i've been clear enough about this.

i'm cusp.

but, gen y, to me, is gen yawn - the kids are fucking boring.

mid 30s, right now, is that demographic dip. we kind of don't exist. so, i need to make that choice. and, you're more likely to find me at a 40+ event than at a 20-something one - even if i'm more likely to blend in at the latter.

so, i haven't been going out and doing much.

it's been cold and dreary. i don't want to go out anywhere until it warms up.

but, there's also not anything of interest happening around town.

it'll be a snap decision, but i'm probably going to skip gybe! next week. they haven't done anything i care about in almost 20 years. i'm holding out for another mt. zion disc...

it might be april before i head out again.

but, i said this last year: last summer was probably my last summer spent partying. i'm 37 years old. it's not even about my age, exactly, it's more about my interests. i haven't been shy in pointing out that i'm not exactly fond of the younger generation, and it's to the point that they've taken over all of the spaces - there's not a lot of places left for somebody my age to go, and not be bored.

i hate folk music. gen y rock culture is lame. and, even their techno is boring.

so, getting out to things is going to rely on recognizing an older band, or on identifying something going on at the dso, or finding a jazz band, or catching an aging dj. it's going to happen, periodically. but, less and less...

last winter, i skipped a few things due to the cold.

this winter, i'm just not interested.

we'll see if that opens up or not.

chopin ended up on the cutting room floor.

just didn't feel right.

so, i'm listening to glass this afternoon, instead.

it's the 1998 cd with the full version of the grid.

i remember picking up the cd up in high school, and everybody in my family thinking i'd lost my mind. but, it's great for reading....

https://archive.org/details/Koyaanisqatsi

for this occasion only, i'd be ok in letting some yanks play, too.

if they can make the team.

this is what we need to do.

we'll line up at baffin ellesmere island. they can line up at franz josef.

best five out of seven; winner gets the north pole.

you have to remember that, in canada, the cold war was so frigid that we fought it on ice.

and, i'm not even that young, but that's all i really remember.

lemieux.
to gretzky.
and back to lemieux....

that franco-polish connection.

so, maybe i'll listen to chopin this afternoon.

yeah, i know gretzky is polish.

but, it's going to take more than a symphony of sorrowful songs to get me to shoot the puck in my own net, here.

don't change the topic.

if you want chopin, listen to chopin. it's a free country. i don't give a fuck.

but, don't take away my rach, dammit.

this is why we can't go to war with russia...

i will not accept cheap, second-rate, polish renditions of rachmaninov.

ever.

sorry.

we're going with some classic rach, this morning.

but, i'm not going to insult you by posting some masturbatory, bourgeois americanized version of either of these.

you gotta let the russians do rach. they do it best. it's no comparison. unfortunately, the closest you'll find to somebody doing this right, online, is some polish tart using it as an outlet for teenage angst.

hope it paid off well, at least.

we're not even at war yet, and i have to link to amazon. fuck...

i've done a lot of sleeping, recently. hopefully, i last the day.

https://www.amazon.ca/Rachmaninoff-Piano-Concerto-No/dp/B000025LJW

i'm slow to get started again today, but here i am.

i'm waiting for the guy to come to finish the last little bit of painting...

i really don't enjoy the smoke coming up from downstairs, or living life in a fog. again: i can't understand how anybody enjoys this on a daily basis. it's maybe making me understand why so many drug addicts kill themselves.

i feel like shit.

but, i have to wait until i can get things out of here before i can finish taping the walls over.

i finished august last night, and, again, it took some time, but it was the heaviest month, so far. hopefully, september is a little faster....

i want to address a silly point, just so it's written somewhere.

when i copied all of my comments off of the internet, i wasn't able to get exact dates and times for many of them, and didn't make the effort to be careful about it for others. so, as i'm reconstructing the comments, i'm making approximations as to the exact dates and exact times.

i assure you that i'm not making up new comments. i frankly have better things to do. and, i'll remind you that the point of this is actually to build the liner notes for my aleph-discs: this is a music project. but, a very keen individual could no doubt point out that certain things are not in the right order...

sure.

first - get a life.

second - i'm doing this as best as i can.

all i can do is acknowledge the defect and carry on...

there's a point a little later on where this shifts, and i make a stronger point to record the time and date as i'm archiving.

i just want to post a short explanation for people that are following the 2015 updates, here, and might be confused about what i mean when i'm talking about a streaming proxy service.

you might think i'm talking about streaming over the internet, and not understansd why that's important in trying to fix the mixer. in fact, the terminology is shared - streaming over the internet is largely the same thing as streaming over your operating system. it's more a question of who the clients are.

without getting into an undergraduate lecture on operating systems (and i'll remind you that i've completed 19.5 credits of a computer science degree at a high gpa), i'll just point out that your operating system streams almost everything, from a conceptual perspective. streaming, itself, refers to a transfer of data. all it means is that it is a continuous flow. so, your operating system will accept data from your sound card - or your video card - as a stream of data, just like your network card will accept data from your router in a stream. as you can set up network proxies, you can also set up local proxies, and the entire audio architecture of your computer almost certainly depends on this. it's the same basic thing over all over the major operating systems, but ksproxy.dll is a windows library that is very specifically audio-oriented.

so, i'm not talking about network streaming, i'm talking about how windows communicates with my sound hardware. but, if you can abstract it well enough, it's kind of the same idea as network streaming, just very, very local.

a hostile agent could absolutely take control of that audio stream and redirect it elsewhere. and, for a time, i felt that this was what was happening.

in the end, i decided that the actual problem had to do with a fluctuating magnetic field in the room and i had no option but to try to work around it rather than actually resolve it.

i'm not sure if most people would have even noticed it.

i was up a little later tonight, and am now done eating and ready to start the day.

i haven't smelled any drugs wafting up here yet tonight, so hopefully the adjustments i made yesterday afternoon are good enough to allow me to focus for the day. i've also left the cabinets open. so long as it's cold out, the cold air flowing down should both clear out the passageways a little bit and keep any smoke down there from rising up.

there are other explanations, but let's hope i've got a handle on this.

so, how am i doing?

those nose bleeds are lingering. they're not active bleeds; it's more bloody boogers. and, it's not entirely unheard of - i'm used to getting a little blood in my snot when it's dry, which it is, right now. cold or hot, what i really hate is dry air. the smoke is no doubt a factor. once i get the holes blocked off in here, that's going to need to be something i'll want to deal with. humidifier, maybe. as it is, my last brita filter died on me the other day, so i'm just drinking coffee.

