The Apples in stereo: New Magnetic Wonder

Posted on Friday, October 12, 2007 6:40 PM

The Apples in stereo (c) Joshua Kessler)

The Apples in stereo are a bunch of geeks. Their album New Magnetic Wonder comes as an enhanced cd:

Dear Listener,

The enhanced portion of this CD contains the lyrics and liner notes in text format, in case your CD has become estranged from its packaging, plus the original unabridged album art by Andrew McLaughlin.

There is other fun stuff too: a couple of short films, a bonus MP3, and an explanation of a "Non-Pythagorean" musical scale Robert invented, which he used to compose the introductory tones of New Magnetic Wonder and two of the link tracks.

Plus there are SoundFont (.sf2) and WAV files of sine waves tuned to the Non-Pythagorean scale, and instructions for you to compose with it on your sampling keyboard or computer.

Music theory of this new scale is an open question, so we look forward to hearing the result of your experiments.

We hope you enjoy our New Magnetic Wonder,

THE APPLES IN STEREO

The Apples in stereo: New Magnetic Wonder

Right. Did that put you off? Don't panic. New Magnetic Wonder is a highly sophisticated pop record with catchy riffs and the occasional spanner thrown in to get the casual listener on the wrong foot. All the enhanced stuff is nice enough to mess around with for a couple of hours after which you have come up with some über leftfield ditties that will scare the shit out of your loved ones. Art hurts, you know.

Oh, and let's not forget that they dedicated their album to Syd Barrett (1946-2006).

MP3: The Apples in stereo - Energy
MP3: The Apples in stereo - Non-Pythagorean Composition, Pt. 3

» applesinstereo.com
» myspace.com/theapplesinstereo

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# re: The Apples in stereo: New Magnetic Wonder

11/7/2007 10:45 PM by astrosmashley
the tuning you came up with is really georgeous, especially using sineoid sounds. the phasic beats you get end up being an actual dimension to the composition. how cool is that!? maybe a classification system could be built around relative beat ratios per interval. in music school there was a guy who came up with an equal tempered 17 note scale. i generally love the bizarre and exotic, but that scale was far too unmanagable to create anything one could listen to for more than 10 minutes straight. i can see some real musical applications for the non-pyth though. it would be interesting to see if you could train someone (or yourself) to sing this tuning.

if you haven't heard the bulgarian womens choir, i really recomend it. they sing tight harmonies on the mean tone scale. it sounds super peircing, alien and strangely hollow. ever hear Ligeti's "Lux Aeterna"?...good stuff

astrosmashley

# Album reviews on HCTF (A-Z)

12/3/2007 9:41 AM by Here comes the flood - a weblog about music

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