i picked up a cassette of fixed some time around '94 or so. at first, i couldn't listen to it. it was just noise. but, i kept coming back to it out of a sense of curiosity: is there something to this under the chaos? is this something abstract i ought to understand? or is it really just a lot of noise?
it finally clicked some time in mid '95 or so, and it got stuck in my walkman after that for months and months at a time. i actually managed to literally wear the tape out, and had to repurchase on cd.
i'm not sure i've ever really got an answer to that question, so much as it acted as a means of familiarizing myself with the concept of noise as music. about half the disc is carefully sculpted and arranged. the thirlwell mixes, especially, are definitely works of art. but, there's also a good helping of total noise on the disc that exists on a kind of boundary point. if you listen to it repeatedly, patterns start to arise and you become familiar with them, meaning it does function as artistically valid from start to finish. but, it's an open question as to whether those patterns were composed or just haphazardly spliced together. the thing is that it's not obvious, either way - there is at the very least an expert level of bullshitting going on here, to the point that the question can be put aside and the record can be thoroughly enjoyed as purely abstract sound.
it's a pretty ubiquitous background influence, along with the other major nin remix discs (closer & fdts, especially). but, it really comes out very strongly on the current featured track.
(relevant tracks: why is the current featured track with the obvious influence, but fixed is a formative influence and can be heard in everything i've ever done)
so, just trying to work things through a little...
i'm convinced that what i'm picking up is radio static. at the frequency level it's at - 5000-15000 hz - it pretty much has to be that. and, it seems too low to be wifi or cell or whatever. it's the frequency that a radio signal operates at, so it's gotta be a radio signal.
the questions i need to figure out are:
1) can i find a way to block the radio signals in the unit? 2) given that it seems to have something to do with the power lines or the streetlights as well, is it the case that these things are affecting my headphones and turning them into a receiver or is it the case that these things are affecting the radio waves and turning them into a relayer? that is, are my phones getting charged (and can i shield them?) or is the signal getting amplified (and then what?).
see, here's the thing: i seemed to be able to block it with a towel. you can't block a magnetic field with a towel. but you can block a radio signal with a towel.
that suggests to me that i may have a solution in building some kind of fort.
i'm hoping my landlord has a gaussmeter. that will help a lot.
but, i think i really just need to go ahead and get the new cords, already. i mean, the worst thing that can happen is that i'll have extra cords.
christmas deposits come in early, it'll be a next week thing.
my walking phones are also demoed, which will be a gst check thing at the beginning of january. they were a christmas present three years ago. i immediately knew that the connector on the noise cancelling unit would break. i didn't think they'd last three years, even. i can unscrew the unit, but the break is too high on the line - i'd have to cut and splice it. they're not worth it, really. i'd rather just get some cleaner phones. so, merry christmas to me...
or...
why don't i get some new phones next week, and then test to see if the interference is gone, then get some new cords if it is?
i did a compost run this morning, which was a
long walk a good way from home, and it was interference free until i got
a few blocks from home.
whatever the cause of this is, it's transmitting over several city blocks. it's a bloody huge field.
short
of getting the city or the utility or whatever else it is to get to the
source, there is no way to stop the interference. that is now clear to
me. it's not in my control. my only option is to try and block it.
i
learned during the walk that my walking phones have a short. the
initial logic was "either it's interference or both phones are shorted.
it's unlikely that both phones are shorted. so, it must be
interference."
and, it is clear that there is interference.
but, it might also be the case that both phones are shorted.
if i can prove to myself that my studio phones are shorted, and replacing the cord fixes that, then that's good enough for now.
but, i also need to figure out how to approach this huge multi-block field i find myself living in, too.
i'm just wondering how i go about the process of investigating a possible interference problem, and possibly having it fixed.
i'm an electronic musician, so i spend a lot of time listening to unusual effects collages and i consequently have very sensitive ears. i've been noticing strange audio behaviour out of my system since july, and it has taken me a very long time to go through the process of checking various causes and ruling various things out.
after checking driver conflicts, os settings, ground issues, cords and everything else you could imagine, i've finally settled on interference as the root cause because it seems to be unpredictable. it will be fine for a few hours, then distort for a few days. the interference seems to fade in the early morning, and especially on saturday mornings.
the interference i'm getting is relatively high frequency. it's in the radio spectrum. it's a distortion roughly between 5000-10000 hz, maybe a little higher, and often a functional low pass somewhere around 10,000 hz.
i get this interference from multiple pairs of headphones out of multiple systems on multiple circuits. in fact, i even get it from a standalone pocket-mp3 player. but, i've been assuming for the last few weeks that the source was indoors and trying to locate it.
today, i took that pocket mp3 player for a walk around the neighbourhood and noticed that the interference was actually even worse outside, in the immediate vicinity of my dwelling. if i walk a few blocks in any direction, it seems to mostly dissipate.
there was some intense jackhammering in my neighbourhood over the summer, as the sewers were replaced. i'm slowly coming to an understanding that something may have been damaged at that time and it's been feeding out signal ever since, in a way that is proportional to how much electricity is being pulled into the neighbourhood.
do you have a process to deal with this sort of thing? how do i get it started?
hydro one
Thank you for contacting us to bring this issue to our attention.
Please provide your property address, meter number and/or Hydro One account number in a reply email and we will be happy to investigate further.
For more information on Hydro One, visit: www.hydroone.com.
jessica
hi.
i'm a renter, so i don't have the account information. but, i'm located at
805 marion ave,
windsor ontario,
n9a 2h8
i also have some more information to provide you with.
i went for a long walk with my mp3 player and headphones around the city yesterday. i've determined that there is no interference south of erie or east of ouellette.
i believe i'm actually picking up radio frequencies in the phones, but that there must be some environmental factor - likely related to the power lines or the streetlights - that is amplifying it when i walk through the affected area, which is north of erie and west of ouellette, at least as far as where i live (i haven't determined exact boundaries to the north or west of the affected area).
what i think is that some kind of maintenance in the area has disrupted the lines, which has created a large magnetic field that is proportional to the amount of current running through the lines. this magnetic field is then messing with my phones, turning them into a receiver for the normal radio frequencies running through the area.
i may be able to get some readings on a gaussmeter over the next few days and will forward them to you if i do. hydro one
Dear Ms. Murray,
Thank you for your reply.
