Category Archives: xr1300

Abandoned shorelines, xr1300

This is the forgotten blog

Why do I never update this place? I have it to rant and rave and do whatever I want, but I never use it.

Anyway, if you care about this kind of thing, I recently wrapped up both the XR1300 and Abandoned Shorelines projects. My iMac is (still in the process of) dying and spending long hours (ha ha) using Garageband isn’t really possible anymore. I have since moved onto a plain-ass PC that so far is only running Win10. If I get around to installing a secondary hard drive, I’ll install some flavor of Linux. Most likely Cinnamon Ubuntu or Linux Mint Cinnamon.

I won’t stop making music, but it won’t be under the Ratan X moniker and I’ll probably keep it off this domain. Just for reasons of separation.

I actually like using Win10. I’m still getting used to it, and there are certain things I miss about macOS, but it isn’t the abomination so many claim it to be.

I’m typing this on a free program called Open Live Writer. The blogging software I used on macOS was shareware. Pretty much everything I use on Windows is freeware. Other than Guitar Pro (which I already had a serial for the macOS version), it’s all free.

I’ve been increasingly disappointed in the progression of macOS since the Snow Leopard days. That was the final great OS from Apple. Everything has been a progressive downhill slide. And I like Win10 better than Win7, so there is always that. Microsoft still makes me wanna puke, but Apple is no goddamn better.

Also, the cult of Apple has gotten old. Not to mention I hate not being able to update the consumer grade computers. And I’d hate to spend $5K+ on a computer that isn’t much better than the $1300 Dell I have now.

This set up isn’t perfect, but neither was the iMac. So, c’est la vie. There are more important things to worry about than fapping yourself off for not using a Microsoft product.

Abandoned shorelines, music, xr1300

Ketchup

Hoo, more than a year without posting. Are you really surprised?

In the meantime I have released two albums:

Life in a Velvet Sky by Abandoned Shorelines

Vs cover

And its obligatory remix album

Velvet Skies Remix by XR1300

Vsr cover

Also, the Harem of Gamines site is pretty much dead and will be mothballed as is. For those who don’t know, tumblr went full puritan and banned “adult” content, which pretty much nuked half of my blog.

I was able to download the blog backup, but in their impotent wisdom, tumblr did not code the html files correctly, and the files point to the images on the tumblr server, not the local copies. Not to mention, there are no index files to speak of. As much as I enjoyed keeping that blog, I have nearly 4,600 posts and I don’t have the time to hand code everything so it looks perfectly like it did back in its glory days.

I put all of the blame on Apple for not allowing apps that access adult content on the Apple Store. If soldering RAM to their iMacs wasn’t bad enough, this is the final straw. When this iMac bites the dust, I will never buy another Apple product again. I am only one man, but if everybody protests Apple’s puritanism, maybe they will reconsider.

Lastly, the CEO from Tumblr looks like a villain straight out of Law & Order SVU. The one where the middle aged man hides in the bushes outside the elementary school boy’s locker room.

Abandoned shorelines, music, xr1300

Two for the price of one!

Ho ho ho, only 13 days late! It’s the perfect number, so I’m not too upset that I forgot this long.

But I released two new releases on the 13th of June. Both reimaginings of my other project’s project.

First off, The Sheltering Sand Remixed by XR1300.

Cover 18

Secondly, A Season With The Brain Police Redux by Abandoned Shorelines.

Cover

A new Abandoned Shorelines release is coming soonish. Maybe next month. Maybe August.

Abandoned shorelines, music, xr1300

Back with new music

A little over 3 years ago the hard drive died in my old iMac and I successfully replaced it. I wasn’t so lucky this time. Something bad happened to the power supply and yada yada, I have a new iMac. Its pretty swanky. I bought a refurbished unit, which might come back to haunt me. Hope not.

macOS Sierra is… well, I’m not hating it, but it’s still not as great as Snow Leopard was. But I gotta stop living in the past.

Anyway, today I was finally able to upload two new releases, only a few weeks late.

Animal Drone by Abandoned Shorelines and Intercrural Love E.P. by XR1300.

I have tons of stuff in the queue. Full length albums from both bands. And some experiments from Sarkeesian. And more “ambient revisions” from Abandoned Shorelines. So the next few months should be good…

music, rural citizens band, xr1300

A brief history of music by Ratan X.

Not that anybody asked, but here goes nothing…

Rural Citizens Band (late Dec 2006 to August 2015). — Officially broken up in early 2016, but for all intents and purposes this project came to an end once I moved. There are some crusty releases early on (especially the first one), but once I got the hang of things and found my voice, things improved a lot. This is still the project I compare everything else to.

XR1300 (June 2013 to present) — This was started around the time I was taking a vacation from RCB. I was going to end things with the 8th album then do everything under this monikor. That changed when I started doing drone music and I wanted this to be more beat driven. Again, the first album is kind of crusty, but the second album (and everything afterwards) was a huge leap forward. Still making music for this. Still lots to come out in the near future. Yes, I’m still flooding the market!

