The Grand Hotel Summer 2011

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GrandHotelLiveNovember2010 by thegrandhotel
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Autumn

Tinkertronics - February 13th 2009

Colonel Fabien (aka J.P.G. of The Grand Hotel) joined the proceedings on WVKR FM last nite and threw down a set of beautiful beats and abstractions. Tune in here to listen to the show.

Tinkertronics Radio - January 30th

Just uploaded my radio show from last night, which you can hear here, and read the playlist here

This past week uncovered a forgotten cache of old Detroit techno and electro 12"s from the early-1990's, so tonight's show was a sort of time machine journey back to the days of WJLB, the Electrifying Mojo, and Jeff Mills (aka The Wizard), back in the day when people mixed their DJ sets with actual records (aw snap!).

Best,
Christopher

Gyorgy Ligeti's Artikulation

Visual transcription of Ligeti's "Artikulation" by Rainer Wehinger. Video by d21d34c55

Tinkertronics Radio - WVKR Poughkeepsie

Hudson Valley Dispatch -
Christopher aka dj farmathon, 1/2 of the Grand Hotel nucleus, is hosting an experimental techno/dubstep/electronica show with Scottie Z. on WVKR 91.3 FM Sundays from 10-Midnight. Here are the first dispatches of Tinkertronics Radio from 12/21/08.
The tracklisting is here
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Cold Radio Transmission

What is this? Who can say? Received this transmission from Upstate NY last night, somehow its related to The Grand Hotel universe. More to come?!?

Klangwart!

Klangwart was the music duo of Timo Reuber and Markus Detmer from Germany, active in the late 1990's heyday of heady electronic music and easily-aquired import vinyl stateside. Back in 1998 I unassumingly picked up a copy of their self-released Koln/Olpe LP from the late, great Temple Records on Avenue B in Manhattan. It quickly became, and remains, one of the greatest ambient electronica efforts I've heard before or since. But what happened to Klangwart??? They put out one more record, the very low-key and cool 'Zwei' (whose beautiful white vinyl Side One I accidentally slashed with a boxcutter in my overexcitement when it arrived in the mail, adding an extra pop to the piece every time it came around on the turntable), but then they seemingly disappeared into the German aether. Or did they?

The other day I was poking around the internet and noticed a new Staubgold release with the Klangwart name, and I was like 'Whoa!'. So I looked around and YES, it's a new Klangwart record for real! I just got my hands on it.

Holy moley, it's called Stadtlandfluss and it's such a good record! Maybe their best one yet! It's broken up into 7 tracks, but one piece just blends into another, creating one long shimmering continuum of drone and collage that's been crafted with maximum precision and attention to detail.

Forced Exposure's still got it in stock on vinyl I think. I wish Klangwart would come to the USA and play in someone's living room. If you are reading this Klangwart, do consider it...

Happy Holidays and best wishes to all from your friends at The Grand Hotel. Looking forward to an adventurous and prolific 2009!
xo

The Grand Hotel at Audio Visual Arts in NYC

This week the Grand hotel has commenced an audio installation "70 Cities of Sound" at  AVA gallery in New York City.


It is part of the exterior sounds series and will run from december 21st to december 27th, each night at midnight for approximately 22 minutes. The gallery is found on 34 East 1st Street in the East Village.
*Exterior Sounds is a monthly audio series that will
feature exclusive site-specific experimental sound
works created by select fine artists, performers, and musicians. It’s purpose is to serve those in transit.
It could be a 30 second transmission for the night owl
at 3am, a 15 minute transmission for the soup kitchen’s homeless line-up (next door), or an hour long transmission for the early morning dog walkers and commuters. The goal is to set the stage for unique
public audio encounters.
Have a good holiday!

More Recent Cassette Acquisitions

Emeralds - s/t [c30, Hanson] Picked this up at Hospital Productions, an inexplicably located DIY/Black Metal/Noise shop smack in the East Village of Manhattan. Lotta product we didn't know anything about, but I'd heard the latest Emeralds "Solar Bridge" CD and was very taken with it, so this s/t tape was a score. Listened to in the car on the way back upstate from Brooklyn, right around the time they issued a tornado watch for the Hudson Valley. Lemme tell you, it was POURING buckets. So the tape... a good bit darker than the full-length, has elements kinda like Growing + their guitar phasing. I gotta give it up for Emeralds though, because the songs SHOULD be 15 minutes long, and allowed to phase in and out, here and there. The one side, in particular, sounds like a piece I would hear walking into a giant warehouse, a blown out bass throb that speeds up and slows down in a most sinister way. Very awesome and monumental.