the guy was supposed to come finish the work yesterday, but didn't. so, i've been stuck in the house all week. i'll be able to get out and grab some things - duct tape, steel wool, brita filter - in the morning.

i'm otherwise relatively alert. the headaches have mostly subsided, and there's only two or three places left to tape, for now.

i want to be clear: i'm feeling better because i've blocked most of the smoke. it didn't go away on it's own, i took steps to counter the problem. and i think i'm not at 100% because it's not done, yet.

i would advise that they spend their time doing something else.

there's clearly multiple people down there smoking.

but, they couldn't fit enough people in the room to overpower the cold air pushing down from 6 wide open bay windows, 24/7. and, they'd choke to death, if they were to try.

if there's any damage done to the floor, it will be from the smoke, not the temperature.

so, it's no surprise that the crackheads downstairs aren't good at physics.

i have enough of the holes patched that i'm clear-headed enough that i'm getting some work done; if i've been a little slow the last few days, it's more that i've been distracted, and partly by the need to patch holes..

so, here's how the physics with this works.

so long as it's relatively cool out, opening the window above a smoker will flush the cold air downwards. further, the smoke will escape out the window.

the end result is that i get fresh air, and they get cold. perhaps very cold. but, i can't care, so long as they're blowing smoke through the electrical fixtures in an obvious attempt to piss me off.

i'm perfectly happy to sit here in a sweater with the windows open for the next month. the air in here is clear enough, right now, and just going to clear out further, as i patch up more and more holes.

and, the more i'm annoyed the colder it will get downstairs.

that said, the maintenance person should be here today to finish sanding the bedroom, at which point i can start smoke-proofing that space and moving things in, which will let me smoke-proof the larger space, next.

i don't feel like my time is being wasted, because i have to work this out, anyways. but, it's unclear to me why they're wasting their time with such obviously childish behaviour.

but, i need to be clear: i'm right about this.

history will uphold this plight.

and, i intend to win, in the long run.

so, how am i feeling?

well, given that i'm caught up on sleep, it's not that strange that i'm having a long day. i'd better get some sleep in the next 12 hours, though, or i'm going to find myself back at the hospital.

and, i will keep going to the hospital until they give me the right answer.

i'm not high. not racing. not feeling palpitations. i'm getting a mild nose bleed, but it's dry in here, and i need to clean the remnant smoke off the walls and floors. it's suspicious, but it could be a coincidence. my headache never fully went away, but it's currently manageable.

i've patched up the worst area for now, and it does seem to be having an effect. and, i've got the windows wide open. but, the wind has not been blowing directly at me since the first onset of winter, and i'm above hot air rising, so i'm actually getting a lot of negative pressure. the forecast suggests that the wind might shift in my direction this morning.

thankfully, the landlord was here this morning to patch the hole in the bedroom. he's suggesting it may need two more days. but, my hands are tied until i can get in there.

see, i need to clean in here, but the space is packed full of stuff. i really need to be able to clean in the other room first and then slowly move things in, which will give me enough space to clean in the main room.

i've decided that i need to use a brute force approach, which means taping over every inch of the walls. it's going to look like a rubber room. but, that's what non-smokers are going to have to be doing to deal with this.

i am of course in support of marijuana legalization, at the least, but i would also support a law banning smoking inside of apartment buildings. as it is, property values for older buildings are going to crash when this becomes legal. we're going to see the creation of "pot houses" that nobody except pot heads want to live in; on the other hand, we're going to need to pay a premium to avoid living with potheads. it's going to be a factor in further class stratification. and, the people forced to live in these buildings due to low income are going to incur all kinds of unnecessary respiratory diseases that are going to bog down the medical system.

expect a lot of people in the hospital complaining about smoke inhalation over the next few years....

i'll eventually have pictures up, and i'd fully recommend that people emulate this approach, if they're in the same situation.

for now, like i say: i should be getting tired soon, and will have reason to be concerned if i don't. but, i'm otherwise feeling ok - besides the little bit of blood in my nose, and the mild lingering headache that i think should lift when i can finally do a good clean.

but, i mean....

i've been crystal clear that i reject the claim that i'm not working.

not only am i working, i'm working harder than you are, and i'm being more productive than you are, too - because, at the end of the day, nobody cares about that hole you get paid to dig.

you're just brainwashed...

sorry.

software should be free in both senses.

you would expect me to take a harshly realistic view on software piracy, right?

i do not and never will have the means to purchase audio software. so, i can steal it or just not use it at all. as such, i'm not actually cutting into anybody's profit margin, because i was never going to buy it, anyways.

if it was a guitar or a synthesizer or some other physical object, i'd buy it in a pawn shop. that's the better comparison; and, either way, the creators aren't getting paid.

that said, i'm an artist, and keenly aware of the need to convert my labour into food, or starve. but, i'd prefer to lean towards a ubi or gai than towards an enforcement of property rights. and, we can have this debate this decade, but it won't be long before property rights aren't a serious option, and programmers are uniting with artists in their requests to abolish the market.

after doing some cleaning and taping this morning, i really feel better than i have in days.

but, i don't think the crackhead ever made it in last night.

it's just confirming what i've been sure of...

i've got some spaghetti in the microwave. let's hope i can get something done after breakfast. i'm due for a long day, but i need to avoid being drugged in order to do it...

i need to make sure, though, that i get tested for heavy metals as a part of my yearly blood tests next month.

lead poisoning also leads to aggressive behaviour, although it doesn't explain the high i got last night.

i wonder if lead or arsenic may act as a catalyst for certain stimulants...

the crackhead is yelling outside my window to let her in.

hey!

hey!

lol.

all i'm thinking is that maybe i can get some fresh air tonight if she can't get in...

the test came back negative, and, while the doctor at least heard me out, his suggestions were no less silly: not only have i never had anxiety before, but one does not get high from anxiety, and i was high as a kite.

the connection between the second hand smoke and the effects i experienced is too obvious to be altered in my mind.

so i'm left with one of two options:

1) my tolerance to meth (or crack.) is so ridiculously low that i got scary high from an amount that was so low that it didn't even show up in the sample. this is actually consistent with my past experiences with drugs: my tolerance for everything is extremely low. i need to take children's dosages....and that itself might be the answer to the quandary: i'm going to get smashed from a smell, in the first place.
2) whatever stimulant they're smoking was not tested for - so is neither meth nor crack. i have no further suggestions, right now. glue?

i don't know know what the next step is, but i know that if i continue to get high from this second hand smoke, then i'm going to continue to seek medical attention until we can figure it out and devise steps to address it.

something i could try is taking a sample of the air in the apartment to a lab.

and, i could also try and replicate the urine test, and see if i can tweak it to be a bit more sensitive.

i may end up moving, in the end, but not until i can figure out a way to get the landlord to swallow the costs. this is ultimately their legal responsibility, not mine.

