horaflora

2011-12-09T15:46:00.001-08:00

Horaflora SE Tour and New vinyls/cassette

Hi friends, fans, and foes! Yes, I subscribe some foes to my mailing list simply to irritate them! The rest of you may unsubscribe simply by replying with "unsubscribe" in the subject.

So, hope all is well with everyone, I'm writing to announce a short SE tour that I'll be starting on Sunday in Carrboro, NC and which will see me all the way through to Orlando, FL in 10 short days. Full tour schedule below!

Before getting to that, I'd like to take the opportunity to reflect on 2011, which was a great year for Horaflora; I went on a total of about a month of touring (not including upcoming) to some new places that I hadn't been to or played before (Seattle, Portland, Olympia, DC) and some spots that I hadn't been to since the bike tour of 2008 (Philly, Providence, Boston, and NYC).... In addition to all of that, I played 2 incredible festivals: Savage Weekend in Chapel Hill, and We Are Guest Talk Free, $10 in Boston!

Much of the touring was to celebrate and promote the several new releases of mine that came out this year: a split 7" record with Bromp Treb SoundSystem on Yeay! Tapes, a new cassette on Nefarious Activities that's so new I haven't sold a single one yet, and a very short (5min total) split cassette with Julia Mazawa on Ratskin Records.

I was hoping to be able to announce a new full length LP, my first non-split vinyl release, on Crazy Iris Records, and may have copies available on tour, but it's all up to the post office now! The new album is entitled "Craterellus Cornucopiodes" and features a slightly different mix of THIS net release on Install records, as well as a new studio work that mimics and reflects the A side but with completely different instrumentation and recording techniques, stay tuned for an official release announcement soon!

The tour dates, all shows with the great acoustic-noise-vocal-duo Knight Howls (from Boston):

12/11- Chapel Hill, NC @ Meadows of Dan w/ Clang Quartet, Horaflora, Afro dogsnake, Hem of his Garment

12/12 - Johnson City, TN @ (PM show) Hideaway w/ Horaflora, Afro dogsnake, Existensia

12/12 - Johnson City, TN @ (real late show) The meat locker inside the abandoned grocery store

12/13 - Columbia, SC @ Conundrum w/ Horaflora, Brandon-X, The Choir Quit

12/14 - Greensboro NC @ Science House w/ Horaflora, Afro Dogsnake

12/15 - Atlanta, GA - Tunnel Show w/ Pony Bones, Subliminator, Horaflora, Afro dogsnake

12/16 - Gainesville, FL - @ (early show) Lunchbox

12/16 - Gainesville, FL - @ TBA w/ Horaflora

12/17 - Jacksonville FL @ Morrison Pierce's Studio at Cork District Warehouse w/ Horaflora, Voids, S.O.S, Ascetic, Virgin Flower

12/18 - Orlando, FL @ Tim's Pasta Compound w/ Horaflora, Pain Jetski, Zone Eater, Sslots

12/19 - Orlando, FL - Live Recording @ Disney World's Space Mountain

New 7" split!!!!

2011-09-12T11:59:00.001-07:00

New 7" split with BrompTreb!
A: Horaflora - glibbertonne
B: BrompTreb - readinessmax

Both sides are rollicking, rolling, experiments in beat manipulation that compliment each other through a rhythmic wormhole that cannot be explained in words, and even the sound of said wormhole itself is quite difficult to grasp full hold of!

BrompTreb spins his reels of ragga-esque drum treachery through a broken meter bound in noise-tape lashings and a gruff patios calling for a true readiness on the part of all comers, dance on a wobble-leg of doubt and you'll surely fall to the fire!

Horaflora revs up the rolls for a twisting digital escapade, only to settle in for a tripping, lunging, lurch throughout the gearshift continuum that takes in auxiliary debris through the grill and sifts it into a fine mist and back out the trunk before a final cliffside donut sees him drift away down unknown lanes...

Fabulous sleeve designed by Sightlab that sees both artists rendered in a curious (player) piano-roll/IBM punchcard font that's been laser cut into the sleeve, offered sweet relief by individually selected pages of national geographic inserted behind the front cover and custom made rubber stamped release info:

Grip this From Horaflora or BrompTreb (west and east coast)

http://horaflora.bandcamp.com/album/horaflora-bromptreb-7-split
http://yeay.suchfun.net/catalog.html

Sightlab: http://www.sightlab.com/

Location:40th St,Oakland,United States

Some News

2011-04-04T23:10:00.000-07:00

I'm headed out on a couple tours shortly, late April will see me touring with Pete Von Petrin up to Seattle, Olympia, and Portland, and then will be on the east coast in May to play the Savage Weekend Festival in Chapel Hill with about 30 other bands, and am currently attempting to fill out my May calendar with shows from NC up to Mass and all around there... I'll be in New England until May 30th, so please get in touch if you'd like to book me!

