Drown Radio – Me Geek Pretty One Day

I’m a total sucker for acoustic covers of my classic electronic songs, so finding Andrew Flanders’ cover of Aphex Twin’s “Four” really made my day… But then I realized he has a entire series of Aphex covers on YouTube, as well as tabs and mp3s! Holy shit! Time to practice!

Jason did an awesome job on these transcriptions, but I should mention you’ll need a capo (I’m on my way to Lark in the Morning for mine now). He also included the bpms for each track so that “someone can sync a metronome add drums or whatever if they have an interest. “, so get remixing! If you’d like to hear more of Jason’s music, check out his band Echoes From Mars.

Ratatat and Despot are currently touring the US. During each day of the tour, the duo will write, record, and perform a new song that will eventually be released on a free album when the tour is finished. During their recent San Francisco show, they asked Aesop Rock to appear on their daily track. Aes documented his experience and posted it on youtube. Check it out above. The tour only lasts for 6 more days, so hopefully we’ll see the album appear in a week or so.

Semi-obscure music fans rejoice: iTunes is currently featuring John Cage’s “Four Minutes, Thirty Three Seconds” as their Discovery Download of the week! For those that don’t know, 4′33″ is a composition in which Cage instructs the musician not to play anything at all for four minutes and thirty three seconds. It’s the sort of piece that was written to insite conversation in high school intro to music classes and to be a long running joke for music majors for generations to come. I’ve got to admit it’s really cool to see iTunes feature it so prominently in their store. Maybe it will encourage a few people to check out some of Cage’s other pieces (like his scores for prepared piano). Grab the free iTunes download of 4′33″ here.

Inspired by John Cage’s composition of silence, I have created a few musical re-interpretations for you to download:
4′33″ iPhone ringtone (inspired by @sfslim)
4′33″ Drown Radio’s Bangin’ Remix
Cage VS Rock (a mashup of 4′33″ with A.R.’s “Lucy”)

And here are some related pieces culled from the internets… If you have any you’d like to share, please post them in the comments below:
John Cage Vs. Pineal Gland Zirbeldruese “4:33 Erotic Emergency” by Catcubed
4′33″ of the return on BART from Paule Anglim by ifyouseeclay (more here)

A few months ago I did production (& rapping) on The Digital Gangster LP (iTunes link), the split album by ytcracker and MC Lars. “MC Lars’s Facebook Count” is the second music video from DG and was directed by Tim Thompson and Odin Wadleigh (who also directed White Kids Aren’t Hyphy). I’m really proud of my work on the DG lp, and this track is no exception. I had a blast appearing in the video, which I also sing in obviously, and you can check out more flickr pics of the video shoot here. BTW, you can’t front like this beat isn’t fucking fantastic!

I love this old music video “Tired” by Controller 7. Controller 7 played a show in SF tonight, and I’m bummed I couldn’t catch it since I’ve been dieing to see him for years. I’m always hoping that he’ll come out of retirement and make some new beats, or even post some new entries on his hip hop newsblog, but www.controller7.com hasn’t been updated since double ought seven. You can hear his beats on Myspace, but if you make music too, you can’t add him as a friend. C7 has a classic sound and was a personal influence when I was still living in the Twin Cities (that Deep Puddle Dynamics remix in ‘99 still gets play!), so here’s hoping 2009 is the year he drops a new album…. but if it isn’t, at least we still have this awesome rollerskate video.

Based on my google hits, I see several folks stumbling on DrownRadio.com in search of Bomarr’s newest installation to the Wild X-Mas mixtape series. Sadly, last years volume was the last in the series, but fear not; videogame musician and bead sprite artist Doctor Octoroc has released 8-bit Jesus, a chiptune tribute to christmas songs. The album is currently available as a zip file or individual mp3s, but I get the impression that this is a work in progress, so check back later for more muzacs.

Lots of great stuff happening on the West Coast these days. Nerdcore Rising, the nerdcore documentary that features a healthy dose of Drown Radio in it’s soundtrack, is playing tonight and Wednesday at The Red Vic Theater in San Francisco.

