switching to confused in the alter-reality

alter-reality update:

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

something i was able to determine yesterday is that both the jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj records sound outstanding through the mp3 player.

i'm going to be getting back to work today. i'm at least convinced that i haven't been hearing things, that there are really serious differences on playback.

this stranger in detroit very nearly ended up buried from an unplanned overnight in the cold

about a year ago, detroit's famous punk rock bowling alley bar unleashed a minor crisis in the city by converting itself into a split disco/folk bar (disco upstairs, indie/folk downstairs), supposedly under the impression that the punk rock era was over. generations of rock fans in the city have been going through the stages of loss ever since, stuck somewhere between anger and depression. the topic still comes up regularly in smoking sections, with the lone explorer that's set foot in the new world reporting their findings to shocked listeners who can't believe it's really that bad.

"the whole upstairs is a disco club?"
"yup. all of it."
"there's no other section? it's ALL disco? it's really that bad?"
"yup. the whole thing."
"no. like, i mean - not even a room..."
"all of it. it really is that bad."

whether due to popular outcry or increasing financial losses or some other reason, the downstairs folk section seems to be in the process of converting itself back into a punk bar. want my honest guess? punk rock fans are losers, sure. but we're not the massive dorks that an indie/folk bar will bring in. you don't sell a lot of beer to these people. they drink herbal tea, and complain that the smoker on the other side of the room walked by them on the way in, which will possibly affect their grandchildren by offsetting their genetic energy.

bars will always serve punks because we're the market. there's no deficit of coffee houses for the indie dorks to congregate in.

detroit is currently a mess, as woodward is still being torn up. to be frank, i completely forgot that was happening, and walked directly into the construction without any knowledge of detours; thankfully, very little was required. but, it was a cold and very dark walk through broken concrete. i had the first jjjjjjjjjjjjj record in the phones, which was rather effective over it's second, atmospheric half. and, i can report that it sounded correctly through the mp3 player, as well.

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

sisters of your sunshine vapor are a local act that i've near-missed repeatedly, but finally caught last night. you can guess by their name that they want to exist in a specific period, but the result is somewhat stale; i was waiting for the stonehenge to fall rather than looking around for the ghost of syd. but, calling something stale does not suggest that it's terrible. the rhythm section is actually pretty solid. what they really need, i would argue, is a second guitarist to fill the sound out a little and take it over the top.

bands like this tend to float for long periods without accomplishing anything, but there's a long shot possibility that they might develop.

it'd been three or four years since i'd heard any grooms, and they've definitely expanded their sound quite a bit. they've also become a three piece, it seems. this is the only video i could find of them as a three piece...

they still sound a lot like sonic youth, but they seem to be trying to break away from it. you can tell because they're moving in multiple directions. i've seen this a thousand times and it works out one of two ways: if they settle on a specific sound, it will no doubt be because they get some kind of financial pull on it. then, the focus becomes on compressing the sound as much as possible, and it quickly becomes boring. but, if they keep flailing around and the experiments increase rather than decrease then they have the potential to take it to the next level.

it's hard to say what direction they're going in. for the moment, the set was hit and miss: when they wanted to rock, they could and did but a lot of it was passive and mediocre jangle-pop.

so, i'm learning that a part of the experience of living in detroit is developing a healthy level of cautious fear regarding the architecture, and then conquering it.

i didn't see a lot of shows upstairs before it transitioned, but the ones i saw were loud: cloud nothings, boris. the place shook. like, uncomfortably. as the opening sets were playing, it actually crossed my mind a few times that this was better because we're closer to the ground, so it shouldn't be so scary.

but, it only took a few seconds before the wobble asserted itself. i've been to enough shows to know that this was more than the bass from the speakers; the floor was shaking left-to-right. that is, perpendicular to the motion of the sound waves. very bad.

i took a look outside and saw the concrete torn up, right to the front door. what's under the building? three hundred years of caverns, sewers? hidden treasures? masonic lodges? hoffa? who knows; but i know i'm not on solid ground. and, what are the chances that detroit found it in it's budget to do a proper engineering assessment to put in the rail system? you think that's on illitch' mind? you think he cares at all? no; i'm thinking that chances are high that there was no assessment done at all...

