Made By Robot

Chemtrails the 3rd full length studio release from Made By Robot is now available on bandcamp. Released on Monday May 23rd 2011. Shortly after that it will go live on iTunes and Amazon internationally. The bandcamp release has free streaming and is only $3 to download. This release has been a long time coming, the last 12 months has seen it’s fair share of distractions and sideline pet projects that always seemed to get in the way of focusing on this release.

I’ve been told (and I tend to agree) that the style is a lot more upbeat that previous releases, that said I think there is still a good amount of sad sounding synth drones and crushed up beats to please fans of Penguins. I really hope people like it, it’s material that was put together over about 6month of time, I went back and weeded out everything I didn’t like at the end (I have enough material for 2 or 3 out takes albums (why don’t people release those for free, hmmmm). If you do enjoy it, please let me know, it makes all these hours worth so much more. if you want to review the album and don’t want to spend the $3, also drop me a line, I will be very happy to hook you up with a free download (really same goes for anyone, I’d rather you listened to it and enjoyed it than paid me, so if you need a hook up, let me know). Email me at jp@madebyrobot.com or drop me a line on twitter @madebyrobot thanks for your time, I really do appreciate it.

[PS025] Various Artists – Number Stations part II by PublicSpacesLab

Once again, I’m honored to have been given the chance to curate another Number Stations compilation for PublicSpaces Lab – Number Stations Part 2. Gathering together a collection of international artists, old and  new and faces a like. Again the one remit, make music with samples taken from the mysterious and compelling number stations phenomena. Strange shortwave recordings of unexplained voices, beeps and clicks that are often attributed government agency communications with secret agents. Many of the recordings are from the height of the cold war. The challenge is to take these hissing, crackling, pitch twitching sounds and wrestle them into something musical. It was a challenge that was accepted with delight by 12 artists, who I am proud to say make up the Number Stations Part 2 release. Number Stations Part 1 is also available on PublicSpaces Lab.

Back in December I announced I was curating a new project, today I can announce that Part 2 of the Number Stations Compilation Series will be released on Friday 25th March on PublicSpaces Lab. We’re all very excited with this new release, there are a couple of artists from the first compilation, but in the main this is a new batch of musicians with their own interpretations of the Number Stations phenomena.  13 tracks from 13 international artists, all available free to download under a creative commons license.  It’s been a remarkably smooth project this time round, which I have to blame entirely on the artists I’ve had the pleasure to work with (99% of them had their submissions to me ahead of schedule, if you can believe that).  I hope to work with them all in the future of other projects.

I’ve been sampling a lot of electronic items, they have especially great sounds when turned on and off, planning on using then extensively as drum based samples in the upcoming album.  More soon…

[PS015] VA – Number Stations by PublicSpacesLab

Very excited to have been a part of this project as curator and contributor. Head on over to Public Spaces and download the entire album in MP3 and Flac format. If you like the tracks check out the artists other work and maybe buy some more of it, support them so they can make some more. In the mean time Numbers Stations is freely available under Creative Commons license. We hope you enjoy it.

An interpretive video project. The idea is to take a long segment of video, something abstract and nondescript and add a sound track. The result is an ambient drone, that mumbles along with the content that appears on the screen. Due to the somewhat constant speed of travel the video was taken at there is some sense of timing to some of the elements, other elements are totally random.

This is the first in a series of 3 videos I’m working on.

The music track is available for download free:

soundcloud.com/​madebyrobot/​the-colorado-project

The Colorado Project Part 1 by madebyrobot

http://soundcloud.com/madebyrobot/the-colorado-project/download.aif

Quick video for the Numbers Stations compilation that I’m curating for lab.pubspaces.com​ netlabel, due out free January 15th 2010.

This is my track, from the album Penguins, available on iTunes, or madebyrobot.bandcamp.com

Thursday Afternoons (Swaying Smoke Remix) by madebyrobot

I was deeply honored when James Lowery (Swaying Smoke) contacted me to let me know he’d been working on a remix of Thursday Afternoon the opening track on Penguins (link to iTunes). I was even happier when I heard his mix, which I think paints a nice spin on the original. Many thanks James.

And don’t forget if you’re interested in working on a mix or a totally new track using the raw stems, they are all available on my Band Camp site, just let me know what you do with them.

I have released the 8 stems from Thursday Afternoons the first track on Penguins.

