A.M. Salad>>Amish Macaroni Salad>>>Keith Childress

Though the winter nip is still nipping at my nips, spring is coming more and more into focus through my Vaseline smeared binoculars. A couple weeks ago I saw huge snowflakes falling from the sky as if a congregation of grandmas were lounging on cloud sofas, discarding their collective doilies upon our heads. But yesterday spring teased me from a distance, as at least one flying insect caught flight in the temperate outdoor air and passed by my eager eye...

But I hear the cold winter is not ready to concede to spring, as the robotic two-party political candidates continue to do battle while weaving their lies and hairline fractured promises around the masses of hypnotized moths and lacewinged constituents of this mock democracy. I am not a big fan of the two-party political headbutt, nor am I a big fan of the bleak, dreary, lifeless winter season, though amidst the latter I can at least find beauty in the cycle of things as they end and re-begin unlike the recycled tape-rewind jam of the latest Democrublican candidate's podium slop.

So with winter not yet at the end of it's term, let me share with you one of my favorite winter companions... fuckin' SOUP!!! Sip it, slurp it, spoon it, thermos it... stick your face in the steam of your bubbling cauldron!!!

And nothing is fresher during the winter than root vegetables. So here is one of my favorite soup recipes for a hearty root soup:

RUTABAGA, TURNIP, AND CARROT SOUP
////////////////////////////////////////////////////
1 TABLESPOON OLIVE OIL
1 1/2 CUPS CHOPPED LEEK (WHITE AND PALE GREEN PARTS ONLY)
1/2 CUP CHOPPED CELERY
2-3 GARLIC CLOVES MINCED
2 CUPS 1/2 INCH PIECES OF PEELED RUTABAGA
2 CUPS 1/2 INCH PIECES OF PEELED TURNIPS
2 CUPS 1/2 INCH PIECES OF PEELED RUSSET POTATOES
2 CUPS SLICED CARROTS
1 28 OUNCE CAN DICED TOMATOES IN JUICE
7-8 CUPS OF VEGETABLE BROTH

Heat the oil in a large stock pot over a medium to low heat. Add leek, celery, and garlic and saute until vegetables begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add the turnips, rutabagas, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes w/ juices, and 3 1/2 to 4 cups of broth. Bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat; cover and simmer until vegetables are very tender, about 45 minutes. Transfer 1/3 to 1/2 of the soup to processor or blender. Puree until almost smooth. Return the puree to pot. Add remaining broth to the combined soup and puree. Mix well and then bring the soup to a simmer. Season with salt and pepper and serve. Serves 6 to 8 depending how damn hungry you beasts are...

By the way, don't hesitate to improvise with whatever like-ingredients you might have around the kitchen, backyard, alley way, vacant lot, or hydroponic closet. I've used some sweet potato and daikon radish in a batch of this soup before, and the shit was still deeeeelish...

Following additional research, I have found some articles on "Odor Recorders", devices for recording smells for later play back. I am posting two of them here. Some of the issues addressed include the complexity of odors, as well as the dynamics of odors and the factors included such as drift and aging; and environmental factors such as temperature change and humidity change:

1.
____________________________________________________________________________
Device records smells to play back later
29 June 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Paul Marks

IMAGINE being able to record a smell and play it back later, just as you can with sounds or images.

Engineers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan are building an odour recorder capable of doing just that. Simply point the gadget at a freshly baked cookie, for example, and it will analyse its odour and reproduce it for you using a host of non-toxic chemicals.

The device could be used to improve online shopping by allowing you to sniff foods or fragrances before you buy, to add an extra dimension to virtual reality environments and even to assist military doctors treating soldiers remotely by recreating bile, blood or urine odours that might help a diagnosis.

While a number of companies have produced aroma generators designed to enhance computer games or TV shows, they have failed commercially because they have been very limited in the range of smells they can produce, says Pambuk Somboon of the Tokyo team.

So he has done away with pre-prepared smells and developed a system that records and later reproduces the odours. It's no easy task: "In video, you just need to record shades of red, green and blue," he says. "But humans have 347 olfactory sensors, so we need a lot of source chemicals."

Somboon's system will use 15 chemical-sensing microchips, or electronic noses, to pick up a broad range of aromas. These are then used to create a digital recipe from a set of 96 chemicals that can be chosen according to the purpose of each individual gadget. When you want to replay a smell, drops from the relevant vials are mixed, heated and vaporised. In tests so far, the system has successfully recorded and reproduced the smell of orange, lemon, apple, banana and melon. "We can even tell a green apple from a red apple," Somboon says.

