we can always retaliate by decreasing exports right?
that would be even better!
Friday, May 28, 2021
i'm working on a giant post...
i called the gastro-enterologist, and he entirely discounted the premise of deductive thought, in context. "but, i checked for everything else and..."
"IRRELEVANT!"
listen - i appreciate the flair, as highly illogical as it may be. i'm italian; i don't mind getting yelled at. in fact, sometimes it's actually more effective.
while he may have been exaggerating slightly (that is, i don't think it's irrelevant), i get the point - these tests i'm asking for are useful as hints to help figure out what to do next, but they don't prove or disprove anything, in the end.
he let me know that the ministry direction is that i should get a full scope immediately, and that opinion is fully noted. however, i think the ministry direction is wrong, and that healthy 40 year-olds shouldn't be getting scoped due to one piece of data, when there's 100 others that suggest otherwise; the ministry direction should be to get me a fit test as quickly as possible, not to try to coerce me into an unnecessary and potentially damaging scope by refusing to pay for it.
that's fine; i don't have anything else to do this month, i can pay out of pocket.
however, i did not get paid today, and will need to wait until monday.
i feel fine...
again: i'm on the side of the americans with this. i don't eat beef, but i know that safety regulations around things like hormones are much stricter in canada and that, as a canadian, i would like to know that my meat is not being imported from the united states, if i were eating it.
and, it's something that american consumers should think about, as well. if i lived in the united states and i did eat meat, i would want to purchase that meat from countries with stronger levels of industry regulations than exist in the united states.
but, as i don't eat beef, i should be clear that i'd also be in support of anything that would reduce the total amount of beef being raised and exported from canada, due to broad climate concerns and general ethical reasons. the cattle industry will find no solidarity from me - shut them down. great...
so, today's post is inri060, which is the first fully post-rabit release (although a few loose ends will trickle through...) and also features my first recorded vocal track in almost two years.
after starting hormones in may, i was going through somewhat of an identity crisis and that's really what the track documents, although i'm being obscure about it for good reason - this is a period of my life i'd rather not fully document. let there be somewhat of a black hole here in the historical record. what i'll say is that i was experimenting with a few things, both chemically and sexually, and in the end took away from it what i needed to take away from it, which is that i made the correct choice to transition into a female identity.
it's one thing to transition as a child, and it's another to transition as a full adult that's lived a life in the gender assigned to their birth sex, and it's another altogether to try to transition as an actual, literal virgin (i'd never even held anybody's hand, or even experienced the rejection of being turned down, because i'd never asked. i was a 100%, complete, total, utter virgin in every conceivable way imaginable.) in your early 20s - that's the period that people spend experimenting with their sexual orientation, and with their identities more broadly, to try to figure it out.
i don't "believe" that people are assigned gender identities or sexual orientations at birth, in some kind of conceptionist/creationist/religionist process that fixes who we are for the rest of our lives. in fact, the science rejects that hypothesis, despite what you may have heard otherwise (mostly from lawyers). i "believe" that sexual orientation and gender identity are fluid processes that change dramatically over the lifespan of an individual, and are brought on by a culmination of experience and individual choice - which is what the science actually says on the topic. as i am an evangelical atheist, i simply don't care what religious authorities think about this, or have the remotest interest in their enforced concepts of morality around the issue (to the point that i will actively try to convince them that their religion is wrong about this, and they should apostatize and repent over it), which is the actual basis of the existing fake left legal regime around the issue - what i do "believe" is that people ought to be free to make their own choices regarding their orientation and identity, and if the religious authorities or general society doesn't like those choices then they can fuck off, and circle jerk at home. as a queer person, i just don't fucking care. at all.
i don't want to fit in or be normal, anyways.
so, i think people should experiment with who they are and draw conclusions from the experiments they do, rather than base who they are on some theory written in some book, and that is what this is really all about.
this kind of scientific imagery is omnipresent in my work during this period, but this is the only vocal part recorded during the period that really explores the themes i was imagining, and that's something i've largely chosen not to develop fully as i've completed my recordings over this period.
you can hear a phone call in the end of the third track (developed fully as inri061) that snaps me out of it, at least for a little while. but, these themes of exploring experimentation around sexual orientation and gender identity would continue on for a few years, if perhaps never quite so explicitly.
====
this is two conceptually linked outtakes from mid 2002 that document an event that i'm going to be vague and obscure about.
written in august, 2002. track one was remixed in december, 2014 to turn the rest of the track up relative to the vocals. released on dec 12, 2014. disc finalized on nov 14, 2017. as always, please use headphones.
the lead track appears without vocals on my seventh record, ftaa (inri079): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ftaa
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2002, 2014, 2017).
released august 31, 2002
j - guitar, effects, bass, drum sampling, drum and other programming, digital wave editing, vocals
Thursday, May 27, 2021
in fact, that strat is so heavy that it weighs more than my sg:
like, a lot more.
go back to the previous video, though, and check out gorgeous maple neck. like i say: nobody can figure out where the body came from, although it has a typewritten number on the inside of it, suggesting it's fairly old. like, just the font suggests 60s or 70s. but, it seems like somebody put the coronet neck on it.
one hypothesis is that somebody smashed it and put the coronet neck on to replace it, but that doesn't help us understand where this heavy hh strat came from to begin with.
open concept basement bedroom, 1997-1999
- my parents moved across the city in mid-1997, and i lost the soundproof room in the process :(. i lost the drum kit & the tascam in the process, as well. however, i gained a computer with internet access and windows 95 (my previous computer had no internet access, and had windows 3.1. in fact, my first bedroom pc was shipped with ms dos 6.2 and wordperfect, the latter of which was actually reasonable, given that i grew up in ottawa (corel disappeared, but the big adobe building remained a presence in downtown ottawa for years.). i've actually kept up on the old software reasonably well, mostly because i never stopped using most of it: cool edit 96 (https://www.audacityteam.org/), noteworthy composer (https://noteworthycomposer.com/), the windows 95 sound editor, a hacked version of logic that never ran smoothly and a guitar tablature to midi program called "bucket of tab" (https://antisleep.com/bucket) were where i got started on this. but, this pc did not have the resources for even the most basic sound recording.
- i got an ry30 mid summer, to replace the drum kit. my dad was sad; my stepmother wasn't. that ry30 stuck with me until 2003, when i sold it to go to bc. of all the gear that got sold, that's the piece i think i most miss, and i'd love to see a serious attempt to emulate it. i can load samples into battery, but it's missing the point - this was a powerful little drum synth, and i made massive use of it for years, all the way to the end of the rabit is wolf period. that said, the reason i sold it is that i felt i grew out of it, and there kind of wasn't a lot left to do with it. i couldn't justify spending $400 on it given that i can do everything with free plugins nowadays, but i will eventually replace this thing...
if you know where to get an actual vst emulation of the ry30 - not samples of it, but a vsti of the actual machine - let me know.
- a bass reappeared. i don't remember the model. it was green, and played very smoothly, which was necessary because i have freakishly small hands (to this day, i play a mini ibanez bass).
- i actually synced the noteworthy composer sequences with the ry30 parts manually because nobody told me i could sync them automatically. so, it's all very meticulous, but using very simple hardware. i would have had a basic consumer grade soundblaster in this thing, and the initial sequencing is all using general midi. it's for that reason that i went looking for general midi a few years ago and came away with bandstand, by native instruments (a very big company in music creation circles):
bandstand was central to the recordings i did over 2014-2016, because i needed a way to emulate general midi using updated sound fonts. this has been discontinued, and i think it's the last attempt by the industry to save general midi for recording, as it seems that the standard nowadays is to use specific sample libraries rather than a general sound font library (and native instruments suggest the use of kontakt, instead). i think this is unfortunate, myself, as i liked the standardization of being able to take a midi score and plug it into a daw, but the industry doesn't seem to be interested in scored music in much of any abstraction at all anymore and rather more interested in just creating textures out of existing sound. so, the standard nowadays is to sell you this pile of violin scratches, rather than a collection of violins to sequence - and tell you to hire a violinist instead i suppose. but, of course, i still have soundblasters i can track if i need to. i will eventually install kontakt on the 64 bit machine, as the experiments i had with the 32-bit machine were just simply that i needed more ram. but, i actually found that kontakt was unnecessarily inefficient (it loads everything on start-up, even if you're only using a fraction of it) and that the freeware sound libraries actually even sounded better....
i would like to find an update for bandstand, but nobody seems to really want there to be one. this seems to be something people have moved past, and something you're going to need to curate old software for if you want to hang on to.
