whether the weather is better depends on whether the weather hither there-or beyond where there isn't a feather, just concrete and pleather, and pleather should be recognized by the dictionary here henceforth, as a word of not particularly modern origin, and should have been acknowledged some time in the not-so distant past, but weather the weather is better depends on whether the weather hither there-or beyond where there isn't a feather, just concrete and pleather, is better or not-better, on a relative perception to whether the weather is better.

star rays beam down through a haze of fog, setting off chaotic disturbances that wreak havoc on the surrounding areas. it's almost like it's worth inventing a god out of it. the angry solar beast. yet, that angry solar beast is a machine with perturbations - error bars - the same as any other machine we've created, human or mechanical. error rates are a function of any process, not something determined by the source of it's fuel. it's just that maybe we can understand the error rates as something patterned and rational. forces from other galactic bodies. some insights in fluid mechanics that have escaped us. that's an amazing thing to study and make sense of, as magical as it seems.

this is why i think immortality has some benefits. it makes me utterly depressed to realize that i have a time restriction on the amount of time that i have to learn and analyze and contemplate things. it's not enough time to even get a sketch of things, so why even bother? there's the argument for anti-intellectualism that triumphs everything. it reduces education to a hobby. go do stuff...

...but then the stuff that yearns about to be done is just reading. we're silly creatures. doomed to our own irrelevancy.

but is immortality really impossible? there's a medical push to develop technologies that treat the body like a machine. lose an arm, become a cyborg. ok, cool. but eventually you're made out of metal. and then silicon. and that strikes me as unsustainable to service.

so, genetic engineering. but how far do you go with that? is it possible to convert an elderly person into a young one with frequent organ transplants? is that the most efficient way to do deal with it?

i kind of prefer the idea of recycling. bodies, that is. both organically, through a decomposition process, and by allowing for a sort of shape shifting. host jumping.

it would lead to a massive genetic bottleneck on the earth. i don't really see a way to prevent that. yet, it also makes evolution irrelevant. no, hegel, no, don't say that ridiculous phrase...

but the way the rich would use it would be to jump back to their 20s every few decades. people would get into a biological time machine and be 23 again.

first, it relies on the idea of creating human beings through 3-d printing. so, we're a ways away from that. but if we could create a 23 year old from a genetic sampling, without going through the messy phase of raising clones for mental takeover, we could create new hosts out of old organic material.

can your mind fit on a usb key? well, maybe a blu-ray disc. can it be downloaded and reuploaded into that new host?

...and then the old body gets recycled. that's an algorithm for immortality that could work. then, what of reproduction? well, who wants that under those circumstances? new minds, perhaps. sure, but it's no longer a biological imperative. a lot of existing biological ideas just break into pieces when applied to that kind of hypothetical reality. the entire laboratory's been trashed by hooligans, couldn't even enter it. not an unbroken flask in the place. labcoats, stylized into parisian fashions. just a mess.

so, reproduction probably doesn't end, but it probably does become measured in terms of centuries. and it might eventually even become advanced by 200 years or so, in terms of learning, by downloading some libraries at birth. oh, that little tyrant is quoting machiavelli again!

silly fantasies - or projecting hope onto hopelessness? well, the way back to creating meaning out of what we have in front of us isn't going backwards in time. we lost the whole god thing. we're better for it. let's move on. let's take that confident understanding of a godless universe into one where we construct our own existence, and give it the meaning we want.

it's really the choice between daydreaming of utopias and being overwhelmed by the pointlessness. there is a possibility of immortality, if we take an interest in creating it.

publishing deny everything (inri041)

by posting a final final final final final version of this record, i'm transporting myself out of my deny everything phase and into a period where my main focus was playing the classical guitar.

this was the culmination of a year's worth of experiments in almost ideal working conditions, and as such represents a singular moment in my discography. the reason i've modified it so often is that i was in such a rush to get so many ideas out that i got sloppy. i'm confident that everything is resolved in this incarnation of the record, and the five eps i've spun off from it.

--

this is a project that has been through many incarnations and revisions, which should hopefully stabilize now that the tracks are entirely instrumental and the substantial number of outtakes have been categorized into companion eps. i don't expect to modify this further, but note that versions have been created roughly every 3.5 years since 2000 - in 2004, 2007, 2010 and now 2014. that slow, 15 year process of removing samples and reconstructing instrumental sections is now entirely complete.

what's left when the thematic ideas are stripped out is an eccentric and elaborate delve into psychedelic and electronic music that has no clear parallels that the author is aware of.

the record can be sectioned into 4 parts:

- ignorance is bliss [introduction]
- entropy/curious george/gravity's rainbow [program]
- a commercial break [intermission]
- acidosis [finale]

abridged versions of this record entitled 'symphony 1' should contain only the program and the finale, although condensed versions may leave out the beginning parts of the program.

