wandering a little further into michigan to see torche (and nothing)

the show was in ferndale, which is not a walkable option from downtown, especially not coming back overnight. i'm looking at roughly an hour and a half on a bicycle, even - and not much quicker on a bus dealing with heavy lights and many stops. it seems to be the first sizable suburb moving north out of detroit, but it's amidst so many other suburbs that it's a weird term to use. an inner city suburb. very middle class, nothing gated, or nothing i could see. but, it's by far the deepest into michigan that i've yet been, and i was fully cognizant of the possibility of getting stuck there overnight.

a back of the napkin calculation suggested to me that i'd get to the bus on time if the show ended before midnight, and i figured it likely that local bylaws would shut the stage down at 11:00 or maybe 12:00. so, i was aware of the possibility but didn't think it would really be an issue...

i left early to head down to a record store to get some tickets, which took me a little past ferndale to an area called "royal oak" on maps but that seems to be referred to as "oakland" by residents (judging by the signs everywhere). i spent the long bus ride second guessing michael gira's decisions on his most recent juggernaut, to be kind. overall, it's a satisfying record, but the ego really veers it into bad taste at a few points...

this venue seems to be picking up. i'm guessing it has something to do with the magic stick being in the middle of a construction catastrophe (they're putting in a rail line up woodward), and something to do with bands not wanting to go into wayne county for safety reasons (and the bar is as close as you get to wayne county without going into wayne county), but it also simply needs to be stated that it's a relatively nice rock bar. it's next door to a microbrewery, which has it's pros and cons, which i'll get to. but it's designed like a bar you want to play. and it's ground level, which is so remarkably relieving for me when the bass kicks in....

so, it seems as though i'm going to be at this place relatively often. i just wish it was walking distance back to the tunnel.

i went to pick up four tickets, three at the same bar: torche for the night, screaming females next month, la dispute (at the masonic temple, early april) and lightning bolt in mid april. to my disappointment, they only had the la dispute, and there's actually no way to get tickets in advance for the other two. i'm not really worried about screaming females, but it's a bit small to hold a lightning bolt show in metro detroit. that will likely sell out. i'll have to get there early that day...

royal oak was a surprisingly nice neighbourhood to walk through, with more attended to landscaping and a lot of independent businesses. it almost seemed like i wasn't in detroit, for a few minutes. rather than wait for the bus, i decided to walk back up woodward to the loving touch, which got me most of the way through the new bjork record. it's well crafted, but it's missing colour. it's like a boring, run-of-the-mill mozart composition - mathematically flawless, but just not compelling. i'm really not very impressed by this arca character. he's very cinematic, but he's just not a talented composer in the sense of knowing what notes to put where. it's a shame the orchestrations are so robotic and emotionless, because bjork herself is clearly very emotionally invested in the disc. unfortunately, these kind of execution-level fails in what are otherwise excellently constructed grandiose concept records seem to have come to really define the latter half of her career.

i'm there a half hour early and grab a beer in the bar next door to pass the time.

 -----

the doors open a little late, but when they do open i come face to face with the lack of beer bottles in the venue. this is a problem for a standing room show that is likely to feature some pushing and shoving.

now, the pro is that the beer selection itself is a little nicer, due to the microbrewery next door, even if it's only available on tap. i only tried the raspberry blonde, but it was pretty nice and something i'd drink a second time.

but, one simply cannot stand on the edge of a pit with a glass of beer, no matter how delicious the beer might be. guaranteed spillage. every time. take it to the fucking bank. and, sure enough, the floor quickly became sticky as people tried to mosh with plastic glasses and spilled their beers all over each other like the idiots they obviously are. absolutely predictable, and absolutely predicted the moment i saw there were no bottles.

i get the counter argument - you don't want to give angry, drunken oafs beer bottles to smash each other with. it's better to mop beer off the floor than blood. point taken. but i might take the issue back a step and suggest that you don't want to book bands that attract hooligans. responsible adult punk rockers know how to cradle a bottle in the pit - you don't go in until it's down halfway, then you keep your thumb over the top and cradle it inward, so your arm doesn't get knocked away from your body. you can hardly boost the entrance age to thirty. but you can choose not to book bands of a certain type.

i compromised with a gigantic pbr in a can, which is second best. more spill potential than a bottle, but manageable.

...and i knew it was going to be a long night when i was on my second beer and nobody'd come on before 10:00.

---

armed with a can rather than a cup, i suddenly had the new found confidence to wander on to the floor, and quickly came face to face with an already shitfaced fellow that was astounded that his friend couldn't recognize the music playing in the speakers. now, i acknowledged that i didn't recognize it either, but that i'm an old grunge kid and not a metalhead and that it's consequently out of my sphere. a debate quickly erupted on the merits of metal v punk, which led to him offering to buy me a shot. well, twist my arm. but i'm glad he cashed out, as he was teetering.

the exact transaction took the form of a shifting slew of half-coherent conditional statements, eventually culminating in "if you agree you like king diamond". i met his king diamond with some cardiacs, which he was unfamiliar with. we then agreed upon hawkwind and floyd. i'd yet to confirm the king diamond when the shot hit the counter, which i drowned quickly. well, i met his conditions repeatedly up to that point. fuck, i could have taken his offers cumulatively and demanded seven shots, but i'm just not that person. i did have to admit that i hadn't heard enough king diamond to form an opinion, and promised to check them out.

now, as you know, i'm a guitarist, so i have a little respect for feats of virtuosity - even if i tend to prefer punk (as a broad theme) to metal. but i'm also a composer, so i prioritize compositional complexity over pure virtuosity. one of the problems i have with metal is that the guitar solo is this institutionalized excursion. the song'll be going along like it's going and then, all of a sudden, the band breaks into this standard three chord rock song with a guitar solo that has absolutely no musical connection to the "composition" underlying it. when the solo kicks in, the band tends to stop playing together. it's not satisfying to me.

"cock rock metal's like a bad laxative:
it just don't move me, you know?"

see, i tried to point this out to the guy. if you want to hear some really interesting guitar playing, forget about michael schenker. what you want is al di meola. there's no contradiction in digging punk and upholding the superior musicianship in jazz. that's where you get it all come together. some prog does this well, while the worst of it is really equivalent to the worst metal.

i gave it a quick shot and i don't really hear anything particularly interesting in it. it's pretty generic "heavy metal", with doses of the worst prog (elp, yes, rush). predictable. formulaic. it's off the charts on the cheesy scale. the guitar style was already well worn and cliched by 1986. i'd suggest dream theater over it - their writing is a lot more interesting. but i'd rather listen to something like indricothere, or maybe queen, if you're going to push me on the point.

the first opening band started to play almost immediately after the shot was finished, so i thanked the kind (if smashed) fellow, convinced his friend the guy was done for the night (he needed little convincing) and hit the floor with my can of pbr....

---

now, when you've had what amounts to roughly three beers and you take a shot, you get that bolt of alcohol induced energy - it's not really a drunk feeling, it's more of a high. so, i'm dancing a bit, which kind of stood out in the crowd of slightly portly, rock solid torche fans, and skinny kids moshing. which attracted the presumably universally non-single women in the crowd to join in a little.

i'm not going to deck myself out to go to a torche concert. it's going to be roughly 80% completely straight guys, roughly 10% bearish gay guys and the remainder filled up by girlfriends and freaks. i'd fall into the freak category, contextually. there's going to be mutual repulsion with the brawny queers, and that's fine. and, most of those straight guys are not the type i really want hitting on me. the one that's going to hit on me is pretty much going to be the exact guy i'd prefer to avoid for basically ever. i'm either setting myself up for something creepy or something freaky. when i go to shows on the brink of what could be called 'metal', i consequently tend to dress down in a sweater or t-shirt, with no make-up. i'm there to see the show, and willing to blend in. i also had to be cautious of the safety concerns around the reality that i was hurdling myself into an uncharted area of detroit for the night and not sure how long i was going to be there...

in a dark room, when i start dancing to rock bands, it attracts women. they see a skinny bottled blond dude in a well-laundered grunge outfit. there's a timeless kind of sexiness to this. i understand that; i'm not entirely comfortable with it, but i do get it. the bottom line is that it's repeatably demonstrable. in multiple cities. now, i'm willing to bring another person into my little universe for a few minutes if they knock on the door, i like "fun", but i'm really solely there to see the show and not shy to point out when it's getting annoying, either. and i know single women don't often go to these types of concerts, too. that's not a value judgement, it's just conflict avoidance. the last thing i want is a fight.

there's a number of tactics women will use to try to get my attention when i'm out there, which are mostly variations on standing in front of me and pretending to fall on me. and i've let a few fall when they start pissing me off. but i got a new one last night. it consisted of leaning back so her head is hovering off my chest and pulling her phone out to take a "selfie" that includes the two of us. that gets your attention alright. it was fun to play along and take a few silly poses, but she seemed to want to play that game all night, so i had to point at the stage to get the point across. but somebody out there has got some choice pictures or videos (not sure) of me.....

the first band up was "wrong", which is basically ungoogleable regarding live footage. they weren't terrible, but this is a genre that is at this point defined more by the quality of the gear than it is by the quality of the songwriting. i mean, it's predictable, but you want it to be - you want that groove to set in and your head to get caved. they didn't quite have that oomph. maybe they'll find it if they keep working on it.

https://wrongriff.bandcamp.com/releases


i went out for a smoke break after the first band, hoping to catch a puff somewhere. after four drinks, you really only need one.

the border is not something i'm playing with. ever. it's just not worth it. probability = zero. and i'm not planning on stumbling through customs baked, either. but a puff at 9:00 is going to be indiscernible from a few drinks by the time i get there at 1:00. by that time last night, it was clear i wasn't going home until the morning.

i'll spare the details for good reasons: mission accomplished, amidst universal agreement of the absolute supremacy of canada as a nation state.

call it paranoia, but i didn't finish that pbr after i picked it back up. it just felt like bad news. and i took the opportunity to cut myself off, as well. you really just need one puff...

now, when i got back in the second band (nothing) was setting up and they really cracked me up. i didn't know anything at all about them, but it was pretty clear from looking at them (and their tease of mayonnaise) that it was going to be something more in the indie rock category. they were taking an unusually long time for sound check, which an opening band is usually going to do because they're wasting time to make up for a short set. i mean, the levels are generally already set before the tour starts. and ironing out the room is what soundcheck is for. it was getting exceedingly lengthy, so i called them on it...