Smell researchers are interested in the institute's work. "It would be interesting to know just what range of smells this new system can detect and recreate," says Stephen Brewster, a computer scientist at the University of Glasgow, UK, who is studying whether smell can be used to help people quickly identify digital photos without opening them. "This could be an interesting delivery system for our work."

From issue 2558 of New Scientist magazine, 29 June 2006, page 32
____________________________________________________________________________

2.(minus technical graphs)
____________________________________________________________________________
Chem. Senses 30 (suppl 1): i254–i255, 2005 doi:10.1093/chemse/bjh211
Chemical Senses vol. 30 suppl 1 © Oxford University Press 2005; all rights reserved.
Correspondence to be sent to: Takamichi Nakamoto, e-mail: nakamoto@mn.ee.titech.ac.jp
Key words: MIMO feedback control, odor recorder, odor sensing system, quartz resonator gas sensor, real-time reference method, robustness

Introduction:
Although techniques of recording and reproduction of visual and
auditory information are nowadays well established, a corresponding
technique for olfaction is still not mature. However, the
study of recording and reproduction techniques for smells is
becoming more popular in the field of chemical sensors as well as
that of virtual reality (Kaye, 2004).

An odor sensor called an ‘electronic nose’ (Pearce et al., 2003) can
be used for olfactory recording. In addition to the odor sensor, a
smell reproduction technique is required. We have developed a
system called an ‘odor recorder’ for reproducing the smell recorded
using an odor sensor (Nakamoto et al., 2001). The recipe of the smell
is obtained using the odor recorder and the smell can then be reproduced
based upon the obtained recipe.

We have successfully determined the eight-component recipe of
apple flavor using our odor recorder (Yamanaka and Nakamoto,
2003). Although a constant recipe was obtained in most of our
previous studies, the actual odor in the atmosphere changes continuously
and dynamically. In this paper, a study of the odor recorder for
dynamical changes of odors is described.

Principle of the odor recorder:
An odor sensing system recognizes the output pattern of a sensor
array composed of multiple sensors. The same sensing system is used
in the odor recorder.First, the target odor to be recorded is introduced
into a sensor array and its output pattern is memorized. Then, the
responses of the sensors to the blended odor, made up of multiple
component odors, are measured and are compared with those to the
target odor. The recipe of the target odor is obtained from that of
the blended odor in the case that the sensor-array output pattern of
the blended odor agrees with that of the target odor. Otherwise, the
recipe of the blended odor is iteratively modified so that the sensorarray
output pattern of the blended odor can approach that of the
target odor using adaptive MIMO (multi-input multi-output) feedback
control theory. The recipe of the target odor is obtained after
the convergence.

Once the recipe is recorded, the smell can be reproduced using the
odor blender. The odor blender, remotely located from the odor
recorder, can be used to generate the smell in the same manner as the
blender inside the odor recorder.

The feedback approach utilized in the odor recorder is essential,
since the linear superposition theorem is not completely valid in the
case of most of the chemical sensor responses. Moreover, it is also
effective in compensating for the drift and aging that are often
encountered in chemical sensors.

Record of dynamical change of odor using the realtime reference method:
Our group attempted for the first time to use a feedback-error
learning neural network to record the dynamically changing odor
(Nakamoto and Hiramatsu, 2002). Then, the real-time reference
method for recording dynamical change of odor was developed
(Yamanaka et al., 2003). This method is useful for recording
dynamical changes of odors, as well as for compensating for environmental
changes such as temperature and humidity.

The comparison of the real-time reference method with conventional
approach is illustrated in Figure 2a,b. Although multiple
component odors and multiple sensors are actually used, only a
single component odor and single sensor are shown here for
simplicity.

In the previous method shown in Figure 2a, the steady-state
response to a target odor with constant concentration is measured
for the first time. Then, the recipe of the blended odor is adjusted so
that the response to the blended odor can match that to the target
odor. Since it takes a few minutes to determine the concentration, the
change during the process of the recipe determination cannot be
detected.

On the other hand, the target and blended odors are alternately
introduced into the sensor array every sampling interval (several
seconds) in the real-time reference method illustrated in Figure 2 (b).
Although the sensor response to the blended odor deviates from that
to the target odor, at first due to the concentration difference, it soon
approaches the response to the target odor. Once convergence
occurs, the blended odor concentration tracks that of the target
odor. The real-time reference method achieves a time resolution of a
few seconds to record dynamical changes of odor.

