music

Tone chasing

I’m always interested in finding new sounds, new pedals, whatnot. Experimenting with stacking pedals and effects and the different sounds you can get from them. One day I plan to get a Tascam and start recording some of these experiments. Right now they sound like shit, to be honest, but someday I might get something worth recording.

One problem with YouTube videos dealing with echo, delay and reverb pedals is the style of music featured. You rarely, if ever, see ambient, space rock or drone music featured. It’s always some guy with a douchey sense of humor, playing the same boring blues and rockabilly riffs to the same slapback reverb setting. It almost seems like there is a factory producing SRV clones with the same playing style.

Don’t get me wrong, there a couple of channels dedicated to ambient music (a lot of electronic, which is cool, too), but they get lost in the avalanche of bad blues impersonators.

Of course, the same problem applies to your average guitar teacher, or music store personnel.  If you’re gonna go pedal shopping, they’ll always tell you the pedals and settings that Page or Clapton or Hendrix used on whatever song. Again, I don’t really fault them, as the great majority of buyers are going for that sound. I’m an oddball, and that’s fine with me.

There used to be an online community, but I never joined because of busy life stuff, but it’s now defunct. Which is just me always be late to the party.

But at the same time I plan to do more experiments and get my own sound. For one thing, most ambient guitar guys use insanely expensive pedals. Stuff that costs $500 a pedal. The four pedals I will use cost about that much combined. Yes, I use stuff by MXR, TC Electronics and Line 6. That’s just what I can afford. Or justify paying. Maybe if I made thousands of dollars a month at Bandcamp I would put the money towards a Strymon, or a Death by Audio pedal. Some of those Death by Audio pedals are tempting. And they’re made by Oliver Ackermann of A Place To Bury Strangers (one of my favorite bands), but I still can’t really justify or afford the cost at the moment.

Also, when people use the same boutique pedals, often times their sound is too similar. I won’t fool myself into thinking I’m getting a revolutionary sound out of my four, moderately priced pedals. But I like to try. And I like to go for something different.

I’ll be honest for a second and say that if I had a pedal that gave me an instant Windy & Carl sound, I’d be happy. At least for a few minutes, until I realized I was simply poorly replicating music that came about 15 years ago.

For now, I’ll simply experiment and go from there. Most of the fun of ambient music is finding new sounds, and ways of making sounds in different ways. And sometimes that kind of thing is best done alone.

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.

brainy, censorship

Thought crimes R us

The human impulse to dehumanize by Jim Goad: 

British TV personality Katie Hopkins was born with a very unfortunate nose. Her proboscis is roughly the size of a toucan’s beak. Blonde-haired and with sparkling blue eyes, the poor maiden would actually be visually fetching if it weren’t for her giant, crooked, sloping honker.

What’s more important is that I doubt Katie Hopkins would feel compelled to call the police on me for saying any of that.

The same cannot be said of her many detractors. In recent days thousands of those who hate her—in the name of love and tolerance, but of course—have encouraged the police to arrest her for maligning fat people and Scottish people. 

… 

This new generation of insta-snitches—and there are endlessly dreary armies of them—who appear to feel justified in having human beings caged merely for hurting their feelings all seem afflicted with a self-absorbed notion that the only possible reason someone could have said something they found offensive was for the singular purpose of offending them…rather than, say, because it’s what they really believed.

But in the case of Hopkins, her allegedly “offensive” comments appear to be rooted in an ethical conviction that being fat is not only unhealthy, it unfairly burdens those who have to pay the fatties’ medical bills. “[Obesity’s] cost to the NHS is more than six billion a year,” she explained during the same televised segment where Szrodecki called the police, “and the Chief Surgeon at Guy’s Hospital said, ‘It’s killing millions, costing billions, and the cure is in our hands,’ and as a taxpayer that’s why I feel I do have a say, it’s because I’m paying for your health.” On Twitter, Hopkins has written, “My hate for fat people has grown from the fact I have to pay to make them better.”

Forgive me for suspecting that her real crime here is criticizing the bloated size of the British welfare state.

