New music for your next ccowboy zombie prom slow dance from Hepnova & JC Cassis

Original version of Again Tonight

More Hepnova Music on Bandcamp

Here’s a new groove for #MusicMonday: an updated version of the Hepnova track You’re For Me with vocals by the fierce and fabulous Ms. JC Cassis.   The original version of You’re For Me was on our eponymous 2009 album and featured vocals by Hepnova co-founder Nicholas Dibiase.

The electric guitar solo (you know, the part where you wonder, “who invited The Edge to this Silk Road hoe down?”) was played by the brilliant Dr. Bob Devine.  And the crazy synth sounds you hear near the end come from the legendary Swedish SidStation.

Here are some reviews we have been getting:

JC calls You’re For me “a down-and-dirty country banger in the style of Johnny Cash.”

Mediocre Student says, “I like JC’s voice. and the pipa at the beginning. it’s like Detroit Chinatown. Your music has kind of a limping, offbeat rhythm which is a nice contrast to the incessant and calculated thrust of the bullshit Gaga house music I’ve been hearing in the Castro.” (*Actually the “pipa” sound is just a really cheap toy nylon string guitar, but also probably made in China, so I guess we are on the right track.)

Prestonism: “RAD to the MAX”

@ToniaMBartz: “GORGEOUS”

@KrysVS: “i would give it a “wow” to a “very wow”

@ClowerPower: “I could picture this on the soundtrack for a Tarantino film!!! ”

@AlexBerger: “A very fun retro feel!”

@JackAlert : “Can’t wait for #MusicMonday! Awesome new @Hepnova mix:… I think I might be in love with @JCCassis“

Here’s a new HEPNOVA track I finished tonight with Tsar Nicholas. It’s a menacing electro instrumental track called Rasputin.

Mumbo Jumbo Maracas vs. T.I.

Mumbo Jumbo Maracas vs. Art Kleiner

Mumbo Jumbo Maracas vs. The Plastic Ono Band

Thanks to Yasser Ansari, Paul Paradiso, and Jorge Just for these brilliant mashups!

Mumbo Jumbo Maracas (excerpt) @ ITP NIME 2009, Southpaw, Brooklyn, NY from lee-sean on Vimeo.

Here is an excerpt of my Mumbo Jumbo Maracas piece for the ITP NIME concert at Southpaw in Brooklyn last night.
Featuring Eric Mika on maracas and Arturo Vidich on keytar
Thanks to Meredith Hasson and Tianwei Liu for the video

More video coming soon. Photos on Flickr.

TXTTONE is my final project for Live Web.  It’s a web browser and SMS-based collaborative musical instrument that is meant to be performed in a room full of people with laptops and cellphones.  I wanted to create an interactive and collaborative musical experienced based on the ubiquitous technologies that we normally have with us at all times.  I was also interested in the play between the synchronous and asynchronous and explore the phase effects that result from TXTTONE being played on multiple computers simultaneously.  TXTTONE is programmed in AJAX/PHP, with SMS support by TextMarks.   I did the sound design in Logic Pro; I was going for “wind chimes meets dial tone.”

Check it out here.

Come out to Brooklyn next Tuesday night for the ITP NIME Show! I will be performing my Mumbo Jumbo Maracas piece with Arturo Vidich and Eric Mika.

NIME: New Interfaces for Musical Expression
Creating new performance tools for digital music.

In the eighth annual NIME concert, performers will play a series of newly designed electronic instruments that aim to keep the “live” in the live performance of digital music.

Electronic music is usually played with a keyboard and mouse. Laptop musicians often sit at a desk and give performances that feel like watching someone work in their cubicle. The idea behind NIME is to go beyond the mouse and keyboard and beyond even piano keys and drum pads. It seeks to present performance systems that make the most out of the new opportunities for musical expression that digital technology offers.

This year’s NIME concert will feature such innovations as a musically enhanced sewing machine, sonified floor tiles, performative knitting needles, turntablism for live instrumentalists, electronically controlled cartoon antics, novel realizations of the rock guitar, and a host of other exciting approaches to the creation of music.

NIME is an end-of-semester performance by 16 graduate student artists from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU.

Entry is $7 (Free for NYU ID holders)
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Doors open at 7, Show starts at 8

Southpaw
125 Fifth Avenue (at Sterling Pl)
Brooklyn, NY 11217
718.230.0236

cshirky: The New Yorker still runs cartoons of crazy people carrying placards. What do 25 y.o’s make of that? In their world, crazy people have blogs
8:07 AM Nov 15th

leesean: @cshirky 25ish y.o.’s like me make mashup/remixes of crazy people with placards and put them on YouTube http://bit.ly/x0BQV
10:28 AM Nov 15th

cshirky: RT @leesean: @cshirky 25ish y.o.’s like me make mashup/remixes of crazy people with placards and put them on YouTube http://bit.ly/x0BQV
1:14 PM Nov 15th

I created Jump (The Bailout Bash) with Elizabeth Fuller for a class at ITP last year (Communications Lab with Marianne Petit).