i had to move back a little, which blunted the physical effect of the sound. i'm aware that this is a large part of the experience; i've been to plenty of shows where the sound is pummelling. but, i think my intuition of my surroundings was justified.

i did slowly move up, but the show was done by the time i was getting the courage to get to the front.

there was a benefit, though: i got to see a relatively interesting light show from a bit of distance. you can't see it in this video, presumably because the camera is too close. but it's a wall of white light surrounding the stage, making the band members appear as apparitions. simple but effective.

as for the band? they're a known entity in what they do; joy division goes grunge. swans performing nirvana covers. brutal and dark, but always melodic and never stupid. creative use of guitar effects. but, you're not getting half of it by watching this video. this is a band that you'll get the most out of by seeing live, and letting the sound physically affect you.

and, as for myself, i need to get over this fear of detroit's architecture, as healthy as it may be.

i hadn't bothered to check the time; it was moving a little slower than normal, due to a chance encounter in the smoking section before aptbs. but, i get out and check my clock and it's three minutes until the last bus. no chance. shit.

i make the decision to walk to the tunnel and wait for a cab, aware that i'm still feeling a little funny from the chance encounter and thinking i'm probably better off getting a coffee, anyways. after waiting at the bus station for a while, i finally approach the border guards to ask them to call me a cab.

"call you a cab?"
"yeah."
"where are you from?"
"i live in windsor."
"they call cabs in downtown windsor?"
"well, i'm from ottawa. i don't know. i never use taxis, i walk everywhere, it's just that you've got all these barricades here preventing me from getting home unless i'm inside an automobile of some sort."
"it's a security concern."
"can you call me a cab, please?"
"no. what you do is go to that road over there and wait for one to drive by."

i've really never done that before. like i say: i walk everywhere. but, sure enough, there's a sign on the road that i don't think i've ever seen before: taxi stand.

it's about ten minutes, which is not bad.

"how much to get just across the border?"
"across what border?"
"to canada."
"to canada? you have documents?"
"yup."
"$60."

i got him down to $50, but that was it.

see, here's the thing: even if i could afford that, and was willing to pay it, i'd still be stuck. my bank card only works in canada. i had $17 in cash on me, which i thought would be enough - it's literally two minutes to the other side. but, the cabbie is concerned about getting searched by customs ("i'm a muslim. they always search me.") and it's just a no go.

a few minutes later, cabbie #2 pulls up...

$60. still. he tells me it's a flat rate set by the company due to losses stemming from hold ups in customs.

so, basically, i have to pay $60 for a two minute drive across the border that i'm not allowed to walk because border security does routine racial profiling on cabbies doing their job. great system. very efficient.

in the end, i was at the bus stop for more than 6.5 hours: from 1:45 to 8:30. i took a few walks. i spent well over an hour on the couch in the fancy hotel lobby across the street when i was getting a little cold; strangely, nobody asked me to leave. i was dressed to be able to walk for a few hours, but not to sit outside for six hours so it was really necessary to get in and warm up. another novelty was getting back pennies on a coffee purchase, which no longer exist in canada.

i asked two different cops if they could just shuttle me over, and they both refused. as mentioned, it's a two-minute drive under the bridge, if that. i had documents. 10 degrees isn't enough to kill you after even a few hours, but after 6 hours? as mentioned: i went in repeatedly, because the shivering felt as though it was onsetting hypothermia, and i do believe that this is the right range of temperatures.

i'm considering looking into the responses the cops provided me and pushing the point. i do believe that they should have been required to shuttle me across.

but, i know now that catching a cab in the middle of the night isn't an option and that if i'm stuck downtown then i need to find an all-night coffee shop close to the venue.

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/10/03.html

exploring a little closer to home (math rock bands on crooked floors)

well, i've either got a mosquito bite on my forehead or i'm developing a third eye. want to take bets on that?

i didn't get any cleaning done the other day; i got stuck in an algorithm on youtube, which ended up crashing the browser. 2500 open tabs. in hindsight, i suppose it's not possible to watch all of youtube. i hope to get that done with the rest of today, and get back at it tomorrow. i'm feeling rejuvenated and eager to move forwards.

i hit a house show last night with two mildly interesting acts, both of which demonstrated some potential, but neither of which held up as well as they could have. reviews in the comments.

