In my Room..

Coming back to my love all I found is a rape scene which I’m sure I’m responsible for. Watching her from the bed I don’t even recognise her skin because the paleness reflects through my drugs as a memory of colors that are now stored deep inside brown boxes collected from a body-builders shop down the road a couple of weeks ago. Reebok boxes. Constant is the noise that the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion New Single She Said makes by staring at me from the front of my fridge – what holds it up is a mixture of different types of blue-tack kind of adhesives collected from other posters that died of internal combustion in ancient times which I’m glad not to recall anymore. And OK. Here you go. Reebok Boxes. Now I’ll stop it ‘cause it start to sound too pretty fuckin’ dull to me as well but I’m talking about something that I’ve been sharing my the last five years of my life with, which in perspective is one sixth of my life for Satan sake! Reebok Boxes. Something that should have died three days ago is screaming out of the new boiler which I only managed to abuse for the last three weeks. I wish I could explain it in better words but this five years in here has been a great crying laugh of people swinging on a swing and three nights on a row with a drug of a girl in a room and a cat from the far east asking me the best way to die. There was also a birthday party where the walls started to throw out adrenaline to human beings and God sent Cupid to strike every single moving thing in the room but I refused out of cynicism or because I knew the one I love by myself anyway but she was already far far far far far far far away.  7 far are more than enough to me. Then I remember the crazy fights with my neighbour that couldn’t cope with the fact that I’m a crazy noisy punk-rock guitar-DRUMS player. I’ll miss u/I’m NOT GONNA MISS U. What I’m gonna miss and I don’t even know why is the rain coming through my rough but yeah..I’m gonna miss that. And the cold. So cold that I had to wear fingerless glows to play guitar. I’m gonna miss that too. But above all I’m gonna miss u. My love. My room. Before me your walls give space to an amazing filmmaker. Before that someone even changed sex in your presence. And before that people used to make clothes for the Nothing Hill Carnival. So yeah. This is my little elegy to you. My room. And I’m sorry if I exploded myself on your walls. In your air. In your hears. Now it’s all to you. You Room.

Alway Coca Cola -Brutal Version-

On the eve of opening of the final degree show of my Sound Arts course, I was asked to do a performance. I decided -actually on the same day- to do something related to my CANCAN installation. I was gonna do a guitar improv anyway, but I though about improvising around the 'Always Coca Cola' theme. I had both a guitar amp and a bass amp at my disposal, and MANY distortion pedals in between. Here's a video and some pics of the event. The video is a small fraction as the piece was 20 minutes long. Brutal as my friends said..my friend Sarah even left a note for me: 'You raped my ears'..signing off..

CANCAN and the death of the Butt Kickers

So here we go. The installation happened, and I enjoyed the opening really much. All the works of my classmates was really interesting and the audience seemed to be engaged and to interact with the installations - when this was wanted by the artists. Unfortunately I pushed the tactile transducer a bit too much and..well..KABOOM..taking down the piece as of this moment because the rain got through the container and I don't want to die electrocuted in a metal container only a week after the end of my degree..here some pics of the thing for posterity. special thanks to Philip Holmes for making the main structure and to Acme Bars -Indo Pub- for sponsoring part of it.It seemed that the crowd enjoyed the piece in spite of all the technical problems. The composition track had different responses, with some people really getting into it and other despising it for his socio-political contents - while working on a mixer and various cable connections I overheard some students calling the piece 'pretentious' and saying that my business cards are really good for making 'roaches'- which it is probably true, but I stopped smoking pot a long time ago (why?)..mm..anyway enjoy the pics..signing off..

Leslie Shatz and the scattering of my undead brainsssshhhh...

Leslie in studio..maybe recording pool table' sounds??!

