[S05E06] December 2023 - Honey Bizarre


The December 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast features theremin music from Canada, Germany, Italy, Finland, and the USA. Host Rick Reid interviews Gilda Razani and Hanzō Wanning, members of the German duo Honey Bizarre.

FEATURED MUSIC*

  • "Sagittarius A-Star" - Stephen Hamm (Vancouver, BC, Canada)
  • "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" [Mozart] - Gilda Razani with Hanzō Wanning (Dortmund, Germany)
  • "Cosa Prova Una Scimmia Nello Spazi" - Vincenzo Vasi (Bologna, Italy)
  • "Suru" - Kepa Lehtinen (Helsinki, Finland)
  • "Silent Night" - Armen Ra (West Hollywood, CA, USA)

*The full-length recordings featured in this show were used with the knowledge and permission of the artists and composers. Please support the artists by visiting their websites, purchasing their recordings, and attending their performances. 

ADDITIONAL MUSIC

INTERVIEW GUEST

CALENDAR OF THEREMIN EVENTS

MEDIA LINKS

CONTACT

CREDITS 

Copyright 2023 Rick Reid 


--------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT

Please note: This transcript was created with the help of speech-to-text AI.  It may contain some errors.

David Brower  0:04  
This is Theremin 30. 30 minutes of theremin music news events and interviews with a new episode about every 30 days. Now here's your host from Denver, Colorado, USA, Rick Reid.

Rick Reid  0:19  
Hey, welcome to the December 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast. This month I've got music from the USA, Canada, Finland, Germany and Italy. And my interview guests are Hanzo vining and Gilda Rosani they'll be talking about their latest music project called Honey bizarre. Let's get going now with a groovy new single from Stephen ham that Theremin man here is his psychedelic sci fi themed track called Sagittarius A star.

We launched into the music with a spacey new track from Stephen ham called Sagittarius A star. It's the first single from a forthcoming album. You can see the music video performance of the song on the Theremin 30 YouTube playlist. And after that I played Hell's vengeance boils in my heart, better known as the Queen of the Night aria from Mozart's opera The Magic Flute, performed there by Gilda Rosani on Theramin with an orchestral backing track by Hanzo, Vining, Gilda and Hanzo are my interview guests this month and later in the show, I'll be visiting with them about their new music project called Honey bizarre. After the next break, I've got music from Vincenzo Vasi and from Kipper Liikanen. So stay tuned

I'm gonna stray from the usual format a little bit here to make room for extra music and interview time. There isn't much on that Theremin 30 calendar for the next few weeks to talk about so I'm skipping my usual calendar segment this month, but you can always see the calendar on the Theremin 30 website. If you have a Theramin related event you'd like me to put on the calendar send me a note with all the details you can reach me with the contact form at Theremin thirty.com Italian thereminist Vincenzo Vaci recently released a 10th anniversary remastered edition of his Roxio electrico album that's available for download or you can order a limited edition CD cassette or vinyl LP from his Bandcamp page. Here is the first track on the album. Cosa proba una schema and Ella I don't know how to say it. In English. It's called what a monkey feels in space.

We started that set with Vincenzo Vaci with what a monkey fields in space from the 10th anniversary edition of his rasio electrico or electric arm album. You may also know Vincenzo as part of an eclectic Italian duo called oppo Poyo. After that I played su or sadness from finished thereminist and film composer kept by lentinan you can watch the music video on the Theremin 30 YouTube playlist. Coming up later in the show I've got a Christmas classic from Armin raw. And after the break I'll visit with German duo honey bizarre so stay tuned.

Earlier in the show, we heard classical music from gilda Rosani and Hanzo Vani. They are also known for experimental jazz and for some fascinating purely electronic recordings. I spoke with them a few days ago about their current music project, honey bizarre. Gilda Razani and Hanzo Vani. Thank you so much for being on the Theremin 30 podcast.

Gilda Razani  16:24  
Thank you for having us.

Hanzo Wanning  16:25  
Yeah, thank you. So glad

Rick Reid  16:29  
I've played your music on the show over the last four years a few times. And one time it was released under your names. And one time it was bloody red roses. And another time. It was about Aphrodite. And now you've got a new band. Tell me how did the two of you get together? And why do you have all these different names?

Gilda Razani  16:51  
About Aphrodite is another band. We play there with the drama and Tani visa, it's new formation, this new song and a little bit more than bigger and more dreamy, 

Hanzo Wanning  17:08  
dreamy more.

Rick Reid  17:10  
For people that aren't familiar with you to introduce your part in the musical collaboration, What instruments do each of you play?

Gilda Razani  17:17  
I play of course, the Theremin. And I play also a saxophone and I play the arrow phone and I play the soma type. And of course, I like to make this electronic rules and noises and so on.

Rick Reid  17:34  
 And Hanzo How about you?

Hanzo Wanning  17:35  
I'm a classical and jazz piano player and composer. But since my youth I'm deep in electronic music of all parts of all sides. Also,

Rick Reid  17:44  
how did the two of you become musical collaborators?

Gilda Razani  17:51  
We met up in a bar and talk about music. And so after time, we started to make music together.

Rick Reid  18:01  
And how long have you been performing together and recording together?

Gilda Razani  18:04  
Oh, I think 15 years 

Hanzo Wanning  18:06  
15 years,

Gilda Razani  18:07  
15 years, Yeah. 

Rick Reid  18:09  
Wow. 

Gilda Razani  18:09  
We're married too.

Rick Reid  18:11  
Oh, well, that makes it convenient for rehearsing.

Hanzo Wanning  18:16  
With all the positives and negatives

Rick Reid  18:23  
did you become musical partners first, or did you get married first?

Gilda Razani  18:31  
No, we started the saxophone Piano Duo. And then after time we founded a band and so on and so on.

Rick Reid  18:39  
I really enjoy the variety of music that the two of you create bloody red roses in particular, which happened just before the COVID lockdown this wonderful, almost frightening electronic music that I would expect to hear in a horror film. 

Gilda Razani  18:55  
Yeah, bloody red roses is now Honey Bizarre.

Rick Reid  19:01  
And it's a very different sound. Now it still has its basis in electronics, but it has a sort of almost an ambient sound to it. It's almost an ambient I want to say jazz but that's not quite right. How do you describe honey? Bizarre?

