i've got these two obsolete 100 gb external drives that i picked up when i bought this machine in 2006. i wanted one of them to be for mp3s, and i can't remember what i wanted the other to be for. i've since picked up a tb drive for mp3s, which is more than i'll ever need for music storage.
worse, these drives can only be read on xp. conspiracy theories abound, but the bottom line is that there's no way around it. windows 7 simply won't acknowledge they're there.
so, i've converted them into extra data backup [my music pc is still using xp]. now, this is highly redundant - i've got all of these isos burnt to dvd, and backed up in multiple other places. but, putting the data on these drives like this allows me to put them away. it's convenient - even if i need an xp machine to read them.
i've hit the first 100 gb of storage, tonight. these isos have all the source material - cubase projects, raw wav data, pod settings, etc.
it's something worth taking note of for my own records. on to drive #2...
i've also determined what i'm doing with the rabit set.
i have each release available for individual purchase in download or physical cd - most of it is cheaper than you'd expect. i've decided to further compile "box sets" for each major release as they appear. currently, my major releases are:
box sets compile the record along with the collection of singles attached to them - or two records, in the case of the first two box sets, which had less developed singles attached to them. they run between 6 to 8 hours. i've attached the price of $50 to them, which is again cheaper than you'd expect.
i further have "period discs" available, which attempt to combine the work of several records together and are determined by some event or idea in sound. my periods are:
period discs are much longer - 14-15 hours. roughly twice as long, really. period 2 is going to have to be a 2xdvd of flacs, although i may sell them individually. i only have period one up right now, but the price is set to $100.
this rabit compilation falls in between. it's more than a "box set" for inri038 (not considered a major release). but it's not a period disc. it's kind of a special disc, really. and it's over 12 hours.
i've consequently split the difference and put it up for $75.
i should also have my first mp3 dvd done soon, as well. i'm hoping i can get everything up to 2003 in. but i may have to cut it off a little early.
this will run for $200. hey, it's 30+ hours over ~45 releases. do the math. it's actually a deal.
if you want to pay me once, wait - i'll eventually have a blu-ray flac disc up for ~$500, and i'm thinking it should be the entire discography. have to see.....not clear yet if i'm going to go over 75 hours.....
if i do, i'll eventually have a 320 mp3 bluray disc for something like $800-$1000. depends how full it gets.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
yeah, i'm staying in tonight. i just don't feel like it's worth it. i'm at best a passive fan; it's more an experiential thing. like, i'd pay $10 to see them around the corner, just to say i've seen 'em, but the situation is a bit more annoying than that.
i could very well get most of inri043 done tonight.
Monday, April 27, 2015
i've also got inri043 public, now. it won't be more than a week.
this is the second of two double ep singles to come out of tracks that were begun in 2002 and not completed to my liking. the mixes in this single chart this song's rather elaborate development over twelve and a half years, with the first disc consisting of new mixes and the second consisting of old mixes.
it became clear through the course of july that rabit is wolf wasn't really going anywhere and i was better off cutting my losses. we jammed a few times, but it wasn't really serious.
this track was initially written as a folk punk song, but i jumped to the scorewriter with it almost immediately. the expanded guitar demo was written in a scorewriter and then performed, rather than vice versa. it was initially less about explicitly creating a techno song and more about ordering the parts in a way that could be deconstructed more effectively. i wanted a more flexible approach to production that would allow me to take tracks in and out based on sean's input.
i may have gone over this in this space before, but my mixing process up to that point was considerably unconventional. i would record tracks in one by one using a wave editor and then paste them on top of each other. i worked this way because i just didn't have more advanced tools. while there are benefits to this approach (it's additive synthesis, which blurs the mix for soundscaping), it meant that each additional track was destructive. i could not remove tracks once they were added. this meant sean was unable to provide much input into demos i sent to him.
i also picked up a copy of cakewalk to help with this, but i quickly learned that my system couldn't really handle it. at around eight tracks, it just became unresponsive. with less than eight tracks, it didn't matter if the mix was destructive because it was easily reconstructed. so, i went back to the wave editor approach until 2007, when i upgraded to a modern pc.
