there was a cancelled ajj show that i was looking at, but i keep skipping him because...

i like a subset of his recordings, but so much of it is just sooooo slllllooooow that i'm not quite sure what the actual point of leaving the house to go see it is. he had xiu xiu on the bill with him, who i've seen many times without being a big fan of, and have kind of lost interest in since they've adopted a more stripped down punk rock format. but, that's likely the kind of thing i'd need to get out to see him. i'd like to, eventually, under the right circumstances.

i was very distracted and unproductive this week, sadly, so i've only been through this once, and it's about what you might expect from the ajj, if maybe a little bit more cheeky than the last few. his takedown of the trump-era doesn't suffer from the stupidity that seems to be ubiquitous on the soft-left right now, and that's maybe expected, as he's always struck me as well to the left of the democratic consensus. it's otherwise the usual intersection of the cynical and the surreal.

there's maybe a deeper beatles influence, which i wouldn't complain about if it became standard.

but, i'm getting the same basic disincentive that i've gotten from him for years, in that i'd expect the show to be kind of boring, and that i'll enjoy this more in my bedroom through headphones.

mike is making what is a common error in reactions to these events - he wants retribution, which he calls "justice". so, he wants to go after the prosecutors. he wants to send these "bad apples" to jail. it's the same response you see over and over...

but, what is the point of sending these cops to jail if the academy just replaces them with four more that think exactly the same way?

this is systemic, and you have to go after the root causes, which are in the way that police are taught to act. it's not an accident that this happens over and over - it's the system. they're not "bad apples". it's by design.

i know you don't want to think of it like this, but sending these cops to jail isn't any more useful than sending some low level crack dealers on the street to jail. it addresses something emotional, it expresses something religious, but it is an absolutely useless step in actually solving the actual problem.

lol.

i'm going to have to concede the point, reluctantly, but note what i had to do in order to get here - i had to throw away the first ep altogether, cut the arena rock bullshit off of the last two and then resequence the remaining eight tracks to essentially finish the job that reznor abandoned. that means i've cut out half of the tracks (it's closer to a third of the running time, because these were mostly shorter tracks). but, i'm going to acknowledge that the sheer terribleness of tracks like shit mirror (shit mirror?) actually served to throw me off from the more substantive tracks that make up the rest of the collection.

so, once you remove the arena rock garbage, what's left is actually a substantive release.

the way i've resequenced this needs a few finishing touches. the fade in the second track is now too long, and he's got twenty minutes at the end to tack on something like theme from tetsuo, which i still think is the best thing he's done in eons. but, this is beyond acceptable, and i'm not compromising or going easy on him - this is substantive, and it's the first time in a long time i can say that.

i want to say something about the "loop" at the end of the background world, though, because it's not actually a loop, but rather something called process music, in the style of a steve reich composition. that's going to go over most people's heads, and that's fine, but just notice when you're listening to it that it slowly changes and morphs in a way that gets from one defined point to the next. he's reusing the record-player-dying effect he used on the closer to god single, sure, but there's actually a lot more going on here than there is there.

i'm still of the opinion that these cheesy ableton sequencers need to die and burn, but he's not using them as a crux here as he so often has, and he's found a way to transcend these loop based composition processes (see the reich reference). i don't want to say that that's a big step forwards; it's more like a step sideways, or a reclamation of his humanity. but, it's encouraging at least.

he may have claimed that this is the end of this project, but he's said that before and...he's full of shit. we all know that. there's a lot to draw on here in a re-embrace of more abstract writing, and even some more subtle lyricism. if he can just stop with these big man with a gun self-parodies once and for all. but, they pay the bills, right? fuck.

this edit is legitimately strong, and i'm glad i took the time to finish the fucking job for him, even if i shouldn't have had to fucking do it for him.

so, i've put this together for myself, and, hey, if you like it...

i'm going to listen to it a few more times to see how i react to it in this form, but this was something like what he wanted to do to start with, and is probably what he should have actually done in the end. maybe if he'd have released another two or three eps, he'd have had enough quality material for a whole record.

while this eight track collection is far from the heights of his classic period, it's also arguably the best nin record in over a decade. but, i just have to reiterate the point - you can't and shouldn't try and compare this to his 90s material. rather, you should interpret it as a facelift over his lackluster 00s-10s work. it does have a purpose, when interpreted that way.

i'm actually hoping that this is both an end and a start, and any future nin releases are rather different in scope. we'll see, i guess.

something else that new disc reminds me a little of is this old oldfield disc, which has never had good reviews, but really needs to be re-evaluated.

