let me clear about this, though - don't connect your xp machine to the internet. ever.

at this point, i only have one controller with internet access that i take files off and with an external drive, and keep everything else off the intranet.

that's the one issue, but you don't want your recording machine online, anyways.

i will do things with 20 year-old gear that you will take 20 years to understand.

yes, i'm using cubase.

sx. 3.

on xp.

hey, it works; the only issue i've ever had with it is overloading due to the 4 gb ram limit in the 32 bit os. the new sample libraries simply need more ram. but, it's going to be matlab that is going to pull me in to the 64 bit os recording world, finally. it was actually matlab that forced me to upgrade from 98 to xp around 2005 - and while i've upgraded my hardware, i've stuck with 32-bit xp ever since.

i'm ultimately the type that likes a stable, steady daw over the newest bells and whistles. from the time i got my jx/ry30 combo in the late 90s (which would have been cutting edge ten years earlier, but was just high quality last gen by the time i snagged it), i've always been about making the most of the previous generation of gear - and you'll note that i tend to actually use the features in my gear, rather than just upgrade it every six weeks to look cool.

if you're getting good equipment, it should last twenty years before you exhaust it, by which time you have another generation of supposedly last-gen gear to actually understand and make actual use of.

i'd rather listen to a talented programmer on a 20 year old tower that really knows how to use the gear because they've spent the time with it than some talentlesss rich kid fucking around with the shiniest, newest toys.

so, i'll stick with sx 3 for now, thanks.

but it's almost time to upgrade to a system that would have been cutting edge around 2015 or so.

the idea is that i'm trying to keep the calcium away from the iron, so i'll put the yogurt and cheese in a pre-salad before i have my spices-heavy salad. for now, anyways.

it took me all of this time to eat up all of the spinach, and i've still got tons of yogurt, so i'm replacing the spinach with pasta (which will eventually be replaced with quinoa) for my pre-meal bowl. so, there's my betaine shift, for now.

but, i got some kale last time i was out, so my new-normal side salad just got a huge movement towards stability, as well.

ok, i gotta eat.

inri077

so, i actually ended up spending the morning digitizing the last old cassette i have so that i can put it away, along with this old portastudio i recorded it on, via the same alesis over asio connection i was using previously. i'll reinstall this afternoon. and, i've even uploaded it as a temp mix to the cassette demo ep, which is not closed but i think is now constructed.

i vaguely recall recording this in sarah's apartment as a starting point one night when she was out, and it's really the only way to make sense of it existing at all. i ended up living in sarah's space (which she shared with a friend named heather) for a few weeks because my retarded step-mother tossed me out of the house for correctly calling her delusional - because she was - and refusing to apologize - because it was true. you can claim that was foolish, but where do i get by denying the actual truth? she made an absurd accusation that can only be described by her deluding herself about reality. apologizing for pointing that out would be equivalent to also denying reality and being equally delusional. like, it wasn't an insult, it was a statement of fact! so, if i were to apologize for stating the truth, it would be equivalent to accepting her delusions as true, which would be a denial of reality, and for what? i can't sacrifice truth like that. i can't walk down this dystopic path. so, if you want to accuse me of foolishness, let's at least be accurate about it - the foolishness is actually rooted in an inability to interface with nonsense. this wasn't about my ego, it was about refusing to walk into a dystopia and refusing to separate myself from reality in the process. i'd read too much orwell, i just couldn't handle it. and i knew that the next step would be even worse - that accepting one nonsense as truth would merely lay a basis for accepting more nonsense as truth. it was a shitty outcome, no doubt, but i had to stick to the facts, here - i had to hold to my principles.

truth > family. you have to protect your brain, you have to protect your sanity, or you'll end up as fucked up as everybody else, in the end.

so, i ended up without anywhere to sleep - something i'd never dealt with before (except on the trip to bc i'd just come back from) and wasn't actually taking seriously. in addition to learning that my stepmother was retarded, i learned a little bit about how to fend for myself. but, in the end, i decided i'd rather stay with sarah for a bit, anyways. 

