Blog

Sat 21 Mar – BEMF (Brussels Electronic Music Festival) - Day 2. Bozar, Brussels.

Second night BEMF, Brussels.
Coach Bertels, Webber and C14 got up bright and early at eight o clock in the morning. Fit as they were, a stroll through the park was the one and only thing that can wake a festival visitor. Feeding the doves with little crumbs of bread, enjoying a fresh coffee and the morningsun, Bertels discovered some Chinese like girls doing Tai Chi in a very erotic but distant way.
After several coffees, croissants, chocolate buns and ciabatta’s, Bertels went into the city to see just what was going on there. A market was being set up and restaurant owners sprayed their part of the street clean with water.
After all these little morning joys, the three musicateers went to see the Royal Galleries, a big nice shopping mall in the centre of the city. Having seen that, the cathedral was on the list of most wanted items to see. The church was big, white and powerfull in it’s glory. Bertels waited outside as Webber and C14 were baptised. Outside the church big yellow, red and blue busses transported people around the village in an ultimate attempt to spot all the sightseeing hotspots in an one and a half hour drive. The three musicateers went on the yellow bus and they got very cold on the way to the atomium. The day before this magnificant work of architecture was already conquored, but the three stayed cool and looked slightly surprised again when the shear beauty of the spheres was seen against the clear blue spring sky.
At the Royal Greenhouse they got off the buss and found the Greenhouse to be closed for public, the Japanese tower was also closed. This throwback was unbearable for the three musicateers, and as a simple reaction of revenge they took the A-train back to the city centre. It was now time for a snack and C14 suggested a waffle, the waffles were great. A bit later Bertels suggested fries on a baquette, the bun was great too. Webber didn’t felt like supper, so he ate nothing, just to start eating an hour later, anoying the others with that.
In a local pub, songs from the radio had to be quessed, a funny game in which Coach Bertels has a leading role. The fish restaurant across the street was pre selected as the dinner place and with that settled, beer flowed rich.
First the three musicateers went back to the motel to seek some information on the internet and prepare for the second BEMF night. At the fish restaurant, everything seemed okay and Bertels just had enough beer in one glass.
The long waiting for concerts the previous day had a dangerous impact on Webber, now he was sure everything would be delayed for at least three hours. We’ll go there around midnight and still miss nothing, he said. But Bertels was anxious not to let this happen since the first show was scheduled for eight PM.
As our three heroes arived at the BEMF ticket centre to exchange the tickets for wrist ribbons again, a line waiting folks could be seen from the lobby. Not a good sight, since this indicated delay. Luckily the doors opened at nine and eveybody got inside quick and clean.
First act of the night was The Black Dog, two folks doing a live performance from scratch using electronic gadgets on their laptops. Their first part was good, but their second part became to much and plenty beat trance.
Second act was Dopplereffekt, a very nice girl with a black mask standing en-profile to the crowd doing nothing special at all. Some old bloke did all the magic with his right hand by floating over the instruments without touching anything. C14 later said that it must have been playback.
The three musicateers were tired and sleepy, they could barely stay awake during the concerts, so tonight they go to bed early to enjoy every bit of Alva Noto tommorow.
Good night musicateers!

The Past is All I See

Ah yes, the inevitable "best of" list. Now, in some ways this one differs in the regard that it is not all about stuff that came out in '08. Not sure if that's a critique on this year's releases or simply a matter of changing tastes on my part. I'd say it's a combination of the latter as well as my propensity to gravitate toward quality releases from years past.

As such, the 2008 list is a bit slim:

(In alphabetical order)

Brian Grainger - Porous Variations
Lawrence English - Kiri No Oto
Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV
Portishead - Third
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Real Emotional Trash

And a trio of fantastic reissues:

Gas - Nah Und Fern
Pavement - Brighten the Corners: Nicene Creedence Ed.
Stars of the Lid - Music for Nitrous Oxide

And that's it for 2008!

Now, for the earlier stuff. They certainly aren't new releases, but they were new to me. The phrase "late to the party" comes to mind.

Arpanet - Inertial Frame
Biosphere - Substrata
Der Zyklus - II
Dopplereffekt - Calabi-Yau Space
Dopplereffekt - Gesamtkunstwerk
Drexciya - Neptune's Lair
Elecktroids - Elektroworld
Havaer - Cultivar
Hecq - 0000
High on Fire - The Art of Self Defense
Japanese Telecom - Virtual Geisha
Loscil - Submers
Monolake - Momentum
Siren - Living Light
Ulver - Bergtatt
Ulver - Shadows of the Sun

I'm really fighting the temptation to finish things off with an elongated opine on the various things I've picked up on my musical journey, so I guess I'll leave that for future journals. Stay tuned! Feel free to comment and thanks for reading.

