this is a brand new (jan, 2014) construction to replace the previous one, making it the third incarnation. and, if we accept dialectical reasoning, we can conclude it's a final outcome - unless it converts itself into another track altogether.
the thesis here was a fully produced version that included vocals. the antithesis was a minimal version that stripped out most of the production along with the lyrics. this synthesis brings the production back in while leaving the vocals out. i've tried to author my additions while keeping in mind the aesthetic ideals i was attached to in the period. that is to say that while this is a new mix, it belongs to the time the track was created - mid 2000. no new recorded sound has been added.
thesis (vocal mix), antithesis (2004 mix) and an early mix (inristart), as well as a completely different construction of the track, are available here, with write-ups:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ignorance-is-bliss
i'm just going to talk a little about the specific changes in the 2014 mix. first, i've brought the introductory guitar solo back in, but extended it by reflecting it across the y axis. a backwards solo now follows the first solo. the reason i left it out was that it was written to segue into the vocals. that is to say that when the guitar part ended, the vocals began, and the track carried forward momentum through because of that. removing the vocals left the guitar part as a sort of bridge to nowhere. the extension by means of reflection resolves that issue of continuity, and reintegrates what was an interesting moment in the initial track.
the story around the bass part is sort of funny. the vocal mix actually contains what was a replacement bass part. it's a more playful part. yet, when i wanted to remove the vocals, i was forced to revert to the initial part. at the time, i decided that accepting the less interesting bass part was a valid trade-off for removing the bass. well, why not have two bass parts?
the vocal version also had a funk guitar part that was written to play off against the second bass part. this funk guitar part didn't make sense when contrasted against the initial bass part. yet, as i'm bringing in the second bass part, i can also bring in the funk guitar part.
there were two thunder claps in the vocal version that were inserted as sound effects - the thunder claps when the narrator opens an umbrella. while the first is nonsensical without the vocals, the second has been readded for dramatic effect.
lastly, i had a sequenced "ukelele" part running through the track. well, it's a sampler set up to a ukelele fret board. meaning it's triggering samples based on ukelele chord shapes. this is early 2000, way before that shit was trendy. nor has it ever been trendy in the context of being triggered by a computer. i digress...
it ran all the way through the vocal version, and, in hindsight, i don't know why. the minimal version is superior to the vocal version in this respect; the power of the drum machine drilling away underneath the interstellar synth parts is lost when clouded up by a bunch of goofy ukelele trills. instead, i've targeted the ukelele part to two specific sections: right after the first guitar solo, and leading up to the final swell before the fade.
these are the changes i've made in 2014, all of them with the intent to capture the entirety of the track as it was initially written.
as for the track itself, it's almost indescribable except to point out it's really psychedelic and really electronic and really epic.
created in the spring and summer of 2000. reconstructed in 2004 and again in 2014. final construction is dated to jan 13, 2014.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/ignorance-is-bliss
Monday, January 13, 2014
i'm wondering if people could think for a second if they might have a copy of a cd cover art program from the windows 9x period called "adaptec easy cd creator 3". they packaged it free with cd-burners in the late 90s. unfortunately, it was later purchased by roxio, and they were absolute jerks about maintaining backwards functionality. cl3 files will not open with new versions of roxio, not even version 4. only version 3. the internet isn't throwing a file back at me, so if anybody could iso one up and email it to me...
mixing records only has one rule: do not mix while inebriated. your ears are not trustworthy when baked. i repeat: your ears are not trustworthy when baked.
i am arrogantly flaunting this rule.
i can provide a reasoned argument.
i'm not just empty rebellion. such accusations are premature, hear me out!
see, while the rule is a reasonable rule of thumb, there are circumstances where music is meant to be consumed baked. under such circumstances, mixing should be done baked to capture the blur properly.
jess 1, rules 0.
of course, i made that rule up, and i am the only person under it's authority, so my assertion of sovereignty is somewhat trivial.
nonetheless, i am flaunting my own convention and will not be persuaded from it.
i am arrogantly flaunting this rule.
i can provide a reasoned argument.
i'm not just empty rebellion. such accusations are premature, hear me out!
see, while the rule is a reasonable rule of thumb, there are circumstances where music is meant to be consumed baked. under such circumstances, mixing should be done baked to capture the blur properly.
jess 1, rules 0.
of course, i made that rule up, and i am the only person under it's authority, so my assertion of sovereignty is somewhat trivial.
nonetheless, i am flaunting my own convention and will not be persuaded from it.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
i'm kind of laughing to myself. i've been getting upwards of 50 plays a day for a few weeks running now, and almost nobody ever makes it to the end of a track. i'm obviously not attracting the right kind of listener; these are things one needs to listen in *album length* chunks to get a full grasp of. i need to attract the kind of listener that makes it through to track 5 before they even begin to form an opinion. yet, such an audience may belong to more sophisticated times. that doesn't mean i can't have fun with the metrics.
it's almost like getting through one of these records or eps is like running a marathon, and all these weaklings that are getting to the page can't even get through a single track. which just makes me seem unfair, really. why create such a grueling track, you fucking masochistic lunatic!?!1! how am i supposed to make it through this? huh?
it's more of a disinterested creator than a masochistic one. reactions are largely meaningless to me. except maybe to laugh at how torturous an experience some of this must be when taken out of context by somebody looking for something conventional. i can imagine the horrified reaction, followed by the "skip button", which seems to dominate the play ratios. that's comedy gold to me.
it'd be nice if i could attract the right listener, though. i don't even mean in terms of enjoyment (an "audience"), but even just as having the approach of habitually listening to a few tracks sequentially when browsing. as a consumer, there's a lot of things i would have missed out on had i judged so quickly.
over the last month, ~45% of listeners have skipped the track before 0:30, indicating that they had no intention of listening to a new piece of music in the first place. ~52% have made it longer than that, but weren't able to complete the song. so, more than half tried, at least. yet, only 3.5% of listeners have been able to actually scale one of these epic peaks.
that's ok, i like the inaccessibility of it. but if i could get less of those people that will give up after 0:30...
i just don't get it...
it's almost like getting through one of these records or eps is like running a marathon, and all these weaklings that are getting to the page can't even get through a single track. which just makes me seem unfair, really. why create such a grueling track, you fucking masochistic lunatic!?!1! how am i supposed to make it through this? huh?
it's more of a disinterested creator than a masochistic one. reactions are largely meaningless to me. except maybe to laugh at how torturous an experience some of this must be when taken out of context by somebody looking for something conventional. i can imagine the horrified reaction, followed by the "skip button", which seems to dominate the play ratios. that's comedy gold to me.
it'd be nice if i could attract the right listener, though. i don't even mean in terms of enjoyment (an "audience"), but even just as having the approach of habitually listening to a few tracks sequentially when browsing. as a consumer, there's a lot of things i would have missed out on had i judged so quickly.
over the last month, ~45% of listeners have skipped the track before 0:30, indicating that they had no intention of listening to a new piece of music in the first place. ~52% have made it longer than that, but weren't able to complete the song. so, more than half tried, at least. yet, only 3.5% of listeners have been able to actually scale one of these epic peaks.
that's ok, i like the inaccessibility of it. but if i could get less of those people that will give up after 0:30...
i just don't get it...
publishing ignorance is bliss (inri038)
the third of what will be four eps of material cycling around the deny everything lp, this is definitely a pretty heavy listen. as i tend to do, i've mixed some weird styles together here. electro-goth-grunge? noise-hop? industrial blues? ambient post-punk? i dunno. it's not easily describable, and i aim for that. as a piece of electronic music, it's pretty neat. let's leave it at that. three times in a row with subtle variations is going to require an interest in the topic. but, i demand some grit from my listeners; i expect that, in turn, from the musicians i admire.
so, have some fun tripping out into this. or don't. whatever.
--
this is a collection of versions of a track that was important to me around the turn of the century: three electronic versions and an electric folk version that i often played as a sort of a drunken party trick. the three electronic versions are arranged in decreasing complexity, and the electric folk version is at the end.
it's sort of about me, and sort of about my dad, and sort of about caricatures. we never had a dog drown, and i simply have no knowledge of the dynamics of my parents' sexual relationship. that's just an old country song. yet, there were a lot of stressful problems in both his work and family life, and that was being pointed to as a cause of his heart problems.
in hindsight, i'd tend to lean more towards genetics than stress. of course, that's something i have an interest in understanding further as i age. at the time, though, the focus was all about reducing the amount of stress he was dealing with.
i really just sort of didn't get it. i still don't *really* get it. stressed? well, chill out then. spark one up. put on a tune. it's maybe not as easy as snapping a finger, but it has to be about a general philosophy of life. see, i guess i place a lot less faith in the idea of free will than most people do - and my father, being a rush fan, and don't get me started on that travesty, put far more faith in it. when one is absolutely convinced that their entire life is determined by the choices they make, including the ones they don't make, it produces a lot of pressure to make or not make the right choices. meaning? he did it to himself - his atlas never shrugged.
ultimately, universe gonna hate. your so-called free will is doomed to be crushed in a wave of stochastics. the universe is a random, chaotic place defined by poorly understood probabilities. so, why bother concerning yourself so deeply with the consequences of your actions in this pointless existence, to the point that it might cut that existence short? it was the idea of him driving himself to cardiac arrest that pissed me off. you could be hit by an asteroid in your sleep. you could spontaneously combust. you could even wake up one day to find that aliens have landed and are taking over the world using robot gunships. once you get *that*, trying to fight for control seems pointless. embrace the random, and spiral out....
or, so, the debate went. i wasn't really comfortable writing a song *about* my old man, so i took a fictional first-person perspective and went to town with it a bit.
the vocals have come in and out of the track, but in the end they became attached solely to the electric folk version, leaving the electronic version solely as a piece of music.
the cover art bitmap is one of the files i put through coagula to produce sound out of light. inristart was a working title for the piece.
written and recorded, 1999-2001. track 2 was reconstructed out of existing sound in june, 2004. sequenced as is in jan, 2014. as always, please use headphones.
credits:
j - guitars, effects, bass, synthesizers, sequencing, drum programming, vocals, vocoders, sound design, sampling, digital wave editing, production
released july 11, 2000
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ignorance-is-bliss
1) this was the meta mix: recorded from may to july, 2000 and included on the original deny everything demo. it's also the most produced mix, in the sense that it utilizes a number of electronic and guitar based sound effects that were dropped from the final mix. note also that the bass part is different and arguably better, if slightly out of sync.
i should point out, in the context of streaming it from this site, that it starts about 15 seconds in. this was a conscious thing that was designed to startle the listener. you're supposed to listen to the first fifteen seconds, adjust your volume, scratch your head, etc - and then jump a foot in the air when it actually comes on and scares the fuck out of you. even if you know it's coming, the suddenness is still jarring.
