Friday, February 9, 2018

i am now caught up to where i left off last year, which was may, 2015. so, what i'm actually back to is the rebuild...

i need to rebuild the second part of 2015 over both archives, and varying amounts of 2016 through the both of them.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

so, where am i?

i'm in march, 2015.

i'm also filling in a bit of the politics archive, so that's going to slow me down a bit, but i think it's a good idea, because i've been referencing myself in a way that nobody can verify.

this remains a lengthy process and i want to be clear that it's a distant eta.

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

if you think that it's dark or scary to imagine we have no purpose - as though this is an obscure possibility, right - then you are experiencing something called existential dread.

i would argue that it is really existential dread that is at the root cause of the continuing spread of religion, well into an era where it should have ceased to exist many decades ago.
"but, science says the purpose of existence is to maximize your number of descendants, so shouldn't being an atheist mean you want to have as many kids as you can?"

it's funny how religious people tend to think that science perfectly upholds religion, isn't it? i mean, how could it not, if you're absolutely certain in your faith? that's the thing about faith - all possible evidence always upholds it. if you have faith in santa claus, the absence of presents under the tree any given year just proves you were bad. and, if you have faith in god, then any possible set of events that can be thrown at you will just be perverted to offer more and more evidence for it's existence.

faith is a perversion of logic. that is why it is such a dangerous tool, and must be kept away from the state.

in the western/judaic context, this talk of descendant maximization goes all the way back to the torah. god gave abraham this purpose. but, how did this get attached to science? well, it didn't, except in the minds of religious people, that are seeking out some kind of purpose, because that was what they were taught to seek out.

so, we have this problem: when people raised with religious upbringings come into contact with science, they need to frame it in terms that they understand. religion teaches them that existence is about purpose, and that that purpose has something to do with god (although this itself is circular logic, as the purpose is created to justify god, rather than the other way around). if science is to offer some alternative to religion, it must offer some alternate purpose, right? and, from there, they come up with this vulgar dawkinsianism that deduces that our purpose, as humans, is in carrying on the dna. we exist to breed.

but, the reality is that you'd be hard-pressed to find a scientist (or an atheist) of any ability or renown that would accept that humans have any kind of purpose, as that pre-supposes that a god exists to define it, first. who or what defines purpose, if god does not exist? it's a neat trick that the religious person does, here, in defining existence in purely religious terms, before bringing it to the scientific bodies for answers, as, once you have done that, you have hard-wired religion into the question, and made it useless to science. you can walk down this path with philosophy, it's what it's all about, but not with science, which will provide you with no worthwhile answers if you present it with what are brutally leading questions.

science cannot pre-suppose that a purpose exists. science must gather evidence to determine if it suggests that a purpose exists. whether the nature of the purpose is an empirical question or not, which is what the religionists pre-suppose and assign to scientists as a strawman, is reliant on whether the purpose exists or not, first, which is also an empirical question, and not something to pre-suppose at all.

while it would be extremely difficult to do a comprehensive study that empirically disproves that we have purposes, the lack of evidence underlying any purpose is a convincing argument that we have no purposes, for most atheists and most scientists.

and, so this is what the atheist will tell you: science does not argue that our purpose is to breed, but rather that we have no inherent purpose at all, and are free to define our purposes as we see fit to do so.

i've decided that my purpose is not to raise a family but to to complete my discography, and, because i seek to be free, there is nothing in the universe that has the right to challenge my authority on the point.

Sunday, January 28, 2018

so, what am i doing, anyways?

from a distance, it probably seems like i've just fallen through the ground and into a rabbit hole, as i was prancing through the rhetorical field of rhetoric.

yes, the rhetorical field of rhetoric. it's a rhetorical field, remember. of rhetoric.

i think christmas is going to end in the next few days. yeah, it's a long one this year. well, i wanted to deal with all of the alter-reality writing - from 12/1996 to 02/1998 and counting - and, as those who have been following this for a while know, my writing tends to get a little more expansive on, err, holidays.

yes, friday is a holiday. legally. really.

so, i've been maintaining the proper mindset, notwithstanding tolerance, since christmas, preparing myself for the writing in the alter-reality...