Hanzo Wanning  19:14  
Yeah. It's quite difficult to describe because it has so many sides, but you're right. It has a strong ambient side of music in it. What would you say?

Gilda Razani  19:28  
Ambient side but also a dancing side to side and this is because the sentence is music for dancing and dreaming. The songs deepness Strange is more Indian and LeBrons game is more than that

Rick Reid  19:58  
what's your process for compose? Sing this wonderful music to start by improvising on your instruments or

Gilda Razani  20:05  
Yeah, at first, we improvise. And then we sew the material, and then we improvise again. There's some good ideas from the first improvisation. Yeah. And so after time after time, after time, we say, Okay, this is the main theme. And this is a good group. And then we make a composition.

Rick Reid  20:29  
Hanzo what would you add to that?

Hanzo Wanning  20:31  
The first step for me is that I'm looking for some electronical sounds, or soundscape, or electronic elements when I'm putting them together. So I'm in general able to improvise, because I always make a new kind of instruments. For me, just for the improvisation, it's, I need some preparation, before we can start. And with all the colors in my book, then we start sometimes one or two hours, then we listen to everything and fall asleep. And after we we listen once more. And sometimes we have only one little idea in this one hour, which we really like. But sometimes we also had an improvisation about 20 minutes, and we take the whole improvisation, just because they're also recording MIDI. I sent this MIDI data also two very different songs again, but we had this material in general, and we use it for nails, let's say 99%, with very, very different.

Rick Reid  21:33  
The Theremin draws attention to itself, both in concert and in recordings, because it's so different. So how do you balance out the Theremin with all the other instrument sounds you have available to you?

Hanzo Wanning  21:45  
Very often we are looking for some hot spots for the theremin. So it's not the instrument which you can listen to the whole time of the song. It's very nice to have some spots for

Rick Reid  21:57  
it. And then of course, Gilda you play other instruments. So you might choose a saxophone instead of a Theramin sometimes, 

Gilda Razani  22:03  
yes, but in Honey Bizarre, I do not play the saxophone I play is the arrow for I play. Also, there's so much anti but I play also from Holon it's called a will phone and it's like electronic. Saxophone, also with other sounds is the kinds of electronic saxophone.

Rick Reid  22:25  
You have several different theorems. I know you have Mogae and you have a sub scope.

Gilda Razani  22:30  
Yeah, but I don't play anymore. I play only the Etherwave Pro and the Claravox in the moment. I like to play two different sides of Theremin music. I like the classical Theremin playing, but also I have own sound. I created my own sound because I love Jimi Hendrix. And it's my role model. I like to play like guitar and because of that you can use in in the song deepness strange. This is my sound, distorted sound somehow I created

Unknown Speaker  23:22  
How did this honey bizarre project come about? 

Gilda Razani  23:25  
We first study with roses, but we let this formation and created us new and so now we are honeybees. About Aphrodite is more jazzy, and honey bizarre is the old bloody red rose.

Rick Reid  23:42  
And the bloody red roses songs. I just just loved everything I've heard and music videos are wonderful. You're so creative in so many ways. Besides music. The visuals are just just amazing.

Gilda Razani  23:54  
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Well, to that you can see it also in our honey bizarre formation.

Unknown Speaker  24:06  
I see on the photography that you've done so far for honey bizarre that there's an airplane theme. How does that relate to your music? And how did you come about that?

Gilda Razani  24:14  
In our info, we said that we are driving in space with full words. Improvising for freedom and, and dancing. So we make our photos in very old airplane.

Unknown Speaker  24:30  
We had a photo session in a museum of airplanes in Austria. 

Rick Reid  24:37  
So you have a new album coming out in January

Gilda Razani  24:39  
because the vinyl is finished in March. Our release is in March. Not in January. 

Unknown Speaker  24:46  
how can listeners hear the first single or two from the new honey bizarre album?

Gilda Razani  24:50  
You can go to Spotify or iTunes or Apple Music or Deezer or other and then you can hear our two singers From any desire or you go to our web site and then in the spring we have our IBM release there it's also to all flooding red roses song now or honey bizarre. You can hear it. 

Rick Reid  25:15  
Okay.

Gilda Razani  25:15  
Yeah, yeah

Rick Reid  25:29  
another recent project you did, which is the Queen of the Night aria from a magic flute? How did that come about? What motivated you didn't record that

Gilda Razani  25:38  
only, I mean, not not 

Hanzo Wanning  25:42  
just for fun.

Unknown Speaker  25:46  
Just for fun, one of the most difficult pieces in opera

Gilda Razani  25:51  
because I like to play. So in this way, it felt good.

Rick Reid  25:56  
You get to visit with some of the other well known Theremin players around Germany.

Gilda Razani  26:01  
I hope to see them soon. But I think perhaps because of Corona, I don't see them for quite a while. Yeah, quite a while. I hope that this is in the future. No problem.

Unknown Speaker  26:14  
Well, thank you so much for visiting with me today. I really enjoy your music and I encourage people to find any of your bands online because they are all wonderful. 

Gilda Razani  26:26  
Thank you so much. Thank you so much. It means a lot for us. You're saying this.

Unknown Speaker  26:34  
To learn more about honey bizarre click on the link in this month's show notes at Theremin thirty.com You can also see their music video for a little deep Miss strange on the Theremin 30 YouTube playlist. Let's finish the episode and this calendar year with the lovely holiday him here he is Armen Ra with silent Night.

Unknown Speaker  29:17  
A big thank you to Steven Hamm, Gilda Razani and Hanzo Wanning, Vicenzo Fonzie, Kepa Lehtinen, and Armen Ra for sharing their music with us, and to Gilda and Hanzo for visiting with me about their honey bizarre project. I'm also very grateful every month to the listeners who support this podcast with small one time or monthly donations. I wish everyone listening a very happy and peaceful holiday season and a wonderful new year. I'm your host, Rick Reid, and I'll see you again in the year 2024.

