Bennett Williamson

things:

Volume Pops Pro – Jeff Sisson’s amazing solution/adaptation/plugin for the universal volume pop shame problem

Champale Podcast – Back when, I introduced Willy and Marko to each other, in part because they were my go-to guys for finding out about new raps. Now they do an amazing, overly analytical rap podcast together with great guests, just in time for me to have moved out of New York and absorb their comedy, wisdom, and slaps via iTunes. If only I could so deftly curate my other friends into personal broadcasting about our common interests I’d be set…

DJ Filetype SWF live on Awesome New Place – A 2+ hour DJ set consisting entirely of embedded flash music on websites, mixed in real time in tabs in Chrome by DJ Filetype SWF aka Joel Holmberg live on my radio show. Legendary & groundbreaking

Free Music Archive and Vimeo team up – When I started volunteering at WFMU, one of the first things I worked on was the Free Music Archive, and once Jason Sigel explained the aims of the project to me, one of the first things that I thought was that a big archive of Creative Commons music could be a huge boon for the always-growing world of online video content, as the UMC takedowns have become all too familiar across YouTube. I told Jason I knew some people at Vimeo, made some introductions, and wrote a few blog posts. I’m not very involved with the FMA any more but I’m really happy to see that an idea I set into motion has come to fruition.

Jamming with Critter and Guitari and Javelin and other friends at the Experimental Television Center (RIP). I wish that there was something for me to link to, but nothing has been digitized.

VHX.tv goes public [beta] – Jamie Wilkinson &co launch best site to watch online video, imho. I have talked to Jamie for a few years as different iterations of this project have been in the works, from like “wouldn’t it be cool if there was a website that…” to the super-slick-yet-I-guess-not-even-finished site they have today.

My show ‘New Age Problems’ at The Pigeon Wing in London – super fun, and with enough lead time that I got to make a variety of new pieces, it all came out looking pretty good. Was great to spend some time in London and see some old friends, catch some great weather, and show at an art gallery that also included a free bed and kitchen.

Helping mount Cory Arcangel’s show Pro Tools at the Whitney Museum – lots of hard work, but super fun! Proud to have worked on something so high profile in NY before I left.

Seeing Christian Marclay’s The Clock – sat and watched for like 2 hours, totally awesome work.

Bicycling around western Massachusetts in september, so beautiful.

music:

• Win Win – Interleave (XXXChange’s 1993 Mix) [feat. Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip]
• Peaking Lights – All The Sun That Shines:
• Harald Grosskopf – Synthesist (reissue)
  La Big Vic – Musica
  Bay Area Retrograde (BART) Vol. 1
• Dog Leather – Troll Spray:
  George Kush (aka Mister A*OK) – A Few Tunes, Chopped Not Slopped
• Javelin – Canyon Candy:
• Jim Jones – Believe in Magic (Prod. by Girl Talk)
  Lupe Fiasco – Out of My Head Instrumental (with hook) (feat. Trey Songz, Prod. by Miykal Snoddy) (look ma, no Lupe)
  Dntel – Enya Mixes
  Addison Groove – Minutes of Funk
  Soulja Boy – Welcome to my City, 1UP
• YC – Racks (so unintelligible so good):
  DJ Exotica Sage Presents: Blood Orange Home Recordings Mixtape
• Riff Raff – Larry Bird:
• (p.s. from 2010 but still great: Edward Larry Gordon – Celestial Vibration)

video finds:

• Ratboy Genius!! so epic, homemade 3d animation song cycle.. knock knock
• illest goo pick up machine
• Ray getting dickered on a snowmobile, canada!
• epic whistled rendition of Georgia On My Mind on a 90s talk show
• Russian motorcycle punk rock band, en route
• Prophetic 1995 Student Internet PSA (w/ pulsing techno)
• Madison the five year old makeup guru
• Chip Torres – Te Voy a Dar un Byte
• mariachi band serenades whale, whale poops
• lazy sunday aciiiiid trax w/ jammies & cat
• “El Mejor video de internet” I think this is some old guys with a flat tire getting down to Lorna’s Papi Chulo
• … see also Papi Chulo performed in urdu by Younis Jani, sick
• freestyle canoeing to Lady in Red by Christopher Cross, no big deal
• Phil Thomas Katt – I’ve Never Been Alive “This Was The First Music Video Shot Entirely in a Hurricane and it Includes Some Cool Storm Footage.” great home recording ballad found during the blue balls that was Hurricaine Irene
• compilation of Japanese commercials 1980 – 1992 that used music from Yellow Magic Orchestra
• Mannie Fresh speaking at Redbull Music Academy, hosted by blogger Andrew Noz (amazing story about Mystikal getting out of jail and not knowing what YouTube was)
• 39 Second Space Painting
• Divine Rags Ad – pimpin’ low production values
• Real Scenes: Detroit – a nice 20 min short about the Detroit Techno scene in Resident Advisor’s Real Scenes series
• phantom of the flopera
• Greg Barris standup reel 2/23/11 funny!
• minimal composer Roberto Cacciapaglia’s Ann Steel concept project being performed on Italian TV in the 70s
• Hennessey Youngman killin it with Art Thoughtz – this series was the jumpoff this year!
• Intense second life style animation w/ home-dubbed misheard lyrics, freaky

