adcBicycle

KO video

2011-01-11T09:49:00.003-05:00

Wow, it's been a long time since I last posted, I blame it on my new daughter. Recently, I did the music for this Knowledge Ontario video.

electronic music cover album

2008-11-29T10:49:00.005-05:00

Released today, a cover album of electronic music. My cover isn't really "electronic"... except that was recorded on an "electronic" tape recorder.

Buy it here for $2.

Or download it here for free.

remixed album is released!

2008-09-12T12:04:00.007-04:00

released today at 12rec.net, my unreleased album, which was revisioned by a group of amazing artists.

the tracks/artists:

Substance (Combustion Mix) - Umami
Miranda July - allthatfall
Needs #5 - Albatrocity
I Need You To Stop Needing The Love That We Made Together - Fell
No Fun Swimming In The Bath - Zanf
Palms - He Can Jog
Wagon 7, Seat 7 - The Amazing Rolo
Living Room Player - map~map
42 / 88 - Chimp Logic
Performance (36 Seats Taken) - Autistici
Drunken Boat - The OO-Ray

also, check out this fantastic bonus track from ignatius.

if you'd like to support 12rec, and get a beautifully made CD with art by buenos aires artist Matías Conduri ... you can buy it here.

new track on 12rec.net release #50

2008-07-20T10:33:00.005-04:00

12rec.net now has officially released 50 albums, and for their 50th they put together a complilation of brand new tracks from future and past 12rec artists.

12rec puts out albums where the tracks are all 100% free for download, but also makes beautiful cds which can be purchased for a small fee. Get a #50 compilation cd for only 6 euros including shipping.

The lead off track of the compilation is a brand new totally-unnecessarily-overly-dramatic track by yours truly.

gold

2008-03-20T09:17:00.004-04:00

According to wikipedia, 10000 legal downloads in Canada is considered to be a gold selling record. And, coincidentally, my ep surpassed 10000 downloads on archive.org today, check it out!

I know technically, these downloads were free... not all downloaded in Canada... and many of the downloads were probably for tracks not the whole album... but i'm going to ignore these legal technicalites.

review - catching the waves

2008-02-06T16:18:00.000-05:00

I love this review of my EP from the blog catching the waves.
Partly because they like my album... and partly because they use setences like this:
"adcBicycle are a wild-eyed bunch of rebels who by rights should be tearing up the dusty backroads of America or dashing through rain-drenched Budapest squares in search of the next after-gig party."
and this:
"sounds like the manic humming of a deformed manservant on his way to help in his master's laboratory."

Not quite dead

2007-09-26T16:26:00.000-04:00

I've come up with an idea to bring my failure of an album back from the dead. I've asked some of my favourite artists to remix the tracks.

I was completely blown away by the response, I can't believe that such talented and creative artists have agreed to help me out. Each one is going to take on one of the 12 tracks, so as of now, here's the star-studded cast:

01 - hecanjog
02 - Autistici
03 - Ignatius
04 - Chimplogic
05 - The Oo-ray
06 - Umami
07 - The Amazing Rolo
08 - Unrecognizable Now
09 - Zanf
10 - All That Fall
11 - Albatrocity
12 - John Mccaig

Expect something by the end of December!

Change of plans

2007-09-04T09:24:00.000-04:00

So I've come to the decision that I will not be releasing my new album.

I've decided this after the album has been fully completed, mixed and mastered. There is nothing I want to go back to revisit, adjust or add, I'm happy with everything... except, the style. I don't feel there's anything particularly interesting or original about the overall style of the album. Therefore, rather then release something I have doubts about, I'm going to sit on it, and make something entirely different.

Sorry to all looking forward to this, the next one will be better, promise.

My second full length album is done!

2007-06-20T15:07:00.000-04:00

I've finally finished my new album. It was sent off today to the amazing John McCaig at Panic studios in Seattle for mastering.
Such a relief to be done.
Watch for it in the next few months!

Audiobulb - Endless

2007-06-11T12:31:00.000-04:00

I created a piece for a new project for Audiobulb Records.

Called "Endless" the challenge was to make an ambient piece exactly 2 minutes long. The pieces from each artist are faded together over 30 seconds to create one big continuous sounding piece.

To listen go to the Audiobulb page and click the "projects" lightswitch at the top.

New remix track

2007-02-15T19:15:00.000-05:00

Released today is a new EP from Portland based musician Ignatius, on the label Buried in Time. On which is a track originally made by Ignatius and remixed by myself, called Hylnur.

The EP is called Halocline EP, and it can be bought here or here.

Very nice dark cerebal music.

Phlow - Best of 2006

2006-12-11T12:17:00.000-05:00

Phlow, a german online music magazine, claims my EP is one of the best netlabel releases of 2006. Thanks Phlow!

