regarding this piece, my memory is blurry; yet, i have a vivid recollection of playing parts of it for my guitar teacher on a sunny day, where there was still snow on the ground. it's funny how we remember seemingly irrelevant details, but i guess the atmosphere of the performance is important because the performance is. that would date it to roughly march, 2001.
i switched the piece from classical guitar to piano halfway through writing it, and vaguely remember thinking that an impossible interval had something to do with it (a specific c# cannot be hit on a standard classical). yet, that doesn't change the fact that it's guitar music. the counterpoint is very guitar.
to further complicate things, i've long wanted to turn the piece into a jazzy idm romp. it has a kind of a jingly feel to it that belongs in the warp records sphere.
conceptually, the time machine aspect referred simply to the slowed down guitar chords at the beginning of the song. if you play it a certain way, it sounds like time is collapsing in on itself. or, so i thought, anyways. the various versions i have created here have made an attempt to take that idea to it's logical conclusion. it's a mix of the vision i had at the time and a bit of hindsight.
written early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. final render completed on july 5, 2014. as always, please use headphones.
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-time-machine-5
Thursday, January 8, 2015
stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides (vst mix) (for thru)
this is one of the tracks that i can't date well. i do, however, remember working on it during the winter, which means it must have been late '00 or early '01. i'm going to consequently deduce that it must have been what i was working on over the 2000 christmas break and date it coming out right after it.
actually, i have another reason to date it in early '01 rather than late '00: the introductory piano part was recorded live into my notation program on my dx100, which i was given over christmas (maybe a little before; it was a cheap garage sale pickup) to act as a controller for my recently broken jx-8p, that i had tried to take apart over the summer to clean a sticky key (a common problem with mid-80s roland analog synths) but failed and left keyless. it's still keyless. yet, the dx still drives it....
that introductory piano part formed the basis of the track, which built itself up fairly quickly. somewhere, i lost the nwc file by saving it as midi, which ruined all the formatting. it's been sitting on my drive ever since.
thematically, the track is meant to orchestrate a feeling of claustrophobia with society pushing down on you too hard. it's meant to transmit a feeling of existential dread. at the time, i really felt stuck with life in general and not sure how i was going to get out of it..
written late 2000 & early 2001. initial instrumentation and render completed mar 7, 2014. minor instrumentation changes to facilitate a small wind section were implemented in late april, 2014. final render completed on may 3, 2014. as always, please use headphones.
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/stuck-in-the-middle-of-an-alley-closing-in-on-all-sides-5
actually, i have another reason to date it in early '01 rather than late '00: the introductory piano part was recorded live into my notation program on my dx100, which i was given over christmas (maybe a little before; it was a cheap garage sale pickup) to act as a controller for my recently broken jx-8p, that i had tried to take apart over the summer to clean a sticky key (a common problem with mid-80s roland analog synths) but failed and left keyless. it's still keyless. yet, the dx still drives it....
that introductory piano part formed the basis of the track, which built itself up fairly quickly. somewhere, i lost the nwc file by saving it as midi, which ruined all the formatting. it's been sitting on my drive ever since.
thematically, the track is meant to orchestrate a feeling of claustrophobia with society pushing down on you too hard. it's meant to transmit a feeling of existential dread. at the time, i really felt stuck with life in general and not sure how i was going to get out of it..
written late 2000 & early 2001. initial instrumentation and render completed mar 7, 2014. minor instrumentation changes to facilitate a small wind section were implemented in late april, 2014. final render completed on may 3, 2014. as always, please use headphones.
