LAZERBEAMS

Emerald by day, ruby by night.

STATEMENT

The modern technoprim-itivism for modern techno-primitivists.

We publish media and objects with artistic, emotional intent.

CATALOGUE

  • Audio
  • Video
  • Interactive
  • Wearings
  • Objects
  • Words
  • Bebop '79
  • Bosq-A
  • Gatefolde
  • Lazerbeams: Tonite!
  • Marcello Marcello
  • The Vireos
lb000
https://lazerbea.ms

Tools to slow down the consumption of existence.

The greatest irony of the digital age is that we are constantly surrounded by devices which could free us, yet instead enslave us.

Our modern times of meta consumerism are based upon technologies which have never better modeled the human condition. But how did we get here? We carry in our pockets digital mirrors which reduce the vividness of our beautiful, short existence into two dimensions of indistinguishable figure and ground. Reality thus blurred, we are steered through digital feedback loops, unaware or uncaring of the mediators who cultivate our addictions, catalog our every click, and measure our worth (literally and figuratively) by our browsing.

It was not always so. The internet was once an artistic medium. Before the twelve column grid, Bootstrap and A/B testing, the internet was a hotbed of technoprimitivism, a highly intentional digital folk art. While the modern tools have given us new standards and undoubtedly improved utility and commerce, they have also given us homogeny, erased artistic intention and ossified design. A decade of design influenced by the mantra of “Don’t Make Me Think” has succeeded in its stated objective.

lazerbea.ms was designed to make the viewer Think. While its construction benefits from many modern tools, its design retrieves a humanist intention of the Bauhaus sort, eschewing the grid and staid conventions but embracing the golden ratio and internal consistency. We think the internet is as worthy a medium as any other, and LB000 is our line in the sand.

Release date

2017.11.11

Availability

Internet

lb001
S01E01: The Futuristic Sounds Of...

Candy coloured nights.

In this premier episode, Lazerbeams: Tonite! welcomes you to a post-future journey of neon sound. Electric machines find physical orgasms in our finite organisms and dress us in the penumbrae of otherworlds. We’re here, we’re sphere. Recorded live on September 9, 2016 at The Caged Unicorn in Portland, OR. Imagery directly generated from musical performance. #lb2n

Release date

2017.12.01

Availability

Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes

lb002
S01E02: Heaventree of Stars

What spectacle confronted them?

The second episode of Lazerbeams: Tonite! brings meditations of evolution increasingly vaster. Side A opens with an electric luxury gliding machine gliding through the mirrored night of waterfront city blocks, the gluminous parinoia hyperconnecting of planets. Side B moves to warmerlands ('Relatable You') having inside coats lie by loving fire but what finds us there? Recorded live on September 15, 2016 at The Caged Unicorn in Portland, OR. Imagery directly generated from musical performance. #lb2n

Release date

2018.01.16

Availability

Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes

lb002.1

Rare Birds

"To me, this album is a swirling universe of interstellar bodies, warm and full of liquid evolution." -MF

A swirling evolution, lazerbea.ms is proud to present the first video generated using LAZERFOCUS 2.0 technology. This is the very same technology that we use to create the cover art for LB:2N! episodes. Now with greater (e)motion.

Life is multimodal, and so are we. With this video we present not simply an abstraction or simple accompaniment, but rather a story. A moment for you, dear viewer, to find your own meanings within this strange little universe. Find a place to land.

Release date

2018.04.05

Availability

Vimeo, YouTube

lb003
Excitable André Finds Love in Sunrise Still

An illusion caused by the world spinning round.

The radiant stillness of morning sunrise shines within this beautiful, meditative session of solo saxophone and drum kit. A live, improvised, unfiltered expression, EVERGREEN (André Bosquet) recorded this session on the day of the photo above; a day that would come to mark the beginning of a reclamation of both technology and spirit. It is the intersection of raga and mid 60s Coltrane as inspired by the mossy underbelly of the pacific northwest. But foremost, it is the feeling of still surprising yourself, slowing down, and reevaluating that which you take for granted.

