bird show band “bird show band” long playing record

• quintet one (9:09)
  
• little song (2:02)
  
• quartet (2:57)
  
• bsb synthesizer solo (2:36)
  
  
• quintet two (8:06)
  
• quintet three (5:55)
  
• quintet four (5:35)

bird show band “bird show band” compact disc

• quintet one (9:09)
  
• little song (2:02)
  
• quartet (2:57)
  
• bsb synthesizer solo (2:36)
  
• quintet two (8:06)
  
• quintet three (5:55)
  
• quintet four (5:35)

amish press release...

ami 041 bird show band s/t lp bird show band documents bird show's new collaborative spirit and stands as the culmination of ben vida's chicago-based work, featuring a who's who of the city's improvisational luminaries, including josh abrams, jim baker, dan bitney and john herndon. the improvisatory feel of the bird show band sessions function as vida's paean to the windy city. rather than another bird show release that involves guest accompaniment on select tracks, vida conceived of these recordings as a foray into session playing, tracking the entire album over just two days. while herndon and bitney's percussion invokes german psych, progressive rock, and jazz idioms, vida's synth-based experiments, here accompanied by jim baker's arp 2600, provide the first indication of his recent musical preoccupations, an interest that relies heavily on the moog and his own fluid, lyrical melodic lines. if you have had the luck of catching bird show or ben vida perform live over the last few years, you have witnessed the centrality he now gives to the moog and one-touch patchwork, experimental forays that point to europe and the mid-century avant-garde, especially the cologne-based innovations of stockhausen and his many students during the late 1960s and early 1970s. regardless of this description, bird show band is more than a mere intellectual exercise and the sessions balance brain with musical brawn in ways that vida has yet to achieve on his previous outings.

ben vida / keith fullerton whitman “splitaggregatepulseripper (damaged iiii) b/w 080114” long playing record

• ben vida - aggregatepulseripper (damaged iiii) (11:31)
  
  
• keith fullerton whitman - 080114 (18:20)

amish press release...

ami 033 r/w ben vida / keith fullerton whitman aggregatepulseripper (damaged iiii) / 080114 the third iteration in the required wreckers series, a split lp featuring new and exclusive work from ben vida and keith fullerton whitman (ami-033 r/w). having collaborated over the last decade as a trio with greg davis, this release features new solo-work by two of america's most important emerging sound artists. the first side of this release debuts a new composition from ben vida. in keeping with his recent patchwork-based compositions, aggregatepulseripper (damaged iiii) continues to explore vida's interest in both digital and analog control sources, a compositional process that refuses to fetishize one technology over another and, more interestingly, appears (though, of course, these appearances are deceptive) to displace the musician's hand from the compositional process. in light of vida's early work with the acoustic ensemble, town and country, and the world music and concrete studies of his solo project, bird show, this new compositional method should not be overemphasized. for this piece, vida creates a complex web of patches that change and morph in what he has contextualized as a series of shifting generative patterns. the subtitle of his piece references how these patterns coalesce in aggressive, almost hardcore, clusters of sound that refuse to slip into contemplative or mystical arenas that so many in today's electronic music reference in relation to their work. vida's composition opts instead to remain engaged in the phenomenal and spatial forces that shape our perception of sound. the flipside of this lp features keith fullerton whitman's third in a series of splits (previous releases have included no fun production's b/w carlos giffoni and amethyst sunset's b/w with mike shiflet) documenting a particularly productive period in his creative output - a series of "synth concerts" from 2007 and 2008. recorded on january 14, 2008 at pa's lounge in somerville, ma, this piece documents the fourth in whitman's solo synthesizer sets. his technical set-up is based around a theme (and circuitry) of economy, in which the artist makes use of each cv-source in a variety of fashions. throughout the recording one can discern talking from the audience and ambient room-tone noise, as well as sound coming from different sources spread throughout the room - a small battery powered speaker on stage right, a giant barbetta on stage left. each speaker was fed into a different patch irrespective of its frequency response. whitman uses a hybrid system of digital and analog sound sources that, with the exception of a single 4096 bd delay, is presented here without treatment, overdub, or sequencing of any sort. new york-based artist meredyth spark provides the cover art and sixteen-page booklet for this release. sparks has been assisting amish for the last few years with design and layout. this is the first release to exclusively feature her work. the images and design elements for the cover art come from her extraction series (in truth, the front and back covers are extractions of her extractions), paintings and collages that draw heavily from the aleatory methods and analog/digital processes that both vida and whitman utilize in their recordings.

