Thursday, April 30, 2015
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
yeah, i'm staying in tonight. i just don't feel like it's worth it. i'm at best a passive fan; it's more an experiential thing. like, i'd pay $10 to see them around the corner, just to say i've seen 'em, but the situation is a bit more annoying than that.
i could very well get most of inri043 done tonight.
i could very well get most of inri043 done tonight.
Monday, April 27, 2015
publishing untitled (inri061)
inri042 completed.
--
this is the second of two double ep singles to come out of tracks that were begun in 2002 and not completed to my liking. the mixes in this single chart this song's rather elaborate development over twelve and a half years, with the first disc consisting of new mixes and the second consisting of old mixes.
it became clear through the course of july that rabit is wolf wasn't really going anywhere and i was better off cutting my losses. we jammed a few times, but it wasn't really serious.
this track was initially written as a folk punk song, but i jumped to the scorewriter with it almost immediately. the expanded guitar demo was written in a scorewriter and then performed, rather than vice versa. it was initially less about explicitly creating a techno song and more about ordering the parts in a way that could be deconstructed more effectively. i wanted a more flexible approach to production that would allow me to take tracks in and out based on sean's input.
i may have gone over this in this space before, but my mixing process up to that point was considerably unconventional. i would record tracks in one by one using a wave editor and then paste them on top of each other. i worked this way because i just didn't have more advanced tools. while there are benefits to this approach (it's additive synthesis, which blurs the mix for soundscaping), it meant that each additional track was destructive. i could not remove tracks once they were added. this meant sean was unable to provide much input into demos i sent to him.
i also picked up a copy of cakewalk to help with this, but i quickly learned that my system couldn't really handle it. at around eight tracks, it just became unresponsive. with less than eight tracks, it didn't matter if the mix was destructive because it was easily reconstructed. so, i went back to the wave editor approach until 2007, when i upgraded to a modern pc.
the taiko drum part was initially just to keep time; it wasn't supposed to be a part of the song. but, as i built it up i began to realize how interesting it sounded as a techno tune and sort of ran with it. once i'd notated it, i had to convert the drums into a soundscape because the midi render just wasn't good enough. this was done using a mix of software drum machines, midi snippets and isolated jimmy chamberlain samples. i then performed the score i had notated, with the exception of a few synths which were sequenced back. unfortunately, the midi file for the synth build up at the beginning of the track has been lost.
the mix never came out well, partly due to ram issues with cakewalk and partly because i got a little pretentious with some of the parts. i was also extremely distracted over this period. despite this all being done to make sean's input more easily integrated into the material, he had no interest in the direction i took it and basically put his nose up at it again. i attempted a few different things over late 2002 and early 2003 to try and salvage it for my own purposes, but in the end i shelved it as unworkable.
when i first set up the bandcamp site around 2010, i realized i had a collection of tracks that fit a sort of techno-guitar description and compiled them together under the name "tetris" (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/tetris). i uploaded an incomplete mix for that project, but it was never really done and i never really felt good about it.
it wasn't until late 2014 that i came back to the track, to authoritatively finish my discography. first, a mix was reconstructed from source to include all of the existing sound files. next, three separate sequencer mixes were sculpted out of the score - a jazz fusion mix, an overture mix and an ambient mix. pieces of these sequencer mixes were then isolated and mixed into the reconstructed original mix. finally, a series of extra lead guitar parts were recorded and mixed separately into a final mix and the orchestral mix, creating the end result and an accompanying guitar concerto. the recording process for this was very lengthy, which was ironically partly due to consistent distractions.
i've included the midi file of the original composition, if you'd like to mess with it on your own.
written over the summer of 2002 and initially recorded in the early fall of 2002. additional recording, production and mixing occurred from dec, 2014 to apr, 2015. final completion occurred on april 27, 2015. as always, please use headphones.
credits
j - guitars, effects, bass, synthesizers, drum sampling, drum programming, sequencing, sound design, soundscaping, digital wave editing
the various rendered electronic orchestras include electric bass, synth bass, distorted electric guitar, clean electric guitar, acoustic guitar, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, harp, koto, french horn, trombone, trumpet, tuba, english horn, flute, oboe, piccolo, clarinet, bassoon, synthesizers, piano, glockenspiel, music box, tubular bells, bells, agogo, melodic toms, timpani, taiko drum, orchestral drum set and choir.
released september 15, 2002
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/untitled
--
this is the second of two double ep singles to come out of tracks that were begun in 2002 and not completed to my liking. the mixes in this single chart this song's rather elaborate development over twelve and a half years, with the first disc consisting of new mixes and the second consisting of old mixes.
it became clear through the course of july that rabit is wolf wasn't really going anywhere and i was better off cutting my losses. we jammed a few times, but it wasn't really serious.
this track was initially written as a folk punk song, but i jumped to the scorewriter with it almost immediately. the expanded guitar demo was written in a scorewriter and then performed, rather than vice versa. it was initially less about explicitly creating a techno song and more about ordering the parts in a way that could be deconstructed more effectively. i wanted a more flexible approach to production that would allow me to take tracks in and out based on sean's input.
i may have gone over this in this space before, but my mixing process up to that point was considerably unconventional. i would record tracks in one by one using a wave editor and then paste them on top of each other. i worked this way because i just didn't have more advanced tools. while there are benefits to this approach (it's additive synthesis, which blurs the mix for soundscaping), it meant that each additional track was destructive. i could not remove tracks once they were added. this meant sean was unable to provide much input into demos i sent to him.
i also picked up a copy of cakewalk to help with this, but i quickly learned that my system couldn't really handle it. at around eight tracks, it just became unresponsive. with less than eight tracks, it didn't matter if the mix was destructive because it was easily reconstructed. so, i went back to the wave editor approach until 2007, when i upgraded to a modern pc.
the taiko drum part was initially just to keep time; it wasn't supposed to be a part of the song. but, as i built it up i began to realize how interesting it sounded as a techno tune and sort of ran with it. once i'd notated it, i had to convert the drums into a soundscape because the midi render just wasn't good enough. this was done using a mix of software drum machines, midi snippets and isolated jimmy chamberlain samples. i then performed the score i had notated, with the exception of a few synths which were sequenced back. unfortunately, the midi file for the synth build up at the beginning of the track has been lost.
the mix never came out well, partly due to ram issues with cakewalk and partly because i got a little pretentious with some of the parts. i was also extremely distracted over this period. despite this all being done to make sean's input more easily integrated into the material, he had no interest in the direction i took it and basically put his nose up at it again. i attempted a few different things over late 2002 and early 2003 to try and salvage it for my own purposes, but in the end i shelved it as unworkable.
when i first set up the bandcamp site around 2010, i realized i had a collection of tracks that fit a sort of techno-guitar description and compiled them together under the name "tetris" (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/tetris). i uploaded an incomplete mix for that project, but it was never really done and i never really felt good about it.
it wasn't until late 2014 that i came back to the track, to authoritatively finish my discography. first, a mix was reconstructed from source to include all of the existing sound files. next, three separate sequencer mixes were sculpted out of the score - a jazz fusion mix, an overture mix and an ambient mix. pieces of these sequencer mixes were then isolated and mixed into the reconstructed original mix. finally, a series of extra lead guitar parts were recorded and mixed separately into a final mix and the orchestral mix, creating the end result and an accompanying guitar concerto. the recording process for this was very lengthy, which was ironically partly due to consistent distractions.
i've included the midi file of the original composition, if you'd like to mess with it on your own.
written over the summer of 2002 and initially recorded in the early fall of 2002. additional recording, production and mixing occurred from dec, 2014 to apr, 2015. final completion occurred on april 27, 2015. as always, please use headphones.
credits
j - guitars, effects, bass, synthesizers, drum sampling, drum programming, sequencing, sound design, soundscaping, digital wave editing
the various rendered electronic orchestras include electric bass, synth bass, distorted electric guitar, clean electric guitar, acoustic guitar, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, harp, koto, french horn, trombone, trumpet, tuba, english horn, flute, oboe, piccolo, clarinet, bassoon, synthesizers, piano, glockenspiel, music box, tubular bells, bells, agogo, melodic toms, timpani, taiko drum, orchestral drum set and choir.
released september 15, 2002
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/untitled
Sunday, April 26, 2015
how many odonises does it take to set a signal path?
that was the first show i've been to in a while that was a little underwhelming. i could have stayed later, but the reality is that i didn't really want to. i suppose it's kind of a reminder to be a little more selective, given the cost of transit and the realities around staying out late.
i'm exaggerating a little. two of the three acts i saw did what they did well, it's just not something i would have gone out of my way to see. what i went to see was fairly lacklustre compared to the recorded material. i just didn't have the energy to stay for ice balloons, given that the night was unfolding sort of poorly and it would have meant an overnight; cost benefit analysis came out as "go home". i hope those that stayed enjoyed the set, but i'm not convinced i would have - or at least not enough to have to wait until 8:30 am to go home...
to be clear, i was hoping to catch ice balloons as an opening act - they seemed interesting in that context. but i wouldn't have crossed a border just to see them. and i wasn't keen on staying the night to see them last.
the first band was pulp fiction, and i should start out by saying that they were very competent and everything. you had everything you need for modern progressive metal - the tapping guitarist doing piddly arpeggios, the bassist ripping on geddy lee, the loose feel psych drummer, the out-of-place shoegaze guy...
