My first music video, made by yours truly alone.
T.A.Z. stands for Temporary Autonomous Zone and it was insipred by the same titled book by Hakim Bey, Tarkovsky's Stalker and most of all - my childhood.
SHARE Conference is a new kind of festival created by the State of Exit Foundation. For the first time in the region, a host of internationally acclaimed internet and social activism experts, new media artists and renowned musicians will be present in one place at the same time. The festival has two main program units: the innovatie SHARE by Day education platform and intensive SHARE by Night with Tuborg parties. Belgrade will thus become the hot spot for sharing knowledge, ideas and fun at performances, lectures, workshops and exhibitions featuring representatives from Google, Harvard, MIT, Obama's marketing team and the likes. Dom Omladine with its 3 halls is the festival's main venue, and another 8 clubs will host around 700 regional opinion-makers, as well as 15,000 local and international visitors. A single wristband will grant access to more than 100 events of the festival.
Just as we found out there will be no Dis-Patch festival in Belgrade from this year on, which is quite sad news, we got ourselves some kind of substitute in form of SHARE Conference. While it may not be as revolutionary and new as their advertising team suggests, it certainly bring quite a few big names into the game - Carl Craig, Murcof, Alex Smoke, Tricky, Josh Wink and MJ Cole, to name a few. It's just something that small independent festival like Dis-Patch wouldn't be able to handle, possibly due to lack of financial support that otherwise stands behind EXIT team, who runs this show.
Everything is on a whole different level now. So are the entry fees. Which is quite understandable, but still not easily affordable.
I got myself a lucky way in, though. There was a small competition that required from producers and sound designers to create an under-10-seconds "sound logo" for the conference. One of mine got into the selected few, so I will receive the wristband which allows me to be there day and night.
I've been saving for this one for long time now, and I must say it was definitely worth it. Truth to be told, at first I've had some other options in mind when it comes to solving my lack of equipment for live performance, namely KP3's younger brother, Kaossilator Pro, but after many reconsiderations and a few budget cuts, I went for this little widely underestimated box.
Kaoss Pad may be quite a popular toy actually, but it seems that the vast majority of users don't go beyond it's most immediate and obvious functions (at least judging by countless YouTube clips I've seen), simply playing around with effects, or in more interesting case, using it to make beatboxing more crazy than it already is (and I mean in a good way). It's not so surprising, considering how relatively poor manual seems to be when it comes to more detailed informations.
Yet, coupled with a separately purchased SD memory card, KP turns into a self-sufficient loop&effect box, capable of delivering enough options for inspirational and varied (albeit still inevitably repetitive by nature) live performance. For example, you get four banks with loops of up to 4 bars of length, which is what everyone knows, but you can also make more variations by simply chopping up that 4 bar loop into 8 equal parts that can be turned on or off, which creates much more room for creativity than simply pressing ABCD pads on and off. It also means that, having this in mind, you can create and load really interesting combination of sounds/rhythm packed into each of those 4 bar loop banks and go crazy with the thing.
Maybe not really a prime example of creativity with Kaoss Pad, but this is the first thing I've done with it, after only several hours of actual use (got it two days ago), and if you listen more or less carefully you can notice it doesn't quite seem like just four loops going on and off. I'm already satisfied with this test and frankly can't wait to try out more.
March 2011 update:
First try at recording video while improvising with Korg Kaoss Pad 3, with a little bit clumsy intro and a few (I hope) minor mistakes here and there. Sounds were prepared in Ableton Live 7, exported as loops and imported onto four sample banks on KP3.
Recorded directly from the Kaoss Pad's LineOuts into E-MU 0404 PCI, no extra sounds added or editing performed, except for the slight compression on the final recording to increase loudness. Sorry for such a poor video quality, my cheap camera isn't quite fond of dim indoor light.
Somewhere around this time (late May) last year, after one of the most difficult creative struggles, I had submitted one four and a half minute ambient piece for a contest organized by Goethe Institut Belgrad (aka German cultural center in Belgrade), Radio Belgrade - Channel Three, Deutchlandradio Kultur (Berlin) and Chinch initiative for contemporary music (Belgrade) entitled Klangpostkarten - Von irgendwo in Südosteuropa (Sonic postcards - Somewhere from Southeastern Europe). We were supposed to sonically depict a certain place in this region to German audience, as the title suggests, basically in a form of "sound postcard" that would give them a taste of local atmosphere.
