[video]: Kyla Kegler "Buffalo Grain Music"

I've always wondered what would happen if a sound artist made use of the giant, rotting grain elevators located just south of the city. This video here from Kyla Kegler offers a hint at the possibilities.

buffalo grain music. from kyla kegler on Vimeo.

in this video you travel by bicycle through downtown buffalo, ny, through the deserted ruins and into the old abandoned grain elevators.

all of the sound in the video is live and natural to the environment. the music comes from the incredible acoustics in the grain funnels, and is only voice and sounds made by touching the sides of the funnel while sitting inside of it.

if you get bored at the beginning, skip to 15 minutes ahead, to see the music.

Reactionary Ensemble's Surround:Audio Tonight at the Burchfield-Penny Art Center

Interesting FREE event going down tonight at the Burchfield-Penny Art Center.  Audio/visual improvisationalists the Reactionary Ensemble will perform using a hacked Wii remote and Wacom tablet to control audio and video in a venue fitted with surround-sound capability.  

The event will feature musicians Gabe Beam, Kevin O'brien Cain, Jamie Currie, Michael Kimiad, T. Andrew Trump along with KG Price manning the live Wii-mote Room Conduction.

The event's Facebook page says to prepare for the combination of "sound & visuals into a synæsthetic montage that challenges the audience to forge unfamiliar connections and make new correlations — opening a boundless world of unprompted connections existing as a vodoun-esque fabrication of dream-like imaginations."

In other words, hallucinogenic experiences will be provided with cover charge. Oh wait...its FREE!  

Head down to the Burchfield Penny Art Center (1300 Elmwood Ave) at 7 pm.  

And if you take any pictures tonight, upload them to The Soundscape Flickr Group for everyone else to see.

On the Next Soundscape, 10.25.10

On the next episode of The Soundscape, I will conduct a brief profile on sound artists who are currently making use of field recording techniques in their music/art. 

We'll listen to a variety of artist who utilize field recordings in different ways with some using their field recordings as the primary vehicles for their ideas like Solo Andata, whose new album Ritual was released by Buffalo-based label Desire Path Recordings. We'll also listen to others artists that incorporate field recordings into their musical frameworks like new 12k artist Marcus Fischer. 

Solo Andata in action

The Soundscape will also check out German sound artist Martin Backes and a work he created for Hydrophonia, a festival directed by Kim Cascone that is dedicated to raising the public awareness of ocean noise by creating sound art with underwater microphones. The third edition of Hydrophonia takes place in Barcelona on October 29-30. 

The Wire recently did an interesting post on field recording and it has loads of good links if your interested. 

Any local sound artists out there using field recording techniques? Send me your stuff.  Use the dropbox to the right of this post.

See you this Monday at 8 pm. 

Needles