Telecorps All-Inclusive

review of "Hard On/Off Hearong" by Craig Whitman

2011-06-02T11:40:00.001-04:00

This cassette was released in celebration of Record Store Day 2011, and is a fine document of the sound of Fuck Telecorps. It features two pieces recorded both in 2011 and years previous with some post production for treatment. The cover art nicely represents the themes I will attempt to interpret for you below;

"This File Is Corrupted" begins with pensive percolations and congeals into blips with short shrieks and kissy farts. The air being let out of the squealing balloon starts the tractor and mows the synapses with dive bombers. The good sam's club banging cookware a summer evenings ritual of creaky doors and hubcaps, lapsing into a brief anti climax before the naked shower stall in the hard on/off bathtub sets the scene of a radio nestled precariously close to the shock drop while someone scrapes the egg off a plate in an hispanic kitchen of a town near you.

"Viking Fireman Inseminator"; there is nothing wrong with your tape player...maybe. Polyrhythmic polyseismic polyanthem gets the condom on/off and a clarinet squeals with erotic and implicitly trite semi poly abandon already proceeding into post orgasmic afterglow. Sex encore. The wet belly announcing the conch call of jizz jazz and orally facilitated delights. The loud climactic affirmation sees the balloon reintroduced to accompany the lewd deflowering of a peacock on a rubber matted filth floor. Applause. Balinese blues. The soulful cry; "you give to me leather, you take away my [leg?] invokes a provocative kabuki demon dance ending in a fiery and perverted sexual conquest. Elements of unsatiable lust and multiple orgasm tie this up in a well orchestrated aural theme of repeated insemination.

3 thumbs up

Craig Whitman
June 2011

Wed. June 8th 2011: BLACK LEATHER JESUS + MARTIAL CANTEREL

2011-05-31T16:36:00.008-04:00

one night. two amazing shows. back to back.

first this noise at The Shop:

plus LAST OF ENGLAND [NNN; Pgh]

then this synthwave at Brillobox:

this will be the Pittsburgh debut of both Black Leather Jesus and Martial Canterel.

Fuck Telecorps "Hard On/Off Hearong" cassette

2011-04-18T15:43:00.011-04:00

a new FTCRPS cassette, entitled "Hard On/Off Hearong," was released by Mind Skull Records on Sat. Apr. 16, 2011.

Lado 1:

"This File Is Corrupted"

(recorded by Margaret Cox on Jan. 22nd 2011 during Winter Void Fest 3 The Shop in Pgh, PA with two overdubs recorded by Edgar Um Bucholtz in March 2011.)

Lado 2:

"Viking Fireman Inseminator"

(recorded Apr. 11th 2007 at Modern Formations in Pgh, PA)

Stephen Boyle - fake guitar, ring modulator, microphone, telephone
tap, tapes, percuss, junk, shirt and tie

Edgar Um Bucholtz - pigs, cdj, silence, beer bottle, pot, scrubs,
paper, cornet, radio, voice, misc. objects

Matthew Wellins - electronics, clarinet

artwork by Josh Bonnett

an edition of 75 cassettes are available only via Mind Cure Records in Pittsburgh, PA. $5/each.

email: orders@mindcurerecords.com

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mind-Cure-Records/

special thanks to Michael Seamans and Mind Cure/Dear Skull/Mind Skull Records!

Matthew Wellins, Edgar Um Bucholtz and Stephen Boyle at Winter Void Fest at The Shop on Jan. 22, 2011.

Mind Cure Records Record Store Day Release Party

2011-04-14T14:15:00.003-04:00

this will be epic.

press release from Mind Cure:

"National Record Store Day, April 16th!

Mind Cure Records is pleased to be celebrating National Record Store Day for the very first time at our location in Polish Hill. The fun begins at 10:00am and we will be closing the doors at 7:00pm to get ready for the after party at Helter Shelter.

Mind Cure Records is putting out several releases that are exclusive to our store. Here are the details:

* Majeure - Ben Nevis B/W Jakoda - 45. (Limited edition of 150 copies only available on RSD at Mind Cure Records). Two exclusive short and sweet tracks from Majeure. Each one a simple, yet building piece of synth mastery.

* TMEye - Ecolectro Mix - Cassette. (Limited Edition of 75 copies only available on RSD at Mind Cure Records). A sampling of tracks made by TMEye specially mixed for this project from their forthcoming releases. Dreamy vocals flawlessly mixed over-top hypnotic beats with layers of analog synths create the prefect sound-scape for android dreams. Pro-made cassette manufactured and imprinted at National Audio.

* Fuck Telecorps - Hard (on/off) Hearong Cassette. (Limited Edition of 75 copies only available on RSD at Mind Cure Records). Featuring amazing full color artwork by Josh Bonnett. Pro-made cassette manufactured and imprinted at National Audio. Two live offerings from Fuck Telecorps. For these recordings Fuck Telecorps was:
o Stephen Boyle - fake guitar, ring modulator, microphone, telephone, tap, tapes, percuss, junk, shirt and tie
o Edgar Um Bucholtz - pigs, cdj, silence, beer bottle, pot, scrubs, paper, cornet, radio, voice, misc. objects
o Matthew Wellins - electronics, clarinet

* Metalian - Wasteland - LP. (Limited edition of 100 copies only available on RSD at Mind Cure Records). Blistering guitar leads, vocals that would make Rob Halford and Bruce Dickinson run to the hills, the long anticipated Wasteland LP from Montreal’s Metalian is finally receiving a limited release for record store day. Recorded in one 14 hour session with limited over-dubbing the Wasteland LP has sat, pressed, and in boxes, tied up in various delays - offers from major metal labels, artwork problems and an increasingly regulated border has kept this massive slab of NWOBHM influenced heavy metal from hitting the streets until now. This is a limited edition of 100, housed in a screen printed jacket to tide you heshers and headbangers over until the real artwork gets wrapped up. But don’t sleep on this, who knows how long that will take.

* Gangwish - Space Cace Vol. 2 - 45. (Limited edition of 400 copies). The second installment of powerhouse Sam Pace’s Gangwish “Space Case” project. Mixing live drumming with triggered samples which at times harnesses the raw energy of Einstürzende Neubauten but the also warmth of current left-field electronics.

* Shep and Me - Nasturtium Inertia LP (Limited Edition of 300 copies). The long awaited vinyl pressing of Nasturtium Inertia. For those un-familiar, Shep and Me is the moniker of multi-instrumentalist Matthew Himes. On Nasturtium Inertia he continues to create hauntingly beautiful songs woven out of solo guitar and banjo fragments with ghostly vocals layered on top of electronic drones and warbles. Housed in gorgeous handmade sleeves, painstakingly assembled by Himes himself, don’t miss out on some of the most unique music to come out this year.

...

To show all of our amazing supporters how much we appreciate everything over the last 10 months, we will be offering 10% off all used records. To make it even better, we will be putting out hundreds of used LPs and 7”s early Saturday morning. So get here early and help us celebrate!

As mentioned earlier in this post, we will be shutting our doors at 7pm to get ready for the after party at Helter Shelter. Here’s the facebook event page link:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mind-Cure-Records/119647011399740#!/event.php?eid=111849322231570

The party starts at 8:00pm and is 7bux. All proceeds help fund the release of local music. Come get your party on with Slices, Birth, TMEye, Gangwish and Fuck Telecorps with DJing by Philadelphyinz (Young Robots: NYC/Philly).

We’ve started a blog to keep everyone informed of all of the new releases and restocks, so be sure to keep an eye on that! Here is the web address:

www.mindcurerecords.wordpress.com

We really look forward to seeing all of you on Saturday!"

Fuck Telecorps "Legendary Puce Telecrops" (2011)

2011-01-07T15:49:00.012-05:00

Fuck Telecorps performed live at Helter Shelter in Pittsburgh on the evening of Thursday Jan. 6th, 2011.

for this occasion, Fuck Telecorps was Linda Ronstatic (home built electronics), Mortimer Grim (suspended cymbal and thundersheet) and Peter Psoriasis (somewhat broken Prophet 600, analog and digital fx, laptop, cornet.)

also performing on this night at Helter Shelter were Casual Male (of Pittsburgh), Half Nelson (of Pittsburgh), Teeny Bopper (of Far Rockaway, Queens, NY) and Tension Fields (of Far Rockaway, Queens, NY.) Teeny Bopper and Tension Fields are also members of the group, Yellow Tears.

recording by Linda Ronstatic.

Fuck Telecorps "Summer Lecture Series No. 1" (2007)

2010-11-19T19:41:00.011-05:00

Fuck Telecorps performed live at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts shortly after 7pm on July 12th, 2007.

for this performance Fuck Telecorps was Matt Wellins (electronics, reeds, misc.), Steve Boyle (electronics, percussion, voice, misc.), Edgar Um Bucholtz (cornet, small instruments, misc.) and Jim Storch (percussion, small instruments, misc.)

these sounds were recorded by Mark Lamb.

this performance was part of a series of improvised music events called "In Tent" that occurred at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts during the summer of 2007. "In Tent" was curated and organized by Edgar Um Bucholtz.

the headlining performance of this concert on July 12th 2007 was a solo set by reedist Oluyemi Thomas. Marcus Kim performed solo on marimba. Ben Opie and trio also performed.

special thanks to George Davis, Joy Sato, Rich Engel, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and Pittsburgh Filmmakers for making this series of concerts happen.

Edgar Um Bucholtz and Matt Wellins relaxing on the lawn at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts between sets at In Tent.

Fuck Telecorps "Scrp Tcrps"

2010-11-14T18:59:00.006-05:00

On Thursday November 4th 2010 at The Shop in Pittsburgh, Fuck Telecorps performed "Scrp Tcrps." For this performance, Fuck Telecorps was Edgar Um Bucholtz solo. For this performance, Edgar Um Bucholtz wore a grey wig, mirrored sunglasses and a shiny silver track jacket. Illuminated by two very bright work lights, he sat on a chair and held a square piece of glass with the letters "TCRPS" painted in black. Two piezo contact microphones were attached to opposite corners of the underside of the glass with black electrical tape. A wire led from each the contact microphones into two channels of Yamaha mixer/amplifier situated to the right of Mr. Bucholtz. The channels were panned hard left and right. The volume levels for each channel and the master volume was at approx. 75%. At the beginning of his performance, Mr. Bucholtz adjusted the channels on the mixer/amplifier so that the sounds of the surface of the glass he held would be loud, but not feeding back excessively. Once the sound levels seemed appropriate, Mr. Bucholtz unsheathed a small rectangular razor blade from it's light brown cardboard protective housing. He then began to scrape away the painted letters on the surface of the glass. The resulting scraping sounds coming out of The Shop's house PA were shrill and complex. Due to these sounds, many of the audience members fled the room. Some fled but continued watch and listen at a dampened volume through a window in an adjacent room. Once the painted letters had been fully scrapped off the glass, Edgar Um Bucholtz continued to scrape the glass in a more sensitive way, encouraging the glass to emit even higher audio frequencies. Approximately 10 minutes after he had begun scraping the glass, the performance was concluded.

