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Public Post
Public readers: I have some exciting high-profile projects to announce in the next six months. Stay tuned. |
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Domain Bandwagon
I got Myke.me today. (Sorry, other Mykes of the world. But my name's too damn hard to spell as it is...) |
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Sunday Sound
Somewhere on the Internet, someone and I corresponded about something, which gave me access to this amazing file of mezzuin calls which he himself recorded (if memory serves) in Morocco. UPDATE: Ah, it was from someone on Metafilter, and it was recorded in Istanbul, not Morocco. The recordist says: "You can hear me walk through the town at night and then stop right between the Blue Mosque and another mosque as the prayer starts." Mezzuin Call to Prayer 04/09/2007, 0915PM Recorded in Istanbul by Tom R. |
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Low Light Mixes #2
Some of you may remember the blog Low Light Mixes, which featured my shortwave radio interceptions and original compositions in a long-form piece entitled A Drift on the Signal (April 2007). Now he's created a second mix, entitled A Ghost In The Phase. (Amusingly, the associated artwork is a reproduction of my new tattoo.) Highly recommended stuff as always. |
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Not sure what exactly possessed me to dig this up, but here it is: a field recording of the Bradley Int'l Airport automated air traffic control announcing closure of runways "due to national emergency," as recorded on 9/11. Runway Closure Notice Bradley International Airport 09/11/2001, freq unknown (1451 UTC) |
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For those of you who pay attention to such things, my sound-art music and writing is featured in last week's episode of NPR's program, "Hearing Voices." You can stream it here: http://hearingvoices.com/news/2008/04/h Hearing Voices from NPR®: Radio stories about radio, then stories about radio stories: Jake Warga paints sound-portraits of "Urbana FM" in Uruguay and "Radio Gondor" in Ethiopia. ShortWaveMusic blog records "Duelling Transmitters" (also check his CD 30: A Retrospective 1976-2006). "WWV- The Tick" comes from Douglas Grant (voiced by former WWV announcer John Doyle). We premiere Chesty Morgan's Forbidden Love!. Larry Massett interviews the "Language Removal Services." Recordist Steve McGreevey captures the solar sounds of space weather, the northern lights, and "Natural Radio." The Android Sisters lament the loss of great "Ray-Dee-Ohh." And Scott Carrier reports to work for "The Friendly Man." Shortwave/music mixes from Myke Weiskopf's CD 30: A Retrospective 1976-2006. |
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The Loveless Fascination
My brother sent me an e-mail today asking after a version of The Church's "Under the Milky Way" that I did during the 1997-1998 concert period (and intermittently thereafter). It's always been one of my own favorite "secret recordings" - I considered making it a hidden track on 30: A Retrospective - so I thoiught it was worth sharing here with you again. It's also interesting to hear myself at 21, lovelorn but confident and seduced by music, at the start of my career in a new city. Ten years later, I'm back in that same space. Guess this is that "circle game" Joni used to sing about... "Under the Milky Way" Recorded direct to DAT at 384 Commonwealth Ave #16, Fall 1998 Myke played guitar and sang |
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Persian Love
Poking around online this morning, I discovered that Los Angeles is home to a humongous expatriate Iranian community - which may be common knowledge to anyone with a passing familiarity with L.A.'s culture, but I had no idea. What this means, of course, is that there's a record store - one hell of a record store - right in the heart of the Iranian community in Westwood. They have a massive selection of Persian classical and pop music of the scope I'd only seen online at places like Aramusic. I went over there with an iPod full of shortwave logs, hoping to convince them to identify some of my pieces by ear, but the elderly owner wanted nothing to do with this idea. Instead, I offered a meagre list of popular Persian artists I