- the jx-8p & tascam 4-track both show up about this time, with the jx being my only and primary keyboard for years after. this is of course the last version of the roland juno series, and combines analog style juno sounds with more modern digital sounds. the jx has been keyless for years and driven by a dx100, and i've had a midi frontend installed on it for years and never used it, but this is a vsti of it in case i want to sequence it (i could of course sequence it manually, too):
i should also look into something called "zenology" when i get my windows 7 machine back up and can start looking for evaluation copies.
but, i suspect i'll keep programming it with the little window, as that's what i'm used to doing.
- later programs included hammerhead (a 909 emulator) (http://www.threechords.com/hammerhead/introduction.shtml), sound raider (a noise generator) (https://web.archive.org/web/20060721182502/http://www.andyw.com/zip/raider.zip), goldwave (for extra effects processing) (http://www.goldwave.ca/), granulab (https://www.abc.se/~re/GranuLab/Granny.html), coagula (light-sound synthesis) (https://www.abc.se/~re/Coagula/Coagula.html).
- my aunt sent me back a flute from a trip she took to india that shows up on several tracks
- somewhere along the way, the cassette deck stops working properly, and a song is constructed out of it.
- it was some time in late 1998 that my dad asked me to go to songbird with him to help him pick out a guitar for my sister, who was going through a difficult phase. as mentioned, she had been doing a lot of piano playing since she was very little, and now wanted to play guitar and was threatening to run away from home if she wasn't gifted with an expensive brand name guitar (in fact, i think she was trying to get my dad to buy her boyfriend a guitar, and i don't think that ever clicked). so, my dad got baited into buying her a guitar.....which she didn't accept, because it didn't have a brand name on it. and, it definitely pissed him off, yeah. meanwhile, i continued to play my entry level ibanez, right? it's worth pointing out that my sister was a delusional, spoiled brat at this point, but i really never said anything about it. the guitar i picked out has yet to be properly understood by anybody i've presented it to; it seems to have a coronet "batwing" neck, the dual humbucking pickups seem to have been installed manually and the body, while shaped like a strat and built like a paul, is of unclear origin. so, this is a guitar that somebody seems to have built from parts. the reality is that i picked the guitar out from the store because it played better than any other in the store due to the beautiful neck on it; after my sister rejected it as not sufficient because of the lack of brand name on the headstock, i ran it off to my friend greg's before it could get sent back, where i let it sit until everybody forgot about it. it eventually found it's way back to my studio, and has been my main guitar ever since.
- while i never said anything about it, i get the impression that my dad eventually felt a little bit stupid about asking me to pick out an expensive guitar for my sister (who did not play guitar), while i continued to play a starter ibanez roughly ten years on. i didn't care about the brand name, but that frankenguitar i snagged from songbird had a beautiful neck on it, and i sure appreciated it. nonetheless, he seemed to realize, in hindsight, that it was kind of a shitty deal for me, and went and bought me a red sg, along with an electro-acoustic. the black guitar itself is somewhere in the sg/guild range in terms of weight, in the sense that it's lighter than a paul and heavier than a strat, but i've always treated it like a sort of a fat strat due it's shape and construction. so, in the end, i got three guitars out of my sister's hissy fit and she got zero. all three of the guitars start showing up in recordings over the end of 98 and start of 99.
let's go way back.
1996-1997 basement room
when i was a kid, my dad built a soundproof room in one of the basements of one of the houses he owned. i suppose he intended to use it himself, but he was a 40 year old man with a day job and it just didn't work out that way; i was a 15 year-old kid on summer holidays, so you couldn't pull me out of there. so, my earliest demos were recorded in this little insulated room i was lucky to have. what gear did i have that i could look for?
- i was using an ibanez guitar with a floating bridge. i actually don't regret selling this guitar, as i found the bridge to be annoying and i don't have the attachment to ibanez that a lot of metalheads might.
- i still have my ancient cheri amp
- i still have my zoom 1010 effects pedal, and wouldn't imagine anybody would want to model this. google suggests "no" on first pass. it was a beginner floor guitar effects pedal that...it didn't sound very good, or at least not as a guitar processor. i didn't know any better. it was useful as a noise generating device, even if it wasn't so useful as a guitar pedal. so, there's some great sounding distorted cymbals recorded through it. i would be interested in finding an emulator for the reason that it's so overwhelmingly noisy that it's almost useless in scenarios where it would be great if it wasn't. in later years, i've put the jx-8p through it and that's all i'd ever use it for nowadays. but, all my guitar parts used this thing, for years.
- my dad's friend larry left a broken mxr phase 90 (script logo.) down there that i still have. it still works, if you pay close attention to the pot on the inside, and i used it quite a bit. he just never retrieved it. hey larry, do you want your mxr back? he was a van halen fan; i was a corgan fan, and even at that age i understood the influence and the value of it. this is a classic pedal - it's both in the pod and in guitar rig - but i wonder if there's a standalone....
there's one attempt here:
...but nothing official, i don't think. if i was mxr, i would have this, for sure.
- there was a bass down there to start (i don't remember the model), and then there wasn't, so i bought a boss oc-2 to try to create bass parts out of my guitar, and it didn't work out that well. i ended up using it mostly for keyboard parts, but i sold it without getting too much out of it.
this is an emulation:
- my sister, who was a serious pianist at a young age, had an electric piano with some organ sounds and stuff. she was strangely propertarian about the item, and repeatedly refused to allow me to record in her space. so, i had to sneak into her room when she wasn't around. i eventually got the jx-8p...and she eventually got a grand piano parked in the living room, that was great to record on when nobody was home. i don't remember the model.
- her metronome is also heard a few times
- there was a peavey bass amp down there that i held on to for years and think my sister ended up with, in the end. i can get all manners of peavey emulation from the pod or from guitar rig, even if i actually prefer the sound of roland or vox amps.
- there was a drum kit down there; don't ask me about the details. again: i never saw him actually play it. in hindsight, maybe that was intentional.
- larry also left his tascam down there, and he did pick that up, along with an acoustic guitar that belonged to him.
- there was a graphic equalizer hooked up to a luxman receiver
- i never mic anything any more, but the mics i was using were dixon md-1178s, and i actually still have both of them. i have some mic emulation software, but this is something i pay very little attention to because i line almost everything in through the pod or the alesis (including the electronic drum kit), and almost all of my music is instrumental. i later picked up a very old altec 683 b, and it's the mic i use when i need one (and the mic sean used to record everything, as well).
