a100ql: a hundred quirky legs

Logan, Utah based visual artist Whitney Leary has created these two beautiful new videos for some of centrozoon’s “Fire” live recordings: Fire 4 and Fire 8. I’ve asked Whitney for a brief statement about creating these videos, and this is what he sent me:

“These video’s were shot using a Canon Powershot SD1400 IS (a fairly cheap camera), in video mode of course. The only manipulation of the footage is time stretching, any artifacts are strait from capturing. The music centrozoon does is very electronic, some might question why I would put electronic music with nature video. Well nature and technology bode high intelligence any way you look at it in my opinion, I see the smartest things (technology and us) we have to take into the wilderness, and the world the Divine left us as being highly spiritual bed fellows. Complementary intelligents. Both very inspiring to take in as well as to use to create, art. Try taking your copy of centrozoon music on your headphones, and walk in the park, in the woods, and take a camera. Try and see what the music and the moment inspire you to find, capture it, I bet you will love the experience as much as I do. centrozoon moves.”

 Fire 4

Fire 8

Whitney has already produced videos for two tracks of our latest CD studio release “Boner” earlier this year: Mauls of Reclining (MF Version) and The Yeah Winces (MF Version).

I’ll be co-teaching a course with Barbara Weber at this year’s Davos Festival, starting August 6th and ending with a performance on August 9th. General information and details (PDF) on the Festival website (in German), and here’s a brief description in English:

The course will revolve around theories and practices of conveying contemporary music using Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Mantra” (1970) for two pianos and live-electronics as an example. Students will be working towards a performance dealing with the work in one or several ways, and perform it before a performance of “Mantra” at the end of the course, with the aim of providing the audience with possible entry points into Stockhausen’s piece. This way, the acquisition of knowledge and skills and their application will go hand in hand. 

I will also be available for personal meetings outside the course schedule.

There is room for a few more participants and the fee is very modest (free for HKB students), so please see the Festival’s course page and contact info@davosfestival.ch if you’re interested in participating. Also please spread the word if you know people who might want to hear about this (they’ve  also created a Facebook event page which you can share). The course is primarily aimed at professional musicians and music students, but don’t hesitate to contact us if you don’t fall into either category. We’ll try and make it work.

Image source: Wikipedia

centrozoon is releasing “Fire” today, an improv session from June 2011. It’s available for free listening or as a 6€ download at http://iapetus-store.com/album/fire. 

All revenue will go towards the Bonestarter campaign, which I’ve written about in the blog post “This is how we do it”. In addition to the audio release there is free video footage for Fires 2, 3, 4 and 8 on the centrozoon Youtube channel.

liner notes and credits

“Fire” documents the complete evening of centrozoon recordings at the foyer of Gütersloh’s town hall in June 2011. 

Taking place five months ahead of the “We Will Tongue You 2011/2012” Tour, the Fire session was scheduled with the primary intention of recording audio and video material to promote centrozoon’s renewed intention of presenting their music live, and to acquire more gigs for the tour. It also marked the band’s first time playing together in over 18 months, so while there was no audience present, the recordings served both as a “sound check” and as way to shorten the wait until the tour.

The revenue from this release will go to support Bonestarter, our homemade crowdsourcing campaign to finance our latest studio album “Boner” which was released on May 9, 2012.

-

centrozoon - Fire

Recorded and filmed on June 14, 2011 at Rathausfoyer, Gütersloh, Germany

Bernhard Wöstheinrich - software synths
Markus Reuter - Touch Guitars® U8 Deluxe
Tobias Reber - electronics

Mixed by Adrian Benavides, Austin TX, USA

Mastered by Lee Fletcher, Paignton UK

Thank you: Rathaus Gütersloh, Wolfgang Hein, Mia Plaßmann

Released July 14, 2012

A couple of shots of the Tönstör Laptop Ensemble’s opening gig at the “Lange Nacht der elektronischen Musik” at Dampfzentrale, Bern on July 6, 2012. The performance marked the completion of the second “season” of this project, and now it’s back to planning the future and raising funds so that we can hopefully make this the ongoing and growing Ensemble that I envisioned it to become. Thanks again to Barbara Weber and Tönstör for supporting this project and making an effort in teaching electronic music to kids. Thanks also to TIll Hillbrecht who co-hosted the workshop-rehearsals leading up to this performance with me, and to the crew at Dampfzentrale for putting up with our very loud final rehearsal earlier in the week. I do hope we can make it happen again soon.

photo credits: Samira Zribi (1), Ronny Kummer (2,3)

Bernhard and I performing/presentating/discussing centrozoon at Capella Hospitalis, Bielefeld, Germany on Monday, July 2. Wonderful location but just a handful of people in the audience. The trip was well worth it, though: it’s always good to spend time with Bernhard, the improv recordings from the previous day are fab, there was time to talk about how to proceed with the band, and the presentation is an experience we can build on.

Photo by Olaf Tilsner.

Cooperativa Neue Musik, a sound art community in Bielefeld, Germany has invited my band centrozoon to present our work on July 2, 2012 as part of the Jour Fixe series of artist talks. Bernhard and I will be there (Markus is on tour with The Crimson ProjeKct) to play music and to talk about the band’s history, approaches and the new album “Boner”.

The presentation will take place at the Capella Hospitalis, Teutoburger Straße 50, 33602 Bielefeld, Germany - www.capella-hospitalis.de.

Also, as a reminder in case you’re not watching the European Football/Soccer championship finals tonight (July 1st), you might want to tune in to this centrozoon broadcast at 8 PM CEST.