In a moment of boredom at my parent’s house back in Italy I turned on the TV and started zapping through the tragedy of the Sky channels. Suddenly everything stopped and I snapped out of the room and found myself underneath a shower of broken glasses cutting through my brains. This is kind of what I felt the first time I watched the shower scene from Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park. Without taking away any credits from Van Sant’s amazing visuals, what makes this scene so special to me is the sound design and the resulting perfect synesthetic marriage between the image and the sound.  Searching through the imdb database I soon found out that the man behind this sonic magic is a regular Van Sant’s collaborator called Leslie Shatz. One of his first jobs was as dialogue editor for ‘Apocalypse Now’ and the year after for ‘Star Wars: the empire strikes back’. Since then it seems like he worked in loads of productions that I really enjoyed. As sound designer for The assassination of Jesse James, Gomorrah, The Road, Elephant, Dracula, and only as sound re-recordist for others, which are definitely not in my top 10 best films ever (Rambo 4, Van Helsing, Hidalgo). Finally I’m watching Paranoid Park from beginning to end for the first time. Because last time I started watching more than half way through, many things now start to make sense, but hey! If you didn’t watch it yet try to do it from the shower scene and then rewind to the beginning the second time around. So here’s a video of the scene. Enjoy. Ps Crank up the volume pleeease!!! Signing off..

The Red Coca Cola Cans Only Bins Legacy..

As I pretty much reached the amount of red coke cans that I needed for the ‘CANCAN’ installation, I think it is now time to draw conclusion on how the three red bins that I installed around London worked out in the end.

RED BIN 1 – installed at HFC Halal Fried Chicken Shop, Whitechapel: didn’t go well at all. Loads of chicken bones and residues of half eaten burgers and few cans, and the owner threw the bin in the street after a week (luckily I managed to recover it).

RED BIN 2 – installed at  PFC2 Perfect Fried Chicken Shop, Whitechapel: this was excellent!!! For some reasons the owner convinced the customers to use it only for cans – not only red of course, but this is the place from which I collected most of them. It worked so well that the owner decided to start recycling, and as a gift I left him the bin. Thanks Abdul. You’re a good man.

RED BIN 3 – LCC Canteen, Elephant and Castle. This was actually the worst. Even with the red signs all around the college student just couldn’t get it – or they couldn’t give a damn about it, or simply they can’t read, they’re just pretending.

I was gonna take it away, but Simon –the manager- asked me to keep it there, as he’s also into recycling and he exclaimed: they MUST learn to use it!

So this is the results, and the unexpected legacy that this bin created.

I’m a pessimist, and I don’t think recycling will save the world, but it doesn’t take much effort to throw something in the left hand side bin instead that in the right hand side one.

A big thanks to all the people and friends that collected empty cans for me, especially Drew and Giovanna. Great score. Some more cans might come from outside London, but not sure if they’ll make it on time. Signing off..

CANCAN in Tasmania!!!

It’s been a while since the last post, but catastrophe struck!!! Two of the main technical things I needed for my sound installations got blocked by custom in..Tasmania! It took a while to get through all the papers (and the damn fine) but now they arrived. The two thingies in question is a pair of Aura Pro tactile transducers - also known as ‘butt-kickers’ or ‘bass shakers’(I put a pack of cigarette next to them so you got an idea of the dimensions).

They’re fundamental for my project as from my research seems like the perfect one to shake the mountain of red coke cans. Oh yeah! I changed the name of the project from “You CAN walk (in your corporate grave)” to “CANCAN” for two reasons: first I like the new one more anyway, and second because for health and safety reasons you CAN’T actually walk (on my deathly sound-installation-grave).

I’m in contact with a carpenter, and next week we’ll try the Transducers on different kinds of wood – and maybe metal as well. The transducer will be excited by infrasounds coming from an amplifier. These infrasounds will be part of my final composition for the piece, which is a cut-up of different coca-cola adverts and some speeches from various U.S. presidents. The sound of the coke cans rattle should be then amplified using some contact mics(the red/black snake-looking things you see in the picture). here is where it gets tricky, as I’m not aware as yet of the sound resulting. I’ll try to manipulate it using some guitar pedals fx. But that’s all for now. Time is running faster than a tsunami wave but I’ll keep surfing on my see of coke cans. Signing off..

The Red CokeCan Chicken Massacre

So..a terrible toothache had the best out of me for the last two weeks, but finally I'm my brain is back into function. Two of the red bins are installed. They're in two of the chicken shops around the East London Mosque in Whitechapel. As I work in the pub next door I though it was a good idea keep the locations as local as possible - if the bin is full I can just pop by to the shops and collect/put a new bin bag. Today's the first day. Cross fingers and I really hope not to find too many chicken bones covered in mayonnaise in the bins..signing off..