David Brower  29:50  
You've been listening to the Theramin 30 podcast visit Theremin 30 on the web at Theremin 30 dot com
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[S05E05] November 2023 - Andrew Levine

(photo credit: © 2022 Nuno Martins)


The November 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast features ambient, experimental, and improvisational music from the USA, England, Australia, Portugal, and Germany. Host Rick Reid interviews Andrew Levine about his recent album Quadruple Quadrature Questions. (photo credit: © 2022 Nuno Martins)

FEATURED MUSIC*

*The full-length recordings featured in this show were used with the knowledge and permission of the artists and composers. Please support the artists by visiting their websites, purchasing their recordings, and attending their performances. 

ADDITIONAL MUSIC

INTERVIEW GUEST

CALENDAR OF THEREMIN EVENTS

MEDIA LINKS

CONTACT

CREDITS 

Copyright 2023 Rick Reid 


--------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT

Please note: This transcript was created with the help of speech-to-text AI.  It may contain some errors.

David Brower  0:04  
This is Theremin 30. 30 minutes of Theremin music news events and interviews with a new episode about every 30 days. Now here's your host from Denver, Colorado, USA, Rick Reid.

Rick Reid  0:19  
Hey, welcome to the November 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast. For the next half hour I've got some new and not so new Theremin music from around the globe. I think we can all agree that the Theramin is an unconventional instrument that can be used to play conventional music. On past episodes, we've heard jazz, pop, rock, classical and other familiar styles. This time around though, I'm going to feature some unconventional music, ambient, experimental and improvisational performances that take the theorem and in some interesting and unusual directions. We'll hear recordings by Eric Ross, Chris Conway and Peter Whitehouse, and My special guest this month is Andrew Levine from Hamburg, Germany. He has several new albums out and we'll be talking about how he recorded one of them during his concert tour of Portugal earlier this year. And I do want to mention up front that the music selections for this episode were a bit too long to neatly fit in the 30 minute format of the show. So I'll be playing excerpts from the full length recordings. To get our Sonic journey started. Let's go back to the future from the 2014 Eric Ross album Music from the future here is a track called Pluto's court.

We started the show with a track called Pluto's cord from the 2014 Eric Ross album Music from the future for Theramin and ensemble. If you aren't familiar with Eric, be sure to check out my interview with him and the June 2019 episode of Theremin 30. After that, I played Theremin immersion a brand new track from Chris Conway. It's from his Theremin ocean dreams album, which is actually a stripped down reworking of his deep ocean dreams album. Chris edited a single version exclusively for this podcast. After the break, I've got the Theremin 30 calendar of events and another dreamy experimental Theremin performance from Peter Whitehouse. Then later in the show. I'll interview Andrew Levine about his new album quadruple quadrature questions. So stay tuned.

It's time now for a look at that Theremin 30 calendar of Theremin events. On Thursday, November 23. Charlotte Dubois has a concert in Turku of France on Saturday, November 25. The radio science orchestra performs at the National Space Centre in Leicester, England. On Sunday, the 26th supernormal are onstage in Portland, Maine, USA. On December 2, Torvalds. Jorgensen performs with the castle state orchestra in Kassel, Germany. It's the first of several concerts they're featuring film score music. On December 16. Miss Terry performs holiday music with organist Yan Willem doctor in our house Germany, and on December 17, electric storks are performing and Rotterdam, Netherlands. For details about these events and many more, check out the interactive calendar on Theramin thirty.com. If you have a Theramin related event you'd like me to list on the calendar send me a note with all the details you can reach me with the contact form on the Theremin 30 website. Peter White House of Brisbane Australia is a relative newcomer to that Theremin. But he has already shared some really interesting experimental recordings on his SoundCloud page. Here's an ambient drone piece he calls stretched cacophony.

That was stretched cacophony by Peter Whitehouse. You can find more of his experimental Theramin recordings on SoundCloud under his username Wanko 42. Right after this break, I chat with Andrew Levine. So stay right where you are.

Andrew Levine is an experimental electronic recording artists based in Hamburg, Germany. He has at least six albums out this year, including one called quadruple quadrature questions. I caught up with Andrew a few weeks ago to ask a few questions of my own. Andrew Levine, thank you so much for being on the Theremin 30 podcast.

Andrew Levine  16:05  
Yeah, thanks for the invitation. Rick, I'm happy to be here.

Rick Reid  16:09  
You have some of the most interesting and different music than I've ever played on the show. I don't know if you'd call it new music or experimental. What's the word you give for that style of music you play? Well, I

Andrew Levine  16:20  
usually say free improvised music, but there is actually so many potential names for that. The first one, actually talking about this kind of music was Karlheinz Stockhausen. And he called it intuitive music.

Rick Reid  16:37  
What does that mean to you?

Andrew Levine  16:38  
Well, it means to me that basically you go into a concert or a recording session with like, no preconceived ideas. The only thing you will definitely talk about his how long you're going to be playing. And maybe who was going to start, but sometimes even that is not defined.

Rick Reid  16:55  
There are no rules other than the length of the performance. 

Andrew Levine  16:59  
Yeah, there are really no rules, you would listen to what is happening, good listen to what happens when you try to play the instrument. I mean, we all know the Theramin. So especially if you try to use the full range, so maybe like five or six octaves or something, then the techniques that are developed for what I call Theramin plus, so just using the Thurman to determine the pitch and using my other hand to mix different cameras in real time, you don't really know what you're going to be getting. I mean, you know, this is going to be a high note, this is going to be a low note, this is going to be somewhere in between. But depending on which Thurman you play, is the ether wave. Or is it the Clara Vox which is quite linear,

Rick Reid  17:46  
you play the open Theremin to you. 

Andrew Levine  17:49  
Yeah, I play the open Theremin. And that's actually really nice for for traveling because it's really small as everyone else. And it's quite a good Theramin. And the calibration function works well, although sometimes it drifts. But with this kind of music, you can basically also depend a bit on what you get from the instrument. The thing is, if you try to listen to what is happening with your fellow musicians, and if you just like see what you get from the instrument, you're going to find, hopefully, find the direction that you want to move in and then you just take that direction, and then possibly you pick up something that here somewhere else or you're contrasted, you try to develop a small melody just because you feel like it, you might quote something I mean, why not? You just try to keep an open mind and see where the music will take you

Rick Reid  18:44  
Did you start out with more traditional mainstream music education?