....and i actually haven't even started yet.

as we can see, i've ranted here quite a bit, and quite nicely, since the 15th of january, when i closed the audio for the first two periods. today, i've been ranting nearly non-stop for like 18 hours or something - although i'm just about to stop. so, i've done a lot of writing, even if it's not in the topic i was intending. but, what i'm really doing is building a master list of album notes, so that i can pull the parts out that i need as i run through the alter-reality and close.

i need to reiterate that i only have to do this once and that, once it is done, the remaining process wil be much, much smoother.

so, what have i done over the last week?

i've built the first 350 pages of the master list up. the document is currently 700 pages, and has notes going to mid 2015 in it.

at this point, i would guess that the final document (1996-2018) will be around 3000 pages long - word, 8.5"x12", 12 pt - although i only expect to get up to around 1000 by the time i get to actually writing.

which will be when?

march.

christmas will be over before january is.

Thursday, January 18, 2018

ok, so i've got the facebook pages updated. i'm going to ultimately convert that timeline into something hardcoded, so i'm actually really using it for data redundancy. but, if you want, you can scroll all the way back to 1996 and see a detailed time-based presentation of my first two periods.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/jessicaambermurray/

there's a condensed version mirrored at my personal facebook site, as well.

i need to close the last bunch of releases for the vlog before i can get back to the alter-reality, but first i need to eat...

i've decided that i need to approach the master list a bit more cumulatively to start. so, i should just get right to reading what was written over 1996, and writing 1997 and planning out 1998. i can get to filling the rest in once that's been taken care of.

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

i plugged my router back in this morning, and it's made an instant difference in speeding up my machine. i had it unplugged because i didn't want to break the network architecture in the old apartment, but now it doesn't matter any more, because i have to rebuild it anyways.

it's facebook, mostly, that's the problem. i'm guessing that, even with adblock, all of the scripts running are just killing the dns, when it's external. pulling the dns down into the router seems to make a massive difference in responsiveness. that's really crazy, actually. for all of the talk of facebook's influence on elections, it seems to have tied itself to the same generation that is in the process of slowly eroding power, while making it unattractive to younger people. and, these slow pages, if they're widely experienced, are going to just add to the problem.

so, i should be a bit more productive today, as i won't be waiting for pages to load. what i'm doing is distributing the last batch of uploads over facebook, which will be a part of building the master list, soon.

Monday, January 15, 2018

so, i just accomplished something - i've closed all of the audio for period 2.

so, this is where i put the placeholder for period 2, for now.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-2

that means my discography is now completed for the period 1996-2003, with the caveat that i'll need to add a pdf file to each release for liner notes, and i have to finish the period 1 & period 2 discs, which are html front-ends on a pdf file that is the culmination of all of the individual ones.

i still have some work to do on this.

but, what's next?

it's jan, 1998 in the alter-reality. i left off in dec, 1996.that's a year worth a journal writing, and i'll need to get to it soon. but, i need to recalibrate, first.

first, i need to clean in here. i need to ship the rest of that order. but, i feel better about it now, because i'm over that hump.

i'm not sure how long it's going to take to recalibrate and get all this data in line, but i should be coming up on absolute final closes on inri000-inri015 in the upcoming weeks. and, then i need to stay up to date...

republishing inri074

around october, 2002 i met a friend. i was sort of in need of a friend, and i mean that in the friend sense. but, the mental condition i was in was the explanation of why i needed a friend, if you see what i mean; i was completely unstable in this period and did all kinds of absurd things, which isolated me - and i wasn't getting any better.

i dropped out of school under the realization that i was walking down a path that wasn't getting me anywhere close to what i wanted out of life. i ended up working three jobs to raise money for gender reassignment, and it crossed me paths with somebody that was also trying to think of ways to get out of the box in terms of ways to exist.

she was trying to save up money to go to british columbia. it was some kind of warped take on the grapes of wrath, where everything works out perfectly. but, the rent was eating into her savings, which was making the goal seem impossible. well, unless we stopped having fun.

so, i suggested she should just stay at my parents place. part of it was a hope that she would move her drum kit in, although that didn't happen. and, i might add that this was done with all of the reckless abandon that could be contemplated - we were moving stuff in without even asking, it was really remarkable.

and, it seemed to me that we were getting pretty close over that period.

so, when the time came that she had all that money put aside to go to bc, it was kind of a downer to let her go. and, she initially wanted to go with a friend who dropped out. so, i ended up going across the country with her.

now, i need to be clear: we weren't planning on coming back. we were going to pick fruit or something - we didn't know, exactly, we'd figure it out when we got there.

so, this was meant as a sort of farewell to certain people i hadn't talked to in months and didn't care if i was leaving, anyways. i think it let me work some things out on weird subconscious levels, but the truth is that these songs really aren't about anybody except me, and there's no use in pretending they are - i just liked the idea of a farewell disc.

