Cinchel

i felt like i didnt listen to much new music this year. then i went back through my bandcamp purchases and i was reminded that i did. here's what i really liked or what i felt other folks haven't hyped enough yet and that you should check out.

Ope! I Did It Again by Obsolete Aesthetics

really fun and adventurous loopy sample album. a mix of field recordings of what sounds like conversations at a party/cafe with woozy samples and lurchy drum machines.

Minutia by Ted Byrnes

i really like solo recordings of a single instrument when the artist is doing something to really milk every sound they can from said instrument. this recording kinda sounds like a drum kit falling down a set of stairs but in a comfy way.

MUSIC FOR SCREENSAVERS by German Explaining Station

this is a wonderful collection of ambient/synth experimentation, reverb drenched guitar goodness, and scott walker-esque song excursions.

Levitation Stories by Chloe Yu Nong Lin & P.M. Tummala

i dont think Monastral has ever put out something i didnt like. this is a terrific pairing of processed pipa ("a Chinese lute that dates back 2000 years running its tonal resonances through patch systems to coax unpredictable sounds and textures from an ancient voice.") played by Chole, and Harmonium pulses by Tummala. gently delicate and warming.

DOMESTICATA by Soft Five

this record is pure fun. the first full recording from chicago percussionist and experimenter Amanda Kraus. starts with a contemplative gong warm up and ends with a delightfully funky and dancy closer.

Calendar Year by Jessica Risker

absolutely perfect 70's hazy and mildly psychedelic folk record. every song propelled by Jessica's strong and confident song writing.

Must you go, when the day and the night need you so? by Christopher Elmore

organ drone at its finest. wonderfully deep and mesmerizing.

Future National Sports by Patrick Cosmos

Patrick continues to make solid late 90's inspired dense beat collages. i am huge fan of the crispyness of the production.

what it means to be a body by wøunds

each wounds album ups the ante. more moods. more layers. more movement. absolutely huge sounding.

Interior of an Edifice Under the Sea by Pan American & Kramer

the slowest guitar, the prettiest synth swells and some fine piano and pedal steel. so much space to settle into.

In Transit by Lia Kohl & Zander Raymond

music of train stations, bus stops and taxis. mixed with synth and cello. delightfully glitched and looped.

Spring Morning at Pepe's by Tymbal Tapes

the only release this year from Tymbal Tapes and its a benefit release for families in their community who lost everthing in a fire. 3 pieces that were performed during a benefit also for the families. one sitar/drone based and one more noisey, with a collaborative 3rd piece at the end.

its been 2 years since C. Reider released anything which is sad. but this is a wonderful 2 track re-make of the set they did opening for Autechre in November.

The Pines by joshua bonnetta

this is probably the best sound art i've heard all year. its uses 8760 hours(!) of field recordings from a tree in Tioga County. mixed down to 4 different hour long pieces. it brings up so many questions and ideas in my imagination.

Sirens From Monoliths by Brady Matteson

dark and droney like a chicago winter.

to live slowly, without fear of its consequences by blood pact scout

dense chords and static noise swells that feel like a david lynch film and slow melodies that hint a beauty under the surface.

Never Die by Matt Jencik & Midwife

even though this came out in july this is a haloween record. a wonderful collaboration between Matt (whose recordings with Implodes and his solo ambient works i am familiar with) and Madeline Johnston who has a project called Midwife that I was unfamiliar with before this release.