knew and asked him to recommend discs in my particular favored style (orchestral-pop works from the 1950s-1970s). Scouring through the racks was completely useless for me on my own - all the discs were in Arabic and the dates of manufacture offered no clue as to the recording session dates - so I had to rely on his judgment and discretion to pick out what I wanted. The biggest coup was learning the name of the official moazzen of the Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran (VOIRI), one of my favorite shortwave broadcasters: Zadeh Ardebili. They proffered an eight-disc set of his recitations for only $36.99, but looking over at my already considerable stack of discs, I decided to defer until my next visit. At any rate, the proprietor and his wife were immensely helpful and sweet, and I can't wait to patronize them again. Now if only iTunes would recognize some of these disc names... |
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I was playing with Ryko on the bed when this song came into my head for no apparent reason. I got this on a crappy old Maxell cassette of the legendary Velvet Underground "After Hours" bootleg series. This particular volume contained a covert recording of Lou Reed and Nico running nostalgically through old songs in Lou's NYC apartment in 1970 (possibly in rehearsal for the forthcoming show at Le Bataclan). Nico is - as usual - a funny mixture of flirtatious and bitchy, stoic and doofy, beautiful and shambolic. In their almost total failure to summon an adequate rendition of anything, they are unexpectedly charming and vulnerable and touching: it's the sound of two old friends reconnecting over something now lost, but still remembered in its own way. Lou cajoles, entreaties, pokes fun; Nico scoffs, demurs, and - memory be damned - sings. It is my favorite recording of all time by either artist. (And in a set without the untouchable "Frozen Warnings," that's quite a statement.) Here they are on attempt #4 of "Little Sister" from Chelsea Girl. Lou Reed and Nico |
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I'm finishing At The Tone this year. If only for the reason that it's now been 50 years since the earliest track was recorded - which makes for a nice, round, celebratory number. Here's a few tracks to get us started... |
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Web site re-launch for 2008. I needed a comprehensive list of all the stuff I've worked on for credibility purposes, and it just wasn't getting done on the old site... I had to hunt through all sorts of old e-mails and documents to remember all this stuff. |
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New Methods for New Cities
When I was living in Jamaica Plain, I used to construct elaborate sound-sculptures out of various accoutrements in my bedroom when I needed sleep-noise. I might have, for example, a box fan going in one corner; a shortwave radio tuned to a drone frequency in one window; a stereo playing Brian Eno's Music for Films at nearly-subliminal volume; and possibly some other white-noise or radiophonic element. That was back in the stone age of my computer usage, since as of 2001, I was still running Windows 95 on a box that barely had the firepower to run Winamp without seizing up. Though my methods and sources have changed, I still enjoy jerry-rigging environmental music for sleep and trance time. At the moment, I'm using a ramshackle but effective means of looping and layering various sounds within the laptop itself. This has become my favorite way to experience my own music, so I thought it worth offering yet another mesmerizing sound-artifact featuring yours truly, this time mixed with some delicious ambient shortwave data transmissions and Qur'an recitations. Hope this finds some space in your own nocturnal sound-worlds. (Nb.: Due to a freak-out by my D/A converter, there's a lot of glitchy looping that I hadn't accounted for. However, it actually serves as a nice accidental remix, so I've left it in.) 833-45: Howth St PART/SEQ (Pananorama Mix) Incorporates: What I was going to say is, Song of Encouragement (v1.0), An Optimist on Election Day, Easter Hymn, (18), Radio Tone Piece, The Grotesque, Chicago Aviation Weather Report 1992, BBC, Interval Signal, & Train Ambience. |
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Take II.
