Here's a little something about the creator of
The Virtual Rhythmicon and his band:
"Nick Didkovsky is a guitarist, composer, band leader, and software programmer. In 1983, he founded the avant-rock octet Doctor Nerve. He presently resides in New York City, where he composes, creates music software, and teaches computer music composition at New York University and Columbia University. He is the principle author of the computer music language Java Music Specification Language (http://www.algomusic.com/). He has composed music for Bang On A Can All-Stars, Meridian Arts Ensemble, Fred Frith Guitar Quartet, California EAR Unit, New Century Players, Ethel String Quartet, Electric Kompany, ARTE Quartett, and other ensembles. His Punos Music record label offers CD releases of his more extreme musical projects. He is director of bioinformatics for the Gensat project at The Rockefeller University. . . ."
- Full Biography.
About Léon Theremin and Henry Cowell's original Rhythmicon from 1932
http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/rhythmicon/
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Nick Didkovsky: guitars, retro echoplex nostalgia.
Rob Henke: trumpet, screaming ears.
Ben Herrington: extreme trombone.
Jesse Krakow: electric bass, trout masks.
Michael Lytle: contra/bass clarinet, chilling predawn calm.
Kathleen Supové: Massive keyboards, massive sampling, massive vocal rants.
"The ultimate Doctor Nerve experience":
At first, the album appears as a mixed bag of goods: high energy live Doctor Nerve performances and a cover of Captain Beefheart's "When It Blows Its Stacks," a few "Nervewares" (compositions generated by software written by Didkovsky), and collaborations with NewEar, the Meridian Arts Ensemble, and the Isso Yukihiro Group.
But instead of being a collection of oddities, Every Screaming Ear reveals itself as the ultimate Doctor Nerve experience. Every aspect of the band is represented in its context: the ultra-complex, light-speed fast tunes, the contemporary chamber works, and the downright craziness that becomes so palpable when seeing the band live."
- François Couture.- Fantastic album ! - also on
eMu.
Comments
Nick Didkovsky, electric guitar, laptop; Thomas Dimuzio, sampling, live sampling, and processing; ARTE Quartett: Beat Hofstetter, soprano and baritone saxophone; Sascha Armbruster, alto and baritone saxophone; Andrea Formenti, tenor saxophone; Beat Kappeler, baritone saxophone.
- "Nick Didkovsky is an accomplished composer, virtuoso guitarist, and computer programmer who works on the cusp between the concert hall and the rock-and-roll club-territory that is only now beginning to be taken seriously. Didkovsky's compositions are rigorously conceived, yet leave plenty of room for spontaneous input. He has tapped into what one might describe as a typically American way of making music-iconoclastic and formalist without being overly uptight. Combining complex rhythms, harmonies, and textures with the visceral energy of rock music he creates work that is cutting-edge (albeit more Downtown than Uptown), rigorous, and subversive. His employment of asymmetrical meters, gratuitous dissonance, and tonally ambiguous harmonies rubs against the pop sensibility implied by the compositional forms and instrumentation with which he works. The sense of compositional and technological inventiveness in Didkovsky's music bears resemblance to that of other maverick composer-hacker-performers such as Salvatore Martirano, Larry Polansky, David Rosenboom, and George Lewis.
Didkovsky's music reflects current trends and practices including the use of live, interactive computer-assistance, genre jumping, and blurring the distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow. Although the accoutrements of Western tonality are never far off, his musical sensibility allows for some radical departures from the stock-and-trade of tonality. Didkovsky is attracted to the ambiguous boundaries between human-generated and software-generated materials. Ice Cream Time (2003) is a multi-movement piece scored for saxophone quartet, electric guitar, and live electronics. As might be expected, Ice Cream Time embraces, or engages with, a wide range of influences and material contrasts. Nine of the movements feature live sampling by Thomas Dimuzio, whose job was to capture and process the saxophone and guitar sounds in real time, using his Kurzweil K2600RS. Because the unaltered signals are also heard, a rich and subtle texture is produced."
New World Records 2007
Didkovsky / Hufnagel / Ulrich / Smith - Petromyzontiformes Vol 1
Recorded live on Jan 31, 2015 at WinterProg Festival at Spectrum,
Nick Didkovsky - guitar
Kevin Hufnagel - guitar
Samuel Smith - guitar
Tomas Ulrich - cello
- "“I am proud to present three new duos, all of which reside in that actively ambiguous borderland between composition and improvisation, and I am honored to bring three amazing musicians to the task: Tomas Ulrich, Kevin Hufnagel, and Samuel Smith.
The first duo is entitled “For Mary” and features ‘cellist Tomas Ulrich. I’ll be playing quiet and meditative electric guitar structures, giving this master improviser lots of room of compose his parts in the moment. The second duo is entitled “III, for Electric Guitars”. It is a rich and ecstatic sonic contemplation, and I am beyond thrilled to have Kevin Hufnagel join me for it. The third and final duo, “IV, for Electric Guitars” is a massive sonic lava flow, to be molded and kneaded by texture master Samuel Smith. Three new duos, three awesome players, this is going to be sick…”
– Nick Didkovsky (program notes for WinterProg)
BIOS
Cellist-composer Tomas Ulrich has performed and recorded with such diverse artists as Anthony Davis, McCoy Tyner, Anthony Braxton, Derek Bailey, Coheed and Cambria, and Doctor Nerve.
http://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/tomasulrich
Kevin Hufnagel is a solo artist and guitarist for Dysrhythmia, Gorguts, and Vaura.
Samuel Smith is a guitarist, bassist, and composer who currently performs with Long Island death metal outfit Artificial Brain.
It's on Bandcamp...
http://vomitfist.bandcamp.com/album/forgive-but-avenge
Leo Ciesa - drums, a capella observations, time reversal
Nick Didkovsky - electric guitar, reamplified obsessions
Yves Duboin - soprano sax, telepathic wrap-up
Ross Feller - additional soprano sax on Uses Probe Form, low latency
Rob Henke - trumpet, boxing behind enemy lines, Sauerbraten
Benjamin Herrington - trombone, tight fives, focus
Jesse Krakow - electric bass, life vests, foot foot
Michael Lytle - bass clarinet, demonology, contempt for human sacrifice
Kathleen Supové - piano, skin, zero waste
Tom Marsan - electric guitar
CHORD uses amp distortion, feedback, tone shaping, and musical artifacts to craft a viscous universe of ecstatic, immersive textures that reward careful, detail-rich listening.
"...a brutal cascade of sonic artifacts that immerse the listener in a beautiful sea of noisy guitar textures dripping down the walls... slow moving ambient slabs of free-metal." - Peter Thelen, Exposé