- ....and my sennheiser 440-IIs, which i still have, were what i listened to everything through.
i think we'll be installing this, as well:
if that plugin works well in cubase, it could get a lot of use, especially on the lost symphony, as it would have been fundamental, if i had actually recorded it at the time.
if you're curious, this is how i tend to work - i go looking for what i need when it comes up, i don't tend to just download things and experiment with them when they're brand new.
but, i wonder if i should actually even go out and find all of the old gear that i've lost in plugin form. how possible is that? what is really missing, actually?
this soundcard is actually an older model than i thought it was.
it's at least designed for nt, so maybe the software might work, if i get the right peripheral for it.
but, it also has a firewire, so i wonder if i could drive it from the alesis....
right now, i just want to get drivers and script them.
the key shift in approach should be this:
it may be true that 24 bit is technically superior to 16 bit, but, in the end, it's, just, like, your opinion, as to which sounds better.
don't believe me? go ask that kid with a record player.
so, i want to mix towards an output, not just get superior quality for the fuck of it.
but, i need to understand what people are actually listening to, and the answer appears to be the following: spotify is currently upgrading from streaming lossy mp3 to cd-quality audio. and, youtube seems to be pushing downsampling. so, for right now, 16-bit seems like the way to go, still.
my previous build of the 32-bit xp machine had the soundblaster live drivers built into the os install. since putting the live back in the 98 machine (which i'm calling 16-bit but is actually also 32-bit) where it came from, i've put the audiigy that my sister's first husband gave me (he decided to be a douche bag mac user around '05ish, so he didn't want it) in the 32-bit machine to replace it. it also has what was the last line of m-audio delta series pci cards in it, which i got for very cheap at the end of it's lifecycle explicitly because it has an actual rca out on it, and the dac is dealt with right away kind of thing - it's about minimal amounts of conversion, although i later found out that the windows kmixer sort of ruins it and i have to connect via asio to make sense of that. and, i'm connecting an alesis 16-track mixer as a recording interface via firewire, as well as a pod xt via usb for direct guitar ins. old gear - like i said. and, none of this is going anywhere any time soon....
anyways, i didn't need to script up a driver install for the live because the drivers came with the os and the software didn't work on xp anyways, but i'm going to need to script something up for the audigy. i'm currently searching for an install cd, and will probably hold off on anything complicated until i can get one of those interfaces like i have in the other machine. the major reason i'm going to use this device is to make use of the dsp in it, which is intended for gaming and is consequently a little thicker than you'd get out of most normal audio-focused applications. a large percentage of the weird guitar and drum reverb i used from about 1999-2004 was actually using that eax as a pre-amp; i lost it when i upgraded to xp in 2004 and put it aside when i couldn't get it to work when i built the 32-bit machine in 2007.
wait. i'm recording at 16 bits? what? well...
see, this is my actual logic, here - the machine i did everything on until my system collapse was built to use 32-bit software, and almost all of the plugin software (like guitar rig) is written for 16-bit audio manipulation. so, what happens when you send 24 bit audio into software written for 16-bit audio? if it's well written software, it should actually stop you from actually doing it and tell you to downsample the audio or buy a new plugin. but, what most plugins are going to actually do is simply truncate the file and then spit it out with a bunch of zeros, meaning you end up downsampling your 24 bit recording to 16 bit by accident as you process it. and, you probably will not be able to tell the difference, as you're doing it.
on top of that, you downsample in the end anyways, right? see, that's the assumption. is it true? for now, let's assume it is. now, some people will tell you that you want the extra space for the calculations, if your software allows for it. ok. but, that's the rare scenario where you probably can tell the difference between 16 and 24 bit - when you've run the project through a thick reverb and filled all that space up with data. and, then what happens when you mix it down?
the answer is that you just delete it - and you've wasted your time getting something to sound great as a 24-bit sound file, only to have it sound entirely different as a 16-bit product. and, are you going to even notice, are you going to listen to a 16-bit file through your shmancy sound system? nooooo.
oops.
so, i developed a policy of sticking to recording to the output quality. that is, i decided that if people are going to listen to the end result on 16-bit playback devices (or, god forbid, fucking speakerphones) then i'm going to mix them at 16-bits. logical, right?
but, how true is that, still? i mean, nowadays nobody listens to anything on cds - what they actually do is stream it, probably. and, are they therefore able to stream it at 24-bits? i mean, their hardware can probably do it.
the 32-bit machine that i'm reinstalling this morning will remain 32 bits and geared towards 16 bit recording. that's not going to change.
but, as i get around to building that 64-bit machine and wondering how i'll be recording into it, the question i'm actually going to ask isn't about maximizing recording quality so much as it's about trying to understand actual listening habits. i know that i still listen to everything in 16-bit. am i out of touch on this? if i am, and people are listening to 24-bit flacs on their phones, then i should adjust to mixing final outputs in a way that conforms to how they're actually going to listen to them.
if i mix everything in 24-bit and the world listens to it in downsampled 16-bit, i'm just deluding myself through the process - all of that effort exists strictly in a parallel reality that nobody actually inhabits. however, if i mix everything in 16-bit and the world upsamples it to 24-bit to listen to it, i'm missing out on an opportunity to expand the quality of the mix.
all the technicalities and specs are fun to analyze, but it's the user experience that i'm really concerned about.
ok, so that was a wasteful few days due to needing to undo the cops breaking my computer (yet again.), but i have my machine coming back up now. i was in fact able to isolate a crc error on the dvd; the reburn is booting from the dvd, as intended.
but, listen, you fucking idiot thugs...
the chromebook is the only machine i use to post to the internet and, so long as this continues, that is not going to change. the 90s laptop is being used strictly as a phone, right now, but will eventually also be used as a tv. and, the recording machine is kept off the network and used strictly to record and compose music on.
the computer you want to hack for kremlin codes is the chromebook. please leave my recording pc alone.
is that simple enough for you to understand?
so, i was having difficulty booting the install media from the dvd drive and i had to figure that out because that's how this sits - i just leave the install media in the bottom drive and let it sit there, so i know what the most recent version is, and i have it available in case i need it.
but, as i was doing some troubleshooting, i started to suspect that it's the media itself that's corrupt. thankfully, i do in fact have a backup. of course. so, i'm going to try to reburn that and try again.
to be clear: i could install it from the blu-ray drive, but i don't want to do that, i want to install it from the dvd drive. and, the dvd drive seems to let other media boot, so it kind of has to be the actual disk itself. i think....
today's post is inri059, which is a theoretical demo for the acoustic rabit is wolf tour that the second half of the project was geared around but that never happened, and something i pulled together over late 2014 from existing parts of published tracks (me, myself..., psi, magenta, day) and demos of unpublished ones (penny shoeman, jumped up and down) from the very last sessions we did. i'm not sure that sean even knows this exists (he stopped returning my emails quite some time ago), but it is a far better representation of what sean wanted to do. around the time we did penny shoeman, he even tried to bring in an emo-style guitarist (i did not know him and do not recall his name) and asked me to recede towards electronics and production, but i didn't have the slightest interest in the style and was happy at that point to sort of him let him go start an emo band if he wanted to do that...and convert the track into a techno piece, without him, instead. which i did - it's inri061.
these opinions may be jarring to people following this space that thought they knew all about me, but all i can say is that they weren't listening to what i said and actually presented and actually posted. while i grew up listening to and self-identify as a punk, and there was a brief period of art-school emo after 2007-ish (that included defeater, touche amore & la dispute, primarily) that i was able to get into starting around 2010-ish, i've been starkly critical of emo for decades and wasn't remotely interested in it at the time, at all. and, i keep posting links to abstract electronic artists like son lux, not to contemporary rock music, if it even still exists at all. if you thought i was some kind of emo rock star, that's your opinion of me forced down upon me, and not something i ever projected or ever embraced.
and, it's frustrating because i know that this is what jon and sean both thought of me, too - and that they were both apparently disappointed to find out it wasn't true, in the end. i don't take responsibility for that perception, and i don't apologize for their disappointment - it was their own delusion, and they're the ones that ended up missing out. we could have produced interesting art rock, but they didn't want to - they wanted to be boring old, normal-ass, generic-as-fuck rock stars.
that said, insofar as acoustic demos are concerned, i happen to think this is pretty good, my own obvious biases around it's production aside. if there was more emo in the period that was written with this kind of detail and performed with this kind of passion, perhaps i would have been less critical of it. and, my dismissive attitude around it aside, i would have been happy to be a part of this - if it were realistic to perform something like this and maintain the attention span of the audience that gravitates towards it. in truth, a demo like this, and a performance that emulates it, would have been instantly requested to tighten up, and i would have no doubt gotten up and walked off.
nonetheless, as an alternative demo, i can accept this - and i created it for the reason that it is a better historical document, in some sense, of what was being envisioned by the other half of the project. this is being narrated entirely from my perspective, but i have somewhat of a responsibility to get the other person's perspectives across, as well....as best as i can reconstruct them, in as honest a way as i can. if the rabit demo is a unilateral decision that i know sean dissented on, perhaps he'd be more approving of this.