this is a personal favourite, and i am convinced that it will be better regarded, in time.

so, that thirlwell disc is a collaboration with a swedish guitarist and...

it sounds extremely similar to a king crimson record, as i take it is the style that the guitarist operates in. there are clear bits of thirlwell scattered in between in the instrumentation, but it's fairly muted and it's really unusually organic for a thirlwell release.

it's not going to take me a week to work this out.

but, file under crimson. really.

speaking of thirlwell...

excuse me while i hide inside for the next week, figuring this out.

https://jgthirlwell.bandcamp.com/album/oscillospira

i can't remember if i posted something about this or not. i remember listening to the first two eps, and then deciding i'd look into it more thoroughly when the third was released, but i don't think i ever did.

first off, let's clarify a point: if these are supposed to represent nine inch nails' sound at an earlier period, that may be true to an extent, but it's important not to go too far back in time in your description. it perhaps sounds like something from the 2005-2007-ish period at points, but it certainly doesn't sound like old nine inch nails, and i don't want to confuse anybody by making that suggestion.

personally? there have been a few things over the last twenty years that i've been able to get into a little bit, mostly the soundtrack work, but, with the exception of parts of year zero, i really haven't liked much of anything reznor's done under the nin moniker since he became a jock, so this actually doesn't go far enough back in time to catch my interest. rather than talk about it being a return to form, i'm more likely to bring up the same criticisms that i had for records like with teeth, which i consider to be beyond subpar. in fact, i actually hold them with a large amount of contempt. this guy just flat out gave himself a lobotomy. did you know that testosterone actually kills brain cells? that's science. but, i'm not creating this rant right now.

that said, the collection, as a whole, perhaps dispenses with some of the worst moments in the later part of his career, and substitutes something a little bit more thoughtful in their place. it may not be enough of a throwback to recapture his oldest fans, but there is an argument that some of those older fans may interpret it as a sort of replacement for some of his later material. yes - this is jockish and muscular and macho in substance (which are bad things.), but it isn't the kind of insipid arena rock he fell into in his worst period. it is, perhaps, with teeth (improved) or with teeth (done right).

or - with teeth (now, with less teeth).

i'm going to keep listening for a few more hours until i check out the new ghosts releases, which i suspect i'll like a lot more, but i don't expect it to really grow on me. this is just a style that i never did like much, and that i'm never really going to like much..,..

it's more representative of the nin i abandoned than of the nin i became infatuated with.

this would be the latest in a series of son lux eps to catch up on, and i'm actually not entirely sure what to make of it. the instrumental versions of change is everything are something i'd like to hear in a more developed manner, but these are really just teases - jingles, almost. like, you could imagine them repurposed for underwear commercials - where change is indeed everything.

i'm sorry.

the version of remedy is sort of necessary, but as a bookend; this is the logical conclusion of a bside, but it's a bside, and i think maybe the most pressing question it opens up is why it wasn't on the most recent record, and if it will be on the next one.

as a collection of tracks, it's on the somber and reflective side, which is one of the sides of his work that i like. but, as a cohesive work, it kind of neither starts nor stops, a reality exacerbated by the fact that i've already heard these songs, and these mixes don't really add anything new to any of them.

i think i would appreciate a full record of new material in this style, though.

https://sonlux.bandcamp.com/album/reincarnates

to be a little more concrete, i'd scratch out and redo the tracks with the strikeout through them.

1) ROSE QUARTZ (NNAMDÏ Remix)
2) FULTON STREET I (Hether Fortune Remix)
3) FULTON STREET II (Wreck and Reference Remix)
4) RHODONITE AND GRIEF (Kitty Remix)
5) ANXIETY PANORAMA (Cremation Lily Remix)
6) IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN (David Allred Remix)
7) FROM OUR BEDROOM WINDOW (E.M. Hudson Remix)
8) FOOTSTEPS AT THE POND (Zeal & Ardor Remix)
9) THERE YOU ARE (HIDING PLACE) (Majetic Remix)
10 YOU ASCENDANT (Peter Broderick Remix)

the three in the middle just need something a bit more intense, and the last one egregiously cuts up a rather epic piece of poetry and should not have.

in northern michigan and you ascendant, especially, should have been converted into absolutely demented pieces of sound in ways that could have taken the lyrics to the next level. that remix of rhodonite and grief is really the weakest on the record; it's barely there at all, for a track that could have been....i actually think that the best person for this track really honestly would have been old man jim thirlwell. really. those horns. and, that remix of anxiety panorama comes off as a bad joke.

