Badawi / Kode9 / Bob Ostertag

Badawi and Kode9 at the Compound last night. Throughout Kode9's set there was a static projection on the wall that said “hyperdub”. I guess that's what they were up to. It sounded dubby but not hyper. If you want to listen to stuff like this, the Compound is a good place to hear it. They even hauled out one of the dual 18” subs from RML to give the other 8 subs a helping hand. Prior to taking the stage they were projecting Svankmajer's Faust with the audio run through a delay patch in Live or something like that. Highlight of the evening. I think we watched that movie three times through over the course of the night. photos

Jumping back in time... Monday night I heard Bob Ostertag give a talk at SFPALM. He focused on the tension between human bodies and machines, specifically musical instruments, with automated processes, which don't require human operation. He talked about how we have yet to create a electronic music interface that could be considered a real musical instrument, explaining that there still does not exist one that anyone would practice on for a few hours a day for their whole life as is common with other instruments. He believes the theremin is the closest we've ever come and said Clara Rockmore was one of the only virtuoso instrumentalists of electronic music. He added Jimi Hendrix and the Invisibl Skratch Piklz to that list, though he explained that their instruments were actually only amplified acoustic instruments. Interesting talk altogether kind of better than I expected it to be and probably a lot more interesting than I'm making it sound. The Improv:21 series has been pretty good from the ones I've seen. A little expensive, but Ostertag gave away a bunch of CDs for free, explaining that his music is all available for free download on his website anyway.