Andrew Levine  18:48  
Yeah, so I've been playing the violin since I was about six years of age. And then at some point, I started singing. And when I was about 1718, I spent one year in the United States on a scholarship in McLean, Virginia, I went to school with like a lot of music possibilities, and I wasn't a choir and in an orchestra and choir was just like so much easier. You don't have to practice on like, nobody expects a singer to train for six hours a day. And that's the normal time you have to spend playing the violin. So I gradually drifted from violent towards singing then I started taking singing lessons and enjoy that very much. And when I came across a Thurman and it came, like across my path several times, watching some YouTube videos, something and in 2010 I decided to just go ahead and buy one and I got the ether wave plus because I thought well has this interesting possibility of also taking out control voltages and using that for something I didn't have any idea what it was about, actually, at that point, but I thought really cute my options open. And the moment I set up the Thurman the moment it had, like warmed up and and was able to do something I realized why it made sense to have studied violin that long and have studied boys because it's like so close, you have to be able to correct quickly when you're like slightly off or more than slightly off. And you have to praise in a way that it's like a vocal ease, like when you're singing. So all of these things helped me but of course, I still came from a background of written music. So you have a sheet of music, and you can read it and you can just play with a violin, you can sing it, whatever. 

Rick Reid  20:39  
Now you've had a really busy year, you did a tour of Portugal and recorded several performances and put that out as an album. You've got a new album out quad, Dre. 

Andrew Levine  20:50  
It's quadruple quad what your questions.

Rick Reid  20:54  
And what is that title mean? 

Andrew Levine  20:57  
Well, we have four people asking all kinds of questions. And we were like set up in kind of like, square shaped arrangement. And stuff was just like bouncing around from one to the other. And I just had this idea that oh, this sounds like a crazy title for the crazy music that is like behind that.

Rick Reid  21:21  
Now was this recorded in a studio? 

Andrew Levine  21:25  
Yeah, I was in Lisbon, the end of April. So I did like some solo concerts. And then I went to Porto, for one I came back to Lisbon. And Ernesto, the alto player picked me up on May 1, which was actually not that easy, because there was a demonstration going on in the middle of town. And he got out of his car and waved at me and I saw Rocky, that must be the guys. So there was two of us AirMesh to go to Vegas, the alto player and Hulu Pena, he plays bass clarinet. And we drove for a while to a small studio outside of Lisbon that is owned by flax, and he's a guitar player who comes from the rock music. But he's grown tired of rock music and is very much interested in trying something new and finding new things and working with the experimental music scene here and he has a small studio, which is quite cramped.

Rick Reid  22:24  
And then you have more than just your Theremin in your corner of the room.

Andrew Levine  22:29  
This was a more reduced set because I was flying. I took the open Thurman, I took small modular rig, because the open Thurman has these beautiful control voltage outputs. So you can do a lot of stuff with that. And I took the stereo field, I took a cracker box. And I took the Zoma pipe microphone. On this trip,

Rick Reid  22:49  
the stereo field, it's got like circles with metal contacts that you touch with your fingers.

Andrew Levine  22:55  
It's actually like a crackerbox, a double crackerbox and steroids. More or less.

Rick Reid  23:01  
We'll have to have listeners look up a cracker box. Yeah. And that's something that Yeah, well defies definition, probably.

Andrew Levine  23:07  
Yeah, it's actually the first circuit bending instrument, which was developed in the 1970s. And you have these six touch plates that you can connect with your fingers. And basically you become part of the circuit. So I really like that disparity between Thurman where you don't touch, and the cracker box and the stereo field where you do touch because if you don't, there is like nothing happening. And you can use the stereo field to make all kinds of crazy noises. But you can also use it to create control voltages. You can also use it to process audio. It's an amazing instrument.

Rick Reid  23:49  
Do you use hand signals? Or is there any other way that you can communicate with the fellow musicians while you're recording and while you're performing?

Andrew Levine  23:57  
Well, mostly you just listen very, very attentively to what's going on. Because that's also an indicator if you like being too loud, I mean, you you're supposed to be able to listen to everything that's happening. So en esto he plays like very, very gentle stuff on his alto. So he's like fiddling along, or like I don't know, we're using the word from his bowl to make like very, very soft sounds. And then there is Bruno. He's making louder or softer sounds with the bass clarinet. And then there's the electronics coming in from flax, and you basically listening to everything and that's actually the best connection because you can listen 360 degrees, you can hear everything that's going on around the view. Whereas if you look someplace, you can only like connect to one or two people that are standing where you're looking, 

Rick Reid  24:52  
and how can people listen to your album or better yet, buy it. 

Andrew Levine  24:55  
It's available now on Bandcamp of course, but also on Apple Music iTunes, Amazon mp3 I mean you can get this album, quadrupled quadrature questions you can find that basically everywhere right now

Rick Reid  25:09  
to wrap up this episode of experimental Theremin music here's an extended excerpt from quadruple quadrature questions this track is called Dream of the Bumblebee you can hear the full length version of this track on Bandcamp.

Thank you so much for joining me once again on Theremin 30 And thanks to this episode's featured artists Eric Ross, Chris Conway, Peter Whitehouse and my special guest Andrew Levine. Be sure to click on their name links and this month's show notes. And as always a special thanks to the listeners who support this podcast with small one time or monthly donations. Until next time, I'm your host Rick Reid. I'll see you again soon somewhere in the ether.

David Brower  29:48  
You've been listening to the theorem 30 podcast visit Theremin 30 on the web at Theremin 30 dot com.
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[S05E04] October 2023 - Monelise



In the October 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast, host Rick Reid plays theremin music from Canada, Denmark, Australia, and the UK. Rick's guest is singer-songwriter Monelise. 

FEATURED MUSIC*

*The full-length recordings featured in this show were used with the knowledge and permission of the artists and composers. Please support the artists by visiting their websites, purchasing their recordings, and attending their performances. 

ADDITIONAL MUSIC

INTERVIEW GUEST

CALENDAR OF THEREMIN EVENTS

MEDIA LINKS

CONTACT

CREDITS 

Copyright 2023 Rick Reid 


--------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT

Please note: This transcript was created with the help of speech-to-text AI.  It may contain some errors.

Coming Soon!
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[S05E03] September 2023 - Mike Buffington

 




In the September 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast, host Rick Reid plays theremin music from Australia, Finland, Spain, and the USA. Rick's guest is Mike Buffington of Forgotten Futures. 

