i have also uploaded the instrumental version of my second symphony, which is the end of my second record.

the noisy plugin is attached to the vocal version of this symphony. there's also an a capella version that i haven't test yet. together, that will close inri019.

the second record is now completely reconstructed, although i am continuing to play with some minor equalization decisions around tracks 9, 10 and 11 that will be completed in the next few days.

sanity check on inri017 done.

no sanity check required for inri018.

currently working on a sanity check for the bulk of inri021.

i thought i had inri019 done, but i realized at the last minute that i have a noisy plugin. so, i'll need to isolate it and re-render.

i should also double check that everything i've uploaded over the last few days is outputting cleanly, as a sanity check.

inri019 is done. and, i can probably upload the last five tracks for inri021, too. just give me some time to double check that there aren't clicks or pops.

i spent all night fighting with the interference, and specifically ruling out various ways out of the problem. for example, i learned when the power went out that i have two circuits in the unit. is the wiring better, or the load lighter, on the other circuit? nothing worked.

i eventually got a few hours of clear listening in, but all the experience did was uphold my previous hypothesis: the interference is caused by a magnetic field that is generated by electrical usage in the neighbourhood. so, i need to mix when the neighbourhood goes quiet, until i can find some way to block the magnets.

today, that was from about 6:00-9:00 am. that was it. three hours...

i had to take a break to renew my prescription online. i'll be back offline again in a few minutes, and probably until it's done, this time.

as mentioned, there will be no vlogs edited or uploaded until this is completed.

i got a few more tracks up, now. all in all, that's 1-8 + 12. i don't think i'm going to need to listen much in order to complete the mixes for 13-17, which seems to be what i'm doing next (unless the interference subsides, unexpectedly. but i think i'm going to need to wait until at least after midnight.).

i'm back online because my tongue is tingling and i wanted to look it up. the technical explanation seems to be reduced blood flow to my lingual nerve. but it seems to have a large number of possible causes.

what it actually feels like is as though i have giant hair in my mouth. like, a foot long or something. i know there's nothing in there. there's also a mild taste of blood in my mouth.

i first noticed it when i just woke up at about 4 pm on the 20th but it was brief and minor. it's come back after eating.

the precise sensation ceases when i move it around and bathe it within saliva - it comes back when it dries. if it's tingling due to low blood flow, that makes sense.

i'm going to sit still until it passes. presuming it passes.

i spent the night constructing remixes for boogeyman, which is going to have a larger single than initially planned. and that's ok. we'll have to see what happens with my tongue before i determine what's going on with the rest of the day.

one of the things this is associated with is ms. again. everything is a symptom of ms. down the list. but, it could be anything. nerve damage. a blood clot. who knows...

i don't have any other symptoms, except some anxiety. no chest pains. the same mild background headache i've had all week.

i dunno. i know i don't want to have a seizure when i'm doing the dishes. so, i'm staying in bed until it passes.

and, this, by the way, is an html table. coded. i suppose it's an art form that never caught on...

the interference. fuck the interference...

the only thing i've been able to link it to is high usage periods in the neighbourhood. sunday morning? well, there's a church across the street...

i'm stuck for a few hours, at least. i'm mastering pre-recorded audio and need a stable signal. the fear is that i may end up cranking the treble because the interference is taking the highs out, thereby creating a tinny output.

i can get two or three minutes at a time by draining the cord. but, i need more than that to get any actual work done. and, it's coming back hard and with consistency. i'm stuck.

i have at least finalized the first four tracks. it's a start. i wish it was more. but, i'll have to wait until the power usage around me decreases before i can get back at it.

i've got the album back on inri018 up, now. totally done.

i'm behind schedule, as always. i've been unexpectedly hungry the last few days. i dunno. but i need to eat again.

the next task is to sequence inri021 (the record) and i'll be heading offline to do it. if all goes well, i should have several completions through the next update - including a new lp and a new symphony.

publishing inri018

this track represents my first serious attempt to break out of the synth-pop sound i'd been developing over the first half of 1998 and into the more epic electro-noise-rock that defines the next period. while i'd been careening in this direction the whole time, and the track is ultimately a failed experiment, this is really the portal i go through that ultimately opens the way for what follows.

conceptually, the track was initially meant to mock the news cycle; the circus riff was tongue-in-cheek. you can imagine wolf blitzer and judy woodruff getting out of their clown cars and reading their teleprompter, type of thing. while i've eliminated the vocals from the official release, and there were never any produced for the re-recording, the bonus tracks are both early vocal mixes. it's admittedly hard to ignore the conceptual history of the track in explaining why i have a punk song built around the circus theme, but by the time i got to re-recording the track in late 1998 i'd truly moved past the concept.