the rest of it, though, is fairly strong, if never transcendent. to be clear: it could pretty much all be taken to the next level, but the stuff i didn't scratch out is at least workable as starting points.

i'm spending time on this because i actually think this is a format that this band has some potential with - they write multidimensional, complex music that could and perhaps ought to be ripped and spliced. this was a great idea, even if it didn't really execute.

on second thought, that la dispute remix record doesn't disassemble in as difficult a manner as i initially hoped - while there are some high points, much of it sort of floats by. and, while the lyrics are pushed to the forefront, they're also frequently cut-up or abridged. i was hoping that the stronger moments would overpower on subsequent listens, but it's more the reverse.

it's certainly a step in an interesting direction, but i'd interpret la dispute more as a neo-rem than as an appendage to nin (although both arguments have merit); dreyer has had points of reznorian lyrical embarrassment, but he is, overall, an incomparably more talented wordsmith. rem's discography is more diverse than people give them credit for, but they never delved very far into industrial music. is that an interesting projection, though? well, i think it's what i wanted to hear.

i would admittedly love to hear something as simultaneously complex and challenging as those mid-90s remix records, but this really isn't it, it's maybe what i wished it was.

i'm not slamming it - there are high points, and i don't find myself skipping anything. i'm more stepping back from and acknowledging my own misperception, rooted in an unjustified projection. that is to say that it maybe wasn't fair to imagine this as something it isn't.

i'd still give it a B or something. but i'm still waiting for my sequel to those ridiculous 90s remix discs, and i might, in truth, be waiting forever.

this is something i put aside a few months ago, and that kept getting lost in computer crashes. i'm finally giving it a listen...

as somebody with a distinct interest in industrial music, i'm finding this sort of double-edged. it doesn't always hold up to it's potential, but when it does it often transcends the original recording. i guess you have to be approaching it from a certain mindset to even begin to try and get your head around something like this, and that's probably not feasible for their entire fan base, but it probably is for enough of it, and it really is a treat if you can do it.

there were complaints when the record was released that the vocals were mixed down or even almost out; on this collection, there's a tendency to focus on the vocals to the exclusion of the other instruments in a way that delves into very abstract hip-hop, or even some devotional music (even if so much of it ends up sounding vaguely like tool in it's more reflective moments, except without the repetition and cliches). that is something that a lot of long term fans should be ecstatic about, if they can get out of their emo shells - which they should be more than old enough to do at this point.

but, this is a thick record with many layers to uncover and that you simply need to spend some time with, so it's going to take a while to see if it can climb it's way into the same heady place i hold records like further down the spiral in. it very well might.

for you, i'd say it's worth a try, at least - if you dare.

https://ladispute.bandcamp.com/album/panorama-remixed

i missed this, too. and, it....

when brighter wounds was released a few years ago, it was hard not to notice that it had this lead single that was obviously designed for maximum commercial potential, something that i sort of skirted around without explicitly denouncing.
https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2018/02/first-impressions-of-new-son-lux-record.html

the thing is that i wasn't sure what was going on. were they leaning in a specific direction out of a legitimate intent to maximize commercial outcome? were they being groomed by suits in ties? wtf was going on?

it then sort of backfired on them. an act that a few months earlier was widely seen as the leading creative voice of their generation was all of a sudden written off as purveyors of the dreaded "millennial whoop". and, if you go to their youtube site, it seems to have underperformed, at least in terms of hits. their touring market then seems to have dried up, and ryan lott retreated to working on compilation releases with names like "remnant", suggesting he was giving up altogether.

so, this remix collection, which upgrades four of the poppier tracks on the last record into more abstract territory, and notably ignores the single all directions with it's badly received and somewhat confusing kierkegaardian video, is nice to hear.

but, it doesn't really answer my initial question, or alter my analysis from 2018. is this a re-embrace of the self, or an exit strategy?

these existential questions surrounding what ryan lott is and what he wants to do can only be answered in the form of a new record. i think it's clear what my vote is, and where my interests lie. but, i write my own records - i just listen to his.

https://sonlux.bandcamp.com/album/labor

if you ever tell me i look like bono, i will throw you down the fucking stairs.

but, he's right. don't let the bastards grind you down...

he actually threw me off a little by claiming these were old recordings, something i'm not convinced is actually true. but, what exactly is going on with son lux recently? did the label shut him down, or what? something seems to be not quite right, and he just doesn't have the personality of a trent reznor.....he won't stand up and yell and scream about it....

all the artists and bands i like get dropped. and people wonder why i don't want to get signed.