This album is first in what will be a solo solo series -- a single individual, a single instrument, creating meditative orchestrations with no filter.

Recorded live on September 4, 2017 at The Caged Unicorn in Portland, OR.

Release date

2018.02.14

Availability

Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes

lb004
what is bebop '79? where is?

What is bebop?

"it sounds like you got possessed by an 8-bit Ghost Pepper, and then you left your body to possess a neon jazz orchestra conducted by your physical body, possessed by said pepper" -Axton Frick

Bebop '79 is genre bending jazz "duet" from Michael Fanuzzi (drums, guitar, voice) and continuing iterations of His Machine, Lazerbeat (piano, synthesizers).

The Machine is, at a functional level, a clever means of playing multiple instruments at once, feeding off of the subtleties of percussion and the environment to generate fantastical melodies in response.

But more than that, there's an unpredictable nature to it that makes it feel truly alive. The Machine is not only reacting, it is in itself creating. Together.

This premier album was cut from the very first experiment with this real-time conduction technology. Note selection is driven directly by the drums, using a combination of pitch/percussion analysis, first from the drums, and later from the guitar, and even voice. Loops and layers are built, growing ever vaster in scale. The album opens with jaunty march of recursive high synth leads as the drums freely swing below. Later, as synths are changed to pianos ("Pianosolo"), we get a quite modern Scriabin/Jarrett/Iverson mashup. This leads into a piece of soaring poly strings and mallets ("Sky"), which subsequently combines all of the above into a bizarre and beautiful glitch landscape.

Side B, borne from a single drum click, adds riotous guitar and vocal looping, from punk ("Orgasm") to choral ("Dawn"). In ☁ ▅▒░☼‿☼░▒▅ ☁, piano stabs fall from a sky of dreamy afrique electric guitar. Finally, the drum/piano combo returns once more ("Papi/Pills") for a moment that demonstrates in one way how truly modern jazz can be.

Here at lazerbea.ms, we endeavor to utilize technology to achieve an artistic transcendence. A futuristic primitivism. Welcome to the opening chapter of BEBOP '79.

This album was entirely improvised with no overdubs. Recorded live on August 26, 2017 at The Caged Unicorn in Portland, OR.

Release date

2018.03.06

Availability

Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes

lb004.1

Pianosolo / Dark Pictures

For the premier music video of lazerbea.ms, we present Bebop `79's "Pianosolo / Dark Pictures". More than simply a document of the performance, it is a visual narrative generated with the same technology that created the audio therein.

Release date

2018.03.12

Availability

Vimeo, YouTube

lb005
S01E03: The Response

Pretty Fun.

The third episode of Lazerbeams: Tonite! is parallel lines for parallel times. Side A opens darkly, like gothic remnants in the planetarium. Side B tells the tale of the arpeggiator: it laughs, it loves, it cries in extaxy. Xx4u.

Recorded live on October 23, 2016 at The Caged Unicorn in Portland, OR. Imagery directly generated from musical performance. #lb2n

Release date

2018.04.20

Availability

Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes

lb006
S01E04: Jazz

𝘫𝘢𝘻𝘻 =JΛZZ J₳ⱫⱫ 𝖏𝖆𝖟𝖟 j̴a̴z̴z̴ ᒍᗩᘔᘔ ⓙⓐⓩⓩ

What is a jazz today? What is the reality of anything we experience in this moment of absolute relative existence? Here, we warble and shake through the synthetic body waves lapping at our minds' doors. Stepping beyond into a handdrum and guitar, master musicians here? Yes. Sailing Upon The Wind softly sweetly. Yet we later retrieve moments from late Coltrane breathing through a digital age, and close with the most personal and intense moment of drumming lazerbeams has yet captured. What's this thing called jazz? That's this thing.