Longlost by Boundary Waters

while i dont really consider myself an "audiophile" i am picky and want to hear my music library as lossless as possible. my music collection (4.4TB as of this writing) is not all FLAC/lossless but a lot of my favorites i have made sure to have in the highest resolution i can. while most of them are 44.1k/24 i have some at 48/24 and 96/24. these are all served up via a plex server and for a number of years played on my stereo via Sonos Port which is a fine piece of hardware but has some limitations. it works well with the plex server but the interface to search and play music to it is slow and doesnt have all the features that any of the other plex players have (shuffle by album, "artist radio", etc.) also, to plex server the sonos device looks like its outside the network which is annoying.

the sonos port, even via digital coax, maxes out at 44.1/24 and while it says you can send it 48/24 i noticed the plex would downsample it to a lossy AAC stream anyway. trying to figure out how to edit the plex transcoding rules was not easy. that coupled with my annoyance with the interface, it finally pushed me to find a new way to do things.

i've always wanted to play with a raspberryPi but never had a good use case until now. i purchased this Raspberry Pi 5/8GB with the fan case, power supply, 32GB sdCard, and hdmi cable. with shipping it was $145.68

i recently discovered this shop from a friend on blusky, HiFi.me. they make all kinds of USB audio dongles. i recently picked up this Ut-23 which does USB to Optical SPDIF out and i luckily have a optical IN available on my receiver. $40 after shipping.

if i had know then what i read up on the last few weeks i would have maybe not gotten the fan case above and instead gotten this case which has room and knockouts for this pi-hat DIGI 2 pro. giving me the optical SPDIF i wanted. but its a wash in price so no real loss.

my original plan for the raspberryPi was actually for it to be a plex server too which is why i picked up the pi5 with 8GB of ram. but the ARM processor on the pi isnt compatible with the 'sonic analysis' option that plex. so i could have saved some money and gotten a pi4 with 2gb RAM and it would have worked just as well and saved me ~$40.

once i got the pi and setup the initial install i just followed this blog post to install plex amp but i made sure to use the most recent .pkg from here (which at this time of post is 4.11.5)

other tips i noticed at the install: use

sudo raspi-config

to make sure you set the USB audio as the default audio. it helps but i still had to go and set it as the audio output in the plexamp ui and reboot for it to always be the default when i play from plexamp.

why not use the HDMI out on the pi? i mean you bought the cable.

well i couldnt get plexamp to be able to send out audio out on it all. i did some very brief reading and it may have something to do with it being co-opted by the GUI on load. i tried a few things i read but none worked for me. and since i'm just using this for like 99% stereo audio files the limitations of optical SPDIF are not going to affect me.

Only my second release of 2024 and most of the music from it was recorded in 2023. I've been finding it hard lately to finish things. I actually found this folder on my server called "next" which had all these tracks on it that i clearly intended to do something with last year, while saving a folder called "next" of things i recorded this year. so yeah i'm kinda behind. (the 2024 "next" folder is mostly mix downs from the last few live sets of 2023/2024. i hope to upload those soon. really)

Listen: long dreams of hope by cinchel

i am oddly very proud of this album. mostly because while i've been listening to the final mixes and masters i continue to be delighted by the various sounds and melodies. so much so that i feel i want to add some context to each track.

1) "The Feeling of Seeing the Shapes of Sound": i tend toward fading in tracks or starting pieces from silence and slowly bringing in layers. but the abrupt start, with the kinda crackle/static, gave me warped tape vibes that i really enjoyed.

2) "Dance Butterfly Rosebush" i dont think there is any guitar on this. i believe its mostly op-1 and rhodes. i really like the the melody line that comes in around 2:30 and then is joined by another pretty lines around 3:44. it feels like a church hymn. you may be wondering "cinchel there is so much clipping distortion. why didnt you re-record some parts?" and my answer is: i have spent a lot of time over the last 12 years trying to make sterile and/or "pure" ambient music. but the more i've worked the more i have considered my origins which is really a teenager with a guitar learning 90's grunge and punk songs. distortion and rough edges added to the emotional context of so much of my early music listening. so i didnt feel i could recreate the emotional context in these recordings if i tried to do them again. also a few of the clips/static noises i felt were my (poor at best) homage to alva noto. some are from one of my amps that is just wonky.

