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| Dubstep Squat Party in London 30th March |
28-Mar-2007
Abacus Sounds presents... -------------------------------------------------------- D U B S T E P A F T E R H O U R S FRIDAY MARCH 30 10PM to 10AM AND BEYOND -------------------------------------------------------- DJs: KODE9 LOEFAH N-TYPE T_! b2b R.Demon (Macabre Unit) Rootsteady (Electrodub, reggae, dubstep) HXW (Formerly Rivalry; dub, dubstep - Abacus) Heva (Bashment, dubstep, grime - Abacus) Bracket (Old skool, jungle, dubstep - Combat Recordings/Plex) Mission Creep (Abacus) $hy (Dubstep - afterdark) Synthektik (Dub, dubstep - Abacus) Easychord (Screwed & chopped hip-hop set - Vice/Do it!) Pathfinder (Drum n bass, dubstep - Abacus) MCs: K9 (Macabre Unit) ...and a very special very favorite surprise guest mc... Call 07974892670 £5 -- East London location -- £1.50 beers -- security tight but polite -- support the cause
| Podcasts |
18-Feb-2007
We've created a podcast of all our downloadable releases and mixes so you can keep up to date with the audio content from your favourite podcatcher. If your new to podcasting it's basically just on demand media content. You subscribe via a podcatcher (or aggregator) to podcasts from websites / channels that your interested in and the software downloads the content for you. The content is then available on your machine for playback at your leisure. Check this podcatcher list compatible software for your operating system.
| Reactable |
22-Jan-2007
Next generation of synthesizer / digital audio performance tool anyone ? Reactable is a "state-of-the-art multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface" The video demo is fairly self explanatory to anyone with a basic understanding of synthesis. We were totally blown away by this kit and we'd love to get our hands on it ! Hopefully tools like this will help to advance the performance aspect of digital music which is often comparable and about as exciting as watching someone check their emails..
| Bang ! |
22-Jan-2007
Bang is a book about Pure Data - the free and Open Source real-time graphical programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing. Bang was published towards the end of last year but you can download the chapters for free from the website. Chapters such as Pd & Synaesthesia, Basic Physical Modeling Concepts and Is Pd Art? No and Yes. Two Attempts ensure there is something for everyone. Go Consume..
| Sepia Hours review |
22-Jan-2007
We're a little late in picking this up but there's a nice
review
of Sepia Hours from the excellent Belgian musical webzine Derives.net.
Derives.net specialise in reviewing intimate and atmospheric indie music of the finest kind and are a great source of underground musics.
Happy 2007 folks :)
| Phoneme for Sunshinedna |
30-Oct-2006
Sunshine is the new sci-fi film by acclaimed director Danny Boyle. The website has a selection of behind the scenes and promo videos, a few of which utilise and tiny excerpt from the end of HAL's "Phoneme" in their opening section. HAL even got paid ! Never let it be said that attention to detail in sound design isn't worthwhile ;-)
| Openlab3 |
29-Oct-2006
Group Show, 4/11-11/11/2006, 1-7pm
Opening Event and Private View 4/11/2006, 4 -12 pm
Closing Event 11/11/2006, 4-12 pm
Auto-Italia South London Gallery
82-86 Queens Road
SE152QX Peckham, London
OpenLab is delighted to present OpenLab3, an group exhibition with an opening and closing event featuring musical performances by more than 20 artists and musicians of the OpenLab collective. OpenLab engages in the aesthetics and politics of Free Open Source Software Culture. Free Software Culture seeks to emphasise transparency of the creative process by making all stages of development available to others, enabling them to learn how the creation works and alter it for their own purposes. When this idea is applied to artistic practices, the boundaries between the artistic usage of software tools and their collaborative development become blurred. The workings of the artist's tools are exposed, and the artists are actively engaged in developing media technologies. They can modify them to suit their goals, rather than creating works by using existing tools that impose "their way of doing things" on the artwork.
This group exhibition brings together interactive installations, sonic interventions, video works and animations which explore the audio-visual code of this network culture: computers start to paint pictures on their own, expose their internal circuits and "commit suicide"; birds will sing and fly around in multiple realities, the skylines of two cosmopolitan cities merge, language, meaning and time burst into fragments and recombine. The range of the combined works points to the strength of Open Source Culture – its increasing versatility as artistic playground essential to contemporary debates and its continued importance not just in the invention of new media realities but also in tackling themes of "real" time and space.
