MORTON'S NEWS

One of my photos was included in something called a SCHMAP. It's an interactive online map. You can view it here. Mine is the blurred photo of the Burnside Bridge in Portland, OR.

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MY FAVORITE ARTIST EVER

ALL TIME FAVE TRACKS, #3 - "FINGERBIB"

Aphex Twin - "Finger Bib"

Rock out, folks.

ALL TIME FAVE TRACKS, #2 - "CABIN ESSENCE"

The mighty "Cabin Essence," off the aborted 1966 Beach Boys masterpiece, "Smile." This is a bootleg version. Many exist. This has no vocals... the music is really amazing. Unbelievably ahead of its time.

Beach Boys - "Cabin Essence"

IS IT TRUE THAT GOD CAN TAKE ANY FORM?

THE WORLD IS YOUR OYSTER

PESKY BUFFALO AND INDIANS.

THEY'VE BEEN DEALT WITH.

TREES BLOCK THE VIEW. MUCH BETTER VIEW ACROSS SAND DUNES. NOTHING IN THE WAY.

THE WORLD IS NOW YOUR OYSTER !

TENNIS

BURNING IN FLAMES? CONCRETE SCREAMS?

GO FOR A SWIM, RELAX, HEAD TO THE CLUB, PLAY SOME TENNIS!

P.S. YOU ARE BEING WATCHED.

ALL TIME FAVORITE TRACKS, PART 1

I've decided to upload tracks I consider "all time faves" and give them away until I'm contacted by somebody's lawyer.

The first in the series is called "Kometenmelodie 2" from Kraftwerk's seminal "Autobahn" album. This track has been a touchstone of sorts for me. something I keep returning back to as a reminder for the beauty and possibility of recorded music.

Kraftwerk - Kometenmelodie2

GRADUATION DAY

ME AND JAMES // FREE ALBUMS

Photos courtesy of GvsB.

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James Murphy gave me 50 dollars, a new pair of fashionably oversized glasses he'd been wearing all day, and a bottle of champagne in exchange for the three dollar plastic shades I bought outside a UT football game. By coincidence, GvsB caught Polaroids of us both wearing the same shades.
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In other news, I am giving away my handmade c.d.s "Silence!" and "{{{ SUNSET }}}" as well as my DVD. You only need to pay for postage. For more info, email me here for more info to email for more info which will be supplied by email.

R.I.P. Sound Team

Hello friends,

By now you might have heard that Sound Team is disbanding, so to speak.

The reasons are numerous and boring, so I will spare details. They are the typical band problems: stress of the road, diverging tastes, personal tensions, and monetary difficulties. Nothing too dramatic. Just time to move on, that's all.

As to the future

:
Jordan will of course continue drumming. The man is a machine. I have no idea who he will play for, but that band will be lucky indeed.

Gabe has written some great songs on piano and I hope to help him hone / record some of these.

Will has been playing and recording as Sleep Good, and will continue doing so. He has started a band with Michael Bain. Preliminary results indicate great things to come.

Matt has written a fantastic set of songs, his best yet, and will likely record and release them.

Bill (me) will continue recording and releasing music under the {{{ SUNSET }}} moniker ( I have actually changed the name to Silent Sunset). I'm hoping to release an album that far surpasses anything I've previously released. Brighter colors, sharper contrasts, better lyrics. "Raising the bar," it's been called. That is my hope.

Sam, part of the original "rock" lineup of ST, left the band in December to pursue his art and painting. His work is prodigious and impressive, and can be found here.

Michael, who also left the band last December, has returned to school.

Big Orange will change, no doubt, but the dream will remain alive as long as there's breath in my body. I will try to operate the studio more as a commercial venture, engineering bands and producing when asked. If anybody wants help with their music, my rates are quite competitive.

Sound Team's Catalog will be available on our website, completely free, and in high quality digital format. Unreleased material will also be available, including live recordings, radio session, b-sides, and outtakes.
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Having founded the band with Matt, I feel emotional about all this. I invested years into the group, dreamt crazy dreams, laughed, toured, made great friends. I regret nothing. The band, in my mind, achieved great success and made fantastic music. I set out with this band to restore a sense of joy and exuberance to musical performance. At our best, we achieved that goal.

