Hoxerijo's Last.fm Journal

Hurry up Harry - part 1 new Hox Vox breakbeat record is out

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:34:11 +0000

Hurry Up Hurry - part 1 is a breakbeat prog record, released with a Creative Commons 3.0 ND license, so free to download.

Last.FM
http://www.last.fm/music/Hox+Vox/Hurry+Up+Harry

Jamendo
http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/57318

Bandcamp
http://hoxvox.bandcamp.com/album/hurry-up-harry-part-1-2

Зимний дворец and Jeanne d'Arc videoclips

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:31:22 +0000

Soundtrack is a song from my album "Outskirt" (2008); I took St. Petersburg Winter Palace - left empty when Nicholas II and imperial family moved to Alexander Palace - as a hint to depict 1905 russian Bloody Sunday.

"Bloody Sunday (Russian: Кровавое воскресенье) was an incident on January 22 [O.S. January 9] 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia, where unarmed, peaceful demonstrators marching to present a petition to Tsar Nicholas II were gunned down by the Imperial Guard. The march was organized by Father Gapon, who had collaborated with Sergei Zubatov of the Okhrana, the Tsarist secret police, to create workers' organizations and thus considered by some to be its agent provocateur. Bloody Sunday was an event with grave consequences for the Tsarist regime, as the disregard for ordinary people shown by the massacre undermined support for the state."
[from Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_S...

Subtitles in english and italian.

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Track is about a great female historical figure, Joan of Arc, juxtaposed to middle east singers, and a quirky muezzin.
I worked with paint effects on some footages about Crusades, Jeanne d'Arc and east europe (looking like a little middle east) singers. Track is, briefly, about the juxtaposition of western guitar arpeggios and middle east vocals.

My intention was putting together women from both sides in Cusades: a western woman, the "étoile" in this case, which dared to act like a male soldier in a demented inquisition environment; and docile eastern singers. They got no moments of glory followed by dying on a pyre, but a continuous subordination, so actually it's a pondering about women's troubles in western or eastern world. Different ways and degrees of cruelty, same patriarchism.

Clip simply follow this scheme and adds a movie picture support. I needed just a couple of days to finish it as it's a "punk" expression in videomaking. This time I tried to catch the result on the fly, without exceeding in refurbishing every single frame. Not a draft, but a quicker language. And a different subject, it wasn't the right place to unleash some After Effects frenzy quirknesses. At the opposite, I worked on slow motion footages, to achieve a relaxed but a little gloomy mood.

I found quite cruel in the last sequence to put side by side Jeanne d'Arc in flames and a smiling singer. It was not intended as a revenge of muslim on a christian, but the cruelty in life itself. While one is dying, the other is enjoying his art.

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Songs and videoclips are released by Hox (Gianluca Missero) under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

New Hox Vox toon Videoclip from Étoile: Intro

Sat, 5 Sep 2009 22:03:44 +0000

Subject of clip is swines. I like them, they're clever and it's a stupid common place they love to squelch in the dirt. Vietnamese little pigs are clean like cats.

Video is an operatic dadaist inferno - where pigs are menacingly main characters. Not an happy end (as it's my favorite mood), but everybody knows what's a swine destiny (no gory images, anyway).

Étoile - world & symphonic progressive meets kraut rock - is out!

Mon, 6 Jul 2009 18:19:02 +0000

Fourth release by Hox Vox, it's a concept album about stars - both intended as prima ballerinas and cosmic bodies - and their issues.

Genre is a series of various kind of mix with world music, symphonic progressive, a bit of contemporary and kraut electronics, always with the free approach of Rock in Opposition tradition (from Zappa to Henry Cow): sometime resulting in complex structures with mindbending pairings of melodies with subtle detuned arrangments. Record start with a Residents-like intro sung by a couple of real pigs, then a piece of math/art rock, sounding like a too dry death metal. Then from Rhythmbox the record starts wedging prog, contemporary, world and electronics.

Record is available here at Last.FM

You can also download it from Hox Vox HQ website, a single zip archive with the 13 songs and booklet.

The record as usual is free to listen, download and spread, as it's released with a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Enjoy.

