soiled rug on a concrete floor basement (2000-2001)
i didn't know it at the time, but my parents actually didn't have nearly as much money as they liked to pretend they did, they just borrowed absurd amounts, and were able to convince people to let them borrow it as long as they had two incomes. but, the company my dad worked for relocated around the year 2000, which sent him back to school over 2001-2002. they had to downsize, which meant i had to relocate from this posh three room suite into an unfinished basement, with cracks in the floor and a house fly infestation, to boot.
they still had leverage in their mortgage, though, and they managed to buy some property in a good area for cheap and then sell it off to somebody that wanted to rebuild, which let them move back up the ladder within a few years and eventually into a mansion that they couldn't afford. i don't know why this was so important to them, but it's not uncommon amongst people born in the late 50s, this "generation jones" mentality, where it's absolutely imperative to seem like you have money, even if you're driven hopelessly into debt in order to do it.
so, everything disappeared in the course of about a week - the drum kit was sold, the piano was sold and the house was sold along with it. i kept the things that were mine, which was a large percentage of the items that had built up, but i ended up in a 10x10 room, and fighting off the flies. this kind of dramatic shift in perceived wealth is something i'd already been through a few times (i grew up with my mom, who lived in a rent-subsidized townhouse) and would go through a few more; it's kind of indicative of reality, for me. i could very well go through it a few more times, too...
so, there's no new fancy gear in the next few basements, just a lot of use out of what i actually had.
- the one new piece of gear that shows up in this basement is a dx100, which my dad found for dollars at a garage sale. near the end of my stay in the last basement, i took the jx-8p apart to fix a stuck key, and i couldn't get it put back together again. listen - i didn't break it, it was already broken. but, i needed a controller for it, now, and the dx100 was ideal. i also used the dx100 itself in a lot of the rabit is wolf material, most of which was started in this basement.
- i sold my main classical guitar in 2003. a second mini classical guitar appears in this basement, which was purchased at a garage sale. i still have this one, and it's frankly better suited for my freakishly small hands.
- an old 12-string acoustic guitar made by a budget guitar company from japan was found underneath the stairs, apparently left by the previous owners, which i then inherited. my sister appears to have stolen this from me when i left it in storage at my parents' house in 2011, probably because she incorrectly deduced it was worth money due to it's age, and she probably sold it for peanuts. in fact, it had a vicious warp in the neck. it's very sad to see what drives people in this world. it's heard in the end of clarity and in strung out.
- there was another no-name guitar found for nothing at around this time that i kept for alternate tunings and shows up on a few tracks. it was also very old, but essentially worth nothing. it also disappeared in 2011.
- i don't remember where the harmonica came from, but it first appears in clarity.
- i think the altec mic first appears here, as well.
- my dad kept buying and selling basses, because he never played them, but pretended he did. so, when he had money, a new bass appeared, and i could play it; when he didn't have money, he'd sell the bass almost immediately. i got fed up and bought a red washburn bass that i hung on to until i left in 2003.
pieces recorded in this basement were:
- little suite
- preludio
- strung out
- give 'em hell, harry
- stress
- me, myself...
- time
- clarity
...but i spent most of the time writing into noteworthy composer, including:
- stuck..
- time machine
- symphony of psilocybin induced madness
- intersection of two identical particles
- existence
it was late 2001 or early 2002 when i ended up in the next basement.
(this post was started on the evening of may 27th and worked on over may 28th, then abandoned on the morning of may 29th as i focused on a number of more personal concerns. i am resuming it and finishing it on june 7th 8th.)
three room basement concept, 1999-2000
my parents moved a lot, and i tended to end up with some kind of space in the basement - be it a finished bedroom, an enclave near the laundry or, in this case, access to two adjacent bedrooms, along with a large open area full of gear.
as before, my dad had a desire to have an open jam space, but nobody ever showed up. this was his last attempt at this, but the initial set-up was absolutely amazing - he put a new maple drum kit in beside a giant grand piano, and a huge fender bass amp (which i still have). i was supposed to get one room and my sister was supposed to get the other, but the sister didn't want to live there (?) so i ended up with both rooms, instead.....at least to start. slowly, my stepmother reclaimed one of the bedrooms as an "exercise room" and the various instruments started getting moved out of the recording area (some into my now cramped bedroom), which was reclaimed as a "family room". this was on some level a tragedy, but the fact of the matter is that nobody was using any of this stuff, except me. but, i sure used it...
so, what have i got to look at here?
- the one extra piece of gear on liquify was a dan electro dd-1 fab tone that was temporarily left in the space by my friend greg. out of all those dorks i knew at the time, greg was the one that actually had some raw musical talent (as a guitarist, a drummer and a singer), but he went through this yoga rebirth anti-pot phase in his early 20s that set him down an extremely different path as a human being, one that we weren't really going to base much commonality around. i fucking hate yoga - it just destroys people, as individuals. i've been through this with too many people. it's a fucking awful cult. he was a legit good guy, though. no, really, he was. but, there was a new greg and an old greg, and i found myself voting for the old greg, the one with silly, flappy hair that did too many mushrooms and played guitar like a jimmy page wannabe, not the one on some bullshit "spiritual journey" to buff up and get laid. we just kind of drifted apart...but i wish there was an explicit greg + j recording, and there isn't. he actually left it in the basement by accident sort of thing, and i mostly used it to create a feedback loop in the bridge as i found it wasn't hot enough to get the tone i wanted (it would have sounded better with a boost in front of it, which i didn't have) and i also realized very quickly that it was ridiculously noisy, and consequently difficult to record in such a way as to allow it to be driven later (amplifying it in cool edit just blew up into noise, and you put a gate on that and ruin it). the distortion on the track was actually mostly created manually in cool edit, over top of a very low send. and then i pasted it back on, after. so, it ends up sounding doubled because it is. i mean, you can tell that that isn't my normal guitar distortion by comparing to the other guitar parts, and the dan electro is in fact the reason why (even if i had to find a way to predrive it, as mentioned). so, it's integrated into a few of the guitars and a component on some of the drums, but i was actually trying to use it as a send on a track when i fed it back accidentally, and that's what really ended up sticking. so, if somebody can find a vst of this, i'll archive it, but i wasn't particularly enamoured with it (good guy greg loved it, though - and it worked well with his good guy riffs).
these things have somewhat of a following, but they're just, like, utter noisy cheese, imo:
...although, as mentioned, i wonder what kind of screech you could get out of it if you put something like an electro harmonix linear power booster in front of it....
if i saw one for less than $20, i'd probably snag it.
- it seems like the first use of the new soundblaster is in the track "tribute", which features me feeding my guitar through the environmental audio processor - and it's easy to see how warped it sounds, almost immediately. it's like instant frippertronics. i was lucky enough to get a new pc as a combo birthday/christmas present, which had the soundblaster live in it. as posted previously, here's a vst emulator of this that i hope works well:
- it was around this time that i started using a leslie rotating speaker emulator fairly frequently. like, on almost every song. it's very heavily utilized on 'stress'. i still install this.
- there was a hyperprism plugin pack that i used extensively from about 1999-2004. this company no longer exists and the files don't appear to be available anywhere online. i do still install these, though.
- i started using a program called "sounder" that lets you generate midi sequences using an interface similar to the video game "pong". you tell the computer which notes to play, so you reduce the randomness to note length and dynamics, while picking the key it's working in - making it sound more like a jazz musicians than a computer. it was the kind of generative app i felt was actually useful, to the point that i was frequently jamming with it. i could never get this to work on xp, not even in a virtual machine, but i intend to reinstall it to the 98 system - in fact, it's one of the reasons i'm doing it. this program formed the basis of the track "entropy", and is used in a number of other places.