We now describe the experiment on recording the dynamically
changing odor using the real-time reference method. The concentrations
of four odor components of apple flavor were independently
changed in the experiment. The odor components used here were
trans-2-hexenyl acetate (green note, Comp1), trans-2-hexenal (smell
of grass, Comp2), isobutyric acid (sour sweet, Comp3) and ethyl
valerate (fruity, Comp4). The sensors used here were four quartz
resonators (20 MHz, AT-CUT) coated with polphenyl ether, polyethylene
glycol 1000, tricresyl phosphate and Apiezon L, respectively.
The sampling interval was 4 s.

The temperature and the humidity were intentionally changed
during the experiment since robustness against temperature and
humidity changes was also studied. Changing the air conditioner
mode (DRY/COOL) caused 2.5°C of the temperature change and
20% of the humidity change during the experiment.

The experimental result is shown in Figure 3a,b. The solid and
dashed lines are the concentrations of the component odors in the
target odor and plots are the recorded concentrations of the component
odors. Since the recorded concentrations of each component
odor almost agreed with that of the target odor, it was found that the
real-time reference method achieves a record of dynamical change of
odor even in an environment in which the temperature and the
humidity changed, as is shown in Figure 3b.

Conclusion:
A record of the dynamical change of the odor was successfully made.
The real-time reference method can be speeded up when the blended
odor is measured simultaneously with the target odor using the same
two sensor arrays. Furthermore, recording the dynamical change of
odor together with a movie record will be an interesting topic for
further study.

References:
Kaye, J.J. (2004) Making scents. Interaction, ??, 49.
Nakamoto, T. and Hiramatsu, H. (2002) Study of odor recorder for dynamical
change of odor using QCM sensors and neural network. Sensors Actuators
B, 85, 263.
Nakamoto, T., Nakahira, Y., Hiramatsu, H. and Moriizumi, T. (2001) Odor
recorder using active odor sensing system. Sensors Actuators B, 76, 465.
Pearce, T.C., Schiffman, S.S, Nagle, H.T and Gardner, J.W. (eds) (2003)
Handbook of Machine Olfaction. Wiley-VCH, Weinheim.
Yamanaka, T. and Nakamoto, T. (2003) Real-time reference method in odor
recorder under environmental change. Sensors Actuators B, 93, 51.
Yamanaka, T., Matsumoto. R. and Nakamoto, T. (2003) Fundamental
study of odor recorder for multi-component odor using recipe exploration
based on singular value decomposition. IEEE Sensor J., 3, 468.
Figure 3 Recorded dynamic concentration change of each component vapor in target odor. Solid line: concentration of each component vapor in target
odor, Plot: recorded concentration of each component odor. (a) Comparison between target and blended odors and (b) temperature and humidity changes
during experiment.
____________________________________________________________________________

Moldy tomato sauce recovered from the depths of my refrigerator:


I'm sure you've encountered the sensory experience of smelling a familiar smell that triggers a memory of a moment in time or a feeling once felt. Maybe its that combination of cigarette smoke hidden amongst potpourri and aerosols, and blended with the ever strengthening aroma of traditional Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine that was present at grandma and grandpa's house when you were a child. You never encounter this exact fragrant combination anymore, but its almost like you can remember the smell though you haven't really smelled it in many years. The smell is in your head without first going through your nostrils. And then there is the inverse, like smelling the familiar smell of freshly fired firecrackers, and remembering how people of small town Arkansas used to convene in the middle of the road and make their own drunken firecracker show for the neighborhood kids. And going home with your cloths completely infused with the smell of gunpowder, extending the feel of the holiday well through the afternoon of July 5Th until the cloths were washed. The nose triggering the brain to think. And not just to think about the smell, but more so a feeling or memory tied to that smell. Maybe its a good odor that recalls a bad memory or vice versa. It happens with our other senses, like when you hear a terrible song over the speakers at the grocery store, and though it completely sucks shit, it still brings a smile to your face as you recall a neighborhood girl from your youth who put it on a mix tape for you and you used to fast forward through it every time while shaking your head, or that time you saw some funny old guy do karaoke to the song while drunk off his ass at Red Lobster.