More photos on Flickr

“Inspirational Actions”: Think about a performance you have witnessed that made a indelible mark in your life, a performance you would aspire to give, a tool/system you would aspire to perform – and bring a short audio and/or video clip of it to share with the class. This can be something you have already done, but we encourage you to look to the work of other artists/musicians/performers for inspiration.

The name of my NIME instrument, Mumbo Jumbo Maracas, just came to me one day. I wanted an instrument that would allow me to make wild flailing gestures and a thick texture of noise. For my performance, I want to combine elements of primitive shamanistic ritual with good silly fun, sort of post-colonial re-appropriation of mid-century exotica.  I find maracas fun and festive (as this Señor Coconut track demonstrates), and as user interfaces, the simplicity of how they work is intuitive and they become in a way instant noise-making appendages in the hands of their player.

I created a 1 minute audio sketch in Logic that approximates what I want my final project to sound like.

While we are on the topic of maraca-related inspiration, here are a few YouTube clips I like.

As for the mumbo jumbo ritualistic performance part of my NIME project, I admit, I am totally ripping off Terence Koh.

“Inspirational Sounds”: Think about the music you would aspire to make – and bring a short audio clip of it to share with the class. This can be something you have already done, but we encourage you to look to the work of other artists/musicians/performers for inspiration.

For my inspirational sounds, I decided to share some Steve Reich music. This clip includes parts of “4 Organs” and “My Name Is” from a 1970 performance at the Berkeley Museum.  I am attracted to the strong rhythmic pulse of Reich’s music and the mesmerizing use of repetition and slowly evolving patterns.  For my own NIME instrument, I want to do something involving maracas (like in “4 Organs”) as well as incorporate some form of sampled human voices (like in “My Name Is”).

I am starting to get a clearer idea of the instrument that I want to build.  I am calling my project Mumbo Jumbo Maracas.  I would like to mount accelerometers on a pair of maracas.  In performance, I would play the maracas as purely acoustic instruments, while the sensors would be used to trigger various looped vocal samples (the “mumbo jumbo” part.

The working title of the new collection is Transistor Troubadour.  We are planning on doing some more covers as well as some Hepnova originals and to continue to develop the unique electro-acoustic sound that has emerged in previous Hep tunes like “You’re For Me” and “Again Tonight.”

Check out the new Hepnova tracks on Bandcamp. More tracks in the Transistor Troubadour collection are in the works, so check back often for more music!

Lyrics after the jump:

En la plaza de mi pueblo
Traditional

En la plaza de mi pueblo
dijo el jornalero al amo
“Nuestros hijos nacerán
con el puño levantado”.

Esta tierra que no es mía
esta tierra que es del amo
la riego con mi sudor
la trabajo con mis manos.

Pero dime, compañero,
si estas tierras son del amo
¿por qué nunca lo hemos visto
trabajando en el arado?

Con mi arado abro los surcos
con mi arado escribo yo
páginas sobre la tierra
de miseria y de sudor.

Märk Hur Vår Skugga (Fredmans Epistel #81)
Carl Michael Bellman

Märk hur vår skugga, märk movitz mon frère
Inom ett mörker sig slutar
Hur guld och purpur i skoveln den där
Byts till grus och klutar
Vinkar Karon från sin brusande älv
Och tre gånger sen dödgrävaren själv
Mer du din druva ej kryster
Därför Movitz kom hjälp mig och välv
Gravvård över vår syster

Lillklockan klämtar till storklockans dön
Lövad står kantorn i porten
Och vid de skrålande gossarnas bön
Helgas denna orten
Vägen opp till templets skriftprydda stad
Trampas mellan rosors gulnade blad
Multnande plankor och bårar
Till dess den långa och svartklädda rad
Djupt sig bugar i tårar

Så gick till vila från slagsmål och bal
Grälmakar Lövberg din maka
Där ditåt gräset långhalsig och smal
Hon än glor tillbaka
Hon från Dantobommen skildes idag
Och med henne alla lustiga lag
Vem skall nu flaskan befalla
Torstig var hon och uttorstig är jag
Vi är torstiga alla

Here are audio recordings I made of the speakers from last night’s ccSalon SF at PariSoMa.  Right click or control-click on the speakers’ names to download the MP3s.

