THIS IS WHY

08-29-10

This is why my friends are the very best. Excerpted from a gchat with photographic genius, Michael Aghajanian.

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FUCK WORK

08-27-10

Does anyone else find this mindbendlingly repulsive?

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MORMONS HUNTING

08-26-10

I have noticed an explosion recently of these Mormon web ads. Now, normally, I chat with any box put on my screen, but this one I found a bit suspicious. What kind of broke-ass chat window doesn’t have those sweet emoticon gifs that wink and shit? Nary a moment too late I realize that this slick bit of webvertising (word?) is from none other than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The “Latter Day” thing always kind of tripped me out. Isn’t it a little broad? Its like, didn’t yesterday count as a latter day? Just sayin.

Whenever I see this stuff I wonder two things: 1) what kind of schlub is responding to this advertising? and 2) why do they think that I am one of those schlubs? I mean clearly people are clicking this mofo. I saw a chart somewhere on the internet that claimed that the Mormons have hella cash. People with hella cash don’t just throw said cash at outreach without proven click metrics. This means that somewhere, someone is cruising the same hungarian porn/warez website I was and thought, you know what I WOULD LIKE TO JOIN THE FAITH CHAT. And then, they did. I have heard that one of the great advances in internet advertising is that, basically, ads can follow you around. I noticed that almost all of the ads tailored to me include music production software and/or cheeseburgers. Pretty on the nose. So why did some little interbot see me coming and say, THIS FUCKER LOOKS LIKE A FUTURE MORMON? Did it read my emails and know that I was spiritually adrift, in need of a good chat? Now I got nothing against Mormons, I say of them what I say of all people: get yours. I just wonder if eastern european porn caves are really the places to be hunting for faith-bros.

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UNLISTENABLE MUSIC

08-15-10

I am going to say something that I have thought about deeply and thoroughly: I fucking hate Sleigh Bells. Not the instrument, beloved of reindeer and Rashied Ali, but the band from, surprise, Brooklyn. This band is awful in literally every way. Their “backstory” (who the fuck cares about a back story?) is that the producer (in this case, the guy who had a cracked copy of fruityloops) used to be in a hardcore band called Poison the Well. HOLY EDGINESS! The singer has bangs. First of all, are we not over the “I used to play hardcore and now I am a pussy” story? I am shocked, indeed shocked, that the internet is still into this garbaggio, given that that is the Dashboard Confessional backstory. But what about their music, you say? Horrid. This kind of music is the worst for several reasons. Anybody who hides behind the term “noise pop” or “avant-whatever” always has the ability to, if criticized for their music sounding like cats in a blender, claim that we, the bourgeois audience, don’t get it. They would be right. Sleigh Bells music doesn’t suck because it is too abrasive–that is the icing on the shitty cake that is their album. Their music sucks because it is limp pap. Because it was created to be played in an Urban Outifitters in Des Moines. Sleigh Bells is Evanescence for WASPs who went to Bard.

How does this music get made? How does this music leave the holding pattern of internet music to be launched into pitchforklandia? The answer might be that these clowns are on MIA’s label NEET, and clearly were sonically on teh same page as MIA’s latest meh offering. That sonic page being nu-metal.

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HOW TO USE ABLETON TO MIMIC MLR

08-12-10

That’s right, music production nerduses, I have made an ableton tutorial video. This baby will show you how to use Ableton to mimic the functionality of the monome program MLR. Essentially what it allows you to do is to chop up clips by restarting the clip at various points in the clip. This sounds more complicated than it is.

This approach has several advantages over the use of the real-deal, monome version of MLR. 1) you get to use all the cool stuff that ableton can do (routing, pitch transposition, warping, fancy colors) 2) you can map it to anything, even the computer keyboard 3) you don’t have to buy max for live. Nerd out.

I also made this little video of me improvising using this setup. This is from a remix of the Yeasayer song “One” that I started but never finished. I realized halfway through making the remix that 1) I hate remixes and 2) the original song was exceedingly wack.

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THE ADRIA METHOD

08-09-10

Ferran Adria, the avant-garde Catalan chef, is something of an inspiration to me. Not that I have ever been tempted to make a mango foam filled with goat cheese, but because, in an age when innovation in the arts seems to take the place of quality, Adria is able to innovate and make things that are good. This commitment to “goodness” (a technical term for him) is even more amazing given that the man IS the culinary avant-garde. He could very easily just make crazy crap and call it a life. Usually such a commitment to quality is a mainstay of more conservative artists–ones who yearn for classicism and handcraftedness.

