David Firstʼs musical life is filled with opposites and extremes. At the age of twenty he played guitar with renowned avant-jazz pianist Cecil Taylor and then in 1976/77 he was creating electronic music at Princeton University on their original Buchla 100 modular synthesizer while leading a Mummerʼs String Band in Philadelphia parades. He formed formed rock n’ roll outfit The Notekillers, and has put out releases steadily from the 1990’s onwards on labels such as OODiscs, Analysand, Ants, XI Records, Fabrica, Dais, Ecstatic Peace...
As a composer First has created everything from finely crafted pop songs to long, severely minimalist drone-works. His performances often find him sitting trance-like without seeming to move a muscle.
Firstʼs music has been performed all over the World, in such places as The Kitchen, Bang On A Can, Central Park Summerstage, the CMJ Music Marathon, SXSW, The Stone, The Knitting Factory, Tonic, Issue Project Room, Podewil, the USArts Festival, the Heidelberger Festival for Experimental Music and Literature, The Impakt Festival (Utrecht), Het Apollohuis (Eindhoven), and the Brugge Concertgebeouw (Brugge), Kunstforeningen (Copenhagen), the UppsalaKonstmuseum (Uppsala), Sonambiente Festival of Sound Art in Berlin…
lyrics
High frequency signal generators and function generators sending signals in the lower regions of the AM radio frequency range are broadcast to an open channel on AM/transistor radios allowing them to modulate the internal resonator oscillators of the radios. In some sections of the piece, radios are further modulated by the performative use of the amplitude control antennae on a theremin.
credits
from Modulisme Session 077,
released December 17, 2022
2 General Electric SuperRadio II transistor radios
Silvertone SR2400 transistor radio
GE Model 7-2927A Portable Radio
3 Superior Instruments 650-A signal generators
Heathkit IG-102 signal generator
Knight KG-650 signal generators
2 Wavetek 180 function generators
Moog Etherwave AM controller
Modulisme (translates Modularism) is a media supporting leftfield Electronic music (giving priority to Modular Synthesis but
not only). Providing ressources/interviews, a radio program aired via 7 antennas, and above all label-like streaming music for you to listen to…...more
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