Music From The Other Room
Multimedia lab experimenting with image and sound. We try to do things as they are not supposed to be done.
Listen and subscribe on RadioPublic or wherever you catch your podcasts: https://play.radiopublic.com/the-white-whale-6rMkNW/ Find entire season, Samples from Anodyne, with transcripts on CyNar Pictures: http://www.cynarpictures.com/the-white-whale/tape-extracts/?category=Samples+From+Anodyne So what is Samples from Anodyne? It's series 3 of The White Whale. It's a podcast. It's a zine. It's a podcast about a zine.
Today's teaser just needed to have some visuals. It started as something simple and then became what is not atypical for this group. Watch, listen, enjoy. Series drops tomorrow (as long as technical glitches do not get in the way).
So what is Samples from Anodyne? It's series 3 of The White Whale. It's a podcast. It's a zine. It's a podcast about a zine. It's a podcast about a zine run by Julie Shapiro that she has rebirthed through a tumblr page and steadfast commitment to continued print distribution as time and life permits; a gift for those generous enough to contribute. It's a podcast about a zine about how one grows up, how one gets old, how one comes to terms with a life so excruciatingly unknowable and uncontrollable despite best efforts put forth everyday to know and understand.
It's a story built on its own finite; where only the briefest of moments could allow its narrative to be true. Originating in an era that now seems unfathomable - pre-internet - where you connected with people in person or through the transference of something physical - even an analog phone or shortwave transmission had a certain weight we're uncertain of today; to now where nothing seems tangible, everything smoke and mirrors wafting away just as soon as you think you've grasped it. A story about the interweave of fact and fiction and the value of that conflation when driven toward positive means of love, community, and connectivity.
It's about living in the abstractions of daily life and finding the poetry that lies beneath.
This series feels very much like a story The White Whale was built to tell and it's an honor to have been provided the opportunity. There will be one more trailer tomorrow and then the entire series will drop later this week.
"Enjoy the centerfold. Enjoy the tape. Enjoy the fact that you have great taste in music."
The last time we posted here was about a new logo for CyNar. Something evolved with its age and increasing abstraction from the typical methods of media production.
Now, The White Whale is following suit. As we are finishing up Series 3, and already looking beyond to other material, a new face seemed appropriate. One that speaks to its continued understanding of itself and the evolution of its presentation in this self reflection. So, with that, here is the new look as well as a new Facebook page devoted to its own malfeasance! Enjoy.
In 2015 Don Chambers hosted "a music and other things entertainment" each month called The Last Thursday. Each month had its own theme and governed not only the types of content, but way of presentation for the evening. These evenings lived and died in the moment with very little social media promotion or archiving. In the second season of The White Whale we offer snippets of these evenings; providing first glimpses beyond the nights of what went down and why their existence foregoing online permanence is important. Visit http://www.donchambersmusic.com/ for music and more.
In 2015 Don Chambers hosted "a music and other things entertainment" each month called The Last Thursday. Each month had its own theme and governed not only the types of content, but way of presentation for the evening. These evenings lived and died in the moment with very little social media promotion or archiving.
In the second season of The White Whale we offer snippets of these evenings; providing first glimpses beyond the nights of what went down and why their existence foregoing online permanence is important.
Visit Don Chambers for music and more.
This piece was produced by The White Whale as part of The 24-Hour Radio Race from KCRW's Independent Producer Project. Features the voice of Don Chambers, a musician from Athens, GA. For more information on his work visit http://www.donchambersmusic.com/
This weekend provided the privilege of producing as part of the 2016 RadioRace from KCRW's Independent Producer Project. Featuring the voice of Don Chambers from Athens, GA; the story that came forth is both broad and microscopic in its considerations of influence, thievery, and the all encompassing act of living.
Many thanks to KCRW for the opportunity to produce so quickly and look for more from Don Chambers in the upcoming season of The White Whale.
For now, enjoy.