the taiko drum part was initially just to keep time; it wasn't supposed to be a part of the song. but, as i built it up i began to realize how interesting it sounded as a techno tune and sort of ran with it. once i'd notated it, i had to convert the drums into a soundscape because the midi render just wasn't good enough. this was done using a mix of software drum machines, midi snippets and isolated jimmy chamberlain samples. i then performed the score i had notated, with the exception of a few synths which were sequenced back. unfortunately, the midi file for the synth build up at the beginning of the track has been lost.
the mix never came out well, partly due to ram issues with cakewalk and partly because i got a little pretentious with some of the parts. i was also extremely distracted over this period. despite this all being done to make sean's input more easily integrated into the material, he had no interest in the direction i took it and basically put his nose up at it again. i attempted a few different things over late 2002 and early 2003 to try and salvage it for my own purposes, but in the end i shelved it as unworkable.
when i first set up the bandcamp site around 2010, i realized i had a collection of tracks that fit a sort of techno-guitar description and compiled them together under the name "tetris" (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/tetris). i uploaded an incomplete mix for that project, but it was never really done and i never really felt good about it.
it wasn't until late 2014 that i came back to the track, to authoritatively finish my discography. first, a mix was reconstructed from source to include all of the existing sound files. next, three separate sequencer mixes were sculpted out of the score - a jazz fusion mix, an overture mix and an ambient mix. pieces of these sequencer mixes were then isolated and mixed into the reconstructed original mix. finally, a series of extra lead guitar parts were recorded and mixed separately into a final mix and the orchestral mix, creating the end result and an accompanying guitar concerto. the recording process for this was very lengthy, which was ironically partly due to consistent distractions.
i've included the midi file of the original composition, if you'd like to mess with it on your own.
written over the summer of 2002 and initially recorded in the early fall of 2002. additional recording, production and mixing occurred from dec, 2014 to apr, 2015. final completion occurred on april 27, 2015. as always, please use headphones.
the various rendered electronic orchestras
include electric bass, synth bass, distorted electric guitar, clean
electric guitar, acoustic guitar, violin, viola, cello, contrabass,
harp, koto, french horn, trombone, trumpet, tuba, english horn, flute,
oboe, piccolo, clarinet, bassoon, synthesizers, piano, glockenspiel,
music box, tubular bells, bells, agogo, melodic toms, timpani, taiko
drum, orchestral drum set and choir.
recording is done. final mixing will commence after that persistently annoying, and yet absolutely necessary, food thing. inri042 awaits imminent completion, likely by sunrise.
that was the first show i've been to in a while that was a little underwhelming. i could have stayed later, but the reality is that i didn't really want to. i suppose it's kind of a reminder to be a little more selective, given the cost of transit and the realities around staying out late.
i'm exaggerating a little. two of the three acts i saw did what they did well, it's just not something i would have gone out of my way to see. what i went to see was fairly lacklustre compared to the recorded material. i just didn't have the energy to stay for ice balloons, given that the night was unfolding sort of poorly and it would have meant an overnight; cost benefit analysis came out as "go home". i hope those that stayed enjoyed the set, but i'm not convinced i would have - or at least not enough to have to wait until 8:30 am to go home...
to be clear, i was hoping to catch ice balloons as an opening act - they seemed interesting in that context. but i wouldn't have crossed a border just to see them. and i wasn't keen on staying the night to see them last.
the first band was pulp fiction, and i should start out by saying that they were very competent and everything. you had everything you need for modern progressive metal - the tapping guitarist doing piddly arpeggios, the bassist ripping on geddy lee, the loose feel psych drummer, the out-of-place shoegaze guy...
