March Highlights, April 4th lounge

The next DC Listening Lounge will be Tuesday April 4th. Mark your calendars.
Until then, here are some highlights from the lounge- last night:
MARCH DCLL HIGHLIGHTS 
Thanks to AC for hosting.  He kicked off the night welcoming everyone and we went around to make introductions and mention of our favorite weird food.
AC- pork rinds
Efim- mothers Russian Pelmeni- dough with meat inside like piroges, boiled and dipped in sour cream, mustard and followed by beer.
Jenny- pickled herring
Jocelyn- buddha's hand
brandon- steamed blue crabs, well-picked
Alex VO- century eggs, on saltine crackers. Buried in earth. Chinatown NYC.
James- drink egg whites from the carton
Ian-Gefilte fish, pulverized poisoned fish- yes he likes it.
Deb- bitter melon, pickled, caramelized, like caramelized garlic
Steve- Menudo, hangover cure, beef tripe, potatoes, corn, carrot. A ritual of toppings with cilantro, lemon to taste.
Liz- The popular in Brazil food containing, manioc flour toasted, sweet or savory etc
Bond- pickled broccoli stems
Ann- keeping us in suspense...

The night's audio :
began with Alex Van Oss, featuring work from Finish sound scape artist Simo Alitalo . The video was shown from a live performance in the round (with instrumentalists positioned around and across a small cove ). Conversations about how to performance and create audio outside the confines of a tightly controlled studio- just be sure to include the waving of large flags from the tops of buildings and a giant crank powered alarm.
Reflections of the fine line between dry humor and tuning a band to a crank-powered alarm or maybe performing the sound scape of a World War..

Bond moved us along with a guessing game of “who's this artist” with the song “Screen Door.”
Radiohead or Yo-Yo Ma meets Steve Reich. Solution, EDM DJ DeadMau5, "stuff I used to do compilation" from 1997-2007. Cool contrasts in this one from the regular work and the old magic from this compilation. Notes made about the contrasts between simplicity of early rap programmed into an 808, and the computerized voice and the sensitive metaphors and then mixing in with poor metaphors.
Like asking Siiri to compose a piece.

Efim jumped in with a song that he wrote and converted into a Dada poem, cutting out the words and pasting them back in into a random order, using music memos app which generated a backbeat and bass line for the poem. This is the result “Sketches in Sound, I Am I”
crowd response: “That could have been a bad lip-reading parody.”
Steve followed with audio to celebrate a successful first edit he had today on a story He shared a youthful sing-a-long with clapping accompaniment and accented by kid squeals. Sounds from the church of Kansas City mostly made of members from Democratic Republic of Congo and refugee camps they left behind. Sounds from the first Baptisms of the new church. For the podcast The Spiritual Edge, funded by the Templeton Foundation.

Jocelyn played the rough mix intro to a new episode of a podcast she's working on. Complete with homemade audio effects and per-liscened music beds. Discussions of the ways that music can manipulate our emotions in good and bad ways and the recent Smithsonian Hirshhorn Ragnar Kjartansson exhibit.
Brandon played audio from the  Folger Shakespeare Library lab audio that was pulled from a radio play and re visioned for a new sound scape. Wanted it to be cinematic.
Greenwood Tree: show just closed.
Jenny shared audio from her friend Sam Guilford's collection “Sonic Sketches” a composition collection that uses different keys and time signatures and follows the shape of a drawing of an animal or image that is drawn in silhouette. Mandolin and fiddle featured with this octopus tonight.
Efim mentioned the composing off stars, over-laying a staff and drawing in notes any place a star appears.
James played the ending of a story of Todd. He debuted the opening at last month's meeting. This month he finished the story of Todd's relationship (or non-relationship) with his dad and his grounding in personal identity. Conversations abounded about how to play with sound to manipulate,distort or otherwise change a recording- how much is too much and in what ways can fx influence our listening to a scene and understanding of it's characters?
Announcements:
-Sound Scene update: July 8th, 2017 @ Smithsonian Hirshhorn
 Decisions on what pieces will be accepted for this year's event are coming soon (apologies for the slow process- many cooks in the kitchen). DCLL is actively seeking partners to share financial support for evening programming- please do be in touch with any suggestions/leads!
-DC Department of Energy and Environment FROG WATCH coming up. Follow this link to learn how to be a citizen frog call scientist and help manage and monitor frogs in the DC area. seriously.
March 16th the program is coming back by popular demand- Frog ear-training and identification.