No audio or visual documentation of this performance is currently known to exist.

Fuck Telecorps were booked for this performance by Matt McDermott.

Special thanks to Lauri Mancuso.

Fuck Telecorps "Requiem For Summer 2010"

2010-10-19T15:40:00.017-04:00

Fuck Telecorps "Requiem For Summer 2010" performed by Edgar Um Bucholtz solo at The Shop on Monday August 16th, 2010.

The cassette tape that Edgar Um Bucholtz manipulated with his big toe was "err..." recorded by Telecorps on September 20th, 1991. This performance was the first public airing of "err...."

Ice Cream provided by Twister's. Ice Cream assistance by Marcus Kim. Boom box on loan from Sam Pace. Performance documentation by Ryan Emmett.

The other bands on the bill for this show were: Drainolith, Nazi Dust, Outer Space, Half Nelson, Free Clinic and Forest Dweller. Reeves Smith and Joshua Rievel booked the show.

Erik Ciora received the commemorative Fuck Telecorps t-shirt.

the original cassette:

Forget Tea Leaf Creeps "Live in Rhodesia" 2010

2010-05-05T17:20:00.006-04:00

FORGET TEA LEAF CREEPS "Live in Rhodesia" part 1:

Forget Tea Leaf Creeps performed live on Apr. 29th 2010 at the Brillobox in Pittsburgh, PA.

Forget Tea Leaf Creeps were:

Edgar Um Bucholtz - turntables, Serato, laptop, tracks of original synthesized and acoustic improvisations, cabasa, moo, voice, fake Hawaiian folk song

Steve Boyle - vari-speed tape player, radio, ring modulator, contact mics, voice

Matt Wellins - home-built electronics

Video documentation of this performance by Jim Storch.

This video edit by Edgar Um Bucholtz was completed on May 5th 2010. It incorporates found home movie footage obtained from lostinlight.org

Also performing at the Brillobox on the evening of April 29th 2010 were: Burnout Warcry and Caethua.

Thanks to Heidi for setting up the show and asking Forget Tea Leaf Creeps to perform. And thanks to the Brillobox and Jim Storch.

FORGET TEA LEAF CREEPS "Live in Rhodesia" part 2:

"Don't take pork on the Old Pali Road
And don't take pork on the King's Highway
Doing so will anger the Fire God Pele
And doing so will anger (the Pig God) Kamapuaa

If you must carry pork on Old Pali Road
Or if you must carry pork on the King's Highway
Wrap the pork in ti leaf or bamboo
Or wrap the pork in banana leaf to shield your taboo"

(lyrics by Edgar Um Bucholtz, 2010)

Fuck Telecorps live April 1st, 2010

2010-04-08T15:37:00.006-04:00

Fuck Telecorps performing "How Many More People Must Die Before I Present This Salad To You" at The Shop Art and Performance Studio on Thursday April 1st, 2010.

for this performance, Fuck Telecorps was:

Matt Wellins: homebuilt electronics, contact mics

Edgar Um Bucholtz: yogurt, cucumbers, tomatoes, parsley, salt, pepper, Jalapeño peppers, black mustard seeds, ghee, Hamilton Beach electric fryer, chopping block, knife, metal bowl, paper towels, spoon

this concert was organized by Dynamo Sound Collective.

video documentation by Josh Tonies.

special thanks to Lauri Mancuso and Josh Tonies.

here's a shorter, better quality edit by Josh Tonies:

telecorps reunion performance from Joshua Tonies on Vimeo.

Cottonballman live at The Nerve Oct. 12, 2009

2010-03-30T10:03:00.002-04:00

no mysteries may be revealed.

all is darkness.

"Edgar Um Bucholtz, Panther Hollow, September 2008" video interview by Josh Tonies

2010-03-24T16:52:00.002-04:00

Edgar Um Bucholtz, Panther Hollow, September 2008 from Joshua Tonies on Vimeo.

"Static Free" 9.30.05 - 10.24.05

2010-03-18T17:43:00.027-04:00

"Static Free" was a contemporary fine art exhibit to showcase international, regional and local Pittsburgh artists whose work has been directly influenced by urban graffiti and street art.

"Static Free" was curated by Seak M.A.C., Michael D. Walsh, Megan Fitzgerald and Edgar Um Bucholtz.

Organizational support was provided by Pat Clark and Tracy Jackson.

Installation support by Sharmila Venkatasubban and Lauri Mancuso.

Initial funding came from a Seed Award Grant from Pittsburgh's The Sprout Fund. Corporate funding support came from Scion, American Eagle Outfitters and Red Bull.

International and U.S. artists were exhibited at SPACE in downtown Pittsburgh:

Calma (Stephan Doitschinoff of Brazil)
Maya Hayuk (of NYC)
Jerry "Joker" Inscoe
Tim Kaulen (of Pittsburgh)
Ryan MacKeen
Other
Stephen "ESPO" Powers (of NYC)
Seak M.A.C. (of Pittsburgh)
"Delta" Boris Tellegen
Michael D. Walsh (of Pittsburgh)

Regional and local Pittsburgh artists (with a few exceptions) were concurrently exhibited at Future Tenant across the street from SPACE in downtown Pittsburgh:

Sean Barton
Dan Bergeron
Biko
Dallah Cesan
Cameron Clayton
Nicholas Ganz
Kwest
Labrona
Jamie Matthews
Nathan Mould
Danny Paracat
Joe Rudans
Chris Savido
Matt Spahr
Ollie Slaughter
Jude Vachon

Opening night was Friday September 30th 2005. The show ran until October 24th 2005.

installation by Steve "ESPO" Powers

sculpture by Tim Kaulen in the foreground; sculpture by Michael D. Walsh in the background

mural by CALMA

mural by Maya Hayuk

Opening night of Static Free. We hired Miguel's Mariachi Fiesta to perform music during the opening. Over 2000 people attended.

a closer shot of Tim Kaulen's sculpture. This work debuted at "Static Free," but was commissioned and is now permanently exhibited at The Pittsburgh Children's Museum.

Static Free brought renowned NYC DJ and urban culture writer, Bobbito Garcia a.k.a. DJ Cucumberslice, to Pittsburgh to perform for the Static Free opening after-party at "9/9th" in downtown Pittsburgh. Approx. 1000 persons attended.

On the following day, Saturday October 1st, a Static Free symposium was held at Pittsburgh Filmmakers' Harris Theater. The symposium was moderated by Henry Chalfant and featured legendary NYC graffiti writer Blade, filmmaker Pablo Arevena and many Static Free exhibiting artists. Pablo Arevena screened a preview of his film "Next: A Primer on Urban Painting."

Also part of Static Free was a City of Pittsburgh-sanctioned mural on the Alisa Furnace Jail Trail representing and painted by Pittsburgh local and regional artists. Megan Fitzgerald, Veks and Evict headed the mural organizing and production team. Lauri Mancuso primed and readied the wall for painting.

Additional sponsors of Static Free included: Pabst Blue Ribbon, College Prowler, Arts Greenhouse Initiative of Center for the Arts in Society at Carnegie Mellon University, A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust Fund of The Pittsburgh Foundation, The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture, The Multicultural Arts Initiative, Hilton Pittsburgh, The Mattress Factory, Steel Valley Arts Council, Pittsburgh Filmmakers, 720 Records, Lumation Design, Blue Archer, Jackson/Clark Partners and Brett Yasko.

Seak M.A.C.'s "Static Free" photo documentation on flickr

kudos from Wooster Collective

D.S.C. presents Teeth Collection, Cottonballman, Fuck Telecorps and more

2010-03-08T18:18:00.005-05:00

Thursday April 1st 2010

Dynamo Sound Collective presents

TEETH COLLECTION aka MATTHEW REIS
(Dayton, OH)

"Teeth Collection play a type of early industrial style in the order of Blue Sabbath Black Cheer and have in fact done a split with those guys so it’s gotta be heavy duty right? It is but more in an echoing, scraping, metal, creepy chamber music kind of way. Which is to say whoa! Not enough of that shit coming around nowadays! This side eventually morphs into industrial metallic clouds that billow till they break. Nice. These dudes had a killer release on Peasant Magik, now way out of print, a way long discography that looks well worth the time and investigation. P.S. These dudes also appear on another recently released exhaustive box set documenting the best in today’s psych/experimental/drone/whatever underground, The Static Hymnal (Husk/Factotum/Hung Like a Horse)." - FOXY DIGITALIS

NICHOLAS CEPARSKI
(PERRYSBURG, OH)

Operates Community College Records. Member of Ribbons and To-Night Golden Curls.

PLASMIC FORMATIONS

review by John Olson: "Arriving At The End To Find Another Beginning" Community College 24 Cass. / Don't know Beginning/ End im @ but I def. gripped this killer strange tape! Someone once wrote in a review of the mind-blowing NEW DAWN lp that "if a rec starts with the sound of nature, its usually a good sign" - to that statement i'll replace NATURE with UNGODLY TENSE HISS and use that for the PF review. I luv me some strange sounds trying to breathe/ release into a world of HISS to reveal they ugly mugs, and this tape nails it. Couldn't tell you word one about the devices to put into this tape, but whatever they used; RULES. Edition of 30, ALL WEIRD. Kool cover showing a parallel universe landscape that looks nice enuff to post up with a kooler for a nice afternoon. & Fave new label name. aka THE WORKS.

COTTONBALLMAN (Dynamo Sound Collective)

FUCK TELECORPS (represented by Edgar Um Bucholtz, Matt Wellins and Raq. V.B.)

all-ages

$5 or so

7pm-11pm

The Shop Art and Performance Studio
4312 Main St. in scenic Bloomfield
Pittsburgh, PA 15224

"Name Bank" (collage, 1991)

2010-03-02T18:23:00.004-05:00

newspaper clip-art, photocopy collage by Edgar Um Bucholtz, circa 1991.

i made this for Carnegie Mellon University's "alternative" student-run paper, "The Student Union." i submitted this and a few Telecorps-related collages with stolen slogans. Rich Engel (now at Pittsburgh Filmmakers) was one of the editors at the time, so blame him.

Fuck Telecorps "Greatest Hits Vol. I"

2010-03-01T23:09:00.010-05:00

this is Side B of the bootleg Telecorps/Fuck Telecorps cassette release entitled "Telecorps 92.12.31" released in 1993 on That Cow Inc. cassette label. Side B starts with a live recording (made by Herr Brine?) of Telecorps performing live on New Year's Eve 1992 in the basement of Turmoil Room in Wilkinsburg, PA. since i have already posted video+audio documentation of this performance, i skipped ahead to the last minute of this performance on the cassette. the recording then immediately segues into a cutup tape composition called "Greatest Hits Vol. I." this composition was edited by Herr Brine from previously-released and bootleg Telecorps cassettes, including "Reaching Out", "92.12.31" and rough mixes of the still unreleased "MainstreamMotherFucker." Herr Brine also incorporated recordings from the Telecorps-associated live radio series, Radio For The People, broadcast on WRCT FM Pittsburgh. one of these Radio For The People recordings includes a snippet of Paul Snelson performing "Terminal."

the numerous sound drop-outs throughout "Greatest Hits Vol. I" are assumed to be the intention of Herr Brine.