"is this really necessary? do you think anybody is going to notice? or are you really just wasting time for a short set? i mean, what is this, some layered guitar effects shit or something? great if it is, but if you need to waste time, like, do a cover or something..."

listen: i'm a critic. and i'm a fucking punk. but i'm altruistic. it was meant constructively. long soundchecks for the second band are bad pr. something in the guitarist's head seemed to click. i think he heard the call out and basically agreed. so if they shorten that up in the future, you're welcome.

next, they realized that the drummer had disappeared and seemed visibly confused by it. but, in hindsight, i think this was a further delay tactic. this comedy finally ended with...

"we'll begin the set when we find our drummer."

this set me into convulsive fits of laughter, largely out of mental projections around the drummer just bailing on them. i have a dark sense of humour. if somebody got it recorded, they'll look back and laugh, too.

so, were they wasting time or really setting levels? i think it was mostly wasting time. it turns out that it's actually some pretty layered guitar shit, but they weren't setting levels on anything of the sort.

this is an old set and it gets the idea across but it doesn't really capture the evolution in the band's style, which has become a lot darker, bleaker and dronier. there's a lot of just flat out noise worked into the set, but it's ultimately a kind of nihilist alt rock. i want to avoid comparisons to the trendy gaze/metal hybrids of the last few years. rather, i'd suspect these guys are giant boris fans. i'd recommend checking them out - if you can handle finishing your beer before the set starts.

this is a full set from a few days later:

torche, on the other hand, just plugged in and started playing - after the tech fixed the bass drum, and they pleaded with management to turn off the neon green lights behind them.

"c'mon, guys. anything but christmas lights."

to no avail.

it was loud, which is really what i came for. bassy loud. the kind of bassy loud that makes you wonder if it's going to leave you with an irregular heartbeat. i've pointed this out in a lot of reviews. i crave that for some reason, it's some kind of addiction.

i'm a passive torche fan, so i'm not going to go into the different renditions of the songs. but they did what they do, and they did it enjoyably....

this is a full set from a few days later:

and, when it was done, it was 1:30. last bus back to canada? 1:09. so, i'm hanging out for a few hours...

my initial plan was to just get a beer or two and sit in the bar, thinking that you're looking at last call around 2:00 and the bar staying open until 4:00. by then, something should be running. but that's not how things work there, apparently. apparently, you're out at 2:00. unless i misunderstood....

after a bit of stumbling up and down the road, i found a 24/7 dunkin' donuts with a bus stop at the front door, which was just about ideal given that i was a little unnerved by the situation. i could sit inside until i saw the bus arrive - which turned out to not be until 5:30.

now, i've sat overnight in a wide variety of fast food restaurants but this was a singular experience. the counter attendant seemed to have a series of long running feuds with almost every customer that walked in, who all complained about how horrible the food and service is. naturally, i asked them why they keep coming back, and the answer - in all cases - reduced to some kind of game. they seemed to see each other as each other's nemesis. they seemed to enjoy being angry at each other, even desire it. free therapy with every order over $4.99?

at least two people seemed to live in the restaurant. one of them would sit in the bathroom for hours at a time, and constantly had to be chased out by staff. he seemed to clear the tables in exchange for compassion. but he was rather visibly in a cycle of some sort. my best guess was that he was trying to extract something from his excretions and then reuse it. he always left the bathroom very clean - like, cleaned - when he came out after a long period in it. he would then go behind the building, snort something, go into convulsions and repeat. it's hard to be judgmental about the drug habits of somebody that is in their 40s or 50s, is under five feet and has a noticeable hunch in his back. there's not a lot of options, there, unfortunately.

a number of people tried to get me out of the restaurant and go somewhere else, and while i'd have to apologize to any sincere requests, i certainly wasn't taking that kind of a chance. i think they were all sincere except one. he comes in, starts chatting me up and explains how he's from texas. then he's from florida. then he's from detroit. he's in town to visit his 20 year old daughter, then he's got a contract; he's on tv, then he's staying in an rv with a propane tank for heat that he needs to jump a barbed wire fence to get to. the story is constantly changing. he's trying to psych me out and failing horrifically. and it becomes clear after a while that he's trying to get me out of there - first when he lures me out with a cigarette, and then when he asks me to go hop the fence with him.

so, how do you get a guy like that away from you? you play down your wealth.

"gee, i wish i had some more cash, i could just take a cab home."
"i live on welfare, actually." <---that one was powerful, you could see his facial expressions twist.

i had a flip-phone on me as a clock. he left very shortly after he realized that was the newest phone i had.

---

so, i finally get on the bus about 5:30. it's a short ride to the station up the street that i could have easily just walked to and caught a bus an hour earlier. i knew that, it's just that i didn't want to miss one by a hair and get stuck for an hour at a sketchy bus station i've never been at. i assumed the buses would be synched, which was actually a wrong assumption...

so, i get off the bus and i hear a request for a smoke coming up behind me. i'll hand them out freely, 'cause i'll ask for them later. but, he wants to talk. detroit is a friendly place on the surface, until you realize how much of the conversation is meant to figure out whether you're a worthwhile target or not.

he's telling me he wants to go to the casino to win enough money to pay his bills for the month. it's about 5:45 am. he managed to get his rent paid, and he's visibly proud about that. but, he figures he can't do anything worthwhile with his last $47, so why not take the chance on it? he's probably going to have to borrow money, anyways. if he loses the $47, he hasn't lost anything worthwhile. if he wins enough to get what he needs for the month, he won't have to borrow anything.

logically, he's right in principle, i'd just question whether putting it into a slot machine is the highest probability option he has. he's probably better off buying a guitar in a pawn shop and finding somewhere to busk, for example. but, i'm not talking about any of this. he's already creeping me out a little.

then, he starts talking about my shoes. coveting them, actually. he's thinking they're $100 shoes - again, badly misperceiving my actual level of wealth. now, he's got on a pair of rainboots that are the size of clown shoes. he explains that they're far too big for him, and he's right. the dude legit needs a new pair of shoes. so, he asks me what size my shoes are...

in a sense, this is like "worst criminal ever" stuff. i'd tell him not to quit his day job, but, y'know. i'm actually wearing a pair of $40 glittery pink converse copies. they're boring skate shoes with some girly sparkles. i lie and tell him they're worth $20, and are size 6.

"wow, my feet aren't that small."

i take a step away...

i'm starting to gather that i'm dealing with a high functioning autistic person with a hormonal inability to comprehend empathy. a clinical psychopath. there's no cure for this. he needs medical attention that the system is unable to provide for him, and he *will* lash out if he's not able to meet his needs.

"hey, do you have a disease?"

i take another step back.

"can i have a sip of your coffee?"

autism confirmed. he's asking about the disease because he wants coffee, rather than something more violent. i'm still keeping my distance...

"i'd rather not share my coffee, i'm sorry."

at this point, he's aware that i'm uncomfortable, which seems to make him uncomfortable, and he walks across the station to chat up somebody else. the bus arrives shortly, and it's uneventful trip home from there...

this was a test run for the overnight; in the future, i'm probably better off staying at something else about half way there and walking to the station to catch the bus right on time. i don't want to spend more time at this station than i need to. the next show at this venue is on saturday, which means either getting out on time or catching the sunday morning bus....at a lovely 8:30 am.

i actually suspect i'll probably get out on time. we'll have to see how that goes, and what the path home looks like.