broadcasts/podcasts/related

• Title TK w/ Danny Goldman live at the Whitney Museum
• Traxman guest set on the Math and Science show on WNYU
• Men in Blazers
• …impossible to pick just one moment from The Best Show, but the Shout! Network lineup for the fall was a particular highlight, had the whole family laughing on a long car ride.

RIP:

• Martin Rushent
• Altered Zones
• Experimental Television Center

I will be returning to my one-time digs at WNYU tonight for a special Quiet Storm episode of A Downtown Affair, tonight from 10:30pm – 1am, hosted by my longtime discofriends Tackleberry & Mike McGill.

Tune in to 89.1fm in the tri-state area, or the web stream anywhere else.

Though ADA has a rock solid disco / boogie / modern soul format, we were inspired to do this 100% slow jams episode in part by the last time I was on the show, when Tackleberry, Mike, myself, and our other discofriend Josh Dunn hit a collective nerve when we pulled out all our mellow jams and ballads for a collaborative last set. Review my mix Wine Coolers from 2009 for more context for tonight, and certainly we’ll hear some tracks that are on the perpetually-forestalled follow up to that one.

Sit back and relax.

UPDATE: The archived show is here, or direct download; Part 1, Part 2.

Stream | Download

When Josh Dunn came to do a guest set last year on Awesome New Place, he pulled Manual Gottsching’s E2-E4 (1984) out of the record library walls, and recounted to me how Finland’s DJ Anonymous used the record to pre-heat parties, letting Side B play out it’s proto-techno while he set up his second turntable, went to the bathroom, smoked a cigarette, got a drink, and settled into the booth for the rest of the evening.

Learning more about Gottsching was the real genesis of this mix, the impetus to finally listen to Ash Ra Tempel and the nucleus of other mainstay Krautrock bands that I had known were influential, but beyond that, hadn’t really known at all. After a glut of Kraut downloading and record library perusing, I definitely gravitated towards the albums like Zuckerzeit (1974) and Music von Harmonia (1974) that pivoted from the noodling rock band format towards synths, pop, and the ‘Kosmische’ vibe.

When I interviewed Ashra percussionist Harald Grosskopf and his collaborator Axel Heilhecker on Awesome New Place, right out the gate they name checked Mickey Hart and spoke about how kosmische musik was essentially their generation’s attempt at complete, formless, utopian free expression. But the 90s saw their albums reissued on CD with ‘New Age Music!’ stickers on the shrink and their honest hopes for enlightenment redirected towards the mass market for self improvement via a number of vaguely spiritual consumption practices; diets, mellow breathing exercises, Enya soundscapes, pastoral meditation retreats, candles, crystals, rainforest/ocean sounds sleeping aids, etc.
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Pictures from my show New Age Problems at The Pigeon wing are up here. The show is up til May 28th and the gallery is open Fri – Sun, 12 – 5.

I’m excited to announce that I have I show opening up on Friday May 6th at The Pigeon Wing gallery in London! It’s my first solo show, and there is lot of new work to be seen. The show features a few new prints, an audio broadcast, a zine, and an old video piece… something for everybody. It was a great challenge getting everything together and I’m excited to share. For fun (and a little added promo) I’ll be DJing at Catch bar on Kingsland road the night before the opening. The show is up from May 6th – May 28th, don’t miss it!

New Age Problems
Opening Friday May 6th 2011, 6:30 – 9pm (facebook)
at The Pigeon Wing
Top Floor (front),
Guild House Rollins Street
London
SE15 1EP

Bennett4Senate DJing @ Catch
Thursday May 5th 2011, 8-10pm (facebook)
22 Kingsland Road
Shoreditch
London
E2 8DA

(p.s. keep an eye on this space for pictures from the show, and read on for the full press release..) (more…)

I have a new print in the show Microfortnight, which opens this Wednesday, March 3rd. The show was organized by Ben Sisto of LQQK Fine Arts, for a new space in Williamsburg. Please come by if you’re around! A fun theme and a cool group of artists.

Microfortnight
Wednesday Evening, March 30th 2011
07:00 PM Exhibition / 10:26 PM After Party
70 North 6th Street, Brooklyn
“Please use the metal door covered in stickers”

Ben Sez:

I will be speaking on a panel about “Remix culture, music, and the arts” this weekend at the 2011 Students for Free Culture Conference here in NYC.

