Bennett Williamson

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.

I was invited to make a new mix for Fully Fitted, which, for the unfamiliar, is the web home / casual record label of DJ Ghostdad, Chris Devlin, XXXchange, and others.

The Live at Home is all about Sunday afternoon vibes, one take, no edits etc. The series has thus far included such heavy hitters as Jayceeeoh, Frank of Voodoo Funk, DJ Ayres, and the members of Fully Fitted themselves, so I’m flattered to be a part of the deepness!

Check out the original post here
http://fullyfitted.blogspot.com/2010/11/live-at-home-31-bennett4senate.html

tracklist:

James Asher – Cosmic Dust
Charanjit Singh – Raga: Bhairav
Alex Cima – Rocket’s Cat
Chris and Cosey – Morning
Cybotron – El Salvador
Neil Young – Computer Cowboy
AnIta Feldman and Michael Kowaiski – Riffle
Piero Umiliani – Antiche Tradizioni
Ten City – Suspicious
Jef Barbara – Larmes De Crocodile (Fresh Version)
Kyle Hall – Ghosten
ROTFLOL – Wish U Were Here
The Samps – Yellow Jacket
Washed Out – New Theory
Nobody – One for all Without Hesitation
Cerrone – In the Smoke
Azymuth – Amazonia
Alan Silvestri – The Ship Beckons (from Flight of the Navigator Sdtk)
Lil B – Robots Forever (Based Freestyle)
Moodswings – State of Independence
Gold In the Shade – Over You
Larry Lewis – Concordia

my musings on the mix:

I know this mix series is supposed to be “things I can’t play live,” but mine ended up being kind of backwards. I’ve been doing my show on WFMU for the past six months or so, where freeform is the norm, so the weirder the better, and I’ve barely stepped into a club in that time. I think everything on here I’ve played on the show, but when I’m in there I’m not beat matching or anything, so my Sunday afternoon vibe is actually a chance to dust off the Serato and try to get a more proper continuous mix going.

I’m pleased with how this came out, its a lot like what I’m aiming for with my show, but pared down for more focused consumption. Both beat-heavy sections and synth pad scenic atmospheres, a mix of old records and new WAV files (lossless son!). Sounds like lots of synths of course, library music, vocoder Neil Young, acid techno ragas, a couple soundtrack cuts, 90s Lion King feel good vibe house, ambient album cuts from disco LPs, a splash of r&b… also a bunch of new material, which has been the refreshing surprise of being on a radio station that gets tons of new independent music every week. The record industry may be a big ? right now but contemporary music is still inspiring. So this mix has some new Detroit house, “chillwave,” even some autotune.

if you don’t feel like clicking any further, just stream and/or download it right here.

p.s. also wanted to say that some of this stuff is available for free online, specifically on the Free Music Archive, Ubu.com, and Digital Dripped.

Here’s a few pictures (courtesy of Eyebeam) from the Mixer performance at Eyebeam from September.

DJ Ghostdad and myself provided live visuals on the big three-screen background for Dam Funk and DJ Reverend Shines’ sets. We used Dadeo, a “single channel video switcher/distorter/pixelator w/ midi, osc, and wiimote control” built in Jitter by Ghostdad himself. (Keep an eye on this space as Dadeo will go public (once G-dad has time to finish it foreal .) Ghostdad on the WiiMote, me on the Midi Fighter.

Videos included lots of rare YouTube digs, lots of not-so rare YouTube digs, and a couple of new animations that I made in Google Sketchup just for the show.

Thanks as always to Paul Amitai for organizing, and all the performers – Rev. Shines, Dam Funk, and Extreme Animals (who provided their own visuals for a trippy / amazing journey of a set that definitely resonated with my own New Age Syndrome.)
Lots more pics on Eyebeam’s Flickr.

(p.s. I did the flyer illustration too!!!)

Real quick – Aram Bartholl of FATLAB has brought the speed show format to NYC – taking over an internet cafe for a one-night show of online artwork. The show is tonight from 8-11pm, at 90 Bowery Internet Cafe, NY 10013. facebook here http://on.fb.me/cjevSi.

I’ll be there with Double Happiness, doing some live surfing and posting. The list of participating artists is thick – check it:
Erik Andersson, Cory Arcangel, Michael Bell-Smith, Charles Broskoski, Jon Cates, Aleksandra Domanovic, Double Happiness, Constant Dullaart, JODI, JK Keller, Greg Leuch, Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied, Duncan Malashock, Eva & Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG, Aaron Meyers, Mark Napier, Katja Novitskova, Paper Rad, Jon Rafman, Ariel Rebel, Ryder Ripps, Evan Roth, Brad Troemel, Marius Watz

Was good to see a lot of these folks at the opening for Free at the New Museum, look forward to hanging out again. I’ll post some pics here after the show.

