Saturday, December 25, 2010

Sandy Ewen & Jonathan Jindra live recording

Jonathan Jindra & Sandy Ewen (live improv 12-12-2010) by trills

Jonathan Jindra (Trills) & Sandy Ewen performing a live improvised set at the Binarium Sound Series in Houston, TX 12-12-2010

Thursday, November 18, 2010

2 B-Sides Available

Bermuda Triangle' @ I, Absentee is an outlet for them to present free extra tracks of artists connected with the label. Due to the nature of the concept, most files are unmastered and the older audio may contain surface noise in the original recordings. There are two Trills tracks added to the collective: "Blood ...Orange" is a Modular Puzzle demo outtake, and "Joguko" is a newer track that I quite like, but isn't fitting the flow of the rest of my more recent output.

"Joguko" and "Blood Orange"
AVAILABLE HERE

Monday, October 11, 2010

Peach Genesis

My good friend Dissolved Paul runs an excellent music blog called
"Quagmire of the Antler People" to share mixtapes and this week I
contributed a mix of some tunes that inspire me that I've called "Peach
Genesis".




http://quagmireoftheantlerpeople.blogspot.com/2010/10/peachy-keen.html
As we enter the month of Samhain, we have an exciting hectic, maybe spooky but definitely fish fueled generous time ahead of us here at the Quagmire. Hopefully our eccentric listeners will have filled up on the previous mixes because here comes another, and we are happy to say this time it comes from an eager outsider, possibly an astral traveler, who has arrived from a distant star holding a small flashing device filled with audio greatness. Or it could simply be excellent electronic experimental musician type, Trills/Jonathan Jindra disguised as such a being.

Regardless of what form the traveler appears as, the sonic quavers he brings are tasty and are mysteriously headed under the name "Peach Genesis" which we think is really cool. Is this the name of another planet capable of sustaining life not as we know it or is it the name of an edible book, or perhaps an exotic mantra. We have a pet cat called Genesis actually who has back legs like a rabbit and sometimes when he meows, no sound comes out. Sound most certainly does come out here though so enjoy and listen to the excellent Failure, who don't live up to their name with some grinding melodies and emotional tones that aren't Emo, the lush Boreal Network who bring some warm synths to watch silent 80's science programs to and the slow 'Low' try and run away with your eternal organs, mainly your heart only using the singers sparkling voice, who appears to have originated from a planet where the term "tone deaf" doesn't exist. Pan Sonic have been living in your membranes for their entire existence and are the sound of electronic rain falling inside a cheese grater which is slowly rubbing up against your internal band pass filter while you visit the Arctic.

Peach Genesis.
1.Pan Sonic: Current 1
2.Failure: Heliotropic
3.Steve Brodsky: Halo 4A Hula-Hoop
4.Low: Laser Beam
5.Nico: Afraid
6.Boreal Network: Adrive
7.Oceansize: Massive Bereavement
8.Machinefabriek: Hieperdepiep
9.Greymachine: Wolf at the door
10.Track53: Dimensia

Available Here

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Midmir Live Videos

Sept. 12, 2010 live @ The Binarium Sound Series, Houston, TX





Saturday, August 28, 2010

Sequenza 21 Article

http://www.sequenza21.com/2010/08/trills-this-sunday-august-29th-in-houston-tx/


"Jonathan Jindra’s weekly experimental music concerts Binarium Sound Series continues 8pm Sunday nights here in Houston, Texas at The Mekong Underground, 2808 Milan Street (right next to Kohn’s bar). This is a wonderful series where you will hear intimate performances by local and visiting artists performing composed, improvised, electronic, and acoustic experimental music.

This Sunday’s August 29th Binarium program features Jonathan’s electronica project Trills. Trills is manifested in Jonathan’s live performances as well as several online digital releases – many being collaborations with other similarly minded artists. His recent full length split with Glasgow artist Dissolved entitled PH:14 has been his most successful release to date with over 43,000 downloads in its first month of release. Trills’ repertoire to my ears has roots its in groundbreaking synthesizer and electronic artists and ensembles like Tangerine Dream, Vangelis (especially his soundtrack to Bladerunner) and Popol Vuh. Jonathan name checked for me a handful of more contemporary artists as influences, including Boards of Canada, Pan Sonic, and Autechre.