All tour details here.

I should have a split 7" record with Bromp Treb Sound System out in time for these tours, so be on the lookout!

In the meanwhile, you can check out THIS interview and THIS feature/review, as I hadn't posted these here yet!

Also please check out THESE 3 live tracks I played with Ralph White from 2009! It's free!!

See ya soon!

bandcamp

2010-09-08T17:55:00.000-07:00

I made a "Bandcamp" account, where I look forward to selling physical goodies with included downloads, which that website excels at... so far a free live set and a Tshirt/ringtone are what's doin...
Record up soon!

http://horaflora.bandcamp.com/

tonight!!!

2010-08-16T09:34:00.000-07:00

Hurtling, this very moment, widthwise across the scorching continent with a map to your bee hinds bullseye...

Ladies and hairier ladies it's

F A T W O R M OF E RR O R CD release party! (Resipiscent)
Core oG the Coalman
Micose and the Mau Mau's
Horaflora
Radiant Husk with Zach Iannazzi

WHERE: The Lab http://thelab.org, 2948 16th Street San Francisco, CA 94103

WHEN: Aug 16, MONDAY 7:30p || $5-$10 ||

http://resipiscent.com/promo/fatworm.html

Fat Worm of Error [Westeastern, MA] Drums in the way of ten flailing limbs as guitar buzzsaws a cloud of magnetic dust choking the dentist-drill soprano. Celebrating the release "Ambivalence and the Beaker" CD (Resipiscent) http://yeay.suchfun.net/artists/fwoe.html

Core oG the Coalman [prodigal Czexpat] Circuit stirring bowed-string builder of Prague by way of Oakland, Schrödingerian curiosities that, once opened, never close. http://soundcloud.com/core-of-the-coalman

Micose and the Mau Maus [SF] Techno for the morbid obese realized on banjo, cavaquinho, reel, pedals and buttered percussion. How have you not heard this!? http://www.myspace.com/micoseandthemaumaus

Horaflora [SF] Micro air tearer, handmade electroacoustics such as balloon-driven trumpet mouthpieces against hand percussion. http://horaflora.blogspot.com/p/discography.html

Radiant Husk with Zach Iannazzi [SF] Skittering kitbag of post-electronic doodads with Iannazzi's gobsmacking 16mm world wedged in a pyramidal ray of light. http://www.bezoarformations.com/ | http://henubergebogen.net/

Sold out show in WWII Bunker!

2010-07-20T18:20:00.000-07:00

Sunday, Aug 1st:

Green Sound revisits the historic WWII site on the stunning Marin Headlands hillside overlooking the majestic Pacific for the second of two shows. Curator Jorge Bachmann takes you inside the belly of the cavernous Battery, built inside an artificial hill that was able to withstand Japanese aerial and naval bombardments of the era. Soldiers worked and slept inside the fortified Battery but now the hollowed rooms and spaces echo with reverberance. Sound artists reinterpret the space without electricity and powered amplification.

Japanese artist Takahiro Kawaguchi inhabits the Battery connecting its military past with its environmental future through a sonic environment developed from invented mechanical instruments from altered clock timers and tuning forks.

Artist Raub Roy (horaflora) immerses the audience in an Aleatoric improv-installation using balloons and toothbrushes. Drumheads are made to sing throughout the bunker’s recesses, whilst the innate windiness excites Aeolian instruments along the bunker’s main corridor.

Artist Jim Haynes builds a series of thermally driven turbines agitating suspended pieces of glass generating a variety of tones and frequencies. The performance includes sheet metal, bells, mallets, bows, battery powered vibration devices and a shortwave radio.

Note: This is an event on top of hill overlooking the ocean and can be windy, cold and foggy. Please bring warm coats and proper shoe attire. We highly recommend our SF bus service, but if you are not using it, please park in the Rodeo Beach Parking Area and arrive at least 30 minutes before performance time. There is a 20-minute mild uphill hike from the Rodeo Beach parking lot to the Battery. This is a standing room only event.

