstarter campaign, which seeks to raise funds for a recreation of the project in Berlin, and also on-site, in Brooklyn, within the maze itself.