Also on the panel will be Ben Sisto, Laurel Halo, DJ Ghostdad, and Games (the musicians), all moderated by Aram Sinnreich. A cool mix of musicians and artists, and definitely internet power users one and all. Full program for the weekend here.

I’m pretty psyched for this because my artwork, money work, and volunteer work are spread across a lot of different outlets, too many blogs/twitters/facebooks/DJ nights to draw a though-line, basically. But then Kevin Driscoll wrote to me and said that “My goal is to bring together folks who work across boundaries and can talk comparatively about multiple modes of making: cutting up videos, DJing, writing code, etc.” So for the first time I feel really qualified!

I’ll try to speak about my history with GRL and FAT, web appropriation on Double Happiness and in my own work, and music efforts of WFMU and the Free Music Archive. So much panel, so little time!

2011 Students for Free Culture Conference
‘Remix culture, music, and the arts’ panel
Saturday Feb. 19th 2011, 10am – 11:20am
Cost: Pay What You Want
at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University
251 Mercer St, New York NY 10012.

UPDATE: Video of panel here: http://livestre.am/D5KC

Hello reader. Welcome to my website bennettwilliamson.com.

So last year, come New Years, I was unemployed. Not one to usually make resolutions, I decided that a little structure and self-induced deadlines couldn’t hurt, so I resolved that in 2010 I would redo my website. My old site, codeblooded.net, was in essence just a static page with links to other places on the web that I was actually updating – youtube accounts, facebook, flickr, twitter, etc. It also linked to blogs like Doublehappiness and FATLAB where I occasionally posted original content – blog posts in the form of net art or little open source projects. The problem, I thought, was that I was making artwork in many different forums but had no central place where people could follow the narrative of my work.

Of course it was also a way for me to begin creating that narrative in the first place. I figured having a central site would force me to look at what the hell is going on in my life, and keep it moving, whatever IT may be. It also might be a way to, you know, get a job or some art shows or something.

So yeah here we are just over into 2011, and obviously you’re here reading this, so I done did it. Sure there are some gaps left on the site if you poke around deep enough, but lets just say for the sake of completion that this post marks the move from Beta to Done. Thanks to Jeff for helping me over the hump when I hit my limits of css and php knowledge (and caring), and thanks to Cory for all the pointers throughout and letting me rip off a lot of things that I liked about his site.

Riding on the success of last year, I’m making another resolution this year – to use this thing that I have built. One thing that was in the back of my mind around this time last year was that I could use a site in my name as a forum for writing, speculation, general meandering thoughts about web culture, music, art, any goddamn thing that I want. The prospect of doing that is, of course, terrifying. But now that I have my own site which presumably no one looks at, I’m free to do it. I’m pretty sure that I want to.

I figure the point of having my own website it to make it more than an Announcements page for whatever recent art project I’ve got – it can also be the place that I turn to try to flesh out working ideas that might lead to bigger and badder projects. So here’s to trying.

Happy New Year. Welcome To My Website.

A big shout to the homies Josh Dunn and Jon Kirby who each came through this fall and dropped gems of sets of the WFMU airwaves.

Each of these guys sets was like a wedge of the Trivial Pursuit wheel that is the vibe of my show.

Tip of the cap to Kirby, who, besides authoring the above simile, really came though with the mic-break pleasantries, which I had promised in the listing for the show. We spoke much of regional food options. John’s set was a great blend of boogie soul, thrift store classics from both ends of the spectrum; cheap classics, and cheap unclassics. Rare records too, no doubt. There was a distinct voice-modulation bent to his picks, as he just drove up from his homeland of NC coming straight off a book tour afterparty date for Dave Tompkins new tome How To Wreck a Nice Beach. Ended it all with an all Carolinas sunrise set. I was really impressed how Jon would jump off the decks mid-song just to set up his next track with some introductory patter that showed how well researched my man truly is. Check out the rest of his writings at CarolinaSoul.org, and listen to the show right here.

Josh, as always, played a masterful set filled with small-run offbeat 80s electronic music. From more straight house to angular art-school tracks and crossover post punk. I have learned a lot about Detroit techno by following Josh’s gentle influence over the past few years, but the problem has always come down to “yeah cool but where can I find this?” He usually shrugs and sites his time spent combing record stores of the greater Detroit area, taking in stories from the old timers coming through. Also getting tips from long lost artists and their families reaching out when Josh ultimately finds their records and puts them in mixes on his well-crafted website, 100 Limousines. Josh pays a lot of his bills as a talented graphic designer, and lets his visual sense guide him as much as the music’s history, so definitely take a look at the playlist for his show where I tried to get pictures of his myriad album cover gems.

Much thanks to both the fellas.