Found Art (Adblocker)

 

 

 

We need to start a page for these.

This week's podcast: New Directions

We're going to try doing new 25-minute long-form audio collage around here every week.  Nothing given its final form by other people, and not anything I've posted before.  Hope so, anyway.  It might start getting a little odd audio in here.

Found Art (Adblocker)

 

Adblocker is like the Banksy of internet synchronicity.

 

...oh my god.  It's an illustration for today's actual news story.  It's Trump before the Supreme Court!  The other guy is Kyle Rittenhouse, which is probably a comment in itself.  But the teeth are definitely this thing--

 

 and there's some sort of intentional pun on the expression "screw" or "screw with".  Wow.  Thomas Nast must be out there in the aether somewhere.

This week's podcast: Air Pirates of the 21st Century

Enter the strange world of true underground radio.  Thanks to the fine Internet Archive, and untold hours trying to make it sound listenable, we present an eclectic journey into what's leaking out the sides of your radio when no one's listening.

 

Here is a sample, a slightly burnished rendition of the Youngbloods' song "Get Together." 

Found Art (Adblocker)

 Today's offering:

Jimi Hendrix's 78th Birthday

A note about this week's podcast.

 

Track #4, the 2020 Birthday Jam, was created this week from the same two bootlegs that Alan Douglas used when he compiled "Captain Coconut" for the 1975 album, Crash Landing: "MLK" and "New Rising Sun".  We both chopped up the originals, but recombined them differently.  My version kept Buddy Miles and Billy Cox. 

 

(Hendrix improvised an original "MLK" at a memorial concert.  This isn't it.  It's been described as one of the most beautiful, heartfelt tunes he ever played.  No known recording.  Oh well.)

 

 

Found Art (Adblocker)

 I used Adblocker on the ads in the margin, and it did this:

 

 We may be looking at some kind of art-generator, here...

WTFBrahh: Paula White's Re-Election Prayer for Donald Trump

 

I hear the sound an abundance of rain, 

I hear the sound of Victory!

Link to YouTube

Found Art (Yahoo News)

 Our continuing series, featuring images randomly combined by Internet banner ads.

 

"Ya know, I've always wanted to be a doctor.  Now, bend over!"

Vic Berger & VICE News: A Portrait of Donald J Trump

Mr Berger has been featured on this website before.  He specializes in edited news footage: chopped, slowed, grainy closeups, draaggged out speech, repetition, overdubs, etc.  The result is surreal commentaries that get right up inside their subjects, in a way that's both dreamlike, and disturbing.  This is the first documentary of his that I've seen.  

I remember when a new wave of radio documentaries came out in the early 1970's.  They completely disposed of a narrator, and used the voices and sounds of their subjects to tell the story.  The result was, essentially, an extended cut and paste sound stream.  

Mr Berger is doing the same thing with video, but flavoring it in his own inimitable fashion.

Link to YouTube

Open AI: Classic Pop in the style of Frank Sinatra

 

 

Or not.  It sounds more like John Oswald's Plunderphonics than Frank.  Maybe that time his '59 tour Down Under got a little kooky.  It's Hot Tub Time-- Ring-a-ding-ding!

link

This is from an article on the Guardian's website, entitled "'It's the screams of the damned!' The eerie AI world of deepfake music".  (No link.  They want your email, before you can read stories on their site.) 

But the author identifies this as a "Deep Fake", "seemingly performed by Frank Sinatra".  I'll just put that out there, for you cutup fans.  Either any kind of mashup is acceptable as a "deep fake" these days, or the author decided to go for the sizzle without realizing he was looking at a salad.  

Recordings of wacky synchronicity and twisted sampling have been around much longer than Deep Fakes.  I never thought of the latter as falling into that category.  Maybe I should.

 

PS: I really dig that they used Frank's "swinger" period for this.  Nelson Riddle and the boys sound absolutely flipped.

Explain to me again why they have AI news editors

 Is Dracula the photo editor at Google News? Her face is up there, Google.

Phew

 All over except the shouting, as they say.

Update. Nov 19: Well, the "melting image" thing hit Giuliani, so we got it close.  

 

Cutupsound weekly podcast, notification system

 

The weekly post is up.  Blogger has this "subscribe to new posts" system, which I assume works.  I'm trying it now. 

Bob & Ray: Mitch Miller promo

 

Part of our series, "The Occasional Bob & Ray", chapter eye-vee, paragraph seven.  An ad from their 1959 CBS Radio program.

link

Found Art (Youtube)

 

"Softly As I Leave You".  An audio conjunction.

Found Art (Internet)

 

 I call it, "A Man's Gut Is His Castle."

John Lennon's Birthday, 2020

 

This week's podcast.

Paul Frees

 

 

 

Part 3 of our Paul Frees compilation will go on the podcast this week, and perhaps more, down the road; he was an indefatigable presence in audio show biz for 40 years, and this humble collection is but a sample.

 

I should add a word about announcers, as a phenomenon: a public face/voice, coordinating the show before our very ears.  Vaudeville had Masters of Ceremonies, and before that there were Ringmasters.

