where am i on the filing?

i have done an extra thorough run through the first 10 releases, inri000-inri009, which is also the first blu-ray disc. that leaves inri010-inri074, and the tracks i'm currently working on.

i was hoping that i could sync as i was working, but it hasn't worked out. on second thought, inri004 does not sound right and i've left it unpublished. given that it took a few tries before i could set inri002 right, and something seemed to click, i decided to re-upload inri000, inri001 & inri003. i have also reuploaded inri004 yet again and am hoping it stays in place, this time.

inri004 is a lot of things - it's industrial hip-hop, it's melodic hardcare, it's shoegaze, it's blues and it's even a bit of country. it's an experimental electronic noise piece and a grunge/alternative/punk rock song at the same time. so, it's all over the place. but, if there's somebody messing with it, they're misreading it - it's not supposed to be a dancehall thumper, and it's not supposed to sound like somebody put it through a meat  grinder. it's really pretty wysiwyg - it's a punk song with a drum machine. and it has sparkly, pretty guitars - not angry, mean ones.

i don't know why anybody would imagine they could actualize my art better than i could, but the mentality underlying it is turning it into a factory process. it is effectively co-opting my art, and destroying it by turning it into a commodity. in place of unique, individual expression is substituted a set of algorithms designed to maximize market appeal. and, i neither have any interest in it nor any time for it.

i don't want to play stupid games regarding my expression.

i expect that the files i upload will not be further altered. 

and, that is all.

i also re-uploaded inri004 to be sure, and i think it sounds ok.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/fuck-the-dead

again: i actually don't want the exaggerated boom, here. if you want to crank the bass on your system, it's there - go for it. but, for me, this is melodic hardcore first, and experimental hip-hop second. the interesting part of the track is the harmonic interplay between the guitars and the white noise. so, you want to just crank it to get that fuzzy guitar blaring at you. and, you'll notice that the bass actually comes up with the volume, when you do.

no, really.

i reuploaded inri003 the other day, just to make sure the files weren't corrupted.

these are the unedited mixes from 1997. well, almost unedited - i had to convert them all to stereo. i still have the mono mp3s from 1997.

they're mono because the samples i used were mono. in fact, they're like 56 kbps, because the samples were like 56 kbps.

so, this should sound kind of flat and dead, and it does. with the the first three recordings (the two demos and the inricycled), the sound should be trebly and sparkly and bright, partly intentionally and partly due to the fact that i was a 15-16 year old kid that was learning how to use the gear. it's important that the packages maintain that naivete, so we can't have fancy bass transforms running over it. it broadly doesn't sound that bad. this recording, inri003, is my first experiment with digital anything, and has to maintain the telephone speaker or am radio quality, even though i've long upsampled it.

it sounds ok to me. but, if you notice a dramatic increase in sound quality, please contact me. that would not be right - this is a document of a collection of primitive experiments, was isolated and released that way for that reason and needs to maintain a glitchy, low sound quality aesthetic.

the remasters for inri015 and inri021, where most of these end up, are a little thicker sounding. 

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

alright.

i've listened to inri002 streaming from the server, and i can hear that it is good. for now. whatever was fucking with the mix has lifted.

i can't sit here and police the files 24/7, but if it was the conscious result of some external actor, they have withdrawn, for now. i can only hope it was via the persuasiveness of my oratorical prowess. as i yell at the microphone in the walls...

please leave these files alone.

and, please don't mess with anything else, either.

moving on...

it always makes me laugh when people try to associate being a rock star with heterosexual male prowess.

you realize that 80% of the actually interesting rock singers since 1965 have been exclusively or primarily gay, right? 

the other 20% were mostly skinny, nerdy losers that probably didn't have much difficulty finding sex because they were rich, but are hardly sex symbols.

the sexually attractive heterosexual male rock star is actually somewhat of a unicorn, in truth.

listen - i'm struggling to make sense of my experiences.

i'm grasping at absurdities. but, i seem to be being presented with them, fairly consistently.

i mean, if i am dealing with a fucker at the mixing desk - however ridiculous that idea is - i should have made my disdain beyond clear, by now. any misguided attempts to "help" should have been realized as absurd quite some time ago.

