when i figure this out, i'm going to want to finish building a guitar mix that i started in 2007. this may end up with new sound. then it's done and i can move to the techno track, which is also going to primarily be a remix. there's going to be a few unreleased tracks attached to that. the last song to complete for this period is this thing i called ostrich, which was a first draft of sarah's 2002 xmas present. i ended up discarding it in favour of flying. there's going to be some new sound for this, but not much. the ep of material for the first half of 2003 is already finalized, so that will be a quick up. i'm going to have to reinterpret some stuff from mid 03, but it likely won't require new sound. in fact, i'm not looking at new sound after ostrich until probably early 2005. i always wanted to release symphonies 5&6 as the first part of a double, and no doubt will, but they'll probably also be available separately as record #8. so, i could very well be to xenophanes and symphony 7 by christmas. my period with sarah saw a dramatic decrease in output, but at least i mostly finished what i did. it's after sarah that things get scattered again. oddly. i think maybe i ended up with less time, but more of a need for an outlet and consequently more focus.

i literally have five reconstructions of this song that all seek to be the same thing.

there's a 2002 mix that i'm upping as is.

but i think i couldn't find that mix in 2007 and rebuilt from scratch. i have a bunch of modded source files from that point. i was trying to compile a list of symphonies at the time. i actually have two mixes from 2007 that seem to be almost the same (there's a louder guitar at one point). then, there's files modded in 2008, which i suspect were used in what seems like a remaster from 2009.

but i now have my 2002 version back again, and i'm thinking it would be best to just added the few extra tracks that were missing to it.

so, i've got a lot of just listening to do after supper. i'm not planning on recording any new material for this, but i want one definitive final instrumental version... to come up both for this and the ftaa upload....

i'm not rebuilding it from scratch. it's going to be based on one of the three near-complete mixes that are there.

this is why i moved to cubase...

uploading completed mixes to inri058

trepanation nation disc 1...

1) this is the first version of the track, which was written as an arena rock anthem in the summer of 2001 for use in a gestating rock band project that never happened.

i rerecorded the track to capture it in it's initial state on aug 3, 2014. track dated to aug 15, 2001.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-original-mix


2) the successor project to the aborted rock project was rabit is wolf, which consisted of myself and the singer from that project. while it was initially constructed around a shared interest in post-punk, the project took a sharp turn towards folk in the first half of 2002. the track was consequently converted from an arena rock punk/industrial anthem into a folk punk tune. this is the initial folk punk incarnation, as recorded in february of 2002. dated to feb 19, 2002.

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


3) i first started to record this track in earnest in march of 2002 by reconstructing the drums to utilize a mixture of machines and live loops. in the process, i began to experiment with the structuring of the track. the track may have been initially written on a classical in the first place (i don't remember); it certainly integrates the perspective of the classical guitar, and for good reason - i was playing a lot of classical guitar music over the course of 2001. so, it transferred to a finger picking style very intuitively. the final versions all have multiple classical guitar overdubs.

it was on the classical guitar that the track was expanded into the scale it came to exist in. this is an early performance on classical guitar, dated to april 7, 2002.

the knocking in the background of the track is literally background noise of my father hammering something outside my room. it became the inspiration for the ring modulator adlib in the final versions of the track (i gave sean a mic, plugged it into a ring mod and told him to bash on it while twiddling the knobs).

this version is very rough and is only available for download on bandcamp due to space requirements on the physical media.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-classical-guitar-mix


4) by the beginning of may, the track had taken on a defined shape. at the same time, sean and i were discussing ways to present rabit is wolf to the public and had decided on a two-person guitar/voice duo. the track consequently needed to be reworked for live presentation, which is what this is.

i constructed the mix in november, 2014 out of a guitar part dated to may 5, 2002 and vocals dated to june 7, 2002. i'm dating this to may 5, 2002.

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


5) the recording of this track over the spring of 2002 seems to have occurred in spurts, likely based around gaps in my school schedule. the drums in the first part of the track were sculpted together on the night/morning of march 7/8, which would have been a little after the track took it's initial folk punk form and centred on it existing in that way. the drums were sculpted from a mix of the initial drum machine part, real time ry30 square pushing, washes of digital noise and short, sculpted samples of greg playing in real time. the track seems to have been shaped into what it is during the week of april 15-22, a little after it was expanded by playing it as a classical piece, with the addition of multiple guitar and synth overdubs and all kinds of digital wave shaping through notch filters and time manipulation. i must have had that week off for exam related purposes; i probably had late exams that year. incomplete versions of the track exist that seem to have been burned around april 25, which are what the live version with sean would have been based upon.

the next spurt in recording was to add bass parts over the weekend of may 17-19. further drum and guitar parts were also added at this time.

i was growing very insular during the period this was recorded, which was partially out of a decision to force myself to go straight edge in preparation for transgendered hormone therapy, which i was set to begin at the start of may. the bulk of the track was recorded before i went on hormone therapy. it may in some way reflect a sense of resigned preparation for a difficult process. but, it really comes more out of the isolation i had forced upon myself.

my parents were coming out of a difficult financial situation due partly to their own mismanagement and partly to my father coming out of a period of unemployment. he was completing a course in management over the period, which put me in the weird position of having to do his statistics homework for him. i was a second year honours math student at the time, so his basic stats assignments were not very challenging for me; conversely, he wasn't interested in the topic. i should probably have a diploma in business stats from the university of manitoba along with my math degree from carleton. but, who's counting, really? my math degree never got me anywhere in life (i haven't aspired to use it for anything....), but his management course opened up doors for him that have aided me. so, it worked out....