RECAP: – (official recap on FFFFFAT)
Here’s the post that we made for the show. The computer that we were designated to work on was ll in Chinese, and didn’t have Firefox, only IE. So one of the hardest parts was getting the raw image URLs because I had no idea what any of the right-click menu choices said. I tried all of them eventually, but nothing seemed to work.
Anyways, we persevered – Jeff sat next to me and worked on the post concurrently, but that meant that someone’s artwork was getting bogarted by us, since each work was assigned its own station. You do really need multiple computers for the true DH Live Blog experience I think…
Shoutouts to Joel Holmberg who came and sat with us for a while, good vibes.

The 2010 WFMU record fair starts today!! If you’re a reasonable distance from Manhattan, and looking for vinyl, it’s worth your trip. Sure, its a chance to lay out your cash for “nice pieces,” but the dollar bins are stellar too. I was pretty broke last year but still had a great time. Yes, record dealers are a strange breed, but there are so many in one place for this event that chances are you can find some who are decent conversationalists and will put you up on good records. Networking is free baby!

I’ll be setting the mood on Sunday, DJing in-house from 11:30 – 2pm, playing themes for sore hunched backs and music to crouch over milk crates by. If you get tired of bargaining, come vent with me – I’ll be volunteering at the LP destruction / collage area the rest of the day.

All record fair info at http://www.wfmu.org/recfair/.

As a way of promoting the Record Fair, pretty much all the DJs at the station, myself included, play only 7″s in the week preceding. Check out my playlist here: http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/37772

Also of note, I joined Marty McSorley on Trent’s show for the third annual 45s and 40z, three hours of irresponsible radio this year packed into just one hour, celebrating malted beverages and Trent’s inability to drink fast, and testing our ability to censor ourselves saying the kind of things that we’re not going to remember saying in the first place.

I edited together some video I shot of Critter and Guitari, aka Chris Kucinski and Owen Osborn, when they came through to Awesome New Place.

Download the full songs at the Free Music Archive.

Javelin did a live set on my radio show last month, which was recorded, licensed with Creative Commons, and posted on the Free Music Archive. I blogged it there, reposted here:

Genre Judo Throw: Javelin

Javelin developed their sound in Providence, a small town with a scene that they say encouraged people to not wait around for recording budgets, and instead grab the closest 4-track and start putting something down; shoot first and then edit, maybe come back to it. This high-volume production process seems to be how they developed their signature eclectic thump. Where other producers flip beats, Javelin’s style is judo throw, re-directing the momentum of pitched up disco, soca, and r&b records back into fun percussion-driven vignettes. With a healthy skepticism for both band and DJ culture, the duo sucessfully created a show that avoids the trappings of electonic musicans forced to “go live”. Surrounded by tables of MPCs, mini mixers, and pedals, George paces out the shows in deep concentration, sweating over an electronic drumpad, with Tom meandering around the stage singing a mix of his own lyrics and earworm pop hooks, ocassionally noodling on the keytar or kazoo. The rest of the music is playing itself, sequenced by the machines.

The net result has rappers wanting to drop verses on it, other producers wanting their remixes to sound like it, and just about everybody wanting to dance to it. A triple threat. Their tastes do not sit still, and this thirty minute session mirrors the variety found on their new album for Luaka Bop, ping-ponging from r&b to country in an effort to keep themselves entertained. Buying thrift store records like they listen to the radio on tour: whatever’s local.

(more…)

My good friend DJ Tackleberry came through Awesome New Place and basically played the entire show. Always a good time for me, as I get to kick back and update the playlist instead of driving the boards.

Tackleberry is one half of the crew at WNYU’s A Downtown Affair, but for my show he played records “that I get a little too bashful to play on our show… in the r&b and boogie vein for the most part, and some weird synth things as well.” A perfect set of “fineline” music – the Venn diagram center of cheesy/inept/powerful amateur music.

Playlist here.
Stream it here.

Recently I met up in Brooklyn with curator Isobel Shirley of London’s The Pigeon Wing gallery and the website Art/ Value/ Currency. She showed me a cool ongoing traveling exchange project that Pigeon Wing is doing, and we we recapped the past few years since we’ve seen each other.

She followed it up with an email interview; I typed about the creative processes related to making offline spaces and events for things like Dub Hap, surf clubs, and lonely bedroom shredders.

Its up now – check out the full text here.