...and, as a medley, it wasn't half bad. the thing is that's really what it was: a medley of existing material. and, some of it crossed a few lines that you can't get away with. pompeii is iconic.
it was far from terrible, though, it was just exceedingly derivative. they made a big deal about how it was their last show. but, i'd say this was worth not skipping - so long as you know what you're walking in to.
odonis odonis strangely played second, and i may have been the only person in the bar there specifically to see them so the ordering actually did make sense, despite the billing. their newest record is up for a polaris prize, and is worthy of the acclaim. but, it came across rather terribly in a live setting. the set was composed of short, disconnected tracks that were stripped down to their most basic elements. i suppose it worked reasonably well as a blast of noisy post-punk, and i have to acknowledge that the venue was not at all designed for this (or ice balloons for that matter), but i was expecting something a bit more integrated, based on the recordings i'd heard. i'm concluding that the disc may be reaching for them.
https://odonisodonis.bandcamp.com/album/hard-boiled-soft-boiled
the last band i saw was sweat, from flint, which is sort of local. as with the first act, they weren't terrible - it's just that i wouldn't have gone out of my way to see a band like them. at their best, they channeled aspects of swans, but let's not get carried away - they were, overall, fairly generic riffing of the no doom wave whatever variety. again - this is worth not skipping. but i'm not the kid that's going to fall all over this. i'm not going to post a sample because they claimed it was all new material..
i presume ice balloons would have come on next, but i was out around 12:30 when i realized i was only going to catch a few minutes of it if i wanted to get home tonight...
i guess i was hoping for half-hour sets and 15 minute break intervals, which would have had the show done a bit before 1:00, but the bar has a dedicated sound person and he seems to like to take his time. my point is simply that it's greater detail than i'm used to in a bar that size, which lead me to an underestimation of set-up time. hey, it's not like they're checking my bus schedule. and if i was more excited about the closing act, i would have gladly stayed until closing.
ice balloons is some kind of new york supergroup that does slightly avant out-of-date pop. it's a project zappa never did, but without the satire. i don't think anybody really wants irony out of this - despite usually craving it. which is ironic. i probably would have suggested it's worth not skipping...
but, a bunch of bands that are worth not skipping is...
this was also my first night at pj's, and i'm certain i'll be back there. there's some pros and cons in the place. seems like i just have some quirks to get used to.
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/25.html
i'm exaggerating a little. two of the three acts i saw did what they did well, it's just not something i would have gone out of my way to see. what i went to see was fairly lacklustre compared to the recorded material. i just didn't have the energy to stay for ice balloons, given that the night was unfolding sort of poorly and it would have meant an overnight; cost benefit analysis came out as "go home". i hope those that stayed enjoyed the set, but i'm not convinced i would have - or at least not enough to have to wait until 8:30 am to go home...
to be clear, i was hoping to catch ice balloons as an opening act - they seemed interesting in that context. but i wouldn't have crossed a border just to see them. and i wasn't keen on staying the night to see them last.
the first band was pulp fiction, and i should start out by saying that they were very competent and everything. you had everything you need for modern progressive metal - the tapping guitarist doing piddly arpeggios, the bassist ripping on geddy lee, the loose feel psych drummer, the out-of-place shoegaze guy...
...and, as a medley, it wasn't half bad. the thing is that's really what it was: a medley of existing material. and, some of it crossed a few lines that you can't get away with. pompeii is iconic.
it was far from terrible, though, it was just exceedingly derivative. they made a big deal about how it was their last show. but, i'd say this was worth not skipping - so long as you know what you're walking in to.
odonis odonis strangely played second, and i may have been the only person in the bar there specifically to see them so the ordering actually did make sense, despite the billing. their newest record is up for a polaris prize, and is worthy of the acclaim. but, it came across rather terribly in a live setting. the set was composed of short, disconnected tracks that were stripped down to their most basic elements. i suppose it worked reasonably well as a blast of noisy post-punk, and i have to acknowledge that the venue was not at all designed for this (or ice balloons for that matter), but i was expecting something a bit more integrated, based on the recordings i'd heard. i'm concluding that the disc may be reaching for them.
https://odonisodonis.bandcamp.com/album/hard-boiled-soft-boiled
the last band i saw was sweat, from flint, which is sort of local. as with the first act, they weren't terrible - it's just that i wouldn't have gone out of my way to see a band like them. at their best, they channeled aspects of swans, but let's not get carried away - they were, overall, fairly generic riffing of the no doom wave whatever variety. again - this is worth not skipping. but i'm not the kid that's going to fall all over this. i'm not going to post a sample because they claimed it was all new material..
i presume ice balloons would have come on next, but i was out around 12:30 when i realized i was only going to catch a few minutes of it if i wanted to get home tonight...
i guess i was hoping for half-hour sets and 15 minute break intervals, which would have had the show done a bit before 1:00, but the bar has a dedicated sound person and he seems to like to take his time. my point is simply that it's greater detail than i'm used to in a bar that size, which lead me to an underestimation of set-up time. hey, it's not like they're checking my bus schedule. and if i was more excited about the closing act, i would have gladly stayed until closing.
ice balloons is some kind of new york supergroup that does slightly avant out-of-date pop. it's a project zappa never did, but without the satire. i don't think anybody really wants irony out of this - despite usually craving it. which is ironic. i probably would have suggested it's worth not skipping...
but, a bunch of bands that are worth not skipping is...
this was also my first night at pj's, and i'm certain i'll be back there. there's some pros and cons in the place. seems like i just have some quirks to get used to.
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/25.html
Saturday, April 25, 2015
it's not going to be done today, and i am hitting the show tonight, but it's been fully ordered and only needs a couple more parts - which are (mentally) written. monday, probably.
i'm considering maybe working the extra leads back into the final, which i didn't want to do. i'll have to see what it sounds like.
i'm considering maybe working the extra leads back into the final, which i didn't want to do. i'll have to see what it sounds like.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
taking a walk to detroit’s local anarchist punk house on a nice spring night to see pile (and animal faces)
i spun the wheel of detroit again last night and ended up down option #5 - grand river, up a ways, with an eventual hard right up to the venerated detroit trumbullplex....
grand river was a short walk defined by juxtapositions: casinos tower over devastated apartment complexes. ruins, simply. windows are not merely smashed out, but scavenged, leaving oddly tidy orthogonal squat escapes - if it weren't for the black mold, which has overtaken the space to the point that it looks like fire damage. if you didn't know better, you'd think you were walking through a war zone at points, with bombed out buildings - collateral damage on the aerial assault on the industrial heartland. foreboding side roads fall off the main street, with invisible DO NOT ENTER signs. but, passing glimpses sometimes suggest portals to a past era. there is early twentieth century architecture in tact and in good shape here; one expects to see a classic ford car spin the corner, perhaps trying to outrace the cops to the speakeasy to disappear into a basement tunnel. other side streets have nothing but dilapidated wood buildings in immediate sight, and may very well have lost pets as their primary tenants. abandoned fields give way to large educational institutions and government buildings, which give way to more abandoned fields.
in fact, the media narratives of detroit's ominous urban warzone fade quickly into the context of the city's vast emptiness. walking up this strip of the city, there is simply nobody around to potentially harm you. the most immediate danger seems to be coyotes.
the turn up trumbull took me into a slightly different neighbourhood, full of crumbling victorian mansions - the kind with four or five bedrooms, personal balconies, fenced off porches and, of course, those decorative pseudo-minarets, which i'm sure were interpreted as pretentious (that would have been a good monty python skit...) when they were built, and today just seem bluntly absurd. if these towers ever had princesses, it seems clear that they've long dispersed.
the venue comes of as an extremely large garage (for those reading from ottawa, it's most similar to the old house of targ) and, given the size of the house it's attached to, may very well have been one at one point. well, what's five or six cars in mid-twentieth century detroit? today, it seems to mostly house bicycles, in what was probably previously a storage room. to the side, in what i'm guessing was initially a sun room, there exists a "'zine library" full of an assortment of pamphlets and other literature meant for dissemination - which is actually an excellent idea. curating is important. it might not seem important, but it is.
the first band up was time cat, and they managed to remind me that i live in the midwest, now - without putting me off by it, too much. there's some rootsy elements to their sound, but it's largely a merger of blues and punk. the energy is in the right place to produce a strong set, and the frontwoman for the band is worth checking out simply for her guitar skills. the drumming, however, needs a little work - and not everybody is going to connect to the vocals. if you see them opening, and you like the raw blues punk sound from hendrix to srv to jsbx to the white stripes and everything in between, they're worth checking out. but be wary of giving them too much energy to feed off, because they will play over time if you do.
https://timecatmusic.bandcamp.com/album/quadday
animal faces surprised me. i hadn't heard any of their more recent material or seen them in a few years. i was expecting some thrashing post-hardcore with the amps and drums blaring, and i got a bit of it, but a good portion of the set seems to have focused on expanding the more sombre connecting portions of their previous work into longer sections. the result leaned heavily into the kind of post-rock that do make say think were excellent at in the early 00s.
now, i'm actually a huge fan of dmst. i've seen them something like eight times. and, they were some of the most fun shows i've ever been to - partly because i knew the material inside and out, and they're great at delivering it. given that their output has dwindled recently, i wouldn't be opposed to hearing somebody draw on it. further, this influence was apparent in their earlier releases, so it's not entirely out of nowhere. but, animal faces' attempt to walk into that space lacked the dynamics and subtlety you want out of that sound. over the last ten years, post-rock has become notorious for being monotonous and sort of boring. unfortunately, there wasn't much in the set to separate them from the mass of substandard bands that currently exist in that genre. and, what's a little frustrating is that animal faces were actually really good at what they used to do - really loud, thrashing post-hardcore.
if they're pivoting, so be it. i'm not one to push stasis. but, the shift requires a bit more work before they can say they're as good at what they want to do now as they were at what they wanted to do previously.
destroy this place were locals and they were a little too conventional for my tastes. tight. radio-ready. just not my thing.
i got to talking to the drummer from pile while out on a smoke break, and he seemed pretty chill. we agreed it would be nice if they get on to play, given the show was running about two hours late.
we did get a decent set from them, and they didn't disappoint. generally, the shorter my reviews are, the more i enjoyed the show
here's a full set from the same tour:
i didn't think the show would really be over at 11:00, but i didn't think it would run until 12:45, either. last bus back to windsor? 1:04..
i managed to walk back to rosa parks in 19 minutes (google maps estimate: 33 minutes). that's right: at the platform at exactly 1:04. but, no bus.
"shit.", i'm thinking. "missed it.".
but, i'm stubborn, so i cut up michigan to griswold, hoping it got stuck at a light or something. and, sure enough, it comes rumbling around the corner, causing me to run out into the intersection of griswold & larned, waving and hopping, which got me a stern talking to by the driver...
"what the fuck are you doing jumping into the middle of the road like that?"
"well, i'm trying to steer you into a place you can stop."
"what? really. you're not seriuh-....."
"well, you can't just stop in the middle of the road. at least you're not supposed to."
awkward pause.
"THANK YOU FOR STOPPING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD TO PICK ME UP."
close, though. it wouldn't have been so bad if i was stuck on a weekday, it's only a few hours, i just would have walked up to get a coney dog and a coffee. i think i was more irritated that i didn't bring a book...
