To Here Knows When
Hello! I’m Michael Donaldson, and I’m the curious fellow behind 8sided.blog. This blog has been running in various forms (and URLs) since 2015, with a few inexplicable long breaks.
The standard social media bio is a series of nouns often preceded by descriptors. Mine is no different. Recently, I identified myself across the web like so: blogging proselytizer, music industry exile, sonic swashbuckler, sunrise watcher. Beyond that summary, other personal obsessions include the history of cinema, hot sauces, the sound of tape delays, vegan cooking, studying and pondering philosophy, lake life, sustainable living, these damn cats, and collecting more books than I’ll ever read.
Terry Matthew of 5 Magazine did a profile on me a while back that I like, going deep into my history in music and my attitudes on the industry. It’s a good MDonaldson primer.
Another fun profile that’s more recent is this one in the Orlando Weekly written by long-time confidant Daniel Fuller. If you’d enjoy a time warp, Daniel also wrote about me way back in 1997.1The date on the article says ‘1998’ but it’s wrong.
2026-08-15 Update: Achievement level unlocked. I appeared on my favorite internet whatchamacallit, James A. Reeves’s Midnight Radio. I chose some songs for James to play, and I hedged at length on the question of God. Check it out.
I live in Orlando, Florida. Many years ago, I ended up in this city in a misguided attempt at film school and lacked the means or will to escape. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. Despite some questionable life choices and Florida’s ever-sinking status (in more ways than one), I’ve made an interesting, fulfilling, and generally happy life here.
As for this spot on the web, 8sided.blog is my pet project, my pride and joy, my journal of personal interests, and my digital thinking cap. It keeps me sane. If you want to add a dose of sanity to your life, I suggest starting a blog filled with your obsessions and ramblings. Here’s how.
This site runs solely on grit, a love of writing, an insatiable curiosity, interactions with my readers, and money out of my pocket. If you’d like to help out with the latter — any amount is appreciated — you can buy me a vegan chalupa.
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Talk To Me
I’d enjoy hearing from you. Feel free to reach out here: michael@8sided.com
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The Tonearm
I run The Tonearm, an online journal of art, music, film, and literature that I started with Lawrence Peryer in November 2024. My title is editor-in-chief, which in practice means I commission the pieces, edit them, and lay it all out for the online page, but I’m also responsible for a lot more of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans. A month on the site might carry an interview with an ensemble recording Julius Eastman’s catalog, a piece on the filmmakers behind a documentary about Sacred Harp singing, a conversation with the synthesist who introduced Stevie Wonder to TONTO in the 1970s, and a profile of a jaw harp improviser working out of coastal Nova Scotia. Most of what we publish is long-form interviews with artists and essays that widen out from a cultural moment into its context and ideas. We also produce The Tonearm Podcast, hosted by Lawrence, which has won two AIVA Communicator Awards. There’s a weekly email newsletter too.
The editorial idea comes from a line of Alejandro Zuleta’s, that art music is best understood as a practice, “a way of engaging with the material of sound.” We apply that well past music, to filmmakers, novelists, and visual artists, which, in turn, dissolves the genre question. The practice turns up in indie rock, field recording, documentary film, and Sardinian canto a tenore. After that comes the unrepeatable part, the process, circumstance, or creative orientation that belongs to one artist and could not be swapped for another. That rules out most of what gets pitched to us, including a lot of good records. The test I apply to every piece is whether it helps a reader find something, or think something, they would not have arrived at on their own.
Be sure to subscribe to the email newsletter I write and send out every Sunday, Talk Of The Tonearm.
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Q-Burns Abstract Message
In 1994, I started a solo production project called “Q-Burn” (a pun on the old radio term ‘cue burn‘). After getting mixed up with the famed turntablist Q-Bert and a lofty idea that “there is no Q-Burns … this is an imaginary band,” I changed the name to Q-Burns Abstract Message. Unfortunately, people kept on confusing the name with Q-Bert (including, once, DJ Shadow). My first records were on a small but beloved San Francisco imprint called Mephisto Records and the Hardkiss offshoot label Sunburn. Then I was signed to Astralwerks for a few fun years and returned to Eighth Dimension. After a couple of decades of spurts and sputters (and way too many remixes), I released the AUDIOTOTEMPOLE EP in 2019. That’s the final release under the Q-BAM moniker. After that, I released one song as Grottoes, and it’s a creamier, sparser, less beat-concerned, and somewhat ominous thing.
If I’m being honest, I’m not sure if I’ll ever make music again. I’m content with the written word, which has stolen all of my attention.
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Social Media
Regular readers of the blog know I have an increasingly complicated relationship with social media. I’m trying my best not to add value to platforms owned by companies that I disagree with ethically. I wrote about this struggle here . . . and more recently here . . . and maybe for the last time here.
If you’d like to get social with yours truly, Mastodon is my primary mode of transportation. Come on in, the water’s fine. Don’t believe anyone who tells you it’s complicated or weird. I’m also on Bluesky and Letterboxd.
Want to ease yourself out of social media and algorithm-guided content? You should use an RSS reader!
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What’s With that Avatar?
It’s from a photo that some of the members of GusGus took of me in Los Angeles. We were play-acting an imaginary Wim Wenders movie and, in this scene, I was demanding my driver hit the road. This shot ended up getting used by Astralwerks as my press photo. It’s still my favorite Q-BAM photo and, despite my suspicion of nostalgia, it gives me all the feels.
