The Euclidean Splendor

First foray...

I've been relatively slow to get into performing, perhaps almost famously. 

To be fair, two of the most prominent musical phenomena of the previous century - The Beatles and Glenn Gould - eventually gave up public performances entirely in favor of studio work. Given the dynamics of the era, it's not really hard to see why that made sense, and it basically still does. The results were more controllable, the sound quality was better, and there's the possibility of doing things that essentially can't be done on stage. Especially once multi-track recording on greater than four channels of tape (initially the standard for nearly all of the Beatles' recordings up until Abbey Road as far as I'm aware) became common practice in studio sessions by the early 1970s, the effect on the music world has been nothing short of electric. The new technology did much to cement the LP format as the preferred vehicle for carefully crafted album-length masterpieces that soon issued like fruit from the trees starting in the 70s and ever since. I've collected quite a few myself over the years, as you might expect!

It's easy to forget that things weren't always that way though. Before the advent of inexpensive, reliable and high-fidelity (well, relatively speaking) recording formats, being able to reproduce an entire musical performance - reliably, from start to finish, whether on stage or in the studio, on an instrument or sung - was essentially the gold standard of musical professionalism, and groups often spent hours, days, weeks or months rehearshing together to prepare for tours and studio dates at a time when the overall cost of living was (let's not forget this either) considerably cheaper than it is now. It seems a marked contrast to the entertainment world of today, where image, style / aesthetic presentation and economic expediency have become in certain ways almost more important than the music itself.

So I started to wonder what would happen if I attempted to engage in a bit of musical "time travelling"... Not back in time, but somehow reaching out to the roots while simultaneously embracing the unknown future, using the technology immediately accessible to me. There's a lot that is unknown about the present moment we're in as a people, as a society and a planet. Both humanity's greatest potentials and our gravest dangers seem to lie not in some far off utopian or dystopian scenario but in actuality everywhere around us, at every moment, pervading every space that we once took to be sacrosanct, private and trustworthy. At such a time I thought it fitting to experiment with new formats and new ways of playing; perhaps even redefine my basic model of working in order to breathe new life into what I do. 

That is what you see documented here, if only in prototypical form. I thought, what if the studio could truly be used as an instrument, "playable" in real time to create unique performances that allow for spontaneous variation..?

The Everything

[for the previous post]

The lens through which the present problem of technology is framed is itself an illustration of a much grander dilemma running through much recent world history: the desire for progress, for positive societal change and adaptation, is forever opposed by the weight of history, and from a strictly empirical perspective, we lack purely historical examples of the type of society we so fervently wish to create; at least, we lack examples that spring readily to mind in the public consciousness, save what many take to be well-intentioned yet somewhat vague sentiments about respect, compassion, mindfulness, tolerance or diversity. 

The situation reminds one of nothing so much as William Blake's famous maxim: 

"What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torments, despair, eternal death..."

The IIBC (Insectoid Intelligence Broadcasting Corporation) would like to apologize for the previous announcement

Sorry everyone, but perhaps for the more impressionable readers out there, not to mention in light of the tenor of the times, I might go to the trouble of pointing out that I do NOT, in fact, advocate for the actual death of Bandcamp curators. I was writing somewhat flippantly and it was not at all intended to be taken seriously. I also don't happen to think that the title of the 2004 film "Kill Your Idols", a great doc directed by Scott Crary about the progenitors of punk in New York City in the late 1970s and their various aesthetic heirs apparent, was meant to be taken seriously either. Actually I generally have a great deal of respect for the various guides on offer at BC where they coincide with my general area of interest, containing as they do many of the notable entries in what may very well have been the only formats possible, in a public forum, to present or render the modes and suggestions of stylistic nuance in the theater of the mind. In other words, I respect that it must be a difficult job, and one that is inevitably apt to rub certain people the wrong way by way of the inclusion or exclusion of this or that plausibly relatable entity. These kinds of considerations are of course fascinating, and used to be great fun to discuss at parties while stoned before social media and the onset of late-stage capitalism started driving people to various extremes of isolation, escapism and... well, extremism. 

In turn, these developments were indeed the frequent topic of many rambling yet well-informed and impassioned discussions in Bradley's basement before a truly tragic turn of events rendered even that no longer possible for the likes of misunderstood freaks like me. 

It IS interesting to note that the promise of the "opt-out" cultures of the early computer hackers and that of psychedelic enthusiasts - movements that were at one time very much entwined and seemed to promise not endless enslavement to some neo-consumerist ideal but rather a path toward a truly free and egalitarian society; a culture free from the many historically-derived shackles often mindlessly dictated by the demands of commerce. And yet we remain divided on just that point. The structure of society didn't take very long, so it would seem, to integrate the new technologies into the infrastructure of commerce; a move that has apparently rendered its liberating potential somewhat meaningless in the context of a marketplace hopelessly skewed towards the resourceful and well-connected.

The situation would seem hopeless. And yet, there are encouraging signs. The real promise of the internet, despite its origins as a post-apocaplyptic defense department emergency hotline, is that a new kind of human understanding may yet be generated via new modes of interaction. In other words, cultures tend to adapt to change in ways that are both constructive AND destructive. It may simply take human beings a bit longer than anticipated to fully recognize the consequences of a tool so powerful that the ability it enables, namely near-instantaneous global communication and lightning-speed access to information almost anywhere, plus the ability to manipulate that information ad lib, in real time, would surely have seemed to any earlier culture or human society as nothing short of black magic.

The question is, and perhaps always has been: do we have enough time to adapt successfully before we are overrun with the downsides? How are we, for example, going to successfully put the brakes on the many dubious uses of AI when absolutely no one expects the companies developing and marketing such products to be accountable to public opinion or anything like environmental standards? At what point do the accumulated errors render the code useless, and we have to - as the early punks indeed felt they had to - rip it up and start over again?    

PSR, continued

...and yet (for "Land's End") all observers must somehow agree on the underlying facts - that is to say events - themselves. You can't just make up events. Any events that don't agree, no matter what time they allegedly occurred, must be relegated to the perfectly agreeable yet distinct realms of fiction or fantasy.

Kill Bandcamp Curators

Stop telling us what's good and what we're supposed to like. Who elected you?

Land's end

"Begin at the beginning... and go on till you come to the end: then stop."

     - Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

As opposed to (in no particular order): starting in the middle, stopping after the end, starting before the beginning, or stopping before the beginning.

There is some implication here about the identity of indiscernables, which may require a relativistic adjustment per Einstein: I'm thinking of trains and flashlights, and whether anyone really sees the same object. 

Is the PSR subject to relativity also? In the sense that varied accounts of the perceptual order of events would imply different chains of causation to different observers?

Attacking science is like noticing the sky appears blue and then attacking someone else for noticing the same thing. 

To attempt a monopoly on the truth irrevocably alters the nature of what is meant by truth.

Belly of the whale

More ambient / downtempo / chillout treats from DJ CC and co.

Seriously, why don't these have more views??!?! So good!

The Listening Party

Sorry

Ok everyone, here's a great big stinking apology for all those whose listening party I missed, album I didn't buy, record store show I didn't attend, concert I couldn't afford, profile I failed to adequately scope, resource I didn't make use of, etc etc etc etc... last year. 

In my defense, I can only point out that I am in fact still counted among the living by a great many people, including (until further notice I assume) several successful legal professionals.

So Therefore Records

Aphex. Squarepusher. The stalwarts of IDM. So Therefore... 

kind of an ambient house-y 4x4 dub techno thing which is in fact totally different