YEAH!!!

So YEAH!!! I gave the last touch and sort out bits and bops and pops and some spray can’s retouches and now I’m sitting in front of YEAH!!! at LCC’s media dept atrium. Pretty happy with it and setting it up was easier than I thought – got a moment of panic as the red speaker wasn’t really loud but it came out to be a faulty XLR cable.

It got a really good reception from the students passing by - some dancing and loads of pics and videos taken.

An MA student in photography took LOADS of pictures actually (both digital and film), and she said she’ll send me some prints – which is $%^&%* AMAZING!!!

It is a coincidence that today is Valentine’s Day, and I guess part of the audience might think it is linked to the occasion – should have made an heart-shaped speech bubble..

I already wrote about the piece, but I feel I need to say something more about the tape cassette itself. What I came up with is two different compositions –one using pure cut-ups from songs and the other manipulating the tracks with MAX/MSP patches and analog pedal effects-. I also decided to give lots of  ‘silence’ between the tracks, so that I could surprise the audience with some sudden (and really short) bursts of ‘yeahs’.

Oh!!! Last thing!! I used the cassette’s case to hold some biz cards..last minute idea. I love those rare moments..

ps for some reason the walkman is keen on grabbing the signal from the mobile phones around pretty LOUD!!! I'm really enjoying it actually!!!

ok..or better..YEAH!!!..signing off.

The Curse of the Red Spray CAN!!!

YEAH!!! Things are finally moving on in the installations’ realms..

I got two on the go, one due for next week –Valentine’s day- in the Atrium of the London College of Communication’s Media Block, and the other due for the end of may, of which you can read more on details by scrolling down to the previous post, but bare with me and you’ll understand while I’m already feeling the pressure of the task sending signals of fear and doom straight down my spine..

The first installation is called ‘Yeah!!!, and consists of a Walkman and a speech bubble floating in mid air, with the Walkman positioned as if ‘speaking on the bubble’. The speech bubble says –funny enough- YEAH!!!

They’re both red, and the reason is because advertising researchers believe that the colour RED augments the number of sales of a product, or anyway it attract the attention of the consumer more than any other colour. What I’m trying to do with this project is building an association between the colour RED and the word YEAH, which is a word that can be found in millions of popular –and not- songs and sound composition in general.

I didn’t do an appropriate research on charts or an anthropological study of the effects of the word ‘Yeah’ on people, but it seems to appear in many number one songs. One thing that I felt personally is by casually listening to a track of which I don’t know the lyrics and when the ‘Yeah’ hook kicks in well..yeah!!!..I can sing-a-long for a bit as well!!! More research is needed on this..

Coming back to the actual installation, I might say is an audio-visual piece, as it works with both of the before-mentioned senses. The sonic aspect of the installation lay in a tape playing through stereo speakers from the red floating Walkman Cassette Player itself, and it is a composition based on cut-ups of ’yeahs’ from different songs from different genres of music. This is actually the part of the project that got me going a bit mad in the last two weeks. I worked on something that holds similarity –at least sonically and aesthetically- to ‘YEAH’ two years ago, and it was an installation called ‘Tapegrinder’ (you can find a video in older posts), but that was based on the interaction between audience and three cassette players, so the random element was wanted. Here I’m not sure it is wanted. A first version of the ‘YEAH’ piece had three cassette players on repeat instead of one playing three different compositions, but it could have ended in chaos as portable cassette players don’t have the word ‘synch’ in their vocabulary, so I went minimal: one walkman – zero walkmen wasn’t an option..

My struggle is still in the mixing process of all this cut-ups, as I’m trying to find a shape for the composition with which I’m aesthetically satisfied with: I guess the core problem is that I’ve never really explored skills such as time-stretching and cross-fading of multiple tracks (or better, I did it in sound for film pieces, but here I’m in front of a SERIOUSLY different tasks). So ‘YEAH!!!’, still got four days to ponder and cut and paste songs – but at least the foam core for the speech bubble has been glued and cut and painted (..mm..the damn thing wasn’t easy to cut as I thought, and I didn’t know about ‘knifes that heat themselves’, as a friend doing sculpture suggested it as the perfect tool the day after my cutting mayhem. So..mixed results but I’m happy with it).