yet, i wanted to retain the musical ideas in the track and even take it to a different level. the way the track is sequenced here retains a memory of how i wanted the track to unfold into a lengthy, multi-part epic separated by long sections of guitar-effects generated and digitally shaped ambience. this is not just an idea that would resurface in my next piece, my second symphony, but also something that would follow me for my entire musical career. these collages are crude, but this is where the idea first developed.

conceptual issues aside, i also had a lot of difficulty getting the guitar tone i wanted for the track - a problem i really hadn't previously had on this kind of scale. in hindsight, i think i'd just become a little more aware of the tonal options in front of me. up to this point, when i ran into the problem of the evasive tone, putting it down for a few days and approaching it fresh solved it, but that wasn't working. this track was dragging on for months. i was lost in production...

then, out of the blue, there was a power outage that knocked my computer out as i was running a part of the track through an ambient transform. the track - and all the digital additions i had added to it - were largely destroyed. what was left was this completely corrupted wave file of disjointed guitar fragments. i've never been a religious person (obviously), and i don't want to say i took at as a sign or something. yet, i let chance assert itself; the corrupted wave file became the final version of the track, and i moved on to the next thing.

the actual, proper track was then forgotten about for years. i'm only finally dusting it off now, in 2016, and releasing it here as a single, along with a collection of experimental collages that approximate what the track was meant to sound like. this ep should really be thought of as consisting of two versions of the song, separated by the two minutes of silence after the fifth track. the track was abandoned for good reason; the motif is silly. so, my frustrations with the composition shall have to be recorded in the annals of time.

initially written in 1997. recreated and reconceptualized in late 1998. salvaged somewhat at the end of 1999. remastered in 2013. compiled on nov 13, 2016. finalized on nov 19, 2016. as always, please use headphones.

the album version of this track appears on my second record:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inriched

this release is compiled in the following places:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/merch/inri-box-set

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1997, 1998, 2013, 2016).

*download only

credits

released December 1, 1998

j - guitars, effects, bass, drum kit, synthesizers, sequencers, drum programming, noise generators, sound design, sampling, found sounds, tapes, digital wave editing, cool edit synthesis, loops, vocals, chance, production

if i knew it was going to take me a year and a half to get through this detour of remixing material from 1998, i'm not sure i would have taken it. i think the results speak for themselves: this was worthwhile. but, it was terribly time consuming, too.

a lot of the delay was the consequence of malfunctioning gear and environmental noise. i probably would have been dealing with the same problems, regardless.

but i'm almost there. finally. a few more days.

this morning's been kinda weird, actually.

i have finished the cover art for inri017. it is 100% completely done.

i've closed the audio for inri018. but, in the process of writing up the liner notes, i ended up publishing all of the remaining inri material - except the final sequence on the second lp, which i need to sequence the vocals out of.

that means.

1) inri019. symphony #2.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/teenage-jesus

2) inri020. boogeyman ep single.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/boogeyman

3) inri021. lp #2.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inriched

4) inri022. outtakes from 1998.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inrijected

5) inri023. glitch remixes from 1998.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inrimixed

6) inri024. reclaimed mixes from 1998, directly from tape (2015).
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inriclaimed

period 1.3 starts here

7) inri025. too cold single.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/too-cold

8) medinricated glu remix stub.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/02-medicated-to-the-one-i-love

9) inri026. grade 12 marketing project donation request.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/gene-os-a-soundtrack-for-an-italian-breakfast-cereal

10) inri027. grade 12 electronic music assignment.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/pop-music-a-tribute-to-carbon-dioxide

11) inverted tricil remix stub.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/03-inverted

12) inri028. grade 12 electronic music project.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/warning

13) inri029. war ep.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/war

14) inri030. liquify ep.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/liquify

15) inri031. remix compilation.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inrimake

16) inri032. lp #3.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inridiculous

17) inri033. book it! single.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/book-it

18) inri034. ambient works vol 0 compilation.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ambient-works-vol-0

now, i need to finish mastering the first couple and write liner notes for the rest....

i'm going to stop for a bagel, though.

publishing inri017

these three tracks were not initially connected in any way, other than being the lead sequence on my second record. they are not even connected in time: the first section was written in late 1997 around the ry30, the second section was written in early 1997 around an octaver and the last section was written in mid 1998 as a sound design experiment. however, they've been connected together since they were sequenced together in early 1999.

it was in early 2014 that i first got the idea of splitting the opening sequence into it's own release, in order to upload the tracks together to youtube. i eventually ruled against it as it didn't have a deep enough conceptual unity to justify.

the idea has come back with the revisitation of my first period and the construction of a series of experimental singles. for reasons of chronology, it was somewhat necessary for me to release a single for idiotic in the summer of 1998. but what made the single worthwhile to me in this form was the ability to reversion the concept using the different glitch mixes of the first and third tracks. the result is a challenging and epic listen, and i hope you enjoy it.