- there is some tactical use of an old version of acid at this point to mess with some horn and string samples, but i've always found the interface sort of stifling. yes, i said that. in fact, you'll notice that - i don't make music that is loop based like that (sometimes, the differences are subtle, but everything is live, and it's very consciously so). that said, i more seriously toyed with the idea of using it to build a string library, but even the new computer had problems with using it in any meaningful way due to the program's extremely heavy use of ram. acid is not currently in the list of programs i'm installing on this machine. acid is no longer owned by sony, apparently. you can hear this in "entropy", as well, but you'd never guess it was acid. in the end, i just preferred to write midi scores than try to use samples.
- i picked up a morley pro series wah around this time for pretty cheap but i found the effect to be a little more subtle than what i wanted. i mean, i was hardly interested in doing 80s hair metal whammy dives, but, after playing with direct x filters in cool edit, i wanted a much more dynamic instrument that i could warp like a dj or sound engineer warps filters with their hands, but in real-time with my feet, and found this was really designed to be the opposite of that. there was no doubt a mental disconnect between the world this was made for (southern rock guitarists) and the kind of sounds i was imagining (warped sound effects from contemporary experimental techno, like download). i mean, i knew better, but i guess i didn't. that said, i made some sufficiently demented use of it in the climax to "entropy", as well as in the intro solo to "ignorance is bliss" before i swapped it for a digitech xp-100 a few basements later. the pod has a couple of wah sounds in it; it wouldn't make sense to try to model this in a daw, unless you have the right kind of controller. so, you need hardware here, one way or another.
- audiomulch makes it's first appearance here - try the "v2" sounds in gravity's rainbow, or the jungle drum sequences in the "curious george suite" or the weird sequence at the end of the curious george suite. i still install this, although i don't think i used it over my last recording binge phase (i would expect to use it for cycles/second, along potentially with max, reason and a few other overwhelmingly nerdy things. that's a research project of it's own when i get there.)
- i use a bass sequencer program called "rubber duck" by d-lusion (that is based on a tb-303) on a few tracks for the deny everything period (you can hear it squelching in acidosis, and gravity's rainbow):
- the drum sequencing for "curious george" was done using leaf drums, and took in a number of odd sources, such as a donald duck sample. i also used rubber duck as a source for some of the samples. there was also a "leaf effects".
- the secret effect on the guitar tone in curious george is the "megatrancer" direct x plugin, which i can't find anywhere online or in any of my files just right now.
- i made some use of a generative sound program pushed by brian eno called "koan sound" that has since been purchased by wotja and that i should look further into:
- hammerhead, coagula, granulab and sound raider were used extensively during this period. some of the synths on ignorance is bliss used coagula to generate samples that were then pitched using a soundfont program that came with the soundblaster (vienna?) and performed on the jx-8p.
- there was a program used to generate "ukelele permutations" which was some kind of guitar chord teach-to-play software, but i've forgotten the name of. it might have come with the soundblaster, but i don't remember.
- there is some use of the synthesizer in the soundblaster, as well, just as a midi bank. specifically, the "orchestra hit" is used in ignorance is bliss (and then warped mercilessly in cool edit)
- i also picked up a creamy dreamer, which is a modded russian muff intended to sound like the tone that corgan used in siamese dream. i still have this, and in fact still use it. regarding emulations, there are attempts to pin this sound both in the pod and in guitar rig and i'll leave it at that. i have a regular muff as well, and we'll talk about that a few basements up.
- around this time of his life, my dad tended to disappear on sunday mornings for a few hours. in later years, it was obvious that he was trying to avoid going to church, and he even used routine breakfast with myself as a way out of it (after i had moved out). but, in these years, it's a little less clear what he was really up to. however, he'd often come back with things he'd purchased at garage sales - which ranged from speaker parts to beatles lps to obscure, out-of-print prog cds and whatever else he could get his hands on. it was a hobby, no doubt. and, from time to time, he'd come back with some old guitar effects that cost him a buck or two each, which included the following:
- mxr m-168 stereo flanger, early 80s. i still have this, but it is finnicky and often doesn't work. i think it's a power issue. this is kind of a basic flanger; universal audio emulates the rack version, if you insist on it.
- mxr distortion II, late 70s (the big one, with the plug, in the gold box). i still have this, and it's noisy, but it works - i'm no fan of hair metal, which is what it's associated with, but it gives a good noise rock tone if floored appropriately, as well and is used on numerous recordings from 2000-2002, although i never left it in my normal signal due to the noise. these units are very expensive ($600?), and i don't want to sell mine, but i can't imagine why - they don't sound particularly good. i'd rather use a boss sd-1 for that kind of light overdrive sound as it's a bit tighter. the mxr+ is widely emulated, but the mxr II is kind of obscure. like i say - i'd suggest using an sd-1 for normal use, anyways. but, i like having it around as an oddball secret weapon if i want a particularly noisy, live sound (most of the amped guitars in little suite were done with this, as one example).
- mxr m-102 dyna comp (this was broken on arrival and appears to have disappeared. i think he gave it to his friend larry, actually. so, maybe larry got something in return for his broken phaser, after all.)
- ibanez ge-601 (this was broken on arrival and never fixed. i still have it, though.)
- i picked up a mooger fooger mf-102 ring modulator that spring, hoping to drive it with the morley and get that dramatic foot driven techno-oscillation filter, but it didn't actually work; it just didn't convert to an expression like i hoped. i never got another expression for it. guitarists kind of have their hands busy, so this became an expensive trick item. that said, it is used extensively as a bass (acidosis) and vocal (trepanation nation) processor over the next few years, before i cashed it in as having done it's purpose. it's also become very expensive ($600?), but isn't any more useful than a freeware vst plugin - it's expensive because it says "moog" on it, and likely of little actual functional value to you, unless you're doing very modular synth work. just about any old ring modulator with a carrier signal should be just as good.
i wish i could find a demo with the expression pedal plugged in like i wanted to set up, but what this demo does is really demonstrate how kind of useless the thing really is:
...with the mxr distortion II set up off to the side.
you can hear at least parts of that chain on "entropy", on "ignorance is bliss", on "being a good little monkey" (which uses the ring mod) or on "acidosis", as well as on some tracks recorded in the next basement - like little suite.
and, there's really nothing in there worth looking for a specific emulator for, that i can't get in the pod, or in guitar rig.
- up until this point, my guitar training was in blues and rock music, and i felt i needed something a little deeper, so i started taking classical guitar lessons. i just wanted to get a basic footing before i ran with it on my own. so, there was a classical guitar in the house now, too, which is heard on "acidosis" primarily, until it picks up a little in the next basement. i took about a year's worth of lessons before i stopped. i still had the ibanez, the epiphone sg and the obese strat at my disposal, along with an electric-acoustic.
- a found an electric mandolin at this point at a garage sale that eventually developed some electrical problems and had to be disposed of. it's heard on "acidosis" and "strung out" amongst other things.
- another item i picked up at a garage sale in this period was a bontempi electric air reed organ. this was a noisy, half broken piece of gear that i had to use digital noise reduction to remove the motor from, when recording. it's heard in a number of tracks from 2000-2003 (acidosis, 9:46..., little suite), before my stepmother discarded it under the claim that it was "garbage". sadly. i can get an organ sound from any vst synth, and then mess with it further from there, but nothing quite sounds like this old thing that probably end up in the landfill.
this is similar:
- an ebow was purchased while living in this basement, as well, which i still have. it's heard on "acidosis" amongst other things.
- as mentioned, there was a drum kit in my bedroom at this point (heard on the curious george suite, a commercial break, gravity's rainbow), along with a grand piano a few feet outside of my door (heard on acidosis) and a large fender bass amp (used to record most of the guitars, which i still have).
- there was a peavey bass/keyboard amp (gone) and a cheri guitar amp (still have)
- the wood flute is used in "acidosis" and "book it!"
- the jx-8p is the main synth, still. the ry30 is used sporadically, because the memory was full and i didn't know how to back it up.
- there was a bass, but i don't remember much about it.