Gland Canyon at Aquarius Records

2010-04-26T14:46:00.000-07:00

Indeed!
http://www.aquariusrecords.org

HORAFLORA Gland Canyon (Install Records) cd-r 8.98
Bay Area sound artist Raub Roy goes by the name of Horaflora; and his performances are really impressive exercises in controlled electro-acoustic chaos, with low-tech electronics skittering above various tactile scrapes counterpointed by reversed currents of placid bass frequencies and tonal undulation. One of his best performance stunts is to fill up large balloons, shove a trumpet mouthpiece inside the balloon, and drop the metal mouthpiece on a large drumhead. With two of these devices going, Horaflora can generate prolonged vibration and acoustically phased drones that are really amazing.
Gland Canyon is a small run edition released by Instal Records (which had released a Caretaker disc a while back, although this shares little aesthetic similarity), and works through many of the clamorous, decomposing sounds that Horaflora generates in a live setting. It can't be qualified as 'noise' as these collages are more in keeping with a tradition of automatic writing through sound, with idiosyncratic juxtapositions of electronic bloops, ring modulated flanges, minuscule clatter of wood and metal, mad-scientist weirdo percolations, and those sublimated balloon drones. As such it's more in keeping with some of the HNAS collages or something deconstructed from Small Cruel Party and old P.16.D4 tapes. The various tracks ebb and flow with an unhurried pace that slowly magnifies some of the many sounds into more sparse hypno-repetitive passages and then sweep everything into rather dense crescendos of scattershot sediment. Limited to 100 copies.
MPEG Stream: "oRFLooRE"
MPEG Stream: "Goargalor Fantasy '54"

Foxy Digitalis Review

2010-04-02T14:14:00.001-07:00

Ralph White & The Horaflora Sound System

Resipiscent

Two players: White, who plays kalimbas (a thumb piano variant), fiddles, and banjo; and Raub at the wheel of the Horaflora Sound System (prepared speakers and objects plus transducers). It’s unclear if this music was improvised together or assembled from separate recordings. The question isn’t really important because the music is so incredibly neat sounding and nice. There are moments of oddly soothing metallic plinking and patter (“Buzzard and Rattlesnake Share A Meal of Honeycomb”), skeletal violins echoing across pools of mercury (“A Space Between A Chimney and A Swift”), and bike spoke banjo touring arctic and equatorial environments (“Wildflower Face, Insect Eyes”). Technically an electroacoustic album, it never feels like a study on some type of compositional device. It’s just great listening. The interplay is often surprising and textures overlap serendipitously. The song with the droning fiddle verges on the psych folk; especially when entwined with Raub’s sparkling transducer pitches. Inspired stuff. 8/10 -- Mike Pursley (31 March, 2010)

Touring!!!

2010-02-17T21:49:00.001-08:00

* 02/21 Austin, TX @ Annie Street Arts Collective w/ Peace, Loving, Ralph White, Weird Weeds, Twigs and Yarn
* 02/22 Denton, TX @ J&J’s Pizza w/ Peace, Loving, Zanzibar Snails
* 02/23 Lubbock, TX @ Bash Riprocks w/ Peace, Loving
* 02/24 El Paso, TX @ TBA w/ Peace, Loving
* 02/25 Santa Fe, NM @ Santa Fe Complex w/ Peace, Loving
* 02/26 Albuquerque, NM @ Wunderkind Collective w/ Peace, Loving, iNK oN pAPER
* 02/27 Phoenix, AZ @ Trunk Space w/ Peace, Loving
* 02/28 Flagstaff, AZ @ The Cottage house w/ Peace, Loving
* 03/01 Los Angeles, CA @ HM157 w/ Peace, Loving, Featherbeard
* 03/02 Los Angeles, CA @ Echo Curio w/ Peace, Loving
* 03/03 Lost Angeles, CA Brian S. Ellis @ The Lightbulb Mouth Radio Hour w/ Peace, Loving

23five presents: Sudden Infant, Horaflora, Tralphaz, and R. Jencks

2010-01-19T19:46:00.000-08:00

23five Incorporated, Swissnex, and The Lab present: Sudden Infant, Horaflora, Tralphaz, and R. Jencks

SUDDEN INFANT (Switzerland / Germany)
HORAFLORA (San Francisco)
R. JENCKS (Oakland)
TRALPHAZ (San Francisco)

The Lab
2948 16th Street
San Francisco
Sunday, January 31, 2010
8PM
$15 advance tickets
$8 - $15 sliding scale tickets at the door on the night of the performance