"Telecorps 92.12.31" cassette cover photo by Herr Brine.

"Noise Theory" by Csaba Toth

2010-03-01T19:42:00.007-05:00

i stumbled upon this online. Csaba Toth is an old friend. he has been writing and lecturing about noise music (including noise music from Pittsburgh) since the early 1990s.

this is a recent essay from "Noise & Capitalism", a collection of essays chosen by editors, Mattin & Anthony Iles.

i include it here because he mentions Telecorps, Fuck Telecorps and Macronympha.

Title: Noise and Capitalism
Publisher: Arteleku Audiolab (Kritika series), Donostia-San Sebastián (Gipuzkoa), Spain
Publication date: September 2009
ISBN: 978-84-7908-622-1

Contributors: Ray Brassier, Emma Hedditch, Matthew Hyland, Anthony Iles, Sara Kaaman, Mattin, Nina Power, Edwin Prévost, Bruce Russell, Matthieu Saladin, Howard Slater, Csaba Toth, Ben Watson

Editors: Mattin & Anthony Iles

"Csaba Toth received his PhD from the University of Minnesota, and is Professor and Chair of the History Department at Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Toth's scholarly interests include social movements, production of gender, girl cultures, politics of sound, urban history, and pedagogy. His writings have been published by The M.I.T. Press, St. Martin's Press, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He was a guest professor of American Studies in Japan (1998–2000), lectured in Australia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia, and Sweden, and has been the recipient of several major grants and awards (Fulbright Senior Lecturer, NEH, Newberry, George Soros Foundation, DAAD, Wise-Susman Prize)."

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"Noise Theory"

by Csaba Toth

In the mid-1980’s, Noise music seemed to be everywhere crossing oceans and circulating in continents from Europe to North America to Asia (especially Japan) and Australia. Musicians of diverse background were generating their own variants of Noise performance. Groups such as Einstürzende Neubauten, SPK, and Throbbing Gristle drew larger and larger audiences to their live shows in old factories, and Psychic TV’s industrial messages were shared by fifteen thousand or so youths who joined their global ‘television network.’ Some twenty years later, the bombed-out factories of Providence, Rhode Island, the shift of New York’s ‘downtown scene’ to Brooklyn, appalling inequalities of the Detroit area, and growing social cleavages in Osaka and Tokyo, brought Noise back to the center of attention. Just the past week – it is early May, 2007 – the author of this essay saw four Noise shows in quick succession – the Locust on a Monday, Pittsburgh’s Macronympha and Fuck Telecorps (a re-formed version of Edgar Um Bucholtz’s Telecorps of 1992-93) on a Wednesday night; one day later, Providence pallbearers of Noise punk White Mice and Lightning Bolt who shared the same ticket, and then White Mice again. The idea that there is a coherent genre of music called ‘Noise’ was fashioned in the early 1990’s. My sense is that it became standard parlance because it is a vague enough category to encompass the often very different sonic strategies followed by a large body of musicians across the globe. I would argue that certain ways of composing, performing, recording, disseminating, and consuming sound can be considered to be forms of Noise music. The Noise sub-themes behind Christian Marclay and DJ Olive’s turntablism, DJ Spooky’s illbient ‘electroneiric otherspace,’ Masonna’s bodybased performance, Philip Samartzis’ live mix of specially prepared CDs combined with real time synthesis and abstraction, Wolf Eyes’ ‘wailing, tortured dungeon sound’ (Ben Sisario in SPIN), Scot Jenerik’s fire-fuelled display of noisy destruction, Oren Ambarchi’s guitar experimentations, and the classics in the genre’s history, Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Z’ev, and the Haters clearly illustrate this point. I wish to state that it is the entire socio-cultural and historical matrix within which Noise is chosen, combined, and listened to that defines the genre.

Noise iN the society of sileNce aNd spectacle

According to French cultural theorist Guy Debord’s powerful analysis, life in late capitalism presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles.[1] Everything that was once directly lived has moved into representation. The society of the spectacle eliminates dialogue; the organization of the monologue by political and economic organizations isolates and prevents direct, localized, non-repeatable communication. The society of the spectacle, Jacques Attali claims in his pioneering book Noise, is also the society of silence.[2] These considerations enable us to theorize the rise of Noise music as a form of cultural disturbance in the silent and silenced deindustrialized space of late capitalism. Therefore, I will construct the beginnings of Noise performance as an aesthetic production that challenged social and cultural institutions, collapsed genre boundaries, and had broader socio-political implications. Noise music in its most uncompromising form is different from other forms of resistance musics such as punk, New Wave, hardcore, or dark metal. In these musics, the voice, the logos as truth, has constituted the ideal point of a politicised voice by claiming to speak the truth of its audience’s situation. Noise has no such claims; it is a radical deconstruction of the status of artist, audience, and music.[3] It is ‘the grain of the voice’,[4] a refusal of representation, a refusal of identity. Noise, at the very least,

[1] Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (New York: Zone Books, 1995). [2] Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985). See also Csaba Toth, ‘The Work of Noise’ in Amitava Kumar (ed.), Poetics/Politics: Radical Aesthetics for the Classroom (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999) 201-218 and ‘Sonic Rim: Performing Noise around the Pacific,’ in Kathleen Ford and Philip Samartzis (eds.), Variable Resistance: Australian Sound Art, with compact disc, (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2003), 14-23. [3] For an exploration of these questions in theory, see especially Chapter Three in Jeremy Gilbert and Ewan Pearson, Discographies: Dance Music, Culture and the Politics of Sound (London and New York: Routledge, 1999). [4] Roland, Barthes, ‘The Grain of the Voice, ‘ in Image – Music – Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 179-189.

disrupts both the performer and listener’s normal relations to the symbolic order by refusing to route musical pleasure through the symbolic order (symbolic relations are defined here as an aggregate of guilt, the law, achievement, authority figures). We can call this musical pleasure anti-teleological jouissance, achieved by self-negation, by a return to the imaginary or the pre-subjective (the stage that precedes ego differentiation) – which, in our context, is a sonorous space. As for its ‘musical’ parameters, Noise is conceived to be anti-teleological in the sense that it digresses from the reified desire for the telos-driven formula of tension and release that characterizes most western musics, and particularly tangible in rock and pop performance. Instead, Noise speaks to and through our imaginary register of auditory, visual, haptic perceptions, and fantasy creating a chaos of sensations and feelings. I also wish to stress the performativity of Noise. It is enough to allude here to Francisco Lopez’s blindfolding his listeners, Christof Migone’s ‘corporeal glitches’ (Will Montgomery in The Wire), Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock’s releasing an amplified turkey laden with contact microphones during a live show, the humorous head-dives by the Incapacitants’ ‘big man,’ Fumio Kousakai, and the fanciful masks, headgears, and ‘choreographed’ movements of Lightning Bolt, the Locust, and White Mice. Why performance? What is the value of performance to Noise practitioners? I construct performance as an aesthetic production that challenges cultural institutions and genres, and has broader social implications. As queer performance theorist Ann Cvetkovich suggests, performance inhabits different locations – both discursive and material: the nation, the stage, the body.[5] What version of late capitalism is contested in the rise of Noise-based musics? Noise performance, in our view, exercises a culturally coded and politically specific critique of late capitalism, and offers tools for

[5] Ann Cvetkovich, ‘Comments,’ at the Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association, Nashville, TN, November 1994. In author’s possession.

undoing its seemingly incontestable hegemony. To be sure, Noise performance operates in the shadow of recontainment by the very commodity structures it intends to challenge. But resistance to such commodification continues to occur, and what cultural critic Russel A. Potter says about hip-hop appears to be true also for Noise music: ‘the recognition that everything is or will soon be commodified has ... served as a spur, an incitement to productivity.’[6] Let it be enough to mention here the hundreds of recordings by Merzbow, Francisco Lopez, Muslimgauze, and, most recently, the endless stream of cassettes and CD-Rs released by Wolf Eyes. It is worth noting that Noise has become a transnational global cultural form capable of mobilizing diverse constituencies. I wish to give a measure of historical specificity to Noise music by claiming that the rise of Noise was coeval with deindustrialization in the USA, Western Europe, and parts of the Asia-Pacific region.

Noise aNd history

The birth of Noise culture can only be understood in the context of the collapse of the industrial city. Noise is a profoundly metropolitan genre (even in its ecological form) that first registered its presence amidst the ravaged urban-industrial landscape and reactionary cultural climate of the Thatcher and Reagan years, and, perhaps to a lesser degree, the Yasuhiro Nakasone period. Concomitant with deindustrialization in the West and Japan was a development that went hand in hand with a globalizing process: the emergence of a global information network and immense transnational corporations. Saturation with consumer goods and informational simultaneity wove a web far finer and smaller scale than anything imaginable in the classical industrial era.

[6] Russell A. Potter, Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism (Albany, NY.: State University of New York Press, 1995), 8.

Deindustrialization continued to hit the Fordist economies of late capitalist societies between the late 1960’s and mid-1990s. Although the roots of industrial collapse are complex, the demise came with the changes global restructuring wrought. Cities such as Manchester, Leeds, (parts of) London, the Rust Belt in the United States (Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland), major heavy industry centers in Australia such as Whyalla and Elizabeth in South Australia, Newcastle and Wollongong in New South Wales, had been particularly adversely affected by retrenchment and capital flight, becoming ghost towns of late capitalism. With the collapse of traditional industries, venture capitalists heavily invested in the new wave of ‘cyber work,’ producing North Carolina’s Research Triangle, Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the ‘model’ city of the 1990’s, Seattle. We have witnessed the increasing concentration of the functions of ‘information capitalism’ in central Tokyo. Australia began ‘to confront the realities of world markets’ (Paul Keating, Labor Prime Minister) by simultaneously deregulating its industries and advocating the mantra of cyber-work under the sugar-coated slogan of ‘Clever Country.’ In reality, the selling points with which these cities tried to lure back capital sounded like whimpers coming from a desperate ‘underdeveloped’ country: promises of lower wages, lower rents, tax abatement or tax breaks, and corporation-friendly local office holders. The economic ‘upswing’ cycle since the mid-1990’s has been, statistically, characterized by a dramatic rise in employment. What these statistics hide though is that most new jobs represent flexi-work, that is, partial employment with no benefits. While this economic ‘boom’ has produced harder times for the middle sectors, it solidified the stagnation or further submergence of the labour pool hit by earlier processes of deindustrialization. Also, perhaps crucially, it reinforced racial/ethnic bifurcation (Berlin, Budapest, Pittsburgh) and a multi-dimensional fissure of space, race, and class (Chicago, London, Paris, Sydney) in the post-Fordist city.[7] A new regime of representation set out to celebrate the ‘visible and audible rehabilitation’ of the city, and, in the process, shifted attention away from the arid row houses, impoverished ghettos, bleak projects, and the neubauten that had loomed so large in the 1980’s, early 1990’s. And while, as music scholar Adam Krims states, representationally, a new music-poetics marked the ‘re-conquest’ of the city,[8] forces of law and order imposed materially a brutal silence on the city’s subaltern subjects from New York to Paris as sky-rocketing rates of incarceration for petty crimes, anti-immigrant hysteria, and paramilitary presence in certain neighborhoods have shown. I will argue that Noise music, although not always unproblematically, intervened into this silenced space, and functioned as a resistant cultural form. Performers produced, found, and invented new Noise instruments, and applied guerilla tactics of street theater (Einstürzende Neubauten’s disassembling a part of the Autobahn, for instance). Their work was collective; what was played was not the work of a single creator – audiences initially barely knew the names of those behind most of these groups. Recordings were made on ‘production sites’ set up by industrial performers (see Throbbing Gristle’s Industrial Records; Manny Theiner’s SSS label in Pittsburgh; Load Records in Providence; etc.). Groups stayed together for a short time, and dissolved only to regroup for another intervention. To be a Noise performer meant a day-to-day and subversive activity, a guerilla tactic, a constant war of position.