it's actually relatively strong; it sounds less like it's unfinished, and more like it's mildly unfocused, but that's not exactly a bad thing. it might be a little ironic, but the band concept was perhaps a little too controlled - this is a little looser, and breathes a little more clearly. that slow build on whispering, for example. further, the fact that there's no obvious attempt at a hit single actually makes the record flow a little better.

i feel we've only hit the tip of the iceberg with ryan lott, that he has a lot more to offer, but he needs to embrace the inherent obscurity in being creative rather than get discouraged by a lack of commercial success, and that's maybe harder said than done. let's hope he doesn't pull a peter gabriel and just evaporate....

https://sonlux.bandcamp.com/album/remnants

it's very sad that we're finally getting some nice weather and there's really nothing to do outside because the government cancelled everything :(.

i have lots of work to do. i'll be fine.

but, it would be nice to go out and have a beer somewhere, and i can't.

i did feel better this morning for having screamed, but i still had to sleep it off.

i'm going to finish that meal i started, take a hot shower and finish this up once and for all tonight.

let's hope the air stays clear for the night.

so, i took a slight detour over the last few days, in building a meta youtube list for the deathtokoalas blog:

that list will get updated whenever i add a new journal entry.

it's also been added to the link list on the side of this blog.

i've spent some time listening to this today, and while i must point out that mammatus clearly fear satan, i also have to report that i'm just not getting into this like i did their previous work. this isn't the first attempt, and i think maybe it's time to give up.

it's not exactly because it's a little slower moving, it's more along the lines of that they didn't really pull the slower-moving thing off so well. it drags in a lot of ways that their previous work largely avoided. when it clicks, it clicks, but you don't really gain anything from the disc that you didn't have previously in their existing work.

this is a talented band that is doing something with almost no commercial potential and is essentially scraping by for the love of it, which is what i want to hear. i hope that they continue to compose and release in the future. but, this is not their most compelling work.

https://mammatus.bandcamp.com/album/sparkling-waters

in 2011 and 1941, the country got attacked.

in 2020, it shut itself down to stop the common cold from killing geriatrics and extremely unhealthy people - and largely failed to even do so.

the responses are incomparable because the situations are incomparable.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-05-22/little-sense-of-shared-grief-as-virus-deaths-near-100-000

america did this to itself.

and, it seems to want to just move the fuck on.

there's a new indricothere record up.

colin marston has a very defined style at this point, and this is really more of the same, without hitting the absurd dynamics of his first releases. it's enjoyable enough, but don't expect anything that's much different than what you've already heard from him.

https://indricothere.bandcamp.com/album/altrrn

i run into records like the newest pearl jam offering once in a while that i don't really want to criticize. i don't want to say anything bad about this. really.

but, it's interesting that the reviews are talking about it as though it's experimental, or more abstract, or branching out. relative to what, exactly? not even themselves; they were far more adventurous in the 90s.

it sounds like what it is - some aging rock stars that are trying to rekindle their interest and stay relevant, which...i'm trying not to be dismissive. it could be far worse, really. well, check out four of the five records that preceded this one - it was worse.

i'll give them credit for being methodical, at least; it's been a long time since the last one, and there at least isn't any empty filler, here, like there so often has been. these tracks may be a little safe and predictable for my own tastes, and the band may have moved on, as is their prerogative at their age, but at least they're properly worked out, fully developed. they took their time on this and did it right, they didn't just churn it out. fans that have kept with them should appreciate that.

but, beyond a few points, i'm just not feeling it.

i'll say this, though - if this is the last pearl jam record for a while, it's at least a decent ending point. but, if it's a transition into a string of late records, the next one might potentially be a legit return to form.

yeah, i'm most of the way through listen three, and the strong points are certainly very drastically overpowering the weak points. while i don't think it's as strong as organ music, this is a substantive release.

unfortunately, it seems like his label dropped him over it. welcome to late capitalism :\.

i wish i had checked this out earlier...but i suspect i'll check out again...

i will almost certainly give this a few more listens before i form a final opinion on it, but my first impression on the initial run through is that it's kind of a microcosm of spencer krug - there are high moments, but, overall, it's kind of bloated.

we'll see if that works itself out or if it cements itself.

actually, let's start with this for the night.

the piano record he did a few years ago tuned me out, although i expected to try again later sort of thing, and i didn't find my way to this when it was released. of his various projects, it is really only the moonface releases that i've founded interesting enough to bite into...

but, a concept record from the perspective of a minotaur? yeah, that's more along the lines of something i can get into. so, let me give this a good listen...

i find spencer krug to be exceedingly frustrating; i find 90% of what he does to be incredibly boring, and 3% of it to absolutely brilliant - like, top notch, cream of the crop brilliant. he's often touted as being "prolific", but i think the truth is that he releases too much crap.