With the support of the Swiss Arts Council, Pro Helvetia

Sudden Infant is Joke Lanz’s longest-running and most enduring project. Its inception in 1989 was borne out of Lanz’s urgent drive to combine sound art and performance into one visceral whole – by doing so, his performances frequently bring forth elements and influences from Dada, actionism, Fluxus, noise and punk, as well as some of industrial music’s most trenchant performers. A Sudden Infant performance will typically be anchored by two main characteristics: the use of minimal electronic equipment on one side, on the other a strong focus on the human body, its reduced essence and the sound worlds it contains and spews forth. Sudden Infant is a vehicle for Lanz to run acoustic and psychic elements to their end by focusing on their bare essentials. Thus doing, he establishes an extremely tense aesthetic of performance, and tears down any preconceived barriers between noise, performance, improvisation and electronic music.

Horaflora (aka Raub Roy) has performed and recorded experimental music in a variety of solos, duos, trios, etc since 2001, upon acquiring an Akai sampler, which was his instrument of choice until 2007, when a shift in focus led him towards prepared and extended acoustic instruments, as well as electro-acoustic methods of sound manipulation and diffusion.

Tralphaz is an electronic sound artist from San Francisco. He suffers from a permanent fracture in his frontal skull, an injury he had
sustained since childhood when he rode a Mickey Mouse tricycle through a glass door. He has recorded for labels such as Troniks, RRRecords, Throat, and Harsh Noise and has toured the U.S., Switzerland, and Japan.

R. Jencks is a Bay Area aktionist, alchemist, and provocateur, ceaselessly pushing thresholds in all media since the late '80s. His work utilizes modified electronics, voice, and physical response, augmented by strategic visual installation to manipulate the environment and the senses. This unyielding research and experimentation continues to elude classification, except a singular agenda to exploit instinct and technology executed through the most insidiously visceral form of sound and presentation possible.

23five Incorporated is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development and increased awareness of sound works in the public arena, and to the support and education of artists working with and discussing the medium of sound. Sound works are defined as artistic endeavors primarily concerned with the use of sound, but fall outside of what is normally considered "music." This includes but is not limited to: recordings, radio transmissions, performances, installations, sound sculpture, site specific public art, and new media arts.

more information:
23five: http://www.23five.org
The Lab: http://www.thelab.org
Swissnex: http://www.swissnexsanfrancisco.org
Sudden Infant: http://suddeninfant.com
Horaflora: http://horaflora.blogspot.com
R.Jencks: http://www.crashworship.net/sixes
Tralphaz: http://www.tralphaz.com/

Ralph White and the Horaflora Sound System

2009-12-07T15:05:00.001-08:00

Ralph White and the Horaflora Sound System CD-R

Resipiscent Records

From the press sheet:

Chain-draped kalimba played with the soft speed of Texas banjo, fiddle and accordion master Ralph White, its acoustic distortions convoluted through a range of materials (rigged to transducers) in Horaflora's custom-built sound system, yield a crumbling wet firmament of timbres. The songs by which the sounds were discovered are transfixing, psychedelic, transporting; in fact, they invite site-specific listening: Binaural methods make track one best suited to headphones, track two must be heard outdoors, and track three includes unadulterated Weddell seals and is best heard underwater. Lose your map, this is music uncharted.

Story of the coming about of this:

Another tour introduction, though this time not in person....
At the last day of my stayover on the east coast, which was also the night of the last show, at the peoples pint in Greenfield, MA, Josh Burkett of mystery train records (in Amherst, MA) trades me an LP that he just put out, of a fellow from Texas namd Ralph White... Over the course of the next few months, that record becomes a favorite of mine.

Eventually one day last spring, an oppurtunity to book a show at a cafe that Dianne, my girlfriend, worked at presented itself. As I was going through a list in my head of who I might get to play that would really be something special, up pops an email from the Ralph White fan club announcing an upcoming show, and it dawns on me that he might just agree to come play for travel fare, food and a place to sleep, so I write him, and a few emails later, we've got ourselves a show! Skipping the long story about how the cafe space itself fell through, we find ourselves playing in Dianne's backyard ... during the course of this concert, Ralph played his electric Kalimba through my prepared speakers which lent a 'you-are-inside-of-a-giant-kalimba' sound to the proceedings, as the different frequencies of the notes rattled, shook, buzzed, and sizzled all different parts of the individually prepared speakers which were spread out all around us, creating a diffusion that was a function of frequency, rather than stereo balance... a curious effect!

