MEDIA ROOTS — In today’s fast paced, mostly club-dominated, electronic music culture, it is rare for dance music to convey an evocative message.  A wonderful exception to this standard is Oakland analog synthesizer solo musician, Identity Theft.  He has just released a new EP, Security Theatre, which you can stream for free in its entirety.  Its titular track tells us that “All the World’s a Stage.”

No longer is outdoor surveillance exclusive to the UK; If you venture outdoors pretty much anywhere in the United States, you are frequently being recorded and mapped by sophisticated surveillance technology.  These technologies are not just being implemented by various government or law enforcement agencies, but now by ordinary citizens against each other.  We have heard time and again the citizenry say, “If I’m not doing anything wrong, I have nothing to hide.”

Identity Theft (real name M. Buchannan), aka Djynx Ogo, is one of the members of Nommo Ogo and Seacrypt.  All of the music is created on hardware drum machines and synthesizers.  As far as being an ‘Analord’ is concerned, Djynx was already knighted long ago. 

MR

***

IDENTITY THEFT — The rites of security theater play themselves out in airports, hotels, malls, town centers and gated communities. These rituals protect us mentally from the creeping suspicions that we are not actually safe at any time or place. This illusion of security is constructed within our private lives as well, in our homes and residences; with our significant others, our friends, our families. We are compelled to surveil upon each other in order to feel some level of comfort. The loss of our own privacy to others is outweighed by our need to observe, to know the limits and the parameters of our relationships. We give up our autonomy and our sense of uncertainty for a false feeling of invulnerability. This loss is palpable, and reflects into every aspect of modern existence with it’s dazzling luster. The lights fade, the curtains rise, and the audience falls silent with anticipation of the performance to come.

Purchase at Bandcamp for $4

Released by: 
www.katabatik.org

listen to nommo ogo and other similar music at: 
www.recordlabelrecords.org

***

MEDIA ROOTS — The infamous neo-conservative, former World Bank boss and former Bilderberg group steering committee member, Paul Wolfowitz, also a ladies’ man (just ask Shaha Riza), is now a DJ, too, throwing down dance mixes exclusively for Media Roots.  “Did you see the pictures?”

“Hey, fellow patriots!  To help take the edge off of tha Cipro comedown from the weekend, I recommend trying out my DJ set.” 

-Paul Wolfowitz

Artist List: Check the SoundCloud timeline.

www.recordlabelrecords.org

MEDIA ROOTS- There are only a handful of electronic or synthesizers musical acts associated with film and movie scores. Clockwork Orange and The Shining’s Wendy Carlos comes to mind as does Tangerine Dream’s memorable scores for Risky Business and The Keep. One brilliant composer who is heavily revered in the world of orchestral film music, yet rarely mentioned amid discussions of film scores is Jerry Goldsmith. Goldsmith began as an auteur who strived to emulate the likes of Bernard Hermann and later he become a workhorse for Hollywood.

In time he started experimenting with exotic instruments and tried weaving them into a traditional orchestra aesthetic. Two years before Delia Derbeishire made the legendary “synthesizer” (which really was tape splice cutups, not synthesizer) theme for Dr. Who, Goldsmith had incorporated a Hammond Novachord into his theme song for Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (the last song in this mix).

In the 70s Goldsmith was already beginning to toy with synthesizers, but he didn’t make a fully synthesized score until the film Logan’s Run. His use of strange instruments and synthesizers make brief appearances on some of his earlier scores such as Star Trek the Motion Picture, but when his collaborations with Joe Dante peaked (Goldsmith became Dante’s right hand man akin to Spielberg’s use of John Williams), electronic elements were incorporated into almost every score he made from 1981-87. The results were profound: the samples from Gremlins, Explorers, Psycho II, Poltergeist, Outland in this mix exhibit a mystical hybrid of classical symphony and synthesizer music that has never been replicated since.

We went Goldsmithing for electronic music and this is what we found, so kick back and enjoy a relaxing journey of nostalgic childhood treats from none other than Jerry Goldsmith.

Robbie Martin