what this meant was that i found myself living in a split duplex around the beginning of 2002. for many years previously, i had lived in various basements and more or less had those basements to myself, merely having to tolerate the odd laundry run. the split duplex put me in the rather normal situation of having a bedroom upstairs, the privilege of having a studio downstairs and the inconvenience of having to follow scheduling rules. as i'd been so used to having total freedom in my scheduling for so long, i was unable to adjust to this.

if i were to come up and down the stairs in the middle of the night, i would wake my labrador retrievers up (who just wanted to come say hi) and that would wake up my parents. this was consequently forbidden. to get around this, i started sleeping in the afternoon, so i could go downstairs in the evening and not come back up until the morning. this left me without human contact for days or even weeks at a time. on long days, i would sleep on the carpeted floor of the studio. some days, i simply wouldn't sleep at all.

what you're hearing here is in many ways the culmination of this lack of human contact, complete abstinence from drugs and sleep deprivation - all in the context of the stress from simultaneously completing two university programs and preparing for a dramatic life shift. while the music was recorded in spurts, those spurts were emotional stress outlets. while parts of this may sound like my sanity was fragile while it was being created, the process of recording them is probably the only thing that allowed me to maintain it.

this version is dated to may 22, 2002.

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

6) sean's vocals were added at the beginning of june. i had to add some extra synth parts, as well, to fix some of the harmonization. i've successfully glossed over the problems, but this is the one recording where sean legitimately couldn't find notes that fit. it's hard to blame him, as the music is rather complex from a harmonic standpoint and there isn't an existing melody written out for him to follow. he didn't have the training required to interpret this. the vocal manipulations i used in the track caused some conflict, but the reality is that the vocal melody he had extrapolated out of the guitars for use in the acoustic version was simply not transferable to this mix and the mods were necessary to compensate. placing his naked vocals into the track would have created large amounts of dissonance where no dissonance was desired. when the track opens up a bit, there's more space, and the vocals are left unaltered.

looking back, i suppose i could have explained that to him and asked for a rewrite rather than just taking it into my own hands and slathering on the effects, but i was very keen on both maintaining his autonomy as a vocalist and maintaining my autonomy as a producer/composer. on top of that, i simply liked the end result. i suppose that, had i not been able to manipulate the vocals into what i wanted, i would have had to ask for a rewrite....

for the ring mod part, i wanted to emulate the knocking sound that existed atmospherically in the classical version. so, i gave sean a mic plugged into a ring modulator, locked him in the room and told him to smash it against the ground and play with the knobs for a while. i've kept this part in further instrumental versions.

that said, sean largely rejected the track in it's psychedelic form, so this is the last rabit is wolf version.

this is dated to june 15, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-day-i-saw-you-cry-3


trepanation nation disc 2...

7) once it had become clear that sean had rejected the track, i wasn't entirely sure what to do with it. i had some material i had put aside for a noise project (subsequently compiled as inri032: jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/give-em-hell-harry-strung-out ) that was meant to merge noise & politics, and i was maybe eager to get back to this idea of music as a political art form.

while there were not lyrics attached to the initial cynicide project, i did already have the idea of a conceptual piece connecting the existing condition of north american society to the idea of trepanning, or self-lobotomizing to get the precise point across. we were in the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks (which seemed staged even at the point) and the political reaction to them. i felt the need to say something about this, but i didn't want to be too direct or judgmental about it so i compiled a list of samples that presented what i felt reflected the general condition of the world we were living in. the references are broad and vast; there's not really a succinct way to over-simplify it.

the overall context is the view that we were living through the end of the civil rights period. it could be argued that the focus on civil rights accidentally erupted as a reaction to world war two propaganda, hit a high point in the 1960s and began to irreversibly erode at the beginning of the 1980s. in this narrative, the collapse of the twin towers was the final death blow to something the elite never wanted in the first place and was happy to sweep into the trash heap of history.

but, i'm specifically focusing on how this is self-inflicted by our collective desire to be stupid - to drill these holes in our skulls, as though there's some kind of enlightenment in abolishing our ability to understand the world around us, and focus instead on our own short term gains. in that sense, it's an attack on the neo-liberal model and how it encourages us to destroy ourselves.

the spoken word section in the middle was a poem i created out of those word magnets you see on fridges. i was working as an overnight security guard at the time (summer of 2001) and just not sleeping at all. as i was doing my rounds, i stopped and made the poem. i got fired from that job for yelling at a coke machine...

i've considered doing a sample-by-sample breakdown of this but have decided it's neurotic. however, if you want to write an essay, and i like it, i'll link to it.

dated to july 4, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/trepanation-nation-sample-mix


8) in late 2013, i decided to complete unfinished tracks in a chronological ordering and it led me to the decision to complete the track in the form it was initially written in. completed on sept 24, 2014; dated to sept 16, 2001.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/10-to-spin-inside-dull-aberrations

i'm going to need to sleep soon, but it's going to flood a little.

i'm doing the crazy thing, here - almost three hours of mixes of the same song. it's going to be ordered chronologically. it won't take long to get it done, but it's going to be a lot of rss posts.

publishing the imaginary tour demo ep (inri059)

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

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

--

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

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

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

released august 1, 2002

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



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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

publishing time (inri056)

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

so, inri037 is now complete.