FEATURED MUSIC*

  • "Trance Encounters" - The Night Terrors (Melbourne, Australia)
  • "Harmony with Planet X" - Xan Hughes (Kokomo, Indiana, USA)
  • "Watersnake" - Annaglyph (Crockett, California, USA)
  • "In the Heart of Winter, part 2" - Kepa Lehtinen (Helsinki, Finland)
  • "Texturas de pan, a peneira" - Paulo Pascual (Vigo, Spain) 

*The full-length recordings featured in this show were used with the knowledge and permission of the artists and composers. Please support the artists by visiting their websites, purchasing their recordings, and attending their performances. 

ADDITIONAL MUSIC

INTERVIEW GUEST

CALENDAR OF THEREMIN EVENTS

MEDIA LINKS

CONTACT

CREDITS 

Copyright 2023 Rick Reid 


--------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT

Please note: This transcript was created with the help of speech-to-text AI.  It may contain some errors.


David Brower  0:04  
This is Theremin 30. 30 minutes of Theremin museum news events and interviews with a new episode about every 30 days. Now here's your host from Denver, Colorado, USA, Rick Reid.

Rick Reid  0:18  
Hey, welcome to the September 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast. It's the Labor Day holiday here in the USA as I finished the show today. In America we celebrate workers by taking the day off. Well everyone but me I'm working on 30 minutes of Theremin music from around the world. Plus an interview with RCA Theremin expert Mike Buffington will be talking about what he has been working on lately. Let's start the show now with an exclusive world premiere of the new single from Australian duo the night terrors featuring Myles brown on Theremin and synthesizers and Sarah Lim on even more synthesizers. Their fourth album is called hypnotic composition for Theremin and electronic music synthesizer. The first single is set for release on Tuesday, September 5, that's tomorrow, but we've got it a day early. This is trance encounters

Rick Reid 9:27  
We started this episode with trance encounters the first single from Hypnotica the brand new album by the night terrors set for release on November 3. After that we heard from Xan Hughes performing harmony with Planet X. Xan is based in Kokomo, Indiana, USA and he has his own channel on Twitch where he live streams, Theremin performances, and even plays along with old horror films. You can learn more about the night terrors and Xan Hughes by clicking on their names in this month's show notes after the breakup got the Theremin, 30 calendar of events and an off field logical tune from Annaglyph look that up in the dictionary. And later in the show I'll visit with Mike Buffington about his limited edition reproductions of vintage RCA Theremin documents. So stay tuned

Rick Reid 10:23  
It's time now for a look at that Theremin 30 calendar of Theremin events. Marla Goodman's Theremin themed art show continues at Kirk's grocery in Billings Montana through September 23. With the concert performance set for September 22. You can see Marla's paintings of their ministry you probably know by following the link in this month's show notes on September 9 as Shelley own hosts and other music and chat live streaming show on YouTube are scheduled guests are Harvey star and Danny dodge, who will be chatting about the STAR Labs ZTR MIDI guitar controllers. Lydia cabina will be performing sci fi favorites on Saturday September 30 For science fiction day at the historic papplewick Pumping Station in Nottingham, England, and synth fest UK takes place October 7 in Sheffield, England. For more details about these events and many more, check out the interactive calendar on Theremin thirty.com. If you have a Theremin related event you'd like me to list on the calendar send me a note with all the details. You can reach me with the contact form on the Theremin 30 website. Let's get back into the music now with the latest single from Annaglyph she sings and plays Theremin and synthesizers on this slithery song called watersnake.

Rick Reid  16:49  
We started that music sent with watersnake by Anna glyph. She has made a very clever stop motion animation music video for that track. Check it out on that Theremin 30 YouTube playlist. After that I played in the heart of winter Part Two from the Helsinki based Film and Television composer kept by LinkedIn and it's from the in the heart of winter EP that came out in March of this year. You can hear all seven tracks on Spotify and other streaming services. Coming up after this break I'll visit with Mike Buffington about some cool new RCA Theremin stuff. So stay right where you are.

Rick Reid  17:52  
Mike Buffington is one of the curators of the RCA Theremin registry. He is also one of the go to guys for restoring RCA Thurman's, his most recent restoration project is worth a lot more than the paper it's printed on. Hey, Mike, welcome to Theremin 30

Mike Buffington  18:09  
Hi, Rick. Thanks again for having me back on. It's great to be here again, 

Rick Reid  18:13  
your previous appearance on the show or you talked about restoring RCA Theremin. But now we have another project we're going to talk about where you're restoring. How do we describe it ephemera? Is that the right word?

Mike Buffington  18:26  
Yeah, I think that's a great word for it because these things are so rare. These are documents that were printed around the time of the RCA Theremin we have an owner's manual. We have a service notes and we have two brochures one just says the RCA Theremin and the other one says the victor Theremin. The goal was to get these things professionally printed and to make them look as authentic and original as possible as if they were new. 

Rick Reid  18:56  
So they don't look old. 

Mike Buffington  18:58  
Right we do have a little tagline that says you know reproduced by Mike Buffington and whatnot. When I say we I have been working with my friend Wally to packer is probably better known under his musical moniker as gocta. He has an interest in most things, vintage and Theremin fall into that category. I've been working with him on some other stuff. He has an interest in a musical instrument called the ondioline. 

Rick Reid  19:24  
Yeah, I caught his concert at Moogfest a few years ago. It was amazing. 