I inquired later if Ralph would let me 'replay' some of his kalimba through my sound system for a recording, with additional live manipulations as it played back, and soon enough we've traded several tracks for each other to complete... The additional details have been released on Resipiscent Records!

..and for the uber-curious,here's a recording of the kalimba as played in the backyard... Enjoy!

Reviews:

"LOACHFILLET - ELECTRIC SOUND: SOLAR SOLUTION (CD by Resipiscent)

SERGE MODULAR USERS 2009 (CD compilation by Resipiscent)
RALPH WHITE AND THE HORAFLORA SOUNDSYSTEM (CDR by Resipiscent)
On both CDs the analogue synths play an all important role. On the compilation its the Serge Modular and unnamed synthesizers on the CD by Loachfillet. The latter is from Oakland, California and has worked with Pigs In The Ground, Mummers, Diatric Puds and Psicologicos Traumas, as well as various involvements with labels. The ten tracks on this release fit perfectly into the current revival of cosmic music. Yet what Loachfillet does isn't exactly what say Tangerine Dream did. This is not light your hashpipe kind of music and drift away. This is nightmare music, the horror movie soundtrack. More alike the experiments carried out by some of the more radical early composers such as Morton Subotnick or Ilhan Mimaroglu, or 'Planets Of The Apes' soundtrack. Dark, menacing music, long sustaining sound, heavy oscillations. A pleasant nightmare of course. Like a good horror movie can be pleasant too (or even a bad one). An excellent connection is made to the past tradition of this music, not necessarily taking it into a new field, but a fine continuation within that tradition.
The only time I ever saw a Serge Modular synth was studio 4 of the EMS studios in Stockholm, but it didn't work (unlike the Bucla in the same studio), so I never had the change to fiddle on one. I am actually quite surprised to see a compilation with so many artists that actually have access to one, or perhaps even own one. Much alike the release by Loachfillet, this is nightmare music, soundtrack music or just downright scary. Lovely again. None of these pieces are really noise based
(except perhaps Cebec, Lowenzahn or Grusel), but each of them breaths analogue warmth. Pieces by m/N/Ml, Jan-Hinnerk Helms, Cray, John DuVal, Benge, Kkonkkrete, Electronic Waste Product, Carlos Giffoni, Mono-Poly, Sonic Dada and David Talento. Perhaps not the most well-known names around - not all at least - but each of them knows how to get something nice out of such beasts.
On CDR we find Ralph White, who has recorded his fiddle, banjo, accordion and kalimba with Jandek, Sir Richard Bishop, Michelle Shocked and Powell St. John (of 13th Floor Elevators), together with Raub Roy, who works as Horaflora, and who plays the computer. Reipiscent calls this: 'Konono No. 1 playing Ricardo Villalobos as recorded by David Tudor', which I sort of can see, but it surely doesn't have that Konono No. 1 drive to it. Three long pieces of improvisation, none of which could impress me very much. Very much like stuff a bunch of separate sounds going on, that never seem to match very well. The processing of whatever White does is a bit crude and noisy, and never seems to find a common place, where they both play or interact together. 'A Space Between A Chimney And A Swift' is the best piece with a nice fiddle sound to it. Overall not really bad, but not enough to keep it going for the entire length. (FdW)
Address: http://www.resipiscent.com"

Frans De Waard, vital weekly

"Hey y'all. I feel weird being the first on the new version of this forum, there was a bunch of interesting stuff here before... Hoping some of it can be reposted.

Anyhows I just watched Danny's old buddy Ralph White play an experimental set and thought it would be of interest here. He did a collaboration with a fella that goes by the name of Hora Flora. His mbiras and banjo were amplified through an assortment of objects instead of a regular PA. Hora Flora had a bunch of tiny speakers and he would balance them on big metal dishes or stack rocks and tin foil and stuff on them. There was a little subwoffer with rocks all over it, or sometimes a plastic bag would be stretched over it. This would either cause the object to resonate with frequencies Ralph was putting out or make crazy distortion. All this stuff was spread out in front of the stage and sometimes even out in the crowd a little bit. It worked in a really cool way with the percussive nature of the instruments. Mbiras typically have a chain or something that lays across the keys to get a rattling sound, and this was a sort of an extension of that, except instead of a little chain or something it was mostly garbage from the modern world that was somewhat frantically being arranged on the fly as Ralph's sounds passed through. Since all this stuff was vibrating it would kinda fall apart at points and Hora Flora would have to run around like a crazy man to keep things balanced or rearrange them. You could tell Ralph was getting a big kick out of it. They did one song with little tape recorders placed all around the room playing a fiddle drone, which was extra cool. They have a CD out together on this label - http://www.resipiscent.com/ - and you can hear some short samples on the site. The first track is binaural, so if you listen on headphones you're plopped down in the middle of all the crazy resonating objects as they're moved around and played with. I think it's a cool CD and an innovative concept in the treatment of traditional sounds. Hooray for folktronics!"

