8Sided Blog

the scene celebrates itself

Any Relief is Sweet Relief

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One More Post About Stress and Creativity → I’ve alluded to the challenges and difficulties of putting together a weekly email newsletter, which are the obstructions of creative work, really. Whether writing, music-making, brainstorming, anything requiring the mythical ‘creative juice’ — the stars should be aligned, right? If something’s out of whack, then perhaps it’s not happening. The mood escapes us, and, creatively, we feel like fish flapping on the edge of the dock. 

I could probably say it’s felt like this for four years, but COVID-times — coinciding with the launch of my newsletter somehow — exaggerates the mental forecast for dark clouds. A few of you have picked up on these feelings, responding to confirm the matching weather in your heads. Our challenges aren’t equal, and I’m aware I’m better off in these circumstances than most. But the combination of daily chaos from the White House, a global pandemic, and the duly exacerbated struggles of self-employment weigh heavy. I admit: this stress-fog is the reason the newsletter slowed down its pace to fortnightly. No matter how much I try to keep my brain fresh — news-avoiding, stoic reminders, meditation — the dark clouds find a way to shoo off the ideas. And the motivation to go along with them. 

So how do I feel today? Probably, like you, a bit better. Damon Krukowski tweeted yesterday that Boston’s 4.2 earthquake was actually “everyone jumping out of bed with energy for the first time in 4 years.” I don’t know how long this lasts — the daily chaos is already starting to resume, battering us for at least a couple of months. The pandemic is scarier than it’s ever been. And I’m still a self-employed person balancing the financial precipice. But on at least one or two of those points, I see some hope, and I didn’t feel that way several days ago. Any relief is sweet relief, and my creative process is thankful. 

I decided to use this blog and my newsletter as a respite from all this turmoil. That’s why I haven’t spoken about it much and why it feels weird writing about it now. And I don’t want to make it all about me, either. But I feel like it’s a good possibility you’ve been going through the same challenges. You might also feel less ‘weighted’ today. Again, that doesn’t mean it’s easier from here out — creation is hard even in the best of times. But any ray of light helps shine through those clouds, doesn’t it? Onward.

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Speaking of my Email Newsletter → Will Sumsuch let loose a bunch of lovely words about Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care in the new issue of 5 Mag. He calls my newsletter “a neatly packaged antidote to our horrendously homogeneous musical landscape” and “like an artistic self-help guide.” Can you see me blushing through the email? I hope to live up to those accolades as rev back up to my weekly broadsides. Thanks, Will! The latest issue of 5 Mag is only available to subscribers right now, but you can download it for $2.99. You should! It’s rad, and, as usual for the publication, it features a lot of informative underground dance music content to grok. [LINK]

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Pylon – Box → The best band I ever saw live (and I didn’t even get to see them in their early ’80s prime) has a wonderful box set out. It’s Pylon, and it’s called Box. Sasha Frere-Jones wrote some great words about it on 4Columns, including this thinly disguised call-to-arms: “These recordings demonstrate how powerful the idea of punk was as liberation, not in the sense of political emancipation but as a license to start from scratch.” Anyway, you could do worse than put on Pylon today or any day. “These kids listen to dub for breakfast.” You can listen to (and buy) Box on Bandcamp or those streaming spots. [LINK]

Looney Machine of Outrage

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Negativity Will Not Do → I could probably write about every other post that appears on The Red Hand Files here. Nick Cave’s answers to his reader’s questions are delightful and insightful, and most deserve highlighting. The latest, Issue #122, is a response to Pat from Chicago asking how Nick deals with hate mail. Nick jokingly — I hope — claims to enjoy “a good death threat in the morning.” Then I’m fully on board once he dismisses social media as “that looney machine of outrage.” I’m sticking the phrase in my quiver for future deployment. 

But it’s Nick’s dose of resistant optimism and a rally to continue doing creative work in the face of uncertainty that stirs my soul. I needed to read this today:

Of course, there is much in our world that is in need of change, to be set to rights, and clearly humanity is complex, conflicted and full of faults, but at this moment in time, when our very existence hangs in the balance, we need to come together not just in good faith and consolation, but also in a spirit of creativity and invention. Our existence depends upon offering the best of ourselves. Negativity, cynicism and resentment will not do.