...and, as a medley, it wasn't half bad. the thing is that's really what it was: a medley of existing material. and, some of it crossed a few lines that you can't get away with. pompeii is iconic.
it was far from terrible, though, it was just exceedingly derivative. they made a big deal about how it was their last show. but, i'd say this was worth not skipping - so long as you know what you're walking in to.
odonis odonis strangely played second, and i may have been the only person in the bar there specifically to see them so the ordering actually did make sense, despite the billing. their newest record is up for a polaris prize, and is worthy of the acclaim. but, it came across rather terribly in a live setting. the set was composed of short, disconnected tracks that were stripped down to their most basic elements. i suppose it worked reasonably well as a blast of noisy post-punk, and i have to acknowledge that the venue was not at all designed for this (or ice balloons for that matter), but i was expecting something a bit more integrated, based on the recordings i'd heard. i'm concluding that the disc may be reaching for them.
the last band i saw was sweat, from flint, which is sort of local. as with the first act, they weren't terrible - it's just that i wouldn't have gone out of my way to see a band like them. at their best, they channeled aspects of swans, but let's not get carried away - they were, overall, fairly generic riffing of the no doom wave whatever variety. again - this is worth not skipping. but i'm not the kid that's going to fall all over this. i'm not going to post a sample because they claimed it was all new material..
i presume ice balloons would have come on next, but i was out around 12:30 when i realized i was only going to catch a few minutes of it if i wanted to get home tonight...
i guess i was hoping for half-hour sets and 15 minute break intervals, which would have had the show done a bit before 1:00, but the bar has a dedicated sound person and he seems to like to take his time. my point is simply that it's greater detail than i'm used to in a bar that size, which lead me to an underestimation of set-up time. hey, it's not like they're checking my bus schedule. and if i was more excited about the closing act, i would have gladly stayed until closing.
ice balloons is some kind of new york supergroup that does slightly avant out-of-date pop. it's a project zappa never did, but without the satire. i don't think anybody really wants irony out of this - despite usually craving it. which is ironic. i probably would have suggested it's worth not skipping...
but, a bunch of bands that are worth not skipping is...
this was also my first night at pj's, and i'm certain i'll be back there. there's some pros and cons in the place. seems like i just have some quirks to get used to.
it's not going to be done today, and i am hitting the show tonight, but it's been fully ordered and only needs a couple more parts - which are (mentally) written. monday, probably.
i'm considering maybe working the extra leads back into the final, which i didn't want to do. i'll have to see what it sounds like.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
so, i am definitely back to work today and tomorrow. i'm planning to hit odonis odonis on saturday, but we'll see how i'm feeling on saturday. the openers look good too, i think that'll be a good show...but if i can't pry myself away, so be it.
i spun the wheel of detroit again last night and ended up down option #5 - grand river, up a ways, with an eventual hard right up to the venerated detroit trumbullplex....
grand river was a short walk defined by juxtapositions: casinos tower over devastated apartment complexes. ruins, simply. windows are not merely smashed out, but scavenged, leaving oddly tidy orthogonal squat escapes - if it weren't for the black mold, which has overtaken the space to the point that it looks like fire damage. if you didn't know better, you'd think you were walking through a war zone at points, with bombed out buildings - collateral damage on the aerial assault on the industrial heartland. foreboding side roads fall off the main street, with invisible DO NOT ENTER signs. but, passing glimpses sometimes suggest portals to a past era. there is early twentieth century architecture in tact and in good shape here; one expects to see a classic ford car spin the corner, perhaps trying to outrace the cops to the speakeasy to disappear into a basement tunnel. other side streets have nothing but dilapidated wood buildings in immediate sight, and may very well have lost pets as their primary tenants. abandoned fields give way to large educational institutions and government buildings, which give way to more abandoned fields.
in fact, the media narratives of detroit's ominous urban warzone fade quickly into the context of the city's vast emptiness. walking up this strip of the city, there is simply nobody around to potentially harm you. the most immediate danger seems to be coyotes.
the turn up trumbull took me into a slightly different neighbourhood, full of crumbling victorian mansions - the kind with four or five bedrooms, personal balconies, fenced off porches and, of course, those decorative pseudo-minarets, which i'm sure were interpreted as pretentious (that would have been a good monty python skit...) when they were built, and today just seem bluntly absurd. if these towers ever had princesses, it seems clear that they've long dispersed.
