People!

Very Important Tough Love Message:

It’s awesome that you’re going to Burning Man this year.

As you pack your critical gear, please remember that Playa Dust is an inorganic alkaline clay. Inorganic materials, once in your lungs, don’t really come out.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, for me, would you spend the extra 20 bucks to get a REAL respirator this year, so you can avoid getting “Dust Pneumonia/Asbestosis/Pneumoconiosis?”

Think of it as the "Sith Lord" look.

These are available at Amazon. Less than 22 dollars.  Seriously. Make me proud.

My good friend Uma is one of my favorite art and music studio assistants…She’s got a consistently positive attitude, and is highly insightful when it comes to making difficult decisions (…she’s particularly good at dialogues regarding key change and harmonics).

If you haven’t already done so, make sure to try this fun music game, Dub Engine #1,

by infamous artist Laura Cesari and yours truly, The Coppercat. (circa 2004)

The circular shapes in the middle trigger drums and fills, while the squares with tape buttons are lengthy loops.

The goal is to make mini-songs; most of the samples are in key, and/or go with each other.

If you wait too long, the loops will restart and you’ll lose your Timing Edge.

Now you have the power to make a space-dub odyssey in your own home!

Fractal movie designs by Laura Cesari and Jeremy Richardson appear courtesy of the Electric Sheep project. Thanks to Scott Draves.

This image totally captures my musical action statement and agenda.

Dragon Dubs Steppas Club

Come see The Coppercat perform at Dragon Dubs Steppas Club at Oasis in Oakland, July 29, 2010.

It’s a low-cost ($6 after 10pm, free before) high-quality Dub, Dubstep, and Reggae-vibed show,

at the Oasis in Oakland, put on by the Dragon Dubs folks.

Oasis is open-air and chill…You’ll be able to smoke a Swisher under the stars and listen to underground dub,

dubstep, ambient, and reggae-influenced hip-hop;

whilst you sip your mojito and contemplate the finer things in life.

I’ll be choosing selections from my latest albums,

including excerpts from the forthcoming Dub Side of Mars double-album from the Crypticon Label!

(so new that nobody outside the Coppercat Labs has heard them…fresh, fresh, fresh!)

Oasis

Oakland’s #1 Outdoor Venue

135 12th Street, Oakland

Musical Genius of the Day
July 15, 2010

Jeremy Richardson, the Coppercat, interviews Eva Irwin, a.k.a. Moody Eva

http://moodyeva.com

Moody Eva

Artist, Producer, Musician, Singer, Graphic Designer, Marathon-Grade uber-athlete

Q:  When did you realize that you needed to produce music?

A:  Well I am a true Renaissance (wo)man (for lack of a better term).  I’m good at all things music and art.  I was born this way.  So I guess my answer would be, “From the second that I understood what that meant.”

Q:  Was there a moment of realization/specific show/ personal epiphany, or was it a gradual process?
A:  I was a DJ for almost 18 years.  The last 8 years of which I kept having a harder and harder time using all of my energy to find other people’s tracks, to DJ them …. when I REALLY wanted to use that energy and put it INTO my OWN music AND THEN ….to find my own sound.

I have hardly left my house at all in the last year and my sound has never been more intricate and sinister… something I have been gravitating towards.  I started out making happy funky driving house music; and now I like glitchy, filthy, grimy, hip-hop, dubstep breaks and drum & bass. My sound went from smiling at about 130 bpm to headbanging at about 90 BPM or even 120 programmed at half time.  I havent listened to the radio or watched TV in the past year either; which I think was VERY important in me evolving, musically.
I never went to school for music production…. a lot of guys I was hanging out with, when I started to make music, had degrees and still couldn’t make or complete songs (love you guys – you are WAY better now, LOL)…The uber-competetive genetic implant installed by my foremothers activated, and I started paying guys I know $20 an hour to transfer-all-musical-data-from-their-brains-into-my-brain.  These guys I refer to as my “Sensei’s” and I have the deepest respect for them;  I have learned my way through music, one .wav form, one machine, and one Sensei at a time.  I am currently looking for a new Sensei- since the last one is hard to track down (pun intended).