On the same day, James A. Reeves offered this complimentary observation (unintentional) on his Atlas Minor blog: 

It’s an awful feeling, being afraid to hope. But I’ve relied on pessimism as a protective measure for too long, only to discover it’s another warped mirror.

I literally exclaimed, “Oh, shit!” when I read that. It felt like I got burned. This week’s tough — the toughest in a while — and the stress is nearly unbearable. My own ‘protective’ pessimism and wallowing outside of my creative pursuits aren’t helping anyone. Quite the opposite, actually. Thanks for the wake-up call.

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Joe Muggs on “Starfish and Coffee” → Joe Muggs was given the task of writing in-depth about a Prince song in a lengthy Twitter thread. He chose “Starfish and Coffee.” Hey, that might be my favorite one, too. Joe’s thoughts and recollections on this classic are heartwarming, reminding me of all the things that make one love music (and Prince). He also touches on that DJ set sweet spot: playing a song that everyone knows and digs, but you never hear on the radio (or the 2020 equivalent). Anyway, this is a great thread. Hopefully, someday this screed will get transferred to a blog or personal site (you should do one, Joe) and away from the ephemeral clutches of Twitter. Passionate remembrances such as this deserve a more hallowed ground. 

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“I Don’t Want To Talk About It” Masks → Orlando art troubadour Patrick Greene ran for mayor of ‘the city beautiful’ in 2004. His campaign slogan was, “I don’t want to talk about it,” a sentiment that has haunted us (and him) ever since. As we barrel further into COVID-times, Pat has heeded the call to extend his slogan to us mask-wearing ‘over its’ as we do our sensible duty while discouraging senseless chat. Or at least that’s how I read it. 

The masks are $16.00 (including shipping within the US), and Pat will donate four of those dollars to Community Hope Center. That organization helps the homeless and those living destitute in the (now) ex-tourist motels along the theme park highways. You may recognize this existence from the film The Florida Project. What was a budding problem at the time of that movie has gotten much, much worse thanks to the economic effects of COVID on Central Florida’s service industries. Supporting Community Hope Center in this crisis is a worthy cause.

Send Pat $16.00 for one of these handy masks. Click here for his email address for more info, or PayPal him using that same email. Be sure to include your shipping address.

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Affect Display – Animal Drift Animal → Canadian producer Damien Smith is Affect Display, and he’s released a unique seven-track album titled Animal Drift Animal through the Pirates Blend label. The tracks recall Detroit techno’s early explorations, as releases became less about the dance-floor and more about the head-trip. Smith’s drum programming sets Animal Drift Animal into this heady mode, with frenetic rhythms that betray influences traveling across a landscape of genres. There are scenes of pastoral ambiance, but also indie-quoting guitar lines in “FlightorFury” and a couple of others, a mellow gothiness in “Transference,” and disorienting experimentalism leading to grandiose prog-ness in “Dauen.” And it works. Affect Display has delivered something unusual and grabbing. He’s shaking things up, and what more can one ask for in these lockdown days of endless sameness? Check out the video for “Until the Light Hits the Door” for an eerily nostalgic taste of Affect Display’s electronica:

A Body of Work for Hire

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Going through an old archive, I rediscovered this terrific article on Burton Silverman, best known (to his chagrin) as the painter of the cover art to Jethro Tull’s Aqualung. Here’s an age-old story — an artist does an inexpensive, flat-fee work-for-hire. And then the product takes off and earns millions for everyone except that artist. From the article:

The tale of how Chrysalis Records had done him wrong was turned into somewhat of a running family gag. Given the haggard figure he created, we mused that he might eventually embody his own artistic creation — a destitute, howling figure draped in rags and huddled in a darkened street corner. Buried within this bit of gallows humor lies a nagging truth: There’s a palpable sense of unease and frustration at seeing something he created become immensely popular — define his career, even — only to see his ownership of the work taken away, thanks in no small part to the persistent myths and outright falsehoods that have been told about the artistic inspiration for the cover.

