weird that i can hear this tonight but couldn't hear it last night or the night before. it's richie hawtin, specifically. he'll be on another hour.

at first, i thought it was a house party, so i took a walk around the neighbourhood planning to crash it. yeah, i'll do that. well, listen, if you're going to turn the music up loud enough that i can hear it in my apartment, i'll interpret that as an invite; if i'm listening to your music anyways, i'd like to come in and dance, thank you.

but, as i started walking around, i started realizing it was coming from a rather large distance away because i could hear cheering in the background. it was the cheering that dissuaded me; must be a hefty cover. the bass seemed rather close, though. i guess it was roaring in between the houses...

i also realized that the dj actually wasn't very interesting, and it wasn't worth stumbling around trying to find.

i assumed it was probably the casino in downtown windsor, not across the river in detroit. that is really ridiculously loud....

http://www.movement.us/

yeah. i'll be ok. hopefully it goes away soon, though.

it hasn't really improved, but i've gotten used to it. also, i'm developing a sore throat, which leads me to conclude that i've picked up a virus. this is pretty intense for the flu, though....

...and the truth is the only vector i can conceive of over the last week would be those eggs. so, bird flu? maybe....

i'll see what i feel like when the sun comes up.

my neck needs rest, but my brain is wide awake. so, read.

i'm finding myself in far greater agreement with hobbes than i ever thought i would be, and am actually seeing him produce a lot of the same sorts of arguments i'm always throwing at ancaps. hobbes would agree that a society based around markets and contracts would require a state to enforce those markets and contracts, rendering the vision of classical liberalism (today pushed by anarcho-capitalists) a sort of contradiction in terms - precisely agreeing with myself and other anarchists, who don't think anarchy and capitalism are compatible with each other.

of course, hobbes would not conclude that markets and contracts (and property and currency) should be abolished, as i would. instead, he'd argue in favour of a totalitarian state that forces actors to carry out their promises.

but i'm a little surprised how much i'm actually identifying with somebody that's always been presented to me as the exact opposite of everything i've ever believed in or stood for.

these are the existing stats on my top video. i've pointed out repeatedly that buying views would not help me, due to the fact that i'm an abstract artist and have no commercial potential or potential to herd a flock. but these stats make it clear they aren't bought. you'd think it would make more sense to run it against poisson or something (perhaps some research is necessary to get the right distribution, poisson strikes me as useful in finding the rare event of a full play) to determine if the data fits a reasonable shape, rather than to just be all racist about it.

it's that one algerian hit i want, not the hundreds of dumb americans that get confused after 0:07. i'd rather they delete the american hits, and let me keep the algerian one.

we'll have to see what they do or don't do with this, but it seems like all those hits outside of the first world - in turkey and south africa and elsewhere - will be declared fake.

because they don't actually exist.

i'm noticing that the youtube algorithm is basically racist, in that it rejects any hits from outside of the "first world".

sorry, white men from california. i post regularly on videos discussing global affairs. those hits from russia are legit.

in your world, nobody in russia actually uses the internet, i guess.

i ultimately don't really care. youtube views are not a meaningful currency to an obscure artist that is about substance over style. like anybody else, it makes sense for me to maximize the potential audience. but, i'd rather have one quality hit than ten thousand people that listen for five seconds. see, the unfortunate reality, though, is that the latter is necessary to get the former.

but, people should be aware that youtube isn't actually really cracking down on fake hits, it's just applying a type of racial profiling, and it's going to negatively affect people with an actual global reach, by turning audiences outside of the first world into non-entities.

in a sense, it's sort of what we all already knew: the tech industry doesn't think the rest of the world actually exists.

ouch.

neck is very stiff. has me paranoid about paralysis. but i'm hoping i just leaned on it the wrong way. will give it a few hours to heal before i freak out.

i took a break from mixing this morning to make some eggs, which gave me some heartburn and forced me to lie down. i woke up a few hours later barely able to move, with difficulty swallowing & etc.