It's in German, but here's a ridiculous google translation of the section which mentions me:
Another scoop release comes from the house Kikapu. The Canadian MattChisholm published there under the name a adcBicycle conclusive selection of Songs its called album. Post office-more modern Pop with the will and the authority all-go to dramaturgy and melody.

Speaking of Germans who appreciate my music, I'm also reviewed in the brand spanking new magazine Dead Magazine (which is in pdf format AND printed on real, non-digital paper). I also have a track on the compilation CD that comes with the magazine.

Part of the One Minute Film Festival

2006-10-23T21:46:00.000-04:00

One of my videos was accepted into the 2006 One Minute Film Festival.
The festival, in Toronto, has two main rules: the film must be exactly one minute long, and it must follow a specific theme which is different each year. This years theme is "growth".
Me and my long-time friend Kyle Cameron, shot this film this summer on a very rainy night in my backyard with a blue screen, a model building and a bunch of little fireworks bought from the the corner store. I remember watching the satellite weather on the internet in order to find an hour long window when we could be outside long enough to shoot.
If you want to see it on the BIG screen, the festival happens on November 22nd 2006 at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto.
Or, if you don't live in Toronto and are too cheap to buy a plane ticket for 60 second of excitement, here's the small screen version, "The Modern Forest":

And, last year I was accepted into the 2005 One Minute Film Festival, the theme in 2005 being "Interections". The video was also was chosen to be one of the films featured at the United Emirates Film Competition, as part of the OMFF showcase. Here's the small screen version of that film, entitled "I Hurt Pop Rock":

Freeculture.org video contest winner !

2006-10-01T15:38:00.000-04:00

I made a video for a contest put on by freeculture.org with some friends a few weeks ago. The contest: to create an anti-DRM video.

And we're one of the 5 winners!

Here's the video:

And here's an extended version of the music I made for the video.

What's DRM you ask? Digital Rights Management... i.e. a way for large companies to control how you listen to your music or watch your movies so that they can make more cash.
More info on DRM at Wikipedia or this great anti-drm site: Defective by Design.

Check out the other winners too... the other 5 videos are really great.

Root of Sine - Vol. 3

2006-10-01T14:08:00.000-04:00

I'm on a new compilation released by Audiobulb Records, Volume 3 of the Root of Sine. All the tracks on these Root of Sine releases follow one primary rule, the only starting sound that can be used is a 440Hz sine wav.

I took the sine wav and transposed it, looped it, multiplied it and processed it in an amazing little program called Audiomulch. What I ended up creating is what Audiomulch calls a metasurface, which maps certain parameters (which I specify) to certain locations on colour coded surface. So the track was created entirely by dragging my mouse around the metasurface, with no editing or much post processing. A very fun way to create music.

Check them out, they're all available for free download, scroll to the bottom of the page. It's pretty amazing listening to these tracks knowing that they were all created from this very simple starting sound. I especially like the releases by Ultre, truly amazing work, also Austin Martin's track is very nice.

An album to walk to

2006-09-20T13:07:00.000-04:00

I've officially started work on my second album, now having the bones of a first and second track.
No idea how long it will take though. My last one took over a year, but I think that was excessive, this one should be faster.

My general plan for the sound: Catchy yet kind of dark, post-rock-esque builds, few sounds that purely emulate other instruments, maybe a vocal track?, more of a focus on how notes and melodies interact, more of a focus on tonal song structure (i.e. chord changes) interesting and promenant beats, fewer vocal samples then the first album.
But who knows, this could all change tomorrow.

Also, every track is going to be at 100bpm which is my perfect beat to follow while walking... and since I have a slower walking bpm then most people it may force people to slow down and appreciate the scenery while listening.

Noisefactory compilation review

2006-09-14T21:02:00.000-04:00

I have a very short mention in this review of the brand new Noisefactory compilation Vol. 3 (on which I have one track). Done by the UK paper One Week To Live.

Tiny yes, and in it's entirety compares me to Prefuse 73, but my very first printed review.

New Studio

2006-08-27T11:41:00.000-04:00

I just moved to a new house, and have finally set up my new music studio. Some photos of the new place:

So that means I'm finally able to get back to making music. My first project, which I'm starting today, is a remix track for Ignatius (here's his myspace page). He's a musician based in Portland who makes great abstract electronic beats.

adcBicycle full length album is released!!

2006-07-21T10:48:00.000-04:00

I'm very pleased to announce that my 13 track self-titled album has been officially released today by Noisefactory Records!