...and there is absolutely no chance whatsoever that i'm taking drugs to combat the effects of other drugs.

i feel ok, now. i just ate four bags of doritos, which i would not have otherwise done. my metabolism just got tweaked up and down; that's what happens. i'm not going to fall for the drugs, but i'll fall for the munchies. this time, anyways.

so, what's tonight's saga?

i started getting floaty around 9 or 10, and overwhelmed about 11:30. same deal: odour wafting up that seemed kinda like pot, but didn't feel like pot when inhaled.

i didn't get a headache tonight, so i wanted to work through it, but, like...

i can't grasp how they're giving this shit to kids to get them to focus. i could understand giving kids marijuana if you wanted them to focus, because it wipes away the distractions; it turns off the noise and lets you focus on the signal. uppers, on the other hand, exaggerate the noise and drown out the signal. i could barely sit still, and barely look at one place on the screen. my heart was racing, and my head was buzzing....

so, i did two things:

1) i drank a lot of water.
2) i sat down in a yoga pose and did a lot of deep breathing, basically waiting out the high until it was gone.

is that why you're not supposed to drink the water in the ganges?

that's probably not what you're supposed to do on meth. but, you're not supposed to drug people against their will when they're trying to read, either. fuck.

about a half hour later, it was time to get up and urinate. i've now got three bottles to submit for testing in the morning...

i fully expect to get the same response.

"but, you need to be in very close proximity to get the effects of second hand smoke."

yeah, that's what they said about cigarettes for decades, too, if you'll recall. let's do the test and see what comes back. that's empiricism. if you're going to walk around in that lab coat, you've gotta fucking act like it..

it's 8:00, and what's going on?

well, i'm feeling alright. the sum total of the smoke inhalation yesterday afternoon appears to be that i'm a little tired - and that i have a rash on the inside of my arm, that may be due to some nasty perspiration.

the remaining smell i'm getting is that smell you get when you cross a mild dish soap with heavy grease and let it sit. so, imagine using dawn to let a pot full of hamburger grease sit.

they could be doing dishes.

ugh. let's just hope it's gone by tomorrow.

once again, i would have liked to get more work done today. there's still some chance i could get a second wind.

i mean, i'd like to know how often it happens that kids taken away from meth addicts are then prescribed meth to deal with the symptoms created by their parents being addicted to meth.

it's fucking insane...

...and don't even get me started about the absurd idea of giving meth to kids to fight a condition that doesn't even exist.

that's a type of abuse that boggles my mind.

i just want to point something out, though: i've run into the pcp problem before, i'd say on average every six-ten months, but this is the first time i've been convinced that i've run into meth-laced marijuana, and i'd have actually been the first to suggest that such a thing doesn't exist, if somebody had presented it to me before last week.

i'd be skeptical if i were you, too.

but, i'm good at logic, and i'm pretty much convinced that this is what we've got, here.

moments after i published the last post, i got bombarded with what felt like a chemical weapons attack: smoke coming from every room of the apartment at the same time, with an especially powerful concentration in the kitchen, which is a few feet away from any window and consequently almost impossible to neutralize without letting it air out.

it seemed both co-ordinated and intended to upset me.

the one thing you can do is try and steam it out by running hot water and burning water on the stove at the same time. but, the hot water was out - strangely. this is twilight zone shit, really.

about an hour in, i started to freak out: i had been drugged against my will yet again, and there was nothing i could do but escape. but, i couldn't escape...it was coming from every direction...

as somebody who has hotboxed many things, i would hazard a guess that there was roughly ten grams of pot released into the air over that hour. this wasn't a j or two. this was an onslaught...like they were burning open leaves as incense...

once again: i didn't feel stoned, i felt agitated and angry. i wanted to smash something in. the headache was creeping back (and is still there, nine hours later).

what does meth do? well, some of the literature focuses on the hormones, but this isn't really what a user actually experiences, despite the drug industry propaganda. the only hormonal reaction i'm getting is a headache, which is probably an acute withdrawal symptom. but, i don't want more drugs, i want to detox

what meth (also called speed) does is give you a really short burst of energy, followed by a really terrible crash. if you're dancing, you might look like this:

do they look that ridiculous?

worse.

because they can't dance like that. rather, they flop their arms around and stamp their feet like children having a temper tantrum. it lasts a few minutes - twenty at the most, but usually more like five. they can be easily identified by how obtuse they appear. and, then they zoom off the floor and go pass out somewhere.

the sensationalized media portrayal of meth is just that. most people at the rave really actually just have a few drinks, maybe a few tokes. mdma is fun, if you can find it. if you're of legal age, you probably know better. balloons are quite popular, as well. and, the people taking uppers that last the night are mostly taking very small hits of actual cocaine up their noses. these little spoons they carry around...

the speed addicts are really rather rare, and are the isolated losers; they don't last on the floor very long - because speed isn't an endurance drug but a short burst and a long crash. the effects of the drug might last you 12 hours, but the high is only a few minutes, and you'll spend most of the night struggling with the come down in the bathroom or outside by yourself. as addictive as it is, you often hear things like "i made the mistake of trying that once....never again...."

that's if you're dancing.

what if you're having an awful fucking day? then, that burst of energy is going to manifest itself as anger, as violence. and, that's what i've been going through repeatedly with this: the smell pisses me off, and then the effect of the drug takes over, and i get very uncharacteristically angry. i yell and scream for a few minutes, it passes through my system in an hour, and then i sleep it off for ten-twelve hours.

and, i don't want this to happen again. ever. there is no reason at all that i need to tolerate being drugged against my will - and arguments that i do are ridiculous. if you think that being a liberal means getting stoned because your neighbour is, you don't understand liberalism so well.

today, i stormed downstairs and banged on their door and demanded they cut down their intake. and, it seems to have had enough of an effect that i'm starting to clear it out of my system.

so, i'm going to give them a grace today, tomorrow.

but, i'll be at the clinic early monday morning if this happens again tomorrow night.

i've also decided that i need to apologize. i don't yell at people like that. it's deeply uncharacteristic. i need to explain that i believe my behaviour was a consequence of second-hand smoke exposure, and that what they're smoking is clearly laced with something. i'm going to present meth as the most likely culprit..

but, how much smoke is getting up here?