as mentioned previously, sean soon emerges as a sort of generic indie rock loser trying to emulate pretentious nonsense like the animal collective, and in the process ended up copying a lot of the techniques that i developed in these demos and then claiming he invented it himself. i've even heard rumours that he tried to take credit for some of the performances and compositions, particularly when presenting the recordings to females he had an interest in, but i never confronted him about that and do not know the actual truth of it (it would be sort of pathetic, if true). so, i suppose he saw the value in these recordings after all - and decided he could do this without me. my analysis of the the little bit that i've heard of the recording he did without me is that his arrogance was unfortunately rather blinding, and that it's not as good as he seemed to think it was, in fact that it even sounded like what it actually was (a total musical illiterate fucking around with gear he didn't remotely understand), but i haven't heard anything he did after he got over what was an understandably steep learning curve, given that he had absolutely no technical or musical training at all, if he ever even did get over the curve, if he didn't just give up, instead. sean's vocals do not appear on any further recordings.
i actually played bass for jon a second time in a project he joined as a second guitarist, and i'l talk a little about that in my period 3 run through, in time - that part of the story doesn't end here.
====
something like this would have been the demo brought along on an acoustic tour that never happened. tracks 1-4 would have represented a live set over the summer of 2002, while tracks five and six are otherwise stranded acoustic demos (and may have been played as encores, where possible). the style could be broadly categorized as folk punk, but it also leans heavily towards the emo of the period.
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. 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 (2002, 2014, 2017).
released august 1, 2002
j - acoustic guitar, voice (3)
sean - vocals, lyrics
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
this is actually a useful outcome, as she doesn't have to pander to quebec to win re-election.
i've been highly critical of this person's political positions. she was wrong on her insistence on unnecessary statist interference in assisted suicide, and she was wrong on the normalcy and relevancy of corruption within capitalist institutions. but, she's right this time - the legal process in the constitution must be followed, or it's rendered void, altogether.
and, if the prime minister won't at least stand up for the procedural conventions in the constitution, he should resign immediately, as it renders him unfit to govern.
vitamin a - not in yet
copper cerulaplasmin - 26.1 μmol/L, which is considered slightly high, unless you're taking oral estrogen, which i of course am.
that said, elevated copper is also a sign of cancer, and particularly blood cancer, which is one of the more obscure things i'm worried about.
so,
iron - low absorption
zinc - normal absorption
copper - high absorption
together, that continues to suggest celiac is very unlikely and suggests that low copper is not interfering with iron absorption, at the least.
c-reactive protein was indeed tested previously at .8, which is ideal.
i should have a lengthy list of items coming:
- fibrinogen, prothombin time (pt) & partial thromboplastin time (ptt) for k.
- glutathione, for selenium.
- iodine
- uric acid, for molybdenum.
- pyruvate, lipase, amylase for manganese.
- ascorbic acid
- asca, for crohn's v colitis (although there's no sign of inflammation, given crp and esr were low)
- oxalic acid
- salicylate
- mercury
- amino acid, fractionation & quantitation
so, i was sleepy when i got in, which isn't that bizarre, as i had been sleeping afternoons for the last few days. i wanted to shower, eat and take a nap, but i had to shower and then nap, instead. so, then i got up to eat and napped some more. i took some iron and napped some more...
i guess i got about ten hours of sleep overall, but i suspect that's two days worth. i actually like naps rather than long sleeps in the summer, and i'd rather sleep in the day if the air conditioning is on (as opposed to having to suffer through it). i absolutely despise air conditioning and want it off altogether, but it is currently on, despite the fact that i asked him to turn it off when he left. so, when you have the air on, it's actually warmer at night - and it's more enjoyable to sleep during the day, to avoid the a/c. but, now i'm awake, so i'm going to need to run the stove to warm the place up, instead. i'll have to try to cycle that over in the next few days, to get back to sleeping during the air conditioning and being awake when it's off.
as it is, i've been up since around 6:00 and have been trying to shift over to do some cleaning but have been stuck dealing with the recording pc, instead.
i guess the cops upstairs realized i was using the recording pc this week, and decided they therefore had to break it. i have no idea what they're looking for, but they seem to think i'm hiding some kind of data somewhere. whatever they did, they seem to have shorted the ram, and they seem to have broken the boot loader - which is something similar to what they kept doing to my windows 7 machine. the difference is that i've very purposefully kept the recording machine off the network for more or less this exact reason, and i guess it doesn't seem to matter - they'll just break into your house and break it when you\re gone.
so, i cleared the cmos and...i was in the process of reinstalling to the drive anyways, so i'm currently putting a temp install in.
this machine does not have a wireless card in it, and i don't want to connect it to any outside network ever at all. in the lalala world that the cops live in, that means i must be hiding secret codes from the kremlin on it, so they need to hack it and take it down.
i don't know how i got into this surreal, absurd mess, but they don't seem to be operating on evidence, and it seems that my only choice is to try to ignore them.
so, that's my night (eating and sleeping) and my morning (reinstalling). i need to call the doctor soon, eat again and then get to getting on with it.
this is my seventh symphony, now inri058, which i spent about five months on in mid-2002, at the start of my first stint through hormone therapy, in between multiple moves and at the start of somewhat of a crisis in my academic identity, as i closed down my second year in the pure math program with the conclusion that i wanted out of it. in all of it's incarnations, this is a confusing, dark, demented piece of music, which is of course how i like it, and a reflection of the shift in existence that i was going through at the time.
i think this was a little much for sean to process. his reaction was to decide it should be reworked for my own projects, which it then was. but, i mean....i gave him a ridiculous 25 minute masterpiece and he asked for a three minute radio song, instead. it didn't end quite there, but it was somewhere around this point that i decided i couldn't be fucking bothered anymore.
this track actually has two reworks, in the end - the cynicide version (inri048) that best represents it's initial construction as a cynicide collaboration piece and the ftaa version (inri058), which is how it eventually ends up in the end, after going through rabit is wolf on it's way there.
so, this is the biggest, most developed thing that came out of that period, and forms the template of what i would do for the next several years, moving forwards, as it pulls together all of the various disparate influences and concepts into the format of a sprawling, morphing, roughly half hour epic.
===
there are a few ideas in my discography that i've explored from multiple angles, but nothing else at all like this track, which has been through multiple complete rethinks involving multiple people over the course of sixteen years. as the revisions are so diverse, i think that a comprehensive collection of interpretations is a proper entry within my discography.
in the end, this emerges as my seventh symphony.
the collection is to be arranged chronologically in four discs consisting of two 2xcd sets, with the first two discs consisting of mixes that were meant for inclusion in band projects and the third and fourth consisting of mixes that were created after the track was moved into my own various one-person projects. further discussions of the various incarnations of the tracks appear on the track pages.
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. as always, please use headphones.
the album version of the track (track 13), reconstructed in 2014, appears on my seventh record, ftaa (inri079): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ftaa
the 2002 vocal mix appears on the rabit is wolf demo (inri057):
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/rabit-is-wolf
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2014, 2017).
released july 4, 2002
j - guitars (electric, acoustic, classical), bass, synthesizers, drum programming, orchestral sequencing (12), drum manipulation, vocal manipulation, voice (9), live & digital effects processing, digital wave editing, loops, equalizers, soundscaping, sampling, composition, production, cover art
sean - vocals/lyrics (2,5,7), ring modulator (7-9, 11, 13-14, 16)
greg - drum performance sample source (4, 6-9, 11, 13)
bob - hammering (3)
the rendered electronic orchestra on track 12 includes tuba, saxophone, flute, clarinet, orchestra hit, piano, violin, viola, cello, contrabass and various full string sections.