- the equalizer i had been hauling around for a few years went belly up around this time, and you can hear me taking advantage of it near the end of "acidosis".
nothing's clicking or whirring, and it's running a little hot, but it always did.
it's not obvious at all what the problem is, so i have to do it the hard way.
this machine was built in 2007. it's an old machine. i don't need it to emulate a quantum computer, but i do just need it to stop freezing.
and, before i do that, even, i should run chkdsks on all four drives in the machine.
it might be bad sata cable or something stupid like that, but i have to strip it right down to figure it out.
alright. so, i don't really want to troubleshoot this machine, but i unfortunately have to as it keeps freezing, and i'm not convinced it's hardware. i simply don't know what the problem is.
there were some periodic freezing issues back in 2015 that i thought was ram, but i'm no longer convinced is. there were also base issues with chipset drivers when i first bought the machine, years ago.
what i'm going to do is reinstall the machine in the most minimal way possible - just the programs integrated on the disc + the drivers for the most minimal hardware configuration possible. and, then i'll bring things in further as i need them, rather than all at once and carefully observe what happens.
i suspect i may need to reprogram the board again like i did in 2014. why do i have to keep reprogramming the board, pigs?
the reality is that there's a lot of software on here that i barely use and that the next phase is not going to be heavy on things like vst synths so much as it's going to be about guitars, actual hardware (like drum heads) and abstract sound design. so, i shouldn't get caught up in getting all of these virtual vstis to work, because i'm probably not going to use them much anyways.
and, once i'm convinced that i've found the problem, i can rerun the script again.
should there be original versions of these records made available?
i've decided to include low bitrate mp3s of the original versions of the first two records as bonus material in the download, and they interact with the html frontend if you care to launch it. when i get to that point, deny everything and ftaa will be released the same way. high quality versions (or the highest quality versions that i have) are also released in the aleph compilations.
the sample collages are also scattered across the singles.
so, the material is available - i haven't deleted anything. but, i'm presenting the recordings as purely instrumental works because that's how i want them interpreted in a final state, moving forwards.
it's up to you as to whether you want to listen to me or not, in the end.
today's post is inri067, the alternate ftaa release, called spoke.
my sample collage phase was from roughly 1998-2004, and i stepped back from adding samples to the music afterwards. it was actually largely a reaction to it being misinterpreted. but, i also just got to a point where i became sort of wary of ruining the music with a political message. i didn't want to get stuck with music that had a political purpose, rather than exist as pure sound art. to me, the ability to separate these things was natural and obvious, so it was sort of a rude awakening to realize that people had difficulties with that sort of abstraction. and, i kind of didn't know what to do with a lot of these pieces for a long time afterwards, as i'd felt i'd sort of ruined a lot of my own work with these abstract social and political messages that nobody really understood - when i wanted them to dig the tunes, first and foremost.
it's a kind of an inversion of punk rock, in a sense. the punks were all about criticizing the rock music culture of their era as bloated and empty, and wanted to reestablish something a little bit more primal - partly by interjecting politics in the place of, like, references to greek mythology, or something. i found myself with the opposite problem - my political references were so opaque that it just baffled people, who struggled to grapple with it, and therefore couldn't enjoy it. referencing oscar wilde would be a step down in abstraction.
i never really wanted to discard all of these sample art collages, and there are indeed a few more on the way. but, when i made the choice to strip all samples and all vocals from the final recordings (with the exception of a few very early sound collages, the war of the worlds sample in ignorance is bliss, a lingering bush sample in curious george, a star trek sample in gravity's rainbow, the electric folk track stress and the poem about afghanistan in like divine amoebas), it left these collages in a limbo. i didn't want them in the records, but i didn't exactly want to delete them, either.
in the end, i think this is the best way to present this, even if it overlaps with the main record sequence in period 2 & 3. three of these tracks come from the deny everything project (which was completed as a sample art project in mid 2000 and stripped entirely of samples by 2014) and three come from the fuel true anarchy in the americas project (which was completed as a sample art project in 2004 and is nearing final reconstruction as a fully instrumental work - it was really done in 2015, i just haven't uploaded it yet). the jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj records in between did not contain any sample art experiments, but were rather either intended as classical music compositions or rock songs fronted by sean. this is consequently comprehensive over the period 1999-2002, and includes the proto-ftaa collage eat my fuck as a bonus.
this cannot be the final version of the ftaa record, but is closer to it's initial vision.
the trivial group material will also be stripped of samples in the end, so there may be a spoke part two dated to around 2007 or 2008. there will also likely be an inricted pt 2 with discarded vocal parts.
=======
the ftaa project, much like it's namesake, was never an idea that was carefully developed, which is very much an anomaly in this discography, where almost everything is developed at such a microscopic level of detail. the idea initially developed as a means to protest the government's response to the 9/11 attacks, from what most people would identify as a libertarian perspective. however, rabit is wolf ended up becoming my main focus in that period, instead, and by the time i got back to the idea, the initial impetus had largely stalled. all activism was necessarily diverted to stopping the war....
....but, i also found myself in a much different reality, starting in late 2002. for the first (and only) time in my life, i had a partner, and it took away most of the time that i would have otherwise spent in music production. on top of that, i found myself working long hours in order both to maintain a dating lifestyle and to deal with real world expenses that the relationship created, and i hadn't ever had to deal with before. i did create some music over 2003, but my head was almost entirely inside of this relationship.
the ftaa project (now inri079) initially completed in may of 2004 and was composed of some of the parts of this recording plus an anti-war song. it will re-release in that space as my 7th record, but as an instrumental recording like the rest of them, thereby jettisoning both these sample collages to their respective singles and the idea of a record of sample collages altogether.
i considered re-releasing the ftaa project as a double with the samples on the other side, but there's something asynchronous about this that i don't like. further, in hindsight, i ended up putting the deny everything recording through more or less the same process, so it makes more sense to combine the jettisoned tracks together into an outtakes disc, and release it at the end of the second period.
another way to look at this recording is to interpret it as a reaction to the presidency of george w. bush, and i've left the tracks in chronological order for that reason. the first two tracks were initially on deny everything (inri041) and have the thematic unity of being a warning regarding the bush presidency, even if the trudeau character sounds more like trump, in the year 2017. the next two tracks were an explicit reaction to the 9/11 attacks. the fifth track takes those ideas to their conclusion, in exploring the thesis that the attacks were the catalyst to end the period of liberal democracy in the united states, and potentially also in it's satellites, and usher in a period of totalitarian rule. as of 2017, that process appears to be nearing it's completion.
(edit: and, as of 2021, we seem to be in the throes of full on fascism due to the pandemic response)
so, this is really the actualization of the intent behind the ftaa project, even if it isn't quite in the form that it was initially released in. as such, it should be viewed as almost an official record - despite the overlap and the historical revisionism.
written and recorded between dec, 1999 and july, 2002, except the hidden track (which was created in the summer of 1998). none of these tracks were remastered or otherwise modified after 2002. disc simultaneously created and finalized as lp016 on nov 26, 2017. as always, please use headphones.
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 (1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2017).
released april 23, 2003
j - guitars (electric, nylon, acoustic), mandolin, electric bass, digital & analog effects processing, synths, sampling, pythagorean sequencing (sounder), drum and other programming, drum manipulations, drum kit, voice, flute, sound design, sound raider, noise generators, cool edit sequencing, digital wave editing, composition, production
sean - ring modulator (5)
greg - drum performance sample source (5)
Monday, June 7, 2021
ok.
so, i really was finishing that gear writeup, seriously. it's a lengthy post, clearly. but, it's necessary to rebuild the 98 machine, amongst other things.
that might actually be why my white blood cells were high...
yeah.
you could take your serum levels up over 65 by popping pill after pill, but that level is considered to be "saturated".
that is, that's the absolute upper range of normal c serum levels - any higher than that, and i'd be overclocking myself.
i got my vitamin c back and it's 65 umol/l - that's about 1.15 mg/dl, which is actually only on the moderate side.
it's a reminder that your body only absorbs so much c and discards the rest, which is the actual reason that trying to take it in large doses via any means other than injection isn't helpful, and just leads to kidney problems, instead.
i take about the maximum healthy amount possible and that's where i'm at...
you can have your opinions and that's whatever - i don't care.
but, there's going to people that are going to fight this. and the state needs to pick it's battles in what it considers a worthwhile use of it's resources.
vaccine certificates are a losing battle for the state that will be defeated by a constitutional challenge, and it should avoid wasting everybody's time with them.