1) enough that i can see it in the apartment. clearly. a stranger walking in here would assume i'm a smoker just via what they can see with their eyes.
2) enough that it's frizzing my hair out.

it's a lot...

i'm feeling far more alert, today...and i didn't go through a messy phase last night, although i slept a lot...

if i'm going to catch meth or crack in the urine, it's going to need to be within a few hours of being poisoned by it, so there's no use in going today, because i didn't feel it last night.

we'll see what i feel like in the morning.

i mean, if they're done, they're done. i mentioned that it wasn't bad until a few days ago; some of  the vocal snippets i'm hearing from downstairs suggests that some parents or grandparents may have been away for the week.

that would explain everything....

i understand that the way meth is supposed to work is to mess up your rewards system. you end up addicted to a hormone, and not to meth itself.

but, my response is not give me rewards, or give me death!

rather, it's stop "rewarding me" and fuck off.

maybe there's some connection to the fact that i've never been a keener. i've never had an interest in being at the top of the class, or working my way up the ladder, or really winning at much of anything - i've always preferred to project mediocrity in the physical realm, and then be a god in my own fantasy reality. so, what meth is doing is setting off a hormonal reaction that i've never craved in the first place. and, i'm not craving for more, but pleading that they turn it off.

as i've always said: what "reaching for the top" means to me is that i must have left my beer on the top of the book shelf.

being awake for days is fun.

and, being stoned is sometimes fun.

but, being awake and stoned for days is the definition of hell.

i don't need or want drugs to help me stay awake for days at a time.

the manic phase is far more enjoyable when it's organic, because it doesn't come with an artificial buzz.

getting out of the apartment this morning took me away from the poisonous smoke for long enough to allow me to come down, which gave me an opportunity to actually sleep this afternoon, and i took it over running around looking for a means to incriminate the source of the smoke.

i'll get the drug tests done in the morning.

i have the windows open and my winter jacket on to compensate. but, there will no doubt be plenty more poison wafting up tonight.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/pharmaceutical-drug-company-doctor-physician-payment-disclosure-transparency-1.4169888

occam's razor is that the doctor was/is a shill for the pharmaceutical company, and was just looking for a new victim.

but, is there a chart? and is somebody taking orders?

you can never be sure what they do or who they call when they turn that corner...and mu experiences have made the paranoia hard to completely shake...

i think they'd jump at the opportunity to wipe me out. sure.

and, to the fucking dipshit calvinists left standing, get this through your thick heads: my aversion to labour has nothing to do with drugs.

i am sober, and i still don't want to work.

and, if i had to waste all fucking day at some stupid waste of time piece of shit job, i guarantee you i'd be more interested in blasting away my individuality in a blaze of dead brain cells, because i'd have nothing else to live for besides my own self-destruction.

i've told you repeatedly that this is a philosophical position, not a mental illness. and, people of the future, in a post-labour world, will look back on me as the only sane person on the entire fucking planet.

meth really isn't so dangerous - er "doctor" in windsor, ontario

my neighbours are smoking meth.

it's making me sick, so i went to the hospital.

they tried to prescribe me opiates as a painkiller.

fucking society. here's my prescription: destruction.

i'm not straight edge, but i'm a punk at heart, and i don't want to take non-recreational habit forming drugs unless i need to.

i have no interest in living in a designer drug society that prescribes a different pill for every problem.

so, you could imagine my frustration when the doctor listens to my description of being drugged by my neighbour's second hand meth smoke and responds with a suggestion to prescribe me painkillers.

i'll stick with aspirin, thanks.

"we don't prescribe aspirin."

yeah - i bet you don't have a contract with them, do you? you fucking pusher...

the thing is that she didn't drop it. she insisted that i accept an iv. and, i called her on being a pusher and stormed out.

all i wanted was a write-up for a vitals blood test. i want to know what they're poisoning me with, and how much damage it's done.

so, i'm going to try the clinic, instead.

fuck...

my basic position is that i don't care what the consequences are for them.

i care what the consequences are for me.

i think this is what i'm going to do:

i'm going to go to a clinic tomorrow and ask to get tested for everything they can test me for. then, i'll take the results to the landlord & the cops and ask them to move on it from there.

because, i don't know.

but, i'm starting to change my mind: i need to know.

it'll be clear and concise: my neighbours are smoking something, i think it's meth, it's making me very sick, and i need medical attention.

should i go to a hospital for detox?

i might...

if i become convinced it's meth, i have no problem sending the cops in over it.

might they even be able to tell me if it is via blood test?

i'm not there yet, but i'm close.

the symptoms need to be gone by the time the sun comes up.

i'm leaning towards it being meth.

this is a good summary of how i'm feeling.

http://www.methamphetamineaddiction.com/the-five-most-common-meth-withdrawal-signs-and-symptoms/

ok, everything else aside, july of 2015 was actually a heavy posting month so let's hope i can pick things up in august.

the plumber fixed the shower but left a hole in the wall for smoke to seep in through, so i've moved into the living room until it gets plastered over. of course, the retards below me followed me in here - because they seem to be trying to get under my skin. you have to just ignore immature people, like that, and maybe hope somebody decides not to break for them, the next time they cross the street. they're obviously feeding off of my discomfort, due to there clearly being something wrong with them.

all of the windows are open and they will probably not close again until december. but, it's warmer in the other room, so it would be rational for them to stay on the other side of the building. hopefully, they take the bait.

i feel like i'm being harassed, but there's no use in letting whatever they're drugging me with get me upset about it.

all i can do is try and get as much oxygen in here, to fight the constant tension headaches being caused by whatever kind of hard drugs it is that they're doing, and i still have no idea if this is a meth addict or a crackhead, down there - because i've never been in direct contact with either substance.

i just feel tired, yet can't sleep. it's constant headaches, and constant stomach aches. i'm getting tracers, but it's not different from what i was getting with the migraines, and think they're being triggered by the headaches rather than by the drugs. so, you tell me: is that meth or crack? i don't know, and don't really care, i just want to air the place out.

there is no possibility that i'm going to ever enjoy whatever the fuck this is.

so, as has been the case the last few nights, i'm going to try and get some work done, with little confidence in my ability to do so. i will probably spend most of the night trying and failing to sleep.

i'm not normally somebody that has difficulty focusing. when i sit down to do something, i normally have a really laser-sharp focus; i'll spend days or weeks lost in a task, to the expense of things around me, and not really care.

so, this is something i'm not sure i've experienced before. i have no memories of this, at the least.