3)"Living in a World Where Things Are Much to Big for Me" you can hear my breath, the movement and tap of my hands while i record this auto-harp, the sounds of me moving around my studio. this was again a conscious choice, to leave in the room sounds, giving the piece more air and space. i like the tremolo of the rhodes speaker cabinet but that means i have to put the mic pretty much by my feet while i play the piano. i liked the acoustic sound of the autoharp recorded with mix of contact mics and room mics. again me trying to incorporate some of the ideas of the 'lowercase noise' music of the early 2000's. while also mixing in a lot of synthetic sounds, manipulated from these acoustic recordings. again no guitar on this one either. mostly op-1, rhodes and autoharp.

4) "Go Somewhere and Stay Nowhere" not much to add. more room sound. more mistakes and happy accidents. i mostly focused on embracing what i would usually classify as "cheesy synth sounds" that feels very "pure moods" to me but are in a nice contrasting playful conversation with the toy glockenspiel.

as with the previous post there is a story with this collaborative release. i wrote about that here. i never posted about the actual release which happened this summer on the wonderful local label called Scripts.

What the Photograph Reproduces to Infinity Has Only Occured Once by Mirror of Nature

allow me to get sappy/sentimental for a moment. apologies if i've told parts of this story before..

we moved to chicago in june of 2001 i am not sure how but one of the first bands i remember seeing after moving here was Zelienople and i was hooked. bought all the releases i could. i discovered Under The Spire Recordings because they had a release on it, which lead me further down the rabbit hole of weird ambient music that has really stuck with me. around the same time i started to use the internet to get my music out there. it was myspace days and i would browse around looking for other people making weird music, especially in chicago. which is where i found music by Neil Jendon. i bought some mini-cdr from him and saw him perform a really cool drone/guitar peice at hyde park art center. for most of the early 2000's i would just try and see their shows, or buy their music but never broke my shyness to reach out. i even played a show opening for Mike Weis and Matt Christensen and the most i could do after the set was quickly walk up to matt and say how much i liked the set and then run away.

somehow in like 2012 neil and i started playing some duets together. which was awesome and is still awesome. we just did a guitar duet a few months ago and i hope we do more soon.

in 2016 neil asked if i would join him and mike in a new group because Kwaidan was not going to be playing anymore but they still wanted to explore a 3-piece guitar/synth/percussion group.

i was fucking honored. to be able to play with musicians that you've been following for about 10 years is crazy.

so that became The Mirror of Nature and we've been playing slow ambient/jazz around chicago for 2 years now. frequently having various guests join us, all excellent and people i never thought i would share a stage with

this past January we spent a few days in Neil's basement and recorded about 3 hrs of music as our base trio. we carved it down to the 6 peices that are on this tape. thank you Muzan Editions for releasing it.

we hope to have a release show somewhere in the new year. and i hope we have more shows and recordings and collaborations forever.

forest management - the elevated quiet

The Elevated Quiet by Forest Management

mazes - the violent tapes

Mazes - The Violent Tapes by Mazes

c reider - listening after the end

Listening After the End by C. Reider

scot tuma - no greener grass

No Greener Grass by Scott Tuma

taylor deupree - somi

Somi by TAYLOR DEUPREE

kyle landstra - vestige i

Vestige I by Kyle Landstra

patrick cosmos - tonal rotors

Tonal Rotors by Patrick Cosmos

uncouth - tree of woe

Tree of Woe by Uncouth

tharsis tholus - soft and vague

Soft + Vague by Tharsis Tholus

boliden - backyard

Backyard by Boliden

peter j woods & andrew weathers - a whole new alphabet

A Whole New Alphabet by Peter J. Woods & Andrew Weathers

jon porras - tokonoma

Tokonoma by Jon Porras

le berger - to twist (one's) knob(s)

to twist (one's) knob(s) by Le Berger

The Devil Speaks To Ivan by German Explaining Station

that was 2015. the first time i played a live set in duet with someone besides Neil Jendon. Neil had originally initiated our collaborative sets starting in 2012 so this would also mark the first time i asked someone to perform with me. before Billie would start to more formally use @akosuen for her experimental musical output. 

