heavenly screen
autechre show
On recommendation from Tyler I attended an Autechre show at the Abbey Pub last Friday, and true to his words it was a "wall of abstract sound". It was wonderfully perplexing, like dueling schizophrenic robots, or maybe a robot going insane. Layers of pulsating mechanical rhythms shifting and alternating, like machines trying to become human. Battlestar Galactica fans know what I'm talking about. In accordance with concert protocol, Autechre came on after (dj) Rob Hall and Massonix. Rob Hall was fabulous, rocking the scatterbrain idm we all know and love. Massonix, despite his elder status in the electronic music world, was bland and boring. The first two acts tenderized the crowd with deafening idm, which varies in form but maintaings semblance to the beats and rhythms of rave, house, hip hop, dub and blues. This is groove based music that inspires dancing and a basic feeling of social togetherness. But some forms of idm, particularly the downtempo (Boards of Canada) sort are more geared for the heads. To my knowledge the term 'heads' gained popularity from a KRS One song where he askes "how many real hip hop heads are in the house". A "Head" is now used to describe the listener who plays close attention to the structure of of beats, a kind of minimalism. Intelligent Dance Music, despite the pretensive name is an accurate description. It exists somewhere in between the mental rational realm and the physical, emotive and corporeal realm. IDM in the Aphex Twin tradition makes some attempt at song structure, with the hooks and riffs that engages your humanist side while synthetic chattering textures and microprogrammed drums transform you into Galvitron. After a good hour/hour in a half of Rob Halls' survey of contemporary electronic music (the past 20 years), Autechre's set was a complete reversal. I want to say it was void of all aspects that makes music feel like it is complimentary to our daily lives, or what I've been referring to as humanist. But Autechre is not void of humanism, they start from a place that is purely anti-humanist. Repetative, machine-like, an automated factory, this is where Autechre begins, but they end up with Skynet. The gears and precision and machine noises begin to alternate, with a sense of intuitive logic and irrationality. The sound of becoming a humanist. I've been listening to Autechre for several years now, in fact I just checked their discography and I've heard every album they have put out. My experience with Autechre songs is more on the lines of - an attempt to listen - I usually fail. One song at a time is all I can take. Autechre live is radically different, being engulfed by the volume and experiencing the music with your body rather than only your ears. highly recommended.
Read a more informed review on Milk Factory.
Como te va?
A coworker caught me reading Slavoj Žižek during my lunch. Then I was challenged to define parallax and explain the parallax gap. I thought I had done well, she seemed to understand and was intrigued by the concept.
This is the same lady who usually refuses to speak English with me, even though she is bilingual. At first it was fun, forced me to practice my Spanish, which I comprehend but cannot converse with. But now I find it more fun to reply in English to her Spanish.
The day after we talked about Žižek she stopped in, wanting another explanation. I understand the parallax gap as the interstice between juxtaposing systems. Wikipedia describes motion parallax as the change of angular position of two observations of a single object relative to each other as seen by an observer, caused by the motion of the observer. Simply put, it is the apparent shift of an object against the background that is caused by a change in the observer's position. (kinda like a Sunset Rubdown song "Will you live? Will you live in the physical world? With the sun setting low and the shadows unfurled? Will you live with the way they make you look unreal?" - from "the taming of the hands that came back to life"- lyrics as well as delivery, which is confident yet waivering and fragile.)
I used an example of a person moving from a 3rd world country to a developed one. She gave me homework. "You are going on a journey, you don't know how long you will be traveling and you don't know where you are going. Make a list of ten items that fit into a small bag that you would take with you". She is compiling these lists for some sort of immigration project. Here is my list. I wish I would have fit toilet paper and some basic toiletries in the bag, and I'm not sure I made the best choice of food.
First Aid Kit
Tarp
Hammock
Sleeping Bag
Water Bottle
Water Purifier
Cooking Pan
Oatmeal with dried fruit
Instant Ramen Noodle
A ziplock bag of extra undergarments
This is the same lady who usually refuses to speak English with me, even though she is bilingual. At first it was fun, forced me to practice my Spanish, which I comprehend but cannot converse with. But now I find it more fun to reply in English to her Spanish.