once in a while, though...

i actually like this record quite a lot - it would be pretty high in my best of the 2010s list.

https://moonface.bandcamp.com/album/organ-music-not-vibraphone-like-id-hoped

i actually haven't listened to a new pearl jam record all the way through in quite a while. the self-titled avocado disc, which was 2006, was the last one i could get into.

this is certainly rather different, enough that i'm going to check it out tonight.

the youtube comments section is suggesting peter gabriel, or talking heads. what i actually hear is a gigantic nod to spencer krug.

i think we should get through the first wave before we start talking about a second wave. this is virology, not punk rock.

most of north america hasn't peaked yet. it's starting to pick up in mexico now, but remember that they have that low life expectancy card to play, and much lower levels of obesity as well. in the end, you should probably expect the mortality rate in mexico to actually be quite a bit lower for that reason. they're seeing it ramp up there now, though...

(actually, strangely, mexico is now the most obese country in the world. i should have checked that before posting; i thought it was obvious. but, no - they've recently even passed the united states as most obese country, flat out.

so, it could actually be relatively bad there, then, and you might see a mortality curve that it's actually skewed a little younger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_Mexico)

but, is a second wave inevitable?

it depends on if it substantively mutates.

that's what these historical waves are - different mutations.

so, it's not inevitable, no, and it really has little to do with government, except in the sense of the importance of actually tracking the thing. the only thing the government can really do to stop a second wave is to overtest as much as possible, and be ready to do extremely aggressive contact tracing if it finds a more vicious mutation.

but, if the thing stays relatively stable, or if we've already seen the most substantive mutations, then a second wave isn't likely at all.

the thing you really need to be worried about is how flu-like it really is, and the little bit of evidence i've seen suggests that it is recombining, and that this might make vaccines fleeting - they may need to be updated quite frequently. in that case, you're going to be looking at waves pretty much every year, and they're no longer waves but seasons. that's probably the most likely outcome, in the long run.

see, you think that we're here:

and you're worried about this coming up, in the future:

...but we're actually only here.

....meaning we have to get to vitalogy before this starts to slow down, still.

sorry.

i bet you do, don't you.

you're not the centre of the universe; this is about me - it's not about you.

i don't care about you.

at all.

sorry.

you fucking pig.

you revolt me.

this is absolutely retarded, and i take it that it's intended to be.

body hair is actually largely a vestigial trait, meaning we're evolving to have less hair and not more hair. look at a chimp and look at a human and take notes on the direction that facial hair is evolving. so, we don't need to ask why men evolved hair, we need to ask why they haven't gotten rid of it yet, or, more specifically, why men have been slower to lose their facial hair than women have been.

that means that a better question to ask is whether the fact that men still grow facial hair makes them less evolved than women, who have largely evolved past it. and, that is a question that likely has to do with sexual selection, rather than any sort of competition. the answer is basically "yes".

but, any question that starts with "why did men evolve beards?" is completely backwards. men did not evolve to have facial hair, they are in the process of losing it - and are clearly behind the curve in doing so.

https://www.newsweek.com/beards-may-have-evolved-protect-men-punches-face-1504294

ask any woman whether they think hair gives men an evolutionary advantage.

it's disgusting - women hate facial hair.

humans are a species with remarkably low levels of sexual dimorphism. this difference in body hair is not shared in other primates, either, who have much more similar levels of body hair across the sexes.

it could take a while for men to catch up to women in their loss of body hair, but we can be reasonably confident that men will eventually lose their beards, over time.

so, stop asking "why did we evolve to grow hair?". that is the wrong question, in every possible context.

the right question is always "why do we have less hair than our recent ancestors?".

and, in the context of sexual dimorphism, what we need to understand is why men are losing their hair at a slower rate than women are.

here's an interesting question.

is it possible that women were the hunters in early human society?

is that why they lost their hair more quickly?

yes you do.

i'm very slowly moving through that introduction to quantum physics lecture series (which is really a course in applied linear algebra, as i learned it in first year), and it keeps reminding me of this old demo i did with sean - which was the one & only rabit is wolf track that i did not remaster, remix or otherwise play with. it's the one and only track i was actually happy with...

i've tended to resist commenting on sean's vocals, because i think i'm sort of out of line doing so. there really was a total division of labour; he may have asked for an extra bar or two to work out a lyrical idea here and there, but he really had absolutely no musical training whatsoever, and i really had no interest in interfering with his expression. but, i keep thinking about this...