Because the KCRW #RadioRace wasn't enough, decided to create another piece of audio for The Sarahs,
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"Theory wrapped me in an entire climate of description. Theory was simply, shoulder-shruggingly, the only thing that helped me to see what I was and where,"
Read MoreIf you follow our social media accounts you'll know we are spending this weekend amongst audio greats at Podcast Movement. First time visiting this particular conference, and already excited for the next one. Yes, they have it set.
This kicks off a couple busy weeks as we are continuing to put out The White Whale every Sunday, have some work for other shows in the mix and are playing participant to the 24-hour Radio Race from KCRW next weekend. Yes, we have asked ourselves what we are doing. Too fun to take that reality check.
If you are new to our podcast as of #PM15 please take a listen in whatever order you please. First season is chronological, but as conversation of the records and films speaks to listening and watching in whatever order you please we have designed each episode to be part of a larger whole that can be heard unto itself.
Cheers to all following and participating in this crazy business. We are having fun. If looking for us tonight we will probably be mixing some radio somewhere in the ether. Feel free to steal attention.
There is a lot of work on the horizon as we round the corner of summer into August. Not only is The White Whale's first season wrapping up in a couple weeks, but we're honored to be contributing to a few other productions for which we are long-time fans.
After the season ends we'll have a slight break. An album collecting original music from the first season is being whittled down. Something we're excited to release, but there is a lot to go through.
We'll also have some one-off productions covering the work of people we love. That's a secret we will hold for now though.
Second season is already under-way as well, though it's subject is still ours to tell. While its approach and aesthetic will be much in line with the first season, this is also going to be a very different experience and very different story. Much more dealing with a particular perspective of the last half century and how it changed the world. Pretty rich and cool stuff. Not a story we imagine you have heard.
What else? What else?
Surely there is more, but the audio world seems enough to highlight for the moment. We just released the newest music video from Scott Wooldridge, something many years in the making, and have a few other tricks up our sleeve in that end. There may be some fiction we wish to visualize as all this audio work is really presenting new worlds and wouldn't mind finally releasing some new photography from the last few years. See if we find the time.
If you follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ you know we are very busy. Anxious Machine's second season has started and our remix for ARRVLS is in the airwaves. We also had a big hand in the recent episode of SisterStory Presents: with Jo Piazza. A lot of music and producing went into making that happen.
There is also a lot coming down the road including a new music video for Scott Wooldridge as well as some others. The White Whale is kicking strong and growing a larger fan base everyday - but that is closer to its season end rather than beginning. We are going to fill that space with some different one- off radio docs as we prepare the second season. That is going to be a pretty different narrative, but built upon similar foundations.
This post specifically though is about a new mixtape American Residue Records is dropping tomorrow. Called Event Horizons, if you have heard any of the recent podcast episodes we have been a part of then you have heard some pieces. These have quickly gained some listeners so time to release.
follow our channels for all the updates and look for the new record tomorrow!
We have a new album coming out tomorrow - solo release by Garrett called Études.
According to Wikipedia,
An étude (/ ˈeɪtjuːd/; French pronunciation: [eˈtyd], a French word meaning study) is an instrumental musical composition, usually short, of considerable difficulty, and designed to provide practice material for perfecting a particular musical skill. The tradition of writing études emerged in the early 19th century with the rapidly growing popularity of the piano. Of the vast number of études from that era some are still used as teaching material (particularly pieces by Carl Czerny and Muzio Clementi), and a few, by major composers such as Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt and Claude Debussy, achieved a place in today's concert repertory. Études written in the 20th century include those related to traditional ones (György Ligeti), those that require wholly unorthodox technique (John Cage), and ones that are unusually easy to play.
by John R. Barner
About midway through mixing down the tracks on Hikikomori, the machines began to “talk back.” This is the only way I can describe the mixes beginning to augment relatively independently in the computer software. Often I would spend several days away from a mix, either getting busy with life outside of recording or taking time to think about a particular song’s structure or sound. When I would return to the song, there would be changes that I didn’t remember making in the recording process. Sometimes subtle—a bit of echo on a beat, for example—that was easily explained when in the midst of tweaking levels of effects. Others, however, were drastic and many of the songs on Funayūrei contain elements that I genuinely don’t remember adding or enhancing. It was actually quite creepy at times! The phenomena occurred enough that I began to research technical reasons why it could be happening, but turned up nothing to explain everything I was hearing. I did, however, revisit a few creative instances where sounds ended up on a recording without easy explanation. During the recording of Joy Division’s final album, Closer, producer Martin Hannett remarked once to Rolling Stone magazine that the piano line on the song “The Eternal” would be heard through control room monitors when there was no one playing the piano or even in the recording room.