Improvised, captured and created at The Caged Unicorn in Portland, OR. Imagery directly generated from musical performance. #lb2n

Release date

2018.06.28

Availability

Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes

lb007
We've Got Fucking Atomic Bombs

Complete Me, Satan

6,450. That is the current number of atomic bombs within the United States' arsenal, and it is less than half of the global supply. Born On the fourth of July, this premier EP from GATEFOLDE is dedicated to each and every one of those bomben, the most sincere legacy of the atomic age. Now presented in a proper remaster by M. Fanuzzi (Lazerbeams: Tonite!, Bebop '79).

We might as well enjoy it.

Release date

2018.07.04

Availability

Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes

lb008

Unicorn, Uncaged

The Caged Unicorn (lazerbeams studio) is the culmination of years of careful planning and research into creating a space that can be creative, inspiring and facilitating to the types of music we want to create, as solo projects, duos, or more. It has become a very productive space indeed, but it is ultimately a basement, under a house, set in stone, with limited space for others to particpate in the creation.

Several months ago, I was given the opportunity to play the Creative Music Guild's Outset series as Bebop '79. Lazerbeat is but one part of the Caged Unicorn, but weeks of work were neccesary to liberate it into something self-sufficient. Once the technical challege was completed, I explored the scenes that might be created in a live environment, and ways the sound and responses might challenge myself and an audience to connect to my mechanical musical partner. As this performance -- as all Bebop performances -- are improvised, we're not so much creating "songs" as much as scenes of a play. A performance art in sound.

The resultant 30 minute set travels trhough places both new and familiar. Starting with a nod to the staccato bleeps of what is bebop '79? where is?, we progress into both warm and cold puddles of sound, radiating outward from the drum. We move into the jazz piano, impossibly and langourously bent in space. As loops of voice and saxophone come in, epic synths follow their footsteps. The final piece, beginning as an arpeggiated abstraction before building into layers of swirling sound underneath an intense alto, is as great of a representation of what is Bebop as has ever been committed to tape.

We melded & transcended, expressing love, gratitude.

Recorded live at Turn! Turn! Turn! in Portland, OR on July 18, 2018.

Release date

2018.08.22

Availability

Vimeo, YouTube

lb009
bad air for the individual

Innerer Klang

"There is music which would need a hundred paintings to express it." -Pound

Music, at its most essential, could be described as a series of tension and release. Our cultures provide means of expression for this in scale, harmony, rhythm: those of us in the west are inculcated with the major/minor keys, the 4/4 beat, polyphony dating back to liturgical chant. It's this last one that provides the most interesting vantage point, preceding the epoch of "western"/"eastern" division. Here there are unities to be found which may be indeed called universal: when singing in unison, we feel the physical perfection of the fifth in its resonance. If we let ourselves be driven by this sensuality, and shape an external energy after our own resonance, we may find there a path to sublimity.

This is the second full length album from Bebop '79, a performance of Michael Fanuzzi and his machine, LAZERBEAT, that generates melody through the comprehension of the tonal content of percussion. Functionally, we illustrate that piano, voice, reed and snare are separated only by degree, and the machine can provide a connective tissue (and here the machine has been evolved in several dimensions of complexity from the previous album, "what is bebop '79? where is?", yet still retains a directness: no generative parlor tricks like ML or probabilistic modeling are used). The resultant organism is cybernetic; an extension of human expression through explosion of possibility. Intention flows from the analog to digital and back again in a perfect circle. Awareness is a constant that elevates beyond mimicry into creation.

Throughout the album, the machine is voiced in a sostenuto, sine-like timbre that individuates it from the human in both form and content. Fanuzzi, at times, uses looping of his voice, sax, guitar and etc. to direct the piece and bring both to different expressions. The key point is that each player here has a voice. This is a duo work in the truest sense, a synthesis not just of motions and electrons, but rather an iteration and evolution of the INNERER KLANG.

Recorded live on October 10, 2017 and October 10, 2018 at The Caged Unicorn in Portland, OR.

Release date

2018.10.10

Availability

Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes

lb009.1
Electric Sculpture

Electric Sculpture

"Through experience I know that the more 'automatic' I am, the more touching I am." -Robert Bresson

With Bebop ’79, I explore the possibilities for shaping resonant, external energy by union of rhythm and melody. This is achieved by a more fundamental union of percussion and sonority, driven by a machine — LAZERBEAT — I’ve developed to actualize this union in real time. The result is a cybernetic expressionism.