in two years here, it was actually the first time i've taken a walk away from downtown after dark. i knew i was going to be walking through the wealthy part of the downtown core, but it took on a different feeling in the moonlight due to how clear it is that i was walking through a neighbourhood built by very old money. the churches, the collegiates, the mansions - these are all still standing, and all still in use. i suppose that it's only different from what i'm used to in ottawa in terms of how explicit it is; it may have been similar to walking through the glebe thirty or forty years ago, but i'm not old enough to remember what that may have been like.

the key thing you notice when you cross the street into the old money is how dark the neighbourhood is. the houses are old, but taken care of - likely professionally. they're dark because they're empty. one imagines widowers living off investments made by ancestors they've never met; sum totals of labour that exist of shuffling portfolios. these ten or fifteen room houses were built for families, and were no doubt once inhabited, but today they are merely equity passed down through generations. you'll see a jogger here and there; a dog walker, a couple. but, these are not castles, not sanctuaries to escape from the blood-thirsty masses. rather, they're empty relics of the past.

and, one exits this space as quickly as one enters it: a highway appears, and once one crosses it they are back to the normalcy of post-industrial decay. buildings that, though a quarter the age, are falling apart due to low maintenance. the whiff of marijuana replaces the soft background scent of professional gardens. but, i am crossing to the right side of the road, not the wrong side of it.

the show was outside, in a large lot (perhaps originally two) that's been split into three: a small house faces the street, with an equally sized secondary bungalow right behind it, that must be accessed via a path along the first one. you could spit from the back deck of the first to the front porch of the other. it seems almost as though the back house was moved in from somewhere else. an empty lot of the same size exists next door, apparently reclaimed by these inhabitants for events, although if the city were to appear out of the bushes with an ordinance, they would no doubt be told to exit the empty and adjacent lot. mosquitoes are endemic; in addition to the bite on my forehead, i've got a dozen on my unshielded arms. should have worn a long sleeve t-shirt...

sly why was up first (after a short set by some kind of radio show). i've seen sly why before, but with a band; i initially thought this was a dj set. rather, it was the front person for the band doing a solo set that integrated live keyboard playing & rhyming over some drum & bass machine work. the sum total was likely meant to exist in a flying lotus type space, but with a heavier emphasis on hip-hop and quite a bit more of a chick corea feel. in principle, this is an excellent idea. unfortunately, the execution was a little off.

the chick corea sound (i'm talking more about miles davis than return to forever) is two things: it's an aesthetic and it's a playing style. related things, but they're different. the aesthetic was pulled off very well, but a musician listening in would be unimpressed by the actual playing. he seemed to want to go into long interludes of piano work; these were effective when they were focused, but often sounded aimless and improvised. it's one thing to try and get the corea aesthetic; it's another to think you seriously actually have the talent to try and pull off that kind of improv. i think he needs to kind of make a choice on that: be more focused and drop the solos, or work on his improv skills.

he's definitely not chick corea.

as i believe i said last time, it's a good proof of concept with a lot of potential but it needs some work to actually come together.

this is similar:

 
this was the first time i've seen noxious foxes, but i remember their early records as being more dynamic than what i got last night. more live playing, intersecting harmonies, leads - less loops. my memory may be skewed; i may go back and listen to their first two records and realize they're more loop-based than i thought. but, it ended up with a pretty strong ian williams feel that really needs to be broken up a bit.

it was fun. i'd pay the $5 a second time. but, they need to be thinking about ways to get out of the box created by writing solely around loop pedals.

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/09/28.html

rap news 35

who created the internet, and why?

the narrative is about stopping certain forces from taking control, as though the internet came to us free of corruption and we need to prevent it from falling into the hands of darkness.

maybe it ought to be about taking control of a system that was handed to us with a precise function that it took some time for us to become aware of.

well, i didn't get much listening done this week, but my mind was elsewhere, so that's ok; i got plenty of thinking done, and feel nicely rebooted. that's the real purpose, that reboot.

the weather was unseasonably nice here this week, and that helped.

i'm going to push my monthly cleaning forward a little this month and do it tomorrow. i plan to hit a math rock band called noxious foxes on monday. i'll also need to make some calls on thursday. but, i'm transferring into a new normal this week and should be back and focused at some point during it.

you can imagine that all this bullshit with the gear has been a force towards apathy. it's just a process of seriously convincing myself it's good now and plowing on with it.