--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

released march 10, 2002

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

running out of time (final mixes)

1) the track, as it existed in rabit, was a conscious pop compromise. i had ideas that weren't explored to keep it poppy and that have been expanded upon in the remixes. written in late 2001 and 2002 and recorded in early 2002 and late 2014. the final mix was finished on nov 18, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/running-out-of-time


2) this mix is a combination of tracks from the original song played at various speeds, with large amounts of processing on the individual tracks. there's actually no synths in this track. track released nov 18, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/time-running-out-mix


3) a remixed instrumental version of the original track. released nov 18, 2014.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/time-unstuck-mix-2

i'm done reclaiming rabit stuff, now. the next few releases require some remixes but should be quick.

i don't know about this tour ep, i don't know if i have enough material. i'm not just going to release it for the sake of it. if i can get enough together, great. if not...

i ended up with a lot of unused edits for the first section of time, now called running out of time. i'm going to try a sound raider experiment with them to add to the ep. but they're not a part of the track. inri037 is otherwise done.

the rss will update. i need to eat....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

i hope i've clarified a few things.

time (running out mix)

so, this is going to come in in three parts on the time single, which will be merged into one track on the record.

it's looking like it'll be around 20 minutes, which may be a mild problem when it comes to sequence the disc. but i can't worry about that right now. right now, i've got tons of space on the single...

the third part may end up not on the record. we'll see.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/time-unstuck-mix


this is the first section, which will open up into a remix of the song for the second section. the third section is an idea that will be chaotic, let's see what it sounds like....

written & recorded in late 2001 and early 2002 and mixed in early 2002 and late 2014. the final mix was finished on nov 18, 2014.

this is fucking awesome....

i need to sustain it.

redistributing joy (tralfamadorian mix)

the song is..it's....it's coming unstuck! get back in the contraption, before it sucks us in....

whether this gets to glitch-hop or not remains to be seen (i may end with multiple mixes of this), but the track is currently taking on a decidedly ambient feel.

k, i've got the track rebuilt, if not mixed.

tonight's task is to figure out what to do with it.

well, i got my permanent record mailed to me, but it's not my permanent record. it's for somebody else with the same name born in july, 1981. i was born in january, 1981. so i need to figure out where my files are...

the one thing i did get back was standardized testing results from when i was in grade two. apparently, they identified me as being at a ninth grade level at that time. i passed a test to skip me past grade five, but the principal vetoed it because she thought i needed to stay the year for maturity reasons.

the truth is i was always almost a year older than everybody because i was born thirteen days past the cutoff. so, i was almost eight going into grade two. the skip probably would have helped more than hindered in terms of behavioural issues.

anyways, these were my grade two standardized test results. these are percentiles, not grades.

vocabulary - 99
reading - 95
language - 96
work-study - 99
mathematics - 93
total rank: 99th percentile (national)

i look back and don't wish i would have spent more time on school, i look back and wish i wouldn't have bothered at all. and, had i not been pressured into it, i probably wouldn't have.

i mean, i'd probably have more of this discography done at this point.

but i think i got to the right approach eventually.

speaking of which, i need to start the next remix....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

every once in a while i second guess myself on the way i'm doing this, with so many overlapping tracks, and i always come back to the same point. i'm just concerned that i'm giving out the impression that i'm ripping people off by burying an obscure track here or there, forcing people to buy things repeatedly.

first of all, i wouldn't expect *anybody* to buy every single release i have up on my page. it's not a collect them all kind of thing. it's a very diverse discography. if you like my ambient works, you might not like my noise pieces; if you like my orchestrated stuff, you might find the punk a little boring. etc. i get that. i'm that kind of artist. i mean, there will be the odd person that likes all of it but it's not going to be the norm...

second, i'm actually operating more on the idea of cataloguing my work than i am in offering a product for sale. so, yes, there's a lot of overlap in the eps, but each one of them is a conceptual fragment that represents an idea that i think ought to be catalogued.

the point i keep coming back to is that i'm providing options.

if i removed all the eps, and there was a specific song you really liked, you'd have to buy two or three records to get all the different versions. now, maybe you might want to do that anyways. but, maybe you don't. then, the ep would be a good idea because you'd get all the different versions of that one song in one place.

for example, with the ep i just released, you could break down the tracks as follows:

1) upcoming 6th record
2) rabit is wolf demo
3) imaginary tour ep
4) probably unique to this ep (a different version will be on the imaginary tour ep)
5) unique to this ep
6) not a song

you could look at it as though i'm burying two obscure tracks on the ep, but the way i'm looking at it is that i'm constructing a thematic listening experience, and there's no rule that says you have to buy the ep if you don't want to. that's what the records are for, if that's what you want. see, i grew up listening to remix records; i like to hear a handful of different versions of a song i like flow together, and in that sense i'm providing what i would want as a consumer.

but you could also look at it as though i'm stopping you from having to buy three albums to get all the versions of the track - and tossing in some bonus material on top of it.

another thing i'll do is split off ten or twenty conceptually linked minutes of a record and put it up as an ep. you could argue it's redundant, but what if somebody only wants that concept rather than the whole record? even that's not the point of why i'm doing this, though. i'm doing this to catalogue that idea as separate from the record, for thematic or chronological reasons. one example is the classical guitar ep. it's on the fifth disc. but, what if you just want the guitar pieces?

the current standard industry solution to this problem is to allow per track downloads but i really find this distasteful. i don't allow this for the specific reason that i don't like it. and, in the end buying multiple scattered mixes of a track is going to cost more than buying an ep, anyways, so i'm actually undercharging rather than overcharging if you directly contrast these options.

i know i'm doing this the way i want, and i know i'm doing it for the right reasons. but that perception bothers me. not that anybody has brought it up. but don't think it...it's not the right way to look at what i'm compiling, or interpret why i'm doing it this way...

i'm otherwise done for the night. the next thing up is the time remix, and this is going to be a little different because i don't have a clear plan to construct it. i have some rough ideas of things i wanted to play with, but it's not at all formed.

i think i'm going to reconstruct the track as it was, first, and then splice it up from there.