Monday the 14^th will be the judge – or Armageddon I might say.

Ok, back to the second installation: working title ‘I CAN walk (in my corporate grave)’.

I found out that is not gonna be 100 per cent sure that I’ll have access to the big red container outside of the LCC building – and to make things even heavier is not sure 100 per cent if the container will be red at all as they’re planning to repaint it!!!

But I don’t despair; I always had a PlanB, which consists of having it on a smaller scale inside the school gallery. And anyway, the focal point of the project now is: where and how am I going to get thousands of red empty cans of coke? ..and the answer is..

Where people throw them away! Which is in the rubbish bin, usually situated not more of a mile away from the purchasing place and along the route of consumption of the fizzy product. So, even if I don’t really care, most of my friends pointed out that is not cool -and actually pretty gross- to constantly go through rubbish bins around London in search of my Red Corporate Grail, especially when I’m with them. Also is not proving effective, as like most people around this town I too have a job or other things to do during the day – there are special cases of people that actually go through the rubbish all the time, like our friend the rubbish collector and, of course, some homeless persons.

Solution? I bought my own bins (RED BINS) and I’ll install ‘em around town. After some research I came to the conclusion that the best locations for the bins is in Kebab and Chicken shops, especially the ones open 24 hours a day. The only thing I need is the permission from the owner or manager of the business to do it. Some thought I’m crazy, some just got scared, but most of them seemed happy to help me out – some even thought that I’m famous, and got really excited about me telling them about their premises been in the credits of the installation. Another obvious place is the school’s canteen, and one of the RED BINS should be in place by Monday – many thanks to the canteen’s manager Simon for supporting the cause.

This will be accompanied by some posters, of which you can see the work in progress in the pictures. Thanks to Nadine for designing this and the stencil for the bins: You’re the queen of Photoshop. I’m the lord of rubbish.

Signin’off..

CAN CAN!!!

So here is what I got in mind for my site specific installations due in May..

I’ll get back pretty soon with thoughts on a recent research on some peculiar objects called BUTTKICKERS!!!! which I'm planning to use for what follows..

As I've been focusing both my dissertation - and most of the compositions that I’ve created in the last two years - on popular culture and the recycle of sound material through sonic manipulation, I thought about having my final installation as a site-specific piece around the iconic image of the Coca-cola can. As source of inspiration I definitely have to cite Andy Warhol, especially the 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans piece, and Christian Marclay’s Telephone.

The installation I have in mind has at its core an environmental message, and it is a direct attack on the corporate world we live in.

The provisional title is: We CAN Walk (in our corporate graves)

It consists of two separate factors:

- Thousands of empty cans of Coke
- A composition played through loudspeakers (which would be a mix of Foley work on cans of Coke, Coke company Jingles, and probably an overall structure similar to Mozart's
Requiem). I need also to find out if such a mass of cans of Coke can be molecularly moved by subsonic infrasounds.

I considered health and safety because of the sharp edges of the used tin cans, and I thought about RED working suits, RED boots and RED gardening gloves.
I also thought of building some sonic Headphones – which are called CANS in popular English slang funny enough- with two cans at the two ends, but that could be another piece, maybe with the title "I CAN hear you!”
The piece would need some carpentry work that I can do with some friends, as I need to elevate the container floor, and then having it descending in a sea of empty cans of Coke - of course at a reasonable level (again) for health and safety reasons.
Regarding the composition techs specifics for diffusion, it would be stereo with a sub-woofer. So I'd only need an amp, two speakers + sub, a CD player.
I'll look through recycling companies to see what's the deal on getting such a big amount of cans, and also if I can manage to get the council to collect them at the end of the show for recycling purposes. I also thought about asking local Kebab shop to keep some plastic red rubbish containers  -which I will provide- to collect and separate the cans from the rest of the garbage (I’m pretty sure more than a million cans of coke are consumed in the London area each and everyday). I could do the same thing in the school building and offices workspaces.

