8Sided Blog

the scene celebrates itself

suspicions of provenance

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Hakobune‘s guitar is processed like one hundred Guthries, ringing with reverb abandon as chords stretch into warm, elongated vibrations. The 2019 album Rain Studies is a full-spectrum affair; it alternately plays and washes away intruding sounds. Its CTwins-spirit is best transmitted on “Tenkyuu,” which sounds like muting everything but a single guitar track on Victorialand‘s mixing desk.

I suppose these comparisons are a little unfair. I feel I’m projecting my influences onto Hakobune, the Tokyo-based sound artist who also goes by Takahiro Yorifuji. But, in a way, the guitar is baggage, and a limited sound palette is never free of suspicions of provenance.

Hakobune strikes me as a guitarist falling under the spell of electronic drone music but opting for the novocaine instead of the noise. Rain Studies could refer to the mix knob on a reverb unit pushed all the way to ‘wet,’ but it’s also chilling (both interpretations accepted), like rainfall. “Tenkyuu” is the difference—the other tracks simply blend as one liquid sheet supplants another. No doubt these ‘studies’ were recorded as the rain fell outside, watched through a drizzled window as the guitar reflected and chimed its accompanying song.

On the periphery, John Coulthart wrote about echo guitars, an initial attempt at a ‘Young Person’s Guide.’ He mentions the Watkins Copicat, developed in the late ’50s and arguably the first independent tape-loop-based echo unit. A chance encounter inspired UK music gear innovator Charlie Watkins to explore the possibilities of tape echo:

… a pair of customers, returning from a visit to Italy, [regaled] Watkins with talk of a performance they’d seen there. The singer Marino Marini, who was enjoying a worldwide hit with his cover of Dominico Modugno’s hit “Volare,” had run his microphone through a pair of reel-to-reel recorders with one continuous tape loop rolling between them to recreate his distinctive vocal echo. The sound had knocked their socks off. *

The Copicat followed, as did an influence on musical styles like surf rock and the kosmische exploits of Manuel Göttsching and many others. The popular Echoplex emerged alongside other tape delay machines, leading further outward to dub and studio-as-instrument forms.

In my Spotlight On interview with David J, I remarked that my favorite sound might be a tape echo filtering away into infinity. David signaled his agreement.

Shimmering & Shining with The Black Watch

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It’s easy to get distracted by the number 23. Not only are we told it’s everywhere by thinkers as prestigious as Robert Anton Wilson and Jim Carrey, but those two digits look and feel special. How about a 23rd album? Perhaps that’s magical in some way (especially if the KLF ever got there), but to most, it just sounds like a lot of albums. Twenty-two is a lot, too, not to mention twenty-four. But I don’t want to get hung up on the 23rd album because it doesn’t matter to John Andrew Fredrick of The Black Watch. Weird Rooms is the band’s album number twenty-three, but John isn’t counting or accumulating. He’s persisting.

John may be aware of the potential baggage in musical prolificness. Quantity sometimes counterintuitively means stagnation: running in circles, repeating the comforts of an established sound or workflow, or releasing the same record ad infinitum. I can testify that this is not the case with The Black Watch. Not only does John profess an incapability of stopping rather than an effort at ‘building content,’ but also of directly reacting, in a sort of dialogue, with his preceding albums. Changing line-ups, songwriting styles, producers, and, as is the case with Weird Rooms, city locations (Austin, this time) enforce a variety of textures and execution. There’s no sameness here—The Black Watch’s twenty-third record probably sounds as fresh as 1988’s debut.

John and I planned an interview session for a long while, with my delays a glaring (to me) contrast to his musical productivity. Weird Rooms was finally the excuse to get our screens together. John is a delightful conversationalist, an obvious fan of wordplay and language (he’s also an author), and inspiringly enthusiastic about his creative work. We discussed so many things: creating music for personal satisfaction, writing from the subconscious, the unexpected perks of a Lutheran upbringing, what focusing on singles says about your band, and so much more. I tried talking to him about the number 23, but he wasn’t having it.

I mentioned how The Black Watch, and especially Weird Rooms, wears its influences on its sleeve. I likened this to a recipe in that the album’s sound takes things from different, identifiable artists without sounding directly like any of them. I suggested that that recipe includes a heaping tablespoon each of My Bloody Valentine, The Cure, and The Beatles. John agreed, adding Syd Barrett, who is probably floating around like a bay leaf. It’s a great mix of ingredients, making songs like “Gobbledegook,” “Swallowed,” and “Miles & Miles” achieve Michelin-star tastiness.1My metaphors aren’t getting any better.

