At War With False Noise

Valgriindedfa

Rage in Eden

Twilight Records

Beast of Prey

In no particular order: Eleven records from the last ten years that have made a big impact on me in some way, mostly having to do with making my own tunes.

1. Nine Inch Nails: The Fragile (1999)
2. Sigur Rós: Ágætis Byrjun (1999)
3. Lament Configuration: Paragon-Asia Dataflow (2004)
4. Cex: Oops! I did it again! (2001)
5. Gultskra Artikler: Goloded (2004)
6. Tujiko Noriko: Make Me Hard (2002)
7. Lustmord: Zeotrope (OST) (2002)
8. Panacea: Brasilia (2000)
9. M² (Squaremeter): The Bitter End (2002)
10. Set Fire to Flames: Telegraphs in the Negative/Mouths Trapped in Static (2003)
11. Clint Mansell: The Fountain (OST) (2006)

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Other albums not on this list that I’d include now.

Dead Lettters Spell out Dead Words: Facelessness Erases Every Trace of Humanity (2008)

Kode9 and the Spaceape: Memories of the Future (2006)

Wolves in the Throne Room: Two Hunters (2007)

There are still a few shining lights out there, but it seems like when Fukkgod Let’s Create went away (in their familiar form at least), a lot of other netlabels disappeared as well, or started putting out sub-par material. Autoplate is no longer putting out new stuff, and the rest of Thinner has gone the route of paid downloads. Monotonik is still going strong, but I haven’t heard anything vibrant out of that camp in at least two years, not since Bliss’ “Hello Brain Goodbye Heart”. No Type offers fewer and fewer releases overall every year, and sub-labels Sine Fiction (a netlabel project that could be amazing) and Nishi haven’t had any new releases since 2007.

So what’s going on out there? Am I just not finding the good shit on Google anymore or have things really become that stale?

I’ll write more about this soon. I just wanted to get this initial part down here first.

Okay, so the point of that little rant?
I am going to delve deep into the netlabel land again and find some of the good stuff.

I don’t make money from making music, but I still do it of course. I never went to music school either and it seems like some people who did go to music school are worse off than I am and they have a B.A..

In a round-a-bout way it kind of makes me think that I’d be happy teaching skills at a trade school, instead of producing art for car and travel companies.

Seriously, the dude is almost better at reading and speaking than William S. Burroughs. For some reason his prose seemed to have dropped off as of late.

http://www.bordersmedia.com/backlot/coraline.asp

To me the moniker is not in reference to its views or it being a particularly hairy 4×4 trail. The reason its the “Oh My God” Road is because its not a 4×4 trail. We actually are insane enough to use it as a road. Like you’d drive down a frontage road to the next town to visit your friends that go to a different high-school. To me its “Oh my god what the Hell was someone thinking when they made this a commuting route!” Road.

That is all.

Random good things

• For the first time maybe ever, I really like my job
• Catherine learning to make savory veggie tarts
• The San Rafael farmers market
• Sol Food continues to be awesome every time
• The food at AVA in San Anselmo
• I finally found good California beer this year (not as easy as one might think)
• Our new place is awesome. My work room actually has space for all of my stuff
• Getting to know Barron over this last year has been great
• Comic-Con 2008

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Music related good things

• Cex – Dannibal LP (The guy just keeps cranking out amazing work)
• Lustmord – Other
• Nine Inch Nails – The Slip and Ghosts I-IV
• Portishead – Third
• The Autumn Wind Productions mailorder
• Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words – Lost in Reflections LP
• Discovering the parts of the Black Sabbath back catalogue that I hadn’t heard before (Dehumanizer and the Tony Martin albums in particular)
• Sigur Rós – Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust
• Mogwai – The Hawk is Howling
• Gnarls Barkley – The Odd Couple
• Uruk-Hai – Upon The Elysian Fields
• Telefon Tel Aviv – Helen of Troy (I can’t wait to hear the rest of this album!)
• Autechre – Quaristice (Of the last 3 Ae releases, all of which I thought were great, this is the one I’ve been listening to the least for some reason, its still very good. Apparently the other material they released around the same time (call quadrangle maybe?) is even better. I need to track that stuff down.)

I’m working on getting the first synapse.project tape together. Its gonna be awesome!

Part of me thinks that wiping the slate clean is the best thing that could happen to us, the other part of me is reminding that part of me that even if that happened, we’d still have cities.

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

I am not only going to register to vote this year, I am actually going to vote.

I’ve watched almost an hour of coverage so far this time, I probably wouldn’t have seen any of it, but then I found out that BADMITTEN (Badminton) IS AN OLYMPIC SPORT!!! Also, we found out last week that we have cable and didn’t know it.

But now I think I’m done this time around. I got sucked into the badmitten and ended up watching swimming for a while and volleyball and women’s softball (which was actually kind of cool, but the commercials just kill my attention span for it).

So for the rest of these games I’m going to following what’s going on by how loudly the neighbors in the house behind our place clap and yell at the TV when someone does something good.

