Moogfest

Luigo Russolo's live noise orchestra performances often ended in violence. On the other hand, today's technosonic music fans turn up in droves to gladly watch performers destroy themselves onstage. Crystal Castles' lead singer, Alice Glass (pictured left) imbibed most of a bottle of Jack Daniels while performing hits from their eponymous albums at Asheville's Moogfest. Most likely every band on the Moogfest lineup used mixtures of sampled sounds and MIDI-controlled instruments. Nowadays, it seems that technosonic music is a realized live possibility. France's M83 uses electric bass guitar and real drums in tandem with electronic drums and MIDI-controlled instruments in their live show. Based on their riveting performance, M83 has come a long way from its more modest past electronic efforts - where the lead vocals were removed from the central synth-driven fabric of the music. At Moogfest, the combination of organic effort from the live instruments and the expansive synths has shown the capacity of technosonic music to be a compelling act onstage. M83 was not the only standout act at the festival - young and upcoming talent Chaz Bundick leads his touring band through a transcendent live show. His band, Toro y Moi performs nostalgic, heavily filtered chillwave that crackles with emotion. Toro closed their performance with 'Low Shoulder,' a fan favorite (or at least MY favorite of their songs). Driving electronic instruments that recall progressive rock and funk at moments pulse underneath Chad's uplifting message: "Sorry for the others / That was us for the last five years / Now it's over and it's getting better / That's how we lived / Now we're living different / Now it's over and it's getting better."=

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I spilled my drink on my laptop just then and subsequently postponed this post for a week. Just kept that for posterity... back to the review: Amon Tobin was a show-stopper and a game changer for technosonic music. The live stage set-up was a a set of staggered cubes, upon which a projector displayed various visuals which were mimetic of the movements of the music. One of the cubes hid the performer. The interesting part is that the aesthetic effect seemed to come from the emergent synthesis of video and music, rather than from the capacities of the music or video of themselves.

All things held equal but happiness and jackets, a trend emerges

© Michael Shepherd 2009

Umbrellas

Wraparound umbrellas should make a comeback. I think they're called the birdcage umbrella. I want one. They're ergonomic, intriguing, and have the effect of being in half a hampster-ball. If I had a birdcage umbrella, I would be even more excited about the rain than I normally am. I would check the weather all the time in anticipation of a rain, and when it did rain, I would look straight up at the sky and welcome the rain that would all but fall on my face.

I'd pretend I was in the cockpit of some awkward plane too.

God I wish I had this umbrella.

point of view

Swift on a breeze
carrying myself-
or, myself carried,
everything is me;
or is nothing?

Fleeting, a smoke ring
cringing in sadness,
an exaltation! or
a lament of
an ordinary death.

emothugpunkgeekprep

If you feel fuzzy all over and false inside you might be a stereotype

My life doesn't segmentalize into neat 24 hour packages of clear information begging to be summarized.

Poetry is powerful because you pack infinite meaning into concise space.
Blogging is base because you take non sequiturs and elaborate until it's painful.

Today I overheard in the dining hall, "He's cool, but he's too fat to be a real friend to me".

Some people are just not good.

Today

I discovered some things about gravity today.

When we embrace, my gravity is affecting you more than that of the nearest star, by a factor of a million. and how can you say that we are insignficant compared to the cosmos? we are the only thing that matters, the immediate center of each other's universes. This, this, is love.

People just want to get closer.