Stin-G, Danny Barnes Forum

PICTURES from the release party!!!

Gino Robair taking a picture of my setup!

ipod/portable music creation

2009-12-07T15:04:00.001-08:00

I'm a big fan of the iphone/ipod touch, I see them as little modular sound stations that never leave the pocket of their owner, and yet are as multicapable as a laptop, just not as multitaskable... I contend that that's a benefit, as it keeps one focused on a single task at a time, without getting distracted my new chats, emails, and status updates!

Since the app store opened last year, I've obtained a microphone that dangles off the ipod like a little friend, and with it, I'm able to make a recording of anything that passes by my field of hearing within seconds of first noticing it! For this reason alone, the ipod touch would be an invaluable tool, as most field recordists don't actively carry around their equipment on their day-to-day, but if your recording equipment is also your music player, email device, calendar, and more, you tend to have it with you!

The sound capabilities of the little touch don't stop at field recording though, there's a multitude of synths, samplers, live processing effects, virtual instruments, and generative composition programs!

By using a special mic I have that allows one to plug a line input into any of these programs, I can use a couple or, by borrowing my girlfriends, a few all linked together like a traditional effects chain where each can be a whole multitude of different effects, without having to rewire anything, but simply by changing the program!

One program I find to be particularly cool is called "RJDJ" and it's essentially a host program for PD patches made by users all around the world... usually, these subprograms take a live input from the microphone (or line in) anf effect it in some predetermined way, there's glitchy choppers, delay + feedbackers, granular delays, pitch shifters, quantizing rhythmic loopers, and a bunch of other stuff, sometimes having it's own music that responds to noise input to control the compositional structure of the playback... these aren't my favorites, I prefer ones that only use one's input sounds with no additional sounds of their own... but I'm in it to create, rather than for entertainment. Below is a link to my RJDJ profile, and I suggest playing a couple or a few tracks at a time, as each was made as minimally as the software would allow, in order to facilitate mixing later, only after uploading these to their site did I realize that one may mix them on the site itself!

RJDJ

more to come...

REVIEWS

2009-11-29T20:06:00.000-08:00

for Ralph White and Horaflora sound system:

"LOACHFILLET - ELECTRIC SOUND: SOLAR SOLUTION (CD by Resipiscent)

-Frans De Waard, vital weekly ...not the best review, but then again, I don't think he really listened hard enough... and I don't play a computer!

Ralph White and Horaflora Sound System release party show reviewed:

"Hey y'all. I feel weird being the first on the new version of this forum, there was a bunch of interesting stuff here before... Hoping some of it can be reposted.

-Stin-G, Danny Barnes Forum

For Gland Canyon:

"Gland Canyon is the destination getaway of the season! Languidly ride down steep, marrow trails on helpful cilia, then thrill to the corpuscular rapids, as you shoot the creamy flow within! A delight!"

-Chris Cooper, angst hase pfeffer nase, fat worm of error

Upcoming!

2009-10-20T17:12:00.000-07:00

BarBQ - Sat Oct24 - 2pm with Anti-Ear, Ralph White, Horaflora, Shelly Waters

Can you chew, puff and elbow dance at the same time?

Find out fer sure when Ralph White himself gets off a plane from Austin and reports directly to LIFE CHANGING MINISERIES 1629 8th in OAKLAND alongside Horaflora, Shelly Waters, and Anti-Ear plus a secret!

At 2PM there'll be roasted victuals, bring your favorites to toss on the cross, plus smoked brains and bands soon after.

Liz Allbee, Gino Robair, Loachfillet, Hans Grusel, Ralph White+Horaflora 10/25

it's the RESIPISCENT release party

SCHNUFFLER (Liz Allbee/Gino Robair with 2 super ltd cassettes and Liz Allbee solo CD!)
HANS GRUSEL (and friends in support of the Serge Modular Users 2009 compilation!)
LOACHFILLET (announcing "Solar Solution: Electric Pond" full length CD!)
RALPH WHITE+HORAFLORA (clear here from Austin with a new full length CD!)

an EARLY show, 5pm doors 6pm bands, to avoid conflict with bsfx at hemlock later that night.

