October 11, 2010
One day on the Cut this autumn I was scritchin’ and scratchin’ — you know, you know, professionally beat matchin’ some vinyl — when a shadowy figure loomed before me. I squinted my eyes and saw what appeared to be an android bearing an anthracite guitar and a glowing red 2001 iMac monitor on his head. He said no words; rather, he tilted his head, and white buzzing squares on the screen began to race. Slowly he spit out two CDs from his palms and handed them to me.
He turned and began to leave without saying a word. I couldn’t allow myself to see him leave without knowing his name, so I quickly slipped, “Wh— Who are you?” In a bitcrushed tone he crunched back, “Robot Cowboy.”
Robot Cowboy — Dan Wilcox: a futuristic, expatriate American space ranger who combines wearable computing, MIDI guitar, and live energy to wander the digi-range playing for dying astronauts. This is a low-fi guitar show with algorithmic balls from a devospud, laptop-stomping idiot wearing exposed electronics.
His mission, you ask?
“You are unwittingly controlled by your machines; I feel obligated to return the favor through sonic variations in time and booty shaking. I will protect you from the arcane sonic forces which threaten your very existence.”
He’s roaming on campus somewhere. You should find him and ask him for a demo on how to masterfully use PureData.
Want to hear what he’s got in store for you, cosmonaut? Type this universal resource locator into your Internet browser: http://www.robotcowboy.com/category/media/
-Juan Fernandez
October 4, 2010
Once heard, a sound lives forever within the soul of a man, quietly stirring. Produced by anything, felt through any part of the body, the perception of sound is a bipolar bastard child of the human perception. While lauded greatly when it’s chopped, divided, castrated, and filed in metronomic precision, it goes greatly unperceived in its raw and pure form. This grandeur is not so much one associated with music but with identity. In sound, the intangible and the ephemeral become something physical: a reverberation that physically alters space and time. Vibrations are not respected because they cannot be tamed.
Whether it be the clatter of silverware dancing across the porous walls of an old-age home or the rustling of heather in the empty air of the cold Sierra Nevadas, sound carries an infinite potential whose beauty lies in its unmasterable nature. Yes, while some may become adept at banging out sonatas or strumming tribal breakbeats, the mastery of sculpting something permanent out of that humming quicksilver is not something that the adept few ask for.
Flowers, the material as ephemeral, rejoice in their springtime dances. Sound, which blossoms out from nothing more than the void, is the God of the ephemeral. Enough of that poetic nonsense. Want to get down with the WRCT Sound? Check out the following:
Boards of Canada:
Music Has the Right to Childre
— Experience the beauty of electronic music. Extremely approachable and low-key in its magnificence.
Shoes:
Eccentric Breaks and Beat
— Flawlessly arranged pastiche of esoteric soul and funk.
Flaming Lips, Stardeath & White Dwarfs:
Dark Side of The Moon (ft. Henry Rollins and Peaches
— A sonic blow-out. Dark Side of the Moon for a digital generation.
-Juan Fernandez