but, i lost access to my computer and recording interface...

as such, i called up my friend greg, who had been using the tascam. i mean, i didn't need it - i had the soundblaster live interface. but, now i did. proto-anarchist jessica knew how to distribute property efficiently. the only reasonable timeframe when i would have made this recording is therefore when i was staying with sarah, after i picked up the item from greg (who got a little bit annoyed about it) - which would have been the fall of 2003.

in the end, i just forgot about this recording, and am kind of wondering where the tape with "like divine amoebas" went, as i have more developed memories around recording that track than this one. i mean, this doesn't actually go anywhere just quite yet, even if the dual guitars are kind of harmonically interesting as intertwined sections. that said, this is my next major recording project, as well, and it will form the missing piece of my 8th record (a massive 2xlp set of lengthy pieces, all four of them labeled as symphonies) when it's done.

i will probably do something further with this exact recording, though, as i finally work out the lost symphony. as it is, as rough and unfinished as it is, it's easy enough to extrapolate my mindset at the time, in this kind of dour gira-influenced dirge through this dissonant harmonic cycle of down strokes.

if this is from late 2003 as it must be then it is by far the earliest recording of it that i have. i tried to record it in late 2004 and over 2005, but got distracted and ended up writing xenophanes, instead. so, this comes in last in the sequence of four intertwined symphonic works, but it was actually meant to be the third piece, before xenophanes interjected itself in between. and, that's why it got lost - i pivoted out of the trivial group before i finished it, as i so often did back then. and so often do still now....

are there further demos? well, i can't answer that question thoroughly until i'm sure what happened to the other tape. i digitized it in early 2004, so i haven't lost anything in being unable to locate it. but, i'm sort of sure that it was actually around, too.

for now, these are the only two tracks i have from that brief phase, both demoes of songs that would be completed later and elsewhere, and this is the document i can construct.

by my count, this should end up as inri077 and is essentially now done - along with inri075, inri078, inri079, inri080, inri081, inri082, inri084 and inri085. it is inri076 that will need the attention and could take me most of the summer to complete. and, that will take me up to the summer of 2004. inri083 (impressionist jazz punk, first take) and inri086 (cycles per second lp) will then require some thought as to how to approach.

new upload:


full ep, so far:

this is going to be a temp install because i'm still testing the ram - which seems to be fine, so far. i think the board was just dusty...

alright, so i got through one stack of cds and all of the cassettes, save one, and i'm deciding to go ahead and reinstall rather than continue filing because i have to to archive the cassette. there have been some minor hardware changes that will require updating the script, but i guess i'll have to just deal with it.

this machine has been in a broken state for years, as i spent a very long time troubleshooting what i decided in the end was an environmental signals problem. so, i ripped everything to do with the windows xp subsystem out and just finished the last mixes i was dealing with over asio drivers. and want to put it back, now.

i simply don't know what the signals are like down here, and am long overdue to find out.

the install is automated but it's lengthy so that's likely the morning.

i've come to tolerate hippies.

but, i'll never like them.

today's post is inri056, the single for the track time.

as mentioned, the suggestion that i ought to write folk music hit me as a sort of a mind fuck, as i didn't actually listen to folk music. i consequently had to kind of recalibrate myself, and i'll admit i like a good challenge, but i ultimately had to draw on some of the post-punk, progressive and psychedelic music that i actually understood, and not this weird white bourgeois thing that i had no real meaningful grasp of. in hindsight, i realize that sean had like jefferson airplane and the beegees around the house, in place of the crimson and genesis and floyd i had lying around, so he was able to conceptualize this in ways that i had always culturally othered. again: that wasn't clear to me then, and he may not have been aware just how not into hippie culture i really was, at the time. i mean, he knew i was an old timey punk rocker, but you'd have had to pick at the surface to get me to go into an anti-hippie rant and i doubt that actually happened.