see, it's been suggested to me more than once that i'm high risk for developing MS. i've had these periodic facial tics for as long as i can remember, but it's on the other side of the neck. i'm a little worried that something "broke" on the other side.

for now, i'm going to try to breathe slowly and just basically not move for a few hours.

so, i've become convinced that i will eventually snap my own sternum in the process of stretching, the blood splinters will travel to my heart and i'll die on the floor in a pool of my own blood. things are constantly snapping in there. it's just a matter of time.

but i can't just not stretch. no, really. try it some time. nobody can accomplish this task.

so, i've resigned myself to my own frailty, and patiently await the outcome.

hey, i always said i wouldn't make it to 25.

i was shocked when i made it to 30.

i suppose my track record on this prediction is not good, but i consider it exceedingly unlikely that i'll get to 40.

in some imaginary state of nature that never actually existed, i would have been eaten by lions before i turned ten. no, really, i would have. so, i'm already way ahead, thanks to the technology.

better to quit when i'm ahead. wait.

uploading first movement (demo) to soundcloud

this is the guitar run through of the first movement of the proverbs symphony, as it was initially written (and demoed in early 2007). note that this version is less than seven minutes and is written to be performed live, whereas the completed movement is over seventeen minutes and would be impossible to reproduce without an orchestra of guitarists.

https://soundcloud.com/deathtokoalas/proverbs-symphony-movement-1-winter-2007

...and the memories come back: it was written as a synth-guitar part, in the sense of being meant to be played over a keyboard. so, i'll have to put the sequencer section back in.

that means i'm moving to a temporary mixing stage for the day. the remainder of the track is basically production & vocals. that may mean adding some extra tracks, but it's flourishes.

i might have it done by the weekend. the 1st, for sure. the next track is going to be a process as well, before i rapidly shoot through the rest of '01.

the last prewritten section isn't playable. i'd have to split it into multiple tracks, then use weird tunings on all of them.

the awkward moment when you realize you read your own sheet music wrong.

hey, it was 15 years ago.

uploading the lost symphony to soundcloud

when finally completed, the trivial group sequence will consist of a 2-cd arranged in four thematically linked "symphonies", of which two are currently complete and one is partly complete. this is a live play through of the second half of the third piece and the entirety of the fourth.

this was written over 2004 and yet has not been recorded in any significant form. i went through a long period from '04 to '07 where i was convinced this piece (and some others i was writing at the time) required a drummer and refused to record until i could find one. i couldn't find one, which put me into a fit of depression and led to writers block & etc. eventually, i just bought an electronic kit with the goal of playing it myself.

however, i then skipped over it because i felt i was dragging on the relationship it was about on just a bit too far. time to move on, kind of thing. it had outlived it's relevance, without making it to track.

i'll be recording this (finally) over the upcoming months. for now, here's a messy demo of it.

https://soundcloud.com/deathtokoalas/the-lost-symphony

done for the night.

day.

what is time?

the rhythm parts are now almost done. i've been bouncing around between all these weird tunings...

...but the last rhythm sections are connected to some acoustic parts, which should be done tomorrow.

will have to change the strings and etc in the morning.

afternoon.

i also need to record some live drums, somehow. then: leads, vocals, production. getting there...

seems like somebody had an urge to do a townsend impersonation

i'm not picky about acoustics. it's the percussive sound i want, i can always put some reverb on it. so i'll get a cheap one...

i could always try to reglue it, but the split looks messy.

gah. on second thought, it looks like the head has been glued back together.

which may provide an answer to the question of where my uncased guitars went.

the glue job was weak, neck is going to crack in time so i should get these tracks down immediately...

my acoustic works! yay!

i was worried about it for a long time, because it seemed like i had just demoed the intonation by dragging it across the country in a canadian spring. going from ottawa to new brunswick to manitoba to alberta to bc to alberta and back to ontario, across rainforests and deserts and mountains, from cold to hot, from dry to damp, and in a little nylon gig case the whole time, and in a short amount of time, seemed to have left it in an unplayable state. it was in the unfortunate state of being unable to produce an E that sounded the same across different strings, no matter how closely i tuned it.

