2009-12-31

2 unreleased Aeriae tracks - Passage 9 + Path 9 - OUT NOW via 4-4-2's Single of the Month Club, November 2009
21/11/09 20:02
To keep the fires burning between records, here are a couple of previously unreleased Aeriae tracks, available now as free downloads via netlabel 4-4-2's Single of the Month Club:

Quoth Adrian of Sydney's Telafonica, who runs 4-4-2:

"Two video game offcasts from Aeriae - Side A an uptempo acid glitchbleep workout while Side B heads into the dark recesses of Resident Evil or Silent Hill in order to find somewhere quiet to be alone."

Get them here: Aeriae - 4-4-2 Music e-Single of the Month Club - Nov 2009

The A-side was explicitly composed for use on a videogame soundtrack. The B-side was inspired by horror game soundtracks, and would not be averse to becoming part of one.

AMay concludes film festival rounds in Romania
07/11/09 20:03
Last stop for this round of screenings of AMay was at the Kinofest International Digital Film Festival in Bucharest, Romania. AMay was screened on October 23 as part of the Animation competition.

AMay Melbourne screening!.. Fri Oct 16, 2009
12/10/09 12:16
I saw it with an audience in Newcastle last week, and I tell you, that is a rocking way to see it.

AMay is next showing as part of 'Conjunction' on Friday, Oct 16th at the Westspace gallery in Melbourne, so if you live down there, get thee to Westspace gallery!

Level 1, 15 - 19 Anthony Street Melbourne, Vic, 3000, Australia +61 3 9328 8712

It's $10 entry for a two hour program.

http://www.westspace.org.au/program/future/ (under the Conjunction heading)

Catch 'AMay' theatre screening @ Electrofringe in Newcastle, Fri Oct 2nd, 2009
30/09/09 12:06
I submitted the AMay video to Electrofringe back in Jan or Feb. About a week before the festival itself (IE now) I received confirmation the video was in, and would be screened as part of Electro-projections 1.

In or near Newcastle? You can see AMay on a big screen with a big audience, which will include myself, this Friday evening, and of course see many other technologically interesting works as well:

Time + Date (cost is Free!)

Electro-projections 1 (screenings) Friday 2nd October, 2009 - 6:00pm – 7:00pm

Playhouse Theatrette Level 1, 375 Hunter St, Newcastle [Map can be found at http://thisisnotart.org/playhouse/]

For more information about the screenings and the rest of Electrofringe's program, please visit http://electrofringe.net/ or for more information about This Is Not Art, head to http://www.thisisnotart.org/

Announcing Aeriae album 2, VICTRIS, and a videogame, LEADLIGHT
06/07/09 21:48
The second Aeriae album is significantly along in development. It will be called Victris and I hope to release it before the end of 2009 through my own label Call-151 Records. The label will have a more solid identity this time around, though if you look on your Hold R1 CD, you will see the Call-151 logo on it. The logo has also featured in Aeriae print ads and material over time. Coming onboard for Victris's graphic design is Alex Lee of What is the Apple IIGS? fame.

All I will say about the new album content is that I feel that the sound is both more detailed and more overtly melodic than Hold R1's. This reflects the expansion of my production abilities and of my compositional ideas respectively. The latter were probably more in thrall to the impulses of the IDM project on the first record.

Another project I am working on, and which I hope to unveil around the same time as the album, is an 8-bit horror game for the Apple II computer called Leadlight. The game brings some modern Silent Hill and Resident Evil like flourishes to the old text adventure game model, and is programmed using the Eamon game engine. The game is set in a private girls' school (you play a girl in year ten) and I see it as my eight bit take on something like Dario Argento's film 'Suspiria'. The game will run in a java Apple II emulator on the Aeriae website, so to play, all anyone will have to do is visit an URL. There will be no fiddling with disk images or ROMs or emulator software, etc.

So why make a game by such a weird and ostensibly difficult manner in this day and age? The Apple II has always been a major creative inspiration for me, and I love programming it. On Hold R1, I used Fantavision on the Apple II to animate the AMay videoclip. My label Call-151 is named for the Apple II monitor command, and I keep getting sound and imagery ideas - and sound samples - from the computer for the Aeriae project. I had wondered whether I would ever find time or motivation to make this horror game, and somehow it just seemed to be a cool idea to put the game out alongside the next Aeriae record. I hope people who know adventure games will dig it, and people who've never seen them may be intrigued. Mind you, I'm still writing and programming the game, and it's not impossible it will run into some impassable technical hurdle, but fingers crossed.

