City Frequencies

Well its been nearly a year since the last RAEM tour and things have been busy at the City Frequencies studios with organising an album, planning future projects and compiling all sorts of interesting statistics for your reading pleasure.
The first lot of stats covers the overall Random Acts of Elevator Music touring success. We have completed two tours, in 2006 and 2009, during Fringe Festivals playing in a total of 70 elevators. There were about another ten elevators that we didnt include as they were either tests, promotion or rehearsals. So its 70 elevators with 35 played in each tour.

In 2006:
35 elevators total
20 successful
15 evictions
over 10 days of performances.

In 2009:
35 elevators total
25 successful
10 evictions
over 8 days of performances.

The main difference in the two tours was the upgrading of the gear which meant that we could play for longer. As well as that the new gear was a bit more innocent looking so where the first tour had a tripod in a bag which added to the unusual appearance of us, the 2009 tour had just office type cases. The shortened tour period in 2009 was due to the tour taking place in both Sydney for 3 days and Melbourne for 5 days.

Over in the audio section of the site there’s a new mp3 file uploaded called Live at the Glitch Bar 2009, you can find it at the top of the list of audio files available for download. This recording was taken from the lineout of the suitcase amplifier that took up most of the storage space in one of our cases. In the photos of the gear you will see the main case also has a keyboard horizontally positioned over it.

The amplifier we used took two audio signals, one from the keyboard and one from a computer and mixed them into a single audio signal that was then sent to a stereo bus. This was mainly done to alleviate the difficulties of mixing the levels of two separate audio signals live (in elevators mainly) so the result is a mono recording here.

This mix also was performed differently than the way we played in elevators due to the nature of the venue which was a small cinema with an audience of about 30 people. So this recording has a few upbeat elements and is mixed from the instruments slightly differently due to us using the in-house PA with sub woofers.

Quite. Its time for some changes to the site as we revert back to the old City Frequencies ways, all the Random Elevator stuff is still available but the front page will now be used to document the next stages of development. Firstly, the Random Acts of Elevator Music album is nearing completion with most of the tracks having been mixed with only one left to complete. It will be an album of individual tracks so if you want to hear an actual live set from an elevateur’s perspective you will have to head on over to the Audio section.

Speaking of which, there will be two more media file additions soon with the first being an audio recording of our live set played at the Glitch Bar in Nth Fitzroy just after our tour to Sydney. The other file is a video recording of our set played at the Excelsior Hotel in Sydney. They both need to be compresed suitably for web transit, so not long away.

With completed album under our wings its then a matter of finding a record label and distributor that we can then promote via a national tour. Yeah you heard right, imagine a tour of all the main office building elevators in Australia…

Other plans are being made at this stage for the next major project in the life of City Frequencies. We currently have two concepts that we are hammering out to determine which is more feasible and, well, fun to do. At the moment there’s not much we wish to divulge about them other than the first is an extention of the Cafe Voyeur modus operandi with the addition of multi culturalism and other fine governmental department buzz words like that. And the other project is one that still utilises the voyeuristic tendencies albeit contained within the home. Hmmmm, oblique enough for you? More on all this soon.

Quicklinks –
2009 Random Acts of Elevator Music equipment build
2009 Random Acts of Elevator Music performances
2006 Random Acts of Elevator Music equipment build
2006 Random Acts of Elevator Music performances

We are still busy in the RAEM studios getting an album of material ready and compiling a report into the 2009 Tour of Melbourne and Sydney. A few more press interviews have been added to the About page and a general tidy up of the site is taking place too.

And there’s always time for cooking, thanks to this site.

Thanks to Stu at New Weird Australia we now have a recording of our new mix of the track entitled Lunchtime Meditation Session available for download. Go here http://newweirdaustralia.com/2009/12/new-weird-australia-broadcast-one/ and enjoy.

This nets us recordings of two tracks from the elevator set, though slightly different as we composed a definite start and finish whereas when we play live each track leads into the next one. Its nice to play somewhere bigger than an elevator.

After a bit of a break from all things elevateur its time to head to the studio to commence recording sessions for our album. Prior to which we need to clean, fix and use the coffee machine pictured that was found by the side of the road. And it works perfectly, so caffeinated bliss is achieved.

We played in the front room of Loop Bar to an appreciative audience and it must be said that its great to have a good foldback as our performances tend to require the ability for us to hear what we are playing. Used to small elevators, us. A digital recorder captured the audio from the house mixer so it would be likely that an mp3 of that will be up on the website before long. Thanks goes to Harrie for providing the visuals, cheers lad.

Well here we are getting all set up and ready for a set of elevator music down at Loop Bar in the CBD. We are due to perform in about ten minutes and our VJ is ready to feed the room with visuals.

In the midst of some updates we also have a performance scheduled for this saturday 21st of November. We will be playing at the Electundra Audio-Visual Festival that takes place at Loop Bar, 23 Meyers Place in the CBD. If you happen to wander in at about 3.30 pm that saturday you will find us playing our live elevator set, recently played here in Melbourne and Sydney.