The ‘persistent myths and outright falsehoods’ refers to how Ian Anderson, leader of Jethro Tull, keeps telling everyone that the figure on the cover is a representation of him. Silverman insists it’s not, and one wonders if he’d care so much if Anderson wasn’t such a knucklehead about this.1I believe Silverman here — the article is convincing — but, tbh, it does look a little like Anderson. 

Burton Silverman's 'haggard figure' from the cover of Jethro Tull's Aqualung

Silverman is a successful enough artist — recipient of countless awards and permanent collection inclusions — that his Wikipedia entry barely mentions his association with Jethro Tull. So, it’s not like Silverman owes his success to the band. But it grates on him. Silverman’s handshake agreement with Chrysalis didn’t anticipate all the t-shirts, the merchandise, the dorm room posters, and Anderson claiming ownership because he believes he’s the scary cover dude. (Anderson has also annoyed Silverman by publicly referring to the cover as “messy” and “not very attractive or well executed.”)

There’s no contract, an error on Silverman’s part, so maybe he doesn’t have a right to complain. Legally this is a grey area, detailed by a copyright attorney in the article. 

I recall other work-for-hire arrangements where there was a cut-and-dry contract, the project takes off, and the artist feels cheated. In particular, there’s one producer who did a remix of a known ’80s song.2It’s not essential to this story to name names. The remix took off, becoming a top-charting hit in the UK. The producer signed a ‘flat-fee’ agreement — no one forced him — but he felt the label should pay him royalties.

The remixer started publicly complaining that he wasn’t paid enough and should be entitled to a cut of the song royalty. “My remix is why this is popular,” he reasoned. He brought this up in every interview and article that featured him, perhaps oblivious that this remix of someone else’s popular song was the only reason for the interview.

In other words, rather than adopting a ‘body of work’ mindset and building on the success of this project, the producer was publicly renegotiating an arrangement that wasn’t negotiable.

A couple of labels commissioned the producer for other high profile remixes over the next several months, but nothing else was a hit. He disappeared from the charts and public interest shortly afterward. I am sure many in the industry passed on working with this producer because of his attitude and public airing of ‘sour grapes.’

Seth Godin writes about situations like this in a 2018 blog post titled Considering the Buyout. He brings up the “I Love NY” logo, which Milton Glaser designed for $2000, and the Nike swoosh, designed by Carolyn Davidson for an astonishing $35. Godin refers to these projects, and the remix and album cover above, as illustration, not art. They might be artistic — especially in Silverman’s case — but, Godin says, “Illustration has a client … taking on all the risk. The artist is free to wander, and free to own the consequences.” He continues: 

As Milton Glaser has shown, being associated with dramatic success as an illustrator opens the door to even more success. It can fuel your art and create opportunities for higher leverage in your illustration work as well. Illustration can pay some bills at the same time it chips away at your obscurity problem.

Derek Sivers talks about how if your answer isn’t an enthusiastic “hell, yes!” then it should be a definite “no.” But, he adds a caveat: when you’re starting out and building leverage, then often a “yes” will do. “Hell, yes!” is for artists with leverage, and it might take a few frustrating work-for-hire ‘yeses’ to finally exercise that privilege. 

🔗→ My Dad Painted the Iconic Cover for Jethro Tull’s ‘Aqualung,’ and It’s Haunted Him Ever Since
🔗→ Considering the Buyout

Bells and Mechanical Tune-Teasers

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Spotify Shuts Out SongShift → SongShift is a popular iOS app that allows the transferring of playlists across platforms. That is, if you use Apple Music (like me) and want to grab one of Joe Muggs’ Spotify-only Soft Music For Hard Times playlists, SongShift makes it happen. Now it seems Spotify is pouring the jerk sauce on this recipe, as the SongShift team recently made this announcement: “The Spotify Developer Platform Team reached out and let us know we’d need to remove transferring from their service to a competing music service or have our API access revoked due to TOS violation … as of SongShift v5.1.2, you will no longer be able to create transfers from Spotify to another music service.”

