Sunday, June 24, 2007

early morning june 25th 2007

greetings.
As the to do list gets longer and the performance schedule picks up speed, I realize. I'm tired.
tired, but excited.
I spent around an hour this past Saturday talking to John Stewart from the local newspaper, about my upcoming projects. It's always a nice feeling to know after the interview I had 20 other projects to talk about, but not enough time. I think there will be an article in the local paper Friday. I am getting ready to fly into Atlanta for a one night performance with Francisco Lopez. He will be doing the same next week for me, flying into Chicago for a show.
My last trip to Atlanta was lame, so I am hoping this one erases the bad memories from before.

I spent Wednesday night hanging out with the Chicago noise folks. Many back rooms deals were discussed as well as consuming some damn good pizza. It was a pleasure as always to see Magic is Kuntmaster pummel my senses with fog and red flashing lights. It was my first time seeing Burrow (my friends Blake and Bryan) collaborate. The high point of the night was hanging out with 16 Bitch Pileup. They are noise pros and if they come to your town in the future, you shouldn't miss it. I hope I get a chance to talk more with them on my trip to the Bay area later this year. Sarah even stabbed my table, what a gal. Pics below.
many project updates after July 6th. I will be preparing for these shows. please visit www.somnimage.com for ordering info and event dates and locations.
until later
mykel


16 Bitch Pileup


Burrow


Magic is Kuntmaster

Friday, June 22, 2007

small review of Empty Bottle Show

greetings.
Tuesday June 19th 2007, I performed at The Empty Bottle in Chicago.
The evening started off in fine form with Joe and Nicole of Rococo Records feeding me. Nicole also showed me why one should never sit to close to her when she is drinking root beer.
They gave me a BLACK METAL Rococo shirt. You can see it in the photos.
The two bands I was opening for were In The County (from Norway) and The Late Severa Wires (from Sante Fe, NM). I traded cd's and records with both groups. They were all really nice people. The only problem all night came from the almost 2 hour soundcheck In The Country took. I suppose when I go to Norway I will do the same? I enjoyed performing through the Bottle p.a. and my set was well received (but you never know for sure, are your friends gonna tell you you sucked?). Bryan (Is) took some good photos (below) and kept me entertained all night. I was happy to see Ed and Joel from Estesombelo and Sanford Parker come out as well. Overall a great night. Happy to do it again in the fall.



Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Secret post

greetings.
We now have a myspace page with sound samples from "Radio Interference From Unknowm Orgasm" click and listen, then go to www.somnimage.com and buy it!

www.myspace.com/somnimagecorporation

big show tomorrow, pics and such wednesday.
until then
mykel

Sunday, June 10, 2007

the big speaker

greetings
today I performed at The Hyde Park Arts Center in Chicago with Vertonen (Blake) I had a great time (my family even came out to watch this one). Thanks to all who came. Here is the pre-press from the Chicago Reader as well as Blake's review of the show and some photos.
news soon
mykel


Vertonen
Blake Edwards, aka Vertonen, and fellow Chicago sound artist Mykel Boyd will collaborate between solo sets at this afternoon show—and by proxy both will collaborate with sculptor Juan Angel Chavez, who built the installation they'll be playing in. His Speaker Project opened at the Hyde Park Arts Center in late April and has been hosting performances since May. Set inside a hangarlike space that's open to the street during shows, it's like a junkyard temple made from scrap wood, metal, glass bottles, PVC pipe, traffic cones, and two giant resonating horns. It creates a mind-altering landscape of sound that constantly morphs as listeners and performers move about, and the effect is especially intense at apocalyptic volumes—which this show promises to provide. Edwards says he'll play a custom-built two-oscillator pedal and a shortwave radio, and his duet with Boyd will exploit the acoustics of the installation: they'll use pairs of high or low frequencies tuned to interfere with each other (in theory you should only be able to hear one of the notes or a third between them, though which one depends on your position) and try to simulate electronic voice phenomena (EVP), the illusion of paranormal speech coalescing out of noise. Boyd plays first and Vertonen is last.
- Monica Kendrick
2 PM, Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell, 773-324-5520.





some notes on the june 10 sets...


