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Speculativism, Cyborg Jazz etc. Glitchy Experimentation in audio and visual art.

 
  • Speculativism, Cyborg Jazz etc. Glitchy Experimentation in audio and visual art.

    I have one track here under my own name: 20100729_033615 but I usually use the name Speculativism for audio and video work. I've got lots of videos on YouTube, Internet Archive, Vimeo etc. and lots of sound art on last.fm, Internet Archive, Bandcamp, Jamendo, Soundcloud, etc. most of the sound art is leaning in the direction of music but without any music background. Some tracks are under the name "Cyborg Jazz" - which denotes projects where the automated software is treated like a collaborating partner with the artist. I also contribute to studio typewriter and Apskaft Allrats. All of my recordings are free downloads. They are under Creative Commons 3.0 (Attribution / Non-Commercial / No Dereivatives) except for the occasional cover version of something famous.

    BIOG:

    I went to a really rotten school which would not allow us to touch musical instruments in case we broke them. This was in the 1960s and the teacher was paranoid about artists like The Who and Jimi Hendrix smashing their instruments on stage. She thought we were all vandals and morons. Consequently I grew up without the opportunity to find out whether I had any aptitude for music or not. After a while I began making noises with found objects, then with a guitar, plastic recorder and drumsticks. Eventually I began using computer effects. This year I got an electric guitar for the first time in my life and am having a whale of time incorporating the sound into my 2010 tracks. Maybe one day I'll be able to afford the other instruments I like, such as the saxophone etc. In the meantime I have to make do with playing midi instruments on my qwerty keyboard.

    As an adult with a substandard education I had a massive inferiority complex, but then I passed the entrance test for Mensa and got a bit more confidence, which enabled me to re-enter full time education as a mature student and work toward a degree in Fine Art.

    After graduating from University I began making video and audio art for the web, under a Creative Commons licence. I still refer to my audio work as "non-music" even though I've begun to use musical concepts such as "keys", "chords" and "beats per minute". This is because my approach to the work is not a musician's approach but more of a painting and collage making with sounds. It may be a subjective thing but I feel that not being music "as such" gives me more freedom to create unusual forms within sound, dischords and arhythmic structures etc. I also switch back and forth pretty fluidly between serious ideas and comedic ones.

    Some keywords which go with the sort of thing I'm doing are: fluxus, pataphysics, dada, surrealism, prog, fusion, third wave, non-music, post sci-fi.


  • November 2010 Updates (posted on December 1st)

    During November the number of listeners to my recordings under the name of "Speculativism" passed the 1,000 mark! In addition one of my tracks was featured in the last.fm group "Gruppe gegen Marmelade" as SOUND OF THE WEEK #83 ( http://www.last.fm/group/Gruppe+gegen+Marmelade )

    It has also been a very productive month. I recorded a Christmas song (a Buddhist Christmas song) Xmas 2.0 for the Zilch Records Christmas album then put the track out on a little album of it's own too. Silverlage describes the track as "Acid Folk holiday music".

    I've released three new Speculativism albums this month (4 including the Christmas one) --- (making a total of 27 so far on last.fm) and one new video on YouTube (making a total of 156 videos there).

    The new albums are:

    Hergest Bells, which is me pretending to be Mike Oldfield,

    Glitchy Bricolage, released on Чёрный квадрат (Black Square net label) by last.fm user and artist In_Cognitus

    and
    Wastelands, a bizarre collision of T.S. Eliot's poetry with music inspired by Terry Riley, Steve Reich and The Who.

    The new video is "Unknown" - and the soundtrack is on the Glitchy Brilcolage album.



    Plus, I've done these tracks for forthcoming Apskaft albums Toccata and Fugue in Blue, Sheena is a Punk Rocker, 21st Century Schizoid Man and a Daniel Johnston cover (plus a bit for the Apskaft Battleship Potemkin soundtrack collaboration).

