Category Archives: Music Sound Noise Audio

Dick is Dead (His Face is Frozen)

Another Hozpitality hit!

Requiem for Dick Clark. BEHOLD!

Why Not Try Every Possibility?

Listen what happened to New Order (what i like to call “Norder”)….

I Got A New “Busy Box”!

It’s the red version of the Korg Kaossilator. What is different, other than the color, is it’s primary function. The Kaossilator is a Dynamic Phrase Synthesizer (or sound MAKER). The Kaoss Pad (also known as the MiniKP) is a Dynamic Effect Processor (or sound mutilator). So basically, I can make sounds now and then torture them with effects! This provides hours of entertainment and makes what would normally be a repetitive loop a little more exciting with trippy spaced out effects.

Here’s a 5 minute sample song I created. I went through countless different effects tricks on this track so you may have to listen to all of it to hear some of the possibilities. This is only a small fraction of what the combination of these devices can do for someone completely devoid of music performance talent such as myself.

Check it out!

Sad News from Billville

The comedy world has lost one of it’s finest and most under appreciated talent yesterday with the passing of Peter Berman of The Firesign Theatre.

I’ve been a fan since I was 17 and found the group though The Rolling Stone Record Guide, a book which rated FT’s album Forward Into The Past as a 5 star record. I discovered the 5-star rated Brian Eno’s Another Green World through this book as well. At that time in my life I would buy almost any album rated 5 stars.

Once I listened to the complex, multi-layered comedy of the group the first time, I asked myself “what’s so funny about this?” But then I listened again. And again. And again. As the layers revealed themselves to me I found it impossible to not find something funny that I missed on the last listen.

Soon I could recite the 20 minute “The Adventures Of Nick Danger, Third Eye” in all the characters ‘ voices from memory.

I never got to see them live, but their comedy will always make me laugh out loud at the incredible wordplay, references, and mental images of the characters which they mastered over their 40-plus years as a performing troupe.

Peter is the first of the “Four (or Five)Funny Guys” to pass. The chair is now missing a leg that can never be replaced.

I’ll miss you, Pete.

 

Hozpitality-Hot Fruit. The First Album (2010)

Once again, the first Hozpitality album is available but now with resized artwork and fully implemented mp3 tags (for you iTunes (barf) and iPod (fool) users).  This had been completely posted and written up on an early blog that I have since stop using.  Instead of sending pointless sheep-like traffic to that site, I’ll just offer a better, new improved write up here:

It’s here! The first album from the long awaited release that started it all, sometime before anyone gave a shit (and they still may not), by the progressive avant garde musical collective known as Hozpitality!

Hozpitality is a collective of “non-musical” or “wanna-be talented” people playing music, tweaking knobs, and making sound with any tools at hand. It’s a very spontaneous effort. We have been making recordings like this for some time. The original “album” of material was finished the previous year (2009) with the creation of the “Paper Plate Blues” album which guested some wonderful vocal talents by Liz Keglovits. Sadly, the masters of this album were lost with a hard drive failure.

THIS TIME, Hozpitality met in creative reverence to lay down some bitchin’ tracks, and actually back them up this time. The credits on this album titled “Hot Fruit” consists of:

CeMeGo: Production, noise, auto-tuning, voices, and junk
Denise: Loops suggestion, voices, chanteuse, words, lyrics
Bitchin Bob: Production, guidance, voices, general dream cheekiness
Theatreshmuck: Trumpets, voices, lyrics, tolerant of the creative process
Count Samula: General silliness and suggestions

Track List:

