Weekend Listening: Sounds from the Mindpirates Silo, And DIY Music Scene's Underground Nooks

Off the commercial radar, playing often for the joy of it, the bedroom producers and music DIYers are now making their noises live and in person. Secluded in “home studios” no more, production is real-time, in the basements and abandoned spaces at the corners of the music scene.

And yes, Happy Record Store Day – but that’s even more reason to cap off an afternoon of record shopping with an evening of live music, wherever you are. And we can offer some sounds direct from artists to discover here.

Our friends at Mindpirates can help. We visited the archaic concrete geometries of their former grain silo in Berlin for experimental ambiences last month. Now, this month they’re opening up that space for two days with an eclectic group of international artists. (See the graffiti-festooned entrance, above.)

I’m pleased to close out the weekend with a live AV set alongside Benjamin Weiss (“nerk”), our first NERK/KIRN outing Sunday night. But this is also a chance to share some other artists for you to explore. Here are just a few favorites.

Easton West, who has also begun helping out on planet CDM, is making dark, carefully-composed techno:

New York’s endlessly-talented Aurora Halal, scene most often these days doing grungy analog-ish video performance, will here add her own terrific sounds:

Here’s a listen to what happens at her parties, too:

Now is a good time to mention Aurora, as her involvement in Brooklyn’s increasingly-vibrant electronic scene was recently documented in the new Vice Magazine project, Thump:

And you thought you had to move to Berlin for electronic music or hop a plane to California for a venue described as a “meditative creative space of Body Actualized Center and Mutual Dreaming.” Nope. Brooklyn. (Yes, also worth noting: electronic music does not in fact have to involve disassociating yourself from your body. Ahem.)

Jamie Drouin is making eerily-beautiful, spare ambient/experimental works. A recent Berlin transplant, he’s also organizing events around arts, so I hope to hear more of what he’s doing soon and some of the connections he makes with artists around town and traveling through.

With a small suitcase modular synthesizer and radio Jamie Drouin explores the edges of minimalism through sparse, yet intensely focused compositions which freely combine elements of new music, noise, and electro-acoustic improvisation

Continuing with some of the themes found in his gallery installations, Drouin incorporates the ubiquitous palette of electrical-based noise pollution, exploring the positioning of these familiar domestic and environmental sounds within abstract music frameworks. In doing so, his works seek to expand and transform audience perceptions of familiar habitats, altering the meaning of the residual electronic sounds with which we share our contemporary spaces.

His commercially released recordings of collaborations with international artists such as Johnny Chang, Crys Cole, Lance Austin Olsen, Mathieu Ruhlmann, and Sabine Vogel have won praise for their distinct voice in the fields of electroacoustic and improvised new music.

Spooky, adventurous sounds echo in these selections, hand-picked by our friends at De:bug. I love playing events in which I wind up discovering new acts just reading the set times. Why else play music live but to meet like-minded artists? (See De:bug’s story in German.)