2) i've held to this version since june, 2004 but i'm going to update it for inclusion in deny everything, yet again. the fun part of being an unknown composer is that you can modify your works at a whim. well, known composers have done that, too. fuck the rock era. fuck rock stars.
it contains more of the track than the "original" inristart may, 2000 version but less of the track than the abandoned vocal mix (july, 2000).
the sections that were abandoned for this mix were largely overflows of the vocal version. for example, a short guitar solo was ignored because it seemed pointlessly indulgent and empty without it being an introduction to the vocals. there's also a sequenced "ukulele" part that ran through the vocal version that was discarded; it was a vocal accompaniment (in a way that may bring to mind lady in satin, or perhaps vespertine) that seemed to just appear out of nowhere. a thunder crack only made sense relative to the lyrics. a noise-funk guitar part was meant to work with the bass part and no longer did.
i was also in a more minimalist frame of mind back in '04 when i put it together. today, though, i want to bring in more of the vocal version. this version just feels half done.
this differs from the inristart version only in the addition of a lead guitar part that bridges the first and middle sections and a subtle feedback swell around twelve minutes in. these, however, are substantial differences that i feel are worth maintaining in their own mix.
the 2004 date seems anachronistic, but all the parts were recorded in the spring and early summer of 2000.
3) this is the oldest version i have and formed the basis of the final version.
4) this was never meant to be recorded like this, only played live, usually drunk, but a friend of mine talked me into recording it for inclusion in a radio rock project we were hatching up. well, he was hatching up. i didn't really have much of an artistic investment in it, i just agreed to play bass, because my friend needed a bassist more than any other reason. he wanted this to be a "hidden song". i obliged.
however, he was a little taken aback by the result. he wanted it to be twangy and country, which indicated a misunderstanding of the content. it's comical on a surreal level, but it's not a cheap comedy skit. his ideas would have devalued it and that sort of pissed me off; my refusal to redo it pissed him off. this was part of the reason that the project never went anywhere, except to spark rabit is wolf:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/rabit-iz-wolf
this recording did not happen until mid 2001, but i was playing it at parties months before that. it's only very slightly anachronistic to attach it to here; the conceptual unity overpowers.
so, have some fun tripping out into this. or don't. whatever.
--
this is a collection of versions of a track that was important to me around the turn of the century: three electronic versions and an electric folk version that i often played as a sort of a drunken party trick. the three electronic versions are arranged in decreasing complexity, and the electric folk version is at the end.
it's sort of about me, and sort of about my dad, and sort of about caricatures. we never had a dog drown, and i simply have no knowledge of the dynamics of my parents' sexual relationship. that's just an old country song. yet, there were a lot of stressful problems in both his work and family life, and that was being pointed to as a cause of his heart problems.
in hindsight, i'd tend to lean more towards genetics than stress. of course, that's something i have an interest in understanding further as i age. at the time, though, the focus was all about reducing the amount of stress he was dealing with.
i really just sort of didn't get it. i still don't *really* get it. stressed? well, chill out then. spark one up. put on a tune. it's maybe not as easy as snapping a finger, but it has to be about a general philosophy of life. see, i guess i place a lot less faith in the idea of free will than most people do - and my father, being a rush fan, and don't get me started on that travesty, put far more faith in it. when one is absolutely convinced that their entire life is determined by the choices they make, including the ones they don't make, it produces a lot of pressure to make or not make the right choices. meaning? he did it to himself - his atlas never shrugged.
ultimately, universe gonna hate. your so-called free will is doomed to be crushed in a wave of stochastics. the universe is a random, chaotic place defined by poorly understood probabilities. so, why bother concerning yourself so deeply with the consequences of your actions in this pointless existence, to the point that it might cut that existence short? it was the idea of him driving himself to cardiac arrest that pissed me off. you could be hit by an asteroid in your sleep. you could spontaneously combust. you could even wake up one day to find that aliens have landed and are taking over the world using robot gunships. once you get *that*, trying to fight for control seems pointless. embrace the random, and spiral out....
or, so, the debate went. i wasn't really comfortable writing a song *about* my old man, so i took a fictional first-person perspective and went to town with it a bit.
the vocals have come in and out of the track, but in the end they became attached solely to the electric folk version, leaving the electronic version solely as a piece of music.
the cover art bitmap is one of the files i put through coagula to produce sound out of light. inristart was a working title for the piece.
written and recorded, 1999-2001. track 2 was reconstructed out of existing sound in june, 2004. sequenced as is in jan, 2014. as always, please use headphones.
credits:
j - guitars, effects, bass, synthesizers, sequencing, drum programming, vocals, vocoders, sound design, sampling, digital wave editing, production
released july 11, 2000
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ignorance-is-bliss
1) this was the meta mix: recorded from may to july, 2000 and included on the original deny everything demo. it's also the most produced mix, in the sense that it utilizes a number of electronic and guitar based sound effects that were dropped from the final mix. note also that the bass part is different and arguably better, if slightly out of sync.
i should point out, in the context of streaming it from this site, that it starts about 15 seconds in. this was a conscious thing that was designed to startle the listener. you're supposed to listen to the first fifteen seconds, adjust your volume, scratch your head, etc - and then jump a foot in the air when it actually comes on and scares the fuck out of you. even if you know it's coming, the suddenness is still jarring.
2) i've held to this version since june, 2004 but i'm going to update it for inclusion in deny everything, yet again. the fun part of being an unknown composer is that you can modify your works at a whim. well, known composers have done that, too. fuck the rock era. fuck rock stars.
it contains more of the track than the "original" inristart may, 2000 version but less of the track than the abandoned vocal mix (july, 2000).
the sections that were abandoned for this mix were largely overflows of the vocal version. for example, a short guitar solo was ignored because it seemed pointlessly indulgent and empty without it being an introduction to the vocals. there's also a sequenced "ukulele" part that ran through the vocal version that was discarded; it was a vocal accompaniment (in a way that may bring to mind lady in satin, or perhaps vespertine) that seemed to just appear out of nowhere. a thunder crack only made sense relative to the lyrics. a noise-funk guitar part was meant to work with the bass part and no longer did.
i was also in a more minimalist frame of mind back in '04 when i put it together. today, though, i want to bring in more of the vocal version. this version just feels half done.
this differs from the inristart version only in the addition of a lead guitar part that bridges the first and middle sections and a subtle feedback swell around twelve minutes in. these, however, are substantial differences that i feel are worth maintaining in their own mix.
the 2004 date seems anachronistic, but all the parts were recorded in the spring and early summer of 2000.
3) this is the oldest version i have and formed the basis of the final version.
4) this was never meant to be recorded like this, only played live, usually drunk, but a friend of mine talked me into recording it for inclusion in a radio rock project we were hatching up. well, he was hatching up. i didn't really have much of an artistic investment in it, i just agreed to play bass, because my friend needed a bassist more than any other reason. he wanted this to be a "hidden song". i obliged.
however, he was a little taken aback by the result. he wanted it to be twangy and country, which indicated a misunderstanding of the content. it's comical on a surreal level, but it's not a cheap comedy skit. his ideas would have devalued it and that sort of pissed me off; my refusal to redo it pissed him off. this was part of the reason that the project never went anywhere, except to spark rabit is wolf:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/rabit-iz-wolf
this recording did not happen until mid 2001, but i was playing it at parties months before that. it's only very slightly anachronistic to attach it to here; the conceptual unity overpowers.
Jessica Amber Murray
ok, i responded
mom
K...I'm off the phone with her now. How are you?
Jessica Amber Murray
i'm ok. was fighting with my hard drive, but it seems to have resolved itself for now at least. i don't know what happened, really. it's not doing the things that hard drives do when they die, leading me to believe it's not really dead, just had a hiccup.
mom
Mine is working good for awhile and then makes very loud noises as well....I took it into apple and they said it was an old dinosaur and they could not service it...told me to just back my stuff up and continue to use it...They tested my fan activity and said my fans were running right....Not sure what it is all about...I am just using it and hoping for the best.
Jessica Amber Murray
yeah, i still think it sounds like your drive. i think i may have actually accidentally zapped mine with a jolt of static electricity, because the plates aren't misbehaving. which means it could be fine or could be waiting to implode. but the guy is right - back your data up. it's a shame they won't just put a new drive in it. that's kind of jerky.
mom
Well, there is another place...The Mac Group, where I bought it from in the first place that I could bring it into and I think they would actually service it. I only have pics on it...I did put them onto a couple of usb sticks.
Jessica Amber Murray
well, if your drive is dying, you're either going to need a new drive or a new laptop. the electronics industry is so wasteful. people just buy new computers when a part breaks, it's craziness, really.
mom
It seems such a waste...I have so much space on mine...I have hardly used any at all...Do you think it just needs a good cleaning?
I did pull out some dust and crap with some extra long tweezers that I have and it did seem to work better after that.
The stuff that I could see.
Jessica Amber Murray
well, did the guys at the store say it was the drive? if it's the drive, you can't clean it. drives whir like that because they're off balance. your hard drive is sort of like a record player. it spins around and around. now, imagine a record player that wobbles. that's the clicking sound. ....if it's your drive. ultimately, it's a mechanical device, and it will break, eventually. like i said before: i've never actually seen a fan break like that. i can see how it's theoretically possible, but if that's what's going on it's the first time i've ever actually heard of it. more likely is that if your fan is misbehaving then it's getting jolted by a misbehaving power supply (power surges, basically).
mom
The guy just didn't know...He said the fans had the right whatever they are(I forget what they are?)...Could there be dust and dirt collected on them at all?
I pulled out a whole wad of crap...dusty piles of fibers or something from some of my fuzzy blankets or something...there was even some dried old tobacco that was attached as well.
Jessica Amber Murray
well, sure, they could collect crap, but i couldn't see it creating that kind of clicking. but, i mean, it seems possible in the abstract. 98% of the time, though, when a laptop clicks and whirs, it's the drive.
mom
Well... I guess eventually I will be looking at buying a new one then...Unless, I bring it into the mac group and see what they may do.
ok, i responded
mom
K...I'm off the phone with her now. How are you?
Jessica Amber Murray
i'm ok. was fighting with my hard drive, but it seems to have resolved itself for now at least. i don't know what happened, really. it's not doing the things that hard drives do when they die, leading me to believe it's not really dead, just had a hiccup.
mom
Mine is working good for awhile and then makes very loud noises as well....I took it into apple and they said it was an old dinosaur and they could not service it...told me to just back my stuff up and continue to use it...They tested my fan activity and said my fans were running right....Not sure what it is all about...I am just using it and hoping for the best.
Jessica Amber Murray
yeah, i still think it sounds like your drive. i think i may have actually accidentally zapped mine with a jolt of static electricity, because the plates aren't misbehaving. which means it could be fine or could be waiting to implode. but the guy is right - back your data up. it's a shame they won't just put a new drive in it. that's kind of jerky.
mom
Well, there is another place...The Mac Group, where I bought it from in the first place that I could bring it into and I think they would actually service it. I only have pics on it...I did put them onto a couple of usb sticks.
Jessica Amber Murray
well, if your drive is dying, you're either going to need a new drive or a new laptop. the electronics industry is so wasteful. people just buy new computers when a part breaks, it's craziness, really.
mom
It seems such a waste...I have so much space on mine...I have hardly used any at all...Do you think it just needs a good cleaning?
I did pull out some dust and crap with some extra long tweezers that I have and it did seem to work better after that.
The stuff that I could see.