i almost feel like i'm not the same person, or something.

the emotions i'm feeling are a combination of anger and frustration. it's making me want to lash out at something or somebody. it's beyond uncharacteristic. it's almost got me wondering if somebody's put something in my water, or something, as this is what i'd imagine that somebody on anti-depressants is likely to feel like.

but, i know it's the smoke and i know i just have to wait it out.

i do not think i suffer from depression. i have never been seriously diagnosed with depression. i do not think i have a chemical imbalance. and, if somebody is drugging me against my will, that person or entity should face severe penalties and consequences: because this is beyond unpleasant, and in no way medically jusrified.

i'm literally feeling an urge to beat something into a pulp. i'm somebody that has been on testosterone suppressors for almost ten years; that does not make sense. and, i've never experienced that before.

it's not pot. i don't know what it is; i've never done anti-depressents. i've never done cocaine. i've never done meth. i've never smoked crack. i don't know what they taste or smell like, or what they feel like.

but, i know that this is the worst i've ever felt in my life.

i've got almost nothing done in days because of this....

i'm not going to be able to handle much more than a few more days like this without freaking out.

so, the shower had better be fixed, soon, so i can start taping these holes up.

there's going to be a violent confrontation if i can't keep the smoke out.

meth is not something you fuck around with.

an accidental overdose could lead to mass organ failure and instant death.

with the exception of heroin (& derivatives), it is singularly dangerous amongst "recreational" drugs.

i would literally go down there, knock their down and beat the shit out of them on the spot. i'd then blame it on the second-hand smoke wafting up, and intend to win the argument.

are they smoking meth down there, or what?

fuck...this is simply hellish...

also, they finally updated my electricity balance.

it's at -39.50.

that's right: enwin is crediting my account by $40 for february.

well, use less electricity, then.

i don't feel stoned.

i feel really, really, really hungover.

i got a few hours of sleep this afternoon, but i woke up disoriented, and i still feel like i had a lobotomy. my brain just feels gone. i'm not really here, and i don't like it at all. i'm taking aspirin every 5 or 6 hours and it helps with the headache, but not with the disorientation. i've also consumed something like two pots of coffee over the last 48 hours, and it's only barely helping me fight this crappy woozy feeling.

the plumber replaced the broken cartridge this morning, but he had to rebuild the system to do it, and now there's apparently a leak in the pipe behind the shower head, so he's going to have to come back tomorrow to tear the wall down.

i'm actually looking forward to this, because it should give me a better opportunity to patch the holes in the wall, in the long run.

i might not stay awake very long. but, i'm going to try to work through july tonight. and, then i'm going to need to pull everything out of the bedroom so he can work with the plaster in the morning. and, like i say - i'm ok with this, because it will give me a chance to tape the walls down.

the temperature outside has fallen, but i don't really care. i'm going to need the windows open until i can find a way to stop the smoke from seeping in.

if you're curious, the stress i was under did lead to a nicotine relapse over parts of december and much of january. but, i turned it around at the beginning of february, and it's now been about three weeks since i had a cigarette. i'm comfortable in stating i'm back on top of this.

the last couple of days have been pretty brutal.

i've been unable to sleep for something like a week. an hour or two here and there. i've spent most of the last 15+ hours trying to sleep with no success...

this has left me with a headache and a stomach ache, both of which are being compounded by a large amount of second hand smoke coming up through a hole in the floor, which is going to need to stay open until i can get the plumbing fixed, and it is unclear when that will happen.

i feel like death.

in the mean time, i've been forced to leave every window open in the apartment, and i have no intention of closing them until i can fix the hole in the floor that's exacerbating the headache.

back at the old apartment, i pointed out repeatedly that there was no solution in moving to a different apartment, as i'd just recreate the same problems. up until last week or so, this place legitimately seemed  a lot better, but there appears to be a lot of marijuana coming up from the floors all of a sudden. i think i can fix this by taping over it. but, i have to wait until the plumbing is fixed.

i don't expect to be able to do much of anything useful until this problem is resolved, and it's unclear how long this is going to take.

but, as was the case before, there is no solution in changing apartments- as i've just demonstrated.

i really wish there was a law against smoking inside of apartment buildings...

as it is, i have no recourse but to slowly seal off all of the cracks, until they're all gone.

on being beautiful, once

perhaps what this intends to illustrate is the connection between religious fundamentalism, mental illness and irrational behaviour?

i don't understand how you can relate with the male character here, at all. this is is just insane behaviour, all around. and, this man needs to speak with a mental health professional.

you seem to be mostly coming from jewish or christian backgrounds. but, this story is more important in the muslim tradition, where it informs one of the eid festivals. the narrative in the muslim tradition is a little different as well: in the muslim tradition, this is meant to celebrate abraham's faith - which, in context, presents the idea that he might actually do it as the most supreme act of righteousness possible. abraham is presented as a hero, here, and his faith as something to emulate.

i've never been able to interpret this as anything more or less than simple crazy talk. and, the only lesson i get from the story or ever did get from it when i read it as a child is about the dangers of faith, and how it can lead to poor decision making.

when i first heard the song, it reminded me of trump's campaign slogan: make america great again. but, i remember thinking that the irony wasn't cognizant in his mind. he didn't realize he was making the exact same error, or that that kind of thinking would have the exact same outcome. this is common in people of faith, that can't see through this two-way mirror, and often don't realize it's there.

after watching the video, i'm not so sure anymore. because, this can be seen as an indictment as easily as it can be seen as anything else. and, i guess that kind of ambiguity is what defines a lot of art as what it is.

the dso is doing la mer (+ more) this morning, but i'm just not feeling up to leaving the house in the rain.

the neighbour on the one side is smoking skunk weed like incense. it's not every day, but it's annoying when it happens. if it was just an odour issue, i'd spray something back, but the effects of second hand marijuana smoke are not enjoyable: headache and tiredness, without any hint of inebriation.

i will be agitating to have the laws changed so that you're only allowed to smoke outside. this is two nights in a row where i feel like shit in the morning, and am crashing early because of it. and, it's no doubt the ultimate reason why i'd rather go to sleep than go to the symphony.

but, this is one of the most important pieces of music in the history of western civilization. i hope they do it justice...

marijuana is fun once in a while. but, i've never been and will never be a daily smoker. i would rather be sober. and, it's really a crime to take that choice of sobriety away from people by smoking inside.

just go outside with it, people.

it's obviously the case that key took massive influence from dub music.

but, if jlin is simply taking her sound from a synthesis of dub with high-brow electronic music, then she got beat to the punch by about 35 years.

