Author: john ingram

This iteration of John Ingram was created in response to increased demand in global John Ingramness. Previous incarnations were less suited to fulfill this need.

V/A – Calida Construccio

Floating effortlessly through a labyrinth, all claustrophobic walls and ground-clinging fog, harangued by evanescing whispers disembodied from their ancient source; accosted by the hissing and the clanking and the crashing: this is how the listener experiences Càlida Construcció. Compiled by artists from around the globe (specifically, France, China, Argentina and Catalonia), the release is a study in electroacoustic and acousmatic production. Slow to start, with a plodding march of minimalism from Jeanne Clerc-Renaud, the study picks up some energy with the resolution of the second track, by Xu Hualing. “La chambre en spirale”, by Santiago T. Diez Fischer, bursts into the fray, at times with relative bombast, to maintain that level of energy, if only momentarily, before giving way to the album’s closing by Joan Bagés i Rubi–whose final moments may be the finest of the release.

As a study in electroacoustic and acousmatic, it is near textbook; employing classic sounds such as clanging metal, field recordings and tape manipulation. The production, across the board, is exquisite, highlighting the dynamic range of the source material without homogenizing the disparate efforts of the artists involved. Despite this, on a personal level I felt that it lacked that je ne sais quoi to really bring it all together to form that sort of remarkable listening experience that bears repetition.

Great, but not quite really great.
[Rating:4.5/5]

Goodness

Time can really get away from you, when you stop paying attention. We’re already three weeks into September, and I have no idea where it went. Potentially good news on the job front, but I’m not getting my hopes up until I see some ink on paper. Been down this road too many times the last few years.

What strikes me as funny this morning is the predictability of my site stats. The last six months have been relatively flat, in terms of average visitors, with the same five sites contributing virtually the same number of click-throughs each month. It’s mildly comforting that I can count on these visits. It does appear, though, that word of the recently revived Sound Design Tools has spread. My bandwidth usage is way up compared to earlier this month.

Spent some time last night working on a Controlled Dissonance track for the new compilation project. I haven’t really been much inspired to make noise lately. I’m loathe to pull out any hardware, because it’s such a pain in the ass in my tiny bedroom. But I’m also sick of just taking sound sources I find on my computer and beating them to death with VST effects. And that’s why I’m trying some new techniques. I had a short and very minimal live performance that I’d recorded a few months ago. Over that I’m layering some tracks that have been culled from a sample performance on my old SH-101, databent and then processed acoustically with cassettes, stereo mics and a snare drum (snare drum distortion for the win!). It turned out to be a pretty decent bed of sound that I now have to pull together with something. It may not be my best work, but I feel that I’m pushing my boundaries a little bit and that is refreshing.

What I would really like to do is find out what has been sapping me of all my energy lately. If I can figure that out, I might be able to turn this thing around and get myself rolling. I need to score a short film and have that finished before November, so I can concentrate on NaNoWriMo.

Until then, etc. etc.

Turmoil – The Living End

The Living End documents the early musings of Turmoil, the flagship act of Amduscias Records. A homogenized collection of tracks, The Living End is an exposition of found sound collage and minimal tone, employing tasteful layers of field recorded material that invoke a sense of chaos without falling into cacophony. This culminates in “Sloe Decay”, a hauntingly soporific dirge of minimal drone.

[Rating:3.5/5]

Cheapmachines – Convergence

Convergence comes at this reviewer like a fresh breath of serendipity that wafts through the fog and gloom of a Tuesday morning; an answer to a yearning unspoken, but true. Listen as layers of sublime ambience shift and gyre in a vast sea, rich in depth and texture, their ever-changing currents surround and engulf. Cheapmachines has offered us not so much a journey as an exhibition of ambrosial decadence; a subtle masterpiece of dark ambient that builds imperceptibly to a grand and noisy crescendo in the harsh and distortion-bathed closer “Red Halo II”.

For what it’s worth, this was exactly what I was looking for this morning.

[Rating:5/5]

Pour some Quaaludes on me.

Tonight is part one of the season finale of Warehouse 13. Do you know where your favorite nerd will be at 9:00 PM? (I’ll be folding laundry in front of the television. Booyah!)

I spent some time yesterday reading reviews of the new Resident Evil movie, and it sounds as though most people took from the movie exactly what I saw in the previews. What I haven’t heard is that the CGI is effing atrocious, which makes me feel that either the trailers are really misleading, or that the effect is lost on the big screen. Needless to say, any movie that was “written for 3D” can suck a stale fart out of Gene Siskel’s desiccated ass*. All I know is that the trailer could have been half as long as it was, if the scenes weren’t all in slow motion. I just don’t know how the guy who brought us Event Horizon could end up such a horrifyingly bad director…

In other news, I got Drone Structures up this morning. What reminded me of the fact that this sample library ever existed was an entry in my visitor stats from a site that is hosting edited versions of the library. I remembered that someone took the free version, added some loop points and converted the samples to software-specific formats and then made them available on their own website. They’re freely available, but only after you have signed up for a mailing list. Which, in a way, rubs me wrong – to use my efforts as incentive for people to sign up for your newsletter? I don’t want to start a pissing match over it, because I already acquiesced years ago, but I can just host the files here, without that hassle. After all, fuck it. They’re my sounds anyway.

I’ll be uploading those files throughout the day.

Still haven’t recovered from Sunday night. The good news is that I’m making more progress on the new sample library. I’m just not really sure what will be useful and what will not. Most of what I have is interesting by virtue of being atonal and noisy, which doesn’t lend itself to traditional keyboard mapping samples. The other option is just a straight-forward sample of the sound, but that doesn’t necessarily provide a sample that can be looped or played in some manner other than a simple sample trigger. What I have so far is largely the latter. Hopefully that will be sufficient.

I’m considering caffeine. It’s that kind of morning.

* Sorry Gene, wherever your voodoo animated corpse may reside. I could think of no better insult for such an atrocity; a travesty to the great art of film.