Here's why "no more free is free on Last.FM"

Mon, 6 Apr 2009 13:05:54 +0000

From Wired blog, see http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/06/warner-music-gr.html

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Warner Music Group Pulls Music from Last.fm

By Eliot Van Buskirk

June 06, 2008 | 5:59:39 PMCategories: Digital Music News

Rockin Warner Music Group has confirmed that its music is no longer available through Last.fm's on-demand music streaming service.

Last.fm users can still stream music from Warner's artists via their artist-based radio stations (see below), because those songs are licensed under a different deal.

However, Last.fm users will no longer be able to stream songs on-demand from albums Neil Young, Nickelback, Death Cab for Cutie, or any other artist recorded for the label, as Silicon Alley Insider discovered.

"I can confirm that our music is no longer available on the service," a Warner Music Group spokeswoman told Listening Post via e-mail.

In our efforts to include music on the Listening Post blog, we've ended up turning to imeem more than Last.fm, because Last.fm doesn't allow single-song embedding, and imeem seems to have more on-demand music. And that was before the Warner deal fell through. Now, imeem, MySpace, Napster and YouTube could become more attractive to users, because each of them still has the label's music free and on-demand.

Most likely, Warner either wants more money or an equity stake in Last.fm similar to the ones it has in imeem and MySpace. CBS purchased Last.fm for $280 million; it's possible that Warner, as the first label to make a deal for on-demand music with Last.fm, expected to see its ship come in, so to speak.

Last.fm had earlier pointed to the availability of free, on-demand music on its site as having had a promotional effect on sales, increasing them 58 percent. Apparently, Warner doesn't care much about that, and would prefer to get paid more for on-demand playback than Last.fm (a division of CBS) was willing to pay.

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I leave you any comment.

Hox Vox's Das Chamäleon is out now!

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 23:45:18 +0000

3d release by Hox Vox multimedia project, Das Chamäleon is a 5 track EP about mutant music, obtained through bizarre pairings or juxtaposing uneven genres.
Cover image by Hox.

Tracks description:

Springbound is an electronic/IDM number.
Plastique Boots between white reggae and rock.
Entr’acte - inspired by famous Renè Clair movie - put together electronics and a latin melody.
Cockroach got the darker Residents influences and a slow and harsh fusion bass guitar.
Das Chamäleon starts in a funky fashion and developes a series of themes usually considered as incongruous, being the manifesto of whole record.

As usual all of the tracks are free to listen, download and share as they're released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Thar Desert videoclip

Thu, 5 Feb 2009 23:33:37 +0000

This afternoon I modified last tiny details and saved master file for Thar Desert, 3rd videoclip from an Outskirt track.

This time I worked on a more ordinary videoclip concept, but I couldn’t just trace out. I recorded by a viewcam me playing Thar Desert and extracted a discreet number of frames (a nightmare cutting them out, really), then assembled again in animated sequence form.

Alberta gave me pictures she shooted in Egypt last December, so I made a great use of them to create the environment and some animated absurdities (as usual).

The result is obviously grotesque as I still believe in The Residents / Frank Zappa / Pere Ubu and share at 101% their nothing-is-sacred approach.

Videoclip is as usual on Hox Vox Box Youtube channel, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbHLBtEyPsQ

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Second Hox Vox videoclip from Outskirt is out

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 17:15:48 +0000

Belief: Greed videoclip is OK, I uploaded it in Youtube Hox Vox Box channel.

I worked on a video of mine which won a couple of animation contest prizes in first 90s, called "Peyote". The strange process was 1) clean the video like it was done nowadays 2) add animation part missing and create... an aged film aspect, like it was an old documentary film. :-D Seems strage but the real video damages were very bad, the computer-generated are somewhat pleasant, they look like vintage but without destroy too much the footage.

Plot is about a peyote experience by a late 60s hippie on mexican mesa. I think is a good companion for Belief: Greed, as song and images are both dealing with psychedelic (but song is more aptly tagged as avantprog/rock in opposition).

http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=8dS8iOPwons&fmt=6

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Belief: Wrath videoclip online @ Youtube

Tue, 6 Jan 2009 18:24:17 +0000

I just finished first videoclip from Outskirt, and uploaded to Hox Vox Box channel on Youtube.