As my official "farewell," I leave you with a video I made for the song "BEDROOM WALLS." Within the video are much of what I hold dear about this band; I worked quite hard on it. I hope you enjoy.

BTW, the conversion was not properly sized; our faces look a bit puffy! I will fix this shortly. Until then, here's the poorly sized "BEDROOM WALLS."

BEFORE THE BREAK /// SANFORD/PHILLIPS OPENING /// "20 NOTE SPIRAL"

UPDATE:
I fixed the broken links!

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I just finished a podcast interview with the show "Before the Break." You can download / stream here:

Before the Break Podcast

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In other news, I will be performing a new musical piece, "20 Note Spiral" this Saturday at Sam Sanford and Marguerite Phillips' opening, "Long Distance Relationship." The opening will be 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Bolm Gallery: 5305 Bolm Rd. #12, Austin, Texas.

The paintings will be fantastic. An explanation of the exhibition from the website:

This exhibition began as a photographic dialogue, via the Internet, between painters Marguerite Phillips and Sam Sanford. We wandered around our cities - Los Angeles and Austin - taking pictures of anything we liked, sending our pictures to one another, choosing our favorites, then going out to take more pictures. The central theme that emerged from this dialogue was the profound solitude characterizing our relationships to the architectural spaces of our cities. The images we chose to paint express a range of feelings arising from this solitude: quiet wonder, warm affection, lonely alienation, blank numbness.
Each of us painted each photo on identical canvases, Marguerite in Los Angeles and Sam in Austin. Our ways of painting are in many ways antithetical: Marguerite paints in an open-ended process, gradually refining the image in accumulating opaque layers until it captures the mood and feeling evoked by the image. Sam uses a rigidly defined system, digitally separating the image into three or four primary colors (CMY or CMYK) then reconstructing it one single-color transparent layer at a time. The two paintings of each photo will be exhibited side by side.

Throughout this process we have communicated almost entirely via the Internet, and portions of the exhibition take place online. We have kept a blog of our conversations and progress updates; this blog will be made available as part of the exhibition. All of our source photos are available on flickr. In addition to the physical exhibition, all the paintings will be made availale in a comprehensive online exhibtion, opening Monday September 10.
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Sam contacted me to write a new musical piece for the show. I joyfully agreed, and composed a piece in keeping with the show's approach: different takes on a single piece of source material. As different interpretations accumulate, the different approaches to the source material evolve in relation to one another.

I decided to attempt a piece of "process music." In Wikipedia's words,
Process music or systems music is music which arises from a process, and more specifically, music which makes that process audible.

My process: play the same 20 note score on guitar, piano, and synthesizer, each being fed through its own accumulative looping station. A more specific description of the process:

I will play the 20 note score first on guitar and capture it as a loop (using an ElectroHarmonix looping station); I will repeat this process on both piano and synthesizer, using the same 20-note score. Each instrument is being played through its own amplifier, with a background bass pulse.

I will repeat this entire process, replaying the 20-note score into each looping station to create a stacking effect, for exactly one hour.

The soundscape will evolve as polyrhythms arise, eventually overtaken by overtones and ultimately engulfing the room in a pleasantly blurred mass of notes.

Two processes will be at work: patterns on a single instrument interacting with previous patterns looped from the same instrument; and the relationship between each instruments / looping stations will also be evolving. The interaction between the different

Since the variables are strictly defined (3 instruments, a single 20-note score, one hour length), the architecure of the piece will be laid bare.

The result will hopefully be as engaging as the listener wants it to be. Listeners aren't forced to engage with music if they don't wish; this is, after all, an art opening. The music will hopefully provide movement to the room and soundtrack for the paintings.

In keeping with the "20 Note Spiral" title, I will be giving away copies of the score on spiral notebook paper. I also hope to release a recorded version soon.
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In other news, me and my group, known as "SUNSET" and "SILENT SUNSET," (you choose), have plenty of fun shows coming up. Hope to see you at one of them!

honest and true,
Bill

BTW, I will do a performance of "20 Note Spiral" in your living room in exchange for a mystic mango kombucha tea.