But unlike the other senses, we can't accurately document an odor so that it can be smelled again... especially if this is a unique combination of various odors. We can take a photograph or paint a picture of a moment or subject... we can record a song, soundscape, or act of nature... we can write a poem or novel. But an odor is of the moment, and then gone... unless you are some fancy scientist who could possibly take some molecular samples of the odor causing agents. Maybe we can describe an odor from the past by comparing it to common place odors, but how accurate is this? And even within common smells, are they all the same? Does every apple pie really smell the same? When two different artists paint a painting of the same subject matter, say a red tailed hawk, does each painting look exactly the same? Does each real red tailed hawk look exactly the same? Maybe we smell something that is similar enough to the odor of old, enough so for it to spark a thought or memory. But how similar are these odors really? As similar as looking at your bearded landlord, and then remembering that bearded Philosopher you once saw speaking on the ethics of cloning humans for medical purposes? What if you could somehow document odors in the way we record music or take a picture, so that the memory, thought, or feeling would come to the brain via stimulus to the olfactory senses? You could "smell the blues" instead of listening to it. Our cat has oral cancer, and will probably be dead soon. I tend to prefer the company of animals more than the company of humans, so needless to say, the whole thing saddens me. But tied in with the whole unfortunate situation is the fucking horrible stench that fumes from her tumorous bottom jaw. A smell though disgusting, is still quite unique and unlike anything else my nose has had been unfortunate enough to come in contact with. As I was working on some art bullshit the other night, I started smelling the foul stench of the cat's inflicted mouth, and my mood suddenly began to change eventhough the cat wasn't even visible as she napped under the couch. If there was a way to document this horrible foul odor, I'm certain I could smell it years from now and be saddened by what will turn out to be the final stages of my feline comrade's life.

What if you could document the smell of that perfect spring day, in the middle of the forest in rural Virgina when that unique mixture of pollen is in the air. That smell could be tucked away in a time capsule, saved for those to experience in the distant or not too distant future when forests on the east coast could be virtually gone. And what would this do to our abilities to learn or to remember or retain information, if we could combine images, textures, sounds, and smells of a moment in time all at once? Could this familiar sensory package of sight, sound, touch, smell, and even taste help people with Alzheimer's Disease recall lost memory? Just some thoughts...

Will we ever be able to enhance our sense of smell such as the way we enhance our sense of sight with binoculars or a microscope; or as we do with our sense of hearing by amplification devices? Is the creation of abstract smells possible? We have abstract visual art, and 3 dimensional art can involve abstracting our sense of touch via textures. And we can create abstract music. Are some perfumes, colognes, incense, etc. abstract odors? What about an abstract bad odor? What about a confused assault of odors to the senses to bring about a feeling of fear, confusion, or paranoia? Or an art project combining pleasant images with horrible smells? Kinda like one of those beautiful flowers that when in full bloom, smells like rotting flesh. I need to explore this further in an art project...

Ever heard of Smell-O-Vision, or any of the other attempts at combining odors with the visual and aural experience of the movie theater? Odors in conjunction with film actually predates the use of sound in films. John Waters toyed with smells in cinema in the mid 80s, but not much else has been attempted in recent times, that I know of.

According to Wikipedia:

"Smell-O-Vision was a system that released odors during the projection of a film so that the viewer could "smell" what was happening in the movie. The technique was created by Hans Laube and made its only appearance in the 1960 film Scent of Mystery, produced by Mike Todd, Jr., son of film producer Mike Todd. The process injected 30 different smells into a movie theater's seats when triggered by the film's soundtrack. The use of scents in conjunction with film dates back to 1916, before the introduction of sound. In this first instance, the Family Theatre in Forest City, Pennsylvania, placed a wad of cotton wool that had been soaked in rose oil in front of an electric fan during a newsreel about the Rose Bowl Game. In 1929, during the showing of The Broadway Melody, a New York City theater sprayed perfume from the ceiling. Further attempts with releasing scents timed to key points in a film happened at a Detroit, Michigan theater with The Sea Hawk and Boom Town. The 1959 film, Behind the Great Wall, used a process called Aroma-Rama to send scents through the air-conditioning system of a theater."

"However, these early attempts were made by theater owners, and not part of the films themselves, and thus were seen as an offense to film aesthetics, as the audience could be distracted by the scents instead of focusing on what the film director intended. Furthermore, because of the size of the theaters, large amounts of perfume had to be released in order to reach all members of the audience. This caused another problem: The human nose has a difficult time transitioning between smells until the molecules that triggered one smell are completely cleared from the nose, and with that volume of perfume, the scents would mix together, becoming muddled."