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

inri036 is now complete.

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

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

--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

released february 20, 2002

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

fuck boxes (overdub mix) and fuck boxes (final mix)

1) this mix removes the acoustic guitar(s) and integrates an electric guitar line into the end of the piece. it gives the track a very different, almost dubby, kind of glitch-hop sort of feel. written in early 2002 and recorded in early 2002 and late 2014. this mix was finished on nov 15, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/fuck-boxes-overdub-mix


2) this is the final instrumental mix of the track, encapsulating all instrumental parts written and recorded for the piece except for a guitar line that is unique to the overdub mix. written in early 2002 and recorded in early 2002 and late 2014. final mix completed on nov 15, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/fuck-boxes


3) the final mix is also on the j^2 record.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/fuck-boxes-2

on third thought, the dub mix can and will be done - i really want this, so i'm forcing it a little. the only thing i'm taking out is the acoustic, which makes it a universal overdub (that is, it includes the original overdubs). acoustic guitars are beastly instruments when it comes to the mix, hogging the whole spectrum. and i made sure the acoustic guitars really did hog the spectrum, mixing it through three separate eq paths. what that means is taking it out opens up immense room in the mix, and i'm able to get the feel i want for this.

merely ripping those out created three parts very quickly. so, that's what i need to do, here - mix these extra parts into the dub mix, then see which ones i can take over to the final mix.

i should eat lunch first.

forget it....the dub mix sounds goofy...the track has a glitch quality, and i thought it would be fun to exploit that, but it's too long and disconnected to the point that it honestly just sounds like a reggae band that's so stoned they can't stay in time. i'm not getting anywhere by blaring leads over this, or even releasing it at all. so, scratch that idea.

i think it's done, but let me mull it over first.

ok, i've got what i think may be a final mix done, but i need to experiment with some lead parts.

the problem is that the end of the track is a little boxy, and it's restricting what's possible in terms of lead parts. if i loop something, it's going to feel cluttered. if i do some flashy lead parts, it's going to become a fusion track, and that's not really where i wanted to take the song. so, i'm probably going to leave the end section void of those lead parts.

however, i wanted to make a dub mix consisting of the overdubs i added to the track, and i'd be comfortable taking that in a more fusion direction.

so, i'm going to finish that up first, then mix the lead parts into the main track and see what it sounds like. i'm not expecting them to stick, but i'll have to hear it before i make a final decision.

so, it may be a little later than noon, but i still expect to be done by the end of the day....

uploading already completed tracks to inri056

1) this is the rabit is wolf version. written & recorded in late 2001 and early 2002 and mixed in early 2002. track released march 2, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/time-2


2) this is the rabit is wolf version. written & recorded in early 2002. track released march 8, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/psi-2


3) this is included for thematic purposes, and otherwise has nothing to do with rabit is wolf. written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. further constructed, warped and appended to over july, 2014. track released july 19, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-time-machine-4


three of what is currently four tracks slated for inri037. there's nothing new here, but this timeline will eventually be moved to my own site, so i'm documenting dates.

tentative writeup:

time remixes. inri037.

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

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

the track, as it existed in rabit, was a conscious pop compromise. i had ideas that weren't explored to keep it poppy and that will be explored in the remix.

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

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

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

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

ok, i'm awake now. that was a lot of sleeping. i'm leaning towards noon as an eta for this.

i'm very sensitive to the weather...

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

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

this is why i always have extra spaghetti.

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

i'm putting the final touches on this. final instrumental name: "fuck boxes".

excerpt from catch-22

"You mean there's a catch?"

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

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

i've never had an apple device in my life, but i should look into itunes/beats/whatever.

beats is worse for payouts than spotify.

it seems like only google is doing this in the right way. consumers may want their free lunch, but the artists aren't likely to give it to them.

give it a few quarters, and i think google completely cleans up on this by inking exclusive agreements. it's going to drive apple to adjust it's payout model, and probably close down spotify altogether.

....and apple is actually arrogant enough to demand you upload from an apple product, lol.

google is the right choice. i'll figure this out later...

grargh. not happening, i guess. back to post-production...

yeah. they'll let me link the account to paypal, but they won't let me use it for this purpose. it's not like i really want to pay paypal, but at least it would work.

gah...

i decided to give uploading to google play a shot. it's almost five cents a stream. that's far more realistic as a payout. i'd expect that what google is doing is undercutting the competition, and that they will eventually raise the price. i'm on the other side of this, and i'd have to argue this is the right way forward. spotify isn't paying the artists. if google is paying the artists, that's a start, but the price it's charging isn't sustainable, either....

it's $25 to sign up, which is what stopped me from signing up before. but i've got $25 in my paypal account from sales. that's how i want this to work.

they only take google wallet. ok. so, i go to sign up and they won't take my debit card. i'm using a canadian grocery store card, so i guess they don't have it setup. that's reasonable, but then why make it the only option?

that's not what creeped me out, though. realizing that i can't make this transaction, i went to delete the wallet account i'd created.

apparently, google wants to phone you.

i don't have a phone, either, but that's not the point. about the last thing in the world that i want is a phone call from google. i just about had a heart attack.

