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September 17, 2008
IDM and Glitch
When he's not analyzing industrial and metal albums for the Music Genome Project, Will Redmond is often out on tour as BlipVert, performing his twisted and hyper-intense take on IDM. This is electronic music at its most challenging, where samples and microsamples are arranged like chips in a mosaic or dots in a pointillistic painting. Standard beats are thrown out entirely, discarded in favor of fractured chunks, bits of signal, and electronically damaged sound. IDM can be exquisitely beautiful, disturbingly jarring, or beautiful and jarring at once. Here is the website featuring Will's work as BlipVert, called Synapse Compound; he dubs this site "a nice place for noise." (9 mins.)MUSICAL TERMS INCLUDED IN THIS PODCAST
| Ambient music | IDM (intelligent dance music) | Sample | Broken rhythms |
| Sampler | Theremin | Chaos pad | Analog noise |
| Synthesizer | Sequencing | Electronic music | Sourcing |
| Musique concrete | Tape splicing | Pitch wheel | CDJ |
| Sample banks | Track switching | Mixer | Vocoder |
| Air FX | Looping |
INDUSTRIAL MUSIC: MIXING METAL, PUNK, AND ELECTRONIC EXPERIMENTATION
by Throbbing Gristle |
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by Skinny Puppy |
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by Ministry |
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by Nine Inch Nails |
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by Merzbow |
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From top to bottom on the near table: a four-channel mixer, an Air FX unit, and a sampler. That long strip to the right is a vocoder, which is a vocal effects processor. BlipVert's live sound-mangling relies heavily on these four pieces of equipment. |
AMBIENT MUSIC PIONEERS
by Brian Eno |
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by Harold Budd |
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by Tangerine Dream |
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by the Orb |
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Yes, his hand is a blur because he's moving so quickly. Here is BlipVert manipulating a piece of CDJ (compact disc jockey) hardware. Much like an analog record player, the CDJ is set up so that the speed and direction of the turntable's motion alters the audio playback. |
1990s EXPONENTS OF IDM (all of whom are still producing great work in the 2000s)
by Aphex Twin |
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by Squarepusher |
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by Orbital |
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by Underworld |
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by Autechre |
 |
Those two microphones are each going into separate signal processing units that warp the sound of Will's voice. |
OTHER CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS DEALING WITH GLITCHES, BLEEPS, AND ELECTRONIC ABSTRACTIONS
by Venetian Snares |
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by Boards Of Canada |
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by Odd Nosdam |
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by the Books |
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by Matmos |
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by BlipVert |
 |
Similar to a theremin, the Air FX unit monitors the movement of air near the instrument. As Will's hands move near the pad, the sound changes. Depending on what parameters he has set to have the Air FX control, those rapid-fire hand sweeps could change pitch, resonance, or any number of other sonic variables. |
Comments
For what it is worth the song "Water" by The Who was NOT on the "Who's Next" album.
Posted by: Clay Farha at September 19, 2008 03:11 PM
hi.
Posted by: david s. wirth at September 20, 2008 08:23 PM
I love electronic/industrial music! This podcast was very informative and was a good build on the one about LFOs and sythesizers. More please!
Posted by: Andrew at September 29, 2008 09:09 PM
Great, informative profile!! I am a fan of electronic music, DJ and recording artist as well. Check out my work on my webpage: http://www.danieltriana.com
Posted by: Daniel Triana at October 1, 2008 08:41 PM
I think this is great stuff.
One tune I like that resembles beat-editing but dance (2-step I believe) is HotChips (AU- not Hotchip UK) version of "Sexual Healing"
http://www.myspace.com/364492231
Posted by: Jay Peek at October 12, 2008 08:04 PM
AHHH. Yes. I am glad that you mentioned Musique Concrete. And Whoever reads this, go out and check out the forefathers . Edgard Varese, Karlheinz Stockhausen(Especially). And Lest We forget Bruce Haak. and The Residents and, and, and... I, Unknowingly started out when I was about 8 years old doing this stuff with a couple of cheap boomboxes with line in/out rca plug. I found that if you slightly held the pause button on a casette player down, it sped up the tape and would play back at half speed, so my friends and I would make little radio plays and stuff. Their dad was a live country music player so we had amps mikes and tons of old Maestro accompaniment machines and stomp boxes and we'd just make sound collages. remeber this was the mid 1980's in a small town in Arizona. But I used to do overdobs and manipulate static and shortwave radio stuff before I even knew there was a name for this stuff. Now with digital I hope that kids are out there doing this as well, without knowing it and having a blast! 20+ years later and I'm still doing it, now I've studied theory and Musicology and and had the luck of meeting the COOLEST Theory instructor who told me to check out John cage, And Zappa and all the RCA synthesizer guys and early avante-garde composers . and to dig on that. Thanks Dr. Bill Frkovich. I never took another theory class after yours. I went out and bought some old reel to reels.
Posted by: StretcherBearer at October 15, 2008 02:59 PM
great podcast, more on electronic music would be awesome. does any one know the brand and model of the cdj and mixer he is using?
Posted by: hesh at October 30, 2008 11:50 AM
For it was at the water that I stopped and questioned my thirst.(pink and green) good idea!
Posted by: Maria Cruz at November 10, 2008 06:00 PM