And though Weird Rooms was the inspiration for our conversation, John was especially excited about The Black Watch’s next record, (tentatively?) titled Bye. “With a pun on saying goodbye and a bye in a tournament,” John explained. While John was understandably bubbling over with thoughts on this 24th effort—to him, it’s the fresh new thing, of course—I’m trying to hide my astonishment that we’re on the heels of Weird Rooms‘ release and the next album is already in the hands of a mastering engineer. At least John admitted it wasn’t a good idea to release it immediately.

But I can’t get over the as-yet-unreleased album’s title, Bye. Does John give it a double meaning because it’s a fork in the road? Is it a goodbye, as Pop Matters recently wondered? Or, as in a tournament, will it mean The Black Watch is ready to advance to the next in a long, long series of rounds? John told me he couldn’t stop, even if he wanted to, so I’m optimistically embracing the sporting option. I doubt 24 is The Black Watch’s idea of a final score.

Here’s the extended audio of my conversation with The Black Watch’s John Andrew Fredrick, with an excerpted text version below the fold. At the bottom, John answers my “What’s something you love?” inquiry with the aplomb worthy of someone with a PhD in the art of words. Dig it!

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The Children…’s Blues is a Primal Yowl

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The three members of The Children… sitting around

The Children…, as you have already noticed, follow their band name with three dots, periods, or stops. I detect the implication of something sneakily approaching. Whatever it is, it’s not necessarily coming for the children, but maybe it’s the children themselves, Village of the Damned-style. I say this in hindsight after listening to A Sudden Craving, the second album from The Children… The music evokes multitudes. It’s a layered and cinematic affair with intricate instrumentation, spacious sonic production, and beguiling stranger-lurking-around-the-corner vocals. The songs on A Sudden Craving are also delightfully ominous, spurring a complexity in their deep darkness—a reflection, rather than a warning, of what comes after those three dots. It might be those spooky movie kids with glowing eyes, or it could just be something chasing childhood’s innocence down a night’s cityscape.

The core of The Children… is Michael Wiener, Jim Coleman, and Phil Puleo. Others float in and out, but this trio provides the bulk of the instrumentation and songwriting credits, with Michael also deploying the vocals. Jim and Phil are veterans of Cop Shoot Cop, and Phil has done time in Swans and Swans offshoot Angels of Light. Michael’s artistic journeys have taken him into the avant-garde, as well as writing essays, criticism, and screenplays. Bonus points: Michael is a memorable figure in the fantastic documentary Hail Satan!, described as the film’s ‘performative inspiration.’

The band’s collective curriculum vitae (which I’ve largely truncated—there’s much more to these three) informs A Sudden Craving toward the ambitious, the unrepentantly artistic, and a product of the grimier parts (are there any others?) of New York City. The noisier, perhaps industrial-inflected, side of late ’80s NYC rock echoes throughout, but the imagined spaces frequently found in these songs add a quiet contemplation to the set. Most importantly, it’s a dynamic reading, especially when the album is listened to from head to toe. Whatever malevolent Children… are coming upon us, I’m guessing they’ll be won over by candlelight.

Months ago, I sent a handful of questions to The Children… and received prompt and generous responses from Michael and Jim. However, the interview’s appearance on this site was not as prompt as I suddenly needed a cornea transplant1It went well! I may write more about this soon, or I may not., which put all eye-related goals on the back burner. My apologies to everyone involved, of course, accompanied by gratitude for these illuminating answers from The Children… In this exchange, the two touch on the darkness of an NYC music scene, how improvisation is everywhere, how they embrace a certain definition of ‘gothic,’ and tales from the recording of A Sudden Craving. Enjoy, kiddos.

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A Degree of Randomness: A Conversation With Joseph Branciforte

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Joseph Branciforte pops up on my computer monitor as we begin our chat. He’s in an austere studio chamber, pristine and wooden, with racks of audio gear and a familiar Juno-60 behind him, all by its lonesome. Are those a pair of Grammy awards I see on the shelf? It’s not the typical studio I encounter when chatting with a musician making electronic or experimental music. Besides the Juno, it doesn’t look like any studio I’ve recorded in. Mine are always a mess.