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/03/20.html

torche, tonight, was an adventure. weirdly, so. i'll have a lengthy write-up to do when i wake up.

but the most important part was that i realized when i got home that i'm happy. legitimately. and that i'm lucky to be happy, too.

any tension relief from refraining from coffee is being reversed by struggling to stay awake more than 12 hours. i felt alert around noon, but now i'm a walking zombie. i'm going to let it sit for tonight nonetheless, and likely hit it pretty hard tomorrow.

now that the weather's cleared up, i want to get out to some more shows. part of the point of this was to force myself to hang out in the art spaces of detroit to meet people (which i'm very bad at), but it really seems to be a lot of terrible. i'm going to get out to see some rock shows, though: torche, screaming females, lightning bolt, loma prieta, la dispute...

one thing that became a little clearer as the tension came down a bit was that a part of what's happening is related to the bones. i think there's some chips in there, although it's hard to get to cause and effect. the earliest i remember this happening was after i got a tetanus shot after i smashed my face in when i fell of a bike, in 2005. i'm not pinning anything on the tetanus shot, but it seems that the bones never really healed properly. i don't know if all the tics are chipping it, or if the chips are causing the tic..

i'm glad that the blu-ray install was painless. the plug & play picked it up (never clear with this version of xp that i've hacked into pieces. i can't get it to read my sansa mp3 player consistently, for example. but it seems to be good with drives.), and imgburn knows what to do with a big iso. so, i didn't even have to install any new software. it's kind of like it just worked. how about that. must be a talented tech that set it up that way.

i'm trying to get rid of an expired bottle of peanut butter, but am going to crash shortly. it seemed promising this afternoon. it really did. but it's been a long time since i've been off coffee...

one more day for recovery/detox. i'm going to try to hit torche on friday.....

i literally slept all due tuesday (my legs were too sore for much of anything), and spent most of yesterday immobile but got my eating playlist padded for another few months. that's actually a time consuming process, the way the feeds are designed. it would be nice if you could jump to a specific point in the feed. alas...

my legs are back, at least.

i'm going to spend the next several hours getting information off my politics page. i'll likely only take a dent out of it, but this is a good time for it. i'm basically sick.

as for the effect? well, i'm feeling my perception of time slow down a little. a bit of tension has removed itself from my head and neck, but it still lingers - i think it's still releasing. and i'm more hydrated, which is an all around positive regarding skin and everything else. but the facial ticks have merely slowed down.

i'm sticking with the water. no doubt. but i think i've convinced myself the coffee is not the problem. and i'll consequently likely get back on it and back to work next week. i need a few more days though, to let the tension really wind down....

the tech at long & mcquade's is gone for two weeks, and he charges by the minute, so i'm going to open the thing up and take a good look at it. i'm thinking that if it's close enough to the diagram i'll get a soldering iron and give it a go. otherwise, what i want to do is probably to strip it before i go in, which is going to require a soldering iron either way. that way, he's not charging me for disassembling it....

i picked up the blu-ray drive, though. it's going to need to wait until tomorrow for an install. right now, my feet are killing me. that was a good twenty-five km on foot today...

it's a nice day, taking advantage of it. got some compost dropped off this morning...

the city doesn't accept compost, and i hate throwing it out. what a waste of nutrients. so, i leave it in the freezer until it builds up (it's just fruit cores, egg shells and coffee grinds, split into those three components) and drop it off at this local muslim community group that uses it to grow tomatoes to give to homeless people. that's a useful recycling of material. but fucking capitalism, right? i mean, i'd rather see the city do something like this than a religious group, but it doesn't. you work with what's available.

it means a lengthy walk with a knapsack full of decomposing shit every few months, but it's worth it. it's actually good exercise, and gets me some vitamin d.

i picked up a brita on the way back, as well as a drill set for the shelves i want to build. i was expecting drill sets to be like $150 and that i'd have to improvise to get the shelves in. but it turns out that there are much cheaper options. the drill was $30, and the bits were $10. it's bare bones, but i would have spent that much for a falling apart "fancy" drill at a pawn shop. what i need is stability, not power. just shelves...

the brita is important for the neck experiments i'm doing. i needed coffee for the walk. but i may just be dehydrated. i know - i'm grasping. but, i don't drink *any* water, and i've noticed that increasing my water intake has had positive impacts in the past. i mean, i drink tons of coffee, tons of juice, tons of soy....but no water. the reason is that i'm perpetually iffy about the water out of the tap. so, when i get that set up i expect to notice a positive difference one way or the other. at the least, i can say i've controlled for it when i get to the doctors.

as it's so nice out, i'm going to get a few other things done today. i've got a blu-ray burner waiting for me at the best buy, which i'll need to bus to. i've been waiting for them to come down under $100. this one is $99.99, so, hey. that's my grandmother's christmas present for me, i guess. the track i'm currently working on would require 4 dvds to back up, and that's going to be the norm moving forward into the trivial group material and beyond, so it's time to move to blu-ray for back up.

i'm also going to stop at long & mcquade with my fake strat and see what they're going to charge to resolder it. i took a closer look at it, and it seems like the previous owner mangled the insides up altogether. the switches are not stock. i can follow a diagram and get the logic down and stuff, but i don't want to fuck around with something that's already been fucked with. i only need to fuck up once to fry myself. i doubt many guitarists really realize the kind of current they're dealing with it. playing the electric guitar is actually pretty dangerous. there's some spots in the track i'm working on that would benefit from the skinnier pickups, which was the point in picking up the fake strat. so, it's time to get that fixed...

so, lots of exciting things for the day, for me. even if the rest of the week ends up spent as a zombie...

you know, i'm noticing that deep breathing helps. given the symptoms, i'd find it remarkable to think i'm merely just stressed out. it really seems to be a nervous system issue located primarily in my left ear and working itself down the jawline, neck, shoulders and increasingly into my left arm. but that's why experiments are useful. i'm not doing anything until i get the track done, but i'm going to try devoting a few minutes a day to just sitting and breathing and see what happens.

i've got about a dozen guitar tracks down, but it's taking a long time to mix them because it's a delicate process to avoid disrupting the dynamics that already exist. it's the same basic issue i had when i was working the orchestral parts in, except more complex because now there's more things to not disrupt. the bass distortion is especially delicate, considering i'm mixing in guitar distortion. i mean, i spent a lot of time getting the right grind/roar balance on the bottom end, i'm not about to just plow over it with wanky guitars. really. if you check the track that's already up through a good pair of headphones...i mean it's a fucking *dirty* bass part. and it's really the center of the track. so, i'm dealing with a lot of fades to sneak things in around it. there's plenty of space, it's just that i need to be very careful about it.

i'm just about done the first five minutes, up to when the beats come in. it's going to be a while before it gets done, though...

i'm half expecting the doctor to tell me to cut the coffee out. and i may have to try that experiment to see if it does help. but i'm going to end up sleeping for the next month so i have to wait until i'm done this....

no. fuck it. this is driving me nuts. i'm cutting out coffee for a week. i may become useless over that week, and this may not get done until april. but i have to figure this out before i go in.

i've been hepped up on caffeine for fifteen years. i can't remember the last day i didn't drink at least a pot of coffee. i need to "come down" and see what happens.

see, if i *do* have ms, i can use that for disability. so, i need to do this experiment. and if i don't, like, i want my face to fucking stop spasming....

so, realistically, you can expect this to go quiet for a bit. we'll see. but, as much as i hate the hippie bullshit attached to the term, i need to "detox".

so, i quit smoking for most of february and noticed the dysphagia improved but didn't disappear. i also noticed i was less alert and less productive. as the smoking does not seem to be the cause of the dysphagia, and i wanted to increase my alertness and productivity, i picked smoking back up for the first week of march. while my alertness and productivity did increase, the dysphagia quickly became unbearable. i'm at a breaking point and will stop. i need to eat. but it means i need to deal with the effects of withdrawal this week, which is extreme sleepiness. again. grargh.

i have enough evidence at this point to conclude that i either have ms or cancer. i'm going to have to go to the clinic and have this sorted out, as i know the dysphagia is not going to go away by not smoking. i just want to finish this song first...

there's really only one "easy way out", and it's that i have a massive ear infection. but, i'm grasping at straws.

my perspective about ms is that i can't do anything about it, so why waste the time in a doctor's office? but, it's starting to affect my arm, which affects my playing. if i can get some drugs for that, i'll take them.

i've got several parts down, but i actually spent the morning playing with my aleph releases. i put together an mp3 disc for a psychiatric appointment in the morning [i'll be glad when these are over with....] and realized the plan i had to fill up an mp3 disc with periods 1 & 2 is likely not going to work. too much material. i'll wait until i'm done period 2 (this track i've been working on for three months is the second last track; i thought it would be done by now...) before i figure this out properly.

but i took a good look at what i had and it didn't make a lot of sense. i had a bunch of dvd-audio comps up that, in hindsight, seem foolish given that i can fit more on a flac disc. i also had all these box sets up that were just unsellable due to shipping costs...

so, i've cut the aleph releases down considerably by focusing on two specific kind of flac discs. one is the period discs, which will necessarily have some overlap. it's by design, because they're meant to be self-contained. but they're $100 each, so i wanted to find a way for people to go this route without double paying. i've filled that out by condensing the box sets into single $50 flac discs, which cut the shipping down dramatically. it's now down to five aleph releases - three box sets, and two period discs. but, i should hopefully have a third period disc and three more box sets up within a few more weeks. i need to stop projecting things regarding time, as i never hit the deadlines.

so, these are the new aleph options...

aleph zero is a box set - earliest demoes. inri001-inri012. i need this to provide an option to not double pay for inri013-inri023.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/merch/inri-box-set

aleph one is also a box set, combining the later [more psych-oriented] inri releases with the deny everything singles. inri013-inri023.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/merch/deny-everything-box-set-2

aleph two is the first period disc, which is precisely the first two box sets. it was easily split. the second period is not so easily split.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/merch/period-1

aleph three is the first period 2 disc. i'm going to actually need two dvds for period 2, no matter how i break it down, so i've taken it to it's maximum extent. it's going to be a while before volume 2 comes up, but when it does it will close period 2. and, yes, there will be overlap with period 3.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/merch/period-21

....and aleph four is a box set, collecting the singles from the first jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj album onto one 7.5 hour long dvd.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/merch/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj-box-set-2

there's going to be overlap with the periods, but i'm going to avoid overlap with the box sets and create the box sets in such a way that you can get around the overlaps with the periods by strategically subbing in box sets. so, for example, for right now, you could get the complete discography (up to inri033) by combining the inri box set and the period 2.1 disc.