I always thought announcers were kind of audio craftsmen, in a way.  Standing next to a huge microphone, watching the Director, and being that single point where the whole thing pivoted as it careened through our living rooms.  

Paul Frees was The Announcer.  There were other memorable characters in the profession-- Thurl Ravenscroft, George Fenneman, Ken Nordine, Olan Soule, Mason Adams, Norman Rose-- and even regular actors like Richard Kiley, Lloyd Bochner and Les Tremayne were able to shine as narrators.  

 

But Mr Frees, who had literally hundreds of gigs in his career, was the king.  When you heard Paul Frees, you knew you'd just been announced to.  His tinny baritone ran the range from Imperative to Sinister like few others.  And he was everywhere.  He was almost Hal in 2001 (too busy to fly to England), which would have added another dimension to the character: with all the work he did on TV commercials, the ultimate voice of American Capitalism.  As a killer computer.  Very Kubrickian.

He started doing voices before he was a teenager, and definitely had the talent for it.  He'd play hooky from school, and when the Truant Officer called, pretend to shuffle them around between different members of the household, some of whom spoke only Russian.  

I think the ones who do well tend to start out young.  

ps: The final movie trailer in this set, The Beatniks-- that was his film.  Wrote and directed.

And the music, of course.

The Podcast is Up

 

Clicking on the "Latest Podcast" picture to your right will now take you to our Podcast library.  The first one is available for your amusement.  It's from a 1978 aircheck, and is a pretty good example of what we used to do with Late Nite Radio.

I guess I'll link to the page here, too.  And, what the heck, the file as well.  We (Nockley and I) are going to try to post one of these every Friday.  No idea how that's going to work out. 

The Stream is Down

 One thing about computers: their complexity makes it unlikely they'll totally screw up your work by having everything go wrong at once.  That said, they are also good at fouling up what you do with unexpected failures at critical points.

 The stream is down.  I shut it off to add new stuff, and it wouldn't come back.  Technical issue.  It's raised questions about having a stream in the first place.  Maybe going back to through-the-air radio is better.  Nockley thinks so.  

Update, Aug 26: Yes; yes, I do.  I don't know if you 21st Century-types recall it, but there used to be an expression, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket."  Word to the wise.

Regarding the stream: there's a lot of moving parts in that contraption, and neither of us are techs.  (I'm actually "pre-computer"-- oh, how charming, it's being spell-checked.  The computer doesn't recognize it.)  You get a lot more bang for your buck with a podcast, at this stage of affairs.

So, here's the deal.  The stream is paid up for the next month.  If we drop anything into it, you'll be the first to know.  But watch this space for a weekly podcast starting on Friday.

-Nockley

New CutUpSound album on Bandcamp

You can listen to it for free at this Link.

My first album in 7 years.  Most, maybe all the tracks are already on the site here.  I edited a few when they went to Bandcamp-- ain't sayin' which ones.  

The first two albums, I deleted the tracks from this site, for some reason.  Not worth the fuss this time.  But if you want a handy collection of your favorite CutUpSound audio experiments, the link is probably better than fishing around over here, anyway.  

Police Squad: Metastatized Narrative

I like the way it takes off when they bring Phil Dihn into it.

Augmented White Noise Background Loop

Thank you, Bob.  Hello, all.  A few years since I've sat before a microphone, but on the whole, hale and hearty.  I forgive those who know me not from Edwin Armstrong.  My broadcast home, the Trudy, was drydocked when your grandparents were kids.  Nevertheless, I plied the waters of the Great Lakes from Rochester to Chicago for 20 years, just beyond the 30 mile limit, and cranked out many a radio dream in the leaky hours before dawn.

Our first selection may be useful for those who vainly strive for the embrace of Morpheus-- or perhaps only set the ripples flowing in the same direction.  I speak of noise control, friends; a neighbor arriving home from work at 3:30...every morning.  Or perhaps a happy party across the street.  We've all been there, and who wouldn't want an audio eraser, or even an audio rake, to tidy up their local neighborhood of sounds, and restore a measure of control.  I give you

sleep loop 01_mp3_regiment + artificial canine.

It's a 10-minute loop.  "Canine" is a nod to Jean Dubuffett's soundtrack for Cuckoo Bazaar, an early audio fractal.  The basic track is from Eno/Byrne "Regiment".  There's a kind of scratchy-popping noise from one chuckle, turned into a continuous sound.  And car horn sfx; who says masks can't also be the thing being masked? 

I'm using it right now, and although I think I've heard them getting in and out of their car next door, there's been no discernible random, startling noise.  I'm also playing it with a generous helping of white noise from a TV and a noisy fan, with the window open, on a hot July night.  So, it works.  Adjust the track and the TV noise for flavor.  Fan is optional.

- Nockley

What happened to the audio?

Hi folks.  This is a post I've started a few times, recently.

Now that you're spending more time at home these days, does it seem like your home computer has become considerably more ...well, inept in what you want it to do?  Or even, suddenly unable to do it at all?

I'd rather gloss things over when I can-- as if, having a tool that requires constant attention is going to work with that approach-- but eventually you wake up and go, hey, we're not movin!