the way this track worked was that sean came in with a vocal idea for a song he wanted to call "released with your sigh", and i built the song up after he left, sending him a demo over...i can't remember if it was icq or msn. but, he came back about a week later and did the vocals for it in one take, and that was really the extent of it.

after listening to it, though, i insisted on naming the track "psi" - as the howl at the end was essentially a wavefunction collapse. in fact, i initially stylized it with the greek letter itself, ψ, but that didn't survive in a pre-mathml browser reality; what i just did to get that psi was very simple, but would have actually been very frustrating back in 2002. so, i just started calling it psi and it stuck....

he asked a few times, and i just told him it was a greek letter. i'd known him since we were kids, and was aware that his scientific literacy was very low. i think he tended to think i was naming it after something jungian, perhaps from a tool influence. but, it was more of a bowie-esque play on words.

so, this tune keeps coming up in my head, when i'm eating.

i'm working through this slowly because......the concepts are not new to me, but i have never taken a formal course in quantum physics like this before, and some of these concepts are things i've barely looked at in 20 years. the math is...it's weird. it really is. i think the weirdness has more to do with the geometry being wrong, but i will have more to say in due course. for now, i'm making sure i'm going over it well enough to really properly grasp it.

i would expect that future lecture series will be a little faster.

i think i know more about brahms via fawlty towers, frankly.

hey, i'm not actually an encylopedia. everybody has something to learn about...

brahms is actually a bit of a black hole for me, in the sense that i legitimately have heard very little of it. but, this is in the general style of dark, aggressive romantic music that i like, and would seem to have been a large influence on rachmaninov; perhaps the missing link between beethoven and rachmaninov was brahms, and just right in front of me all along, without me realizing it.

this was apparently an early piece, so, like the chopin piece, it may be more indebted to beethoven than later pieces are. if you had told me it was beethoven, i'd have believed you.

but, this is new exposure for me, so i'm going to hold off a bit. i at least like this, i can commit to that.

it's at the end of the month, but they've already cancelled it.

distorted viewpoint.

it's a known unknown. you don't know; don't pretend you do.

this wasn't that long ago, really.

that's one way to do it.

let's hope they do antibody testing while they're at it, and actually publish it. that's what i want to know...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-11/china-s-wuhan-sees-first-new-virus-cases-since-lockdown-lifted

so, this was this weekend, and is something i would have normally skipped over without much further analysis, but being that things are as they are....

in the west, prokofiev is known mostly for his ballets, so this is a little bit of a curve for me. i guess it's closer to something i could get into, but i find a lot of late romantic or neo-classical music to suffer from this same kind of aesthetic defect - it's like the composer has this brutal case of add, and just can't focus on a coherent idea. it's easy to spin that around on me "you're not following it", and to an extent that's fair, but who wants to follow a rambling, twenty minute long monopohonic movement that just fizzles out in the end? maybe it's the journey; maybe it's how you got there. but, i need some kind of process, some kind of counterpoint, some kind of something. just barfing a bunch of notes on to the page really isn't enough for me. the crescendo at the end doesn't save it, if it just pops up out of nowhere, and for no reason.

so, i kind of almost wish it was prancing russian unicorns. as it is, this just hits me as aimless and pointless, but that is a criticism that i would direct rather broadly at the style, which i wouldn't even really consider prokofiev to be a dominant representative of; if you were to attack this as being overly buttoned-up or tastelessly bourgeois, i'd say you'd largely be correct in your denunciation.

i actually have a longstanding hate-on for mozart as representative of everything wrong with the world; if i was going to ban a list of composers for being formulaic, mozart would be first on the list, but i'd rather denounce and criticize than actually ban. it's funny how often "he was just a kid, though" is used to gloss over the formulaic aspects of his writing. but, then you keep performing it. why?

as is generally the case with mozart, i really have no use for this - it sounds like engineering homework. it's not art...

this is a little more interesting, but it's kind of over before it starts, so while i'm at least not able to slam it for being aimless, i'm not really getting anything from it, either. i'd like to hear a longer piece from this composer that delves into a more romantic style use of dynamics, as is toyed at here, while banging out these scandinavian jazz riffs. so, it could go somewhere, or it could not. but, it's just a proof of concept, as it is.

and, i just learned that bill rieflin died...

jim.

jim....

i couldn't figure out what it was at first, but the new squarepusher disc is very steroid maximus.

scraping foetus off the atari...

