1 June 2010
Music: Baroque Variations (Hoddle-Fawkner-Batman Mix) - a psychogeographic voyage around cheap General MIDI samples, field recordings from Melbourne 10 years ago, and inspirational words from Father Gerard Dowling.
2 May 2010
Art: Third City: Walking on Red and Blue - An installation of writing, drawings, maps, photographs and music.
10 April 2010
Art and Music: The Slips - A day-long performance at Clubs Project Inc. in 2003.
26 March 2010
Website: Fixed!
Blog: Close enough.
22 March 2010
Ha ha! I screwed up the website template. It'll take a day or two to update all the pages, but then it will be better than ever. Promise.
21 February 2010
Art: Rescreening: String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) is my first music video, now up on YouTube. It's a remake of the installation version of String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta), first shown as part of the Redrawing exhibition.
New gig: I'll be one of the performers of Dan Goren's new group piece Sum Over Histories on Wednesday 24 February. More details here.
7 February 2010
Music: I met Tony Buck with a flashing red bike light stuck in my mouth outside the old Brisbane Museum. Based on a true story.
23 January 2010
New gig! Thursday 28 January I'm giving the first UK performance of my String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta), at the Vibe Bar in Brick Lane, London, as part of Music Orbit's "Strung Out" night. 7.30 pm, £7 on the door.
20 January 2010
New look website: I'm making small but significant improvements to the design. Some pages will have the old look for a while longer, while I try to make sure nothing breaks too badly. Again, email me if something's buggy or broken for you, 'cos I know Macs running old versions of Safari are having trouble with the blog (it's always the blog.)
Blog: The new-look blog has recent reviews of gigs for George Crumb and Iancu Dumitrescu, and points you toward the Virtual Philips Pavilion.
3 January 2010
New look blog: I've switched over from Blogger to WordPress and started to redesign the site, to give it a more consistent look and add some more features. Email me if something's buggy or broken for you, 'cos I can't be bothered checking on anything other than the versions of Firefox and IE-something installed on my computer.
25 November 2009
All music files are now fit and working again. The move to a bigger web server with more bandwidth is a qualified success. Sorry about the disruptions.
4 October 2009
Writing: The Taxi Driver Looks At The Seine. Since being written in 1993, this piece has lived a fitful life as an amusement for obscure zines, a spoken performance for bemused audiences, and now as a content-added web experience, thanks to Flickr's random image function.
10 September 2009
Music: Melodica! An album of new music for melodica(s) curated by Daniel Wolf. Includes Redundens 1m.
19 August 2009
Music: The Listening Room is now fully functional. Ninety-four mp3s, and all of the Stained Melodies and Redundens now play without distortion. All mp3s on the site are now tagged with a "listen" button for instant streaming.
Blog: I am cleaning up some scans of old slides (hint: I'm about to finally add some more stuff to the Art pages).
7 August 2009
Music: Callington. 5 x 5 choruses for a guitar or something increasingly unlike it. The sound of failure. Where all the buildings look alike, even if they're not.
25 new mp3s ready for download or streaming at The Listening Room.
Blog: I am cleaning up some scans of old slides (hint: I'm about to finally add some more stuff to the Art pages).
27 June 2009
Music: Real Characters and False Analogues. The long-awaited sequel to Stained Melodies. Five years in the making, because I'm a superb procrastinator. A set of twelve pieces for microtonal piano, with a richer palette of harmonies and textures than its predecessor.
12 new mp3s ready for download or streaming at The Listening Room.
Blog: In the presence of greatness? Seeing the previous generations for myself: Christian Wolff, AMM, Robert Ashley, Phill Niblock, Joan La Barbara, Alvin Lucier.
18 May 2009
Blog: Hooray! Eurovision Week is over! Hooray!
24 April 2009
Blog: The good news? The blog is active again. The bad news? Yet another post about Stockhausen.
24 March 2009
Music: New
Redundens. Now with three foursix
mp3s: Redundens 1b, Redundens 6, Redundens
6i, plus Redundens
4 and the brand-new Redundens
1k and Redundens
6j.
Sarsaparilla: Google versus Death, Round 2. (Sarsaparilla Lite)
Please Mister Please: ... also gets the spiffy new jukebox.
21 March 2009
Music: The Listening Room. Every piece of music on this website in one convenient location, playable as streaming audio - over 50 mp3s to choose from.
Sarsaparilla: How to not recognise famous art. (Sarsaparilla Lite)
15 March 2009
Music: New
Redundens! Now with three fourfive
mp3s: Redundens 1b, Redundens 6, Redundens
6i, and the brand-new Redundens
1k and Redundens
6j.
Sarsaparilla: Sarsaparilla Lite is on the air while the main site is refurbished. Thoughts on Dance, Jane Austen, and The Wrestler.
5 March 2009
Music: New
Redundens! Now with threefour
mp3s: Redundens 1b, Redundens 6, Redundens
6i, and the brand-new Redundens
6j.
Sarsaparilla: Sarsaparilla is on hiatus. Expect a relaunch and new site design soon.