I guess one can understand the rationale. Spotify’s strength and differentiator, as far as music listening goes, is its playlists. If you’re into Spotify-only playlists, transferring them to your streaming place of choice might keep you from committing to their platform. Transferability makes it easier to leave the Spotify ecosystem, too. But it still comes off as a weaselly power move, especially as all other services allow these transfers (for now — this decision could set the tone). 

Spotify is a public critic of Apple’s walled garden, and Jason Snell points out this hypocrisy on his Six Colors blog: 

Spotify hates how Apple tends its own ecosystem, but it has zero interest in allowing its customers to migrate metadata in any way that might make it more convenient to leave Spotify behind. That’s their decision to make, of course, but for a company that claims to support consumer freedom, it has just made a hypocritical decision designed to reduce the freedom of its own customers.

One can argue about ownership of playlists, but the music is not the property of Spotify or anyone else besides the rights-holders. And I’m sure rights-holders would prefer the containers for their music remain fungible across applicable services. 

But what are you gonna do? I suppose if you use SongShift, maybe don’t update to the latest version (though I don’t know for sure if that will make a difference). And transfer those Spotify playlists as soon as you can, even if you use something other than SongShift. I’m sure Spotify will quickly put the kibosh on those other services, too.

Update: Spotify has done an about-face. Adds SongShift: “The only caveat is, you have to have created the playlist yourself, or the playlist must be collaborative and followed by you.”

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The Company That Has a Monopoly on Ice Cream Truck Music → The origins of the music boxes playing from ice cream trucks are fascinating. Today’s familiar sound was once in a heated competition with sleigh-bells (“ringing a bell all day long soon proved to be too manually taxing for drivers”) and resistance from older generations complaining about the noise (little did they know).

Nichols Electronics persevered and still delivers 300-400 music boxes a year. That seems low, but the company — which has provided these boxes for several decades — is comfortable with its niche’ monopoly.’ Nichols Electronics is a lesson for labels and artists — find your audience, serve only them, and prosper with consistency despite limited opportunities for growth. 

I also like the strategic rules that Nichols Electronics sets for songs included in their music boxes: 

• They’re short and easy to remember … the perfect length at between 15 and 45 seconds.
• They’re structurally simple: “You don’t want the music to be very full,” music historian Daniel T. Neely tells us. “If it’s too complicated, the message becomes kind of muddled.”
• They’re typically rooted in nostalgia.

As the article explains, “That last point is perhaps the most crucial element of a good ice cream truck song: We’re drawn to these melodies because we’ve heard them before.” It also helps when the ‘nostalgic’ song is in the public domain and doesn’t require licensing fees. That aspect might be a problem for the heavy metal ice cream truck. 

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Yoshiaki Ochi – Natural Sonic → Today, I randomly happened across a lovely percussive ambient album from composer Yoshiaki Ochi. Light On The Attic’s Kankyō Ongaku compilation featured this Japanese artist, as did Music For Dreams’ Japanese music collection Oto No Wa. Natural Sonic calms with tropical sounding wooden percussion, floating between the tribal, the distant, and the contemporary. In my interview with Elijah Knutsen, an enthusiast of Japanese ambient music, he describes how the Kankyō Ongaku genre often features the “natural sound of life, with bits of melody blended between the long stretches of environmental sounds.” Natural Sonic includes these elements on a few of the songs — beach surf on “Woods from the Sea,” or bird sounds on “Anywhere.” But the lack of synthesizers draws Ochi’s album closer to the likes of Martin Denny (except the bird sounds here are real) than the pioneers of Asian ambient music. And, interestingly, the organic materials that populate the album result in a timelessness. Natural Sonic was recorded in 1990, a fact I had to look up as listening gave no easy clues to its year of origin. 

Put the Blueprint Down

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Season 3 of KCRW’s Lost Notes → This week, I spent 30 minutes each morning listening to the third season of KCRW’s Lost Notes podcast series. The other two seasons are terrific, but this latest particularly grabbed me. This time, each episode focuses on a prominent event or artist from 1980. The host is poet and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib, approaching his subjects with an engaging language. The series suggests 1980 as a pivotal year, setting the tone for the next decade and reverberating into the present.