recorded over the space of the year 2000. remixed substantially in 2004, 2007, 2010 and 2014. existing version finalized in jan, 2014. as always, please use headphones. 

an audience exists somewhere that will cherish this as the truly unique monstrosity that it is.

credits:
j- guitars of all types, bass, programming, drum programming, sequencing, synthesizers, live drums, piano, loops, films, noise generation, organ, ebow, flute, mandolin, treatments, effects, found sounds, sampling, sound design, generative synthesis, granular synthesis, generative percussion, light-sound synthesis, digital wave editing, production, coughs, a broken equalizer, cover art

the star trek sample in 'gravity's rainbow' is from the episode "errand of mercy" (mar 23, 1967).

the rendered electronic orchestra includes theremin, ukelele, orchestra hit, string ensemble, taiko drums, gongs, trumpet & sax.

released november 11, 2000

a commercial break (original album mix)

the story behind the song is not very remarkable. the working title for the track was just 'progblues thing'. it was intended to be a structured instrumental guitar track that mixed the flair of hendrix with the minimalist structure of steve reich.

it was also the result of my dad getting himself a drumkit for christmas that year, which my step-mother promptly placed in my bedroom as a disincentive for further use. score, i guess. but it didn't survive the move a few months later. in the mean time, i got some recordings out of it - as well as a few moderately crazy drunken weekend jam sessions.

i'll note that that christmas also produced a grand piano a few feet outside my door, which is heard in acidosis. it's intended recipient was my sister, but she wasn't around much. me? new pc, with a convenient recording interface, and some more functional microphones. despite talk of family jam spaces, one might suspect my father was actually conspiring in my favour. there is probably a great deal of truth in this suspicion. these conditions held for less than a year, but i made the most of them.

so, the idea of the track was initially about experimenting with the new reverb system built into my new soundcard interface, by triggering it with the drumkit that had recently magically appeared out of good fortune. it had been a few years since i'd played the kit much, and, unfortunately, it kind of does show. i had spent a little time practicing along with "nevermind" and "siamese dream" for a few weeks to get back in shape, but i wasn't really "there" yet at the time of this recording. i didn't want to program loops into the song, so i compensated by splicing the track up. of special interest in this wave editing is the backwards cymbals, and especially how they intersect with the soaring guitars.

and of those soaring guitars? a fairly simple blues pattern. sure is lovely, though, isn't it?

the original version of this track has a lengthy mlk sample in it and is available over here:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/let-freedom-ring

the speech became attached to the track when chance managed to have them playing simultaneously for me. i had cnn on in the corner. it was doing some kind of special on mlk, perhaps related to an anniversary that is related to a yearly holiday. placed together, it knocked me flat on my ass.

the idea in my mind from the start was integrationist, if not really consciously so. on the one hand, the guitar part is raw southern blues. on the other hand, the structure is sterile white minimalism. i didn't just realize this juxtaposition, i was trying to exploit it, even if the racial context hadn't occurred to me. when king's speech was played over it, though, the idea really exploded; the context became much deeper. it was an instant exponentiation in profundity.

in hindsight, there are some problems with this. i was a moderately wealthy white kid from canada. there was never much chance of me turning a profit on this, but if i did it would be a type of appropriation. the dr. king samples were removed from this track by the time this demo was initially packaged, which was november of 2000. that's probably for the best.

the second part of the track was recorded in june. it was a short that i had put aside for further development and then decided against further developing, so it ended up here as a sort of addendum to the track. it's really it's own thing, but it's been placed here so long that i don't want to separate it.

recorded over the course of the year 2000.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/a-commercial-break

installation file:
kmeleon.dll

curious george (replaced album mix)

musically, the track is a combination of an experiment with an idea. i should note that this suite together is maybe the first original track in the style that dominates my output over the next few years, even if it's incomplete (albeit hereby decreed complete). the idea was about creating "guitar symphonies" (and while i was aware of the work of oldfield and fripp, and of sonic youth and gybe!, branca was a black hole for me at the time) in a minimalist, electronic framework that most readily draws to mind the work of trent reznor. this is the first of many expressions and evolutions of that idea. the experiment was with a program called "leaf drums", which is a fairly basic drum machine except in it's ability to manipulate samples with effects in realtime (remember that this is the spring of 2000). once i had that loop running, i started playing some of the riffs i had put aside for the guitar symphony, mostly just to play around with them. it stuck far better than i expected....and that's really the extent of the track.

the bush sample at the beginning is a constructed loop rather than a direct quote. he was talking about gore - "this guy would say anything to get elected, i'd...". that was flipped around to "i'd say anything to get elected" and looped. well, at this point i don't think anybody is going to stand up for bush' honesty or credibility. regardless, the way i looped it purposefully pans it to make it obvious that it's not a direct quote.

the lost version was built up considerably further than this; this version has three guitar parts, the lost version had closer to ten. i was too focused on getting the samples together to worry about re-recording the guitar parts. i don't remember them at this point and will not make up new ones. to be honest, this is far easier to listen to, and, while i mourn the loss of the completed version, i'm actually happy that i kept a more stripped down one.

recorded in april, 2000. samples added in oct, 2000. album version reverted to original mix in sept, 2006. 