"Laube's technique, which he dubbed "Scentovision", was to connect pipes to individual seats in theaters, so that the timing and amount could be carefully controlled by the projectionist using a control board. He introduced this system in the 1939 New York World's Fair. The New York Times reported in 1943 that Scentovision "is said to have produced odors as quickly and easily as the soundtrack of a film produces sound."'



I guess I haven't really touched on taste as it relates to documentation. The taste of a particular food item can certainly spark a thought or memory. And taste of the moment, as with odors, can not really be documented so to stimulate the senses directly in the future, without attempting to replicate the source of the taste by use of a recipe or cooking technique. And when I mean "stimulating the senses directly in the future", I mean directly through the taste buds, not merely a written description of the taste. And are there abstract tastes? Or just complex combinations? Can you design something to be tasted, that is unique in itself, and not intended to be eaten... or not intended to taste good or bad? Without veering into synesthesia, could something taste scary or depressing? Hmmm, I think I've accidentally cooked a few meals like that before...

Of course the obvious obstacle for documentation of both smell and taste lies in the fact that we are speaking in molecular terms, as in when you smell something you are coming in direct contact with molecules in the air which have entered the nose. So sampling an odor would have to involve talking a physical sample of the molecules involved in the odor, or combination of odors. But it just makes me ponder the future in a sorta dorky sci-fi way... like consumer products sold at K-Mart for capturing a sample of the odor emitting molecules in a room, and then enhancing them greatly the way you would amply a sound. Who cares right? Big deal, its just an odor... what could be so important about an odor? Well, its a product of our senses, and we've found with the visual arts and music, a lot can be communicated and stimulated through these forms... often in a much more uniquely powerful way than that of words. SNIFFF, snnnniiifffff... yeah man, that smell says it all...

One of my favorite articles in recent times:

Clean loo campaigner to open toilet-shaped home by Lim Chang-Won

Sim Jae-Duck was born in a restroom and now he plans to live and die in one -- a 1.6 million dollar toilet-shaped house designed to promote his tireless campaign for cleaner loos worldwide.

Sim will open what is billed as the world's one and only toilet house on November 11 to mark the launch of his World Toilet Association.

The 419-square-metre (4,508-sq-foot) concrete and glass structure is rising on the site of Sim's former home in his native city of Suweon, 40 kilometres (24 miles) south of Seoul.

Before he moves in, anyone who is flush with funds can rent it for 50,000 dollars a day -- with proceeds going to his campaign to provide poor countries with proper sanitary facilities.

Apart from two bedrooms, two guestrooms and other rooms, the two-storey house -- of course -- features three deluxe toilets. Unlike the giant "toilet" in which they are located, they will not be see-through affairs.

"A showcase bathroom screened by a glass wall is located in its centre, while other toilets have elegant fittings or water conservation devices," Sim told AFP.

The showcase loo will feature a device producing a mist to make users feel secure. An electronic sensor will raise the lid automatically when people enter, and there will also be music for patrons.

The house, complete with a stream and small garden in front, is named Haewoojae, meaning "a place of sanctuary where one can solve one's worries".

Sim's birth in a restroom was in line with traditional beliefs.

"It was intentional. My mother followed advice from my grandmother that people born in restrooms will enjoy long lives," said the 74-year-old.

Sim's campaign began during his term as Suweon mayor from 1995 to 2002. His drive to transform toilets into "clean and beautiful resting places imbued with culture" earned him the nickname "Mayor Toilet".

Public restrooms in the city were jazzed up with paintings, fresh flowers or even small gardens. His achievements prompted Sim to launch the Korea Toilet Association in 1999, in time for South Korea's co-hosting with Japan of the football World Cup three years later.

Then he decided to take his clean toilets drive worldwide. The proposed World Toilet Association might be seen to rival squeaky-clean Singapore, where the World Toilet Organisation is based, but Sim has said the work of the two bodies will not overlap.

Indeed, he hopes his toilet house will highlight the global need for better sanitation.

"My family has already agreed to preserve this house as a symbol of South Korea's new toilet culture after my death," he said. "The house will be remembered as an example of saving mankind from diseases and protecting the environment."