the venue comes of as an extremely large garage (for those reading from ottawa, it's most similar to the old house of targ) and, given the size of the house it's attached to, may very well have been one at one point. well, what's five or six cars in mid-twentieth century detroit? today, it seems to mostly house bicycles, in what was probably previously a storage room. to the side, in what i'm guessing was initially a sun room, there exists a "'zine library" full of an assortment of pamphlets and other literature meant for dissemination - which is actually an excellent idea. curating is important. it might not seem important, but it is.
the first band up was time cat, and they managed to remind me that i live in the midwest, now - without putting me off by it, too much. there's some rootsy elements to their sound, but it's largely a merger of blues and punk. the energy is in the right place to produce a strong set, and the frontwoman for the band is worth checking out simply for her guitar skills. the drumming, however, needs a little work - and not everybody is going to connect to the vocals. if you see them opening, and you like the raw blues punk sound from hendrix to srv to jsbx to the white stripes and everything in between, they're worth checking out. but be wary of giving them too much energy to feed off, because they will play over time if you do.
animal faces surprised me. i hadn't heard any of their more recent material or seen them in a few years. i was expecting some thrashing post-hardcore with the amps and drums blaring, and i got a bit of it, but a good portion of the set seems to have focused on expanding the more sombre connecting portions of their previous work into longer sections. the result leaned heavily into the kind of post-rock that do make say think were excellent at in the early 00s.
now, i'm actually a huge fan of dmst. i've seen them something like eight times. and, they were some of the most fun shows i've ever been to - partly because i knew the material inside and out, and they're great at delivering it. given that their output has dwindled recently, i wouldn't be opposed to hearing somebody draw on it. further, this influence was apparent in their earlier releases, so it's not entirely out of nowhere. but, animal faces' attempt to walk into that space lacked the dynamics and subtlety you want out of that sound. over the last ten years, post-rock has become notorious for being monotonous and sort of boring. unfortunately, there wasn't much in the set to separate them from the mass of substandard bands that currently exist in that genre. and, what's a little frustrating is that animal faces were actually really good at what they used to do - really loud, thrashing post-hardcore.
if they're pivoting, so be it. i'm not one to push stasis. but, the shift requires a bit more work before they can say they're as good at what they want to do now as they were at what they wanted to do previously.
destroy this place were locals and they were a little too conventional for my tastes. tight. radio-ready. just not my thing.
i got to talking to the drummer from pile while out on a smoke break, and he seemed pretty chill. we agreed it would be nice if they get on to play, given the show was running about two hours late.
we did get a decent set from them, and they didn't disappoint. generally, the shorter my reviews are, the more i enjoyed the show
here's a full set from the same tour:
i didn't think the show would really be over at 11:00, but i didn't think it would run until 12:45, either. last bus back to windsor? 1:04..
i managed to walk back to rosa parks in 19 minutes (google maps estimate: 33 minutes). that's right: at the platform at exactly 1:04. but, no bus.
"shit.", i'm thinking. "missed it.".
but, i'm stubborn, so i cut up michigan to griswold, hoping it got stuck at a light or something. and, sure enough, it comes rumbling around the corner, causing me to run out into the intersection of griswold & larned, waving and hopping, which got me a stern talking to by the driver...
"what the fuck are you doing jumping into the middle of the road like that?"
"well, i'm trying to steer you into a place you can stop."
"what? really. you're not seriuh-....."
"well, you can't just stop in the middle of the road. at least you're not supposed to."
awkward pause.
"THANK YOU FOR STOPPING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD TO PICK ME UP."
close, though. it wouldn't have been so bad if i was stuck on a weekday, it's only a few hours, i just would have walked up to get a coney dog and a coffee. i think i was more irritated that i didn't bring a book...
i
want to address a point that i have to address periodically. i'm
actually not sure what it is that leads people to the conclusion that
i'm a dj working with sample libraries, but, for whatever reason, it's
something i've had to address for years...
i think it's partly
just the age we live in. people just assume that a one-person project
must be sample-based. it's the null hypothesis, in some sense. i also
think i should probably take it as a compliment, in the sense that it
suggests a perception of complexity.
but, it's not true.
i'm
a guitarist by training. i've dabbled in blues, jazz and classical -
and it's all there. i'm also a self-taught punk guitarist, if that makes
any sense. i use a lot of effects, and some of it is in the production
stage. but the actual truth is that the vast majority of sounds coming
at you in my songs are produced by a guitar.
