We had a great weekend at the Maker Faire. Thanks to everyone there who hung out for our set, and the great folks we met. Also thanks again to Paul Spinrad for getting us involved.

The Smooth Assailing blog has covered us again, check out their review of the Painful Leg Injuries' The Quicker Are the Encumbered. A big thanks to JR Leonetti. To order your copy from Lona Records click here.

The latest episode of the Painful Leg Injuries Podcast, Shower of Babble is composition of random passages and loops from my circuit bent Speak-N-Spell, Speak-N-Math, and Speak-N-Read.

Alex Spalding begins a new series this week with Imperformance. He recreates his live set, using a four track cassette deck as an instrument. He kicks this series off right with awesome textural piece that lands somewhere between Fennesz and Coil. El Plan De Aguavodka's latest Séraphita in the Woods is lovely little beast of gorgeously detailed drone-scape. Little Ricky's House of Chankletas' latest will suck your mind-hole out, Vanishing Memories.

There will be no podcasts next Monday, October 29th, but they will resume on November 4th, just in time for the end of Daylight Savings time. Woo-hoo.

I'd like to start off this week by thanking some new friends in the Austin area. First, Circuit Bent Radio played the Painful Leg Injuries' I Did Not Agree With the Prophets and promoted our show at the Maker Faire this Saturday. If you happen to be in the area of the Travis County Fairgrounds this Saturday, catch us at the Tweak Freaks stage at 10am. I will be performing a set with visuals.

The visuals will be animation work I've done using my Gameboy camera and a drawing program designed for the Commodore 64. I took these pictures and drawings and built them into animations using modern design and animation software. Here's a few stills :








Also, we'd like to thank this great little record shop we found in South Austin called End of An Ear who has recently stocked the Painful Leg Injuries' If The Devil's In The Details Than How Many Details Can You Fit Upon A Match? and Marco Oppedisano's Electroacoustic Compositions for Electric Guitar. So if you live in the Austin area, and need an OKSRNA fix, End of An Ear is the place to go.

This week's podcasts, first we can begin with A Small Devotion Wrapped in Cellophane the latest work of El Plan De Aguavodka as he blasts his VL-1 through some more effects pedals. Little Ricky's House of Chankletas gives us another slice of jazz by way of outer space and electrocacoustic experimentation with New Shadow. Alex Spalding drops the final episode of his media meltdown, Diversionary Media, with a tower of lost voices. Think of like an aggressive version of Byrne (not a relative, unfortunately) and Eno's My Life In The Bush of Ghosts).

And finally, The Painful Leg Injuries' third episode of circuit bent instruments, this time, my departed (hopefully not, but in any case I don't think it'll every sound like this again) Casio Rapman. This piece was an improvisation that I made one edit in, (it sucks when you hit demo in the middle of improvising on a keyboard) so guess it's now a composition or whatever, but it's called Black Onions, it's me playing my Rapman with a feed back switch I added until I hit a certain point and then I fired off the random passage switch I added. Enjoy.

Until next week, take care.

Now available for free download, a new Painful Leg Injuries album, The Forever Ending Revolutions On Autopilot. Click here to download your copy. It has been released on the net-based label Noise Joy. Noise Joy's Alex Spalding does weekly podcasts for OKSRNA.

This is our first album of long form compositions. Each of the four pieces are based on sections I composed using the Little Sound DJ software on my Gameboy. These were written during my commutes on the New York city subway. I'd then record them when I get home and write new parts for my various home-made, circuit bent, software based and various other instruments. And after the pieces were built, I wrote cello sections for Suzanne to play.

The title refers to the trance-like state I fell into during my commutes. Which I actually quite enjoyed and strangely enough, the daily subway ride is one of the things I miss the most about New York.

Well, I hope you enjoy the new music, thank you.

This Realistic Concertmate 200 is my instrument for the latest of the Painful Leg Injuries current podcast series Open Up and Say ZZT! A collection of improvisations and compositions of my circuit bent instruments. This week I used the photo cell controlled pitch changer I added to my Concertmate 200, thus it's title, You Can't Hold Light. This was seriously the first electronic instrument I ever owned, my aunt gave it to me when I was like four.

El Plan De Aguavodka is also loving his white little synth with his latest, Cavatina, or the Love of Bee. His Casio VL-1 is running through some guitar effect pedals and he creates a demented space journey from it. Alex Spalding's latest sounds like a Ghost Box hauntology-type piece, you space age training video music, that of course is way more awesome that the description suggests. Little Ricky's House of Chankletas give us and closet of disturbed voices with Boo Frabble.