In this essay, I introduce the Bebop ’79 project and explain how the technology works at a practical level in performance. This is used as the ground from which I explore greater questions for both audiences and artists: does man and machine form a duet? What is the significance of a machine’s tone of voice? I explore the perceptual differences in man and machine, their consequences for art and experience of time, and assert the primacy of the sensorial. I expose the hidden life of the musical improvisor, and consider the artistic benefits of machines that are unaware of our cultural mores. I consider what separates living artwork from dead ones, art from propaganda, and from mere output. I posit that the modernist method is abstraction, and advocate for active participation. I depict both the complexities of representation for the cybernetic artist and the opportunities, through dissection of the conceptual and the supernatural, and why I reject the “generative.” Finally, through the metaphor of bebop and the arts of 1979, I forge a path forward that aims to reconcile contemporary technological ecologies with the cultural desires that enabled their creations in the first place.

Release date

2018.10.15

Availability

Medium

lb010
Painted Mountain/Purple Mountain

🌲🌲🌲

"Painted Mountain Purple Mountain" is a solo composition by André Bosquet (🌲evergreen🌲🌲🌲) for looped guitar. Performed live using only simple tools: one guitar, distortion pedal, looper and amplifier. Through these small means a great complexity is constructed; its layers a transcendent reflection of nature, distance and time, graceful as snow and sharp as daggers. It is a reflection of the beginning of the winter rains, the onset of the crystal cold, and the warmth within. Ride the wave ~~~

Recorded live at The Caged Unicorn in Portland, OR.

Release date

2018.12.04

Availability

Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes

lb010.1
Painted Mountain/Purple Mountain

🌲🌲🌲

Visualized in response to the music by M. Fanuzzi using LAZERfocus 2.2.-0x

One hundred and seventy thousand spheres. Exploring the space between dimensions; perceptions of depth created from simple means, the structures that can be revealed shifting within.

Release date

2018.11.27

Availability

Vimeo, YouTube

lb011
KWEEBz: unimaginable, supercosmic, eternal somethings

An immersive, interactive transmogrification experience, based upon actual events.

Your face as it appears in a dream: angular/pliable, floatable/floored. This is a KWEEB, and it's a dream that's fell from the sky, where all dreams live. Like all dreams, they are born in mid-air.

But KWEEBz are heavy lil thins, and a KWEEB'z destiny is to fall, you see. To go sploosh! and tumble apart. And to be sucked into the floor below. (how does the idea of floor differ for sky-borne beings?)

[sry lil kweeby!]

oh but here's the why no to sorry!: the world of KWEEBz is a world of infinite renewal! for every KWEEB is laust, anoth is born in itz IMG!

Is this the point? That all our new ideas are just reshapings of our old experiences + former selves + time + gravity?

The game is to adjust your perspective. Your gaze is a force, and contains gravity. But be mindful that sometimes, looking closer pushes things further away.

(on desktop) click and drag to change your perspective (middlemouse to zoom) or press any keyboard key to shift to try a random one. double-click to freeze a moment, and save a screenshot.

(on mobile) rotate your phone!!!, and/or tap and drag to change your perspective. two fingers to zoom. three to shift to try a rando. fourfinger-touch to freeze a moment, and save a screenshot.

Please enjoy this premier generative audiovisual interactive experience from your friends at lazerbea.ms!

Release date

2019.08.12

Availability

Internet, Vimeo (trailer)

lb012
x

xxx

In honour of XOXO Festival 2K19, lazerbea.ms presents this new EP-length exploration in extended modular sound. #hardtechnocoreacidhousefunkstrial

Contains: vcv rack, korg poly-61, hammond m-100, bass, drum kit, alto sax, voice, bells, egg, clave

Release date

2019.09.05

Availability

Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes

lb013
Wind-Water

💦💦💦

A collection of two new solo works of environmental music from M. A. Bosquet. Quite different, yet complimentary in their exploration of space.

