Read the 2012 Olena Bormashenko translation of the 1972 novel Roadside Picnic by the Russian brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky which was made into the 1979 film Stalker, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, which I first saw, oh let’s say in the 2010-2017 range. A circuitous route to be sure. If you, like me, only knew the story via the film then you, like me, were largely ignorant of what the book contained until you, like me, finally got around to reading it. The film is mostly a faint echo of the events of the book which has me wanting to watch the (grim) film again because I couldn’t remember anything in the book happening in the film other than some very basic details. As far as I’m concerned, its greatest contribution is this image/vibe:
A simple distillation of the plot is: Aliens visit Earth and then leave. They leave behind both physical objects and less tangible “zones” that have strange effects on humanity and the environment. People go after these objects and die or get grievously injured (physically/mentally) in the process. Mostly they talk about it a lot. Highly recommended.
The song that was playing as I read the final scene and which was the perfect accompaniment was this one from Ian William Craig and Daniel Lentz titled “Stöltzle.” Also highly recommended.
About a year ago our cat Auguste (Twizby) was diagnosed with the first signs of kidney failure. This level was too high, the other too low. He had already been eating a prescription dry food for kidney health, but recently he stopped eating it almost entirely. We had him checked out again and switched him to the wet version of the same type of food and he was super into it. Soon we found out his too high/too low levels were even more so, and the vet prescribed him a few medications (Naruquin for phosphorus levels and Renacare for potassium levels).
Context: A few years ago our older cat Minty went though a similar situation, but his escalated very quickly, resulting in a check-in with the vet that he didn’t return from. So this was very much on our minds with Auguste.
Fortunately the medications worked/are working, and hopefully will continue to work. Auguste is still with us, still excited to eat his horrible smelling wad of prescription food gloop, is still keeping on eye on the neighborhood, and is still waking everyone up at 4am with his pacing and faux-mournful meowing. Fantastic.
Made Japanese Milk Bread from the Milk Street cookbook over the weekend. It’s my second time and both have turned out great. I’m the kind of sicko that sometimes thinks I could happily survive on nothing but buttered bread and water, so being able to make my own, even a couple simple varieties, is a nice skill to have. Milk bread (slightly crunch crust, very soft but stable interior) is a bit more complicated but none of the stages are themselves all that esoteric, though if you’re a slowpoke like me it will eat up an entire day. It makes enough to freeze for later and it comes back to life rather well, so bonus. Also, dog approved.
Planted nine raspberry canes over the weekend. Days later and I’m still a broken man.
Growing up, my grandmother had a swath of raspberry bushes that produced more berries than we could eat. That seems impossible now (I can eat a lot of them) but I think it’s true. Raspberries are my favorite food, hands down. Recently I had bought a pack of them at the grocery store to use in a dessert or something and ended up eating almost all of them while standing over the kitchen sink. In this economy? I figured it was time to make my own.
Our local, week-long music festival called Homegrown recently concluded. It’s been ten years since I last played HG, which means it’s been ten years since I’ve played live at all and I’ve had that fact on my mind.
My first live gig (of mostly cover songs) as a drummer with the band Third Stone happened sometime in the summer of 1993 in the parking lot of a Burger King that’s no longer there. I continued to play drums in many other bands up until I formed my own, The Surfactants, in 2004/5. I’m pretty sure I was also playing in the bands BOTH and The State Champs at the same time. The last Surfactants gig was a bit of a reunion that happened at The Flame nightclub in Superior Wisconsin for Homegrown in 2016. I played five shows in three days that Homegrown, which included a collaboration with my friend and Surfactants bass player Eric as Dirty Knobs, and my other electro synth-noir project The Electric Witch. You can hear some of those live recordings in The Endless Compendium.
All of this happened right after I recorded some synth parts in Nashville with Mary Bue (the second singer for The Electric Witch after the original, Marcus, who also sang for The Surfactants and was the original drummer in BOTH, [are you keeping up?]) as part of her band The Holy Bones. Sounds much more glamorous than it was, I assure you.
Things kind of exploded between Nashville and Homegrown, a tale as old as time and one that’s beyond the scope of this blog and my interest in telling it, and had nothing to do with me anyway, other than being caught in the crossfire. But I was already burned out, explosion not-withstanding. Twenty-plus years of hauling drums and gear, joining, forming, and dissolving bands, recording a dozen albums, all for little more return than a couple drinks and a fun hang. Hitting the Big Time was not going to happen and I was out of fucks to give.
So here I am, almost 50, ten years since I last played live, either solo or as part of a group. It’s been wonderful. I don’t miss it. Really. I barely even go to live shows anymore. The physical sound of your average band playing an average gig at an average venue actually makes my skin crawl a little. I have no desire to go back to that fruitless struggle.
In the meantime I’ve worked to make my humble home studio just a little less humble, a more comfortable and efficient space to work in. A quiet, calm place to be in without any outside expectation. I think I’ve recorded some of my best stuff as a result.
I’d like to wrap this up with some witty return to the concept of “Homegrown” but you know what?