Sim, a member of parliament, will host the World Toilet Association's inaugural meeting which he hopes will attract 300 representatives from 70 countries.

On the final day he plans to invite all participants to his house, which he said "envisions a new concept to place toilets in the centre of our life".

Sim said his campaign will focus on setting international standards for clean public toilets, adding that countries such as Mongolia, Indonesia, Turkey and Brazil are actively supporting it.

Epidemics caused by poor sanitation worldwide cost two million lives a year, he said. Worldwide, 2.6 billion people live without toilets. Elsewhere, poorly designed flush toilets waste vast amounts of potential drinking water, he added.

A future project in his active mind is IT-based toilets, where people can check their health or surf the Internet.

"Toilets were once regarded as stinking and dirty places. Not any more. They must be treated as the sanctuary that protects human health," Sim said.




Awesome! He should consider getting this haircut too:

Uhhh, yeah...
www.myspace.com/amsalad

I posted a blog entry on myspace about the recent tour, and I guess I'll post it here too:

The end of summer / pre-fall tour was extra boss. Had tons of fun. Some pleasant surprises ensued such as the show at Green Eggs and Jam Records Shop in Boone, NC... really nice, enthusiastic folks... and a local guy (Human Pippi Armstrong) played a pretty raw solo set with homemade circuits and blowables, all while fucking the ketchup outta a McDonalds Value Meal. I got pretty destroyed on cold beer and warm Tequila at Freedamn Fest... released the beast within... it ruled... Among the sets at Freedamn Fest, I would have to say that This Is My Condition floored me the most with his one-man-band drum / guitar attack. I was pretty ripped by this time, and had fun bouncing around, throwing myself into people, and being on the wrong end of a dogpile, like I had summoned the high school kid from the past for one last mosh pit bruise session. The music was great, I was an idiot, and it was all perfect. Camped out at Lake Martin in Alabama which was pretty cleansing after some self induced poisoning while festing in Stone Moutain, GA. Michelle and I befriended some mutant ducks that looked like the results of some cross hybrid experiments involving turkeys. Birmingham was cool as expected... got to hang with Algebrassiere cohort Byron Pussyturd. P-turd played a great decomposing, rusty trash compactor sounding pedal-punch set while clutching a guitar he never played. Badical. Lance of Burzee, Ghuts, Dick Neff, etc. played a digital delay effect vocal warpler with homemade gadgets, all billowing outta his homemade speaker set up. Them Natives concluded the evening with some mellow smokey chanting w/ strings, chimes, blowables, etc. Kinda like a ghost story that you feel rather than hear. Or maybe one you feel and hear but without words. And maybe you don't get real scared, but instead start to question what it is to be scared. Did some really nice canoeing in Aiken, South Carolina... decent current in a narrow winding river with lots of sunken tree obstacles and anole lizards hitching rides on the watercraft. Played two shows in S. Carolina in the same evening including a set at the local art college which featured some older people in attendance, which I fucking loved... cool to chat w/ interesting old folks after sweating and making a racket. Concluded the evening with a spontaneous collaborative cranial squeegee w/ Jefferson Mayday Mayday inside his lair... Jefferson carved a maze of tunnels into the carpeted abyss with his piano playing while I slowly brought in some cassette head mechanical clutter. Then the electronics came into the fold as he transitioned to farfisa meltdown. Jefferson's Immaginarium space should be the new space camp for adults and children alike, a visit I would strongly recommend to anyone interested in exploring, though you may never land again. Then it was off to Chapel Hill to meet up with Hal McGee and Ironing who I played with during the final three shows of the tour. Clang Quartet joined us in Chapel Hill for a performance of noise energy with wearable sound makers that also acted as statements on the religious beliefs of the performer. He is also a very talented percussionist and utilizes a bombardment of cymbals and other beatables. He didn't make a believer outta me in the greater sense, but I respect his passion and I have to say the Clang Quartet performance is quite an experience that I would recommend checking out. And he is a really nice guy too. Richmond had a surprising turnout even with it raining buckets of buckets outside. Narwhalz (Of Sound) got to the final level of Zeltar as a gameboy was turned into a key unlocking the pixel world long enough for it to shatter into a million sounds while Bald Bull punches you the fuck out and wedges your limp body between two Tetris blocks. The Sonic Circuits Festival in D.C. was very well done, with some pretty varied and interesting sets... among them were Zan Hoffman and Constant Mauk, both of which are also really nice people to talk with... Zan gave lots of suggestions on cool places to play overseas. Constant Mauk played a nice short set of huzz crackle and swishes with some electronic treatments and contact mic speaker massages, weaving a cloud over our heads only to have it burst into feathers that weighed as much as anvils. Zan hammed it up as he peeked over his executive-style briefcase while electronically fucking with recordings he made of the previous Sonic Circuits performers earlier in the evening as well as other tweaked audio, all while dashing around in a slick suit handing out documents to the crowd. I wish I could tap into Zan's energy level. I had a blast hanging w/ Andrew Chadwick (Ironing) and Hal McGee throughout the final three days of the tour. All three of their sets that I witnessed were really damn good. Andrew has a knack for the cassette / turntable audio overload assault. The murky loops and slowed downers infuse with in-between beats and clutter, and then it seems to come together just long enough to confuse, and then Janet Jackson slips in a comment on how nasty the boys are and its soooo true. Ladies? Awesome. Hal really threw me for a loop, literally, with an amazing lecture of readings from random pages in books and loose papers while recording his readings and then plopping some circuit bent splushes on top, rewinding and adding some pot and pan percussion... press play and add something random off the tape which might have been from 2 minutes earlier or maybe it was from some comment or found sound he squeezed on there while walking through a gas station parking lot the night before. Loops, electronic slosh, comments on stereophonic sound, record, play, readings from the article written in the local independent press about the very show he is performing that moment, etc., etc. Oh, and all the sounds where unamplified... all coming from either his mouth, or the tiny speakers on his handheld tape recorders or battery operated casios and circuit toys. Andrew assisted with the "press record, press play, rewind, play, record" musical button game, which added to the amazement. I joined in on two of Hal's sets adding microcassette accompaniment of raw audio I recorded from his Chapel Hill performance... my favorite moments were when Hal was reading a passage in real time while one of his taped readings haunted the background space at the same time...