[7] Janet L. Abu-Lughod, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America’s Global Cities (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 357. [8] Adam Krims, Music and Urban Geography (Routledge: New York, 2007), 123.

Noise Music as GeNre

Noise music, in its many alterations, ruptures conventional generic boundaries: it is often not music at all, but noise, or sound, combined with visual material (video, DVD, public-access cable television, radio, the internet). Due to its polymorphism, it escapes the closure of the (theatrical) stage. It is often performed and disseminated outside the commercial nexus (in fact, Noise music probably would not exist without the selfactivity of its fans). When staged, the relation between performer and everyday person is blurred, and participation by audience members in Noise events is, in specific instances, a distinctive phenomenon. At its inception, Noise music was informed by a diverse set of assumptions, cultural and political, in its approach to postindustrial society. In musical terms, Noise performers’ formative experience entailed a confrontation with what they perceived as the destruction of rock music by a culture industry reflective of mass production and what Attali calls repetition. Industrial standardization in the record industry in particular translated to them as the emergence of a single totalitarian code. The initial impetus behind Noise rested on the assumption that since industrial production sets the terms for repetition inside mass-produced music, any cultural form of repetition inside the commodity market would be subsumed by the overarching logic of industrialization. Therefore Noise musicians generated non-repeatable music outside of the commercial nexus.

Noise as eNjoyMeNt?

Noise is pre-linguistic and pre-subjective. The noise of heavy machinery and the powerful sonic onslaught of a Macintosh PowerBook are acts that actively foreground their materiality and disrupt meaning: ‘what does this Noise mean?’ Harsh textures of sonic forces break down our identities rather than reinforce them. In the language of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, we would say that Noise creates jouissance. Jouissance means ‘enjoyment’[9]; in French it is used to mean ‘orgasm.’ But jouissance may also refer to a state of crisis that occurs when the grip of the symbolic is weakened or broken. This is how Lacan talks about law and jouissance in Seminar XX, ‘[T]he essence of law [is]-to divide up, distribute, and “retribute” everything that counts as jouissance. What is jouissance? It is reduced here to being nothing but a negative instance. Jouissance is that which serves no purpose.’[10] This is a powerful phrasing of the non-teleological nature of Noise. However, I sense a slight contradiction between the claim that Noise music is non-teleological and that it is ‘oppositional’ at the same time. Would Noise be then a form of resistant sound by accident? The blunt edge of applying Lacanian jouissance to Noise as which ‘serves no purpose’ has been complicated by musicologist Robert Fink, who, instead of an antiteleology, speaks, by way of gender theorist Judith Butler, of a performative teleology.[11] Such a performative teleology if applied to Noise performance may signify a teleology that sets the libido free by infinitely mutating it like, I would claim, a Boredoms performance.[12] Other theorists such as Barthes and Julia Kristeva give jouissance a somewhat different meaning. Recapturing the pre-linguistic experience, the child’s relation to his mother, an unmediated materiality is an orgasmic experience: it is the moment in which signification interrupts meaning, that is, it disrupts the symbolic, the social. I believe that the kind of Noise that, for instance, Japanese sound artists such as Merzbow,

[9] For example, Slavoj Zizek, The Metastases of Enjoyment: Six Essays on Woman and Causality (London and New York: Verso, 1994). [10] Quoted in Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1995) 191 note 29. [11] Robert Fink, Repeating Ourselves: American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 43. [12] Ibid., 42.

Masonna, Hijo Kaidan, Boris, and others generate, amply illustrate these two intersecting, yet differing interpretations of jouissance. In Merzbow’s laptop work, for instance, we have extreme sonic effects and high-frequencies often interspersed with samplings from Black Sabbath’s songs. The pain of harsh digital textures mixes with heavy metal’s brutal intensity. But Noise is not only pre-linguistic and pre-subjective, it is not simply a ‘return’ to something in our past. The kind of jouissance Noise generates has the effect of displacement and lets the subject open up to the possibility of change.

Music, techNoloGy, ideoloGy

In the early 1980s, formations such as Einstürzende Neubauten, Throbbing Gristle, and early SPK rejected repetitive modes of technology, considered themselves sub-electronic, and deployed environmental, ‘found’ sound as well as the body as their chief source of Noise. In musicological terms, for Noise musicians, repetition was equated with industrial standardization and mass production and represented a move toward a single totalitarian code. The body appeared to be the perfect vehicle to achieve non-repeatability. Late capital’s silent space was exposed as laden with a neo-fascist potentiality. Telecorps, NON, Psychic TV, Merzbow, and Laibach, often in controversial fashion, perceived this space as one dominated by a totalitarian code, where only the state is beyond the code, and manipulates all codes. Unlike the noisy rallies of historical fascism, this neofascism builds on the silence of the ‘users’ of its space – episodic resistance is met with overwhelming state violence. From the late 1980’s on, the use of sonic forces informed by mass reproduction technology (synthesizer, computer, video, etc.) had been more widely embraced.

Noise musicians increasingly went beyond the model, according to which objects are simply use values that extend the body or enable its disembodiment – a model that premised its utopian assumption on a re-establishment of the organic interrelation between subject and object and that looked to direct exchange to facilitate those relations. They proposed ways in which technology can provide destabilizing strategies, shattering some of the notions of those artists who overtly identify technology with capitalist progress and social control. Was then Noise, because of this new course, subsumed by the larger logic of the repetitive economy of capital? In her book on rap, Black Noise, Tricia Rose convincingly argues about rap’s alternative uses of and relationships to repetition. She stresses the multiple histories and approaches to sound organization inside commodified culture. Rose claims that, in black culture, repetition means circulation and equilibrium; and is not tied to accumulation and growth as in the dominant culture.[13] Her conceptualization of rap appears to be applicable Noise music as it has developed. At the transition to a new millennium (1999-2000) an influential group of digital Noise performers – Mego, Sensorband, Hrvatzki, Greg Davis, Nobukazu Takemura, and others – targeted postindustrial consumer society more directly. If creating (consumer) desire in perpetuity is the dominant characteristic of post-World War II capital, why not confront it with the sheer excess of processed sounds? Shaking off allegiances to technologies favoring organic components (body, fire, trash can) and perceived ‘outdated’ technologies (analogue box), the digital wave of Noise performers have been using western electronic hard and software technologies with immense creativity. There is a new sense of agency at work with technology-intensive musics: sound technologies are used to create new meanings for strategic aesthetic and political ends. ‘Wired’

[13] Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Hanover, NH.: Wesleyan University Press, 1994), 71-72.

Noise also fits the current international moment: music happens along global channels of rapid communication. The acceleration of sound communication opens new avenues for instantaneous intervention – that is, somewhat paradoxically, resistance to global capital is channeled through global cultural circuits.[14] How does digital Noise performance mesh with information-based businesses, spurred by developing cyber-technology, military research, or computer-driven control operations geographically separated from production? The question is legitimate since music as a cultural form is imbricated in economic production. How does this imbrication in the late capitalist mode of production impact digital performance and the structures of feelings Noise creates in the listener? That there is a certain unease about the digitization of Noise among its performers has been reflected in the revival of analogue composition. Vintage synthesizers are used both live and in recordings. The Locust features one member on an ‘old-fashioned’ Moog, White Mice’s Anonymouse uses knobs and wires, Stereolab rely on a mixture of electronics, Astro (Hiroshi Hasegawa) generates ambient analogisms, DJ Jeff Mills ‘spins’ minimal techno, Vibracathedral Orchestra record their live shows directly to two-track tape with guitars, violins, cello, banjo, recorders, and Casio toy organs, and Masonna kindles a ‘warm’ psychedelic sound with his Space Machine project. Others like Yasunao Tone subvert the ‘intentions’ designed into digital devices by using a Scotch tape to confuse the laser reading a CD, thereby creating a wide array of glitches.[15] Is the ‘return’ of analogue a form of nostalgia, ask the authors of Analog Days, Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco?[16] Their answer is: not necessarily. They cite Brian Eno who appears, in principle at least, to valorize the unpredictability of analogue production: the sounds ‘between the knobs’[17] challenge the flawless efficiency and

[14] See Chapter One in Paul D. Greene and Thomas Porcello (eds.), Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technologies in Sonic Cultures (Middletown, CT.: Wesleyan University Press, 2005). [15] See on this Nicolas Collins, Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking (New York: Routledge, 2006), 229. [16] Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco, Digital Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 318. [17] Ibid., 319. See also Timothy D. Taylor, Strange Sounds: Music, Technology and Culture (New York: Routledge, 2001), 110-111.

‘discipline’ of digital technology. Would then the recourse to an analogue approach be the relevant response to the tyranny of silence, anonymity, programmed and depersonalized workplace that multinational corporations have imposed on the urban-postindustrial space? In defense of digital Noise I argue that their approach provides a possibility for new experiences of desire and new experiments in musical forms. Taking a cue from Lacan via Robert Fink I claim that digital Noise is not ‘the negation of desire, but a powerful and totalizing metastasis [of desire].’[18] With Lacan though, it must be stressed that it is a desire for an unsatisfied desire.[19] Digital Noise, like Lacanian desire, does not seek satisfaction–it pursues its own continuation and furtherance, resulting in the aforementioned productive complication of the teleological/non-teleological binary. It is only in a reconfigured listener (subject) that desire will no longer hinder the subject’s pursuit of gratification. To achieve this, Noise must make the listener not only acknowledge that something is ‘wrong’ with his or her desire but expose, that even in refusal, he or she desires in accordance to the Law (authority figures, guilt, ambition) and that even ‘our’ desires are not our own but belong to the Other. Can digital Noise performance achieve this? In quasi-programming environments made possible by certain software (MAX, Super Collider, etc.) the musician can create a storehouse of pre-defined connections and control them using patterns and sequences and free-form patch control that is unique to one’s computer. And if one ‘intrudes’ into the program itself as Ikue Mori does, one can get totally inside the electronics behind the sound and thereby overcome routinisation (hollowing out) of her intervention and continually shatter the listener’s expectations by not sounding one expects her to sound.[20] This Noise makes us want to know something, figure out what our unconscious is saying, and discover what the performer can capture from our dreams and fantasies. It is only then that the true task of ‘working through’ between Noise performer and audience can start in order to get us listeners to say the ‘unspeakable’ without guilt and without fear. The social and political outcome of saying the ‘unspeakable,’ just as that of a Noise performance, is unpredictable.

