dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja: 11/03/13

Sunday, November 3, 2013

demo #20: unintelligible

silly self-deprecating pop-punk-noise thing. musically, this is pretty tight. neat bassline. the percussion, i clearly remember, was tapped out onto a wood desk with two bic-style pens. try it. it's fun.

well, actually, i should add a few more words because it otherwise seems rather pointless.

i was at the time talking about starting a punk band with a friend of mine, named matt. there was actually a song recorded with matt on vocals and bass and myself on guitar (i can't remember the name of it, and don't have a copy of it). the name of the project was meant to be "second class citizens", with an acronym stylized as 2CC. nothing else came of it.

but i had initially written this song for that purpose and demoed it out to show him. that kind of explains why it's different than the other stuff on these early demos.

eventually, it became clear that the project wasn't developing, so i just added my own vocals. as the song was meant for matt to sing on, i didn't have any thematic concept attached to it. so, what i did was take random words out of the dictionary. it was honestly just a close-your-eyes-pick-a-page-pick-a-word process. then, i added the chorus in reaction to the random dictionary process.

....except the bridge. that's an nwa reference.

i guess you could maybe pull something accidentally insightful out of it regarding my view of lyrics in mainstream punk (or grunge) at the time. it could be interpreted as a parody, but i wasn't consciously thinking of it like that.

recorded in march, 1997. remastered on nov 3, 2013.

thee silver mountain reveries - pretty little lightning paw

Collector's Item

in hindsight, this ep comes off as a sort of an experiment. the mt zions have repeatedly indicated a sort of boredom with post-rock and have been trying to get out of it for quite a while. in the end, they seem to always go back to it. on a level, they're sort of stuck. i can plead guilty to keeping them stuck there, but it's not out of an aversion to them trying something different so much as the directions they keep going in. like, start a punk band. i'd dig that. they seem to like punk. there are a lot of reasons to think they'd be very interesting if they went in a sort of hafler trio direction, or even flat-out industrial noise. but, the delves into generic folk and corporate rock have left me unsatisfied, even as i rant about how boring and generic that post-rock has become.

obviously, i'm suggesting less commercial turns of direction than they've actually taken and that contrast sort of colours my reaction. the experiments here are sort of floundering; a few of them come off fairly well, but even the more interesting sections are marred by a sort of contrivedness. see, it's sort of obvious that they're trying to piggyback on what radiohead was doing at the time. well, the shift is too dramatically obvious to suggest anything else. they were generating a lot of interest in the radiohead community. this is a deduction, but it's obvious. that's not to say that the ep sounds like radiohead so much as it is to suggest that it seems like it was constructed to appeal to radiohead fans - a subtle, but very significant distinction. or simply influenced by? no, not this band.

so, here is the reality, bluntly, after many years of contemplation: when a collective that built itself up on it's ability to channel raw emotion all of a sudden moves to something that is cerebrally calculated, the contrast is so clear that it cannot be missed. it denies the act of the precise, exact quality that generated interest amongst fans, rendering them almost obsolete.

what happens with the next few mt zion discs, though, is a sort of a struggle between the real and emotional and the calculated and dour that swings back and forth rather wildly, creating highly erratic results. for this disc?

the first track is some kind of homage to do make say think, or broken social scene, or something like that. on some level it seems tongue in cheek, but the sad thing is that it seems to miss it's own irony. it comes off more as a parody than anything else, but due to the way it's presented in it's introduction it seems more like a parody of themselves. the second track moves into the aforementioned post kid a territory, rooting itself in an awkwardly dour and heavily reverberated loop that seems to go on forever before it breaks up into a wash of noise - a neat track in theory, but the emotion is missing. something similar could be said of the third track. lyrically, the explorations are of paranoia and freedom, themes that are actually shared between radiohead and the gybe/zion collective. however, they have a distinctly mundane quality that could be arguably labeled as "annoying".

the last track is a real treat, though. some kind of johnny cash type thing; the band may have been thinking of freak folk as a way to break the monotony of being a post-rock band, and while they would explore folk further they never produced anything remotely approaching this. there's a continuity in the heavy reverb from the previous two tracks, but what separates it from the rest of the disc is that it feels real in it's resignation and passive hope.

as this is a collection of mostly failed experiments, i'm labeling it a collector's item and sticking to it. however, it's probably the band's most accessible work. the caveat is that it isn't at all similar to any of their other records.

stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaJpJ9OX0zs&list=PLnpQFjefXCRMI_cUh5536j-nMfLVicRQ_

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/artists/ASilverMtZion/2004-PrettyLittleLightningPaw/index.html

on the question of doggy mens rea

jessica amber murray
dogs are incapable of mens rea?

i don't know about that. ever had a dog steal a turkey? clearly pre-meditated. and, they clearly know they shouldn't.

i count mens rea + actus reus = criminally responsible.

sentence: six months community service at the orphanage.