--

section 2...

i was violently anti-tobacco in my teens. to an extent, i still am. but, i was also largely just repeating things that had been said to me, without the critical filter that comes with defining a sense of individuality. i think we probably all remember a time when we repeated things told to us by teachers, parents and the media without fully thinking them through. we don't, however, all have demos of songs that we wrote before we'd come to understand who we really are, as individuals.

looking back at the initial recording, i mostly just wish that i had articulated myself a little bit better. i never dropped my opposition to tobacco, not even when i was a smoker. i'm not sure that i ever really even admitted to myself that i was a smoker. so, i don't want to distance myself particularly far from the basic crux of my opinion that smoking tobacco is really pretty stupid - i never really altered that opinion. what i do want to distance myself from is some of the precise language and arguments that i used, as they are not reflective of my own thoughts.

for example, i wouldn't present the health care argument. first, i'm a strong advocate of universal health care. second, the accounting underlying the idea is not well defined, and difficult to construct. third, i reject the entire concept of currency. nor do i think we'd have to make resource-based decisions about health care if it weren't for the limits provided by currency. so, i'm retracting that statement - along with many others.

by the time i got to recording a second version of the track in mid 1998, i'd smoked a few other things and enjoyed them. a purely anti-tobacco song no longer seemed all that relevant to me; more relevant to me was a song comparing marijuana use to tobacco use. so, i hid the vocals through a very heavy vocoder effect and piled a lot of silly samples, many about marijuana, on top of the track. it stayed that way for almost fifteen years.

when i sat down to remaster in late 2013, removing samples was a dominant priority. thankfully, i actually had an archived instrumental version from back in 1998. this allowed me to replace the track with only minimal editing.

there were continuity reasons why i went with the sample version the first time around, but it was against my better judgement, even then. i should have followed my gut.

-

section 1...

i had earlier recorded a vocal version of this, but i had the good sense to realize it was awful and replaced the vocal parts with synth sections, creating an electronic/ambient piece with a liberal use of noise. it's admittedly a little elevator-music sounding, but i think that's sort of part of it's charm. it's very precious sounding.

this is one of my favourite early pieces. i used to just sit and play the simple guitar outro, with drum loop in my sennheiser 440-IIs, for hours at a time...

the decision to remove the vocals on this track was largely a reflection of my growing confidence in the quality of the music to stand up on it's own. over the '98-'99 period, i was largely aware of how cringeworthy my lyrics were and put them into three overlapping categories: (1) comedy/satire, in which case i let them stand as they were, (2) cries for help, in which case i upheld them as they were hoping somebody would listen, (3) songs that i had no lyrical idea for but that i felt needed lyrics, in which case i felt trapped by the genre conventions and upheld ideas that i truly didn't even like at the time simply so the songs would have vocals. over time, i eventually got to the point where i had enough confidence in the music that i no longer felt that the songs required lyrics, and i started to look at it as something to use sparingly based on whether i actually had an idea to express. while there are definitely songs in this period that i wish i had kept instrumental versions of, the final mixes only include a couple with lyrics that i actively regret. this is the first time i was able to mentally push back against myself and say "no. this song does not need lyrics.".

--

section 3...

this is what it sounds like when you open dlls with a wave editor. there was some strategic reshaping, but that's where the bulk of the sound comes from.

--

initially written over the course of 1997. recreated and expanded over the course of 1998. lead track first sequenced in this form in feb, 1999. further remixes generated over the course of 1999. a failed rescue was attempted in 2013, and another in late 2015. remastered in november, 2016 from various sources, 1997-2015. finalized on nov 17, 2016. as always, please use headphones.

the album version of this track appears on my second record:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inriched

this release is compiled in the following places:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/merch/inri-box-set

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1997, 1998, 1999, 2013, 2015, 2016).