Unfortunately, Hydro One Networks does not service this area. Please contact Windsor Utilities at 519-255-2727.
so...
i took a walk around the neighbourhood and the source of interference appears to be the power lines. it fades if i walk in any direction.
the city did some sewer replacements over the summer. much jackhammering. possible cause.
i *think* i can contact the utility company about this...
yeah. i may have wasted six months due to broken fucking power lines.
see, it worked for a bit yesterday - randomly - and then crashed again this morning.
it has to be being driven by the other tenants.
i just sent my landlord an email asking if he has any ideas...
i have come to the final conclusion of outside interference as the root of the problem, but it has not left me any closer to finding a solution.
1) i do not know the source of the interference, but it is certain to me that it is outside my apartment.
2) i do not know if some kind of damage to the phones made existing interference worse, if the interference damaged the phones or if the interference is more recent.
the electric heating upstairs was removed last spring. a new tenant moved in upstairs near the beginning of the summer. i think this is the reason it seems ok, then doesn't, then does. it depends on the interference floating around. i had suspected this previously, but every time i came to a different answer i put it aside; these have all been false positives, and the interference is really the only thing left.
one of the most compelling demonstrations of this occurs when i place a towel over my head, which dampens it. moving my head around drastically alters the sound. it really couldn't be more clear.
i've decided on a plan.
1) i will finish this project on a track-by-track basis. most of it is mixed, i just need to verify that it sounds correctly. it is a bit of a process to find the right way to position the headphones, but it can be done.
2) i will replace the cord in the phones. i am not certain this will work, but i have to try it.
3) if it does not, i will need to talk to my neighbours, and see if i can determine a cause.
4) i'll need to talk to the landlord, after that. he has done electrical work in the building. he's an electrician. he may have some ideas.
5) if i still cannot resolve the issue, i will have no option but to plan to move.
i think 3 & 4 are the most likely to yield results, but i need to approach this incrementally to avoid making errors in my living arrangements.
the inriclaimed project, and related projects, will need to be done in the next few days. i will be able to do the filing I need to catch up to where i was, after that, while i wait for the phones to come in. the new cord will likely arrive early in the new year, and i'll have to go from there.
it's finally consistently sounding a lot better. with a slight caveat.
current hypothesis - and take it for what it's worth given my track record - is that the seal on the left headphone is weak. either due to the bass loosening it, or just because it's weak, the seal is consistently opening. this is creating a magnetic field that is picking up interference. the interference is distorting the output in unpredictable ways, as it's dependent on whatever is floating around.
i seem to be able to break the field by pushing the seal in, but it seems to pull itself back open. i don't want to glue it because i do want to be able to open the phones up. the break is really paper thin. i'm hoping that pushing it back together often enough will put it back in place.
i'm thinking the cause of this may have been the short i was getting in the last cord, which had me frequently fiddling with the connector on that side. the sound seems to have really broken when i was mixing "viewless" at high volumes, which features a massive thump on the low end, in the drums and bass guitar. so, i think it was a combination of things. i may have made it worse by jimmying it open a few months ago, looking for a cause.
i've had far too many hypotheses, and in the end they all either fail or end up incomplete. but, i think this one is ridiculous enough to be plausible. and i do seem to be getting cause and effect, which has eluded me for so long.
i need to listen for at least the rest of the day to be sure. i don't expect to finalize anything today. but, i'm posting this because i legitimately think i finally got it.
it's some kind of statement of zen; not a suggestion that we should put aside our differences for family, but a suggestion that our families are not worth the frustration. true freedom necessitates abandoning all attachments to other individuals, including to the people in our families.
you have to remember: stipe is a wry guy. and, he tends to come at things from multiple angles at the same time.
what he's getting at is the unrealistic nature of the expectation, but he's balancing out the selfishness of suicide with the right to it.
are those the eyes that the narrator really wants the listener to remember?
eyes that shiver and fold?
is the narrator truly not creating a burden?
truly holding these things inside?
and how can you look the narrator in the eye, when these words are coming out?
should the narrator be surprised that the listener is shivering?
but, the sum total is simply an exploration of how difficult the situation is.
i don't think he really comes to a total conclusion.
i think people are mostly getting the point, but they're missing the device. and, i think that getting the device ties a lot of the ideas here together. this is one of stipe's smartest tracks and analyzing it does a lot to point out that his language is often very carefully put together, even when it may not seem like it is.
"it's 10:00. do you know where your kids are?"
this was often something you would see on tv during the reagan years, generally during a newscast. it was also widely ridiculed by young people at the time. you still hear it from time to time. it's meant to ask the question: are your kids on drugs?
what stipe is doing is ironically putting himself in the role of the adult, here. he doesn't exactly want to be the adult. he doesn't want to be the "downer". but, he's also seeing this world first hand, and he's reflecting that the news reports are not entirely frivolous. that the kids are on drugs. or, at least some of them are. and, the ones that are on drugs need a bit of help with it, too.
he's trying to establish a perspective that exists in some kind of middle ground.
he's then taking that middle ground to reflect on the real value of freedom, and how he feels about getting in the way of the freedom of others. the car is the american symbol of freedom.
the drug lingo is consequently entirely accurate, but it's a giant double-entendre about feeling caught between the counter-culture and a feeling of responsibility to help people. to stipe, this is a very stern moral dilemma that pits two equally valuable ideals against each other. he's struggling with this moral dilemma.
the language about bush & ollie north is also accurate. you just have to understand their connections to drug smuggling, even as they're rounding people up for it. freedom?
what that does is set the tone for a record that is broadly about feeling powerless to change things, and the futility of getting lost in it.
it's really a fucking lyrical masterpiece.
but, through all of it, remember: a working class hero is something to be.
obligatory influential...
this is my last post for the day.
automatic for the people, and rem in general, is one of those ubiquitous influences for me. i've told this story before, about checking green & document out of the public library when i was about eight or nine. mom was into sabbath & zeppelin. dad was into floyd & genesis. i grew into some of that as i aged, but the public library was a useful resource for me at the time in finding what i really wanted to listen to, beyond the standard beatles records lying around. i've described michael stipe as a kind of a weird, distant uncle. automatic for the people dropped when i was eleven, and was at least as defining as any other experience in my life. by early 1998, i was waiting patiently for up - which is the last rem record that i was able to connect to strongly.
i'm not citing this record as a direct influence, so much as i'm citing it as an aesthetic one. it's a feeling, not a thought. and, i'm leaning more towards the instrumental tracks and the string arrangements. there's a little new orleans instrumental in there. there's a bit of that cello from drive.
about a year later, i would do a cover of drive that is in a similar style to this.