The two music events feature sound and multimedia performances of artists who use and develop open-source tools such as PD, Supercollider, Processing and Fluxus. They will perform prepared sets and code their music live in various programing languages. Musicians will also experiment with a set of live instrument swapping. By exchanging PD-Patches, they will challenge each other in an uncharted space of sonic manipulation. The performances will span from excursions into the symphonica, experimental noise and soundscapes to electronica and beat-oriented minimal techno-sets.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Rob Canning, Chun Lee, Claude Heiland-Allen, Carl Forsell, Sabine Gottfried, Karsten Gebbert, Paul Webb, Rob Munro, Chiharu Kaido, Evan Raskob, U-Sun, Ryan Jordan, Oli Laruelle, Robert Atwood, Luke Jordan, Rene, Monica Subrotova & Daniel Kordik, Michael Woelkner, Andy Farnell, Martin Aaserud, Ryan Jordan & Rachel Horne, Dave Griffith & Alex McLean
For more information please visit :
http://www.fexia.com/openlab
http://openlab.pawfal.org
http://www.midnightbluecollective.com
| Netaudio Festival Report |
29-Oct-2006
The Netaudio Festival is already a distant memory but there's a nice report [pdf] available in the press section of the site that gives a really good coverage of the event and successfully captures the spirit of the festival. Polymorphic hugely enjoyed being involved in this celebration of netaudio culture :)
| Sepia Hours Release |
13-Sep-2006
Debut Sepia Hours release available here
| Netaudio 06 : Hyperlangauge preview |
30-Aug-2006
This preview release of Hyperlanguage acts a precursor to the improvised sound installation at this years Netaudio 06 festival. It aims to give the listener an aural context for the project whilst introducing the fundamental themes of investigation with which the participating artists are concerned.
| Level Release |
16-Aug-2006
New Level release available here
| Netaudio London 06 |
22-Jul-2006
Netaudio London '06 Festival takes place on 15-16th September with daytime sessions at the Candid Arts Gallery and evening parties at the Electrowerkz club next door. The programme is now confirmed with a wide range of performers, DJs and VJs. The daytime sessions include a knowledge fair, workshops (one on Pure Data by some of the Openlab guys) and coffee table discussions, one exploring the cultural impact of netaudio. Polymorphic will be participating with an sound installation by Level and a daytime performance by Sepia Hours.
This exciting event will bring together artists [pdf] from an international scene and provide a taster of the diverse sounds available form within this growing underground network of communities. The daytime sessions will be a more laid back affair covering many forms of electronica complimented by some guitar based and experimental audio whilst the evening sessions are dancefloor orientated including minimal techno and dubbed out beats.
Tickets can be bought for the event as follows :
| Real DJs Code Live |
06-Jul-2006
Check this Wired.com article for an intro to Livecoding. About as improvised as you can get with a laptop..
| Incoming.. |
30-Jun-2006
It's been a busy couple of months down here so the site has taken a back seat for a while. Rest assured we have quality releases lined up from Level , Gareth Dickinson and Sepia Hours. We've also been getting involved in organisation for the Netaudio London '06 Festival which takes place in September. The line up is being confirmed as we speak and the event looks set to be a real success. Watch this space..
| Lembrouille Mix |
27-Apr-2006
New mix from guest DJ Lembrouille available here. This marathon 43 track mix is freely downloadable / distributable and features a variety of quality dancefloor music from the netlabel scene.
| Frequenzen plays Remote_ |
19-Apr-2006
The excellent Frequenzen radio show has restarted on Resonance FM and featured a track from the Polymorphic Sampler CDR by Remote_ on the first session. Check out the show for the best in minimal sounds.
| STFU Glasgow |
16-Apr-2006
Check out the fantastic Hippocamp video download that covers the STFU event in Glasgow. The video provides a valuable insight into netaudio culture, copyleft aesthetics and the power of collaborative, decentralised organisation in it's coverage of the showcase event. A extremely valuable document with some great audio visual content. Very nice..
| Gremlins squashed |
06-Apr-2006
Jukebox working as normal... Enjoy !
| Gremlins in the Jukebox |
06-Apr-2006
We seem to be experiencing problems loading up the Flash movie that allows MP3 streams via our Jukebox. Looks like there may be problems at our remote host as another visitor reported strange DNS problems yesterday...
In the mean time you can still download material from the Releases / Mixes section and listen offline..
We apologise for any inconvenience :(
| OpenLab2 - Post Mortem |
04-Apr-2006
OpenLab2
was a great success and provided an interesting variety of aural delights for
the adventurous listener ! Almost too much to choose from but some of the highlights
were Rob Cs' processed toys, Rob As' purity through feedback, Andy-Gnomadics'
low bit leanings, the fantastic drummer from Wojciechs' group and Chun-Sonicvariables'
frenetic closure (couldn't resist kranking the volume for that one). Big thanks
to ALL the artists involved, a good time was had all round..