I've chosen Belief: Wrath because that anti-song (which I tag as "grindcore classical") was very apt to a sarcastic point of view about live concerts. I was always surprised how people are totally mad during them, but calm and serious just before and after. :-D

I mean, it's more noticeable than people disguised in carnival... seems like they were waiting for eons to give vent to their need of raising against normal boring lifestyle. It sound me as a clear pent-up driven expression.

While I respect it, I got the right to kid it. I used a mixed technique (die-cuts in the usual way but also 2D puppet which gives movements a gummy elasticity) so the result is very near to Terry Gilliam's (of Monthy Python) animations, it has the same "Max Ernst meets Tex Avery" taste.

Probably frenzy animation rhythm override music in itself, I mean it tends to steal the lead role; as the music is mechanical and obsessive, so it goes on the back. Not the steel snare, of course, it stick in your cranium as a nail. You can't forget it.

I think it's exactly what I wanted: a video not confortable, but funny all the same.

Video is available here:

http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=9jDsXltYKYE&fmt=6

Released Outskirt (Rock in Opposition)

Tue, 9 Dec 2008 01:41:11 +0000

Last afternoon - 12/08/08 - I finished last song in Outskirt, my new free album (Creative Commons 3.0 license) about low inhabitated, or at least far from centre areas. Genres varies according to the ambient, from progressive to kraut rock electronics, indie, jazz, metal, avantgarde, funky, obscuro and more.

A list of all my notes about single parts on Outskirt:

01. Sigma Hydrae

It's Outskirt's intro, comprising a vivace drone (in comparison to those of GI!BE) growing up progressively (...) with chorus to his theatric closing, disturbed by an elusive pianist involved in a spastic series of tryouts, searching for the right theme. I imagine him on an Enterprise-like starship's bridge, trying to get in vain inspiration by Sigma Hydrae nebula slow approaching.

02. Møre og Romsdal

It's a norwegian county splitted in countless fjords and isles. I could only describe the feelings it gives me through a glacial jazz-death metal approach, so I tried to melt the cold Meshuggah and Mike Barr kind of outputs. I wanted to give a couple of unexpected twist to add lunacy, I hope I achieved that aim.

03. Reidsville, NC

I've been living in Greensboro (and going back to Italy sometimes) from 2002 to 2005 when I was a designer in a Reidsville company. Reidsville was an average industrial area before China's low-cost production side effects, and it was never high populated anyway.
Near Greensboro there's Winston Salem (up here my favourite pub), Tim Sparks' (and other more moonshine-conventional guitarists) hometown. Some of them I've heard in concert on different nights while eating at a small pine-wooden restaurant in Reidsville.
The guitarist usually took a chair from a free table, went in an apt corner and started to play, surrounded by voices, noises and when warm weather (so windows were opened) with car passing sound. This song was the most emotional to put together.

04. Giant Star Antares

I'm quite satisfied with the results. I avoided to pump sounds on purpose to get an early kraftwerk/krautronics taste. Electronics sounds like minimal classical instead of being a multilayered baroque pastiche of pads and ambient sounds covering nothingnesses, which is more than boring.
Back to outer space (after the intro Sigma Hydrae), it's 5 minutes of audio travelogue about revolving around Antares, from door to door.

05. LaGuardia, 3:00 A.M.

Airport totally smoke free "thanks" Rudolph Giuliani: a nightmare. I draw on this to catch the surreal atmosphere broken by sneaky zombies supposed to be fresh managers ever on the go, and tired immigrates side by side with young cheap travelers, all looking for nightime low-cost flights.
Song result is something like Cardiacs playing be-bop in front of one of LaGuardia coffee-shops night time.

06. Zimniy Dvorets (the Winter Palace)

I had as startup a classical romantic theme, something between Mussorgskji and Saint-Saëns, but more on the russian side. I've seen in my mind old documentaries and ancient pictures about the Bloody Sunday while I imagined the rest of the song, an endless zig-zaggin' progression chords ostinato, very grave, dramatic.
And same time I imagined this enormous building getting empty by czar Nicolas II sudden leaving for Alexander Palace. Right place for the pianist I left on Enterprise in Sigma Hydrae strike back.
Also, I found interesting having a song about a New York airport and then another about S. Petersburg's Winter Palace.