that show went really well. better than either of us expected i think. we didnt practice before hand but i was confident that we were on the same page musically. it was suggested to us by her boyfriend (now husband) that if we worked out the ideas more we could really have something great. 

so it planted the bug in me. we would practice! that first practice wouldn’t happen until Jan 17th 2016. it went well. i decided this would be a project that i wanted to capture properly and as such i wanted to go to an actual studio. i focused on ESS both because i thought they would understand the project and because they are an active member in the weirder music community in chicago. i feel if you want to see that flourish you support it anyway you can. we decided that we should at least have 2 practices in before going to record.

we practiced a 2nd time on Aug 21st 2016. then HCL Fall season started. i was pretty much 100% focused on that for the next 4 months... 

so at the end of december i get some dates from Billie and reach out to ESS. March 18th 2018 is set sometime in early jan.

this past thurs (2 days before the session) we played another show together. it basically counted as our third practice. we did both pieces, the 2nd of which we hadn’t performed for an audience yet. 

1 year, 7 months, 22 days after that first show. from an idea to a poorly notated in my alternative notation on small sheets, 

(that was another level of self consciousness. i wrote out the pieces for our first practice because i thought it would help Billie. but i also worried that she would laugh “what the hell is this” or something. she didn't. ever.  that was nice )  

to a thing i had to explain to a third person who i was paying and using their time/talents. While talking with Alex i had to constantly fight an inner monologue saying to me how this was a dumb idea.  i had to fight an inner monologue that wanted to remind me i was not a good musician. because if i let that voice out in the room then that would shift the mood in the room away from the 2 pieces which were the most important thing. which means i have to admit that this is worth doing because if i dont then i am wasting the time of everyone in that room. and that would make me feel shitty too. 

when i arrived with my 2 amps (w/ inner monologue saying “do you really need to bring both of these!?!) i let it slip saying to alex “hi, here i am with these 2 huge silly things.” and he just smiled and responded “oh this will be fun” 

that put me at ease. 

Billie arrived. we setup. sound checked and on schedule started recording. I liked the intense listening and reacting. its great mental exercise. its a different feeling than a show usually is. 

but intense listening. for 3 hours. either listening to each other play or listening back to recordings and deciding “yeah thats good”. gets very exhausting.

we were both more critical of our own performances than of each other, or the whole recording. which i think means we did well.   

also i drank too much coffee. i should have drank more water. 

anyway, 1 year, 7 months, 22 days ago i didnt think i would have reason to record at ESS. (and to some maybe you still dont think i do.) but those little encouragements: Jesse suggesting we practice more, Billie agreeing to take time out of her very busy schedule and finding the time to practice, my wife for being understanding about some sunday afternoons spent in a practice space. all these little things adding up to this. an idea that is now real. and hopefully this year those of you that want to will hear these pieces in a form that i didnt think would ever be. 

this is also to say that maybe this year you’ll see less solo work from me. i think the encouragement from working with Billie helped me be more confident. it may have allowed me to seriously consider and accept the offer to play in a band with Mike Weis and Neil (The Mirror of Nature). both of these projects are challenging me in new ways that is very exciting. also spending 4 months working on a solo piece may have burned me out. 