The day after we talked about Žižek she stopped in, wanting another explanation. I understand the parallax gap as the interstice between juxtaposing systems. Wikipedia describes motion parallax as the change of angular position of two observations of a single object relative to each other as seen by an observer, caused by the motion of the observer. Simply put, it is the apparent shift of an object against the background that is caused by a change in the observer's position. (kinda like a Sunset Rubdown song "Will you live? Will you live in the physical world? With the sun setting low and the shadows unfurled? Will you live with the way they make you look unreal?" - from "the taming of the hands that came back to life"- lyrics as well as delivery, which is confident yet waivering and fragile.)
I used an example of a person moving from a 3rd world country to a developed one. She gave me homework. "You are going on a journey, you don't know how long you will be traveling and you don't know where you are going. Make a list of ten items that fit into a small bag that you would take with you". She is compiling these lists for some sort of immigration project. Here is my list. I wish I would have fit toilet paper and some basic toiletries in the bag, and I'm not sure I made the best choice of food.
First Aid Kit
Tarp
Hammock
Sleeping Bag
Water Bottle
Water Purifier
Cooking Pan
Oatmeal with dried fruit
Instant Ramen Noodle
A ziplock bag of extra undergarments
Colt Vista !
In other news . . . Aric Naue is playing guitar in a band named Colt Vista. If you've heard any of his self-released cds (On The Verge of a Picnic, Compulsion, Thosepassedoutmissedoutonsecondsminutestoosoon, or Family Chameleon) you are probably very excited by this news. Visit their website www.coltvista.com for more relevant information.
Their next shows:
February 28 at the Know in Portland.
March 13 at High Dive in Seattle.
Tough Subject
Intrigued by the relatively young age of modernism, I decided to delve into some classic 19th century fiction. Beginning with the industrial revolution and then with mechanical reproduction clinching the deal, the modernity that I am aware of is maybe 150 years old, give or take a couple decades. Coincidentally, I recently discovered a genre of music I'm interested in is called 'Modern Classical'. The piano is to music what oil paint is to visual art. What finally turned my awareness of this fact into a curiosity came about when reading Jeremy Gilbert Rolfe. In Beyond Piety he traced the color black as the stardard in fashionable attire to the urbane 19th century, when the soot from coal burning dirtied everything in the outdoors. If your clothes were black it would disguise the layer of soot you carried around. So this is one reason I am reading "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens, which is set in England around 1840. I wanted to get a different perspective of modernism, or maybe I just wanted to read a good book. I expected to trudge through purple victorian language and deal with drastic disparities of class. But I did not expect to deal with lawyers in an endless dispute over a will. Thus, the new perspective. Dickens' view of modernism sites relational formalities as a prominent characteristic. The formalities of law in a courtroom, the formalities of speaking to royalty or anyone in a caste/class differing from yourself. Like the time the Japanese principal of Masuho Junior High would not speak to me until I took my hands out of my pockets. Strict structure within interpersonal relationships. The importance of this aspect escaped me, until Mr. Dickens showed me how oppressive the caste system is to the homeless as well as her royal highness. Depressed because you are Jo, the homeless child who somehow earned the nickname Tough Subject, or depressed because you can't disgrace your family name and legacy or acknowledge your illegitimate daughter. Extreme cases, but perhaps the flowery and rigid social guidelines in London, 1840 have been transformed into bureaucratic red tape, order forms, billing departments, online security measures, and what was the name of your first pet? The tedious social norms in drastic 19th century hierarchy are now the delicacies of social networking, mass communication on a grand scale. Not to say that today's class disparities are any better, just expanded and global. BCC me on all emails, BTW. . . . but anyway, what do I know, I still have 153 pages to read.
enhance enigma
links to good music
A great best of 2007 mix from Almost Cool Music Reviews can be downloaded here.
http://www.almostcool.org/test/ACYearEnd2007a.m4a
http://www.almostcool.org/test/ACYearEnd2007b.m4a
http://www.almostcool.org/test/ACYearEnd2007a.m4a
http://www.almostcool.org/test/ACYearEnd2007b.m4a
Boguey being a Slyboots
"Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house tonight? Is there a a chimney on fire?"
"Chimney on fire!"
"Ah!" returns Mr. Guppy. "See how the soot's falling, See here, on my arm! See Again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won't blow off - smears, like black fat!"
They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and a little way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. Comes back, and says it's all right, and all quiet . . .
