Mikael Jorgensen, Greg O'Keeffe & friends.
Posts tagged Pronto
Wrapping up 2010
Dec 31st
With a bit of sadness, but mostly excited liberation, we packed up the ProntoLabs this week and placed it in storage for a few month hiatus. The chilly, crappy, sweaty, noisy, complainy confines of our facility on Prince Street in Brooklyn, finally became too much to bear. A new studio situation is developing and I’ll have more to say on that when there’s more to say. In the meantime, here are a pair of videos from the last couple of days.
Timelapse of packing up:
The End Of Prince Street 2010:
Happy New Year!
Pronto Daytrotter Session
Oct 26th
In the fall of 2009, Chris Girard, Tunde Oyewole, Greg O’Keeffe & I recorded some songs for the wonderful people at Daytrotter. You can take a listen here.
Next stop: Solid Sound Festival – August 13-15, 2010
Jul 13th
The Solid Sound Festival is a 3-day Wilco curated music, comedy and arts festival being held at Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA, August 13-15th. The lineup includes:
- Pronto
- Wilco
- Mavis Staples
- Nels Cline
- Autumn Defense
- On Fillmore
- Avi Buffalo
- The Books
- Brenda
- Vetiver
- Deep Blue Organ Trio
- Sir Richard Bishop
- Mountain Man
- Outrageous Cherry
- Jeff Tweedy solo
- Numero Group DJs
- A comedy cabaret including Todd Barry, Kristen Schaal, Hannibal Buress, and John Mulaney
- A Video installation by Cassandra C. Jones
- Plus a steaming piles of amazingness
Say It All Night – Amonyeh Remix
Jul 3rd
A remix I did for the song “Say It All Night” off of the Pronto record All Is Golden.
Pronto to perform at Solid Sound Festival 2010
May 13th
We have been asked to perform at this years Wilco curated Solid Sound Festival, August 13-15th, in North Adams, MA at the enchantingly Willy-Wonka-esque Mass MoCA complex. It’s going to be an wicked awesome weekend of music, art and comedy.
Artists confirmed so far, ‘sides us:
- Wilco
- Mavis Staples
- Autumn Defense
- On Fillmore
- Nels Cline Singers
- Vetiver
- Avi Buffalo
- Sir Richard Bishop
- The Mountain Men
- Brenda
- The Books
- Deep Blue Organ Trio
- Bread And Puppet
- Todd Barry
- Hannibal Burres
- John Mulaney
- Kristen Schaal
Tickets are available HERE
More love from BoingBoing.net for both Pronto & Wilco!
Mar 8th
Xeni lets us in on her recent visit to Amoeba Records in Los Angeles, CA. Some clarification is needed however: the Pronto record she’s describing is “The Cheetah,” which is our glitchy, computery one, while the record she’s holding is “All Is Golden,” which is our 70′s pop rock one. Here’s more:
“Amoeba Records is one of the world’s greatest independent record stores, with many thousands of square feet of new and used vinyl, CDs, DVDs, and assorted rarities in film and music. They’re in SF, Berkeley, and Hollywood. The kinds folks who run the joint invited me in to pick a handful of items I’m excited about, and the video that resulted is embedded above. I chose:
• The incredible Alan Lomax in Haiti box-set (we’ll be blogging more about this one on BB soon!)
• Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias From Peru (a tip of the chapeau to Susannah Breslin, and to my brother DJ Carlito for turning me on to this one)
• N.A.S.A. “Spirit of Apollo” (we’ve premiered a number of the music videos from this project on Boing Boing Video)
• Q-Burns Abstract Message and Eighth Dimension Records (we’ve used snips from his work as theme music for Boing Boing’s audio podcast, and for our video project—I’m a longtime fan!)
• Wilco, “Wilco (The Album)” (I loved their latest record, and I believe they’re one of the greatest live acts on the planet.)
• Pronto, “All is Golden” (Wilco keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen‘s side project, glitchy electronic minimalism, I mispronounce his name horribly in this video… sorry Mikael!)
• Die Antwoord!
Amoeba Records: What’s in My Bag? / Xeni Jardin
The complete “What’s in My Bag” archives are here, with many interesting past guests.”