Have you ever noticed that graphic artists, especially those with a refined aesthetic, have the nicest workspaces? The idea must extend to mastering and mixing engineers of Jospeph’s caliber and scrupulous dedication. Glance over his client list, and you’ll see names that I’m sure have requirements: the ECM label, known for its consistently polished palette, figures in as a patron of services. This makes Joseph’s Greyfade imprint, established in 2019, an exciting development. We expect a bending of sonic expectations, a lack of preference for electronic and organic, music redefining its terms, all immaculately recorded and presented.

I’ve got Joseph and his studio on my monitor as we’re discussing LP2, a collaborative album with storied vocalist Theo Bleckmann. Joseph is warm, engaged, and obviously proud of his work on this record. He should be—featuring Theo’s wordless melodies and Joseph’s electronics, the album bends all expectations, blurs the electronic and the organic, and redefines plenty. As for how it’s recorded and presented, the sound of it is as stunning as the record’s stark design and packaging is remarkable. Released at the tail end of 2023, on the eighth of December, LP2 made it just in time to become my album of the year.

I should briefly explain Theo Bleckmann. He’s a vocalist and composer of incredible range (“both his pitch and emotional range,” says Joseph in our conversation) and an epically diverse repertoire. He’s a human instrument, as you’ll hear on LP2. and has worked with the likes of Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, Meredith Monk, Philip Glass, so many others. Curiously, and possibly impressively, Theo is credited with an alien language in Men In Black.

As an electronic manipulator himself—Theo submits his instrument to his own rack of effects—the voice is game for dipping in and out of familiarity. Joseph enhances and de-hances, both within live improvisation and in a post-production setting, and the results are magical. I almost wish I didn’t know anything about the who and why of LP2, as that would make its songs so immediately mysterious. What’s the voice? What’s synthesized? Are we outside? What’s electronically rejiggered? Is that a vibraphone?

The instruments on LP2 insist on being listened to as a whole rather than picked apart. This makes discernment fuzzy, especially if experiencing with mystery, but satisfying for those of us seeking something secure yet impressionistic. What Theo and Joseph have created floats around—a warm mist that’s neither comforting nor ominous but holds gentle touches of both.

My conversation with Joseph was heady and sometimes technical. We delve into his process and dig into the creation of specific tracks on LP2. In contrast to my vague, descriptive flowers above, Joseph delivered a pleasantly straightforward overview of what makes the album something special. We also chatted more than I’m letting on here, and I’m saving our short discussion about a much-anticipated future album until its release. Joseph also teased me at the end by saying, “We could talk about Master Of Puppets for an hour.” Bring it on.

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Pierced With Lasers

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Eyesore! That’s the chant around these parts. My right eye (previously) was pierced with lasers the other day in preparation for next week’s big surgical procedure. Tiny little holes. Visually, I don’t quite notice—my eyesight in that eye was rotten to begin with—but there is a dull throb around the eyeball that’s making things a tad difficult. It’s not terrible or even painful. It’s persistent.

“Do you want to be awake for the procedure?” the surgeon asked. How many patients choose sleep? “It’s like half-and-half. Usually the ones with anxiety.” Surprisingly, I don’t get anxious about things like this, so I decided I’ll stay awake. I want to retain the experience of this unimaginable thing taking place. Does that sound crazy to you? Just over a year ago I had the first procedure which—spoiler alert—eventually turned into a failure. But I was awake—heavily drugged, but awake—and I enjoyed it! I felt like Dave Bowman getting swept into the Jovian Monolith. The colored lights were awesome.

In the meantime, here I am maintaining this blog with a throbbing right orb, but blog I must. There’s a lot going on besides the sight-related. I’m in the middle of editing an extensive interview with one of the two folks behind what’s probably my favorite album of 2023. That will appear here, signaling more features to come on digable artists (sound and otherwise). I’m playing around with the new MEMORA8ILIA blog, though I’m having trouble with its dark mode. I’m thinking a lot about what’s next for the record label and leaning toward that ‘next’ looking very different. And this week’s Spotlight On podcast is out, and it features Nic Dembling who was in a late ’70s outfit called Comateens. They orbited the CBGBs bands everyone talks about when discussing that scene, but Comateens were there, too, and Nic has fun insight on all of that.