the one exception will be the rabit is wolf box set, which is just a different animal.

so, the next box sets coming up will be for j^2, rabit, trivial group and ftaa.

for the mp3 discs, i intend there to be no overlap. but you have to keep in mind that the mp3 discs are going to be $200 each so it's a strong incentive. and, then there will be blu-ray discs at $500 for flac and $1000 for mp3.

well, what *should* 25 gb of flacs cost? think about it. that's like 75 hours of music. if you guesstimate that to around 75 hour-length cds, you're looking at $6.67/disc. keeping in mind that most discs are less than an hour, it's more like $5/disc.

i mean, consider the reality: if i'm to have a fanbase (and i know i don't really now....) with this much music, full discography torrents are going to exist. i've downloaded more than a couple myself. so, apply bootleg logic.

bootleg logic?

well, bands often don't care if you tape and trade, it's the people that press and sell the shows that piss them off because that's when it starts taking money away from them. the best way to avoid that is to press and sell your own concerts. i mean, if you're a fan, and you're buying the bootleg, you'd think you'd rather support the artist than some dude down the road.

so, i think presenting the option is about the best approach. people want it, there it is.

the price tag is really just a reality check on what it is that you're actually doing.

but, i've been over this before. music sales are down across the board. ok. that means that prices have to increase to make up for it. instead of mass producing something and selling it to thousands of people, artists need to get their heads around hand producing things and selling them to a smaller number of people at higher prices. the product shifts from a cheap commodity to a valuable scarcity.

what i'm selling at this point is the number on the disc. the digital files are basically free. but "copy 7 of a limited edition run" is valuable to the collector - both in terms of emotional attachment and in terms of resale value.

consumers might not realize that yet, but collectors have known it for years.

i learned a few days ago that slow riot for new zero kanada has been ranked as the greatest ep ever on aggregate. it was fifteen years ago, but, today, my beat to shit original pressing - that i bought out of aidan girt's hand on the actual slow riot tour itself - has more value than the version that's on the shelf at walmart. and, that's what collectors strive for when they buy records by obscure composers on bandcamp.

boss sd-1

this pedal isn't something you want to use on it's lonesome....unless you really wanted that basic ac/dc sound, in which case, honestly, just tell your neighbours to fuck off and turn the amp up...offer the cops a beer when they show up...that's how you do ac/dc right...

but, it's a basic necessity in several genres to start off with. best basic tone going....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpvyfdOJMpk

guyatone sustainer distortion

i adore this little box...it works best driving a tube, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT6cWUd7YCA

this is the first time i've got to use my favourite guitar tone since i set my gear back up last year.

it's a two-humbucker guitar [the black one in the cover photo - it's a weird creature, sort of shaped like a two humbucker strat, but it's actually heavier than an sg (not as heavy as a paul) and has what seems to be a coronet neck on it] through the following chain:

eh linear power booster ---> guyatone sustainer distortion ---> boss sd-1 ---> art tube pre-amp ---> pod [roland jazz amp-->chorus-->delay--->reverb]

i use the power booster because the pickups are a little weak. but i actually like the weaker pickups for rhythm playing. it's more flexible to be able to just turn them up....

it's a smooth, distorted sustain sound. most of it's easy to find and pretty common, but that sustainer/distortion is out of production. it's a tasty little box, though.

i've been thinking about what the doctor told me the last time i was in, though, and i think it's both correct and sort of reflective of the reality of the situation, which is that a psychological disability is really defined by whether you decide to have one or not. it's kind of justifying my tactics, actually. i'm not talking about physical limiting factors or something like down's syndrome, i'm talking about depression or personality disorders...

it's been remarked more than once that the society we live in is a psychopathic society, defined by antisocial social relations. you really can't get ahead unless you *do* have a personality disorder.

but what he told me was that it's pretty rare to see a psychiatrist for more than a few minutes, and most of them provide instant diagnosis. which produced ridicule from me. if you know me, you can imagine my response. are they magicians? medicine men? healers? what the fuck?

here's a good example of this. i'm looking through the review i picked up last week. it indicated i wasn't experiencing a loss of appetite, which implicitly suggested that i'm not all that depressed. but, that's such a hokey analysis. i'm actually the kind of person that assigns a lot of value to being thin (i don't tend to judge others by their weight, but it's important to me that i don't gain weight) and is fairly careful about how much i eat in order to ensure that i don't gain weight. i'm not like on a regimented diet or anything, and i don't tend to starve myself, but i'll routinely skip a day if i have a big meal. i consequently wouldn't associate a loss of appetite with depression, i'd associate it with forward-thinking - it would mean i'm looking forward to something. i'd actually associate over-eating with depression. stuffing my face would be not giving a fuck; eating less would be altering my figure for a future purpose.

the point i'm getting at isn't that one analysis is inherently superior to the other. certainly, a loss of appetite is going to be a negative indicator for some people. what i'm getting at is that it's not the kind of thing you can arrive at through talking to somebody for an hour. and, what's worse is that i wouldn't even expect an uneducated fool to be confused on this point. it's in the realm of common sense. how we can have doctors that are willing to jump to such specious deductions with such a deficit of evidence is befuddling to me.

i initially assumed my initial diagnosis was haphazard. but, i'm starting to realize it's not the case. my initial diagnosis was no less rigorous than what i'm coming up against, and consequently no less valid. and, as a result, i don't see anything wrong with pushing buttons until i get what i want - because it's ultimately all just a lot of bullshit, anyways.

on second thought, the overdub mix isn't worthwhile. so, i'm finally starting on the guitar concerto after supper...

i have a number of formed ideas and a number of abstract ones. i'll have to see how this goes. it could take anywhere from a day to a month to finish.

so, spring cleaning today.

i'm going to do a quick overdub mix when that's done, and then get on to the guitars later tonight.

untitled (originally intended mix)

this is the mix that i intended to complete when i sat down to reinterpret the piece at the end of last year (2014), and will form the basis of the final guitar concerto. mix finalized march 9, 2015.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-originally-intended-mix

so, i'm finally just about done this. i'm just setting final levels. it'll be up late tonight or early tomorrow.

this is the cubase breakdown of just the orchestrations. you can see it's been a slow process of cutting up sections and mixing them in as overdubs.

i have a "modern pc", but it's almost ten years old now and it's starting to show a few limitations. i use an old version of cubase (sx 3) to minimize ram requirements. even so, it starts to lock up when it gets to a certain point. now, it's a fargone point - 100 tracks, or maybe 50 with heavy plugin use. so, it takes a lot of tracks to lock up. but i'm routinely pushing things to their limits in terms of sound saturation right now, and getting to that point on almost every song.

this piece is at almost 200 tracks now, which is just too much. so, i've had to put a temporary mix down to get the orchestral parts in. i'm then going to have to bounce this down and import it into the original project. it's a little bit space intensive, but i've got plenty of hard drive space, and it'll all get moved to dvd in the long run anyways.

but, you can see how time intensive this was. i'm glad to get past it. as mentioned, the rss feed will update in the next 12-24 hours. and, i'm on to converting it into a guitar concerto starting tomorrow...

serious progress on this. i have one more section to arrange and mix. it could be done by monday, but no promises. it's kind of what i want, though, so i can dedicate the entirety of next week to guitar parts and then finally move on...

closer. i'm mostly done the arrangement, so it's mostly just setting levels now. but i've been sleeping a lot since i quit smoking. if that doesn't lift, i'm going to have to go back to smoking. moving from 4 hour sleeps to ten hour sleeps is hugely negative.

at this point, i really don't want to be smoking anymore, so i'm really hoping that my body is able to adjust in getting me out of this horrible normalcy.

but i'd rather live to 40 with four hour sleeps than live to 70 with ten hour sleeps. if it's going to give me back 4, 5, 6 hours a day, it's a valid trade-off.

the weather is just about to turn, so i'm really hoping i get a jolt of energy soon. like, tomorrow. otherwise, i'm going to be very tempted.

the reason i started smoking in the first place was for it's properties as a stimulant. coffee wasn't working. but i was pushing myself to 40 hour days as i was working multiple jobs. i don't need quite that much. but i can't handle the absurdly short 15 hour days i've been living recently. it's just too short. i'm not productive. i need to be sleeping about half as much as i have been the last month or so.

coffee is like water to me. i need it to stay "normal". in a sense, i know it's withdrawal, but if it doesn't lift soon then it's just not worth it.

closing down the scratch pad

i set up the scratchpad as a sarcastic reaction to some requests for collaboration.

as i've received exactly zero responses, i will no longer be posting to it.

the mix is coming slowly. a few more days, probably. but i'm not making any promises.

uploading untitled to the scratch pad

sorry for the rss flood; that was actually unexpected and a little weird.

there is a temporary mix up at the scratchpad, just because i've been a slowpoke on this. it's close to being the full thing (minus the guitar solos) for the first 7.5 minutes or so. it's enough to get an idea of what i'm working on...

you really need headphones with this.

that was a heavy few days, but i got a number of things sorted out and should see my productivity increase the rest of this week

feels good to get back at it, actually. here i go...

i've actually been "finalizing" the first section for a week now. i keep listening to it, and it sounds good but i'm just not convinced. soon...

aaaand, the first doctor left me a voicemail indicating she's done the paperwork. that's no doubt a result of the threat, so it worked. i wish it didn't come to that, but so be it.

so.

that actually puts off the aspirin stunt for quite a while, at least until i get a response from the ministry.

if i get the extension as well, i can mix and match the two forms and see what is best.

but i have SOMETHING to submit, now. thankfully.