(relevant tracks: wish, drive, symphony 0, anything in the ambient list and really anything at all)
obligatory influential...
in some ways, this is pretty weak. i mean, i'm not claiming i'm doing much on the guitar with this track. but, the thing is that the hendrix signature is pretty obvious - even if it's all rhythm work. but, you can't find hendrix on youtube. so, srv is the next best relevant option.
in fact, the truth is that i had spent as much time doing srv parts in the mid 90s as i had spent doing hendrix parts. my guitar teacher was somewhat of an srv wizard. and, while stevie really only knew how to play two songs, he played them both really, really well.
(relevant tracks: i'm not always a flashy guitarist, but hendrix/srv are really at the core of my guitar style, and it comes out in various ways over various periods. when i get fancy, you can hear it pretty clearly.)
he tends to lose the plot. it's...he's drunk...
i'm sorry. it's true.
whoever was in charge of editing this should have cut out the part in the middle where he didn't know what day it was.
obligatory influential...
it may be almost pathetic, in context. but, in trying to figure out what i was thinking regarding the synthetic strings, and trying to put it into the context of early 1998, i can't ignore this tea party record. it's really a pretty big, if somewhat muted, background influence through a lot of what i was doing at the time, in terms of integrating blues-based guitar music with electronics. i mean, i tend to point more cleanly to various types of electronic music or various types of guitar-based music. this is because, at the time, the ideas were still broadly disentangled. i guess they still are, but there's at least a bigger pool to draw on, now. there's not really any good reason for this; listen to a late 60s beatles record. but, some kind of taboo developed in the 70s and it took decades to really break it down. the result was that guitars and electronics only really mixed in the fringes of technical music, in a bit of high-end pop and in the realm of industrial music. blues-based musicians universally avoided all electronics.
it really started opening up about 1998. in that sense, the tea party were just a hop ahead of the curve. if they had shown up just a few years later with the energy they started off with, they'd be as big as muse or radiohead. they were really blazing a path just ahead of them, but they got muffled by the glaciers up here or something.
but, canadians, at least, recognized them for the talent they were. and, one could not have been a canadian teenage musician in the 90s without being influenced by them - both in their "morrocan roll" stage and in their truly rather pioneering electro-rock world phase. or, just simply as a guitarist.
(relevant tracks: wish, schizoid, on sexual confusion in adolescence....anything with a guitar, and anything with string arrangements, however primitive)
obligatory influential...
i'm just trying to figure out what the best way to document the obvious eno influence on the track is. and, while the influence is obvious, it's not obvious to source. it's a process of getting my brain around the time period, mostly.
see, i'm in that age group where eno was sort of ubiquitous, and i have a dozen paths to claim him. i was a big u2 fan when i was a young child, and it stuck with me until i was about 20 (i couldn't get into all that you can't leave behind, and have tried some of the later material a few times, but it's just void of anything). so, that string of records from unforgettable fire to zooropa (and also pop, but there was no eno on pop) is one way. then, there's not one but two swaths of bowie (late 70s and mid 90s). there's the work with fripp. plus, there's his own material. but, it's more than that. it was every time you heard a synth part on the radio. it was the massive influence he had on "intelligent" electronic music in the 90s. it was every time you turned on your computer, even.
as such, citing eno as an influence is a complicated thing because it doesn't necessarily have to sound like anything eno did, despite eno doing so many very diverse different things. in some ways, the more recognizable it is, the less valid it is. rather, it's more about an idea.
i do remember listening to this record quite a bit around the right period. there's little causal connection. but, i think it's the most relevant thing, nonetheless.
for those making comparisons, let's remember that bites was released in 1985 and this could be as old as 1983. there's some similar outtake material on the third volume of brap, which was 83-86.
it's not entirely without parallel at the time. but, puppy pretty much invented what we today call idm - and more or less as throwaway experiments, before moving on to something else.
also, dwayne was not in the band yet. this is all cevin. dwayne joined the band in 1986.
obligatory influential...
it wasn't conscious emulation. iirc, i just made a loop and started jamming over it. but, i would have likely never thought it sounded musical without interfacing so heavily with this track. listening to it, one might hear eno or maybe even joy division. there's hints of autechre. but, it was really this disc that i was enamored with.
(relevant tracks: wish & symphony 0, specifically, but fdts was pretty intensely formative)
obligatory influential post.
there's something about those lyrics that i connected to. i don't actually remember the cause and effect, and the bit of evidence i have suggests i actually may have written a song with similar lyrics a little bit beforehand (my file is dated jan 13, 1998 - yield was released feb 6, 1998). but, it's kind of neither here nor there. yield was fixed in the player over 1998.
but, i do remember that i took the lyrics out partially due to the similarity, and partly because mine were....a little less profound, let us say. it kept the track name.
yield is the band's only complete document. that's not to say some of the others aren't pretty good. but, yield is the one you "accidentally" leave on the counter, and hope somebody decides to explore.
(relevant tracks: wish, symphony 0)
obligatory influential...
i noticed i was here before, but didn't leave a post. strange, that. i went looking through my posting history, and realized i left one on a now deleted video of this disc well over a year ago, when i was just doing daily rotations, before i settled into my existing alter-reality algorithm in real-time (current date in the alter-reality april 11, 1998). and, i'm thinking i skipped over the inrisampled obligatory, waiting for a better moment. i think i was waiting, specifically, for the period 1.3 transition, which was the beginning of 1999. the influence really becomes more obvious at that point. another year before i get there.
but, the track i just switched into is too dominated in influence by the ambient sections on this disc to wait. the coil and aphex mixes, specifically, but the thirlwell ones, too. which isn't to say i'm stealing ideas, so much as it's to say it's where my head was. listening to it, one might hear eno or maybe even joy division. there's hints of autechre. but, it was really this disc that i was enamored with.
it wasn't conscious emulation. iirc, i just made a loop and started jamming over it. but, i would have likely never thought it sounded musical without interfacing so heavily with at the heart of it all.
i've done a bunch of obligatories on these nin remix discs between fixed and the perfect drug and they're still nearly unparalleled in terms of abstraction. i wish i could find something contemporary that exists at this level of quality. i can aspire. but, it's not the same thing as finding it out there. alas...