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/22.html
grand river was a short walk defined by juxtapositions: casinos tower over devastated apartment complexes. ruins, simply. windows are not merely smashed out, but scavenged, leaving oddly tidy orthogonal squat escapes - if it weren't for the black mold, which has overtaken the space to the point that it looks like fire damage. if you didn't know better, you'd think you were walking through a war zone at points, with bombed out buildings - collateral damage on the aerial assault on the industrial heartland. foreboding side roads fall off the main street, with invisible DO NOT ENTER signs. but, passing glimpses sometimes suggest portals to a past era. there is early twentieth century architecture in tact and in good shape here; one expects to see a classic ford car spin the corner, perhaps trying to outrace the cops to the speakeasy to disappear into a basement tunnel. other side streets have nothing but dilapidated wood buildings in immediate sight, and may very well have lost pets as their primary tenants. abandoned fields give way to large educational institutions and government buildings, which give way to more abandoned fields.
in fact, the media narratives of detroit's ominous urban warzone fade quickly into the context of the city's vast emptiness. walking up this strip of the city, there is simply nobody around to potentially harm you. the most immediate danger seems to be coyotes.
the turn up trumbull took me into a slightly different neighbourhood, full of crumbling victorian mansions - the kind with four or five bedrooms, personal balconies, fenced off porches and, of course, those decorative pseudo-minarets, which i'm sure were interpreted as pretentious (that would have been a good monty python skit...) when they were built, and today just seem bluntly absurd. if these towers ever had princesses, it seems clear that they've long dispersed.
the venue comes of as an extremely large garage (for those reading from ottawa, it's most similar to the old house of targ) and, given the size of the house it's attached to, may very well have been one at one point. well, what's five or six cars in mid-twentieth century detroit? today, it seems to mostly house bicycles, in what was probably previously a storage room. to the side, in what i'm guessing was initially a sun room, there exists a "'zine library" full of an assortment of pamphlets and other literature meant for dissemination - which is actually an excellent idea. curating is important. it might not seem important, but it is.
the first band up was time cat, and they managed to remind me that i live in the midwest, now - without putting me off by it, too much. there's some rootsy elements to their sound, but it's largely a merger of blues and punk. the energy is in the right place to produce a strong set, and the frontwoman for the band is worth checking out simply for her guitar skills. the drumming, however, needs a little work - and not everybody is going to connect to the vocals. if you see them opening, and you like the raw blues punk sound from hendrix to srv to jsbx to the white stripes and everything in between, they're worth checking out. but be wary of giving them too much energy to feed off, because they will play over time if you do.
https://timecatmusic.bandcamp.com/album/quadday
animal faces surprised me. i hadn't heard any of their more recent material or seen them in a few years. i was expecting some thrashing post-hardcore with the amps and drums blaring, and i got a bit of it, but a good portion of the set seems to have focused on expanding the more sombre connecting portions of their previous work into longer sections. the result leaned heavily into the kind of post-rock that do make say think were excellent at in the early 00s.
now, i'm actually a huge fan of dmst. i've seen them something like eight times. and, they were some of the most fun shows i've ever been to - partly because i knew the material inside and out, and they're great at delivering it. given that their output has dwindled recently, i wouldn't be opposed to hearing somebody draw on it. further, this influence was apparent in their earlier releases, so it's not entirely out of nowhere. but, animal faces' attempt to walk into that space lacked the dynamics and subtlety you want out of that sound. over the last ten years, post-rock has become notorious for being monotonous and sort of boring. unfortunately, there wasn't much in the set to separate them from the mass of substandard bands that currently exist in that genre. and, what's a little frustrating is that animal faces were actually really good at what they used to do - really loud, thrashing post-hardcore.
if they're pivoting, so be it. i'm not one to push stasis. but, the shift requires a bit more work before they can say they're as good at what they want to do now as they were at what they wanted to do previously.
destroy this place were locals and they were a little too conventional for my tastes. tight. radio-ready. just not my thing.
i got to talking to the drummer from pile while out on a smoke break, and he seemed pretty chill. we agreed it would be nice if they get on to play, given the show was running about two hours late.
we did get a decent set from them, and they didn't disappoint. generally, the shorter my reviews are, the more i enjoyed the show
here's a full set from the same tour:
i didn't think the show would really be over at 11:00, but i didn't think it would run until 12:45, either. last bus back to windsor? 1:04..
i managed to walk back to rosa parks in 19 minutes (google maps estimate: 33 minutes). that's right: at the platform at exactly 1:04. but, no bus.
"shit.", i'm thinking. "missed it.".
but, i'm stubborn, so i cut up michigan to griswold, hoping it got stuck at a light or something. and, sure enough, it comes rumbling around the corner, causing me to run out into the intersection of griswold & larned, waving and hopping, which got me a stern talking to by the driver...
"what the fuck are you doing jumping into the middle of the road like that?"
"well, i'm trying to steer you into a place you can stop."
"what? really. you're not seriuh-....."
"well, you can't just stop in the middle of the road. at least you're not supposed to."
awkward pause.
"THANK YOU FOR STOPPING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD TO PICK ME UP."
close, though. it wouldn't have been so bad if i was stuck on a weekday, it's only a few hours, i just would have walked up to get a coney dog and a coffee. i think i was more irritated that i didn't bring a book...
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/22.html
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Monday, April 20, 2015
i'm noticing that when i type comments in facebook [and it's comments, specifically - not posts], i get very weird behaviour - characters jump all over the place, the delete button ends up "padded", etc. it's almost like i've got some kind of script running that's acting as a keylogger or something...
i don't think it's anything like that, though.
1) it only happens in facebook comments.
2) it happens on multiple computers
so, i suppose if it's something malicious, it might be on both computers. but i think that's not right, because it's just facebook. so, i think it's just something at the facebook site.
when i copy and paste the comment's text into notepad, i get all kinds of weird characters interspersed randomly through the comment. well, it's just one character - i've attached a picture. but it's all through the comment.
now, these characters seem to be something nasty. when i paste them into word, they trigger some kind of macro, which puts the machine in a loop state. i can only stop it by halting the task in task manager. so, they're some kind of pointer to some kind of script or something.
now, oddly, they don't show up in firefox. however, if i view the comments in ie then they appear the same way they would if i pasted them into notepad.
i'm left to conclude that firefox is interacting badly with some kind of facebook script. i've tried disabling adblock, and it has no effect.
i can get around it by typing into notepad and then pasting the comments in, but who wants to do that? and, i wish i knew what the fuck it is. so, i'm just curious if anybody's seen these characters in my comments, if they've seen them anywhere else (i can't find any info on this) and if they can identify what is going on...
the factors that lead to the characters appearing seem to have to do with the backspace and delete buttons. meaning it *seems* like facebook itself is actually keylogging - or trying to capture deleted characters, to be more specific. well, you'd expect it would be useful for a site based on ads to be able to capture the parts of the post that you didn't post. it's kind of scary, and dystopian. but i'm not left with much of another answer. i guess there's something in my hacked firefox that is "catching" that...but it would be nice to get some leads in actually proving this.
i've been planning on getting off facebook completely for a while, and just using it for shows - until a better option appears. and, i like the idea of facebook as a sort of cv, as the timeline interface seems almost designed for it. my days here are numbered. it's why i'm not accepting friend requests. i've just been waiting for my odsp update before i sit down and do it. it's going to take several days - probably weeks, maybe months - to completely migrate. if i'm right, it's just another reason to get off. and, if i'm not? bluntly, it's a matter of time. if they could read your thoughts, they would.
i don't think it's anything like that, though.
1) it only happens in facebook comments.
2) it happens on multiple computers
so, i suppose if it's something malicious, it might be on both computers. but i think that's not right, because it's just facebook. so, i think it's just something at the facebook site.
when i copy and paste the comment's text into notepad, i get all kinds of weird characters interspersed randomly through the comment. well, it's just one character - i've attached a picture. but it's all through the comment.
now, these characters seem to be something nasty. when i paste them into word, they trigger some kind of macro, which puts the machine in a loop state. i can only stop it by halting the task in task manager. so, they're some kind of pointer to some kind of script or something.
now, oddly, they don't show up in firefox. however, if i view the comments in ie then they appear the same way they would if i pasted them into notepad.
i'm left to conclude that firefox is interacting badly with some kind of facebook script. i've tried disabling adblock, and it has no effect.
i can get around it by typing into notepad and then pasting the comments in, but who wants to do that? and, i wish i knew what the fuck it is. so, i'm just curious if anybody's seen these characters in my comments, if they've seen them anywhere else (i can't find any info on this) and if they can identify what is going on...
the factors that lead to the characters appearing seem to have to do with the backspace and delete buttons. meaning it *seems* like facebook itself is actually keylogging - or trying to capture deleted characters, to be more specific. well, you'd expect it would be useful for a site based on ads to be able to capture the parts of the post that you didn't post. it's kind of scary, and dystopian. but i'm not left with much of another answer. i guess there's something in my hacked firefox that is "catching" that...but it would be nice to get some leads in actually proving this.
i've been planning on getting off facebook completely for a while, and just using it for shows - until a better option appears. and, i like the idea of facebook as a sort of cv, as the timeline interface seems almost designed for it. my days here are numbered. it's why i'm not accepting friend requests. i've just been waiting for my odsp update before i sit down and do it. it's going to take several days - probably weeks, maybe months - to completely migrate. if i'm right, it's just another reason to get off. and, if i'm not? bluntly, it's a matter of time. if they could read your thoughts, they would.