In other anticipations, this movie looks fantastic.

via The New York Times:

Los Angeles and its sounds are pivotal to “The Tuba Thieves.” All kinds of noises, welcome or not, make it into the movie: the crackling of fires, the roar of traffic and, above all, the repeated sound of overhead airplanes, a constant background pollution for residents near the airport. In contrast, there’s silence, represented by a re-creation of the 1952 Woodstock, N.Y., premiere of John Cage’s infamous “4’33,” in which a pianist simply sits in front of the piano silently turning pages for four minutes and 33 seconds, opening and closing the keyboard lid to signal the beginning and ending of the piece’s three movements. Apparently irritated by the spectacle, a man leaves and stomps out into the woods, only to be captured by the sounds of nature around him.

I spun the musical wheel and happened upon Night Places, a three-song EP1It’s still longer than the first Van Halen album, though from Rose. There’s no information about this artist anywhere, dammit, though ‘they’—there are two figures on the cover art, so I’m assuming here—have released music for at least a decade. Oakland’s exceptional Constellation Tatsu imprint is a key collaborator.

These cuts exhibit that swirly head trip stuff anchored by out-of-focus rhythms that feed sustenance to my 8-sided veins. Admittedly, the first track, “Phosphorene,” doesn’t do much for me, and I can’t put my finger on why. Perhaps it aims hopefully at a dancefloor with too much intention.2The most effective dance music is the least intentionally so. That’s a hill I’m prepared to die on. But the latter two-thirds of this EP excel in a Dave Bowman flying into the Jovian Monolith kind of way. “The Searing” opens with a distant foghorn over bouncy thuds. The wash of sound builds pleasantly like a tide gently rolling in, and soon, we’re gliding. Then, the last few minutes are a rhapsodic freefall. And I’d like to imagine the title track’s name is a play on Tones On Tails’ Night Music—they mined similar territories of mixing the light and dark—but I’m content to visit these dream fields throughout the day. Though, yes, this tune, in particular, is a more fitting venture when broadcast outside of sunlight.

Rose’s music is crafted. That’s the word that popped into my head as I listened. It’s deliberate—not the same as intentional—and patient. Music like this connects so much for me: shoegaze, (deeper than) deep house, ambient, and aspirations of inner calmness. I feel it’s experimental in ways that a lot of experimental music isn’t, in that disparate threads tie together without exposing the knots. Night Places tickles my brain in ways that only music like this does. If you understand what I’m talking about, then please send more in my direction.

Side note: I just noticed the entire Constellation Tatsu discography is $20 on Bandcamp at the moment. That’s the kind of crazy talk you should immediately converse with.

Creature Feature

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I have some curatorial notes today. Memora8ilia, the “filing cabinet for 8sided.blog,” is presently hosted on Tumblr. I’m in the process of moving it to a self-hosted site, at which point I’ll get more active with it. I’m not necessarily moving it off Tumblr due to recent controversies. However, that does serve as a reminder that when we rely on other platforms to present our creative work, problematic associations can (and probably will) happen.

Memora8ilia is meant to be a place where I store cool things I find on the web in case I want to find them again. It’s inspired, in part, by Warren Ellis’s LTD blog, which is his “writer’s notebook” and daily log that we, his readers, are allowed to access. Warren logs what he’s reading, watching, and hearing, as well as updates on how his garden is faring (a source of both his joy and frustration). He often checks in with his morning status and what his workload looks like for the day. Warren claims the people he works with can use that status to gauge how slammed and accessible he is at any time. I won’t go as far as posting my status, though. For one thing, the people who I work with should always consider me slammed and pretty much inaccessible lol.

Memora8ilia’s just fun stuff, and you’re welcome to follow along. Sometimes, things I briefly add to the Memora8ilia filing cabinet stick in my brain, and they work their way over to this site. That process is interesting, and I like having a record of it happening. So, look for that to pop over to its new home soon. I don’t think I can transfer the Tumblr site posts over to the new one (which will be a WordPress thing). It’ll be a fresh start. I’ll keep the Tumblr archive up and create a post at the top with a redirect once the change occurs.

More curation? This Beginner’s Guide to Chinese Shoegaze, courtesy of Concrete Avalanche, is so uplifting it makes my entire body tingle. And Simon Reynolds dropped a blog post about the “two kinds of early electronic composition and musique concrete that I really really love, and can’t get enough of” and helpfully supplied embedded YouTube examples. Your Discogs want list just got a lot bigger. On the niche (my kind of niche!) side of things, check out Harvard’s Davis Center Library Poster Collection, solely featuring digitized “Soviet posters dating from 1919 to the 1990s.” Be still my heart.

