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oh god here it comes

January 15, 2008 · by · in ,

School just happened to me. Owch. So:

This is a concept guitar, by a man named Amit Zoran. Essentially, it provides a different resonating chamber for each string. I happen to think that’s a pretty mindbending idea, but that’s because I don’t usually think about acoustics and acoustic changeas a method of synthesis. Obviously, I spend too much time in front of my computer.

I went to see Oholibah and Her Lovers last night, an opera put on by a horde of people from the School of Music…but not the School of Music itself. Overheard politics aside, the “naked opera” was monumental in the very best sense of the word. The libretto was edited together from Old Testament, and the production as a whole worked out to a cross between Cecil B. DeMille and Wagner, complete with the Song of Soloman, Voice Of God, and a Cast Of Thousands. Wonderful stuff.

Finally, I’m playing at Hush on Thursday, January 31st, opening for Yoseff. You should come.

Oh oh!  Chris Reiche dropped some artistic and ontological science today when he said that “We’re not modernism or post modernism or post-post-modernism any more.  We’re at individualism now.”  I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out what he means by that Zen little koan.

geek your way to love

January 10, 2008 · by · in , ,

First things first: Come and see me opening for Shiloh at Hush, tomorrow. They’re fantastic, I’m fantastic. Simple. Now then:

Networked Music Review has a link to some gloriously otaku in-game music playing in Lord Of The Rings Online. I don’t know how much support Second Life gives to this kind of thing, and I have a feeling that the latency is still bad enough to prevent duets. However, as latency improves, online ensembles will become more and more plausible. I will, in fact, bet you money that they’ll eventually turn into their own games / interfaces / programs, etc. At the moment, MacBooks come standard with webcams. What if they came standard with mics and ‘GarageJam’ software? ‘GarageJam’ being, of course, GarageBand plus a friends list and an “Let’s Jam” button for when you’re bored and want to play / make / create music with a friend.

Damn. Now I’m all excited about that. Moving on to video games. GamaSutra did an interview with the guy who designed Elite. In it, he talks about emergent gameplay, AI-driven missions, proper “non-linear” stories in mainstream games, and so on. Meanwhile, Grand Text Auto linked to a bunch of articles about table-top gaming and how story evolved in them. Greg Costikyan’s essay is a really good read and a really good history lesson.

Those have got me thinking, mostly about quantization of narrative, to give it a high-falutin’ title. I will post more about it, later, when math is not calling my name as much, and when I can form thoughts better. Most of what I want to say is dealt with in those two linked articles. Read them!

dance, you fools, we’re sinking!

January 5, 2008 · by · in

Micah – Greenstone (Sad Mix) [Proton]
Pigon – Promises [Dial]
Martin Skogehall – Viagra Falls (Djinxx Edit) [Mezzotinto]
Sasha – Who Killed Sparky [emFire]
Mark Ankh – Dreaming (Medway Remix) [Sound Evolution]
Naveen G – Torsades [Emote]
C79 – Silent Violence (Quiet Riot Remix) [Pacific Front]
Simon Baker – Bandit [20:20 Vision]
Pryda – Odyssey [Pryda]

Cobblestone Jazz – Dumptruck [Wagon Repair]
Cortney Tidwell – Don’t Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up (Ewan Pearson Remix) [Ever]
Silver City – Bari Girl (Ewan Pearson Remix) [GU]
Moonbeam – What Dreams May Come [Mezzotinto]
Future Funk Square – De-Mystified (Andy Page Remix) [Default]
The Youngsters – The Third Knife [20:20 Vision]
Radio Slave – Bell Clap Dance [Rekids]
BBE – 7 Days & 1 Week (Rollo & Sister Bliss Remix) [Kosmo]

begin again

January 3, 2008 · by · in ,

School started today. Oddly enough, the worst part was getting used to a new math prof. Speed, then, is the order of the day:

– I’m playing at Hush on Friday, January 11th, opening up for Shiloh. You should come.

– NYE was fantastic. John Howard and Death To Sexy rocked Hush, then Dust and I brought down the house at the Sunset Room, and then I went to bed. Then I somehow ended up drinking at a friend’s house at 7 PM on New Year’s Day. Ooops.

– Braeden and I are working on a mix. The ball is in my court for tracks 2 & 3: more as it breaks.

– Ideas: If you were a music student, would you want free webspace from the University, as an online resume / promotion space? What if there were mics in all the practice rooms, with a “post to website” button that would upload what you were just practicing to said webspace? What if there were headphone cues in practice rooms, so you could work on your quartet / quintet / sextet across practice rooms, without needing 037 or 016 to be free? Or do you all just want more practice rooms? (Credit is due to David (?) for the micing practice room idea, which is where all of this started.)

music will not last

December 31, 2007 · by · in ,

Much to my surprise, I find myself a music student. While I’m not entirely sure how it happened, I can tell you that the School of Music at UVic is a mind-boggling place for a science kid who likes techno to end up.

See what I mean? These are deeply serious people. If you’re a typical music student, you have to audition to get in, you have an appointed lesson for your instrument once a week, you have to play for masterclasses and recitals of all shapes and sizes…and you have to hold down decent marks in five courses. Woosh. I do not exaggerate when I say that the skill level that undergraduates display would rate a master’s degree in, say, computer science.

The music school is also a bit of a cult, or maybe “closed system” describes it better. It lives in this odd, self-perpetuating, historical vacuum, filled with the ghosts of surly German men. These ghosts loom overlarge, watching as music students reproduce their centuries-old melodies and harmonies with such perfection that only other music students will notice their flaws.

Some of these students then become teachers, and go out into the world and indoctrinate small, innocent children into their way of life. A subset of these children eventually end up at UVic as music students and a further subset of these new music students become teachers, and the cycle begins anew. It’s like salmon spawning. Only with more bassoons, more strict counterpoint, and fewer bears in rivers.