Akibare (March – April 2013) — Noise annoys. This was actually the first side project I did after taking a hiatus from RCB. It was a chore to make this album, because I was trying to make each track more obnoxious than the last. And I took the easy way out of making “noise” music, by mostly taking sound samples and amplifying them to distortion. That isn’t to say a new noise project isn’t coming out soon.

Brother Curtis (February 2015) — I have made only one EP under this moniker, and it was released to a hidden subdomain on the ahoy-hoy.net domain. Then I took it down a few days later. Mainly because the album cover was an esoteric symbol that may have been used by a gang of human traffickers. I really don’t want my music associated with such people. This project is a drone metal/dark ambient project and I really liked the synth sound I got out of it. Kind of sounds like live Sunn 0))). Some day I might re-issue it with a new album cover. And maybe re-relase it under a new moniker that would encompass more experimental/noise stuff. We shall see…

Abandoned Shorelines (February 2016 – present) — The current ambient project. A lot like RCB, only beatless. And with more emphasis on beach life and culture. So far I’ve only released drone tracks and ambient revisions of XR1300 songs, but I have a full-length album of new material in the works. That should be out very soon.

And now you know the rest of the story. Good day!

music, rural citizens band, xr1300

An RCB sabbatical

But not a sabbatical from making new music.

The first music I ever released was released under the name of “Rural Citizens Band.” I’m not 100% sure where the name came from. Part of it is based on citizen’s band radio, but not really. I almost went with “Angelina’s Pet Orphan” but thank God I didn’t. It would no longer make sense today, and might have political meanings I didn’t intend.

That was back in December of 2006. At first I thought of it as fun, maybe even a bit of a joke. The first album reflects this as it’s not too good and it’s too sloppy and amateurish in its execution.

For a while there I only put out a new album every nine months or so. There were times I thought “Uh oh, it’s been nine months, better throw some tracks together and put out a new album.”

Then something funny happened. I put out one of those albums. Then I recorded an entirely new album a few weeks later. Then another. VIII was originally going to be my final RCB album because I thought it was the pinnacle. Then I started making drone tracks and drone albums.

Eventually I started a “side project” named XR1300 that somehow became my main project.

I kept putting out more RCB albums and the last two, Travelogue of the 80s and XXII were probably my two best. At least two strongest.

For that reason and more, I plan on putting the RCB project on permanent sabbatical. See, all of those songs were recorded in a previous time and place I literally cannot go back to.

I still want to make drone music and ambient music, but I feel it’s best to seal the time capsule of RCB and go forward with something new.

I will release an album of all new material by XR1300 very soon (and a remix album), but henceforth, all ambient and drone music will be released under a different name.

I already have two drone tracks (two totally different versions of the same song) ready to go. I just need to come up with a new name.

Really, nothing much is changing other than the name. When I get things online, I will post here about them.

This is a good thing.

music, xr1300

Two new XR1300 releases

I’ve been a bit busy lately, mostly with the XR1300 project.

First off, on 13 August 2015, I released Rose Fioriscono Di Nuovo, a remix album that consists of five remixed songs from La Giardino di Gigli Rosa, a remix of Yuri Trib Dub called Rubfuckhouse and a new song called Fun With A Tomboy.

Today, 13 September 2015, I released another remix project called Xambient — The RCB Remixes. I remixed 13 classic Rural Citizens Band songs in a more dance oriented manner.

Depending on your outlook, you will either be pleased, or upset, to know that I have sequel volumes coming up in the next few months. The second volume of Rose Fioriscono Di Nuovo, is already completed and ready to go (minus the artwork). I will start working on the second Xambient volume later in the week.

As always, these albums are released under a CreativeCommons license and are free to download and distribute, provided you credit me, Ratan X.

Album covers below the cut.

Continue reading Two new XR1300 releases →

music, xr1300

Oh so close…

I’ve been working on an XR1300 album lately. It’s strange in that it’s less dancey than the last two, but also more ambient. Yet it’s too dancey to be a Rural Citizens Band album. I’m using a lot of fuzz bass on this one, and as I play around different effect pedals (mostly delay, reverb, echo, etc) I’d love to make a sort of space rock album and release it under the XR1300 name later in the year.

But first I need to complete this one. And that is proving to be kind of a chore. I have 11 of 13 songs done and finished. Baring any unforeseen difficulties, I will leave them as is. Another song is damn near done, I just need to add a few touches here and there. I’d say it’s 80% done. The last one isn’t even started yet. I’ve tried three different songs, but none of them are past the planning stages. One I used my trusted Fender Precision bass (named Marceline) and had a pretty good bass line. Sadly, I thought the song was in C, when it’s really in B. So the bass line clashed in a really bad way with the rest of the song, changing the pitch in Audacity made it sound like shit. But I’m not too bugged, because the rest of the song was shit, TBH.

This always happens, then at the last minute I pull out a winner. Something completely different. It just comes to me. I have a couple of muses, as it were, for this album, so I will continue until the battle is done. The nice thing is that I have no real set release date. I also know that I’m most likely the only person who will ever hear any of this, so I really do end up in the shitter, it won’t matter that much. Except it’s my album and I want this track to be perfect. There has to be 13 songs on it, otherwise it won’t be right.