Electric Eclectics - Festival of Experimental Music and Sound Art

July 9, 2008

Electric Eclectics

Festival of Experimental Music and Sound Art

PRE-FESTIVAL EVENTS

The Electric Eclectics Festival presents sound installations in various public buildings throughout the month of July, leading up to the Aug. 1-3 festival weekend. The Electric Eclectics Festival features cutting-edge, avant-garde and experimental music by world-renowned musicians, media artists, sound artists and performance artists. Electric Eclectics Festival info is at www.electric-eclectics.com.

Electric Eclectics’ popular Music for Toilets series will return with sound installations in the toilets of the Bean Cellar Café in Owen Sound and the Earth Harvest Café in Meaford. Anitra Hamilton (named “Toronto artist of 2007″ by Now Magazine) will present her Audio Parade at the Bean Cellar, and Steve Heimbecker’s “The Enormouslessness of Cloud Machines” can be heard in the toilets of the Earth Harvest Café in Meaford. Both installations run July 1 - Aug 3.

Videos by Sound Artists will be shown at the L.E. Shore Library Gallery in Thornbury, featuring videos documenting sound installations and sound art by Barry Schwartz, Tilman Kuentzel, Chris Welsby, Laura Kikauka, Gordon Monahan, Charles Fox, and Ira Schneider/Werner Durand, July 5 - Aug. 29. At the Festival Aug 1-3, there will be an expanded area for sound installations at the Funny Farm festival site, featuring installations by Edwin van der Heide whose “Laser Sound Projection” was a highlight at last year’s festival, and Maki Ueda who will present her “Aromatic Journey” consists of distilled smells from local elements, both natural and artificial.

A noteworthy return visit by New York percussionist Michael Evans also takes place before the 2008 Festival. Last year, Evans’ free, interactive percussion and drumming workshops were a hit with local youth. This year, during the week of July 28-31, Evans will host workshops for drum enthusiasts at the Meaford Library, the L. E. Shore Library in Thornbury and the Meaford Military Family Resource Centre.

Electric Eclectics is expanding with a series at the Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest called “The Best of Electric Eclectics”. The series will feature highlights from Electric Eclectics’ first two years, with performances by Nihilist Spasm Band, Alexander Hacke and Danielle de Picciotto, Rozasia, Alexis O’Hara, Dorit Chrysler, Lary 7, Jesse Stewart, and John Kilduff. The Best of Electric Eclectics series takes place July 3-13.

The 3rd annual edition of the Electric Eclectics Festival takes place on the August 1-3 long weekend in rural Meaford, Ontario. Concerts on several stages, sound installations, unique vendors, and many surprises, are all part of the Festival at the Funny Farm. The Funny Farm is located at 202 Scotch Mountain Road, off Grey Road 12, about 8 km from Meaford. Electric Eclectics Festival info is at www.electric-eclectics.com.

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Media contact:

Gordon Monahan, Eclectic Electrics Founder & Artistic Director

519-378-9899, elgordo@fuzzylove.de

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Written by Jesse · Filed Under Concerts, Music, Audio

HARBOUR NIGHTS - RISING STAR and VETERAN RECORDING ARTISTS unite

July 9, 2008

July 13, 2008
7:00 pm	to	9:00 pm

The amount of musical talent we have in this region is absolutely
astounding, and our primary mandate with the Harbour Nights Concert
Series is to showcase that talent, especially original
singer-songwriters. The concerts are gaining a loyal following - over
800 people have attended the 3 concerts to date this summer.

This coming Sunday July 13 we have a rising star appearing with two
incredible musical veterans, and we invite you to take the opportunity
to shine a spotlight on this concert in particular. Here are their bios:

LAUREN BEST
Young, talented, and absolutely fearless, Lauren’s talents helped her
win last year’s Summerfolk Youth Discovery Showcase. A driven
songwriter, singer, and keyboardist, Lauren is creatively engaged
performing, collaborating, and working on her debut album. Hear her
songs at www.myspace.com/laurenbest

ROSELYN BROWN, classically trained multi-instrumentalist and recording
artist, has played locally and internationally, from performing with
some of Toronto’s finest jazz musicians to international performances of
Big Band music with her husband Tommy Earlls and his International
Untouchables. With the release of her CD, EMANCIPATION, Roselyn is now
enjoying airplay and interviews on select radio stations.
www.roselynbrown.com

Award-winning multi-instrumentalist MICHAEL GRACE has appeared
internationally both as a performer and music educator, having played
with notable artists such as Dizzy Gillespie. With a classical and jazz
background, his versatility extends throughout the woodwinds as well as
on basses. He hails from Ann Arbour, Michigan, but makes Southampton his
summer home.

