schrodinger's swan

this seems like the best thing on youtube to crosslink this to...

i put a five-year listening period on my serious reviews in order to ensure that the music can sink in and be put into context. sometimes, it's a matter of convention. with something like swans, it's really necessary to make sense of it. i've been a swans fan since the late 90s, and share a certain artistic approach with them, so i'm coming into this very, very familiar with what they are and what they're aiming for. i'm extremely critical but i need to point out that gira is one of a handful of living artists that i have legitimate respect for, as an artist. i'm not ready to write a full review yet, but i think i'm ready to provide a general impression.

oddly, not many people seem to be spilling much ink on the absence of jarboe. sure, it's not like there's any real chance that she's coming back to the band. but it's sort of remarkable how totally she's been written out of the band, as though she never existed in the first place. this strikes me as indicative of most reviewers coming to the band after their breakup period looking for a seminal doom act, and sort of skipping their psychedelic 90s phase. but, see, i think there's a dominant argument that what made swans' 90s work so remarkable was the interplay between gira's dour bluntness and jarboe's lighter, more airy presentation. you could think of it as tension and release. but it's just the juxtaposition of it...

gira's tried to compensate with the use of various female vocalists, but it's clear that it's on a guest vocalist level rather than a collaborative level, meaning it just doesn't capture the juxtaposition on as organic of a level.

in a sense, maybe it's unfair to draw the comparison. everybody knows jarboe isn't in the band any more. but, if you have an understanding of what swans is, the more recent material just seems like it's missing an important ingredient.

putting that aside, one needs to review a record for what it is.

the core of this disc is as strong as anything else swans has put out, but i get the impression gira is being driven a little too strongly by expectations. i'm all for long records, but a long record is something that needs to develop out of an overriding concept or simply a lot of material. neither of these things seem to apply to this. it seems like this record is long simply for the sake of being long, and is loaded with tons of filler to get to the point of being long. i don't think we really needed nearly as much aimless jamming (and a lot of it is aimless jamming) or damo suzuki impersonations.

i'm not walking away from it with the sense of it being the kind of masterpiece that gira has previously been involved with creating. rather, i'm walking away from it thinking it's a little tedious and that large amounts of it are simply rather grating.

i don't think this record is going to hold up as well as his other major works. it might be partially as a result of trying to fit perceived expectations of an epic double record. but i think it might be a bit of pretension getting into his head.

this could have been a strong 9 if pared down a little. as it is, i have to give it a 6 or a 7.

Zack Fishley

I envy people who lived through Swans' original run and are able to see those albums as Gira's masterpieces. While I like them, I feel like albums like Soundtracks For the Blind lose focus quickly when they hit disc 2. Just not as memorable.

deathtokoalas

they're more abstract records; they explore a wider scope. memorable is a subjective thing. but, you can objectively state that they require a deeper attention span and greater focus on the actual music. i find his newest work has more aspects of his oldest work in that sense; they're great if you want to listen to one or two things for three hours. soundtracks is more variable, and so is more immersive. but, you have to be looking for that, otherwise you're going to trail off, like you said.

what i was trying to get across here is that it isn't that gira has lost a step. what's amazing is that he really hasn't. it's more that he's lost a layer of self-criticism.

i was hoping to catch animals as leaders last night, but i ended up passing out. i'm not sure how exciting a live show it would have been. great guitarist, but it's headphone music.

i've got a new map up that organized things a little differently. as you can see, this is just loaded with guitar overdubs, a lot of them doubled or quintupled through separate effects paths. it seems like i'm hurtling towards 70 tracks. three more things to do there, down at the bottom.

...although i'm starting to wonder about maybe doubling a few more parts later in the song. we'll see how this goes....

man, could this kid be any more of a walking cliche?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgE_PAfLhxE

deathtokoalas
you know, it's an interesting question if he realized that geffen would have almost certainly never signed him if it weren't for bowie's extreme interest in the pixies (to the point of practically starting a pixies cover band in 1988). it's not a direct thing, but you have to understand that people took bowie pretty seriously at the time when he started talking about what he thought had commercial potential.

RebelThoughts82
The Pixies were never a commercial band. They were completely underground. It was only till Kurt Cobain started talking about them in interviews that they started getting recognition.

deathtokoalas
that's absolute nonsense. surfer rosa was the album of the year in several mainstream music publications the year it was released, and doolittle was released through warner brothers.

bowie has been clear that his tin machine project was modeled after them. if you know a bit about bowie, he tended to figure out what was on it's way up, get ahead of it a few years before it happened and then act as a gateway in opening up doors for the bands he ripped off.

bowie was doing covers of debaser in sold out stadiums, to a sum total of probably close to a million people, about the same time as smells like teen spirit was released, which would have been a few months before it broke out.

it's just so incredibly templated. i know better than to really be irritated by this; bad techno has been popular for decades. but it would be nice to hear some out of the box thinking, rather than a tired remake of every other bad techno song, marketed with the tired old coke & guns & girls shtick.

yeah, i bet this threw a few people for a loop, lol...

if you check some early live videos of prince, you'll see that he actually even went out of his way to look like hendrix, right down to the bandana.

rabbit is jaguar?

wish it was a wolf....

it was a pun.

rabid is wolf.

rabit is wolf.

rabbit is wolf.

i like the monty python shot, but that would be much cooler if i could find it......

i'm not really skilled with photoshop like apps. i don't even have one installed. but i could surely figure that out.

maybe a back panel, if the disc sells any copies.

again, i hardly watch this channel, but it's kind of impossible to avoid...

dude takes some of his content offsite, and youtube stops promoting it. coincidence? maybe. who knows, really.

i don't how much of this is an act, but he strikes me as considerably more naive than, say, pearl jam were when they tried to avoid ticketmaster. different motives. but it's ultimately going to work out to something similar, i think.

i don't get the impression that he's biting any hands. but maybe the hands are inherently aggressive, and willing to smack back at the slightest hint of bared teeth.

obligatory "influential on the song of the week" post...

this redefined epic for me. i kind of grew up with a certain strain of prog, so the pumpkins made a lot of sense to me at the age when i was starting to feel the power of punk rock. they kind of acted as a bridge between my childhood and adolescent years, in that sense. there's still not much quite like this out there and there may never be.

(relevant files: screwed up, idiotic, first movement, too cold, to spin inside dull aberrations, others; everything, in some sense)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzZh4fdaUpk

it's about cheap labour, stefan. people have been coming back and forth over the border for centuries. they work the farms in california for a fraction of the minimum wage, allowing what is essentially a system of slavery to continue. the real question is how much the cost of goods would go up if you forced the landowners in the region to pay a living wage - and what the political consequences of it would be, in terms of the landowners fighting back.4

the crackdown was political. nobody ever intended to stop the flow of labour. so, you're right that he's glossing over that. but not in the way you're suggesting...

this was a speech that ought to be deciphered. he's very clearly standing up for a system that is worse than wage slavery, if not quite as violent as chattel slavery. but you've been blinded by your racial preconceptions and missed it for what it was.

see, here's the thing. when you break down the various conspiracy theories, what you get out of them is essentially an attempt to discredit socialist type thinking. what, you think that there's a capitalist class and it works together to appropriate your labour? pfft. you must be a conspiracy theorist. i bet you believe in lizard people too, right?

and the really creepy thing is that if you look into the history of it (which at this point requires going to that weird place we call a library because nobody's bothered to get the information online), the conspiracy becomes exposed as the conspiracy theory itself. the actual truth of this is the most mind-boggling thing about it. it's beyond meta. it's meta-meta.

the illuminati were actually a group of real people. they existed in the middle of the 1700s. what were they, though? they were a sort of a cross between a political activist group and a reading club. these types of organizations don't really exist anymore, but they've had a dramatic effect on world history when they have. i mean, there wouldn't have been revolutions in france or america without these "secret societies". and one might argue that we probably won't get another real revolution until we go back to that sort of thinking. they may have had overlapping membership with freemasons in the period, but masonry was relatively popular at the time amongst "free thinkers" so there's not a lot to draw out of that.

so, what were the political aims of the illuminati? well, they lived in europe in the 1700s, which remained an aristocratic society that upheld the divine right of monarchs to rule by the blessing of the pope. the pope was a sort of european emperor (in some ways a direct political descendant of the roman emperor). underneath him, you had the various monarchs in control of areas of land (which we today call countries), who parcelled the land out further and etc. it's the political order we call feudalism.

the illuminati were a group opposed to feudalism and in favour of what they then called liberalism - which meant free markets, human rights and common ownership of resources. it's a little bit contradictory in terms of the existing spectrum, but it represented the revolutionary thought of the period. they correctly identified the political power of the catholic church as the single most important thing to overturn in order to carry out the revolutions we refer to today as the french and american ones.

naturally, the catholic church was opposed to abolishing itself....