Q:  Prince or Madonna? Explain your choice.

A:  Prince.  He can play every instrument.  He too is a Renaissance man.  We are kindred spirits as I am super famous to myself… and I have had people refer to me as a symbol and not a name too (middle finger)….

Yes. We’re all well familiar with your middle-finger, Eva. Particularly your Facebook friends…

Q:   You’re quite a dance enthusiast, too, correct? The most spastic dance you’ve ever learned intentionally is the ________.

A:  WOW, I learn dances all the time watching YouTube…. Crip Walking ….is one of my favorites because of the attitude, poppin’ your colla’ and shrugging your shoulders and kicking your feet.  But in the grand scheme of things… I have been a breakdancer most of my life, I still practice a few hours a week to keep it in my mind.  Mostly uprock houser-style stuff BUT…. I have always since I was about 10, wanted to learn how to “1990“– which I still fantasize about learning.  Yes, still.

Q:  You finished a nearly-length-of-California bike ride for charity recently.
…Did you do it iPod or au naturale?

A:  (When I train for half marathons its always drum & bass.  Noisia actually took 30 seconds off my mile time.  Best band in the world, thanks.)  On the Aids Ride…. which was NOT the full length of California, but it was 560 miles of it…. We were not allowed to wear iPods at all.  We rode on the 101 Freeway a lot, and through cities, so you had to be aware of surroundings, and not distracted.  It was mostly a lot of brain-on-brain action, but to the mental BPM of drum & bass and dubstep… at least for me.

Q:  I stand corrected.  Only 560 miles. Dude, once i rode 30 miles. It was LONG.
What sort of music, real or imagined, saw you through that?

A:  THE FUNNY PART IS WHILE ON THE AIDS RIDE (with no iPod)… we did a bunch of what I considered “mountainous climbs” and if I started to DOUBT myself, I would start ‘singing-my-balls-off’ which was an amazing distraction… mostly Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Aretha….. and one time I spent 2 miles going up one hill trying to figure out the last sentence in the first verse of “Bust a move,” and other people were joining in…. “FROM THE TOP —- this here’s a story for all the fellas….”

Q:  Helvetica: Love, Hate, or indifference?

A:  F#$% HELVETICA, AND F#$% COURIER, AND F#$% COOPER BLACK, AND F#$% IMPACT, AND SUPER MOTHERF#$% COMIC SANS; THOSE ARE NOT FONTS.

(editor’s note: can you sense the aforementioned middle-finger here, or what?!?)

Q:  Knobs, Buttons, or Faders serve you best?

A:  All three at the same time… and doing multiple passes of recording automation so it’s more like 10 of me doing all 3 all at the same time…..

Q:  In your mind’s eye, on your best days in the studio, you sing like _____ and write like _____.

A:  Sing like —– Billie Holiday (dead ringer)
Write like —– every introverted and misunderstood musical super genius who never left the house because their life actually depended on their ability to create.

Q:  If you were to give a name to the “body language” that DJ’s and musicians use, it would be:

A:  Mixer Humping.

Q:  Hehehehe. Elucidate.

A:  No matter what you use, vinyl, cd, laptop; you are still there, humping the mixer, and gently touching it’s crossfader. LLLLOOLLLL

Q:  The Ultimate-Record-of-Slaying that destroys any dancefloor anytime is:

A:  Acid Attack, by Avalanche…. it slays like a freshly sharpened ninja star every time…. NOW AND THEN!

Moody Eva @ Future Ape

-Jeremy Richardson, Caterwaul: The Coppercat blog

A fine mix of deep house, acid jazz, and dub; for the purposes of making your inner critter wiggle.