"why did we do all of this, then?"
i dunno.
why did we do this? you tell me - i'm still trying to figure that out.
"was it all for nothing?"
apparently, yeah.
listen - if you don't want covid, then get vaccinated.
personally, i'm not expecting this disease to go away any time soon, and i want to catch a few variants and beat them when i'm young - so i'm more prepared to beat newer variants when i'm older.
if i can cross over into the states without being asked for proof of vaccination, i will.
and, if the canadian government wants to restrict my s. 6 rights by demanding i show proof of vaccination on the way home, i'll see them in court - and i'll win that case, because it's not ambiguous.
the pmo needs to drop the stupid bullshit, stop wasting everybody's time and just open the border without restrictions, immediately.
i'm a canadian citizen, and that gives me the right to leave and re-enter the country at will.
i take that seriously. and, some dead old people aren't a good reason to take that away from me.
listen - i don't care about people coming into the country in any way at all. make them dance the hokey pokey and turn themselves around - i don't care.
but. i have travel rights under s. 6 and i want to exercise them in being able to leave and come back, again. and, i'm getting frustrated and impatient with these continued restrictions on my rights to leave the country.
a big part of the reason that they put menopausal women through hormone replacement therapy is to keep their serum estrogen levels high enough to prevent bone loss, as they can fall to almost zero after menopause. men have a normal range of up to 200 pmol/l, and that is enough for normal bone health. my worst test was 363, which is higher than any cismale could ever expect.
so, this idea that i'm losing bone density due to falling estrogen levels is...i'm not actually there yet. i'm probably not even close.
in fact, with calcium serum levels and serum estradiol levels as high as they are, i should probably be gaining bone density - if moderately.
if i was losing bone density right now, my alp would be high, and it wasn't.
it's probably from smoking and malnutrition, and it's probably longstanding.
i still need to address it aggressively, though - including total cold turkey until i get it back over -1.
alright, let's hope that stays put until i'm finished doing what i'm doing, at least.
what else could be wrong?
i think the drives are fine, but i'm a little iffy on the processor.
and, i vaguely recall needing to reinstall cubase after the script, due to resetting some system files...
well, i recently bought some new lithium batteries, so why not try a brand new one?
no, that didn't do it...
the only thing that ever seems to work with this thing is flashing the bios, and i wish i understood why, exactly.
i messed around with the page file and environment variables, and i'm running a defrag.
i know these are old timey concerns, but it seems like it's either that all of the ram is bad or none of the ram is.
it was stable with 3 gb for quite a while...
yeah, i'm far less convinced that the issue with this thing is related to ram...
i got the board to read all 4 gb, and i'm going to stick with that for a bit. instead, i've unplugged the card reader, because i don't use it in that device anyways.
nobody knows how or why these kids died, or how many years worth of dead kids the mound represents, or really anything, and it's sort of a part of the problem. a good guess is that they probably died of malnutrition, and it's probably decades worth of dead kids, but the reasoning underlying it isn't understood. and, you have to understand that child mortality was a lot higher back then...
i'm not making excuses, it could very well be the worst thing imaginable, i'm just pointing out that you can't jump to the worst conclusions in the absence of any evidence at all.
it would be very useful if the church would share any information it has to set the record straight, if it can - because there's people out there that seem to think that the bishops mowed them down in cold blood with ak47s, or something.
you know, it's really counter-productive if you want to raise awareness around who this guy was and the system he set up.
i'm not as opposed to these things as a lot of other people are, and i don't really care if you find that upsetting. there's a kind of middle point here that i think is the right answer, in the sense that i'm a strong advocate of public education, and i recognize that these cultures....these people believed a lot of things that were not true, and there was a public responsibility to teach them that the things they believed were incorrect. the way it was done was pretty terrible, and how the church of all institutions ended up in charge of it is beyond me, but the premise of public education is sound. and, you can yell and scream at me if you want, but i don't give a fuck.
and, this isn't something that's going to go away - there's always going to be ignorant people, they're always going to congregate in rural or semi-nomadic societies and there's always going to be a need to send them to school. we can't give up on that ideal - we'll be plunging ourselves back into the dark ages. we just need to be more humane about the way we do it, and actually live up to the ideals we're trying to espouse.
again: i don't know who's bright idea it was to put the church in charge of this, but....
yes - if the issue were put up to a vote, and i happened to be around, i'd vote to move the statue into a museum. it's not appropriate to have a statue of this guy much of anywhere.
but, if we forget who this guy is, and what he promoted, and the way he did it, it's just going to happen again. so, we want to preserve these kinds of things in backrooms, and not destroy them.
it sucks not having confidence in your hardware, but i haven't been able to demonstrate that there's anything wrong with any of it, either.
i'm trying to remember if i had this problem before and i don't remember.
however, i vaguely recall figuring this out a while back. i backed up my appdata directory so i copied it back over and the load process was instantly different.
i don't need every single plugin to load every time i launch, what i need is to figure out if i've got a ram issue or not, and there's no easy way to do that....
the immediate concern is just making sure that the plugins i recently downloaded actually launch. so let's hope i can get through that without it freezing further, then try to bring some more ram back in.
of course, the idiot cops seem to think i'm hiding secret messages from the kremlin somewhere, and they seem to keep fucking with my bios, so i might need to get in the habit of clearing my cmos whenever i come in from somewhere in order to get the machine to run properly.
*sigh*.
i've swapped the ram around and it keeps halting, so i'm going to have to shut everything off in cubase to start, then bring it all in one by one.
naw, it crashed with 2 in it, too...
i know i have a questionable stick, but i lost track of which one it was.
so, let's try with 1.
of course, i could also have some unstable plugins, right.
so, i launched cubase to check to see if the eax plugin was loading, and it froze with the third stick in.
i took it out, and it booted.
here's what i don't know right now - is the stick bad, is the board funny or is cubase having difficulty with this hybrid ram channel thing? what i mean is this - if i have two sticks in, it loads them together and if i have four sticks in it loads them in parallel. but, when i put three sticks in, it does this weird in between thing.
i have to experiment with it, but i want to make sure everything is loading first.
in the end, if i decide that one of the sticks is bad, i might have to choose between 2 and 4 gb if i want the machine to run. but, i should be able to get 2x1 gb of ram relatively cheaply nowadays, right?
so, like everything else, the next process is going to be a little bit convoluted.
i want to finish my train of thought regarding all of the extra plugins before i do a narration of the last week of events. so, let me rewind to about ten days ago...
there have been these periodic reports of mysterious tankers showing up in the gulf from iraq or kurdistan for years, and it seems like what's been going on since at least 2003 is that the oil is being sent to the united states under the radar.
then, america claims it's a net producer, supposedly due to fracking. right.
when trump said they should have stolen the oil, maybe he missed the obvious - maybe they did. and, maybe they still are...
so, let me get this straight.
iran is shipping oil to venezuela.
????
let's remember a few things.
1) venezuela is a major oil producer.
2) venezuela's primary customer is the united states.
3) that fact gives the united states tremendous influence in venezuela, regardless of the propaganda otherwise.
4) iran is supposed to be under a fuel blockade.
...and...