There’s also the music I am posting in these blog entries, whose curation, from the outside, appears a bit higgledy-piggledy. Well, posting only the latest music isn’t something I’m that concerned about. That’s a good thing because, as this blog goes through its long pauses, the music piles up. This particular pile consists of music I’ve purchased on Bandcamp with the intention of mentioning on the blog and releases sent to my inbox by kind and understanding labels and artists. I’ve thrown all this music in a folder, and when it’s time to concoct a post here, I use my handy-dandy randomizer and see what it pulls out. Surprise!

Today, I rolled a 244, and that points me to Andrew Edward Brown’s “Her Rescue.” Andrew is a Los Angeles-based via Philadelphia producer who also records under the alias Champion Soul and in the collaborative project Andy & Sasa. “Her Rescue” is one of the tracks found on Mr.Brown’s Studio Sessions Volume 3, an EP released by Strange But Soulful (could be a little stranger, tbh). The other cuts on the EP aren’t my thing, but “Her Rescue” has a hazy simplicity that harks to that time when techno producers were loudly proclaiming jazz bona fides. “Her Rescue” has all those elements: a gently percolating synth sequence, four-fingered chords on analog gear, and spacey treble strings, all riding on a kick drum shaker cycle. There’s saxophone, too, but I don’t mind as it’s reverbed and restrained and works a lot better than the Blade Runner love theme. This stuff is real fuckin’ sexy, just like you asked.

I also want to take some time to pour one out for Creature, AKA Creature Feature Double Feature, pictured at the top in a senselessly abstracted portrait. This exceptional cat, who enjoyed giving me determined head butts at three in the morning as I was fast asleep, was a part of our household for 17 years. Impressive! And a couple of days ago, he decided to wander off into the good night, likely not to be seen again. That fellow never had an awful day in his life — especially that day when he caught a squirrel (bad Creature!) — so our sadness is tempered by the appreciation that anyone could be so lucky to have 17 wonderful consecutive years. Off you go, sir, and farewell.

Time Travel, Expressed

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I should talk about my podcast work. It’s going well! My main gig is the Spotlight On podcast, hosted by music industry vet and erudite interviewer Lawrence Peryer (LP). Several months ago, I was promoted (I suppose that’s the word—it’s a two-man operation) from editor to full-on producer/manager of the show. That means I’m handling nearly everything outside of hosting.

I’m having a blast and am thankful that I’m working on such a terrific podcast. I’m always learning, a state I strive for in any project I take on. In addition to production and marketing duties, I suggest and book some of the musician guests, but LP tracks down the majority, who are mostly new to me. Fortunately, LP’s musical taste converges nicely with mine, so I’m discovering loads of new artists through the podcast.

This week’s guest is the German jazz drummer Mareike Wiening. This is my first encounter with her, and I am digging her jazz tidings. Check this out:

Mareike Wiening on drums, abstract photo

You can listen to her episode and all the others from the Spotlight On webpage. Or, if you want to be a superstar in my book, subscribe via wherever you get your podcasts.

Pro tip: Be sure to peruse the show notes. Compiling show notes is one of my favorite chores, and I give them a lot more attention than I probably should. I always slide in links to one or two fantastic articles or things tangentially related to the show.

A few months ago, there was a last-minute guest cancellation, so I became the guest. LP and I freeformed for a bit and released our gab session as an episode. I’ll embed it below as it’s found nowhere else on this blog, and I think it’s a fun chat. Some hot takes (well, ok—more like lukewarm) get dropped, too.

Another thing I’ll embed today is Opening Space, an album from Open Spaces on the Oakland-based ambient label Constellation Tatsu. Its Bandcamp release date of March 3, 2020, may seem prescient—mere days before the initial pandemic lockdowns—as producer and audio engineer Chris Hancock explores placing his music in imaginary environments. It wouldn’t be long before contemplating environments outside of our four walls was a hot new trend.

Open Spaces, the project name, designates Chris’s experiments in 360 audio, including heady-sounding technologies like, as noted on his blog, “binaural recording and ambisonic spatialisation software.” The opening track—”Opening Spaces,” natch—is a salvo of an example, flitting bird songs right out of Herzog’s jungle accompany a warm, harmonium-like drone before nature gets reversed. Time travel, expressed best as sonic art form.