  1. Buffalo Bites (0:08)
    This album was conceived as a sort of half hearted attempt at a song cycle.  Our interpretation of this was to include some sort of running theme or snippet throughout the album to give it some sort of consistent sneakiness.  In this sense, a lot of our lyrics were read from the same local Chinese delivery menu.  Denise provides the haunting introduction to the album.
  2. Good Flavor (1:34)
    Apologies to Bob for my obsession with timpani.  One of the subtitles for this album would be “how to use AutoTune without reading the manual”.  A lot of the material on this album was nothing more than random doodling of AutoTuned sounds with a music bed.  Give it up for the “red bean paste”.
  3. Whole thing As It Is Pick and Shit (0:55)
    Tape doesn’t “fall on the floor” in album production anymore, you are simply left with one big digital audio file that has all the mis-takes and stuff you couldn’t use.  Here is 55 seconds of it, in case you wondered what that sounds like.  (The title is the actual raw file title.  I left it alone as I thought it summed up the track perfectly).
  4. Take Out (3:03)
    This track was mostly Denise and CeMeGo with some Theatreshmuck. Once again, auto-tune experiments with the Good Flavor delivery menu. Theatreshmuck read off some poem of some sort, but it’s hard to make out as our lack of skills with AutoTune just destroys his track (sorry). I personally have an affection with stupid openings and endings to tracks. The end of this one is OVER THE TOP with Denise evilly whispering “Buffalo Bites” and the jews harp and banjo backing to “Sweet Potatoes”, adding in (of course) the urban ethic rappings at the end. Too much of not enough!
  5. Sesame Seed (1:06)
    Beans!  Sing along.  It’s easy.  The end just sounds like the tape ran out.  Ha!
  6. Street Vendor (4:12)
    THE HIT SINGLE WITH A BULLET! I think it was agreed by everyone involved in this Hozpitality outing, that Street Vendor is THE TRACK.  Bitchin Bob said, “The only problem with this track is that you are slave to that powerful opening rhythm.”  Because I am not one to give up, and also because my creativity runs like a train wreck, we made this song into 3 movements.  Denise thought it to be the soundtrack for a big city urban street vendor’s daily routine.  The beginning of the song sounded like his 9 to 5 drudgery, and the ending movements sounds like a respite from a hard day’s work.  The fun part about this track is that a lot of the traffic noise is recorded right outside my stupid South Philly apartment window.  Apparently the cam records audio as well, and I had the cam’s audio channel open by accident and captured some horn blowing, screaming, and drunken arguing from the people across the street.  Worked perfectly!  The trumpet is Theatreshmuck playing from the kitchen because our microphone sucked and distorted.  I played around with some double tracking on the trumpet to give it that Jon Hassell third world feel.  A “high water mark” for the album.
  7. Prime Rib (1:21)
    One of the tracks of the original Hozpitality album that wasn’t lost to the hard drive failure.  (We will forever miss Goth Roller Rink, *sigh*).  Just makes you think how the first album may have sounded doesn’t it.  (Or not).
  8. P in da M (2:09)
    “Now THAT’S a picnic!!!”   Thank you Ally for letting us turn your commercial outing into an expose of sexy funky groovy R&B.  Now go visit the Ceresville Mansion website so we don’t feel so bad about spewing our Dirty Mayonnaise all over this commercial.
  9. Shoedini Project 1 (1:39)
    This was created after showing this video to a bunch of silly people in the apartment.  We immediately took the audio of the video and chopped it into little pieces and laid a funky beat over top.  I think even Gilbert Gottfried would be pleased.
  10. Coda (0:30)
    Did you fall asleep during the album?  Get knocked out?  Don’t have enough time?  Here’s a 30 second recap of the whole album (with Bitchin Bob doing monk voices in the background).

Tools used:

Antares AutoTune VST
Sony Acid Loops
Adobe Audition (blah!)
A crappy microphone I have since thrown in the garbage

Click here to download a .zip file of the album in .mp3 format including cover art. (17 megs)**

** We don’t make money off of this crap. We do it for fun! The best compensation would be a comment or review right here on this blog. Hozpitality thanks YOU (and your sexy Hot Fruit)!

Hozpitality – The Second Album (2011)

The second album from Hozpitality. This one was hustled into production from the overwhelming popularity of the first album. It was short so it was called an e.p. (which is short for extended play. It is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP). Oddly enough it is slightly longer than the first album. Hozpitality once again keeps you on your toes!

This album lovingly includes the “Tuffy Goosewich Suite”.  These were songs that were created using samples from the The Conet Project-Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations.  These samples were used in conjunction with Sony Acid Studio to make some sort of musical ambient sensation of subtle mystery and freakishness.

The name Tuffy Goosewich is a misspelling of the Phillies Minor League Baseball player “Tuffy” Gosewich, who was being profiled in the news at the time of the creation of these tracks.  His likeness has been lovingly distorted on the album cover.  There is no reason for this association other than it being a funny sounding name (poor guy).  Nobody should take offense to this use, as there is no malicious intent… get over it!  The way things are on the Internet these days, there is a chance this could actually make the guy more famous (if his name wasn’t so damned funny).

Track List:

  1. Tuffy Goosewich Suite(Bob Version 1) (1:46)
    Bitchin Bob’s shot at the suite.
  2. Property Patch Whore (2:12)
    Denise and CeMeGo reminisce about a night at a bar where a bunch of motorcycling whore’s come to get drunk and beat the crap out of each other.
  3. Tuffy Goosewich Suite(Chad Version 1) (1:19)
    CeMeGo’s attempt at the Tuffy suite.
  4. I’m Gonna Put This on My iPhone (2:39)
    CeMeGo hates the iPhone (guest starring Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty) (2:39)
  5. Here Kitty Kitty(Daddy n Meez Gonna Cum) (3:29)
    A family affair on the phone (where most of these take place).  Gladys is not amused!
  6. Tuffy Goosewich Suite(Chad Version 2) (1:54)
    Funny how radio noise can break down into something completely musical and misdirected at the same time.
  7. Albino Goomba (2:41)
    Need a catch phrase?  Hate everyone including yourself? This is the song for you!  If you make a t-shirt out of any of these phrases, please contact us for a good laugh!  (Language not suitable for children or anyone with rational thought).
  8. Tuffy Goosewich Suite(Dirty Mayonnaise Finale) (1:26)
    A grand finale collaboration where the radio noise becomes the musical notes.  If digital audio needed a razor blade to cut tape, this song’s creators would all have bled to death.

Tools used:

Sony Acid Loops
Adobe Audition (blah!)
Olympus Digital Voice Recorder WS-600S
Radio Shack Voice Memo Recorder

Click here to download a .zip file of the album in .mp3 format including cover art. (17 megs)**

** We don’t make money off of this crap. We do it for fun! The best compensation would be a comment or review right here on this blog.  Hozpitality thanks YOU (and Your Dirty Mayonnaise)!