....so it told everybody that the illuminati (and the masons and the other revolutionay groups) were SATANISTS. you want to be a revolutionary? dude, you're going to hell...

this propaganda offensive by the church (and aligned aristocratic groups) was extremely successful during the period that the actual illuminati existed. the authorities raided the society, smashed it up and sent all the people there to jail and/or monasteries. adam weishaupt actually spent most of his life in a seminary, "recanting his sins".

in fact, the propaganda was so successful that we're still talking about it today. it was imported to the united states in the nineteenth century by right-wing religious puritans to use in much the same way that the catholic church initially used it and has ballooned into everything from mccarthyist birch society type stuff (satanic illuminati communists are pushing the nwo) to the standard hip-hop conspiracy theory. i remember hearing the old bogeyman come up near the tail end of the occupy moment, as well.

the common theme that runs through all of it is that the illuminati has always represented the groups that are in opposition to the actual capitalist power elite, which is trying to scare you away from them by demonizing them as satanic.

triple meta scary point? this is how religions start....

the flip side of this is that, because the capitalist revolutions were largely based in secret societies, the secret "working group model" has continued. there's a reason that conspiracy is in the criminal code - and has been enforced at the political level. there's plenty of historical examples of exclusive groups working together to carry out social or financial goals. a proper understanding of the history of the capitalist era can't ignore the works of carroll quigley or antony sutton.

the error in the conspiracy theory approach to understanding the world consequently isn't in the idea that the elite meet in groups to carry out their plans - this is well established, if weakly documented. rather, it's in the following two major points.

1) the idea that they're evil. this needs to be replaced with a proper class analysis. skull and bones does exist. yale will confirm this. but, it's a way for upper class kids to make contacts that will help them carry out their goals in life, not a satanic cult.

2) that they're centralized. this is the key error. in fact, these groups are often in conflict with each other. this is abstract and over-simplified at the same time, but the democrats and republicans largely fall in line with the major split in these groups, which is over the role of the british empire in the world. you can see it come out in the propaganda if you know what you're looking for. republicans tend to push for an atomized world driven by american dominance, whereas democrats seek to work through bodies like the united nations to establish a global order based on international law.

so, yes: secret societies exist. in many ways, they form the basis of the existing ruling class. but, they're fighting with each other for control rather than organized in a centralized command structure.

and they don't eat babies.

deathtokoalas
geez. almost twenty years later, and people are having the same arguments on youtube that i was having in my friends' garages.

listen: you don't have to actually want california to fall into the ocean [that would be catastrophic. bad scene.] to be able to relate to the idea in the song. it's not a complicated point, guys. no mental gymnastics required. no cognitive dissonance to work through.

it's still effective, fwiw. in hindsight, the 90s are a decade full of near misses. this disc really stands out in how well it stands up.

Justin Waters
They are dumbfounded dipshits.

deathtokoalas
i'd be tempted to conclude this is actually some kind of joke, if i didn't know it is a cynical marketing ploy to try and capitalize off of some existing trends. i'm surprised there's not a product placement for the vodka or something. a nice big captain morgan label would seem about right...you missed your chance for a pay check there, beyonce. tsk.

although, i have to be frank about something that i'm a little concerned about. it seems as though somebody's mama didn't tell her not to monkey around on the balcony. it's all fun and games until somebody falls off the rail.

i'm critical, sure. but this is really, really bad. the production is almost interesting, though. it's just a shame so little was done with it. but i don't pretend that the kids really care, nowadays.

with each hit after the next, the pop music of this generation is just getting more and more incredible in it's utter stupidity. it's not incredible that this exists. but it's astounding that it generated ten million hits in a day. i might hazard a guess that it's all the alcohol. well, it seems to be the topic of a lot of songs, nowadays.

you know what the solution is? these kids need to put the booze down and go find some acid....

it was predictable, though.

you launched a war on drugs...

....and you got a generation of drunken buffoons.

jason smith
Mind expanding drugs would break down all this superficial bullshit. We can use another Tool :D But there never can be another tool.. lol.. But Tool-like.

deathtokoalas
it does kind of make me want to suggest that some people learn to swim. alas, that's not remotely on topic.

jason smith
:D

i recognize that the concerns underlying the development of this product (and, let's be clear: this video is an advertisement. all the kids want the real doll! buy! buy!) are real. a lot of these comments are seeking to trivialize the issue. it's not a triviality. there's mountains of research into this.

however, you'll notice that several of these kids are deciding what the dolls' careers are based on their appearance. they may be being prodded a bit to sell the doll, sure. it's hard to know. but what they're saying is that the barbie doll must be a fashion model because of how she looks; the "realistic doll", on the other hand, can be an astronaut, if she wants, because of how she looks.

in other words, the kids are continuing to enforce the objectification of women. pretty much everything these kids are saying remains reflective of a heteropatriarchal order that categorizes women based on their ability to conform to male standards of sexuality.

again: there's a problem here. but it's not in the dolls, themselves, as physical objects. they're just molded plastic. it's in the way that the girls are taught to interpret the dolls.

and, if you want to get to the root of this, you need to change the messaging that girls get when they pick the toys up, not the toys themselves.

scandinavian women are going to continue to exist. and, in fact, the advanced social system in that area produces plenty of women that look like barbie dolls and work in law or medicine.

existence is a weird thing, in the sense that it becomes infinitely valuable when it doesn't have an end point, and more or less useless when it does. worse, it's value degrades as one ages.

somebody did the math on about 4 years per twelve years of smoking. i'm not convinced that adding an extra fifteen or twenty years to the end of my life sounds like a good idea. 85 or 65? i'm not really looking forward to the quality of life that accompanies most people in their 60s and 70s, whether they're smokers or not.

i'd rather suggest that the opposite message is more valuable. you don't have infinite seconds to waste being distracted by neon-flashing lights. you've got a few decades to accomplish something, then you become somebody's burden and finally end up recycled back into the biosphere.

if smoking a cigarette helps you focus a bit better on what you're doing, or keeps you awake a few hours longer while you're working on something important to you, it's worth the cost of a few less years in the old folks home.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgIhD2G1T_8

it's expensive, though. keep that in mind.

everybody knows you don't really get high the first time. i sure didn't. and they don't seem very high to me.

now, get them to do this a second time and you'll have an interesting video.

also, to answer the dominant question on the thread: most marijuana users don't want to get high every day any more than the average person wants to get drunk every day. there's a time and a place for it. but, almost everybody (except extreme alcoholics) agrees that being drunk all the time is a crappy way to live, especially if you've got responsibilities. even if you don't have responsibilities, the intellectual component of existence demands sobriety at least a few days a week to accomplish. whether you make art or like to read or like sports or whatever, there are some things that are not fun to do under the influence. it's no different with pot. people that smoke every single day have an addiction and need to seek help. they no more represent the average pot user than the raging alcoholic represents the average alcohol user.

it's hard to fault the guy for the reaction. maybe dude was just looking for a couch. maybe not. he can't take liberties in guessing.

but, it is reasonable to ask questions about a society that allows the conditions which lead to something like this happening in the first place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG1Xq5wRWxo

publishing the imaginary tour demo ep (inri059)

ok, that finishes inri040, which i'm releasing as a download-only release.

these mixes are a little messy at points, but it's marketed as a demo, so i'm ok with that.