The album continues to mine and develop these notions with gently pulsing drone work and elegantly located sound markers. “Compassion” adds distant percussion booms and a seemingly improvised but effective dream vocal from Michelle McCosker for a piece that made me think of Dead Can Dance warming up at soundcheck. And then “Some days are easier than others” (caps absconded) opens things up with a string-plucked motif driving a polite but shady crawl. In the last third, additional melodies and bass lines subtly appear and wash the clouds away with peeks of sunlight. It’s a generous production on its own merit, but it must have sounded downright ebullient in its time within the confines of closed-in spaces.

Brightly Transmitted Influences

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Today, I’m listening to Im Fünfminutentakt, an album by the enigmatic act Fred und Luna released last April. In playful press releases, Fred und Luna are purported to be moon-based explorers observing and commenting on Earthly activities through the language of music. This set-up, along with a synthesized and intentional retro sound that those same press releases refer to as “elektrokraut,” signals the kind of thing I’d often shy away from. But Im Fünfminutentakt is a terrific album.

Fred und Luna owe much to Kraftwerk and the electronic German music of the Kosimche ’70s. But where the album excels is when those brightly transmitted influences are stylistically fiddled with. Im Fünfminutentakt‘s first three tracks are what I’m talking about: there’s “Aurum C,” a bubbling, motorik album intro, and “Nur ein Viertelstündchen,” which brings to mind a becalmed take on New Order’s “Your Silent Face”—itself a Kraftwerk tribute. But the standout is the song sandwiched in between those two. “Es ist so schön”—”It is so beautiful”—is a fancy female/male duet that’s one part new wave dancefloor in restraint, one part affected Weimar torch song, and one part Cluster foolin’ around. It vibes for days and sounds like what hopeful young American couples imagine Europe to be like.

Im Fünfminutentakt and Fred und Luna first grabbed my attention when this album was released, but the reason I’m commenting on it now is less felicitous. Fred und Luna was one person, a creative hustle and bustle by the name of Rainer Buchmüller. In addition to creating the music of Fred Und Luna and performing/DJ’ing under that name, Rainer is also listed as a poet and record store owner—two identities perhaps even more financially challenging than professional musician. The sad news over the wire this week is that Rainer succumbed to cancer and is no longer with us.

Rainer was obviously harboring expertise and indebtedness to the strain of German music lovingly referred to as Krautrock. Not only do the recordings of Fred und Luna wear this proud lineage on their sonic sleeves, but Rainer was involved in Future Sounds of Kraut, a compilation series released via Compost Records. The aim is to highlight the latest crop of German artists (though not exclusively so) that are carrying the Krautrock torch into our modern age. Volume 1, embedded below, is well worth a listen. Volume 2, already completed, is due on March 1. Rainer Buchmüller did not live to see its release, but I am thankful he was able to complete the project.

Time’s running out, my friends. Stay focused on the things and people you love.

Elongated Installations

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This morning, I took a photo of the sunrise over my backyard lake. I used to do this almost every day—my sunrise diary. But I also used to get up a lot earlier. These days, I’m in bed until 7:30-ish, which is seriously sleeping in compared to my routine a few months back. These aches and pains, combined with the cold weather, are making it tougher to catch the sunrise, but these photos remain an aspiration. How many sunrises can one see in a life? It’s worth seeing as many as you can.

I’m amused by another barometer of time due to the recent attention given to the performance of John Cage’s “As Slow As Possible” (or, originally, “Organ2/ASLSP”) at the St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany. The performance began in 2001, nine years after Cage’s death, and the church’s organ is scheduled to stop playing in 2640. This length is based on the age of the oldest keyboard instrument — 639 years — at the time of the project’s conception. Temporal reflection is the goal, as is the draw of a special kind of nerdy tourist to the town of Halberstadt.

There are other elongated installations that comment on humankind’s mere blip on the great timeline. Pogues member Jem Finer’s “Longplayer” beats out “As Slow As Possible,” beginning a year earlier and performing its computer-generated synthesis of sound well into 2999. There’s also Danny Hillis’s The Clock of the Long Now, associated with The Long Now Foundation, as well as the unexpected alliance of Bezos and Eno. Presently under construction, it’s assumed to sit within its mountainous Texas dirt hole and periodically chime over 10,000 years.