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/curious-george

publishing curious george (inri040)

this track was taken from the then lost curious george suite...
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/chimpanzees-cant-dance

...and loaded up with samples to raise awareness. the impression i was trying to create was that bush wasn't going to be a president who was particularly concerned with civil liberties because he had stated as much rather clearly. this is still pre-9/11, it was right before the election, and i still had no idea what was coming. i was just conscious of the fact that this is a guy that isn't going to stand up for anybody's rights, have much interest in maintaining the rule of law (international or otherwise) or have much respect for the democratic process.

even listening to it today, a lot of it is really surreal. at the time, i was focusing a bit on the irony. for example, his "people who are going to commit crimes shouldn't have guns" quote is cited in reference to himself - by that logic, he should have overseen an american disarmament. "this guy's not elected, he just took over office" quip was also meant to apply to him. i think it's largely forgotten that the news of a possible attempted coup hit before the 2000 election did. there was a buzz on the internet that the people behind bush (military contractors) weren't going to let him lose. the "court battle" in florida wasn't a completely surprising turn of events. it was gore's disinterest in fighting the legal battle (because it would "destabilize" the country) that hit people by surprise.

i've split this into it's own space because it belongs in it's own space. deny everything has been converted into abstract instrumental music; the samples don't belong there. it also seems disingenuous to insert it into the lost suite.

i think i need to be careful in stating that historical hindsight inoculates me in explaining what i hoped was obvious: that this is a thinly veiled call for the assassination of bush before he takes over. a tree fell in a forest here. alas.

recorded in april, 2000. samples added in oct, 2000. samples removed around 2010. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - guitars, effects, drum programming, sampling, sound design, digital wave editing

released october 13, 2000

acidosis (original album mix)

and, this is the continuous, single-track version of acidosis. i have removed the jungle noises sound sample collage from the end for this version.

this was constructed over a little more than a month: from 7/7-8/20, 2000.  

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/acidosis

publishing acidosis (inri039)

this is the core of my first symphony. it's a sort of a pun; it uses the medical condition of acidosis, which is when the ph level of a person's blood dips to a level that causes complications or death, to draw an analogy to the environmental destruction being carried out by industrial civilization. it also forwards my intuitive hypothesis that homo sapiens will ultimately end up as an evolutionary dead-end. more specifically, my view is that intelligence, as a trait, is ultimately an evolutionary disadvantage. well somebody else probably has that view too; i honestly couldn't cite anybody, sorry.

the material is presented here in fragmented format to properly outline the structure of the piece. it exists in one section on deny everything, and will be the dominant component of a larger first symphony file.

that sexy cover art is a couple of bitmaps of neurons played with in paint and superimposed onto each other in coagula. the sound of that sexy bitmap is heard in the song.

i think i'd rather let the piece stand by title alone, other than to point out that the reaction explored in the piece is really more general than any specific narrative justifies. it's a systems break down.

the music is half generated algorithmically and half played. the half random, largely atonal notes i had programmed into the generator created unusual jam circumstances that were fun to play with. as an example, the piano part is live, but it's being spurred on by the random synth bass underneath it. the computer was driving me, creatively; i think it produced interesting results, both out of me and in itself. as a rhythm section, the computer holds it's own here - as random as the notes are.

what centers the track, though, is a classical guitar part that i recorded very late one night. i was weirded out about things and wanted to get some shit out, so i recorded myself playing for close to a half hour. i think a lot of people don't realize just how powerful a guitar can be as an alternate outlet for aggression. psychologically, that's powerful shit.

i listened to the jam when i got my head clear and i was sort of fascinated by it's just raw emotion. it didn't make any musical sense, but it expressed an idea through it's dynamics. i ran it backwards through an effect designed to simulate a record player dying over exaggerated lengths of times and that became the idea to build around. the shape grew slowly, all the way into the analogy, from there.

this was constructed over a little more than a month: from 7/7-8/20, 2000. it seems to have been recombined into one track around 2007 but has otherwise not been modified. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - guitars of all types, bass, drum programming, synthesizers, piano, loops, noise generation, organ, ebow, flute, mandolin, treatments, effects, sound design, generative synthesis, digital wave editing, production, coughs, cover art

released august 20, 2000