this disc was initially passed around with a cut up version of the pretentious untitled mix at the end, but this was almost immediately ejected from future burns and is not present on this ep due to the poor quality of the mix. the remaining five tracks became combined into what i now call my eighth symphony.

written and recorded in late 2002 and early 2003. this was initially uploaded unmodified from a cd-r rip in may, 2015, but this was replaced with a version from source on nov 29, 2017 due to clipping due to an unrealized normalization on the burn. disc finalized as symph008 on nov 29, 2017. as always, please use headphones.

the hidden track is the final version and also appears on my ninth record, {e} (inri08x): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/e

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2003, 2015, 2017).
 

credits

released May 3, 2003

j - guitar, effects, bass, synth, voice, piano, drum programming, generative programming (sounder), granular synthesis, sound design, soundscaping, loops, bowls, claps, tables, ebow, orchestral sequencing, digital wave editing, sampling, production, composition

Sunday, January 14, 2018

publishing inri073

it was in may of 2015 that i first contemplated the idea of a chamber works. i was creating compilations to end my second period, when i realized that a couple of the tracks that did not fit well into the orchestral works might work better as chamber pieces. so, the chamber works was intended as a kind of companion disc to the orchestral works, both to offer a different flavour and to collect the remaining tracks into a compilation of serious music, so they are not left out.

so, i went back and did a systematic evaluation of the period 2 material to see which tracks could or could not be converted into chamber pieces. the last three mixes were created at this time, while the first was removed of clicks.

then, i stopped. i decided that an electronic chamber works was an idea of questionable worth, and i should put the idea aside for a bit and take a look at the idea again upon reconstruction of the period 1 tapes.

what the issue really comes down to is how good the electronic strings sound. does this actually sound like chamber music, or does it sound like a computer creating chamber music? and, if it sounds like a computer, is the issue resolvable somehow?

when i came back to completing period 2 in the fall of 2017, i decided in favour of the release, as the sound fonts are convincing enough, even if one needs to ignore a few relics here and there. tracks two and three were subsequently added to the compilation.

i decided at the end that this format has some future to it, whether it is fully realistic or not. string music will probably never go away. but, composers are going to find themselves less and less interested in actual physical reproduction, as time moves forward. the question of realism in the tracks is consequently somewhat misplaced, as the chamber music of the future is likely to be performed by computers, and sound like it just a little bit.

initially written and recorded between 2001-2003 and remixed and recorded further over 2014-2015. an idea for this compilation was developed over the last week of may, 2015, but it was not finished or released at that time. corrected and expanded from october, 2017 to january, 2018. finally released & finalized as lp022 on jan 14, 2018. as always, please use headphones.

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2014, 2015, 2017, 2018).
 

credits

released May 2, 2003

j - controller input, programming, effects processing, mixing, digital wave editing, composition.

the various rendered electronic orchestras include piano, orchestral drum kit, violin, guitar, viola, cello, contrabass, various string sections and choir.

publishing inri072

an unexpected result of the project to complete my discography, undertaken in late 2013, has been the construction of a handful of orchestral pieces, mostly as remixes of original tracks from the jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj period. while these tracks were initially written out as scored pieces for expanded instrumentation, they were generally written around the guitar and the expanded instrumentation was largely meant simply for colour. the exception to this is the psilocybin symphony, which was written as a piano concerto from the start and previously completed in early 2006.

the ability to expand these pieces into orchestral works is the result of the advances in vst sampling technology that have occurred since 2003. while changes in instrumentation have been accompanied by extra writing (mostly on the guitar), tempo shifts and other general rearrangement choices, the existing technology makes it very easy to rearrange a rock song for an orchestra, by simply multiplying staves and changing the sound fonts.

the condition i've set for a piece to be "orchestral" is that it must utilize the entire orchestra: it must have percussion, piano, horns, woodwinds/reeds and strings. guitars are generally treated like "first violins", whereas violins are generally not considered to be more special than other similar string instruments. some of the tracks also have prominent choral sections. all of these pieces meet this condition, except the last one which does not have a woodwind/reed section.

my delve into scorewriting ended in 2003; the material in my third phase is more focused on live and manipulated guitars and synthesizers. i consequently feel that this is an interesting summary of my second period, taken from a specific angle that is otherwise largely relegated to single-only remixes.

initially written and recorded between 2001-2003 and remixed and recorded further over 2014-2015, except track 2 which was completed in early 2006 and track 5 which was completed in 2017. the initial final compilation date was may 23, 2015, but track five was then added on oct 14, 2017 and the disc was finalized as lp021 on nov 29, 2017. track 7 was added as a download-only bonus track on jan 14, 2018. as always, please use headphones.

