Unison S100 soprano sax with a Selmer S-80 C* mouthpiece, Rovner ligature and Francois Louis 3 reeds
Holton Colligiate alto with a Meyer 6 hard rubber mouthpiece, Rico H-ligature and Vandoren JAVA 2 reeds.
Buescher True Tone "C-Melody", with a Selmer Scroll Shank mouthpiece, Selmer ligature and Vandoren JAVA 2 reeds.
MacBook with
Ableton Live Logic Pro, and Garageband. Line 6 DL4, DigiTech Multi-Play, Boss SE-50, Kawai K4, Roland VK-7, E-mu Classic Keys, Korg M4r, Korg Kaos, Korg Kaosillator, xaphoon, bombarde, kalimba, and lots of found objects
Influences
Louis & Bebe Barron, Jane Ira Bloom, John Cage, Captain Beefheart, George Clinton, Lol Coxhill, Ron Geesin, Pierre Henry, King Crimson, Roland Kirk, Steve Lacy, Cliff Martinez, Thelonious Monk, Conlon Nancarrow, Sam Newsome, Pink Floyd, Krsystof Penderecki, Harry Partch, Roger Ruskin Spear, Soft Machine, Soulive, Karlhienz Stockhausen, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Raymond Scott, Weather Report, Robert Wyatt, Iannis Xenakis, Frank Zappa, Joe Zawinul
Sounds Like
Me.
But really, you're going to have to find out for yourself. You wouldn't find my CDs at the mall or Walmart. You'll have to "step outside the box".
I'll spend hours working on loops and mix those sounds with recordings made in the field. Sometimes, we record performances and then cut them up and mix those sounds with things patches and loops to create completely different sounds.
Ambient, electronic, experimental. A combination of studio, live, and field recordings. Abstract electronics and free jazz.
UEM: Code
Improvisations with acoustic (voice, percussion) and electronic (synth, laptop, circuit bent toys) instruments. Featuring Jilli Dart and Andy Sykora. Recorded live at Dangerous Curve, LA.
WILLIAM C HARRINGTON: UEM Live
Experimental sample based electronic art music with beats and and acoustic improvs performed live. Featuring Jilli Dart.
WILLIAM C HARRINGTON: Urban Electronic Music
Urban Electronic Music was constructed using loops recorded over a 30-year period, analog and digital synthesis, as well as traditional instruments and found objects.
SEVERAL MOUTH PARTS: The Mind is The Body
Trapped in the belly of the LA's underground, Several Mouthparts was a Garage / Jam band that performed around the LA area in the early 70's. This live recording was recently discovered in a vault and is the only document of this historic band.
Album Review Your Imaginary Friend Reviewed 2008-05-26
Appropriately named, this guy delves into noisier aspects of drone and collage than his previous works. Lots of collage of random tones and percussive hits, seemingly academic styled avante, but then he lets loose with the full on drone/noise that he is so great at. Don't ignore this one!
1) drone soundbed to rather harsh'isms, grating tones, and "electronic" tones join in
2) random percussive noises, tones
3) a great musical drone, swirls about, great
4) seemingly random tones, percussive, sparse
5) good harsh electronic noise, droney, harsh but not gratuitous
6) looped noise, messed up, samples, collage organic and crazy
7) loopy noise
8) a fantastic noisey looping drone, with a long slow fade-out towards the end which is actually with about 1 minute left so BE CAREFUL with that ending
Track Listing
1. Even Thin Galaxies Can Grow Fat
2. Kl
3. Arps!
4. The Tcotchke
5. Blast
6. Aingst
7. Wisp O' The Will
8. Noise Noise
Keyboard tech for Gentle Giant and Zappa, briefly appearing in the Baby Snakes vid, this guy has street cred and his third release was mastered by Scott Fraser, who issued the impressive Natural Histories before working with Kronos Quartet. Merely by those facts, though, the CD mightn’t be what you’d expect. A cross between Craig Leon, John Wiggins, Conrad Schnitzler, and Bill Nelson’s later output, the disc is a cross-blend of pastiches, noodling, and melodic miniatures with no narrative threadline nor even a seeming wisp of intent but plenty of aesthetic pleasures, from stripped obliquities (“Syd”) to a Riley-esque Arabian mosaic (“Rajilli: They Have the Bomb Too”) to loopy experiments (“The Long Descent”). The rather abrupt shifts in setting can be a trifle disconcerting, but one can’t help but feel it was part of the plan, instilling an intermittent sense of sensory alienation and dislocation. Synths comprise the majority or voices but Harrington also plays sax and guitar while inviting several guests in. The longest of the 15 cuts are just seconds over five minutes but “The finally Did It” and several others prick the desire for much lengthier extrapolations. Nothing is demanding but repeated listens begin to unfold subtleties not immediately graspable. However, don’t invite the neighbors over for the sound test, as they mightn’t understand, never having quite understood why you insisted on blasting the soundtrack to Forbidden Planet at midnight last week. Mark S. Tucker
Signal To Noise issue 47 : fall 2007..
It’s late at night, or early in the morning, not that you care. The streets stink, but it’s a familiar stink of food and oil and, most of all, people. You’re sitting on the curb, not because you’re drunk, but because your feet hurt. You walked off the last of your drink a few miles back, and now your feet aren’t so sure it was a good ides to not wait the 40 minutes until the next bus came by, but your head and heart are still certain of that decision.
A couple walks by, their conversation not stopping, their eyes pointed at each other, although you know they are watching you, just as you are watching them.
