Ember Music Volume 1: Released 01/01/11

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As co-founder, curator, art director and artist for Ember Music, I am very proud to announce that our first official release, Ember Music – Volume 1, is now available on Bandcamp at http://embermusic.bandcamp.com.

The compilation features works by Murat Esmer, Carl Sagan’s Ghost, Known Rebel, Akisma, Kurt Lorenz, Mr. Sandbags, Saffron Slumber, Savaran, Nordmach, TraisKin, Slaphappy Mortician and MobiusB.

The album is available for purchase for $6.99 through Bandcamp with a full streaming preview available.

Ember Music Volume 1 will be available through iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, Spotify, and other digital stores in the coming weeks. We will also have a limited number of physical CDs available for sale in February 2011.

Love The Earth Film

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I am proud to announce that my short film "Bees" was hand selected by Grammy Award winning artist Imogen Heap to appear in her concert/film/dvd project Love the Earth. The film debuted at Royal Albert Hall on November 5th, 2010 and streamed live to more than 480,000 viewers. For more information about the project visit their website: http://www.lovetheearthfilm.org/

or watch this: 

 

Bees from Kurt Lorenz on Vimeo.

Sunday afternoon in my sunny Seattle garden. Listen close, slow-mo bee sounds and bird song, and plenty of slow-mo camera noise too! I was really planning on composing a nice haunting melody to go with these great visuals but the raw sound played back at 25% the original speed was just too cool to mess with.

Cardboard Houses Music Video

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I have just completed a music video project for Summer Rain Recordings artist IG88. The video is made with found footage from the Prelinger Collection at archive.org. Edited in FCE4.

"Cardboard Houses" by IG88 from Kurt Lorenz on Vimeo.

"Cardboard Houses" by IG88
Release Date: May 31st 2010

Catalog Number: SRR-075

IG88′s self titled EP is his debut release on Summer Rain. Beautiful, haunting melodies, occasional vocals, and glitched, elaborate beats bind to culminate in a blissful collection of tracks that inspire and soothe.

Visit http://www.summerrainrecordings.net

Video compiled and edited by Kurt Lorenz
http://www.kurtlorenz.com

Ember Music Podcast #1

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My most recent project is compiling and narrating a monthly podcast for my artist-run net label Ember Music. 

This is the first in a series of regular podcasts that will highlight Ember Music artists. In this episode, learn more about the background and creative processes of Savaran, MobiusB, Kurt Lorenz and Slaphappy Mortician and hear a track by each.

The podcast is currently available on Soundcloud but will also be available on iTunes soon.

Ember Music link: http://www.embermusic.com/2010/09/02/ember-music-podcast-1/
Soundcloud link: http://soundcloud.com/embermusic/ember-music-podcast-001

Ember Music Netlabel

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Ember Music logo and background by Kurt LorenzA few months ago I was having a discussion with a Twitter friend (MobiusB a.k.a Bill Bendrot) about the state of the music industry and trying to promote oneself in this web-centric culture. I was searching for a net label to help promote my music and Bill had some powerful insight. He had had some horrible experiences with net labels trying to steal publishing rights out from under him and thought that there had to be a better way. We decided to start an artist run netlabel that focuses on electronic composition and production. Ember Music was born.

Our goals are:

  • To bring exciting and dynamic electronic music to fans.
  • To build interaction and a sense of community between the artists and their fans as well as other artists.
  • To ensure that our artists are the ones that benefit and prosper from their labor. (Ember Music itself runs as a non-profit. Any proceeeds made go almost entirely to our artists).

We both hand picked 5-10 artists and asked them to participate... all of the responses were very enthusiastic.

We hope to expand the scope of the site to include visual art and physical goods as well as the music. Come to the site and don't forget to follow/fan/like us all over the web...

You can find Ember Music at these sites:

http://www.embermusic.com 

AMBIRE LINEARIS: FINALLY

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On May 14th I joined my good friend Daniel Davis on stage for the first-ever live show of his musical project Carl Sagan's Ghost. I created some amazing visuals to go with the performance... They're a little blown out in the performance video but if you hit play on both videos below you can see the performance and the visuals at the same time...

Carl Sagan's Ghost | Live at SPACE - 05-14-2010 from Kurt Lorenz on Vimeo.