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2014, 2015, 2017, 2018).

* download only
 

credits

released May 1, 2003

j - controller inputs, drum & other programming, orchestral & other sequencing, live guitars, live bass, live synths, effects, sound design, digital wave editing, composition, production.

the various rendered electronic orchestras includes violin, viola, cello, contrabass, electric guitar, nylon guitar, guitar fret noise, bass guitar, synthesizer bass, french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, english horn, oboe, bassoon, clarinet, saxophone, bamboo flute, flute, piccolo, synthesizers, mellotron, organ, piano, harp, koto, music box, clavinet, kalimba, xylophone, agogo, mallet, hammered percussion, woodblock, tubular bells, tinkle bells, glockenspiel, orchestra hit, melodic toms, electronic drum kit, timpani, orchestral drum kit and choir.

republishing inri071

i've taken to splitting my discography into phases, and my hitch-hiking trip to british columbia is a very important separation point - both in terms of the nature of the material that came out afterwards and what is now a substantial body of work that came before it. that makes it a natural point to look backwards and build compilations of intersecting ideas.

a characteristic of my work is that it does not conform well to genre norms. this is not an accident; when compiling a record, i'm guided more by the late beatles' philosophy of vast diversity in a small space than i am by any kind of desire to collect together nice singles, or by some kind of compulsive organizing into categories or concepts. i write psychedelic music. that means something different in 2015 than it did in 1966, but the commonality is that it's necessarily challenging. i want all of my records to do everything at once, and accomplish everything by their end point. that makes compilations of this sort inherently difficult, because every song touches on every compilation idea at the same time. the jazz record would have the same tracklisting as the punk record, the classical record and the folk record - and none would really be what they're claimed to be.

the one exception to this conundrum is how i interacted with ambient music in this period. i very regularly utilized ideas from the genre, but i tended to interpret ambience as something that is necessarily obscure. in this period, ambient pieces are almost always outtakes or b sides. i tended to interpret covers and remixes as ambient pieces, probably because that was unexpected. when ambient ideas make it on to the record, they're almost always for effect: introductions, endings, connecting passages, that sort of thing.

when i began reconstructing my discography in early 2014, i came across a handful of songs i'd written out into midi format and put aside for later. a number of these ended up reworked into ambient pieces, and released as b sides. i also ended up converting some of the material i wrote in this period into ambient sound collages that are more in the style of music i created after 2003.

the end result is enough bsides and remixes to put together two full cds of ambient music. none of the tracks on volumes one or two are on any official record as they appear here; this is technically a collection of remixes and outtakes.

this package was initially released with a mix tape of fragments from 1996-1999, but it has since been moved into it's own release (inri035): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ambient-works-vol-0

initially written and recorded between 2000-2003 and remixed between 2014-2015. sequenced over mid may, 2015. the final compilation date was initially may 20, 2015, but both discs were mildly updated with some more appropriate mixes of the same tracks on nov 29, 2017; disc subsequently finalized as lp020. as always, please use headphones.

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2014, 2015, 2017).
 

credits

released April 28, 2003

j - guitars (acoustic, electric, nylon), effects & treatments, bass, synthesizers, electric air reed organ, orchestral & other sequencing, drum & other programming, generative programming (sounder), "projectile synthesis" (audiomulch), granular synthesis (granulab), sound design, electronic and conventional drum kits, sampling, loops, films, voice, digital wave editing, composition, production.

sean - vocal ideas (tracks 4 & 7, disc 1), ring modulator (track 9, disc 1)
jon - background guitar performance (track 4, disc 1)
greg - drum performance sample source (track 5, disc 1)

the various rendered electronic orchestras include synth bass, electric bass, acoustic bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, nylon guitar, guitar effects, guitar noises (fret noises, pick scrapes, knocks), synthesizer, synth pads, mellotron, choir, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, string section, pizzicato strings, french horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, oboe, english horn, bassoon, clarinet, flute, piccolo, mallet, piano, woodblock, music box, xylophone, tubular bells, other bells, orchestra hit, electronic drum kit, melodic toms, drum machine and orchestral drum kit.