Grassnoct2 by theCoppercat

Musical Genius of the Day

I’ve started a new feature on the Caterwaul blog:  interviews with fascinating musicians, artists, writers, dancers, and visionaries…from an artist’s point of view.

My intention is to furnish the audience with a conversation that would transpire inside an artist’s studio, without the trappings of pop-culture or paparazzi.

The first interview is with one of the Bay Area’s absolute best underground producers, George Cochrane.  George produces consistently fantastic music of all genres and styles.  He plays drums, bass, keys, synthesizers, button-and-knob machines, and sings…and he’s a studio engineer, too.

George Cochrane

July 9, 2010

Jeremy Richardson, the Coppercat, interviews George Cochrane (Origami, of DJ2 and Cubik & Origami, Andrew Phelan and Origami, The Fingermonsters, and The White Pinecone)

Q: When you write, do you manifest lyrics or melody first?
Do you coalesce them with effort or serendipity?

A: Lyrics tend to come to me in little snatches that float into my head while I’m making a sandwich as the raw loop blares in the other room. I often find myself running back into the studio to jot things down before I forget them. The vocal melody tends to get improvised on the first take, and refined in subsequent takes.

Q: Uptempo or Downtempo, BPM, Key Signature, Major/Minor…how do you decide from track to track?
What’s your method or madness?  Logic or whimsy?

A: If I get to choose, (I.E. it’s not a specifically commissioned track/remix) the tempo and tonality is typically dictated by my mood, the music I’ve been listening to, or the recent trajectory of the stuff I’ve been making.
This means I make a lot of widely-varied stuff, which is a blessing and a curse, I guess. It makes marketing/promo a pain but hey, you’ve got to do what makes you happy.

Q: If you were on Permanent Vacation on a desert island, and could only have one,
which would you pick: AutoTune or a Vocoder, and Why?

A: Vocoder, for sure, because most of them can be used as a cool little fixed filterbank, and I think that it’d be more entertaining as I while away the hours in my bamboo chaise lounge. Plus, I could say “Pin-a Cola-da” through it, to the tune of “Around The World“, when I got thirsty.
On the serious, I prefer Melodyne over Autotune nine times out of ten. I only use Autotune when I’m lazy or I WANT messed-up audio.

Q: A BPM  you’re obsessed with and a story that pertains to it is:

A: When I made a lot of tech-house (I guess I still do), I enjoyed the beautiful shape of 126 BPM. The numbers themselves, and the pace- Just fast enough to get you up and dancing, but not TOO fast. I have an unnatural affinity for even numbers, too.
These days, most of my housier stuff lives around 115-122 BPM. There just seems to be more room for expression when you’re not tripping over the next beat so fast.

Q: The Secret Recording Technique you probably shouldn’t share is:

A: My favorite thing of late- if you’re making crunchy, square-wavey music (Electro House, Dubstep, etc) and you’re valuing slam and attitude over fidelity, try cascading a gluey compressor and couple of mastering limiters on the mix bus, each set to a few dBs of gain reduction. Put some “character” plugins between them, and if your DAW does it well, push the signal into a little (digital!) distortion at a couple of points in the chain, making sure to get the signal back out of the red with the final mastering limiter.
I cannot believe how huge I’ve gotten things to sound that way. It’s all a matter of harnessing chaos. A lot of the work we engineers normally do to retain clarity is counterproductive in those styles. You just want to CRUSH it and CRUSH it again, and give it a good kick in the cojones for good measure.

Q: Care to predict the date of the RIAA fall? Obvious extra points for specificity.

A: Not soon enough. I think it’s going to take quite a few older folks retiring and taking their inflexibility with them, as seems to be the case in many other media-oriented governing bodies. I think everyone going out and making a living through smaller entities instead of the majors is going to help hasten that transition.

Q: iTunes: love, hate, or indifference?