(relevant tracks: medicated to the one i love, jesus gets fucked on robitussin, symphony 1, curious george, wish, why, symphony 0, many others - almost everything, really.)
dammit, reeves. hendrix or holdsworth. fucking figure it out, already.
obligatory influential...
i remember picking this disc up in the summer of '97 on a rec from the store clerk at the local disc-go-round and listening to it on the bus quite a bit for the next few months. i was familiar with smg, but wouldn't have at all called myself a fan. i think the accusations of his work up to this point being derivative are fairly accurate, but even that isn't so much of a drawback as the fact that it's all fairly bland. the high points are due to collaborations with dwayne goettel (night returning) and solidly written cover material (strange days). it just doesn't stand out as worthwhile.
but, the guy at the counter was insistent.
"i see what you come in here and buy", he said. "this is way better than anything else he's ever done, and i think you'll like it for sure. it should be called chris randall and the die warzau backing band. and it's got reeves gabrels on it.".
it was the gabrels drop that hooked me. really.
and, i must say that this record really was a huge leap forwards in terms of songwriting and instrumentation. he's finally using the supporting cast of chicago musicians and engineers around him to their full potential, and manages to combine the city's various sounds into what is arguably a lost psychedelic pop classic. but, it's also the kind of disc that alienates people because it's too good. in the end, it's a shame that it's really the only solid disc he ever made, because you can hear the potential here. sadly, this is an often-told story in the modern era: the problem of making a record that is too good and can't move units, which leads to getting dropped.
the whole record was an influence on me over this period, but it's usually subtle and lost amidst the bowie and the reznor. i'm picking out this track today because there's a part about 3:53 where a blast of noise segues the track. it's a technique ultimately traced back to haus der luge. but, the way it's used here is not just completely unpredictable but also completely irrational and i took some influence from the absurdity of it.
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
it is clear that the remaining problem is minimizing interference, but it is not at all clear where the interference is coming from. it seems that at least some of it is coming from the devices. the rest of it is currently of unknown origin.
it's bad enough that i can sit in the same spot for hours, put a playlist on loop and never hear the same song the same way twice.
it at least seems to be the case that i can duck out of it by lying on the ground, but that's obviously unacceptable. tactics for the next few days will be related to finding ways to avoid the interference.
over the last few days, i've once again been stuck with fading.
i ripped the machine right down and was still getting the same problem from asio with everything else uninstalled and disabled. so, i defaulted back to the phones being the issue and noticed something i hadn't realized before - i didn't actually have to reset the jack, i just had to touch it.
i ended up back at interference, and was finally able to get a cause and effect relationship in cycling the receiver.
i'm not entirely sure, still, if it's magnetic or electrical. i think i may have been creating a field by coiling the wire (although that sounds ridiculous, given the voltages involved). but, i've cycled everything, reset the load on the electrical chain a little and grounded all the soundcards and audio paths through the same power bar.
i think i'm stable. if i am, expect some quick confirmations. if i'm not, i’m essentially at an impasse and have nothing left to do but buy some more cords in desperation.
i missed this in august...attention drawn to it by tour dates....just wasn't paying attention...
i've only listened to the record all the way through once, and will have to give it a few more tries. you don't really "get" a defeater record on the first listen. but, i'm comfortable in stating that if i'm going to connect to this at all then it's going to be on a purely lyrical level. that's not impossible.
i wouldn't be surprised to find out that this disc was well received by people that are closer to the mainstream core of the modern "(scr)e(a)mo" sound. hey, there's a relatively big audience there. and, it's not a complete 180 - there's plenty of things that jumped out that seemed very characteristic of the band's previous work. but, the blunt and honest immediacy - the starkly nihilistic juxtapositions and just blatant punk rock, however much adapted - that made them refreshing seems to have been replaced by what are kind of contrived melodramaticisms. i mean, i don't want to sound ridiculous. it was always contrived. but, it was a different kind of contrived - a more thematic and less calculated one. if you're a fan of the centre of the genre that they're moving closer to, you probably won't understand this criticism because it's the perfect description of every band that you're used to listening to. but, if you lean more towards older school punk rock or perhaps even straight up art rock, don't really have any affinity with "emo" and were kind of being pulled into this by bands that hover closer to the core of what punk was, you'll understand what i'm getting at. if you're that person, as i am, you probably really didn't want to hear them walk down this path. but, you probably knew it was coming, too.
i could probably handle some standardization in the aesthetic if the writing compensated for it. musically, i didn't pick up on that the first time through - i got the opposite impression. i'll have to see if i pick up on it, thematically, as i listen to it a few more times.
i'll say this though: i was initially put off by the stronger testosterone level on letters home. but, as i got to understand the story line, i began to realize that it couldn't have been any other way. it had to be badass. i'll have to see if this connects in the same way.
i know this is an extremely tentative review. maybe i'll post another comment in a few weeks or months. but, that's how this band operates. you just don't understand it the first time you listen to it; if you think you do, you definitely don't. that's why elitist critics like me are drawn to them, even if they're consistently cycling around a genre we would generally consider to exist purely in the realm of bad taste.
the real reason for the blood test was to check my estrogen levels, which was actually done on my request. i've been thinking for a while now that i should get my dose boosted. but, i was running around from doctor to doctor and just didn't really get a chance to get an empirical test done to determine what the levels were and whether they should be boosted. as expected, they're a little low.
that's actually pretty normal. it's an expected part of transitioning to increase dosages after a while. i'm actually way past due on this. so, i've been boosted from 4 mg/day to 6 mg/day. but, i'm going to wait until i quit smoking first before i do it.