And this time around I *do* have something new for you. It’s called NUMBERTHUMPER by Dirty Knobs and it’s kind of a weird one. What can I say? Sometimes ideas need to be pursued to their natural end if for no other reason than to get rid of them and make way for others. A just really wanted to use the numbers I recorded ages ago, and I really needed to make something painfully loud and distorted. Here’s my best explanation:
a lost, shambling machine the size of cities, all clanks and shakes and fretful whirrs, broadcasting a series of numbers that have lost their meaning, yet must be spoken, the still air pushed by overdriven vibrations, an invisible wall flattening the night as the machine drifts through a relentless fog illuminated by cloud bursts of faint green and yellow light, plods over ash covered fields, animals watch it pass with dull curiosity while the furrowed trail the droning, broken machine leaves behind fills with bubbling tar and rust and steam, pools of water with no moon to reflect.
The new one from Squarepusher, KAMMERKONZERT, just arrived. I’ve been listening to the download from Bleep since it released a couple weeks ago. This time around we hear Tom Jenkinson (the pusher himself) inhabit an entire jazz orchestra sprinkled with his trademark bass guitar gymnastics, electronic jabs and throbs, frantic drums (both real and programmed) and a full compliment of string, horns, and woodwinds played at a thousand notes per second down to softer, thoughtful, languid interludes. In other words, it’s a Squarepusher record all right. But die-hard fans of his drill & bass style might be disappointed in this much more organic, flowing, modern classical form (see also: ULTRAVISITOR), echoed in the album art that features multiple exposure black and white photos of what seem to be traditional acoustic instruments on a dark and mysterious stage. All very Blue Note Records-esque and it’s obvious that Jenkinson wants this to be considered a recording of a sweaty, intense live performance despite it all coming from just one guy. At times it can come off as a bit of an impenetrable whirlwind, but its mastery of the form is undeniable.
NOTE: This is the first time I’ve ever seen a hidden track on a vinyl record. It’s on Side 1 where after the third track there is a silent locked groove (meaning it will just keep spinning but not moving the needle forward.) But there is a fourth track beyond that that can only be heard by picking up the needle and placing it on the track manually. (You can see the gap in tracks in the photo below.) This hidden track is a short piece a la SOLO ELECTRIC BASS1.
…except for your other three crew members and close to a million people watching the livestream back on Earth.
Today as the astronauts aboard the crew-christened Integrity (formally Orion) officially flew further from Earth than any other humans before, they took a moment to request a name change for two unnamed features on the moon’s surface. First they asked for one to be named Integrity (obvious), and the other to be named after commander Reid Wiseman’s wife who passed away a few years ago. The dedication ended with them making sure it was spelled correctly, “And you spell that C A R R O L L.”
I’m not sure if this name change suggestion was a surprise to Wiseman or not, but the immediate result saw all four members of the crew bursting into tears, then floating across the cabin into one big group hug.
Listen, life on Earth has never been easy, but right at this moment it feels like a lot is going very wrong for VERY STUPID reasons. To see these four humans unashamedly showing love and support for each other LITERALLY as far removed from the world as anyone has EVER been, is nothing short of an extraordinary, monumental moment, blasting out a beacon of hope brighter than any celestial object.
Received the new two disc self titled LP from SUNN O))) yesterday. “You should put that on right now and play it loud as fuck,” I was instructed. Not a problem.
If you are at all familiar with SUNN O))) then you have a very good idea of what this sounds like. If not, imagine if the universe were a couple of fuzzed out electric guitars played through a parallel universe of amps at a rate of several eons per chord and you might have some idea of what they achieve. While not everything is played at a glacial pace, “slow” and “massive” could be used to describe any of the songs. And with very little exception those guitars and their wavering, thrumming tones, vibrating both together and at time at-odds with each other, are all you hear. But it is such an all encompassing riot of sound that you will envision a vast symphony of players. When each song inevitably ends it’s as if a great pressure you hadn’t noticed building is suddenly lifted and the silence becomes briefly disorienting. At least if you are listening to it though a hefty sound system in a room at reasonably high decibel levels, and you should be.
It’s been about five months since it was released and I’m just now getting around to talking about the on-demand via elasticStage vinyl release of SCORCHER by Dirty Knobs.
For a much more detailed step-by-step run through of the experience you can check out this post about my three-part ROOMS release. The SCORCHER process was exactly the same regarding the album page creation and ordering/shipping process. tl;dr It’s very reasonable, fast, and sounds great.
SCORCHER is quite a different album from ROOMS, and it’s given me a better feel for the sound quality that elasticStage delivers. This time is felt like the disc’s surface noise was a little more present, but this could be because the music on SCORCHER is much more dynamic so one is prone to turning the volume up a bit at the beginning which also increases the volume of the surface noise. (I am always turning the music up, and up, and up as I go, just generally speaking, so your milage may vary.)
So this is not an audiophile quality product by any means, at least as far as the vinyl is concerned, but it is still, in my estimation, worth the cost and worth checking out if you are a musician or band looking for a way to sell directly to fans without having to rent a storage space to house 1000s of copies and deal with shipping out of an extra bedroom.
You can listen to SCORCHERhere and buy the digital download (starting at just $1US) there. You can order the on-demand vinyl and/orCD copy here and get all of my elasticStage releases here.