John Balance and Peter Christopherson of the band Coil recorded a side project entitled ElpH. The central creative conceit of the resulting Worship the Glitch, is described in band’s Wikipedia page as “random musical compositions that were generated from their own equipment, either by itself or as an unintended yet pleasant byproduct of their own work” although Balance and Christopherson would often say that they felt these “random musical compositions” were anything but, and seemed to be “transmitted” by somewhere or something. After uncovering these examples, I let the machines (or whatever force was using them) take over and much of what made the final mixes remains unedited. Funayūrei was intended to be the darkest of the records and the most evocative of the traditional ghost story. In Japanese mythology, the funayūrei are the spirits of those who have drowned or died violently at sea and are seen as acting malevolently so that seafarers will join them in their watery afterlife. Reading these myths and legends were incredibly inspiring to both realizing my vision for the music and the recording process itself, which evolved to sampling and making field recordings of water in various forms and incorporating electronic voice phenomena or EVP—static field recordings said to capture ghostly voices.
For the latter, I was able to access several publicly available archives of EVP first broadcast on the Coast to Coast AM radio program once hosted by paranormal enthusiast Art Bell, which I first heard many years ago on a road trip to California. From these disparate elements, the final part of the Yōkai Trilogy was born.
LINKS:
Coil vs. ElpH, Worship the Glitch: https://youtu.be/WUp8tUlftW8
Art Bell on EVPs from Coast to Coast AM: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA0978912DC43800D
We released the cover art for John's third act tonight. Album is set for release Tuesday and as per the other releases we have films lined up. Next few weeks should be exciting as we send all this material out in the world.
This has been a long road and it's not over yet. The podcast has lots more material to cover - we just introduced this album, but we're going to travel back a bit so we're nowhere near the end. There are the upcoming films too.
And...John has talked of a special edition Trilogy release that would feature additional material not on the separate records.
We'll see what happens, but while this is an end in some regards, it's also just a beginning.
By John R. Barner
Around the time I had set for myself to start recording music for the first story idea, I happened to be reading a book called Kūhaku & Other Accounts from Japan, edited by Bruce Rutledge. In the book, I was introduced to Aokigahara, a dense forest at the base of Mount Fuji that was a popular spot in Japan for suicides. Within a few days, I saw a link for a short film produced for Vice magazine in 2011 that followed Azusa Hayano, a geologist researching formations around Mount Fuji, who regularly ventured into the forest and often returned having either successfully counseled or recovered the bodies of any of the 50 to 100 persons who travel to Aokigahara each year to end their lives.
What I was reading and watching was both profoundly moving and disturbing, and I took my inspiration from it and the music came together in a short span of time. The final mixing sessions also corresponded to the birth of my son, which added to the already dizzying flurry of activity. As I continued, I was mindful that the topic of suicide is a tender one, for myself and countless others. In no way did I want to cheapen or glorify the subject matter. I read more, researched, and tried to compose the music in a thoughtful and respectful manner. In this I was and remain deeply indebted to the thought of Simon Critchley, the philosopher and ethicist who said that suicide “introduces the possibility of an encounter with some aspect of experience…not reducible to the self” (from his Very Little…Almost Nothing, Routledge: 1997, p. 74).
In a way, that remains my hope for not only my fictional character that “haunts” these five pieces of music, or, rather, goes from living to ghost in the space of them, but also for those actual troubled persons that inhabit the very real woods of Aokigahara.