and, i'm thinking about my issues with eye contact. it was what i initially wanted to talk to a psychiatrist about, before i got diagnosed with...well, i guess they got me to social anxiety disorder in the end, which is more along the right lines. but, i never expected it to be declared a disability and to entitle me to a monthly check; i was thinking it was something i could get some therapy regarding.

part of the argument i used to get my extension, which i haven't posted anywhere yet, was a cost-benefit analysis of treatment v. acceptance. it was a catch-22 themed essay that argued that i might seem perfectly ok right now, but if you take me off the odsp then i won't seem ok anymore. i concluded that i ought to be grounded. but, i acknowledged that a significant investment with morally questionable techniques could resolve the issue - even if you had to chain me down and lock me up to administer it.

what i'm wondering right now is whether that's really true.

i avoid almost all eye contact. it's really only when i want somebody to do something for me that i can muster up the courage to look somebody in the eye; it's that aggressive of a gesture, for me. it's clearly not such an aggressive gesture for others.

is that learned, or instinctual?

the earliest memories i have with eye contact are feelings of almost panic due to a desire to avoid confrontation. so, i don't have memories of any theoretical causes, but only memories of effects. the thing is that it goes back very far, to that murky early grade school period; it could be because i changed schools in grade 3, or because i had a concussion shortly afterwards, but i would be almost hopeless in differentiating between events that happened between when i was four and when i was 7. it's quite young, though.

i remember that when people looked at me in the eye, i would become fearful that an argument or fight was about to start. it was just an act of pure aggression. so, i found myself avoiding eye contact both to counter the aggression of others and to prevent others from thinking i was behaving aggressively.

it sounds like i'm talking about an antelope. and, maybe i am in the sense that i have some native american genes. i'm exhibiting behaviour regarding eye contact that is normal in some indigenous cultures, but i haven't been conditioned into any of those cultures. perhaps therapy may be less effective then i'd like to think.

i've liked to think i'm not irreversibly broken; that i could be fixed, but that the investment would be at a loss. and maybe what i'm pointing to only necessitates therapy, rather than negates it's use. but maybe i'm uncovering somewhat of an unrealized truth, whatever it's scale.

i'm starting to become more cognizant of this strange tick in my neck. now, what i'm going to say may seem unscientific, and would probably be rejected by most doctors, but if you ask them to provide a better explanation, you'll be disappointed in their responses. i'm grasping the situation through experiencing it; i'm carrying out the experiment. and, while i may not be the person best positioned to measure my own behaviour, my notes should be analyzed for a mechanism rather than discarded as "impossible".

i seem to have developed too much control over my autonomous nervous system. seems ridiculous, i know. but, can you point me to studies that prove it impossible to gain control over the autonomous nervous system? because i bet i could find some studies that blur the lines pretty substantially.

i seem to have developed a fear of swallowing. that's at the crux of it. due to throat inflammation for various reasons, but one obvious, i may have nearly choked once or twice. i suppose we all cough something up once in a while, and it's a lesson to be more careful when you're eating. but, we mostly tend to shrug it off after a day or two, right? instead, i seem to have internalized it to the point that i'm not able to open my throat to let liquids in. i find myself fighting a battle against my own throat.

that might seem to indicate a loss of control, but not if it's thought about more carefully. if everything was firing correctly, i'd expect my throat would open when i pick up a glass of water. instead, it shuts and i have to consciously struggle with myself to open it. if i were in full conscious control, i would not have to struggle; if it were truly autonomous, it would not close at all. that indicates that it's my subconscious that must be interfering and shutting it out of a repressed fear of choking, which indicates too much control - but not consciously.

i understand i'm not likely to convince anybody with a doctorate in anything of this. but, i believe it's what's actually happening. in theory, the solution should be in the realm of mental health. but, even if i could convince somebody to take me seriously, i'm skeptical that they'd have any good ideas. it's maybe the kind of thing something like yoga might fix, without as of yet understanding the mechanism.

i don't think i actually need to go to a yoga studio. but, the answer may be spending a little bit of time sitting and breathing. i've spent most of my time recently fighting with a computer, and most of my time before that mixing and mastering. maybe i need to spend a little time with the guitar.

i'm not as dismissive of hypnotism as you might suspect i am, i just wish we could get a better handle of the mechanism.

