Pixels At An Exhibition – The Movie

by | Mar 13, 2010 | Music

Pixels At An Exhibition – The Movie from Pixels At An Exhibition on Vimeo.

In December of 2009, Knox Bronson approached Rae Douglass at the Giorgi Gallery in Berkeley, California with the idea of presenting the first ever gallery exhibit of iPhone photography. Rae said yes, and within days, Knox had created a website, iphontography.org, and had put out a call for submissions.
Pictures flooded in from all over the world. Amazing pictures, all done on iPhones. No editing on a computer was allowed, and suspect images were checked and removed if found to have been edited elsewhere.
At the end of a 30-day submission window, an independent jury was convened to vote on and choose 200 images. The show opened on January 30th and ran through the month of February, garnering rave reviews and exposing the world to the beauty of this emergent medium and nascent art form.
This is a movie of the 200 finalists, with music by show co-founder, Knox Bronson.

Flight of the Atom Bee remastered—now available 11/17/09

by | Nov 27, 2009 | Music

FOTAB_FINAL_600c

Flight of the Atom Bee photo by Luciano and Mira Donato, Italy www.mirabiliaimages.com

1. The Big Shimmer 7:38
2. Wild Pink Yonder 4:58
3.  Flight of the Atom Bee 9:28
4. [Hydraulic] Serenity Applicator 4:52
5. March of the Molecules 5:25
6. The Blue Man Wept 6:59
7. World’s Night 5:19
8. When We Were Machines 7:52
9. Fountain of You 4:16

Realizing that vast strides had been made in digital audio technology in the years since I originally recorded this song, I recently got out the old 1″ tape on which resides the original recording of the title piece of the cd, took it down to Wally Sound Studios in Oakland, redigitized the audio and took the resultant audio file to Oakland Wunderkind Charles Stella, who also mixed and mastered my “Pop Down The Years” and “the seasons” cds, and had Charles apply his advanced noise-reduction magic to the track.

I then had Thomas Dimuzio, well-known in the avant-garde music world, remaster all the songs off this strange and beautiful work, unique in the canon of analog synthesis, “Flight of the Atom Bee.” Click here for the story about the actual creation of the title song, “Flight of the Atom Bee.”

Some years ago, I released a version of the cd with my novel, “Flapping,” with some songs deleted and others added from what is now the “Deus Sex Machina” cd, which I also recently had Thomas remaster and release, but this songlist is the original “Flight of the Atom Bee.” It had been my intention to make the cd more “commercial” with the subtraction of some songs and the addition of others. As friend and collaborator Shoji Kameda, of the On Ensemble and Hiroshima, kindly pointed out, there really is no way to make “Flight of the Atom Bee” commercial.

It is, nonetheless, a work very near and dear to my heart. Very electronic. My first attempts and merging the orchestral and the electronic into a modern classical idiom, electronic pop for the ages.

Get “Flight of the Atom Bee” on Bandcamp.

Come back, Baby!

by | Nov 2, 2009 | Music

babycuddle

Baby has been gone for four nights now. I walked all over the neighborhood looking for her, calling her name, tonight. No luck.

I am having this weird paranoid idea that she got taken away as karmic retribution for the deer I killed on my way home the other night. My car is still in the shop for that crash.

In any case, I am posting a free download of a song I wrote for her, “Baby’s No Help,” as an offering to what/whomever might have some say in her safe return home. Come back, Baby!

Flight of the Atom Bee cover art

by | Oct 9, 2009 | Music

I am happy to share with you the final art for the long-awaited digital release of the analog classic “Flight of the Atom Bee.” I will be posting some articles about some of the vintage analog instruments used on the cd, as well as some words about the songs themselves, over the next month.

FOTAB_FINAL_750

I found this image on the website Mirabilia Images. The utterly charming  couple, Luciano and Mira, whom I assume to be residing in Italy, do some wonderful work: perfectly matched, in my opinion to the music found on “Flight of the Atom Bee:” beautiful, strange, sexy, and otherworldly. I was so happy when I found the site.

I wrote to them about licensing an image, along with a link to the music and they wrote back with a yes, and very complimentary words about the cd, which I of course appreciate. So we came to an agreement on the license and they sent me the image and I spent some time putting in the Atom Bee and … here we are!