LINKS:
Kūhaku & Other Accounts from Japan: http://www.amazon.com/Kuhaku-Other-Accounts-Japan-Rutledge/dp/0974199508
“Suicide Forest in Japan,” a Vice film: https://youtu.be/4FDSdg09df8
Simon Critchley’s “Suicide – A Defense” given as one of the Durham Castle Lecture Series, Durham University, in December of 2014: https://youtu.be/SO5bBtO26Cw
Producing The White Whale has really taken hold the last few weeks as we've begun rolling out our idea of a first main season. Eventually we are going to start introducing one-off recordings that allow some divergence and continuation between seasons without losing the idea of long-form documentary that we are embracing with The Yokai Trilogy.
This episode of The White Whale continues the conversation of The Yōkai Trilogy and looks at how sound running backwards and listening out of order became significant conduits to composition. "Start anywhere, go anywhere, and do anything" as John says. Being a decider of your own experience shapes your context. This episode features a new track, Lullaby, by This Line newly available on their release Riemannian Metrics: https://americanresiduerecords.bandcamp.com/album/riemannian-metrics This season of The White Whale is aiming to thoroughly consider The Yōkai Trilogy - an art collaborative between John R. Barner and Garrett D. Tiedemann where John supplies the music and Garrett the visuals. The project has been happening for more than a year and a half with the support of CyNar Pictures and American Residue Records. Final record in the trilogy and set of films are due for release soon. To learn more about the project - including music and video streams - go to: http://www.cynarpictures.com/video/yokai-trilogy/ Theme music by Garrett D. Tiedemann and John R. Barner. Original music in this episode is by Garrett D. Tiedemann. Additional music by This Line from the album Riemannian Metrics (https://americanresiduerecords.bandcamp.com/album/riemannian-metrics) and American Residue Presidents: from the albums Last Foxtrot in Burbank: The Mixtape (https://americanresiduerecords.bandcamp.com/album/last-foxtrot-in-burbank-the-mixtape) and Breakable Objects: The Mixtape (https://americanresiduerecords.bandcamp.com/album/breakable-objects-the-mixtape) Cover art by Garrett D. Tiedemann
Unexpectedly, this podcast has led us to rediscover content forgotten as well as tracks unreleased, though not by design. In case of the latter it could have been easy to pretend that wasn't the case and eventually release it as a single or as part of the original music for the podcast, but that feels disingenuous. Especially as part of the "intent" is to reveal the process.
Meta though this may be, it struck a cord that something sitting in an original assembly didn't make it all the way down the distribution chain; requiring rediscovery by an entirely unknown prospect at the time of initially considered release.
This podcast is blessed by our record label which allows usage free and clear where something original to the episode is not needed. Yet, the podcast has already offered something back and we're all better for it.
Excited to see what other pieces will reveal themselves in the process. For now, count this as an eventual one-off - investigating the discovery unknowingly necessary.
The White Whale is officially on twitter! It will obviously be a bit of a catch all for CyNar and other assorted ideas, but we never really had a project with enough regular output to motivate a twitter reach so it seems like the right voice for the platform. Are you on twitter? Check us out at https://twitter.com/whitewhalepod.
And make sure to listen on Soundcloud and iTunes. We really like the worlds of sound we are creating and you listening will help keep us going!
The White Whale is an audio production of CyNar Pictures and its record label American Residue Records. Built upon the ideas of Residual, the blog of CyNar, each episode is an extension of the blog offering visions behind the curtain of art collaboratives in video and audio. CyNar Pictures is a multimedia lab experimenting with image and sound. It's owned and operated by Garrett D. Tiedemann. http://www.cynarpictures.com
It's been a few weeks since we have written. We've been busy getting new content out in the world and it's limited the time to write a proper update.
The White Whale season 1 is in full swing as of yesterday with the first episode introducing John Barner properly and the ideas that have built his trilogy. Brimming with tales of ghosts and mechanical malfeasance - this should be a pretty great ride.
You'll recognize music from the catalog and certain approaches to sound unique to the games we play. The storytelling will keep evolving as the conversation evolves and grows richer so stay tuned for some impressive arrangements.