*download only

credits

released August 5, 1998

j - guitars, effects, bass, drum kit, synthesizers, sequencers, vocoders, octavers, drum programming, noise generators, sound design, sampling, digital wave editing, loops, a broken tape deck, production

one thing at a time...

the alter-reality post was done a few hours ago:
http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/1996/11/demo-12-sound-art-collages-computer.html

i've been less productive tonight than i should have been. but, i'm confident that i can close inri017 before i eat. i just would have liked that to have been five or six hours ago....

the flip side of that is that i'm uploading and i'm going to want to wait for that to finish before i get back to mixing inri019, anyways.

my period 1.2 singles are getting more and more absurd as the period closes, but that's a reflection of the material - and largely what i've wanted all along. this is climaxing well...

inri017 is now closed, audio-wise. i'll be writing liner notes this morning.

the release is dated to aug 5, 1998 and picks up where the first record left off, in the push towards combining lush, ambient soundscapes with very harsh types of noise. the proper release, the first four tracks, is the first three tracks from the second record sequenced four different ways - because i had that many mixes of each of the tracks.

this is as challenging a listen as anything else in my discography.

more coming soon....

i have a monitor!

i guess it was last tuesday that i wanted to catch up and then put it all on hold until i finished period 1.2. that's going to be tonight, now. back to work either late tonight or, more likely, first thing tomorrow.

also, i forgot to update this space saturday night / sunday morning with the new releases:

1) inri017 is tentatively finished, except for the first track:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-harsh-truth-is-that-only-idiots-wish-for-happiness

2) inri018 is tentatively finished altogether
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/circus

3) inri019 is tentatively finished, except for the first two tracks
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/teenage-jesus

4) i uploaded a couple of tracks from inri020, and then fell asleep.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/boogeyman

inri021 is the actual record, so, you can see that this is coming together quickly.

kijiji can be both useful and frustrating.

i spent a good part of the day arranging a transaction for a monitor and then waited at a tim horton's for it, only to learn that "my wife must have moved it" after i got home.

i'm going to try and hit some pawn shops tomorrow. there's still some filing i can do overnight. once i've calmed down a little. and eaten.

i'm more disappointed than pissed off. i've wasted days before. i just want my computer to work.

i actually considered just buying a new monitor...

....but i have a very small space for a monitor on my desk. i want something in the 13-15 inch neighbourhood. the smallest i can find is 20 inches. very frustrating.

on the one hand, i'd rather get something used for environmental reasons. on the other hand, i realize it probably won't last very long. but, if i can't find a small enough monitor new, i'll have no choice but to get a used one.

why is this hard? i haven't had a job in a few years, but you wouldn't expect to walk into an office and see a row of 27 inch monitors. that would just be an absurd waste of space.

i'm a musician. i don't need a big monitor. i need a monitor, but it doesn't have to be big. and, conserving desk space is of far greater importance...

you'd thinks staples, right? no. maybe there's a business direct around here or something...

or i might have to go to detroit.

this lcd screen...

it's a power issue. but, i haven't given up on it yet - or at least not for now. i suppose i'll need to get a new monitor around christmas. sale days are soon, right?

i became convinced that i couldn't get it to power on because it had cooled down, so i cranked the heat in the studio up. this worked. but, the result is that the monitor had it's mind blown out, or something - it's become a fucking vegetable.

i get an immediate flush of white light, followed by a fade to grey and then a black pattern fading back in. it stops when the screen goes all black. and, it's repeatably demonstrable - so long as i don't let the monitor cool down too much. so, wtf?

i am confident the other components are functioning. it seems to be a regulation issue. and i don't know if it will resolve itself or not.

i know that, if it does, then i'll leave the monitor on, no matter how hot it gets.

what if it doesn't come back?

well, the only other monitor that i have is my tv, which should in theory receive a signal. the thing is that i'd need to set it up first, which means i need a monitor out. if it comes back, that will be a high priority. i cannot swap video cards because the studio pc does not have a legacy pci in. so, i will be unable to use that computer.

i spent some time this afternoon backing up my music drive via a sata-to-usb bridge, and now have everything i was working on accessible from the laptop. this should hold me for a few days, worst case. but, i cannot connect either laptop to my sound card (no firewire ports....) and resolving that would be more expensive than a new monitor.

there is only one possible path, and that is to connect the soundcard to the living room pc with the tv as the monitor, which probably means moving it into the recording room. this is the only other firewire connection that i have access to. but, the specs are arguably too weak.

it will be worth a try, at least. if it doesn't work, i'll just have to wait until i get a new monitor.

but, i'm still hoping that it comes back.

my monitor is out again...

i cycled it yesterday and it was fine, so i turned it off until i could go back in. it was hot and hissing. but, it's not coming back on. so, if i can get it back on, i'm never going to turn it off again....

i'm going to wait until the morning before i decide to move the tv back in or not. i guess i'm filing for the night, in the mean time.

*sigh*.