Guest Curation by Greedmink
Rubber (() Cement,
Bran...Pos, and
Hora Florabran(...)pos is the ongoing audio-visual-performance-noise-musique-brain-bend of Jake Rodriguez from San Francisco, CA. Rodriguez has been performing and recording under this moniker for 14 years with releases on C.I.P., Resipiscent, Ratskin Records, Animal Disguise, and Chitah! Chitah! Soundcrack. synthesizer and mouth manipulations are the most common audio elements, rounded out with rubber face and a live video component to complete the human-analog-digital-human circle. in March 2011, two bran(...)pos releases were on display at the Editions of You fair in Oxford, UK and added to the Oxford Brookes University Popular Music Research Unit's permanent collection of hand-made editions and zines. more info, sounds, photo, video can be found at soundcrack.net. "With a background in theater performance and sound (and a seriously demented mind), Rodriguez with his bran(...)pos project has boiled down the most absurd elements of our ongoing ritual into an amalgamation of human, sound, and light that is at once ridiculous and terrifying." - Paris Trans-Atlantic
Raub Roy (Hora Flora) studied sound art and studio technique with Daniel Warner and Christoph Cox at Hampshire College, Amherst Mass, between 2004 and 2006. D. Warner and C. Cox are co-editors of Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (Continuum, 2004), a collection of critical and theoretical writings on contemporary music, which functioned as a textbook in the course "Audio Culture: Theories and Practices in Music Now". Raub is also largely self taught in microsound, field recording and other specialized aspects of his field.
Raub has performed and recorded experimental music in a variety of solos, duos, trios, etc since 2001, upon acquiring an Akai sampler, which was his instrument of choice until 2007, when a shift in focus led him towards prepared and extended acoustic instruments, as well as electro-acoustic methods of sound manipulation and diffusion.
Raub has performed in support of many excellent and respected artists from the noise, improvised music, and electronic music world: Lionel Marchetti, Jerome Noetinger, Fat Worm of Error, Angst Hase Pfeffer Nace, Chris Corsano, Vampire Belt, Paperrad, Cex, Stars as Eyes, Feathers, Bromp-Treb Sound System, Ralph White, Rubber-O-Cement, Nmprign (Bhob Rainey and Greg Kelley), Howard Steltzer, Bill Nace, Thurston Moore, MV&EE, Evolutionary Jass Band, Headboggle, Tony Dryer, Jacob Felix Heule, Dat Politics, and Nautical Almanac.
Coalescing into a specific burning vision in 1994 Rubber (() Cement was put together as a direct idea for a super science future that will happen. The next technological breakthroughs are realized in a zero-tech way with the emulation of the unrealized 'next step' with the actual "vision" existing in the present (picture a cargo cult with stats on NASA industries). The first experiment was to build a Computer that plays music and looks like it's doing something.
Historically Rubber (() Cement came out of a few shows: one in L.A. with Speculum Fight, and a Japan tour where there was going to be 10 tape release, all at once, with stacks of comics, action figures, trading cards all from the closing of "Comics and Cosmos" who filled up their sales bins with nickle items. Wanting to redistribute this mega closeout overseas, a roadie job opened for some ingrates in a rock band. Since then the bowel has kept rolling down the technological chromo-hill into the mercury ocean of endless alumino-butyl face welding. Flakes chipped away to a core of faulty keramik iron-consistency, Rubber (() Cement persists years later.
This is particular live visual assemblage is the antithesis of nescient paint-sperm masterpieces smaller than most microbe canvases (note mid point close up of below for petri-shuttle) played out on a Los Angeles sound stage. The off camera Motherboard Superiors are crossing themselves in a solid state soldery light source pattern giving an aura of "first omega book prophecy" to the ManOSores (off timeline, unbeliever, and inadvertently) powering the onstage stint you use your exposed ocular nerves to interpret with rapt persuasion.
It really is up to you to "read" the signs and gestures here to your audio reception-mix. This presentation is coming in contact with a visual bleach blanded ketone solvent that your loose sockets are watching while the individual mouse clicker, would spray paint the entire facial/chest area with an acetone cleaner for maximum excitement-fury inner brain counter attack.
The mainstage computer, CIMEVOX 30084, could shake and twirl it's reel to reels while playing some of the most tortured synthesizer sounds [sounding like it's doing something]. Wing motherboards were put on later to let it process more information, but after a show in Chicago they melted the innards of the CIMEVOX. It's in the basement of the club still there after a full computer life of 2 years of use.
The second experiment was to present a wheel footed self sustaining food maker, as a human being. The arms were to be long corn cobs and the feet [with training wheels] would act like a 7 ton Mack Truck cab. D-Tech:"This was a little too much to start on so we compromised to making overly large cargo cult gene-spliced infant feet that have more power and energy for the active adult. "
Next up on the mainstage: the human head! It can store only so much information within it's small dome. A cube shape is not only 'functional' it looks good and can stack easily at night next to other cubes depending on the amount of money invested for memory. We replaced the head of front 'man', A-Gene-rack, with a cube and sewed thru suture and piano wire an ear on it --to give a not so horrific alien look to the cube. On top of the cube we put groper bat wings to act as an augment for the orthoptic failure of the cube [remember the ear is just for looks] and at the joint of the wing spines there are actual tiny fly eyes that send irregular information to the cube in stuttering 01 morse code. A-Gene-rack is semi blind with all these additions.
This head is constantly updated. A newer head for the more developed shows are of a vat grown bat mixed with K+Ataphase protein in different amounts to make a larger efficient head. This (newest) head, grown three times, produced 3 beautiful faces with sensitive 'bat-radar' eye-ears and 'teeth' that are actual mini map memory sticks of every place that the Gene-rack has been, and the list of every note that was played at every show set. Fantastic!!! Out of the back of our main "walker" experiment are jetplane fuselage tines that give the over large infant feet a "push". They unfortunately can only be operated in open air/outdoor venues.
There are 10 cds and 2 lps by this duo. Rubber (() Cement has toured the world (not Africa unfortunately) playing with acts such as Wolf Eyes, Violent Onsen Geisha, & Nautical Almanac.
Cost: $6-10 sliding