God, I love bears. Let me also make it very clear that in addition to loving bears, I don’t think that the cult / conservational aspects of the school of music are a bad thing, even if they can sometimes come on a little strong. I do, however, think that everyone should go down to Hush or Lucky or somewhere and get right crunked out from time to time. A little bit of populism never hurt anyone.

(I would take this chance to write about musical styles as a memetic virus, but that’s neither here nor there. Will get to it later.)

If you’re me and you snuck into all this through the back door marked Music & Computer Science, it can be a little overwhelming, and more than a little humbling.  I lack the skill, even after DJing for almost 7 years, to perform at the required level, and Brahms didn’t write any sonatas for laptop and turntable, for some reason Way to go, Brahms. What a dick. (I’ll just have to write them myself.)

“please, don’t tell me…

December 28, 2007 · by · in , ,

…that I’ve been fucking an android. Or, do tell me that I’ve been fucking an android.”

No one can say that THE INVISIBLES aren’t quotable, even if they’re slightly less than coherent from time to time. To move on: I can’t not link to this slightly visionary, slightly creeeeeeepy interview with David Levy, author of a book called LOVE AND SEX WITH ROBOTS. You wish I was making this up. Or, you don’t.

In less pornographic news, I have two new clips posted: Oceanography and the aforementioned Beatles project, EVOLved. Go and listen to them right now.

I also look to be DJing on New Year’s Eve at the Sunset Room, tagging with Dust. We’re on at 0400, by the looks of it, for all those who are still awake and dreaming.

Finally, I’ve been doing rather a lot of reading. I can, much to my surprise, highly recommend HALTING STATE, by Charles Stross. I can mostly recommend SPIN, by Robert Charles Wilson, and CAMOFLAUGE, by Joe Haldeman. And, of course, Neil Gaiman’s STARDUST is perfectly lovely.

More coherent thoughts to come, once school re-starts and I have lots of spare time. (Nyuk nyuk nyuk)

i’m not even angry.

December 26, 2007 · by · in ,

“I’m being so sincere right now. Even though you broke my heart. And killed me. And tore me to pieces. And threw every piece into a fire.”

Welcome to PORTAL. Always remember: the cake is a lie.

In addition to being a fantastic concept with a fantastic game around it, with a fantastically snide plot and fantastic presentation, writing, and voice work around the plot, Portal is actually a textbook example of learning in game design. The titular portals that drive the game are a bit of a mindbreak. This only increases once you discover all the things you can do with portals.

The designers deal with this by slowly and exactly introducing each concept, maneuver, and mechanic. They also supply a horde of visual cues, some subtle, some obvious, to help you on your merry way. By the time the bottom drops out, the User is totally competent at manipulating portals, boxes, momentum, enemies, and laser beams – all of which become pretty important pretty fast.

I mention this super-geeky subset of game design because of a book I was given called A THEORY OF FUN, by Raph Koster. If you’re interested in game design at all, practically or abstractly, you should read this book.  Koster is occasionally cryptic and meandering, but the text as a whole is filled with wisdom of the highest order, about the nitty gritty of design and the overarching philsophy of games, play, and learning.

2007: shows of the year

December 23, 2007 · by · in

I can’t really pick one out of a horde of good nights out this year, so I’m just going to list off my favorites:



Battles, Maximo Park, Planet of the Drums, Phil K, Steve Reid & Kieren Hebden, Kid Koala.

Of those, Steve Reid & Kieren Hebden maaaybe stand out a little. Maybe Battles do as well. Tough to say. I’m also kind of surprised that there was no standout DJ performance for me this year. Phil K was Phil K, and Kid Koala is pretty sick, but no one DJ made me stand up and say yeah, as it were. Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe I just need to drink more.

happy solstice,

December 21, 2007 · by · in ,

I am deeeeeeelighted that today is the winter solstice, and that the days will be getting longer for another six months. I, for one, have had enough of dark skies at four in the afternoon.

On a less mythic note, it looks like Resist has gone under too – info is from CMD, care of Morgan King, whom you may remember from “I’m Free” on Northern Exposure.

…Remind me to write a post about how much of crime it is that no one cares about history in electronic music.

“but what is the secret of orgone, that which men would give their lives for?!?!”

December 19, 2007 · by · in , , ,

– The Invisibles, by Grant Morrison, is totally mad.  It’s like Michael Moorcock took his most sideways Jerry Cornelius yarns and made them all into a Vertigo comic book.  I don’t think that Moorcock’s influence on a generation of British authors can be overstated.
– David Byrne is a bit of a fruitcake, but his discussions about the music industry make for good reading.

– I’ve been having ideas again.  It would be nice if there was a way for me to track and order the music that I actually end up playing when I DJ, as opposed to the music I take with me to each gig, as opposed to my music collection as a whole.  And then sort them by most played, least played, etc.  Traktor / Serator people, do your browsers do this?

– More ideas:  My desktop since I moved back to Victoria has been a pair of fairly abstract images from Desktopography 2.  I’ve also noticed the rise in widgets and counters and information-at-a-glance.  OS X deals with them by hiding them until you summon them up.  What if they were integrated directly into your background though?  A really cliche implementation would be an ocean image that gets stormy as the weather gets worse.  I think a purely abstract version would be better.  Colors & shapes represent your RSS feeds, your friends lists, the weather, your agenda, CPU stats, etc – and they’re all pretty and subtle, but are right there if you need to look at them.

– Tide Pool Is Love is this Thursday evening at midnight.  You should tune in.

– I want to do a proper version of LOVE – kind of like The Grey Album, but with nothing but Beatles samples and vocals.  We’ll see how far the idea takes me.