Thanks to all who came out...
Mykel began with a flurry; static discharge, volume swells, electronics on the verge of collapse. A screed of static pulse looping / weaving, some metal bowl scraping and banging, high distorted bursts cascading and raining about; it wasn’t a relentless noise derailment—he had some moments of breathing—but it was consistently loud (at least inside the box) with a solid amount of dynamics and frequency manipulation. he also beat some of the metal plates of the speaker box with a microphone, the result coming over the speakers as harsh metallic punctuation that slowly decayed and was subsumed by other components of his sound palette. I will say that inside the installation it was a LOT louder than outside (I was inside the for most of his set, setting up my stuff for our segue and checking some material over headphones.) I did walk around the box a couple times during his set to see if things sounded ~that~ different from space to space and overall, with the exception of the face of the box that was all pylons that sounded pretty bassy, the sound wasn’t really altered noticeably. I say the best seats in the house were inside the speaker.
Our segue (about 20 min) went pretty well; I brought in some shortwave that clipped in nicely with Mykel’s bassier static loops, and my drone element did a decent job of swimming among the pre-existing sounds he began adding. Mykel brought his bowl back into the mix to work off some of my sounds, and we had a pretty decent back and forth and overlayering (plus some fine head scratchery “is that you or me doing that?”) And again, this is all from inside the box; I’m not sure how it translated outside. I’m sure Mykel’s wife and kids (the latter with their hands over their ears for most of Mykel’s set) would tell a slightly different tale. I also tried putting a few microcassette players in some of the pylons during our segue, but I have no idea if anyone came close enough to the sides to hear the different sounds I’d planted...
My solo set started off with good intent but I think fell apart about ten minutes in; the bass throbs from the oscillators were fine, but the material I was mixing on the laptop (two low frequencies) were pretty much too low for the PA to handle / replicate, and in what I consider a bad decision I tried to force the tones to “play nice” and do what they’d done at home over headphones by furiously working the eq’s and levels for the next few minutes; from where I was, it all just sounded like clipped crap. I then added ~another~ trio of bass tones (two more looped from the oscillators and one more from the computer) and while the 55 hz sounded pretty good from the laptop, the other two canceled each other (and the other two from the oscillator) out and left a bit of a void. In my mind, things were now in disarray; I had intended to run with multiple layers of bass material for about 15 minutes, working eq changes and panning changes to shift the sound inside (and outside) the space, and I was determined to make things work as they had done when I was jogging ideas at home. I kept at it for close to 15 minutes, trying to adjust levels, bring sounds in, take sounds out, basically flailing blindly while trying to find a solution I was happy with. Here and then peaks of decent sound came in, but I could never hold them. Oh yeah, and then this horrible feedback (i.e., not intended) crept in for which I could not find any logical source. Bringing in the shortwave helped a bit (filling the troughs of the bass tones), but it wasn’t the ideal solution.
Uncertain after the bass problems, I’d say the EVP “replication” didn’t work as intended, because the vocal sources were way too prominent due (primarily) to trying to resolve the feedback problems from the bass component. Unlike the bass clip clop, the vocal elements were satisfactory, even if not what I intended. I ended with a smattering of permutated organ drone and extremely pitch shifted voices and a fuzzy shifting pair of drones from the pedal with a lot of panning.
I also don’t know how successful the speaker itself served as a speaker, although that could be based more on the actual PA inside (and the material we each played, let's not kid ourselves...) Everything outside was quieter, there wasn’t a lot of variance in sound processing as I walked around the speaker during Mykel’s set, and a smattering of the folks who stopped in weren’t actually “interacting” with the speaker box (i.e., walking around it) to explore the different speaker cone ideas. I think I thought the speakerbox would have been constructed so that I could have, for example, played a single drone for 45 minutes and while I didn’t change anything substantially, to people outside it would be shifting / changing... and again, this is from someone who was primarily inside, so maybe it was doing what it was intended to...

from Blake


Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

busy week

greetings.
Things here are HQ are crackin. So, here we go. "Radio interference from unknown orgasm" is ready to ship. It is leaving here box by box this week. I am very proud of this one. Order it up at www.somnimage.com

also available
Mykel Boyd 3" cdr titled "October,1952" limited to 50 signed copies
Hand assembled sleeve with photo. 2 long sound pieces recorded for performances.
$14.00 post paid in USA, $18 post paid the world!






Next on the menu.
Allan Zane "the sperm of metals" 10th Anniversary Edition
limited to 50 copies. 3" cdr in metal tin,signed and numbered.
Looks like this.


Pre-orders start NOW.
$16.00 post paid in USA, $20 post paid the world!


Another update of upcoming releases will be coming in a week or so.
Until then here is some info on some upcoming live events.


Sunday, June 10th @ Hyde Park Arts Center Chicago,IL
I am performing between 2-3 p.m. with a half an hour collaboration with Vertonen leading into his set from 3-4 p.m.
Part of Juan Angel Chavez's Speaker Project
admission is FREE
http://www.hydeparkart.org/exhibitions/2007/04/speaker_project.php


Tuesday, June 19th 2007 at The Empty Bottle
1035 N. Western Ave, Chicago, Illinois
Cost : $7.00
with Late Severa Wires and In the Country (Norway)
http://www.emptybottle.com/

Saturday, June 30th 2007 at Eyedrum
Suite 8, 290 MLK Jr. Drive SE Atlanta, Georgia 30312
withFrancisco Lopez, Darker Florida (Irene Moon), Black Natural (Mr. Natural & Graham of Blossoming Noise)
http://www.eyedrum.org/

Thursday, July 5th 2007 at Enemy
1550 N. Milwaukee Ave (3rd Floor), Chicago, Illinois 60622
Cost:$5.00
Jason Soliday, Mykel Boyd, Francisco Lopez solo sets from all three!http://www.myspace.com/enemychicago


Friday, July 6th 2007 at Elastic Arts Foundation Chicago,IL
with Is and Silvum and TBA
http://www.elasticrevolution.com/

Wednesday, October 10th
No Other Radio Network on KPFA Berkeley, California
Mykel Boyd live performance on the No Other Radio network, broadcasting on KPFA, out of Berkeley,CA for MIDNIGHT on Tuesday, Oct 9th (oct 10th morning).

Sunday, Oct. 14th. 2007 at The Space Theater Sacramento, Ca
NorCal Noise Fest
http://www.norcalnoisefest.com/
until later
mykel

Sunday, June 3, 2007

Live Photo from last weekend.


greetings
I will provide a complete label and show update tomorrow.
for now, here is a photo from my May 26th performance @ Boris Karloft in Chicago,IL
photo by Mark.
Hot Tapes ( good stuff!!!) also played as well as Deathroes (who I missed, but I hear they were great).
until tomorrow
mykel