(i should rephrase that. i can't mix and match. but i can pick the best one.)

the doctor was not able to locate the forms, so i had to walk in empty-handed...

i got to the point of opening the aspirin bottle, which sent the nurse to the other room. they talked me down from it by promising to write me a letter for an extension, so i'll see where that goes.

end result: they're now aware that they're dealing with somebody that may act irrationally. i had to at least get that across. i'll have to phone the adjudication unit tomorrow to see what the result is.

if it gets denied, i'll have to pull off the stunt at the odsp office. i'm building the proper profile, at least.

i got some more forms sent, but i'd have to fax a request for an extension and i don't have time for that.

so, i'm going to go to the first doctor and ask for the original forms, which i will take to today's doctor. if i can't get the forms, it's clear what i'll have to do.

i wasn't able to get the forms, but the odsp office suggested i should get an extension if i call to ask. so, i need to go call them right now. if i get the second extension, i'm obviously not going to send myself to the hospital...

the idea is that asking for forms is an excuse for extra extensions.

so i'm reposting this for the comments about the state i'll be in when i get there. the key point is that i will not take any aspirin until i enter the clinic. the truth is that i don't even have the energy to get drunk before i go in. it's just absolute meh.

chances of overdosing tomorrow are about 99.99999%. i don't think i'm even going to have the forms. so, it's not even going to be an option. if, by some fluke, i manage to get the forms and get him to fill them out then great, but i don't expect it.

that means there are only two options for tomorrow: i come home with the forms signed, or i overdose on aspirin at the windsor city health center on mar 3, 2015...

http://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.ca/2015/02/im-essentially-certain-at-this-point.html

i have no further appointments, and no way to put it off and hope i get the right answer. i need the papers signed tomorrow, or i will breakdown and begin to ruthlessly annoy, harass and bother whomever is around me until it happens.

annoyance: they claim you have to ask your worker for the medical forms. which strikes me as absurd.

so, i'll go in tomorrow and ask the worker...

i'm going to eat lunch first and then head out to the initial doctor to see if it's been filled out yet.

it's not like not having the papers is going to prevent me from od-ing tomorrow. it's more like walking in without the papers is a guarantee that i will.

i mean, if i can't get the papers then i can't fill them out. indicating there's no way to prevent the stunt.

250,000 hits

first impressions on the new gybe! record

i know a lot of people have interacted with them primarily - or even solely - with the slower, churchy, quebecois jam-band version of the band that was explored through most of skinny fists, but these guys really don't go down well when they're in phish mode, and really never have. they're a punk band, dammit. they work best when they're roaring and pounding and throwing walls of dissonance at you.

i hope the disc is a bit more eventful, but i haven't expected much from them for a while. really, i just hope the check clears fast enough to get another mt zion disc out before the end of this solar cycle.

ok, no. i need to maximize my opportunity. she's had a month minus a few days. i don't see any use in leaving it there an extra day.

so, i'll go on monday to see if it's done. if it is, great - maybe she wanted the weekend. if it's not, i'll have to take the forms and bring them with me on tuesday. and that'll be the stunt day.

i mean, at that point i'll have ruled out two of three possibilities, and the third will be remote.

so, it will really be an out-of-options decision.

the one thing i'll have to play by ear is if i go in there on tuesday and he decides he wants to set an appointment within a few days. but that seems unlikely. he's either going to fill the forms out or he isn't, at that point.

he might want to set an appointment for april, but that's too late.

you have to keep in mind that these people get paid by the half hour, right. so, it's like....even if they're not going to fill it out, it's worth their while to string me along.

which is basically what i think is really happening.

now, i guess if i go in on monday and she says something like "it will be done for sure by wednesday", i'll be kind of stuck. in that scenario, i guess i'll want to walk up to the odsp office and see if i can get a second set of forms.

actually, maybe i should do that anyways.

yeah.

ok. so, i'll go there first, and if i can get a second set of forms then i'll take that to the doctor on tuesday. you know, if i can get it filled out twice i can maybe take the best of the two, even.

but i can't wait longer than tuesday if neither comes back. regardless of what she says.

rip leonard nimoy

again: an important generation is entering it's twilight. spock was an awesome character, and he did it well. somehow, i don't quite think spock will ever truly die.

thoughts on the new screaming females record

sounds solid to me, i don't know what people are complaining about.

i'll suggest that the record sounds like there may have been some time spent away from jamming, in the sense that it's a bit more ordered. reviewers that have never written a song before generally tend to get this backwards by applying some kind of intelligent design theory to the ordering of sound. when it comes to this kind of rock music, "sloppy and messy" indicates that a lot of time was spent on it and "snappy and catchy" indicates that you're getting something a bit more raw. the reason is that the songs come out of the basic architecture of chords and riffs and grow and morph into big, sloppy messes. it essentially never works the other way around. this is really true of all music, but rock as an artform is especially inherently deconstructive, chaotic, unraveling...

it's normal for a band to release a disc or two like this over the course of their career. they work themselves into the discography and make a place for themselves. sometimes, they indicate a band is falling apart, but it's usually out of practical realities, and i don't get that impression, here.

the key thing about this band has always been that guitar tone, and there's really been no loss in it's crunch.

no call this week....

i'm just getting annoyed. i don't want to have to do this, but i feel as though i have no choice.

i have an appointment on tuesday (with a different doctor). i can't tell him what i'm planning because i need an element of surprise, so it's not really a factor. if i'm done this mix by monday, i'll do the suicide attempt then. otherwise, i'll give myself a few more days to get the mix done and go whenever it is - wednesday, thursday. it's just that if it goes wrong, i don't want a half done mix sitting here....

i *do* expect to be at least almost done by monday, so i'm looking at wednesday at the latest.

yeah, it's clicking. i'm back in "the zone" with this.

and, while i really, really want to do something regarding this guitar concerto idea, i'm realizing that trying to work a fuzz/sustain guitar solo into this mix is going to be difficult to the point of maybe being impossible. that may have to be left out of the final, and quarantined into it's own space.

there's just only so much sound that can exist in one space.

i mean, i'll get *something* in there. the beginning build up, for sure. but it may not be much more than that...

the final product is going to have something like 250 instruments worked into under 14 minutes.

so, yeah, it's coming up on two months. but i'm not slacking. it's just complicated.

by comparison, the last hybrid live/electronic piece i completed (in october) that took me this long (all of august and september) was only about 150 instruments over 19 minutes:

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/to-spin-inside-dull-aberrations


when you consider that i've actually got several mixes of this thing, it's more like 1000 parts over the last two months. so i'm not slacking. dammit.

the biggest thing i have so far remains that first movement. i'm not going to count the tracks right now, but the source files take up 40 gb of space of audio. i'm guessing there's something like 500 tracks worked into these 18 minutes, a large amount of it in guitar overdubs.

^ that took two years to build. although i should add that i had a job at the time.

it's starting to come together a little - i've got some horns worked in - but the sound is a lot more saturated than i realized it was going to be, so this is going to be a fairly delicate operation, requiring a lot of weaving. i've got some space at the top, but i want to keep these orchestral sounds out of the way of the bass, which is actually bleeding pretty far into the mid range due to the heavy fuzz. it's just, like, way too much stuff. i've overextended this to a ridiculous extreme. i mean, i'm trying to mix 120 orchestra pieces into what is already a crowded space...

i'm toying with the idea of throwing a techno-orchestra mix up, but i'm not committing to it until i get to a transition mix. i mean, if i end up having to mix 90% of the orchestra out for the final, it will make sense, but i don't want to put up an extra mix for the sake of a lone oboe or something...

it's going to be just flat out ridiculous, though.

releasing inri002 in the alter-reality

so, i'm currently transitioning into inri003 in the alter-reality.

this is a "mix tape" composed of snippets from the first two demos. it didn't actually seriously exist until late 2013, but it's being dropped into the alter-reality for the summer of 1997. this is the only way to get the early material on a physical media; the first two demos are not, and never will be, for sale. mp3 only.

(to clarify: i was between 15 and 16 in these demos. a young 16, for the last of it. so, it's easy to understand why they're not for sale.)

but, this "mix tape" compilation of snippets *is* actually for sale because i can present it as worth listening to. it's what i'm presenting as my actual debut release, and unofficial 0th record. now, it's a quirky listen, to be sure - a lot of instrumental passages and weird guitar solos spliced together, often with little context. i'm a bit of a zappa fan; he did a number of records like this that were composed of just bits of sound, cut out from elsewhere. mike keneally followed up on this through the 90s. that's the thought process i had in compiling it then. but some listeners may be more familiar with this approach through flying lotus, or some of his influences. it ultimately goes back to varese, but it would be absurd for me to compare this to varese...

but, this is the path out of period 1.1. inri004 will go up in about two months, and usher in the synth pop phase. there won't be any further alter-reality updates until then.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inricycled-a

most of the way through the week. ugh. i hope i get a call tomorrow or the next day.

i mean, i'm not going to just walk in and start popping pills. i'm going to need to get a response first. but unless it's "here. done." or "it'll be done tomorrow.", it's going to get messy...

like, for example, if she tries to give me the forms back? no. you said you'd fill them out. you've wasted my time. i don't have time to find somebody else. so, there are going to be consequences for that.

fucking weather. i really don't care if it's hot or cold, it'd just be nice if it could keep it steady so i'm not passing out...