5) joe biden was one of the insider democrats that was always suspected of having something to do with iran-contra (and, i suspect there was something like that going on during the obama years, too)
so, while i understand that the narrative here is inevitably going to be about iran defying american hegemony in sending a ship across the ocean, and i even concede that there are reasons to look at it as an act of defiance, the premise of iran risking a nuclear war to send oil to venezuela (of all places) is beyond dubious to the point that it needs to be discarded.
my best guess is that this oil is destined for houston, via venezuela as a stopover.
the next sequence in the discography is a series of compilations that put the various ideas worked out over period 2 (and, in some cases, period 1 & 2) together in a series of different thematic releases. while there's a lot of overlap, these are in some ways the more finished products (excluding the actual records - inri, inriched, inridiculous, deny everything, jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj and jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj^2, as well as the upcoming ftaa and trivial group 2xlp) than the singles as most people are going to prefer to listen to something with a varied tracklisting than a single track reworked a million different ways. i mean, i grew up listening to these abstract nin discs that took a single song and ripped it apart for an hour, and while i never get to those levels of abstraction that's where my head is at for a lot of these extended singles, but i realize that's an obscure thing and an acquired taste. you'd probably rather listen to something like an orchestral works, right? and, so i've constructed this sequence of alternate lps that take each of the official lps to these different places. call them remix lps, then, but you've never heard remix lps quite like this, trust me.
first up is the ry30 + primitive electronics disc (inri066: electronic pieces in a primitive style, with apologies to william orbit) that explores my first electronic compositions from a no-guitar, no-bass, no-vocal perspective, and sort of reclaims them as electronic music works. i made an attempt to avoid the pieces that were composed of steady loops, in favour of the pieces with more detailed programming. in the process, i'm showcasing what you can do with a serious drum machine, if you take the time to actually use it.
this is probably the last specifically delineated inri release (i could not imaging resurrecting the moniker at this point), so it is fitting that it is inri066.
=========
when i sat down to complete my discography in 2013, one of the ideas that immediately jumped out was to try and reinterpret some of the inri tracks from the late 1990s as modern pieces. as i believed that my source tapes were unusable at the time (which i eventually realized was not the case - see inri024), the conditions for this being a workable project would need to be the existence of the original drum tracks, along with the existence of some midi files.
i was gifted my ry30 in the summer of 1997 to compensate for the loss of my drum kit and studio space, but i did not have any recording gear again until christmas. so, i spent the fall programming the drum machine and teaching myself the basics of sequencing and sound design, using the primitive tools i had available to me. by the time i got my four track, as well as my jx-8p, the ry30 was full, and re-recording my first songs was just a matter of transferring the completed material from the electronic equipment to tape. so, i initially considered making a companion ep to inrisampled that would document my time spent programming the ry30 along with my time spent learning how to manipulate sound. the difference between the drum tracks at this stage and the initial collage experiments, however, is that the drum tracks were not complete songs. so, this was abandoned due to the product being a little dry. but, i still wanted to make an ep around the ry30, perhaps by orchestrating the existing companion midi tracks.
this idea then quickly merged with what would become thru (inri070) and eventually discarded itself within itself when it was realized that the existing midi files for the 90s material were too sparse to really utilize, especially in comparison to the midi files from the early 00s. thru was deleted and then resuscitated over the course of 2014 and 2015, eventually releasing in mid 2015 as a 2001-2003 project, leaving the 90s material in the dustbin of my own history.
it was in june, 2015 that i realized that the source tapes were usable after all, and cycled back around to the beginning of the reconstruction in order to complete the relevant tracks as instrumental pieces. this idea kind of recreated itself in the nature of the source tapes, as i had bounced all of the electronics together into the same channel as a mixing step, back in the 90s. so, i found myself with these ready-to-publish electronic tracks right off the tape that incorporated a combination of the ry30 tracks, jx-8p parts, soundblaster programs, zoom 1010 noises and cool edit experiments. all they really needed was a little attention on the mastering.
i flipped this over, in the end: what each of these tracks are is their final album mixes, with the guitar and bass parts deleted (unless the bass was done on a synthesizer). so, there was some post-production added over 2015 in the form of updated soundfonts, digital mastering and digital effects processing. but, these are really flourishes on the existing tracks.
it was at the end of dec, 2015 that further similar electronics-only ry30-centric remixes were creating for some later songs, as well, thereby filling out the disc and closing the project.
i sold my ry30 in may, 2003 to raise money to go to british columbia. my logic was that i'd really maximized what i was going to get out of it, and that i'd already discarded it, anyways: by that time, i'd been writing drum parts in the scorewriter for a few years already, and had barely touched the ry30 in a long time. but, i regret that decision, in hindsight. and, i expect to pick up another one, one day.
originally written, programmed and recorded from 1996-2002. reclaimed & remixed from june to december of 2015. initial completion date was december 31, 2015. disc finally released, closed and finalized on nov 26, 2017. lp015. as always, please use headphones.
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 (1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017).
released april 22, 2003
j - drum & other programming, orchestral & other sequencing, guitar effects, digital effects processing, digital wave editing, synthesizers, loops, vocal noises & relics, sampling, sound design, production
the various rendered electronic orchestras include organ, sitar, bells, synthesizer effects, tuba, saxophone, flute, clarinet, orchestra hit, piano, violin, viola, cello, contrabass and various full string sections.
Sunday, June 6, 2021
today's post is the rabit is wolf boxset, which i went maximal with, as a 2xdvd (or 2xiso) set:
disc 1 is all of the technical rabit releases:
- inri049, inri053-inr057, inri059, inri062 - that is comprehensive
disc 2 is all of the tracks that might have been rabit releases and contain tracks with sean but in the end became something else:
- inri048 (intended cynicide track that became inri058. sean is only on an ourtake.)
- inri058 (started as a rabit demo, but became an ftaa track. sean sings on several demos of the track, but not on the final version.)
- inri061 (starts as a rabit demo and is developed as a jjjjjjjjjjjjjj composition. sean's vocals are only heard on the initial demo, which was never developed)
- inri063 (instrumental, completed versions of rabit is wolf era material, reclaimed as jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj)
- inri065 (first trivial group track & last conceptual rabit piece. "inspired by" sean's suggestion.)
sean's contributions in the form of harmonica and ring modulator parts may end up on further compilations, but that is comprehensive and then some, and i don't rebrand his vocal parts on period-ending compilations. so, if you really dig sean's vocals for whatever reason, this is all of it - all 8.8 gb of it.
=====
purchasing this release comes with the immediate download of the release that you linked to it off of. be sure you make the right choice.
inri048: written in the summer of 2001. remembered over july, 2014. completed august-september, 2014. released sept 24, 2014. expanded, finalized and re-released on oct 16, 2017
inri049: written and recorded in the fall of 2001. released on sept 6, 2014. expanded, re-released and finalized on oct 21, 2017.
inri053: written late 2001 and early 2002. this file is ripped from a cd-r that was burnt around 2002, as that was the option that would produce the most accurate reproduction of the original composition. published without modification on oct 6, 2014. expanded, re-released and finalized as symph006 and lp012 on oct 23, 2017.
inri054: recorded in late 2001 and early 2002. track 6 was constructed in may, 2004 out of files recorded 1999-2001. tracks 1-4 were reconstructed over october, 2014. final mixes were finished on october 18, 2014. released on oct 21, 2014. disc closed on oct 30, 2017.
inri055: written in early 2002 and recorded and mixed in early 2002 and late 2014. released on nov 15, 2014. expanded, re-released & finalized on nov 1, 2017.
inri056: 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.
inri057: written and recorded in late 2001 and early 2002. initially sequenced in may, 2002. re-sequenced and first released in june, 2002. re-released in slightly different forms from 2002-2014. resequenced to mimic the original sequencing and re-released on november 8, 2014. except to sequence the record, these files have not been altered since 2002. disc finalized as lp013 on nov 3, 2017.