I’ve listened to a bunch of Jonathan’s music and still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of his talents and repertoire. And I don’t want to pigeonhole Trills with only a cursory familiarity of countless 21st century electronic artists that flood the web trading digital files of original groundbreaking music the way I traded cassette tapes of the same back in the day. The best thing to do is go to the Trills website and enjoy the music and video samples, and then forget what you’ve heard when you check out this Sunday’s show. Jonathan’s set will be accompanied by custom video projection. About This Product joins Trills on this bill."

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

8-10-2010 Live Recording

320kb mp3s of last night's sets:

1 - Trills 30:37
2 - Mark.Nine 30:54
3 - Five Step Path 22:20
4 - Daed 45:22

http://www.sendspace.com/file/7ce3u1

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Binarium Sound Series

http://www.binariumsoundseries.com/

I am now hosting a weekly experimental series entitled "Binarium Sound Series" at The Mekong Underground outside of Khon's Bar in Houston, TX at 2808 Milam. I'm taking over the concert series previously named Resonant Interval Sound Series who was run by Lance Higdon who created quite a name for himself in the Houston noise music community, partly by DJing the Genetic Memory show at 91.7 KTRU, but more effectively by being a great communicator of the abstract and he served as a hub for a scattered, yet extensive area of Texas music. He is moving to Atlanta to teach Latin at a Catholic University at the end of the month so he is passing the show off to me, which I have renamed "Binarium Sound Series" which shares part of it's name with a track off the Trills release 'Modular Puzzle'.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Phaidon - Flash Fiction

My good friend Junior Davila was inspired by the Tchrite - Phaidon music video to write a fictional short story based on the images presented in the video.

http://juniordavila.com/2010/07/24/phaidon/

"
Phaidon

July 24, 2010 by Junior

In my nightmare of nightmares; I was in a stairwell. I looked up and there was no end in sight, like an impossible staircase from an M.C. Escher drawing. It was dark, abysmal. But there was a light that came from nowhere and yet was everywhere. The stairwell was lit in the color of arterial blood. The type that flows from the heart to the body, but this was no body. This was me. This was my prison.

Along with the blood-washed walls, there was a sickly green essence presiding there too; pushing away the blood in a mad attempt to overtake it with its feeling of rot and disgust.

I looked at the step in front of me and there stood a Venetian woman. She was clad in a black corset and dress that frilled at the edges below her knees. She wore a mask, the masquerade type seen at Mardi Gras. But there was something very sinister behind that mask. Her eyes were holes beneath it, endless holes. Rose petals fell around her, shriveling and dying as they passed her on the way to their stairwell grave. Suddenly a brilliant flash, lasting only a split second, revealed her eyes. She was watching me. Her ice-blue eyes bore holes into my soul making it a heap of what it was. In that single instant, she took from me my innocence, my love, my devotions, and all the joys in my world. The Venetian Woman robbed me of everything.

Something pushed me forward, but God help me I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see what lay next.

Please!

The Lady in Red flashed a half-step up the stairwell, who was she? She had blonde hair and a cold, callous look. Her detached demeanor flipped a butterfly knife. The knife was for me. My body. She meant to kill me. No, she meant to rip me of my being—my flesh. My soul a husk, she was meant to finish the job….

God! Please!

She disappeared and in her place, a man. The bald-headed man looked down at me as I passed the Venetian woman holding me in her gaze. I passed her but could not make myself look her in the eyes again. I could not look at the very thing that robbed me of everything dear to me. A cold-shiver ran through my spine as the man in the suit, wearing dark sunglasses, licked his lips as I approached him. He quirked a smile. I’m going to fuck you, son. My lead-ened dick is going to fuck you hard. He pulled a chrome-plated gun and pointed it at me, at my face. I could almost feel him winking behind his sunglasses.

As my eyes widened in absolute terror, as this man was about to destroy my sex and rape me of my ego, two forms materialized in front of me. From what felt like my navel, I was pulled again. I followed a man who held up a figure dressed in a white death shroud in front of him, guiding him up the stairs. I passed the man in the suit…he blew me a kiss and I shook again, I’d soon be seeing him again…I was sure of it.

Help me, please someone help me.

A thought occurred to me as I followed the man with the shaggy hair. His subject, the one he’s escorting…it’s me. I didn’t want to believe it, but the thought came anyway. My heart raced as I was realizing that my nightmare was real; I was dying and I was going the place where all bad men go. And here I was following the very thing that was escorting the shroud that I would come to wear when the time came.