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
how are my teeth doing?
the decaying composites are, in some places, starting to turn over, and the last dentist i spoke to seems to have been spot on correct - there's no tooth decay anywhere, but the decaying composite is exposing some serious gaps. there are some places where the hydroxyapatite (or some other combination of my existing routine) seems to be making a difference in closing the gap and there are some places where it isn't.
i've been avoiding the antibiotics because they may interfere with iron absorption, but i'm going to have to get back to that soon. my viewpoint right now is that, while some attempts at regrowing gums are necessary, i'm probably going to need to fill a couple of the gaps in with something, eventually. i think there's only one that i'm seriously concerned about. i have until september to keep applying hydroxyapatite, which is my next cleaning.
my bottom teeth are more crooked than they were last year, indicating that it's probably the root cause. there's one that's been squeezed almost entirely out and that i may have to give up on; it's currently healthy, as far as i can tell, but it's been badly warped by the pressure from the incoming incisor and there's probably no answer besides eventually pulling it. ironically, it probably won't create a gap because it's getting squeezed out entirely.
but, i started to wonder about my exfoliation routine today....
what the doctor old me is that the kind of recession i have is almost always caused by brushing back and forth, which i am sure i've never done. i brush circularly, and i brush up and down, but i never brush side-to-side, and i never have. like, i know better than that, and i have since i was six years old.
but, something that could be creating that kind of pressure - besides the crooked teeth - might be the pressure i create on the side of my face when i'm exfoliating my skin, which i've been forced to do more of since i moved here because this basement has unusually dry air (due to the dehumidifer running upstairs). it's just something i never thought about before, but if i'm looking for sources of sawing motions on my gums, that would be it, not poor brushing.
i've looked it up online and, at the least, nobody seems to have put that together, before.
but, i wonder if there's not something to it...
mr. trudeau,
if you think that mr biden is going to respect you and interpret you as his bestest bud ever for running up behind him, tongue out of mouth, and trying to hop up on his lap regarding this belarus incident, you are sadly - and pathetically - mistaken.
in fact, it is not in canada's self-interest to act as an american puppet-state in regards to russia. we should have an independent policy, here.
i will once again call on vlad to impale this guy once and for all. he's a problem, and the russians surely realize it.
but, any nato military action regarding belarus is retarded and should be rejected with the strongest force of condemnation that is possible - not the least of which being that it's a trap, whether gi joe realizes it or not.
so, i got the bone mineral density test done and picked up some tarps at the dollar store, for free, as it happens to be, as the cashier wouldn't charge me for them. no complaints, here - score.
i'm 172 cm tall and weigh 65 kg, meaning my bmi is a tad under 22. so, i have indeed gained around 5-10 pounds, relative to my normal weight.
i'm going to ask for a uric acid blood test to check for molybdenum deficiency, as low uric acid levels are a sign of low molybdenum. direct molybdenum tests do not appear to be available at all.
it turns out that alp is an indicator for manganese deficiency, and my alp levels were normal. i'm otherwise going to ask for a pyruvate test, as manganese is used in glucose metabolism and an abnormal level might indicate a shortage. lipase and amylase are also an indirect test for manganese. manganese is also used for bone mineral density (the test i did) and glucose tolerance (and my blood glucose is always fine...), so those are further indicators. i can get a direct manganese test, eventually.
and, while a chromium test is available, chromium deficiency is not currently understood, like, at all. they wouldn't know what to test for.
so, here's my update:
- i can't get an indirect for e. beginning of july, probably. haptoglobin would be indirect in children and my haptoglobin was fine. apparently, it's almost impossible to deplete your e stores....so it's not all that useful to measure serum e if you're concerned about recent changes in absorption status because your stores are probably beyond what you'd be able to exhaust any time soon.
- i can do indirects for k as: fibrinogen, prothombin time (pt) & partial thromboplastin time (ptt)
- indirect for selenium as glutathione, for now.
- i can get an iodine test
- no covered tests for molybdenum, manganese, chromium
- ....but i can check blood or urine uric acid as indirect for molybdenum....
- ....pyruvate, lipase, amylase as indirect for manganese...
- ...and no symptoms of chromium deficiency are currently well understood.
- ascorbic acid
- crohn's: asca, c-reactive protein?, sedimentation rate (esr)
- oxalic acid
- salicylate
- mercury
- amino acid, fractionation & quantitation
- phenylalanine is covered, for some reason
actually, we already did esr and it was fine and i sort of suspect we did c-rep, although i don't have a copy of it. ok.
- i can't get an indirect for e. beginning of july, probably.
- i can do indirects for k as: fibrinogen, prothombin time (pt) & partial thromboplastin time (ptt)
- indirect for selenium as glutathione
- i can get an iodine test
- no covered tests for molybdenum, manganese, chromium
- ascorbic acid
- crohn's: asca, c-reactive protein?, sedimentation rate (esr)
- oxalic acid
- salicylate
- mercury
- amino acid, fractionation & quantitation
- phenylalanine is covered, for some reason
but, what i was going to say is that i'll have to do these once a month until i catch up....and that's fine because i should have monthly ferritins for a while, anyways.
this month i need to pay for the fit test.
- i can't get an indirect for e. beginning of july, probably.
- i can do indirects for k as: fibrinogen, prothombin time (pt) & partial thromboplastin time (ptt)
- indirect for selenium as glutathione
- i can get an iodine test
- no covered tests for molybdenum, manganese, chromium
- ascorbic acid
- crohn's: asca, c-reactive protein, sedimentation rate (esr)
- oxalic acid
- salicylate
- mercury
- amino acid, fractionation & quantitation
- phenylalanine is covered, for some reason
so, that's tomorrow, and i'm sure i'll get some attitude, but it's the right thing to do as i wait for the fit results.
and, what about these extra minerals and vitamins i haven't tested for?
i seem to have done everything i can test for except a general amino acid test, vitamin c and iodine, and if there's anything i'm sure i'm getting enough of, it's vitamin c...
as far as i can tell, they don't even offer tests for things like manganese and molybdenum. so, we could all be suffering from overwhelming molybdenum deficiency and wouldn't even know it. fuck.
what's left is:
- vitamin b1
- vitamin b2
- vitamin b3
- vitamin b5
- vitamin b6
- vitamin b7
- vitamin e
- vitamin k
- selenium
- molybdenum
- manganese
- nickel
- chromium
my doctor gave me shit for looking at "obscure" issues, but the reality is that a number of these things interact with iron absorption: riboflavin, niacin, selenium, molybdenum, manganese and vitamin k all play a role in iron absorption and metabolism. but, the thing i really wanted to test for first was k, and i'm kind of pissed off that the test is $200 and not covered. this test should absolutely be covered.
i can test for it indirectly with platelets, and my platelets seem to be fine. and, it seems like a three-part test for fibrinogen, prothombin time & partial thromboplastin time is covered - and this is actually the more standard approach. great.
am i concerned about k? well, my k ought to be fine....unless i have a colon absorption problem. which is what i was trying to fucking figure out. i can also test for an antibody for crohn's and i might as well.
i can also test indirectly for selenium by doing a glutathione test, which is covered.
so, i'm going to try to get a ten minute with him before my next real appointment, and for him to fax a sheet with this stuff on it, so we can look it over.
and, i should get a & copper results then, too.
so, what am i doing this week, then, given that the weekend got away?
i could jump back to the diet as planned, but this is going to be a scattery week, and i think i'd rather avoid starting anything. so, let's put that off until next week.
i could potentially finish most of the filing as i'm cleaning and then maybe even get to doing something by friday. let's see if that's plausible.
fuck.
listen, google - these are your servers. if there's something running on the back end, you put it there, not me. or, you got hacked and need better protection.
i don't own this domain, and it's not even some obscure place - it's blogger.com. the company that owns this domain is the same company that is flagging the site, meaning it's either completely full of shit or it's flagging it's own domain.
i just log in and post shit.
so, while i suspect that there's a 98% chance that these warnings are actually coming from the fucking pigs because they don't want these posts broadcast, the bottom line is that i couldn't do what they're accusing me of in the first place and if there is something wrong here, then they need to fix it, themselves..
the hope is that the tarp will create a barrier between the cold concrete floor and the humidity in the air, so that the humidity doesn't end up as condensation on the cold concrete floor.