If you’re me, the temptation is to skip to the end and listen to the fantastic Grace Jones episode (which also throws in a short history of Chicago’s Disco Demolition, occurring the previous year). But roll through them all, in order, to get a grander picture of the influence that year had on music and culture. Stevie Wonder, Ian Curtis, John Lennon and Darby Crash (together), Minnie Ripperton, The Sugarhill Gang, Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba — each topic is fascinating and offers something to learn. 

You can also read each episode online via KCRW’s site (click on the artist’s names above). But Hanif Abdurraqib’s personable narration, peppered with audio and musical examples, is the way to go. It’s a compelling production.

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Throwback on a Comeback: The Last Cassette Tape Factory → I enjoyed this mini-doc on ‘The Last Cassette Factory‘ — though I’m wondering if any tape manufacturers have popped up since the video’s release four years ago. As noted in the video, there’s a resurgence of cassette releases. This growth is partly thanks to Bandcamp and a need to give fans a limited, physical version of a release without breaking the bank for vinyl pressings. It’s an excellent idea for emerging bands to offer cassettes, especially when personalized with homespun artwork and packaging. Just don’t believe that your fans are listening to your cassettes. For one thing, as the first commenter on the video’s page notes, “The problem is I don’t see any quality cassette players being made today.” As for this video, we’ve all seen footage of the whirring machinery found in record pressing plants. It might be surprising to see that a cassette factory’s inner workings are also fascinating and highly technical. 

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A Guide to Sun Ra on Film → A useful list of long-form Sun Ra footage found on YouTube and elsewhere. Some of this I hadn’t seen before. The Magic Sun film, intended as a projection behind the Arkestra as they performed at Carnegie Hall, is particularly wild. And I think the writer of this piece somewhat downplays Space Is The Place — it’s a great movie, low-budget or not. 

As a proponent of focusing influence on one’s own ‘world,’ I like this quote from Ra in the listed French television interview: “You want a better world, put the blueprint down.”

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Ralph Kinsella – Lessening → My 8D Industries label released a new album today on Bandcamp. Titled Lessening, it’s the debut album from Scottish guitarist and ambient producer Ralph Kinsella. I’ve written about Ralph before — I discovered him after he reached out to this blog with his music. A few months ago, he sent the demo for this album, and I haven’t stopped listening. An antidote to lockdown — this is travel in a small room.

The last paragraph of the press release does a great job of describing Ralph’s music:

Kinsella’s guitar is the even thread, sometimes bare and then often processed, awash in texture and synthetic glares. Tracks like “In the In-Between Light” use the guitar to express enormity — of space and emotion — before the song is gently brought close by calming lines and reassuring synth patches. There’s also a soft tension in songs like “Lung Noises,” sharing the masterful slow build of the shoegaze genre’s finest practitioners. Lessening‘s closer, “Born on the Cusp,” offers a resolution — chiming guitars and reverberant tones signaling both loss and promise. This is the sound of an uncertain present feeling its way to that better world.

I hope you’ll check it out. Lessening is available now exclusively on Bandcamp and, like all 8D Industries releases, is set to ‘name your price.’ 

Old Man With Pink Hair

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Unfortunately, You Might be a Dingdong → In the new issue of his Roden newsletter, Craig Mod offers advice on dealing with dingdongs. He also provides clues to determine if you, unsuspecting reader, are unknowingly a dingdong. What’s a dingdong? Craig explains: “A dingdong is a subset of asshole, but for the sake of levity, we go with the former. A dingdong believes — genuinely! — that their opinion and their frequent, unsolicited deployment of that opinion is helpful. Often: It’s not.”

Craig rightfully points out that website comment sections are ‘dingdong bonanzas.’ I believe this extends to comments on Twitter, Facebook, and all the rest. His prescription? Block or mute. Or, even better, reply with something like, “That’s interesting — thanks!” and then block or mute. Craig calls that technique “The Dalai Lama Stance.” 

In the essay, Craig makes this case for ignoring dingdongs, no matter how tempting: 

… dingdong engagement has a very low energy-in to positivity-out yield. Almost zero. In the exceedingly small chance that you end up in a fruitful back and forth with a dingdong, it’s likely you’ll look back on that tête-à-tête and wish you had been doing literally anything else with your time.