Saturday, January 13, 2018

back in 2001, and bleeding into about 2003, i wrote a number of tracks into a scorewriter with the explicit intent of eventually having them performed by live ensembles. at the beginning of 2014, i decided that this wasn't likely to ever actually happen and went about completing the tracks in finalized forms - which happened over 2014 and 2015.

my initial plan for this compilation was to produce a record of midi compositions mapped to modern vst instruments as a "chiptune" (not literally) project, and have it double a record of fully realized versions of the tracks. as i went about completing the project, i began to realize that these vst versions were not sufficiently different enough from the finalized versions to justify a separate album and consequently aborted the project.

however, something that's happened since 2001 is that a more mature market has developed for midi-generated music, largely on the back of the success of the gaming industry. people have nostalgia for the sounds that their childhood gaming consoles made and an interest in listening to original music in the style of the soundtracks to those games.

i need to be clear that these are not gaming soundtracks - they're a mix of various types of classical and jazz, taking in influences from across the musical spectrum but essentially none from gaming. gaming isn't a thing i've ever really done, and the little bit i've done has tended to act as an excuse for listening to music (i had a mild civ2 obsession in early high school).

however, i feel that compiling a record of soundblaster mixes is something that could appeal to a specialized, niche audience and am going to put this record together for those people. i also feel it captures the headspace that i was in at the time. i've decided to mirror this soundblaster disc with the vst disc i was initially contemplating, to demonstrate where the technology has arrived at.

all of these tracks also appear on a set of cross-listed singles, and most of them are sequenced into a record at some point. there's more info on the track pages.

i've included the raw midi files in the download for further listening and modification.

these tracks were written from 2001 to 2003 and in some cases rearranged over the course of 2014 and 2015. all disc 1 tracks rendered through a soundblaster live! device that was manufactured c.1999. all disc 2 tracks created in cubase with vst software synthesizer technology. the compilation date is may 14, 2015. disc finalized as lp019 on jan 13, 2018. as always, please use headphones.

his release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2001, 2002, 2003, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018).
 

credits

released April 29, 2003

j - controller inputs, programming, composition, digital wave editing, effects processing, production

the various rendered electronic orchestras include acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, flute, clarinet, brass, trumpet, trombone, tuba, soprano saxophone, orchestra hit, violin, cello, string section (tremolo), drum machine, electronic drum kit, hand drums, finger snaps, nylon guitar, electric guitar (distorted, clean), steel string acoustic guitar, fret noise, sitar, banjo, pc card clavinet, music box, piano, organ, bells, synthesizers, mellotron and choir. 


i'm actually not sure how i find myself in this position, here, at 2:00 in the morning.

i needed to detox today, but it manifested itself as typing in bed. i slept most of the day, not up until the afternoon. i wanted to clean, but cleaning means vacuuming and i don't know my neighbours well enough to hate them enough to vacuum at 2:00 am on a saturday morning. no, i'd rather at least wake them up at 8:00.

but, i'm not even convinced i can do that. i kind of feel like all i should be doing right now is sweating and typing, until i'm able to finish the plate of spaghetti i've been working on for four days, now.

what's the probability that i can get done through to inri074 tonight? well, let me give it a shot, right? it's just typing....

Thursday, January 11, 2018

so, i'm just coming out of an extended christmas break, and i'm going to be a little bit mentally wander-y for a bit, still. i lost the last few days to distractions, really...

what are my tasks this weekend and into next week and for the rest of the season?

1) i need to finish cleaning in here. this is still move-in cleaning. i had to wait for the isp guy, and then the maintenance guy. floors, especially. so, i'm going to take a few days to do this.
2) i wanted to finish period 2, first, but not now. now, i want to clean first so i can get to the next batch of writing in bed. what's left is just the cover art for inri070-inri074, and i've already shipped inri071, inri072 & inri074. cleaning won't be too long and this will be quick...
3) i'm going to need to go back and finish the outline for period 1. this is the third winter in a row i've tried to do this. i have to actually do it, this time. this will include catching up to the alter-reality. and, once the structure exists, i should be able to carry forward with it. and, i might as well set up the structure for period 2, too.
4) i'll have to do a lot of fixing of things before i'm able to get to period 3. i have a stack of broken and disassembled technology that needs attention. so, there will be an extended studio set-up phase that will also include things like buying bookshelves. basically, this is getting back to what i was doing in the summer, pushing back into the spring. part of that will be catching up on the vlogging, although that will also be a part of building the period 1 disc.
5) notwithstanding any further problems, i should finally be able to start period 3 by summer, hopefully.