When I first got into releasing music I did so under the name Nigil Caenaan. In my first couple of years of making music, I kept that whole side of my life hidden. I didn’t have any “musically inspired” friends so I would just save my music sessions for myself. Late nites I’d camp out in the studio and create all sorts of madness. Most of it was a form of music therapy I’m sure, but bits of it made it to tape.

If you're into music that sounds like an old Juan Atkins track. Or are familiar with the System 7 / Derrick May, The Other Peoples Place or Dopplereffekt, you would definiitely appreciate these early pieces.

In preserving them and giving them a life beyond my hard drive I initially had them online in the My Music section @ Lx7.ca. But I had a sudden realization and added them to Last.fm as a release with Humanjava Enterprises.

Forget Regret is a 5 track EP of music ranging from 1998 to 2004. The EP contains tracks: Lost Souls, Breath On It, Wikkd Things, Hieroglyph, and Dont Break Down.



Most of the tracks were sequenced with a Yamaha QY700 They're all in the same style as other tracks I've released like Januarys End, or Outta Control. And were written and performed live to tape.

- Dopplereffekt
- Autechre
- Marion Cocaïne
- DJ  
- Can
- !!!

2007 WEIGHTED CHART

1. John Maus
2. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
3. The Human League
4. Scott Walker
5. Section 25
6. This Heat
7. The Feelies
8. Brian Eno
9. Trentemoller
10. The Residents
11. Hildegard von Bingen
12. Artefact (french)
13. dälek
14. Deerhoof
15. Dopplereffekt
16. R. Stevie Moore
17. The Art Bears
18. Trans Am
19. Holy Shit
20. Sebastien Tellier
21. Diabologum
22. Antipop Consortium
23. The Chameleons
24. New Musik
25. Super Creep

My name is bigsexyshaq. My name has been involved in many projects, from the outstanding "Top Ten Reasons Why Radiohead Sucks" to the even greater "Who is Kanye West REALLY?". As you can tell from the titles, the stuff I write is pretty sharp and to the point. I don't deal with nonsense. Actually, correction, I didn't deal with nonsense until riiiiiiiight NOW. THIS article will be thoroughly supporting the aesthetic ideal of nonsense. Why am I against sense? Here's a hint: Sense is a non-existant entity. If the word "sense" doesn't make sense to you, here's a better word: delusion. People are in delusion of all kinds of things, but more than anything else, they are in delusion about SENSE. What am I talking about!? Hm... I forgot myself. Well, let me trace back the details... well, my name is... bigsexyshaq... nonsense writing OH people believe that there is sense but really all there is is is NONSENSE. Nonsense only makes sense to those who can accurately conceptualize nonsense, which involves the forming of zero concepts, but instead, forming a concept of anti-concept, which is why you are not able to form a concept out of speaking. Who is speaking? I'll give you a hint: It's you! You're speaking. Bigsexyshaq wrote these words, but it is your voice who is speaking the words in your mind, and let me tell ya, there is not a SINGLE word that is being processed directly. It is just one nonsense gesture after another. Thank you for entering "Why Nonsense is More Important than CENTS" and I encourage you to continue your read. If you get tired along the way, here's a suggestion: tiredness is a logical process... realize that, and then MOVE ON TO ENTERING.

As I grow older, I realize more and more that becoming tired of logical debate is a logical process. I was recently in a debate over whether logic is necessary in music. My argument was Of course not! The soul is its own structure and any constraining structure on top of the soul will damage its imprint on the soul. What do I mean by "on top of the soul"? Take a guess. What prevents the connectivity of the universal soul? Obviously, mind structure, but not just any mind structure. Are you ready to find out why a soul may feel as if it is detached from the universal soul? Are you ready? Bob foggottum fluff gorf eef constantinople pople soaple in a Dope-Dope-Dopel. Health food stores are keeping slime business out of lime business in the passive light of the heart-covered, like a book that is covered by a grocery bag, moon. If you understood that last bit of dialogue, hopefully you understand why you understood it. Do you understand why? Take a look, a bit below the brain. It's within the thing called the body. I cannot explain to you in words where your body is, but I am sure, if you look deeply enough, you can... figure it out? No... you can understand.