Apparently, one of the initiators of this project was none other than Thomas Köner, whom I personally admire to a great extent, both for his extremely deep and minimal ambient work as well as his legendary Porter Ricks dub techno project on no less legendary Chain Reaction label. As a form of an announcement, he did his own sonic postcard from Frankfurt, so that we could later create an appropriate response from Serbia in similar style. Talking about encouragement - there couldn't have been better for me.
My piece was dedicated to a now quiet small village in north of the country, Slankamen, where I had spent so many summers as a kid. It's unique geographic and strategic position provided quite a turbulent history, dating back to Celtic migration to Balkans, over Roman exploitation of well known local healing water spring, to Ottoman Turkish battles with neighboring Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Eventually, among 47 works submitted, mine got into final top seven presented at the Goethe Institute premises here in Belgrade in September 2009. I won the fourth place, missing a nice cache prize by an inch, though later in all of the public reports they properly sorted only the top three, while constantly shuffling the order when mentioning rest of us. Nevertheless, it was such a great honor and privilege, it didn't matter to me that much.
If you can read either German or Serbian, here are the reports on the Goethe Inst. website. You'll also find a podcast streaming player there, with all the finalist tracks being played:
- German version
- Serbian version
All seven of us finalists also got additional exposure on a radio show entitled Newcomer Werkstatt on Deutchlandradio Kultur and later the tracks have been released on a CD by Goethe Institut:
Another few months later, in April 2010, the whole thing was picked up by Hannoversche Gesellschaft für Neue Musik that again included all of these pieces in their sound installations and exhibitions project in Hannover entitled Briefe aus der Heimat (Letters from homeland).
If I could only explain how did I get to this. Most of the year up to that point, late October 2009 to be precise, seemed to be a collection of futile attempts, unnecessary worries and days lost. In fact, right now I can't recall how did I actually spend most of my time then.
I do remember though how I found myself not knowing even how to start making new music numerous times, or when I would eventually start - it would lead nowhere. Then I tried to immerse myself in any topic that has no obvious relation to music, so that I could maybe draw some inspiration or even a whole concept from it. Eventually I got stuck with architecture, which in fact was quite interesting. Among many really fascinating examples of human imagination and skill, you also get to learn how Le Corbusier planned to demolish central part of Paris north of Seine and build this:
La Ville radieuse
Needless to say, the project wasn't approved. Paris hasn't had such "visionary" officials like Belgrade did in mid 20th century, who encouraged quite similar projects again north of city's main river. I consider myself lucky not to have had grown up there. Still, the gloominess of a large, dirty and chaotic city that is sometimes Belgrade doesn't end in the neighborhood shown in the example. "Alienation in urban environment" isn't really that much of a cliché, as it may sound, when you have to actually deal with it.
In a way, my feelings towards this topic eventually formed pieces of sound that slowly (and I mean slooooowly) grew and grew to finally become a part of this release. Strangely enough, as it usually goes in life, so many things came to a rapid climax in that short period around the time the CD was due - and all with a happy end.
Sagamihara, Kanagawa, Japan (CD inlay photo by Kanae Sato)
This change of mood from the beginning to the end, I believe, seems quite obvious on the CD. While the first track is by some people described as "too depressive to play often", the ending one offers hope and positive excitement - something I have to admit not accomplishing often enough in music.
Transitional was my first (solo) release for the Àsino Elettronico label - which I co-created with my friend Xiqhhyiecryn the year before - and it managed to get some slightly wider than usual attention through several contacts. It got a really nice review, a place in the middle of a regional "top 100" album chart for 2009 and the first ever radio play on a major radio station in Serbia (B92).
Rather strange for such an "alienated" record, I guess.
Here is the direct connection to the otherwise framed page on label's website, where you can find more informations, tracklist, and of course the download link for the release (artwork included):
It was late Spring of 2008, I was being quite lazy as far as life goes at the time, then there was this unexpected change of living space conditions (for the better) and also some major investments of what you'd call "entry level professional equipment" - seems that things had just clicked together so that I could make another release, 5 months after the first one.
Initially it was supposed to be a split CD with Youth A.D., where each of us would spit out some noise or whatnot, but as usual, I drifted far into my not-that-noisy world - I've already done three tracks when I realized that this is not "it".
So what was it, then?
Just a slightly lenghtier record than the first one, Stormfields goes a little bit further in semi-improvised sonic exploration, bringing together noisy and bass-heavy humming with what appears to be a more "natural" sound. Melodies are also more prominent than before, and so are the ambiental soundscapes that wander around most of the time.
Again, it comes both as a free, limited, do-it-yourself CD-R package and mp3 files for download.
Apparently, people liked it more than the first one. At least it attracted more listeners, and still does surprisingly.