On October 20th, we will be performing bright and early at the Maker Faire here in Austin. We go on at 10am. You won't need coffee, that's a promise.

Until next week take care.

Tokafi.com gives Marco Oppedisano's Electroacoustic Compositions for Electric Guitar a great review, give it a read, click here.

Also, Little Ricky's House of Chankletas' 27 New York Anti-Sonnets is now available for digital download from iTunes. Click here to download it!

And finally, our new video page is up! Folks who know me, and read this blog, know that getting this video page right has been something I've been tinkering with since we started the site, so while it's not perfect yet, it's taken a huge leap forward.

There's a few new clips on there and I'll be adding a lot more in the near future. But, you can check out Marco Oppedisano performing his Duo With Playback and Skimming The Surface live from his February show at the Monkey NYC. I will be adding the Painful Leg Injuries set from the same evening. I've also added the You Tube destroyed version of my podcast video A Dandelion in February. Also, stay tuned for the PLI set from Monkeytown with the projected visuals, and Little Ricky's House of Chankletas' blistering set from the same evening.

Take care.

Hey everyone, this week we have some milestones to discuss.

First, I am proud to bring you the 20th Painful Leg Injuries Podcast Series. I started the Painful Leg Injuries Podcast in April 2005, just thinking that it would be a cool idea and a good way for me to get my music out there. Now, a little over two years later, I'm very excited to keep this going.

So for my 20th series I decided to do a series devoted to a practice in experimental music that has been growing in popularity and has definitely become one of my personal favorite pastimes, circuit-bending. I first heard about circuit bending around 99-00 in a article in the Village Voice about this up and coming scene of musicians who make noise out of old and reconfigured electronics (introduced me to this band who at that point had already been around a while, Wolf Eyes). I loved the idea and kind of forgot about until mid-late 06 when I read somewhere that really easy to build your own contact mics, and I needed some, so I did it.

I loved the idea for a couple reasons, first, the do-it-yourself idea. Also, it keeps a least a little plastic out of landfills and that got my wife's endorsement. Also, it's fun to explore something and make slight tweaks until you discover a profound new noise. It's geek-ecstasy.

After that contact-mic project, I was no longer afraid of soldering irons, wire and heat shrink tubing. I was important to me to integrate circuit bent sounds into my digitally oriented practice, to keep it from being predictable. Now, as I've done quite a few projects, read Reed Ghazala's book, grown to hate Radio Shack as every self-respecting bender does (you should see my "no-I-do- not-want-your-help" look a flash at these kids who come hassle me at the drawers), I decided to put together a series of performances and compositions of my circuit-bent projects called Open Up and Say ZZZT!

The first one A Collection of Fruity Loops is a composition of random phrases from fairly straight forward bend of the Casio SA-5 keyboard. I've refined it from the stage it was at when I took the above picture, which shows a slavish following of the tutorial in the Ghazala book. I've now removed the body contacts, and replace them with one button. I've found that I avoid frequent freezing and crashing that way. When had gotten some loop I really liked, I edited them into a piece that's full strange twists and turns. Enjoy.

Another milestone is that Enlightenment and Handball is El Plan De Aguavodka's 70th podcast. John amazes me every week just about and this one is no exception. It's a field recording that generates some nicely musical feedback. Little Ricky's House of Chankletas' latest podcast is an electro-acoustic prank call from a pervert, Falist, totally bizarre. Alex Spalding's space-y beat track Inaction is anything but, well you know where I am going with this.

More milestones - we're listed in the top sellers on CD Baby! The Painful Leg Injuries' If the Devil's In The Details Then How Many Details Can You Fit Upon A Match is the top 20 in the Noise section, Marco Oppedisano's Electroacoustic Compositions For Electric Guitar is in the top 20 of the Electroacoustic section, The Painful Leg Injuries' Interpreting Codes Into Robust Details is the top ten of the Sound Art and Sound Collage sections, The Painful Leg Injuries' Backwards, Broken and Incorrectly is in the top ten of the Musique Concrete section. And lastly, our comp, Men in White Coats is in the top top 40 of the Sound Art section. Alright, granted, Kanye West has nothing to worry about from us, but come on, give us our little victory.

My hands hurt, late.