As we turned on the level to go up again, I tried to get a look in the hole where the face would be. Instead, the one escorting him turned to me and my blood ran cold. My eyes beheld the most monstrous sight I had ever seen.

It was a creature. From the neck down it was a normal man with a brown shirt and slacks, but from the neck up…

Jesus no!

It was a scaly creature with the nose of a buffalo. It had slight protruding horns coming out of the sides of its forehead. Another line of small spikes come down the center of its head from the hairline down to the brows. The scales were colored grey and was given the sickly disgusting flair from the rotting green light that emanated from nowhere, yet everywhere. He looked towards me with black vertical slits for pupils and red iris’; irises that glowed with the sheen of the blood-colored light. He continued to look past me and above my head. There was something calling it…and I was the subject. It continued up the stairs and disappeared with what may have been me; or perhaps that shroud that I would fill.

From in front of me stood a woman’s legs. There was something wrong though. I began to look up. She wore a dress of the old-type, the type that was sown in the historic ages with the rough cloth. I looked further up.

What have I done?

With bulging arms and a protruding chest, it was a muscularly built man. He had blonde pig-tails under a Viking helmet and was splitting his tongue down the middle on the blade of an axe. The axe had a skull adorned on the end of the shaft and another similar blade on the opposite side. A spike came up out of the top and I knew…this trans-gendered Viking was here to make me none; not a man, not a woman, neither. It looked at me with maliciousness, hate, and hunger.

My heart stilled and I understood. I finally understood it all. As I flashed back to where the Lady in Red had stood, she now lay on the level floor dead. It’s making sense to me, now.

Another flash and I saw a piglet sitting atop where the shrouded person disappeared. It had a leash being held by nothing and a television showing that there was no body where the Lady in Red obviously laid. My life, the food for the spit, for the very demons who had come for me to strip me of who I am.

I understand now. I am whole; I am saved. The Lady in Red was sacrificed and the Piglet was put in my place.

With cold sweat pouring between my shoulders and down my face, I wept. The nightmare had been real and the Lady in Red had saved me.

Forgive me, Father; forgive me for I have sinned. The Demon’s of hell have shown me who I am. I am he, no more."

Saturday, July 17, 2010

This makes me happy.

I found a small listener review of 'Modular Puzzle' that made me really happy. I'm so glad there are other people out there that really in to what I am trying to make:

"Upon reading the preview for this album on the label's newsletter and web page, i at first read the phrase "acid tachno" and felt a little turned off. I found myself falling into the mindset that acid techo tended to be redundant and uninspiring and more for the dancefloor. Of course, you can't always judge a cd by its preview in print. I listened to the audio samples and was intrigued, and ordered a copy.

It arrived promptly, and popped it into my car stereo and was taken completely off guard. This wasn't your stereotyped acid techno at all in any respect. This wasn't a dancefloor oriented album (thank the stars), and it wasn't anything I had ever heard before. In fact, I was so enthralled with this album, that I am amazed that this hasn't reached anyone else's ears already.

The first few tracks send you into a fiery burst of organized chaos-- industrial beats and a flurry of glitchy synth pads send you into a dark yet vibrant place before settling you into amazingly catchy, IDM-meets-acid synth-meets-Ed Wood Jr's brain if you plugged it into an amplifier. The next several tracks thump you into a whirlwind of emotions; really taking the lidten in and truly making them wonder what could be lurking around the corner.

Things warm up a bit near track nine and ten. Here, I'm reminded of BoC's b-sides to their few singles, only with a hefty dash of Tonikom, "Come to Daddy"-esque Aphex Twin, and a hint of sunlight.

The next few track to the closer are a little more controled, relaxed and mellow. It is certainly needed after such a wild sonic ride.

With such a stunning, brilliant and vibrant label debut, I have no doubt that Trills is going to turn a lot of heads. If there was a soundtrack for the unknown, this would be it."

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Nyimbo Za Watoto CD


http://abcdreams.ca/2009/10/nyimbo-za-watoto-songs-for-the-children/

The Heart is Infinite
appears on this Nyimbo Za Watoto fundraiser CD. Special thanks to Graham Fife and Gayle Ye for their help with this project.