Well, this was my last opportunity. I sat outside in the car until I heard the familiar sound; I had to edit out a good minute of train because I was handling the recorder a little rough for the first few blasts. Different Trains: Rockford, IL, 11/27/2007, 10:45 PM |
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Adventures In Sound #6: Far-Away Trains Passing By
I can't quite put my finger on it - whether it's unique to my own personal childhood nostalgia, or the haunting sonic footprint, or just a sense of culturally-conditioned romance - but the sound of train whistles in the distance makes me almost crushingly melancholy. I'd completely forgotten about the sound, actually, until arriving back home here in Rockford, IL, for my last stay in my childhood home. I was sitting in the living room two weeks ago, my mother having stayed at her apartment in Arlington Heights for a few days, when I heard the blast - faint at first, then incrementally louder with each wave. It remained at pitch for several minutes, carried far over the starstruck Illinois lowlands, unimpeded by architecture or topography and commingling with the sounds of nearby traffic. Then, very gradually, the calls receded into the distance, a dissolution so subtle that it was virtually imperceptible in real-time. I held my breath so the sound of my own body wouldn't interfere with my reception of those long, droning cries. I realized that the sound of those train whistles was, in fact, the most powerful and salient memory I'd ever have of growing up in this house. For all the sounds I recorded here, all the songs and shortwave interceptions and television sound-bites and conversations and creaking of floorboards, more than the memories of sleepovers and sofa fortresses and stomach flu, more than the way the paint peels in certain corners or the light falls in certain rooms, the sound of that train across the haunted midnight landscape may well be the defining sensory fingerprint of my childhood. This had occurred to me the first time I heard it upon returning, so I hurried to get my Edirol recorder ready to capture the event. My first attempt was marred by our headstrong feline, Toby, scratching at the door to be let outside (I'd set the recorder on the porch and gingerly closed the door behind it), so the sounds of cat-scratch and door-slam and admonishing parent-human are unfortunately prominent at certain points. I haven't had a chance to make a second attempt, but I heard the whistles again tonight as my mother was going to bed. I mentioned my theory about the train whistles, about their importance in my sense-memory of growing up, and she glanced over at me. "Really? I've never even noticed them before." Twenty-plus years in this house, and she'd never noticed them before. Countless nights in my mind, lying in bed, windows open to the still summer air, trains passing by somewhere out there, the vaporous sound settling against the chill in my spine, and she'd never noticed them before. Funny, the difference in our perceptions, the details and what's important. She'd waved countless photos, childhood videos, and memorabilia under my nose to my airtight indifference since the day I arrived, but those trains, and suddenly. Snap, twenty years. It's a lonelier sound than any shortwave radio could produce. And, from me, that's saying a big something. I'll be out there again tomorrow night, 11 PM. I'll freeze and be perfectly still and waiting, porch lights out, trigger finger at the ready, for that cargo to cross my path for the last time. I'll get it because I have to. Because if I take any part of this house. Because more than shortwave radio. And that's the only thing on this Earth. Train Ambience, Rockford, IL |
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Updated my Last.fm Artist Profile with new material and additional info. I'll be uploading new work to Last.fm as a matter of course going forward, so if you lose track of something new, you should be able to go there and listen to it again. In the meantime, here's a nice playlist to share with your pals - heavy on the experimental and newer work, as is my preference. |
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Well, I wasn't expecting to find this today. Back in 1999, I was asked by the Chicago-based experimental label Kultbox to produce the inaugural volume in their Shortwave Series, a limited-edition run of 7" singles devoted to found sound and field recordings via shortwave radio. I responded with Time Out Of Joint, a miniature version of my long-abandoned At the Tone project, which featured random historical excerpts from NIST Radio Station WWV pressed onto vinyl. I never saw a final copy of this release, but thanks to the magic of Flickr, today I discovered that the cover art won a design award back in the day - and I'd never even seen one before. (The inside looked something like this.) Pretty damn cool - now I want one!! |
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He's young, he's cute, he's French, and he's doing pretty much exactly what I'd be doing if I'd bothered to keep up with technology all these years. I've only learned about SebastiAn in the last week or so from trolling the dance-music charts for new tunes, but the blogosphere's been all over him for the better part of two years. He's remixed Kelis, Daft Punk, Annie, Cut Copy, Editors, Bloc Party, Klaxons, The Rapture, and a number of lesser-known but even more trendy underground dance types. My infatuation may ultimately prove short-lived, but as Graham Parker once sang, passion is no ordinary word. If you already caught the prior entry on SebastiAn and liked what you heard, check these out for further listening... "Ross Ross Ross" - from Ross Ross Ross 12" |
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Qur'an via Shortwave: 10/8/2007
In observance of Ramadan, the shortwave bands have been positively exploding with Qur'an recitations lately. Ramadan winds up this week (in just four days), so it seemed an apropos time to offer the Qur'an interceptions I heard tonight. 1. BSKSA Saudi Arabia: 2225 UTC, 9555 kHz [4m13s, 2MB] |
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New thingy.
