NAING NAING profile picture

NAING NAING

Live USB guitar / Non-academic musique concrète

About Me

Pics by Ellie Van Brande, Antwerpen, Sept. 2007 (performing in Belgium after a sleepless night in Stuttgart).
As you can hear I try to use concrete sounds as musical instruments, deliberately focusing on sounds that can be recognized by listeners: frogs / toads, wasp buzz, ice cubes in a glass, toothbrushing, bird calls, washing machine, obsolete diesel generator, ducks, goose, whip, cows, pigs, dentist drill, trains, farts, sheep, clocks, crickets, wind, eating an apple, & more.
Most of my songs are from a unique source of sound (one wasp buzz) or thematically grouped sounds (various species of frogs) that are turned into drums, bass line and melodies. But I also did a few songs with what I call "compromise" (like the toothbrush dance music which has drums samples). I finally found a tag for my music : CONCRETE POP !!!
The first song in the player is a remix of LISTEN WITH SARAH "Animal Hop" that will be released later this year on a LWS remixes sampler by Womb Rds (UK). Other tracks here are older (2000-2004) except the live song in the player "Ice cube in Pelog" which is the first live performance of a concrete gamelan piece entirely performed on "USB guitar".
NAING NAING "TOOTHBRUSH FEVER" CD (14 tracks / 60 minutes of music like this / digipack + 16 pages colourful booklet with explanations) is available though paypal here . (12 euro postpaid worldwide)(Re-Aktion rds, 2004)
But NN "Toad Fever" EP-CD (below) is out of print.
I am still working on NAING NAING second full length album (14 tracks 2005-2008) which should be released in 2008... And new TEAR OF A DOLL songs are in the pipeline as well...
Listen to the whole 1st album on last.fm
All Dodoll Records for free & full download at last.fm (Naing Naing, Tear of a Doll / Tears of a Doll & Heimat-los) !
NAING NAING "Toothbrush Fever" is available in the USA on CD Baby.
For live shows, I use a different software and improvise parts of the songs to ensure that live versions are different from the album stuff. Some songs are performed with a MIDI-fyed guitar controlling the laptop, some songs are just played behind the laptop. The show also features Miss Maya singing on a few songs.

Ice cube music performed live in Paris early 2007 (gonna delete soon this old video which is not representative of what I do now : Ice cube gamelan):
Free MP3, reviews, details on how those songs were made are available at www.naingnaing.com
NAING NAING "Toothbrush Fever" CD and "Toad Fever" EP in more or less full preview on last.fm
Naing Naing "Toothbrush Fever" on Itunes .
Live set list as of February 2008:
1 - Intro medley (Doing time + wind & rain + Le Coq Mégalo)
2 - Animal Hop remix
3 - Mind the step
4 - Greensleeves
5 - Chocolate addict at the dentist
6 - Ice cube gamelan (in pelog)
7 - Washing machine goes to Froggland
8 - Sadisco
9 - Quack addiction
10 - Rock'n'Roll Technical School (Ramones)
11 - Sarabande (by Haendel - cricket & gong)
12 - Brosse à dance
13 - Webbed
14 - Animal Farm Blues
15 - Mi Ma La Bu
About me: Naing Naing is my Burmese name. My original French name is François. Long ago I played guitar in late HEIMAT-LOS (Pioneering Hardcore Punk in France in the 80s), then I played in TEAR OF A DOLL (that has merged Hardcore punk, Experimental, Avant / Noise rock, Prog-rock & indian music in the 90s). I also appear on some recordings by COSTES, COSMIC WURST and WIDE OPEN CAGE.
I have been involved in learning languages (mostly from Asia like Japanese & Burmese) and some exotic musical instruments: Saung (Burmese Harp) and a few others from India & Indonesia I eventually had to drop by lack of time (tabla, sitar, gamelan...) After spending 6-7 years in Myanmar (Burma), working as an interpreter for a famous humanitarian organization, I finally came back to my home town Paris in 2006. I'm the father of a half Japanese girl (4 year old).

I am running the following myspace profiles :
NAING NAING (since 1999)
TEAR OF A DOLL 2nd era (since 1992)
TEARS OF A DOLL 1st era (1988-1992)
HEIMAT-LOS (1983-1988)
VISITOR MAP (starting Sept 3rd, 2006) :
GENERATE YOUR OWN WORLDMAP NOW!
Tags : concrète pop ; musique concrète ; experimental music ; organic electronica ; avant-garde ; sound manipulator ; field recording ; found sounds ; frog music ; ice cube music ; insect music ; virtual tabla ; live concrete MIDI guitar ; avant pop ; concrete pop ; musique concrete ; offbeat ; weird ; brosse à danse / brosse a danse

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 4/6/2006
Band Website: naingnaing.com
Band Members:

This is primarily François L'Homer solo project

Miss Maya sings some songs at most of the shows.
Djengo Hartlap has help me a lot at the beginning with the technology and still does the post-pod.
Orkhan Murat (Tear of a Doll, Nosfell) played the turkish drum sample.
And Franck Sinistra (Fisherman, El Justiciero, Marijane Miracle) sang "Toad Fever".

Maya, Orkhan and myself also play(ed) in Tear of a Doll. Check this video (the live pictures are from a gig with NoMeansNo in Sept 1996 at the Bataclan, Paris, two days before I moved to Burma) :
Influences: Some of my favorite artists are :

Important ones are missing above, like Pink Floyd "Ummagumma", J.S. Bach, Nikhil Banerjee (sitar), Shostakovich (especially the quatuor performed by the Borodin String Quartet), Ali Akbar Khan (sarod), Sibelius (for the violin concerto)...

Movie directors: Stanley Kubrick, Terry Gilliam, Jan Svankmajer, Kurosawa, Jeunet & Carot...

Writers: George Orwell, William Burroughs, JL Borges, Henri Miller, Abe Kobo, Kadare, Georges Perec, William Styron, Celine, Hunter S. Thompson, Both Murakami (Haruki & Ryu)

Painters: Hundertwasser ! and a few more...
Sounds Like: Sounds unique (just check it), but has some similarities with some of the works of:
Secret Mommy, Listen with Sarah, Matmos, Hugh Le Cain, Björk, Pink Floyd, Pierre Schaeffer, Jim Fassett, Hanna Hartman, BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Wendy Mae Chambers, Xerophonics, Beatle Barkers, Autechre, Pierre Henry, Aphex Twin, Reed Ghazala (for the insect instrument) and Keuhkot. Tell me if there are more...
Record Label: (Re)Aktion Records (France) for the 1st Album
Type of Label: None