I recently mentioned that Anita Sarkeesian represents everything wrong with the modern world. I see more and more examples of this every day. Simply put, nobody has any skin anymore. Soon, everybody, and I mean everybody, will probably find their lives turned upside down for any perceived slight. And, in the case of feminists, if you didn’t say anything, they’ll lie and say you did.

music

Happy 2015!

Happy New Year everybody!

To celebrate, I have released “The Best of RCB” Basically I chose 23 songs (and create 3 new interludes) that I thought were the best of the best, minus the drone tracks. I also managed to improve the sound quality over the original versions by remixing and remastering the tracks to eliminate clipping and increase dynamic range. Old versions of said songs are still available, but these are the definitive versions. Rooms II has been completely reworked and is one of my all-time favorites now.

As always, it’s free to download, and free to distribute, provided you credit me.

Best cover disc 1 tBest back disc 1 t

Best cover disc 2 tBest back disc 2 t

anime

Fall 2014 Anime Season and the best of 2014 list

It was an odd season. After two straight seasons of Stardust Crusaders, with two yet to go, the fall break was a letdown. Perhaps it colored my outlook because the whole time something was missing. And while none of the series was a complete home run like last season’s Barkamon, most of what I watched as nearly as good. Which meant that this was actually an excellent season, but somehow it felt average without JoJo and the gang.

So, first off, I’ll get the “bad” out of the way.

Cross Ange: I’m 13 episodes in and I can’t really imagine watching the next 12. The girls are generically sexy, there is plenty of fanservice, and the action sequences are usually pretty intense, but this is a bad series. There is no way you can deny it. All the sexy girl butts can’t compensate for bad writing. And much like Elfen Lied, the writers are trying to manipulate you into sadness. I wouldn’t watch this, unless you want to see how NOT to do an anime. And there’s nothing they can really do to fix it, unless they get new writers and start over.

Shirobako: I dropped this after seven episodes. Much like Cross Ange, it is a two cour series and it was so excruciatingly boring, I couldn’t imagine watching 17 more episodes. I will admit that it’s an interesting concept to go behind the scenes of an anime production team. And I guess the meta quality of an anime about anime is kind of cool in a post-modern way, but I could not get into this. Most people seem to like it, so maybe I’m wrong. Decide for yourself if you wish.

I’m not sure where to put Sword Art Online II. I loved the first season, and the first cour of this season was really good, but the writers managed to fuck it up in the end. Much like Shirobako, the first few episodes were pretty boring and didn’t go anywhere. Actually, the second half went nowhere until we find out one of the main characters is an AIDS patient and about to die.  I guess people who like overly dramatic and depressing anime will like this, but I thought it was pretty pointless. SAO’s biggest weakness is how it handles serious content and this only underlined that. Since the first and second cours have little to do with each other, you can stop watching at episode 12 and not miss anything good.

The good:

Yama no Susume 2nd Season: The second of two cours. It was nice that this season was longer than the first. There is nothing too deep or meaningful here. Just cute girls climbing mountains. Some of the teen angst kind of ruined the magic of the show, but this is a really enjoyable way to spend 10 minutes each week.

Danna ga Nani wo Itteiru ka Wakarani Ken: Another short. Again, it’s a trifle, but an enjoyable one. The English translation is “I Can’t Understand What My Husband Is Saying” and you can imagine what the series is about. I jokingly say that this is what married life will be like if I marry a non-anime fan. Not that I’ll ever get that lucky. But it’s only 5 minutes and that is the only thing keeping it from the “great” category. The series feels underdeveloped and even extending the episodes to 10 minutes each would have been a great help. But as it is, it’s a very enjoyable series, and you can watch the whole thing in roughly an hour. So get to watching!

Hi*sCoool! SeHa Girls: Moe anthropomorphized versions of Sega consols, who enter games to play for points? Cameos by Sonic and Dr. Robotnik? You got it! Again, another short and a trifle. The animation is kind of odd, but this was one of the most enjoyable series I’ve watched in a while. Just good fun.