ok, you're thinking,
that's believable - but what about the horn parts? the string parts?
the wind sections? they must be samples, right? well, no...
they're
actually sequencers. when i'm doing a horn or string part, i don't take
riffs out of existing songs. rather, i write them out in a score (like a
composer would) and use a sequencer to play them back. some of these
sequencers are sample-based. and, i think i need a brief discussion of
the three different ideas of "sampling" in contemporary music.
sampling
can mean taking sounds out of existing songs and reusing them. this is
popular in a lot of contemporary music - including hip-hop, techno,
trip-hop and industrial music. i've never created anything with this
kind of sampling. however, sampling can also mean recording individual
notes on an instrument for use in a sequencer. what does this mean?
well,
imagine that you've got a saxophone in front of you, and a saxophone
player. you don't play the saxophone, but you might want to create a
saxophone part later. so, you might ask the saxophone player to slowly
run through the scale on the saxophone. sampling, in this context, means
connecting each note played on the saxophone to a key on the keyboard.
once this is mapped together, a composer can then use the keyboard to
compose saxophone parts.
there's complexities - saxophone players
breathe, buttons click, etc. but this kind of sampling allows for full
composition, rather than mixing and matching existing isolated riffs and
pasting them together.
what i want to get across is that these
are two very different things, on a compositional basis. i don't expect
most listeners to really care. but i want the record set straight on the
issue, for those that do: when you hear these orchestrated things that i
do, they are created by a computer mapping an original score to a
sequencer to trigger samples. if you don't believe me, note that many of
my eps actually come with sheet music in the download, in the form of
midi files. they are *not* collages of existing snippets of sound, as
is common in a lot of modern trip-hop and otherwise electronic pop
music. they are compositions created the old fashioned way.
i am
not a dj. i am not spinning. i am not mixing samples. i do not use
fruity loops. i am a composer of original music, and my main instrument
is the guitar.
that said, there is a third type of sampling, and i
did make some use of it in the past. this kind of sampling reclaims
found sounds for use in creative collages. i haven't created anything
like this since about 1999, but a few things do exist like it in my
discography. here is one example:
you know, this might actually work out alright. i managed to talk my way
up to a supervisor, and if i send my odsp stub off to vancouver they'll
put a hold on it for six months - which should let my refund go through
for the year, so that's step one. step two is that i need to get my
odsp forms filled out in june so that it's permanent - and i think i can
do that. then, i can apply for the loan to actually get wiped. it's the
one and only way out, apparently.
otherwise, i need to send them the stub every six months.
i'm going to get the diet form when i fax the stub, anyways....
i'm pretty sincere about permanence. but if things work out some other way, the loan is gone.
i've
just been ignoring this for months because it's just like....i can't
pay you..but they got me the incentive to deal with it.
wait. there's conditions on the diet forms. gah...
i'm a model of physical health, it's my head that's fucked. gotta be some way around this...
the way people talk about this, it's like anybody can get it.
yeah...no. i'm not going to win this argument. so i'm not going to start it. i'll figure something else out.
i
remember reading the review a few years ago, and one of the recs was to
just abolish the special diet and give everybody the extra $100. i
wonder how convincing that report might be if i showed it to a doctor.
it's just....i don't see how an empathetic doctor could fill the thing
out....
actually, i've had some dysphagia recently. i've been
wanting to have this dealt with, anyways. i think i should probably do
that tomorrow. if it gets me a useful diagnosis, great. i'd kind of like
to get to the bottom of it, anyways.
stupid cra wants to take my tax refund...
which is, like...if you do that, i'm going to apply for the special diet allowance, which is actually roughly twice as much. so, i end up with an extra $50/month.
and, what you're going to gain from my tax refund is roughly 10% interest on the loan in the first place. it's just flat out stupid....
smart thing to do would be to let me declare bankruptcy. but, if you want to burst the student loan bubble, have fun - not like i fucking care.
