DRAM News

DRAM is pleased to announce the first new content from our Experimental Intermedia Archive since its inclusion in 2012! Concentrating now on the DAT documents that made up the bulk of the programming from the late 1980s until 2010, the new content features some of the finest experimentalist composers in the digital world as well as some wonderful surprising legends of the American cultural landscape of the 20th century.

DRAM is pleased to present the ongoing addition of ten new albums in the specially curated archive of Southern and Detroit Gospel recordings, lovingly collected by visual artist, restauranteur, Detroit social activist, and experiment percussionist Ben Hall!  You can find the collection of over 300 vocal quartet, R&B gospel, sermons, and other unheard recordings under Labels: Ben Hall Gospel Archive.

Known for the vocal sound of his pocket trumpet and his playful contributions to the revolutionary Free-Jazz movement of the 1960s, Don Cherry is an American iconoclast. Sound American Issue 14 explores what made him so special–through personal remembrances, historical video clips, and much more. Read it now at www.soundamerican.org!

DRAM composers Julius Eastman, Antoine Beuger, Steve Lacy, and Tom Johnson are four of the five modern compositional minds viewed through their works for a single melodic line.

DRAM is pleased to present the new issue of our online journal, Sound American. This issue explores the composer Pauline Oliveros, her Deep Listening concept, and how its practice affects music making.

DRAM and Sound American, in collaboration with the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage are proud to present an exploration of Philadelphia in the Philadelphia Music Archive and Sound American Issue 5.

DRAM has always been engaged with the question of what defines a piece of music as "American." Now DRAM's counterpart Sound American devotes the first in a series of issues to this question. Through conversations with five custodians of lost American music--specifically, the music of the nation's essential immigrant population--Sound American explores the role of this population in our collective musical heritage.

DRAM has always proudly celebrated the American spirit of experimentation and innovation in the arts, and no other American composer exemplifies that spirit more than John Cage.  2012 is Cage's centennial and DRAM is honored to be a central online source of some of the best recordings of John Cage's music, including our long-time label partner, Mode Records.

Earlier this week DRAM's data center experienced another post-storm power interruption, which in turn took a portion of our system offline. This primarily affected the authentication mechanism, which caused QuickTime to refuse some streaming attempts. The issue was immediately addressed, and all systems appear stable and properly functioning at this time.

As many of you know, DRAM recently experienced a service outage due to Sandy-related flooding in our Lower Manhattan data center. The building's backup generator was destroyed, which in turn took down both the DRAM & New World Records websites. Yesterday for the first time we were permitted physical access to the server facility, enabling us to perform hands-on troubleshooting.