i mean, you have to wonder if that's what demons are - repressed fears - and if that's what an exorcism really is - hypnosis to escape a repressed memory, fear or other such thing. we can do without the spells and religious mumbo jumbo, no doubt. but, it might be getting at stimulating a condition that allows for erasure.

my understanding is that there are actually experimental techniques underway that can erase undesirable memories using electronic equipment. that could be demon removal, on demand.

perhaps certain systems of eastern mysticism may have thrived for the reason that they minimize the onsets of these sorts of stresses.

and, if that's true, the mechanism would be in stimulating the hormonal condition that allows for stress release (jumbled language, it's still sort of magic at this point).

which, i believe - through direct personal experience and the observations of others regarding how i appear when i play the instrument - i can stimulate by expression on the guitar.

when you live in a basement, outside lawn mowers can make some rather gorgeous ambient music.

now that i've got my drivers clean, i'm back to the issue with the eqs.

to recall: there seems to be a programming error in cubase (a truncation error, it seems) that corrupts mixer settings on the first save. it's something i'm going to have to fine tooth everything over. i wasn't previously able to tell the difference on a/bs, but i can now. so, i may have to re-upload some of those files one last time.

my fears were unfounded - the machine booted up to a perfectly clean sound. i am finally confident that the machine is fixed.

all i've done since the last reboot is reinstall the operating system firewire drivers. i didn't even swap them, i just disabled them and rebooted, which forced me to also reinstall the mixer drivers. that seems to be the only thing i needed to do (besides locking the drivers).

it might seem like something i should have never overlooked; that it should have been one of the first trouble-shooting steps. but, i've got all my driver installs sequenced in an install script, so when i reinstall the machine i'm dealing with fresh, updated driver installs for every device in the machine. it's reasonable that it never crossed my mind to reinstall drivers for a system device immediately on a clean boot.

but, there's some evidence that it may actually be the registry wipe i run post-install.

before i run the script, i can uninstall the firewire drivers through device manager. after i run the script, it tells me i can't uninstall them because they're locked by a parent driver required for start-up. that sounds wrong - as though i've crossed something during the registry wipe. what i have to do, instead, is disable them first and then uninstall them.

what i've got back now is the "sound stage" - i can hear the reverb in proper stereo and all the effects have their decay back. it's the reversal of that compressed sound that i was associating with bad conversion. so, i have to conclude that the firewire port was somehow truncating the stream. when i put it into the context of the files always nulling when output to disc, it does, in hindsight, make sense to tie the issue entirely to the firewire streaming, as the issue was purely playback related.

that was a long, difficult process for what in the end was a triviality. but, i really think it's figured out now, and i should be able to get some listening in this week and back to mixing next week.

well, i got my forms mailed today. that's to cancel my student loan.

i can't be certain what the bureaucracy will do, but my understanding is that they basically can't overrule the doctor.

so, i'm celebrating this week. which means listening, but carefully - i know i can't mix when i'm celebrating.

and, it means making some different lifestyle choices starting next week.

i suppose i should be happy that i'm healthy enough that my lungs are still able to go into overdrive whenever i quit smoking. i've been through this often enough to know that this is the last phase before normalcy: the white blood cells start coming out in a quantity that sometimes makes me feel like i'm choking. i can literally stand over the sink and watch a connected gob of slimy goop fall out of my throat for upwards of a minute at a time. it only lasts a day or two. rather than clear my lungs slowly, my body seems to want to go into hyperdrive and flush it all out as soon as it can...

i'm actually scarily healthy. i tell people i won't live to 50. the reality is that if i can cut the smoking out now, otherwise keep my lifestyle (healthy eating, but more importantly no car) similar and get a little luck on inheriting dna from my mom's side, i'll probably make it to 90.

and i can't help but feel that this exaggerated response i always get when i quit is a function of being as healthy as i am.

i made a point of not getting anything done today, because i was expecting to pass out. i've actually been awake for a normal 17 hour day at this point and i'm feeling very alert. but, i'm still not doing anything...

tomorrow, i think, will be time to start again.

i determined yesterday, briefly, that the primary problem was, in fact, the firewire driver. i'm expecting it to boot up to a clean signal. perhaps another reason i didn't do anything today is fear that it won't.

not quite.