i'm getting half a stomach ache. which is weird, considering that the reports are not indicating spring. but, it's a specific wrench. and my stomach is never wrong. i think what it's telling me is that the absurd cold is over, that this morning is the end of deep winter, if you will, and the beginning of a warm up to normal winter.

but we could be in for a pleasant surprise, too.

from what i can gather, it's a biological response to shifts in atmospheric pressure. i guess the high pressure could always come back. but when it gets like this, it really indicates seasonal shifts.

walls update

jessica
hi.

i've got a point form conclusion at the end. this'll be the last time i bug you about this. i just want to get my final conclusions across.

so, it looks like the worst of it is probably passed. i started off saying the walls were badly insulated, then backtracked a little when i plugged the doors and noticed a difference and am now going back to where i started, with the shift in tone to the unusual nature of the current extreme cold. they're not badly insulated relative to the expected climate, but they can't handle this weather, either..

it really seems to depend on what the temperature in the unheated part of the basement is. i think i tricked myself into thinking the walls were better insulated than they were; it seems like the temperature in the basement had risen, at the time, to something more reasonable, which slowed the heat flow out. so, it seemed well insulated when it was really just not a large enough temperature difference for serious leakage.

as the temperature has fallen over the last week and stayed low, the leakage has increased. it has reversed during brief warm-ups. i still think weatherproofing the doors are a good idea, but the temperature difference appears to be a basic, irresolvable problem from inside the unit. that is to say that this unit is heating the entire basement through convection, and so long as that is true and it is very cold then it will be expensive.

it wasn't quite as cold overnight tonight, and it was very stable around -16/-17, so i tried to turn the heat down a little. it took about four hours to go from being a little warm in here to feeling the cold radiating off the walls (which is actually the heat radiating out). so, the temperature outside is not the dominant factor in being able to reduce the heat. the basement temperature has to also increase before the unit temperature can come down.

it's a temperature *difference* thing, of course. if it wasn't so cold, there wouldn't be so much flow. judging from the fact that i didn't really have to turn the heat up until the temperature got below -20, i think that, under a normal winter, and with normal heat sources, ambient heating may even be sufficient. it's just that it's been so unusually cold...

i'm coming from ottawa, where it is often much colder than we've seen this year and last year. these are my first two years here. it seems badly insulated.....relative to what i'd expect for ottawa. and i'll say that if we start getting cold like we've seen the last two years here regularly, this is going to be structurally expensive. i'd argue that you'd have no real choice but to heat the unfinished part of the basement to a basic point (5, 10 degrees, something like that) in order to stop the flow out of here.

but, all factors considered, the walls seem to be able to keep the heat in so long as the temperature outside is not below -15 or so for a significant period of time. once it gets that cold, the walls leak hard - because the basement is unheated. heating the basement with a cheaper source would reverse the issue. but that seems to be rare here.

so, yeah - i started off saying the walls were badly insulated. it's more like they can't handle this weather, but are ok under regular circumstances.

so, final point form suggestions on ways to reduce leakage:

(1) there are big gaps in the doors, and blocking them helped a lot, so weather-proofing the doors would likely make a big difference.
(2) there appears to be a missing plastic strip around the outside of the bedrooms that would likely reduce a low-lying draft if replaced.
(3) the walls are unable to stop leakage when it is very cold, which is the result of a big temperature difference between the inside of the unit (heated) and the unfinished part of the basement (unheated). this appears to be structural, but (once the doors are blocked) is only noticeable when it is unusually cold.

the landlord
I am working on putting a new furnace into the unit next to Paul's unit. I have dropped the temp in that unit since it is vacant and this also affecting the temperature in the basement below. Hopefully within 7 days we will have the new furnace heating with cheaper heat that I can afford. I plan to put a new front and back door with good seals when I can. If you are cold let me know and I will jack the heat up in the unit above the open basement. Please be patient, money and time are available at a slower pace. I have one vacancy also.

jessica
i'm not cold, i'm just trying to get you information regarding the unit from inside of it.

the landlord
Thanks

some new cover art...

the inside of an abandoned mall somewhere in the rust belt.

american ruins.

this is some fun in photoshop (not my creation).

i think it speaks for itself.

i need to stop giving etas. i slept a lot over the last few days - shifts in the weather tend to make me drowsy, and we're warming up a bit. temporarily. i'll get sleepy when it gets cold again, too. soonish....

for me, the best climate would be stable around 20 degrees. vancouver. seattle. portland. england. something like that.

this is the important week, coming up. the doctor has the papers. by next monday (march 1st), i will either have them completed and ready to mail or i will be forced to generate a crisis. there's no further adjustments or wait-and-sees, it's time for action.

given that i'm planning around a suicide attempt over the next few weeks, it may seem like a weird time to quit smoking. but it's just been far too cold out; bundling up for that kind of weather every hour or two just hasn't been appealing. so, i'm actually at two weeks now. and it seems like it might legitimately hold, this time. the in and out has really lost it's appeal...

we'll see if that changes when the weather warms up. but, for now, i prefer my warm blanket and don't foresee any forthcoming desire to work the constant trips outdoor back into my daily routine.

i'm an adding an extra mix to the single, which will make the disc flow a little better (by alternating live and canned mixes) and take it up almost to 80 minutes, further justifying the two-cd set. it's going to be the complete mix, but without added lead parts, meaning it will combine all the pre-existing sound before it's converted into a concerto. i'm thinking it should be up in the next 12 hours or so.

my ears can be so remarkably sensitive at times. i've spent the last two days neuroticizing over a 1 db treble boost, and setting all kinds of playback levels and latency settings to be sure about it....

i think i've mentioned before that the songs only sound ideal in a minimal volume range, which is generally very loud. i've just resigned myself to this. i mean, the reality is that reproduction is so impossible to control that freaking out over a treble roll is just absolutely absurd. people are going to be listening to it on everything from the beats eq to fucking dolby noise reduction, and it's all going to completely negate my production decisions. i can't even tell you to listen to it flat, really, because the response out of the amp or pc speakers (or, god forbid, cell phone. seriously. don't do that. i'll track you down, take that cell phone out of your hands and beat you over the head with it. never. ever. not my shit, anyways. at least find some phones...) or whatever you're listening to it on is almost certainly not flat relative to my signal.

there's things that mastering companies can do to kind of stabilize it. i don't seriously have access to that kind of equipment. i can fake it with some plugins, but it's not seriously comparable. and, there's a problem with this, regardless - it's a generic gloss. you'd probably want to film me reacting to somebody else trying to master my material, because i'd likely just snap. i'm far too much of a control freak. in fact, i probably wouldn't even let it happen. i'd have to be sitting there in the room, and it's going to take a handful of engineers because i'm going to end up murdering the first few....

for right now, the compression i'm using is very responsive to shifts in volume. so, even when i control for gear, i need to hit that sweet spot to really get what i want. and this isn't the first time i've thrown myself for a loop in losing that sweet spot, then needed to spend a day or two reapproximating it...

you want to talk about the future of music? brain waves. fuck the gear. just let me send you raw math that you can download directly into your skull. it's the only end solution possible to get around it. and fucking bob ludwig can fuck off.

i'd much rather be hated and despised than loved or admired. love is mostly an illusion, driven by the false projection of idealized fantasies on to reality. love is solipsism. but hate is a real reaction, a legitimate interaction in objective existence.

i've been scatter-brained the last few days around this mess with my disability, but i think i've got a basic tone down. i'm actually a little bit stoked at the moment, and feeling a bit of extra drive...

the sad truth is that this was the second highest selling single in the us in the 60s. the only thing that outsold it was i want to hold your hand. and while it's depressing that that tune is the biggest beatles hit, it's even more distressing that this outsold all the anti-war music. by leaps and bounds.

the 60s, as they have been sold to younger listeners, are mostly a lie. the beatles were very popular. but you need to go way, way down the list to get to dylan or mitchell or anything else with any kind of social conscience. the reality is that it was a fringe counter-culture.

but, you've probably never heard of this before, have you? the counter-culture was fringe then, but it became dominant because the fringe had the balls (with all due respect to the women involved) to stand up against the market and wave it's freak flag high. now, the 60s mainstream is lost in obscurity. you wouldn't recognize more than half of the most popular songs of the era, but you'd recognize all kinds of stuff that didn't sell at all.

people complain that the market doesn't respond to a counter-culture anymore. but it never did. building a counter-culture is not a profitable business venture. if it sees a financial reward at all, it's not going to happen for years or decades. it's about changing attitudes.

i got the impression that the doctor i saw today was finally taking me seriously. if i'm making progress, i'd rather play the process out than freak out. it's just that i'm running out of time.

i've set a mental deadline for the first. i have an appointment on the 3rd. if i get the papers in time, great. if not, the third is the proper opportunity....

i'm essentially certain at this point that i will be overdosing on aspirin at the windsor city health centre on the afternoon of february 17th. i do not expect the doctor i am going to see to take me seriously, and, as such, i expect this to be a necessary step. in order to pre-empt any malpractice by the staff there, and ensure they are held liable for criminal negligence should it occur, i would like to clarify a few facts about what is going to happen before it happens.

1) i will not be armed with any sort of weapon, and do not plan on harming anybody except for myself. should reports surface that i was armed, these reports should be understood as false.
2) i will not consume any aspirin before i enter the center.
3) i will inform medical professionals that i am about to consume the aspirin before i consume it.