Various - Mash Mansum [DNT, 2008]
First off, one of the sweetest screenprint inserts I've seen in a while. Big props to DNML for the art. This comp. is on the edge of the hot shit art/garage/no wave thing going on. The fidelity of the cassette is exceptional. The music is a bit of a mixed bag, for my taste. 7 bands, my favorites being Hunting Lodge, who kick things off with a garage/hardcore collage that ends in a brief cover of 'Down On The Street', and Neck Hold. Neither of these bands seem to be represented online. So, if you are down with Arab on Radar, Mika Miko, or any other affected, ramshackle outfits you will be quite pleased with this cassette. Strangely, the last segment by Twin Crystals, "Live in Olympia", sounds like a basement Nine Inch Nails jam, which is weird but true.

Terry Riley Terrier

Recent Cassette Acquisitions

Fantastic Sleep - New Master (Phantom Limb)
Duo of Grant and Ged, two of the wizards behind the Echo Curio Art/Music space in Los Angeles. Received this some time ago, but was without a cassette player. But now as I sit in Upstate NY, no one is around except the dog and I. Side A is broken into 4 tracks, nice lo-fi sheen, very pretty guitar repetitions and electronic haze. Side B, one longer piece called "Well Received By The Under Priests", is on some demonic shit. I thought my little tape machine was breaking, but no. Totally urgent blown out low-end noise clusters, Grant's guitar action is never so monumental and fractured as this. The piece kinda splinters and gurgles into some electronix and percussion then forms into an throbbing, abstract kind of sub-bass sequence that rises and falls and rises and finally blasts a final buzz then out. Totally inspired.


Yuppies - Remember the Yuppies (Self-Released)
A little 8-song mini LP I scored for $3 at the Little Claw/Eat Skull/Intelligence/Yuppies show @ Vassar the other night. I was a bit far gone by the time Yuppies took the stage, but you kinda get the idea listening to this tape. I am all for getting down with the white hot art-damage garage rock sound of young america. I gotta be honest tho, this tape sounds a little tossed off to me, like a like a demo that shouldn't have left the basement. I guess you need an equal balance of art and damage. These are solid songs, but the recording does them no justice. I was more into the live sound. I'll keep my eye on them, though...


YOGA - s/t (Tell Me Records)
This is a keeper. A lo-fi black-metal dark ambient art project. The first track reminds me of the Skaters without the incense+crystals vibe. But there's a lot going on on this tape. I can hear a lost Harmonia/Boyd Rice collaboration, John Carpenter-style arpeggiator beats deep under a grainy sheet of noise, and multiple layers going on in every track. As I understand it, this was a mail-order collaboration between two shadowy figures of the East + West Coast undergrounds. There's a lot more in the pipe from these kids and their various affiliates. Track this one down though; it kind of connects the dots between the black metal underground and the cassette noise underground.


Black Eagle Child / Sean McCann "Cambrian Members" (self-released)
Beautiful new homespun split c45 cassette by Milwaukee's Black Eagle Child and California's Sean McCann. It makes sense that these two would connect on a release, the sides blend together seemlessly. This tape is for the chill out room of the 21st Century, two long-evolving ecstatic + gorgeous drones, definitely in kind with Stars of the Lid and Growing but unique unto itself. This is definitely my jam. One of the sweetest and loveliest releases I've heard in some time.




Sean McCann "Background Sound One" (self-released)
Recent solo outing from Sean McCann. This one's a long, slow-burning, kinda tense wall of sound that adds and subtracts elements almost imperceptibly. Very much for the late-night headphone trip. Lots buried in the mix. Not unlike if Tim Hecker was working with 25 or 45 minute song structures. I'm way into pieces like this that use the time to spread out and evolve/devolve over long periods. It sloows my mind downnnnnnnnnn.

j.i. rodale




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.I._Rodale

The gentlemen of The Bull Tongue wrote up the Sailboat Mix L.P. in the recent issue of Arthur Magazine. It goes like this:
We reviewed a cassette by The Grand Hotel a long time ago. It was really weird and out of nowhere, and we figured whoever these magicians were, they probably would evaporate sooner rather than later as such monumentalists are wont to do. Seems like they've been kinda alive and well and gigging close by our environs once or twice. Who are they? We kinda pride ourselves on knowing when shit is going down at any given time in any given basement but The Grand Hotel has us kinda sniffing sideways in "huh?" Adding to our delightful bafflement is a goddamned LP in an edition of goddamned 100 copies with goddamned silkscreen covers and purportedly recorded in Lake Tahoe, Palo Alto, Hopewell Junction and New Orleans. Either someone's pulling our dick or we're just too bizzy doin' jus' dat ourselves cuz this "The Sailboat Mix LP" (felt records) is as enchanting and unpretentious and sweet a slab of huzz-grind improv slather yr likely to grib any which way. What the fuck?

"Unloom"

Music by The Grand Hotel. Filmed in Hopewell Junction, NY by JPG