A: I like the iTunes store a lot. They charge artists less per sale than most other online sales outlets, and it’s a nice place to preview albums before you download them illegally (KIDDING!). They do have a distressing habit of omitting songs from records, especially back catalog stuff, which is weird, and the DRM is a pain.
Then again, most days I “pay” an artist by buying their album on iTunes, and then I grab a high-quality, unrestricted copy from a download site. It’s pretty stupid that we need to do that, but I’m glad the conduit to give money to artists is there.

Q: Frets or fretless?

A: Frets, these days. My intonation is in terrible shape from lack of fretless practice.

Q: What is the analog gear you “wish they’d remake?”  What is your current favorite DSP plugin?

A: I wish there was a smaller, lighter replica of the Sequential Circuits Pro-One. Same control layout, routing options and sound, but the size of, say, a thick laptop. COME ON DSI! I can get the sounds I want so much faster on that box than anything else, and it’s all about that layout and the logic of it. I spend every day shaking in terror that it’s going to catch fire and my career will be over.
My favorite processing plugins at the moment are the Softube stuff. The Amp Room plugins are incredible, I often use them on a return in my sessions and just send stuff there to add touches of grit to different things. The Trident A-Range EQ and FET Compressor are golden, too.
My favorite plug-in instrument is probably U-He’s Zebra. It just sounds incredible and the modular structure is fun. With Live 8′s ability to only include certain synth parameters in the automation lists, it’s really nicely controllable, too.

Q: I remember that you had a bunch of interesting basses. Is there any way you’d
give us a list of all or some of the bass guitars, amps, and synths you’ve had?

A: Haha damn, this is going to be quite the list:

Basses

Past-
Hohner P-Bass
Charvel Eliminator
Gibson Grabber
Mexican Fender Fretless Jazz Bass
Crazy custom 6-string fretless (wish I still had this!)
Ibanez ATK 5-String

Current-
Eko Fiddle Bass
Warwick Streamer 5-string
Fender Precision (1974, love it)
D’Armond Ashbory

Amps:

Past-
Peavey Minx
Peavey DataBass (AWFFFFULL)
SWR Redhead (devoid of character)
Ampeg B25 (tube, awesome, way too quiet)
Eden Traveller (quite nice, stolen)

Current-
Traynor Bassmaster (tube, just loud enough)
Ashdown combo (lovely tone, a bit fragile)

Keyboards/Synths: (sticking to keyboards because modules would make this list way too long)

Past-
Ensoniq ESQ-1 (died catastrophically… sad)
Roland MC-202
Emu Emax
Octave Cat (died catastrophically… really sad)

Current-
Sequential Circuits Pro-One
Roland Juno 106
Roland SH-101
Fender Rhodes 73
Hohner Pianet

Q: The strangest sound Matthew Kent-Stoll (Cubik) ever converted into a phat beat was:

A: Probably the various sounds one can make with a gas cartridge in a soda siphon. Clink! PSSSSHHHHHHH

Q: Your Intergalactic Space Cruiser, if/when you have one, will be shaped like:

A: I think it’d look like that crazy warp ship in Mass Effect. The spinning part in the center would be an amazing dance club/gourmet restaurant. (what a view!

-Jeremy Richardson, Caterwaul: The Coppercat blog

I was just booked for a set tomorrow, Thursday, July 8th from 12-close at the Dragon Rouge restaurant…Come have interesting Asian/Vietnamese food and listen to some Brand Spanking New Coppercat choons!  No cover @ the door, so you get to spend your bux on extra drinks and food!!!!

Vietnamese food with Intimate Atmosphere

Dragon Rouge Vietnamese Bistro
2304 Encinal Ave Alameda CA 94501
510-521-1800

Their menu is quite impressive.

I was re-reading some of Moses Wolfenstein‘s blog entries, and was reminded of this fantastic game, Polygonal Fury. It’s not about reflexes or spastic button pressing, but instead more about patience and timing….and there’s no time limit.  Breathe, Grasshopper.  Choose your moment.