This past weeks I've had 2 chances to perform/install/what-have-you the piece i've been working on at High Concept Labs during this fall season. On December 1st there was a critique session with Vesna Jovanovic and some of the other sponsored artists. Outside of the actual time in the studio that the SAP at HCL gave me, this was the thing I was most excited about. As solo artist I dont often get any feedback on what works and what doesnt. At one point this season i pretty much convinced myself that my idea was terrible and i shouldn't have tried. the feedback I got at this critique was exciting and encouraging. There were suggestions on staging which i hadnt thought about and dynamics/movement (that has encouraged me to get a 2nd set of 3 bells for the piece). Overall, it seemed that the ideas/feelings I wanted to convey came through. that was exciting. here is a mix down from that presentation of the piece. There were about 5 ppl in attendance. 20161201 then on this past satuday (10th of december) HCL had their fall send off party. 7 different sponsored artists got 10-15min to present their work. I got to try out a bit of the suggestions from the critique on a larger audience (about 20 ppl in attendance). It went pretty well and the audience again enjoyed the ability to interact and contribute. (slight down side was that ppl thought some of the other artists instruments were meant for this piece. oops :) it still worked out though). 20161210 and video that Kirstie (@kirstiecat) took is up here:

cinchel - HCL 20161210 from cinchel on Vimeo.

I am trying to clear out my "works in progress" folder as a lot of these had been sitting there for almost a year. I had bigger plans for them that didn't pan out and instead of deleting them I give them to you.

first up sometimes never is soon enough is a collection of 3 tracks of guitar and keyboard. Looking back at the recordings it looks like i did these in single long takes. Usually I sample and loop and mix of small bits of guitar/instruments to make a piece. For each of the tracks here I sat down and recorded a line of guitar uninterrupted for the entire piece, and then went back and did it again overtop with either more guitar or keyboard. There is a sense of longing and distance in these pieces and the title was inspired by that. The first track I am very much trying to (poorly) mimic a Glenn Branca orchestra.

recesses of (nature (part II)) is more guitar and keyboards looped/mixed and distorted. it's in the vein of my previous nature release and invokes the spirit of a rainforest, glistening and bright. 

silence of the oncoming train is a story. the train is played by the fender rhodes keyboard and a person on the tracks is the guitar. in the story distance and time are slowed down to infinity as the train approaches and the two characters combine and disappear. it is dark outside. 

20160929 20161002

this is the first week since i started that i havne't thought to meself "this is a terrible idea. why did they even accept me. this sucks". some ideas are starting to come together. i'm really starting to understand how to maybe make the space sound good and provide an interesting experience for this performance/installation. i think there will need to be more interaction from me (in terms of mixing/looping) during the performance than i thought initially but i think it will still work.

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its week 3 and i'm starting to get a pattern. 5-10min spent setting up. 10-12min of playing guitar and getting a long-ish loop going and then i play with mic levels and effects. i tend to start from the same ableton session each day but quickly try changing different things about it. this week i was really getting bored with some of the longer droney effects of the first 2 weeks. this week i tried to focus on sharper cuts. different lenghts of breaks and repetitions. I also started playing with adding an EQ to each output channel that really cuts out a lot of freq below 200hz. maybe that is too much but i did notice that the sound in the room was way less muddy and i could actually get louder and hear more detail. i am sure this is something you probably learn on like day 1 of sound design101 but..

i'm still tyring to find ways to make these bells sound cool and fit with the idea.

on the 24nd (saturday.. due to EXPO stuff i coudn't get my usual sunday spot so i had a very early 9-11am saturday spot..that was rough..sooo early).. I played with panning a lot! that session posted here may be even more unlistenable than most others.

overall feeling better this week than last. even had some moments that i thought were really great. i am sure it will pass.

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First week of studio time in the can. due to my own schedule overlaps (brothers wedding and tickets for that Nick Cave film that i bought in june!) my time this week was saturday and sunday (i guess technically sunday would be the start of week two if i was counting correctly. but i’m not). so that meant 2 days of 4 hr sessions in a row. by 4pm on sunday i was wiped out. slowly learning what things sound like in that very live space. 

trying to get into a habit of listening back to what i record each day and make a quick mix. here are 2 from yesterday. i hope to upload a daily from saturday by this evening. 

(to quote my friend lindsey #notsorrynotsorry that i will be way over sharing on most social media for the next 4 months. it helps me process all this information and ideas. there is surely a mute button somewhere if you need it.)