Second Square To None


Euphiophone has made a new mix up for free download here.

This is a mellow mix, the likes of which one might play on a hungover Sunday afternoon or late at night. It features songs interspersed with instrumentals (lots of mallet and melodic percussion stuff). There is acoustic material from the likes of Nick Drake and Elliott Smith, minimalism from Steve Reich and Philip Glass, bands such as Sonic Youth and Xiu Xiu, and instrumental stuff by everyone from Clark and Machinefabriek to Moondog and Max Roach.

Wrap this mix around you like a blanket and go back to bed, there's no school today.

Tonntracha artwork by redmonk

Thursday, June 18, 2009 , 2 comments



Redmonk sent us this yesterday, a picture made especially to complement his Tonntracha mix
posted here a couple of weeks ago. He used a piece of square cardboard that was originally packaging for vinyl sent in the post as his canvas, and ink, markers and teabags (both metaphorically, literally, and laterally)(actually just how the teabags were used this writer does not know, but to good effect).
Download

The inaugural Second Square to None event was held in the Joy Gallery, 2 Rutland Place, Dublin 1, on a freezing cold Sunday at the end of November 2008. Despite the frosty conditions it was an all round quality line up of music and visuals. In the second of our Monday downloads we present Dubreak's set, with photography by Aoife de Burca. Biogs and links below.

Dubreak
(on myspace):
First influenced by music at an early age, Dara and his older brother used to fabricate their own type of home-made radio shows when they were wee nippers, splicing and resampling snippets off LW radio shows and talking over the recordings. Dara moved on to using two junk-shop HI-FI decks when he was 13, in his bedroom using doubles of records and some piss-poor scratching techniques trying his hand at being a 'superstar' DJ. He soon got sick of that, unlike some people, and has been making his own brand of music since.... He first programmed sequences on an Amstrad CPC464 with a funky 80's 'lightpen', then a Yamaha CX5M music computer (that plugged into the tiny black and white telly in his even smaller rented smelly bedsit), next with ReBirth, then Reason, Cubase, Ableton Live.... Currently he uses a Moog Voyager, ProTools and a rampant collection of other music stuff. Occasionally he gets to gig at a few festivals around ireland, and work at a few 'live-sound' venues around Dublin as a 'Live Sound' Engineer. Best music moment: Either the time he and Diarmo played live (as MonoSum) to a nice sized crowd at Mantua Festival '06, or the time he had a lock-in in AnSeo Dublin with Dr Alex Paterson, drinking brandy and smoking a few fine Jamaican 'cigars'. Dara is currently in his second year of 'Sound Engineering' at Pulse Recording Studios in Dublin. Viva la tunes....

Aoife de Burca:
Aoife is not fond of writing biographies about herself so until she does all you'll have to go on is her work!


flickrSLiDR.
We are pleased to announce that on Sunday 28th June starting from 2pm in Twisted Pepper the following...

In the back room on the ground floor and playing live:

Sunken Foal

We saw Sunken Foal playing live in Twisted Pepper for !kaboogie a few months ago and knew we had to have them play at Second Square to None. Beautifully organic and intricate electronics presented in a remarkably live fashion - main man Dunk Murphy tweaks his synths and mysterious looking Logic Pro environment set up while opposite Rod Morris taps in the beats and samples on a keyboard. Sunken Foal are one of a small handful of Irish acts who have reached the peak of electronica cool by getting an album released on the Planet-Mu label, "Fallen Arches". Check that shit out!

Bluefood

Long-time Alphabet Set cohort Bluefood makes fun music - music that will put a smile on your face. Check out "Live at the Button Factory" on his Soundcloud page in the link above and you'll see what I mean! Paul likes to keep organic or live elements in his music, not being a fan of tight machine music - perhaps this is why his music has a distinctly human element. Anyway, we've asked him to play some of his more downbeat tunes, of which he has loads.


Gland & Conduit

Gland & Conduit are a duo consisting of Herv and Mel. Herv is a well known breakcore producer with shitloads of releases on a variety of labels around the world. The duo have only recently formed and make noisy music! Fragments of rhythm can be found lurking in the shadows of the grainy noise and found sounds - their set promises to be an interesting listening experience!


Ventolyn & Becotyde

Last year when I was in Galway for the first time playing a gig in the moisture-laden city a mate of Ventolyn & Becotyde insisted I take a note of his not-so-easy-to-remember name. V&B has apparently only been producing for 2 years which is sickening to those of us at it for several years. His album "Audissect" (available for free here) showcases the ease at which he has mastered the IDM sound; for Second Square to None however he will be playing a selection of more ambient tunes that you won't hear anywhere else!

Jimmy the Hideous Penguin

Jimmy is another Galway guest who we're glad to have back at Second Square to None. He's a turntablist who mixes up the idea of DJ'ing and live performance in an entertaining fashion. In Galway Jimmy organises the annual Community Skratch Games and has a similar ethos to Second Square to None regarding how gigs should be run. He'll be playing between and after the live acts in the back room.