and, these floors are unusually cold, to the point that i've wondered if they're cooled, but the concerns i've brought up have been met with denials - just like the smoking and everything else.
but, even if it doesn't work as intended due to potential seepage under the floor, at least it's the floor that gets damaged and not my furniture or gear.
overall, this weekend really got away from me. whoever it actually is that is upstairs is acting like a child in their habits, whether they actually are one or not, so i've been forced to clean up after them every few hours - but it doesn't stay clean. so, i have to do it again...
they've very badly triggered my asthma, which is giving me heart palpitations and forcing me to sleep more than i normally would, as well. and, again, i feel like i'm being drugged, but i can't figure out the source of it to end it.
and, yes i know they're up there - i can hear them, i can smell them. it's obvious.
so, i've just been getting up, cleaning, eating, cleaning, sitting down to do something, having to get up to clean again, getting the smallest amount done, having to clean again, etc.
ultimately, no - it shouldn't take me 6-7 hours to prepare a meal and eat it, but that's life dealing with the effects of second-hand smoke by selfish, worthless neighbours - or their worthless children, as it may be.
i was going to go over the sealing i did with an exacto knife (it's a horrible mess, i'm not very good at stuff like that) tonight, but i realized pretty quickly that that's just going to undo it. and, ultimately, who cares? so, i did a second coat over a few spots, and i'm just going to scrub the floor for now, instead. i also want to put something over the space and see if it's comparably better and, looking into it, the best thing to use is probably a dollar store tarp. so, i'll need to go grab one of those as well, the next time i'm out.
but, i think the worst part of it was the bacteria and/or fungi coming in from the cracks, and i hope that sealing them resolves the primary problem.
i'm otherwise in need of doing that clean on the other side of the apartment that i keep putting off...
today's post is inri057, the demo that was put together at the end of the rabit is wolf experiment with the sum of the completed demos - me, myself....(inri049), clarity (inri054), 9:46 (inri055), time & psi (inri056) and the rabit is wolf version of my upcoming 7th symphony, which was also finished over the end of 2014.
=======
this is the sum total of the completed rabit is wolf studio experiments, which wound through a number of paths on their way to the project's eventual collapse. while there would be further acoustic demos recorded with sean, i ultimately decided to abandon their folky underpinnings and finish all further tracks as electronic, instrumental recordings. a tour ep of the final recordings exists as inri059.
the recording was initially sequenced as a demo in mid may, 2002 but i foolishly deleted the files (i was running low on hard drive space) only to find out that the burn was corrupt and that the result was skipping. i did eventually recompile an ep of material, but it was in a different order and made no attempt to mix the tracks together. in reconstructing the demo, i've decided to recreate the original sequencing. the only difference between this collection and the initial collection is that the last track now includes sean's vocals, whereas it was initially an (eventually rendered incomplete) instrumental recording.
i need to be clear that the decision in sequencing the material this way is unilateral on my behalf. during this period, sean had made it clear that he was not satisfied with the more experimental and electronic tendencies underlying some of the tracks; specifically, he wasn't happy with the first or last tracks on this disc, as he felt they did not represent his vision for the project. on the other hand, i was less interested in purely acoustic music and more interested in electronic music. i was envisioning the project as having a split personality between an acoustic live presentation and an electronic studio presentation. sean argued this would be disorienting; it's less that i disagreed with him and more that i thought that was a good idea. this divergence in vision is one of the factors leading to the project's dissolution.
while i feel this recording stands up on it's own, i've also taken the time over the second half of 2014 to reclaim some of the tracks as my own instrumental works. only tracks two and four exist uniquely as rabit is wolf collaborations; the other four tracks have been resequenced as completed instrumentals in my main recording sequence.
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. 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 (2002, 2014, 2017).
released june 20, 2002
j - guitars (electric, acoustic, classical), effects, bass, synthesizers, digital piano, electric air reed organ, flute, drum programming, drum manipulations, vocal manipulations, loops, sequencing, sampling, digital wave editing, production, cover art.
sean - vocals, lyrics, harmonica (1), ring modulator (6).
greg - drum performance sample source (5,6)
jon - guitar performance (2)
Monday, May 24, 2021
let me clear about this, though - don't connect your xp machine to the internet. ever.
at this point, i only have one controller with internet access that i take files off and with an external drive, and keep everything else off the intranet.
that's the one issue, but you don't want your recording machine online, anyways.
yes, i'm using cubase.
sx. 3.
on xp.
hey, it works; the only issue i've ever had with it is overloading due to the 4 gb ram limit in the 32 bit os. the new sample libraries simply need more ram. but, it's going to be matlab that is going to pull me in to the 64 bit os recording world, finally. it was actually matlab that forced me to upgrade from 98 to xp around 2005 - and while i've upgraded my hardware, i've stuck with 32-bit xp ever since.
i'm ultimately the type that likes a stable, steady daw over the newest bells and whistles. from the time i got my jx/ry30 combo in the late 90s (which would have been cutting edge ten years earlier, but was just high quality last gen by the time i snagged it), i've always been about making the most of the previous generation of gear - and you'll note that i tend to actually use the features in my gear, rather than just upgrade it every six weeks to look cool.
if you're getting good equipment, it should last twenty years before you exhaust it, by which time you have another generation of supposedly last-gen gear to actually understand and make actual use of.
i'd rather listen to a talented programmer on a 20 year old tower that really knows how to use the gear because they've spent the time with it than some talentlesss rich kid fucking around with the shiniest, newest toys.
so, i'll stick with sx 3 for now, thanks.
but it's almost time to upgrade to a system that would have been cutting edge around 2015 or so.
it took me all of this time to eat up all of the spinach, and i've still got tons of yogurt, so i'm replacing the spinach with pasta (which will eventually be replaced with quinoa) for my pre-meal bowl. so, there's my betaine shift, for now.
but, i got some kale last time i was out, so my new-normal side salad just got a huge movement towards stability, as well.
inri077
so, i actually ended up spending the morning digitizing the last old cassette i have so that i can put it away, along with this old portastudio i recorded it on, via the same alesis over asio connection i was using previously. i'll reinstall this afternoon. and, i've even uploaded it as a temp mix to the cassette demo ep, which is not closed but i think is now constructed.
i vaguely recall recording this in sarah's apartment as a starting point one night when she was out, and it's really the only way to make sense of it existing at all. i ended up living in sarah's space (which she shared with a friend named heather) for a few weeks because my retarded step-mother tossed me out of the house for correctly calling her delusional - because she was - and refusing to apologize - because it was true. you can claim that was foolish, but where do i get by denying the actual truth? she made an absurd accusation that can only be described by her deluding herself about reality. apologizing for pointing that out would be equivalent to also denying reality and being equally delusional. like, it wasn't an insult, it was a statement of fact! so, if i were to apologize for stating the truth, it would be equivalent to accepting her delusions as true, which would be a denial of reality, and for what? i can't sacrifice truth like that. i can't walk down this dystopic path. so, if you want to accuse me of foolishness, let's at least be accurate about it - the foolishness is actually rooted in an inability to interface with nonsense. this wasn't about my ego, it was about refusing to walk into a dystopia and refusing to separate myself from reality in the process. i'd read too much orwell, i just couldn't handle it. and i knew that the next step would be even worse - that accepting one nonsense as truth would merely lay a basis for accepting more nonsense as truth. it was a shitty outcome, no doubt, but i had to stick to the facts, here - i had to hold to my principles.
truth > family. you have to protect your brain, you have to protect your sanity, or you'll end up as fucked up as everybody else, in the end.
so, i ended up without anywhere to sleep - something i'd never dealt with before (except on the trip to bc i'd just come back from) and wasn't actually taking seriously. in addition to learning that my stepmother was retarded, i learned a little bit about how to fend for myself. but, in the end, i decided i'd rather stay with sarah for a bit, anyways.
but, i lost access to my computer and recording interface...
