So Many Hours ...

Listen: So Many Hours.Mp3

N64/365

Andy

Indeed an alarming amount of my life has been spent clutching a controller, but GoldenEye for N64 really was at the forefront of making gaming a social experience. We were crammed into one room, four friends, four controllers, and a license to kill. Not to forget games like Mario Kart for their amazing multiplayer mayhem, but it is GoldenEye that really sowed a seed in social gaming.
 

Strobist: 1 LP120 @28mm, 1/32 power, into collapsed silver umbrella camera left, 1 LP120 @28mm, 1/32 power, barn doored behind controller. Triggered via radiopopper JrXs.

Austin

Indeed countless cumulative days were spent in front of GoldenEye in particular, so it seemed a fun nod was due to world of Bond and its legacy of great music. I admit, however, that this piece ended up rather odd, as a sort of schizophrenic homage to Bond (maybe this is the music of Bond after he closes his eyes at night and simultaneous remembers all the lovers and all the kills. A sea of chaos both romantic and twisted?).

Academia

Listen: Academia.Mp3

063/365

Austin

In contrast to the overtly primitive "caveman-ness" of yesterday's post, today's is a look at my musical evolution over the essentially one year period which straddled the end of high school and start of college. It's basically a program piece, telling the story of a young, more or less self-taught composer contentedly writing extremely "Hollywood" sounding music who is violently plunged into the world of formal classical education. Despite years of composing and conducting, at age 18 I was largely still unfamiliar with some extremely seminal staples of the repertoire. Assembled here is a collage of some of the works which most profoundly changed me in that very short period of rebirth (can you name them? There are 19 in all....)

Andy

My attempt at forced perspective. Turns out it's difficult when you're shooting yourself, but it's still fun. I need to start finding models... The concept, if not obvious, was a play on the huge amount of information presented in academia/college, and how quickly it can become overwhelming.

Strobist: LP120 @ 28mm, 1/1 Power into 43" Westcott shoot-through umbrella at encyclopedias. LP120 @ 28mm, 1/1 Power, 1/4 CTO @ me. Triggered via RadioPopper JrXs.

Aurora

 

Listen: Aurora.Mp3

062/365

Austin

The first seven years of my life were spent in Aurora, CO and in a sense they represent "prehistory" for my life. I didn't study (or even listen to!) music. In fact, video games (leading eventually to computer programming) weren't that important to me yet. Basically none of my priorities in life today were even sewing their seeds back then. In watching home movies from that period, I see myself as erratic, unpredictable, odd. Pretty well sums up today's music ...

Andy

This is the intersection of Illif and Chambers, the closest major intersection to the house I lived in during my earliest childhood. Good old Aurora.

PORTRAIT OF A LINEAGE, Part 1

Listen: Portrait of a Lineage, part 1.Mp3

061/365

Austin

The series beginning today is based around a set of seven poems by the great artist Sonja Eisenberg. Sonja is my cousin and the vast majority of my artistic identity today is owed to her influence and the countless hours we've spent together musing about art and life. The poem, entitled "portrait of a poet" and here performed by my wife Megan Wintory, reads:

On the street

I met a neighbor

"Do you celebrate?" she asked

"You should!"

"Of course," I replied

"I can see the sky

I hear a bird sing."

Andy

The poem in today's track, to me, spoke to the curiosity and wonder with which we should maintain in our daily life. This was symbolized for me by the simple act of preparing to shake hands. I am terrible at meeting new people. Instead of truly listening to their introduction and learning their name, I am concerned with my own introduction, and what I am going to say. It takes work on my part to break this habit as I feel like in not really listening I am failing to be as observant and aware as this poem asks us to be.

PRECAMBRIAN Part 1 - HADEAN

Listen: Precambrian Part 1 - Hadean.Mp3

060/365

Austin

The sort of 'Brief History of the Earth' series begins today with a glance at the Hadean Eon, essentially the oldest period in Earth's life. At the onset, the planet's molten "underworld"-esque landscape completely lacked any life or atmosphere, and left no substantial physical record behind (earning the informal designation of "Cryptic Era"). This almost incomprehensibly ancient image of the Earth has long intrigued me as a composer, so at last I set it to music within the miniature context of Allogamy. The music is volatile, primal, lacking most of the familiar signposts we grapple towards as listeners.

Andy

So far tonight I dropped my external hard drive on concrete, it doesn't sound healthy, and I fried my alarm clock plugging it into a bad outlet. It melted the plug and threw some soot at me with a loud pop and a bright light. Definitely not in the mood to come up with an elaborate photo. Hence the iPhone extreme cop out. I'm moving and the chaos has got to be pretty close to the theorized Hadean. It looks like things are starting to cool down though, and should start taking form.