    I'm also gradually getting all these items uploaded to other locations such as Jamendo, Bandcamp, Vimeo and the Internet Archive.

    You wouldn't credit it, but even after all that I still have an enormous backlog of sound and video projects to complete, plus the faux autobiography I'm writing (which has temporally stalled somewhere around Chapter Twenty-Two or whatever) - it's lucky I'm unemployed just now.

  • A new track added to "One Mad Man"

    I've added a new track to the album "One Mad Man". The track is "Spleen Two" by Charles Baudelaire

  • New Album on the way.

    I'm working on a new album but I'll be building this one up gradually, adding one track at a time. The album will be called "My Subversions" and the first track is up now: A Distorting Mirror

  • The second track goes up.

    The second track of the forthcoming album My Subversions is now up. The second track is called Ipecacuana

  • The third track.

    The third track of the album My Subversions is up. The third track is called The Long, Arduous Trek Through the Mad Hatters Tea Party

  • The fourth and fifth tracks are now uploaded

    The fourth and fifth tracks of "My Subversions" are now uploaded:

    The Superman

    While My Guitar Gently Soils Itself

  • 6 New Tracks

  • And 3 More New Tracks

  • Another 2 Tracks

    Another two new tracks for the My Subversions album brings the track listing up to 16 now. More to follow. The 2 new tracks are:

    The Demonic Conspiracy Theory Movie

    and:

    Something To Be Thankful For

  • 3 More Tracks added to "My Subversions" - making 19 tracks so far


  • Completing the Album

    The "My Subversions" is probably now complete with these two final tracks added:

    The Lure of The Unexpected Life

    and

    Fade Out

    Also I had to change the name of one track (Sub Strata changed to Sub Stratum) because of a weird glitch in the uploader thingy.

    The album now has 21 tracks. These range from jazzy to noisy to glitch rock to synth sounds to wyrd, all interspersed with spoken word pieces of oddthought.

  • Under the Gassssss

    Here's my latest video release. An extended version of my earlier video "Under the Gas". This is a movie about pain and distress.

    When I was about 10 years old I received an overdose of nitrous-oxide gas at the dentist. I probably had minor brain damage as a result. My IQ still tested unusually high but my behaviour became slightly sillier than before. I've enjoyed unusual levels of silliness ever since.

    YouTube recently allowed me to post longer videos, so this one is 38 minutes and 21 seconds, compared with the original version which was 4 minutes and 32 seconds.



    All original music by Peter-David Smith (Speculativism) with the exception of "Zig Me Baby" which comes from a public domain soundie in the Prelinger Archive.

    The original version looked like this:

  • Experiments in the Vicinity of Music

  • On the Way a Mystery

    I added a new track to the Tracks with vocals as such album:

    On the Way a Mystery

  • Old Old Science Fiction

    I've released 2 new tracks on: Old Old Science Fiction.

    Track One:
    Old Old Science Fiction

    Track Two:
    Space Lizards


    Bearbeitet von speculativism am 25. Apr. 2011, 10:30
  • The Labyrinth Within the Maze Within the Labyrinth



    Emerging from my weirdness laboratory I've devised two albums in April. The first one is called "The Labyrinth Within the Maze Within the Labyrinth" and is a collection of semi musical workings of strange ideas and visions. There are a few recurring themes from previous albums, reworked in new ways, and lots of entirely new tracks. The second album for April is coming soon and will be an archive of experiments I did recently with recorded spoken words and musical scales.

