i play pretty close attention to global conflict spots and i don't even pretend to have a solid grasp of what's happening there, with muslims fighting christians and blacks and arabs and europeans fighting each other, and china fighting the united states, and corporations fighting each other and governments competing over resources to export and a dozen different tribal groups all mixed up in it...it makes syria seem easy to understand in comparison...
the one thing i think i get is that, despite all the myriad forces fighting for control, it's only the gangs on the ground that actually have any control, and they've turned war into a mercenary business. the ideologies are really just a gloss. they're for hire. and that's the devastating reality on the ground.
http://www.msf.org.uk/article/central-african-republic-arriving-midst-violence
Saturday, December 21, 2013
this is legit, and legally binding in iran. there's been some establishment propaganda recently trying to rationalize it away as mere words, but that kind of doesn't add up as consistent with their own propaganda - is iran a totalitarian theocracy or not?
the reality is that they're not building anything.
http://www.ww4report.com/node/929
the reality is that they're not building anything.
http://www.ww4report.com/node/929
at
21:59
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
1) smash up a google bus
2) ????????
3) communism
i suppose it's a shocking way to get the issue covered. unfortunately, the kind of press this produces is
"luddite bay area idiots go tourettes on taxpaying citizens"
it's not a question of supporting or condemning them. i'm very vocally of the opinion that rent is too high, but i blame property owners and not workers. i certainly don't blame "techies". the tactic is too uninformed, counteractive and bluntly stupid to get to the point of asking that question.
i mean, if you're opposed to pipelines do you attack a ketchup factory and then claim diversity of tactics? there's no sense in this. it's just derp.
http://pando.com/2013/12/20/breaking-protesters-attack-google-bus-in-west-oakland-smashing-window/
of course, this has all the signs of infiltration by the cops in the sense that it was a random act. the anti-gentrification groups (and i hate that concept, as it enforces class division instead of fighting against it and shifts the target of attack from people who own property to people who rent it) all expressed shock and confusion.
i mean, this is what cops do. they've been doing it since bismarck. it's deeply documented. the derp of it all is hard to explain through other means.
we shouldn't be reducing the issue to increasing living conditions OR maintaining livable rent, then condemning wide swaths of the city to crime-infested and impoverished slums. we should be demanding increased living conditions (through a combination of community work and investment) AND livable rent, possibly through cooperatives. that requires refocusing the attack on property owners.
there should ultimately be an attempt to build solidarity with these tech workers to try and convince them to help create low rent solutions, possibly through subsidization programs involving tactics like the state buying up property. these are workers. they pay rent themselves. they're not likely to lack empathy on the issue.
attacking them solidifies feelings of us v them, creating arbitrary divisions that are not actually class divisions. it pits proletariat against lumpenproletariat. smart socialists understand that the lumpenproletariat needs to form the infantry for proletariat revolt because employed workers are too co-opted by capital to form a revolutionary class of their own. so, who benefits by turning them against each other?
....and, no, you can't scare them out of the neighbourhood; they have riot cops, you have sticks, that's delusional.
so, it just creates division across a dispossessed front when the focus should be on building solidarity against bosses and property owners.
if it's not the cops, these people need better class politics and it's up to the anti-gentrification groups to make sure they get that education.
2) ????????
3) communism
i suppose it's a shocking way to get the issue covered. unfortunately, the kind of press this produces is
"luddite bay area idiots go tourettes on taxpaying citizens"
it's not a question of supporting or condemning them. i'm very vocally of the opinion that rent is too high, but i blame property owners and not workers. i certainly don't blame "techies". the tactic is too uninformed, counteractive and bluntly stupid to get to the point of asking that question.
i mean, if you're opposed to pipelines do you attack a ketchup factory and then claim diversity of tactics? there's no sense in this. it's just derp.
http://pando.com/2013/12/20/breaking-protesters-attack-google-bus-in-west-oakland-smashing-window/
of course, this has all the signs of infiltration by the cops in the sense that it was a random act. the anti-gentrification groups (and i hate that concept, as it enforces class division instead of fighting against it and shifts the target of attack from people who own property to people who rent it) all expressed shock and confusion.