--

something like this would have been the demo brought along on an acoustic tour that never happened. tracks 1-4 would have represented a live set over the summer of 2002, while tracks five and six are otherwise stranded acoustic demos. the style could be broadly categorized as folk punk, but it also leans heavily towards the emo of the period.

written and recorded in late 2001 and the first half of 2002. mildly remixed in november, 2014 to make the tracks more presentable; nothing substantial was altered, and no new sound was recorded. final mixes were on november 19, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

credits
j - acoustic guitar, voice (3)
sean - vocals, lyrics

released august 1, 2002

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-imaginary-tour-ep



1) this is the original demo, that the main track was built over. it is completely unaltered from the 2002 file. feb 5, 2002.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/9-16-outside-the-magenta-box


2) this is a new mix of the original guitar and vocal parts. written and recorded in march, 2002. mix done on nov 19, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/psi-4


3) when the idea of performing as an acoustic duo was decided upon, it became clear that much of the recorded material was unsuitable for this purpose. the original version of this track would have been painfully boring to watch as a duo, with the music consisting of nothing more than a basic bass line. so, i rewrote the song for acoustic presentation. this is a (rough) live demo that i made for sean. no recording with sean was created.

it's a tricky guitar part, and trickier to do while singing (which wouldn't have been necessary in a live setting).

obviously, a live version would have included sean singing his vocals rather than me reciting them. it would have also included dual harmonies at the end.

some minor editing of this may 5, 2002 mix was done on nov 19. 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/me-myself-and-the-time-i-thought-this-was-a-good-idea-2


4) this is actually a transitional version of the song, halfway between the initial folk version (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-day-i-saw-you-cry-first-demo ) and the rabit is wolf version (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-day-i-saw-you-cry). the guitar part was recorded live in may, 2002 for the purposes of it being the performance version of the track, and just as a way to show it to sean over icq (or was it msn?). i've reconstructed the vocals from recordings of the studio version, which is in itself a substantial reworking because those vocals were heavily manipulated.

i had no option but to time shift some of the tracks as some of this recording is in a different tempo, but these are otherwise naked vocals and this is otherwise what i would have wanted a live performance of the track to sound like, as the ending point of any live set.

this mix was done on nov 19, 2014, out of parts recorded in may and june of 2002, and is dated to june 10, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-day-i-saw-you-cry-2


5) this was a live demo (with sean on the left channel and myself on the right) that i think was probably recorded in july. i've mixed the channels down, but not altered it, otherwise. mixed on nov 19, 2014. dated to july 14, 2002.

this was a song that had a split personality from the beginning; it was being converted into a techno song for my own uses at the same time that it was being written with sean, and to be honest i had far more invested into the techno side of it. i did play it for sean, but he wasn't interested. no final mix was recorded with sean. i think this version is best left as it is.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/penny-shoeman


6) this was a live demo (with sean on the left channel and myself on the right) that i think was probably recorded in july. this was never finished as a rabit tune, and i never expanded it into one of my own tunes. i think it's better left as it is. this acoustic ep is actually a good home for it, as it was intended that way.

the little bit of production i did was in mixing the channels. the intent was just to mix the two sources together, but i felt that the mixdown took something away from sean's vocals that they previously had when they were separated in the mix - this is hard to articulate, it's just something about the empty space. so, that's the idea going on there.

i constructed this final mix (date: nov 19, 2014) out of two mixes - one that continued the stereo rotation for the whole track, and the initial channel-separated one. it's dated to july 28, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/jumped-up-and-down


note that this is also the last rabit is wolf release.

i'm going to put a box set up, but it's difficult to place the boundaries on it so i'm not sure yet. the rule will probably be "include's seans vocals". which will make the box set eight or nine discs.

publishing time (inri056)

sound raider isn't behaving...i probably wouldn't have uploaded it anyways....

so, inri037 is now complete.

--

time & psi were partially a rejection of the folk idea in favour of glossy, somewhat experimental pop. i realized that it was reasonable to move in a more commercial direction, but folk wasn't something i understood well, so it was a weird direction for me to be moving in. experimental or psychedelic pop, on the other hand, was something i had a solid grasp on...

time had been initially recorded in the fall and was remixed in late february to integrate a drum part. no original files exist. psi was recorded quickly in early march.

the track, as it existed in rabit, was a conscious pop compromise. i had ideas that weren't explored to keep it poppy and that have been expanded upon in the remixes.

the time machine is added here as a bonus track. it's based on an earlier classical guitar composition that was always meant to be reinterpreted as an idm tune and finally was in early 2014. the thematic overlap makes it relevant, but there is otherwise no connection between the two songs.

i started working on what would become my fourth symphony very shortly after the material on this ep was completed, and it really represents the point where i lost interest in rabit as a concept, under pressure to continue moving in a direction i didn't have any interest in. there are folk and psych versions of the track; sean never caught on to the psych version, and i never had my heart in the folk version. there were final folk demos recorded as late as the fall, but the disconnect was not solvable. the vocal version of the fourth symphony is in some way a corollary of but is ultimately too separate from these files to include here. psi & time, together, consequently comprise what is the fourth and final ("psychedelic pop") phase of rabit.

written in late 2001 and early 2002 and recorded in early 2002 and late 2014. the final mix was finished on nov 18, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - electric & acoustic guitars, bass, synthesizers, digital effects & treatments, drum manipulations, programming, digital wave editing, loops, sound design, production, composition.

sean - vocals, lyrics (3,4)
greg - drum performance sample source (1-3)

the rendered electronic orchestra on track 5 includes acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, brass, orchestra hit, drum machine, electronic drum kit, nylon guitar, electric guitar, synthesizer effects, music box, piano, bells and mellotron.

released march 10, 2002

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/time

i feel that people are a little bit confused about this discussion of streaming media, and a lot of it has to do with not understanding the words that are being thrown around.

so, we live under the system we call capitalism. while there are many ways to categorize people in capitalism, the most widely adopted (and most successful, in terms of explanations) way to do this is to broadly split people into workers and capitalists. it's not a clean partition, and it's not exhaustive, but it's fine for the discussion.

simply stated, the workers in a capitalist system are the people that make the goods, whereas the capitalists are the people that own the systems of production and appropriate a profit from the worker's labour, while not producing anything themselves.

now, let us analyze a music distribution system, like spotify. clearly, the musicians are the workers in such a system. and, who are the capitalists? that would be the managers - spotify, google, apple....

and, we see the same thing in this system that we see in every other capitalist system - the capitalists make large profits by exploiting the labour of the workers, while the workers starve.

now, it's pretty blatantly obvious that capitalism is an exploitative system. so, one of the things that anti-capitalists (like socialists and anarchists) seek to do is to gain control of the means of production, so that they don't have to pay the capitalists. anti-capitalists would consequently seek to smash systems like spotify and replace them with artist-run spaces. that is, independent labels and independent artists. bandcamp is not exactly an artist run space, but it's far closer to a socialist model.

the confusion stems from this idea that any process of exchange is upholding capitalism, which is just a misunderstanding of capitalism. capitalism is not exchanging things. there are diverse types of market socialism. capitalism, specifically, is the appropriation of labour by a managerial class. and, the entrenchment of services that stream music for peanuts that are sent to a centralized corporate bureaucracy, while the workers get nothing at all, is one of the most blatantly capitalistic things we've seen happen in our lifetimes.

this confusion is upheld by social norms which seek to trivialize certain economic activities as outside the market. generally, it's "feminine things" that are trivialized in this way - child care, housework, social work and art, to name a few examples.

i hope i've clarified a few things.