inri058: written over 2001 and 2002 and rethought repeatedly between 2002-2014, with no clear resolution in a final mix. reconstructed from source in late 2014 and then rendered at multiple stages to create a series of snapshots. final mixes were completed over the last week of november and the first week of december. released as a two-volume set on dec 7, 2014. the concept was rethought on nov 3, 2017, which led to the inclusion of five more mixes and an expansion to four cds. re-released in four volumes & finalized as symph007 on nov 12, 2017. the raw guitar mix was corrected on jan 6, 2018.
inri059: written and recorded over 2001 and 2002. mildly remixed in november, 2014 to make the tracks more presentable; nothing substantial was altered, and no new sound was recorded. released on november 19, 2014. re-released on physical media and finalized on nov 14, 2017.
inri061: written over the summer of 2002 and initially recorded in the early fall of 2002. additional writing, arranging, recording, production and mixing occurred from dec, 2014 to apr, 2015. released as a two volume set on april 27, 2015. this release was expanded to include a third disc on nov 17, 2017 and filled in with eight new remixes over the next few days. re-released as a slightly rearranged three volume set and finalized on nov 19, 2017.
inri062: this track was written in late 2002 and completed over april and may, 2015. released may 11, 2015. disc finalized on nov 20, 2017.
inri063: these tracks are all based on existing demos from 2001-2002 that were initially intended to be completed with vocal parts and were remixed from july, 2014 to may, 2015 as purely instrumental recordings. released may 2, 2015. disc finalized as lp014 on nov 21, 2017. this is my sixth official record.
inri065: written and recorded in early 2003. transcribed, slightly rearranged, remixed repeatedly and re-rendered repeatedly over may, 2015. released on may 16, 2015. expanded & finalized on nov 25, 2017.
originally created from 2001-2003. this compilation is dated to april 21, 2003. slowly remastered, reconstituted, compiled, reconstructed, released and finalized from 2014-2017. compilation finalized on nov 25, 2017. as always, please use headphones.
released april 21, 2003
j - guitars (electric, acoustic, nylon), electric bass, electric mandolin, orchestral & other sequencing, synthesizers, drum & melodic programming, electric air reed organ, digital piano, flute, regular drum kit, electronic drum kit, sampling, digital and analog effects processing, digital wave editing, sound design, soundscaping, loops, granular synthesis, noise generators, equalization, vocals, vocoders, drum & vocal manipulations, bowls, claps, tables, e-bow, production
sean - vocals (inri048-inri049, inri053-inri059, inri061), harmonica (inri054, inri057, inri063), ring modulator (inri057-inri058), vocal concept (inri062) .
jon - guitar performance (inri048-inri049, inri057)
but, now that we're all anti-catholic, can we make them pay taxes?
things are starting to pick back up in detroit, and i'll be damned if some loser in ottawa is going to tell me whether i'm allowed to cross the border or not.
if the political system won't react, it's time to start filing lawsuits and standing up for our rights.
ok.
so, the weekend seems to have gotten away from me again. i've been sleeping a lot, and trying to keep up on the eating.
i'd have caught up on the eating and moved on to something else by now if i wasn't so tired...
so, it's just a reminder that i still haven't really figured out what the problem is. at the least, i'm alert and should be in for a few days, so let's try to at the very least get everything back in order before i have to go out again.
how did we get stuck in this situation where we give these losers all of this power?
it's absurd on it's face.
they should be allowed to write tax laws; they shouldn't be allowed to order businesses to close, or dictate conditions on border travel. who the fuck do they think they are, really?
uneducated losers like doug ford and justin trudeau should not be making important decisions that affect people's lives.
ever.
they did everything they possibly could to undo our systemic advantages.
they made every mistake possible, over and over, and did everything they could to fuck it up - at times seemingly almost intentionally.
and, if there's anything that should come out of this it's that these decisions need to be taken out of the hands of politicians and placed into the hands of health professionals.
if you want to credit canada for anything, credit it's superior system - and in spite of the politicians we elected, not because of it.
has canada done better than other places in the world?
not per capita, no.
but, to the extent that we've done a handful of things right, it's because we had a better system in place - and we would have done a lot better if the idiots we elected would have listened to the system, rather than decide they knew better.
i've been over this repeatedly - essentially all of the white papers i've read on pandemic responsiveness in canada got everything right upwards of 10-15 years ago, but nobody at either level of government seems to have bothered to actually read any of it.
it would have been a lot easier, and a lot less painless, had these idiots just listened to the scientists from the start. but. that's a fantasy - nobody ever listens to science, ever.
so, i'll be keeping an eye out for a political option that wants to end this madness immediately.
but, i'm not holding my breath - and i'm not holding my nose, either.
you think i'm going to pick between a fatass idiot and a trust fund retard?
that's what they're trying to set up, here.
but, no - i'm not making that choice, and i'm not accepting that framing.
they're both utterly incompetent fools, and neither one of them is better than the other.
i want a free country back. and i want it now.
who's going to give it to me?
nobody?
then i'll stay home.
and i'd urge you to follow my lead - if there's no solution on the table, don't participate in the discussion until there is one.
record low turnout - that's what i want to see.
there's been a complete failure in the society, here, at every level - a total breakdown, a complete systems collapse. both the federal and the provincial government have horribly mismanaged the pandemic at every step of the way. and, they should both be thrown out as soon as possible.
i repeat: i want a complete end to all border restrictions, and i want it immediately.
that's the left-wing position, here - and it's not even in the spectrum.
the country has gone full retard - it's a debate between the right and the far right over who can close the border the tightest, at a point where the virus isn't even a threat anymore. we've happily, fully, totally embraced utter fascism - and nobody seems to even realize it.
and, it's reflective of their polling on the topic.
in this upcoming cycle, i will only vote for candidates that promise to open all borders as quickly as possible - and that means totally free access across the border and the end of restrictions on air travel.
and, if none of the parties will embrace that position, i won't vote at all.
warren kinsella is a disgruntled former liberal strategist that i hold in much, much higher regard than anybody currently in the pmo.
and, he's expressing a valid grievance, and a worthwhile observation.
but, this isn't about science and it isn't about trade, it's about what the pmo perceives popular opinion to be, and that's scary - because this isn't something that should be politicized.
the pmo is concerned that opening the border may be an electoral liability. that might not make any sense, but it's the truth of it - and it's hard to say, right now, if they're right or not.
i know that i'm not planning on voting in the next election at all, at this point - if the liberals are just going to act like conservatives anyways, why bother trying to block the conservatives?
listen, the world isn't run by smart people like me.
smart people like me can't get a word in, edgewise.
rather, the world is run by people that think they're smart - people like you.
and, look at the world.
my diet is dominated by fruits and vegetables, so my major sources of iodine are eggs, cheese, yogurt and ice cream. essentially nothing in my diet has added salt in it, except the cereal. it should be enough, on paper - but it's probably pretty close. the cereal is also a recent addition; for years, about the only sources of salt in my diet were from cheese and hot sauce.
my sodium levels tested lowish.
i've been trying to get my iodine tested, but the test that is covered isn't offered anywhere and they want to charge me $200 for it - which is infeasible.
my tsh was lowish...
so, everything is ish:
calcium - highish
d - lowish
tsh - lowish
sodium - lowish
it's plausible, but it's not a smoking gun.
i should be careful with the d until i get a pth test.
so, something that you learn in life after a while is that it is not a continuous curve, but rather a pretty vicious step function.
that was a hectic week, and my life changed a lot in ways i haven't processed entirely yet.