...what day is it?

i think i'm out of the haze and ready to finish troubleshooting.

so, after caving into various self-rationalizations over the first half of september, i've been de-nicing the last few days and have every intention to stick with it this time. i've said that for a long time. but, i've got my income stable for the next five years, i'm no longer in a hurry to do much of anything and i'm very much intent on getting over this. i had a little heatstroke when i got back on tuesday night and have been sleeping that off as well, but i think i'm alert enough now to at least try and get the machine back up.

i turned it off tuesday morning right before the script runs. i'm going to want to make sure i can get the firewire drivers correctly working before i run the script.

i didn't get my forms on tuesday. it turns out that the psychiatrist has to fill them out, and i'll have to wait until monday. nor does it seem as though the nurse practitioner is going to carry through with my prescriptions. he claims he'll work as a go between if i can find an endocrinologist, but he won't work with the guy from london because he claims he's unprofessional, which i think is a cop out - i think it's a religious thing, again. he said he put out a referral, but i'm kind of sketchy on it. i'm not convinced it's even a real person. but we'll find out. if i don't have an answer by monday, i'm going to have to get in contact with the guy in london.

i can't think of any reason why i should need to actually go to london and physically speak with him. i'm just asking for a refill of something i've been on for years and will be on for the rest of my life. it should be a five minute conversation, and it's not really necessary. and, if he insists on a blood test or something, i don't see any reason why i can't just get the blood test here and have the results sent to him.

the ideal remains trying to get the guy in windsor to see me because then i can indulge whatever silliness he wants at essentially no cost to me.

i'll find out these things in a few days.

and i think i should have the machine up in a few hours, even if i need to spend a few more days sleeping to finish the detox.

yeah, i think it's partly related to the operating system's firewire driver, strangely enough. at the least, this seems to be *one*of the things - and it's pretty pronounced. it seems to be reversing the compressed sound that i was associating with kmixer sample rate conversion and giving it back it's fullness. but, it's still fading...

i ended up breaking the audio in the machine pretty badly before i got there (i wanted to completely isolate the asio, so i did crazy things like delete the windows audio service, purge the registry of all mentions to all drivers, delete the system audio files, etc), so i'm going to have to reinstall again. like, i can't get it to pick up the directsound out on the m-audio card - which is what i wanted to isolate the asio, but now i need it back. so, i just don't really have a clean system to test with. the fading had stopped before i busted it, so i want to get back to where i was, do the firewire reinstall and see what happens.

it's been the same thing almost every day for weeks now. months, even.

i find some fix. it seems like it worked. i go to sleep. i wake up and it's back to where it was.

i dunno. am i playing tricks on myself? the truth is everything is nulling, so i'm not looking for changes in the actual waveform, i'm looking for changes in playback. is it possible that i'm getting used to the sound every night, only to have to start again the next day? are my headphones or my amp warming up overnight, then cooling down?

this morning's apparent fix was deleting the operating system's firewire drivers and replacing them with drivers from a firewire card i have in the other machine. it sort of makes sense relative to the weird tone issues, insofar as it seems bandwidth related. i'm taking guesses. i've been taking guesses for a while.

and, like so many of these steps, it seems vaguely familiar.

we'll see tomorrow if it's the same thing yet again, or if it's actually a meaningful fix, this time.

is it even the coffee?

there's a little box called "direct monitoring" in the cubase vst panel. unclicking this seems to have FINALLY broken through the sample rate issue and given me the sound i remember. that means i'm going to have to go back over this one more time. but it seems to be the answer i've been trying to figure out.

i'm not entirely clear on what this does. it appears to be related to whether i can hear files coming in from the mixer or not. if i was running an input driver all the time, i may have screwed up the output driver. i dunno, that's a guess.

but, i'm feeling good about this. now, though, is sleep...

if i go back to this feeling i was having that i was being eavesdropped on, it kind of adds up. it's probably obvious that i have unusually sensitive ears. the direct monitoring takes the input from the mixer and sends it to the output. just the bandwidth could have been bothering me.

there's been nothing attached to the input the whole time, of course - i've been mixing old four track parts. so, if that's what it was, it's, like, a virtual ground loop on the signal.

false update on just say no to mood altering prescription drugs

this has been updated.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/just-say-no-to-mood-altering-prescription-drugs
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/nope