"you think you're god because you have a robe and you can put people up the god damn river for 20 years? well you're not."

let's take this fucker down a notch.

that's right, "justice" corbett - you're getting dragged to federal court by a self-represented litigant that you decided you didn't want to take seriously.

i'll see you there.

so, i watched the planet of the humans this morning...

i didn't find this "documentary", if you want to even call it that, it was really more of a mash-up, to be particularly controversial, but i didn't find it very enlightening, either. it's really just the kind of empty trash you expect from the genre. while people like al gore and bill mckibben are really not defamable at this point, so this was relatively mild as far as these things go, i was also expecting it to focus more on a degrowth or depopulation agenda based on the reviews, and it really didn't; it made the classic discursive error of articulating a problem relatively well, without even really trying to present a solution. so, now what? and, if you just have crickets, then what was the point?

the film's thesis is something like this: the narrator was some kind of hippie from michigan that went up into the upper peninsula to live a thoreauvian existence, then, like thoreau, got jaded at the hypocrisy and ignorance underlying the movement defining what he did. so, now, he's lashing out at the ideology that led him astray, and the people he holds responsible for misleading him. also, we're all going to die if we don't smarten up. in the process, he ducks and weaves through all kinds of strawmen, some of which are more worthwhile to disassemble than others, without ever conceding the obvious point - sustainability implies moderation, by definition.

so, yes - if you had this idea that all we had to do was build millions of wind turbines and we'd be able to fly to the cottage on the weekends as offsets, then you weren't thinking clearly, but that has more to do with the underlying critique of capitalism than it does with anything about the environmental movement; he's certainly right to point out that there have been unrealistic expectations attached to green technology, but he's declining to point out that these critiques have been there all along, and that not many people bought into this as deeply as he seems to have.

i remember back in 2011, i met some kids at the occupy protest that wanted to go live in the woods, and were insistent on living "off the grid". they seemed to honestly think that burning wood was more sustainable, and wanted me to come with them. i couldn't believe what i was hearing; wood? no - that would be terrible. mass protest is about converting the grid, not avoiding it. but, all i got were blank stares, and i do believe they went out into the woods to live like nineteenth century colonists. let's hope they didn't shoot any indians.

as a lifelong environmentalist, myself, i've never had any desire to turn back the clocks, so i don't feel betrayed by the realization that it was a lie - i would have told you that in the first place. rather, we need to reduce energy by altering our lifestyle decisions, which means doing things like getting rid of family cars, and abolishing suburbs. i've never bought into the fantasy the narrator did; for as long as i can actually remember, i've been arguing that we need to change all of the things that the narrator thought we could keep. i'm consequently in broad agreement with the crux of the thing, even if it didn't provide me with any compelling insights.

the strawmans are consequently on both sides - he is presenting the environmental movement as promising things it has never promised, and he is presenting environmentalists as buying into promises that we've never really bought into. the critique may be valid if applied to himself, but that's just it - he should speak for himself, not pretend he's speaking for others. i know few activists that were as naive as he appears to have been.

so, yes - the future is going to need to be more efficient, but it's also going to need to utilize renewables as best as we can, and he shouldn't be suggesting otherwise. if all he really means to say is that solar panels are not a panacea and that wind turbines are not a magic bullet, then i'm hardly in disagreement with the basic point, even if i didn't feel it needed to be said. if all he meant to say was something like "there will be some place in the future for electric vehicles, but what we really need to do is get used to taking the subway" then that's a perfectly valid and reasonable position, even if he appears to be coming at it from a place of rather bizarre privilege that i'm having trouble relating to. but, we shouldn't move and shift in extremes - recognizing that solar panels are not a panacea does not rob them of all utility, and that's an error he seems to be leaning towards. he seems to want absolutes, extremes, certainties - and i guess maybe the section with the psychologist is him realizing that. he thinks like a fundamentalist; he's an extremist. we're not all like that, most of us can think dialectically, and will support moderate and pragmatic policy options.

the last thing i want to draw some attention to is degrowth, because we're kind of stuck in this; the film avoids the topic, but it leans there, so it's the inevitable next point, and i suspect there's been plenty of googling done...

if the argument is something like "we'd better drastically change our way of existing, or we're all going to die", where does degrowth leave us? these proposals would cut our population down to a few million. and, what happens to all these billons of people?

well, they die. which is what you were trying to prevent....? no?

i'm all for condoms and abortion on demand and all the other things we can do to try to reduce the growth rate, but be careful with these macabre degrowth types, who flirt with nazi implementation schemes that would wipe out 90% of us. you surely don't think you'd be chosen do you?

the reality is that growth rates in the advanced nations are slowing, or declining. the pen, here, is mightier than the sword; the best way to reduce the population is to eradicate poverty.

