“Catjar in the Rye” (or “Betty”, as she is know to her friends) is an experimental sound instrument built for Swedish composer Andreas Catjar. It combines a chaotic Benjolin synthesizer, extreme fuzz distortion unit, a speaker/contact-mic feedback system and “circuit-bending”-style body contacts into one rugged flightcase. The Benjolin features several modifications, including patchable routing banana jacks, LED lights for the three stages of its analog shift register and an external audio input. I hope to post some sounds and video later on, when Andreas has time to make them.

My thanks go out to Rob Hordijk, who designed the Benjolin circuit, and to Pete Edwards/Casper Electronics for his help in working out the modifications. You can read a few of my thoughts on using analog shift registers for chaotic sound synthesis in this post.

This instrument really represents exactly what I would like to be doing more of these days: customized design and construction of personal sound instruments based on circuits freely available within the DIY electronics community. Please get in touch if you have a project in mind!

“Catjar in the Rye” was commissioned to appear in the Institutet/Markus Öhrn/Nya Rampen theater production “We love Africa and Africa loves us”. The premier takes place on October 5, 2012 at Ballhaus Ost Berlin.

http://institutet.eu/productions/we-love-africa-and-africa-loves-us/

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aluk todolo–occult rock[2012 ajna offensive]

A•LIVE Information Metabolism from Vanessa Ramos-Velasquez on Vimeo.

I will be playing a live, improvisational set for modular synthesizer, found objects and SoundBox at Basic Electricity Berlin on Friday 28 September 2012. Joining me will be video artist Vanessa Ramos-Velasquez with her live electronic microscope visuals. This will be our first, exploratory outing with the A.LIVE bio-art project, and we’re both quite curious to see how it goes. Hope some of y’all out there can make it.

Incidentally, the audio in the above video comes from the soundtrack of Machine Deva, the recent collaboration I did with my father, Steve Holzer. Interesting to hear it in another setting… Machine Deva recently won the Best Experimental Film prize at the Columbia Gorge International Film Festival. Way to go, Dad!

I will be offering copies of the Machine Deva soundtrack on CDR and DVDRs of the film itself some time in mid-November. Due to the extremely detailed nature of the hand-animation, which seems to be hopelessly corrupted by any sort of compression process, Machine Deva will never likely get put online. So unless you happen to be around when Steve or I screen it, this might be your only chance to view this remarkable work. Get in touch if interested…

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neil young–on the beach[1974]

The Rainforest project at the LAK Festival for Nordic Sound Art in Copenhagen was a complete success on many levels. The organizational team was fantastic, even without considering that this was their first ever event. While they planned for a modest 100 visitors for each day of the event, the total number turned out to be about 1500 in total. The Rainforest concert opened the festival, and continued as a live installation each day. Many thanks to Rainforest co-organizer (and true soul buddy) Mads Bech Paluszewski-Hau as well as participants Anders Børup, James Brewster, Ejvind Juul Chang and Kristian Hverring for their energy and dedication, as well as to curators Jonas Olesen and Sandra Boss as well as the whole LAK team for a great weekend.

Photos by Hanne Budtz, My Lambertsen and Antonin Matejovsky. Full LAK photoset here

SNYKradio indslag om LAK festival og Regnskov 2012 by janstricker

Practice your Danish! SNYKradio interview with myself and Mads Bech Paluzewski-Hau at the LAK festival 2012 by Jan Stricker. Don’t worry, plenty of parts in English too…

Rainforest 2012 // Regnskov 2012 – LAK festival for nordisk lydkunst by My Lambertsen on YouTube.

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