i mean, this is what cops do. they've been doing it since bismarck. it's deeply documented. the derp of it all is hard to explain through other means.
we shouldn't be reducing the issue to increasing living conditions OR maintaining livable rent, then condemning wide swaths of the city to crime-infested and impoverished slums. we should be demanding increased living conditions (through a combination of community work and investment) AND livable rent, possibly through cooperatives. that requires refocusing the attack on property owners.
there should ultimately be an attempt to build solidarity with these tech workers to try and convince them to help create low rent solutions, possibly through subsidization programs involving tactics like the state buying up property. these are workers. they pay rent themselves. they're not likely to lack empathy on the issue.
attacking them solidifies feelings of us v them, creating arbitrary divisions that are not actually class divisions. it pits proletariat against lumpenproletariat. smart socialists understand that the lumpenproletariat needs to form the infantry for proletariat revolt because employed workers are too co-opted by capital to form a revolutionary class of their own. so, who benefits by turning them against each other?
....and, no, you can't scare them out of the neighbourhood; they have riot cops, you have sticks, that's delusional.
so, it just creates division across a dispossessed front when the focus should be on building solidarity against bosses and property owners.
if it's not the cops, these people need better class politics and it's up to the anti-gentrification groups to make sure they get that education.
at
21:21
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
publishing first remaster & re-release of inri (inri015)
so, this is completely, totally done now, no going back to it. i
boosted the bass in a few places and actually reverted back to the cd
rip for a few of the sound collages. i think it sounds pretty good,
actually, for the most part.
there's one specific track, the 8th, on the second demo that is causing me headaches. the mix is just so saturated and muddy that i'm constantly getting information overload listening to it. i'm having a hard time building reference points. i want this done with by the end of the day, so i can move on, so soon.
====
it took a little longer than i wanted it to, but i've finally got this cleaned up to a final state.
....and now that it is mastered decently and has had a handful of bad decisions removed, i have to say it holds up fairly well. when comparing it to other late 90s electro-rock hybrids, it carves out a really unique space in it's exploration of more abstract electronics. i'm not content to recycle depeche mode or new order yet again; i want to mix in elements of glitch, throw in sound collages and even get a little proggy sometimes. really, i wish there were more people working in this removed a space, both then and now. it's really rather refreshingly creative.
the record/demo bounces back and forth between "songs" and "experiments". while some of the songs are more compelling than others, the more consistently interesting material is actually the experiments.
where it drags is in the vocals, but only to an extent. the eighth track is indefensibly bad; incoherent to the point that i don't even remember what it was about, if it was about anything at all. the rest of it is valid, even when it's trite, because it's real. that is to say that it sounds like i'm 17 and less than well-adjusted. if it could be better than it is, it would lack the authenticity of being a demo produced by a troubled teenager. i might not articulate my feelings of being useless at a very high level of thought or with much compelling poetry, but i'm certainly feeling them and that feeling certainly gets across in my unique and goofy sort of way. likewise, when i go into juvenile shock rock i am actually convincingly juvenile and convincingly shocking (unless i'm trying to be ridiculous, in which case i pull that off just as well).
that means you have to listen to it from a certain distance because a big part of what you're listening to is the spectacle of a demented child being demented, but when you do that it comes off as some of the most idiosyncratic leftfield synth pop i'm aware of. you've never heard anything quite like this.
so, if i could remove the 8th track without killing the flow of the disc, i would. beyond that, the edits that i've made have left me comfortable with throwing this out there as it is - under the existing caveats.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-lp
====
my first cd demo represents a dramatic shift in sound that, at the time, was meant to be permanent but that ended up being merely a step in a long journey. on one hand, the shift in sound reflected my changing tastes away from alternative rock and towards industrial music. on another level, it was a return to my childhood roots in 80s synthpop. i was also expanding my tastes into glitch, noise and what could be called "musique concrete".
the shift to using drum machines was dominant in the new sound, as was the reality that i had a synthesizer available to me starting in the beginning of 1998. another major factor was the use of a pc. however, my main songwriting tool remained the guitar and these are still mostly guitar-driven pieces.