For more info on the people involved be sure to check out the OpenLab site.
We dumped a playlist
from the mixing software if your interested in investigating any of the music
that was played between sets.
| OpenLab2 - Open Source Digital Art |
28-Mar-2006
OpenLab2 is happening 16:00 - 24:00 this Sunday 02/04/06 at the Vibe Bar, Brick Lane, London :
"Sound and visual artists from the Open Source collaboration, OpenLab will take audiences through a stimulating journey through the sonic space.
The event builds on what is now an increasingly blurred line between artists and software developers. The broad expansion of the Internet and the democratization of computers have left audiences more than ever confronted with new, hybrid software conceived by a blend of artists and programmers.
As intellectual property is a fiercely debated issue, some people cling on to their little bits of territory, while others choose to share knowledge, art and collective work. This day will be a platform for OpenLabs digital artists, musicians and programmers, to present their collaborative works."
Full details www.pawfal.org/openlab
| Netlabel 15 |
27-Mar-2006
Wire magazine printed the following Netlabel chart submitted by Polymorphic in their April issue. The genre tags are largely culled from the Phlow directory and should be used as a guideline only ! Go check these guys out.
| Sampler CD charts with the Head Gardener |
05-Mar-2006
The Polymorphic sampler release features in the March charts over on the Garden Of Earthly Delights radio show ensuring that material from the CDR will be featured weekly throughout the month. This highly successful alternative music session is set to go global with an Internet stream in the pipeline ensuring that the Gardeners weird wired sounds are as far reaching as possible. In the mean time you can download mixes form the site or tune in on the FM dial if your within range.
| Radioactive FM #2 |
26-Feb-2006
Music from Polymorphic artists featured in another broadcast on Radioactive FM . The session featured tracks from our promo CDR and finds us in good company :) .You can find a full playlist here.
| Polymorphic Sampler CDR Release |
25-Feb-2006
New CDR showcasing the Polymorphic artists is available to stream here
| Radioactive FM |
25-Jan-2006
Tracks from Polymorphic are to feature on New Zealands' Radioactive FM this Thursday 26/01/06 @ 08:00 - 10:00 (GMT) - that's 21:00 - 23:00 NZ time. You can catch the show online at Radioactive FM
| Cycla lauch party |
22-Jan-2006
Smallfish are hosting the release party for Levels' "Cycla" this Thursday 26/01/06. It should prove to be a nice evening and a chance to hook up with a few people in the the physical domain !
Polymorphic will be giving away promo CD samplers on the the night to showcase the cross section of music we have available. Come down if you can, the night is free entry. So, that's a free live set from Level, BYO beer and a free CD sampler. What more can you want :)
| Grounded Circle Release |
21-Jan-2006
New Grounded Circle release available here
| HAL Mix |
17-Jan-2006
New mix from HAL available here. Dancefloor mix of quality sounds from the netlabel community.
| Level - Cycla (Spekk) |
| Goto: here |
| Impossible Flower Release |
07-Nov-2005
New Impossible Flower release available here
| Vibrö featues SI_COMM |
| HAL Mix |
23-Oct-2005
New mix from HAL available here. Second in the series, this mix is freely downloadable / distributable and features a variety of quality music from the netlabel community.
| Level Interview |
| Guessmen and Guests At the Head of Steam |
15-Oct-2005
Newcastle based event featuring a host of artists and an appearance from Elliot Little who has a release on Polymorphic comin soon..
HEAD OF STEAM (Opposite Central Station)
SUNDAY 16TH OCTOBER
8PM
£3 ADMISSION
THE GUESSMEN
ANDREW HODSON
CREATURES OF CONDITIONED REFLEX
MIKE PLUS
THE GUESSMEN
Hidden away in their dank laboratory off Newcastle’s infamous Bigg Market,
the Guessmen have been constructing a world of sodden tracks infused with the
unhealthy binge mentality of their surroundings; inhabited by a cast of dropouts,
freaks and subhuman creatures. Influenced as much by Sun Ra’s extra terrestrial
jazz as the vapid pop music polluting the air of every town, the Guessmen’s
idiosyncratic style has left punters scratching their heads whilst trying to
warn their ass to stop shaking and their shoulders to stop twitching.
Live shows combine precise digital beats with uncompromising freeform lunacy,deploying Edgeman’s unruly trumpet parps and virtuoso balloon squeaking, Squeaky Feet's bass clarinet abuse and BigToe’s beautiful Kazoo playing alongside their traditional laptop/decks/vocal combination.