This album, my debut release, took me a full year to make. I spent so much time adding, deleting, cutting, distorting, warping, adjusting and polishing all the little musical snippets. I've recorded tons of music over the years, but this was my first real attempt at working on a single project over and over until it was perfect in my mind, and I'm very happy with the results. It was finished in January 2006, and it took another 6 months for it to be picked up by the label and released.

It's an online only release through IODA, so you can download it from many different online distributors, including these:

and more...

A hot tip for you: the first 5 tracks are available for free, so download them at Kikapu netlabel instead of purchasing them.

hope you enjoy!

David Icke vs. Richard Warman

2006-07-14T10:40:00.000-04:00

One of the most prominate and asked-about samples on my Kikapu Netlabel EP (and LP) is found at the end of "We're taking over the world Richard". Here's the interesting story about it:

The sample is a message I got on my answering machine a few years ago. The caller says "This is a message, um, to Richard Warman from one of David Icke's nutty followers. We're taking over the world Richard, we're taking over, and there's fuck all you can do about it. We are right."At the time of recieving this message I had no idea of who David Icke was, nor how to spell his name so had no luck in google. But googling "Richard Warman" brings a whole bunch of links, lots of which include David Icke references.

It turns out that David Icke is a fairly well known, wacky conspiracy theorist from Britian, who believes, amoung other things, that there is an elite group of people who control the world, including the Queen Mother, George Bush, Hilary Clinton, Tony Blair, etc. who are either themselves reptilian, or work for the reptiles as mind controlled slaves. Where these wild, out-there claims become controversial is that he linked many of these reptiles through a jewish family, the Rothchilds, and the antisemtic nature of his ideas were latched onto by some far right "hate" groups.

Enter Richard Warman, an Ottawa based human rights lawyer who battles neo-nazis, far-right groups, "free speech" groups and David Icke about the publication of hate literature (both printed and online). David Icke and others have launched an online and written war against Richard Warman, and it's therefore difficult to find much pro-Warman information... but here's a more favourable article written about Warman in the Ottawa Sun. Most other google links to Warman are like this, and this, and this, and this ...

I guess since Warman is in downtown Ottawa, as I am, the person who left the message got the right area code, but wrong number. As the Ottawa Sun article mentions, Warman gets tons of phone threats.

And as an interesting twist, a friend of mine who knows of David Icke recently told me that the voice in the message sounds a lot like David Icke himself.... maybe it is?

what's after? post post-pop for a closer listen.

2006-07-14T10:25:00.000-04:00

I think this is the first "full" English language review of my EP.
Reviewed at rubored.org.

what's after? post post-pop for a closer listen.
REV- 038

the kikapu-netlabel and noisefactory.com are working hand in hand to bring you this fantastic 5-track EP as a teaser for the full-length debut of adcBicyle from canada soon to be released on CD. i'm not sure if i really like the idea of using the netaudio-format to promote your commercial (whatever that might mean for an independent label) outcome. on the other hand, the participants (including the listener) only have benefits from this deal- and if the selection for the EP works out so well, so what? nobody forced you if you feel like you have to buy the CD after listen to this nice MP3s. but let's stop talking bout net-politics. you guys wanna know about the music. well.

first track goes by the name of intro. rumpling drums, reversed guitars and synthesizer stand tall to accompany a catchy rhodes-melody. there are so many sounds! sounds a bit like the last four tet-album ('ecstatic') looked like: colourful, strange, funny yet unusual. track two is sort of the elongation of number one. the woodwind-like synth stay the same, the drums are still trashy. at the end, huge glamrock-guitars wail up, but just for a short moment. everything gets a bit more frenetic, louder, even more colourful. great. like caribou doing one of their krautrock-liveshows.
facing the wall at position number 3 finally breaks it all down a bit. there are some voice-samples and a lot of looped field-recordings. the synth blow their last goodbye and a small acoustic guitar says hello to the rhodes-piano from the beginning. the bubbling loop that form at the end of the song leads to in the name of god. adcBicycle takes on the path of psychedelic rock he sketched at poor economic policies. drums come in, organ fades in and out. a slide guitar introduces the final track. here, the listener is taken by the hand from a guitar, a drum-loop takes over, synths gather in the back and a perfect vocal-sample proclaims world domination. fin.

it's quite stunning how catchy this EP is, although adcBicycle refuses to obey any musical standards. dulcet post-pop the books would have been proud to release. i'm going to order a CD, will you?

Foreign language reviews of EP

2006-07-14T09:48:00.000-04:00

Here's a selection of foreign language mini-reviews of my Kikapu EP. I translated them in Babelfish, giving some interesting and nonsensical results:

From Couper Decaler (Japanese)
AdcBicycle - EP [ kpu094 ] エレクトロニカ, the element of the lock, acoustic and field recording etc. is piled up, the world where the various timbre mix and is possible. 5 tune entering EP which become the debut work of Canadian adcBicycle, were announced from net label kikapu. This EP from Noise Factory Records "is sold" promptly seems like preceding single release of the album which. As for the album the online it seems that is sold, but this single is open creative コモンズ (BY-NC-ND) with.