Sunday, April 19, 2015
metz & lightning bolt in ferndale
actually, i'm not so much into writing that narrative, right now. nothing really exciting happened, so i feel it would be disingenuous to play it up...
i almost didn't go, because i was paranoid i wouldn't get in. well, everybody has a phone, right? what i thought would happen is that i'd get there, and everybody would buy a ticket in line. to make matters worse, the bus was 40 minutes late - or to put it another way, two scheduled 53s just didn't come. this slowed the bus ride down substantially because it was packed. i felt bad for some of the people on woodward that may have been waiting an hour, only to have the bus drive by...
i'd hesitate to say the show was a double-headliner, but the opening act had it's own audience. i've seen metz before, and i thought they were overhyped. in terms of what they do, it's essentially a function of the fuzz pedal - there's really not much to it, besides the roar of beating drums and fuzzy riffs. i guess there would have been a time in the mid 90s when i would have been more excited about this, but today it just comes off as sort of middling - it doesn't have the same power as something heavier like torche (which i'm dropping because i saw them in the same bar a few weeks ago), and they don't seem to have the ability to generate hooks that the best grunge bands had. when they get noisy, there's little abstraction. the result is actually borderline boring. or, at least it is to an old pair of ears like mine. some music just has an age limit, dictated by the mainstream's tendency to limit access to more interesting music.
i'll say they had more stage presence this time. they seemed a bit more confident. but i'm not really going to play that up, because when you start getting too much confidence in this genre it inevitably turns into macho cock rock. i'm not making that accusation, at least not yet, but it's apparently the path they're heading down. that confidence came with what seemed like more conventional writing - they've tightened up, moving out of "noise-punk" and into a more commercial grunge sound.
they're not bad enough to skip in an opening band situation. but i wouldn't go out of my way to see them, or recommend them to much of anybody - except a certain type of kid, and maybe aging grunge fans.
also, the pit was borderline frat boy tackling. i kept out of it.
is there any use in reviewing lightning bolt? the show was what one would expect...
the last video was relatively useful in demonstrating what the show i saw was like, in a medium-small venue. and they played mostly new material - although a passive set of ears would be hard pressed to tell the difference. but if you don't know the band, check this out:
here's a full set from a few months later:
...& here is a short clip from the show, too:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/18.html
i almost didn't go, because i was paranoid i wouldn't get in. well, everybody has a phone, right? what i thought would happen is that i'd get there, and everybody would buy a ticket in line. to make matters worse, the bus was 40 minutes late - or to put it another way, two scheduled 53s just didn't come. this slowed the bus ride down substantially because it was packed. i felt bad for some of the people on woodward that may have been waiting an hour, only to have the bus drive by...
i'd hesitate to say the show was a double-headliner, but the opening act had it's own audience. i've seen metz before, and i thought they were overhyped. in terms of what they do, it's essentially a function of the fuzz pedal - there's really not much to it, besides the roar of beating drums and fuzzy riffs. i guess there would have been a time in the mid 90s when i would have been more excited about this, but today it just comes off as sort of middling - it doesn't have the same power as something heavier like torche (which i'm dropping because i saw them in the same bar a few weeks ago), and they don't seem to have the ability to generate hooks that the best grunge bands had. when they get noisy, there's little abstraction. the result is actually borderline boring. or, at least it is to an old pair of ears like mine. some music just has an age limit, dictated by the mainstream's tendency to limit access to more interesting music.
i'll say they had more stage presence this time. they seemed a bit more confident. but i'm not really going to play that up, because when you start getting too much confidence in this genre it inevitably turns into macho cock rock. i'm not making that accusation, at least not yet, but it's apparently the path they're heading down. that confidence came with what seemed like more conventional writing - they've tightened up, moving out of "noise-punk" and into a more commercial grunge sound.
they're not bad enough to skip in an opening band situation. but i wouldn't go out of my way to see them, or recommend them to much of anybody - except a certain type of kid, and maybe aging grunge fans.
also, the pit was borderline frat boy tackling. i kept out of it.
is there any use in reviewing lightning bolt? the show was what one would expect...
the last video was relatively useful in demonstrating what the show i saw was like, in a medium-small venue. and they played mostly new material - although a passive set of ears would be hard pressed to tell the difference. but if you don't know the band, check this out:
here's a full set from a few months later:
...& here is a short clip from the show, too:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/18.html
i guess the story of last night was my first mosh pit in detroit.
there's only a handful of bands i'll really actively slam dance to - and dancing is what i'm doing, in the mayhem, between rushing the stage and pushing people out of the way so i can dance more. i don't want to get in the pit when it's a lot of frat boys tackling each other, or when it's full of metalheads doing martial arts in the air or anything like that. i'm thin, and carry almost no muscle, but i'm not petite - i'm more swedish egghead than viking plunderer, but i'm pretty sturdily built and not at all easy to knock over. i can stand my ground in the most hectic of situations, and then some. but i'm still going to stay on the edge of most pits. most of the time, i'm just not really into getting into what's unfolding in front of me.
my experience has been that lightning bolt is in the group of exceptions to this - it's a mixed gender space driven by adrenaline rather than testosterone. just people having legit, clean fun. no dominance. no macho bullshit.
i've got a few bruises on my arm, but it was from staff mistaking me for somebody else and grabbing me. listen: cops are cops. they always create more problems than they solve. i'm not going to argue that security shouldn't exist at concerts, but bar staff going into the crowd like that never does anything but cause problems. the reality is that assholes get pushed out, and the response is generally proportional. the best pit police is usually the pit itself.
i'll write up something more narrated when i wake up...
there's only a handful of bands i'll really actively slam dance to - and dancing is what i'm doing, in the mayhem, between rushing the stage and pushing people out of the way so i can dance more. i don't want to get in the pit when it's a lot of frat boys tackling each other, or when it's full of metalheads doing martial arts in the air or anything like that. i'm thin, and carry almost no muscle, but i'm not petite - i'm more swedish egghead than viking plunderer, but i'm pretty sturdily built and not at all easy to knock over. i can stand my ground in the most hectic of situations, and then some. but i'm still going to stay on the edge of most pits. most of the time, i'm just not really into getting into what's unfolding in front of me.
my experience has been that lightning bolt is in the group of exceptions to this - it's a mixed gender space driven by adrenaline rather than testosterone. just people having legit, clean fun. no dominance. no macho bullshit.
i've got a few bruises on my arm, but it was from staff mistaking me for somebody else and grabbing me. listen: cops are cops. they always create more problems than they solve. i'm not going to argue that security shouldn't exist at concerts, but bar staff going into the crowd like that never does anything but cause problems. the reality is that assholes get pushed out, and the response is generally proportional. the best pit police is usually the pit itself.
i'll write up something more narrated when i wake up...
Saturday, April 18, 2015
to see lightning bolt or not to see lightning bolt...
well, i know it's going to be a good show. i've seen them before. and they're good for it - i know that. but i'm kind of involved in what i'm doing. and i'm a little paranoid it's going to sell out five minutes before i get there. also, my landlord said something weird to me the other day, so i'm hoping i get home tonight. it's a trek out to ferndale, but worse is that that toll over the border is annoying if it is sold out...
i'll probably go. i just want to get close to an instrumental mix of lalala first. looking at my schedule, that will give me a solid three days to get both of these done and move on to the ostrich thing.
again: i didn't want to set up my magic fuzz chain this morning, because i'm going to need a long, solid session to finish the concerto. but, i've got the ideas worked out in my head. i've to this point avoided shredding over this track, because i didn't want it into the final mix, but it's going to come out in what's left. expect something acrobatic...
well, i know it's going to be a good show. i've seen them before. and they're good for it - i know that. but i'm kind of involved in what i'm doing. and i'm a little paranoid it's going to sell out five minutes before i get there. also, my landlord said something weird to me the other day, so i'm hoping i get home tonight. it's a trek out to ferndale, but worse is that that toll over the border is annoying if it is sold out...
i'll probably go. i just want to get close to an instrumental mix of lalala first. looking at my schedule, that will give me a solid three days to get both of these done and move on to the ostrich thing.
again: i didn't want to set up my magic fuzz chain this morning, because i'm going to need a long, solid session to finish the concerto. but, i've got the ideas worked out in my head. i've to this point avoided shredding over this track, because i didn't want it into the final mix, but it's going to come out in what's left. expect something acrobatic...
deathtokoalas
this is largely misleading. it explains why it's a waste of time to convert from 16 to 24 (including "upsampling" your cds), but it doesn't really talk about recording in at 24 bit.
the more important question is whether your ears can hear the difference between how well the d/a converter can construct an audio source from 16 v 24 bits. the noise floor is the difference between the reconstruction and the "true analog wave", and it comes out in conversion back to analog. what it means is that the 24 bit file should have a lower noise floor, because it's closer to the true analog. that is absolutely a fidelity issue, mathematically speaking...
however, there's a lot of factors, there, in the signal chain. also mathematically speaking, and under reasonable assumptions, the noise floor on the 16 bit d/a conversion is almost always going to be low enough that your ears can't tell the difference between the 16-bit reconstruction and the "true analog signal". in theory, the 24-bit has more accuracy and therefore less noise. but if you can't tell anyways then you're not gaining anything from 24 bits.
now, i find most people get this part, but then argue that you should use 24 bit anyways because it creates more "headroom" for signals processing. i've experimented with this, and i think it's funny logic. i'd actually advise people record in at 16-bit, so long as 16-bit is the playback standard.
i mean, once you get something into the computer and start adding reverb and compression to it, you're no longer discussing fidelity or quality or reconstruction. it's now subjective. this discussion makes sense if you're talking about recording an acoustic piano; it doesn't make sense if you're talking about running a prerecorded guitar part through an amp simulator, or whatever other digital thing you're doing. rather, the whole thing gets complicated because you're taking in the specifics of each plugin, effect and general "process" on the sound coming out.
it follows that if you record and mix and master in 24-bit, it has to be with the expectation that people are going to listen to it in 24-bit. the moment you downsample to 16-bit, you're altering the production. now, you might actually like the downsample. but that's just the point - this all becomes subjective. to me, the key point is this: if you mix and master at 24-bit, and your audience listens at 16-bit, they're not hearing what you intended them to hear.
the converse, however, is not true: if you mix at 16-bit, and people listen at 24-bit, it's just empty data. it sounds identical.
now, can you make the reverb sound better in 24-bit than 16-bit? i'm going to struggle against this. you may have to use more reverb in 16 than 24. but i can't think of any kind of processing done in 24 that is unable to be recreated in 16.
it's just a question of whether people are listening to what you actually created, or a damaged replica of it. if you stick with 16, you're standardizing that presentation much more effectively.
lachlanlikesathing
+deathtokoalas As I understand it, the argument for recording in 24 bit is that if you start using multiple tracks or multiple plug ins, and you start increasing gain etc., the quantisation noise will very quickly become audible in 16bit. Whereas you have a lot more headroom to do all sorts of things with 24 bit. The final master is fine in 16 bit because you are only adding one generation of 16 bit quantisation noise (largely inaudible) as opposed to multiples. I don't think that audible quantisation noise is the 'subjective' perceptual intention people have when they start adding things like reverb or other plugins.