scary shit.

it turns out google wallet has general problems in canada.

we can't use their phone software, either.

it's probably a "regulatory problem". which means that the oligopoly doesn't want to let in foreign companies.

our regulatory bodies get praise outside the country, and there are some upsides, i'll admit that. but they're generally driven by the desire to control the market, to keep rates higher. i'm one to argue for other options than market liberalization, as i don't think that is beneficial to consumers, either. but when you're dealing with these big companies, conflicts develop - because they want to control the entire process.

as the united states is a large and close market, it's a problem for canadian businesses, in general. there has to be some kind of workaround...

i ended up tweaking the mix yesterday. i think i'm finally happy.

i'm going to have to wait until 10:00 before i'm comfortable hitting the kit. i don't think he can hear it, but noise carries differently at 3:00 am than it does in the afternoon, and i'm considerate about this.

i'm considering maybe soundscaping the drums for the third part, anyways. on the one hand, the section kind of screams "zeppelin"; on the other hand, i want to avoid the cliches. i've actually got too many ideas floating through my head rather than not enough and am having difficulty ordering them.

it'll happen.

things always take longer than i expect. but it's part of the freedom of not working with boundaries. i love the fact that i don't have a producer yelling at me to get things done before a release date, so i can fit a marketing cycle. i wouldn't give that freedom up for anything.

a friend of mine at the time heard the song and claimed it was stairway, which was wrong by any reasonable metric, but it's stuck with me and i'm conscious of avoiding the bonham cliches for that reason.

with all the electronic noises and glitchy beats and stuff, it's definitely nowhere close to stairway now. i do admit that riff is admittedly rather page in character, but it's a rock riff, and it's kind of true of every rock riff - if it's not page, it's iommi or clapton or mclaughlin or hendrix. they invented it, so, you can't avoid a comparison on some level.

if it sounds like an existing riff, i can't place it, it's a stylistic thing...

...but there's really a big sign in my head that states, quite clearly, NO BONHAM. and i'm obeying it....

ok, i've got my schedule cycled back around for drums, now, and a few days to get the last two parts done. i think i will...

uploading unintelligible to youtube

the track switches tonight at midnight (tomorrow night), but i'm thinking about it now...

not my most insightful track, in either the sense of being purposefully or accidentally insightful. it's catchy, though - fun as far as silly 90s punk rock goes.

the most substantial thing is probably the nwa reference, in the sense that it's something you wouldn't expect - and foreshadows me moving in that direction.

the drums were played by recording myself rocking out with a pen on a wood table.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL3knvasuwQ&list=PL3JSjmqp0cbsN9vZEYmFDghfz0V6hWbLI


well, actually, i should add a few more words because it otherwise seems rather pointless.

i was at the time talking about starting a punk band with a friend of mine, named matt. there was actually a song recorded with matt on vocals and bass and myself on guitar (i can't remember the name of it, and don't have a copy of it). the name of the project was meant to be "second class citizens", with an acronym stylized as 2CC. nothing else came of it.

but i had initially written this song for that purpose and demoed it out to show him. that kind of explains why it's different than the other stuff on these early demos.

eventually, it became clear that the project wasn't developing, so i just added my own vocals. as the song was meant for matt to sing on, i didn't have any thematic concept attached to it. so, what i did was take random words out of the dictionary. it was honestly just a close-your-eyes-pick-a-page-pick-a-word process. then, i added the chorus in reaction to the random dictionary process.

....except the bridge. that's the nwa reference.

i guess you could maybe pull something accidentally insightful out of it regarding my view of lyrics in mainstream punk (or grunge) at the time. it could be interpreted as a parody, but i wasn't consciously thinking of it like that.

actually, it's sort of not worth the time. the max i can claim on this is $4000 (for the year) for living expenses, or $10000 for "professional recording expenses" that need to go to a for-profit recording studio.

i have no use for a for-profit studio for what i do, and i'd probably just end up yelling at the engineer until he walks out.

or kicks me out.

so, $4000/yr is basically useless.

the only reason i need to be concerned about applying for the $10000 and then just pocketing it is that it might harm me to renew. i want to avoid that. but i don't know if i'll still be alive in may.

the way the calendar aligns kind of works it out, though. i could maybe...yeah....it does make sense to apply for this, even though it's small.

i'm thinking the jury is probably full of liberal "arts" douches, though, the kind that think that celine dion is a singular talent and a canadian icon, and they're just going to be confused by what i send them.

there's this whole nationalist bent to it. and i'm often not friendly to canada.

but i should do this...

again: this is why some kind of minimal income is ideal to maximize freedom. this jury is not an audience of my peers. this would be more likely to work out if i wanted to be avril or alanis or something - or if i were a local indigenous or francophone singer that was carrying on a "cultural tradition".

it's a fundamentally conservative system. every second sentence says something about heritage (and i'm kind of the view of "fuck heritage!"), but there's not a word about creating new forms.

it mirrors the society.

you have to expect that.

i have to try....it's worth failing for....and it's practice for something else next year, if i make it that long.

they want two audio recordings. i'm going to give them two fragments.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/introduction


https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/second-movement-part-1-rough-part-2


i think these are 'pop' enough to qualify, and yet also have artistic merit.

wish i had looked into these grants a few weeks ago....i'd never claim i'm an organized person....

there's one that's open. everything else is closed.

until may probably.

had i done this in september, i'd have more options.

the one that's open is for "popular music". that's a complicated, multifaceted and bluntly intimidating term.

i guess in the sense that it's "not classical" you could sort of call what i do "popular music".