the guitar work is one of the things that separates the sound from a typical industrial aesthetic. i've never been a fan of heavy metal and largely shied away from creating that kind of thing. yet, i found myself connecting more with psychedelic guitar at this point than punk rock. industrial psych generally implies something like trance, but it need not to. industrial hendrix? well, maybe it ends up sounding more like synth pop, which has historical roots in psychedelic music and progressive rock. the point is that the music does manage to carve out a unique space between industrial music and synth pop that i don't know of any clear comparisons to. people have suggested mid-period swans, the legendary pink dots and nine inch nails - only the last of which was a significant influence, and none of which are really that close. a better comparison, although still not a significant influence at this time, would be joy division - who would become a significant influence after this phase. my actual influences at the time would have been more like brian eno (through his 70s and 90s work with david bowie, as well as his work with u2), early prog (genesis/floyd/crimson), peter gabriel, the beatles, radiohead, the smashing pumpkins, REM, sonic youth, the tea party and a bit of contemporary electronic music (prodigy, nin, coil, foetus, autechre, nitzer ebb, ministry, econoline crush, gravity kills, stabbing westward, skinny puppy and side projects). the sense of humour is coming from frank zappa and matt groening, if they are not actually the same person. i wasn't listening to much tears for fears, i don't think, but you can hear them lurking underneath everything.
some of these songs are reworked versions of tracks i had recorded previously. in almost all cases, i consider the versions here (and on the follow-up demo, inriched) to be the authoritative versions of these tracks.
the demo is consciously constructed to alternate between "conventional songs" and "experimental pieces", although both definitions are stretched. it generally takes the form of connecting passages. it's meant to give the record the feel of a cohesive work rather than a collection of songs.
lyrically, i'm still a teenager, but i'm starting to grow into myself a little more. there are still some points of embarrassment, but it's really only the 8th track that is causing me any serious grief. my singing style has changed quite a bit though - most of the lyrics here are in a spoken word style, rather than sung. it's partially the result of insecurities with my voice, but it's mostly due to the shift to something electronic. i found the dead pan vocal delivery more appropriate. it's something that stuck with me though until relatively recently.
some of this material was written as far back as 1994, but was only sequenced in the second half of 1997 and recorded in the first half of 1998. unfortunately, i decided that the songs sounded better in mp3 and consequently compressed everything before burning. i understand now that i was hobbling together a crude mastering process, but it means (unfortunately) that the closest thing i have to the finished tracks are low quality mp3s and a cd-r. these tracks were taken off of a cd-r and run through digital post-production in dec, 2013 in a process that also included minimal editing (mostly the removal of badly placed simpsons samples). this is my first official record; as always, please use headphones.
credits:
j - guitars, effects, bass, synthesizers, drum programming, sequencing, sampling, vocals, cool edit synthesis, windows 95 sound recorder, found sounds, strategies, soundraider, hammerhead, sound design, metronome, digital wave editing, production
released june 20, 1998
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-lp
there's one specific track, the 8th, on the second demo that is causing me headaches. the mix is just so saturated and muddy that i'm constantly getting information overload listening to it. i'm having a hard time building reference points. i want this done with by the end of the day, so i can move on, so soon.
====
it took a little longer than i wanted it to, but i've finally got this cleaned up to a final state.
....and now that it is mastered decently and has had a handful of bad decisions removed, i have to say it holds up fairly well. when comparing it to other late 90s electro-rock hybrids, it carves out a really unique space in it's exploration of more abstract electronics. i'm not content to recycle depeche mode or new order yet again; i want to mix in elements of glitch, throw in sound collages and even get a little proggy sometimes. really, i wish there were more people working in this removed a space, both then and now. it's really rather refreshingly creative.
the record/demo bounces back and forth between "songs" and "experiments". while some of the songs are more compelling than others, the more consistently interesting material is actually the experiments.
where it drags is in the vocals, but only to an extent. the eighth track is indefensibly bad; incoherent to the point that i don't even remember what it was about, if it was about anything at all. the rest of it is valid, even when it's trite, because it's real. that is to say that it sounds like i'm 17 and less than well-adjusted. if it could be better than it is, it would lack the authenticity of being a demo produced by a troubled teenager. i might not articulate my feelings of being useless at a very high level of thought or with much compelling poetry, but i'm certainly feeling them and that feeling certainly gets across in my unique and goofy sort of way. likewise, when i go into juvenile shock rock i am actually convincingly juvenile and convincingly shocking (unless i'm trying to be ridiculous, in which case i pull that off just as well).