Disclaimer: I have no good concept of time. So this whole thing might not add up as for as years go. I might be a few years older than I thought when all of this was happening.

The first memory of music that I have is my parents singing to me, but I don’t remember what songs. The first memory I have of recorded music is The Beatles “Good Night” from The White Album. My dad has it on vinyl and I was obsessed with it when I was young, especially the tracks Rocky Racoon, Bungalow Bill, and Good Night. We used to sing it along with the record before I would go to bed. My upbringing was pretty Rockwellian.

Beyond that there was a lot of Sesame Street records and my Mom listened to a lot of Top 40 Adult contemporary, which at the time, I used to like singing it in the car with her. Songs like “Islands in the Stream”, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and “Break My Stride” are three that really stand out from that time. This would have been close to 1986, which was when I started going to Elemmentary School.

For most of my Elementary years I listened to aweful Top 40, Everything But the Girl, Haddaway (?), etc. (KS 104 in Denver was my FAVORTIE radio station). I vaguely remember hearing 2 Live Crew. I really had no clue who any of these people were at the time, I just knew the words to their songs. I liked Michael Jackson A LOT, and one of the first tapes I ever bought was the single for Smooth Criminal (1988) (which also had the first instrumental version of a song that I had ever heard, and of course I would Karaoke to it in my bedroom while playing with He-Man toys). After Jackson there was the Vanilla Ice, MC Hammer and Young MC. And I listened to that sort of thing up until about 6th grade. My group of friends all liked to dance to MC Hammer back in those days, at one point we had a dance contest. It was bad.

In 6th grade two things happened: I became interested in girls and I got my first CD player and three CDs (my parents must have spent a fortune on that thing), which were Red Hot Chili Peppers “What Hits!?”, U2 “War”, and Michael Jackson “Dangerous”. This was exactly what I had asked for that Xmas, but mind you I had never actually heard a U2 or red Hot Chili Peppers song. However, two girls that I liked both had U2 and Chili Peppers CDs and at the time that was enough for me to want them. The girls both had copies of Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik, which was what I asked for, but my parents said they wouldn’t buy me something with a PA label on it. I still have all three of the discs to this day, and I still listen to War from time to time. I couldn’t actually afford CDs then either, so they were the only threee CDs I had for a long while. Also around this time, I became aware of Guns ‘n Roses, Motley Crue, and Paula Abdul. I wasn’t really a music nut at this point in my life. I had never heard a GnR or Crue song, I just knew who they were and that a couple of my friends liked them. We didn’t have MTV at home when all of this was going on, so I had no clue how people found out about these sorts of bands. At that point in my life the only music video I had ever seen was “Opposites Attract”. Also one day in the cafeteria someone mentioned to me the band Nine Inch Nails and asked me if I had heard of them, of course I hadn’t. That must have been 1989 or 1991.

Important music from this time (for me) that I can still remember:

U2 – War
Red Hot Chili Peppers – What Hits
Michael Jackson – Pretty much everything up til Dangerous
The Beatles – The White Album
More to follow…

Nine Inch Nails – Year Zero
M.I.A. – Kala
Burial – Untrue
Venetian Snares – My Downfall (Original Soundtrack)
Cex – Sketchi
Cex – Exotical Privates
Rasputina – Oh Perilous World

Total shock and glee (my head exploded) when I was presented with it. Thanks a lot John and esp. Ryan!

11 x 14 Acryllic on board.

So before the infamous crash of the Noiseusse server, I had a post on here that pointed to an artist guy that I know, Tony Guaraldi-Brown.

He did me a freakin sweet monster at Comic Con this year (featured on left), and now it looks like he’s selling some of his other originals at very reasonable prices. Peep it!

Its not as funny now that I’m not so punchy, but this had me chuckling pretty good the other night.

The old blog is dead and gone, the data on the dead drive couldn’t be saved. I’m going to try and get some of the old stuff back where it was, but this is pretty much a new site now.

Kinda lonely out here at the moment. The GF is coming out in a couple of weeks and then things can start getting back to normal.

For now, this video has been keeping me hitting replay.

Heartbeats Live

Add to My Profile | More Videos

I was digging around in my file cabnet looking for my college transcripts and stumbled upon a few things that I don’t really remember from high school. Some things were just old notes and crap like that, a few old love letters that I tossed, a couple of old short stories written by friends of mine in from when I lived in the mountains (really bad writing, BTW). Then I found this…

I don’t remember getting this letter, but I remember why I got it. Normally I’d leave things like this unedited, but the last I heard was that the person who sent it works for the FBI now. If anyone really cared to, they could figure out who wrote it and what they refer to in the letter.

I’m not exactly sure why I am sharing this… I think because it freaked me out a little when I found it. A strange snapshot to be sure. This had very little impact on my life at the time (I was only 16), but in retrospect it was a pretty big deal…

I think I’m going to have to do another round of cleaning my file cabnet. Its too depressing finding this crap every now and then.