They are up on my bandcamp site. I’m releasing them as I did the entire album under CC-NC-A license, and I’m hoping some will take on the challenge and remix them to oblivion. If you have any questions whilst remixing don’t hesitate to ask. If I get enough volume of remixes I’ll put together a little compilation and and maybe see if I can get a netlabel to release it free.

If you make a remix, please let me know how it comes out, I’d love to hear what people do with the stems and if I get enough feedback I’ll be sure to put them together and make them available as a free download on my bankcamp site.

If you need an easy way to send the tracks to me, just use my soundcloud drop box:

Send me your track

Penguins – 2009 – 09-00020

Thursday Afternoons – US-5N8-09-00021
Boiled Alive – US-5N8-09-00022
Code Name Hangman – US-5N8-09-00023
No Love Lost – US-5N8-09-00024
Ethics – US-5N8-09-00025
Or Be He Dead – US-5N8-09-00026
Our Man In Havana – US-5N8-09-00027
Spoilt Kill – US-5N8-09-00028
Triple Fugue – US-5N8-09-00029
Worst Journey in the World pt. 1 – US-5N8-09-00030
Well Full of Leaves – US-5N8-09-00031
Worst Journey in the World pt. 2 – US-5N8-09-00032
As We Were – US-5N8-09-00033
10-13 – US-5N8-09-00034

Available From:

iTunes
Name Your Price Digital Download

I’ve been bouncing around on twitter for a long time the idea of getting together 10-12 tracks featuring electronic musicians interpretations of so called Number Station samples.

Number Stations if you are unfamiliar are shortwave radio stations that broadcast strange and cryptic content, often ordered or seemingly random series of numbers repeated over and over again. Other stations played weird music, and other still just repeated tones over an over. They were all the rage back in the Coldwar era and are often thought to have been spying agencies means of communication.

Probably the most famous Number Station sample is from the Wilco album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, partly due to the album being named after it but maybe more so because it lead to complex legal wrangles over who “owned” the recording, eventually settled out of court.

The most authoritative collection of Numbers Stations recordings is the Conet Project by Irdial Records, who make available the entire collection under their Free Music Philosophy. There are also plenty of other places online to find other samples that can be used in recordings as samples (my so called 3 note oddity used in my track comes from this very informative site).

So now you have the background, here’s my idea. I’d like to get 10-15 tracks together, and release them through an established netlabel free. My current netlabel of choice is the Barcelona based Public Spaces Lab (I’ve contacted them and they seem very interested).

If you are an electronic musician, of any flavor and would like to make a piece that heavily uses samples taken from Number Stations recordings and then make it publically available for nothing, either drop me an email mail at madebyrobot dot com, or leave a comment below and drop me a message on twitter @madebyrobot.

I’ll keep a running list here of people who have expressed interest in contributing:

- Made By Robot
- Kieron James
- Ambienteer (James Fahy)
- FixateMusic
- Svanbommel
- Mrbitterness
- I Am Genko
- Battery Collection
- % (aka Owner Operator)
- Martin Backes
- Weather Balloons (Dave Barber)
- Oicho

For anyone interested in submitting and those who already have listed above, I will need the following for Public Spaces Lab at some point:

What we need from you is the following:
Every artist involved in the release, including yourself should provide us with:
1. Small Bio (300 words max)
2. High Resolution Photo

All artists have to agree to being released under a Creative Commons License 3.0 Unported by-nc-nd.

I have setup my soundcloud drop box for submissions, if you have a soundcloud account you can just keep the track private and share it with me that would be great.

http://soundcloud.com/madebyrobot/dropbox/

Summerless Part 1 by Madebyrobot on Mixcloud

summerless pt1 – on mixcloud

I was very excited this morning to notice that Made By Robot is now available through the iTunes music store. I still have some tweaking that’s needed on the Binary Album (it appears as a partial album), but all the tracks are available for purchase now there.

Made By Robot – Spoilt

Made by Robot – Binary

Code Name Hangman – Made By Robot

[audio: http://madebyrobot.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Code-Name-Hangman.mp3]

Something from the new album which is tentatively being called Penguin. There are some interesting ideas being thrown about for this release, including the possibility of limited run vinyl, but I need to see how the final thing works out. Hope you enjoy this sneak peek, this is one of the tracks that might not make it onto the album, but you never know.