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

did the holocaust actually happen?

well, i might be a product of it. my paternal grandmother just kind of shows up as an orphan in the 30s, without much of any documented history. she was raised in an italian family, and one would no doubt make many errors if forced to differentiate between italians and jews out of a line-up, but i think most people would assume she looks pretty jewish. there's pictures of my dad from the 70s, full bearded, where he actually looks flat out arab, although he aged in a way that made him look not dissimilar to chomsky, in that eastern european jew kind of way - although he aged terribly. his physical appearance was described almost perfectly in the term 'italian jew'. although, when i say he aged in a way that made him look not dissimilar to chomsky, what i mean is that, at 50, he looked not dissimilar to chomsky at 70. i got my mom's genes, on that one; i remember bringing her to a field trip in the fourth grade, when she was almost 30. and having the entire school think she was my teenaged sister. this deduction, though, is ultimately not phenotypical - the two rumours on that side of the family are that she is in some unknown way a product of the holocaust (smuggled in, maybe?) and that she's the product of a mob hit, and sometimes these stories intersect in a tale of starcrossed lovers and racist slaughter by catholic mob bosses that couldn't deal with the interracial, and interreligious, eloping. my grandmother is a catholic. my aunt claims she found them in a newspaper clipping of young lovers tied to railroad tracks (and subsequently annihilated) in ottawa in the 30s, but the evidence is circumstantial, at best. my grandmother doesn't know.

between the time of her adoption and the time she was married, my paternal grandmother's last name was zito. and, ottawa was known to have an international mob presence, at the time. you can find pictures of the big bosses, i think including capone, existing in ottawa. it actually does add up. the fact that she seems to have no known history has led to the speculation that her adopted parents probably knew what happened - perhaps even knew the killers - and just didn't tell her. there is literally no trail. her adopted mother could have been her mother's sister, or something.

or maybe her parents managed to get her out, despite the attempts of north american governments to prevent jews from arriving. certainly, if you wanted to get your jewish infant or toddler child out of germany in 1937, you'd have had to have done something like smuggle it out. and, you wouldn't want a paper trail, because if it's found then the kid will get sent back.

maybe i'll look into it one day...

anyways, whether i'm the result of it or not, did the holocaust actually happen?

i run across this question from time-to-time, and i'm going to provide somewhat of a dodgy response: the holocaust is as well, or better, documented and convincingly demonstrated as any other event in accepted mainstream history. so, i can be as sure that the holocaust happened as i can be about any other event in history.

but, look at the words i'm using, the language, the context: event in history. history.

that is not the argument that my grandparents would provide. they may have been born as it was happening, and not remember it, but it was a part of their lives. this is not even the argument that my parents would provide, as they lived with people that lived it. three of my grandparents are even still alive, and all three of them could very well outlive my mother, between the heroin and the alcohol and the cigarettes, not to mention the half of a dozen duis.

but, the boomers are passing, and this is going to be the new reality around the holocaust: we are approaching the point where no living people have any connection to this any more, and it exists purely as history.

this is the situation that the holocaust memorial people have been preparing us for for the last 60 years, the point where the question is no longer about forgetting, because we don't have memories to forget. you can't forget what you never knew. instead, you need to ask the question: can you trust history?

well, can you?

punk?

it's exceedingly well documented. i understand this. but, so is the life of jesus.

a part of the problem is how central the holocaust story is to the western founding myth, at this point. it's intrinsically interconnected with the ascent of american hegemony, so it is consistently intertwined with narratives that are otherwise blatantly false. turning on cnn, you could very well have a holocaust memorial set sandwiched between a fraudulent expose on the syrian government gassing children and a jaw-droppingly bad interview with kellyanne conway that goes on for twenty minutes without managing to say a single true statement at all. association doesn't produce guilt, but it's a little unsatisfying to come to the conclusion that the only accurate information provided by the media is related to a historical event, even as they misrepresent every other kind of history on a hourly basis. the importance that the media places around it really does make the whole thing seem kind of fishy.

it's exceedingly well documented. i understand this. but, i think there will come a time when nobody really thinks this happened - or that the scale was exaggerated.