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/stuck-in-the-middle-of-an-alley-closing-in-on-all-sides-5
at
18:02
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
that's an incredibly immature cat, with no concept of personal property. you expect a puppy to act like that. but a grown cat? no. it's supposed to be the adult in the room...
at
04:12
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
you know, it's really remarkable. as hard-right as this administration has been been, and as hard-right as successive administrations have been for decades, the media continues to push them from even further right. is there any end to this continual rightward movement of the center?
but, the discussion on israel demonstrates how important it is to have a policy wonk in this position rather than a pr person, and i hope this is corrected in the next administration. i'm not sure if she got this job as a favour or because the administration legitimately wanted a pr person. but, being unable to express the administration's position on this matter is a point of failure that has no end point but confused messaging.
whatever your views on the conflict (and i'm far more empathetic to the palestinian struggle than the reporters in this room), the logic underlying the line of questioning is beyond warped. it's ultimately rooted in the base assumption that the united states has sovereign control over palestine. one could not coherently arrive at these questions without this core imperialist assumption. the logic suggesting that the state department can provide incentives by dropping support is the kind of thing that makes sense in the context of like the american civil war or something, and even there is going to come up against dramatic opposition from states rights supporters. the key is sovereignty. washington had sovereignty over virginia. it doesn't have sovereignty over palestine. trying to apply this kind of model to the behaviour of an independent, sovereign state (and this applies equally well to some of the questions about syria) is the kind of warped nineteenth century logic that led to the first world war.
the american position here - and this goes back to at least carter - is to try and engage the "moderate" palestinians, for the precise reason that it's well understood that completely cutting them off is going to send them to the arms of hamas. you cut the funding, that's what's going to happen. not less rocket attacks, but more of them. and without getting into the hypocrisy in too much detail, it's worthwhile to point out that it doesn't seem to have even crossed anybody's mind that the same logic applies to israeli attacks on palestine, which are always considerably more catastrophic. the more you isolate israel, the worse the attacks become. both of these things are demonstrable from shifts in policy over the last fifty years.
so, yes, you have to engage with the "technocratic government" if you want to prevent them from working with hamas. cutting them off will force them to work more closely with hamas, because it will then become their only option. that's the entire fucking point of the strategy.
and, it's imperative that the state department can put somebody in this position that can explain that, rather than let the hare-brained analysis of these dipshit reporters stand up without challenge.
but, the discussion on israel demonstrates how important it is to have a policy wonk in this position rather than a pr person, and i hope this is corrected in the next administration. i'm not sure if she got this job as a favour or because the administration legitimately wanted a pr person. but, being unable to express the administration's position on this matter is a point of failure that has no end point but confused messaging.
whatever your views on the conflict (and i'm far more empathetic to the palestinian struggle than the reporters in this room), the logic underlying the line of questioning is beyond warped. it's ultimately rooted in the base assumption that the united states has sovereign control over palestine. one could not coherently arrive at these questions without this core imperialist assumption. the logic suggesting that the state department can provide incentives by dropping support is the kind of thing that makes sense in the context of like the american civil war or something, and even there is going to come up against dramatic opposition from states rights supporters. the key is sovereignty. washington had sovereignty over virginia. it doesn't have sovereignty over palestine. trying to apply this kind of model to the behaviour of an independent, sovereign state (and this applies equally well to some of the questions about syria) is the kind of warped nineteenth century logic that led to the first world war.
the american position here - and this goes back to at least carter - is to try and engage the "moderate" palestinians, for the precise reason that it's well understood that completely cutting them off is going to send them to the arms of hamas. you cut the funding, that's what's going to happen. not less rocket attacks, but more of them. and without getting into the hypocrisy in too much detail, it's worthwhile to point out that it doesn't seem to have even crossed anybody's mind that the same logic applies to israeli attacks on palestine, which are always considerably more catastrophic. the more you isolate israel, the worse the attacks become. both of these things are demonstrable from shifts in policy over the last fifty years.
so, yes, you have to engage with the "technocratic government" if you want to prevent them from working with hamas. cutting them off will force them to work more closely with hamas, because it will then become their only option. that's the entire fucking point of the strategy.
and, it's imperative that the state department can put somebody in this position that can explain that, rather than let the hare-brained analysis of these dipshit reporters stand up without challenge.
at
03:51
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
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