Copyleft.

[18] Fink, Repeating Ourselves, 9. [19] Fink, Lacanian Subject, 51. [20] Thom Holmes, Electronic and Experimental Music. Second Edition. (New York: Routledge, 2002), 236.

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This book can be downloaded as a PDF file:
http://www.arteleku.net/audiolab/noise_capitalism.pdf

FUCK TELECORPS "PRESENTS DISS-CO-RPES"

2010-03-01T19:32:00.012-05:00

"Fuck Telecorps Presents Diss-Co-Rpes" is side A of a bootleg Telecorps/Fuck Telecorps cassette produced and released in early 1993 by Herr Brine (of experimental tape/music duo Trailer Court Flambe. Trailer Court Flambe was Herr Brine with Raq V.B. who joined Telecorps in late 1991) on his cassette label, That Cow Inc. it consists of samples and edits of Telecorps "live on New Year's Eve 1992 at the Turmoil Room" and of the Telecorps "Reaching Out" cassette chopped and diced over a "disco" beat. The beat is more early 90s hip hop than disco, but whatever. oh, and it's 38 minutes long. work that body.

Herr Brine's current whereabouts are unknown.

"Telecorps 92.12.31" cassette cover designed and produced by Herr Brine, 1993.

Matt Wellins + Nick Painter live at the Nerve Dec. 17th 2009

2010-03-01T16:57:00.007-05:00

this duo performance occurred as part of the last show at The Nerve Art and Performance Studio in the Bloomfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

Jason Zeh, Pimlo and Hunted Creatures were also on the bill.

Ryan Emmett set up the show.

it was recorded to audio cassette by Nick Painter.

it was digitized and leveled by Edgar Um Bucholtz on March 1st, 2010.

photo by Ryan Emmett.

HIGH EVIL

2010-02-17T18:40:00.009-05:00

"High Evil"

Saturday, November 2nd, 1996

a building (now demolished) on Fifth Avenue in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh

"I (tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE) was invited by Edgar Um Bucholtz to participate in a rave/Halloween Party/whatever called 'High Evil' that was organized by tcrps/Bass Culture. One of the advertisements for it was a fluorescent orange sticker with the following text:

'HIGH EVIL!!

They killed S.P. Dinsmoor and Jeff McKissack, they killed James Hampton, they want to destroy the Garden of Eden, the Orange Show, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millenium General Assembly! Where There Is No Vision The People Perish! Join us to expand the earth's field intelligence, expose their hidden hand! All Hallow's Eve, Dia de los Muertos show the gate; join us the second day of November to explode the locks! Come save the world! 456-BASS'

I (tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE) loved the advertising but, alas, I didn't have any fun at the actual event. Providing improvised sound were Sharyn Lee Frederick: child's violin, measuring cups, voice; Michael Johnsen: saw, amplified oboe, baritone sax; Greg Pierce: records, intercom, guitar, alto sax, dictaphone; & Dave W(Ho)le Shim: 4 track cassettes. I contributed projected video mixing. This was an experiment in combining vaudeos of mine ("My Life Flashing Before You" & "Something That Dissolves The Shadow Of Something That Was Next To Something That Combusted Twice. Once") with live drawing using a "VideoPainter". This latter device is a toy with a touch-sensitive screen that sends out a video signal. It can be drawn or written on & has various ready-made images targetted at a young user - such as pictures of a robot, a car, a dragon, a fairy, etc.. I scribbled on it, drew faces with parts made out of the ready-made images, wrote the words "Deeper & Deeper" when a recording of a hypnotist's spiel played (mixed in with sexual penetration footage), mixed the video with VideoPainter ready-made landscape images, etc.. There were various technical problems (such as my inability to get the preview monitor to work properly & the video projection cutting off my view of some of the necessary VideoPainter controls) & this was probably the WORST "performance" I've ever presented." -->tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, some years ago

"On Saturday, November 2nd, 1996, I (tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE) participated in an event in Pittsburgh entitled "High Evil" organized by Edgar Um Bucholtz that took place in a building that's now demolished. This event was significant for me as one of the 1st shows I participated in after moving to Pittsburgh & as possibly the only time I ever used the toy VideoPainter as a video improvising tool. Since I've been too poor most of my life to afford 'professional' equipment, I've often used toys & borrowed &/or broken equipment. The broken equipment in this instance being a WJ MX-12 AV mixer that I STILL use & that's STILL broken. Providing improvised sound were Sharyn Lee Frederick: child's violin, measuring cups, voice; Michael Johnsen: saw, amplified oboe, baritone sax; Greg Pierce: records, intercom, guitar, alto sax, dictaphone; & Dave W(Ho)le Shim: 4 track cassettes. I contributed projected video mixing. This brief movie is probably a simulation of the visuals done at home - since the actual conditions of the show probably didn't involve any video recording." -->tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, 2010

For more info from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, see entry 201 @: http://www.fyi.net/~anon/MereOutline1996.html

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I (Edgar Um Bucholtz) will scan and upload the flyer for this event once i track it down in the tcrps archives. the flyer was a small letterpress edition on recycled paper. Dan Bidwa designed the flyer and printed it at Third Termite.

the building that this event occurred in had a sign on the front that read "M. Stahl Plumbing." at the time, it was rented by Lauri Mancuso.

tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE video performance/projection and the accompanying improvised music performance occurred early in the evening from 9:30pm to 10:30pm.

this was followed until the early hours of the morning by a number of DJs playing drum and bass, downtempo and experimental tracks on the main floor and in the basement. i believe the DJs included: Dan Strange, Soji-Fu, Spaed and Farmer Tea.

no other documentation of this event is known to exist.

The Curious Dr. Humpp performs "And What About...?"

2010-02-03T21:20:00.004-05:00

"And what about Janus? And what about cats and dogs living together?
And What About Bob? And what about Afghanistan? And what about
celophane? And what about bullet proof vests? And what about Ben
Bernake? And what about newspapers? And what about Pauly Shore? And
what about sunsets? And what about obedience?

And what about narcoleptic seals? And what about moonraker? And what
about anti-inflammatories? And what about McFadden, the lazy surgeon?

And what about this rash?

And what about these lashes? And What about Bob Edwards? And what
about Oven-Ready Turkey? And what about Yuengling Black and Tan? And
what about High Zero? And what about knickers? And what about radical
utopias? And what about Dianetics? And what about the R6 implant? And
what about Michael Jackson? And what about Blanket?

And what ABOUT Blanket?

And what about eugenics? And what about cornflakes?

and what about The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion? And what about this
chocolate in my peanut butter? And what about this peanut butter in my
chocolate?

And what about Werner Erhard and The Wiz?

And what about Steev Mike?

and what about fashion snuggies? and what about kidnapping haitian
babies for christ? and what about the death of autotune? and what
about where's the birth certificate?

And what about...

Lady Gaga
Adam Lambert
Norman Mailer Fighting Rip Torn
Boys In The Sand
Guys Go Crazy 4: Banana Bangers
Peter Berlin
Bette Davis in Madame Sin
Lola Montez
Franz Liszt
Shameless Scouts
GOIN.GAY.FOR.PAY
Maverickman222 and Hunter
Double.Dick.Trouble
How.The.West.Was.Hung
My Best Friend's Father
Dorian Gray
Lord Henry
Pashtun Warriors
their Halekon
Cock Scene Investigator
Trogpite
Tusk Lord
CottonBallMan
L.P.N.
Telecorps
Propane Beef Dog
Systems Research
Radioactivity
Pineapple Symphony
Comet Kohoutek
Sunny Ray
the Children of God
Flirty Fishing
Love bombing
Sun Myung Moon
Ronald Reagan
The Rapture
The Tribulation
The Late, Great Planet Earth
The Jupiter Effect
A Horse and Two Goats
The Aesthetics of Rock
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
Wounded Knee
The Ghost Dance
Vine Deloria
My Lai
Abu Ghraib
Attica
Ward Churchill
Turtle Island
Seymour Hersh
Copper Green
preemptive war
Right-wing politics
Binaries
A hex dump
Metadata
Granularity
OWLs
Owl Worship
homosocial rituals
Moloch
Baphomet
the cosmology of Thelema
sex magick
Wilhelm Reich
Cloudbusting
book-burning
William S. Burroughs
anal mucus
Curtis Harrington
Jack Smith
Normal Love
Batman Dracula
The CN Tower
the artful penetration of Barbara
and what about Matt Wellins
And what about MEEEEEE!!!???"

text composed by Dan Lansberry, Marcus Kim, Greg Bolton, Nick Bloom, Elvira Eichleay, John Riegert, Jason Dunbar and Edgar Um Bucholtz.

performed by The Curious Dr. Humpp (Edgar Um Bucholtz accompanied by Matt Wellins on home-built electronics) for the christening of Lauri Mancuso's new art and performance studio at 4312 Main St. Pittsburgh on Feb. 2nd 2010.

also performing were RRIND and ANITA FIX.

Edgar Um Bucholtz's turban and make-up by Thommy Conroy.

photo by Lauri Mancuso

dedicated to Jack Smith

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (2004)

2010-01-12T16:19:00.009-05:00

"The Air-Conditioned Nightmare" was a group art show organized by Edgar Um Bucholtz in winter 2004. It was installed at Thommy Conroy Works at 3700 Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh with much assistance from Thommy Conroy. The show was themed on a book of the same name by novelist Henry Miller. The book, written in the late 40s, is an often critical travelogue of America. Miller foresees the coming cold, homogenization of mainstream 1950s America, but also celebrates the quirky, individualist American underground. The walls of the gallery were covered with canvas and then collaboratively painted by many of the artists over the course of many days. Additional artworks were then wheat-pasted or hung on top of the canvas.

here is a link to my flickr page with installation shots of the show and a few pics from the opening night:

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (2004)

all installation and opening night photos by Thommy Conroy

Devil Rock in the Monongahela River

2009-09-14T21:41:00.001-04:00

this devil rock was video recorded using a G1 Android device on July 19, 2009.

Cloud video for Hothouse 2009

2009-09-13T18:00:00.008-04:00

this video was shot, processed and edited by Edgar Um Bucholtz in August 2009. the cloud footage has been sped up by 500% to 1500%. it was produced for projection at Hothouse 2009 as part of Thommy Conroy's decor. Hothouse is an annual fundraiser for the Pittsburgh philanthropic non-profit organization, The Sprout Fund.

in addition to making this cloud video, Edgar Um Bucholtz was the music coordinator for Hothouse 2009. Zombi, Philadelphyinz, Harlan Twins, Humanaut, Flamenco Pittsburgh and Sam McUmber were the featured musical acts.

http://www.sproutfund.org/hothouse/

lighting design and video projector installation by Rob Long and and the excellent folks at Clear Story.

enjoy the silence.