that reliable feeling of disappointment that one expects following a new smashing pumpkins release

all three of these tracks seem geared for radio play. it's not like the pumpkins weren't always a radio band, but...

i don't listen to the radio anymore and haven't in a really, really long time but i suspect that none of these songs are going to fit in well with anything remotely approaching an existing singles market. which gives them that left-field advantage. but that's low probability. hey, i hope it works out. but...

how many people are going to post the tired old "it's like everything else since insert event - it's ok, but it just doesn't grab me". well, they're right on some level but they're not able to articulate it.

the smashing pumpkins sound requires the integration of virtuoso guitar work.

that's the missing link, the je ne sais quoi, the intangible, the mystery ingredient...

sadly, it's probably the exact opposite thing that william (hey, he asked, have some respect) has heard from every label head, marketing expert, friend and pet over the last fifteen years.

this is alright. for a pop song. but it doesn't have that virtuosic angular energy.

which in the end just means i'm not in the intended audience. which is ok, too.

they didn't broadcast the part where mike tyson was restrained from entering the ring, with knife & fork in hand, bib around neck and humongous smile on face...

thankfully, they were able to keep mikey out of the ring, and properly mail the ear to an unrequited love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLDjDgqXdRY

no, that's the right response for wearing a shirt that was clearly unprofessional. he deserved that pat on the back, patronizing or not. this is progress. ignore the neanderthals - in the end, the genome will.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOggVg2Ekko

this was an interfaith prayer service with the purpose of building bridges across muslim and christian communities.

....and what the responses here demonstrate pretty clearly is that it's a hopeless aim. religion is inherently suspicious of the unknown; the xenophobia it preaches cannot be resolved without abolishing religious thinking altogether.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrDK8UWsRFg

deathtokoalas
the guy's at work. it's not appropriate. and that's not rocket science.

Alex
if i was responsible for landing on a comet, I'd wear whatever i wanted. Also why is it inappropriate?

deathtokoalas 
no. you don't get to behave differently as a result of your accomplishments. you remain required to uphold the same code of conduct as everybody else. you're not special. you're not above the law. you're not entitled to special treatment.

he understood what was wrong with the shirt, it doesn't matter if you do or not.

xX444Xx1
well you should consider that in many scientific workrooms there is no real dresscode. since they have no contact to 'customers' on a daily basis like in many modern occupations, they can nearly werar whatever they want as long as they are not naked :D

warioman91
I love the shirt, because IT IS TACKY and funny. Maybe it's something I get from my dad, but bad taste is timeless.  My dad has worked in the air force and now other government project stuff and he would wear bad taste pink dress shirts and other stuff occasionally. Whatever, I just love this guy's look. It says "cool" scientist/engineer!

So if you still think it's inappropriate, then that's your view but I love it because it's exactly what it is.

deathtokoalas
i come from a scientific background. while it's true that dress codes are not generally articulated, it's not with the idea that anything goes but because it's assumed that people will use the proper judgement without having to be micromanaged about it. i mean, nobody wants to tell somebody with a phd what to wear. the assumption is that somebody with a phd knows what to wear without having an hr manager on their ass about it.

the guy knew he was going to be on tv. it's the kind of bad judgement that it's just assumed is never going to be an issue.

tacky is one thing, but it's clear what the problem is and i'm not going to go over the 101 course notes on the topic. nobody would have said anything if the shirt had palm trees on it. but, things have changed over the last few generations and a shirt like that just isn't acceptable in a professional culture anymore.

publishing 9:46 outside of the magenta box (inri055)

inri036 is now complete.

there's two new instrumental mixes here, and three vocal mixes from 2002. overall, it's sort of a psychedelic folk release, which is a bit of an anomaly for me. it was never done, never felt right. until now...

i'm quite happy with the two instrumental mixes here, so do check them out.

--

my memory is a little fuzzy with this track, other than that it was constructed all at once in the middle of the night on a cold february morning in a basement that wasn't well heated.

i believe that sean initially brought in the a capella vocal that is heard in the acoustic demo under the request that it be developed in a folky style, and the track was built from there. we seem to have done the live version the next week, meaning i must have written it over the week.

there was some hard drive corruption as the demo was being recorded. i was in a glitchy mindset at the time and decided the skips ought to be interpreted musically. i'm not sure i'd make the same choice now, but i'm not willing to second guess myself, either. so, i skittered up the bass and organ parts to make the entire track sound glitchy to compensate for the skips. i also ran the vocal file through a musical algorithm that involved slowing it down and pasting it over itself to create a collage of voices somewhat similar to a robotic choir. as the track is otherwise rather pastoral, all of this glitch provides for an unusual juxtaposition.

as mentioned, the track was built up quickly, but it was always meant as a demo. that is to say that the vocal-driven 2002 version of the track was not complete, and was never completed.

i came around to completing it as an instrumental work in mid october, 2014. the removal of sean's vocals required some mild rethinks in terms of melodic content, but the real additions are threefold. first, it is substantially remixed to make it sound thicker. second, some sound design or soundscaping was constructed, mostly for the beginning of the track, but some guitar parts were also added throughout. third, drums were added. this converts the track out of folk (a genre i spend almost no time in) and back into psychedelic pop (my usual home) with hints of fusion, prog and idm. as it is, this can be viewed as the definitive (if non-comprehensive) third incarnation of rabit is wolf, which was being torn between freak folk and folk punk tendencies in it's general tumbling towards "folk".

written in early 2002 and recorded in early 2002 and late 2014. the final fuck boxes mixes were finished on nov 15, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - guitars, effects, bass, electric air reed organ, electronic drum kit, voice (1, 5), sampling, sound design, vocal manipulations, digital wave editing, production

sean - vocals/lyrics (2,3,4)

released february 20, 2002

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/9-46-outside-the-magenta-box

i'm very sensitive to the weather...

i had set the condition on myself this morning that if i finish the song then i can go to the punk show tonight. i instead ended up falling asleep, and now i'm afraid to go outside. and i'm still sleepy.

it's only -10 with the windchill. but i'm actually getting the feeling that i may not leave the house at all until it's passed next week.

this is why i always have extra spaghetti.

the song is legitimately almost done. i want to add some extra guitar parts. it'll only take a few hours from the time i sit down to do it. but right now i'm still nodding off...

i knew what i was walking into, but i'm still constantly amazed by what i'm seeing.

i actually wouldn't want to travel to this place on foot. i need to get a bicycle...it's clear....top priority in the spring...

it's amazing how much of detroit has this "old country road" feel, given that it's a substantial metropolitan center. areas in the center of the city look and feel like isolated, trapped-in-time towns in central ontario.

i haven't spent enough time yet to know if i'm walking into a village mentality.

i'm actually a big city person. i like the egalitarianism that comes with anonymity.

deathtokoalas
why is our tax money being wasted on this trash?

i'm not normally a fiscal conservative, but it's really upsetting. first fall out boy, now this.

it's not about reducing taxes. i don't pay taxes. it's about the proper use of public funding.

this is money that ought to have been budgeted for art but is instead being wasted on hollywood-style videos to mass market mindless crap. public funds earmarked for art ought to have two focuses in mind:

1) helping actual artists (like me) escape the market forces that make their lives so difficult.
2) general social welfare.

the people of ontario are not in the business of running major music labels. this is the kind of thing that should have been fronted by a label, in return for debt. that is, this kid should be paying for this, not the people of ontario.

there's no cultural, thematic or musical content to this that justifies public expenditures. it's just mindless pop trash. i mean, if you have a definition of art that umbrellas this i'd like to hear it, but expect me to call you on your mental gymnastics if you do try it...

it's sort of fitting that the only responses i'm getting (and deleting) are comments about my appearance.

platismatiaglauca
Why do you say "our tax money" and then go on to say you don't pay taxes. 

deathtokoalas
because taxes are owned collectively by the public. the fact that i don't pay into the system does not rob me of the right to an equal say in how the funds are used.

excerpt from catch-22

"You mean there's a catch?"