Jessica Amber Murray
well, did the guys at the store say it was the drive? if it's the drive, you can't clean it. drives whir like that because they're off balance. your hard drive is sort of like a record player. it spins around and around. now, imagine a record player that wobbles. that's the clicking sound. ....if it's your drive. ultimately, it's a mechanical device, and it will break, eventually. like i said before: i've never actually seen a fan break like that. i can see how it's theoretically possible, but if that's what's going on it's the first time i've ever actually heard of it. more likely is that if your fan is misbehaving then it's getting jolted by a misbehaving power supply (power surges, basically).
mom
The guy just didn't know...He said the fans had the right whatever they are(I forget what they are?)...Could there be dust and dirt collected on them at all?
I pulled out a whole wad of crap...dusty piles of fibers or something from some of my fuzzy blankets or something...there was even some dried old tobacco that was attached as well.
Jessica Amber Murray
well, sure, they could collect crap, but i couldn't see it creating that kind of clicking. but, i mean, it seems possible in the abstract. 98% of the time, though, when a laptop clicks and whirs, it's the drive.
mom
Well... I guess eventually I will be looking at buying a new one then...Unless, I bring it into the mac group and see what they may do.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
re:
from: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: grandmother's email address
yeah, it's not bad here, really. well, compared to what i'm used to. those minus thirty lows last week were record setting, here. that was really only a few days, though, and it's back to being pleasant. but, the locals aren't used to even -10 weather. so, for me it's actually a fairly mild winter....highs are around -5 on average...and the big snow storm we got a few days ago will likely be gone in a few days.
there's no plows on the streets, though. four days after the storm, cars were still getting stuck on the main roads. that's how not used to winter this place is.
i'm definitely working on the music. what i'm doing right now is slowly working through my old material, going back to the late 90s. it's taking a little longer than i wanted, but it's something i've been wanting to do for a while. and i'm just about through it. it's up over here if you want to take a listen to some of it:
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com
i shouldn't have a problem cashing a check. i'm allowed to claim a certain amount as gifts. that's probably constructed mostly to allow christmas and birthday presents. it would be rather cruel to deny odsp people (many of whom are far more disabled than i, and far more attached to gift-giving than i) of the ability to receive gifts. i don't even think harper would be that cruel. it's income that they track.
...but don't feel obligated. i don't often celebrate holidays. i'd certainly appreciate anything you'd send, but don't feel like you need to.
besides that, things are actually fairly comfortable here. i'm actually pretty content. life is about reading and composing, like i feel it should be.
glad to hear leo's ok. and i hope willy is doing well, too.
j
To: grandmother's email address
yeah, it's not bad here, really. well, compared to what i'm used to. those minus thirty lows last week were record setting, here. that was really only a few days, though, and it's back to being pleasant. but, the locals aren't used to even -10 weather. so, for me it's actually a fairly mild winter....highs are around -5 on average...and the big snow storm we got a few days ago will likely be gone in a few days.
there's no plows on the streets, though. four days after the storm, cars were still getting stuck on the main roads. that's how not used to winter this place is.
i'm definitely working on the music. what i'm doing right now is slowly working through my old material, going back to the late 90s. it's taking a little longer than i wanted, but it's something i've been wanting to do for a while. and i'm just about through it. it's up over here if you want to take a listen to some of it:
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com
i shouldn't have a problem cashing a check. i'm allowed to claim a certain amount as gifts. that's probably constructed mostly to allow christmas and birthday presents. it would be rather cruel to deny odsp people (many of whom are far more disabled than i, and far more attached to gift-giving than i) of the ability to receive gifts. i don't even think harper would be that cruel. it's income that they track.
...but don't feel obligated. i don't often celebrate holidays. i'd certainly appreciate anything you'd send, but don't feel like you need to.
besides that, things are actually fairly comfortable here. i'm actually pretty content. life is about reading and composing, like i feel it should be.
glad to hear leo's ok. and i hope willy is doing well, too.
j
mom
Hi J...Did you receive an email from Nanny? She wants to know if you got it around 7pm tonight? She is fretting about computer issues again....lol.
Jessica Amber Murray
i haven't checked my email in a few days. i don't know how i can help her from here. i'll check, though...
ok, no, it's not a computer help email. i got it though, responding...
mom
OK...Good...That's all she wanted to know. I am on the phone with her right now...
Jessica Amber Murray
she put the entire email in the subject line. i'm laughing my ass off.
mom
LOL....
LOL....I am explaining to her what she did...lol....Not sure she understands though...lol...She was wondering why it seemed to disappear....lol....She is laughing now too...she wants you to answer her back right now.
Jessica Amber Murray
yeah, well, it's going to take a few minutes to type it.
mom
K
Hi J...Did you receive an email from Nanny? She wants to know if you got it around 7pm tonight? She is fretting about computer issues again....lol.
Jessica Amber Murray
i haven't checked my email in a few days. i don't know how i can help her from here. i'll check, though...
ok, no, it's not a computer help email. i got it though, responding...
mom
OK...Good...That's all she wanted to know. I am on the phone with her right now...
Jessica Amber Murray
she put the entire email in the subject line. i'm laughing my ass off.
mom
LOL....
LOL....I am explaining to her what she did...lol....Not sure she understands though...lol...She was wondering why it seemed to disappear....lol....She is laughing now too...she wants you to answer her back right now.
Jessica Amber Murray
yeah, well, it's going to take a few minutes to type it.
mom
K
the oldest aunt's wife
just to let you have know your aunt had a heart attack thursday or early friday they put 3 stents in today all went well she is resting comfortable in ottawa heart inst.
Jessica Amber Murray
i'm sorry to hear that. i have to ask, though: i've been under the impression for quite some time that her heart's health is tenuous. i think she has multiple pacemakers? are the doctors letting on anything about her more general condition after this recent heart attack?
the oldest aunt's wife
the multiple pacemaker was not for that problem all 3 stents are in seen artery have not seen dr he came in just for her or she would have had to wait untill monday
pressure and heart rate was high and worried about more damage
Jessica Amber Murray
ok. well, i wish her luck and send her best wishes! let me know if you hear more info, please.
the oldest aunt's wife
sure well
just to let you have know your aunt had a heart attack thursday or early friday they put 3 stents in today all went well she is resting comfortable in ottawa heart inst.
Jessica Amber Murray
i'm sorry to hear that. i have to ask, though: i've been under the impression for quite some time that her heart's health is tenuous. i think she has multiple pacemakers? are the doctors letting on anything about her more general condition after this recent heart attack?
the oldest aunt's wife
the multiple pacemaker was not for that problem all 3 stents are in seen artery have not seen dr he came in just for her or she would have had to wait untill monday
pressure and heart rate was high and worried about more damage
Jessica Amber Murray
ok. well, i wish her luck and send her best wishes! let me know if you hear more info, please.
the oldest aunt's wife
sure well
hi j; I haven't heard from you for ages! how are you doing?We are having the worst weather I can remember, I guess you are too.All is well here Leo is back to normal working 12 hour days again,but that is what he likes to do.Are you doing your music as you had hoped when you moved there?I think of you often & miss you even though we had our differences sometimes.Will you have trouble cashing a cheque as I would like to send you one for your birthday on the 13th, take care & let me know.luv nanny. .ahve
From: grandmother's email address
To: jessica murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: jessica murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
i'm going to put finishing up the old stuff here as a first priority, but then i'm going to take as much as a week off to catch up on some reading. in truth, the downtime has just cemented my greater interest in completing this little project over, say, reading about people getting blown up in syria.
yeah. back on the modern laptop....
i may be on borrowed time. the bios hard drive test is still faulting. but the windows tools disagree. i dunno. i'm hesitant to take the bios tests completely seriously. i mean, here i am. i want to believe it was just the mbr that got corrupted and i fucked up the recovery through impatience. so, the bios is finding a few bad sectors. meh. i'm surprised it's not redirecting me to the company's website, because that's what it's probably about.
regardless, what i really wanted was to get some data off and it's on the way off. now, whatever happens happens.
...but why is windows so stupid? i should have just downloaded imgburn. instead, i'm stuck waiting for it to copy 200,000 files to a temporary directory or something. why does it need to copy to a temporary directory to burn a fucking dvd?
...and, while i'm at it, why won't it let me copy jpgs to my mp3 player? because it's an mp3 player? fucking derp. it's not even an ipod, it's a sansa. i was trying specifically to avoid stupid fucking apple bullshit.
xp forever, baby. if i ever actually buy another laptop, it's coming with xp on it. this windows-trying-to-be-osx shit is revolting to me. alas, the bios on this thing will not allow xp on it. *sigh*.
i didn't lose anything important in this process. i lost my hundreds of open tabs. reading i'd put aside. bands to check out. that's an annoyance and not a catastrophe. i don't like it, but i'll survive.
i have a lot of catching up to do, though. just an excuse to listen to some music...
it's just still not whirring or clicking or anything. it just doesn't add up.
i may be on borrowed time. the bios hard drive test is still faulting. but the windows tools disagree. i dunno. i'm hesitant to take the bios tests completely seriously. i mean, here i am. i want to believe it was just the mbr that got corrupted and i fucked up the recovery through impatience. so, the bios is finding a few bad sectors. meh. i'm surprised it's not redirecting me to the company's website, because that's what it's probably about.
regardless, what i really wanted was to get some data off and it's on the way off. now, whatever happens happens.
...but why is windows so stupid? i should have just downloaded imgburn. instead, i'm stuck waiting for it to copy 200,000 files to a temporary directory or something. why does it need to copy to a temporary directory to burn a fucking dvd?
...and, while i'm at it, why won't it let me copy jpgs to my mp3 player? because it's an mp3 player? fucking derp. it's not even an ipod, it's a sansa. i was trying specifically to avoid stupid fucking apple bullshit.
xp forever, baby. if i ever actually buy another laptop, it's coming with xp on it. this windows-trying-to-be-osx shit is revolting to me. alas, the bios on this thing will not allow xp on it. *sigh*.
i didn't lose anything important in this process. i lost my hundreds of open tabs. reading i'd put aside. bands to check out. that's an annoyance and not a catastrophe. i don't like it, but i'll survive.
i have a lot of catching up to do, though. just an excuse to listen to some music...
it's just still not whirring or clicking or anything. it just doesn't add up.
yeah. no, it's cooked. i guess it got wiped with the file table. grargh. oh well..
it's back up, though. installing drivers, should be back online soon. oddly, though, i'm going to need to keep using this old laptop to upload files to bandcamp until i can get another usb key....which shouldn't be too long...early february....
it's back up, though. installing drivers, should be back online soon. oddly, though, i'm going to need to keep using this old laptop to upload files to bandcamp until i can get another usb key....which shouldn't be too long...early february....
well, the data drive is now mounting after a
chkdsk. thankfully. the data is there and completely safe. i'm going to
need to back a few things up more carefully. i should have done that
some time ago, really. but windows 7 doesn't like my external hds
(there's no reason for this, btw, it seems like a corporate side deal -
the drive works perfectly fine in xp and even vista). so i'll have to
wait until it gets back up.