"Song of Encouragement" (v1.0) Myke played organ and shortwave. Recorded and edited 9/30/07 at OHS/Somerville. This needs a lot of work, but I had to get the idea out. I envision more voices, a longer narrative, a bit more musical fleshing-out. I pretty much just have to dump it from my head to my hard drive... |
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Shortwave Condensation: 09/27/2007 Recorded September 27, 2007 by Myke Weiskopf. Condensed and mixed September 28, 2007. An 11-minute mixed extract of broadcasts from Turkey, Western Sahara, Egypt, Greece, Israel, USA, and the "Backwards Music Station." This is a much more artsy take on the idea I started on 10/23: closer in spirit to something I'd release on my own records. |
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/video/2007/sep/24/white.koala
[video] 1. This koala is adorable. 2. I think the Guardian has used one of my historical WWV mp3s for its introductory splash music. |
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Last night's radio.
Shortwave Condensation: 09/23/2007 Recorded September 23, 2007 by Myke Weiskopf. A 6.5-minute mixed extract of broadcasts from: (1) [unidentified] (2) Western Sahara (3) RTV Marocaine (4) Radio Algerienne (5) [unidentified] (6) WYFR (7) ERTU Egypt |
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Adventures In Sound #5: Stentorian Automated Voices 1a
Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport Terminal Shuttle Recorded September 4, 2007 by Myke Weiskopf |
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It's Burn Time!!!!
I'm off to Reno first thing in the morning, kids. Likely won't be back to post again. Have fun, everyone. Be safe. See some of you out there! |
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Years and years ago, before I even started making records, I used to fantasize about what my albums would look like when those mail-order record clubs like Columbia and BMG reformatted the cover to fit their cheesy, art-destroying cover templates (back when they did such things, of course - and always to cassettes). Twenty years later, thanks to Paytoplay.fm, now I know. (These are the sorts of aesthetic liberties that get taken with your work when you enter into fairly broad licensing agreements, it seems.) |
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Laurie Anderson Orgy® 5 June 2007 WHRB : Harvard Radio Broadcasting 95.3 FM : whrb.org ** FULL BACK-TO-BACK REBROADCAST ** Produced by WHRB [Cambridge, MA] |
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Easter Hymn.
A little solitude, a radio loop, and a chord organ, and who knows what can happen. (A pointer to future directions, for those who are paying attention...) Easter Hymn (4/8/2007)
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Yes, one day I too will own a shortwave radio station. And I will play this on an endless loop for hours, days, weeks. Just as I have been doing in my own living room.
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Writers seem to dig my music.
The beautiful and talented and famous Mr. Prince Gomolvilas has written lovely things about 30 at the CDBaby page. Why haven't you? |
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CDBaby is currently sold out of my CD. However, I'll be shipping more discs to them tomorrow. Thanks to everyone who's gotten this off to such an encouraging start. (And if anyone wants to sic some of this stuff on the blogosphere, I can arrange for some selective piracy to take place...) |
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CDBaby won't have my discs posted for sale for at least another ten biz days. If you want 'em sooner, better tell me and I'll sell you one direct. (P.S.: I'll make more money that way anyhow.) That's $10 PPD. |
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WHRB OrgyFilter - Spring 2007
Honing in on my next WHRB Orgy for the Spring semester. This time, it's going to be Turkish folkloric music. I'm combing through hundreds of artists in order to determine the exact scope of what I want to do, but I'm not wasting a spare second as I did with the Bulgarian Orgy, which effectively means going ahead and preparing for the Orgy as if it's already confirmed to take place. There's an even bigger learning curve this time, as I know absolutely nothing about Turkish music, but it's beautiful stuff, and eminently worth another 12 hours (at least) of air time. |
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Adventures in Sound #4: VNG Australia
"VNG first blipped into the Australian ether in 1964, providing a standard frequency and time signal service for navigators, surveyors, and astronomers. The warm, clear voice of VNG announcer Graham Conolly soon became familiar to shortwave listeners tuning up their sets throughout the South Pacific. In 1987, VNG was shut down, much of its role taken by Global Positioning Satellites. A consortium of VNG users was formed, money raised, and VNG blipped again from a new location. Costs finally came to outweigh benefits, and VNG's last blip was heard on 31 December 2002, at 23:43:43 UTC." - Stephen Gard, EARLabs ------------ VNG is no longer with us, but thanks to my apparently obsessive ear for future nostalgia, here's a full half-hour of VNG Australia's unedited broadcast, as recorded on location in Australia in 2001. This was recorded in anticipation of an unfinished Web project, Time-signals.net, which was to include a half-hour recording of each remaining shortwave time-signal station in operation. Needless to say, it never came to fruition, but here's just a sample of what might have been. Enjoy. VNG Australia |
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OrgyJournal v2.0
Back at the station for shift #2 of Orgy - this one's 13 hours versus last night's 11. Had a blip at the start (iTunes decided to play the middle of our level-check song instead of my intro) but it's smooth sailing at least in the automation department. The rest of the errors are mine: I didn't get to audition today's set as thoroughly as yesterday's, so there are some actual village-style songs mixed in here with the arranged folklore... I'm annoyed with myself, but instead of getting more sleep (3 hours last night) I was in The Workshop all afternoon and evening putting together the final edits for the narration, backdrops, etc... I only barely made my bus to the radio station on time. What a ride. Lots of nice phone calls from all around the country thanking us for putting this together. It's such a good thing.