A.M. SALAD:::TASTER'S CHURCST TOUR

9/7
Boone, NC
@ Green Eggs and Jam Record Shop
during Art Crawl w/ Human Pippi Armstrong
www.myspace.com/greeneggsandjamboone

9/8
Stone Mountain, GA
@ Chateau Noir
Freedamn Fest 3, bunches of bands doing it to it
www.soundsfromthepocket.com

9/10
Birmingham, AL
@ A.C. Temple
w/ Them Natives, Dick Neff, DJ Pussyturd
www.myspace.com/actemple1

9/12
Columbia, SC
@ University of South Carolina McMaster College
http://www.cas.sc.edu/ART/mart.html

9/12
Cayce, SC
@ The Immaginarium, 418 Old State Rd
w/ Jefferson Mayday Mayday
http://kursegoback.com

9/13
Chapel Hill, NC
@ The Nightlight
w/ Hal McGee, Ironing, and Clang Quartet
http://www.nightlightclub.com/

9/14
Richmond, VA
@ Pom Hole
w/ Hal McGee, Ironing, Narwhalz (of sound), others
http://www.myspace.com/narwhalsofsound

9/15
Washington D.C.
@ Warehouse Next Door
Sonic Circuits Festival
w/ Baseline, Esther Venrooy, Oier Etxeberria,
Hal McGee, Gunung Sari, Zan Hoffman, Ironing,
Constant Mauk, Musica Ex Machina festival presentation
http://www.dc-soniccircuits.org/2007/
http://warehousenextdoor.com/

Search engines are sooooo much fun, especially when you don't know what you are searching for... like searching for easter eggs but finding hand grenades or starfish.

Doing a Google Image search, I randomly slapped the keyboard keys and got: S'DFKG'
I only received two images, here they are:



Google asked me, "Did you mean SDFG'?"

No, I didn't mean anything. Damn computers, when will they learn to unlearn?

Okay, fuck it... lets give SDFG' a go...

Google's suggestion came back with a lot more photos than my original accidental entry.

So I waded through the images among the first two Google pages, and here is the SDFG' image story:

The next A.M. Salad live performance:


Sunday, October 6 @ Charm City Art Space
1729 N. Maryland Ave.
Baltimore, MD
http://www.ccspace.org/


w/
Piasa
http://www.myspace.com/pieuhsaw
Kakerlak
http://www.myspace.com/kakerlak
Wzt Hearts
http://www.myspace.com/wztheartssss
Sunshine Ward


7pm / Free!


Be there or be squier!!!!