that means you have to listen to it from a certain distance because a big part of what you're listening to is the spectacle of a demented child being demented, but when you do that it comes off as some of the most idiosyncratic leftfield synth pop i'm aware of. you've never heard anything quite like this.
so, if i could remove the 8th track without killing the flow of the disc, i would. beyond that, the edits that i've made have left me comfortable with throwing this out there as it is - under the existing caveats.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-lp
====
my first cd demo represents a dramatic shift in sound that, at the time, was meant to be permanent but that ended up being merely a step in a long journey. on one hand, the shift in sound reflected my changing tastes away from alternative rock and towards industrial music. on another level, it was a return to my childhood roots in 80s synthpop. i was also expanding my tastes into glitch, noise and what could be called "musique concrete".
the shift to using drum machines was dominant in the new sound, as was the reality that i had a synthesizer available to me starting in the beginning of 1998. another major factor was the use of a pc. however, my main songwriting tool remained the guitar and these are still mostly guitar-driven pieces.
the guitar work is one of the things that separates the sound from a typical industrial aesthetic. i've never been a fan of heavy metal and largely shied away from creating that kind of thing. yet, i found myself connecting more with psychedelic guitar at this point than punk rock. industrial psych generally implies something like trance, but it need not to. industrial hendrix? well, maybe it ends up sounding more like synth pop, which has historical roots in psychedelic music and progressive rock. the point is that the music does manage to carve out a unique space between industrial music and synth pop that i don't know of any clear comparisons to. people have suggested mid-period swans, the legendary pink dots and nine inch nails - only the last of which was a significant influence, and none of which are really that close. a better comparison, although still not a significant influence at this time, would be joy division - who would become a significant influence after this phase. my actual influences at the time would have been more like brian eno (through his 70s and 90s work with david bowie, as well as his work with u2), early prog (genesis/floyd/crimson), peter gabriel, the beatles, radiohead, the smashing pumpkins, REM, sonic youth, the tea party and a bit of contemporary electronic music (prodigy, nin, coil, foetus, autechre, nitzer ebb, ministry, econoline crush, gravity kills, stabbing westward, skinny puppy and side projects). the sense of humour is coming from frank zappa and matt groening, if they are not actually the same person. i wasn't listening to much tears for fears, i don't think, but you can hear them lurking underneath everything.
some of these songs are reworked versions of tracks i had recorded previously. in almost all cases, i consider the versions here (and on the follow-up demo, inriched) to be the authoritative versions of these tracks.
the demo is consciously constructed to alternate between "conventional songs" and "experimental pieces", although both definitions are stretched. it generally takes the form of connecting passages. it's meant to give the record the feel of a cohesive work rather than a collection of songs.
lyrically, i'm still a teenager, but i'm starting to grow into myself a little more. there are still some points of embarrassment, but it's really only the 8th track that is causing me any serious grief. my singing style has changed quite a bit though - most of the lyrics here are in a spoken word style, rather than sung. it's partially the result of insecurities with my voice, but it's mostly due to the shift to something electronic. i found the dead pan vocal delivery more appropriate. it's something that stuck with me though until relatively recently.
some of this material was written as far back as 1994, but was only sequenced in the second half of 1997 and recorded in the first half of 1998. unfortunately, i decided that the songs sounded better in mp3 and consequently compressed everything before burning. i understand now that i was hobbling together a crude mastering process, but it means (unfortunately) that the closest thing i have to the finished tracks are low quality mp3s and a cd-r. these tracks were taken off of a cd-r and run through digital post-production in dec, 2013 in a process that also included minimal editing (mostly the removal of badly placed simpsons samples). this is my first official record; as always, please use headphones.
credits:
j - guitars, effects, bass, synthesizers, drum programming, sequencing, sampling, vocals, cool edit synthesis, windows 95 sound recorder, found sounds, strategies, soundraider, hammerhead, sound design, metronome, digital wave editing, production
released june 20, 1998
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-lp
at
08:00
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
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