Kardinal ZG
They know that they shouldnt? So not only do they have an understanding of property but respect the notion enough to feel guilty if they transgress it? Come on.....

jessica amber murray
it's not property, it's authority - and it's taught. they might not get the why so well, but they know not to eat food on the stove top.

Kardinal ZG
It's kinda impossible to figure out what dogs 'know'. The whole scenario can be explained away by simple behavioural conditioning. Obedience and moral deliberation are not exactly the same.

jessica amber murray
i don't disagree, but the law is also rooted in obedience, rather than morally correct thinking; it seems outlandish to deny dogs can have mens rea based on a lack of moral reasoning, when we don't need moral reasoning to construct mens rea in humans.

Kardinal ZG
If i understand correctly, the mens rea/actus reus distinguishes between the intention and the crime itself. If there is wilful intent to commit a crime as a crime, there is knowledge of its moral character. Now if the law would be extended to animals, a dog ( i hope you realise this conversation is getting ridiculous) committing an offence could at worst be accused of criminal negligence.

Incidently, there was the story of some old german guy that trained his German Shepard Adolf to raise his paw when he scream 'sieh heil'. Of course thats an offence over there, but since the code doesnt specify its specifically for humans, the judge had to find all sorts of loopholes to let the dog off the hook.

jessica amber murray
it's the implication there that i think is problematic, but i'm going to take a step back.

under english law, a crime is technically not a moral wrong but an act that disobeys the monarch's orders. on some level, this is sort of archaic. you can see it's remnant in court cases: R v. Smith is literally the monarch vs. smith. but it's still realistically the way the court system functions. so, under english law, rape isn't illegal due to the immorality of assault but because the king (perhaps through the suggestion of parliament) has decided he doesn't like it when people do that. the question before the courts, then, is not whether the accused has a moral understanding of the wrongness of rape but whether or not the accused formed a mental intent to disobey the king's orders.

you'll have all kinds of philosophers, old and new, try to rationalize that. natural law and whatnot. and they may make a few good points. but it's not what the law is trying to determine. legally, what mens rea refers to is simply whether the act is pre-meditated - whether there was a conscious intent to break the law.

we could pull out an extreme example and break godwin's law on purpose: suppose i built a time machine, went back in time, killed hitler, and then bragged about it. complex moral question; not up to the court to decide. premeditated, therefore guilty.

so, if the dog is sitting there eying the turkey while you're preparing for it, biding it's time, waiting for you to leave before it acts? so long as it knows that jumping up on the stove is "bad", the premeditation to do something "bad", to disobey orders from authority (here the owner, there the king), is enough to build a mens rea, regardless of moral concerns.

Kardinal ZG
I agree, but understanding something as 'bad' (even if that badness is committing offence to the King) seems like it requires deliberation. It seems like a case in which only the act can be punished. This kinda reminds me of the story of that old German dude that trained his german shepard Adolf to lift the paw when he shouted 'sieg heil'. The judge had to find some loophole to let the dog off the hook.

jessica amber murray
well, i think the dog is capable of deliberating on it's decision to obey orders or not. i've seen dogs almost do something they shouldn't, then think twice and stop. it's more than conditioning; dogs are pretty smart, relatively speaking, in the animal world. the thing is that that's really all the law is trying to determine for humans, too.

that dog would have been convicted at the nuremburg trials, although i'd argue something like "not criminally responsible", as the dog lacks the context to understand what it's doing. but that was a rare and isolated situation when the court was actually operating under something close to natural law theory. and, in truth, whether we can collectively come to grips with it or not, it was a set of show trials.