"Sure there's a catch", Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

it might seem like she's moving backwards with this, but she's actually right. it's true that spotify is broadly what people want, and it's true that digital music is with us until at least the oil crash. but, people are expecting a free lunch.

the basic problem is that the price is a fraction of what it needs to be to compensate the artists. with the price that spotify pays out, you'd have to listen to a record every day for a year to get a dollar to the label on it, which is going to  be less than that to the artist.

the idea of access to a giant database of music is a good one, but in order for the revenue stream to get to where it needs to be some combination of the following things are necessary:

1) you need to cut the labels out. spotify is now the label. it's releasing, hosting and distributing. as it is, what spotify is doing is both decreasing the price and adding another middleman. that's economically impossible. in order for it to be sustainable, it needs to replace the existing middleman and work directly with artists.

2) there needs to be different pricing options, connected to how much is actually being listened to. $120/year is simply not enough. $120/month is more like it. plenty of people pay something close to that for cable. there's just as much content being delivered, and many more people that need to get paid. cable-like pricing options are required for this service to succeed.

3) one of the pricing options should be per-stream pricing, and at rate close to $0.10/stream. if you do the math, you'll see the dramatic disconnect between what it needs to be and what it is now.

there's a lot of rhetoric about how artists need to conform or get out, but that's not the way it's going to be. spotify needs content to work. if it doesn't increase it's price, artists are going to slowly start leaving. taylor's high profile and everything but she's not the first one out - and i'd expect people will follow her out. it may take another quarter or two, but this free lunch just isn't sustainable, and it's not going to happen.

the part of the catalogue that is safe is the old stuff that the labels own outright. the boomers don't have much time left, so this is about to explode - floyd, beatles, zeppelin, etc. jazz. classical. elvis. etc.

unless a tactic is developed for consumers to pay more into it, this is the future of spotify - an archive of recordings by dead people.

as it is, they basically did everything wrong. if this model does pick up, and it will if it's done right, it's almost certainly going to be through a different service.

after looking into it a bit more, i'd put my money on google driving spotify to bankruptcy.....

like most advanced mammals, lions need to be taught in order to know how to do things. that doesn't mean it's a good idea to have a pet lion - you're too easy of a meal if you're standing there naively patting it's head, with your gut pressed up against it's face. there's no skill required in munching you. but, young lions that are not taught to hunt will not know how to hunt until they are taught or they figure it out through trial and error.

taking an elephant down, in particular, is something that requires a lot of teamwork. that means it requires a lot of practice, which means it requires a lot of training. it's a task for seasoned, professional lions only.

that's a lot of lions in one place, and it's a little curious as to how they all got there. but it looks to me like the lions are also quite young - a year old, maybe two.

that's the explanation of what you're seeing - it's baby lions v baby elephant.

i'm glad you got the last one on film.

that's the variable that a lot of these "social experiments" completely miss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvq6pH5Rheg

deathtokoalas
you know, i don't want to listen to religious music any more than i want to listen to schmaltzy fake-soul quintets do pop covers, but the idea that your opinion on the band's religious views is in any way meaningful is exactly the reason religion won't die. the more you hack it down like this, the stronger it comes back. you really need to adopt an avoidance strategy, and learn to just ignore it.

besides. a couple of dorks singing lame songs in a cave is hardly the dark side of christianity.

PhourQ
lol @ your emotional fear of theism. Face it, religion will never die and thank God for that...since it is our human experience to apprehend that God exists...no matter how much it scares you to believe it.

deathtokoalas
i sure hope that religion has a best before date, but i don't deny that i have an immense fear of what religion is capable of.

that's a circular argument, by the way. you're stating that god must exist because god created us to have a "human experience" to apprehend it. most atheists would toss your whole conception of "human experience" in the trash heap.

i don't think there's any reason we exist at all, except to carry the dna to the next level. i get that it's maybe a bit overwhelming to get your head around it, but i think it's a pre-requisite to building a truly free society.

it's a catch-22. religion is incompatible with freedom, and it consequently must be abolished on the cultural level in order to attain a free society. but, forcing people to drop it creates a backlash which merely stunts the process. don't get me wrong - i'd be in favour of rounding up all the theists and sending them on a one way trip to jupiter if i thought it would work. but, i know it just pushes it underground, where it forms the basis of the next inevitable revolt against state tyranny. it places a flavour on the revolutionary character that is difficult to transcend.

people have to figure this out on their own. a little bit of ridiculing is maybe a step in the right direction, but it needs to be done carefully. censorship or persecution is just out of the question - it's simply counterproductive.

PhourQ
I wasn't trying to argue for the existence of God in saying it is part of our human experience. I am making that statement with God's existence as a given. I am not concerned about atheists tossing my arguments anywhere. My beliefs will never be swayed by what someone else thinks of them. The fact that theists find meaning in life makes atheists uncomfortable, but atheists provide no rational basis for theists to chuck their beliefs. The problems atheists associate with religion completely disregard the fact that those problems arise when the theist is not in accord with his own beliefs...the problems voiced are rarely the teachings of religion themselves. Furthermore, to suggest that religion is incompatible with freedom may be your opinion, but again, disregards the freedom that the religion teaches itself. Mankind naturally will seek to control and destroy regardless...some corrupt theism to accomplish this, others use atheism. Completely removing beliefs in religious ethics or morals in exchange for varied and subjective morality will have obvious results. 

deathtokoalas
right. so obviously that statement about "human experience" isn't going to mean anything to me, then. you'd might as well have been speaking to the wall. it's about as useful to me as a discussion about pink unicorns. which is kind of a refutation, but why bother...

the idea that atheists ought to be convincing theists to modify their beliefs is again a circular presentation. atheism argues that we need to look at the world in terms of evidence-based reasoning. it wouldn't argue in favour or against any specific belief, so much as it would demand that evidence is gathered to argue in favour of the belief. it's nothing more complicated than backing up your argument, which is something we teach kids to do in grade school - and place a great emphasis on. for example, i have a belief that extra-terrestrials exist in the universe, and the bible is evidence of their contact with us in the past.  that's an evidence-based argument that is consistent with atheism, but it is still a belief. what we get upset about is not over the fact that you believe things but that you use faith-based reasoning to back it up. we then get frustrated over your refusal to accept the superiority of evidence-based reasoning over....magic, basically. let's be sure that this much is clear.

atheists tend to use the same process to deduce morality that the christian fathers did, which is rational discovery. atheism is not the elimination of morals, it is the elimination of magic. now, that necessarily eliminates any kind of authoritarian basis underlying legal systems, but that's the point. "infringing the rights of others is to be discouraged" is a much better statement than "thou shalt not kill" - an improvement, an advance, a step forwards - for the precise reason that it provides for more subtlety in analysis, and stops people from enforcing the rules with a blunt stick. few atheists are going to argue with the general content of religious morality (the few points of contention are largely going to be in the heteropatriarchal nature of the religious systems, but that these exist in religion is reflective of society's influence on religion, rather than the other way around); the point is more that it oversimplifies complex issues, often leading to undesirable outcomes. if the religious texts were thousands of pages long and full of carefully analyzed case notes, there'd be less contention. but, then nobody would read it. it's a tragic flaw in the outcome.

which is where the issues of freedom exist. a group of people that believe a book tells them what is right and wrong and belong to a culture that requires the enforcement of it's contents to reach immortality is....it's insane. whatever the cause, whatever social ill, it's organized madness. and, a free society simply cannot exist in these conditions of coercion and self-righteousness. the proselytism that enforces this self-righteousness into hierarchies and tyrannies is worked into the bulk of the major religions. the idea of free will may be inherent to most religions, but this idea that religion mostly preaches tolerance is absolutely false. every religion seeks to convert the entire world to it's path. this is simply not compatible with a free society.

profitprofitprofitprofitprofitprofitprofit

i don't know what IT crowd is. i checked this record out around when it came out, but don't remember the reference.

deathtokoalas
there's actually a lot to like about this but, like the last single, it's just missing that extra layer of abstraction to take it out of "this season's hit single" and up into "interesting art-pop". a creative remix could save it. seriously. i said the same thing about the last one. there's enough here to work with...

she seems to want to get to the pop art pedestal. but it's kind of unclear whether it's legitimately about creating something challenging or if it's about taking over the world.

it's kind of like the beatles around rubber soul, maybe - or maybe u2 in the late 80s. it's maybe been that long since an established top-of-the-world pop artist tried to branch out like this. she's reached this level of cultural ubiquity where anything she releases is going to sell massively. it doesn't really matter if it's any good or not. so, why not take those chances and try and create something that goes beyond pop and reaches into art?

i think it's still an open question: is she going to be able to take that jump and release a real classic disc? or is it about catering to pop radio? pop, as an art form, is just dead. maybe i was buying into the hype a bit out of desperation, given the lack of options; despite not really being a fan, i had some expectations with this. they haven't been met.