i've been stuck on this remix project for months because my machine just won't behave, and have been waiting until i'm done the project before i give myself a few weeks of filing to occupy myself with. for me, quitting smoking is primarily a problem at the mental level. basically, i find myself unable to focus on anything. it's a huge problem for me because i'm always focusing on something or other. the only way i'm going to get over the smoking is by giving myself something menial to do for, like, weeks. i just have to throw that time away. that's really hard for me - even if i get the long term benefits of it - because i interpret time as the only meaningful quantifiable in the entire universe. the filing is the perfect opportunity for this. but i can't get to it because i can't get the machine to co-operate.
i've been getting impatient, anyways. i only budgeted myself $60 for cigarettes this month. that needs to be a hard limit, now. smoking ends when that budget runs out, whether i'm done the project or not. the hormone switch is just an added incentive.
first, nicotine is an estrogen suppressant. second, smoking on estrogen can cause blood clots. i shouldn't be smoking at all, really - well, *at all*, but at all when i'm taking hormones. it's a risk for people on birth control, which is something like 100 mcg/day. i'm about to jump to 6 mg/day. i'm hesitant about the safety of this. i should really be hesitant about the safety of it at 4 mg/day.
but, he also told me that i'm the "healthiest person he's ever seen". he's "never seen lower blood cholesterol". it seemed obvious to him to ask me about my diet, but he seemed rather disappointed in my responses.
in the 96 hours before the blood test, i had consumed 5 rockstar vodkas, several pots of coffee, several packs of cigarettes and had even smoked a couple of bowls. ten hours previous to the blood test, i had a large meal that included a giant plate of pasta with a third of a brick of cheese, caesar dressing (not light.) as an alfredo sauce, eight slices of crumpled salami, tomatoes and green peppers. i also had a smoothie with a banana, five strawberries, two scoops of ice cream and about 500 ml of soy milk. i've actually had exactly that meal almost every day for the last two months - although i got a pizza one day, and have had some doritos in between as well.
i'll post the link to the culinary series in my vlog as a comment.
that doesn't come off as a particularly healthy diet. he liked the soy smoothies, and didn't like the salami and the cheese. he thought i must be eating some kind of miracle foods like quinoa or something.
while my diet is consciously designed to ensure i get sufficient nutrients (the soy smoothies are key to this, but i also would normally eat a lot of eggs to get my amino acids), it is really not designed to minimize so-called harmful foods - except in the sense that i do not eat a lot. i eat, at most, once a day - most days. once in a while, i won't eat at all.
the correct way to interpret the test results is as confirmation of my approach to food, which i've posted here a few times over the last few years. that is, the important thing to realize is that it isn't the content of the food that is important, but the quantity of it that you consume.
basically, your body stores everything almost exactly the same way. it may not be the most politically correct thing to say, but the actual hard reality of it is that if you're too fat or you have too much cholesterol then you simply eat too much. the way to minimize excess fat storage in the various ways that your body stores fat - which includes blood cholesterol - is to ensure that you're not giving your body too much fuel, because it will then store it as some kind of fat.
my blood cholesterol is not low because of what i eat. it's low because of how much i eat.
but, even that said, there is an even more dominant factor, and it's lifestyle. i walk everywhere. i walked about 40 minutes to the doctor's office today, in fact. i then walked to the grocery store to get some more very high fat caesar dressing for my high fat pasta diet. the reason i do this is that i don't have a car.
that is the actual takeaway: i am the healthiest person the doctor has ever seen because i do not have a car. and, if you want to be that healthy, too? then, stop using your car on a day-to-day basis. walk as much as you can.
i'm proof of it. most nutritionists would claim my diet is terrible (but they're wrong, because the quantity of what i consume is low). i smoke two things. i don't drink a lot of alcohol, but i had consumed some within a few days of the blood test. and, i drink at least a pot of coffee a day.
there's actually three versions of this done, but only two up. i'm considering splitting it off to a single with a couple of extra mixes, as well. this is the instrumental electronic mix.
regarding the singles, my thoughts have evolved on this. at first, i was skeptical about it because of the need to add numbers - now, i think i'll need to add in an extra series between integers, somehow. then, i wanted to work it down to just a couple. now, i'm thinking that if i do any, i should do all of them.
as before, my focus right now is to finish all of the versions of all of the songs. afterwards, i'll check each possible single for listenability value.
and, i still haven't completely ruled out renumbering. i've only mailed three discs. it will just make them that much more valuable, right?
i've got a final mix of this up. it really sounds a lot better, and i'm very much relieved about it.
i wanted to get more done today, but at least i got that done. i've been playing with it the last few days. i need to do beginning/end of the month stuff tomorrow, but things should accelerate over the weekend.
initially written in 1996. recreated in march, 1998. reclaimed june 29, 2015. corrected to control for malfunctioning electronics on nov 26, 2015.
so, i will fully acknowledge - despite rationalizations otherwise - that the reason i went to the show on friday night was to get a last night of smoking in. which, on the bright side, at least suggests i'm serious about stopping. i think i have to be.
that said, i also felt the headliner was worth documenting. to an extent, this is partly what a lot of these show reviews have always been about. now that i have the camera (however low quality it may be....), i feel an added sense of responsibility to be curating. because my taste is superior. of course.
--
i wasn't sure if i was going to miss the opening act or not, and wasn't really concerned about it if i did. i kind of expected the show to start late, but not quite as late as it started - i did catch the opening act, and snapped a little bit of footage.
it very mildly piqued my interest in what it was, namely a splice of mathy indie rock with alt-country-pop-whatever. i don't know who to blame for it (wilco?), but indie rock turned into country music at some point a little over ten years ago and has basically been tedious and boring ever since. this act certainly demonstrated tedium and boredom, but the mathier aspects almost saved it...
i said almost. not quite. i'd say the rhythm section should drop the singer, if it can't convince her to drop the alt-country-pop-whatever schtick. there's nothing interesting going on there.
between sets i went out and had a smoke; i was feeling a little light-headed when i came back. probably the weather. but, it meant i watched most of the next set sitting down, and didn't get a chance to catch any footage.
the name of the band is exceedingly relevant: this is creepy shit. in an unsettling way. i think i'll leave it at that.
while it was meant to be comical, my general reaction was more that i felt embarrassed for them. which is no doubt in the range of intended reactions.
however, there was one song that had me doubled over laughing, and nearly crying. it may have been because i was feeling a little light-headed from the weather, but it was still one of the best laughs i've had in a while. i've found old footage of this track:
here is a full set:
the next band up was called nudie suits, and they seemed to be defined by a conflict: the violin player wants to do loop-heavy, post-gaze drone stuff whereas the keyboard player wants to do more conventional noir pop. the end result was that they were trying to play over each other. not always. they stopped and listened to each other a few times. but it was that conflict that overpowered.
i'm not entirely adverse to the idea of a riff-off in the context of gaze/drone vs. noir pop, but the truth is that neither had the chops to do it. the violin parts often just fizzled out into static feedback loops or two note patterns, and flopped on the builds. and the keyboard player often cycled around simple progressions, bent entirely on rooting herself in dynamics that were being completely paved over by the electronics.
the lack of footage was a conscious choice.