LOCATION: Annie's Social Club 917 FOLSOM, SF, CA $6

Bio

2009-09-25T22:50:00.000-07:00

Raub Roy studied sound art and studio technique with Daniel Warner and Christoph Cox at Hampshire College, Amherst Mass, between 2004 and 2006. D. Warner and C. Cox are co-editors of Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (Continuum, 2004), a collection of critical and theoretical writings on contemporary music, which functioned as a textbook in the course "Audio Culture: Theories and Practices in Music Now". Raub is also largely self taught in microsound, field recording and other specialized aspects of his field.

Raub has performed and recorded experimental music in a variety of solos, duos, trios, etc since 2001, upon acquiring an Akai sampler, which was his instrument of choice until 2007, when a shift in focus led him towards prepared and extended acoustic instruments, as well as electro-acoustic methods of sound manipulation and diffusion.

Raub has performed in support of many excellent and respected artists from the noise, improvised music, and electronic music world: Lionel Marchetti, Jerome Noetinger, Fat Worm of Error, Angst Hase Pfeffer Nace, Chris Corsano, Vampire Belt, Paperrad, Cex, Stars as Eyes, Feathers, Bromp-Treb Sound System, Ralph White, Rubber-O-Cement, Nmprign (Bhob Rainey and Greg Kelley), Howard Steltzer, Bill Nace, Thurston Moore, MV&EE, Evolutionary Jass Band, Headboggle, Tony Dryer, Jacob Felix Heule, Dat Politics, and Nautical Almanac.

Raub and Ralph - horaflora plays Ralph White (working title)

2009-09-16T01:57:00.000-07:00

Another tour introduction, though thus time not in person....
At the last day of my stayover on the east coast, which was also the night of the last show, at the peoples pint in Greenfield, MA, Josh Burkett of mystery train records (in Amherst, MA) trades me an LP that he just put out, of a fellow from Texas namd Ralph White... Over the course of the next few months, that record becomes a favorite of mine.

...In the meantime, here's a recording of the kalimba as played in the backyard... Enjoy!

welcome!!

2009-08-20T00:55:00.000-07:00

still workin on it... but have a look (contents)

horaflora/secret boyfriend split 12" LP

2009-08-19T23:30:00.000-07:00

Horaflora/Secret Boyfriend split 12" LP

Hot Releases

My first vinyl! I met Ryan Martin (Secret Boyfriend, label chief) in Chapel Hill, NC, last year on our bike tour, and he played a great set of cheap keyboard hemmorrage noise songs that was on of the best things I saw while on tour... A month or so later, he invites me to do a split 7" with him... Over the course of time, this turns into a 12" ... One side is done at this point, the other shouldn't be long off...

the gland canyon

2009-08-19T22:46:00.000-07:00

horaflora - The Gland Canyon

install records

Soon to be re-released in an edition of 50 as part of the "installation" series, this is the cumulation of my first 5 years of playing and recording electronic and improvised music. The disc is 80 minutes long, and is a continuous work, though has been split into 5 sections that are defined only by the track splitting on the CD, which I did to facilitate playback/browsing and in order to use several track titles that I'd bandied about through the years! Previous editions have had different numbers of tracks (13, 3, 1) as they were created.

The album consists of many different layered solo, duo, and trio improvisations and field recordings from 2002 - 2007.

Nearly everything was close mic'd, late at night, with binaural microphones; thus a vividly present sound is inherent throughout the proceedings. The late night sessions made for great isolation in each source (no traffic or street noise), as well as the extra-spacial bent allowing each sound to sit in it's own space without interfering with other sources that eventually became it's partners in time! The cumulative effect of such nonsense is a heightened spacial illusion for the listener where not only do the sounds appear to be in the room with him/her (provided headphones are employed upon playback) but that all of the sounds were played together in a room at the same time, perhaps by an improvising ensemble all gathered closely around a stereo mic....