deathtokoalas
+lachlanlikesathing it's not that the noise will quickly become audible through effects, it's more of a safety mechanism. it's paranoia, really, unless you're recording, like, flutes at low volume. in almost any realistic scenario, quantization noise isn't something that you're ever going to deal with at 16-bit. you actually did a decent job of explaining this part in the video.
the reverb thing has a lot of factors. first, the reality is that most plugins downsample to 16-bit - and you're going to potentially get more noise out of the conversion than you'd get anywhere else. but, if you can find a legit 24-bit signal path, you're just going to get a lot more calculations on the waveform. more numbers. it doesn't matter when you're capturing something physical because it will reconstruct it the same way. but those calculations are less tied to any kind of reality.
downsampling from 24 to 16 will always create noise, by definition. the way they get around this is "dithering", which is shooting random noise at the target. due to some statistical realities, the noise will become inaudible.
but, it's still there. it's not magically removed, it's just really quiet. there's not any really good reason to introduce this noise. that's not what i'm getting at though...
the idea of moving from 24-bit to 16-bit without losing anything but quantization error is based on the idea of the physical waveform being basically the same. but, you have to be careful. for example: consider moving from 24 to 16 and back to 24. that process is going to convert the extra data into zeroes: it's lost moving down to 24, then just zeroed out moving back up. the dac is going to create a minimal difference, but this is a loss of data.
now, consider the effect of this if all that zeroed out data was run through a set of effects. now, it's not a physical waveform any more. it's a digital creation. and all these ideas about dacs constructing more or less the same wave form are lost in calculation. this is of course along with the dithering process...
in the end, it doesn't really matter in terms of fidelity, it's just a question of maintaining consistency. 24-bit masters should be listened to in 24-bit or higher. 16-bit masters should be listened to in 16-bit or higher. because you're almost always dealing with digital manipulation on the master, downsampling should be avoided - while upsampling is literally meaningless.
bottom line is this: 1) if you have a 16-bit source (like a cd), it will not sound differently in 24-bit - you're just adding zeroes. even if it was mastered in 24-bit, and downsampled. that data is wiped in the downsample.
2) if you have a 24-bit source, there is technically sound degradation in conversion to 16-bit whether it happens before or after you get it - you're converting data into quantized noise, then removing it through a statistical trick known as dithering. however, you're only going to hear that difference if the source has been dramatically digitally altered in a way that makes the playback "unnatural". convolution reverb would be one way to do this.
3) the way to avoid conversion errors is to avoid conversion. unless you're recording symphonies, 16-bit from start to finish is likely good enough for you. but if you insist on 24-bit, avoid converting to 16-bit as much as possible....
===
i was just thinking about this as i was second guessing mixing decisions. i pointed out that i've played around with it, and...
this is an anecdote. but i think it's worth sharing to demonstrate why the real issue here is downsampling, and why it shouldn't be done.
i recorded one song in at 24/48 and put it through just an army of guitar effects - pods and floor pedals on the way in and on the tracks, parts doubled fifteen times, guitar rig, quadrafuzz, izotope, digital wave mods - it's just stacked with data. at 24/48.
every time i tried to decimate the file (that's a technical term for downsampling from 24/48 to 16/41, which should give you an idea of what you're doing), it came out with a deficit of "air" at the high end, and bits of static interspersed. the problem was actually that the dithering wasn't working well. the blasts of static are what you expect from decimation, as you're destroying data in conversion and forcing the ghost of it out of millions of tiny spaces, but it's supposed to "go away" if you pepper it with random static. i had too many weird numbers in there - too many jagged, digital waveforms - for this trick to work.
what i actually ended up doing was sending the track out of one soundcard at 24/48 and recording it into another one at 16/41. this obviously introduced a little noise in the waveform in transfer, but it wasn't audibly different than what you'd get out of a working decimation/dither. more importantly, it prevented the static and brought back the air - because the computer was able to get the sound via converting to analog and back to digital in 16 bit, without a destructive digital process.
i agree that it's a waste of time from start to finish, but so long as people are releasing things in 24 bit, it helps to have a way to play it back without digitally decimating it - which the fools often do themselves.
this is largely misleading. it explains why it's a waste of time to convert from 16 to 24 (including "upsampling" your cds), but it doesn't really talk about recording in at 24 bit.
the more important question is whether your ears can hear the difference between how well the d/a converter can construct an audio source from 16 v 24 bits. the noise floor is the difference between the reconstruction and the "true analog wave", and it comes out in conversion back to analog. what it means is that the 24 bit file should have a lower noise floor, because it's closer to the true analog. that is absolutely a fidelity issue, mathematically speaking...
however, there's a lot of factors, there, in the signal chain. also mathematically speaking, and under reasonable assumptions, the noise floor on the 16 bit d/a conversion is almost always going to be low enough that your ears can't tell the difference between the 16-bit reconstruction and the "true analog signal". in theory, the 24-bit has more accuracy and therefore less noise. but if you can't tell anyways then you're not gaining anything from 24 bits.
now, i find most people get this part, but then argue that you should use 24 bit anyways because it creates more "headroom" for signals processing. i've experimented with this, and i think it's funny logic. i'd actually advise people record in at 16-bit, so long as 16-bit is the playback standard.
i mean, once you get something into the computer and start adding reverb and compression to it, you're no longer discussing fidelity or quality or reconstruction. it's now subjective. this discussion makes sense if you're talking about recording an acoustic piano; it doesn't make sense if you're talking about running a prerecorded guitar part through an amp simulator, or whatever other digital thing you're doing. rather, the whole thing gets complicated because you're taking in the specifics of each plugin, effect and general "process" on the sound coming out.
it follows that if you record and mix and master in 24-bit, it has to be with the expectation that people are going to listen to it in 24-bit. the moment you downsample to 16-bit, you're altering the production. now, you might actually like the downsample. but that's just the point - this all becomes subjective. to me, the key point is this: if you mix and master at 24-bit, and your audience listens at 16-bit, they're not hearing what you intended them to hear.
the converse, however, is not true: if you mix at 16-bit, and people listen at 24-bit, it's just empty data. it sounds identical.
now, can you make the reverb sound better in 24-bit than 16-bit? i'm going to struggle against this. you may have to use more reverb in 16 than 24. but i can't think of any kind of processing done in 24 that is unable to be recreated in 16.
it's just a question of whether people are listening to what you actually created, or a damaged replica of it. if you stick with 16, you're standardizing that presentation much more effectively.
lachlanlikesathing
+deathtokoalas As I understand it, the argument for recording in 24 bit is that if you start using multiple tracks or multiple plug ins, and you start increasing gain etc., the quantisation noise will very quickly become audible in 16bit. Whereas you have a lot more headroom to do all sorts of things with 24 bit. The final master is fine in 16 bit because you are only adding one generation of 16 bit quantisation noise (largely inaudible) as opposed to multiples. I don't think that audible quantisation noise is the 'subjective' perceptual intention people have when they start adding things like reverb or other plugins.
deathtokoalas
+lachlanlikesathing it's not that the noise will quickly become audible through effects, it's more of a safety mechanism. it's paranoia, really, unless you're recording, like, flutes at low volume. in almost any realistic scenario, quantization noise isn't something that you're ever going to deal with at 16-bit. you actually did a decent job of explaining this part in the video.
the reverb thing has a lot of factors. first, the reality is that most plugins downsample to 16-bit - and you're going to potentially get more noise out of the conversion than you'd get anywhere else. but, if you can find a legit 24-bit signal path, you're just going to get a lot more calculations on the waveform. more numbers. it doesn't matter when you're capturing something physical because it will reconstruct it the same way. but those calculations are less tied to any kind of reality.
downsampling from 24 to 16 will always create noise, by definition. the way they get around this is "dithering", which is shooting random noise at the target. due to some statistical realities, the noise will become inaudible.
but, it's still there. it's not magically removed, it's just really quiet. there's not any really good reason to introduce this noise. that's not what i'm getting at though...
the idea of moving from 24-bit to 16-bit without losing anything but quantization error is based on the idea of the physical waveform being basically the same. but, you have to be careful. for example: consider moving from 24 to 16 and back to 24. that process is going to convert the extra data into zeroes: it's lost moving down to 24, then just zeroed out moving back up. the dac is going to create a minimal difference, but this is a loss of data.
now, consider the effect of this if all that zeroed out data was run through a set of effects. now, it's not a physical waveform any more. it's a digital creation. and all these ideas about dacs constructing more or less the same wave form are lost in calculation. this is of course along with the dithering process...
in the end, it doesn't really matter in terms of fidelity, it's just a question of maintaining consistency. 24-bit masters should be listened to in 24-bit or higher. 16-bit masters should be listened to in 16-bit or higher. because you're almost always dealing with digital manipulation on the master, downsampling should be avoided - while upsampling is literally meaningless.
bottom line is this: 1) if you have a 16-bit source (like a cd), it will not sound differently in 24-bit - you're just adding zeroes. even if it was mastered in 24-bit, and downsampled. that data is wiped in the downsample.
2) if you have a 24-bit source, there is technically sound degradation in conversion to 16-bit whether it happens before or after you get it - you're converting data into quantized noise, then removing it through a statistical trick known as dithering. however, you're only going to hear that difference if the source has been dramatically digitally altered in a way that makes the playback "unnatural". convolution reverb would be one way to do this.
3) the way to avoid conversion errors is to avoid conversion. unless you're recording symphonies, 16-bit from start to finish is likely good enough for you. but if you insist on 24-bit, avoid converting to 16-bit as much as possible....