--
it was the material on valley hush' bandcamp page that drew me out (and made the smoking night worthwhile). While certainly pop, and maybe operating somewhere close to a successful and critically acclaimed contemporary act like tune yards, the overall songwriting struck me as worth documenting.
i only film one song and tend to pull it from between the second and fourth track. there's always the nightmare that you screw up the first track, which is also often going to be chosen to let the scragglers in. two-four is usually the meat of the set.
i pulled the third track, which meant i got one of the poppier numbers. overall, the set was a bit more developed than this, with more extended tracks that leaned into the realm of psychedelic rock without really falling into it.
it's pop. i know not everybody likes pop. i actually have a pretty hefty soft spot for it. but, realize i'm very picky about it, too. i'm only going to bite at a pop band if it's a really good one.
the show was late, as expected, but far more so than i realized. the last band was slotted for 11:15 - meaning they should have been done around 11:45. i knew it was later than that, but wasn't checking the time. the show wasn't done until 12:40; i would have guessed it was more like 12:15. but, had i been checking the clock more closely, i would have left a few minutes earlier.
while i do believe i got to rosa parks on time and should have been able to cut the bus off at the pass, i ended up missing it (unless it came out of customs well after 2:00, which is unlikely) by what could not have been more than a few minutes. i can only understand how this could happen by concluding that the bus left early.
you can imagine why this should not happen. there's more on this topic in the day's vlog:
Brooklyn Allman
Bowie always tends to reflect the world around him. I think this video is a metaphor for the darkside of religion. The book he holds up. The scarecrows in crucifix formation (scarecrows symbolic of fear which is a key element of organized religion). The blindfolds. The people who seem to be possessed by something. Somehow he ties Major Tom into all of this as his skull is treated like a sacred artifact perhaps meaning that anything can be turned into god and spun out of control. I think "Blackstar" might be like a faux-prophet or fervent disciple going around convincing people god is speaking through them. I think it definitely reflects what's going on in the world right now. I'm sure there are many ways to interpret this though, it's very abstract.
deathtokoalas +Brooklyn Allman
the kind of ritual you're seeing in the video is something that "kids nowadays" actually seriously do. there's a pretty sizable movement built up around this amongst women that are roughly university aged. they get together in forested spaces and perform magical rites to what they perceive of as pagan spirits.
if you want to get into it, it's likely a reaction to the upbringing brought on by the previous generation - a kind of rebellion against the value system enforced by the "moral majority" in the reagan revolution. the women i've spoken to about this speak in these terms. they talk of how their christian upbringing created a lot of repressed desires. they talk of catholic guilt. yet, as the rituals become so massively enforced and engrained, they create a sense of safety, as well. so, they realize there's something oppressive about the ritual, but can't quite discard the sense of peace that the oppression provides. the result is rebellion on the terms of praying to a false deity, rather than simply discarding it. on that level, it's blowback.
on another level, the ideas are all around us in our culture. there was a movie released in the 90s called the craft that is very popular in these circles, and there have been a number of similar films released since then. it comes out musically in a couple of styles, like witch house. there's a band called esben and the witch that is kind of seminal (even if all the ideas trace back to the 70s, through artists like coil, who were themselves drawing on existing themes). and, remember: this is a generation raised on magic, from disney through to lord of the rings. magic is no longer seen as an archaic relic of the past to be shunned as a process of ignorance. rather, it's become quite normalized.
i think bowie is reflecting on something here, but it's the youth culture. this is, in fact, what he's always done. what i'm getting is that he's both amused by this (it is really quite ridiculous) and somewhat disturbed by it.
the key shot in the video is at the very end, when he's dramatically recoiling from the images being presented on the screen.
"on the day of execution,
only women kneel and smile."
it's the secular society being executed. but, from the inside out.
see, i think the key to understanding this is having a clue about contemporary youth culture.
the images in the video are what the contemporary musical underground looks like. the exaggeration is only very slight. true to form, bowie is merely reacting to the underground. and, my interpretation is that he's both legitimately amused and seriously disturbed by it.
musically, i'm glad we're getting another "serious" bowie disc and am quite excited about that. i was a little worried he was going to leave us with that last one.
but, only a fool claims to be able to understand the scope of a bowie record via the lead single.
this is the final mix of this track - for real this time. this should accelerate tomorrow.
initially written in 1996. recreated in feb, 1998. reclaimed june 29, 2015. corrected to control for malfunctioning electronics on aug 11, 2015. corrected again on nov 19, 2015.
if you're a really serious music fan, you can likely point to a handful of acts over the course of your life that have acted as epiphanies for you, that have really made you see the world differently. my list begins when i was pretty young and runs through a number of successful alternative rock bands [REM (89-91), nirvana (91-93), the smashing pumpkins (93-95), nine inch nails (94-96)] before absolutely plateauing with skinny puppy, over about 96-99. the next thing that slapped me upside the head was gybe's moya in early '99. but, skinny puppy were the band as i was going through the portal of mid adolescence and entering into adulthood. before puppy, music was formative; after puppy, it was more of a process of identification. it's very much the pivot point between when i was figuring out who i was and when i was pretty sure i knew who i was. as such, there's quite a lot of this band in the core of my being - both musically speaking and ideologically speaking.
while i would have been too young to see them anywhere anyways, the reality is that skinny puppy did not exist during this period. they have toured sporadically since 2000, but i had yet to have an opportunity to see them until now. so, this show was sort of a big deal for me.