Mike Buffington  19:28  
Yeah, so he's really delve deep into audio lanes almost exclusively at this point. He's still working on new music and he has interest in other instruments but he went kind of crazy on the on the aliens and found all these great documents that were all in French. And so this is sort of the backstory of how I came to do this Victor theorem and stuff is that while he had this 40 Page printed sort of manual book that was a collection of radio journal articles that the inventor George Jennie put out and sort of as a monthly thing, and so they combined all of these articles into one printed document was only available in French. And while they had that document, professionally translated, and then I was given an English copy. And he's like, let's make an English version of this document. So I laid it all out. I did all the work, basically. And he was sort of the project manager of this. So I'd be showing it to him as it's not quite right at present there. And it's partially that extra 20% Because he's a no half measures kind of guy. And I'm a no half measures kind of guy, but he's even more so picky and detail oriented. So it's been really a good working kind of relationship where we're kind of challenging each other to do the best we possibly can. So this was maybe about six or seven years ago that I started this, I became friends with Floyd angles, the OG Theremin community will remember this guy is the guy who restored a lot of Theremins and made missing parts like replica antenna, I became friends with Floyd as I was building my own replica Theremin and starting to fix up them and Floyd and I would talk and I visited him a couple of times. And one time that I visited him the first time he sort of gave me the nickel tour, and we went through basically everything Theremin related in his house over the span of like, two or three days. And he pulled out an original RCA Theremin instruction manual and revisional RCA Theremin service notes. I've never seen either one before the service notes can be found in a compiled book that maybe radio enthusiast will know is an RCA Redbook is what it's sort of colloquially called. So I've seen that document in PDFs of all these things exist, but they're, you know, third generation photocopies, and they're really hard to see and read, and there's pairs and stuff. But these two documents came from the same owner. His name was Ray burrows, he had RCA cabinet number 439. Floyd pulled out the service notes and instruction manual from this and kept it. It's every time I talked to him, he's like, I'm done with it, Theremin stuff. So I would really love to like, buy the original service notes instruction manual from me. And it's like, I'll just send you everything. So a couple months later, I got this box, two boxes in the mail of 1930s. Radio magazines, and all of his notebooks have Clara's stuff. And Henry solomonoff stuff, Bob Moog stuff, just, you know, her literal footlocker worth of all these documents. And of course, in there was the service notes in the instruction manual. So that was really nice to kind of be able to hold this thing and say, Oh, this is mine now. And among this that I didn't notice before was the RCA Theremin brochure. And this is just a little trifold brochure that's black and white. And it says, absolutely new, unique musical instrument that anyone can play. 

Rick Reid  22:54  
It's not a radio, not a phonograph.

Mike Buffington  22:57  
Exactly, exactly. It's, it's the thing that like hypes up the Theremin is being this instrument that if you can whistle, you can, you know, you can play it. It's beautiful. It's got this very Art Deco feel with wavy lines and gradations. And you know, this copies in fairly good shape, but it's kind of been bent in half, and there's creases through it. And so I've got three of sort of the four or five known documents, and I'm saying why it's like, this would be really cool. If we made some reproductions of this. He's like, Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. So we decided to go ahead, because it was sort of my project, I sort of volunteered my time to work on the documents, getting them press ready, and then he would pay for printing them. So I scanned each page at like 2400 dpi, super high resolution, I had, you know, three or four other photocopies from other collections. And if there was some weird like ink spot that kind of, you know, compare all three documents, if all three had them, I would keep it in but if only one added it was kind of a printing error unique to that specific document to the best of my ability I kept in what would have been sort of on the printing plate itself so that it would look as authentic as possible. Even though I got a copy of the service notes from Floyd, it was probably used in a smoke filled house, and it's all crinkly. And somebody used just regular clear tape to tape it up. Because it was basically falling apart.

Rick Reid  24:24  
So you had a big piece of yellow tape fixing a tear in the book. 

Mike Buffington  24:28  
And yeah, there's a rip in the instruction manual that goes like right halfway through the page. And so if you scan that, the tape kind of shows up darker, and you can get that nice, crisp, clean lines of all of all the letters. So what I did was I took you know, if I was re spelling the word the I take a T from one place or if there was an HE together and I move in Photoshop and just sort of rebuilt the whole paragraph worth of damage stuff. We made 500 of these offset printed reproductions and that's kind of a nice number. because there were only 500 RCA therapists when we got them all printed and they were ready to go. I emailed all the people that we've worked with people whose Theron's we've restored and people who are interested in this kind of stuff are owners of nice RCA Theremin. So I know we sold a few and they're going into good hands into sort of the right hands, but we definitely have plenty to sell.

Rick Reid 25:21  
Well, it sounds like it's a perfect companion to an RCA Theremin that's in a museum or in a private collection. Right? Absolutely.

Mike Buffington  25:29  
I have set sitting on one of my RCA s 

Rick Reid  25:32  
you're the only person I know who can say one of my RCAs.

Mike Buffington  25:39  
It's not an obsession. It's not it's not it's not a problem. I'm okay,

Rick Reid  25:46  
how would you answer the question? Like why do these need to be reproduced in the first place?

Mike Buffington  25:51  
You're not going to find a better looking replica instruction manuals, anything you can find out there is going to be laser printed and bound with staples and won't have that beautiful brown cover won't be offset printed won't have that red ink on the cover. And so it's like, Why Why settle for something less than that? And

Rick Reid  26:10  
how does somebody order set of these documents,

Mike Buffington  26:13  
you can go to forgotten futures music.org to check out Wally's project, but at the top there's a link to the store. There's also a link at the top of that store page for the RCA Theremin documents. You can click that and you can choose between a bundle of all four or each object you can buy separately. You can find them on reverb and on eBay. And I believe on Instagram as well. So if you go to forgotten futures, Instagram page, I think they have a store. There you

Rick Reid  26:45  
are a great resource to the Theremin community. Because the work you do keeps history alive the magic of the original theremin alive.

Mike Buffington  26:55  
 I'd love it Theremin community. I love everybody out there. I know so many of you out there and I'm hoping that we're doing something well and doing something good for the community. 

Rick Reid  27:03  
You may never get a chance to own an RCA Theremin but you do have an opportunity to own one or all four of these cool RCA theremin document reproductions. For details follow the link in this month's show notes at Theremin thirty.com. We have just a little bit of time left. So to wrap up the show I'm going to play another brief selection from the documentary score by Paulo Pasquale that I featured in the August 2023 episode from the Negro Purpura soundtrack This is textured just upon a pen Yetta I think I said that kind of right and according to Google Translate that is textures of bread and a sieve.

Rick Reid  29:03  
A big thanks goes to the night terrors Xan Hughes Annaglyph, Kepa Lehtinen, and Paulo Pascual for sharing their wonderful music this month. Please support them by purchasing their albums attending their shows or just sending them a nice note to let them know you appreciate their talents. I also want to thank my special guest Mike Buffington for visiting with me and for all he does to preserve the legacy and history of the RCA Theremin. Also, I'm very grateful to the listeners who support this show with a monthly or one time donations. And finally if you enjoy it, Theremin 30 Please tell your friends about it. There's always room here for more listeners and more recording artists. Until next time, I'm your host, Rick Reid. We'll see you again somewhere in the ether.

