Happy Valley Band

The Great American Songbook heard through the ear of a machine

ORGANVM PERCEPTVS: Hatchfund Trailer from Indexical on Vimeo.

The Happy Valley Band is the Great American Songbook heard through the ear of a machine. The project is a deconstruction of popular music through the use of state-of-the-art machine listening technologies. It’s about machine learning, listening, pop music, and copyright. Custom-built computer software written by bandleader and composer David Kant “unmixes” recordings and transcribes them into musical notation. The Happy Valley Band is an experimental music ensemble formed specifically to play this music.

ORGANVM PERCEPTVS

ORGANVM PERCEPTVS is the result of five years of performing with the Happy Valley Band. You’ll hear James Brown backed by a simmering Sun Ra Arkestra, Madonna with a jittery freak-out synth rhythm section, and Herb Alpert with a Tijuana Brass that must have been led by Charles Ives.

ORGANVM PERCEPTVS asks the question: how do we hear, and how can machines help us hear differently? It is a collection of 11 songs spanning pop music history, deconstructed using state-of-the-art machine listening technology. The album features guest appearances by top performers of new music, including Pauline Kim Harris, Conrad Harris, Charlotte Mundy, Eve Gigliotti, Jane Sheldon, Joseph Kubera, Chris Nappi, Thomas Verchot, Joe Moffett, Chris Scanlon, Nathaniel Morgan, Sam Friedman, Daniel Costello, Larry Polansky, and John Welsh.

ORGANVM PERCEPTVS will be released as a vinyl LP and digital download on Indexical in Fall 2016.

Visit the Hatchfund project page to donate to the project and pre-order ORGANVM PERCEPTVS on vinyl.

Band Bio

Directed by composer / bandleader David Kant, the Happy Valley Band is Mustafa Walker, Alexander Dupuis, Andrew Smith, Beau Sievers, Pauline Kim Harris, and Conrad Harris. The ensemble formed in 2011 to play machine interpretations of popular music and has since been presented in the US and abroad at venues such as the wulf. by Dogstar Orchestra (Los Angeles), Center for New Music by sfSound (San Francisco), Littlefield (Brooklyn), Electric Eclectics Festival (Ontario, Canada), and Ostrava Days 11 (Ostrava, Czech Republic) as well as live on WFMU radio. The Happy Valley Band has included special guests appearances by Chris Nappi, Joseph Kubera, Thomas Verchot, Gordon Monahan, Joe Moffett, Chris Scanlon, Nathaniel Morgan, Sam Friedman, Daniel Costello, Charlotte Mundy, Jane Sheldon, Eve Gigliotti, Larry Polansky, and John Welsh.