• Chris DiBona, Open Source Program Manager for Google, Inc.
• Evan Prodromou, co-Founder of WikiTravel and founder of Identi.ca
• Nathan Yergler, Creative Commons’ Chief Technology Officer

Asian Variations

The Asian Variations album is a collection of remixes produced by MoShang in his Chinese Chill style of downtempo electronica, melding deeply laid-back beats with Chinese traditional instruments. Some of these remixes were solicited by the original artists, two were done for remix competitions, and in some cases MoShang approached artists directly requesting permission to remix their work. The artists represe nted on the album are literally from all over the globe; The U.S.A. (Fort Minor, Toao, Lovespirals, Brad Reason), Taiwan (Kou Chou Ching, Chang Jui-chuan, Viba, Andre van Rensburg, MoShang), South Africa (Gordon’s Suitcase), Japan (Akihiko Matsumoto & Chage), Italy (Tafubar), and Slovenia (PureH) and for the most part the collaboration with MoShang was via the web. With the exception of Fort Minor and J-pop star, Chage, none of the artists are signed to major labels and all are working hard to be heard.

More about MoShang and the remixed artists on AsianVariations.com

歡迎來唱我的歌 (Welcome To My Song)

An eclectic collection of Taiwanese music commissioned for the launch of Creative Commons Taiwan.  The title track is by Taiwanese pop icon Yue Hsin Chu.

Download MP3s and song lyrics at CC Taiwan (in Mandarin and Taiwanese)

See also: Launching Creative Commons Taiwan: Background, Experience, and Challenge

The cast and crew of Timberbrit recently shot a music video of “Worst Fantasy,” a song from the opera based on Britney’s “Toxic”

While we are on the subject of Britney, check out Hepnova’s “Hit Me Britney,” a recombinant cover of “…Baby One More Time,” and “Oops!…I Did It Again.”

Whoa!…What’s with the ellipsis abuse?

A.G. – Weird erratic/eclectic General MIDI madness
Drama Queen – Smoky night-time eyes, tape hiss, and more drama
Dream – MIDI-powered koto and shamisen Orientalism, oh my!
Fondue – Minimalist mating music for robots
Hymn – A terrifying deconstructed Taiwanese hymn
Last Song – Just when you thought it was over, last but not last
Prozac Piano – Pop a pill before you listen

You know you want to download them all in one ZIP file.

When I lived in Japan, I played keyboards in a girl-rock cover band called “Nobuko and the Stone Buddhas” (or “The Stone Buddhas” for short).  We were active in Oita Prefecture around 2004-2005.  The band was named after the famous Stone Buddhas of Usuki (Photo above by Tanaka Juuyoh) Here are some MP3s of recordings we made in a rehearsal studio in Nakatsu City, where I lived as a JET Programme participant. Download all tracks (ZIP).

• 32 Flavors (Ani DiFranco cover)
• What’s Up? (4 Non Blondes cover)
• Daffodil Lament (Cranberries cover)
• Mood Swing (Luscious Jackson cover)
• Sunday Morning (No Doubt cover)

Not the Stone Buddhas of Usuki but the Kitsch Buddhas of Chinatown

Also check out Best Shots, our best songs from the 1998-2003 “Ronald Raygun” era.

Both albums are DRM-free and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license, so feel free to share mp3s with your friends and strangers and remix to your heart’s content.

More music on Hepnova.com.  Follow us on Twitter: @hepnova.

P.S.  There is also Hepnova music on other music sites online, but Bandcamp is my favorite so far, with a simple, clean interface and support for higher-quality audio.

Cynthia Paulson (@CynLuscious) of Women Rock Radio just played “The Doomed Cool” by Hepnova featuring Sophia Chang AKA 52 Faces.  Since the song hadn’t been released yet to the public, I guess that constitutes a world premier.  Thanks Cynthia for playing the song and for your kind words of praise.  In case you missed it, you can listen to the archive of today’s show here.

Women Rock Radio (Live program stream)

Download “The Doomed Cool”

More HEPNOVA tunes at hepnova.com.

@CynLuscious will be playing a tune by @hepnova featuring Sophia Chang tonight (19 June 2009) at 6pm pst/9pm est

Listen here at Women Rock Radio!

More HEPNOVA tunes at hepnova.com.

Photo: Sophia in Cake City

Get your own Hepnova logo T-shirt on Zazzle.

Above: From the recording session of tdat by Joe Mariglio.  Photo by Tedbot.  BTW, that’s me in the lower-right.

The data and tension, tdat for short, is a family of vocal systems music compositions. All of them involve more than two streams of simultaneous text. They are a bit like games.

From Joe’s blog:

we recorded the evening of 25.5.09, after dinner and wine.  we improvised mic stands from spring clamps and pop filters from spandex.  we hung a condenser from the light fixture.  it was good fun.

See also: my post about performing tdat during Joe’s ITP thesis presentation.

Listen to tdat: the recording

Go read some of that Nietzsche that you only skimmed through in college and listen to the gripping electrobilly drama “Make This Change.”

Despair. Enlightenment. Death.

But Danceable.

More music at HEPNOVA.com.

Imagine late night boozy karaoke at a desolate desert cowboy bar and cross that with a slow dance at a zombie high school prom and you get the real love dub ballad “Again Tonight.”