the os drive got wiped in the attempted reinstall. i should have known that was going to happen. i did vista support. they taught us that. but note that xp wouldn't have wiped the drive like that, and i'm still in an xp world. i still have xp running on all my pcs and would honestly install it on the laptops if the bios would allow it (that's some fucking proprietary bullshit, but you take what you get with free laptops). there are reasons they switched to an image-based install, and some of them make good sense, but they should have retained the functionality of a straight-over reinstall. this is why windows users fucking hate macs. give me back my user control! let me install what i want! how i want! and, ultimately, the start-up utility failed, guys. you'll point to that as a reason to move to image-based installs without losing the benefit of a copy over reinstall, but it didn't work. i would have been nice to not lose the entire partition.
but i'll blame myself. i was being impatient, and impulsive. i should have known that was going to happen...
regardless, it wiped the partition table, so i had no option but to reformat it. and the chkdsk is running quickly through the "empty" drive. meaning my initial intuition of a fucked file system (rather than a fucked drive) seems to have been correct.
if i'm lucky, i might be able to salvage the open tabs by running restoration programs. formats don't delete data. it might still be accessible. and that's actually all i've lost. it's substantial, though: hundreds of tabs. articles. records. more than that, just flat out ordered tasks. everything else is on the data drive. now, how to get a fresh install of firefox to load that information is another question, and is going to be an experiment. i don't know the answer to this. i know the information is stored somewhere on the drive rather than solely in ram, but how to salvage it i don't know. let's hope i can get it at all to start off with....
overall, though, it's more of an annoyance than a catastrophe. lucky. i still don't know how it happened. i'm starting to suspect a power surge, though. i didn't think anything of it at the time, but i had just popped an sd card into the machine when it fizzed out on me. could the static have shorted it?
the os drive got wiped in the attempted reinstall. i should have known that was going to happen. i did vista support. they taught us that. but note that xp wouldn't have wiped the drive like that, and i'm still in an xp world. i still have xp running on all my pcs and would honestly install it on the laptops if the bios would allow it (that's some fucking proprietary bullshit, but you take what you get with free laptops). there are reasons they switched to an image-based install, and some of them make good sense, but they should have retained the functionality of a straight-over reinstall. this is why windows users fucking hate macs. give me back my user control! let me install what i want! how i want! and, ultimately, the start-up utility failed, guys. you'll point to that as a reason to move to image-based installs without losing the benefit of a copy over reinstall, but it didn't work. i would have been nice to not lose the entire partition.
but i'll blame myself. i was being impatient, and impulsive. i should have known that was going to happen...
regardless, it wiped the partition table, so i had no option but to reformat it. and the chkdsk is running quickly through the "empty" drive. meaning my initial intuition of a fucked file system (rather than a fucked drive) seems to have been correct.
if i'm lucky, i might be able to salvage the open tabs by running restoration programs. formats don't delete data. it might still be accessible. and that's actually all i've lost. it's substantial, though: hundreds of tabs. articles. records. more than that, just flat out ordered tasks. everything else is on the data drive. now, how to get a fresh install of firefox to load that information is another question, and is going to be an experiment. i don't know the answer to this. i know the information is stored somewhere on the drive rather than solely in ram, but how to salvage it i don't know. let's hope i can get it at all to start off with....
overall, though, it's more of an annoyance than a catastrophe. lucky. i still don't know how it happened. i'm starting to suspect a power surge, though. i didn't think anything of it at the time, but i had just popped an sd card into the machine when it fizzed out on me. could the static have shorted it?
i
was starting to suspect funny wiring in this room and may be right -
when i switched outlets, the chkdsk completed very quickly on my data
drive and it seems like it's actually ok. why it won't mount is another
question, but i'm starting to think it might be a windows "security"
thing. have to see if i can load it with a linux live disc....
this is the only outlet in the apartment that's not on a surge protector. i'm not giving up yet, though...
i'm getting the impression i may be able to do a sort of blind copy. i mean, i can't read the partition, but i can read that there's data on the partition. if i can read that there's data, there has to be a way to read the data.
this is the only outlet in the apartment that's not on a surge protector. i'm not giving up yet, though...
i'm getting the impression i may be able to do a sort of blind copy. i mean, i can't read the partition, but i can read that there's data on the partition. if i can read that there's data, there has to be a way to read the data.
Friday, January 10, 2014
i didn't feel that arctic air mass come in, but it's leaving the area like a gastric vortex.
if i haven't posted about this here, i have a weird stomach condition that seems to be driven by shifts in atmospheric pressure. it gets really bad when the weather shifts with seasons, i'll point out when the season really starts by noting that i'm writhing in pain, but also during big thunderstorms and other things related to shifts in pressure.
i've talked to a few doctors, and the general consensus is that i'm a raving lunatic. i didn't really need the diagnosis - it's intuitively clear. but so is this daunting correlation....
if i haven't posted about this here, i have a weird stomach condition that seems to be driven by shifts in atmospheric pressure. it gets really bad when the weather shifts with seasons, i'll point out when the season really starts by noting that i'm writhing in pain, but also during big thunderstorms and other things related to shifts in pressure.
i've talked to a few doctors, and the general consensus is that i'm a raving lunatic. i didn't really need the diagnosis - it's intuitively clear. but so is this daunting correlation....
publishing the curious george suite (inri037)
i've never released this in it's entirety. i was cycling it around bush' election campaign, hoping to get it done right before the election. unfortunately, i lost most of the source files in a hard drive crash that summer. must have been nsa. i thought i had lost the song altogether until i found a cd-r with this 90% done version on it after i moved in the fall. the only things missing were the vocals and a bass part that i never recorded.
as i'm being comprehensive, i'm going to throw it up as an ep.
musically, it's actually an arena rock song sandwiched between two lengthy sections of experimental electronic music.
--
so, i was absolutely mortified of george w. bush considerably before it was cool.
clinton had some problems, and gore was, at the time, a cartoon character; if you want to blame it on something other than the rain (and the moon and the stars), you should blame it on low turnout - something that was largely probably spurred on by the assumption that bush couldn't possibly actually win. well, maybe it was a fitting way to end the 90s. here's your apathy, kids. served cold. ice cold. cold as the blood of a shape-shifting lizard person...and cold as the blood on it's hands.
of course, standing in the spring of 2000, i had no way of knowing what was about to be unleashed. i was mostly still just pissed at clinton for bombing medicine factories in the sudan. i mean, the level of assholery underlying it was just.....the threat of "terrorism" could hardly justify that kind of indiscriminate bombing....fucking medicine factories...
the way i interpreted it was something more along the lines of this half-evolved hominid of undisclosed type slowly riding into town on horseback (with cronies in tow, including one with a yellow hat). it felt like you could see him coming days in the distance. it was unclear what was going to happen when he got to town, but it felt ominous. there was nothing to do but just wait, maybe prepare a little and ultimately hope for the best, even while bracing for the worst.
so, i did what i do - i wrote a conceptual piece about it with the intent of raising awareness. even just amongst friends would help, if they'd talk. etc.
...or, well, i sort of did, anyways. see, i lost a hard drive around this period, and most of the song along with it. what is posted here is a 90% done version that i thought i had lost completely but stumbled upon a few months after the election, after i had moved. given the circumstances, i'm lucky that i found this at all. however, it's remained unreleased as a cohesive piece all of these years.
well, the election was over. it was no longer worthwhile to finish it. i suppose that if i was operating on a profit motive, or a desire for control, i would have finished it. instead, i just felt like i failed to warn people, and it actually put me into a pretty deep depression for a while. it was too late, i blew it, we're fucking doomed....finishing it wouldn't matter....nothing mattered anymore...
listening to it now, it could maybe use a bass part. all this was really missing, though, were the vocals - which were also lost on the hard drive. i have no recollection of them at all at this point and don't see the value in making new ones up.
i did have the first and second section put aside somewhere, on a cd-r. i was able to fill that up with samples and get it out just before the election, and it also ended up sequenced into deny everything. so, it wasn't a total loss.
as for this suite, though? i present it as i've recovered it, with no further comment than that it accurately represents the deep, foreboding fear of the future that was in the air around the period that bush was elected.
this is a song cycle.
i'm almost entirely certain that at least a few of the members of gybe! were aware of my curious george project a considerable amount of time before they released their own sound art sample project, but i don't hold it against them (it was released as an outtake, and one may note that they're a large influence on my recordings in this period. mutual influence is fully permitted.).
recorded in spring, 2000. released, unmodified, in jan, 2014. as always, please use headphones.
credits:
j - guitar, effects, bass, synth, drums, drum programming, sequencing, sound design, loops, digital wave editing, production
released may 10, 2000
1) i can date this well, and report that this was the initial idea of the track. if you read the books (and i'd advise against reading these to your kids), there's actually a fairly graphic section at the beginning where george is captured from the jungle by the man with the yellow hat.
the man with the yellow hat really comes off as a dick.
anyways, that's what's going on here with this.
the cd-r i found has an early version of acidosis followed by this suite. over time, i began to interpret the jungle sounds as being more connected to acidosis than to this suite and this did end up there, in modified form, as 'life goes on'. that being said, the version attached to acidosis was reconstructed from the initial samples because i lost this collage when my hard drive crashed...
the source files (along with the files for part 2) are dated to the end of april, which seems roughly right.
what i did was get a bunch of jungle sounds together and let sound raider mess with them. i then created a file in audiomulch that produced some exotic drum effects and adds in some unusual noises.
it's an atmospheric track in either context.
2) this section was augmented with samples:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/curious-george-2
it was also released on deny everything:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/deny-everything
(https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/curious-george)
musically, the track is a combination of an experiment with an idea. i should note that this suite together is maybe the first original track in the style that dominates my output over the next few years, even if it's incomplete (albeit hereby decreed complete). the idea was about creating "guitar symphonies" (and while i was aware of the work of oldfield and fripp, and of sonic youth and gybe!, branca was a black hole for me at the time) in a minimalist, electronic framework that most readily draws to mind the work of trent reznor. this is the first of many expressions and evolutions of that idea. the experiment was with a program called "leaf drums", which is a fairly basic drum machine except in it's ability to manipulate samples with effects in realtime (remember that this is the spring of 2000). once i had that loop running, i started playing some of the riffs i had put aside for the guitar symphony, mostly just to play around with them. it stuck far better than i expected....and that's really the extent of the track.
the bush sample at the beginning is a constructed loop rather than a direct quote. he was talking about gore - "this guy would say anything to get elected, i'd...". that was flipped around to "i'd say anything to get elected" and looped. well, at this point i don't think anybody is going to stand up for bush' honesty or credibility. regardless, the way i looped it purposefully pans it to make it obvious that it's not a direct quote.
the lost version was built up considerably further than this; this version has three guitar parts, the lost version had closer to ten. i was too focused on getting the samples together to worry about re-recording the guitar parts. i don't remember them at this point and will not make up new ones. to be honest, this is far easier to listen to, and, while i mourn the loss of the completed version, i'm actually happy that i kept a more stripped down one.