Lauren’s original songs will be skilfully supported by Roselyn and
Michael. This will be a seminal concert in the development of what is
sure to be a stellar career. Not to be missed.

The full concert schedule is now posted at www.harbournights.ca

Thanks,

Doug Cleverley
Event Facilitator
City of Owen Sound
Phone: (519) 376-4440 ext. 251
Fax: (519) 371-0511
www.owensound.ca

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Written by Jesse · Filed Under Concerts, Music, Events, Community, Audio

The Big Love

June 12, 2008

a slideshow and recording from: Charles Glasspool and The Big Love

The Flash Player and a browser with Javascript support are needed..

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Written by Jesse · Filed Under Photos, The Arts, Music, theOwen Features, Audio, theOwen

Here we go…

May 30, 2008

Here we go… a guest post by Graeme Bachiu

I was about to pour myself a glass of orange juice at about quarter after eight in the morning…the Saturday morning Eric Van Allen and Paul Thompson were due to show up at my apartment at nine a.m…when the phone rang. I suspected it would be Nick, my camera guy, running a bit late and giving me a courtesy call. As a good producer is wont to do, I built in some extra time in our schedule which could allow us to be late if need be.

It turns out it was Paul on the phone, an hour early. I guess the orange juice could wait; we marched down to Horton’s for the harder stuff to kill some time.

Nick, luckily, showed up a bit early, too. And he came with two coffees in his hands; one for himself and one for me. Sheepishly, I looked down at my own two coffees and wondered what the odds were that we’d buy each other a coffee at the same time. Evidently those odds are pretty good.

What happened next was a whirlwind of fifteen or sixteen hours of shooting that took us from the wilds of Welland, Ontario and Niagara College to Ajax and Pickering and along the way we jump, dove and sometimes stumbled through our memories and experiences. Nick, he of the sore upper body at the end of the day, did a masterful job of shooting in a style that often leaves editors frustrated with a lack of quality material, something Nick deftly avoided. Eric and Paul were great, too…even picking up the guitars to play a couple of times through the course of the day.

To paraphrase Stephen Stills, now begins the task I have dreaded the coming of for so long. Well, not really. I’m actually ahead of the game in terms of conceptualizing the final product. The primary version of what I’m calling Ten Years Gone will be approximately 15 minutes long in order to comply with the restrictions for a short documentary festival I plan to enter it in. Of course, the due date for this is the 20th of June, which is fast approaching.

The first step in achieving this 15 minute cut is to log your tapes, which you do after a couple of days of recuperation after your long shoot. In the old days, this would involve a VTR, your tape, a pen and a pad of paper and about 2-3 hours per tape, logging timecode numbers for good interview clips, sound, shot sequences and so forth. This was traditionally called the paper edit because you’d begin to assemble your edit (a script, actually) in a theoretical sense before you had to pay for editing time.

Non linear editing has blurred the lines of the old production model in a lot of ways, and the paper edit is one of them. Non destructive editing allows me to be less organized and more creative by trying things in the editing process. I’m actually still rather organized; instead of logging all of my material on a pad of paper I do it directly into my Mac now (at work we call this the ingesting stage) and after a few hours of this I can begin to do rough edits. The downside is—and this is where the quote from Stills is pertinent—the process can get hopelessly stretched and extended when you’ve got a fluid deadline and millions of options available to you…which is the point at which I now find myself.

With June 20th fast approaching I quickly built a few sequences I thought were of interest, quickly amassing nine minutes of my total run time without touching on the last half of the raw material. So while I may be ahead of the game as far as the concept is concerned I’m behind the eight ball when it comes to brevity and squeezing the most out of every frame I can.

To illustrate my points, here I am as my video alter-ego explaining some of the other distractions present in day to day life and giving an example of one of the sequences likely—hopefully—to make the final cut of Ten Years Gone. As always, comments are appreciated at old.north.prod@gmail.com.

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Written by Ryan · Filed Under Guest Post, Music, Video, theOwen

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