is the result compelling? i think it is, but this is about as much as i could have squeezed out of this, and i'm already breaching the walls as it's unfolding. i quickly found myself getting bored with what sean wanted and missing jam sessions, myself...

so, these tracks kind of sat, as i felt kind of stuck. i had ideas, but they didn't fit into this bullshit folk thing, and i resented being stifled, even if i was stifling myself. i always knew i had to finish them without sean, eventually.

in the end, the b-side here (psi) was left unaltered because it's just too good a pairing to disassemble (intentionally or not, the demo ended up done in the end, after all. that happens sometimes.), but the primary track was completely remastered and blown up into something else, entirely. the way this was rebuilt was really as a consequence of the fact that the constituent tracks sounded outstanding through remastering plugins. i put the guitar part through a reverb and slowed it down a little and it just caved my head in; i put the bass solo through an amp simulator, and it just came to life. i guess it demonstrates how powerful the tune might have been even at the time, if i was still approaching it from the more creative perspective i was with clarity, rather than trying to tone it down to be more palatable for a pop audience.  

don't get me wrong: sean's vocals near the end of the track are pretty epic, but it's not a coincidence that this could have been played in between a radiohead song and a smashing pumpkins song on a modern rock radio station in 2002 and his vocals are otherwise reflective of the fact that that's really where his head was at, and i was consequently all of a sudden in the unwanted situation of just trying to manufacture a product for the market....

but, of all of the saves i did over this period, this save is perhaps the most substantive - i took a competent if unremarkable pop song and turned it into a real psychedelic gem, as i had long intended to do. so, get some headphones, please - this is some lush shit.

=====

time & psi were partially a rejection of the folk idea in favour of glossy, somewhat experimental pop. i realized that it was reasonable to move in a more commercial direction, but folk wasn't something i understood well, so it was a weird direction for me to be moving in. experimental or psychedelic pop, on the other hand, was something i had a solid grasp on... 

time had been initially recorded in the fall and was remixed in late february to integrate a drum part. no original files exist. psi was recorded quickly in early march. 

the track, as it existed in rabit, was a conscious pop compromise. i had ideas that weren't explored to keep it poppy and that have been expanded upon in the remixes. 

the time machine is added here as a bonus track. it's based on an earlier classical guitar composition that was always meant to be reinterpreted as an idm tune and finally was in early 2014. the thematic overlap makes it relevant, but there is otherwise no connection between the two songs. 

i started working on what would become my seventh symphony very shortly after the material on this ep was completed, and it really represents the point where i lost interest in rabit as a concept, under pressure to continue moving in a direction i didn't have any interest in. there are folk and psych versions of the track; sean never caught on to the psych version, and i never had my heart in the folk version. there were final folk demos recorded as late as the fall, but the disconnect was not solvable. the vocal version of the seventh symphony is in some way a corollary of but is ultimately too separate from these files to include here. psi & time, together, consequently comprise what is the fourth and final ("psychedelic pop") phase of rabit is wolf. 

written & recorded in late 2001 and early 2002 and mixed in early 2002 and late 2014. released on nov 19, 2014. expanded, re-released and finalized on nov 2, 2017. as always, please use headphones. 

the 2014 instrumental version (tracks 1 &2) appears on my sixth record, jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj^2 (inri063): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj-2 

the 2002 vocal mix appears on the rabit is wolf demo (inri057): 

jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/rabit-is-wolf 

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 (2002, 2014, 2017). 

released march 10, 2002 

j - electric & acoustic guitars, bass, synthesizers, digital effects & treatments, drum manipulations, programming, digital wave editing, loops, sound design, production, composition. 

sean - vocals, lyrics (3,7) 

greg - drum performance sample source (1-3, 5-6) 

the rendered electronic orchestra on track 8 includes acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, brass, orchestra hit, drum machine, electronic drum kit, nylon guitar, electric guitar, synthesizer effects, music box, piano, bells and mellotron.