I got a friend who's a lawyer that can enlighten me regarding the risks I could incur into by using the Coca-cola brand - Even if I’ve been told by LCC staff that it shouldn't be a problem because LCC is a private space.

The room will also get darker and darker as people go through - Think of Miroslaw Balka's installation at the Turbine Hall.

The perfect site for this piece would be the red container now standing outside of the school building. I’ve been in touch with the responsible of the site and I’m not waiting for everything to be green-lightened.

Signing off.

..embers..

I read recently a dissertation from Paul O'Brien, a student that finished the BA Sound Arts course last year. I got to say that apart for being a well organized and thoughtful thesis, it was particularly pleasant to read and, without wanting to sound too lame or sentimental..well..here we go..yes..TOUCHING. Reading this brought me to his website Hearing Beckett, where I found more information on his work. What really got to me was how all his work through the course of his last year at school results so homogeneous and..here we go again..'clean'. 

'Solution Of Continuity' was his Final Major Project for his degree.

 It is an installation that does not use any sound..only dust as he argues. It kind of relates with certain thoughts on my dissertation, in particular the recorded voice of someone dead. And the value that piece of tape or vinyl or data on a hard disk can gain with time -commercial value or spiritual or sentimental or..who knows.. 

I know it doesn't make sense to you reader now but I'll try to make it more clear as soon is clearer to me but yeah! sound installations with no sounds! need to do some research on that! I leave you with some words from Mr O'Brien himself. I'm sure it'll make more sense.

"Solution of continuity is a silent sculptural work inspired by Beckett’s stage play, ‘That Time’. ‘Solution of continuity’ is a medical term defined as, ‘A division of bones or of soft parts that are normally continuous’. Beckett harnesses the term in his stage directions for the play to describe the constant flow of words from three ‘moments of the same voice’, proceeding ‘without solution of continuity’. This idea is turned on its head in the piece wherein the two ‘normally continuous’ spools are literally separated, thus there is ‘not a sound’, ‘nothing only dust’."

BA3 Show 2010 - Paul O'Brien - Solution of Continuity from Sound Arts & Design @ LCC on Vimeo.

Publish Post

..for the record..about him..

U turns took him to the 18th Century. He'll stay there for a while 'cause he just wasn't made for this times. He will take breaks too by sleeping for a thousand years seeking alternatives to prescription drugs that taste and smell too much like non-smokers' deaths. He also promises to stop smashing whatever he finds on his path and start gigging again instead. So yeah! stop sucking Satan's cock and book me! But don't ask me how many people I'm gonna bring or I'll make you kill yourself. Teleporting's so much fun..

Bunker's Bonkers..

I’m doing some research on WWII London’s bunkers for a sound installation.. it was pretty handy for this purpose visiting an exhibition set in a bunker not far from Café Oto in Dalston. Could be cool having access to the building and play some war sounds in the space itself and then to re-record them. I’ll probably need some LOUD speakers to play back sounds of sirens and spitfires and V2 rockets, and small radios or beaten up devices to reproduce Radio London dispatches and some background 40’s music. Winston Churchill’s voice is a must..

I’m drifting away from the idea of having it as a 8-channels piece, and moving towards something more visual which should utilize lots of sub-bass and infrasounds.. it also have to be a claustrophobic small and dark space.. basically the public should feel like BEING in a bunker for real. Need to get in contact with the imperial war museum and other related entities to see if I can get some funds or support of some kind..oh yeah!! I definitely need to get one of those metal portable sirens! If you live in the London fields area and you hear an alert for an air-blitz don’t panic. That’s probably me..signing off.

If Tom Araya is our Elvis then Zu must be our Beatles..

Ok..as the next blog is taking too long to get out of this mish mash slumbering mammoth moaning through the membranes of my brain I’ll give ya a taste of something related to it..don’t get too over excited though..more is coming..zoon..

From Zu to Zoo..

An interview to Zu by Luca Zoo Franzoni

With Jacopo Battaglia (Drums) and Massimo Pupillo (Bass)   

Brescia, 18^th December 2009

Zoo: I remember seeing you live for the first time in 2002 as support band for Girls Against Boys. It was at Leoncavallo in Milan on the 2nd of November …

Jacopo: Shit! The day of the dead!