And then we have the DJ's, some of whom you may remember destroying dancefloors (in the best possible way!) over the years at !kaboogie gigs and Mantua etc:

thatboytim

thatboytim is one of the founding members of Belfast (and now Dublin)-based Takeover Records, and can be found spinning tunes every Thursday in Hogan's on George's Street. Normally Tim plays party tunes but on the 28th will be selecting some choice dub, electronica and who knows what else!

redmonk

redmonk is another DJ well known for bringing bass sounds to squeeze the air out of your lungs at !kaboogie and Wobble nights the past few years. He'll be playing some more chill stuff for us as that's kinda what we're going for!

Prozac

Prozac, AKA Riccardo Veglianti, is a man who consumes music of all types and in all formats, but who especially favours minimal and dub techno (the good type of Minimal! Not that derivative SHIT that we love to hate!) on vinyl. Ric has played on occasion for the now seemingly dormant Stasis Collective, and Electic City, but not nearly enough for our liking - great DJ!

Mully

Mully is a veteran of the Irish drum 'n' bass / jungle scene and a collector of musics old and new. He'll be playing a selection of sounds from his archives from Krautrock to Warp style electronics and older Enotype ambience.

Gonna be gooooooood! And all for free! All we ask is that you come, the earlier the better, or you'll miss it all!

Flash music composer

Saturday, June 13, 2009 , 0 comments

Thought we'd point out an interesting web app that we came across on our internet wanderings.

Audiotool is a stylishly executed electronic music creation suite with a comprehensive virtual gear list including groove boxes, effects pedals, mixers & synths for jamming out tunes. There are lots of options for wiring your signal chains and you can record out to harddisk when you're finished. What makes it pretty amazing is the fact that it runs on Flash within your web browser, for free.

Audio-visual sexy sexy

Wednesday, June 10, 2009 , 0 comments

Howdy, jus wanted to highlight some interesting club visuals/audio-visual installations. Might be some ideas for future Second Square events in here...

Anti VJ is a visual label that does visuals experiments, installations, architecture design & live visuals. They seek to 'step away from the usual projections screens and formats, explore projections in 3D spaces and study visual perception'. Below are three examples but check out their blog, their stuff is amazing.

AntiVJ - Nuit Blanche Bruxelles - The content is a mix of 2D / 3D visuals, with mapping and architecture related projections. The second half of the video is especially unbelievable.



AntiVJ - 3Destruct from AntiVJ on Vimeo. Audiovisual installation at Biennale d'art contemporain in Louvain, Belgium. May 2007




AntiVJ - Live Painting: Shackleton from AntiVJ on Vimeo.



Electric Moons is a performance for a matrix of 64 gas balloons, lights, and sound

From their website: "A room is filled with deep, evolving noises from a four-channel sound system. An eight-by-eight array of white, self-illuminated spheres floats in space like the atoms of a complex molecule.

Through variable positioning and illumination of each atom, a dynamic display sculpture comes into being, composed of physical objects, patterns of light, and synchronous rhythmic and textural sonic events. Change, sound, and movement converge into a larger form.

The height of the helium balloons is adjusted with a computer-controlled cable, whilst the internal illumination is accomplished using dimmable super-bright LEDs, creating a pixel in a warped 8x8 spatial matrix.

The sonic events, the patterns of light, and the movement of the balloons are manipulated in real time as a 45-60 minute-long performance."




Punto y Raya Festival 2007 - Excerpt from the dot·line dvj session by Mia Makela (SOLU) and Raúl Santos (Supercinexcene) at Punto y Raya Festival (Madrid, September 1st 2007).



Cubatron display at Burning Man 2007 - Pretty lights



Pablo Valbuena - The Augmented Sculpture Project - The ability to write the following is the reason that this piece is in galleries/museums rather then clubs...: " This project is focused on the temporary quality of space, investigating space-time not only as a three dimensional environment, but as space in transformation.

For this purpose two layers are produced that explore different aspects of the space-time reality. On the one hand the physical layer, which controls the real space and shapes the volumetric base that serves as support for the next level. The second level is a virtual projected layer that allows controlling the transformation and sequentiality of space-time.

The blending of both levels gives the impression of physical geometry suitable of being transformed. The orverlapping produces a three-dimensional space augmented by a transformable layer suitable to be controlled, resulting in the capacity through the installation of altering multiple dimensions of space-time.

These ideas come to life in an abstract and geometric envelope, enhanced with synesthetic audio elements and establishing a dialogue with the observer." It looks real nice too.



Kubik is an open air club in Barcelona. Illuminated water tanks are stacked to create the structure, creating a synaesthetic relationship between light/architectural structure and the (dubious) tunes to create what must be a fairly mind blowing club experience.

Redmonk artwork

Tuesday, June 09, 2009 , 1 comments

Get hi-res pdf of Redmonk's artwork for Ed Devane Live at the Joy Gallery here.