Spark…And Beyond: Twin Cities Electronic Music Resources
Like many electronic music makers, dronemaster Datura 1.0 started in rock, moved on.
Like Christmas, the Spark Festival od Electronic Arts and Music comes once a year, features unusual lighting, and includes a ton of free entertainment. But even though it’s a couple millennia (plus change) younger, composer and U of M professor Douglas Geers’s brainchild offers way better music. Spark was a great idea back in ‘03, when it debuted as a two-day celebration, It’s now an even better one–not just because the celebration’s length has tripled.
Cepia's "Dowry" inspires an exemplary fan video.
While live electronic music thrived locally during the late ’90’s and early ’00’s, venue owners and talent buyers have since grown comically conservative. Meanwhile, the informed and enthusiastic writers who once provided extensive coverage in Twin Cities print media vectors have mostly moved on to bigger and/or better things (this blog, for example), while their old outlets have declined at an astonishing rate.
Minneapolis's Garland Villanova gives SF a taste of its own tunnel (Stockton, heavily processed) at the 2007 Soundwave Series.
What little space doddering local pubs now afford electronic music is almost invariably filled by well-meaning dilettantes and/or Luddite loafers whose sense of entitlement far outweighs any vestigial notions of responsibility to the public they might have once harbored. Luckily for us, we’ve already learned to look beyond birdcage liners rushing toward extinction; anybody interested in electronic music enjoys all kinds of options for getting Spark-related info. But what about the rest of the year? Though divination isn’t our forte, we at IPR have a decent idea of what’s currently happening. Below you’ll find links to local ((and formerly local) electronic music resources–musicians, composers, sound artists, labels, venues, deejays, curatorial types–pretty much every practitioner, enthusiast, or organization with any kind of online presence. Bookmark now, visit often. It’s only gonna get longer (especially over the next week).
Ex-Minneapolitan Timeblind uses SuperCollider--unbelievably powerful, open-source, and absolutely free.
This entry was posted by Rod Smith on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 11:01 am and is filed under Blogging, Multimedia, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
2 Responses to “Spark…And Beyond: Twin Cities Electronic Music Resources”
Leave a Reply
Announcements
Search:
Greenroom Cafe
Menu | Gift Cards
April 24, 2009
The GreenRoom Cafe will close at 3pm Monday, April 27th.
Subscribe to this Blog
I don’t use the terms “blew my mind”, “paradigm shifting”, or “jaw droppingly amazing” lightly, but this year’s Spark is deserving of all 3. Particularly the surround sound multimedia performance from Jochem Paap, aka Speedy J and Scott Pagano; I have been waiting for artists to utilize surround sound in this manner since I first heard the term…
Gah! My pain increases. Thanks to work (first time) and a ride so sleepy, we didn’t even make it all the way through Pole, I had the distinct non-pleasure of missing Speedy J. twice. Regardless, thanks for the heads-up; you’re the first earwitness to so much as mention the surround performance to me.