Massimo: We played at 22:31 pm. I remember. If you want I can tell you the names of all the people that were there…

Z: I tell you guys, you ruined my night. After watching you, GVSB weren’t as good as I thought they would be. And I do love that band! Anyway…Let’s go back even further in time. I know you started playing together by working on theatre productions.

M: At the really early beginnings!

J: Even before making our first record. From ’97 onwards.

M: It’s been two years in which we basically dismembered Gronge, a band from the Rome scene of the 80’s, and then we found each other playing together in this new formation. We developed this musical madness, and one by one the other members left and here we are, the furious crazy three. So yeah, there’s been that period from ’97 in which we made music for plays, and in the meantime we worked on the first record.

Z: That record being Bromio.

J: Exactly. It didn’t even have a name at the time. And we never thought to arrive were we are now. Our aim was doing a gig out of Rome.

Z: I remember receiving from Wallace Records a copy of Igneo (Zu’s album from 2002) on 180 grams vinyl. Heavy!

M: Yep. Heavy…

Z: Ok. Talking about present days, you signed with Mike Patton’s Ipecap Records. Patton himself also joined you on stage during the tour. How was touring with someone like him?

M: It was great. We’re really good friends now.

Z: Any plan of working together again?

M: Yes. We hope. Well yeah! Definitely! With him we found ourselves in situations that we saw as enormous before.

Z: Ok…Stupid question. A Spinal Tap kind of question… Why at heavy rock and metal gigs the majority of the crowd is male? I was talking about it with a friend while watching a Lightning Bolts gig…I know…Dumb question…

J: Well. We like the pussy. Let’s make that clear. (laughs)

Z: You played with Lightning Bolts, didn’t you?

J: Yes, many times.

Z: In London you did that gig at The Astoria (R.I.P.) where you were introduced by Danny De Vito…

M: No! The Danny De Vito thing was in Rome!  At The Astoria we played with Fantomas and Locust. But Denny De Vito no…he wasn’t there.

J: I think we did the last gig ever there. Then they crashed it down to build a Shopping Mall. (laughs)

Z: Five days ago I saw Polvo playing in London. While having a chat with them, it came out that one works in a Museum and another is a therapist. So…how are you dealing with this crippled music biz.

J: We live of this. We don’t have time to be exploited by someone. We exploit each other with great pleasure. It took some years to arrive where we are, but… from when you saw us live seven years ago, everything, thank god, went better and better. This is our life. The chances at the time were working as waiters in some shitty restaurant in Rome or be penniless musicians. We chose the second. Ant until now we’ve been doing quiet well.

M: At the same time you make lots of sacrifices in your private life.

J: Well, me especially. He’s married, and the other got a baby. The only loser is me, talking about private life. (laughs)

M: And our families claim us back home.

Z: Talking about music formats, I’m not a collector of records, but I love to play the few I got, and usually I let them play from beginning to end. There’s a thing that I like to call “Skipping Track Syndrome”, referring to the habit of users of iPod and MP3 players in general of downloading loads of albums and songs, and then just skip them without really listening to any. What’s your point of view on this, how would you feel if someone would start skipping an all album by Zu.

M: He’s a piece of shit and he got to die. We like the 78rpm.

Z: Yes, the heavy black piece of shellac.

M: 78rpm and it got to be listened on a gramophone. In Mono.

Z: Yeah! Back to mono!

M: Back to mono! (laughs)

J: But if you think about it, ok, maybe you’re a bit younger, but the generation of the mid 70’s, is the last one that had a contact with that something that was before Internet. After that it went from the mid 90’s through the Noughties, where the digital downloading became massive. I still have a relation with the object, with the record.

Z: True. So, thinking about album covers, do you see it as part of the record?

M: Definitely.

J: Yes. Certainly.

Z: While with the digital all you got is a really small icon of the artwork…if you’re lucky.

J: There’s a completely different relationship with the music. Anyway music should be live only.

Z: Talking about mix tapes, did you ever do one for your friends or girlfriends?