"I Exalt We (Backyard Orgy)" by J. Fox and Edgar Um Bucholtz

2009-09-07T16:39:00.009-04:00

this is the first part (of three parts) of an experimental video by J. Fox and Edgar Um Bucholtz. it was shot and edited in Pittsburgh in the Summer of 1996. it was publicly screened only once (at The Andy Warhol Museum in 1996.)

the soundtrack was produced by Edgar Um Bucholtz at the studios of WRCT FM. it is a manipulated recording by jazz vocalist Shirley Horn.

this video was made the summer that J. Fox and Edgar Um Bucholtz became domestic and artistic partners. this partnership lasted approx. 7 years. they are remain close friends.

it was shot on VHS-C and transferred to mini-DV for editing.

parts two and three have minor adult content, so i uploaded them via xTube. xTube's embed code is not getting any love from google today. here are the links:

part two

part three

Edgar Um Bucholtz "Solo for WRCT" (2009)

2009-09-04T15:02:00.005-04:00

Edgar Um Bucholtz performs "Solo for WRCT" (with assistance from Josh Beyer on mixing console/production and Marcus Kim on two Denon CD players.)

This piece was improvised and composed for broadcast on WRCT as part of Josh Beyer's "Local Solo Improvisation Summer Radio Series."

Edgar Um Bucholtz reads "Writing Through Derek Bailey's IMPROVISATION," a mesostic text composed by Edgar Um Bucholtz for the 2003 HIGH ZERO Festival of Experimental Improvised Music in Baltimore. Accompanying the reading are excerpts of Edgar Um Bucholtz improvising on cornet and miscellaneous objects (recorded at The Nerve on Monday July 13th 2009) and on soft synths and drum machine (via LOGIC STUDIO PRO; recorded on Monday July 13th 2009 in the attic at 4222 Calvin St. in Pittsburgh.)

The piece in full was recorded at WRCT on the evening of Tuesday July 14th.

It was broadcast on Thursday July 23rd.

Thanks to Josh Beyer for asking me to do this. Thanks to Marcus Kim for helping out. Thanks to John Cartwright for letting me use his MicroKorg as a controller.

I apologize for mispronouncing "scherzos" and "passacaglia"!!!!

Telecorps "Reaching Out" Bootleg audio cassette

2009-07-31T16:54:00.011-04:00

this audio cassette from 1992 (or 1991?) was the first self-issued Telecorps release--even though we called it a "bootleg." it was our attempt to make a live record as shitty as "Confusion Is Sex." we succeeded hugely. it is pure shit. it consists of audio edits of Telecorps rehearsing in the living room of the band house on Hobart Street in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. i made these edits using the shittiest tape decks available and without listening to the source material nor what i was editing.

our friend, songwriter/guitarist Gary Anderson who could never quite grasp what Telecorps was ever trying to do, commented on over-hearing these rehearsals that it seemed we were "really reaching out." hence, the title.

House of Duh was a conceptual and real noise and rock label run by Ray-C-Ray of the bands Propane Beef Dog, Salt Chunk Mary, Telecorps and Infinite Slab of Electric. this release is House of Duh 98.

the cover design and song titles are by Markus P. Spanglestein of Revo/O.R.I. (Edgar Um Bucholtz may have assisted.)

the only time Telecorps played State College (on the "Healthy Lifestyles" mini-tour with Fly Wallpaper a.k.a. Giorgio, Salt Chunk Mary, and Tiny Little Help featuring Duane Jones), we gave away or sold this fake bootleg cassette. Edgar Um Bucholtz's step brother, John Archer, was at a house party in State College a few years later and found one of these cassettes underneath a bathroom sink. or maybe it was a toilet.

listen at your own risk.

"Life In Aliquippa" (1993)

2009-07-23T18:08:00.004-04:00

This is video cutup primarily features footage of Michael Johnsen, Brian Dean Richmond and Edgar Um Bucholtz performing in Aliquippa, PA in 1993 as part of Michelle Illuminato's Aliquippa Embraces Art. The venue for this trio performance was a large empty, decrepit department store in downtown Aliquippa.

For his performance, Edgar Um Bucholtz spent many days researching the story of the town of Aliquippa (at the Aliquippa Library, at the Carnegie Library in Oakland and in the Labor archives at Hillman Library.) For example, he learned of Queen Aliquippa (for whom the city is named and whose name translates as "large hat" for which she was famous for wearing), a leader of the Seneca tribe of American Indians who became an important British Ally leading up to the French and Indian War. He learned of the many African-American families who were moved en masse to Aliquippa in the 1970's to work at the Jones and Laughlin Steel Mill--only to be left mostly without jobs after the collapse of the Steel Industry in the 1980s.

In the performance, he read this text he compiled about the origins and history of the city of Aliquippa. He sat at a table in the middle front of the large space. His voice was sent via microphone and cable to the very back of the room into a 30 second delay and then into an amplification speaker system. The very apparent delay between his live reading voice and his amplified delayed voice was disorienting.

Michael Johnsen also sat at the table with a brass microscope & some video equipment (all equipment, including Bucholtz's was powered via one dangerously warm 200 ft blue extension cord dressed through the wet and sagging floor). On a small monitor, visitors were able to observe the teeming microscopic "Life in Aliquippa" contained in sample of ditchwater collected behind the venue. These were tough times for people in Aliquippa, reflected in the general tenor of the other work in the show, but the protozoa seemed to be doing quite well. Some children asked if "they" were predicting the weather.
Michael also projected a 16mm black & white film loop of sow bugs.

After Edgar Um Bucholtz finished reading his text, he, Michael and Brian Dean Richmond repeatedly played and improvised on three tone rows. Michael played clarinet. Brian played trombone. Edgar played cornet. Edgar Um Bucholtz derived these tone rows from the letters in the various spellings of the name Aliquippa using a alpha-tonal transcription method he devised.

This video cutup also also features bits and pieces of a video by Edgar Um Bucholtz called "Noise In System." The video ends with a bit of Christian evangelical TV re-edited by Edgar Um Bucholtz.

Fuck Telecorps "RedGreenBlueWhite"

2009-07-09T17:06:00.005-04:00

video, audio and edit by Edgar Um Bucholtz, 2009.

this video was shot and edited in Pittsburgh on Monday July 6th 2009.

the audio soundtrack consists of edits of solo improvisations on multi-various electronics by Edgar Um Bucholtz recorded in 1994-1996 live on WRCT 88.3 FM Pittsburgh.

the audio was edited for video on Monday July 6th 2009.

this video was produced to be the Fuck Telecorps set of a concert organized by Mike Kasunic at the Nerve featuring Caboladies, Tusk Lord, Sundogpeacehouse and Fuck Telecorps. at the concert the video was projected on a white wall. the audio was played loudly through a stereo PA.

this video is dedicated to Mike Kasunic, Marcus Kim and Lauri Mancuso.

flyer by Mike Kasunic.

Fox And His Friends: New Millennium Post-Gay Photography 2003

2009-06-25T14:32:00.034-04:00

announcement card by Daniel Minskey. image taken from the film "Mahogany" (1975).

"Fox And His Friends: New Millennium Post-Gay Photography" was an art show organized by Edgar Um Bucholtz and installed at Pittsburgh's Garfield Artworks gallery in May/June 2003.

the first part of the title of this show is a reference to a 1975 film of the same name (English translation) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

the artists included in this show were: Bruce LaBruce, Conrad Ventur, Slava Mogutin, AsianPunkBoy (a.k.a. Terrence Koh), Timothy Dowling, Terry Young, J. Fox and Richard Orjis.

(artist Terry Lewis is listed on the announcement card, but his work was not exhibited as it was very unfortunately damaged during shipment.)

I, Edgar Um Bucholtz, was a guest curator of Garfield Artworks for this show. the primary curator of Garfield Artworks at this time was Lauri Mancuso.

below is a series of installation shots. (unfortunately, they are fairly low res.)

thanks to Lauri Mancuso for letting me do this show, helping to install it and taking these installation shots.

installation views

J. Fox "I Dart NY" (detail) 2003

Slava Mogutin

Slava Mogutin

installation view

Conrad Ventur (portraits of Phiiliip and Debbie from Avenue D)

installation view

Terry Young

Terry Young

Richard Orjis

Timothy Dowling

Timothy Dowling

Timothy Dowling

installation view (with Conrad Ventur portraits of Spencer Product and Melissa Burns in foreground)

AsianPunkBoy (a.k.a. Terrence Koh)

AsianPunkBoy (a.k.a. Terrence Koh)

AsianPunkBoy (a.k.a. Terrence Koh)

Bruce LaBruce

Bruce LaBruce

Bruce LaBruce

below are two short video clips relating to this show.

the first video clip was taken during the installation of "Fox And His Friends: New Millennium Post-Gay Photography."

in this video clip are: Terry Young, Jeremiah Brace, Timothy Dowling and Tracy Stewart.

the second video clip contains live footage of the band Ludus Lovestyle performing at Modern Formations gallery as part of a concert organized in conjunction with the opening of "Fox And His Friends." the date of the opening and concert was Friday May 30th, 2003.

headlining the concert was SSION from Kentucky. opening the concert was Ben Greene's experimental project, Cachexia.

this video clip also has footage (shot in "nightvision" after the concert) in the "Fox And His Friends" installation. it is the only video documentation yet found that gives a sense of the finished installation of the show.

appearing in the video clip are: Lesley (of Ludus Lovestyle), Justin (of Ludus Lovestyle), Terry Young, Ben Greene, Edgar Um Bucholtz and Alec Smith. the video camera was operated by Tom Hall.

Thurs. May 28th: improvised sounds of JACK WRIGHT + BOB MARSH and more...

2009-05-24T18:56:00.005-04:00

Thursday May 28th

an evening of improvised electro-acoustic sounds at The Nerve

with

JACK WRIGHT + BOB MARSH
improvised reeds + cello/voice
http://www.springgardenmusic.com/

MICHAEL JOHNSEN + MARGARET COX
home-built electronics, saw, magnetic cards, etc.

FUCK TELECORPS
(Steve BOYLE + Edgar UM BUCHOLTZ + Jim STORCH)
improvised percussion/etc. + cornet/etc.

JOSH BEYER
homemade guitar manipulations

$7 or so

admission begins at 6pm.

live sounds begin at 7pm.

performances will finish by 10pm.