3) if i could find a source for the "people who are going to commit crimes shouldn't have guns" quote, i could maybe date this better. unfortunately, i suspect google has done some scrubbing for the bush family, which is a scary thought. i think it was early may, but it may be a little later.
i can't remember if i finished most of this, put it aside for later, recorded acidosis and then lost the hard drive OR if i finished the very beginning of this, recorded acidosis, then recorded the second half of this and then lost the drive. meaning, this is either early may or it's mid-september.
there's a number of reasons to lean towards may, though. the drums, firstly. there are not live drum parts in any of the material recorded from mid-may forwards. that indicates that they weren't available to play. second, i remember the early summer sun hitting me when recording the fourth part - and specifically in the hilliard basement, rather than the lexington basement i'd move to over the fall. there's a kind of nausea attached to the mid-season sun that only occurs in april/may and sept/oct.
musically, this extends out of the previous experiment, but it's easy to hear that that is an introduction to this, that this was meant to be the song that that leads into. as the big, ridiculous arena-rock tune it is? it holds up well. note that the aim was to push a message, and the arena rock theme wasn't an accident. this was supposed to be the take-away, the radio play, the thing that got stuck in your head.
i never added a bass track and don't see a point in doing so now. however, what is actually lost is really solely a heavily vocoded vocal track. i won't re-do it. i'll explain it a little. the theme underlying the curious george analogy was one of seeing bush as a corporate puppet. wherever george went, the man in the yellow hat would follow - to oversee, influence and ultimately dominate. i wasn't taking the analogy very far, i was simply drawing it with the aim of hoping that people would educate themselves about the dangers that he posed.
4) this was meant to be instrumental, and wouldn't have been modified in any way except maybe to embiggen the end part. i didn't expect to ever release this, so i raided the track for inclusion in ftaa:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/through-the-looking-glass
as i'm being comprehensive, i'm going to throw it up as an ep.
musically, it's actually an arena rock song sandwiched between two lengthy sections of experimental electronic music.
--
so, i was absolutely mortified of george w. bush considerably before it was cool.
clinton had some problems, and gore was, at the time, a cartoon character; if you want to blame it on something other than the rain (and the moon and the stars), you should blame it on low turnout - something that was largely probably spurred on by the assumption that bush couldn't possibly actually win. well, maybe it was a fitting way to end the 90s. here's your apathy, kids. served cold. ice cold. cold as the blood of a shape-shifting lizard person...and cold as the blood on it's hands.
of course, standing in the spring of 2000, i had no way of knowing what was about to be unleashed. i was mostly still just pissed at clinton for bombing medicine factories in the sudan. i mean, the level of assholery underlying it was just.....the threat of "terrorism" could hardly justify that kind of indiscriminate bombing....fucking medicine factories...
the way i interpreted it was something more along the lines of this half-evolved hominid of undisclosed type slowly riding into town on horseback (with cronies in tow, including one with a yellow hat). it felt like you could see him coming days in the distance. it was unclear what was going to happen when he got to town, but it felt ominous. there was nothing to do but just wait, maybe prepare a little and ultimately hope for the best, even while bracing for the worst.
so, i did what i do - i wrote a conceptual piece about it with the intent of raising awareness. even just amongst friends would help, if they'd talk. etc.
...or, well, i sort of did, anyways. see, i lost a hard drive around this period, and most of the song along with it. what is posted here is a 90% done version that i thought i had lost completely but stumbled upon a few months after the election, after i had moved. given the circumstances, i'm lucky that i found this at all. however, it's remained unreleased as a cohesive piece all of these years.
well, the election was over. it was no longer worthwhile to finish it. i suppose that if i was operating on a profit motive, or a desire for control, i would have finished it. instead, i just felt like i failed to warn people, and it actually put me into a pretty deep depression for a while. it was too late, i blew it, we're fucking doomed....finishing it wouldn't matter....nothing mattered anymore...
listening to it now, it could maybe use a bass part. all this was really missing, though, were the vocals - which were also lost on the hard drive. i have no recollection of them at all at this point and don't see the value in making new ones up.
i did have the first and second section put aside somewhere, on a cd-r. i was able to fill that up with samples and get it out just before the election, and it also ended up sequenced into deny everything. so, it wasn't a total loss.
as for this suite, though? i present it as i've recovered it, with no further comment than that it accurately represents the deep, foreboding fear of the future that was in the air around the period that bush was elected.
this is a song cycle.
i'm almost entirely certain that at least a few of the members of gybe! were aware of my curious george project a considerable amount of time before they released their own sound art sample project, but i don't hold it against them (it was released as an outtake, and one may note that they're a large influence on my recordings in this period. mutual influence is fully permitted.).
recorded in spring, 2000. released, unmodified, in jan, 2014. as always, please use headphones.
credits:
j - guitar, effects, bass, synth, drums, drum programming, sequencing, sound design, loops, digital wave editing, production
released may 10, 2000
1) i can date this well, and report that this was the initial idea of the track. if you read the books (and i'd advise against reading these to your kids), there's actually a fairly graphic section at the beginning where george is captured from the jungle by the man with the yellow hat.
the man with the yellow hat really comes off as a dick.
anyways, that's what's going on here with this.
the cd-r i found has an early version of acidosis followed by this suite. over time, i began to interpret the jungle sounds as being more connected to acidosis than to this suite and this did end up there, in modified form, as 'life goes on'. that being said, the version attached to acidosis was reconstructed from the initial samples because i lost this collage when my hard drive crashed...
the source files (along with the files for part 2) are dated to the end of april, which seems roughly right.
what i did was get a bunch of jungle sounds together and let sound raider mess with them. i then created a file in audiomulch that produced some exotic drum effects and adds in some unusual noises.
it's an atmospheric track in either context.
2) this section was augmented with samples:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/curious-george-2
it was also released on deny everything:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/deny-everything
(https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/curious-george)
musically, the track is a combination of an experiment with an idea. i should note that this suite together is maybe the first original track in the style that dominates my output over the next few years, even if it's incomplete (albeit hereby decreed complete). the idea was about creating "guitar symphonies" (and while i was aware of the work of oldfield and fripp, and of sonic youth and gybe!, branca was a black hole for me at the time) in a minimalist, electronic framework that most readily draws to mind the work of trent reznor. this is the first of many expressions and evolutions of that idea. the experiment was with a program called "leaf drums", which is a fairly basic drum machine except in it's ability to manipulate samples with effects in realtime (remember that this is the spring of 2000). once i had that loop running, i started playing some of the riffs i had put aside for the guitar symphony, mostly just to play around with them. it stuck far better than i expected....and that's really the extent of the track.
the bush sample at the beginning is a constructed loop rather than a direct quote. he was talking about gore - "this guy would say anything to get elected, i'd...". that was flipped around to "i'd say anything to get elected" and looped. well, at this point i don't think anybody is going to stand up for bush' honesty or credibility. regardless, the way i looped it purposefully pans it to make it obvious that it's not a direct quote.
the lost version was built up considerably further than this; this version has three guitar parts, the lost version had closer to ten. i was too focused on getting the samples together to worry about re-recording the guitar parts. i don't remember them at this point and will not make up new ones. to be honest, this is far easier to listen to, and, while i mourn the loss of the completed version, i'm actually happy that i kept a more stripped down one.
3) if i could find a source for the "people who are going to commit crimes shouldn't have guns" quote, i could maybe date this better. unfortunately, i suspect google has done some scrubbing for the bush family, which is a scary thought. i think it was early may, but it may be a little later.
i can't remember if i finished most of this, put it aside for later, recorded acidosis and then lost the hard drive OR if i finished the very beginning of this, recorded acidosis, then recorded the second half of this and then lost the drive. meaning, this is either early may or it's mid-september.
there's a number of reasons to lean towards may, though. the drums, firstly. there are not live drum parts in any of the material recorded from mid-may forwards. that indicates that they weren't available to play. second, i remember the early summer sun hitting me when recording the fourth part - and specifically in the hilliard basement, rather than the lexington basement i'd move to over the fall. there's a kind of nausea attached to the mid-season sun that only occurs in april/may and sept/oct.
musically, this extends out of the previous experiment, but it's easy to hear that that is an introduction to this, that this was meant to be the song that that leads into. as the big, ridiculous arena-rock tune it is? it holds up well. note that the aim was to push a message, and the arena rock theme wasn't an accident. this was supposed to be the take-away, the radio play, the thing that got stuck in your head.
i never added a bass track and don't see a point in doing so now. however, what is actually lost is really solely a heavily vocoded vocal track. i won't re-do it. i'll explain it a little. the theme underlying the curious george analogy was one of seeing bush as a corporate puppet. wherever george went, the man in the yellow hat would follow - to oversee, influence and ultimately dominate. i wasn't taking the analogy very far, i was simply drawing it with the aim of hoping that people would educate themselves about the dangers that he posed.
4) this was meant to be instrumental, and wouldn't have been modified in any way except maybe to embiggen the end part. i didn't expect to ever release this, so i raided the track for inclusion in ftaa:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/through-the-looking-glass
Thursday, January 9, 2014
entropy (replaced album mix)
this is an augmented experiment with a program called "sounder" that takes advantage of some obscure midi qualities to transport the act of triggering a note into the physical world. imagine a midi tennis ball that triggers at different intensities based on how hard the ball is thrown at a wall. now, imagine a frictionless space where that ball can bounce around indefinitely. sounder virtualizes this reality.
the experiment was augmented with synthesizer and guitar parts, and a sample of garry trudeau posing as a political candidate and being interviewed by larry king. i first interacted with that sample early in the morning in a deeply altered state and came to attach certain feelings to it that are difficult to describe. while it's clearly parody, it hit me as being frighteningly representative of reality. i suppose that all effective parody has this quality. perhaps my reaction speaks more of where i was at this point than anything else. i wasn't reacting well to the return of republicanism; i was very much dreading the future that i had no control in preventing. the absurd truth, here, cut me right down.
i was fucking baked.
eventually, i decided that the sample is just not worth listening to repeatedly and removed it from the track. the initial version, with doonesbury sample, is available here:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/entropy-original-mix
initially recorded in late 1999. reconstructed to remove the sample on sept 17, 2006.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/entropy
the experiment was augmented with synthesizer and guitar parts, and a sample of garry trudeau posing as a political candidate and being interviewed by larry king. i first interacted with that sample early in the morning in a deeply altered state and came to attach certain feelings to it that are difficult to describe. while it's clearly parody, it hit me as being frighteningly representative of reality. i suppose that all effective parody has this quality. perhaps my reaction speaks more of where i was at this point than anything else. i wasn't reacting well to the return of republicanism; i was very much dreading the future that i had no control in preventing. the absurd truth, here, cut me right down.
i was fucking baked.
eventually, i decided that the sample is just not worth listening to repeatedly and removed it from the track. the initial version, with doonesbury sample, is available here:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/entropy-original-mix
initially recorded in late 1999. reconstructed to remove the sample on sept 17, 2006.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/entropy
gravity’s rainbow (original album mix)
reading pynchon, smoking pot, listening to floyd, watching star trek re-runs: must be the mid 70s. naw. early 00s....