ANDREW HODSON
He’s only nine years old _ but he is one of Newcastles most audacious
expontents of experimental music.
The sounds he creates are beautiful and sublime, imaginative and always intriguing. Check out his 2004 release Map music also the limited edition In your heart you will find your dreams.
The nine year old hodson can do anything! Thanks to a fabulous electronic device which can transfer the brain patterns of those who are the greatest experts in their field. When he receives these brain patterns, Andrew, with the aid of a special pair of glasses which have built-in electrodes, becomes a man in thought and deed……can become the greatest of all astronauts, musicians, a dare-devil pilot a brilliant brain surgeon or whatever else may be necessary for him as the most daring of all agents attached to the World Intelligence Network of Electronic Music…. Yet he still looks what he really is a normal, healthy school boy. Every live show, audio release and assignment brings new excitement, new hazards and unexpected situations for Andrew, Audience and listeners alike!!!!! /
CREATURES OF CONDITIONED REFLEX
Trapped for seventy years in a labyrinthine maze of wires and gadgets Elliot
Little and Richard Phipps escaped thanks to the bastardized souls of Bobby McFerrin
and Steve Reich. There journey from this underground lair has led them through
Norwich via Birmingham navigating both the M6 and spaghetti junction
On route the pair have aquired audio skills that both shock and awe. There live, improvised, sets combines vocal beat box, live sampling and techno warblings!!
MIKE PLUS
Whilst narrowly avoiding a collision with Halley's Comet in his specially adapted
Renault Clio (trans-mat)Mike Plus encountered a distress signal emanating from
the city of Newcastle, England, Earth on 16th October 2005. He responds and
arrives with elektro bass sonic devices in tow. Expect techno sounds that will
blow your head from here to the ice tombs oftelos!!!!!!!!!!!!Is it Man or Machine??
| Netlabels and Open Content |
15-Oct-2005
I found this research paper by dutch student Bram Timmers that investigates the culture of netlabels.
Makes for interesting reading :
Bram's Website
Bram's research PDF
| Free music |
27-Jul-2005
In line with our new OpenSource netlabel compilations we thought we'd give you a heads up on how to get your hands on some free music. The netlabel community is absolutely vibrant and has a plethora of quality music available. A good starting point would be the Yahoo groups netlabel releases and netaudio or the netlabel section of the Internet Archive. You'll end up with more free audio than you know what to do with and we've been consistently impressed by the quality of what's out there.
For those of you that are in to podcasting, you can load up your portable player effortlessly using feeds from netlabel webzines like DE:BUG. Enjoy :)
| Download tips |
11-Jul-2005
A couple of useful tools for ya. If your not using one already, a proper download manager can make your life on the web much easier. You can queue, pause and resume your media downloads. For the Firefox users out there, you can integrate the manager into your browser using an extension such as Flashgot. This allows you to add and filter entire pages worth of links to your download queue. Very useful when browsing music download sites !
| HAL Release |
11-Jul-2005
New HAL release available here
| Mr Ra Mix |
23-Jun-2005
New mix from Mr Ra available here. This mix is part of the SI_COMM WHITE_LINE series.
| HAL Mix |
23-Jun-2005
New mix from HAL available here. This mix is freely downloadable and features a variety of quality music from the netlabel community.
| SI_COMM Mix |
04-Apr-2005
New mix from SI_COMM available here
| Downtimes Sundays Mix |
23-Mar-2005
New mix from Downtimes Sundays available here
| Creamola Foam |
| Flavorpill |
23-Mar-2005
Flavorpill is a cultural filter in the form of a free weekly mailout across major five cities in the US / UK.
It includes localised arts listings across music, performance and exhibition. They have features section which has reviewed Polymorphic a couple of times and offered links to our streams.
If you'd like to sign up to their lists then please visit the Flavorpill homepage and choose your city.
