RIP Vincent Delcorde / Vortex 1962-2014

Vincent a été le batteur de Vortex, un groupe punk, pendant pour ainsi dire toute sa vie. On a formé le groupe ensemble quand nous étions en enseignement secondaire à l’école.

C’est marrant à l’époque on ne pensait pas voir l’an 2000, c’est sur, le système était sur le point de s’autodétruire!

Vortex from left, Vincent, Marco (me), J.R., Steve

Vortex, from left: Vincent, Marco (me), J.R., Steve

Vincent a décidé de mettre fin à ses jours…

Vincent était un écorché vif de la vie. Il ne faisait pas de compromis et ça a du être trop dur.

Créer Vortex, gérer la sortie de nos albums en auto production, organiser les concerts, ça a été une école extraordinaire. Quand j’ai décidé de quitter Vortex dans les années 90, c’est par ce que j’avais commencé l’aventure ArKaos, quelle aventure… Avec Vincent on avait appris que l’on pouvait créer des choses en se basant sur notre énergie, il ne fallait pas craindre d’être original et surtout ne pas espérer trop d’assistance.

Vortex

Here is a picture we took when we released our first split LP, it’s an LP we shared with another band called “No Debt”

Vortex, from left: J.R., Steve, Vincent, Marco (me)

Vortex, from left: J.R., Steve, Vincent, Marco (me)

Et pour finir ce post voici un enregistrement live que j’ai tourné le 5 février 2011 lors d’un concert au café le Parc à Mons en Belgique, enjoy:

J’ai encore dans mon mobile le SMS que Vincent m’a envoyé au mois de décembre 2013 pour me souhaiter ses meilleurs voeux, et je m’étais dis c’était le moment de se revoir et de discuter… mais avec mon emploi du temps chargé entre ArKaos et ma petite famille ça n’a pas pu se faire… je me demande si j’aurai pu détecter son état d’esprit…

RIP Vincent…

NAMM 2011 from a VJ perspective

NAMM 2011 is finished and regarding video and VJ it’s a big no show.

The music industry keep struggling to restore revenue but seems to keep ignoring that extending musician tools to allow them to create video is important.

The only company that keep saying this is Roland and they finally made MIDI Visual Control an open protocol.

Roland also introduced a new video switcher the VR-5, this is nice machine for those who want hardware solution and does not need HD.

I was amazed by this Video Guitar made by Visionary Instruments. Here is a quick video loop on how it looks like:

There was one very interesting event where I went to see that was the WHAM BAM 2011 (4th Annual) :: MUSIC CONVENTION INSPIRED FUTURE SOUND AND TECHNOLOGY SHOWCASE ::

VJ Culture is doing visuals for them and already last year he tried to get me there. Several performers were presenting there controller and explaining the technical details of their sets.

I enjoyed the presentation of Moldover, here are a few tracks I tapped with my camera:

On this you see that Moldover was using the video guitar:

It is not very often that you see clearly how a performer is using his controller. Moldover created the Mojo and asked Livid Instruments to build it form him.

This is a really cool new instrument Moldover is building, here you can see him jamming from some random peoples:

The other part I did enjoy was the Laura Escudé set, I was not expecting ambient music at this event and so it was a very nice surprise. I taped 2 tracks:

This one is 20 minutes long, YouTube now does allow me to post longer pieces and I expected to use that in the future. The start of the piece was slow and dark and so I added some light flares to the first minutes to have some slow moving visuals from the start:

I bough his CD Pororoca and look forward enjoying it.

For me NAMM 2011 was much more interesting for the meetings I had and what I forecast to do this year from there.

Lonelady

From Manchester, the land of Joy Division and New Order, a new sparkle of genious is born : LoneLady.

Julie Campbell is the whole band herself, mainly playing guitar and using rhythm machines, here and there she uses some touches of synths and there is no bass used in the tracks. The music is minimal and cold but never boring. Indeed she is a wonderful guitar player, in each track the guitar riffs are stacking to creating nice nervous patterns.

Her sound is very unique, the way she is shaping the guitar riffs is very creative and personal. In some tracks such as “Nerve Up” she is building layers of sound in a minimal way, other tracks are much more Punk oriented such as “Army”, one of my favorite of the album.

Here is a track from her first album hosted on youtube:

As for most of the mp3 I download lately I bought my copy at eMusic

And here is her web site, minimal also lonelady.co.uk

She has been signed to Warp Records and I wish her the best, can’t wait her next move!

Neuronium – In Aliens I Trust

One of the very cool consequences of being a visualist coder is that you come in contact with a lot of inspiring peoples. Sometimes you even get to meet people that you knew before starting your project and company. This is what happened with Michel Huygen, the soul of Neuronium.

I have always been attracted by electronic music that has it’s roots in the Berlin culture at the time when the city was a closed place. Neuronium music is following the heritage of this movement but with a unique touch that give the music his unique cosmic feeling.

I know Michel Huygen since a long time because he was an early user of ArKaos software many years ago. Not every musician has like him such visual sensibility.

Another inspiring person I got the chance to meet is Eric Wenger, the creator of many cool applications such as MetaSynth, ArtMatic, ArtMatic Voyager and many years ago the original creator of Bryce, the first 3D landscaping application.

ArtMatic is a software based on mathematical graphs defining textures or height maps that are then used by ArtMatic Voyager for the generation of landscapes. I was listening some Neuronium tracks a few months ago when I realized that the music matched very well with some of the ArtMatic worlds. At the same time I received a message of Michel Huygen informing me that he will come to Brussels to present some of his graphic works. and his latest cd’s I used that opportunity to start rendering a few loops and presented that to him during our meeting. Michel was very enthusiastic about this idea so I did push it to the end and here is the result.

You can see here the final version of the track “In Aliens I Trust” I decided to visualize, if you go to YouTube you can see it in 720p:

If you are curious to see the inner details of the landscape here is the height field of the landscape opened in ArtMatic:

ArtMatic Bio City 3B Interface

ArtMatic Bio City 3B Interface

The rendering of each movie segment is then done in ArtMatic Voyager where you can define the camera movements and launch the renderings:

ArtMatic Voyager Bio City

ArtMatic Voyager Bio City

All the segments took one month to render, for this work I used a MacMini that I have a home. I then assembled everything in Final Cut Express.

Hope you enjoyed the ride, the music is fantastic and the capacity of ArtMatic Voyager is just endless!