Part of it is tech.  I haven't had a working line-in for 3 or 4 months now.  Not a total output killer, there's a stock of raw mp3s around here.  But enough to throw it out of balance, and with everything else bring it down.  The problem is Resiliency of Process.

I'd like to have you meet someone: the late American broadcaster and spiritualist Arthur Haversham Nockley.  He will briefly be returning from the grave to help me administer the site.

AH Nockley, 1893-1959

The stream-- ah yes.  $25 a month.  I think I can afford a dollar a day to keep it trickling out, for now.  Without unleashing my fund-raising myrmidons.  Perhaps Mr Nockley will have something to say about that.

Resiliency of Process.  That, we hope, is a verity.  Mr Nockley's mastery of it created a 40-odd-year record of amazing but lost broadcasts.  I leave you in his hands.

- Old 55

JhohnLenoOfficial: "Love Me Do" by The Beatles but...

...every word is in alphabetical order.

Just like they say in writing school.  Don't tell them about something if you can show them instead.  What's better, this, or some factoid, "There's X number of times the word 'do' appears in this song"? 

Link to YouTube

Doodles Weaver: The Man on the Flying Trapeze

I didn't want the month of May to go by without noting the contributions of Doodles Weaver to the arts of cutup and twisted delivery.  When he was with Spike Jones, he'd deconstruct popular songs; rendering them a tangle of spoonerisms and heinous puns, apparently all ad-libbed.

One of these was preserved, and I offer it to the intrepid listener:  an audio high-wire act based on The Man on the Flying Trapeze.

Cut-Up Radio: Mother's Month

on the stream.  Three live concerts by Frank Zappa from the early 70's.  See "playlist" for more details.

Bob and Ray: Wally Ballou Reporting From the Queen Mary

This might be the silliest bit they did.  Bob improvises to a kid's record.  What a brilliantly simple concept for Found Sound; it's like Monty Python's "Alistair Cooke Being Attacked By a Duck". (YouTube link)

Wally Ballou reporting

(The thing I like the most is hearing Wally reporting from "the Queed Bary.")

Columbo: Nothing Happens Until Someone Sells Something

Here's a bit I just now cleaned up from an old Columbo episode.  This marketing consultant made an alibi for himself, consisting of his narration of what's called an "Industrial Film".

And what a film.  I wonder how many documentaries have a symphonic score like this, busting all out with America's Mighty Destiny.  The script practically announces itself.

The bit's going on the stream, over there, but also here.

Random Cutup

From tonight's CNN.

Cut-Up Radio: New Stream

The return of musical programming.

An ongoing upload.

Larry Tesler 1945 - 2020

...who made it possible to cut & paste text on your computer.

Burroughs Called the Law

Happy birthday, and thanks for calling.

 Burroughs Called the Law

Bernie Sanders jumpsuits

There have been some strange items produced in the 220 years of Presidential campaigns.  This is certainly one of them.

 Only $120, marked down from $160.

And it drives facial-recognition cameras absolutely bonkers.






There's also a hooded version for New Hampshire in February:

Wm S Burrough's mummy

This is appropriate news for his birthday: Someone's messing with a mummy!

The “voice” of an ancient Egyptian priest has been heard for the first time since he died and was mummified 3,000 years ago, researchers have said.  

Nesyamun lived under the pharaoh Rameses XI, who reigned around the beginning of the 11th century BC...Now a team of researchers have 3D-printed a reproduction of Nesyamun’s vocal tract to hear what his voice would have sounded like.

It's not digital.  They cat-scanned and 3-D printed his larynx, and they blow air through it.  It goes, "Hrrnhh".  (Are they sure it's not Jim Lehrer?)  There's sound at the above link.

Regarding making Burroughs speak-- yes!  His birthday.

He might have appreciated this.  He was good at exposing manipulative narratives, especially around the larger cultural issues.  One thing I've noticed about technology, a missing section of the curve as it were, is the stage we're in now: everything that used to work is cheapened down until it's unreliable dreck, and our Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow ("shining at the end of every day") keeps snagging on the same little things.

Like the next stream. My sound stuff has basically quit working.  Part of it has to do with Windows 10 being a poorly-designed program.  Windows 7, which Microsoft recently quit supporting, is actually better at things like uploading files and web-surfing (something else that doesn't work as well as it used to.  Seriously.  It's like being back on dial-up, sometimes.)

So, not to bang on it too hard, but interesting synchronicity: a more extensive Burroughs stream (at this point) is not possible because of technological breakdown on my PC.

However, there will be something, by tomorrow morning, as promised: "Real English Tea Made Here", a collection of his mid-1960s experiments which was released in 2007.  At least that, until his birthday on Feb 5th.  More, I hope. 

Yappy New Hear

No one's listening to the web stream, which isn't surprising-- it's not advertised, and has been more of an experiment to see if some kind of programming could be sustained.  It is ongoing.  Like this site, which will be 12 years old in Sept, although not much has been going on recently.

I put the rest of "Bob and Ray present CBS" from the Internet Archive on there just now.  7 hours.  Going to try listening to it myself once in a while.  Like I say, this internet radio thing is still pretty experimental.