5 February 2009
Music: The Cure For Headaches. An new mp3 added to the Dick Without A Hole Page - a touching duet between a born-again Christian and Microsoft Songsmith.
Blog: Late Rothko at Tate Modern.
1 February 2009
Music: Redundens. A more detailed page explaining the Redundens series in progress, with three new mp3s: Redundens 1b, Redundens 6, and an improved-quality Redundens 6i.
Recordings. The discography, such as it is, has finally been uploaded.
Blog: What, more Stockhausen? Yup. Inori and Hymnen at the Barbican.
9 December 2008
Music: Hentai-Oto-Ma. The title track of this CD is now available as an mp3, and the page now includes a comparison of the source images used in its composition and the sounds they produce.
Sarsaparilla: The Most Useful Piece of Advice You’ll Get All Year.
26 November 2008
Music: Dick Without A Hole. What makes Australians so bloody funny? Talkback radio callers in Adelaide show the world their unique gifts of humour and comic timing. Comes with an mp3 for you to share the magic.
30 October 2008
Music: String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) now comes with a 23-minute mp3 of the 2008 version. This is a much more developed version of the piece than the one in the shorter 2005 mp3, similar to the version presented in Redrawing.
Some of my music can now be heard on Kyle Gann's excellent internet PostClassic Radio.
Art: String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) - now has new images and audio from the expanded version exhibited at CAST (Contemporary Art Space Tasmania), as part of the Redrawing exhibition.
Blog: Finally getting Grisey. Also finally talking about music again.
12 October 2008
Sarsaparilla: A tale of life and death, preservation and destruction, bin days, blue asbestos, and bull dust: it's all in Google vs Death.
Blog: Lately it seems I've been reserving my respect mostly for the dead.
16 September 2008
strong>Art: String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) - the audiovisual installation is now on display in Tasmania, at at CAST (Contemporary Art Space Hobart), 27 Tasma Street, North Hobart, as part of the Redrawing exhibition. The show runs from 19 September to 12 October 2008.
Writing: The new, improved version of "World Class Anxiety" in on sale now in the latest issue of Meanjin (Vol.67 No.3, 2008).
12 September 2008
Sarsaparilla: Everything I've written for Sarsaparilla, thrown together in one convenient location.
21 August 2008
Art: I love and hate the guitar. So I'm going to write and play 2000 Guitar Solos for it. How's that coming along?
Writing: A new section! Dedicated to writing available online and in print. First up: The Obsolete Guitar. Did I mention that I love and hate the guitar?
7 August 2008
Sarsaparilla: Starbucks pulls out of Australia, takes over Britian, thus simultaneously improving the standard of coffee in both countries.
Blog: It's Stockhausen Day at the Proms!
28 July 2008
Music: New! Expanded! Improved! All twenty-four Stained Melodies are now available to download, in improved quality audio.
21 July 2008
Music: New MP3s at last! Two takes of my piece from the Horse Bazaar gig. Too much Coopers Pale Ale and a laptop with a dicky ticker team up to prove to the world that The Old School Is Built On The Ruins Of The New School. (Blog post only, proper web page up soon.)
Sarsaparilla: A visit to the wild frontier of Coburg, Melbourne. Where life is cheap, if you're a brickie.
17 July 2008
Art: Redrawing: String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) - the audiovisual installation.
Art: "Every once in a while Don would scream at his mother 'Sue! Get me a Pepsi!' There was nothing else to do in Lancaster." Mock Tudor No.2 (Why doesn't someone get him a Pepsi?)
13 July 2008
Blog: Still banging on about String Quartet No.2.
3 July 2008
Sarsaparilla: What makes an Australian? Beside urban myths and clerical errors.
21 June 2008
Art: Photos of String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) installed at the Redrawing show are now online. Redrawing at RMIT's Project Space in Melbourne is open until 27 June.
7 June 2008
The new Art page has gone online, with further updates to come. Speaking of which, the Redrawing show is now open.
First up on the Art page, a little discussion of radical amateurism: Mock Tudor No.2 (Why doesn't someone get him a Pepsi?)
Blog: Stockhausen takes the High Road, Tudor takes the Low Road.
25 May 2008
The Music page has been rejigged, with a page dedicated to live performances, and "The Night We Burned Down Bimbo Deluxe" has been moved to its own page.
Blog: It's Eurovision time! Oh, there's some stuff about operas: Harrison Birtwistle's The Minotaur and Luigi Nono's Prometeo.
1 May 2008
New show! Redrawing at RMIT's Project Space in Melbourne, starting 6 June. The exhibition will include my String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) in a new, installation version. Floor talk by me and some (all?) of the other artists on Thursday 12 June 12 - 1 pm, followed by a live performance of the String Quartet.
New gig! Also in Melbourne, at Horse Bazaar, Wednesday 11 June, 8:30 pm. Live electroacoustic music with Ben Byrne, Natasha Anderson, Sean Baxter + Sam Dunscombe, Judith Hamann, James Rushford Trio. 397 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne. $5 on the door.
New music! Magnificent Bastards - eight short pieces for multiple tuning systems, written and performed as quickly as possible. With mp3s.
