Thursday, April 13, 2006

Collaborative International Creative Commons Fun

Today I got word from the Colombian ambient artist Lezrod that his new album "Data Transfer" has just been released on Italy's Xymogen netlabel.

The final cut on this album is "Final Dub", which is a collaboration between Lezrod and I. As with so many ambient artist things, David (who records as Lezrod) and I met through a music forum, exchanged baselines by e mailed mp3, and worked out a piece together quite different from things we each do on our own.

Lezrod is really good, hovering in those nether regions where ambient, melodic noise and chill converge. "Data Transfer" is released under a CC license, available for free listen and download,
here

My theory of these things, which is not original to me, is that technology for music creation and data transfer will change the way we all experience music--eliminating the "star system" and creating a virtual neighborhood of shared sound. Certainly, a world in which I would collaborate via mp3 with a Colombian artist on an ambient track for an Italian label would have seemed rather science-fiction to me twenty years ago.

Of course, I would not have imagined then becoming involved with a posting to a music remix site because one of my favorite internet blitz chess opponents, a great singer, told me about it and later turned out to be the center of a remix contest on it which included one of my favorite Appalachian traditional songs.

But in the meantime, rather than pondering such things, I'm going to download Lezrod's new album, and listen to it as I seek out wildflowers in a drought-recovering land this weekend.

6 comments:

teru said...

The title says it all.

Hey G. - Could you take my new song out with you too this weekend?

http://www.disfish.com/index.php?action=show_artist&artist=42

Thanks. : )

teru said...

The Squirrel link on Final Dub doesn't work for me. The Archive one did the trick though.

Deep track. Very alive and organic.

Gurdonark said...

Hi Teru:

Thanks for listening to the track. My contribution to the piece was rather dark ambient, so I was pleased to hear Lezrod go such a different direction.
I definitely will be downloading your new DiSfish this weekend. It's time you did a "whole album full of stuff" and added it to your DiSfish collection!

Right now I'm listening to a song I generated with freeware called Quasi-Fractal Composer, which is beginning to make me think that the MIDI banjo is a great instrument indeed.

Gurdonark said...

I just gave your new song a listen, Teru--it's great. I like the way the mood/atmosphere fits together so well with the vocals.

teru said...

Thanks again. And for your comments at DiSfish. : )

Did you just say MIDI Banjo? ; )

Gurdonark said...

MIDI banjo playing quasi-fractal music--a mroe final frontier than space. The kind of music that you don't really post or share, because it's of a time and a mood--like playing solitaire.