From hop.over-blog (French)
adcBicycle - EP It is free and it is bloody well! Music of Canadian to the odd name adcBicycle which pop do-it-yourselfing inventive and fresh interfering traditional instrumentation and samples all kinds. 5 titles which put water with the mouth to us while waiting for an album to be appeared on the label Noise Factory records! With not missing obviously and downloading very quickly here!!

From phlow.net (German)
adcBicycle - EP (Kikapu Netlabel)
Kikapu publishes a mad Teaser EP for adcBicycle's shortly on Noise Factory (among other things Broken Social Scene) appearing album. Very strange music! Coordinates are Hip Hop, Indie Pop and Electronica, with this description it however not yet much won.

From Eyka.com (French)
Electronic/Idm/Post-rock'n'roll. Extra! The first EP of adcBicycle, Canadian musician, is extra! To listen and D-listen to while waiting for the continuation...

From ted-strife (Russian)
adcBicycle "adcBicycle ' EP [ Kikapu/Noisefactory Records, 2006 ] This is how on netleyble Kikapu they know how to write the completely fascinating annotations of the marazmaticheskogo content. Similar ipishka of Canadian adcBicycle - this the first 5 tracks from his longpleya, which leaves in this month on another studio, posolidneye - Noisefactory Records. Short film, fortunately still lies at the free access, and here by album bicycle, apparently, it was going to feed wife and children - it will it sell. If we dance from glitch-khopa, to which creation adcBicycle undoubtedly has a relation, then this record by 4 would be named active glitch-khopom. Within the framework of the same nomenclature, let us say, The Books - glitch-khop passive, Prefuse 73 - neutral and so forth:) "activity" does consist in the fact that, mixing in itself entire contract, music of bicycle (pancake, it is possible 4 it and further so call I will be? :) he does not try to be dissolved and to lose clear means, but on the contrary, it erects integral, hyper-complex melodics with the heap it is layer, which supplement each other, overflowing from the channel into the channel. This, by the way, mechanism not so much human creation, as natural, when many independent organisms together compose sometimes whimsical, but always viable medium. Exactly as the rusty body from the Dnieper Cossack, to half utopshiy in the earth, it outgrows by moss and other filth, tom-tom drums in music adcBicycle peacefully coexist with skretchami, frankly stebnymi vocal semplami and acoustic bass. In this case clear bit in this medley the guest infrequent, why tying to KhcIp -xopu weakens. In contrast to the same The Books here any speech (be it monologue from the film, telephone conversation or Dictaphone record) never remains without the intelligent musical tracking, which continues to modify melody, to conduct it further. Music adcBicycle is interesting at least fact that it it frequently throws into extremes (from the solemn wind entrance to acoustic gitarnogo brenchaniya or generally clean idm). Garish, contrasting kollazh more rapidly rivets to itself view well in this case rumor.

Noisefactory Records release

2006-07-10T10:25:00.000-04:00

Noisefactory records is going to release my full length album!

It's going to be released electronically, for purchase on emusic, Itunes, napster etc. soon, stayed tuned.
Noisefactory is a great little label based in Toronto who release a wide range of sounds... as they put it: "beautiful music, we have a particular ear for experimental electronic, post-rock, ambient, blissful, mind blowing, gut wrenching, emotional rock, loud, soft and minimal noise.". The label is probably most well known for releasing the first Broken Social Scene album, and K.C. Accidental's material.

Release date: probably mid-end July

Reautomation Interview

2006-07-09T12:45:00.000-04:00

For everything you wanted to know about adcBicycle but were too afraid to ask, Reautomation webzine recently did an interview with me.

A track of mine was also included on their February sampler.

Kikapu Netlabel release

2006-07-08T13:13:00.001-04:00

*** I'm going to post some past happenings in chronological order here... to fill this page up a bit***

My 5 song EP has been released by Kikapu netlabel. All 5 tracks are free for download, and are released under a creative commons license, so listen to them, copy them, share them, sample from them, remix them. These are also the first 5 tracks on my upcoming 13 track LP release.

Thank you to Brad at Kikapu for the wildly-over-the-top release description :)

The same release is available on the archives.org site if you want some more download options (or want to leave a good or bad comment about the release) .

new blog

2006-07-07T10:22:00.000-04:00

Welcome all.
Yes, I've finally decided to start my own blog. This will hopefully been updated much more often then my website .
Look here for posts on my recent music projects, updates on my LP album and EP release, progress on my soon to be commenced second album... and maybe even live show news.