OFF TO DENTON !

This is our road trip to Denton.

NEW TRANSFER - "ZOMBIES" VIDEO // YOUTUBE VS VIRB

Youtube has been revolutionary for American home entertainment, but the quality is awful. (Even worse than mp3 technology for music). Alternatives have been emerging slowly, but since Youtube created the game, they own the game, in a way.

For my part, I've been uploading videos to several different services. So far, my favorite is called VIRB. The quality is just completely next level compared to YouTube (they allow files three times the size of youtube). They allow you to choose your thumbnail image. Plus they have a cool feature on their page where you can black out everything but the video.

I worked insane hours on my "Zombies" video. So when I put posted it to YouTube and it looked like a fuzzy mess, I was upset. Here is the YouTube version:

And here is the VIRB version:

VIRB seems to stretch out the frame... but overall the insanely better quality makes up for it. I am also investigating a website called DIVX. Anytbody know anything about that?

Anyhow, one thing is certain:

YOUTUBE LOSES.

Video - "End of the World"

Another super8 video done up by yours truly.

VIDEO - "It's Already Here"

Public domain footage + a whole day spent with a paper bag on my head = this video. Bag head walking filmed by Sam Sanford.

MOEBIUS

Made in collaboration with Peter Simonite. His ace editing skills are on full-display here. We started by filming an actual TV grid ( 6 X 6 screens); the grid's wood frame was built by Adam Bork, aka Earthpig. Peter later expanded the grid enormously, with the aid of AfterEffects. But the original, the core, is all real-time filming.

Each screen in the grid is connected to an individual DVD player; each DVD player is loaded with a short film I made called "Surfing" -- a super8 creation shot off the jumbotron screens in Times Square. The TV's were all started at the same time and left to run for several hours. Since each DVD was individually burned and slightly longer or shorter than the others, letting them run for several hours made the grid jump in random patterns of frenzied activity and cooled off colors.

The video / audio begins and ends in the same place. The video is intended to be run infinitely, in a gallery setting. Hence the name "Moebius."

This was an incredibly satisying collaboration. Check out Peter's other work here.

The musicians:

BB: electric guitar, upright piano, electric piano, synthesizer, tape delay, conducting

Joey Koehl : left-hand only distorted guitar

Nathan Stein : French horn echoes

Peter Simonite : eyes closed piano

Matt Oliver : Moog pulse

Michael Baird : twinkled piano

Gabe Pearlman : vox organ

Sam Sanford : drone guitar

Jordan R Johns : drum

LIVE AT KVRX

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I recorded a live session at KVRX with my band.

The entire session can be downloaded here.

RANDOM SELF-SIMILAR SELF PORTRAIT

MORE MATT and ME

Harmonizing!

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Someday this period of my life will make sense.

Til then, I will gladly settle for music.

I have a feeling, though, that what's best in us emerges in our creations. Which is why people look to their children with such hope; they want to pass on what's best of themselves (honesty, honor, maybe hair color).

My music is often the "best Bill" I can put forth... in person, I'm the story of imperfection. My music can exceed my person.

Like many authors who have written odes that make the spirit soar, and in person they seem petty, ordinary or imperfect... poets of gorgeous delicacy who, in normal life, are misogynistic drunk bastards. Not to say I'm a misogynistic drunk bastard, or a poet even, just making an example.

Making "art" = reaching for the highest point of perfection I can achieve and taking a snapshot there to share with the world. Like leaving breadcrumbs (or raisins, or aspirins) for other travelers through life ---> "This way, dudes." Trying to sum up all I know of this world, everything I've learned.

Someday maybe my life will merge with my "art." My life itself will be the creation. Maybe it already is. Somerset Maugham kind of addressed that in "Of Human Bondage," talking of life itself as the final great masterwork, a bright weave of imperfection, beauty, life experience.

Makes me wonder if I should move to a far-off land and help starving children.

Time for another cup of coffee, maybe.

FECAL MATTER

SONGS FROM 1ST NIRVANA RELEASE, "FECAL MATTER"