Tomorrow night is a huge nerdcore show at The Uptown in Oakland featuring MC Frontalot, MC Lars, ytcracker and Drown Radio. Drown Radio (aka AllAboutGeorge and Doctor Popular) will be opening the show so get there early! Doors at 9pm. Rumor has it that Lars and yt might join me onstage for the first (and possibly only) live performance of 911 AM!!

Front and co will also be rocking a show at the Knitting Factory in LA later this week too. Frontalot has hinted that Will Wheaton might also join his set to do the hilarious ShellfishCore skit. More info on the tour and dates here.

I was out of the country during the West Coast Wigout in LA, but hopefully we’ll start seeing videos from that online soon.

I’m happy to say that MC Lars and YTCracker’s new studio album, The Digital Gangster, is available now! Digital Gangster features 14 tracks made by two nerds with a real love of hip hop and is “for sale” in Radiohead-esqu donation system. It features production and guest appearances by Beefy, MC Frontalot, and other nerdcore luminaries.

I’ve even got some production credits on the album, having made the beats for both Birth of a Phish and MC Lars’s Facebook Friend Count. Digital Gangster also has one track that I produced and rapped on called 911 AM (Guiliani). It’s is a song that I had been saving for the next Drown Radio album, but after hanging with the Lars and YT in the studio, I thought the song was a good fit for the three of us. It was one of those songs that literally came together in less than 4 hours (writing, rapping, and everything). Those guys are geniuses.

[note: the views represented below are Doc's and don't necessarily reflect what Lars and YT feel about the track] Check out the great fan video (embedded above) by youtuber ShannonLikesConan

In my mind, 911 AM isn’t about the September 11th hijackings, that’s already been covered (pretty well in fact). This song deals with the fear mongering and civil liberty abuses in the name of protecting us from terrorists. Some will tell you everything changes in a “post 9/11 society”, but that’s bullshit. It’s scary to think that someone can be treated as a terrorist because they have a band sticker on their bike or for posting Aqua Teen Hunger Force LEDs. Taking a tube of toothpaste from travelers doesn’t make the world a safer place. Arresting someone for taking pictures of a bridge doesn’t make the world a safer place. When police make a mistake, as the Boston Police did with maker Star Simpson, we can’t let them trump up their charges

Of course most of us already knew it, but now it’s official: MC Lars and ytCracker are Internet Superstars! Lars and YT were in town last week recording their new e.p., tentatively titled “The Digital Gangster E.P.” (according to the interview embedded above), and I got a chance to hang out with both of them. On monday, I spent the day with the guys at the Rondo Bros studio and was totally amazed at how quickly they could write and memorize their verses. They already had finished 3/4 of their album, but I brought them 3 new beats and some song ideas, so we spent Monday working on Drown Radio beats (word!). I did the hook on a Lars song and ytCracker ripped a solo verse on one of my glitchiest beats yet, but what I’m really excited about is our collab song “Giuliani”. Giuliani is about the over-usage of 9/11 to justify arresting people for taking pictures of buildings, or wearing weird shirts, etc.
The Lars/YT e.p. is slated for release on November 1st, no price as of yet, but you NEED this album. I haven’t heard all of it, but I can say for a fact that what I have heard is some of the best material either artist has put out yet!

When constructing music using circuit bent instruments, I tend to spend 10 minutes improvising to a click track then combing over the resulting audio and extracting the most interesting moments to be later chopped and sequenced in Reason. Basically, I’m the enemy of the “purest” bending community. My goal isn’t to make deconstructionist audio collages, but rather to take these little unpredictable sounds and turn them into something catchy. I want to get a glitch stuck in your head, that’s it.
Even when my music strays into experimental territory, as it did in Bentstrument Guitar (off of Atomic Bros VS Drown Radio), the process was still the same. Improvise, record, chop, sequence, publish.
This morning I tried to do something slightly different, instead of chopping up the audio, I decided to construct an atmospheric song using 3 tracks. Although you may still hear chunks of this audio sampled in future works, this is technically my first “organic”, or non-sequenced, circuit bent song. I’ve embedded the song below, but you can grab the mp3 or wav files too. I am offering this song up to other musicians to chop up and use, all that I ask in return is credit (with a link back) and that you post any resulting songs built from this song in the comments section below.