Blog: I'm haunted by the ghost of websites past.
1 April 2008
Blog: Make your own damn Stockhausen composition! You can do it like this, or do it like that.
Sarsaparilla: Two countries, locked in combat over who has the greatest inferiority complex. World Class Anxiety! Now continued in Part Two...
11 February 2008
Blog: Looking at Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth at the Tate Modern, I wonder if it means something very different from what the artist thinks it means.
20 January 2008
Blog: I review Vaucanson's Duck in Melbourne.
Sarsaparilla: I have a feeling we're not in Crouch End any more.
2 January 2008
New music: Redundens 6i, for piano. Part of Daniel Wolf's A Winter Album.
Blog: I review the Other Film Festival in Brisbane.
Sarsaparilla: The Year in Review. An absolutely official end-of-year list ready and waiting to shape your opinion the past 12 months.
22 December 2007
New music: What I did on my holidays. The One Who Was Neither or Nor, recorded live in Melbourne and Brisbane. MP3s from the gigs, with behind-the-scenes gossip about the joys of being booked for a show which changes venue three times in a week.
Blog: We connect Stockhausen with Ezra Pound.
Sarsaparilla: Something soon, I promise.
12 December 2007
Back home from Australia now, so service is returning to normal. The blog has a review of the Other Film Festival in Brisbane. More about Australia and the how the gigs went will follow shortly.
Please Mister Please is running again, with a memorial to Stockhausen.
24 November 2007
Ben.Harper live in Brisbane: Sunday 25 November, see the blog for details.
I'm on holiday travelling around Australia and New Zealand until early December, so updates and blog posts will be slow and sketchy until then. Hopefully, when I'm back home I'll have some write-ups, photos and music to share.
6 November 2007
Ben.Harper live in Melbourne: Tuesday 13 November at The Make It Up Club, Bar Open, 317 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. With Dur-e Dara and Ren Walters, Blow, and boy Brightbulb and Robert Curgenven - looks like a night of electronics, percussion, guitar and winds. Something for everyone! $7/$5, 8.30pm.
I'll be playing a new piece for digitally simulated feedback, The One Who Was Neither Or Nor. It's a more sophisticated development of the principles used in St Paul's Pianos With Real Nightingales. More details soon.
No updates to Please Mister Please while I'm on reduced internet access in various bedrooms around Australia.
19 October 2007
On the music page: St Paul's Pianos With Real Nightingales, for piano, digitally simulated feedback, and two nightingale stops. Nearly two years in the making, mainly because I just couldn't get the electronics right. Includes mp3 excerpt.
23 September 2007
On the music page: I get quietly excited about the preview of a work in progress, Sketch for "A"-16. Yes, it comes with mp3s and a blurry photograph of a messy desktop.
At Sarsaparilla: Several specimens of the Canterbury Block are discovered in the wild.
30 August 2007
A new feature! Please Mister Please launches with Buddy Greco, and everything feels a little bit better.
At Sarsaparilla, your chance to join the Magic Listeners Advisory Group.
26 August 2007
String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) gets its own page, with a couple of pictures and an mp3.
At Sarsaparilla, I indulge in some gentle joshing of the Dawn and Dusk Club and all heck breaks loose.
18 August 2007
On the music page: new mp3s uploaded of some more Stained Melodies for piano, and the story of Disposable Guitar Play Once Throw Away gets its own page, including an mp3 of Ola-R.
13 August 2007
I celebrate three years of being online in a connected Web 2.0 environment by finally adding a search engine.
26 July 2007
Coming up Sunday 29 July: I'm performing String Quartet No.2 (Canon in Beta) at the Placard Headphones Festival in Paris 27 - 30 July. More about the gig here. Online audio of the event at Radio WNE.
Well, I promised more unpopular music when the server switch was completed. Here are two excerpts from Disposable Guitar Play Once Throw Away, a limited edition cassette made in 1999, uploaded in response to this blog post.
Sweet, addictive acknowledgement from the real world: I get to dick around in The Age.
4 July 2007
The site is moving to a new server, so things may be a bit flaky over the next couple of days. Please drop me a line if you notice anything unusual.
Normal service will resume shortly, with more room to offer new and exciting features (i.e. more unpopular music).
9 June 2007
At least three half-finished music projects are on the go. I'm working through some new ideas, but they don't go far enough yet.
At Haiku Review: I have misgivings about Richard Tipping's public art works.
At Sarsaparilla: The bookshelf debate heats up, and then I worry in public about finding philosophical consolation in horrible, horrible pop music.
May at Boring Like A Drill: Eurovision madness! Again! Again! Again! Then we connect John Cage with James Bond, and tell you another thing about what's wrong with newfangled electronic music these days.
1 April 2007
Two more Stained Melodies are now available for download, with accompanying notes if you want to know more about how these pieces were written.
Latest from Sarsaparilla: Test your word power against a dead squirrel, and Contextualising the contemporary artist within capitalist society: a case study.
Also, I moved house!
17 June 2006
Gradually we are getting the feeling that this website is getting somewhere.
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