ok, i don't want to jinx it, but i did just get through the inri000 section of inri002 without it defaulting to the bass boost, while published.

i can only hope it stays stable...

nope.

it reverted to the incorrect, corrupted, high-bass version. again.

i'll have to keep it unpublished for a while still, it seems.

i hope i don't have to unpublish other albums, as well.

nope.

it reverted to the incorrect, corrupted, high-bass version. again.

i'll have to keep it unpublished for a while still, it seems.

i hope i don't have to unpublish other albums, as well.

maybe, i psyched the fucker at the mixing desk out, because i just republished it, and it sounds correct in the sweet spot, now.

yeah, right now it's consistent - it sounds correctly when i unpublish it, and sound incorrectly when i republish it.

so, we'll keep it unpublished for now, and move on.

...and, it went back to normal as soon as i unpublished it.

ugh.

see, it went back to the incorrect bassy version after i posted that.

i've unpublished it in protest.

so, this is inri002, updated (again) to remove any sound corruption, and let's hope it stays that way:

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

i've tested this one, and in fact re-uploaded it repeatedly, and the results are sort of confusing. it sounded wrong, until i downloaded it, and then it sounded correct. but, then it sounded wrong, again. and then it sounded right again after i started typing up this complaint, and then wrong again when i started focusing on filing. it's almost as though they were waiting for me to actually download it for the a/b, and then reverted once i called them on their bluff, and then reverted again once they thought i'd stopped watching, then back again, and then back again. and, that means what, exactly? that they're playing stupid games?

fuck.

i'm not disturbing this by measuring it - it shouldn't change under observation. that's not quantum theory, it's just silly woo.

so, it keeps modulating between a higher volume, "higher gain" version that boosts the mids (the correct version) and a more compressed sounding, incorrect version that wants to boost the bottom, instead. i seem to be able to get the correct version by refreshing, sometimes, but it seems to default to the incorrect version, over and over. 

but these are imprecise human observations. the math is that it nulls.

what else can i say?

i've hypothesized before that i'm actually hearing an echo from a background listener that is cutting in and out on the line. the sum of it is that the bass gets boosted, but it could be the effect of a reverb feedback loop - and that's what you'd expect. so, for example, try putting a guitar through a delay effect and then feeding it back through an amp - it builds up very fast on the low end. so, i'm complaining that the bass is too loud and i can't hear the highs on the guitars, but maybe i'm actually hearing the feedback from the cops.

i dunno. i know it comes and goes, and i know i don't get it.

but, these files null, so what else can i say? it is possible to hear them correctly. i've made my displeasure clear, on the case that they're being altered. if i'm dealing with a malicious actor that insists on altering the files despite repeated instructions not to, what can i do besides point it out and demand otherwise? and, if i'm dealing with the technical consequences of internet streaming, what can i do?

i'm necessarily streaming this on the chromebook, so i can't disconnect. that's the point.

*sigh*

it nulls.

i wish i could upload some kind of signature file somewhere and get people to download it.

so, i've been spending the last several days trying to win a stupid argument about artistic freedom by overpowering whatever's going on via sheer will power, and i really don't know how long it'll hold for. but, it sounds ok right this minute.

there's four possibilities:

1) somebody is messing with the bass response at the server level, and my control over it is minimal. it comes back and forth with no real pattern.

2) i'm hearing interference from the cops.

3) it's compression introduced by the server, and i'm unusually sensitive to it, given that it's my own mixes.

4) subtle differences in the volume on playback are messing with my head.

re: (4), i'm used to listening to this with the volume cranked - while mastering, on my mp3 player, on my home system, etc. but, it actually sounds much better from bandcamp when it's run at a slightly lower level. it could be that some kind of normalization algorithm at the site (they may insist on boosting the volume before they convert to low quality mp3s for streaming) is essentially distorting the output at high volume, and i just need to turn it down to compensate (and maybe run it through an external amplifier if i need more volume). the quality of the dac in this chromebook is no doubt not helping much, although it does sound fine at a lower level. 

as it is, i've found a sort of "sweet spot" and i hope to exploit it. if it keeps breaking in the same way, though...