David Brower  29:50  
You've been listening to the Theremin 30 podcast visit Theremin 30 on the web at Theremin 30 dot com
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[S05E02] August 2023 - Kip Rosser (part 2)




In the August 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast, host Rick Reid continues his conversation with Kip Rosser that began in the March 2023 episode. Featured music includes recordings by Tharsis Project, Andrew Levine, Paulo Pascual, and Kip Rosser.

FEATURED MUSIC*

  • "Prototype" - Tharsis Project: Ernesto Mendoza and Jon Carr (Mexico City, Mexico)
  • "Live at Cosmos Lisboa" [excerpt] - Andrew Levine (Hamburg, Germany)
  • Selections from "Negro Púrpura" - Paulo Pascual (Vigo, Spain) 
  • Theme from "Idle Hands are the Devil's Playground" - Kip Rosser (Morrisville, Pennsylvania, USA)

*The full-length recordings featured in this show were used with the knowledge and permission of the artists and composers. Please support the artists by visiting their websites, purchasing their recordings, and attending their performances. 

ADDITIONAL MUSIC

INTERVIEW GUEST

CALENDAR OF THEREMIN EVENTS

MEDIA LINKS

CONTACT

CREDITS 

Copyright 2023 Rick Reid 


--------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT

Please note: This transcript was created with the help of speech-to-text AI.  It may contain some errors.

David Brower  00:04

This is "Theremin 30," thirty minutes of theremin music, news, events and interviews, with a new episode about every 30 days. Now, here is your host from Denver, Colorado, USA -- Rick Reid!

Rick Reid  00:19

This is the August 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast and the second episode of season five. I took a bit of a break since the last episode I got caught up in my freelance work projects and some health issues, including some weird problems with my voice. But I'm sounding more like myself now. So if you're ready to listen to me, I believe I'm ready to talk. In this episode, I have Theremin music from Tharsis project Andrew Levine, Paolo Pascual and my interview guest Kip Rosser. I had Kip on the show back in March to talk about the Juliet Shaw legacy project, but you only heard about half of the conversation. So this month, I'm going to play the rest of that interview, as Kip talks about his own musical adventures. 

To get things going. Here is the second single from Tharsis project, a collaboration between John Carr and Ernesto Mendoza, with a track called "Prototype." 

Rick Reid

We started the episode with "Prototype by Tharsis project. After that we heard an exclusive edit from the new live experimental album "Andrew Levine Live in Portugal." This track recorded may 3 of this year at Cosmos in the Campolide neighborhood of Lisbon features Andrew on Theremin and electronics with Jose Bruno Purina on bass, and Ernesto Rodriguez on Viola. The full track and the entire album are available on Bandcamp. Click on Andrew's name in the show notes at Theremin30.com. 

After the break, I've got that Theremin 30 calendar of events and film music from Paulo Pascual. And later in the show I'll visit with Kip Rosser so stay tuned.

Rick Reid

It's time now for a look at the Theremin 30 calendar of Theremin events. On August 3 Andrew Levine joins organist Michael Von Hinsenstern for a classical recital in Bat Berka, Germany. Also on August 3, Marla Goodman celebrates the opening of her Theremin-themed art exhibit in Billings, Montana, with a live performance. Then on August fourth, there will be an artist reception and Theremin demos. To learn more about her wonderful theremin artwork, look for the link in this month's show notes. Both August 15 and August 27 are recognized as the birthday of Professor Leon Theramin. Why two birthdays? Well, it has to do with the Russia switching calendar systems a long, long time ago. But that gives us two days to celebrate. So I'm not complaining. For details about these events and many more, check out the interactive calendar on Theremin30.com. If you have a theremin event you'd like me to list on the calendar, send me a note with all the details. You can reach me with the contact form on the Theremin 30 website. And lately I've been a bit lax about finding events to add to the calendar so do help me out by sending me information about your concerts, workshops and other Theremin-related activities. 

"Negro Purpura" or black purple is a Spanish historical documentary that looks at how hallucinogenic fungus was cultivated by farmers in Galicia. The 2021 film directed by Sabela Iglesias and Adriana Villa Nueva has been playing at festivals in Europe this year. Paolo Pascual of Vigo, Spain, created the music for the film, and he sent me some cues to play on the show. Maybe it isn't obvious, but I don't speak Galician particularly well, so I'll give the English titles. First we'll hear "the magic of fungus" followed by "lights in the River."

Rick Reid

That was music by Paulo Pascual from the soundtrack of the documentary film Negro Purpura or black purple. It's a movie about the history of the hallucinogenic fungus that grows on grain in the Galicia region of Northwest Spain. You can watch the film's trailer featuring Paulo Pascual's music on the Theremin 30 YouTube playlist.

Coming up after this break go visit with American thereminist Kip Rosser, so stay right here. 

Rick Reid

I interviewed Kip Rosser earlier this year about the Juliette Shaw Legacy Project. Because we were talking about Juliette Shaw, I didn't have time in the show to share parts of our conversation about his own career as a thereminist. So I'm going to fix that right now. Kip Rosser. Thanks so much for joining us on that Theremin 30 podcast. 

Kip Rosser  18:04

You're very welcome. Happy to be here.

Rick Reid  18:06

You are involved in theremins in lots of different ways. So give me a little brief introduction of your history of Theremining.

Kip Rosser  18:15

I started playing in 1996. And it was a complete fluke. There was a radio station in East Orange New Jersey called WFMU. At that time, they were wild. You never knew what you were going to hear. And they used to put out a catalog called Weird Stuff every year. One year, I got the catalog. And on the bottom right-hand corner was a little, tiny ad that advertised a theremin kit that you could buy. It was 150 bucks back then. It was by Paia, the Paia Thermax. And I had no idea that Moog was still making theremins, that there was an entire theremin community out there. I just knew what a theremin was. So I bought the kit, put it together. And for seven months that's the theremin that I used. After that I realized I could have bought one put together, and I got a Moog. But it wasn't called Moog at the time. It was called Big Briar. It  was a Big Briar Etherwave. And that was really the transition point. Because playing that instrument was completely different. I had to basically relearn how to play the theremin. It was more stable, it was more accurate, I could get a lot more done with it. So I started in 1996. And from there I just practiced for two years before allowing myself to play in public at all.