- i don't seem to have colon cancer
- i have a solid plan to get my testicles cut out - finally
- ...but i have osteoporosis
and, i still don't know why i'm not storing iron, but i'm starting to suspect it's my thyroid.
i got my tarp yesterday afternoon, and spent the evening sleeping. as i'm now likely waiting until after the tenth to get some more cash in, i should be in for a few days.
i left off at the end of may and was waiting for the recording machine to install before i could make my way through these updates. as mentioned previously, i don't ghost or image this machine - the install process is too dynamic, i don't want this static thing that's set in stone, i want to be able to add new software as i go. and, while i partition my drives, i keep some things on the main drive (and use a backup script to rebuild it). so, i actually just reinstalled my desktop from late 2017, when i turned the script off. i need to be able to troubleshoot, as well. so, i want to be able to rebuild relatively quickly, but i don't want a static image - the answer is to script the install, and it only takes an hour or so, but you have to sit down in front of it and do it, and i was doing a million other things...
it's up, now, along with my office 2003 suite, so i should be able to catch up on that tonight.
i got some sealer for the last wall as well, so i should be able to get everything in place by tomorrow afternoon.
and, as mentioned, i want to prioritize finishing up inri075.
i did some research into markers for calcium absorption (checking serum calcium is misleading because your body will just dissolve it from your bone if you're running low), and the answer is to check for albumin, which was done - it was quite high. if it were to get much higher, i'd have hypercalcemia - which is too much calcium. so, i'm not concerned about calcium absorption or dietary intake. and, i'm only taking these vitamin d pills because i need an excess right now - my d levels were fine, too. as before, i'm fairly confident it's not a dietary deficit.
it's either hormonal and needs to be solved by getting my estradiol levels way up or it's a consequence of exposure to tobacco and marijuana smoke, and perhaps also of poor diet as a child. the markers will help me understand that better - next week.
Saturday, June 5, 2021
so, i'm starting to think i have a problem with my thyroid.
"if i can't dance..."
today's post is inri065, which is the last track in the pile of pre-trip tracks that were written out into midi compositions, and so is sort of a jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj composition, but also is a rabit loose end and a pivot into the trivial group, all at the same time. you'll notice that none of the tracks with multiple developed midi reworkings ended up with finished rabit versions (although a few had demos), so there's more continuity here with what i was doing in 2001 than what i was doing in 2002. nonetheless, this is also the climax of the first trivial group symphony and that's where it always was and ends up in the end.
my life was changing, and i was fully cognizant of it - i was sort of rushing to finish these ideas before i got up and left, which i needed to do. in hindsight, it seems insane, but i needed to shake my life up, and i don't regret doing it, even if things were never the same when i got back. there's that contradiction that comes up in capitalist economies between maximizing individual happiness and maximizing materialist conditions - something not even marx really had his head around right. i had everything i could have wanted, but i was living with this knife dangling over my head, these time restraints related to expectations around traditional employment that i neither had any interest or intent on following through with, and some kind of empty hope that i could get out of it. so, what i wanted was for things to stay how they were, but i know i'd have to escape in order for that to actually happen.
so, there's a feeling of kind of running out of time here, of tying things up, of closing things down - and of moving on. of getting out while i still can...
the remixes came together at the start of 2015, after i had finished transcribing it from the percussion tracks i had from 2003.
reflections is preceded almost everywhere by a guitar jam called algebra (sometimes al-jabr) that is intended as a statement of solidarity with the secularist and democratic movements in iraq in the face of a vicious bombing campaign intended to destroy the country. it is not a statement of solidarity with islam, with muslim belief systems or with islamist political movements - it is solidarity with normal people, not solidarity with abstract ideals. algebra is of course an arabic term that is ubiquitous in modern math and science and translates to "solving for the unknown", something i felt was necessary at the time. no, most iraqis weren't islamic extremists - they were just normal people like you and me. so, let's sing a song and dance a little to celebrate our commonalities and stop othering each other. apologies to peter gabriel, really.
while the narrative has blurred substantively and the media hasn't helped it by trying to normalize islamicism rather than give voice to secularists on the ground, my positions have not changed much. i remain in solidarity with the apostates and opposed to extremism from any direction. and, i still advocate dancing - so long as the fascistic islamic authorities are not informed, as they may chop off our heads if they find out.
========
some time in late 2002, sean sent me a message over msn or icq requesting that we begin a song based on looped birds chirping. i thought his idea was kind of cliched, but i took to working around his suggestions by converting them into something more musically expressive. i didn't want to write a song that literally climaxes around birds chirping, but i was willing to write something tonal that evoked the feeling of birds chirping.
at the time, i had my sister's electronic piano downstairs. she had a miniature grand upstairs. it was initially written on the keyboard with a very strange timing, which the scorewriter had difficulties capturing - partly because i was inconsistent in performing it. the piece was greatly simplified as it was arranged.
however, i believe the piece sat for a long time before the second section was added to it.
sean and i didn't talk much over the next few months, and the truth is that i just never brought this piece up to him. by the time it was finished, i had firmly placed it in my successor project, the trivial group. it was initially dedicated to sean as a part of the going away disc (reflections (inri074)), but that's really as close as this ever got to being a rabit tune.
i don't have clear memories around composing it, although circumstantial evidence makes it very likely that this happened in the late winter and early spring of 2003. i vaguely recall playing it on the grand upstairs, which could have only happened after sarah moved home to the outer suburbs to get ready for the trip. this was around march. i do remember recording the guitar parts and percussion parts, and am convinced this was in the spring due to memories of the spring sun hitting the bowls. the april 20th date may be a little late, but i have every reason to believe that this was not finished until after exams that year.
the percussion sections in the track are notable. the metallic sounds were created by smashing cutlery into a metal bowl, whereas the woody sounds were created by "playing" a pen on a desk. the track also includes hand claps.
these percussion parts were not notated until 2015. this was a careful, lengthy process that required a lot of careful listening, and a bit of napkin math. notating the percussion allowed for a more comprehensive exploration of the track over midi.
i've included the midi files of the original composition, if you'd like to mess with it on your own.
written and recorded in early 2003. transcribed, slightly rearranged, remixed repeatedly and re-rendered repeatedly over may, 2015. released on may 16, 2015. expanded & finalized on nov 25, 2017. as always, please use headphones.
the first track appears as a component on my ninth record, {e} (inri08x): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/e
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 (2003, 2015, 2017).
the various rendered electronic orchestras include synth pad, synth bass, synthesizer, mellotron, fingered bass guitar, picked electric guitar, bowed electric guitar, guitar noises (fret noises, knocks, pick scrapes), violin, viola, contrabass, cello, string section, brass section, piano, celesta, xylophone, marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, tubular bells, woodblock, mallet, electronic drum kit, jazz drum kit, orchestral drum kit and choir.
Friday, June 4, 2021
so, i got a few tests done and here's my update...
these tests were skipped, for now:
- vitamin e
- vitamin k
- selenium
- molybdenum
- manganese
- iodine
these tests are pending at lifelabs:
- vitamin c
- asca <---crohn's
- mercury
these tests are pending from dynacare:
- pyruvate
- gastrin <---stomach ulcers
- copper serum
these tests need to be done at dynacare because only they offer them, although i'd rather they were done at lifelabs because they have a free reporting system:
- glutathione <----- windsor site does not collect
- balp (not yet ordered)
this test requires a 12 hour fast:
- amino acid fractionation
this test is covered by ohip but is not offered anywhere in the region:
- serum oxalate
this test is only available in a california lab:
-hepcidin
these tests are yet to be requested, but are covered:
- pth
- calcitonin
- cortisol
i will need to pay for these tests out of pocket next weekish:
- celiac ($90 at dynacare)
- cea ($36 at lifelabs)
- p-anca + c-anca ($70 at lifelabs)
- psa: ($35 at lifelabs )
- another fit test ($59 at dynacare only)
- osteocalcin ($65 at lifelabs) <----double check, info from med labs
- igf-1 ($70 at dynacare) <-----double check, info from med labs
(this post is dated to june 4, 2021 because it describes events over that day. however, it was written on june 11, 2021)
so, i headed out on the friday afternoon with the intent of doing two simple things. first, i needed to get a series of blood tests at the lab that did the fit test (because the other tests didn’t offer them), as well as pick up a second fit test when i was there. second, i needed to get another tarp for the back area on the other side. easy, right? lol. no, nothing’s easy in doug ford’s locked down ontario!
