8Sided Blog

the scene celebrates itself

Bound for SXSW

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I’m heading off to SXSW tomorrow for a few days of meet-ups and hellos and hobnobbing. It’s been about a decade since I attended the Austin-based conference, and, in the past, I was there as a performer. So this will be my first time at SXSW solely for business. I expect that change of dynamic, as well as the exponential growth of the conference over that past decade, to give me multiple moments of overwhelm. I can deal.

One place where you can find me is Friday (March 15) at Shangri-La around 3:30 in the afternoon. Super cool 8D Industries flagship band Monta At Odds will be playing the MidCoast Takeover showcase at that time. You shouldn’t miss them as they rarely (if ever) play outside of Kansas City. And I’ll be there so be sure to say ‘howdy.’

If you can’t make Shangri-La on Friday but might like to meet up in Austin then feel free to shoot me an email and let’s see what happens.

I will try to report in from SXSW but I’m not making any promises! At the very least, expect a recap upon my return.

An 8D Industries Update

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There’s been a bunch of activity in the label realm, so I thought I’d give a quick update on my 8D Industries imprint.

Terry Grant AKA More Ghost Than Man participated in Big Shot Magazine’s 2018 Rewind, answering a few questions about the past year and the present one. In response to a new year’s resolution, Terry quotes Gustave Flaubert:

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

More Ghost Than Man

(I also submitted to the 2018 Rewind if you’d like to check it out.)

More Ghost Than Man’s Everything Impossible Is Far Away album continues to fascinate, providing evocative instrumental soundscapes for your mind-movies. In 2019 Terry will release a long-gestating short sci-fi film using the album’s songs. Terry’s been dropping clues on Instagram — he’s built a city in his garage and created some sort of space-age sickbay.

We’ll be releasing the follow-up to Everything Impossible Is Far Away later this year.

Monta At Odds have been busy, building on the deserved hype for last year’s Argentum Dreams album and they just performed a bunch of New Order songs (as ‘Blue Monta’) at a special end-of-the-year concert. To keep the momentum going, we’re reissuing Monta’s 2005 debut album Unsuspecting. It’s currently out of print, and it shouldn’t be — it’s a terrific ride, and, though more on the ‘downtempo’ tip, isn’t that far off from the sound of Argentum Dreams. Two stand-out songs you can listen to now: “Disappointment” and “A Nick A Scratch A Scuff.”

Our reissue of Unsuspecting will be out on January 18. If you’re a Bandcamp user, follow 8D Industries there to receive a message once the album is available. Like all of our releases, it will be ‘name your price’ on the Bandcamp platform.

San Mateo delivered his just-completed album this week, and it’s fantastic. The cover art is stunning as well. I can’t wait to send this out into the world. Mid-April, perhaps? It’s the early stages of release planning — once Unsuspecting is out, I’ll have a better idea. In the meantime, dive into San Mateo’s previous work if you’re new to this expressive audio artist.

And an upcoming Q-Burns Abstract Message release? Stay tuned.

What Am I Doing Now? (Jan 3, 2019)

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  • Readying Monta At Odds‘ Unsuspecting album for release on January 18 on my 8D Industries label. This is a reissue of the Kansas City combo’s first album from 2005, and I’m planning for it to be the first in a reissue series for this prolific band.
  • I’m also expanding my consultancy, a big plan for 2019. I just sent a proposal to one prospective client and will be checking on a couple of others next week. There will be a website for my music publishing consultancy, which I’ll be working on in earnest once January 18 passes. I’m also debating another site focusing on my DIY label management consultancy.
  • The daily blog practice has been amazing. I’m so happy I relaunched this. So far, I only missed a few days around Christmas and NYE. But I must remind myself it’s not a competition — there’s no pressure.
  • After spending a week in the sticks (that is, a remote wooded location), I’m back home in time for some beautiful Florida weather. We’ve paddle-boarded two days in a row and it’s possible we’ll make it three. That might be it for a while as the weather looks to go downhill starting tomorrow.
  • Movie: last night we watched Leave No Trace and loved it.
  • Music: listening to Ultramarine’s terrific new album, and today’s been a Sun Ra day with the albums Crystal Spears and Sun Ra Exotica (the latter a great starting place for any Sun Ra neophytes).
  • Reading: How To Make It Big as a Consultant. At times an amusing read as it’s a little outdated but there’s plenty of useful advice within.

Every Year Feels Like a Year of Transition

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2018 has bolted away like a space probe blazing past Ultima Thule. Cue mass introspection. Sure, dates and years are universally accepted ‘imagined realities’ and, yes, it’s just as fruitful to reevaluate and assess in May as it is on January 1. 1/1/19 ain’t nothing but a number. But, even if we resist, this time of year is still when we think the deepest about our next steps. I believe the general lull of the last two weeks of December is partly to blame: we end up with a lot of time on our hands — time to think for extended periods free of most work distractions — and we’re spending a lot of it in close contact with our families. Reflection and contemplation come naturally.

I’m not any different. My week in the sticks afforded ample time to go over my strategies moving forward, where my goals lie, how I’ve veered off track in 2018, and what else I can do to increase joy in my life. Some of these thoughts are deep — I don’t feel I have a firm grasp on my goals and what they mean to me — and some are tactical. In the latter category, I’ve done another (!) redesign of my daily work routine, a bunch of Omnifocus tweaks (new perspectives and constraints, oh my), and am going to experiment with more incorporation of a calendar in the workflow. I need the discipline that scheduling and time blocking encourages, and I aim to exercise this discipline as if building a skill.