It’s true! I remember when I was active on DJ and electronic music forums in the early ’00s. I got in so many stupid arguments. And even in exchanges with dingdongs where I felt it was my duty to set things straight, I came out defeated. I remember eventually thinking, “Has anything useful or positive ever come out of arguing in an internet forum?” Once I had my answer, I logged off for good. Now I follow my friend Zed’s advice: I don’t argue on the internet. 

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Kelly Lee Owens – “Corner Of My Sky” (feat. John Cale) → This new track from Kelly Lee Owens is excellent, and it features vocals from John Cale, who just sounds great. I want to hear from him more often (just as this vocal cameo from Brian Eno makes me want to hear him sing a lot more). And, since the early days of MTV, I’ve aggressively disliked music videos that mix in dialogue and in-video sounds over the music. But this music video is the exception — I love it so much.

But! Since writing the above paragraph, John Cale answered my plea and released a new one-off song (and video) called “Lazy Day.” It’s a weird one, not exactly what I had in mind when I said I wanted John Cale to sing some more. But the song is fun, cool, and catchy, and Cale has transformed into ‘old man with pink hair,’ which is a not-too-terribly-surprising development.

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Khotin – Finds You Well → Canadian electronic music producer Khotin went and did it. He named his album after 2020’s eternal email send-off, “I hope this finds you well.” I’m sure he’s not the only one. But it’s possible this album of hauntology-nodding textural beat constructions conveys the wistful sentiment better than the others. Yes, we’ve entered Boards of Canada territory (Boards of Edmonton, in this case), but where BoC is a tad clinical, Khotin offers the personal. Take the swirling pads and the inserted voicemail messages of “Outside in the Light” — it sounds like someone listening in, from space or the future, deciphering pleasant memories. 

Not Good Enough for Vinyl

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Tom Waits – Big Time → Tom Waits’ Frank’s Wild Years is a longtime favorite album of mine.1That album followed Waits’ Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs, completing one of the great album trios in recorded music. In 1988, a concert film from this album’s tour was released, titled Big Time. The movie is beautiful, and the performances of the songs are creative and mischievous. It’s as good as Stop Making Sense, in my opinion (that Talking Heads concert film was probably an influence on Big Time). Big Time has been missing all these years, only available via used DVDs and extremely low quality torrented files. But! Without fanfare, Big Time suddenly appeared to stream on Amazon Prime Video at the beginning of the month. Watch it. (Side note: fingers crossed Laurie Anderson’s digitally unavailable Home of the Brave follows soon.)

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ECHO: The Music of Harold Budd and Brian Eno → ECHO is billed as a YouTube documentary about the early ’80s collaborative relationship of Brian Eno and Harold Budd. In actuality, it’s a mix of music from their classic albums The Plateaux of Mirror (1980) and The Pearl (1984), accompanied by snippets and quotes from interviews. The visuals are suitably ambient — dreamy pastures, scrolling snow-fields, and misty cityscapes. The video does have some interesting bits, including Eno pointing out various ‘treatments’ and even identifying tools like the Lexicon Prime Time delay. Despite the occasional commentary, the 40-minute film ends up as soothing and hypnotic as the subject albums. Hat tip to Sasha Frere-Jones, who listed this today in his always illuminating email newsletter.

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Rimarimba – Below The Horizon → I recorded my first ‘album’ in the ‘80s, and it was cassette-only. I was a part of the self-released cassette movement (as documented in the book Cassette Mythos), even having my ‘albums’ reviewed in a few ‘zines. I still remember a friend of mine, also active in the cassette underground, telling me one day: “I know why all this music is released on cassette. Because it’s not good enough for vinyl.” Ouch.

There might have been a little hard truth in that. I mean, just revealing that I recorded some cassette albums in the ‘80s has me a bit nervous, because I would hate the fine folks at RVNG Intl. or their Freedom To Spend side-imprint track down these cassettes and offer to release them. Because they really weren’t ready for vinyl. In retrospect, they were quaint but kind of terrible (btw – Ira Glass is right). But that’s not the case with Rimarimba, an artist who I’d not heard of until today and who seems to have once existed on the edges of the ‘80s cassette underground.