pillow “plays brötzmann” compact disc

• images 01 (5:32)
  
• images 02 (6:35)
  
• images 03 (3:42)
  
• images 04 (5:42)
  
• images 05 (2:37)
  
• images 06 (4:22)
  
• images 07 (6:29)
  
• images 08 (4:06)
  
• images 09 (3:33)
  
• images 10 (0:59)
  
• images 11 (8:29)

ben vida “trading prescriptions” cassette

• asuna #2
  
• buuh
  
• full damage #1
  
• stutter fux’es (w. monobloc)
  
• krnk prt 1
  
  
• taap lungy bounce 2
  
• ubsyrs
  
• sm for a and jpn friends

los discos enfantasmes press release...

ben vida - trading prescriptions (lde 015) c-34 normal tape, yellow shell. home-dubbed, one at a time, on nad and marrantz tape decks, in real time. professionally printed j-card with front die-cut. edition of 120. "trading prescriptions" is a collection of works for computer controlled analog modular synthesizer. these eight pieces focus on disjunct rhythm and abstract propulsion.

andy ortmann / ben vida “electronic music” long playing record

• andy ortmann - psychic energy displacement
  
• andy ortmann - persuasive thought interference
  
• andy ortmann - counter-productive telekinesis
  
• andy ortmann - pineal gland activation
  
• andy ortmann - esp with animals
  
  
• ben vida - patchwork composite
  
• ben vida - snf fylls (esstends iii)

ben vida “esstends-esstends-esstends” long playing record

• qweek plus enner (outro too)
  
• zizzlerz
  
• ssseeeeiiiiii
  
  
• pin ans sweep
  
• ennerforrance (esstend iii)

pan press release...

ben vida 'esstends-esstends-esstends' (pan 23) five pieces for computer controlled modular synthesizer and digital signal processing. composed and recorded from february 2010 – april 2011 in brooklyn, new york. 'esstends-esstends-esstends' is a collection of spatial compositions in which audio focal points shift between external and internal emanation sources. the intent with this work is to escape the stereo image and create an activated listening space of expanded spatialization. using just intoned pitch combinations to produce difference tones and harmonic distortions, sound materials are created that emanate from both the playback speakers and inner ear of the listener. by engaging the listener’s sense of aural perception and sound localization in relationship to compositional structure, these pieces act to reframe the listening experience and encourage an engagement with, not only the form and aesthetic of the music, but the sonic space a recorded piece of music projects. higher amplitude will help to reveal. ben vida is a composer, improviser and sound artist who lives in brooklyn, ny. ben led the group town and country and experimented with world musique concrète under the name bird show. in collaboration with keith fullerton whitman and greg davis he explores cross control voltage integrated improvisation and real time automatic group composition. ben has worked with artists hisham bharoocha (duo as soft circle), siebren versteeg, doug aitken, nadia hironaka and mathew suib. he has played in ensembles led by tony conrad, rhys chattam, and werner dafeldecker. as an improviser he has performed with milo fine, fred lonberg-holm, chad taylor, kevin drumm, yamatsuka eye and c. spencer yeh among many others. he has released over twenty records on such labels as thrill jockey, drag city, pan, amish, bottrop-boy, hapna and kranky. in 2011 ben was composer in residency at diapason space, nyc and at ems studios, stockholm and was awarded a swedish arts committee travel grant, issue project room emerging artists commission and museu d'art contemporani de barcelona "composing with process" exclusive works commission. as both a solo artist and in collaboration ben has presented his work in the united states, canada, europe, south korea and japan. the lp is mastered and cut by rashad becker at d&m, pressed on 140g vinyl and comes in a poly-lined inner sleeve. it is packaged in a pro-press color jacket which itself is housed in a silk screened pvc sleeve with artwork by kathryn politis & bill kouligas.

town and country “c’mon” compact disc

• going to kamakura (8:16)
  
• i'm appealing (7:33)
  
• garden (3:50)
  
• the bells (8:34)
  
• i am so very cold (3:15)
  
• palms (4:26)
  
• bookmobile (8:02)

town and country “it all has to do with it.” compact disc

• hindenburg (10:24)
  
• hat versus hood (8:53)
  
• fine italian hand (7:22)
  
• that old feeling (15:10)

town and country “decoration day” compact disc

• give your baby a standing ovation
  
• spicer
  
• off season