tom moody

"Microminihouse" [1.1 MB .mp3]

This was done in the Limelight Reaktor instrument. I might use it for something else but it feels complete (if terse) like this.

As a hobby have been digitizing my cassette tapes of early '90s house music, originally spun live on Dallas's "Edge Club" radio show by DJ Jeff K and guest DJs from the international rave scene (DJ Icey, Utah Saints, DIY Crew, etc). The cassettes were made during the year or two before I moved to NY. Occasionally put up posts asking if anyone can identify the tracks (I had no set list) and have not gotten any response. This means either that they are impossibly obscure or the ultimate niche interest in a world teeming with ultimate niche interests.

Undeterred, here are two clips made over the weekend:

Unknown Early '90s Dance Track A1: [4 MB .mp3]

This is straight up acid house, with a 303 and possibly a 909 because the hats sound like samples, and there's some backwards drum hits (the 808 was all live synthesis). It's very subtle and hypnotic--at the point this track was done, acid had had been around for a few years; it was minimal because the producer knew exactly what could be left out. There's no flash. Much of the impact derives from the single note Rhodes stab and the lonely churchbell/trainwhistle sound in the background.

Unknown Early '90s Dance Track A2: [1.5 MB .mp3]

Bizarre--it sounds like a whole soccer stadium full of people going "AAAA-AAAH," out of which emerges a sweet, John Barry-esque piano melody (as Simon Reynolds once described the orchestral interludes in Acen's "Trip to the Moon.") This could only have been done in England.

...from the adverlicious Lower My Bills archive

"New Monuments" [29 MB Quicktime .mov]

"New Monuments (audio only)" [2.3 MB .mp3]

apologies to Joel Holmberg, Lucas Samaras, Giovanni Garcia-Fenech, Irene Ryan, Marie Chabelska, Abe Linkoln, and many others.

Sent some street waste to a computer graphics firm in Asia and asked the designers to imagine what kind of a molecule the objects would consist of. Just kidding.

"Yorga's Dub" [3.3 MB .mp3]

More heavily processed Sidstation samples (heavy for me anyway) and a standard commercial house loop marbled together in a slab of dubby artcore.
Named for The Return of Count Yorga, a favorite film when I was sixteen. (Apropos of nothing.)

Drexciya interview: [YouTube]
This was James Stinson's only radio interview, given on Detroit radio a few months before he died in 2002.
A fan posted the 27 minute audio and added visuals for YouTube.
Stinson's writing partner Gerald Donald is alive and still an active musician--his comings and goings are documented at the Drexciya Research Lab blog.
Eventually Stinson/Donald will be recognized as important American musicians working outside the academy (along with Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Frank Zappa...)
The fact that they are "all electronic" will be a stumbling block in our granola music culture.
Stinson talks like the classic outsider in the interview. He speaks of isolating himself from the influence of other people's music, staying in his studio working, exploring inner space (as opposed to Sun Ra's outer). He also makes the classic outsider dodge of not describing the music or his intentions for it. People will always interpret it their own way, the music speaks for itself, etc.
Yet he is not the Howard Finster of music. The structures are quite sophisticated in their spare minimalism, as is the sound pallette.
"Undersea Disturbances" (which you hear in the background about halfway through the YouTube clip) could be Debussy with a thwacking beat.

from billy at Loshadka

"Fratres" by Arvo Pärt

Drony, haunting medieval-modern classic played with two SID chips. About 10 minutes--very nicely done. There is a version for a .sid file player but I just downloaded the .mp3. The arrangement is by Linus Åkesson. The organ sounds produced by the chip make the piece reminiscent of early Terry Riley.
Thanks to drx from Bodenstandig 2000 for mentioning this.

Thanks to Paddy Johnson for the plug on her page and for using my artwork in her masthead. Just to be totally "meta," I added a couple of notes to her text.

"The piece is meant to be big, dumb, and iconic, a moving, pulsing symbol of both the promise and failure of technology," said Tom Moody of OptiDisc* during Geeks in the Gallery, a detail of which now resides in my masthead. Aesthetically the gif looks just as Moody describes it, the rings klutzy yet mildly hypnotic; though past this, its life as a meme underscores the artist’s excitement and reservations about the web as a medium. Referencing artists such as Kenneth Noland and Jasper Johns, without reiterating color field painting or Minimalism, Optidisc speaks as clearly to a tradition of Fine Art painting, as it does regular surfers looking for something "different" for their myspace page.**

* The wall-sized projected version.

** This version of the GIF has "gone viral," meaning it has been used on scores of MySpace, YouTube, and LiveJournal pages, and as a web graphic and avatar. (example) I have been collecting screen shots wherever it appears and I have 60 so far (the ones that hotlink the image from my server). I'm saving them out of simple boredom/vanity but also for a work in progress--more "meta" web stuff. Here's a group of thirty screen shots on my studio floor.