The Nerve: an art and performance venue
500 Dargan Street (at Minerva St.)
Pittsburgh, PA 15224

"Playing together since 1986, Jack Wright (alto & soprano saxophone, contra-alto clarinet) and Bob Marsh (cello, violin and processed voice) really convey how theirs is an "improvisational music that reflects and celebrates the mutual dependence of the players", to quote the liner notes (of their Birds in the Hand CD release.) There's an almost physical feel of strict interplay between the instruments, though in a realm of sonic cubism, with broken lines, abrupt changes and jigsaw dialogues; and the key word must be joy, the joy of creative jamming bewteen two long-time friends. Something clearly audible even if you're not a jazz expert." - Eugenio Maggi

noise show in Pittsburgh with Cock Scene Investigator

2009-05-08T14:37:00.005-04:00

tonight Friday May 8th

the first power electronics/noise show at the Nerve

with

CHAOS CHARACTER
solo digi-noise from Providence, RI
http://www.myspace.com/characterchaos

JAMES AMOEBA
solo neon-noise from NYC
http://www.myspace.com/jamesamoeba

FLEA APPARITIONS
solo anemic noise from Pgh
http://www.myspace.com/fleaapparitions

HANDHOLDER
solo porno noise from Pgh

COCK SCENE INVESTIGATOR
terrible noise trio from Pgh/Monroeville
(Nick Painter, Joe Roemer + Edgar Um Bucholtz)

7pm - 11pm

$5

all-ages

The Nerve
500 Dargan Street (at Minerva St.)
Pittsburgh, PA 15224

(flyer by Marcus Kim)

Um Bucholtz "My Little Cow & Me"

2009-04-29T18:02:00.009-04:00

this is an 8 track analog tape composition utilizing an Akai S900 sampler that was realized at Carnegie Mellon University's Electronic Music Studio in the College of Fine Arts. it was my final project for my second semester studying electronic music composition with composer Reza Vali. the year was 1989. i was 18 or 19 and pre-Um.

Reza Vali appreciated my "agressiveness with the devices," but he thought i went over the top when i played the piece in public for the first (and only) time at CFA's Alumni Concert Hall. i accompanied my audio with the projection of a video piece i shot and edited (featuring amongst other imagery a toy cow from my childhood and video of my girlfriend at the time with tape over her mouth, egads!) two performer friends of mine sat on either side of the projection screen doing lord knows what (was fire involved?) the last minute improvised maximalism of the whole thing amused me at the time.

this piece incorporates a sample of my grandmother, Fanny Jean Harrell née Flanagan, speaking to me in 1972 ("What about those paints of mine?"), a James Brown horn riff sample (from "I've Got Money"), samples of people answering the phone at randomly-chosen CMU extensions ("This is Mike Snyder", "Mathematics") and my own voice hooting (in tribute to Lee "Scratch" Perry?), moaning and singing bits of "Blue Skies" (composed in 1926 by Irving Berlin, but known to me from Willie Nelson's version from 1978.)

this version comes from a cheapo audio cassette dub i made of the original 2 track 1/4" tape master (now lost, i think.)

there was a very brief audio drop-out at the end of this dub that i removed using Final Cut Pro.

Um Bucholtz "Chord Organ Improvisation"

2009-04-27T13:26:00.006-04:00

this is a solo improvisation on a Magnus Chord Organ Model 670 done in a minimalist style. it was recorded in my 3rd floor bedroom on Hobart Street in Pittsburgh in 1990. it was the summer, i think.

i believe i was inspired in part by Steve Reich's Four Organs (1970.) unlike that famous piece, this piece's rasion d'etre seems to be the changing tonal beats heard throughout as the notes change in proximity to each other and to the constant tonal cluster drone.

it has a mediative tone--which is only somewhat disturbed by my finger flub at almost 6 minutes in.

Um Bucholtz "Fish Woman" (stereo disco mix)

2009-04-23T12:56:00.007-04:00

this is a solo recording done live in one take in my bedroom in 1991 (or 1990?)

it's my attempt at a punk pop song.

all of the sounds, except my voice, come from vinyl records that i manipulated to make skip. (the only record i recognize is Tommy James and the Shondells.)

soon after i recorded it, i dubbed it to a cart at WRCT 88.3 FM. it received some moderate airplay.

Telecorps "99/33" (video documentation edit)

2009-03-29T16:02:00.007-04:00

Telecorps performed "99/33" as the opening act for a concert (organized and promoted by Manny Theiner) featuring The Haters, Caroliner Rainbow Oblivion and The Spo-its on August 13, 1991 at the Birmingham Lofts gallery in the South Side of Pittsburgh.

in this composition, Telecorps performed 99 songs in 33 minutes. the start and stop times of each song were pre-determined using chance operations. no individual song could be longer than 9 seconds. musicians followed a timed score and a clock. (due to the way that the score was composed, individual songs could sometimes overlap and create longer than 9 second periods of sound-making.)

various mics placed around the musicians fed the sounds of each song into a mixing console which was manipulated (per song) by a recording engineer who followed his own timed score (adjusting mic volume input levels, equalization and stereo panning.)

the (manipulated) sounds of each song were recorded to individual numbered cassettes (#1 - 99.) members of a volunteer assembly line packaged each song cassette as it was recorded into manila envelopes and used chance operations (via a program written in the BASIC language for a Commodore 64 home computer), local phone books and a Pittsburgh postal code book to determine mailing addresses in the greater Pittsburgh area for each cassette.

each cassette package also contained a photo-copied page (also selected using chance operations) from Jacques Attali's book "Noise: The Political Economy of Music" with a Telecorps 99/33 song chart on the reverse side.

immediately after the end of the Telecorps performance, 78 completed cassette packages were taken to the U.S. Post Office in the South Side and mailed.

21 of the 99 cassette packages were not completed at the end of the performance and were not mailed.

over the course of the following two years, 10 of the 78 cassette packages were returned due to various postal irregularities.

of the 68 cassette packages that were received at the selected addresses, Telecorps received no replies to the Telecorps P.O. Box return address listed on the packages.

for this performance, Telecorps was:

Edgar Um Bucholtz: voice, Atari 800XL BASIC programming, 99/33 scores, process, audience handout design
Raq. V. B.: bass, bandages
Ray C Ray: drum set
Sam Ward: drum set, clock
Oliver Kollar: electric guitar, fx, clock
Bob Kollar: Commodore 64 BASIC programming, postal address divination
Sarah Wilkes: address divination, addressing
Kate Glicksberg: labeling, packaging
Gary Miklusek: tape deck operator
Marty Miklusek: tape deck operator
Ky Kim: audio engineer
Matt Marcus: asst. audio engineer
Missy Galore: video documentation, costume design for Edgar Um Bucholtz
Jen Saffron: still photographer

this is a 7 minute edit (made on March 28, 2009) of the original 50 minute video documentation master. this edit features approximately 20 songs (of the 99 performed.) the sound for this video was recorded in-camera and thus is not ideal.

the radio music that can be heard in the background during the latter half of this video edit is the result of members of the Spo-its who attempted to sabotage our performance with easy listening AM sounds.

special thanks to Manny Theiner and WRCT.

i plan to photograph and digitize the audio on the unsent and returned cassettes. i'll post it on here when i get to it.

Fuck Um Bucholtz "Tempelcorps Ass Rash 93" (rough edit)

2009-03-27T19:11:00.011-04:00

Fuck Um Bucholtz "Tempelcorps Ass Rash 93" a.k.a. "(P)(r)(E)(A)(Z)(A)(N)(S)(e)" (2009 rough edit)

this is a 2009 rough edit of a live Edgar Um Bucholtz solo electronics performance on WRCT 88.3 FM in the wee hours of the morning of an unknown day of 1993.

instruments used: Casio CZ-101 (in system mode), voice, analog and digital delays, parametric equalizers, feedback, tape loops and misc. other FX boxes.

this performance was inspired by sounds on the "Kosmische Musik" compilation released in 1972 on the Ohr label of Germany.
thanks to Dave Shim for turning me on to this compilation.

this recording is a cross between screeching power electronics and slowly-evolving Kosmische Musik. the original master is approximately 60 minutes. i edited out many of the transitional sections. i would like to cut it down more at some point.

listen to this the way it was created: at VERY LOUD VOLUME.

notes from the original cassette master (shown below):

"LIVE UP-UM SYNTH THESIS 1993 (NOSIED)"

"Cosmo Synth Musick (Please to Destroy)"

---------------------------------------------

April 27, 2009 update:

i re-uploaded this track. it should now be in stereo.

Fuck Telecorps "Who Shit (Inverse Redux)"

2009-03-26T20:13:00.008-04:00

this is dub of a rough 2-track mixdown of a 4-track tape composition by Edgar Um Bucholtz from 1993. it is named "Who Shit" because the master was recorded over someone's homemade cassette of The Who. the tape i found this mixdown on is pictured below.

it was mixed down to stereo by Edgar Um Bucholtz from a Tascam 4-track in Bob Kollar's house on Chesterfield Street in Oakland on August 13, 1993.

it was digitized and converted to mp3 on March 25, 2009.

-----------------------------------------------------------

April 23, 2009 update:

i realized yesterday that i mistakenly uploaded this in mono. it should be in hard stereo.

it should now be fixed.

Telecorps live on New Year's Eve 1992 (rough edit)

2009-03-03T11:20:00.007-05:00

this is a two camera edit of a live performance by Telecorps in the basement of the Turmoil Room in Wilkinsburg/Pittsburgh on New Year's Eve 1992.

a projected film-loop by MIchael Johnsen accompanied the performance.

on this occasion Telecorps was:

Edgar Um Bucholtz - voice, cornet, orders, timing clock, jumping about
Missy Galore - voice, tinsel
Raq V.B. - voice, ass cheeks, candle-phallus
Ray C. Ray - drums, skree-tar, fx
Sharyn Frederick - bass, hair
Buffy Um Kollar - bowed dulcimer, dominatrix outfit
Ian Williams - guitar, thrashing about, drums
Jen Saffron - violin
Catherine Randecker - electric blinking bug alien
Gary Miklusek - rhythm guitar, hat flaps
Michael Johnsen - film-loop

plus

taunting by Damon Che

video by Gern and a tripod assisted by Michael Johnsen(?)

The Feral Family play in the background at the beginning when Michael is speaking.

This video documents the only time Telecorps rocked in a live setting. It was an accident.

Ray C. Ray plays drums on the first half with Ian Williams on guitar. For the second half, they switch.

Thanks to Brian Dean Richmond for asking us to play this gig.

"Super Duck Window Burn Iconotrashi 96" by Um Bucholtz

2008-12-17T20:54:00.008-05:00

electronic sounds and video edit by Um Bucholtz 1993-2008

sounds improvised on a Casio CZ-100, a Sequential Circuits Prophet 600 and various (somewhat busted) FX. recorded to 4-track in 1993.

mixed down and edited to found video in 1996 as part of an Um Bucholtz (with Dave Shim) audio/video VHS compilation entitled "Reclaim (Electrosonic PicBlocs)."

video and sound re-edited in December 2008.

special thanks to Peter Vogt and Associates and VID-COM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAUSA

Fuck Telecorps "Ball Display Shrubbery Servent"

2008-12-08T17:41:00.005-05:00

this is second of two parts of a Fuck Telecorps live performance on November 30th 2008 at 3634 Penn Ave. in Pittsburgh.

Fuck Telecorps was Steve Boyle (percussive objects, bow, items), Edgar Um Bucholtz (cornet, words, etc.) and Matt Wellins (home-built electronics) with special guest Dave Bernabo on guitar.

the babbling at the beginning is by Edgar, Steve and Michael Johnsen.