 

Carl Sagan's Ghost Live Visuals | Live at SPACE - 05-14-2010-01h.31m.48s.25f from Kurt Lorenz on Vimeo.

AMBIRE LINEARIS: FINALLY - Live ambient showcase

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I will be joining my good friend Daniel Davis on stage as a member of Carl Sagan's Ghost for this Live ambient showcase:

Start Time:
 Friday, May 14, 2010 at 10:30pm
End Time:
 Saturday, May 15, 2010 at 4:00am
Location:
 SPACE Venue and Education Center

 

All good sagas are best left with an epic ending. This is the last chapter of our story weaving the last subtitles of the tale and leaving us with a wonderment and a sense of resolve. 


This event was planned from the beginning to go thru it's stages of development and end on the forth evening. We would be honored to have you at the last of the showcase, and help us end this saga with a climatic finish.

The plot thickens with ambient development by:

Gel Sol
Carl Sagan's Ghost (11:00pm)
Rich la Chapelle
Chiyona
Mary Gossard (live keyboard)

We will also be having some stellar live art by Jeremiah Hammer. Interesting edibles provided by Phi and Beck. More details will become clear as the story develops.

We look forward to seeing you there!

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=118259348187995&ref=ts

10 Seconds

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I am now 18 days into my latest project; 10 Seconds. The plan is to take 10 seconds of video everyday for 365 days. My hope is to learn more about the process of filming and color grading/post production. I am using a Canon T1i DSLR as my main video capture device and Adobe After Effects CS3 for most of my post processing. I'm posting daily to my vimeo account. Here are a few of my favorite clips so far...

10 Seconds 2010-03-07 from Kurt Lorenz on Vimeo.

 

10 Seconds 2010-03-12 from Kurt Lorenz on Vimeo.

 

10 Seconds 2010-03-13 from Kurt Lorenz on Vimeo.

The General Analysis of Nature EP (2010)

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I am proud to announce the release of my first official EP, "The General Analysis of Nature." This EP was conceived and recorded in 20 days as part of the RPM Challenge.  

Cover art by: Kurt Lorenz

<a href="http://kurtlorenz.bandcamp.com/album/the-general-analysis-of-nature-ep">Soliton by Kurt Lorenz</a>

CLICK DOWNLOAD in the player above for a free download of this album in your choice of 320k mp3, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire... 

Conceived and recorded between February 5, and February 25, 2010
Released by: Kurt Lorenz 
Release/catalogue number: KL|EP001 
Release date: Feb 25, 2010  
Cover art by: Kurt Lorenz

"The General Analysis of Nature" by Kurt Lorenz is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported


 

RPM Challenge 2010

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This is The Challenge - Record an album in 28 days, just because you can. That’s 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material recorded during the month of February. Go ahead… put it to tape.


It’s a little like National Novel Writing Month, (NaNoWriMo.org) where writers challenge each other to write 1,700 words a day for 30 days, or the great folks over at February Album Writing Month (fawm.org), who encourage artists to write 14 new songs in February. Maybe they don’t have “Grapes of Wrath” or “Abbey Road” at the end of the month, or maybe they do—but that’s not the point. The point is they get busy and stop waiting around for the muse to appear. Get the gears moving. Do something."

www.rpmchallenge.com 

 

SCHALLGUTnetlabel Team Member

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I am now the official Graphic Designer/Artist for SCHALLGUTnetlabel. The label is brand new (January 2010) and they are just celebrating their first release: #SLG001 | SOFA TUNES | WE GOT for which I created the artwork.

I am hard at work on the cover of the next release and it should be out around March 1, 2010.

I have started a set on my flickr page where I am storing images that their artists can browse through and pick out art for their releases...

 

USTREAM

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Over the last 6 months or so I have really been struggling with putting my live set together. For me the problem is how to make an Ableton Live laptop set "live" enough to be entertaining. I'm trying to run visuals through VDMX while playing my Ableton set as well... What I really needed was a way to practice live, without an actual audience staring at me. So of course the internet is the answer. Enter USTREAM (http://www.ustream.tv/) 

USTREAM gives me the ability to stream my live set and (with some 3rd party software) visuals. I can also record my broadcast and view/embed it. 

Below is a recording of my first live streaming set on USTREAM, follow me there: http://www.ustream.tv/kurtlrnz