....but i do think that she's put down the groundwork for something more interesting next time around. i guess we'll have to see what happens.

at least she can say the gamble worked out. and maybe it's a step forwards. but, i also think she's make-or-break in terms of her artistic credibility, the next time around - if not in terms of her marketing capability, which is easy to see is going to be substantial for quite some time.

one example of the ambiguity: the melody sounds familiar. now, i'll admit that pop music kind of tends to blur for me nowadays. it really is all quite similar to itself. but, isn't there a popular miley cyrus song that has basically the same melody in the chorus?

Shaun thomas
First time listening . . . immediate thought . . "Lorde"

deathtokoalas
yeah, i keep hearing that, but this is too catchy/glossy for lorde.

i wouldn't uphold lorde as the best example of the chillwave sound, but lorde does have a higher level of subtlety in her music. and, not to be a bitch, but it probably stems from the fact that lorde doesn't work with a team of producers. it's coming entirely from her.

that's not really what i was expecting from taylor swift, though. i don't think she has the same kind of intimate connection with the music; i think the music and lyrics are coming out of separate processes, rather than existing holistically. i think i was really just hoping for a less safe production approach.

a few years ago, there was a band called pivot (from australia, i believe) that did this, but with less monotonous synth work.

for the person that asked...

cevin key = seven kilograms (of pot) = kevin crompton.

the story is they worried about people being confused that they were both named kevin, so they came up with pseudonyms.

deathtokoalas
if anything, it's more true that reznor took a substantial amount of his sound from die warzau (or the chicago wax trax sound in general).

there's actually a bit of a link there, with chris vrenna - who was in die warzau before he was in nine inch nails (although he already knew reznor).

he's clearly an actor...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeykDZnZa3M

i think this makes a valid and accurate point. i've been trying to find a way to articulate myself with this and have been largely unsuccessful and consequently haven't. part of the reason might be that the simplicity of the pop form is not able to provide for the subtlety that is required in the discussion. it's one thing to talk of it setting off a discussion rather than getting a concrete message across, but i feel that the song is maybe so blurry in it's messaging that it's not able to even specify what the starting point is. so it's not easy to produce a defined reaction when it's not clear what it is that ought to be reacted to.

i think this is the crux of it: before you get into analyzing or criticizing the original video or the response to it, you have to understand that fat v. skinny is a false binary. it's one thing to point out that there's a lot of unrealistic messaging and it's a cause in continuing the problem of eating disorders (which are substantial). it's another to point out that "body positivity" is just as often used as an excuse for unhealthy people to stay unhealthy, promoting the continuing obesity epidemic (which is statistically a far greater public health issue). putting pressure on overweight people to be more healthy is not the same thing as enforcing an unrealistic beauty standard.

so, is the song a criticism of the enforcement of beauty norms (which would be a good thing), is it a "fat anthem" (which would be a bad thing) or is it in truth too simplistic and vague to be specific and is consequently being interpreted as both, creating confusion as to how to respond to it?

sometimes, when things are complicated it's because they're vague rather than because they're specific.

personally? i get more of a "fat anthem" feel out of it, and i'm not really comfortable with upholding that as a "positive message".

listen: i wouldn't put it past the advertising executives that work for monster to try to tap into this. some of this may really not be a coincidence; satan's been the hippest shit out there for well over two generations, now.

it seems like the consensus is, indeed, "an n".

it's interesting how publicly available children's education can also be useful for adults that can't remember obscure grammatical conventions.

"a n" or "an n"? you can't work this out from first principles, you just have to know. the kids videos have the answer!

is it correct to say "an nwa"?

it seems both right and wrong. it's obviously wrong to say "an nigger with attitude". but, what about "an en double-u ay". the n would be necessary there.

it seems obvious that you want to write "a nwa". but you want to say "an nwa" to compensate for the vowel in your pronunciation of "n".

meh. i like it the way it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL3knvasuwQ

with dogs in the wild, it's probably as simple as not wasting protein.

for domestic dogs? that's probably the only real meal it'll ever have.

ever.

deathtokoalas
so, like.....every song is exactly the same algorithm of single phrase 4/4 loops building up until they just.....stop?

the limits of this technology are pretty apparent, which is why ideas like process music, strategies and frippertronics were developed. it seems kind of boneheaded to just ignore this in favour of doing exactly what the innovators dreaded would be done.

but, maybe it was inevitable. and maybe 95% of the hundreds of kids doing this (and there are hundreds of kids doing this, and there has been for years) don't know who steve reich was, anyways.

there's some alright ideas in here. it's a shame that he's using such a boring means of expressing them.

can you make an interesting piece of music by yourself in real time with nothing but a guitar, a loop machine and a bunch of effects pedals?

no.

now, stop thinking you can.

Conor Chaney
You are really going after Dustin Wong

deathtokoalas
he was in town that week...

deathtokoalas
actually, i think the fripps & belews of the world would be rather disappointed by how simplistic this is.

Dave Ellis
Simple =/= bad.

Besides, this reminds more of minimalists like Steve Reich that Fripp.

deathtokoalas
in general, simple does not equal bad, but in this case it does.

there's no process in this...

ok, maybe there's a vague idea of process in this in the way the pedals are used, but it's not musical in nature and is consequently not well compared to reich.

i was reacting to the several comments that were comparing this to fripp, which likely meant his work with eno, and i do think it's a more accurate comparison than to reich. but, they were ironically less constrained with their technology at the time; they had far more flexible tools at their disposal, because they built them for what they wanted rather than picked them up, mass produced, on a shelf. the result was a far more interesting use of the technology.

don't get me wrong - i'd like to hear some guitarists pick up on that sort of thing. guitar playing has become very technically driven, and it's created a lot of boring results. there's more flexible uses to the instrument than as a blunt means to ape a lot of violin solos. i try to do a little bit of that myself, even.

but, this guy is just not getting beyond the basic level of abstraction that comes with looping phrases together.

teen pop goes emo.

escaping the studio for a familiar blast of new york at trinosophes in detroit

looking at his biography, it's surprising that i'd never heard of virgil moorefield before yesterday. well, the name is vaguely familiar, but i couldn't have placed it to anything. however, the biography (along with a bit of youtube sleuthing) made it clear that i'd better show up, as that slice of the history of new york's music scene is really exactly precisely where my brain lives.

he was performing a new piece, and while i got the impression that the band might not be entirely into it yet, i have to point out that it was a little bit generic in terms of minimalist post-rock, broken only by the inclusion of a sax player. it swayed and rocked like you'd expect it would, but that's just it: very predictable. there wasn't really anything new to it. the melodic lines weren't anything much to react to, either. it's one thing to be predictable and be good, it's another to be predictable and sort of mediocre at it.

listen. it happens. there are beethoven pieces that flat out suck. i wasn't going to make too much of a judgment on the basis of one piece.

the second piece (apparently a reinstrumentation of "i wish i'd thought of it sooner") was a lot more creative. it definitely exists in the space i referenced, but it was noisy and erratic and just overall worked very well.

the third piece (the one posted) was somewhere in between, in that it went back to the predictability of the first piece while maintaining some of the excitement of the second. it was more along the lines of being predictable and good. but, there were also some jazzy curve balls in there.

overall? i didn't get the same kind of raw power i get out of swans, the atonal mess of zorn, the messy dynamics of branca or even the glacial harmonies of steve reich. what i heard tonight was kind of reaching into all these places and pulling a little out of all of them without really hitting any serious high points. i didn't hear anything to define virgil moorefield, so much as i heard a lot of bits of things i'm familiar with from elsewhere - none of it really put together in a way that really grabbed me. i'm sure there's far more to his work than i heard tonight...