07. Thar Desert

Bass, which serves both rhythm & melody, a compulsive-riff guitar and a very dry drum set. Funky to the rougher, I had in my mind Bill Laswell style when he played in Massacre or first Material record (Memory Serves), plus the old No Wave funk area (Konk, Contortions, Liquid Liquid and the like).

08. Junction Box

It's an electronic joint between first Outskirt half and Belief + closing two song. Works like a teather curtain.

• Belief suite

I'm not a believer (in neither deity nor men), so everything related always gave me a scent of loneliness. I perceive the subject doesn't fill, as probably doesn't exist. Capital sins are symptomatic: no honest man can deny they're bad acts, whatever point of view, being religious or not. So if You don't believe when You face them You think it's a trial where judge is absent. Obviously a true believer cannot accept this pont of view, as he thinks that simply the Judge exists.
I'm not interested in demonstrate anything, it should be a bumptious and silly claim. But I'm interested in my particular point of view, and develope in music.

09. Belief: Lust

First movement is an obscure carpet of percussions with a couple of solo inserts by saxophone and a dry guitar acting both a crescendo and then a physiological after-coming decay. I don't deny it's grossly didactic (on purpose).

10. Belief: Gluttony

Second movement is cleaner, with a off-beat jazz drum, double bass groaning in your belly like hunger and an oboe trio from far like a smell of delicatessen.

11. Belief: Greed

Third Movement is greed in timing (less than a minute) but it's the most RIO song in Outskirt, in debt with Henry Cow or Art Bears' dischordant melodies.

12. Belief: Sloth

A bit sloth and a bit lazy, in 7/4 . Maybe it's the most mainstream part of Outskirt, a contaminated synthpop.

13. Belief: Wrath (Hommage à Shinu Mazafakingu Ujimushi)

It's a cover of TBA by Shinu Mazafakingu Ujimushi, an english grindcore band who recorded only that song on a Lo-Fi or Die compilation. I listened to it zillion of times, for a couple of reasons:

1) I got it only in mp3, and it's disgusting low quality, maybe they did it with a VeryVeryLame mp3 codec for bad cell phones. Sounds are melted like you were listening the band from into a washing machine, except a tom, in fact ...

2) song's "melody" (...) is overpowered by a single note, the one of a very acute tom, metallic like the snare drum by Metallica in St. Anger (years before Metallica).

I just couldn't stop to listen that watery roaring made by bass drum, bass, guitar and snare drum, and above this hammer hits piercing my brain. Sometime I think that I probably I'd never love so much it if it was not so really bad coded. Points 1) and 2) are in symbiosis.
I replayed (almost) slavishly same drum sequence, with different timbers and sounds, and recreated the "roaring" with three violas. The result is kind of "Kronos Quartet plays Shinu Mazafakingu Ujimushi". And I putted on a different layer the rest of drums, reaching three plans instead of the original two.

14. Belief: Envy

Envy is in my opinion a childish/unripe kind of defect. So this is the seed.
Talking about the song in itself, it's an electronic section starting as cold sum of sequences, dense but minimal, with shifting changes on the like of Raymond Scott's Soothing Sounds for Children, and its develope is dotted in a crescendo by some Carl Stalling 's intruders.
Don't know if conceptually speaking I went on a cacophony, or better, an unnecessary remark on what was already remarked. The result sounds much frenzier and brilliant after Stalling invasion, that's the most important thing.

15. Belief: Pride

It's an endless single cuban (in my way) loop, with compulsive bass, an insistent xylophone and a reasonable amount of small percussions layers (but drum set is definitely rock.) It prepares with diablo rhythms and lightheartedness to approach melancholic Pet's Repository intro.

16. Pet's Repository

Song is a result of contructing and dismantling. First I grew up with dozen of instruments and atmosferic pads 'til the grosser. Then I had a u-turn and started to delete part after part, so i obtained a skeleton progressive, I mean more similar to Cardiacs than Camel. I like the result of a punk approach to prog, such as Pere Ubu (in an avant fashion) or Cardiacs (more melody aware) did.