first stop was the superstore to pick up a cheap bottle of vitamin d, because why not? it’s sufficient, but lowish. 1000 iu could’t hurt, right? and, for $5, why not? unfortunately, it took upwards of 45 minutes to get through the line up because the cashiers were forced to do performance art in between customers – they didn’t actually have to dance, but the utterly pointless wiping and sanitizing turned what should have been a five minute purchase into a lengthy experience.
i barely made it to the doctor’s office next door before they closed to pick up the requisition.
then, it was to the blood lab and they couldn’t figure it out – the tests i asked for are apparently a little uncommon. the web site says they do iodine, but the iodine they do is different than the iodine that is covered (which should be illegal). the website says they do glutathione, but not at that location, apparently (and why not?). i was instructed to call in, and may need to get to london. but, i can’t bicycle to london...
the trip wasn’t entirely pointless, because i did get the pyruvate, and nobody else does it. they also did copper & gastrin (but they should have told me to fast, so i’m going to redo it with the fractionation). and, of course, i got fit test #2, as well.
unfortunately, it took so long that, by the time i got to the dollar store that is literally next door, they were refusing entry to further customers. there was once again a line-up of people outside the door. if i was the regio nal manager and i saw that, i’d have fired the idiots on the spot – but this is drone labour, and that’s what you get from it, kids that just want to clock out and go get drunk.
i tried the walmart in the strip mall, but they were $30, as feared.
so, i went on another journey across town (and struggling against absolutely vicious winds) to try to find a tarp, and it was just as hopeless as the previous – six tries later and i still had no tarp. i had to wait until the morning...
but, it was some more cardio, which is what bicycling is good for. i’m obviously not trying to build muscle, but i need to be concerned about my heart and also now need to be concerned about not breaking bones. i’ll never turn a bike ride down, for that reason. but, i like it to be more productive than this one was, too....
btw, now that i have osteopenia, you can't call me hard-headed any more - it's demonstrably, empirically false.
you know, i thought i had a few extra dollars this month, but at some point i decided that 203-30 = 273, and in the process overbudgeted by $100. oops.
so, my plan to get things done today has been foiled - i needed around $75, thought i had $115, and only have $15.
i have $60 coming in on the 10th, and quite a few more coming in some time soonish.
i just want to write this down because it's getting convoluted.
so, i got access to all of my old tests done through lifelabs and...
-vitamin a is 3.2 which is highish. great.
my colon is just fine, guys.
these tests were skipped, for now:
- vitamin e
- vitamin k
- selenium
- molybdenum
- manganese
these tests are pending at lifelabs:
- vitamin c
- asca
- mercury
these tests need to be done at dynacare because only they offer them, although i'd rather they were done at lifelabs because they have a free reporting system:
- glutathione
- pyruvate
- serum iodine
- balp (not yet ordered)
i can also do these tests tonight while i'm at dynacare:
- gastrin
- copper serum
this test requires a 12 hour fast:
- amino acid fractionation
this test is covered by ohip but is not offered anywhere in the region:
- serum oxalate
this test is only available in a california lab:
-hepcidin
these tests are yet to be requested, but are covered:
- pth
- calcitonin
- cortisol
i will need to pay for these tests out of pocket next weekish:
- celiac ($90 at dynacare)
- cea ($36 at lifelabs)
- p-anca + c-anca ($70 at lifelabs)
- psa: ($35 at lifelabs )
- another fit test ($59 at dynacare only)
- osteocalcin ($65 at lifelabs) <----double check, info from med labs
- igf-1 ($70 at dynacare) <-----double check, info from med labs
ok, so i've got the machine installed, finally. i still have some filing to do, though.
whether this health scare turns out to be substantive or not, i need to get back to recording, so i'm putting everything else on hold until the machine comes up.
today's post is inri064, and is the first for a number of things - it's the first trivial group release, the first 2003 release and the first fully post-rabit release. it's also the first sarah-era release; even when she's not the subject of the songs, she's kind of ubiquitous in my life for the next few years. if 2001 was mostly about writing scored music (jjjjjjjjjjjjjjj) and 2002 saw me pull away from that to focus on something vaguely approaching rock-era music (rabit is wolf) or spinning out into something much more chaotic and noisy (ftaa), the trivial group was about pulling that all back together into a single thing, as abstract rock compositions that wander all over the place. so, whereas compositions over 2001-2002 tended to focus on specific ideas in disparate genres, trivial group compositions tend to focus on multiple genres within a specific track. a new noise project eventually develops (called cycles per second), but it's really intended to be outside the realm of traditional music, in any remote sense; virtually everything else ends up as trivial group, now, from the start of 2003 to the end of 2006, when the project starts to close itself down, as i start to look beyond it's instrumental constraints.
so, that's the setup for period 3 - anything resembling music is folded into a single project called the trivial group, whereas purely mathematical sound art experiments are split off to cycles per second
the trivial group is a kind of math joke - there is only one group with one member. i toyed with crediting all sound to i or e but in the end decided j was good enough, if somewhat nonstandard. it's not even a map, it's just a substitution. my obsession with scientific themes starts to turn over a little, and specifically starts to lean into abstract mathematics, instead. it's just a function of where my head was at, otherwise.
for now, this is actually a bit of a ways from that. i'll be honest - i look back at this and laugh at myself for it. but, it's a document of what i was feeling, and it's entirely real, as laughable as that seems, now.
my dad had a friend with a phd in chemistry for a while; he was actually the father of one of my sister's friends, and they hit it off in a pta meeting or something. this guy hit the jackpot in the bre-x fiasco by buying it as a penny stock and having it balloon to many times it's worth and ended up a multimillionaire out of it - which meant he was the most bourgeois motherfucker you've ever met. he just sat and home and drank wine all day, until he ran out of money and ended up teaching at algonquin. and, you can imagine the resentment from his kids, right? raised filthy rich and then - sorry! just kidding!
anyways, he was often stumbling around the house, and took some interest in me due to the fact that i was in a science program (or science-y program after i switched to math). and, he used to always warn me that i'd lose a semester due to falling in love.
it was something like that, anyways - even if it was utter nonsense, and utter delusion. but, isn't it always, in hindsight? truly?
i don't know if i'm better off, to avoid the cliche directly. i guess it doesn't matter, does it?
but, everything about me starts to change here, from my disposition to my vocals to my guitar style. and, the dominant underlying factor is, in fact, sarah.
no apologies to the butthole surfers; only the slightest condolences to paul mccartney.
=====
this was constructed as a christmas present for my partner, while in a rather absurd state of entirely preposterous euphoria. only a musician can be so absurdly invested in something so thoroughly delusional - or manage to create something so entirely self-reflective out of a theme surrounding somebody else.
the first part of this was shelved before it was ever released. i was over-exaggerating a sense of self-consciousness, but it still strikes me as unworkable. however, i think it's conceptually important in the idea of this as a christmas present and has consequently been uploaded here without modification. the second part was actually presented to sarah as a present, albeit a little after christmas - hence the jan 1 release date. it eventually found it's way to the center of my eighth symphony, reflections (inri074).
these tracks were written and recorded over november and december of 2002 and uploaded, unmodified, in may of 2015. released on may 2, 2015. re-released on physical media and finalized on nov 24, 2017. as always, please use headphones.
the second track appears as a component on my ninth record, {e} (inri08x): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/e
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, 2003, 2015, 2017).
fwiw, my stool has been changing since i switched the pasta bowl up - it's gone from being mushy (perhaps due to too much fibre) to coming out in more of a chunky manner, but i was perhaps a little bit concerned about the lack of logs. i mean, that's a symptom of an obstruction, right?
but, that was a nice big fat log there just right now, indicating that i've pushed anything out if it was in there.
and, that is, after all, the actual reason that a high fibre diet is so recommended - to ensure you're clearing your colon out on a regular basis.