===
i was just thinking about this as i was second guessing mixing decisions. i pointed out that i've played around with it, and...
this is an anecdote. but i think it's worth sharing to demonstrate why the real issue here is downsampling, and why it shouldn't be done.
i recorded one song in at 24/48 and put it through just an army of guitar effects - pods and floor pedals on the way in and on the tracks, parts doubled fifteen times, guitar rig, quadrafuzz, izotope, digital wave mods - it's just stacked with data. at 24/48.
every time i tried to decimate the file (that's a technical term for downsampling from 24/48 to 16/41, which should give you an idea of what you're doing), it came out with a deficit of "air" at the high end, and bits of static interspersed. the problem was actually that the dithering wasn't working well. the blasts of static are what you expect from decimation, as you're destroying data in conversion and forcing the ghost of it out of millions of tiny spaces, but it's supposed to "go away" if you pepper it with random static. i had too many weird numbers in there - too many jagged, digital waveforms - for this trick to work.
what i actually ended up doing was sending the track out of one soundcard at 24/48 and recording it into another one at 16/41. this obviously introduced a little noise in the waveform in transfer, but it wasn't audibly different than what you'd get out of a working decimation/dither. more importantly, it prevented the static and brought back the air - because the computer was able to get the sound via converting to analog and back to digital in 16 bit, without a destructive digital process.
i agree that it's a waste of time from start to finish, but so long as people are releasing things in 24 bit, it helps to have a way to play it back without digitally decimating it - which the fools often do themselves.
if you honestly can't tell the difference between 320 kbps mp3s and flacs of your own tunes, then you're a shitty producer making crappy music and you should get a different career.
there's lots of people that really can't tell. but it's a reflection of how shitty the tracks are, not a reflection of the parity in technology.
there's lots of people that really can't tell. but it's a reflection of how shitty the tracks are, not a reflection of the parity in technology.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
well, digital > analog. and lou reed had no idea what he was talking about.
personally? i'm not into this streaming service idea. i want to interact directly with artists. it doesn't matter how this is done, it's just creating a bourgeois layer. in order to pay for the bourgeois layer, you either need to not pay the artists or put prices through the roof. then you're just overcharging to pay marketing departments. and, i think that's the reason they're trying to put an artist face on this. i think they understand this, even if the consuming public doesn't quite understand it quite yet.
these services have some use - as a kind of a library. spotify is great if it's full of pink floyd records. as a way to house new music? i think this has no future. in the long run, it becomes a closed space for major label artists, because independent artists and independent labels abandon it.
i think you want to forget about spotify as a model. i think the future looks more like bandcamp...
it's a step forwards, though. people pay $100/month for cable. that's a more realistic price to make this sustainable. if nobody gets there, or seems willing to move in that direction, then these services all fail.
as an artist, my primary condition for signing up to something like this is that i want an exchange value on a per-second basis written into a contract that is not dependent on revenue. that is, i'd want to lease the rights to the music to the streaming site. and it's not going to be fractions of pennies on the stream. it's going to be between ten and twenty-five cents per stream, depending on it's length. not once. every time you listen to it...
that has to be in writing, irreversibly. not interested? not signing....
and i don't really care how they charge you, either. i might suggest that a minutely rate is a better idea than a flat rate. but i'm carrying out a transaction with the managers of the service, not with the customer. i don't really like it, but that's how i'm forced to look at it. that transaction is for the use of my art. how they sell it is their concern.
personally? i'm not into this streaming service idea. i want to interact directly with artists. it doesn't matter how this is done, it's just creating a bourgeois layer. in order to pay for the bourgeois layer, you either need to not pay the artists or put prices through the roof. then you're just overcharging to pay marketing departments. and, i think that's the reason they're trying to put an artist face on this. i think they understand this, even if the consuming public doesn't quite understand it quite yet.
these services have some use - as a kind of a library. spotify is great if it's full of pink floyd records. as a way to house new music? i think this has no future. in the long run, it becomes a closed space for major label artists, because independent artists and independent labels abandon it.
i think you want to forget about spotify as a model. i think the future looks more like bandcamp...
it's a step forwards, though. people pay $100/month for cable. that's a more realistic price to make this sustainable. if nobody gets there, or seems willing to move in that direction, then these services all fail.
as an artist, my primary condition for signing up to something like this is that i want an exchange value on a per-second basis written into a contract that is not dependent on revenue. that is, i'd want to lease the rights to the music to the streaming site. and it's not going to be fractions of pennies on the stream. it's going to be between ten and twenty-five cents per stream, depending on it's length. not once. every time you listen to it...
that has to be in writing, irreversibly. not interested? not signing....
and i don't really care how they charge you, either. i might suggest that a minutely rate is a better idea than a flat rate. but i'm carrying out a transaction with the managers of the service, not with the customer. i don't really like it, but that's how i'm forced to look at it. that transaction is for the use of my art. how they sell it is their concern.
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
a trip to the ufo factory to lift off with noveller
i get silly when i'm tired...
i wasn't able to sleep yesterday morning, and here i am, now, still wide awake. i'm pushing a 40 hour day. which is not that odd for me, but it's been a while. and, certainly, this lack of tiredness at the end of it is a little unsettling.
after some appointments yesterday afternoon on no sleep, and a second failed attempt at it, i rolled out of bed, grabbed the proverbial comb, and stumbled out to explore another new area of detroit: michigan street. the thing you've got to realize about detroit is that it was obviously built by the illuminati, because of the geometry. it's clear as day. hundred mile long roads rotate out of each other at increments of thirty degrees, winding out to suburbs where no bus is allowed to go. michigan st is the fourth option i've taken so far...
of the four, the end point is actually the shortest walk. and, it seems to be the punk rock district. i will be back in this area fairly often.
when one mentions that they attended a show at the ufo club, it's fair game to ask if they played astronomy domine, to which the answer is: fuck off.
"what? not even interstellar overdrive....?"
well, detroit has it's own history - and this place is actually important in it, being across the street from the old tiger stadium. which appears to basically still be there, just fenced off. rumour has it that the likes of babe ruth himself liked to hit a few out of the park at this place. it's a very old building. those days are gone now, but you can kind of still feel them walking up to the bar...
mexican knives are a local act, but i've seen them written up in review sites. those.....hipster (said with somewhat of a plugged nose).....review sites. and, the accusation may be an accurate first impression, but it's not really fair.
hipster is really a different animal than this. it's goofier. it thinks it's more modern, but that's why people with better taste laugh at hipsters, right?
i think something like "generalized punk" is more accurate.
"generalized punk", as i'd put forth it's use, is a kind of amalgam of punk styles, without any concept of time or geography. which is why hipster is a forgivable immediate reaction. for a minute, it's some early dk thing, then it's got a teenage jesus vibe - wait, now it's joy division with...dude is actually strumming like johnny ramone, get out of here...
see, it's not the worst idea to take all these ideas and try and mix them all up. it's better than flat out copying somebody, at least. but it turns into a "who are they now?" game. and, then you're not really listening to what they're doing anymore.
i'll probably see them open at least a second time, and probably a fourth time. they get plenty of gigs. but it needs to be taken to the next level if it wants to really be taken seriously. whatever that means. maybe doing overlapping duelling medleys instead....
"i just gotta tell you what i'm thinking right away while it's fresh: it came to me in a dream, man. the next movement in punk is recursion. i'll come back around to this, i just need to cycle it through my head. it's really spinning."
google recursion. click on "did you mean recursion". those google kids, always playing silly games...
==
so, noveller was the artist i went to see tonight...
i'm generally pretty dismissive/critical of these "think they can play with a loop pedal" types. almost nobody does this well. it almost always instantly turns into fripp does reich - with lobotomies offered in place of 3d glasses.
"now, with free lobotomy!"
noveller's a cut above, though. it's a completely different talent level. the loops are largely atmospheric, and she's setting off more than a few things as they spin around...
she was visibly unhappy with the sound, even stopping a few times. it's hard to believe that she didn't know that tube amps break up a little at high volume. personally, i thought it sounded fine.
she makes a nice - and often rather beautiful - racket. recommended.
here's a full set:
i caught about a half hour of the soft moon, and then left for the bus. i was a little cautious about timing, it being my first time up that way. one of these days, they'll open the tunnel to bicycle traffic. until then, there's no bus service between 1:00 and 4:00, and i'm stuck in detroit if i'm going to stay late. wasn't into that last night...
it turns out i could have stayed an extra twenty minutes, which probably would have nearly closed the set.
i can't say i really regret leaving early, though. the noisy joy division vibe ends up somewhere near late nine inch nails, and i just wasn't nearly drunk enough for it. despite loving noise. and joy division. and early nine inch nails.
it's just really blunt. they've shifted their sound around through different takes of post-punk, and can at times conjure up some decent soundscapes. it's just that there's no subtlety in the writing. that's a problem that no number of sonic facelifts is going to fix.
this is a short clip, but it's pretty accurate.
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/14.html
i wasn't able to sleep yesterday morning, and here i am, now, still wide awake. i'm pushing a 40 hour day. which is not that odd for me, but it's been a while. and, certainly, this lack of tiredness at the end of it is a little unsettling.
after some appointments yesterday afternoon on no sleep, and a second failed attempt at it, i rolled out of bed, grabbed the proverbial comb, and stumbled out to explore another new area of detroit: michigan street. the thing you've got to realize about detroit is that it was obviously built by the illuminati, because of the geometry. it's clear as day. hundred mile long roads rotate out of each other at increments of thirty degrees, winding out to suburbs where no bus is allowed to go. michigan st is the fourth option i've taken so far...
of the four, the end point is actually the shortest walk. and, it seems to be the punk rock district. i will be back in this area fairly often.
when one mentions that they attended a show at the ufo club, it's fair game to ask if they played astronomy domine, to which the answer is: fuck off.
"what? not even interstellar overdrive....?"
well, detroit has it's own history - and this place is actually important in it, being across the street from the old tiger stadium. which appears to basically still be there, just fenced off. rumour has it that the likes of babe ruth himself liked to hit a few out of the park at this place. it's a very old building. those days are gone now, but you can kind of still feel them walking up to the bar...
mexican knives are a local act, but i've seen them written up in review sites. those.....hipster (said with somewhat of a plugged nose).....review sites. and, the accusation may be an accurate first impression, but it's not really fair.
hipster is really a different animal than this. it's goofier. it thinks it's more modern, but that's why people with better taste laugh at hipsters, right?
i think something like "generalized punk" is more accurate.
"generalized punk", as i'd put forth it's use, is a kind of amalgam of punk styles, without any concept of time or geography. which is why hipster is a forgivable immediate reaction. for a minute, it's some early dk thing, then it's got a teenage jesus vibe - wait, now it's joy division with...dude is actually strumming like johnny ramone, get out of here...
see, it's not the worst idea to take all these ideas and try and mix them all up. it's better than flat out copying somebody, at least. but it turns into a "who are they now?" game. and, then you're not really listening to what they're doing anymore.
i'll probably see them open at least a second time, and probably a fourth time. they get plenty of gigs. but it needs to be taken to the next level if it wants to really be taken seriously. whatever that means. maybe doing overlapping duelling medleys instead....