CD Master and artwork go off to the distribution center next week, to become available online everywhere within the next few weeks.

Free download—If I Was Sober (I’d Go Get Drunk)

by | Oct 7, 2009 | Music

drunk

This cost $18, so it stays. Sorry.

I recently got a very rude email about this song from some woman who (a) considered herself somewhat of an expert on the blues and (b) actually believed I might possibly care about her ramblings. She asked me if I had ever listened to Robert Johnson. Actually, I think she asked if I even knew who he was …

She basically said that “If I Was Sober (I’d Go Get Drunk)” was fake blues, because (a) I can’t play blues guitar (b) it is a silly song and (c) … I forget … To all of this I wish to respond … normally, I take criticism with a grain of salt: I have no false modesty about my work; I know what I put into it, even songs like this. But sometimes, no. Make that always, it is the duty of the artist to confront such egregious asininity head-on.

Dear Ms. No-Boundaries:

Of course the song IS silly; there are thousands of silly blues songs. I mean, read the damn title for Christ’s sake.

What do you mean I can’t play blues guitar? You mean like, say, Eric Clapton? Well no, but I play from the heart and this song comes from real-life hurt (I still remember how it felt when I figured out what that girl was up to! Luckily I was still drinking and that helped a lot.) and therefore it is a real blues song, dumb ass.

And lastly, as some old blues guy said if it hasn’t been hocked, it can’t play the blues. Well, if that is the criteria, this guitar is Lucille, Jr. and I am BB King’s bastard son. Word.

Your truly,
K.B.

And for the rest of you:
Click here to download If I Was Sober (I’d Go Get Drunk) and feel free to write me about it! I care!

First review of “the seasons” – 5 stars

by | Sep 29, 2009 | Music

Mark Tucker
Fame Magazine

Amber Arbucci graces the cover of "the seasons"

I reviewed Knox Bronson’s Pop Down the Years a little while back (here) and Seasons has followed with gratifying swiftness but also with an almost shockingly rapid maturation. Completely instrumental in a slow languid pace that urges the listener to relax and luxuriate, where Pop was quirky, interesting, and prog-oriented, Seasons is chambery in the Impressionist sense with tantalizing echoes of Eno (Summer of ‘68 uses the intriguing slow hooning of Discreet Music), Peter Baumann (ca Transharmonic Nights), Peter Michael Hamel, a tranked-out Terry Riley, and the more sensual of the electronicists.

The disc contains just four long songs for an hour’s submersion in
intelligent, slow, spare processionals and ambiences. Michael Hoenig
peeks out occasionally from Autumnal Sun, though the estimable German
never wrote like Bronson does, slowly shifting in sound fields,
coloration, and environmental palette. The attention to perfection here
is bracing, resulting in a piece of spacey furniture music, high art
wanting for nothing, content to take its time in seeping through the
speakers and into cerebellums. Mix the hedonism of the Ibiza crowd with
the seriousness of old Brit/Kraut ventures, then add a sprinkling of
the silently uncanny ideas of Vidna Obmana, and you have a starting
point.

Despite the fact that the quartet of songs was composed during a
dark period in the writer’s life, every minute of Seasons sparkles.
Even the moody segments have a shine and glow lifting them above the
melancholy, indicative of the redemption art brings. The entire
enterprise is pensive but never existentialist, remarkably zen in many
ways, unattached to judgementalism, formula, and tradition. A goodly
portion of the entirety is Debussy-esque, borrowing heavily from tone
poem concepts for heady textures and gestures nailing down authenticity
in genteel certainties alongside intriguing ambiguity. Pore over the
progressive, electronica, and ambient catalogues as you will, you’re
not likely to find very many releases to stand with this one.

the seasons

by | Feb 14, 2009 | Music

Amber Arbucci graces the cover of "the seasons"

Amber Arbucci graces the cover of "the seasons"

the seasons
Release date: February 14, 2009
Label: Tangerine Sky Interactive

Songlist:

  1. summer of ’68
  2. autumnal sun
  3. winter blue
  4. the forever spring