as such, i called up my friend greg, who had been using the tascam. i mean, i didn't need it - i had the soundblaster live interface. but, now i did. proto-anarchist jessica knew how to distribute property efficiently. the only reasonable timeframe when i would have made this recording is therefore when i was staying with sarah, after i picked up the item from greg (who got a little bit annoyed about it) - which would have been the fall of 2003.
in the end, i just forgot about this recording, and am kind of wondering where the tape with "like divine amoebas" went, as i have more developed memories around recording that track than this one. i mean, this doesn't actually go anywhere just quite yet, even if the dual guitars are kind of harmonically interesting as intertwined sections. that said, this is my next major recording project, as well, and it will form the missing piece of my 8th record (a massive 2xlp set of lengthy pieces, all four of them labeled as symphonies) when it's done.
i will probably do something further with this exact recording, though, as i finally work out the lost symphony. as it is, as rough and unfinished as it is, it's easy enough to extrapolate my mindset at the time, in this kind of dour gira-influenced dirge through this dissonant harmonic cycle of down strokes.
if this is from late 2003 as it must be then it is by far the earliest recording of it that i have. i tried to record it in late 2004 and over 2005, but got distracted and ended up writing xenophanes, instead. so, this comes in last in the sequence of four intertwined symphonic works, but it was actually meant to be the third piece, before xenophanes interjected itself in between. and, that's why it got lost - i pivoted out of the trivial group before i finished it, as i so often did back then. and so often do still now....
are there further demos? well, i can't answer that question thoroughly until i'm sure what happened to the other tape. i digitized it in early 2004, so i haven't lost anything in being unable to locate it. but, i'm sort of sure that it was actually around, too.
for now, these are the only two tracks i have from that brief phase, both demoes of songs that would be completed later and elsewhere, and this is the document i can construct.
by my count, this should end up as inri077 and is essentially now done - along with inri075, inri078, inri079, inri080, inri081, inri082, inri084 and inri085. it is inri076 that will need the attention and could take me most of the summer to complete. and, that will take me up to the summer of 2004. inri083 (impressionist jazz punk, first take) and inri086 (cycles per second lp) will then require some thought as to how to approach.
new upload:
full ep, so far:
full ep, so far:
alright, so i got through one stack of cds and all of the cassettes, save one, and i'm deciding to go ahead and reinstall rather than continue filing because i have to to archive the cassette. there have been some minor hardware changes that will require updating the script, but i guess i'll have to just deal with it.
this machine has been in a broken state for years, as i spent a very long time troubleshooting what i decided in the end was an environmental signals problem. so, i ripped everything to do with the windows xp subsystem out and just finished the last mixes i was dealing with over asio drivers. and want to put it back, now.
i simply don't know what the signals are like down here, and am long overdue to find out.
the install is automated but it's lengthy so that's likely the morning.
today's post is inri056, the single for the track time.
as mentioned, the suggestion that i ought to write folk music hit me as a sort of a mind fuck, as i didn't actually listen to folk music. i consequently had to kind of recalibrate myself, and i'll admit i like a good challenge, but i ultimately had to draw on some of the post-punk, progressive and psychedelic music that i actually understood, and not this weird white bourgeois thing that i had no real meaningful grasp of. in hindsight, i realize that sean had like jefferson airplane and the beegees around the house, in place of the crimson and genesis and floyd i had lying around, so he was able to conceptualize this in ways that i had always culturally othered. again: that wasn't clear to me then, and he may not have been aware just how not into hippie culture i really was, at the time. i mean, he knew i was an old timey punk rocker, but you'd have had to pick at the surface to get me to go into an anti-hippie rant and i doubt that actually happened.
is the result compelling? i think it is, but this is about as much as i could have squeezed out of this, and i'm already breaching the walls as it's unfolding. i quickly found myself getting bored with what sean wanted and missing jam sessions, myself...
so, these tracks kind of sat, as i felt kind of stuck. i had ideas, but they didn't fit into this bullshit folk thing, and i resented being stifled, even if i was stifling myself. i always knew i had to finish them without sean, eventually.
in the end, the b-side here (psi) was left unaltered because it's just too good a pairing to disassemble (intentionally or not, the demo ended up done in the end, after all. that happens sometimes.), but the primary track was completely remastered and blown up into something else, entirely. the way this was rebuilt was really as a consequence of the fact that the constituent tracks sounded outstanding through remastering plugins. i put the guitar part through a reverb and slowed it down a little and it just caved my head in; i put the bass solo through an amp simulator, and it just came to life. i guess it demonstrates how powerful the tune might have been even at the time, if i was still approaching it from the more creative perspective i was with clarity, rather than trying to tone it down to be more palatable for a pop audience.
don't get me wrong: sean's vocals near the end of the track are pretty epic, but it's not a coincidence that this could have been played in between a radiohead song and a smashing pumpkins song on a modern rock radio station in 2002 and his vocals are otherwise reflective of the fact that that's really where his head was at, and i was consequently all of a sudden in the unwanted situation of just trying to manufacture a product for the market....
but, of all of the saves i did over this period, this save is perhaps the most substantive - i took a competent if unremarkable pop song and turned it into a real psychedelic gem, as i had long intended to do. so, get some headphones, please - this is some lush shit.
=====
time & psi were partially a rejection of the folk idea in favour of glossy, somewhat experimental pop. i realized that it was reasonable to move in a more commercial direction, but folk wasn't something i understood well, so it was a weird direction for me to be moving in. experimental or psychedelic pop, on the other hand, was something i had a solid grasp on...
time had been initially recorded in the fall and was remixed in late february to integrate a drum part. no original files exist. psi was recorded quickly in early march.
the track, as it existed in rabit, was a conscious pop compromise. i had ideas that weren't explored to keep it poppy and that have been expanded upon in the remixes.
the time machine is added here as a bonus track. it's based on an earlier classical guitar composition that was always meant to be reinterpreted as an idm tune and finally was in early 2014. the thematic overlap makes it relevant, but there is otherwise no connection between the two songs.
i started working on what would become my seventh symphony very shortly after the material on this ep was completed, and it really represents the point where i lost interest in rabit as a concept, under pressure to continue moving in a direction i didn't have any interest in. there are folk and psych versions of the track; sean never caught on to the psych version, and i never had my heart in the folk version. there were final folk demos recorded as late as the fall, but the disconnect was not solvable. the vocal version of the seventh symphony is in some way a corollary of but is ultimately too separate from these files to include here. psi & time, together, consequently comprise what is the fourth and final ("psychedelic pop") phase of rabit is wolf.
written & recorded in late 2001 and early 2002 and mixed in early 2002 and late 2014. released on nov 19, 2014. expanded, re-released and finalized on nov 2, 2017. as always, please use headphones.
the 2014 instrumental version (tracks 1 &2) appears on my sixth record, jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj^2 (inri063): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj-2
the 2002 vocal mix appears on the rabit is wolf demo (inri057):
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/rabit-is-wolf
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2002, 2014, 2017).
released march 10, 2002
j - electric & acoustic guitars, bass, synthesizers, digital effects & treatments, drum manipulations, programming, digital wave editing, loops, sound design, production, composition.
sean - vocals, lyrics (3,7)
greg - drum performance sample source (1-3, 5-6)
the rendered electronic orchestra on track 8 includes acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, brass, orchestra hit, drum machine, electronic drum kit, nylon guitar, electric guitar, synthesizer effects, music box, piano, bells and mellotron.
Sunday, May 23, 2021
so, i spent the morning filing and tried to stop to nap before i ate, and then eat before i napped, and it ended up a confusing mess, but i think i got enough sleep to carry forward for the night, so long as the air quality in here doesn't degrade too badly.
the guy is supposed to be gone, but his replacement cop and/or daughter and/or mother seems to be up there instead, and she's the actual source of both the smoke and the other smells and the vicious a/c. i actually asked him to turn the a/c off before he left; so much for that, huh? it's freezing in here :(.
the guy i interface with is broadly reasonable, but this woman that fills in for him is a horrible, self-centered piece of shit that should be dragged through the streets attached to the back of a car.
i know this person is female because i can hear them and because i can smell them - they smell like a female, and not in a good way. but, they smoke, so they have no idea. again - it's the worst undercover cop in the history of the world, which i suppose is why she does these substitute roles.
i mean, we all remember how bad the substitute teachers were. imagine substitute stakeout cops.