https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2013/11/this-is-horribly-morbid.html

i got distracted this morning by some censorship on facebook.

it was back in late february or early march that facebook decided to put a "cover" over this album art, which i found to be an unacceptable restriction of speech:

their argument was that they'd decided this had "graphic or violent content" and people should decide whether they wanted to look at it.

but, how can people make a choice to decide if they want to see something if they haven't seen it? it's incoherent, circular logic. you have to see something before you decide you don't like it. so, this decision is not being made by individual people, but rather by facebook.

the value of this picture, as art, is that it is disturbing.

what is it even of? this crocodillian ate some human, and is being cut open to identify the body. that's a fact of life, as human predation is a real concern in much of the world where humans co-exist with this species. facebook's decision to cover up the picture is equivalent to a denial of reality, which they're then using to censor the art - which is the feeling of discomfort that you get from looking at this, as a reminder that your humanity is rooted in the fact that you are an animal.

do i think you have the right to avoid that? no...

you might disagree with it, but you cannot be allowed to tell me to cover up.

so, i got into a posting war with facebook over it, and they seem to have conceded the point, but only on my main profile. as i went through the music profile, i realized i'd have to repost several posts that made use of the picture, which meant i'd have to scroll through hundreds of posts....

i then forced myself to sleep this afternoon, which took a few tries - which is a good sign. when i am healthy, i have difficulty sleeping. i thrive on insomnia; bring it on.

i need to finish up what i was doing this morning, before i put the completed master document aside to do dishes and get something to eat.

also, to close the thought on this this post-rock band from boston...

i mentioned that it sounded more like an inversion of post-rock influenced punk and was more in the lineage of deftones, and then pointed out that i hadn't heard their previous records.

i have now heard their previous records, and they're pretty generic post-rock. ergh.

there's clearly a big pivot here on this record, and we'll see where it takes them, but i was actually expecting the opposite and am kind of taken off guard by the truth of it. i'm not sure how exciting a show would have been.

so, i'm scratching this one off the list, as well, meaning....

....might i have stayed inside all may, anyways?

https://harborlightsma.bandcamp.com/album/isolation-ritual

to close up a loose thread, i think i can finally present a thorough opinion of bent knee.

the music is not flashy, but it's very ornate; you can tell that they're a bunch of music grads, for better or worse, whether they're going into interludes right out of debussy, or ripping hard on the cardiacs. but, as mentioned previously, the band is primarily the vehicle for the singer, who is operating very firmly in a soul-influenced singer/songwriter context. for me, it was somewhat of a process to orient myself properly to this, as i don't normally listen to this type of music. once you get your head into it, though, what's revealed is a lot of density in the writing that's maybe more in the paradigm of a trent reznor or a peter gabriel (or perhaps a ryan lott) than anything else, which i'm realizing just right this minute is kind of fleeting, nowadays.

the discography is actually pretty diverse, but also fairly uneven. after what i'd argue is a fairly weak first record, they seem to have hit a high point on their second disc, which i'm increasingly wondering if i had maybe actually come into contact with before. the third disc is frontloaded, before exploring east asian music on the second half in a way that doesn't always sound genuine, even if it clarifies some of the debussy drops on the second disc. their fourth record is a lot poppier in ways that don't always work out, whereas their fifth is more riff-oriented, without being more compelling. while there are moments on the third, fourth and fifth records, i would really only see myself coming back to the second one.

so, would this have been worth seeing live? i might have wanted to go on an adventure to ann arbor, and it might have been a good excuse to do it. but, i would have liked them better a few years ago, i think.

this one is legitimately worth checking out:
https://bentknee.bandcamp.com/album/shiny-eyed-babies

i can be fairly sure that this dvorak concerto wouldn't be in the short list. dvorak is somewhere between brutal chromaticism and schmaltzy classical music, in a way that has rarely excited me, even if i suspect there's a few pieces out there of his that i'd really like, and haven't found, yet. so, i tend to keep trying, but it never works out...

this piece, however, reminds me a lot of this one:

enough to wonder.

certainly, that is the kind of thing i'd like to hear from dvorak. if you want to help, you know my email address.

a word of caution: you need to be careful with this. i've heard far too many versions of this that play like it's some kind of hymn; doing this right requires so much tension that your blood vessels should be bursting, on the spot.

you get the release in the end, trust me - it's the second movement, which is so much less without the banging start.

this is the version i'm most familiar with:

nice music is so much nicer as release, isn't it?

i have a hard time with the medium of film, in general.

tv. movies. i just don't.....

tell him to write me a book, instead.

i've actually never seen a michael moore film.

if you were curious.