The light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually assumed by Mr. Weevle, sits so ill upon him to-night, that he abandons that and his whiskers together; and after looking over his shoulder, appears to yield himself up, a prey to the horrors again.
from Bleak House by Charles Dickens
upon reviewing my notes from a meeting with Chris Cozier (an artist and writer living in Trinidad), I remembered the interest he expressed about the variety of ways that different cultures react to modernity. Especially the when it resulted in a sinister use of images.
christophercozier.blogspot.com/
"Chimney on fire!"
"Ah!" returns Mr. Guppy. "See how the soot's falling, See here, on my arm! See Again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won't blow off - smears, like black fat!"
They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and a little way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. Comes back, and says it's all right, and all quiet . . .
The light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually assumed by Mr. Weevle, sits so ill upon him to-night, that he abandons that and his whiskers together; and after looking over his shoulder, appears to yield himself up, a prey to the horrors again.
from Bleak House by Charles Dickens
upon reviewing my notes from a meeting with Chris Cozier (an artist and writer living in Trinidad), I remembered the interest he expressed about the variety of ways that different cultures react to modernity. Especially the when it resulted in a sinister use of images.
christophercozier.blogspot.com/
New Mix for a New Year
click on "Surface Noise" a couple times to download my new music mix, and to gently enter 2008.
tote bags for xmas
Tote bags given away for christmas gifts.
"Face with Hair", screen-printed drawing by Ethan Pierce.
(Opposite side)
"Sock Puppet with Mohawk" drawing by Cain Tillman.
George Steiner, "Tongue of Eros"
There exists a fair number of monographs on sexual terms, lexica of the erotic, glossaries of the pornogaphic. What is lacking is any historical and psychologically responsible phenomenology of the interplay between sexuality and words, between libido and enunciation -- either internalized or vocal. No Aristotle, no Saussure has taken up this pivotal challenge. We have, so far as I am aware, no study, even summary, of how sex is experienced, of how love is made in different languages and different language sets. How does love-making in Basque or Russian differ from that in Flemish or Korean? What privileges or inhibitions arise between lovers with different first languages? No polyglot woman or man, so far as I know, has left a record of her or ehis sexuality within and between languages.
kcurterif
Piano Diagram
this instrument first sparked my interest because I've noticed a growing trend of piano driven ambient music. What is it about this classical instrument that contemporary experimental musicians find so interesting?
Then, over Thanksgiving weekend my great-aunt Charlotte gifted me a broken piano hammer. When I was 12 she hired me to remove a forlorn piano from her home. There was a good deal of smashing and pre-teen angst involved with its' removal. Not once in the past 18 years did I notice that Charlotte kept one piano hammer pinned up with her collection of presidential campaign buttons.
New tool, new series
(from wikepedia)
In music notation, a sixty-fourth note (American or "German" terminology) or hemidemisemiquaver (British or "classical" terminology) is a note played for 1/64 of the duration of a whole note (or semibreve). It lasts half as long as a thirty-second note (or demisemiquaver).
Sixty-fourth notes are notated with a filled in oval note head and a straight note stem with four flags. The stem is drawn to the left of the note head going downward when the note is above or on the middle line of the staff. When the note head is below the middle line the stem is drawn to the right of the note head going upward. Multiple adjacent sixty-fourth notes may have the flags connected with a beam.
A similar, but rarely encountered symbol is the sixty-fourth rest (or hemidemisemiquaver rest, shown on the right of the image) which denotes silence for the same duration as a sixty-fourth note.
Notes shorter than the sixty-fourth note are very rarely used in music, though the hundred twenty-eighth note (otherwise known as the semihemidemisemiquaver or quasihemidemisemiquaver), or even shorter notes, are occasionally found.
Fantastic Voyage
an echo is something that whistles at the night
some kids in a domestic setting
some swords floating in space
in the middle of something
The back of the bus used to be something special.
Now its the 30 minute walk to work that does it.
Written material is overdue here, I'm resistant to posting beginnings and starting points.
I'm currently captivated by Badiou's "supernumerary", the element with no structure.
Landlord called this morning, he received half of the rent check, the other half disapeared in the mail system, devoured perhaps.
Super City
detail of box lid, 1967 modernist toy sets. awesome
Dream On
keep dreamin