    However, this one, "The Labyrinth Within the Maze Within the Labyrinth", has 16 tracks and they are:

    Work

    The Rainbow and the Serpent

    In Spite of the Noise there is a Peace Within

    In the Hollow Earth

    Tuatha Dé Danann at Hy Brasil

    To Vada the Shamanic Eek

    Dance Music for Jostling Commuters 1

    Dizzy Wizzy

    Dance Music for Jostling Commuters 2

    Interzone

    Dance Music for Jostling Commuters 3

    Lost Soul Train

    Dance Music for Jostling Commuters 4

    Lung Mei

    Parallel Planes

    The Haunted Mansion

    Bearbeitet von speculativism am 25. Apr. 2011, 10:30
  • Beyond the Radio Waves from Earth

    I've now uploaded:

    Beyond the Radio Waves from Earth



    This album is an archive of sound experiments I did recently. I don't expect anybody to sit and listen all the way through this album. There's too much of it. This is more of an archive to dip into occasionally. There's lots of interesting stuff happening in these experiments.

    On my computer's hard drive I had a folder containing examples of various elements from which music could be constructed. These consisted of little midi files labelled things like: octave lesson, oriental, piano riff, power arp, power chord riff, major, minor, dorian, phrygian, algerian, lydian, arpeggios, arabian, sweeps, balinese, byzantine, scales, mixolydian, harmonic, chromatic, egyptian, hungarian, gypsy, hindu, minor pentatonic, etc. In another folder I had recordings of iconic speeches by people like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, President Richard Nixon, Abbott and Costello, William Shatner, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi, Mick Jagger, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President John F. Kennedy, President Harry Truman, Yuri Gagarin, Stokely Carmichael and President Nelson Mandela. I decided to combine all of these with the singing voices of Mae Questel and Marlene Dietrich to produce a gigantic mix of radio signals which might be received from Planet Earth. Pity the poor Martian scientist who is trying to decode all this stuff.

  • Further Experiments by Speculativism

  • Songs Wot I Actually Wrote

    I've put a significant number of my songs (the ones with actual words wot I made up by myself) onto a an album called Songs Wot I Actually Wrote

    This collection includes previously unreleased versions of Space lizards and Old Old Science Fiction

  • My best album so far!

    I've released a new album and it is the most musical so far. I'm really beginning to get the hang of making the the weird noises sound like music now!

    An Alternative Steam Age

  • Apskaft magazine, Name Changes, New Album and Impending Homelessness

    I'm about to lose the place where I've been living for the past ten years and, since I'm very poor, I face possible homelessness. Therefore, just in case I find I have nowhere to keep a computer and an electric guitar etc., much less plug them in, I'm trying to get all of my current work online, finished or unfinished. There's audio, video and graphic art work + writings.

    I'm also changing my artist name to be the same as my regular name: Peter-David Smith but, at the same time, spawning another alias as Various Female Artists

    Take the Smooth with the Rough

    Peter-David Smith with Speculativism and Cyborg Jazz

    Individual Tracks:

    01 wild fing 1

    02 wild fing 2

    03 wild fing 3

    04 Guess What

    05 2113

    06 All Delilah Regrets

    07 Ballad

    08 Existence-Consciousness-Bliss

    09 Chill 1

    10 Chill 4

    11 Cursed Earth

    12 Double Star

    13 Ecce Homo

    14 Fanstatic

    15 Get It Together

    16 Ghosts in the Web

    17 Necklace of Skulls

    18 Rough Noisy Chill

    19 Sad Pixies

    20 Steamy Jungle Planet

    21 The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock (remix)

    22 They Give Us the Minimum They Can Get Away With

    23 They Take the Maximum the Law Will Allow

    24 They're Throwing Me Out of My Home

    25 VH20111107_193817

    26 Wig Wearing Woogie

    27 Zeta Beam

    28 New Moon Over

    29 the other track v1

    29 the other track v2

    At the same time, The new Apskaft magazine is published on ISSUU:

    Read it here: http://issuu.com/apskafters/docs/apskafters_001

  • New Peter-David Smith album: exploration

  • The soundtrack album of Metropolis, now uploaded to last fm:



    Metropolis Soundtrack

    These are all new tracks except for "Bad Music" which I previously released on a different album.

    The version of the movie uploaded to Youtube:


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