2&3 together will provide ample time for an ambulance to arrive. should the ambulance not arrive, or should it arrive too late, the only conclusion will be criminal negligence, and i will expect that the relevant staff be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

4) my goals tomorrow are not to kill myself, but merely to draw attention to the high level of incompetency in the psychiatrists that i'm dealing with. i've spoken to several, and they all believe i am bluffing when i claim i am suicidal. but, i am not bluffing. the fact that i am not bluffing is the key point i need to get across. if there are professional consequences for gross incompetence in misdiagnosis, i believe they are appropriately enforced, in context. but the important point is that i'm able to get to a doctor that understands that i am not bluffing.

abstractly, i am reversing the work or die ultimatum that the market places on all of us and directing it at the doctors. they have the choice to diagnose or be held liable for the consequences. and, i'm a smart, and creative person - i can ensure that there are dramatic consequences.

the severity of these stunts will increase until the papers are filled out. i will broadcast certain aspects of the stunt before they occur, but not so much as would prevent them.

the one thing i want to make clear is that i have no intention of harming anybody else directly, through physical means.

however, the threat to myself will increase with each stunt as the necessity of diagnosis becomes increasingly clear and the liability for the doctors becomes increasingly dramatic.

i want to be clear that the only acceptable outcomes from my perspective are getting the papers signed or committing suicide; there is no third option.

so, this is all entirely preventable, if the right choice is made to fill out the papers.

no....no....i need to be disciplined in this....

everything i'm doing is way out of time, so it'll just be fitting when this comes up out of time. i've got a demo down, but i won't release it until it gets together in sequence.

i can say that it looks like i'm going to have enough material for a narrative driven release dated to 2015 or 2016, though.

yeah. i'm taking a break to do something a little simpler.

this could very well go down like a lead balloon, but i think it's kind of necessary right now.

if i'm not making people angry, i'm not doing this right. this recent wave of inoffensive, vanilla folk makes no sense to me. it's fucking elevator music. and it's the antithesis of what folk music is.

this is going to be electric folk, i don't really "do folk", but it's in intent a folk tune, and going to come with a bit of a divisive message. i'm pretty sure i'm right. even if i'm not, hopefully it makes people think a little....

it's going to be a little weird, though, because i can't number a 2015 release from 2002. so, it's going to be unavailable for sale. for a long time. maybe it's better that way.

i've been putting aside new ideas. i mean, i have several i've thought up since i moved down here, but they've been put in sequence. this is ultimately going to be put in sequence, too, in the sense that it's going to be shelved. but it's going to become irrelevant if i wait two, three years to do it.

i've been thinking recently that, when i get over this 2002 hump, the music moving forward is likely to be more conceptual. i'm kind of out of my instrumental rock phase, in the sense that i think i'm coming up on completing everything i could do in the genre - i've made all the statements i want to make. which is tied into the sense of closure i'm attaching to the end of the discography. i expect releases dated after 2006 to be almost entirely conceptual. and releases dated after 2013 to actually be mostly literary.

i think this is an intersection that all modern musicians get to in their lives because the nature of modern music is so deeply juvenile. the last few generations have been struggling with this as they've entered their mid 30s, and especially into their 40s. i have the benefit of learning from those errors a little and getting out in front of it. there's no use in hanging on to the past. you will suck if you try that. you must grow up..

there's a long way to go before that's relevant. right now i'm just focusing on this track as a throwaway. i'd expect it will eventually end up in a single dated to february, 2015. but i can't tell if it's inri070, inri110 or anywhere else in between there.

it's amazing how easy it is to lose a week for no apparent reason. lol.

i've been playing with a bit of a jokey folk song, but it's a conceptual thing and i'm not sure about releasing it, yet. this would be something brand new, which i'm supposed to be putting aside for the moment. but i'm toying with jumping the queue...

i'll have a clearer sense of what's happening with my life on tuesday, although i'm not expecting any kind of reactionary measures until the first. what i will say is that if i don't get this thing moving, i may have to jump forwards significantly. i'm very overdue on it, and it's kind of screwing up a lot of things.

i suppose it's just more proof that nothing's ever really going to get me to give a fuck. i mean, i'm looking at a mountain of work to complete before a near certain suicide attempt within weeks and i can barely get the energy to get off youtube. that's not even slacking, really, it's just honestly not caring.

it's not like i haven't done anything with this. i've got four polished mixes over the last two months. that's really not bad. if i didn't have a surplus of ideas, i'd be done already, really.

i think it's also partially that what i'm about to embark on in finalizing this is flatly quite challenging. i mean, this is going to be some fairly advanced guitar work. and, i don't mean in the lamer scale-running shredder sense. that would be easy. i need the result to be more developed and more expressive than that.

which means i need to find the right tone, to begin with, which could itself take a week. i'll make decisions when i get back on tuesday. for now, i need to actually get some work done over the next 36 hours...

uploading untitled (orchestral mix) to youtube

i don't want to put you off too much with the description "orchestral mix". i think the general revulsion to orchestral music that exists today is half the result of "classical music" being terrible for much of the last century and half the result of the average person nowadays being borderline clinically retarded, and having the attention span of a squirrel; most people probably won't read this far into the comment, sadly enough. the tune is in an overture style, which is usually as close as orchestral music gets to being "popular music". it was initially written as an alternative rock song (with proggy/jazzy touches), converted into a techno song (both in 2002) and then converted into an overture (in 2015). so, it's structured in a way that makes it not entirely alien to pop music. further, the instruments were played by a computer, so it retains the feel of electronic music. it's really not that scary. give it a try with headphones....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spsIaRkKM9I&feature=autoshare

well, ok, it doesn't make sense for me to have a link on the front of the page that doesn't go anywhere. so, this is back to being public. but that also means i'll be more careful about putting the stubs up. it's falling in a transition period.

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

it took me a few days to get my head around this, but it's starting to take some shape, now. i often get too many ideas at once and need to kind of relax before i'm able to make up a plan that can get them all out in a way that makes sense.

so, i'm just about done the introductory collage. i'll be doing some live guitar parts tonight, and then that will be that. i'll then be able to take that and mix it in, which will finalize the first third of the track. the next step will be to mix in the various sequenced parts. this is going to be both heavy and crucial, as we're talking about roughly a hundred parts mixed into a handful of buses and carefully sprinkled over something that's already pretty full. i'll then need to do a number of highly kinetic guitar parts to finish the final mix. the last thing i'm going to do is take those guitar solos and work them into the orchestral version, along with any necessary overdubs, to produce the guitar concerto.

i think i can reasonably get the mix ready for the lead sections by the end of the weekend, and maybe even start laying them down. but that's going to be a lengthy process. i'm moving the eta on this to mar 1.

the closest i've done to something like this is the first movement of proverbs, which i'm also willing to call a guitar concerto. but, this is going to be a bit more ordered. and it actually took two years to complete. this is already 90% of the way there, so it won't be nearly that long, but getting the exact notes is going to take a few takes.....

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/first-movement

grargh...

i need to clarify a point, because i'm working against something that is so engrained that it's considered almost crazy to even question it.

if you're a younger person listening to this, i don't want to alienate you or anything. i had diverse tastes when i was younger. there were plenty of artists i enjoyed that had a mean listening base at least a decade older than i was at the time, and it didn't really bother me. what bothered me was that so few people my age had any interest in it, or seemed to stigmatize it as "old". i never really understood that, and it just struck me as immature. so, if you can see through that kind of bullshit then good for you - and i can legitimately relate, too.

but i need to be clear that i'm not a young person, and i don't write music for young people. i'd imagine the proper listening demographic ought to be gender and race neutral, but decidedly middle-aged. it's targeted towards people in their 40s and 50s.

it's partly a reflection of the culture, but it's more of a reflection of me. now, it took me years and years to become cognizant of this; i don't want to present it as something that's been obvious from the start, because it isn't. but the reality is that it wouldn't have ever made any sense for me to write for young people, because i've never understood young people. i suppose artists are often isolated people, but i take the stereotype to a different extreme. how can i write for people i can't converse with? that makes no sense. i've never asked anybody on a date before in my life. i've usually had either zero or one close friend in my life at a time - and usually zero. so, how can i write about experiences i've never had, to a generation i've never interacted with? but, i've grown up listening to music written by people that are today in their 50s and 60s. so, i've had some communication [even if it's one-way] with the older generation. i've had essentially no communication with the younger generation.

it happens to be that the younger generation(s) have not defined themselves as artistically inclined. i think this has to do with the economic circumstances that have asserted themselves since 1980, and became devastatingly retarding in the 1990s. but, that's not the point. i'm not clinging to an older demographic out of a perceived decrease in quality - although i do perceive that decrease in quality. i'm clinging to the older demographic out of an inability to relate to people my own age, and to people younger.

so, i run into these suggestions of a more sexualized presentation to appeal to a younger demographic, and it's just, like "this is not the reality i live in". i don't want to present a judgement. it's just not how i perceive the art being disseminated. i want tips on how to appeal to an older demographic that has moved on past their breeding years.

or, the question of acting as a role model. i'm side-stepping this; this is not music for children but music for grandparents, so it's just not a meaningful question.

</rant>

i sort of mentally skipped my young adult phase. i was 15 going on 12, and then i was 17 going on 37 and 25 going on 55 and 30 going on 80. one would have to expect a person that matures like that to live a bizarre life, and i have.

the point is that i'm explicitly trying to not appeal to a young audience, which is so unusual in the industry today that it's incomprehensible. to understand certain things, you have to understand that.

but it's maybe something else that we ought to expect the collapse of the market to bring forward. young people have historically paid the most out. that's probably not true anymore, and becoming less true every year.

untitled (slow mix)

the slow mix is up...

this is a slower, "ambient" version of the track. mix finalized on feb 10, 2015. 