That said, Below The Horizon might not count — according to Discogs — as it was released on cassette in 1983 but made its way to rare-ish vinyl in 1985. And, this time, it is good enough for vinyl. What’s not to like? The first couple of tracks sound like Penguin Cafe Orchestra playing the last 30 seconds of Faust’s “The Sad Skinhead.” If that doesn’t sound wonderful to you, then … still give it a try. And then this final track, titled “Bebang,” is 20+ minutes of layered, ringing guitar loops and riffs, a fanciful, improvised toy synthesizer line, and a subtle tick-tock rhythm that helps the song’s time pass in an instant.

A Singing and Dancing A-Team

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Why Are K-Pop Groups So Big? → Initially, I thought the headline was referring to the immense international popularity of K-Pop groups. But it relates to the growing membership sizes of these acts. Did you know there’s a K-pop group with 23 members? The article also details how larger groups can have multiple spin-off groups (‘subunits’). And there are specific roles and ‘divisions of labor’ within each act’s membership. These acts end up sounding like elite military brigades — or a singing and dancing A-Team, with each personality assigned a duty or specialty. A typical ‘old,’ I find all of this confusing and fascinating. Check out this bit:

Wanna One, the 5th highest-selling K-pop group of the past decade, was formed in 2017 on the second season of survival show Produce 101. Produce 101 supposedly allowed fans to “produce” their dream K-pop group from 101 trainees by voting on the member lineup. For some, a spot in the final group was too valuable to leave up to chance—the show is currently under investigation for vote-rigging by internal staff and external agencies.

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Jazz Musician Lettering → It’s often annoying when modern album covers ape the classic design style of the jazz-era, but there’s nothing wrong with the aesthetics serving as inspiration. And there’s a lot of inspiration found in this compilation of typography and lettering found in the artist names adorning records from the mid-century. Many jazz covers are so iconic that we overlook the inventiveness behind the text. This format invites an examination without the images and layout that complete the full design. Blogger Reagan Ray says, “Rather than post 100s of covers and posters, I wanted to isolate the lettering for easy browsing and analysis. There’s a lot of lettering out there, and a lot I left out.”

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Newsletter Subscriptions → Haven’t you heard? Email newsletters are a thing! Even I’ve got one. Newsletters are a significant move away from the information chokehold of social media — personalized ‘posts’ arriving in email inboxes with our permission and without the judgment of indecipherable algorithms. Finding the right newsletters for you is a little more complicated. First thing: check out the websites of your favorite authors and thinkers — chances are most of them have a newsletter. There’s also a fun newsletter about newsletter recommendations, Thanks For Subscribing. And, though it’s limited to the growing Substack platform, the search engine Stacksear.ch is useful. You type in a word or interest, and the search results show Substack newsletters where your phrase has recently appeared.

One quick thing you might not know about Substack: each newsletter domain has an RSS feed. That’s great for readers as they can get Substack newsletters delivered to an RSS reader without necessarily subscribing. That’s how I read many Substack newsletters. But I feel guilty as this is also bad for newsletter publishers — if we’re reading via RSS, we’re not actually subscribed, affecting the newsletter’s subscriber count. A compromise is to use something like Feedbin, which gives you a special email address to use to subscribe to newsletters. This email address delivers them into your RSS feed. That’s what I do now, and it makes for a better reading experience and keeps my email inbox relatively sane.

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Khemkhaeng – บ้าน → This ambient mini-album from a mysterious Thailand-based producer is a wonder. It’s not often a release in the ambient genre sounds fresh and new. Khemkhaeng rises to the challenge, and these five songs have a rare quality — I want them to last longer. As I wrote in my short Bandcamp review, “Everything here is beautiful, sublime, and seemingly of its own world — but ‘ดูรู้สึก’ is especially distinctive and fascinating. I may have to edit a seamless loop of this track so I can sit inside it all day.”

Kosmiche Clicky Keyboard

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I’ve got a few quickies for you and then some music news. 

