Data Cult Audio

Miles Macquarrie went to college for audio engineering and has always had an interest in sound design. He also has a love for synthesizers and the music created by them. Influenced by new wave, minimal synth, electro, and ambient, he uses modular synths as a way to relax when he is not busy running his restaurant, Kimball House. Links: www.kimball-house.com

“Mountaineering is often called Alpinism, especially in European languages, which implies climbing routes with minimal equipment in high and often snow and ice-covered mountains such as the Alps, where technical difficulties frequently exceed environmental and physical challenges. A mountaineer who pursues this more technical and minimalist style of mountain climbing is sometimes called an Alpinist” J.Alpinist is the moniker of John Hornak, Canadian Producer and Mastering Engineer (Michelle Gurevich, Hermitess, Locutus). Improvised ambient dub composition mixed with precision. Employing modular hardware, software and projection mapping. The 4 part Album/EP series “Offerings” will be completed spring 2018 with the release of Offerings #4 at jalpinist.com and all major digital outlets. Look for J.Alpinist on tour in North America in 2018. Best Enjoyed Loud. "a unique sound featuring delicate layering and beautiful space-age melodies. A gorgeous compendium of illustrative sound." - Earshot Links: jalpinist.com @jalpinist

Helvetian Waves is a side project of Andrés Fuentes, a classical–trained pianist, composer and physicist based in Zürich, whom has been commissioned on several occasions by the Mozarteum (Salzburg) to write electroacoustic music, by the Academy of Fine Arts of Vienna to develop intelligent sound installations and, more recently, by the IRCAM (Paris) to research on new techniques of Deep Learning addressed to music. His oeuvre is quite versatile, including his characteristic nonlinear metric and atonal structures, as well as chromatic post-minimalism envelopes.
 Links: SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/helvetianwaves  Bandcamp https://helvetianwaves.bandcamp.com

Erin April Cooper is an experimental improvisational musician based in Portland OR. She creates her pieces using a variety of synthesizers. Her pieces are inspired by her emotions and life experiences. Links: https://soundcloud.com/rinprilooper/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_ldvGq1L8_aU5LwOJ-f_XQ

Adaptive Machines is a live performance based project from Portland, Oregon. Started by Scott Worley of Jatun in late 2013, as a way to eschew recording on the computer and get back into the world of modular synthesizers and recording live performances through analog mixers directly onto tape (reel to reel, 4 tracks, 8 tracks) with no overdubs or post production involved. On the cusp of releasing the 8th installment in his current VOLUMETRIC series, Scott shares the opening songs off of his upcoming releases, VOL X and VOL XI. He shares some words about Adaptive Machines and the VOL series: "It takes me anywhere from a day to two weeks to finish a patch on the modular. At the moment of finishing the patch it's pretty typical of me to hang out for many hours in a meditative trance, listening to the ebb & flow of interactive modules at play. It's really nice to step back and admire all the work put into what essentially is a temporary piece of art. At this point I'll spend the next couple of days learning how to perform it before recording it live to tape for documentation. These series of tapes are called VOL, short for VOLUMETRIC. VOL I - XX were recorded to a variety of analog tape formats over the course of January 2014 to December 2015 and are currently being released exclusively through Bandcamp." Adaptive Machines can be found on the web at: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/adaptivemachines Bandcamp - https://adaptivemachines.bandcamp.com/ Website - http://www.jatunmusic.com/

Huron is the project of NYC / Pennsylvania-based musician Johnny Lancia. He’s been releasing slowly drifting sounds for over 10 years now, using modular synthesizers, obsolete samplers and tape loops to craft his blissed out drones. This piece was recorded especially for Data Cult Audio and was composed using the Tascam 424mkiii cassette four track as an instrument loaded with tape loops painstakingly created by hand. Recordings of analog synthesizers are warped and twisted with each pass of audio. Casio SK-1 was also present. Links: https://huron.bandcamp.com/ https://www.facebook.com/huronmusicnyc https://www.youtube.com/user/huronmusicnyc

The Polymer Cities is the experimental project of Allan Murphy’s many musical/artistic activities which also include Own Brand (formerly Midwich Youth Club)/Pages from Ceefax/Kehrschleife. The Polymer Cities is a Psycho-Geographical exploration/representation of potential future spaces and their emotional stimuli. The aim of this piece is to reproduce an impression of the phenomena of 'Data Rot' the breakdown of digital files which sometimes results in the odd merging of files on a hard disc. creating new hybrids of information - a sort of cut-up writing for the digital realm in which a potential future might leak through. Allan has used mainly unfinished Polymer Cities pieces as the core sounds and juxtaposed/manipulated them with various experimental processes alongside freshly created musical material to represent what an album of his would sound like in the future after data rot. Links:  https://thepolymercities.bandcamp.com/

John Bender is many things. If you were to refer to him as an innovator, a pioneer, sonic explorer and sound scientist; you would be correct. Mostly though, John is a force of reckoning. His sheer output is amazing. He does not deal in revisionism, and is compelled to see what he can make the equipment do for him. John started releasing his compositions in the early 80’s from his home studio in Cincinnati. Influenced by Can, Suicide, Pere Ubu, Terry Riley and Don Cherry he created music that became a template for much of the electronic music that has happened since his early releases. His drive to make music and move forward exploring technology is at the level of compulsion and has very little if any regard for looking backward. His early works on his own imprint, Record Sluts, are amazingly ahead of their time, and are a rare commodity sought after by collectors. After a thirty year hiatus from publicly releasing music, John has surfaced stronger and more creative than ever, releasing a daunting amount of music on his SoundCloud. Data Cult Audio is honored to present this episode of exclusive music by John. It is being posted on Veteran’s Day 2017. We think it is an apt day for a guy that helped build a part of the electronic soundscape we enjoy today. Links to John Bender: https://soundcloud.com/john-bender-799988736 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDrrZhkApLWBDu9zLSogNMg https://www.discogs.com/artist/427987-John-Bender https://johnbender.bandcamp.com/ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008157755873 http://www.vinyl-on-demand.com/-1-18-364.htm

Vance likes sound. He likes making things. He likes quiet surprises. He likes making sounds that surprise him. It started with Max controlled midi synths, (a Nord rack and Nord Modular) and Max/MSP laptop performance instruments in the 90s. Always interested in creating systems that could only influence and steer, but not control. Propagating an esthetic. He focuses on collapsing sounds – made both from the synthesizers and field recordings. Sonic archaeology – sounds on the edge of breaking – suspended in a structure bordering song and chaos. But please have fun. Eventually, his monkey sphere's needs and the functionality of the tech took over, leading to working in the NYC art scene designing and building all manner of systems for artists and institutions. And in the process – lost any artistic direction himself. Escaping to the hinterlands he has fully dedicated himself to his midlife-crisis and modular synthesizer systems. Again he hunts through sonic rubble, rhythmically pecked by familiar signposts of our past. Links: http://soundcloud.com/reodjectz http://instagram.com/reodjectz

Jen Kutler is a sound based performer, maker and artist. She modifies found objects that are cultural signifiers of power, gender and intimacy to create atypical instruments for her performances. Her current project My Wife is a sound based performance group featuring many of her instruments and a sample based recording project exploring the discrepant experiences of familiar sound environments. 
 www.jenkutler.com