Ernst Karel
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sesamecircuits.bsky.social
Ernst Karel
@sesamecircuits.bsky.social
730 followers 850 following 340 posts
electroacoustic noise / sonic ethnography / Expedition Content (w Veronika Kusumaryati, 2020); 47 Gates (w Bhob Rainey, Erstwhile Records 2024) / Local Locations (KWMR) / https://ek.klingt.org
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sesamecircuits.bsky.social
KWMR community radio
@kwmrradio.bsky.social
kwmr.org/shows/local-...
October 19, 2025 at 7:06 PM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
Ava Koohbor performing on modular electronics with resonating metal plate that says "NO WAR ON IRAN"
June 22, 2025 at 2:26 AM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
Resonating plate by Ava Koohbor, used in performance on 19 June 2025 in San Francisco
Text on a metal plate suspended on a wooden frame: NO WAR ON IRAN
June 22, 2025 at 2:07 AM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
Ava Koohbor soundchecking
NO WAR WITH IRAN
June 20, 2025 at 1:28 AM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
Sven-Åke Johansson, 2005
framed pencil drawing of Grundig shortwave radio, made from memory by Sven-Åke Johansson, 2005
June 15, 2025 at 11:25 PM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
a dog and me, both looking slightly off to the left
May 6, 2025 at 11:31 PM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
at CNMAT in Berkeley this Sunday 27 April, presenting a multichannel version of a piece from 47 Gates by me and Bhob Rainey @mphonic.bsky.social
photoshopped book cover: THE ART OF ELECTRONICS. Nathan Corder, Eric Frye, Michale Masaru Flora, Ernst Karel, Madalyn Merkey, Connor Tomaka. 1750 Arch St, Berkeley CA CNMAT April 27th 2025, 8:30pm, $20
April 24, 2025 at 5:38 PM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
@obsoletesony.bsky.social
seen on local Nextdoor:
Sony SL-HFT7 Super Beta Hi-Fi Betamax Video Cassette Recorder
Powers on, untested
$100
photo from local Nextdoor: front view of Sony SL-HFT7 Super Beta Hi-Fi Betamax Video Cassette Recorder
April 14, 2025 at 1:06 AM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
spotted recently (Taoist Inner Alchemy: Master Huang Yuanji's Guide to the Way of Meditation, Ge Guolong, translated by Mattias Daly, Shambhala: 2024):
cover page of book: TAOIST INNER ALCHEMY: Master Huang Yuanji's Guide to the Way of Meditation, Ge Guolong, translated by Mattias Daly, Shambhala: 2024 from translator’s introduction: "I am grateful for the many nameless contributors to digital databases such as CBETA, CText, Daoinfo, Home in Mists, Kanseki Repository, Taolibrary, and Wikisource, as well as the...” from translator’s introduction: “… Having said that, I hasten to add that absolutely no AI or machine-assisted translation was used in the creation of this book."
March 8, 2025 at 4:33 PM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
I’ve loved his music since I first heard it in 1993 — couldn’t believe how fortunate I was to hear him in concert in Boston in 2013. U
U Srinivas live in concert Mandolin by Padmasri U. Shrinivas with U. Rajesh Mridangam - Madirimangalam Swaminathan Ghatam - Trichy K. Murali
February 17, 2025 at 2:58 AM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
L. Shankar playing the stereophonic double violin he invented (known as the L. Shankar Double violin, or LSD)
January 13, 2025 at 3:35 AM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
@mphonic.bsky.social @erstwhile.bsky.social
Ernst Karel/Bhob Rainey, 47 Gates (Erstwhile) Two very different types of equally rigorous and inventive sound explorers spent nine years forging this rich hybrid of musique concrete, electronics, static-stained samples, and austere chamber music. A kaleidoscopic assortment of source materials were sculpted, re-shaped, and poured into a single chord occupied by a 96-tone octave, but that harmonic wonder is subservient to the dynamic, deeply cinematic composition, where divergent elements and timescales are deployed in mind-boggling arrangements. There’s an increasing amount of work being produced today that engages vaguely similar notions, but the sophisticated palettes and formal boldness of Ernst Karel and Bhob Rainey provides an object lesson on what electro-acoustic music can be in 2024.