First, I’ve officially entered the clicky keyboard club. Mechanical keyboards have tempted me for years, and this Kickstarter campaign finally inspired me to take the plunge. My Keychron K8 arrived today, and this post is pretty much the first thing I’ve typed on it. I’m doing a lot of writing and thought a more physical keyboard — with clicks and noise! — would help inspire and lead me frequently into ‘the zone.’ It’s too early to say. I’ve heard some people can’t get used to these keyboards, and it is larger in height than I’m used to. I’m using a palm rest, which helps, but it’s still going to take effort to get acclimated. But so far, so good — the feel is impressively tactile, and I love the keys’ noise. The fancy backlighting makes typing feel special, too. I’ll report back once I get some serious use out of this thing.

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Here’s a fun piece about John Cage’s expertise with edible mushrooms. Well — he was an expert most of the time as there’s that dinner where he unintentionally poisoned his guests. If you know about Cage but didn’t know about his mushroom obsession, then you’ll find this paragraph fascinating:

In one particularly famous episode, in February 1959, Cage appeared on the Italian television program Lascia o Raddoppio (Double or Nothing) and won five million lire (something like eight thousand dollars) by being able to name 24 white-spored agarics — edible mushrooms — that were mentioned in the Studies of American Fungi field guide. Cage listed them in alphabetical order and then bought a Volkswagen bus for his partner, choreographer Merce Cunningham, and a piano for his home in Stony Point.  

There’s a new two-volume book — John Cage: A Mycological Foray — that details Cage’s mad mushroom skills though his writing and essays by others. It looks lovely.

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Speaking of lovely-looking books, Craig Mod — who might be responsible for my favorite email newsletter — has self-published a book based on his incredible Eater article, I Walked 600 Miles Across Japan for Pizza Toast. I know the title of that article is baffling but, seriously, give it a read if you haven’t. This new book is titled Kissa by Kissa, and it expands on the article with lots of new graphics, photographs, and text. It’s obviously a labor of love and looks fantastic. Even more fantastic, Craig coded his Kickstarter-style platform to raise money and sell it from (he jokingly calls it ‘Craigstarter’). It’s open-source and downloadable from Github. Labels and recording artists take note — you could use this to do a PledgeMusic (ugh) style fundraiser for your next album right from your site. (Update: I see the book sold out. Congratulations to Craig! I imagine it will be online in some form in the future, like his ‘digital book’ Ise-ji: Walk With Me.)

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Brian Eno. Laurie Anderson. Nitin Sawhney. Simon McBurney. These four brains got together (on Zoom) and had a conversation about listening. It’s terrific. And Eno’s lockdown beard is impressive.

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My bit of music news is about Gemini Revolution. The brothers Dedric and Delaney — from the cool Kansas City combo Monta At Odds — lead this project. We call Gemini Revolution their ‘alternate timeline band.’ I’ve just released their rad new album Supernova Remnant on the 8D Industries label. Earlier today, I described this album to a friend as “kosmiche-styled space jams, ambient builders, and textured dream-droppers.” I won’t back down from that description. Have a listen in the player below, and if it strikes your fancy — it should! — then please head down to Bandcamp where the album is downloadable at the special price of ‘name your price.’

The Perfect Playlist

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I revisited this NY Times article from two years ago and it got me thinking about the personal playlist (or, maybe as we used to call it, the ‘mixtape’). The gist: Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto couldn’t stand the music played in his favorite restaurant so he offered to custom-make his own. The original music wasn’t terrible — it was “thoughtless,” lacking any context suitable for the restaurant’s environment or its food. It sounds like Sakamoto spent a lot of time creating the perfect playlist, and it’s one that changes every season. I wonder if he’s still doing it.

The author of the article has some thoughts about the qualities of a perfect playlist:

I would prefer that music not seem an afterthought, or the result of algorithmic computation. I want it chosen by a person who knows music up and down and sideways: its context, its dynamism and its historical and aural clichés. Such a person can at least accomplish the minimum, which is to signal to the customer that attention is being paid, in a generous, original, specific and small-ego way.

Replace ‘customer’ with ‘listener’ and this becomes an attractive argument in favor of human curation.

🔗→ Annoyed by Restaurant Playlists, a Master Musician Made His Own