Austin Remixed: Live! Sunday, December 16th

You found the sounds. Now hear the songs.

In early November, we put out a call to the city, asking, “What does Austin sound like to YOU?” Almost 100 sonic submissions came in, ranging from bats under the Congress Avenue Bridge to tamale making to rowing on Lady Bird Lake.

We passed those city sounds along to some of Austin’s best musicians and gave them just two weeks to create original compositions incorporating the sounds.

Now, those songs will be performed live for the first time. Join us!

WHEN: Sunday, December 16th, 7:30 – 10:30 PM
WHERE: The ND, on the corner of Brushy and E. 5th
COVER: Free
WHAT: An all ages performance of Austin Remixed songs.

BACKGROUND

Grackles, a mariachi band, hot rods revving on South Congress, the diving board at Barton Springs—Austin is full of distinctive sounds.

KUT’s Austin Music Map wants to know: what does Austin sound like to YOU?

Maybe it’s the sound of your neighbor cooking barbecue in her backyard. Or kids playing basketball at the park down the street. Or the crunching of gravel on the hike and bike trail in Zilker park.

Whatever your sounds might be, we want to hear and SHARE them—with a handful of our favorite local artists, who make music ranging from hip hop to electronic to jazz to cumbia to Afrobeat to folk.

Those musicians will incorporate your sounds into all original songs celebrating our amazing musical city.

HERE’S HOW IT WORKS—THREE SIMPLE STEPS:

• Record your sounds and send them to us (details below)—or just shoot us an email at sounds@kut.org, describe the sounds, and we’ll take care of the recording. Sounds are due by November 22nd.

• In early December, we’ll pass your sounds to six musical groups and they’ll have two weeks to compose a song.

• Those songs will premiere at a live performance event on, Sunday, December 16.

HOW TO RECORD YOUR SOUNDS:

If you have a smartphone, chances are good that you can capture sound with it. iPhones are equipped with a simple recorder—called “Voice Memos”—in the “Utilities” section. For simple instructions on how to use it, check out this video.

Android phones are similarly equipped. For one good recorder option, check out this page:

http://theunlockr.com/2012/06/21/android-app-day-voice-recorder/

If you don’t have a recorder or a smartphone, please email your sound suggestions to

sounds@kut.org. Include your name, contact information, a description of the sound, and where exactly you hear it in the city. Please be as precise as possible, so that we can record the sound for you!

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR SOUNDS:

There are a couple of ways to submit your sound:

• Email an mp3 attachment to sounds@kut.org. Please include your name, where you recorded the sound, and a description of the sound in the email.
• If you have an account on SoundCloud, submit your sound to the Austin Remixed group (http://soundcloud.com/austin-remixed). Please include a description of the sound and where you recorded it.

WHICH MUSICIANS WILL REMIX THE SOUNDS?

We’re thrilled to have a dream team of Austin musicians who will be remixing the sounds we gather and turning them into music. Each will take a completely different approach and we can’t wait to hear what results.

Orión García

DJ Orión (Orión García) has been crafting musical chemistry for almost a decade. Half Puerto Rican, half Colombian, and born in Panama, Orión blends the music he grew up with (cumbia, salsa, plena, and son) with dancehall, electro, bhangra, baile funk, dubstep, jazz, and everything in between. Orión is at the center of Austin’s Latin music community, organizing monthly pachangas with the Peligrosa collective, a loose affiliation of DJs all creating a “Nu Latin” sound. Orión also runs a small homegrown record label (Raw Word Records).

Adrian Quesada 

Adrian Quesada is best known as the co-founder of Grupo Fantasma, Brownout, and Ocote Soul Sounds. He has also worked with artists such as Prince, Larry Harlow, Thievery Corporation and Daniel Johnston, among others. Quesada now plays everything from cumbias to psychedelic, soul, and funk, but he grew up in Laredo listening to hip-hop and will bring his early fascination with samples to the Austin Remixed project.

Dana Falconberry

After a childhood studying classical ballet and modern dance, Dana Falconberry left Michigan when she was 18 years old to attend Hendrix College in Arkansas. There she discovered the timeless songs of the Ozarks and the Delta and devoted herself to songwriting, founding the Little Rock Songwriters Circle in 2003. In 2004, she moved to Austin, TX and joined the indie folk band Peter In The Wolf for a stint. Soon, she broke away to focus on her own music: stripped-down songs inspired by dreams, memories, and landscapes. The Austin Chronicle recently called her one of the city’s “most arresting female vocalists.”

BLAZE

Founded in 2000 and led by jazz drummer Brannen Temple, Blaze fashions new jazz with one foot in the classic bop world and the other firmly placed in the idiom’s future, mixing jazz with funk, R&B, hip-hop, electronica, and blues. The quintet – Philippe Vieux (tenor and baritone sax), Yoggie Musgrove (bass), NickNack (turntables), Ephraim Owens (trumpet), and Temple (drums and sampler) – incorporates the wisdom of the group’s history, band members having worked with Chaka Khan, Me’shell NDegeOcello, Horace Silver, Karl Denson, Eric B. & Rakim, Eddie Palmieri, and Jody Watley, among others.

Graham Reynolds + Butcher Bear

Austin, Texas based composer-bandleader Graham Reynolds creates, performs, and records music for film, theater, dance, rock clubs, and concert halls with collaborators ranging from Richard Linklater to DJ Spooky to the Austin Symphony Orchestra.  As bandleader of the jazz-based but far reaching Golden Arm Trio, Reynolds has repeatedly toured the country and released three critically acclaimed albums.

As Co-Artistic Director of Golden Hornet Project with Peter Stopschinski, Reynolds has produced more than fifty concerts of world-premier alt-classical music by more than sixty composers, as well as five symphonies, two concertos and countless chamber pieces of his own.  Reynolds music has been heard throughout the world on TV, on stage, in films, and on radio, from HBO to Showtime, Cannes Film Festival to the Kennedy Center, and BBC to NPR.

For Austin Remixed, Reynolds will collaborate with Ben Webster—otherwise known as Butcher Bear—a local electronic musician, founder of Austin’s (iN)Sect Records, and co-creator of Exploded Drawing, a monthly showcase of beat music from Texas and beyond. Butcher Bear’s punk rock past inspires his music as well as the DIY nature of the local electronic scene.

Soundfounder + Hard Proof horns

Andrew Brown organizes Exploded Drawing, a performance series that aims to stimulate conversation among electronic artists and listeners. Brown also performs as Soundfounder, and will collaborate with the horn section of Hard Proof for Austin Remixed. Locally produced and internationally-inspired, Hard Proof is an Austin-based collective that brings Afrobeats to the state of Texas. Hard Proof tightly fuses sounds from sub-Saharan Africa with adventurous jazz and deep funk. Members of Hard Proof also perform with bands such as Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears, Ocote Soul Sounds, Echocentrics, The Calm Blue Sea, and Cougar.

Roger Sellers

Roger Sellers plays guitar, banjo, mandolin, bass, bells, organ, piano, and drums. He describes his music this way: “Imagine folk-dance-americana-electric-symphonic fusion, where Philip Glass, Sufjan Stevens, and Joanna Newsom all groove to late night ambient house music in George Martin’s living room.” With two self-produced albums under his belt at the young age of 24, Roger Sellers’ songs attest to the skill of his musical training and his confidence as a master of recording. His newest release, Moments (2011), is out and available, as well as his first album, Roger Sellers (2010).