"the real war is always there. the dying tapers off now and then, but the war is still killing lots of people. only right now it is killing them in more subtle ways, often in ways that are too subtle, even for us, at this level, to trace."
i have very clear memories of tripping out pretty hard into audiomulch programs as the sun appeared through some frosty february mornings. these were fun sounds to program through the bright winter dawn.
the concept came to me while reading the opening sections of the novel of the same title. "gravity's rainbow", itself, is a technical term that refers to the period of time that occurred between a rocket strike and the sound of it coming in. as they were able to move faster than sound, this happened in a way that was non-intuitive: the explosion would happen *first*, and the sound would come after. the inability to hear the rockets come in made life just a wee bit stressful in london during the war.
specifically, the opening scene narrates a movement of people into the london subway system, which was used as a system of bunkers during attacks. we're so far removed from this that it's hard to imagine: sirens going off, perhaps in the middle of the night, followed by waves of working class english scrambling for cover by the trains...
there was a point where it came to me fairly lucidly. i just needed to orchestrate it. it's a famously difficult text, but one can get the idea of the song by merely reading the first chapter.
the star trek sample came later. there were re-runs on around 4:00 in the morning; there probably still are, but i turned the tv off permanently shortly after this song was constructed. we all know what else happens around twenty minutes past 4:00 AM. it was a ritual over that winter. the episode precedes the novel, so it couldn't have been influenced by it, but it is strangely topical in the way that it relates the organians to the pynchonian "counterforce". yet, as mentioned, i was smoking a lot of pot at the time....
musically, the track is dual-layered. i've had it described as "an indescribable mixture of conventional and unconventional music" (paraphrase), which is an exaggeration that i'll take as a compliment. the song itself has a sort of an acoustic prog feel that some may compare to porcupine tree or radiohead but was in truth heavily influenced by john lennon and pink floyd (i like early radiohead, but i think porcupine tree is pretentious garbage). the effects underneath the track were constructed using a number of 16-bit sound design programs and unusual approaches to synthesis.
as mentioned, the memories are with the sun coming up. maybe you can get a bit of a sense of that.
recorded in spring, 2000.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/gravitys-rainbow
"the real war is always there. the dying tapers off now and then, but the war is still killing lots of people. only right now it is killing them in more subtle ways, often in ways that are too subtle, even for us, at this level, to trace."
i have very clear memories of tripping out pretty hard into audiomulch programs as the sun appeared through some frosty february mornings. these were fun sounds to program through the bright winter dawn.
the concept came to me while reading the opening sections of the novel of the same title. "gravity's rainbow", itself, is a technical term that refers to the period of time that occurred between a rocket strike and the sound of it coming in. as they were able to move faster than sound, this happened in a way that was non-intuitive: the explosion would happen *first*, and the sound would come after. the inability to hear the rockets come in made life just a wee bit stressful in london during the war.
specifically, the opening scene narrates a movement of people into the london subway system, which was used as a system of bunkers during attacks. we're so far removed from this that it's hard to imagine: sirens going off, perhaps in the middle of the night, followed by waves of working class english scrambling for cover by the trains...
there was a point where it came to me fairly lucidly. i just needed to orchestrate it. it's a famously difficult text, but one can get the idea of the song by merely reading the first chapter.
the star trek sample came later. there were re-runs on around 4:00 in the morning; there probably still are, but i turned the tv off permanently shortly after this song was constructed. we all know what else happens around twenty minutes past 4:00 AM. it was a ritual over that winter. the episode precedes the novel, so it couldn't have been influenced by it, but it is strangely topical in the way that it relates the organians to the pynchonian "counterforce". yet, as mentioned, i was smoking a lot of pot at the time....
musically, the track is dual-layered. i've had it described as "an indescribable mixture of conventional and unconventional music" (paraphrase), which is an exaggeration that i'll take as a compliment. the song itself has a sort of an acoustic prog feel that some may compare to porcupine tree or radiohead but was in truth heavily influenced by john lennon and pink floyd (i like early radiohead, but i think porcupine tree is pretentious garbage). the effects underneath the track were constructed using a number of 16-bit sound design programs and unusual approaches to synthesis.
as mentioned, the memories are with the sun coming up. maybe you can get a bit of a sense of that.
recorded in spring, 2000.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/gravitys-rainbow
Looking for Deny Everything
From: "Nick Austin - Indie Pool" <nick@indiepool.com>
To: "death.to.koalas@gmail.com" <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
Hey there,
Nick from Indie Pool here - saw you on Bandcamp and wanted to get in touch.
I do a ton of stuff for artists around here; short run CDs, distribution, stickers & posters, and music licensing for film & TV, among other things.
I think we should have a chat at some point. Can I mail you a free sample package?
Cheers,
Nick Austin | Artist Rep | Indie Pool
118 Berkeley St (rear building) | Toronto, ON M5A 2W9 | CANADA
Office: 1 416 424 4666 x229 | Toll-free: 1 888 884 6343 x233
Web: www.indiepool.com (new site)
To: "death.to.koalas@gmail.com" <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
Hey there,
Nick from Indie Pool here - saw you on Bandcamp and wanted to get in touch.
I do a ton of stuff for artists around here; short run CDs, distribution, stickers & posters, and music licensing for film & TV, among other things.
I think we should have a chat at some point. Can I mail you a free sample package?
Cheers,
Nick Austin | Artist Rep | Indie Pool
118 Berkeley St (rear building) | Toronto, ON M5A 2W9 | CANADA
Office: 1 416 424 4666 x229 | Toll-free: 1 888 884 6343 x233
Web: www.indiepool.com (new site)
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
publishing let freedom ring (inri036)
this is a collection of three tracks that were recorded in late '99 and early '00 with the intent of being included on record number three ('trinri') but were either discarded or stripped of samples on the way there.
more detailed stories for each track are found on the track pages.
trinri eventually became deny everything (inri041):
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/deny-everything
recorded in late 1999 and early 2000. sequenced in jan, 2014. as always, please use headphones.
credits:
more detailed stories for each track are found on the track pages.
trinri eventually became deny everything (inri041):
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/deny-everything
recorded in late 1999 and early 2000. sequenced in jan, 2014. as always, please use headphones.
credits:
j - guitar, effects, synth, drumkit, drum programming, sequencing, sampling, digital wave manipulation, treatments, production
released january 25, 2000
released january 25, 2000
the next period is a sprawling mess of suppressed tracks, reworked tracks and thrown around tracklistings. on the one hand, it's all centered around a definitive lp. the problem is there's at least five versions of that lp.
the proper way to deal with this is to separate things out into eps. so, i'm going to convert one release with too many versions into several releases.
i don't expect to modify things much. first, things have already been modified. second, i'm not working with cd rips of compressed tracks anymore. i have properly saved files of isolated tracks, now. if a bass part is too low, i can just turn it up.
rather than overwhelm this feed with 100 tracks, i'm going to go back to one track a day.
this material is, however, mostly fully formed. i've mostly passed through the portal of pretension that was the end of the inri period and into music of real substance.
so, it will start coming shortly, once i've mapped it out just a bit more. i'm looking at somewhere around 5 releases over the year 2000, centered around an lp that was timed to coincide with the election of george w. bush.
the proper way to deal with this is to separate things out into eps. so, i'm going to convert one release with too many versions into several releases.
i don't expect to modify things much. first, things have already been modified. second, i'm not working with cd rips of compressed tracks anymore. i have properly saved files of isolated tracks, now. if a bass part is too low, i can just turn it up.
rather than overwhelm this feed with 100 tracks, i'm going to go back to one track a day.
this material is, however, mostly fully formed. i've mostly passed through the portal of pretension that was the end of the inri period and into music of real substance.
so, it will start coming shortly, once i've mapped it out just a bit more. i'm looking at somewhere around 5 releases over the year 2000, centered around an lp that was timed to coincide with the election of george w. bush.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
publishing inricycled b
i initially wanted to sequence this at the end of the inri period, but i've changed my mind. the inricycled concept is about reclaiming interesting sections of songs that my immaturity ruined. however, this idea simply doesn't need to be extended over the full range of the inri period. inri material after the inriched demo (which was just after my 18th birthday) is strong enough to hold up on it's own. this would include the inrimake and inridiculous demoes, as well as associated singles...
the inricycled concept only needs to be applied to the inri/inriched demoes, and i can even really hone in to about a five month period at the beginning of 1998 where some less than great decisions were applied to material i was rerecording (and in some cases had written as young as 13). despite that period being short, it's consequences extended right up until early '99.
that defines the boundaries of this inricycled period: jan '98 to feb '99.
i've tried to make the tracks short to fulfill the medley concept, but that sort of breaks about halfway through. i simply wasn't writing songs in late '98. i was experimenting with sound effects and doing weird remixes. the last song in this collection was the first proper "song" i'd recorded in months, and it really represents a dramatic change in sound. so, it's more reasonable to end the period there for that reason, too.
==
i've released a dozen different things with the title "inricycled", making it more of a concept than a release. it's not just the material i'm recycling, now, it's the idea of recycling material.
i hope this is the final iteration. the difference, here, is that i'm trying to isolate segments of songs that people interested in my more recent compositions would find interesting. these fragments aren't entirely void of lyrics, but they're very minimal. they're also quite short; for the B volume, i've enforced a very strict two minute time limit on the fragments (which is not applicable to a few full tracks). i've also retitled most of the tracks to get a feel of what the music sounds like and/or what i was thinking as i was writing it. well...some of it is just silly.
the material here stems from recordings that were completed in 1998 and very early 1999. it is constructed in a way that maintains the recording chronology, which means it captures a level of increasing complexity. it does not, however, include the material on inrisampled because it's from 1997 and comprehensively dealt with there. nor does it include the material on warning or inrimake because i feel these are sufficient ways to recombine that material. finally, material after march, 1999 has been deemed sufficiently fit to stand on it's own; this only glosses over the inri/inriched period, and related eps.
generally, the goal here is to reclaim instrumental versions of vocal tracks. i've mentioned repeatedly that my lyrics and vocals in this period were not impressive, but there are instrumental sections that stand well on their own. hence, this medley.
one can accurately read deeply into the few lyrics i've salvaged.
looking back at the period between may '98 and feb '99 produces a large deficit of songwriting. i was working through experiments, doing remixes and other fun things, but the only thing approaching a song produced during that period is 'idiotic'. tracks 14-16, here, were finalized over late '98 but mostly recorded in very early '98. when i finally broke the slump with "too cold", i had something entirely different in front of me. it represents the beginning of something entirely new.....
sequenced and mildly modified in jan, 2014. as always, please use headphones.
credits:
j - guitar, effects, bass, synth, drum programming, sequencing, sampling, digital wave editing, production.
released mar 1, 1999
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inricycled-b-deleted-mix-tape
1) fragments mega-mix.
2) 2013 remaster. the dialogue is from the x-files.
3) 2013 remaster.
4) 2014 remaster & re-edit, from the inricycled b compilation.
the inricycled concept only needs to be applied to the inri/inriched demoes, and i can even really hone in to about a five month period at the beginning of 1998 where some less than great decisions were applied to material i was rerecording (and in some cases had written as young as 13). despite that period being short, it's consequences extended right up until early '99.
that defines the boundaries of this inricycled period: jan '98 to feb '99.
i've tried to make the tracks short to fulfill the medley concept, but that sort of breaks about halfway through. i simply wasn't writing songs in late '98. i was experimenting with sound effects and doing weird remixes. the last song in this collection was the first proper "song" i'd recorded in months, and it really represents a dramatic change in sound. so, it's more reasonable to end the period there for that reason, too.