as it is right now, if i were to get over my disability and find a job tomorrow, the loan payments would actually leave me with less disposable income than i have on disability. and, as the interest builds, i'm left with less and less incentive to get over the disability and find a job. i'm not the kind of person that's going to work for nothing. my life is not valuable enough to me to sacrifice it to the state. if i end up in that situation, i'll kill myself out of political protest. and spite. i'd enjoy it, to be frank.
i got manipulated into this loan - it was supposed to be paid off. i'd have never taken it, otherwise. but the person that made me that promise proceeded to die without following through on it. now, it's simply never going to be paid. ever.
they're telling me to wait for my notice of assessment. it might be available online, let me check...
i'm just not going to live that life. our existences are too short and meaningless to bother. it's stasis or bust.
the point is just that bankruptcy is the proper way out of my situation - but, unfortunately, you can't declare bankruptcy on student loans. nobody benefits from this, though. i'm simply never going to generate the income to pay the loan down.
no assessment, but i've got some more numbers to call. i'm not waiting for the assessment to get the dietary allowance, though. if this isn't figured out today, i'll have to do that tomorrow.
it is going to be kind of funny one day, though, if i live long enough. like, how high can the interest grow on this? can it reach a million dollars?
"in other news, there's apparently a sixty year old disabled person in windsor with three million dollars in interest on her student loan payments. when reached for comment, she simply said that they should have let her declare bankruptcy."
Monday, April 20, 2015
i'm noticing that when i type comments in facebook [and it's comments, specifically - not posts], i get very weird behaviour - characters jump all over the place, the delete button ends up "padded", etc. it's almost like i've got some kind of script running that's acting as a keylogger or something...
i don't think it's anything like that, though.
1) it only happens in facebook comments.
2) it happens on multiple computers
so, i suppose if it's something malicious, it might be on both computers. but i think that's not right, because it's just facebook. so, i think it's just something at the facebook site.
when i copy and paste the comment's text into notepad, i get all kinds of weird characters interspersed randomly through the comment. well, it's just one character - i've attached a picture. but it's all through the comment.
now, these characters seem to be something nasty. when i paste them into word, they trigger some kind of macro, which puts the machine in a loop state. i can only stop it by halting the task in task manager. so, they're some kind of pointer to some kind of script or something.
now, oddly, they don't show up in firefox. however, if i view the comments in ie then they appear the same way they would if i pasted them into notepad.
i'm left to conclude that firefox is interacting badly with some kind of facebook script. i've tried disabling adblock, and it has no effect.
i can get around it by typing into notepad and then pasting the comments in, but who wants to do that? and, i wish i knew what the fuck it is. so, i'm just curious if anybody's seen these characters in my comments, if they've seen them anywhere else (i can't find any info on this) and if they can identify what is going on...
the factors that lead to the characters appearing seem to have to do with the backspace and delete buttons. meaning it *seems* like facebook itself is actually keylogging - or trying to capture deleted characters, to be more specific. well, you'd expect it would be useful for a site based on ads to be able to capture the parts of the post that you didn't post. it's kind of scary, and dystopian. but i'm not left with much of another answer. i guess there's something in my hacked firefox that is "catching" that...but it would be nice to get some leads in actually proving this.
i've been planning on getting off facebook completely for a while, and just using it for shows - until a better option appears. and, i like the idea of facebook as a sort of cv, as the timeline interface seems almost designed for it. my days here are numbered. it's why i'm not accepting friend requests. i've just been waiting for my odsp update before i sit down and do it. it's going to take several days - probably weeks, maybe months - to completely migrate. if i'm right, it's just another reason to get off. and, if i'm not? bluntly, it's a matter of time. if they could read your thoughts, they would.
actually, i'm not so much into writing that narrative, right now. nothing really exciting happened, so i feel it would be disingenuous to play it up...
i almost didn't go, because i was paranoid i wouldn't get in. well, everybody has a phone, right? what i thought would happen is that i'd get there, and everybody would buy a ticket in line. to make matters worse, the bus was 40 minutes late - or to put it another way, two scheduled 53s just didn't come. this slowed the bus ride down substantially because it was packed. i felt bad for some of the people on woodward that may have been waiting an hour, only to have the bus drive by...