"One area that seems to have potential for showing that dogs have morality is the matter of property. While some might think that dogs regard whatever they can grab (be it food or toys) as their property, this is not always the case. While it seems true that some dogs are Hobbesian, this is also true of humans. Dogs, based on my decades of experience with them, seem to be capable of clearly grasping property. For example, my husky Isis has a large collection of toys that are her possessions. She reliably distinguishes between her toys and very similar items (such as shoes, clothing, sporting goods and so on) that do not belong to her. While I do not know for sure what happens in her mind, I do know that when I give her a toy and go through the “toy ritual” she gets it and seems to recognize that the toy is her property now. Items that are not given to her are apparently recognized as being someone else’s property and are not chewed upon or dragged outside. In the case of Isis, this extends (amazingly enough) even to food—anything handed to her or in her bowl is her food, anything else is not. Naturally, she will ask for donations, even when she could easily take the food. While other dogs have varying degrees of understanding of property and territory, they certainly seem to grasp this. Since the distinction between mine and not mine seems rather important in ethics, this suggests that dogs have some form of basic morality—at least enough to be capitalists."

at least enough to be capitalists. heh.

that's a convincing argument, and conforms to my own experience (my dad had either 2 or 3 dogs at a time for as long as i can remember). however, i think that needs to be tested more rigorously through experiment to determine whether the dog (on average) understands property as a concept or is merely obeying authority. but, really, how many humans understand (personal) property as a concept? i think there's a danger in applying an ideal that we ourselves don't fully conform to.

i know dogs have been rigorously demonstrated to lack an understanding of syntax, in contrast to smarter animals like elephants. what that means is you can teach an elephant what an object is called and what a verb is and then randomly put them together. if an elephant understands "fetch" and knows what "beer" is, you can tell it "fetch beer" and it will put it together and understand it without having to be explicitly taught. dogs need to be taught "fetch beer" as a single command, and can't abstract it to "fetch stick", which needs to be separately taught. what that suggests to me is that it may have difficulty understanding property as an abstract concept, even if it can be taught that each item - individually - belongs to it or doesn't. but that again just pushes off the question of whether it really gets it or is just responding to authority.

http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=6594

these kinds of jobless numbers really create no other option than the construction of some kind of new system. i just hope the european masses are not too indoctrinated to be unable to see beyond a "fix my problems for me" perspective, and go out and actually build something.

unemployment in europe is a structural problem created by "globalization" and increasing automation. there's neither a serious solution in increasing or decreasing spending. the paradigm has to break, and shift.

(link apparently lost)

the lack of a union movement is a big difference between now and then, and the structural changes dumping production elsewhere (excluding germany) make it unlikely for one to develop. history doesn't move backwards. something may indeed be on the brink of change, but it's going to have to revolve around the massive unemployment levels that seem to have no long or short term solution short of......war? disease? or the organization of something new?

so long as unemployment remains high, production remains minimal and unions remain dead, the only solution is in building local infrastructure, with the possible long term effect of a society broken into incredible class stratification - managers at the top running global trade and finance to create goods for themselves, with peasants building self-sustainable communes at the bottom. that is what is currently inevitable in europe. and whether that flows into violence or not depends on how or if the state obstructs it.

http://jacobinmag.com/2012/04/introduction-europe-against-the-left/

'That God promised the land to Jews no matter what would happen to its Arab inhabitants who was there long before Joshua and his army crossed River Jordan to destroy Jericho and kill every man, woman, child and animal by “God’s command.”'

the people that lived in the area before the exodus (which probably did not actually happen) would not be described using the word 'arab'. this is one of those debates that just needs to go away. it's really irresponsible for people to continue to cycle this bullshit around.....

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/31/drying-up-ideological-wellsprings-of-arab-israeli-conflict/

" However, the unexpectedly strong opposition by the American population blocked the plans of the Obama administration. "

see, here's the thing. the writers know this is false, there's no use debating the issue. yet, it's useful as propaganda because it presents the (mostly false) idea that democracy is possible in the heart of the empire.

the biases that the wsws pushes are actually fairly weak in comparison to any kind of mainstream north american news network. the analysis is of course marxist, but in context that's often more academic than political. on top of that, the biases are hard to pull out because they actually align fairly well with basic assumptions about western democracy. the difference is more in motive; the state wants you to believe in democracy in order to pacify you, whereas the trotskyists want you to believe in democracy to radicalize you.

but, that sentence above, there, is a lie - a conscious, purposeful lie with the aim of putting a politically motivated skew on the story. it's maybe not the bias some might expect from a source like the wsws, but it's the one that is actually there.