Any of the original material we bring into the mix will also get a certain mixtape remix - as we've done in the past, though this obviously being the first with music original introduced in a podcast. So, what you hear will come back around again. New shapes and forms to embrace the ideas we come upon through this journey.
We're always looking for a way to give you new work and new perspectives.
Release of the final album, Funayūrei,is also fast approaching. Album is ready, though release date has yet to be set. We are working tirelessly to finish up the films first so you will have the full experience from get go.
Other adventures are in the mix, but for now listen to The White Whale.
The White Whale is an audio production of CyNar Pictures and its record label American Residue Records. Built upon the ideas of Residual, the blog of CyNar, each episode is an extension of the blog offering visions behind the curtain of art collaboratives in video and audio. CyNar Pictures is a multimedia lab experimenting with image and sound. It's owned and operated by Garrett D. Tiedemann. http://www.cynarpictures.com
For those who check out the site regularly rather than just our social media outlets, you may have noticed some changes in the last few days. Some were necessary as we identified certain elements that were not working on all platforms. However, this need also brought about opportunity to better emphasize what's becoming a big focus of our time - podcasting.
The Yōkai Trilogy page has gotten some attention as we are continuing to build toward the release of the third record and where the story will go after - look to The White Whale as a good starting point. We are currently producing the films to coincide with the album release and are recording some conversation with John to better investigate how this year's work came about.
“Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present to live better in the future.”
We've also got some terrific music videos in the works and maybe some film ideas developing out of the amazing audio work we have been producing lately. So, the section devoted to these highlights might get some more attention in coming months as we are trying to not only highlight the product of hard work, but the process as well. This has always been of significant import for us, but with The White Whale we are seeing possibilities to better pull back the curtain a bit without completely unveiling the mystery.
All to say that we are ever evolving. We want to keep highlighting our many productions without creating a mess of a site. We've taken off the direct links to various writing platforms for the moment - if that is annoying let us know. But, Minnesota Public Radio being the current highlight for our cultural critique, a direct link to MPR can be found in Transistors with the podcast presentation.
For now we are off - to the races.
Be looking for us on the airwaves and video screens wherever you find them.
The White Whale has been establishing itself for the last couple weeks with a couple audio concoctions. We're in process on what will become a larger aesthetic of the podcast, but we may be teasing for a couple more episodes as these pieces are fine tuned.
From the get-go we've been blessed with the attention of Jonathan Hirsch whose show ARRVLS has become a new favorite around the office. It's a truly brilliant show that you should all be listening to if you are not already.
Jonathan has been really kind in highlighting the first couple episodes of The White Whale. Now he's gone and done one better. He's offered us the opportunity to remix their episode Ricochet.
This is a pretty exciting opportunity. It's one of their most popular episodes and the story certainly provides a lot of sonic possibilities for us to play.
Our episode should be coming out in the summer, but for now you should listen to the original episode as released a month ago and go listen to the rest. This is a truly terrific podcast.
On christmas day, the propellor on a four-seater cessna died, along with the engine. Robin Holleran and her brother-in-law found themselves floating in the air outside of Atlanta nowhere near a landing strip. Episode 3 of ARRVLS is a story about how a brush with death, can turn into a new lease on life. Featuring music from the Seattle-based Grand Hallway.
We've finally launched our podcast! It's exciting. We were planing to wait a bit on these as we are in production on content right now, but we got the name and did the artwork and just couldn't wait.
First episode may seem light on content, but considering the development of CyNar and the various ideas we tend to embrace it felt like the right way to get things started.
Take a listen and subscribe on Soundcloud. We should be in iTunes soon as well. There is lots more content to follow soon.
You have to start somewhere. Seems a guitar feed was the best way for The White Whale to make an entrance. Stay tuned for more episodes shortly. The White Whale is an audio production of CyNar Pictures and its record label American Residue Records. Built upon the ideas of Residual, the blog of CyNar, each episode is an extension of the blog offering visions behind the curtain of art collaboratives in video and audio. CyNar Pictures is a multimedia lab experimenting with image and sound. It's owned and operated by Garrett D. Tiedemann.