6d696b75474f44

by Federico Reuben

One of Japan’s biggest pop culture idols for over a decade, Hatsune Miku’s synthesised voice and image have been used on hundreds of thousands pop tracks, videos, and franchised products worldwide. Powered by Vocaloid software, she represents the ultimate hyper-idol, a digitally rendered eternal bubblegum teen star.

6d696b75474f44 is Federico's contribution to New Vocal Solutions (sampler), a collection of tracks by artists working with Miku’s voice and Vocaloid technology in strange and skewed ways. Painstaking programming, circuit bending, and algorithmic repurposing are employed to plunder the uncanny valley and dredge up layers of digital silt; an unexplored rich and mucky underside of pop subculture.

Miku’s ubiquity and popularity is largely down to the independent, amateur, and open source fan communities that propagate her. As such, squib-box is making New Vocal Solutions (sampler) completely free to download.

CREDITS

Released April 2, 2018

Federico Reuben - Composition, programming, production, mixing and mastering

Neil Luck - Voice, cover design

Hatune Miku - Vocaloid (synthesised voice)

A.I.LOVEs2scream

by Owczarek/Reuben

Paulina Owczarek - Alto Saxophone
Federico Reuben - Live coding / electronics

A computer screaming along with a saxophonist in machine-cosmic synchrony. Artificial Intelligence training, learning from human spontaneous invention. The machine becoming expressive, matching heightened states of consciousness, developing a taste for SWEET improvisation. A.I. trains for love, excess, pleasure, spirituality... heading for a brain freeze.

A.I.LOVEs2scream is an album of improvisations by Paulina Owczarek and Federico Reuben. Recorded in one session on 22 January 2017, this album captures the coming together of two free improvisers with almost opposing methods, who yet manage to seamlessly integrate the organic with the synthetic, the physiological and the mechanical, the real with the virtual, the biological and the artificial.

CREDITS

Released September 1, 2017

Recorded with an SM58 and mixed by Federico Reuben
Cover Design by Eszter Takacs

Abhorrent

by Lash/Reuben/Baracskai

Dominic Lash - double bass
Federico Reuben - laptop
Zlatko Baracskai - synth

The Abhorrent trio joins improvising performers using different techniques and attitudes to yield musical expressiveness aiming at variety and exclusivity. Extended instrumental techniques and in-time composition is at the fingertips of Dominic Lash with his double bass. A laptop running SuperCollider implements interactive compositional machines using synthesis and recordings under supervision of Federico Reuben. Chaos arising from breaking modular synthesiser components is tamed by Zlatko Baracskai highlighting the aesthetic of error. The three together form a peculiar cohesion and unexpectedness traversing musical structures that border on the unknown.

Perro-ChimP

Federico Reuben – live electronics
Javier Carmona – drums

Perro-chimp is an improvisation duo comprising Javier Carmona and Federico Reuben and often featuring guests such as John Edwards, Fiona Bevan, Rachel Musson, Mark Hanslip, Adam de la Cour, Paulina Owczarek and Paloma Carrasco.

Perro Chimp @ Squib-Box

Live @ Resonance FM

Perro-chimp + Rachel Musson

Live @ Javier's Flat

Perro-chimp + Owczarek

Live @ Kafri Studios

Perro-chimp + Fiona Bevan

Live @ ICA

Perro-chimp + Adam de la Cour

Orwell Fragments

by Lash/Laubrock/Reuben

Dominic Lash - Double Bass
Ingrid Laubrock - Saxophone
Federico Reuben - Live Electronics

credits

Released June 29, 2011

Recorded Live at Cafe Orwell, Brooklyn, NY, 14.06.2011

Recorded with a Zoom recorder and mixed by Federico Reuben.

Cover Design by Eszter Takacs.

Sporcizia Accademica

by FreuPinta

Sporcizia Accademica is a collection of short experimental pieces dealing with real-time plunderphonics, musica derivata, robo-improv, virtual transcription and alter-electro quotes.

credits

released January 1, 2011

Performed by FreuPinta and various others.
Mixed and Produced by FreuPinta.
Cover Design by Eszter Takacs.

Special thanks to the algorithms and plundered artists.