There is a certain rhythm to the city, a mesh of sound and noise that plays as the soundtrack to the daily drama of urban life. It is an elusive rhythm, usually unnoticed except in those rare moments of relative quiet in which one has the chance to reflect. Perhaps it is incorrect to call it a rhythm, it is more of a genre, an organic, unbidden genre. William C. Harrington issues forth this credible effort at an album in that genre. At first listen it seems like an eccentric electronic music album, but repeated listens evoke more and more of the cityscape, as not the sounds, but the patterns they form evoke that peculiar soundscape unique to the city and shared by cities the world over.
You can, of course, just listen to it as an electronic music album, and that works, too, especially given the un-urbanesque track names, although the music will take many inexplicable twists and turns, but that, too, is good music. Either way, relax, breathe deeply, accept the music, and hear what it has to say to you.
Reviewed by loun on March 21, 2007 at 4:25 pm KFJC 89.7 FM
Los Altos Hills, California..
William C. Harrington was born in Yonkers, New York. While he was a sophomore in high school, he was working as a professional musician playing parties, roller-skating rinks dances, and more. At Cal State U Dominguez Hills, he studied composition, performance, and electronic music with Richard B. Evans, author of the classic book on John Cage, "The Well Prepared Piano". He was also influenced by seminars with several composers including Nicholas Slominsky. After leaving college he worked in the wholesale record industry for two years before going on tour. He worked as a keyboard technician for several bands, including Gentle Giant, before beginning a three year working relationship with Frank Zappa. (This included three America tours, two European tours, spending several months in the studio working on the album "Baby Snakes" and making a brief, credited appearance in Zappa's movie, "Baby Snakes"). He was with Zappa in Paris when Pierre Boulez first visited.
Crush All Boxes Tour 1980
Upon returning to LA, he attended the UCLA Extention Music Business course where he was awarded two NARAS scholarships. He studied record production with Nick Venet (producer of The Beach Boys, Creedence Clearwater and many others).
His first two CDs, Urban Electronic Music, and UEM Live have received good reviews and airplay on NPR, college and indie radio stations. In 2006 The American Composers Forum awarded him a SUBITO grant to help defer the cost of his third studio CD, Nuclear Menace which is currently getting airplay and was reviewed in the fall/2007 issue of Signal
to Noise Magazine.
UEM with Jasmine Orpilla at The Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood 2009
UEM Mature Themed Exhibition 2008
UEM with Seth Kesselman (Warm Climate) perform improvised music as part of an experimental series 2007
You can also download any track from iTunes by click the links below
Experimental artist William C Harrington hails from Yonkers, NYC. University trained in composition, performance, electronic & prepared piano techniques, Harrington has also worked with Frank Zappa. “Urban Electronic Music” is his first full length outing – constructed from his 30-year-old archive of analogue, digital, traditional & found sounds - & comprises 14-cuts of avant-garde trickery & experimentalism. Atmospheric & compelling, “Urban Electronic Music” is an art riot from top to tail. Harrington augments the electronics with sax, guitar, bugles & bells that shimmer in & out of the mix. Intelligent design! Those of you with a healthy interest in this kind of gear would be well advised to pop along to the link below & make your own mind up as to how you’d attempt to describe it to others. Dancing to architecture, indeed! ..
"I’m not what you’d call a “big-city” person. So when the Angry Vegan Records release “Urban Electronic Music” by William C. Harrington arrived, you’ll have to understand that the title didn’t conjure a whole lot of positive images for me. In my limited experience, “urban” is too many people, too little privacy, not enough green– all the best excuses to live somewhere less intense. “Urban” is somewhere I’d visit, but wouldn’t want to stay...
If Harrington’s intent is to capture this feeling, I think he does it well. Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying the album quite a bit. It’s a fascinating trip to take! Like any good-sized city, Harrington has populated his album with a diverse set of voices– Arp 2600, E-mu Classic, and VK-7 keys clamor for attention alongside bowed guitar, cell phones, loops, saxophone, salad bowls, and a host of other unlikely objects. Within many tracks, like “I Slept Through Vespers” or “Cuckoo to You,” distinct sound events play a lesser role; with more of a blended, futuristic, electroacoustic feel. However, some tracks, like “One for Nick,” sound dated– I had some similar synth percussion presets on my old Casio– but isn’t part of the “urban” experience the contrast and layering of old and new? Would a city like St. Louis or Chicago (or Memphis!) retain any of its flavor if it stayed “updated” all the time? Oddly enough; one track on the album, “Enola Gay,” really is dated– 1973, to be precise– but fits so well you won’t suspect a thing...
“Remnants” seems to best reflect this layering, with Harrington providing a real hubbub of activity. This track best reflects the vibrant “aliveness” present in a city like New York, where the pattern and activity of the city itself seems to take on a life of its own. For a one-man album (composed, realized, produced, and engineered by Harrington) it’s a marvelous accomplishment."..
The artist uses a wide range of tools to create this sonic reality. Of course there's the ROLAND and ARP but also we get soprano sax, electric guitars, glass salad bowls, bells, a bugle, vocalizations, and more.
To me the album is beyond electronic--it is experimental, avant-garde, and artsy in places. Harrington explores various themes, sounds, moods, and does some strange musical combinations. Oh sure some of this stuff has been done before but WH brings his own style and approach to the project. Those that like electronic, experimental, and more might want to give this a listen. Interesting listening.
Copyright 2006 A. Canales - The Critical Review..
Exactly as I expected from this fine work from William C. Harrington. Not that it was predictable, it was not, but because I enjoyed Bill's performance at Electro Music 2006 and knew about his electronic music composing styles. I had to purchase his latest release!..
U.E.M. is a nice mix of electronic sound, sampled/treated glass bowls, cell phones, and many other suprises! A expert weave of electronic sound and samples.
..
..Well done Bill ......
..Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!]..
..electro-music.com..
This CD is beyond brilliant...words fail to express the level of genius present on this album. It is a rich, gorgeously textured, dynamic experience...
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