....but i can't help but think it was a good explanation of how i could be so into so much of what came out of that scene without having ever heard of him.

that being said? it was worth the $10. i'm glad i went, and i'd make the same choice next time. maybe i'll check out some more of his work in the meantime hoping to find the best of it...

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2014/11/08.html

publishing rabit is wolf (inri057)

this is inri038. which is done. inri036 needs another week. inri037 needs some analysis before i make predictions about...time.

there's no new recordings here. it's not even remixed, it's just finally sequenced correctly.

--

this is the sum total of the completed rabit is wolf studio experiments, which wound through a number of paths on their way to the project's eventual collapse. while there would be further acoustic demos recorded with sean, i ultimately decided to abandon their folky underpinnings and finish all further tracks as electronic, instrumental recordings. there was some thought of completing an acoustic tour demo at the time; it will appear shortly as inri040 and contain those final demos.

the recording was initially sequenced as a demo in mid may, 2002 but i foolishly deleted the files (i was running low on hard drive space) only to find out that the burn was corrupt and that the result was skipping. i did eventually recompile an ep of material, but it was in a different order and made no attempt to mix the tracks together. in reconstructing the demo, i've decided to recreate the original sequencing. the only difference between this collection and the initial collection is that the last track now includes sean's vocals, whereas it was initially an (eventually rendered incomplete) instrumental recording.

i need to be clear that the decision in sequencing the material this way is unilateral on my behalf. during this period, sean had made it clear that he was not satisfied with the more experimental and electronic tendencies underlying some of the tracks; specifically, he wasn't happy with the first or last tracks on this disc, as he felt they did not represent his vision for the project. on the other hand, i was less interested in purely acoustic music and more interested in electronic music. i was envisioning the project as having a split personality between an acoustic live presentation and an electronic studio presentation. sean argued this would be disorienting; it's less that i disagreed with him and more that i thought that was a good idea. this divergence in vision is one of the factors leading to the project's dissolution.

while i feel this recording stands up on it's own, i've also taken the time over the second half of 2014 to reclaim some of the tracks as my own instrumental works. only tracks two and four exist uniquely as rabit is wolf collaborations; the other four tracks have been resequenced as completed instrumentals in my main recording sequence. please open the track pages for more information.

written and recorded in late 2001 and early 2002. resequenced to mimic the original sequencing on november 8, 2014. except to sequence the record, these files have not been altered since 2002. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - guitars (electric, acoustic, classical), effects, bass, synthesizers, digital piano, electric air reed organ, flute, drum programming, drum manipulations, vocal manipulations, loops, sequencing, sampling, digital wave editing, production, cover art.
sean - vocals, lyrics, harmonica (1), ring modulator (6).

greg - drum performance sample source (5,6)
jon - guitar performance (2)

released june 20, 2002

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/rabit-is-wolf

hrmmmmn.

maybe harper's not so bad, after all. maybe i should give him another chance...

ethical oil is a front group for the canadian oil industry, who came to power here by railing against our decision to legalize gay marriage. yes - canada legalized gay marriage roughly ten years ago, and it was the right choice, but it also cost the sitting government it's hold on power. if you give them your oil money, they will continue their anti-gay agenda. this is politicking of such a level of cynicism that it's hard to believe it's even possible.

it's like david duke doing an anti-racism infomercial.

the manufacturer isn't guilty of any sort of negligence here. it's understood that there is some risk. the guardians accept the risk when they make the vaccination choice. suing the vaccine company for this would be like suing the peanut butter manufacturer for setting off an unknown allergy. it's a freak accident. in legal terms, an "act of god". hey, nobody ever said god wasn't an asshole...

personally? i think the flu vaccine is a little overkill. they're useful for older people and very young people, but healthy people between five and 60 don't really need it - we can produce our own antibodies. i agree that the idea of vaccinating everybody yearly is being driven more by the economics underlying it than by public health concerns. more serious vaccinations? well, yeah, the risk is worth the benefits and we should all keep up.... 

deathtokoalas
this is beyond fucking creepy. turn the fucking camera off and enjoy the meal.

you guys are in a three-way relationship with your video camera.

i've been accused of being in love with my guitar, so i sort of get it. it's weird to be jealous of inanimate objects, but they get in the way. personally? i really do love my guitar more. it's taken me a long time to understand that.

the only thing that's really important to keep in mind about making choices is to be honest with yourself when you're making them. really honest.

honestly. he's sitting in a restaurant enjoying a meal with his girlfriend, and he pulls out a camera and motions for the world to eat with them. this is too ridiculous to be believable. it's the behaviour of a character in a jim carrey film.

there may be some kind of ocd or something setting in, granted, but in the end choosing between your partner and yourself is not always an obvious choice. sometimes, the right choice is yourself.

Jake
Or maybe 'Vlogging' is their job and how they make money, so they try to include as much of what they do as possible so it makes an interesting video for people to watch.

Nah that must be too much of a simple answer as to why they do it, huh? It's got to be an illness and he has to be choosing it over here (Even though they both film things). Yup that sounds right... Not.

deathtokoalas
it's pretty obvious from her body language that she's finding it invasive, and feeling like she's competing with the vlog for attention.

i mean, you could ask her, if she's willing to be that forthright in public, which she probably isn't - and then you'd know, rather than needing to read into it. but sometimes that kind of formality is kind of just that.

i pointed out the dinner section as something that's legitimately whacked. but watch when he takes a u-turn down the alley to talk to the camera. that's an "i thought we were walking" look.

if you take a step back from the "they vlog for a living" thing, like, realize that work getting in the way is a pretty common point of relationship failure, and it's usually something you have to accept rather than something that can be "fixed".

Jake 
But you're just guessing on all of this and you can't be sure as you're just seeing things that you think she 'means' with her body language. It's their job to film themselves, they choose to do it, she chooses to do it. If she isn't feeling it then she shouldn't keep doing it.. But when the cheques come in I bet she doesn't mind how 'invasive' it is.

deathtokoalas
well, sure, i'm guessing. that's kind of obvious. but what i'm getting across is that the tensions appear to be stemming from whether she wants to keep doing this or not. it's not such an easy choice to just walk off, either.

Jake 
Well no it is a pretty easy choice. She was a nurse before this (I believe, not too sure) so she won't have huge trouble getting another job. But if she isn't happy then she needs to walk away and if not, put in place things where they won't film in certain places. Otherwise she needs to get over it and if the relationship problem is to do with the camera, then it's down to them to decide to take a break or stop to keep the relationship healthy.

deathtokoalas
that is indeed the process that appears to be playing itself out. but what i meant was that walking away from a partner of many years is not reducible to an economic decision the way you're suggesting that it is.

Jake
I wasn't talking about walking away from her partner. I was talking about stopping Vlogging if it's getting in the way. And she can stop him vlogging at dinner by telling him that isn't something she wants. She also does vlogs of her own when they're apart and with friends, so it can't be in the way that much either.

deathtokoalas 
it sounds quite simple in the abstract, doesn't it? i do hope they work out what each of them want.

Jake
Could easily be put into place... But she's not asking for it as she doesn't want it or she wouldn't vlog when she's away from him. Simple.

deathtokoalas
i don't think your logic here is very sound. that's kind of like saying that if you really want family dinners then you won't eat lunch at work.