M: We should go back to cassettes. Thousands and thousands of chicks conquered with mix tapes! Tapes where you had Mina (famous 60’s Italian singer) followed by Indigesti (80’s Italian punk hardcore band). (laughs)

Z: Any cover you remember designing for one of those cassettes?

M: No, I have always been pretty shit at that…

J: Me too, but I used to make photocopies of pictures. You know, giving an intellectual feeling. You’re sixteen years old in the suburbs of Rome, and you make a mix tape with a copy of an Escher’s paint as cover.

Z: If you could chose a souvenir statuette of an important building or monument, which one would be and to who would you throw it at? (Reference to the Berlusconi Cathedral-in-the-face accident)

M: I want to throw a Nuraghe (megalithic edifice found in Sardinia), but a real one.

Z: To whom?

M: Too many people…

J: Way too many people…

M: But, if I’m not wrong, there are 2400 Nuraghi in Sardinia. They might be enough.

Z: Radio. I love the radio. Unfortunately it’s not easy to find a decent radio channel.

J: But nowadays you can find them only on the internet.

Z: Yes, but I love the idea of transmitting on airwaves

M: There’s Resonance.

Z: Yep. It’s great to have Resonance in London. But why’s so much rubbish on the radio!? I remember going around London with this old cassette walkman, and it had a radio on it. Unfortunately, most of the time the only thing decent was the classical music channel.

J: In Italy there isn’t any Radio phonic culture.

Z: Well, X-Factor is everywhere. No place is safe. Are you planning to go to X-Factor?

M: We’ve been invited this year! (laughs) We’re even in talks for “I’m a celebrity (get me out of there)”…

J: Yes, because Simona Ventura (Italian TV host) sells coke to our saxophone player. He got a really good deal. So now we’re all great friends.

M: While the Heroin we get it from Morgan (from the Italian X-Factor). Really good stuff. Actually if someone lives around Milan we can give him his number. Great quality stuff.

Z: Have you got a new tour in program?

M: No. We don’t tour. We stay home.

J: We spent the last ten years in the living room.

M: We watch TV…

The Ants are much more important than Us..

I went to a lecture by Sound Artist Max Eastley today and it was quiet inspiring.

I was especially stricken by his installations that in David Toop’s words are ‘sound sculptures that are as engagingly beautiful as they are technologically simple’.

The one in the picture consists of blocks of ice with stones placed within the layers. As the ice melt a miked metal surface captures the sound, which is then diffused through loudspeakers.

Answering to a question in regard of the meaning of the use of the stones, he replied –and here I’m paraphrasing- that is a view of the world, where the stones represent an unexpected event: we hear the sounds of drops hitting the metal surface and suddenly one of the stones falls producing a different and louder sound.

It made me think about my own sound installations, and it kind of putted me off on the use of pre-recorded loops. It excites me more the possibility of using a natural occurring event in the simplest and economic way possible so..yeah! Thanx a lot for today’s lecture Mr. Max Eastley! I thought your Arc mono string instrument was great too. Cross fingers for airport custom controls.

I also felt really touched by your digression on global warming and the fact that humanity would probably need five more planets to learn how to use them. And yes, the Ants are absolutely much more important then us people for Earth’s ecosystem. Signing off.

I promised myself to write a blog everyday, but extenuating circumstances got this to reach the web almost one month since the last word I typed..

I feel really bad about it, but the thing is that I’ve been sucked in a wormhole that puked me out in 18^th Century’s London. To summarize I’m working as an extra  (or “supporting artist” as some up-their-ass people insist on clarify) on the set of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean 4’: I’m in few words one of those blurry human figures that you see hanging on the background during crowd scene in movies.

It can be a fun job and it is pretty well paid for what you do –staying in your ‘first position’ till you hear ‘BACKGROUND ACTION!!!’ eating loads of food, reading lots of book and meeting loads of interesting people.

As I’m doing a Sound Arts course is also an interesting opportunities to see professional sound recordists at work, but in big productions like these it is hard to get a grip of what’s going on, and especially in this film case seems like the emphasis is more in sound post production.

Luckily enough the shooting was taking place mainly at Greenwich, next to the Trinity College of Music, and I had the opportunities to see amazing piano player rehearsing from one of the windows next to the set. I heard performances of Richter, Debussy, Satie and many others that I couldn’t pin down.