You can find the current London issue here.
| SI_COMM Mix |
20-Feb-2005
New mix from SI_COMM available here
| Media Lounge Live |
20-Feb-2005
Free night of audio visual trickery from mp3 to 16mm.
featuring guest vj Micheal Heap and music from Power Sherlock
| WHITE_LINE 5 | em:x |
13-Feb-2005
Featuring tracks from one of the UK's finest, and recently re-launched minimal ambient labels, em:t
To be broadcast on Garden Of Earthly Delights Radio CRMK UK, 10-Midnight, March 4th 2005
WHITE_LINE is curated, mixed, and edited by minimalist afficionado SI_COMM
This mix will soon be available for stream at Polymorphic..
| J. Auer Mix |
07-Feb-2005
New mix from J.Auer available here
| Media Lounge Live - NAM2 |
25-Jan-2005
Free night of audio visual trickery from mp3 to 16mm.
featuring guest vj Micheal Heap and music from Power Sherlock
| Level Release |
23-Jan-2005
New Level release available here
| Sintieron Release |
22-Jan-2005
New Sintieron release available here
| RSS Feeds |
16-Jan-2005
We've added an RSS feed to the site so you can keep up to date with our releases from the comfort of your favourite news aggregator. RSS is a pretty straight forward concept. Consumers (that's you) subscribe to channels that are of interest to them via a piece of news reader software that runs locally on your machine (often called a news aggregator). You are then automatically informed when any of you chosen feeds are updated as a new headline will appear in the news reader. You can keep tabs on the activity of various different web sites all in one place.
You can find a more in depth primer here
If you haven't tried it already we recommend the free firefox browser for general purpose internet browsing. It has many advantages over Internet Explorer but one of the nicest features is tabbed browsing. An other nice feature is that you can add live bookmarks. This allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds and keep track of them from within your browser. Firefox will tell you when you've come across a page with an RSS feed available by displaying a special icon in the bottom right corner. You can install the sage plugin if you require more features from your aggregator.
| New Hosting Server :) |
02-Dec-2004
We've moved the audio content of the site on to a new server that's got a much faster connection. Hopefully this will resolve the audio playback problems that were being experienced. Now our server should be guaranteed to provide as fast a stream / download as your ISP can handle !
On another note, we've had a reasonable amount of interest from people wishing to provide audio content for the site. Now we just have to hope that the Royal Mail actually managed to deliver some post !
Watch this space.....
| Server Performance Problems |
22-Nov-2004
We are currently experiencing performance issues with the playback of the musical content of the site. From your perspective it may mean that the jukebox loads but the track playback is choppy, or, in the case of the larger files (i.e. the mixes) they may not play at all :(
We host the musical content ourselves to keep costs down so our bandwidth is very limited. This had proved fine initially but the MASSIVE increase in demand over the last couple of days has stretched the resources
We have decided to look for a professional hosting solution and aim to have this completed within the next few days.
We wholeheartedly apologise if your experience of the musical content of the site isn't great. Please bookmark us and check back soon or better still subscribe to the mailing list. We can then send out a mail when everythings back to normal.
Thanks for your patience :)
| Polymorphic Launch |
11-Oct-2004
Welcome to Polymorphic
This site is now officially live. Thanks for taking the time to drop by. You can use the links above to browse the content.
The primary goal of this site is to showcase the work of the associated artists. It is open ended in that we welcome contribution from any like minded heads.
The music on the site is available via a high quality MP3 stream. All that's required is the Flash plugin for your chosen browser. You'll need a decent connection speed though. 56k probably won't be quick enough for flawless operation but you could still download some of the files and listen offline.
We've put a lot of effort into getting this site together and we'll do our best to update it with fresh content. As with most independent outfits, we have to earn money elsewhere so time is always a battle but we endeavour to keep this site a desirable port of call. We hope you like the site and please get in touch if you feel you've got something to contribute.
Peace
Polymorphic
| Skinned ! |
19-Aug-2004
Believe it or not, this site has actually been skinned three times now. Although the first two were by me so that doesn't really count !
After putting our thinking caps on and getting more than a little help from a professional (thanks to Fr?ya) we have settled on this design. I am extremely happy with it :)
Anyway, the sites now a step closer to being completed. Been a little caught up the last few weeks doing some paid web development and trying to get a real job so not had much time to spend here I'm afraid. I have also spent some time helping Fr?ya with her exhibition which runs until Sat 21st August.
I got a much welcome call earlier from a friend who has some tracks that he'd like to upload so I am looking forward to getting my hands on those in the near future. Watch this space...
| Polymorphic music is finally taking shape. |
19-Jul-2004
After what seems like and eternity since i had the idea to do this site i am finally managing to get some content up !
The main idea behind this project is to provide an outlet for myself and my friends to use to gain some exposure to their work. I have been sifting through archives, blowing off the dust with the intention of showing some of this stuff the light of day. The tracks initially available are older material but i am currently working on some newer sounds which i will put up as soon as they are ready.
I want to try and embrace the Internet as a means of distribution as well as exploring the more traditional routes. I aim to get an short run EP out in the very near future and back this up with other MP3s for free download .
Please enjoy the site and feel free to contact me with any feedback