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OrgyJournal v1.0
In the midst of Orgy, Night One. It's only two hours in, so there's plenty of time for things to go awry, but thus far it seems fairly seamless. Of course, spending almost every night until midnight over the last month tweaking and perfecting things might have some bearing on that, but this laptop developed some scary illness a few days ago that has rendered it unable to run anything except iTunes - which, from an Orgy standpoint, is just fine with me, but I'm concerned with its longer-term health. Guess I'll have to wipe the damn thing after the Orgy is over. I've already gotten some interesting phone calls from Bulgarian experts from various parts of the country expressing their approval, which is gratifying. The best part of my job is connecting to people I'd otherwise never get to meet (it's certainly not the pay or the hours) - so if that keeps happening, I'll be a happy man. Meanwhile, I get to sit around the radio station all night, listening to Bulgarian music and browsing their massive CD collection. What could be better? (Except maybe sleeping between now and 9 AM...) Listen live, incidentally, at WHRB.
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Adventures In Sound #3: Burning Man 2006
Finally getting around to transcribing my digital audio footage of Burning Man '06. I found the tape still in the DAT player when preparing to record last night's excellent Mark Eitzel show. After the Bulgarian madness is over, I hope to edit it all down into something for my Web site... and perhaps a "radio edit" for MySpace.
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Curated by yours truly...
Bulgarian Folklore Orgy® 26 / 27 January 2007 WHRB : Harvard Radio Broadcasting 95.3 FM : whrb.org Friday 26 January : 10p - 9a EST [UTC -5h] Spread the word. |
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CD back from plant on Thursday. No further details to be posted here. Please instead see (and link to) MySpace page. |
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Ladies And Gentlemen, It's Time
 My first new record in six years. Finally. More details to follow at my site. |
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I always think I know my work inside and out, but... I'm going through everything all over again for an upcoming compilation disc and I'm discovering all sorts of weird stuff I didn't even know I'd done. Entire alternate mixes, acoustic demos, the works. I've already cancelled my A.M. training appointment ... it's going to be a long night listening through all this stuff. |
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Well. I've just awakened from some of the most terrifying nightmares on record, all of which stemmed from the experience of reading this book. Every day, I think of myself as an empathetic person. I can't just tune out pain. I understand the effects of our action/reaction universe in my gut. Reading Half of a Yellow Sun made me feel war - real, in-the-streets, kinship-decimating, harsh and unforeseeable and direct and real and in the "me" of it - more than any photograph of maimed victims, any story of governments forcing the hands of its victims. The imagery and the experience is so grueling and so visceral, it's tracked me down in my own bed weeks after finishing it two or three books ago. I have read Elie Wiesel. I have read Ken Saro-Wiwa. I have read Chinua Achebe. I have read the New York Times and listened to the Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This book decimates them all. This book decimates my pathetic guilty white liberal conscience, drags kitchen knives deep through my imagination. The plague, the head in the basket, the plague, the sickness you can't name, the clean accidental decapitation, the disappeared leaving shadows in the streets, the ashen yellow plague. Even if only for tonight, I can't escape this book. I will light candles, cut a piece of oven-hot comfort bread, cup my face in my hands, and see it all over again. And I will wonder if all of America, innocent or guilty, deserves to be torn from sleep like this, wet with the inescapable terror of a methodically advancing death, and delivered trembling into the morning frost light, haunted by terrible visions of a world we fuel up and drive to work every day. What would change? I have no forgiveness for us, or for myself. |
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