Fuck Telecorps "Mayan, Ruddy Paladin 3G"

2008-12-08T16:13:00.008-05:00

this is first of two parts of a Fuck Telecorps live performance on November 30th 2008 at 3634 Penn Ave. in Pittsburgh.

Fuck Telecorps was Steve Boyle (percussive objects, bow, items), Edgar Um Bucholtz (cornet, words, etc.) and Matt Wellins (home-built electronics) with special guest Dave Bernabo on guitar.

the occasion was a CD release by Baltimore composer/improvising musician/inventor John Berndt on Dave Bernabo's Abstract On Black label.

John Berndt performed a duo set with Michael Johnsen and a solo set.

Boyle-Bucholtz-Wellins-Bernabo opened the evening.

Michael Johnsen made the recording.

special thanks to Monk for hosting this.

related links:

http://www.abstractonblack.com/

http://www.johnberndt.org/

John Riegert performs "Spray" at "New Traditions '99"

2008-11-18T15:14:00.002-05:00

John Riegert performs "Spray"

assisted by Edgar Um Bucholtz

at "New Traditions '99", a simultaneous performance event held in Pittsburgh, PA at Carnegie Mellon University on November 6th, 1991.

"The First Celestial Adventure Of Mr. Antipyrine, Fire-Extinguisher" filmstrip pt. 4 of 4

2008-11-17T19:38:00.000-05:00

The First Celestial Adventure of Mr. Antipyrine, Fire Extinguisher" by Tristan Tzara, 1916.

translated by Ruth Wilson (from "Dadaist Perfomance")

part four of four parts

this version staged and directed for filmstrip by Edgar Um Bucholtz and J Fox in Pittsburgh in 1999

starring Dean Novotny as Mr. Antipyrine, Fire-Extinguisher

and tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE as Tristan Tzara

"The First Celestial Adventure Of Mr. Antipyrine, Fire-Extinguisher" filmstrip pt. 3 of 4

2008-11-17T16:08:00.001-05:00

"The First Celestial Adventure of Mr. Antipyrine, Fire Extinguisher" by Tristan Tzara, 1916.

translated by Ruth Wilson (from "Dadaist Perfomance")

part three of four parts

this version staged and directed for filmstrip by Edgar Um Bucholtz and J Fox in Pittsburgh in 1999

starring Dean Novotny as Mr. Antipyrine, Fire-Extinguisher

and tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE as Tristan Tzara

"The First Celestial Adventure Of Mr. Antipyrine, Fire-Extinguisher" filmstrip pt. 2 of 4

2008-11-16T22:15:00.000-05:00

"The First Celestial Adventure of Mr. Antipyrine, Fire Extinguisher" by Tristan Tzara, 1916.

translated by Ruth Wilson (from "Dadaist Perfomance")

part two of four parts

this version staged and directed for filmstrip by Edgar Um Bucholtz and J Fox in Pittsburgh in 1999

starring Dean Novotny as Mr. Antipyrine, Fire-Extinguisher

sounds, voices and actions improvised by Dean Novotny, Merce Pierce-Dix, Hyla Willis, Matt Weiner, Alisa Dix, Greg Pierce, Adrienne Walnoha, J Fox, Lita W., Michael Johnsen, Etta Cetera, Edgar Um Bucholtz and tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE as Tristan Tzara.

photography by Michael Johnsen

this transfer was videotaped off the wall with a mini-DV camera. i hope to someday scan the filmstrip and upload the audio for a much better transfer.

"The First Celestial Adventure Of Mr. Antipyrine, Fire-Extinguisher" filmstrip pt. 1 of 4

2008-11-16T20:08:00.001-05:00

"The First Celestial Adventure of Mr. Antipyrine, Fire Extinguisher" by Tristan Tzara, 1916.

translated by Ruth Wilson (from "Dadaist Perfomance")

part one of four parts

this version staged and directed for filmstrip by Edgar Um Bucholtz and J Fox in Pittsburgh in 1999

starring Dean Novotny as Mr. Antipyrine, Fire-Extinguisher

sounds, voices and actions improvised by Dean Novotny, Merce Pierce-Dix, Hyla Willis, Matt Weiner, Alisa Dix, Greg Pierce, Adrienne Walnoha, J Fox, Lita W., Michael Johnsen, Etta Cetera, Edgar Um Bucholtz and tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE as Tristan Tzara.

photography by Michael Johnsen

this transfer was videotaped off the wall with a mini-DV camera. i hope to someday scan the filmstrip and upload the audio for a much better transfer.

Radio For The People "Anal Nirvana"

2008-11-16T18:25:00.001-05:00

another one from the archives...

video edit by Um Bucholtz, 1992

audio recorded live by Radio For The People on WRCT 88.3 FM Pittsburgh, circa 1991.

news footage courtesy of Andrew Johnson (I think)

Radio For The People was a live, improvised, experimental radio show initiated by Edgar Um Bucholtz.

Fuck Telecorps "live at Woodlab 5"

2008-11-13T21:28:00.005-05:00

this is the crucial FTCRPS trio: Steve Boyle, Edgar Um Bucholtz and Matt Wellins. various objects are beaten, smashed, thrown, blown, twiddled, bowed and fingered. some words are spoken.

this performance was part of Dave Bernabo's Woodlab music series. it was recorded on a mini-DV camera.

full details on the event from ntmto:

"W O O D L A B 5 5 5 5 5 5
Wednesday April 11 2007
ModernFormations 8:00 $5
All proceeds go to the artists

RICK GRIBENAS
(back in the burgh makin wonderful laptop pieces)

FUCK TELECORPS
(Edgar, MWellins, and SBoyle lineup makin sweet free music)

BEE GENTLES
(now in burgh makin creamy Bee Gees covers)

ELLIOTT SUSSMAN
(burgher makin burgh songs with funny voices and singalongs thingalongs)

JOSH TONIES
(makin amazing artwork for the woodlab 3 compilation featuring the above artists and Eden McNutt/David Bernabo, Pairdown, Maurice Rickard, and Jeff Benko)"

Dave Bernabo's Abstract on Black label and mp3 store:

http://www.abstractonblack.com/

http://www.klicktrack.com/sor/home

TELECORPS "Stiff As The V-Brain" (remix 0.5) (hi res)

2008-11-12T15:02:00.002-05:00

TELECORPS "Stiff As The V-Brain" (remix 0.5)

original sounds by TELECORPS (Ray C Ray, Andy Vogt, Raq V.B. and Edgar Um Bucholtz) live at the Beehive in Oakland, Pittsburgh

- remix 0.4 by Um Bucholtz in 1992 -

- remix 0.5 by Um Bucholtz in 2008 -

Fuck Telecorps "Ha Ha, Your Mushrooms Are All Gone" (hi res)

2008-11-12T11:55:00.003-05:00

Fuck Telecorps

"Ha Ha, Your Mushrooms Are All Gone"
(video version, 1994)

for Ray Caperoon

audio and video production by Edgar Um Bucholtz

audio version released on NOISE WAR compilation on Mother Savage Productions/RRRecords & Sounds For Consciousness Rape in 1994.

this is a re-upload. hopefully it looks/sounds better than the first version.

this piece was edited using PANASONIC S-VHS video decks (and various analog and digital effects.) the video is junk and wasn't meant to be seen. looking back on it, it's sorta cool. so here it is.

i believe Mother Savage has plans to re-release NOISE WAR as a multi-CD set sometime soon. hopefully i can re-master this and get it to them.

Xtended Fuck Telecorps 360° "9 Test Shots [Edit]" Pt. 2 of 2

2008-11-11T16:30:00.002-05:00

Edgar Um Bucholtz + XFTCRPS
"XFTCRPS 360°: 9 Test Shots [edit] at Location Zero" 2008

This is part two of two parts. Total time: approx. 11 minutes.

Commissioned by Pittsburgh Center for the Arts 2008 Pittsburgh Biennial.

This composition for experimental video camera and electro-acoustic free improvising ensemble, XFTCRPS (Extended Fuck Telecorps), uses applied random integers (derived from atmospheric noise) to determine every aspect of a digital video camera (PANASONIC 100B AG-DVX1008): manual or automatic settings (focus, iris, white balance, shutter speed, etc.), shooting area, camera placement, tripod settings, type of shot (long shot, medium shot, close up), length of shot, number of performers, etc. This version, "9 Test Shots [edit]", was the first in a planned series of video/audio outcomes to be performed and shot at various locations in greater Pittsburgh in 2008. This project is a new version of an original composition from 1994 for experimental video camera and electro-acoustic free improvising ensemble that was conceived and performed by LPN (Edgar Um Bucholtz and Dave Shim) and with video camera operated by Michael Johnsen. This new version, performed and shot in May 2008 at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, was realized by sound improvisors Stephen Boyle, Matt Wellins, Nick Painter, Doug Cronin, Johan Nystrom and Jim Storch. Jarrett Buba operated the camera and lighting. Edgar Um Bucholtz invented the process, derived the integers, directed the production and made the edits. Special thanks to Josh Tonies, George Davis and Lauri Mancuso.

Xtended Fuck Telecorps 360° "9 Test Shots [Edit]" Pt. 1 of 2

2008-11-11T14:12:00.000-05:00

Edgar Um Bucholtz + XFTCRPS
"XFTCRPS 360°: 9 Test Shots [edit] at Location Zero" 2008

This is Part one of two parts. Total time: approx. 11 minutes.

Commissioned by Pittsburgh Center for the Arts: 2008 Pittsburgh Biennial.

This composition for experimental video camera and electro-acoustic free improvising ensemble, XFTCRPS (Extended Fuck Telecorps), uses applied random integers (derived from atmospheric noise) to determine every aspect of a digital video camera (PANASONIC 100B AG-DVX1008): manual or automatic settings (focus, iris, white balance, shutter speed, etc.), shooting area, camera placement, tripod settings, type of shot (long shot, medium shot, close up), length of shot, number of performers, etc. This version, "9 Test Shots [edit]", was the first in a planned series of video/audio outcomes to be performed and shot at various locations in greater Pittsburgh in 2008. This project is a new version of an original composition from 1994 for experimental video camera and electro-acoustic free improvising ensemble that was conceived and performed by LPN (Edgar Um Bucholtz and Dave Shim) and with video camera operated by Michael Johnsen. This new version, performed and shot in May 2008 at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, was realized by sound improvisors Stephen Boyle, Matt Wellins, Nick Painter, Doug Cronin, Johan Nystrom and Jim Storch. Jarrett Buba operated the camera and lighting. Edgar Um Bucholtz invented the process, derived the integers, directed the production and made the edits. Special thanks to Josh Tonies, George Davis and Lauri Mancuso.

All-Inclusive Telecorps Invocation

2008-11-11T13:46:00.000-05:00

Greetings Entities of All Time,

In this ersatz realm, electronic fragmentary shrouds of All-Inclusive Telecorps R&D will be posted for endgame-storage and for now-interim pooled-gang rumination, mockery and derision.

Do what thou droop,

-->Edgar Um Bucholtz [Master-Servant of Telecorps God-Eye]