"6 million is an exaggeration. maybe it's an error by a scribe. i mean, look at the way that herodotus exaggerated the size of the persian army, for example. they probably added a few zeroes."

so, it's as well documented, or better documented, as any other event in history, sure.

but, analysing history is fundamentally different than analysing the present. this is something that's changing.
if german becomes a dead language, for example, we're going to lose incredible amounts of our scientific and broadly intellectual history, reliant on summaries in english and translations into russian. that is inevitable, though. we will forget this. we eventually won't be able to read it.

your precious hegel will eventually be illegible to even the most sophisticated idle bourgeoisie in berlin. perhaps this is when history implodes upon itself - it just swallows itself whole, and disappears into a wormhole, yelling taunts at humanity as it flees.

it reminds me a little of my argument that all history becomes poetry in the end, and that this relationship is determined by the co-efficient of poeticity, which is naturally pi. i'm not sure i've explored this here. that is for another time.
is human progress, civilization, inherently forgetful?

well, certainly a lot of humans are inherently forgetful. we forget to do things, and forget lessons taught to us, all of the time. maybe the idea that i'm really expressing is that many of us are stupid, but the way this manifests itself is largely as forgetfulness.

now, the individualist will point out that while many, perhaps most, people are forgetful, there are some people that are not and these people will carry on the thrust of human progress, no matter how forgetful we may collectively be. but, their argument relies on the ideological construct of independence, and this is an empirical question with little evidence supporting it. individualism, at best, seems to be rare. so, these individuals are really left with a curatorial task to remind people of what they've forgotten - they're really just the cleared registers in the collective, trying to avoid the garbage collection from clearing them away, urging for a second chance to exist in memory - and failing. it's like a broken system of error-correction; we can remember and forget at the same time. so, this question of the inherent forgetfulness of human progress does not reduce to a question around independent variables.

it's just a different intellectual conception of progress - not as a linear curve tilting off towards some windmill at infinity, but as this messy, chaotic step-function, full of unpredictable fragments.

there is, of course, a hierarchy of seriousness attached to the consequences of forgetting what is being forgotten. geography can be found easily. a lesson can be relearned. but, forgetting science can be devastating.

this is a potentially unrealized consequence of globalization - when the global culture falls, there will be nobody left to remember what was forgotten.

Tuesday, January 9, 2018

purchasing this release does not come with a download.

inri053: written late 2001 and early 2002. this file is ripped from a cd-r that was burnt around 2002, as that was the option that would produce the most accurate reproduction of the original composition. published without modification on oct 6, 2014. expanded, re-released and finalized as symph006 and lp012 on oct 23, 2017.

inri057: written and recorded in late 2001 and early 2002. initially sequenced in may, 2002. re-sequenced and first released in june, 2002. re-released in slightly different forms from 2002-2014. resequenced to mimic the original sequencing and re-released on november 8, 2014. except to sequence the record, these files have not been altered since 2002. disc finalized as lp013 on nov 3, 2017.

inri063: these tracks are all based on existing demos from 2001-2002 that were initially intended to be completed with vocal parts and were remixed from july, 2014 to may, 2015 as purely instrumental recordings. released may 2, 2015. disc finalized as lp014 on nov 21, 2017. this is my sixth official record.

inri066: originally written, programmed and recorded from 1996-2002. reclaimed & remixed from june to december of 2015. initial completion date was december 31, 2015. disc finally released, closed and finalized on nov 26, 2017. lp015.

inri067: written and recorded between dec, 1999 and july, 2002, except the hidden track (which was created in the summer of 1998). none of these tracks were remastered or otherwise modified after 2002. disc simultaneously created and finalized as lp016 on nov 26, 2017.

inri068: originally written, programmed and recorded in varying states of finality over 2001 and 2002, except the hidden track (which was programmed in 1997). the associated tracks were completed between february, 2014 and may, 2015; these mixes, however, were spun off as late as nov, 2017. released as lp017 on nov 27, 2017. expanded and finalized on jan 1, 2018.

inri069: initially written and recorded between 1997-2003. this compilation idea was developed and expanded upon as an intended full record release between 2006 and 2011. reinterpreted, reconstructed and remixed between 2014-2018. sequenced over december, 2017 and january, 2018. disc released & finalized as lp018 and tetris I-IV on jan 7, 2018.

originally created from 1997-2003. this compilation is dated to april 28, 2003. slowly remastered, reconstituted, compiled, reconstructed, released and finalized from 2013-2018. compilation finalized on jan 9, 2018. as always, please use headphones.
 

credits

released April 28, 2003

j - guitars (electric, acoustic, classical), digital & analog effest processing, bass, bass synth, synthesizers, electric & grand pianos, electric air reed organ, digital piano, flute, mandolin, voice, vocal noises & relics, electronic & analog drum kits, drum programming, drum manipulations, drum sampling, vocal manipulations, loops, orchestral & other sequencing, sampling, equalization, sound raider, found sounds, octavers, noise generators, cool edit synthesis, granular synthesis, generative synthesis, coughs, digital wave editing, production, composition, cover art.