...Though what this ensemble would be playing would be extremely difficult to assemble in one room, and fit around one microphone! Some of the sounds were sourced from old creaky playground equipment, industrial water diffusers (part of a huge shower-head, basically a cymbal with holes), a chinese instrument shop on a quiet day, my family singing christmas carols as I walk up from the basement, as well as a lot of other instruments... homemade granular synthesis sampler, french horn, sax, flute, voice, lots of ebow'd objects (previously mentioned showerhead, mbira tine, toy harp...), custom cell phone rings modulated by mouth cavities, vietnamese woodblocks, egg slicers, ceiling fan, book pages, circuit bent budda box, answering machine message fed back through skype connection, guinea pig, broken hard drive, turntable belt drive motor, music boxes, bone resonator hearing test device, mineral water (gerolsteiner) fizz slowly escaping through the cap which is a little wet, rubbed trampoline, toy piano, and... harmonica! None of the aforementioned instruments were played "properly", though... except for the guinea pig. The guinea pig was unprepared.

All of these recordings were then arranged on computer in early 2007 during which time my recording situation was hampered by a loud refrigerator hum from a cafe below the apartment I had moved into that year, the hum was omnipresent throughout the apartment 24/7 and made it's way into the last track as one of the last recordings I made before settling down to edit and arrange the whole thing into it's present day form.

Discography

2009-08-19T18:40:00.000-07:00

Horaflora - The Gland Canyon CD

install records

Soon to be re-released in an edition of 50 as part of the "installation" series, this is the cumulation of my first 5 years....

Ralph White and the Horaflora Sound System

Resipiscent Records

A collaboration with kalimba/violin/banjoplayer Ralph White!

Released 10/24/09

Video

2009-08-19T17:58:00.000-07:00

Here is the entire set I played on 1/31/2010 at the lab in SF opening for Sudden Infant download or stream

Here's a short youtube clip of same set:

Welcome!!

2009-08-19T17:31:00.001-07:00

welcome!

Pictures

2009-08-19T17:00:00.001-07:00

During the course of a set by horaflora, I usually use one or two balloons on drums, which people tend to take pictures of, though that's not all I'm doing! I suppose the tape manipulation and transducer/subwoofer preparations aren't as photogenically inclined...!

PICTURES from the Resipiscent Records release party!!!

Gino Robair taking a picture of my setup!

Ralph White

CYCLEDELIC MUSIC TRIP PICS!

Live at space space, Queens, NY

Live in the Backyard, alabama st, mission, SF

Flywheel, Easthampton, MA...2005.. with (LtoR) Christopher Carmody, Kurt Weisman, Sherry (last name anyone?), Raub, Jon Tassi, Anna Bartlestein (not pictured)
Recording on Mt Monadnock, 2006
Live at 21 Grand, oakland, CA 2007

at el rincon, SF, CA. Aug 2, 2009at el rincon, Aug 2, 2009
el rincon

at the schoolhouse in hadley, MA, 2003... with Curtis (hntrhntr)

At the Grandstands Bowling Alley/Pub in Northampton, MA... 2003? Performing as "Deflator Mouse" with Kurt Weisman

Shows

2009-08-19T16:03:00.001-07:00

FUTURE/PRESENT!

PASSED!

1/31/2010

The Lab - 16th and Mission

with Sudden Infant, R. Jenks, Tralphaz

"Crowley's Entrail Reduction Sauce"

Sunday, August 30th @ Razor Wire Compound.

887 31st St. , oakland, CA 94608

with....

> ETTRICK

> SHARKIFACE

> FOGNOZZLE

> HORAFLORA

> NERFBAU

Maine to Georgia bike tour with Kurt Weisman in the Fall of 08:

Cycledelic Music Trip

Mp3

2009-08-19T16:01:00.002-07:00

CycledelicMusicTrip Tour 3"

This was realized by myself, Donny (fat worm of error, offal), and Aaron the month before I joined Kurt Weisman on our 'cycledelic music trip' bike tour. It features a lightly layered and edited version of the set I played (and still play) live at most gigs, with drums, balloons,transducers, and subwoofers.

Raub and Andrea on KALX - Is being put out as a Record, so I took down the free mp3, something else good soon!

This was a set consisting of quieter sounds picked up by my binaural mics and broadcast over the Berkeley township.. tape players, ipods, transducers, resonant objects, laptop and kernels of corn all were played.

Contact

2009-08-19T16:01:00.001-07:00

horaflora(at)gmail(dot)com

write to be put on a newsletter containing news such as shows and new releases.

upcoming releases

2009-08-19T13:43:00.000-07:00

Horaflora/Secret Boyfriend split 12'' LP

Hot Releases

My first vinyl! I met Ryan Martin (Secret Boyfriend, label chief) in Chapel Hill, NC, last year on our bike tour....

Horaflora - as yet untitled untitled 7"

Yeay! Cassettes