Category: Ollie Bown

The Imminence Of ‘Fake Fish Distribution’

The new Icarus studio album; ‘Fake Fish Distribution’, will be released on Not Applicable on January 30th 6th February 2012 (N.B change of date!). It is their first full studio album since 2005’s ‘I Tweet the Birdy Electric‘ and was composed using parametric techniques, embedded into Ableton Live using the Max for Live add-on, allowing them to mutate the record so that each version that you download will be different from everyone else’s. More on this can be found via their dedicated FFD page and on the STEIM project blog.

It’s been an epic project, with a lot of help from some very helpful people, but it will be something a bit special. A short tour in Europe in January and February is being put together to promote the record. Dates coming shortly … for news on pre-ordering, gigs and more, follow Icarus on Twitter @birdy_electric or sign up to the Not-Applicable mailing list in the sidebar or here (we promise this is ultra-low traffic). In the mean time, here’s a sample of FFD version 500:

Fake Fish Distribution – version 500 sampler by Icarus…

New Release – Flensburg

‘Flensburg’, the new Icarus / Badun split EP is now available via Bandcamp. There are also some reviews up on the Liminal and the Danish magazine Gaffa.

Also, a big thank you to everyone who helped organise the Icarus tour this spring and to everyone who came out to the shows. Icarus are set to return with a new studio album in the autumn, you can keep posted about it through the Icarus website.

2011

To all of you who have found your way here courtesy of The Liminal – a hearty welcome! To those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about – an equally hearty welcome and a recommendation to partake in the pleasures of London’s latest, er ‘liminal’ music blog, where you can currently find an interview with Icarus and a mix featuring a collection of new music coming out on Not Applicable this year.


01 Not Applicable Mix – Icarus by The Liminal on Mixcloud

We’re very excited about the fact that 2011 appears to be shaping up to be a bumper year for Not Applicable releases. Following on from ‘In Thunder Rise‘ and ‘Three Improvisations‘, both released in the winter of 2010, we have an extremely optimistic schedule of one release per month for the next four months.

So, keep in touch! You can join our mailing list (there is a form in the sidebar), Subscribe to the RSS, or simply come back soon …

Upcoming in 2011:

NOT016 – Tom Arthurs / Miles Perkin / Yorgos Dimitriadis – Glue

NOT017 – Isambard Khroustaliov / Philippe Pannier – Chaleur

NOT018 – Ollie Bown / Brigid Burke – Erase

NOT019 – Tom Arthurs / Ollie Bown / Isambard Khroustaliov / Lothar Ohlmeier – Long Division

Long Division @ NK

Saturday 4th September 2010 @ 21:00

Isambard Khroustaliov / Lothar Ohlmeier / Ollie Bown / Tom Arthurs

Long Division – a series of pieces for two performers and autonomous electronics

Tom Arthurs – trumpet
Lothar Ohlmeier – bass clarinet
Isambard Khroustaliov, Ollie Bown – software design and development

NK
Elsenstraße 52,
2.Hinterhaus Etage 2,
12059 Berlin-Neukölln

0049(0)176 2062 6386

€5.00

Long Division is a collaboration between Arthurs, Bown, Khroustaliov and Ohlmeier for two instrumentalists and two computers pre-programmed from afar, that was originally commissioned for a performance at the North Sea Jazz Festival. Only Arthurs and Ohlmeier will be on stage for the performance, interacting with a computer system that has been programmed to react and improvise with them.

Simultaneously a challenge and a proof of concept, the computer will act autonomously without a score or a determined progression, orchestrating a path around and through the music developed by Arthurs and Ohlmeier whilst also proposing structures and themes of its own. The software’s autonomy is needless to say of a limited sort, and encodes the creative decision-making of its programmers.

The collaboration is both a continuation of the free improvised electroacoustic performance styles explored by Arthurs, Bown, Britton and Ohlmeier in the various onstage incarnations of the Not Applicable Artists, and a more formal, albeit risky, set of software studies carried out by Bown and Britton into generative and interactive music systems, for which Arthurs and Ohlmeier are the willing and highly capable subjects.

The groups interest in and exploration of autonomy is multifaceted, viewing it in the light of new approaches to the structuring of a live musical work, experimentation in interactivity, and also novel approaches to remote collaboration, where one or more participants contribute to a performance by proxy, in the form of the behavioural software created by them.