The idea is to encourage long-term thinking. Very long-term thinking. One can hope contemplation on the organ’s final note fading into the middle of the 27th century might inspire more people to consider future generations for the sake of our resources, our efforts at sustainability, and planning out our lives within a community of species. But, watching the video of the changing of the note at St. Burchardi church, you’ll see folks staring with anticipation and applauding enthusiastically as the next organ pipe finally bellows its tone. They are completely in the ‘now,’ not the ‘long.’ “As Slow As Possible,” probably to Cage’s discomfort if he knew, has become a series of sudden spectacles.

All this long-term contemplation makes me crave something speedy. So, I’m dipping into the catalog of the eclectic Icelandic label Móatún 7 for a split single from Futuregrapher and Self Oscillate. It’s what we kids called drum n’ bass when we probably should have just said ‘jungle.’ I know nothing about either of these artists, but they’ve made an enjoyable attempt at frenetically percussive riddim music. Futuregrapher’s “Dominika” has a nostalgic appeal with a fairly traditional use of that ‘Amen’ business over synthy whisps, moans, and sighs. Midway into the track, an acid riff appears out of nowhere, like someone accidentally hit the wrong patch on the softsynth. But it’s brief, and it works—and I don’t like acid riffs, so hey. As interesting as that is, Self Oscillate does one better with the slinky “Gatekeeper,” sounding a little like if Photek were obsessed with film noir instead of Wuxia movies. The tune is spare, mostly chunky hi-tension drums, frequent sub-frequency dives, and a repeating half-measure bass line. I’m not sure how these cuts stand up to the rampant innovation of jungle’s heyday, but for this split single’s year of release (2019), I think they did just fine.

Ballad of the Blog

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There’s nothing here, and it’s like I’ve tumbled into an invisible thicket. I call this blog danger, loosely defined as an inescapable aura of demise in the face of consistency. Can I bring a date to the relaunch? Because that’s what I’m promising—a blog anew, updated and worthy of apprehensive glances. I could go into where I’ve been, but my explanation isn’t worth your time. It’ll come off as moan moan moan been so busy my eyes are a mess fatigue is the mind-killer and so on and on and on. Let’s assume (please) that I’m trying for real this time. Mocking is appropriate if it doesn’t work out.

I hate saying that I’m adopting a different tone and narrative strategy, but here we are. I’ve been thinking so much about writing these past several months. Tomes have been composed in my head, endless scrolls like ones pouring out of Kerouac’s typewriter, scotch-taped thoughts and brain flowers. Cut-ups, nonsense, and language experiments. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do, this fascination with wooooords and how they woooooork. I guess I’ve been held back by the imagined you, the reader, when the blog should exist more as my exercise (and exorcism).

It’s funny because I can point to all the different phases 8sided.blog has gone through in content and style following each of my random disappearances. This was once a music news blog, then a hot-takes-on-music-news blog, then a little more review-y, a little more interview-y, and occasionally link-bloggy. I never know exactly what the blog should be, which is both the best excuse for slacking and a technique for success. If I leave my space undefined, then where’s the measure of failure? There’s also laziness in the haziness, especially with all the previously alluded-to moan-moan stuff going on. But the key, I think, is to leave this without a purpose or goal and trudge forward valiantly, imagined reader be damned.

Man, I need this blog. I need to make this blog. Writing here, no matter how pretentiously and haphazardly, makes me feel like a special human being. And blogs these days are a kind of resistance—a thumbed nose at the tech brahs and the corporate interests and the sequential swiping up and discarding of beloved online journalism. I’ve had it with that shit. Staying quiet is no longer an option when I could be brusquely blogging on this here ‘indie web.’ Hoist the flag; I’m sailing the high seas.

What’s different? I’m thinking of adding some color and a bit more artsy-ness to the look of this thing. Some playfulness. There will be a lot more music—reviews, interviews, and whatnot in that signature pretentious and haphazard style. I’d like to get more personal about what I’m doing on this Earth, though I rarely leave my tiny patch of it anymore. In that regard, the challenge is to add fire to the unexciting. That’s where those language experiments fit in. And there will be links, and comments on links, and perhaps a word or two(thousand) on the links that give me heart palpitations.

That’s it. Let’s get this show on the road. Relaunch engaged, and hopefully (ha) I’ll be back tomorrow.

FELT