they had a guitarist and a drummer with them and consequently focused the setlist around this. this meant that the material was largely from records like rabies and the process, which feature more prominent guitar work than some of the other records. while this is only one facet of a band that has several facets, one can only facilitate so many facets at one time. i'd have loved to sit there for six hours as they ran through everything they ever did, and maybe the odd tear garden & download tune, but that's not reasonable. the truth is that focusing on the drums/guitar aspect is maximizing their appeal as a live rock band, and that's perfectly understandable. it would have maybe been nice to see something like the center bullet, circustance or jackhammer mixed up in there somewhere, but i had a great time nonetheless.
here is an actual complete show:
it's less that the show was over earlier than i expected and more that it started earlier than i expected. it was doors at 7:00, and the band was on some time around 9:00. they actually played for close to two hours. but, the bar closed down and started pushing people out around 11:00, which left me stuck outside in pontiac for five and a half hours. if they had come on at 11:00 and finished around 1:00, as i was expecting, and then left the bar open until at least 2:30, maybe pushing 3:00, i would have only really needed to procrastinate for about an hour.
as it is, i hung around outside for a bit, went to a gay bar for a few hours and then just hung out with some random kids sitting around smoking in the parking lot. i was starting to freeze over by the time the bus finally showed up, and ready to collapse when i finally got back to canada at about 7:00 am.
attending this concert was a last minute decision that i played over in my mind repeatedly. did i really want to go? was it worth the walk? customs? should i stay in and work instead?
i decided to go because i wasn't going to get any meaningful mixing done that night anyways and i felt it should be in the list of shows i've seen. i also decided that i had an obligation to stop by at the christopher bissonnette release party in windsor because release parties for kranky artists don't happen in windsor every day. so, the plan was to stop at the release show for a few minutes, see what it was about and probably catch the 9:30 bus across to detroit. i was expecting to miss the opening act, and maybe some of the second set.
when i got to the release show, i noticed something i hadn't seen before: this bar sells absinthe. i'll acknowledge that my understanding of absinthe was somewhat vague. well, it's not necessary working knowledge on a day-to-day basis, right? i'd heard it was a hallucinogen. i hadn't really looked it up, because i hadn't really been in the opportunity to need to know about it. but, i figure i'm standing in the bar, i should try it...
i asked the bartender what, in hindsight, seem like ridiculous questions.
"i've never done absinthe before, but i've done plenty of mushrooms..."
"....will i be ok to go through customs on the stuff?"
i decide that i'll take a "strong" shot and see how i feel. by the time i'm done, it's clear to me that the release party is just a dj set (which is not my thing....), so i'm out to the noise show.
i must have missed the bus by three minutes; i'm stuck waiting for the 10:00 bus. but, i'm thinking i still have plenty of time to get there, because they'll be on third.
as i'm waiting, i can feel the burn of the vodka, but i'm not feeling any hallucinogenic effects. i do start to feel some waves as i'm walking up gratiot, but they're gone by the time i get to trinosophes....
...where the band is halfway through their set. they played second. fuckers...
i did catch about twenty minutes of what i'm guessing was probably a 30-40 minute set, and the above shot of noise is a decent representation of it. i mean, it's exactly what one would expect, whether they are familiar with vampire belt or merely with corsano and/or nace. it's just raw, unsculpted, jagged sound.
some people were complaining after the show. "that was fucking terrible", one person said. i had to agree, actually. but, see, that's the point. i guess there's a sort of least upper bound on noise, where you don't get more offensive with increasing intensity. this was achieved some time in the 90s; it really hasn't evolved much since. however extreme extreme music gets in the upcoming decades, what the collection of mostly east coast bands that sound similar to vampire belt did then, do now and will do in the future will never lose it's edge in the realm of irritating the uninitiated. it's just past the limit. some people claim it's the most pure form of contemporary punk; i think that this idea is absolute fucking bollocks, but the sentiment has something to it in the sense that it's a "fuck you" that will never lose it's sting. so, you go to the show expecting to enjoy a half hour of absolutely incoherent nonsense. at the same time, you expect that almost nobody else in the audience will enjoy it.
here's a full set, if you dare:
i stayed a few minutes into the next act, mostly because my stomach was hurting from the absinthe, but left fairly briefly in order to go get another shot. understand that i'm still operating under the idea that this is a hallucinogen. i'm feeling like i didn't get enough to get to a peak and need to take another shot before i can come to any conclusions on the value of the drug. the act was mixing horns with theremins; you've heard this before, and you weren't excited when you did.
i didn't even get a vodka buzz off of the second shot. it was just entirely unfelt.
it wasn't until i woke up in the morning that i realized i was operating on bad information. it turns out that absinthe has a chemical called thujone in it that can cause muscle spasms at high doses but is not hallucinogenic. that is, absinthe does not have hallucinogenic properties. it's really just very potent alcohol.
the machine is fixed, but i was at concerts the last two days. i'm hungover on four hours of sleep, so today is going to be about doing some filing and probably getting to bed early. i have an appointment tomorrow. so, i'll be back to work - seriously, and with intent - on wednesday.
i seem to have been taken in on an urban legend regarding the absinthe....
"Absinthe has been frequently and improperly described in modern times as being hallucinogenic. No peer-reviewed scientific study has demonstrated absinthe to possess hallucinogenic properties."
that would explain why i didn't feel anything. the initial waves may have been psychosomatic and a consequence of expectation.
also note that i had to reupload this video to remove an approximately one minute section (beginning around 18:40) where the bar i was walking by happened to be playing a michael jackson song. sony claimed copyright over the entire vlog, the right to place ads of it's choosing on it and total control over revenue to those ads. to put it mildly, this is absolute bullshit. i have no intention of profiting directly from these vlogs (please visit my bandcamp site to support me financially), but the idea that i'd be allowing sony to profit from it because the bar i was walking by for forty seconds was playing a michael jackson song makes me want to vomit.
in order to prevent these kinds of absolutely frivolous claims, youtube should have an independent arbitration process in place that takes power away from claimants and puts it in the hand of a neutral third party.
i am finally certain that i understand the problem, have fixed it and can resolve it if it reappears. after four months, you have to expect it's something simple.