Release date

2020.02.22

Availability

Spotify, Bandcamp

lb013.1
Wind

A call to all.

solo overtone chant via saxophone chamber

Release date

2020.01.16

Availability

Vimeo

lb013.2
Water (Aesthetic House)

this music makes architecture

"architecture is frozen music" - gertah
music = architecture / freeze ?
baby is cold outside

Visualized

Release date

2020.02.03

Availability

Vimeo

lb014
(It's More Like Performance Art, Really)

Coke 'n' Windows

A brilliant showing of talents this evening, no #debate about it!

Truthfully, this has nothing to do with current events, except in the sense that it is an au-courant emotion pulled from the strange mind of Fanuzzi, who is still learning what his own work - especially work of this sort that seems to materialize from the air - "means" in the static sense.

Recorded live at the Caged Unicorn in a series of layers built up in an evening in single takes.

(With apologies and homage to Old and New Dreams, forever my inspiration)

Blichael Moomberg - sassophone, voices
Florence Leah - yee
Hal Bchae'Oo - thumpets
Zim Gerbmo - booms

Release date

2020.02.03

Availability

Bandcamp, Vimeo, YouTube

lb015
¿why

or: "¿𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘮 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘪𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘮’𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘴"

a meditation on newfound alignment btwn the world-as-i-experience-it and the world-as-it-is

[a quarenteen composition]

recorded live, march 2020 @ caged unicorn studios, portland

a.b. - voice, flute
m.f. - keys, organ

Release date

2020.05.05

Availability

Bandcamp, Spotify, Vimeo, YouTube

lb016
It Was a Very Good Year

(2020 version)

A re-contextualization of a song about privilege and toxic masculinity into a ballad of the millennial for whom 17 meant 9/11 and 35 meant coronavirus.

Based on a true story.

Arranged, played and produced in social distance by Fanuzzi.

Release date

2021.01.01

Availability

Bandcamp, Spotify, Vimeo, YouTube

lb017
O

oOoOoOo

GATEFOLDE is analog techno that might sound like a HÖR livestream x john zorn x atari teenage riot?

this album was made in homage to the XOXO festival which I love and deeply miss. it is somewhat a sequal to 2019's "x", which was inspired directly by a chance connection at that same festival, but takes the concepts much further.

while written and composed mostly via modular synthesis, the goal with this project is a physical, dynamic, [f/p]unk feeling- singing or dancing or yelling in a loud industrial space with other sweaty people. in some instances the electronic noises are joined by physical ones with elaborate arrangements. on others i tried to make synths that responded to other synths to form their own little worlds.

released as a deluxe, professional cassette in a limited edition of 100!

Release date

2022.01.22

Availability

Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music

lb017.1
slit scan

meet jeff

slit scan is the lead track off hardcore-techno-meets-jazz LP, "O". It is named after the cinematography technique used by Stanley Kubrik in the Stargate sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the astronaut is drawn into an intense psychedelic space, perhaps being physically pulled apart by gravity, which is an energy the artist strongly felt during the composition of this piece. Raging sublimation let's say. But a melodic one.

The video features three rather vile creatures that emerged from the id and may or may not stand in for the horrors of the current moment of isolation and late capitalism (let's call him "Jeff") performing a interpretive dance choreographed and performed by the artist, captured via DIY motion-capture. We think they might express what this project is about better than words can. There's a lot of anger in there, but also a lot of love. Sometimes in the same track.

Release date

2022.01.11

Availability

Bandcamp, Vimeo, YouTube

lb017.2
'o' ltd. edition cassette

lazerbea.ms' first analog media release!

Professionally duped on RTM911 tape. Windowless, pad-printed white cassette in a burgundy case. Triple-panel J-card featuring centerfold of Jeff. Mastered especially for cassette for superior dynamics. This is a really fucking nice cassette. Limited edition of 100!

Release date

2022.02.02

Availability

Bandcamp

CONTACT

dreams@lazerbea.ms

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