Blurt review of “All Is Golden”
Sep 11th
http://blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1452/
“Good songs shouldn’t be difficult to find, but they are. Instead, we focus on innovative recordings, cross-cultural meldings, grooves, and new technologies. More >
Pronto Fall 2009 – New Release, Videos, Tour & Merch
Sep 5th
Hi there.
We’ve been busy this summer and have some excellent things to tell you about.
Here goes…
NEW RELEASE: “THE CHEETAH”
Today, we of Pronto celebrate these glorious, wistful days with the release of a digital-only collection of instrumentals called “The Cheetah,” in three distinct downloadable flavors:
1 – “The Cheetah” music only version will be available through the Contraphonic web store & iTunes for only $8.99.
2 – “The Cheetah – Enhanced Version” includes five music videos created by Michael Lascarides available exclusively through the Contraphonic web store for $13.99.
3 – “All Is Golden + The Cheetah – Enhanced Version + Listen Lover video, (Live from The Mint in Los Angeles by Joe Grzeskowiak/Unitus Productions) – Deluxe Bundle” will also be exclusively available through the Contraphonic web store for $19.99.
“The Cheetah” has its origins in 2001 when Chris Girard and I were exploring the technological side of music at SOMA Electronic Music Studios, in Chicago, IL. Once we had a collection of songs, we decided to import Greg O’Keeffe from Brooklyn to play drums on it with Noel Kupersmith playing upright bass. We also asked Rob Mazurek to play cornet on a few of the songs, and from these sessions come the first eight tracks on “The Cheetah.”
The next song “Monster,” was an began with a simple chord pounding relentlessly into oblivion with a neanderthal drum beat thickly layered with synthesizers. This is one of the rare tracks that doesn’t feature any other musicians on it, and my drumming during the coda indicates why this may or may not have been the best of ideas. Michael Lascarides has made a companion video for this song:
“Marsella Rambla,” “Soybot” and “rRan” are three songs that were coaxed almost completely from the computer. Using heroic doses of Cycling 74′s MAX/MSP, M, a Yamaha TX-816, and a Nord MicroModular we crafted and coded our way through to gurgly warm vundersounds.
MIDWEST / EAST COAST TOUR
Also today, Chris Girard and I embark on a week long tour supporting The Fruit Bats, beginning in Nasvhille, TN at the esteemed Exit/In:
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- 09/08 – Nashville, TN – Exit/In
- 09/09 – Knoxville, TN – Square Room
- 09/10 – Chapel Hill, NC – Local 506
- 09/11 – Washington, DC – The Black Cat
- 09/12 – Philadelphia, PA – Kung Fu Necktie
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Upon our return from this first leg, the entire band – Chris, Greg O’Keeffe, Tunde Oyewole & myself, will make our way through the mid-west, concluding this round of touring with a show at Union Hall in Brooklyn, NY:
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- 09/15 – Pittsburgh, PA – Brillobox
- 09/16 – Louisville, KY – Zanzabar
- 09/17 – Memphis, TN – Levitt Shell
- 09/18 – Rock Island, IL – Rock Island Brewing Company
- 09/19 – Madison, WI – Forward Music Festival
- 09/20 – Chicago, IL – Rainbo Club [ free show ]
- 09/23 – Brooklyn, NY – Union Hall
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Please check our Shows page for more info.
MERCHANDISE
We’ll have the ever popular “Norwegian Sweater” t-shirts, All Is Golden CD’s and Posters, Movere Workshop 12″vinyl, and handsome download vouchers for “The Cheetah” available for purchase on the upcoming tour. Come say hello at the merch booth.
PRONTO ON INTERNETS
We are on Facebook, Twitter and myspace. Please join the fun and stay tuned for more suprises.
I’m looking forward to seeing some of your lovely faces out on tour this month.
-Mikael
“MONSTER” video by Michael Lascarides
Sep 1st
Says Michael:
“The first single from Pronto’s forthcoming album “The Cheetah”, available Sept 8th, 2009 from Contraphonic Records contraphonic.com. Read up on Pronto at prontosphere.com. They’re good chaps.
For those who are curious, this video was pretty much coded from scratch using the Ruby programming language (with just a little Illustrator and QuickTime to tie things together). No animation software was used in its construction.”
For more info on Michael and his generative ways, please visit technofetish.com.