but, i changed the nut on it and left it in a weird string configuration - i had a heavy gauge in the D position, and a light gauge in the G position - and then got evicted and completely forgot about it, as it sat in a basement, alone, for two years.

i don't remember exactly what i was thinking, but whatever intuition i had about warping it back into shape seems to have worked, because it's as good as new now.

i really missed having a playable acoustic. things are all slowly coming into place...

another weird thing: i cut the strings off with a pair of electrical pliers that are probably older than i am and, for all i know, may have even belonged to my grandfather. what's weird about it is that it's the same set of pliers i used to use to cut the strings on the first acoustics i played with when i was roughly ten years old.

uploading proverbs demos to soundcloud

this is a very early (july 31, 2005), no effects demo of the second & third movements (reversed). there are a few flourishes, both gained & lost.

https://soundcloud.com/deathtokoalas/proverbs-symphony-movements-3-2-summer-2005 

i think we've all heard rumours of just how widespread the "buy fans" industry is on social media, but on soundcloud they've taken it to a different level. i'm actually getting spammed to buy likes, and i can't believe that's possible without some help from soundcloud.

well, the business models on these sites are notoriously bad. could they make money by selling likes? it might be the only way they're making money.

as mentioned, i've really tried to avoid soundcloud. i'm using it to hold lo-fi demos. i'd never upload anything finished there...

this is what i got spammed with:

https://soundcloud.com/jake_pk

open spamming suggests to me that the industry is working in plain view.

i mean, i'd never buy likes. it's pathetic. a non-starter. but it's actually not something that would help me either, as i'm more interesting when i'm obscure. if we want to talk venn diagrams, my intersection with popular culture is pretty much zero. it doesn't really matter how much i spend on buying likes or other kind of bullshit promo because what i'm creating is inherently revolting to anybody with a follower mindset. to me, buying likes is like trying to market tampons to teenage boys......it's floating a product that is entirely useless to that market.

i'd go so far as to argue that the type of person that is going to listen to my art is almost certainly going to use ad blocking software.

second section of guitar overdubs is done. after all the fucking around, i stuck with less is more, but i'm going to convert one of the counter-melodies into a vocal part, instead.

vocals? yeah. i think i'm going to get back to them, but generally release the material in instrumental form, as well. i know what it's like to enjoy a piece of music and despise the singer, so i'll provide that option.

i do consider myself handy enough with words, but i'm not a poet and have never aspired to be one. for all my rambling about the sanctity of art for art's sake, i'm pretty harsh on poetry as being pretty much useless. see, it strikes me either as a pretty base and unimaginative form of expression or as the height of pretension, with almost no middle ground. i'm more interested in observational writing.

but, maybe observational writing is sort of like poetry and i'm just being semantic. maybe it's actually the middle ground i seek. this could go around in circles for a while, so i'll be clear on the line i'm drawing; you can attach that line to different concepts as you see fit. the difference is in getting an idea across vs mentally masturbating around the language of a turn of phrase. the more obfuscated and layered your statement is, the less valuable the statement becomes. development is key in getting a point across, but the point is getting across the point, and i like to be as clear and straight to it as i can be. if you need a book to explain your poem, you've failed at communicating a message and might as well be just jerking off in the corner by yourself.

to me, this whole dialogue is a big part of what punk rock is really about.

it's not really a break. i've always used vocals, i've just jumped from using them liberally to using them sporadically, and it was mostly because i just didn't have anything i wanted to get across in the medium. if i had something to say, i would - and did. i actually think i can trace this decision back to about '06 or so, meaning it was only really in the early mid 00s that i mostly shunned vocals (although, again, it was never total). it's just that i have very little completed work to show for myself since '05.

anyways.

systems collapse is being stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides. so, let the factories turn to rust and let the buildings fall apart. if you need me, i'll be rocking out with the horn section...