"i just gotta tell you what i'm thinking right away while it's fresh: it came to me in a dream, man. the next movement in punk is recursion. i'll come back around to this, i just need to cycle it through my head. it's really spinning."
google recursion. click on "did you mean recursion". those google kids, always playing silly games...
==
so, noveller was the artist i went to see tonight...
i'm generally pretty dismissive/critical of these "think they can play with a loop pedal" types. almost nobody does this well. it almost always instantly turns into fripp does reich - with lobotomies offered in place of 3d glasses.
"now, with free lobotomy!"
noveller's a cut above, though. it's a completely different talent level. the loops are largely atmospheric, and she's setting off more than a few things as they spin around...
she was visibly unhappy with the sound, even stopping a few times. it's hard to believe that she didn't know that tube amps break up a little at high volume. personally, i thought it sounded fine.
she makes a nice - and often rather beautiful - racket. recommended.
here's a full set:
i caught about a half hour of the soft moon, and then left for the bus. i was a little cautious about timing, it being my first time up that way. one of these days, they'll open the tunnel to bicycle traffic. until then, there's no bus service between 1:00 and 4:00, and i'm stuck in detroit if i'm going to stay late. wasn't into that last night...
it turns out i could have stayed an extra twenty minutes, which probably would have nearly closed the set.
i can't say i really regret leaving early, though. the noisy joy division vibe ends up somewhere near late nine inch nails, and i just wasn't nearly drunk enough for it. despite loving noise. and joy division. and early nine inch nails.
it's just really blunt. they've shifted their sound around through different takes of post-punk, and can at times conjure up some decent soundscapes. it's just that there's no subtlety in the writing. that's a problem that no number of sonic facelifts is going to fix.
this is a short clip, but it's pretty accurate.
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/14.html
Monday, April 13, 2015
rap news 31
i'm going to provide a narrative that is going to drive some people nuts, but it's a reflection of how much nonsense is floating around the resistance movements. you can't forget that we arrived here after decades of slashes to education. the resistance doesn't build or organize anymore. it lacks the knowledge and ability to do this. rather, it sits in the park and demands that the rulers fix it. the reality is that we're as pathetic as they think we are- because they made us that way.
what you're calling austerity is a complex mix of cynicism and failed idealism. there were plenty of people that understood this was inevitable. there were some people that sought to profit from it. but there were enough people that thought this could work to declare it a failed experiment. there are still powerful people that are confused by what they're seeing. it's easy to think it's some master plan. but, it's really just a failed ideology. and the root of it is the way the euro was implemented.
the proper comparison is to the united states, under the gold standard, before the federal reserve. it's a little different, but it's the same basic problem. the austerity is coming from the fact that countries like greece have lost sovereignty over their money supply. when faced with default, they have two choices: spend less, or devalue their currency. but they cannot devalue their currency.
in order for greece and germany to use the same money supply, there has to be some redistribution of resources. in north america, this is actually systemic. the rich provinces and states (like alberta, and california) routinely transfer wealth to the poorer ones (like quebec and west virginia). in europe, it's a scandal - in north america, it's the basis of confederation. this needs to happen as a consequence of using a shared currency, despite having drastically unequal economies.
so long as the euro system continues, these transfers can never end. privatization will merely make things worse. vultures and whatnot. but this isn't a diabolical scheme. it's the result of economic incompetence.
now, here's the funny twist, here: europeans have repeatedly rejected further integration. yet, they want to keep using the euro. you won't hear anybody on the street that gets this. if you put it up for referendum, the popular consensus will be to continue the system that's causing the crisis. because they don't understand what's going on, and the demagogues on the ground are merely confusing things.
in the end, there are three solutions:
1) confederation. under such a system, wealth transfers from germany to the periphery would likely be written into the constitution.
2) abolition of the euro.
3) burn everything down and start over.
everything else that's happening is the result of idiocy run amok....
canada is the master race, we've solved everything - the germans could learn a thing from this.
i mean, i like option 3. but option 1 is most likely.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equalization_payments_in_Canada
what you're calling austerity is a complex mix of cynicism and failed idealism. there were plenty of people that understood this was inevitable. there were some people that sought to profit from it. but there were enough people that thought this could work to declare it a failed experiment. there are still powerful people that are confused by what they're seeing. it's easy to think it's some master plan. but, it's really just a failed ideology. and the root of it is the way the euro was implemented.
the proper comparison is to the united states, under the gold standard, before the federal reserve. it's a little different, but it's the same basic problem. the austerity is coming from the fact that countries like greece have lost sovereignty over their money supply. when faced with default, they have two choices: spend less, or devalue their currency. but they cannot devalue their currency.
in order for greece and germany to use the same money supply, there has to be some redistribution of resources. in north america, this is actually systemic. the rich provinces and states (like alberta, and california) routinely transfer wealth to the poorer ones (like quebec and west virginia). in europe, it's a scandal - in north america, it's the basis of confederation. this needs to happen as a consequence of using a shared currency, despite having drastically unequal economies.
so long as the euro system continues, these transfers can never end. privatization will merely make things worse. vultures and whatnot. but this isn't a diabolical scheme. it's the result of economic incompetence.
now, here's the funny twist, here: europeans have repeatedly rejected further integration. yet, they want to keep using the euro. you won't hear anybody on the street that gets this. if you put it up for referendum, the popular consensus will be to continue the system that's causing the crisis. because they don't understand what's going on, and the demagogues on the ground are merely confusing things.
in the end, there are three solutions:
1) confederation. under such a system, wealth transfers from germany to the periphery would likely be written into the constitution.
2) abolition of the euro.
3) burn everything down and start over.
everything else that's happening is the result of idiocy run amok....
canada is the master race, we've solved everything - the germans could learn a thing from this.
i mean, i like option 3. but option 1 is most likely.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equalization_payments_in_Canada
Saturday, April 11, 2015
you know, yesterday this page had 280,000 hits. today, it has 220,000 hits. it's a little confusing.
now, it's not like i really care, to be honest. the only value that number has to me is as a metric of marketing potential. youtube is not a martketplace - there's nothing for sale. it's a place to advertise things. the store is at bandcamp.
i advertise things here, and sell things there. i'd set up a store at google - they're actually not terrible on paying artists, compared to spotify and others - but they require a wallet account, which requires a credit card. their attempt to monopolize the process has locked me out. i can only shrug, because i think i owe visa something like $15,000 (truth is, i haven't looked at the bill in years...). i'm simply not about to call to ask what i owe them, and if they're willing to give me another card.
so, again, i don't really care.
except that it's nice to watch numbers get bigger. it passed 250K back in march. i was expecting it to get to 300K near the beginning of may. now, who knows - it might shrink back to 0....
the only thing i can think of is that maybe some videos were taken down, but then what's the point?
i've also noticed that they've stopped counting hits on the front page which is just like...
how am i supposed to know how many people visited the page - ie. how effective my youtube advertising has been in driving traffic?
i've got metrics at bandcamp, but it only tells half the story. it doesn't tell me how many people i'm able to get from youtube to bandcamp, which is the point.
i know they don't like the idea of having a "featured track". they want a "channel trailer" to "maximize subscribers". but, i don't get paid for subscribers. there's no self interest in telling people to subscribe. and nobody reads their feed, anyways. i lose subscribers when i upload new videos because they're irritated that i send them notifications. but if you're not interested in the music, why the fuck did you subscribe? am i supposed to care? to tread carefully, so that people that don't care don't unsubscribe? it's a dumb system, and they're leaving us with little choice but to break it. computers aren't tvs and surfers aren't viewers...
so, if they think it's going to modify behaviour.....they're not getting it. i'm not putting the stuff up to maximize hits. i'm cycling around links to the store. the basic traffic direction tactic isn't going to change. it's just that now, i don't know how much traffic i'm getting....
it would be easiest to just put it back the way it was. but, if that's not acceptable for whatever reason, it would be great to get a "channel visits" metric - that is, a metric that documents how many people visit the channel, even if it's just to watch the trailer. that number is far more useful to me than a subscriber count, or watching the hits on my videos increase.
now, it's not like i really care, to be honest. the only value that number has to me is as a metric of marketing potential. youtube is not a martketplace - there's nothing for sale. it's a place to advertise things. the store is at bandcamp.
i advertise things here, and sell things there. i'd set up a store at google - they're actually not terrible on paying artists, compared to spotify and others - but they require a wallet account, which requires a credit card. their attempt to monopolize the process has locked me out. i can only shrug, because i think i owe visa something like $15,000 (truth is, i haven't looked at the bill in years...). i'm simply not about to call to ask what i owe them, and if they're willing to give me another card.
so, again, i don't really care.
except that it's nice to watch numbers get bigger. it passed 250K back in march. i was expecting it to get to 300K near the beginning of may. now, who knows - it might shrink back to 0....
the only thing i can think of is that maybe some videos were taken down, but then what's the point?
i've also noticed that they've stopped counting hits on the front page which is just like...
how am i supposed to know how many people visited the page - ie. how effective my youtube advertising has been in driving traffic?
i've got metrics at bandcamp, but it only tells half the story. it doesn't tell me how many people i'm able to get from youtube to bandcamp, which is the point.
i know they don't like the idea of having a "featured track". they want a "channel trailer" to "maximize subscribers". but, i don't get paid for subscribers. there's no self interest in telling people to subscribe. and nobody reads their feed, anyways. i lose subscribers when i upload new videos because they're irritated that i send them notifications. but if you're not interested in the music, why the fuck did you subscribe? am i supposed to care? to tread carefully, so that people that don't care don't unsubscribe? it's a dumb system, and they're leaving us with little choice but to break it. computers aren't tvs and surfers aren't viewers...
so, if they think it's going to modify behaviour.....they're not getting it. i'm not putting the stuff up to maximize hits. i'm cycling around links to the store. the basic traffic direction tactic isn't going to change. it's just that now, i don't know how much traffic i'm getting....
it would be easiest to just put it back the way it was. but, if that's not acceptable for whatever reason, it would be great to get a "channel visits" metric - that is, a metric that documents how many people visit the channel, even if it's just to watch the trailer. that number is far more useful to me than a subscriber count, or watching the hits on my videos increase.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
further thoughts on the new gybe! record
that's not me out your window, guys. i'm somewhere back in the brush, sitting under a tree, enjoying a peach, and taking notes on the whole thing from a distance.