Adria’s futuristic rigor is especially appealing to me as an electronic musician: it is all too easy in this line of work to just find some novel eight bar phrase, loop it for 5 minutes and call it a track. One of the reasons that this happens is that there is no standard way to do things against which to measure anything. Techniques change so rapidly that it is close to impossible to keep up with–for many artists it takes up all of their time. This is why the internet is filled with computer/digital music tech-porn. Finding someone, like Adria, who is constantly developing new methods but never compromises the integrity of his work, is rare.

The specific method that he uses to do this is outlined in his book, A Day at El Bulli. To make a long story short, Adria divides his time between developing Techniques and developing Ideas. Techniques are tools and methods that can be translated to any material. For Adria, this would include the technique of using dry ice to flash freeze an ingredient instead of cooking it. Adria tests these new techniques and attempts to perfect them, finding out their limits and their possibilities. Ideas are more amorphous, but can include themes and inspiration taken from daily life. Adria would include things like freshly cut grass, or spring. These are things that need, somehow, to be expressed through a technique.

The specific utility of dividing up your work like this is that it allows you to always be doing something. Sometimes I find it daunting to sit down and make a song that evokes, “the feeling that one gets when walking out of a movie theater.” When I don’t have that in me, I can just work on figuring out if adding a side-chained gate to my reverb yields any measurable results (it’s awesome, btw). On the other hand, when I don’t want to sit in front of my computer and manually drag a tiny red bar until the feedback on a delay is proper, I can go to a museum, read a book or watch a movie and record things that inspire me. These would go in the idea file. If I am ever at the point of knowing that I want to work on some music but feeling kind of lost as to where to begin, I can just open up the Techniques box and start mashing around. If I have an Idea that I am developing into something bigger and am stuck about how to get there, I can look through the Techniques box and remind myself of something that may break the ice.

If you are curious about Adria’s work, I would suggest watching Anthony Bourdain’s DVD about the chef. It is short and pretty great. Then read A Day at El Bulli. Then read Food for Thought, Thought for Food, which talks a little more about Adria’s impact on the arts in general.

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TURF DANCING

08-08-10

Found this over at Loudat. Also have no idea what the hell they are doing. Got to say, though, California is out of control.

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INCEPTACON

08-02-10

Since I am crippled, I pretty much only leave the house to go to work. That is my lame excuse for just now seeing Inception. That and the fact that all movie houses except for the Alamo Drafthouse are the most miserable places on earth. I wish someone would explain to me why it is that movies cost more and more and are more unpleasant than ever to go see. Isn’t that the opposite of how the free market is supposed to work? Be that as it may, I saw Inception yesterday and I have determined that this movie was the cinematic equivalent of a restaurant with a really nice view.

Restaurants with nice views are often spotty, foodwise, because, frankly, the food is secondary. If you go to a restaurant on a huge cliff in Malibu and complain to a waiter that fish is dry, they will tell you to fuck off and then they will point to the soaring view of the sea, sky, etc. Inception had, like the Malibu restaurant, some elements that were indisputably not good. Ellen Page’s evocatively named Ariadne (Ariadne is the one was the one who helped Theseus escape the maze of the Minotaur, GET IT?) was basically a non character inserted to ask Dicaprio questions. “What happened to your wife, Mr. Cobb?” “I’m so glad you asked, Ariadne!” Blah blah blah. “Mr. Cobb, can you explain the architecture if dreams to me?” “No problem, Ariadne!” Cue trailer scene. Then, there’s Tom Bheringer (Major league). Don’t forget that the phrase “dream within a dream” was used 9000 times. We all believe that you passed 10th grade English, Mr. Nolan. Cue Michael Caine: “but you taught me to navigate minds!” hmm a hinted-at backstory. I am intrigued! Please do not sate my desire to know how Cobb learned his skills!

Good for us, none of this matters. Because there was a zero gravity fight scene with the guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun (not John Lithgow). Because Cobb’s psycho wife projection was the perfect combo of sexy and very frightening. Because Ken Watanabe is the cat’s PJ’s. Because there was a chase scene in some which some bustling Middle Eastern city (in the near future, bad guys will wear suits again) and the art direction was off the chain. Because the other movies released this summer were: Marmaduke, Charlie St. Cloud and Salt.

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GASLAMP KILLER INTERVIEW: HELL YEAH

07-28-10

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A LONDON THING

07-25-10

Watching this FaltyDL interview on XLR8RTV just reminded me of this track. Really really great, inspiring garage tune.

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download A London Thing–Scott Garcia