In my mid-20s, I typed up streams of nonsense and submitted these outpours into a group called Gunge klahner flambottom kafloowey oowey charchum. If you look into this group, you will find seven posts by muah. I know that doesn’t seem like a prominent stash, but it is actually quite a burdensome load. These seven posts have defined the concept of writing on a large scale. The internet no longer is restrained by AIM grammar, and now, because of me, internet writing is able to cover any spectrum of expression. There is one reason for this: my mind is not restrained by structure. I am sure you are already aware that, here I am not using a structure. I usually don't use those. See, here's the problem with structures. When you USE A STRUCTURE, you are missing one major element of your consciousness... that, um... basically the TOTALITY OF YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS FROM BEGINNING TO END OF YOUR WRITING PROCESS IS COMMUNICATED TO THE READER VERBATIM? I know, sounds delusional, doesn't it? Eh... not really. Not so much. Listen to me, you're getting that command, right? I just said the words LISTEN TO ME, and you're paying attention and you had a genuine response to the words LISTEN, TO and ME, didn't you? There's proof! You always complain, "Oh, woe is me! The internet can't capture tonality! I can't express myself here!" Here’s my opinion on the subject. Tonality is a form, understand? I believe that form, RIGID. CONSTRICTING. form, is the enemy of expression. Then, reader, wouldn’t that make tonality an error in itself? Error? Tonality is a natural part of human speech. How could it be an error? Think about this, reader. Tonality blocks the expression of the formless soul, because, if you haven’t noticed, people use similar sounding tonality to express the SIMILAR forms of emotions. Now, if you take into account ALL of these similarities, the similar tonality and the similar emotions, after a while, you get a human being who is expressing the same thing in billions of diff… no, SIMILAR ways. Understand?

When I was a child, I was a prominent artist. Not artist in the sense that you think of artists… you know, repeating the same basic structure and expressing the same nuances throughout their entire career. I was not that artist, but instead, I was an artist of impermanent form. If you were to visit my apartment, in beautiful West Chester, New York. You would find the art of a young bigsexyshaq. Through the ages of 0 to 12, I produced over 500 works of visual art. These works included drawings of Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, myself and the Ninja Turtles. Although these are not difficult topics to produce art out of, my procedure for expressing these works is almost impossible for the standard human. All 500 works of art contained no themes rooted in any artistic concepts. To this day, I still use NO ARTISTIC CONCEPTS to make drawings of Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, myself and the Myself Turtles. These pieces share one thing in common, and that one thing is this. Think about me. Alright, you have it. If you haven’t noticed, you understand everything about me. </Understand>

Since the dawn of mankind, God has constantly been finding progressively better and better means to express His impermanent soul. God has recently been finding that sense is not the most convenient means to express Himself. If you were to ask God, which will win in His Evolutionary Contest, you would find that neither sense nor nonsense would win. Because think about it, reader. Nothing is wrong with either. They are just different FORMS of nonsense. I have found many times in my life that nonsense outweighs the concept of sense in emotional meaning. Feel this, reader, there are much nonsense that are extremely light and soft darkness. Think about it, the last line could not have been expressed if it were originated within the rigid confines of grammatical language. The greatest works of language are gestated out of the emotions, and the same words that created the emotions are echoed in the impressions that the language gathers. These impressions form the basis for future use of language. The future depends on innovations in language, and simply put, innovation does not happen in the mind. Innovation is a concept is an already existing concept in the mind, so how can it “happen”? Innovation would therefore have to be language that reminds you of this concept. Now, if you think very carefully about what I just said to you, I just completely negated the common delusion that meaning exists in the mind. If you are confused as to why language has meaning for you, I invite you to take a look below me, and discover that you have a body which contains a wide variety of sensations. The problem with classifying these sensations into adjectives such as “happy” and “sad” is is is is is. Pay attention. Do you? The sensations are absolutely impossible to manage with the mind. The sensations pay no mind as to how you feel about them. There is flaflakafakafa Gorf GoRgOKoRn.

Calabi-Yau spaces are important in string theory, where one model posits the geometry of the universe to consist of a ten-dimensional space of the form MxV, where M is a four dimensional manifold (space-time) and V is a six dimensional compact Calabi-Yau space. They are related to Kummer surfaces. Although the main application of Calabi-Yau spaces is in theoretical physics, they are also interesting from a purely mathematical standpoint. Consequently, they go by slightly different names, depending mostly on context, such as Calabi-Yau manifolds or Calabi-Yau varieties.

Rowland, Todd. "Calabi-Yau Space." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource, created by Eric W. Weisstein. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Calabi-YauSpace.html

Just in case any of you have encountered Dopplereffekt's new album, Calabi Yau Space, and thought the album was given some made-up science fiction name, no, the name, like the album, sounds exotic precisely because of its concrete, esoteric reality.

The album is a careful assemblage of refined electronic space music, spectral electro (with the same balance of rhythm to texture as there is vermouth to gin in a dry martini, which is to say the tracks here are nearly beatless), and a detached, clinical atmosphere that combines the accessibility of John Carpenter's soundtracks with the chilly remove of Klaus Schulze's early work. The album is so knowingly infused with the spirit of electronic music past that it exists somewhere between bricolage and pastiche, but unlike past Dopplereffekt records it never strays into outright parody, nor does it fall prey to Linear Accelerator's leaden impenetrability. It's a remarkable balancing act, and very obviously one that won't appeal to everyone. For people who are still interested in minimalism, emptiness and the possibilities inherent in pure analog synthesis, though, it's an accomplished and absorbing record.