"officer malone is gone, parrrrtaaaayyyy!"
and, i'm only slightly exaggerating. she seems to be entirely retarded, and that seems to be roughly her level of operation.
so, because she cranked the air up as soon as he left (despite repeated requests to not do that and...why would somebody pay to run an a/c in an empty room? that alone makes it obvious somebody is up there.), i had to start filling in the baseboard cracks with sealer to stop the place from condensing up. i'm also going to go in the next few days and get some vinyl mats for that corner. and, we'll take it from there for the next round.
if i can potentially get through this stack of cds by the end of the night, i'd consider that massive progress.
it's not even a question of whether i'm getting paid or not.
i don't support the ad revenue model, and i don't want advertising for external products on my writing. you could write me a check for a million dollars in ad revenue, and i'd turn it down if it meant ruining the site with ads.
and, let's be clear: ads just ruin content. there's no subtle way to put it - your site is just flat out ruined, once the ads come up on it.
so, is blogger next for the enforced ads from google?
i'd suspect it's a matter of time, and then that's the end of this - i'm out.
web hosting costs seem to have come down a lot since i looked into this last....this is now a major site, and maybe it's time to take that step. it shouldn't be hard to essentially migrate it in tact.
do you really want to wait in line for an extra two hours while the security guards and border officers clunkily check everybody for covid papers?
it's just a cold virus...the hysteria is absurd....
so, let's leave this in the hands of science, please, and not allow for ignorance fueled by media hysteria. we're going to eventually collectively realize that we have to live with this thing and look back and laugh at how stupid we all were.
the one reasonable exception is for the geriatric facilities, or general contact with the weak or elderly. and, i would have argued you should have needed a flu shot to get into an old folks home, too.
so, today's been a little weird. i fell asleep halfway through eating this morning around 9:00 and wasn't really awake until midway through the afternoon. so, i finished my eggs and spent the evening archiving the oxford posts (which i meant to do a while ago and didn't) and the night just kind of got away from me...
it actually seems that music is so bad nowadays that the kids consider mcr and other viciously bad 00s emo to be art rock from a better era.
listen, kids. i lived through that, and all the artists at the time thought we were living through the death of art - and seem to have been right.
i know it's harsh, and perhaps a little bit difficult, but you have to actually look at the music your grandparents and in truth even greatgrandparents liked if you want something substantive, as your parents went through basically the same feelings of dystopia and disgust at existence and modern "art" that you're going through, too.
today's post is the epic prog-folk track, 9:46 outside of the magenta box, reclaimed as the instrumental fuck boxes, and catalogued today as inri055.
that said, i had mentioned to him that his vocal tone was a little like michael stipe, who was a big influence on me growing up. years later, i would realize the similarity in tone with jordan dreyer, but this was still 2001/2002 and la dispute did not yet exist, i don't think - and i even think that sean would have had more in common with a jordan dreyer at that point in life than i would have or than we did with each other. i wanted to write abstract electronic noise, as i always had...but, if anything, i was actually the one to realize that it wasn't the best way to maximize use of his vocals, even if i sort of resisted my own realization. inri054 (clarity) is more like what i wanted rabit to be like, even if sean's vocals are maybe more suited for this presentation. so, it made sense to look in opposite directions, even if i ended up shifting gears entirely within a few months, myself.
so, maybe he (i?) was right, but it didn't make me more excited about it, and if what he really wanted was to start a folk band then i probably wasn't his most ideal collaborator in the long run, either. and, as mentioned previously, he was supposed to be the weird goth kid, not me. i was just an all around total nerd. as pragmatic as it was, it seems to have also been a fairly substantive change in identity for sean, as well. i think he would have laughed at the idea of himself singing folk music, five years earlier....and i probably wouldn't have walked down this path if i knew it would end up as a folk duo, in the end.
it wasn't long after that he showed up with a neutral milk hotel cd that i found to be pretty unspectacular and undeveloped, but he got a lot out of. like, they just sounded like half-finished pumpkins demos or something - i flat out thought it was boring. so, i didn't follow his lead into that, but i got the point and made the mental adjustments. in later years, sean would become your kind of standard indie rock loser, big into pretentious garbage like the animal collective - and we haven't talked much, since.
as apprehensive as i may have been, i realized the logic in the idea, as well. i mean, this is 2001/2002. how were we going to play these songs in public? neither of us had laptops, let alone cell phones, and sean wasn't useful to me as an actual performing musician. there was really only one way to do this, and it was to haul the entire pc tower into the bar, run it out in parallel with a single guitar part and then let sean be the focus of attention on stage. it would essentially reduce to sean doing karaoke over backing tracks i had written and pre-recorded, while i sat in the shadows and diddled around with things. i still don't think that this kind of thing is palatable as live music, but it certainly wasn't at all in 2002. so, if we were going to do this, we would have to find a more presentable format.
it never got off the ground as intended, but that's how this happened - he wanted to play in front of actual people (something i've never cared much for, myself) so we had to find a way to make music that could be performed in public.
the magenta box is a reference to the hmv that sean worked at, and not a reference to female sexual organs or records by sunny day real estate, which is something i was into (there's a borrowed guitar part from 8 on my first demo, from 1996) and never heard sean or jon talk about.
unfortunately, i don't think either of us found the new direction of the project to be appealing enough to be pragmatic about it, at least not at first. so, it kind of dispersed due to my own preference for electronic music and studio musicianship and sean's need to find a way to actually perform in front of actual people. in hindsight, though, after finishing this as an instrumental recording, i'm definitely proud of it.
so, this is a pivot and that pivot finishes the project and closes the project down, but it also kills it off.
====
my memory is a little fuzzy with this track, other than that it was constructed all at once in the middle of the night on a cold february morning in a basement that wasn't well heated.
i believe that sean initially brought in the a capella vocal that is heard in the acoustic demo under the request that it be developed in a folky style, and the track was built from there. we seem to have done the live version the next week, meaning i must have written it over the week.
there was some hard drive corruption as the demo was being recorded. i was in a glitchy mindset at the time and decided the skips ought to be interpreted musically. i'm not sure i'd make the same choice now, but i'm not willing to second guess myself, either. so, i skittered up the bass and organ parts to make the entire track sound glitchy to compensate for the skips. i also ran the vocal file through a musical algorithm that involved slowing it down and pasting it over itself to create a collage of voices somewhat similar to a robotic choir. as the track is otherwise rather pastoral, all of this glitch provides for an unusual juxtaposition.
as mentioned, the track was built up quickly, but it was always meant as a demo. that is to say that the vocal-driven 2002 version of the track was not complete, and was never completed.
i came around to completing it as an instrumental work in mid october, 2014. the removal of sean's vocals required some mild rethinks in terms of melodic content, but the real additions are threefold. first, it is substantially remixed to make it sound thicker. second, some sound design or soundscaping was constructed, mostly for the beginning of the track, but some guitar parts were also added throughout. third, drums were added. this converts the track out of folk (a genre i spend almost no time in) and back into psychedelic pop (my usual home) with hints of fusion, prog and idm. as it is, this can be viewed as the definitive (if non-comprehensive) third incarnation of rabit is wolf, which was being torn between freak folk and folk punk tendencies in it's general tumbling towards "folk".
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. as always, please use headphones.
the 2014 instrumental version appears on my sixth record, jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj^2 (inri063): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj-2
the 2002 vocal mix appears on the rabit is wolf demo (inri057):
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/rabit-is-wolf
this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2002, 2014, 2015, 2017).
released february 20, 2002
j - guitars, effects, bass, electric air reed organ, electronic drum kit, voice (1, 5, 6, 8), sampling, sound design, vocal manipulations, digital wave editing, production
sean - vocals/lyrics (2,3,4)
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