The great:

Amagi Brilliant Park: I’ve been to a couple parks like the titular one here. A park that has seen better days, or has completed died and nobody wants to say it. Hell, I even got suckered into going to one in Florida a few years ago. Which is to say the atmosphere for this series is spot on. And that the dramatics behind trying to make a lost cause work is inspiring. Of course, the real reason to watch this is for the mascots. But it’s good to see a series that is a full blown comedy, but with tension and drama sprinkled in for good measure. Usually those types of shows fall flat, but this was nearly perfect. The one downside was the 12th episode felt like the true finale, and the 13th episode is more like an OVA. Thankfully it was a very enjoyable OVA, and showed the crew was still working hard and ABP was still thriving.

Girl Friend Beta: I’m alone in loving this series, which makes me love it even more. A lot of people have criticized it for being an anime version of Seinfeld, but that is what I liked about it. There really isn’t a whole lot to say about it. The animation is cute and bright, the overall mood is cheerful. There is enough yuri subtext for fans of that genre to enjoy.  And Miss Monochrome occasionally shows up (mostly in the background). But that only made me want a second season of Miss Monochrome even more.

Gugure! Kokkuri-san: Probably my favorite of the season. I kind of sympathize with Kohina more than I care to admit. I’ve not started to call myself a doll, or admitted how cold and indifferent I’ve become, but internally I’m nearly there. Some of the stuff with Inugami was a bit creepy at times, but not enough to spoil things. I only wish Tama was a main character, but everybody worked so well together that it doesn’t really matter in the end.

Denki-gai no Honya-san: One of the best “slice of life” anime I’ve seen this year. Maybe the best since Nichijou. The entire cast is likable and work well off of each other. Many of the jokes have been done before, but they’re done better here. It also had some of the most attractive women of the season. Kameko was underused, but in my dream anime world, she’d have her own series, even if it was only a short.

2014 was a really great year for anime. It’s hard to narrow it down to ten best series, but here goes nothing. I’m listing these in alphabetical order:

  • Akuma No Riddle
  • Barakamon
  • Denki-gai no Honya-san
  • Engaged to the Unidentified (which also had the best OP of the year)
  • Gugure! Kokkuri-san
  • Sabagebu
  • Sakura Trick
  • Space Dandy (both seasons)
  • Stardust Crusaders (both cours)
  • Tonari no Seki-kun (probably the best short series I’ve ever seen)

The worst anime of the year, and maybe of all time: Pupa. It was only four minutes per episode, but I kept watching just to see how bad it would get. I think the only people who enjoyed this were incestious pedophiles with a vore fetish. Hopefully nobody like that is reading this blog.

music

Best music of 2014

Everybody makes their own lists, and here is mine. In alphabetical order.

  • Aphex Twin – Syro
  • Ariel Pink – Pom Pom
  • Burzum – The Ways of Yore
  • Dum Dum Girls – Too True
  • Grouper – Ruins
  • Lowercase Noises – This Is For Our Sins
  • Pink Floyd – The Endless River
  • St. Vincent
  • Shellac – Dude Incredible
  • A Sunny Day in Glasgow – Sea When Absent
  • Swans – To Be Kind
  • Warpaint

There are some others I’m interested in. Especially the Eno/Hyde collaboration. I’m definitely downloading that one very soon. The Sunn O))) and Scott Walker collaboration as well. Maybe the Sun Kil Moon and War on Drugs albums, mostly because of their one-sided feud a few weeks ago. Mostly I’m curious to see if War on Drugs really is “beer commercial rock” The singles are not. Also, Sun Kil Moon seems to write the most interesting lyrics. Certainly more interesting than War on Drugs.

Best music video of the year is, no question, Warpaint’s Disco/Very. 

It’s also one of my favorite songs of the year.

Biggest disappointment was Perfect Pussy. The EP was pretty good, but the full-length was not. Also, her essays for various online magazines leads me to believe Meredith Graves is a sanctimonious, moralistic dullard. Not that that has anything to do with her music, mind. But it definitely spoils things.

You got it!