The (recent) Past
06/07/09 21:47
This post to be followed within the near future by post 'The Future', announcing the forthcoming releases from Aeriae.

Following is a non-ordered sampling of Aeriae action I've been involved in since I released Hold R1 late in 2007:

• I remixed Catcall's 'August'
• I remixed Delta Goodrem's 'Believe Again'. I love this remix and I perform it at every live show
• I saw Moldover's video on Controllerism, which inspired me to believe I could do an incarnation of Aeriae live
• I spent five months building a live rig in hardware and software engineering from the ground up
• I began to participate in Clan Analogue
• I played several shows
• I produced a Severed Heads cover, which should see the light of day on a Clan release in the near future
• I produced a track for the soundtrack of videogame 'Netrikulator' which wasn't used in the end. This track, 'Passage 9', is particularly game-oriented, and I definitely hope to get it into a videogame at some point
• I remixed Chaingang, my favourite Sydney rock band
• I remixed Damn Arms for a competition, but in retrospect I'm glad this track wasn't released, even if not winning meant not winning $8000 of software and hardware. What was weird was that Damn Arms split up just after the competition was announced
• I had the most crippling bout of RSI in my right hand and arm that I've experienced in life (which is to say out of about three major episodes). Able to do very little for months, I tried to maintain sanity by watching Monkey and classic Dr Who DVDs, and worked with dreadful slowness at the computer on Aeriae material, using my left hand only
• I was fast enough to nab one of the initial steel embossed alternate editions of Autechre's 'Quaristice' when it came out

Bandwidth set list (Saturday July 4, 2009)
06/07/09 21:47
My set at Bandwidth:

1. Heiress / The Immortal / Intro
2. Lenticular Cup
3. Skirr
4. Believe Again Remix
5. AMay

Bandwidth was an extremely successful and entertaining event. In terms of watching bands, a turnaround time of 30 minutes with few gaps inbetween (each band sets up while the previous one plays), is very satisfying. The diversity and number of acts ensures a constantly changing dynamic and enough moods and styles to please almost anybody. There were also comfy chairs, there was room to move around in and the venue had tons of character. Huge props to the organisers. And smaller props to me for helping man the merchandise stand for decent sections of the night.

From performer perspective, I have to admit I found setting up around the previous band quite hard to do, and I got sat on by the front lady of Actual Russian Brides temporarily for my troubles. The venue was also quite cold, and the rubbish circulation in my hands meant my keyboard playing (in the actual piano-like sense) was pretty poor. Still, after an absolutely nerve-wracking few minutes of being bathed in alien light - in which I was almost unable to recognise my own equipment - and feeling cold and clumsy, and losing my way all around the keyboard, the performance kicked in and took off.

Aeriae gig (BANDWIDTH) @ Red Rattler Theatre, Sydney, July 4, 2009
16/06/09 00:28
I'm playing at BANDWIDTH, a half day electronic music festival being run under the auspices of Clan Analogue on Saturday July 4 at the Red Rattler Theatre in Marrickville, Sydney. It kicks off at 5PM. Artists are as follows:

bleepin' j squawkins, lunar module, valley forge, telafonica, loopsnake (luminarsi), karoshi, kate carr, electrofetish, aeriae, actual russian brides, genlevel, swinging tasty bag, foxbat + dj tigerlilly and dj andy rantzen 

There's a mix of styles in there from dj sets through laptoppery, controllerism and out and out playing of instruments.

Don't forget to buy HOLD R1 when you come!

Track preview – Heiress – from album two
09/05/09 22:33
The tracks for the second Aeriae album are starting to acquire a distinct shape and some kind of vector, and I hope to be able to release the album later this year. I've learned a few things about the workings of the music industry since I put out Hold R1 and I know that there will be a tighter coordination of activities surrounding the second album release than there were last time. The tradeoff for this anticipated coordination will be a time hit, so it's not impossible the album release could slip to 2010, but I am aiming to release it this year. 

Excelsior gig videos online
14/01/09 16:05
Four widescreen clips from the Excelsior gig are now up on the Videos page.

The full set list was:
0. Gandhara
1. Intro
2. Lenticular Cup
3. Skirr
4. Pax Are
5. Believe Again
6. AMay

I was wearing a Silent Hill 3 t-shirt. I say this because uncomprehending people could be heard discussing the shirt on the gig recording, plus I was asked about it afterwards!