Month: April 2020

There’s music for when you’re happy.

There’s music for when you’re hurting.

Not a lot of music works for both feelings, but here’s some that does for me.

High On Fire – Need everyone out of your face? Hell yeah. Blazing down the highway in a souped up Z/28 toward the best time of your life? DOUBLE HELL YEAH.

Run The Jewels – Goes without saying. Mike & El will save you, then MC your cookout.

Jim James – Specifically “Regions of Light and Sound of God” and “Eternally Even,” which are vulnerable and transcendent and mountain-funky.

Yob – The beauty and the absolute fury are the closest thing to capturing what my experience is like on the inside.

Doomtree – The crew records, in particular, speak directly to my body, mind, and heart at once.

Beastie Boys – Every other artist here helps me feel seen, heard, and known when I’m in a rough spot. Beastie Boys are the only ones who can drag me up a notch or two with sheer musical power.

First – new music in a week, or less! It’s already on Bandcamp if you know where to look 😎, I’m just waiting for the Spotify, Tidal, etc. links to come through before posting and sending the email.

( ^ Not joking. No pranks/foolin’ today, please.)

Then, I took a deep dive into analog noise over the weekend, working on two projects. The first inspired the second, and I went with it. I recorded seventeen (!) 46-minute (!!) takes of different colors of analog noise from synthesizers, and from dirt pedals with no input (just turning everything up, sometimes adjusting the tone controls if they worked). This is a long-term project too complex to summarize here.

That experience, and my surprise at the many different types of noise I was able to record, got me thinking about making a noise record. So on Sunday, I did.

The first piece has a beat of sorts, and all the synths are synchronized; the Monotribe syncs the SQ-1, which sends MIDI to Medusa and CV/gate to the MS-20.

The second piece is more ambient (though pretty intense to listen to) and I set up six different patches of gear. The six sections blend into each other, relay-style.

The picture shows my DIY slew module; just a giant capacitor alligator-clipped into the CV path! Works perfectly. I used this trick on an earlier (still unreleased) Night Mode recording as part of a thunderstorm simulator.

New music shortly! Or now, if you’re savvy… -h