it's a good record. enjoy it. i'm not detracting. i'm just saying...

this was 1982, i believe.

black origami is the rare critic's choice that i'm in agreement with

it's probably an absolute fluke, but they got this one right. of course, though, the reviews don't make any sense at all...

first, there isn't anything on this record that i haven't heard before. it's very good, but it's not particularly novel.

this record is fundamentally different than anything in the warp canon, for the reason that it is so much more organic. not even tom jenkinson really got to this level of just absolute jazz. but, i'm not going to point to black american jazz musicians, either, as tempting as it is.

the two biggest influences i hear on the record are very early skinny puppy (voltaire never brapped) and mid-to-late boredoms, both masters of the abstract jam session, to be cut up for better use, later. adrian sherwood would be a key rec, if you like this. and, i'm going to present the record in this way: this is some kind of unholy alliance between industrial music (in the original sense) and japanoise, and it works precisely because of how organic and spontaneous it is, rather than because of how meticulous and written it is.

and, i'll attack things for not being written, yes, but that doesn't apply here, because the improvisation is so musical. this may have never been written down anywhere, but it never gets aimless or meandering, even if it does get a little repetitive at points.

that said, i don't feel that this is much more than an introduction. and, as such, i'm going to hold off from getting too deep into it without context.

at the least, the critics got something right, for once. give yourselves a collective pat on the back.

i will say this, though: detroit is perhaps unique amongst major cities in it's absolute contempt for people coming from outside of it to spend money in it.

most cities do everything they can to encourage people from outside the city to come and spend money there.

detroit is dead set on erecting bylaws and regulations that prevent people in the outlying areas from coming into the city to have a good time. detroiters seem to interpret this as some kind of threat to their community, rather than as the economic engine to revive it. and, they don't seem to understand that the root cause of the problems they have, in the first place, is capital flight as a consequence of these regulations.

if detroit city council had it's way, it would erect some good old city walls to keep all of the outsiders out.

it's all identity politics. but, it's self-defeating to the point that it might very well strangle the city to death.

this is why i'd support amalgamation in the counties around detroit, despite opposing it almost everywhere else.

i mean, maybe i should call eugene haslam and get him to open a venue in detroit, right?

it's the same basic, stupid problem; the difference is that there's ten times as many people in detroit as there in ottawa.

i want to be clear about detroit.

there's a market. a huge one, in fact.

(it's detroit!)

and, there are venues.

but, the people that own the venues want to cater to markets that don't exist, rather than ones that do.

so, we have empty venues, as we get skipped.

and, i'm not getting into the identity politics around a lot of it.

thoughts on the new chelsea wolfe record

so, am i a chelsea wolfe fan, yet?

i missed her in the fall in detroit (after catching her in 2016) because the venue (which had recently been shut down for overbooking a melvins concert) was sold out; the truth is that she could have probably filled a venue twice the size, but there wasn't one here for her to fill. this is actually becoming a problem in detroit, as we're down to one serious venue, here ('el club') and while it is great for what it is, it is also simply too small for a lot of what gets booked at it - including both the melvins and chelsea wolfe.

believe it or not, there is nowhere in detroit for a rock band that can fill a 2,000-3,000 seat arena. you can go smaller. you can go bigger. but, about 2,000 people is really the sweet spot for a solid concert and it just doesn't exist.

she probably should have played the majestic theatre, but it's been taken over by a management team that appears to be hostile to good music. to put it another way, the venue seems to be actively attempting to discourage anybody older than 30 from ever hanging out there ever again. this is the famous bowling alley in detroit...

i mean, i wasn't in on the call, but i promise you they wouldn't book the show. yeah. chelsea wolfe. this is the new detroit, folks....

anyways, how's the record?

well, i'm getting the same basic feel that i have from the last few: this is meant to see live. even the vocals are mixed in the distance, which is meant to facilitate extreme volume. i'm finding it enjoyable enough to listen to in the background. but, with all of the fancy headphone music out there nowadays, it's hard to see me coming back to this or really getting lost in it.

i bet the show was great, though.

i'm sure i'll get to see her play again, and that will be the best way to enjoy these songs.

i am sometimes indecisive, but i do not bluff.

you could say i'm ideologically opposed to bluffing. or, i can just tell you that i simply don't have time for that kind of fucking bullshit. i want full transparency and total honesty, and i'm more likely to just treat you like an insect than i am to "make a deal" if i conclude you're not trustworthy.

and, don't call my bluff, at least not to me. if you think you're calling my bluff, what you're actually doing is increasing the chances that i pull the trigger, because i'm likely to spend less time thinking something through once my sovereignty as an individual is challenged. the act of telling me that you don't think i'll do something is pretty much guaranteeing that i will actually do it.

but, i'm not interested in erecting elaborate plans for self-interest or world domination. i project myself as honestly and as plainly as i can, and i will very quickly escalate to treating you as a non-person if i don't get the same respect in return.

liars aren't people

the temperature outside has fallen, and the heat is working, but i don't understand what happened well enough to react.

the next time that happens, i'll have to hit the heaters in the hallways immediately in order to do some further testing.

i mean, there's three possibilities:

1) the heat was turned off, building-wide.
2) management turned the heat off in the hallways, and that in turn turned my heat off.
3) a tenant did (2), rather than management.

i had initially assumed (1). but i'm currently leaning towards (3).

what i will say is that i fully expect this to happen again in mid-march or early april, and while i'd rather not wait, i feel like i must.

no, i need to wait - because i need to experiment.

there's four floors in the building, stairways at opposite ends and a heater on each floor at each stairway, which is how many heaters?

i bet 30% of you can't figure that out.

but, i went around and turned them all on. then, the heat comes on in here about a half hour later.

it might be a coincidence. or it might be cause and effect. but, if i can just turn the heat back on in here by flipping the switch in the hallway, that's a lot easier than taking somebody to court.

i overheard somebody talking about their heater being connected to the ones in the hallway.

it also proves wrongdoing on behalf of somebody in the building. but, it expands the number of suspects to everybody in the building. i mean, i could be undoing what another tenant did.

if that's the case, and we can figure out who it is, i could maybe get the building on my side in coming down on them.

as before, this isn't about money. i just want the heat to work...

what i need to figure out is if my heater is connected to the ones in the hallway or not; if it isn't, i'll have to push back. if it is, i guess i have a fight with another tenant on my hands - one i intend to win, but one that is very different in scope.

ok, i've got something coming in the pipes, now. that's an improvement.

i'm going to have to put out a letter of some sort tomorrow, one way or another.