==
i've released a dozen different things with the title "inricycled", making it more of a concept than a release. it's not just the material i'm recycling, now, it's the idea of recycling material.
i hope this is the final iteration. the difference, here, is that i'm trying to isolate segments of songs that people interested in my more recent compositions would find interesting. these fragments aren't entirely void of lyrics, but they're very minimal. they're also quite short; for the B volume, i've enforced a very strict two minute time limit on the fragments (which is not applicable to a few full tracks). i've also retitled most of the tracks to get a feel of what the music sounds like and/or what i was thinking as i was writing it. well...some of it is just silly.
the material here stems from recordings that were completed in 1998 and very early 1999. it is constructed in a way that maintains the recording chronology, which means it captures a level of increasing complexity. it does not, however, include the material on inrisampled because it's from 1997 and comprehensively dealt with there. nor does it include the material on warning or inrimake because i feel these are sufficient ways to recombine that material. finally, material after march, 1999 has been deemed sufficiently fit to stand on it's own; this only glosses over the inri/inriched period, and related eps.
generally, the goal here is to reclaim instrumental versions of vocal tracks. i've mentioned repeatedly that my lyrics and vocals in this period were not impressive, but there are instrumental sections that stand well on their own. hence, this medley.
one can accurately read deeply into the few lyrics i've salvaged.
looking back at the period between may '98 and feb '99 produces a large deficit of songwriting. i was working through experiments, doing remixes and other fun things, but the only thing approaching a song produced during that period is 'idiotic'. tracks 14-16, here, were finalized over late '98 but mostly recorded in very early '98. when i finally broke the slump with "too cold", i had something entirely different in front of me. it represents the beginning of something entirely new.....
sequenced and mildly modified in jan, 2014. as always, please use headphones.
credits:
j - guitar, effects, bass, synth, drum programming, sequencing, sampling, digital wave editing, production.
released mar 1, 1999
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inricycled-b-deleted-mix-tape
1) fragments mega-mix.
2) 2013 remaster. the dialogue is from the x-files.
3) 2013 remaster.
4) 2014 remaster & re-edit, from the inricycled b compilation.
you know....
....just because it's become clear that you can't exploit me further in the future (i'm sorry about that, but i sort of see responsibility as slavery, so your bourgeois shit just ain't gonna fly with me, sister) doesn't mean there's no longer any reason to communicate with me.
unless you're evil, basically.
which i'm trying to hold out hope against. it's just that, by continually being evil, you're not helping your case.
i know: the world is evil. you're basically screwed unless you conform to it. see, that's why it's so important to avoid evil people, though. there's basically two options: conform to the evil society around us, or avoid evil by becoming a hermit. i instantly fail at the first choice, so i'm left with the second.
see, its not that i'm blaming people, though. not exactly. i don't have the time, energy or interest to blame people. i just can't risk dealing with the consequences of their behaviour any further. evil people can go be evil far away from me...
so, yeah. ignoring me because you can't gain anything from me is positively evil. no, it is. it's pretty normal, maybe. fine. it's still evil. and you're supposed to be better than that.
j
unless you're evil, basically.
which i'm trying to hold out hope against. it's just that, by continually being evil, you're not helping your case.
i know: the world is evil. you're basically screwed unless you conform to it. see, that's why it's so important to avoid evil people, though. there's basically two options: conform to the evil society around us, or avoid evil by becoming a hermit. i instantly fail at the first choice, so i'm left with the second.
see, its not that i'm blaming people, though. not exactly. i don't have the time, energy or interest to blame people. i just can't risk dealing with the consequences of their behaviour any further. evil people can go be evil far away from me...
so, yeah. ignoring me because you can't gain anything from me is positively evil. no, it is. it's pretty normal, maybe. fine. it's still evil. and you're supposed to be better than that.
j
inricycled B is just about done.
...and i've had to mix this up a bit for a few reasons. here's the updated list up to this point:
***inri/young phase***
inri001 - first cassette demo (2xlp) [1996]
inri002 - second cassette demo (lp) [1997]
inri003/jam001 - inricycled A (lp) [1997]
inri004/jam002 - inrisampled (ep) [1997]
inri005/jam003 - inri (lp) [1998]
inri006 - eat my fuck (ep) [1998]
inri007/jam004 - inriched (lp) [1999]
inri008/jam005 - inrijected (ep) [1999]
inri009/jam006 - inrimixed (ep) [1999]
inri010/jam007 - inricycled B (ep) [1999]
inri011 - gene-o's (single) [1999]
inri012/jam008 - pop music (single) [1999]
inri013/jam009 - warning (ep) [1999]
inri014/jam010 - liquify (ep/single) [1999]
inri015/jam011 - inrimake (lp) [1999]
inri016/jam012 - inridiculous (lp) [1999]
inri017/jam013 - book it! (single) [1999]
***end of inri/young phase***
***beginning of intermediate phase***
inri018/jam014 - deny everything [2000]
inri019/jam015 - accept nothing [2000]
i'll probably also splice off a single for 'ignorance is bliss'. i have ten cd-rs of deny everything to sort through. it could be a while. but the inri phase is now FINAL.
...and i've had to mix this up a bit for a few reasons. here's the updated list up to this point:
***inri/young phase***
inri001 - first cassette demo (2xlp) [1996]
inri002 - second cassette demo (lp) [1997]
inri003/jam001 - inricycled A (lp) [1997]
inri004/jam002 - inrisampled (ep) [1997]
inri005/jam003 - inri (lp) [1998]
inri006 - eat my fuck (ep) [1998]
inri007/jam004 - inriched (lp) [1999]
inri008/jam005 - inrijected (ep) [1999]
inri009/jam006 - inrimixed (ep) [1999]
inri010/jam007 - inricycled B (ep) [1999]
inri011 - gene-o's (single) [1999]
inri012/jam008 - pop music (single) [1999]
inri013/jam009 - warning (ep) [1999]
inri014/jam010 - liquify (ep/single) [1999]
inri015/jam011 - inrimake (lp) [1999]
inri016/jam012 - inridiculous (lp) [1999]
inri017/jam013 - book it! (single) [1999]
***end of inri/young phase***
***beginning of intermediate phase***
inri018/jam014 - deny everything [2000]
inri019/jam015 - accept nothing [2000]
i'll probably also splice off a single for 'ignorance is bliss'. i have ten cd-rs of deny everything to sort through. it could be a while. but the inri phase is now FINAL.
flashback.
"you know, if you're really not interested then you could always drop out."
"no, actually, i can't."
"parents?"
"sort of. not really. it's either school or work, and i can't find a job so i'm stuck at university until...."
"....well, if your interest level doesn't pick up..."
"...actually, i'm hoping i'll finally get a call back from one of the local coffee shops, soon."
*pause*
"who is paying for this?"
"the state, mostly."
"do you think that's..."
"i told you what my options are. right now, it reduces to school or homelessness. i'd rather be in a government training program for something working class than solving algebraic equations because it's about the only thing i can find in this place that i don't think is absolute bullshit. take it up with the government. it's their policies that put a massive focus on education."
"yeah. i see what you mean. i've just never seen anything like this, or at least anybody so honest about it."
"it's right out of a kafka novel. but if things don't change, i think it might become normal. university is quickly becoming the place that apathetic young people are forced to go to when they're not able to find a job, rather than a place people go to to advance their goals and ambitions. it's on the brink of becoming a form of social welfare. that kind of dystopia serves nobody."
"you won't reconsider?"
"i have no future here."
"ok"
*end phone call from academic adviser*
i'm sort of a space cadet. that just got thrown back at me while splicing some wave files.
"you know, if you're really not interested then you could always drop out."
"no, actually, i can't."
"parents?"
"sort of. not really. it's either school or work, and i can't find a job so i'm stuck at university until...."
"....well, if your interest level doesn't pick up..."
"...actually, i'm hoping i'll finally get a call back from one of the local coffee shops, soon."
*pause*
"who is paying for this?"
"the state, mostly."
"do you think that's..."
"i told you what my options are. right now, it reduces to school or homelessness. i'd rather be in a government training program for something working class than solving algebraic equations because it's about the only thing i can find in this place that i don't think is absolute bullshit. take it up with the government. it's their policies that put a massive focus on education."
"yeah. i see what you mean. i've just never seen anything like this, or at least anybody so honest about it."
"it's right out of a kafka novel. but if things don't change, i think it might become normal. university is quickly becoming the place that apathetic young people are forced to go to when they're not able to find a job, rather than a place people go to to advance their goals and ambitions. it's on the brink of becoming a form of social welfare. that kind of dystopia serves nobody."
"you won't reconsider?"
"i have no future here."
"ok"
*end phone call from academic adviser*
i'm sort of a space cadet. that just got thrown back at me while splicing some wave files.
Monday, January 6, 2014
Sunday, January 5, 2014
i singled that pic out for a reason. yikes. ahahahaha...
anyways, the inri phase (and related playlists) is now completely constructed on youtube. there are a few genre-specific playlists (jazz/prog, song-oriented, noise, ambient) as well as a full playlist of all uploaded tracks and also one that starts off the beginning of the next phase, which i'm calling a transitional phase (from kiddie phase into serious phase).
i'm sort of struck by how productive and exploratory '99 was for me. the transitional bleed in is two hours, all from '99. and it's about a quarter of what i finished that year.
timed out near 80. ugh. i'm only going to try it one more time before i give a reinstall a try.
....and now it just rebooted, so here comes an attempt at a reinstall....
i don't want to delete the partition yet. it would be nice to recover my open tabs. yeah. lol. well, it would. i don't see why a reinstall would wipe them out...
....and now it just rebooted, so here comes an attempt at a reinstall....
i don't want to delete the partition yet. it would be nice to recover my open tabs. yeah. lol. well, it would. i don't see why a reinstall would wipe them out...
on
the other hand, it just jumped very quickly through 30,000 segments - a
quarter of the partition. it went from 50% to 75% in a flash. so, it
may still balance out. and 5% of the partition is still less than 1% of
the drive....
(i'm also making the error of attaching file segments to physical segments, which i know is an error, but can't really be applied like that)
which is to say i'm talking about the percentage of the mft, rather than the percentage of the disc. i'll probably keep doing that. intuition. but knowing that 5-10% of the file records are unreadable doesn't *actually* tell me how much of the disc is "bad". and knowing this is a drive with a windows os, office and other programs with lots of little files means it really honestly might not be as bad as it looks. i mean, it could be 5000 corrupt 10K files. no, it could. an optimistic projection, but it could.
...and that's why we run the utilities.
(i'm also making the error of attaching file segments to physical segments, which i know is an error, but can't really be applied like that)
which is to say i'm talking about the percentage of the mft, rather than the percentage of the disc. i'll probably keep doing that. intuition. but knowing that 5-10% of the file records are unreadable doesn't *actually* tell me how much of the disc is "bad". and knowing this is a drive with a windows os, office and other programs with lots of little files means it really honestly might not be as bad as it looks. i mean, it could be 5000 corrupt 10K files. no, it could. an optimistic projection, but it could.