the driver installation for the mixer has an error in it. the package needs to install two drivers: one basic driver (also used for asio) and a second driver on top of it (used for wdm). however, it was only installing the basic driver. so, i was getting various sound degradation and inconsistency due to the system using the wrong driver.
i was actually about to give up on the kmixer for the device. i wanted to verify i was getting a good sound out of asio, so i disabled wdm in the mixer and tested through cubase. it sounded right. out of curiosity, i re-enabled the wdm with the asio running and the secondary driver installed. it has since passed all stability testing; the issue seems to be resolved.
i have a higher confidence in stating i'm done, now, because i feel i understand it. i have some more listening to do tonight. i need to edit and upload a vlog from the last three days. i also need to eat. and, tomorrow i need to do laundry and test one more time. but, i'm confident i'll be back at this within 24 hours, and could even get some new mixes up by saturday.
i didn't notice this previously because the wdm installed disabled and i had to manually turn it on. i don't know why that behaviour changed.
i've been quiet here, i guess. troubleshooting updates in the vlog, if you're so inclined.
a
little while back, i noticed that cycling the mixer was creating a new
driver entry in the registry and realized this had something to do with
the problem. i think i've finally figured out that the way to get the
mixer to load properly is to turn it on before the computer starts. this
may be a conflict with the soundblaster, but i'm not sure.
it
says to do this in the manual, but i've basically never done this. it
would require restarting the computer every day. so, i may have to
prepare myself for some wrong sounding mixes, and need to adjust them.
basically, everything is up for analysis right now.
i still need to do some testing, but i'm convinced i'm very close and should be done in the next 24-48 hours.
if it's a conflict with the soundblaster, i can at least point out that i had the soundblaster disabled for a long time.
and,
the issue is wdm-specific, so it wouldn't really be relevant to the
mixing over asio. i think i'm probably safe from having to redo
anything.
see, the thing is that i wasn't sure it was
wdm-specific. i thought it was. if i knew it was, i wouldn't have
bothered with all this, but i couldn't know it was until i figured it
out, right?
i think it's making sense now. but i've said that before.
going to ferndale for a show is always somewhat of an adventure. it's a 40 minute bus ride from the tunnel, which means it's a 40 minute bus ride back, and the last tunnel bus is far too early - it's at 1:09, which isn't even after last call. that means the show would have to end by 11:30 to get back, and that had yet to happen. i can understand why they don't want to run all night, but they should run until at least 2:15 to give people a chance to get back from right downtown around last call. the thing is this: i'm not going to take a 40 minute bus ride out to ferndale and then leave early to catch the bus. if i'm going to go that far, i'm going to stay for what i'm there for, even if it means having to wait until the morning to get home. but, tonight i went specifically to see the opening band, and so expected to get home by leaving halfway through the headliner. as it happened, the headliner was done by a quarter after eleven, so i got to see the whole show and then get home. but, i shouldn't get used to that.
i was perusing the gear on stage, and just about ready to take some camera shots of it, when pinkish black came on a little earlier than i expected - pretty much 9:00 sharp. the set was exactly an hour, too. no sound check, and that was decisive. i started off a foot from the drummer, dead center, but realized quickly that the bass was coming straight at me and i'd need to move a little bit away to avoid the mic in the camera from distorting. so, that's why i shifted to where the camera shot is. but, i went back to the place i started at after i got my shot in and spent the rest of the show there.
the set was interesting, but i'm not sure exactly what to make of it. i spoke to the band after the set, and they acknowledged the mix was poor - that the synths and vocals were not loud enough to compete with the drums. but, it seemed to me that what was coming at me was more than just a mix issue. i'm fairly familiar with their previous work, and it really seemed like the drumming in the tunes had evolved dramatically in ways that often seemed rather off kilter. in multiple spots in the show, the drums fell into what were simple patterns that were punctuated by strange dynamics in volume and syncopation. overall, that converted the aesthetic from the claustrophobic pop sound that they're known for into something more schizophrenic that brought to mind acts like swans and skinny puppy.
because i'm familiar with the material, it kind of threw me a bit but i can't say i didn't enjoy it. what i'm just not clear on is whether turning the synths down focused more attention on the nature of the drumming, whether the songs have evolved over several years and this is some indication of where they're pivoting to or whether it was even just a tactic to compensate for the low volume on the synths (i.e. that the drummer couldn't really hear what was happening, and had to adjust). regardless, it certainly made the sound a bit more raw in converting the material out of headphone music and into something more live. they're worth checking out, but maybe don't expect the tracks to sound the same way they do on record.
here's a full set:
i got to see zombi as well, but i really wasn't expecting a lot from the set and wasn't particularly impressed by it. so, at least i wasn't let down - but i wasn't turned around, either. i'll give the drummer credit on the basis of pure talent even if a lot of it was derivative - it was easy to tell when he was trying to sound like phil collins or trying to sound like neal peart. but, the songwriting was mostly limp and repetitive post-rock, punctuated only by horrifically cheesy delves into the worst kinds of 70s prog. i'm a fan of the more creative sides of both of these genres, but the way they mix it up is just about the worst formula possible. i mean, tortoise spliced with floyd, or gybe! spliced with genesis, sounds like a great idea. that's awesome*awesome, which would have to compute to awesome. but, yes spliced with and so i watch you from afar is cheese spliced with cheese, and could only possibly produce cheese.
for example, there was one track where the drummer was playing something very reminiscent of a trick of the tail era collins (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBcnjx05a1s), while the bassist/synth guy was moping out a two chord minor progression. i may have been heard thinking out loud that it sounded like what phil collins must have felt like the day that his dog died, which is not the thing of compelling music. there was another track where the drummer was literally playing the pattern to tom sawyer, while the synth guy did some kind of slow motion krautrock thing. i may have been heard thinking out loud that this was the chapter twain could never get published, where tom got baked and passed out near the creek.
silliness aside, they were also very tense. when people yelled in excitement "keep it going!", they defensively pointed out that it's only the second set of the show. i mean, shit. imagine somebody getting excited to see their favourite band at a show. clearly disrespectful!
but, i think that serves to explain what's wrong, here. these guys need to chill out a little. if they were to breathe a little, maybe the song structures would open up a bit, which would lead them to more compelling arrangements. it may not be sufficient, but i claim it is a necessary condition to get them to turn the corner on what they're doing.