"Nyimbo Za Watoto (Songs for the Children)
Posted by Frank, October 15th, 2009

ABCD: Art Building Children’s Dreams now has a CD of wonderful original music with which we can raise more funds for the children. It’s called NYIMBO ZA WATOTO (Songs for the Children).

The coordination of the massive effort to do this work was done by a good friend of mine, Graham Fife, a music lover and generous soul.

Musicians/songwriters were found who graciously agreed to donate a song or two. Colin Macdonald, (Colin Macdonald Design) another good friend (and my oldest former student!) came on board to do the great artwork and design. Mastering of the CD was done by Sam Reid of Slip One Digital. He’s a member of Glass Tiger.
It’s an exciting eclectic mix of styles of music ranging from ballads, to klesmer/reggae, to indie vocals, to hot latin beats, to electronic instrumental rhythms, to African folk sung by children.

Inside the case is a wonderful booklet which contains all the lyrics of the songs, photos of all the children and a thumbnail photo of an artwork by each of them. The booklet itself is a treasure!

We are launching the CD at Arts and Hearts for the Children of Kilimanjaro, our fundraising dinner and silent auction, on Oct. 23.If you’re reading this and would like a copy just contact us via email.

To give you an idea of how the funds can be used: the sale price of $20 pays for school lunches for a child for ONE YEAR!"

Monday, June 28, 2010

Tchrite - Phaidon Video


Video for Tchrite - Phaidon from the upcoming 'Mind Transplant' LP.
Filmed and edited by Jonathan Jindra

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Oblivion

A new Tchrite track is contained within this short film from Simon Pena, who is the other half of the band with me.

Oblivion from Simon Pena on Vimeo.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

SOW - Dog



SOW - Crybaby (Alternate Edit)

From the new album 'Dog' on I, Absentee. Available at http://www.i-absentee.com/sow/ Additional visuals by Jonathan Jindra.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Collaboration With Radames Ortiz

I have been working with Houston area poet Radames Ortiz on a collaboration scoring his poems. We plan on releasing a cd this summer of our work together. Here is a recent live performance of a piece we played at Rudolph Projects ArtScan Gallery in November 2009. The video projection was also shot and edited by me.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

MIdmir - Step Into A Dream



"Step Into A Dream is the debut album from Midmir, collaboratively written and produced by Jonathan Jindra (Trills) and Frank Dambra (Arctier, Track53). The respected talents of both artists fuse together to produce a spark flurrying with a sparse palette of colour-changing, genre-morphing tracks.

Newport Riverbed eases us in with bendy synths stretching around deliciously laidback beats and melodies which eventually navigate into wavering atmospheric ambience. Erazi shines through elements of jazz whilst Step22 and Acidto dissolve into wide-open halls soaked in distant house chords and dripping with acid. The journey peaks with Cathode Blue and I Remember Her Handwriting, both epic in scale and build-up, ultimately climaxing in a spirit-lifting experience, leaving an urge to revisit and peel back the inner depths underlying this entire piece.

The great variety of shades and styles provided by each unmistakable artist meld together harmoniously. A sublime listen!"

http://www.retronym.co.uk/rtn011/

Tchrite Review

I stumbled upon this today. It's a review of my experimental side project with Simon Pena we call Tchrite:

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/2009/08/friday_night_noise_tchrites_un.php

"Houston duo Tchrite - don't ask FNN how to pronounce that - are an experimentalist train wreck. They sew samples (No Doubt's "Don't Speak," the sorta public-access sound scraps that The Books go gaga over) into woozy patches of static tone. They puree and smush and smash samples together. They chop breakbeats into bits. They go in for disorienting-yet-forgettable laptop electronic wave modulations that aren't quite "techno" but aren't totally IDM, either - even if a lot of their unsexy song titles would give Autechre wood. All of which to say is that listening to the Tchrite albums FNN could find online (for free!) - Inner Sanctum Mysteries and Echoe Mae - is never, ever boring. FNN nominates "Casahdt" as a standout for several reasons: it's not excessively schizo, it's not long and it's noiser than every other Tchrite out there. It's 29 seconds of pulse-pounding, take-no-shit ecstasy: an out-of-control algorithm beating the tar outta smooth, air-traffic controller chatter with manic, mescaline-drenched drums, wipe-swipe synth effects, and the unmistakable tonal whine of a 747 rising slowly into the sky."