...and that's why we run the utilities.
i
don't know whether it's normal or not, but it's a little relieving to
realize that 3% means 30%, 4% means 40%, etc. seems like a bug in the
program.
so, i'm at a little over 40% after 18 hours, indicating it should be done by this time tomorrow.
well, the first pass anyways.
of the first partition. i'm really hoping i don't need to do this for the second partition. it's roughly 10x the size. yeah. but size isn't the only factor. in fact, i'll try a reinstall before i do it. i'm kind of still hoping it's just the boot sector.
it's kind of got me wondering if i should defrag the fucker from time to time. the conventional wisdom is not to defrag large drives. but is a 50 gb partition that big?
there were a lot of errors at the front of the mft, but now i'm going 10-20K sectors between problems.
see, it never told me it couldn't find a hard drive, or there wasn't an os. the hard drive test failed, but that's not the same thing as "no hd" or "no os". it bootstrapped itself into a 100 MB startup utility partition - on the hd. yet, it couldn't find the boot database thing (whatever it is now, i should know this, i went over it in vista support training, but in practice all i ever had to tell anybody was to run the utility, which i can't get to start because i can't read the partition). that says dead partition, meaning dead database shit, not dead disc.
i just can't parse randomly dying drives. but i've seen mbrs evaporate.
it hit a rough spot around when i fell asleep this afternoon and may even still be in it. its still hard to say if its salvageable, but the damage report is going to be bad. upwards of 5% of the partition, even, maybe.
it's a big drive. as mentioned, i could halve it and still have too much space. but that indicates imminent mass failure.
so, i'm at a little over 40% after 18 hours, indicating it should be done by this time tomorrow.
well, the first pass anyways.
of the first partition. i'm really hoping i don't need to do this for the second partition. it's roughly 10x the size. yeah. but size isn't the only factor. in fact, i'll try a reinstall before i do it. i'm kind of still hoping it's just the boot sector.
it's kind of got me wondering if i should defrag the fucker from time to time. the conventional wisdom is not to defrag large drives. but is a 50 gb partition that big?
there were a lot of errors at the front of the mft, but now i'm going 10-20K sectors between problems.
see, it never told me it couldn't find a hard drive, or there wasn't an os. the hard drive test failed, but that's not the same thing as "no hd" or "no os". it bootstrapped itself into a 100 MB startup utility partition - on the hd. yet, it couldn't find the boot database thing (whatever it is now, i should know this, i went over it in vista support training, but in practice all i ever had to tell anybody was to run the utility, which i can't get to start because i can't read the partition). that says dead partition, meaning dead database shit, not dead disc.
i just can't parse randomly dying drives. but i've seen mbrs evaporate.
it hit a rough spot around when i fell asleep this afternoon and may even still be in it. its still hard to say if its salvageable, but the damage report is going to be bad. upwards of 5% of the partition, even, maybe.
it's a big drive. as mentioned, i could halve it and still have too much space. but that indicates imminent mass failure.
Saturday, January 4, 2014
well, my laptop's hard drive just fizzed out. it's too early to say
how bad it is. it's running a chkdsk from a dvd boot, and could
literally take a week to finish. i think my data's safe, and i could get
by with a reinstall. we'll have to see.
none of my music was on the drive, but it was my only internet access point. my router disappeared in the move to windsor. best i can tell, it got thrown away in a pile of boxes. my pcs are both running custom images with the dhcp ripped out, so they need a router to connect. i've been moving over files on a usb key (which also literally crumbled the other day).
so, what it really means, worst case, is that i need to prioritize replacing the router.
one of the more annoying things is that my youtube password is on the drive i can't currently mount. so, i need to put that part of things aside.
right now, i'm on a 90s laptop that has proven itself virtually indestructible. but it's slow, because it's ancient. and that's going to probably limit me slightly in what i can and cannot do in the next week.
i have plenty of things to work on. there just might be a lag here in updating.
=====
i've had a lot of bad luck with storage over the last few days and it's probably going to be a few days, if not longer, before it gets entirely fixed. i'm typing this from a compaq evo that was manufactured in the 90s, that's missing half it's keys and in all honesty probably belongs in a museum.
but note that it still boots. that's better than i can say for two far newer laptops that are even made by the same company. proof that everything was better in the 90s? fuck, this thing has *rust* on it. laptops with rust is a weird idea, but think of it like a reliable old chevy. it was probably actually even manufactured on this continent.
i even have an old quantum fireball drive that came with windows '98 on it that still boots. yet, the hard drive in the fancy windows 7 machine that my dad left me imploded after less than a year. it's not that we can't do better than this, it's that it isn't profitable to make electronics that don't break after a year. it's fucking pathetic, really.
it started yesterday when one of my usb drives just snapped. nothing out of the ordinary happened, it just disintegrated - almost as though it was timed to fritz out after the first. it might actually have been designed that way. engineers actually take full credit courses in a concept called "forced obsolescence". they spend as much time designing things to break as they do designing things to work. because profit. it's fucking pathetic.
i snapped the plastic off and the solder just gave way. nothing complicated about it, no fault on my behalf - it was just designed to break. just cheap garbage.
this morning, i take the laptop out of sleep (as mentioned, it's practically brand new) and the video spazzes out into static to reveal a blank screen. wait. fuck. reboot. nothing. memory is fine, but the hard drive test is failing. again, there was no strain on the device. worse, it came with no warning - it wasn't clicking or whirring or buzzing. it's almost like it has a timer in it....
i'm running it through a chkdsk right now, which should hopefully be done by the end of the week, and it looks like, in the end, i may get away with a corrupt boot sector and a reinstall; hard to say at this point, but it appears like i may be able to partition out the bad part. but, there's no reason for this. it's just badly designed (accidentally on purpose) garbage.
the laptop is sort of gravy. it was a gift, to replace one that came to me on a grant (another compaq with another dead hard drive). if i can't get it back up, it just means i'll have to get that router fixed sooner than later. it's not devastating.
in the mean time, it's this museum piece with 650 MB of obsolete RAM that is the one that's still kicking - rusty joints and all. and hp/compaq should be fucking embarrassed about that. except not. 'cause profit.
(it turns out it won't be necessary to actually partition anything out because chkdsk does that in the mft. i did know how mfts work, but i wasn't clear on whether the information coming at me related to the physical sectors or the mft; it's the latter. which makes things easier. a chkdsk is enough; the file system will take it from there. and, thankfully, it does seem, right now, that the corruption is just at the front of the mft.)
i should point out that i've got the disc split into a small operating system partition and a large file partition. it seems like that's going to save my data, even as the os needs a fresh install. which is why i did it like that.
1% after 10 hours. 1000 hours is 42 days. and that's just the os partition. it'd better pick up.
it doesn't look unusable, so far. even if i can just get what's there off...
...and this ancient 90s compaq actually isn't bad once it got tweaked to a bigger pagefile. it can only handle a few tabs, sure. but it's at least as functional as an iphone...
if you want to run a 90s computer on the existing internet, you'd better get used to adblock. i don't need more RAM, websites need to stop loading their pages with crap. seriously.
as an aside, i get why i need to block twitter. i think its useless, but it's popular. why, though, do i need to block aol? why are websites still linking to aol? who uses aol? it's a 90s computer, not a time machine back there...
bonus: one can block entire commenting systems.
none of my music was on the drive, but it was my only internet access point. my router disappeared in the move to windsor. best i can tell, it got thrown away in a pile of boxes. my pcs are both running custom images with the dhcp ripped out, so they need a router to connect. i've been moving over files on a usb key (which also literally crumbled the other day).
so, what it really means, worst case, is that i need to prioritize replacing the router.
one of the more annoying things is that my youtube password is on the drive i can't currently mount. so, i need to put that part of things aside.
right now, i'm on a 90s laptop that has proven itself virtually indestructible. but it's slow, because it's ancient. and that's going to probably limit me slightly in what i can and cannot do in the next week.
i have plenty of things to work on. there just might be a lag here in updating.
=====
i've had a lot of bad luck with storage over the last few days and it's probably going to be a few days, if not longer, before it gets entirely fixed. i'm typing this from a compaq evo that was manufactured in the 90s, that's missing half it's keys and in all honesty probably belongs in a museum.
but note that it still boots. that's better than i can say for two far newer laptops that are even made by the same company. proof that everything was better in the 90s? fuck, this thing has *rust* on it. laptops with rust is a weird idea, but think of it like a reliable old chevy. it was probably actually even manufactured on this continent.
i even have an old quantum fireball drive that came with windows '98 on it that still boots. yet, the hard drive in the fancy windows 7 machine that my dad left me imploded after less than a year. it's not that we can't do better than this, it's that it isn't profitable to make electronics that don't break after a year. it's fucking pathetic, really.
it started yesterday when one of my usb drives just snapped. nothing out of the ordinary happened, it just disintegrated - almost as though it was timed to fritz out after the first. it might actually have been designed that way. engineers actually take full credit courses in a concept called "forced obsolescence". they spend as much time designing things to break as they do designing things to work. because profit. it's fucking pathetic.
i snapped the plastic off and the solder just gave way. nothing complicated about it, no fault on my behalf - it was just designed to break. just cheap garbage.
this morning, i take the laptop out of sleep (as mentioned, it's practically brand new) and the video spazzes out into static to reveal a blank screen. wait. fuck. reboot. nothing. memory is fine, but the hard drive test is failing. again, there was no strain on the device. worse, it came with no warning - it wasn't clicking or whirring or buzzing. it's almost like it has a timer in it....
i'm running it through a chkdsk right now, which should hopefully be done by the end of the week, and it looks like, in the end, i may get away with a corrupt boot sector and a reinstall; hard to say at this point, but it appears like i may be able to partition out the bad part. but, there's no reason for this. it's just badly designed (accidentally on purpose) garbage.
the laptop is sort of gravy. it was a gift, to replace one that came to me on a grant (another compaq with another dead hard drive). if i can't get it back up, it just means i'll have to get that router fixed sooner than later. it's not devastating.
in the mean time, it's this museum piece with 650 MB of obsolete RAM that is the one that's still kicking - rusty joints and all. and hp/compaq should be fucking embarrassed about that. except not. 'cause profit.
12:00
(it turns out it won't be necessary to actually partition anything out because chkdsk does that in the mft. i did know how mfts work, but i wasn't clear on whether the information coming at me related to the physical sectors or the mft; it's the latter. which makes things easier. a chkdsk is enough; the file system will take it from there. and, thankfully, it does seem, right now, that the corruption is just at the front of the mft.)
i should point out that i've got the disc split into a small operating system partition and a large file partition. it seems like that's going to save my data, even as the os needs a fresh install. which is why i did it like that.
15:00
1% after 10 hours. 1000 hours is 42 days. and that's just the os partition. it'd better pick up.
it doesn't look unusable, so far. even if i can just get what's there off...
...and this ancient 90s compaq actually isn't bad once it got tweaked to a bigger pagefile. it can only handle a few tabs, sure. but it's at least as functional as an iphone...
if you want to run a 90s computer on the existing internet, you'd better get used to adblock. i don't need more RAM, websites need to stop loading their pages with crap. seriously.
as an aside, i get why i need to block twitter. i think its useless, but it's popular. why, though, do i need to block aol? why are websites still linking to aol? who uses aol? it's a 90s computer, not a time machine back there...
bonus: one can block entire commenting systems.
17:00
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