Jake
How is it like that? If she enjoys vlogging then she enjoys it. If she sometimes wants dinners without it then she needs to tell him and sort it out. Either way, it's her problem and lack of communication from HER that's causing it, not his fault.

deathtokoalas 
i'm not really trying to assign fault. it's not something where somebody has done something "wrong" and should be "blamed" for it.

but, communicating these sorts of things isn't always easy. sometimes people don't react well. and sometimes that's predictable.

Jake
'honestly. he's sitting in a restaurant enjoying a meal with his girlfriend, and he pulls out a camera and motions for the world to eat with them. this is too ridiculous to be believable. it's the behaviour of a character in a jim carrey film' A quote from your earlier reply to somebody. So you are assigning blame, to him. Like I said though, that's her lack of being able to communicate, if she can't speak to her bf and tell him something they shouldn't be together really if they can't talk.

deathtokoalas 
no, i'm not assigning any kind of blame. if that's who he is, it's up to her to accept it or move on. i think it would be invasive to try and change who he is for her benefit.

but, most women would find that exceedingly unattractive.

i'm not sure if it crossed anybody's mind that there may be religious or otherwise cultural reasons underlying her hesitancy to dance on camera.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzc3Ndk5x8w

deathtokoalas
i still use xp...

the only blue screens i've ever seen have been due to buggy drivers or broken hardware. it's the actual truth of it. apple's more integrated approach is maybe better in terms of minimizing points of failure, whereas linux driver support remains largely hopeless. but, you have to consider a trade-off in price and customization. the key thing is this, though: if you get compatible hardware from respectable vendors, the bluescreens really don't happen. when they do, it's because the hardware manufacturers didn't create drivers that work properly in the system, and you can't really blame microsoft for it. you just have to do that research.

Schwarzer
XP of gaming, Linux for working.

deathtokoalas 
it depends on your job, though. if you're working in science, that makes sense. if you're working in art, serious software and hardware support for linux is going to require a change in the economic system we live in. and, of course, windows remains the dominant operating system in networked work environments. i've stuck with windows because i don't have linux driver support for my audio hardware (which is my "job"). i could switch to a mac, but i'm not keen to pay 30-50% more for the privilege of losing control over the customization of the machine.

i acknowledge that linux is in some ways a superior system. but, in terms of day-to-day functionality, it's just not there - and will likely never be so long as we organize our technology sector in terms of corporations.

i've stuck with xp because i have a minimal winlite image connected to dozens of scripts. upgrading to seven would cost me several months of rebuilding the image and rewriting the scripts, and i'm not convinced a lot of it is even really possible. this is the same problem businesses are dealing with, but i don't have the resources of a business to deal with it. on top of that, i don't think i'd really gain anything besides higher ram usage. i mean, my final xp sp3 image is only about 100 mb. it's very fast, because i've completely ripped 85% of the os out. and, it's very safe because i've removed essentially all of the networking functionality - including most of the code libraries.

it's mostly stopped, now. i think the companies have reacted to the outcry, or moved to more sophisticated tracking methods (social media). but something that i'd see happen around 2010 was that i'd download software from a respected company (adobe, say) and then get error messages when the spyware kicked in. what was happening was that the spyware was going looking for dialer software in windows, and erroring out when it couldn't find the c libraries. that would tell me where the executable was and what i needed to remove - or if i needed to uninstall the entire program.

xp was created to exist in a safe, corporate networking environment behind a hardware firewall. it's very open and trusting, but it's by design because you're only supposed to be talking to other computers in close proximity that you have serious one-on-one trust with; security is supposed to be dealt with on the way in and out of the network. this is of course inherently meant for "work" use. it's not a home operating system, and trying to use it as one is never going to be safe - unless you set up behind a hardware firewall, recreating the same conditions.

what that means is that the best way to make xp safer is to take all that inherently trusting networking software right out of it.

kanekan
what people forget is that windows (at least started) is a software company and apple is a hardware company but people blame windows for a hardware problem anyway which is stupid but many also buy an apple computer and put windows on it

Schwarzer
That sounds really stupid. Apples and PCs are build from the same parts.

deathtokoalas 
most people don't really have the kind of modular understanding of a computer as a collection of parts that defined the early days of the industry, they take it as a single thing - like a car or a phone. this idea that they're dealing with something complicated that needs to work together is sort of beyond them. when the os crashes, they blame the os.

apple computers were really something entirely different until relatively recently. i think they moved to the x86 architecture around 2005. up until that point, they were really very different computers.

regardless, apple still produces it's products as single entities, which means everything is tested over the same hardware, drivers are built for specific purposes, etc. so, this idea of complicated things working together is very much minimized.

microsoft just doesn't deal with this. it throws the operating system down and tells the hardware companies to figure it out on their own - with varying results. i think they introduced a driver testing process around vista, but it's still a step down in terms of rigorous testing.

when you keep that in mind, you would have to expect that apples are going to be more stable with the hardware they ship with. and, this is generally true.

the trade-off is a loss of flexibility. if i want to swap the hard drives out on my pc, i'll do it myself and not expect the stability to move up or down. but if i want to break the warranty in swapping a mac's drive out (if it isn't soldered in), i have no assurances that i'm not going to destabilize the system.

i do agree that i couldn't see any reason to pay 40% more for an apple logo and then put windows on it, given that apples are mostly made in the dell factory nowadays. i experimented with hacking os x for a while around 2007, though. in the end, the software flexibility i thought i could get out of it never really materialized and i just formatted it...

Blue Dragon
In the last 2 years since I use Linux as my main desktop system,I haven't met a device without Linux drivers and I have had 1 kernel panic.

deathtokoalas
you must not be doing anything interesting with it, then.

don't get me wrong: if you work in science, linux is the way to go. and if you just want to browse the internet and other normal "computer stuff", it's as good as the next operating system.

but if you're using virtually any kind of specialized hardware, you're more or less at the whim of the company that's making it. and, if they don't feel like it's a worthwhile investment, you're probably shit out of luck.

well, unless you can write them yourself.

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
well, xp comes in 64-bit flavours....

...but, to be honest with you, i'm more concerned about running 16-bit software than running 64-bit software. and i'm not concerned about support or security for the reasons i outlined. it's a recording pc - it needs to launch a version of cubase from 2005, host vst plugins and connect to a few hardware consoles (neither of which have stable 64 bit drivers). now, i admit i've recently run into a few circumstances where i wish i could upgrade my ram past 3 gb. but it hasn't reached the breaking point and probably won't for at least a few more years.


i think the reality is that computing hit a kind of functional flatline around 2005 or so, where increasing specs don't really make any difference unless you're into really high end gaming or something.

i'm simply not going to gain anything of value by upgrading windows, increasing my processor speed or moving to 64 bit. i'm just going to lose an image i spent a lot of time with. what's going to finally break me is when i can't launch a sampler because it has minimum requirements of 8 gb of ram.

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
that's what i'm saying - i will probably stick with xp until i feel i need more ram. and that's probably years into the future. even so, i'll probably end up dual booting into 32-bit xp due to the hardware. i mean, even if i end up upgrading the hardware one day i'm not going to discard the old devices...

i built this thing myself in 2007; i dropped quite a bit of cash into it, because i expected it to last at least ten years. it's a 64-bit chip and the board can take 8 gb, but, like i say,  there's no 64-bit drivers and i like my image. people actually laughed at me. "you'll upgrade in two years.". but i haven't. and all i've lost in that period is one of the four hard drives.

like i say: it's going to be the ram, eventually. and it could be another ten years...

and...i'll still be running xp, even if i upgrade the music pc, because i've got it running on my old pc that just sends a youtube signal to my tv, which is from the 90s (those quantum fireballs don't die. there's a 20 gb hard drive in it. it still spins. it belongs in a museum.) and can't run anything newer than xp. if that drive goes one day, i have every intention to hit a pawn shop and find another one just so i can put xp back on it...