Feb 21, 2017

To The Management of ===================,

On the day of February 20th, 2017, some time between 7:00 am and 2:00 pm, the heat at =============== was apparently completely shut off, building wide. As of the morning of February 21st, there is neither heat in my apartment on the fourth floor nor is there any heat in the foyer.

As you are no doubt aware, provincial legislation on this topic states that heat is an essential service that must be provided from Sept 1 to June 1. As a tenant, I consequently expect to be able to access the heat in my apartment, at will, over this period, as that is what I am legally entitled to.

I do not believe that this was an accident, but rather a cost-saving mechanism.

As such, you have 24 hours to obey the provincial law before I file the appropriate paperwork at the Landlord and Tenant Board, seeking an order that you obey the law along with a pro-ration of my february rent for services not rendered.

Should the situation arise again, I will jump immediately to litigation.

While I do not seek conflict, I cannot accept a management decision to turn the heat off when it is barely 15 degrees outside, given that this is causing me great discomfort and it is simply blatantly illegal to do so. I am concerned about the implications of this policy in the spring and fall. To avoid further conflict, please simply obey the law, moving forwards.

still no heat.

this is what i'm going to do...

i'm going to write a letter to the landlord accusing the building of turning the heat off in february - which is never legal - and explaining that i expect to be able to access the heat in the apartment, at will, between sept 1 and june 1, which is what the law says.

if the heat turns on overnight, this letter will also state that i will file the appropriate grievances to the landlord and tenant board the day of noticing the heat being turned off a second time.

however, if the heat does not turn on overnight, the letter will explain that they have 24 hours to turn it on, or the complaint will be filed on the next day.

on second thought, i'm going to need a thermometer - which i don't have - before i can fill this out.

i don't what the temperature is inside.

i just know that i'm cold and the heat isn't turning on to address it.

and, i know that if i can't get the head on by the morning, i'm going to get a thermometer first thing tomorrow.

btw.

the sneaky trick that my old landlord used to evict me (and only worked due to a biased judge) is not applicable in this building.

i'm a good tenant, that simply demands that the laws are followed. and, i'll defend myself against retaliation.

15 degrees is cold.

25 degrees is comfortable.

35 degrees is ideal.

i mean, it's only 15 degrees today.

will i not have access to heat on an average 15 degree day?

i could see if it was 25 degrees, because then you can open the windows, but 15 degrees is simply not warm enough to turn the heat off.

what i've been doing is running the shower on full blast, full heat every twenty minutes.

i'm not going to argue with anybody about this. this place is not rock bottom cheap like the last one. i'm  paying for heat, and i will receive it on demand.

so, what am i doing?

well, first - it's cold in here.

and i'm very angry about it.

the law does not say that if you have an unseasonably warm day in february, you can turn the heat off. what the law says is that you have to provide heat.

and, i'm not going to pester the landlord about it. i'm going to sue her for two things:

1) an injunction forcing them to turn the heat on.
2) pro-ration of the rent compensating me for the heat that i paid for and did not receive.

yes, i think that litigation is the way to solve problems.

no, i don't care what the neighbours think.

that said, i'm going to wait a little bit because i recognize that i made an error: i knew it was going to be warm today, so i turned the heat down.

the lesson i've learned is that i should never, ever turn the heat down.

however, if the heat does not turn on before midnight, i will mail the documents in the morning; after talking with some tenants, i've learned that the landlord is quite negligent, and i simply don't have patience for dealing with negligence of this sort.

the law is not ambiguous, and i do not feel like i have the obligation to be patient about this.

second, it took me a little longer to do some cleaning and whatnot this week, but it's done now, and i'll be focusing on finishing up 7/15 tonight - so long as the heat turns on.

it's not my fault, i was sleeping.

you know your misanthropy runs deep when even your subconscious dream state starts throwing stuff around like this:

i don't want knowledge,
i want certainty! 

fucking humans...

to clarify: i'm broadly opposed to capital punishment, on the "what if we're wrong?" foundation of legal liberalism.

but, all rules require exceptions.

and, god's crimes are literally beyond parallel in scope and documentation.

could god receive a fair trial? certainly not. doesn't matter...

if we can prove a god exists, then we can find a way to stop it from existing, further; to an extent, proving that god exists is the same thing as disproving that what we're labelling god is actually immortal.

the only open question in my mind is "how do we actually physically end god's existence?".

of course, killing god will not put an end to faith. but, at least we can point to the historical record, label them flat-earthers and move on.

why should we show mercy to a god that has shown no mercy to us?

i'm not interested in "morals".

i'm interested in logic.

the likelihood of god existing is so low as to be negligible.

but, rare events happen.

and, if we somehow find out that a god does exist, we should try it for war crimes and, when convicted, execute it accordingly.

to put it another way...

my views are so much more radical than manson's, and even were as a teenager, that he just struck me as another way to articulate the status quo.

there will be almost no mention of manson in the alter-reality, because i am not and never have been a fan of his.

i was 15 when antichrist superstar was released, a fan of nin and corgan, and deeply anti-conformist, but i don't think i've ever listened to it all the way through. if i ever have, it was by accident, at a party.

first of all, the music is just not very interesting.

but, i don't think the fan base cares much about how boring the actual music actually is.

the flat truth is that i just thought marilyn manson was stupid. i didn't find him interesting or challenging on any level, and what he said was less thought provoking to me and struck me more as just flat out daft.

my opinion hasn't changed at all over the years.

i probably wouldn't have been able to articulate this at the time, but this is the difference: i was an atheist from a very, very young age. not a satanist. an atheist. so, he actually struck me as just promoting another ideology that needed to be broken down. and, if you want to tell me that satanism is not a religion, i'm going to have to take the opposite position in a debate on it.

like, i need to be clear: when i heard him speak, i heard an ideological enemy rather than somebody on my side of things. he wasn't telling people to think for themselves and rely on empiricism and science, he was just giving them an alternate means of brainwashing and trying to work them into another kind of ideology.

i was as opposed to manson's views as i was opposed to any other religionist's views.

i guess i was smart enough to see through it from the start.

and, if your ambitions are to smile as you kill, please turn your ambitions upon yourself.

i think the claim that i lack ambition is pretty obviously false.

rather, my argument is that a market-driven, competitive society makes actual ambition virtually impossible to actualize. i mean, look around you. it's a constant. in order to be successful, you have to throw your ambitions away, first.

there's room at the top, they're telling you still
but first you must learn to smile as you kill...

all that ambition is ever going to get you in this society is a one way ticket to permanent poverty.

and that is what you see in front of you when you look at me.

so, what am i even doing?

well, i've just been sitting here ranting for a long time. i'm kind of feeling in limbo, between things.

i keep trying to do the cleaning i need to do in here, so i can sit down and get back to work, but i keep getting distracted. and, i've actually barely slept in days.

i think i'm going to get some work done for the night, and try to focus on the prep for the week tomorrow. the end point is doing laundry & tucking myself into bed to finish the rest of the rebuild, but it will have to wait yet another day before i get that in motion.