the article itself is explaining how obama is organizing europe into provinces of the american empire.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/30/nato-o30.html

timeline: 2004

100 99 98 97 96 95 94 93 92 91 90 89 88 87 86 85 84 83 82 81 80 79 78 77 76 75 74 73 72 71 70 69 68 67 66 65 64 63 62 61 60 59 58 57 56 55 54 53 52 51 50 49 48 47 46 45 44 43 42 41 40 39 38 37 36 35 34 33 32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0- 0+ 1 2
000
00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09

2004

jan 25: a silver mt zion @ the black sheep, wakefield

apr 16: tortoise, four tet @ capital city music hall, ottawa

may 10: thee silver mountain reveries - pretty little mountain paw

june 10: ember swift, jane siberry @ westfest, ottawa

aug 6: sonic youth @ capital city music hall, ottawa

aug 26: broken social scene, ember swift @ folk festival, ottawa

http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/chronology/CE/2000/000/00/04.html

well, ok. but the sanctions - against iraq, iran, whoever - are always meant as collateral. ramping up sanctions before talks actually implies a hope that talks will work out.

i find this source seems to lack a good grasp of the nihilist, might-makes-right brand of power politics that drives both parties in the united states, opting to interpret the world through a sense of false rationality, instead. well, they're liberals, i guess. there's a lot of naivete here....

http://fpif.org/congress-vs-obama-iran/

i wish you could hear how good these phones sound, though....

....i just compared them to a newer model of sennheisers i got last year and they're just not on the same level...

when i put the 440-IIs back on, all i could think was "why did i ever take them off?".

it was like taking a pair of ear plugs out.

like switching from grey-scale to colour.

like walking out of the city and taking a breathe of fresh air...

like, the way they're able to separate the fuzz guitar in the middle section of mountains made of steam so that it's directly harmonic to the guitar part is...it's almost impossible, really....there's *no* blur....

and, then when the bow comes in, i can clearly hear the buzz on the fucking string. spectacular!

i'm wondering if the model name is a coincidence or a hint.

something about these sennheisers, though, is that they don't have those big muffy ear pieces - and that's an asset, as i find they muffle. all the new phones come with all this noise cancelling stuff that fucks with the signal. no. i want clear, crisp, perfect reproduction...

about five or six years ago, i picked up a pair with some funny digital processing in them that reduces more or less to a boost on the high and low; it was meant to compensate for mp3 compression, and it did give the sound a nice boost through an mp3 player. but, they were impossible for mastering. that's what i'm trying to avoid.

but the market has changed. back in the 80s and 90s, people bought high-end headphones to listen to record player and cd player signals through high end amps. so the focus was on reproducing the signal exactly. that's sort of rare nowadays; the market now is for mp3 players, laptops, djs...

...and because the sources suck, the phones companies have come up with all these digital tricks to try and make their product sound better. basic reproduction is a niche market, now.

sent to sennheiser support (via online form)

sent to sennheiser support:

hi.

i've had a pair of hd 440-II's for about twenty years now. that's two thirds of my life. these 440-II's have followed me everywhere - from bus rides to high school in the 90s with a cassette player right into recording studios for mastering processes. every piece of music i've ever connected to or created has been heard through these phones.

after 20 years, they're getting a little shorted, and i feel it's time to replace them.

i would like to replace them with another set of 440-IIs. otherwise, the world would just sound entirely different. better specs, worse specs - it wouldn't matter. my recordings would all sound wrong; my favourite records would become alien. my universe would just implode in on itself...

yet, they appear to be discontinued. i am very distraught by this thought.

and, so, i have two questions:

1) do you have any hd 440-iis sitting around somewhere?
2) if not, what is the closest model?

if you end up answering (2), i would like to request that you take the time to run the question by some engineers that can answer it properly, rather than try and sell me on something. i'm not looking for the phones with the best specs, or the cheapest phones or any other such thing - i am looking for phones that can replace the 440-ii's with the least amount of variance.

thank you,
jessica

why does this model of headphones have to be discontinued? FUCK.

they're still kicking, somehow. but, they're dying a slow death and i need to replace them. i really, really, really want to replace them with the same model. even if i get something with drastically better specs, it's going to sound different, and it's going to throw me for a loop. these are literally the only headphones i've ever had to record with.

any headphone geeks out there reading this? suggestions for something that sounds similar? anybody happen to even have a pair?

sennheiser hd-440 IIs.

guess i'll look on ebay. but if you have a pair or know somebody that does....