The best thing about this job is the network opportunity that gives you, as apart from some actors and performing arts students the rest of the extras wild bunch are persons coming from a musical background: I met three people from my same course, professional musicians, and elderly people of which some jammed with great players and composers such as Miles Davies and Keith Moon.

It is not always fun though: after the 3^rd day in the same ‘first position’ next to the same people dressed in the same way you feel a bit like Bill Murray in ‘Ground Hog Day’, and you wonder if there’s any way to get it right and get out of there.

Another thought I had, not being interesting in an acting career, is that I feel like we extras are sheep moved around the set by assistant directors that assume the role of dogs in this whacky metaphor. The personal assistant to the director is nothing less than our shepherd.

I almost had the job as Johnny Depp’s body double, and that could have gave me enough money to cover all my school fees and loads more. I still made enough to buy some material for a final project, like an installation or studio time.

So yeah! I think this is a great job if you’re a student and you want to make some money while having time to study.

Plus where could I have met someone so supernatural like Keith Richards if it wasn’t for this? Wild Horses...

Suicide VS SubBass

Back in school! Woohoo!! At the moment in the library writing this while listening ‘Strumming Music’ by minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine..

I’m in such in a good mood that I borrowed all the books available on the sociological subject of suicide. I couldn’t find anything that explores the subject of suicide in relation to popular music but I found some really interesting e-journals. I’ll have a look at this one in particular:

'I'd Sell You Suicide': Pop Music and Moral Panic in the Age of Marilyn Manson

                              -Robert Wright-

I think this is the subject that really pushes my buttons at the moment..

A plan B for the dissertation was writing on the subject of Sonic Warfare, but reading the book of the same title by Steve Goodman I had little invisible insects crawling all over me while spreading boredom and sending me straight to Orpheus’ holiday camp.

No. Really.. Some of the chapters were actually interesting but half way through it became repetitive, and I really couldn’t see myself spending the next five months researching infrasound and sub bass. I’ll have a look at the last year Sound Arts students’ dissertation – which should be available in the library by now – but I think I’ll rather writing about something that really interests me. 10.000 words is not such a big deal, but if you don’t feel the subject they could seem like a million. Relativity theory all the way I guess..

Video Ideas for my band The Shit..

The Shit!!! Here we go..

This is my neighbour’s car. COOL FIRST CLASS MACHINE HEY!!!

I want to ask him if I can put it on some kind of bumpers –I don’t know what I’m talking about at the moment but it’ll come to me-

I want some huge screen around it with the projections of black and white images of the sun bursting crazy or other freaky alien images (check my link to Semiconductor -'brilliant noise' and 'Black Rain' videos- to see what I'm talking about)as the background visible from the windshields etc..

Marion -drummer- should sit on the back but leaning towards the front seats.

Leo -bass- on the driver seat and yours truly next to him.

When complete, I would love to have someone translating the song’s lyrics in sign language on a little box at the left of the screen – a bit like that one that you see on late night TV programs..

Think Tarantino's Death Proof..

ps in case something bad happens to me like death or something my last wish is a drive on the back of this evil thing.

memories..WHAT???

I've been thinking about memory all morning..mainly because mine is really bad and I usually tend to distort things..

Example: a friend of mine keeps telling me that he owes me money 'cause he sold one of my guitar to buy smack. well..really nice for him to do this – and then tell me .But the problem is that for what I remember I sold the very same guitar myself to another friend, who needed it as a tour back up for a similar one he has - by the way I'm talking about a sunburst Ampeg by Burns from 1963.
The only way in which I could find out what really happened would be by cross-referencing the different versions of the story consulting all the people involved, but one fact remains: something in my brain didn’t manage to store this information properly..

Another thing that intrigues me about memories is how they can be affected by the senses: a smell or a picture, a sound or a song could trigger images of past experiences or forgotten events..
This shamble of recorded data floating in my cortex’s membranes reminds me of my Tapegrinder installation – you can check it out on my audiovisual section –
I really want to explore this more and link it with my dissertation and the final major project of my course.

Glad I wrote it down you know..just in case I forget it.