January 8, 2025 at 6:45 PM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
EKG-SF with Cheryl E. Leonard in Oakland CA
EKG, Cheryl E. Leonard, Sarah Grace Graves, Eda Er, Tsviling. Beauty Supply Arts 12/9/24 8pm Oakland CA
December 3, 2024 at 10:29 PM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
ECHO LAB
October 19, 2024 at 5:03 AM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
god waffle noise pancakes

pulsating cyst
mod life crisis (thomas demuzio/wobbly)
EKG (kyle bruckmann/ernst karel)
amphibious gestures
@birdspanker.bsky.social

Center for New Music, 55 Taylor St SF
12 noon sharp
free vegan pancakes with entrance fee
Saturday 12 Oct 2024
god waffle noise pancakes pulsating cyst mod life crisis (thomas demuzio/wobbly) EKG (kyle bruckmann/ernst karel) amphibious gestures birdspanker Center for New Music, 55 Taylor St SF 12 noon sharp free vegan pancakes with entrance fee Saturday 12 Oct 2024
October 2, 2024 at 7:20 PM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
October 2, 2024 at 1:51 AM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
October 2, 2024 at 1:50 AM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
October 12th at Center for New Music, San Francisco. 12 noon. Sets by EKG (Kyle Bruckmann & Ernst Karel) and others. Free vegan pancakes
GOD WAFFLE NOISE PANCAKES
September 28, 2024 at 10:51 PM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
Erstwhile Records @erstwhile.bsky.social 2024 releases so far:
four record covers in a 2x2 grid: clockwise, back of envelope on wooden table, something metallic, a satellite photo of a coastline with a green box drawn on top, and a piano soundboard sitting on gravel and leaning against a wall
September 28, 2024 at 9:19 PM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
"Their concerns were mostly economic" LOL
August 24, 2024 at 8:06 PM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
Steven Feld, ‘The Sound World of Bosavi’, www.aeinews.org/aeiarchive/e...
I analyzed these sorts of issues to write an ethnography of sound, Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expression, 1982, University of Pennsylvania Press; expanded second edition, l990). The book concerns the Kaluli world of birds, myth, and cosmology and how they are united with poetry, song and lament. My interpretation showed how Bosavi birds turn into Kaluli singers and weepers, how Kaluli singers and weepers turn into Bosavi birds, and how all of this is a local ecology of "voices in the forest". It wasn't until the early 1980's, when most of this research and writing was initially done, that I encountered R. Murray Schafer's The Tuning of the World (1977, Knopf) and the 1970s publications of the World Soundscape Project. I was teaching courses on sound at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, and I found these publications very exciting. They opened new windows into a familiar world, making it possible to rethink So
August 9, 2024 at 6:31 PM
sesamecircuits.bsky.social
Feld’s “acoustemology” does not “extend the idea of the soundscape”. It does not presuppose the idea of “soundscape” and indeed Feld and others are highly critical of it:
Acoustemology likewise writes with but against "soundscape," the key legacy term associated with Schafer and particularly his debt to the theories of Marshall McLuhan (Kelman 2010). Against "soundscapes," acoustemology refuses to sonically analogize or appropriate "landscape," with all its physical distance from agency and perception. Likewise it refuses to replace visualist ocularcentrism with sonocentrism as any sort of determining force of essentialist sensory master plans. Acoustemology joins critiques and alternatives offered by Tim Ingold (2007) and Stefan Helmreich (2010) in recent essays deconstructing "soundscape." Along with their proposals, acoustemology favors inquiry that centralizes situated listening in engagements with place and space-time. Acoustemology prioritizes histories of listening and attunement through the relational practices of listening and sounding and their reflexive productions of feedback.
August 9, 2024 at 2:27 AM