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-slow-mix


the final mix is next, followed by the guitar concerto, which is starting to gain some more shape.

i was hoping to have this done by the end of december. it's currently seeming more like an end of february thing :/. but it takes how long it takes...

i've made a change, here.

i've been uploading things as i'm done them, and having it update here via rss. so, anybody can hear things the minute they're finished. now, the reality is that none of you are listening to any of it anyways...

...but i've changed this so that uploads are subscriber only until the release is finalized. so, for example, i'm working on this untitled techno tune right now. i've got two more mixes left, i think. there's currently nine mixes up. at the moment, only bandcamp subscribers can access those nine mixes. when i finish the release and publish it, it will be fully accessible for streaming (and purchase) by the general public.

it appears that the rss feed will stop updating these, so i'll have to post them manually. what that means is that i'll be posting a lot of links you won't have access to unless you subscribe. but, eventually, everything will be accessible....

a little taste of the *actual* future of the music industry.

putting the price through the roof like this provides a strong disincentive for file-sharing. also, if file sharing does end up happening, it ensures that the few people that are actually paying are making up for the lost revenue. that's how markets work, and how it's gotta be if people want to just steal shit...

the result is going to be less sales, but a higher price attached to the dwindling sales. and, you're going to see other things happen as a result of that. artists are going to stop focusing on marketing to the masses and start focusing on marketing to the upper middle classes. this should have a positive effect on the quality of the music, but will likely come at a price of social consciousness. that's a balance we're going to need to grapple with.

the reality is that if there is no market in the masses, there will not be a product produced for them. the idea that a decrease in demand will lead to a sustained increase in supply is incoherent. if demand for popular music falls, musicians will seek out other career opportunities. you can't build an industry on the capitalization of pipe dreams.

so, i'm getting enough to work with that i've decided that there will, in fact, be a "slow mix". day or two on the eta.

i ended up losing the better part of the last two days to cleaning. i'm back at it today. hopefully, i'm able to tie up these loose ends relatively quickly...

suggestions to save on heating

jessica
hi.

i want to be clear that these are ideas to save on heating, not requests for maintenance. i've been here long enough to draw some conclusions.

the way i see it is that the basement is designed in such a way that it doesn't really matter what the source of the heating is, it's going to be high. about 70% of the basement is unheated, and the insulation is incomplete. so, there's going to be tremendous heat loss unless the unit is better insulated. i'm not talking about the windows, i'm just talking about the walls bordering the unheated areas. if it's -10 outside the walls, and there's cracks under the walls, that's just going to leak and leak and leak, whether you put a furnace in here or not.

so, insulating the walls (and the place where the walls hit the floors) would be the first thing i'd do if i wanted to cut heating costs down here.

second, i might want to look at putting stops on the doors, as well. for the back door, it's just constant leakage. again: if it's -10 outside the door, and there's a 2 inch crack under the door, changing the source of the heating isn't really going to be the factor that makes the big difference in costs. it's blocking the drafts. with the front door, there's nothing to separate the cold coming in through the entrance, so it's going to suck the heat out as well. it's not realistic to put an extra door in, but putting a seal on the front door would probably also be huge.

third, it might be worth your while to run a vent from the furnace into the currently unheated part of the basement. that would both reduce costs fighting the draft into here and reduce costs fighting the draft into upstairs, and any stacking moving the air up [which i'm sure must exist].

i've had to turn the heat up a little, as the air in the unfinished part of the basement has plummeted. if the insulation through the walls was better, i'd be able to keep it at a lower level...

the landlord
Thanks, I am concerned as you are....I will considered your suggestions and will act on these as soon as I can with timing and financial recourses. Right now I am  not able to act on doors until spring. I want to put new doors. Just keep warm the best you can. I will talk to you when I come by.

jessica
as i'm sure you know, it's going to get freezing this week.

i've crammed some towels in the cracks around the doors. it's obviously not as good as a rubber seal (and that back door is especially, like, *not* meant to keep out drafts), but i think it's at least a good experiment to try to see if it really helps or not. logic suggests that if you can feel a draft through a 2 inch crack up two sides of the door then obstructing it any way at all should make at least some difference. that said, i don't think towels are exactly the best at trapping heat, either. but i'll let you know if it actually keeps the heat in a little better; if it makes no difference, that indicates it's really dominantly a wall issue.

basically, i think this place was constructed with the assumption that the basement would be heated. just consider the walk back to the fuse box. that's a perfect sink for cold air, right. the only way it makes any sense to put a half-insulated wall right there with a bedroom on the other side is if it's taken for granted that the heat is on in the whole complex. otherwise, it's just a structural nightmare: the unit is heating a cold air sink.

so, let's hope the towels make a noticeable difference and the doors can consequently provide a noticeable decrease in cost.

(pause)

hi.

i don't want to bug you about this too much, i just want to update on the effects after blocking the doors and turning the heat up a little.

it seems to hold the heat in pretty well just about everywhere except the second bedroom, so i think putting weather stripping around those doors is a very good idea.

the second room has ceramic baseboards, and the first room has wood baseboards. the walls are about the same temperature in both rooms, so i think the walls are probably ok but that the baseboards in the second room are leaking. now, i don't want to jump to conclusions about conductivity because i think the situation is complicated by various factors, i just want to point out three observations:

1) the wood baseboards are closer to the ground and forming a better seal. so, it seems like they're doing what they're supposed to, while the ceramic ones are not.
2) the ceramic baseboards in that room are much, much colder than they are around the foundation. that is, the ceramic baseboards in the second bedroom are very cold whereas the ceramic baseboards in the kitchen are not so cold. so, there's exposure, there.
3) if you look around the basement, you'll notice that most of the walls have these black, plastic stoppers around them that form a seal to the ground. that black plastic is missing on that wall. it's just paint.

i'd have to *guess* that the cold ceramic is a symptom rather than a cause, and that the causes of the draft are the missing plastic around the outside and the incomplete seal on the inside.

it's of course going to be a lot easier to run some plastic around the wall on the outside than to replace the baseboards, so i'm just pointing that out as a possible approach.

other than that, i think the weatherstripping on the doors is the key good idea, and that the walls themselves are actually not particularly drafty, excepting the cold air moving in under the walls on the far side.

concerned about lack of response

To: infocchc <infocchc@cmha-wecb.on.ca>

jessica
hello.

i need a way to get access to the windsor city health center to confirm an appointment on feb 17th. i do not have access to a phone. can you confirm that i can get access through this address, or deny it?

the only other way i could contact the center is to walk, but it is a lengthy walk and it is very cold out.

cmha
You had an appointment Fe b 2nd but it was a snow day centre was closed. No future appointment was made with the nurse. You have an appointment With the doctor on the 17th of Feb.

jessica
thank you, that's what i needed confirmed. i didn't know if the centre was closed (although guessed it was) and didn't want you to think that being unable to make it on the 2nd cancelled the appointment on the 17th.

i don't have a phone number, but i have a voice mail box. i just don't carry the number around with me and never remember it. contacting me can either be done via this email address or via this voice box, which sends a text message to this email address.

i'm not really feeling this ambient workthrough, either. the piece is a little too structured for it; i've had to cut the tempo in half, which defeats the point (building backing tracks for the final mix). and, to be honest, i'm not sure how i could work even more sound into this, anyways; as it is, i've got something like 250 tracks to work with in the mix down, and most of them are never going to make it there.

i don't want to just do it for the sake of doing it. i was mostly focusing on the intro, and it's created a contradiction: i need to slow it down considerably to kill the energy in the "bass", but that also means i'm killing the energy in the "guitar", which is what was driving me to do the mix in the first place.

that means i'm more or less going to have to restructure it, but then i'm forcing it, which rarely works out well. and wasn't what i intended.

i haven't abandoned it yet, but i do think that this is the likely outcome at this point.

yeah. i think the right approach is to do this last.

the ideas my brain is giving me seem better suited for the techno version. so, if i do that first, it will open more space to think lyrically.

that means i'm moving to the ambient/synth mix, next.

i'm having second thoughts on that guitar concerto....

as i was mixing it, isolated pockets jumped out at me as good places for acrobatic licks. i thought to myself, "i should go to town with this.". but, i'm not hearing a good way to tie it together.

i want to avoid overdubbing a "boxy" solo. there's certainly enough going on in the track already. so, i want this to be free and expressive, rather than based on repetition. the track is already based heavily on repetition...

the way i write for lead guitar nowadays mostly involves listening. i'll put the piece on repeat for hours, allowing thoughts to coalesce in my mind. then, i'll go about the process of converting what i'm thinking into a playable part.

i spent most of yesterday listening, and my brain is just throwing boxy patterns and sort of cliched lines at me. it was those cliched lines that jumped out at me, and that i think could be used to good effect. but, they need some flow to make it worthwhile, and i'm convincing myself that the piece doesn't really have the space for it. it's less that it's a mechanical techno song and more that it's just already full of notes and colours on those notes.

i'm going to listen some more this morning, and will make a decision around when the sun comes up. i need to clean this morning, i'm past due. if it doesn't come to me clearly, i may turn to trying to write it out as somewhat of an aid.

but, i don't see the use in just piling on flashy riffs. if i don't get some more lyrical phrasing (or at least a semblance of it) in the next few hours, i'm going to put it aside. i may revisit it, though, before the single is closed. it's an idea that i want to work. i'm just not entirely confident that it's going to...