sean - vocals, lyrics (inri053, inri057), harmonica (inri057, inri063, inri069), ring modulator (inri057, inri067, inri069).
greg - drum performance sample source (inri057, inri063, inri067-inri069)
jon - guitar performance (inri057)

the various rendered electronic orchestras include acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, brass, ftuba, french horn, trombone, trumpet, english horn, saxophone, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, flute, bamboo flute, piccolo, organ, sitar, bells, orchestra hit, melodic toms, timpani, orchestral drum set, drum machine, electrmoic drum kit, piano, clavinet, kalimba, hand drums, nylon guitar, distorted & clean electric guitars, guitar effects, guitar noises, synthesizers, synthesizer effects, music box, agogo, tubular bells, glockenspiel, koto, violin, viola, cello, contrabass and various full string sections. it also includes choir. 
 
inri063: these tracks are all based on existing demos from 2001-2002 that were initially intended to be completed with vocal parts and were remixed from july, 2014 to may, 2015 as purely instrumental recordings. released may 2, 2015. disc finalized as lp014 on nov 21, 2017. this is my sixth official record.

inri064: these tracks were written and recorded over november and december of 2002 and uploaded, unmodified, in may of 2015. released on may 2, 2015. re-released on physical media and finalized on nov 24, 2017.

inri065: written and recorded in early 2003. transcribed, slightly rearranged, remixed repeatedly and re-rendered repeatedly over may, 2015. released on may 16, 2015. expanded & finalized on nov 25, 2017.

inri066: originally written, programmed and recorded from 1996-2002. reclaimed & remixed from june to december of 2015. initial completion date was december 31, 2015. disc finally released, closed and finalized on nov 26, 2017. lp015.

inri067: written and recorded between dec, 1999 and july, 2002, except the hidden track (which was created in the summer of 1998). none of these tracks were remastered or otherwise modified after 2002. disc simultaneously created and finalized as lp016 on nov 26, 2017.

inri068: originally written, programmed and recorded in varying states of finality over 2001 and 2002, except the hidden track (which was programmed in 1997). the associated tracks were completed between february, 2014 and may, 2015; these mixes, however, were spun off as late as nov, 2017. released as lp017 on nov 27, 2017. expanded and finalized on jan 1, 2018.

inri069: initially written and recorded between 1997-2003. this compilation idea was developed and expanded upon as an intended full record release between 2006 and 2011. reinterpreted, reconstructed and remixed between 2014-2018. sequenced over december, 2017 and january, 2018. disc released & finalized as lp018 and tetris I-IV on jan 7, 2018.

originally created from 1997-2003. this compilation is dated to april 26, 2003. slowly remastered, reconstituted, compiled, reconstructed, released and finalized from 2014-2017. compilation finalized on jan 9, 2018. as always, please use headphones.
 

credits

released April 26, 2003

j - electric & acoustic & classical guitars, electric bass guitar, bass synth, digital & analog effects processing, synthesizers, electric air reed organ, electric & grand pianos, flute, voice, vocal noises & relics, analog & electronic drum kits, drum programming, drum manipulations, drum sampling, bowls, claps, tables, ebow, mandolin, orchestral & other sequencing, sampling, loops, equalization, light-sound synthesis, generative programming, granular synthesis, sound raider, noise generators, cool edit sequencing, found sounds, octavers, coughs, digital wave editing, sound design, production, composition.

sean - harmonica (inri063, inri069), ring modulator (inri067, inri069)
greg - drum performance sample source (inri063, inri067-inri069)

the various rendered electronic orchestras include tuba, french horn, trombone, trumpet, english horn, saxophone, brass section, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, flute, bamboo flute, piccolo, orchestra hit, melodic toms, hand drums, timpani, orchestral drum set, piano, agogo, celesta, xylophone, marimba, clavinet, kalimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, tubular & other bells, music box, woodblock, mallet, electronic drum kit, drum machine, jazz drum kit, koto, synth pad, synth bass, synthesizer, synthesizer effects, mellotron, organ, sitar, acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, fingered bass guitar, picked electric guitar, nylon guitar, distorted & clean electric guitars, guitar effects, bowed electric guitar, guitar noises (fret noises, knocks, pick scrapes), violin, viola, cello, contrabass and various full string sections. it also includes choir.