Rick Reid

You've played with orchestras and...  

Kip Rosser

I've never played with an orchestra I would love to. That's one of my fantasies. But there are a lot of people who have played with orchestras, but I never have. I've played with live musicians on various occasions. Rarely. There was a time when I had a wonderful jazz and classical pianist that I play with regularly. She and I played for years, but she moved away. I played with a concert pianist from San Francisco and one of my CDs is him and myself in 2005. He and I put on the show at the New York International Film Festival called "The Unholy Secrets of the Theremin." One Sunday afternoon in 2005, while we were on stage Bob Moog died. While I was playing his Etherwave Pro. I never met Bob Moog, but I did speak to him on the telephone one time, and he yelled at me. He yelled at me because it was my first public theremin performance, was done on Cape Cod, and very odd wiring, and the theremin wouldn't function no matter what. So I called Moog Music. And Bob Moog answered the telephone. This was around 1998-1999. And we talked a little bit, and he told me I could get a deep cycle marine cell, which is like a car battery to hook up to a power inverter and power the Theremin off of that, which I did, was very expensive at the time, like $200 for a deep cycle marine cell. And he asked me, "How long have you been playing the Theremin?" I said "two years, and it's my first public performance." And he hit the roof. He started screaming at me that Clara Rockmore and Lydia Kavina practiced six and a half hours a day every day for six years before they dared to play in public." And I couldn't believe that. Bob Moog was yelling at me. That was the only time, my only conversation with him at all. He chewed me out for not going for another four years before coming out to play. I always watched interviews with him. I always wanted to meet him. I wish he could have heard me play. I have no animosity towards him at all for yelling at me. It was just his mood that day. I thought it was hilarious. Bob Moog is laughing at me and yelling at me. It was really funny. 

Rick Reid  21:42

You've done some movie soundtrack work, haven't you?

Kip Rosser  21:45

Lydia Kavina, Charles Lester, a couple of other people have played for film scores out of Hollywood. And I've only done one Theremin score. I wrote the score for an independent film by Michael Jason Allen called "An Idle Mind is the Devil's Playground." You can see it on Prime I believe. You can also see it on Tubi. It's a film that's only about an hour long because he knew he didn't want to try to sustain it for longer. It's in beautiful black and white. The cinematography is amazing. And it's sort of his homage to a Twilight Zone. He found me on ReverbNation and contacted me and asked me if I would be willing to write the score for his film. And I said, Sure. So I did. There was another very, very short film by a director named Sabina Ptasznik. She asked me to write a score for Theremin music is more properly, I would call it sound effects for her movie called Gravity. It was also a filmmaker. Her name at that time was Toddy Burton. It was about a 15 minute film. The film composer contacted me and asked him if I would play the Theremin parts in his score. So I was able to do that as well. Those are the only film experiences that I've ever had.

Rick Reid  22:58

Most people know you from your YouTube videos. Tell people about that, who maybe haven't seen them.

Kip Rosser  23:03

Since 2011, apart from the music videos which I occasionally put up, my real focus was putting up tutorials. Starting in 2011, till just last year, I have made theremin tutorials, which to me was the only thing that I thought was really worth putting up. It felt like a contribution. Playing music, you see tons of theremin videos, people playing music, and there are some wonderfully amazingly talented Thereminists out there now. I would argue that there are more theremin players in the world now than there ever have been, ever. I put up these tutorials because I thought this is what I can really contribute. At the time that I started I never knew that there were things online. When I got the Etherwave, it came with a VHS tape of Lydia Kavina's Mastering the Theremin. It changed a little bit about the way I started playing. But my vision for what I wanted to play was always far exceeding my technical abilities. So when I began learning to try to play Bach and Dvorak and things like that, I had to develop techniques that I've never seen before in order to play them. So the evolution of my techniques is what I put up there. I developed techniques that quite honestly, I've never seen anyone do. I've never seen anyone deal with various aspects of the Theremin. So I decided to put up things that I thought it would really help. But then people started texting me or emailing me about the Theremini and how they were having trouble calibrating it. And that inspired an entire Theremini course. 

Rick Reid  24:43

Do you teach Theremin?

Kip Rosser  24:45

Sure.

Rick Reid  24:46

In person in Pennsylvania or online or...

 

Kip Rosser  24:49

Until COVID I could teach occasionally in person. Then COVID happened.

 

Rick Reid  24:55

So I guess now you're teaching more safely over the web.

 

Kip Rosser  24:59

It was actually my son that inspired me to do it. He asked me how come I've never taught online? And there really wasn't any reason why I couldn't. So I created a website just called ThereminLessons.com. People can go there and book a lesson. You look it up by selecting your date on a calendar, and it takes you to PayPal. I get notification. I always respond personally, and we work it out from there. I'd like to find out what model of theremin people are playing, how long they've been playing, do they play any other instruments. All of it helps me to understand where it is they're at and what types of things that we can work on when we're together. And it's great because you can do a lesson halfway across the world. It's fabulous.

Rick Reid  25:44

Let's finish the show now with some movie music by Kip Rosser. Here is the title theme from An Idle Mind is the Devil's Playground, a 2016 indie feature film directed by Michael Jason Allen.

Rick Reid 

That was Kip Rosser with the theme from An Idle Mind is the Devil's Playground. You can learn more about Kip by following the link in this month's show notes.

Thanks so much for joining me for another 30-minute trip into the ether. And thanks to Tharsis Project, Andrew Levine, Paulo Pascual, and Kip Rosser for providing the tunes. Also, thanks to Kip Rosser for sharing stories about his Theremin adventures. I've already started planning the next episode of the Theremin 30 podcast, but I have some room for more music. So if you have professional quality, original theremin music that's either your own composition or in the Public Domain, I'd love to share it with listeners around the world. So contact me through the website. Also please tell your friends about this show and share links to it on social media. You can also rate and review Theremin 30 on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher to help me get the word out. Until next time, I'm your host Rick Reid and I'll see you in the ether.

David Brower  29:47

You've been listening to the Theremin 30 podcast. Visit Theremin 30 on the web at Theremin30.com.
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