"but she didn't say anything about the millennials' music".

well, i'm not a millennial.

sorry.

as though every other critic didn't focus on millennial music, right?

i don't care how old an artist is. if it's good, it's good. but, if it's bad, it's bad - and i'm not going to follow trends or kowtow to the market to fit in or be 'cool'. i'm an adult, and i'm broadly going to be disinterested in music that is being mass marketed to children.

the new dmst disc is my record of the year

in fact, the only new record i spent any substantive amount of time with in 2017 was the new do make say think record and, by default, it consequently wins record of the year.

and, it's a strong record - it's going to deserve somewhere in the low 90s, out of 100. it deserves mention, at least.

if there were stronger records released last year, i'm not the person to look to for elucidation, at this point. broadly speaking, i need to dig hard to find what i want; i'm not going to find much of value in these year end lists, and, for me, 2017 was a 'me' year, where i focused mostly on my own music, while restricting my exploration to acts i already had a high confidence in. i don't expect to spend much time digging over 2018, either. rather, i'll probably end up cycling back over 2019 or 2020.

when i get to the process of digging, you will no doubt be surprised by what i pull out - and much of it will be obscure or forgotten.

i've added a few new acts to my core list over the last few years, and they've mostly run the course, at this point. cloud nothings & la dispute are done. annie clark has gone full junkie retard. i'm going to give touche amore one more, at most - but they're going to sell out, not break up. but, in truth, i wasn't even really keeping up with that, and that's something i'm going to be doing as i finish what i'm doing over the next few weeks.

actually, i have absolutely no idea at all what a "cara delavigne" is.

sorry.

but, it would be nice if, whatever it is, it would return what was once one of the most promising electronic musicians out there back to the home planet.

in the end, nobody is saved. i know better.

but, i'm not interested in the corporate rock mythology. annie clark wasn't some throwaway junkie like kurt cobain or amy winehouse; she had a lot of talent, and it's sad to see it be pulverized under whatever combination of addiction and greed that it got pulverized under...

and, then, bjork.

my expectations with bjork have been dramatically lowered over the last fifteen years, to the point that i'll consider this a successful release if i deduce it's worth listening to a second time.

it's starting off relatively well. let's see where it goes.

i'm at track two, and this currently sounds like every other time that bjork has tried to be serious since vespertine, which wouldn't be such a tragedy if it were more dynamic. it's less that it's the same thing over and over again, and more that it's the same meandering aimlessness, yet again.

i caught the mt zion sample. did you?

i'm going to let this play, because it's bjork and i can still enjoy what is really brutal stagnation from her on a kind of basic level. and, i might listen to it a second time, too. but, she really needs somebody to challenge her, to take her out of these patterns she's built up around herself, to smash whatever mental chains are keeping her running on the spot and prevent her from going over what is really the same song over and over and over.

thoughts on the new st. vincent record.

i skipped st vincent, who i've still yet to see play an actual set, a few months ago after giving the record a very brief listen and finding essentially nothing of value in it at all. i'm coming back to it now as a last chance, and it's just really not remotely in my sphere of interest, at this point.

hopefully, she finds a way to put the pills away and get her brain back. but, that's not how this usually works.

that is my takeaway from this record: annie clark's talent has apparently evaporated due to drug use.

first impressions of the new son lux record

i've been waiting for this one for what seems like forever, and it's actually been a while since i found myself doing anything like that; i've become used to disappointment after a few records, and, in the process, just stumbling upon things, sometimes months after the fact.

the lead singles had me worried, but not too worried, because i went through this with the last record, too - the singles seemed flat when separated out from the record. but, i don't 'get' singles, anyways, unless they're epics. they're just too short. i have a very hard time focusing on pieces of music for less than five minutes at a time...it's done before it starts...and, as an ad, which is all a single can ever really be, artistically, the process of releasing singles seems incapable of hooking me, and may have even turned me off of records i would have otherwise liked.

so, fuck singles. i should really just not bother, and ritually wait for the records. easier said than done, right?

but, any perceived lack of depth that the singles projected when separated from the record evaporates upon a few listens. and i need to stress the necessity to listen. at least five times. son lux has always been a little difficult, that's half of why i'm attracted to it, but it's also always been very rewarding, as pop, once you disentangle it, which is the other half of the reason i'm attracted to it. this record is, at times, just kind of opaque, on immediate first impression. the sound is saturated over the spectrum, and it needs to be disentangled, but it's the syncopation that you need to really get used to before you can mentally decode the songs into something coherent.

if you're not going to give this some time, you're going to get bored quickly enough, and i'll tell you that this will unfortunately happen to quite a few people. but, if you spend the time with it, you're going to uncover a record that is simultaneously a little bit of a throwback to the outsider music of the first record and a kind of a step towards glossier pop, at the same time. the record also reuses a number of themes on the records in between. this makes the project seem somewhat like a summary of ryan lott's career, and i might question his motives in doing that.

if the band pivots after this record into less abstract material, this will likely end up as the normal way into son lux' comparably deeper and more difficult back catalogue. backwards.

as a contained record, this pull between what i'm projecting as a poppier future for the band and the more artistic past that already exists leaves something that is almost existential in scope. while this is where the music i listen to normally lives, i actually kind of liked the sheltered and somewhat neurotic vocals that i'm used to from this band and hope that, at the least, we get to keep this moving forward. but, you can hear that he's interpreted the present moment as some kind of pivot, some kind of paradigmatic shift, some kind of epiphany: weren't we beautiful once?

sure, ryan. back when america was great, right? but, make sure you're careful getting off the cross, because there's another martyr in line behind you.

i don't expect this band to go full boring. if anything, he's projecting a strong palette of pop influences; on this record, the very obvious nods are to freddie mercury and david bowie, and if these are the pop icons he's throwing out in front of him, what's coming is likely to be both ambitious and tasteful.

but, i wouldn't expect another record like this.

http://music.sonluxmusic.com/album/brighter-wounds