except that a lot of it sort of actually really is better described as classical music.

again, it's the kind of thing i have to think comes down to the person making the decision. if i'm trying to get past of panel of american idol judges or something.....it's not what i do. i have no commercial potential. but, if they're a little more open-minded...

i lose nothing but time trying.

time is important, mind you.

it's the only truly quantifiable thing in our existence.

the only abstraction with any meaning.

time is not money. time makes money seem useless and worthless in comparison.

but i think this is worth it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

publishing rabit is wolf (inri057)

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

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

--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

released june 20, 2002

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

so, i actually got quite a bit of filing done last night. they're things i have to do with this project, to make sure everything's ordered. part of the problem is that almost everything between 2001 and 2003 is dated to may, 2003 due to a wonky burn. so it's a careful process of reconstructing by memory because i don't have a lot of the exact dates. i'm almost over that hump...

i also jumped ahead to inri038 (and i'm certain it will be inri038), which has been sequenced and is being uploaded. this is the complete rabit demo, which has been expanded to a sixth track and is now nearly an hour long...

i wouldn't enumerate any rabit material in my list of official records. rather, i'd point out that there's instrumental mixes coming up on the sixth record. but this demo is long enough that i'm going to treat it as an unofficial record rather than an ep. the problem with calling it record is that 4 of the six songs appear in remixed form on other records. in that context, it's almost more like a remix record.

i jumped ahead to get it out of the way so i can just be thinking about the instrumental tracks. i'm still going to need to do some constructions for the acoustic ep, but this otherwise gets that dealt with.

i'll post it when it's done uploading and i have the info up and stuff.

ok, i'm coming to terms with the fact that i'm probably not hearing back from the psychiatrist and i'm going to have to wait until the 12th to get somebody to fill out the forms.

i'm expecting that the forms will not be filled out. if so, i will immediately attempt suicide in the doctor's office. so, you can pencil in the first suicide attempt for jan 12, 2015. i expect that this attempt will be stopped, but it seems as though i'm going to have to actually go through with it.

i'm also going to have to sit down over the weekend and explore artist grant options. it's not what i want. what i want is long term odsp. but if i get the grants, and it lets me live an extra year or two to get the work i want done done, then it's a better option for future generations. so i'm obligated to do this.

i mean, if the point of this is to save money, they may want to recalculate that because it's going to cost money and resources to pump my stomach and put me through all this processing. if somebody ends up dying in the meantime, i'd argue the doctors should be held liable for it. there's no reason to play out this pointless drama.

but, you know. world. stage. actors. yeah.

i just wish people had more foresight and were able to make decisions more rationally.

i mean, i don't want to spend the weekend in the hospital any more than the system wants to expend the resources on me for it....if i can find even one doctor willing to dislodge head from ass and get a grip on the reality of the situation, i won't have to.

i'm not expecting this.

so, you can pencil in an acetaminophen overdose on jan 12th at the windsor branch of the canadian association of mental health.

ok, the mix is done. that was an all nighter, i need sleep...

i'm not going to be able to drums this afternoon, i'm going to have to do laundry and things of that sort, so i'll be pushing this off until saturday. expect some jump ahead uploads for tomorrow. i may go ahead and sequence the rabit demo.

uploading 9:46 to the scratchpad

i'm going to be playing with the mix for a while, but i've got a temp mix of the first 6:40 uploading to the scratchpad. i'm actually happy this is finally coming together, of all the lost tracks this was one i always wanted to really polish up....

second section is basically done, but i want to sleep on it. it ended up polyrhythmic....

it's not really that i'm irresponsible.

i mean, i am. i can't really argue.

but it's really more that i avoid responsibility, so i don't have to be irresponsible - partly because i know i'm really not overly irresponsible, when forced to not be.

i mean, have you thought about all the conditioning that goes into this? if people actually desired responsibility, we wouldn't need to drill it into kids as they grow up. it's a type of socially enforced brainwashing, and it's arguably necessary to uphold the status quo.

but, if you don't like the status quo, it's collapse is not frightening to you and these arguments about the breakdown of society sound more like a goal than a disaster.

so, if you acknowledge that people don't really desire responsibilities, is it not rational to avoid them?

i got the snares in the second section done today. not completely mixed, but played and sequenced. that was the hard part for that section. i need some toms and kicks and crashes but it's less skittery and should be relatively quick to get in.

so, no temp mix tonight. maybe one tomorrow.

there's four sections. hopefully, two is done tomorrow.

did the package arrive?

jessica
hi..

just wondering if the package arrived?

i just want to comment on shipping, too, because it's been bothering me. the actual cost to ship from where i am in canada to the uk is $9 to ship one disc and $12 to ship two, so i did make a few dollars on shipping. i was considering sending you a bonus disc to make up for it, but i couldn't fit three discs in one package, so it would have cost me an extra $9 in shipping to get the third disc out. see, because the shipping gets me a deal on multiples of two it works out non-linearly to:

$9 - one   (flat 10)
$12 - two  (flat 20)
$21 - three  (flat 30)
$24 - four   (flat 40)
$33 - five   (it's flat 50, but this is where i think it gets unfair)

..and of course it's going to decrease further as more units move in the same order.

fairness is very important to me. i'm actually sort of neurotic about it, to the point that it's harmed my own interests at points. so, i've changed my shipping policy. it's flat for under five discs, meaning i will make a few dollars on shipping small orders but i think that's ok. five or more discs and i'll contact the seller about adding free items.

just thought you should know that, as i had increased shipping between the orders. you had paid more than the list price initially, and i'm glad you did because i would have otherwise lost money on shipping the first item (i had just guessed $5, which was an underestimate...).

but let me know if you got the package... 

primatemaster
Arrived yesterday, thanks.