the basic premise of more gybe! is a good one. if it's from the heart. but it seems like they're going through the motions. it's maybe hard to blame them, given...everything. fuck, i'd do it. kids. they're expensive.
this is probably a transition disc, and it's probably not going to really make sense until the next one. even if the next one is no disc at all. as an end, it seems cynical. but they've been leaning towards that kind of canterbury improv sound for a while now. recognition tends to hurt bands like this, as they end up thinking every pattern they shit out is gorecki-level brilliant, if they don't just stop caring if it is or not. they'll get the awards. they'll sell out the concerts. it doesn't matter. then they'll go home, and...kids. they're fucking expensive.
these people all have other projects that are closer to their hearts, but this is necessary to allow those projects to happen. and they can't use a different label. they can't retire it out of hallowed respect. the point is that this is the one that markets fawn over. the one that allows everything to continue...
they know it. but, you know. kids.
this is observational, not judgmental. i'm patient. and i trust these boys and girls. so, i'll be quiet and wait for them to finish.
the basic premise of more gybe! is a good one. if it's from the heart. but it seems like they're going through the motions. it's maybe hard to blame them, given...everything. fuck, i'd do it. kids. they're expensive.
this is probably a transition disc, and it's probably not going to really make sense until the next one. even if the next one is no disc at all. as an end, it seems cynical. but they've been leaning towards that kind of canterbury improv sound for a while now. recognition tends to hurt bands like this, as they end up thinking every pattern they shit out is gorecki-level brilliant, if they don't just stop caring if it is or not. they'll get the awards. they'll sell out the concerts. it doesn't matter. then they'll go home, and...kids. they're fucking expensive.
these people all have other projects that are closer to their hearts, but this is necessary to allow those projects to happen. and they can't use a different label. they can't retire it out of hallowed respect. the point is that this is the one that markets fawn over. the one that allows everything to continue...
they know it. but, you know. kids.
this is observational, not judgmental. i'm patient. and i trust these boys and girls. so, i'll be quiet and wait for them to finish.
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Saturday, April 4, 2015
i felt more like the swans were fluttering around outside, agitating to raise me out of the bar and bring me home to get back to work
i decided at the last minute to catch atom egoyan favourite raised by swans tonight, and all i could think about was how i should be at home working/recording. that's good, for me. it's probably the last show for at least a few weeks.
i wasn't walking in as a fan or anything, it just seemed like something relaxing to sit back and enjoy a beer with...
stylistically, it's very much the current wave of "indie rock", which isn't really a style i have much interest in. but, the record indicated a larger atmospheric influence, both in the joy division sense and the mbv sense. the live presentation seemed to want to minimize this in favour of something more rhythmic, and while that's probably the right marketing decision in a broad sense, it wasn't really what i was looking for.
that's not to say it was bare bones new wave, but i didn't get that wash of effects i went for...
the record is actually pretty good, though, if you prefer your indie rock a little closer to the source: with more exotic melodies, with less predictable pop and with deeper focus on atmospheres.
https://raisedbyswans6.bandcamp.com/album/xnadalur
on the personal story side of it, something i've noticed repeatedly walking home over the last few weeks is that people think i'm a streetwalker. this is odd to me, as i haven't seen any actual streetwalkers in the neighbourhood. i've given out a few smokes to girls walking home that seemed like they were working, but not on the corner sort of thing...
i'm not really sure how to approach this sort of thing. i'm not dressed provocatively. tonight, i was wearing a raincoat and a pair of jeans. the only clue that i'm even female-identifying is my elbow length hair. meaning these johns are driving through the wrong neighbourhood, and getting desperate. what's worrying is that it signifies pretty strong desperation. the only other thing i can think of is that they might be confusing me for somebody.
it wasn't really an issue at all last year. hopefully, they clue in soon that there's nobody around here and go drive in some other neighbourhood.
but, i mean, like...
you gotta wonder what kind of warped experience leads some guys to think girl walking home at night = prostitute. as though it's occam's razor or something.
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/03.html
i wasn't walking in as a fan or anything, it just seemed like something relaxing to sit back and enjoy a beer with...
stylistically, it's very much the current wave of "indie rock", which isn't really a style i have much interest in. but, the record indicated a larger atmospheric influence, both in the joy division sense and the mbv sense. the live presentation seemed to want to minimize this in favour of something more rhythmic, and while that's probably the right marketing decision in a broad sense, it wasn't really what i was looking for.
that's not to say it was bare bones new wave, but i didn't get that wash of effects i went for...
the record is actually pretty good, though, if you prefer your indie rock a little closer to the source: with more exotic melodies, with less predictable pop and with deeper focus on atmospheres.
https://raisedbyswans6.bandcamp.com/album/xnadalur
on the personal story side of it, something i've noticed repeatedly walking home over the last few weeks is that people think i'm a streetwalker. this is odd to me, as i haven't seen any actual streetwalkers in the neighbourhood. i've given out a few smokes to girls walking home that seemed like they were working, but not on the corner sort of thing...
i'm not really sure how to approach this sort of thing. i'm not dressed provocatively. tonight, i was wearing a raincoat and a pair of jeans. the only clue that i'm even female-identifying is my elbow length hair. meaning these johns are driving through the wrong neighbourhood, and getting desperate. what's worrying is that it signifies pretty strong desperation. the only other thing i can think of is that they might be confusing me for somebody.
it wasn't really an issue at all last year. hopefully, they clue in soon that there's nobody around here and go drive in some other neighbourhood.
but, i mean, like...
you gotta wonder what kind of warped experience leads some guys to think girl walking home at night = prostitute. as though it's occam's razor or something.
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/03.html
Friday, April 3, 2015
i’m certainly anticipating a dispute in the band’s fan base
i caught la dispute last night in a castle...
the masonic temple, in detroit. i'd never been in a structure like this. foundation stones jutting out awkwardly from the ground, warped from a century (centuries?) of weather erosion. elevators from the 30s, when it was cutting-edge technology, that you don't really want to get in; stairways with cracks that you don't really want to walk up. just a slight slant, six floors up - not quite dilapidated, but enough to make you a little claustrophobic and not really keen on rattling the bass. secret entrances everywhere, no doubt leading to scenes from indiana jones films. shit, was that a secret handshake.....?
as clearly impressive and important as this structure may have been decades or centuries ago, it's just as clearly abandoned, now. if only one could just eliminate the landlords....
the show itself was a bit of an experiment they're doing, in terms of turning their volume down a little. whether the fans are into it or not, i think the band is, and i'd expect it to "stick". i'm going to miss the 'proper show' tonight due to it being sold out, and it's not like i haven't see them play their older material before, but this might be the last chance you get to catch it; this may be the end of la dispute as you know them, and they seem to feel fine about it.
in all honesty, i don't think these kids have really ever identified much as punks, or were ever really interpreted that way. they were really always beatniks trying to exist in a hardcore world, without being forced to adhere to folk music stereotypes. so, this isn't really surprising. and the reality, for me? the reality is i grew up on rem. i grew up on sonic youth. i love these bands. i fucking *miss* these bands. i'm not going to be the person that's going to give them shit for this, as they're not walking outside of my sphere of interest. if anything, they're walking directly into it's center.
but, the thing is these are big boots, if you will. you start conjuring up rem and sonic youth, and you're walking into a world of expectations hitherto unknown to the average mortal rock band. this is the gen x pantheon. and, i'm not sure this band has the chops to get there.
the show was intriguing, if anything because it demonstrated their liabilities. some of the material transferred over well, but the overall impression was that the shift is a work in progress. songs would move forward with little real development and end without any sort of warning. void of the nihilistic context of the distortion cutting out, it left little effect. it's perhaps more literally beatnik, in the sense of raw poetry over haphazard accompaniment. but a castle is not a coffee shop.
if this is something they want to do, i don't want to discourage them. i'm in favour of ambition. and they seem to have lost their guitarist, so it might actually be the most rational path forward to change their sound. but it requires deeper incubation. maybe a bit more maturity. and perhaps a creative spark. hope they get there, eventually.
here is the audio from the night:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/02.html
the masonic temple, in detroit. i'd never been in a structure like this. foundation stones jutting out awkwardly from the ground, warped from a century (centuries?) of weather erosion. elevators from the 30s, when it was cutting-edge technology, that you don't really want to get in; stairways with cracks that you don't really want to walk up. just a slight slant, six floors up - not quite dilapidated, but enough to make you a little claustrophobic and not really keen on rattling the bass. secret entrances everywhere, no doubt leading to scenes from indiana jones films. shit, was that a secret handshake.....?
as clearly impressive and important as this structure may have been decades or centuries ago, it's just as clearly abandoned, now. if only one could just eliminate the landlords....
the show itself was a bit of an experiment they're doing, in terms of turning their volume down a little. whether the fans are into it or not, i think the band is, and i'd expect it to "stick". i'm going to miss the 'proper show' tonight due to it being sold out, and it's not like i haven't see them play their older material before, but this might be the last chance you get to catch it; this may be the end of la dispute as you know them, and they seem to feel fine about it.
in all honesty, i don't think these kids have really ever identified much as punks, or were ever really interpreted that way. they were really always beatniks trying to exist in a hardcore world, without being forced to adhere to folk music stereotypes. so, this isn't really surprising. and the reality, for me? the reality is i grew up on rem. i grew up on sonic youth. i love these bands. i fucking *miss* these bands. i'm not going to be the person that's going to give them shit for this, as they're not walking outside of my sphere of interest. if anything, they're walking directly into it's center.
but, the thing is these are big boots, if you will. you start conjuring up rem and sonic youth, and you're walking into a world of expectations hitherto unknown to the average mortal rock band. this is the gen x pantheon. and, i'm not sure this band has the chops to get there.
the show was intriguing, if anything because it demonstrated their liabilities. some of the material transferred over well, but the overall impression was that the shift is a work in progress. songs would move forward with little real development and end without any sort of warning. void of the nihilistic context of the distortion cutting out, it left little effect. it's perhaps more literally beatnik, in the sense of raw poetry over haphazard accompaniment. but a castle is not a coffee shop.
if this is something they want to do, i don't want to discourage them. i'm in favour of ambition. and they seem to have lost their guitarist, so it might actually be the most rational path forward to change their sound. but it requires deeper incubation. maybe a bit more maturity. and perhaps a creative spark. hope they get there, eventually.
here is the audio from the night:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/02.html
Thursday, April 2, 2015
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