i'd hesitate to say the show was a double-headliner, but the opening act had it's own audience. i've seen metz before, and i thought they were overhyped. in terms of what they do, it's essentially a function of the fuzz pedal - there's really not much to it, besides the roar of beating drums and fuzzy riffs. i guess there would have been a time in the mid 90s when i would have been more excited about this, but today it just comes off as sort of middling - it doesn't have the same power as something heavier like torche (which i'm dropping because i saw them in the same bar a few weeks ago), and they don't seem to have the ability to generate hooks that the best grunge bands had. when they get noisy, there's little abstraction. the result is actually borderline boring. or, at least it is to an old pair of ears like mine. some music just has an age limit, dictated by the mainstream's tendency to limit access to more interesting music.
i'll say they had more stage presence this time. they seemed a bit more confident. but i'm not really going to play that up, because when you start getting too much confidence in this genre it inevitably turns into macho cock rock. i'm not making that accusation, at least not yet, but it's apparently the path they're heading down. that confidence came with what seemed like more conventional writing - they've tightened up, moving out of "noise-punk" and into a more commercial grunge sound.
they're not bad enough to skip in an opening band situation. but i wouldn't go out of my way to see them, or recommend them to much of anybody - except a certain type of kid, and maybe aging grunge fans.
also, the pit was borderline frat boy tackling. i kept out of it.
is there any use in reviewing lightning bolt? the show was what one would expect...
the last video was relatively useful in demonstrating what the show i saw was like, in a medium-small venue. and they played mostly new material - although a passive set of ears would be hard pressed to tell the difference. but if you don't know the band, check this out:
i guess the story of last night was my first mosh pit in detroit.
there's only a handful of bands i'll really actively slam dance to - and dancing is what i'm doing, in the mayhem, between rushing the stage and pushing people out of the way so i can dance more. i don't want to get in the pit when it's a lot of frat boys tackling each other, or when it's full of metalheads doing martial arts in the air or anything like that. i'm thin, and carry almost no muscle, but i'm not petite - i'm more swedish egghead than viking plunderer, but i'm pretty sturdily built and not at all easy to knock over. i can stand my ground in the most hectic of situations, and then some. but i'm still going to stay on the edge of most pits. most of the time, i'm just not really into getting into what's unfolding in front of me.
my experience has been that lightning bolt is in the group of exceptions to this - it's a mixed gender space driven by adrenaline rather than testosterone. just people having legit, clean fun. no dominance. no macho bullshit.
i've got a few bruises on my arm, but it was from staff mistaking me for somebody else and grabbing me. listen: cops are cops. they always create more problems than they solve. i'm not going to argue that security shouldn't exist at concerts, but bar staff going into the crowd like that never does anything but cause problems. the reality is that assholes get pushed out, and the response is generally proportional. the best pit police is usually the pit itself.
i'll write up something more narrated when i wake up...
Saturday, April 18, 2015
i'm not going to get this instrumental mix up today, and you can't
hear it yet unless you pay my rent for me, anyways. but it's total gaze
heaven. the kind with definition, though, that you don't normally hear. i
was totally enamored with this back in '02, always kicked myself for
not finishing it....but it's now finally close...
so, expect both inri042 and inri043 to be up by the middle of next week.
to see lightning bolt or not to see lightning bolt...
well, i know it's going to be a good show. i've seen them before. and they're good for it - i know that. but i'm kind of involved in what i'm doing. and i'm a little paranoid it's going to sell out five minutes before i get there. also, my landlord said something weird to me the other day, so i'm hoping i get home tonight. it's a trek out to ferndale, but worse is that that toll over the border is annoying if it is sold out...
i'll probably go. i just want to get close to an instrumental mix of lalala first. looking at my schedule, that will give me a solid three days to get both of these done and move on to the ostrich thing.
again: i didn't want to set up my magic fuzz chain this morning, because i'm going to need a long, solid session to finish the concerto. but, i've got the ideas worked out in my head. i've to this point avoided shredding over this track, because i didn't want it into the final mix, but it's going to come out in what's left. expect something acrobatic...