Wasn't sure about emailing to let you know - in the end I decided that was a bigger deal for the first delivery and not so much after the efficiency of our respective postal systems has been established. Re-thinking, if I were in your position, I'd prefer to know that the package was delivered safely so apologies for any concerned pondering/ sleepless nights. I'll send notifications after any future deliveries, provided that I'm not sending them to a corpse. :)

Don't worry about the delivery cost (insert your own joke about the low value of Canadian currency here), s'not unreasonable given the size of the ocean. And it is more important that you don't lose out in the transaction. I'll confess to a degree of hesitation when the total cost appeared, but that's down to my inner cheapskate having a mental block where $[shipping] > $[stuff I want]. I grew as a person when I clicked the button to pay. Larger orders run the risk of being stung for the double tax of import duty and Royal Mail 'service' charge, so that must be avoided on principle. 

jessica 
don't worry about emailing me, i was just double checking...

ok, i'm going to try and mix a little more before bed. i had to turn the mixer off for an hour or so because it was getting glitchy on me. i think it's more to do with the operating system than the device, but it has a sweet spot.

cover art pretension fail?

maybe, but it works. i'll make sure this is good....

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

actually, maybe i should make a general comment about the cover art...

with few exceptions, most of it is lifted. i'd hesitate to say i have little visual art talent - i've actually been told there is talent, to my honest surprise, underlying the little bit of work that i've done - but it's not something i like to spend a lot of time with. i just don't get the kind of creative burst out of it that visual artists need to get out of it to keep doing it. i think it's no secret that paintings can fetch absurd prices, too - my insistence on focusing on the art form may act as a mental block in diving into it. that is to say that i'm not driven by the kind of profit motive that tries to pass off a picture of a soup can as a work of art.

to me, music is a purely abstract creative form, whereas i tend to interpret the visual side of something as trying to capture an idea or an expression. that is, i see the visual as something much more concrete. further, i'd never doubt it's power in doing that. visual images can be quite striking in that context. so, if i had unlimited resources, i'd generally rather make use of a good photographer than an actual visual artist. when i do fall back to actual paintings, it's usually going to be with the same kind of mindset. it's maybe a bit backwards to look for something concrete in the surreal or in impressionism, but it's how i'm going to approach it for album cover art.

so, i went with the dali for this because it's a concrete representation of the abstraction of the track; however absurd or surreal the painting may be, it's the concrete connection between a picture of a clock melting and the sound of time caving in that is the point, here.

there are a few things i tossed together in paint, often constructed from existing images - like a sample art project. they're pretty obviously discernible. and the dali there is one of a few paintings that i feel have that concrete connection. generally, though, i'm going to focus on trying to find a photographic representation of the album's content - something i feel encapsulates the sound on the disc.

none of it's credited. i'm not selling a lot of records, so it's not a problem for me right now. i come out of a plunderphonics background, and don't see a lot of problem with borrowing the images, so long as i'm not exploiting the creators. and, the truth is that i'm currently not.

i've long committed myself to tracking down the original artists if a time comes where there's serious pressings and serious sales. this will happen, if or when that happens.

for now, i'm just lifting, and i'm thinking of it in terms of sample art.

obligatory influential on the track of the day post...

the drum machine? well, yeah. i'd never really used one before, and it became a pretty important creative tool.

(relevant tracks: confused)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZzh0heyPtI

i was dumb enough to sell it. i use an electronic kit now, and i do prefer the flexibility of a pair of sticks. but if i ever happen to stumble on one again....

ah, this record...

this is an "obligatory influential on" post.

i couldn't get this version up here in canada, so i instead bought both sides of the digipack. i had 'em dubbed onto a tape for walkman use, and hours of total headfuck on the bus.

the song is kind of....not reznor's best work. it's taken on this weird fake underground ebm club cultural context. it's clear, on the disc, that it's a depraved statement from somebody that's losing it. but, i guess nobody asked the dj at the strip club for any type of analysis, and there consequently never really was much.

the density of the track gave the remixers so much room to play with, and (as he was doing regularly at the time) he really got the a list out on it...

i can't overstate the influence of this disc. fixed, also. even today, all these years later, it's still the alpha document that informs the way i structure sound.

(relevant tracks: everything)

uploading confused to youtube

track switches tonight at midnight.

this is the remake of the one about me chopping my penis off. i haven't done the write-up yet. i'm getting snare parts down on 9:46 and am happy about the progress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNAYKj5qgO8

gah. not much more left for the day, nothing done.

but tomorrow i'm clear-headed and should be able to focus. hopefully the space gives me a bit of perspective. like, fuck, all i'm adding is a drum part and a yelp...this should be simple enough....

it's funny how you focus the least when you want to focus the most.

i underestimated the effects of stress. i'm useless under pressure.

it's not even a question of error, and it's not a conscious choice, but i seem to instinctively reject any kind of purpose.

if i have absolutely no pressure to create, i'm very productive. but, when i got deadlines - any kind of structure at all, really - i start procrastinating.

the more i'm pushed to better myself, the less i care.

strange? i don't think so. i think it's a coping mechanism and that it's probably common. it only seems strange if you begin with the error that we are rational and logical creatures.

but what it means is that i'm in a very bad spot. the stress isn't going to stop soon, and if i end up committing suicide it may be with less done due to the stress the process caused...

all they're succeeding in with this approach is making me less productive :(

i'm going to try and relax and get some mental composing done tonight, but i have another stressful day tomorrow....

so, the upstairs neighbour bought a new fridge, and he may have had the ice connected incorrectly.

it's a valid hypothesis, let's hope that's all there was to it. if so, i should be happy that it hit the counter rather than fall in behind it.

again, though, it's not confident-inducing regarding water damage in the structure.

after haggling him a bit to check under the sink, i'm pretty sure he found the connection that was leaking and stopped it. he was trying to convince me the window was leaking from the rain...

it hasn't rained in days. he's a little slow. but, hey, i'm used to living in a kafkaesque world, so i can deal with this...

"it could have been the rain from on friday"

"but it just showed up out of nowhere and then stopped."

"maybe it took a few days to seep down."

"ok, maybe. but can you look under the sink for me?"

"ok."

burst pipes...

jessica
hi.

we know the plumbing down here is aging; unfortunately, i think something may have blown deep into the wall.

i left around 11:00, was back around 12:30, left again around 1:00 and was back a little after 3:00. between 1:00 and 3:00 a significant amount of water appeared on the counter. there's none on the floor. the counters and cupboards are dry. the counter on the other side is dry. and the sink is dry. so it was initially very confusing as to where that water came from, to the point that i was worried about an unauthorized entry.

however, as i was cleaning it up, i felt a sprinkle come down on me from behind the cupboard. i need to be clear that this is very weird as a source - the cupboards and counters are completely dry, but something has sprung a leak behind them and is squirting out from a small hole in the wall.

here's the thing: with the flow rate i'm seeing, the amount of water that built up would have taken more like two days than two hours. that indicates to me that something likely burst and the sprinkle is just dead pressure. it also indicates that whatever's flowing through there is going to mess behind the wall when it gets turned on.

there was also a little bit of leaking coming out of the wall and the pipes. this seems to be migrating. in terms of the amount of water, is little more than condensation - not concerning. but in terms of the source it maybe is because it's right across the window.

so, i'm guessing that there's an exploded pipe behind the wall that can't be gotten at it without ripping things out. i can't provide any more information until i see more water. but i suspect it could be a messy situation fairly soon.

i've attached two files.

i know it's weird. i just need to reiterate that the inside of the cupboards are dry and under the sink is also dry. there just seems to have been a burst of water out of that crack...

(pause)

just to let you know...

it IS still dripping. it's not a lot, but it's coming down. i'm willing to accept the misinstalled fridge as a hypothesis, but if it's true than there's either still water in between the floors or it's still not set up right.

i'll keep monitoring.

(pause)

now, the paint or plaster is starting to peel and i'm getting concerned it might take the cupboard down or worse. wherever it's coming from, it's coming down beside the plaster and bubbling out of it.

so, we know:

1) something happened this afternoon which left a large amount of water on the counter.
2) it stopped.
3) something happened around 8:00 which led to it leaking again.
4) now it seems to have slowed down, if it not stopped.

i'm leaning towards an action-reaction relationship, which tells me it's plumbing related. it very well may be the fridge, but, whatever it is, i think the source needs to be determined and turned off...

the landlord
I found the problem, under my sink the connection was lose, it has been  snug up stop dripping, should be ok: stay in touch: Let me know if it stop dripping. It should dry up. Thanks for the info:

jessica
it seems to have stopped for now, hopefully it holds.

gah. the pipes in here are...ugh...

as far as i can tell, something busted when i was out. there was water all over the counter, but no obvious source - except that the space between the cupboard and the wall was wet. the cupboards are dry. it's dry under the sink. so it must be so deep into the wall that there's no answer besides turning it off. what i don't know is if i can turn it off or not.

i tested all the water sources in here and can state with certainty that, whatever the pipe is, it's not connected to my plumbing.

i emailed the landlord(s) and we'll have to see what i get back.

i suspect something upstairs froze and then burst when it unfroze. i wonder if it has to do with the switch to a furnace that happened over the summer, and if it's something i can expect more of this winter.

they've mentioned previously that most of the pipes are plastic, but there's obviously a bunch that aren't right above the counter. the end solution may be to swap them to plastic. but that's going to be expensive and annoying from what i can gather.

the other thing to point out is that moisture behind the walls is terrible news for keeping out bugs, which i feel i've been largely successful with.

it's going to be a piss off if that gives them the damp space they need.

(outside of obvious structural water damage issues, which i feel this place is pretty sketchy with - but i mean you get what you pay for when it comes to that)

there's no pipes anywhere near the gear, that's the most important thing.

this is a property that i'm more or less convinced *will* eventually cave in. the tub will go through the floor or something. it's a matter of time. i just hope i'm able to get what i need to get out of it before it does.

if somebody one day decides to sort out the cause, it's almost certainly going to be a combination of negligence with the pipes and negligence with the structural integrity of the flooring. i'm not thinking about this right now, i just want the pipe issue identified and turned off.

i mean, do i think this place would pass a safety? with much difficulty, and a laundry list of fixes. it's not imminently dangerous, but it's not being upkept, either.

but that's why it's dirt cheap, so i can deal with it...

this is the fourth or fifth time i've seen leakage this year. it always gets dealt with. this will get dealt with. but the sum of this - and all the damage that no doubt occurred before i moved in - adds up. like i say, it's a matter of time...

there's a half dozen places in the ceiling where you can identify the water damage. i initially decided it was probably just cosmetic. i don't think that's true anymore.