My friend (and fellow altMBA’er) Dean Caravelis has a plan. He publicly listed his 2019 goals for all to see. Dean’s also printing these out and putting the list in a place where he’ll encounter it each day first thing in the morning. I like this.

I’m still thinking about my own goals, but I do know that I’d like to write every single day (and post the result on this blog, but no pressure); I’d like to get at least six new 8D Industries releases in listeners’ hands within a year; I want to read at least two books a month; and I plan on regularly writing and recording new music once again. I know there’s about five more I can come up with and I’m giving this some thought. As I said, it’s that introspective time of year.

Dean has also listed his ‘word of 2019:’ Intentional. The first thing that comes to mind for my 2019 word is ’transitional.’ That might be a cop-out as every year I feel like I’m in transition. But, for some reason, 2019 feels more so — not just for me, but for everyone.

I’m also going to return to my ‘album a day’ practice, which I wrote about here. I’ll do it a little differently — not as strict, and I doubt I’ll regularly post my listening habits on social media — but I think it’s important that I keep my mind fresh with new music daily.

To start, today’s soundtrack is apt: a thoughtful ambient album by Utah’s Grizzly Prospector. Titled dream story, it’s out on the intriguing Japanese label White Paddy Mountain. It’s bright and ringing, recalling vibrating strings, and there are some lovely vocal tracks (nearly a cappella) towards the end. The music gives off an air of future hope, just what the doctor ordered.

Here’s a tip: ‘follow’ your favorite labels and artists on Bandcamp. Then you’ll receive an email when there’s a new release. Create a rule in your email client so that those messages skip your inbox and are automatically archived and grouped into a predesignated folder. Then, when you’re looking for something new and tasty to listen to, open the folder. A list of new releases will be waiting for you. That’s how I ran across Grizzly Prospector.

Cheers to 2019. Let’s make it as good as we can imagine.

A Punk-Rock Gut Punch

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Another dispatch from out in the sticks. Howdy. Proverbial country road pictured above.

There’s a fantastic photo in NPR’s In Memoriam 2018: The Musicians We Lost. An emotive Glenn Branca is pictured in the center, and this is one of the best concert photos I’ve seen in a while. There’s so much energy there, like a jolt of Jolt. I assume Glenn is pictured in the midst of conducting his guitar-based ‘orchestra.’ 

The In Memoriam piece is striking, as these tend to be. There are a lot of special music folks we’ll be missing in 2019. For me, in addition to Branca, losing Mark E. Smith and Pete Shelley in one year is a punk rock gut-punch.

I don’t need another ‘favorite albums of 2018’ list — going through the ones I have bookmarked already could last well into next summer. I should be listening to 2019 music! But Austin Kleon, via his amazing blog (another inspiration for what I’m trying to do here), turned me onto a tantalizingly diverse ‘best of 2018’ list from music writer Ted Gioia.

Kleon titles his post ‘The Agony of List-Making’ and expresses a frustration with making public recommendations under the scrutiny of the internet mob. Gioia eases his own misgivings by presenting his list alphabetically, not allowing any title to receive a crown above any other. Kleon highlights this quote from Gioia’s list post:

Like any music lover, I enjoy sharing my favorite music with others. But in the last few years, a different motivation has spurred me. I believe that the system of music discovery is broken in the current day. There is more music recorded than ever before, but it is almost impossible for listeners to find the best new recordings …

I believe we are entering another era of music discovery, as listeners experience playlist fatigue and blogs continue to lose sway. These personalized lists, from close friends and selected ones from respected total strangers — chefs, movie directors, music writers, etc. — will hold the real power. Recommendations like these have always been the truest source of discovery. But we — as music fans rather than casual listeners — lost our way for a bit as streaming took hold, fascinated by algorithmic playlists and unlimited access.

Optimistically, these personal interactions of recommendation foster more intimate relationships with our music. On the other hand, this could all be my imagination as friends have been recommending music online since those early-90s message boards. But I do feel like there’s a dissatisfaction with playlist culture and how it’s pushed on us by certain platforms. This is a reason I switched from Spotify to Apple Music, something I’ll write about in the future. And this dissatisfaction will grow as playlists and platform features bow further to corporate influence. I used to wonder why Bandcamp didn’t have a playlisting feature — now I get it.

In other news, Big Shot Magazine kindly asked for a 2018 recap and I delivered a few reflections. I mainly talk about the launch of 8D Industries but I also touch on curbing the news diet, a recurring topic around these parts. The Ryan Holiday quote in the piece should be mentally taped above every screen at home, whether it’s a TV or a laptop:

Perhaps it’s time we realize that consuming more news about the world around us is not the way to improve it (or ourselves), personally or politically.

Holiday has written a few articles on why we should abstain from breaking news. They’re all worth a read. 

I’d also like to point out that I meant to refer to the long album version of “Bunny’s Dream” as a favorite song of the year. The video edit embedded in the article doesn’t quite have the majesty or the sprawl and, like many unsuccessful edits, feels rushed in comparison to the original. 

A question I posed to my social media friends: will people be playing Paul Hardcastle like they were playing Prince on NYE 1998? Of course, this is meant as a joke but I know I gave some DJs an idea for a midnight song on Monday. Please report back if you took the bait.

Idyllic Quiet and a Slow Pace

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I’m spending Christmas week in the country. I’m taking care of a family member (she’s doing well) and enjoying the idyllic quiet and slow pace of being away from home. You might think that I’d get a lot done in calmer surroundings but you’d be wrong. The hustle-and-bustle — and familiarity of my work environment — inspires productivity and busy-ness. Here I want to relax and let my mind wander. There’s something to be said for that, though — these breaks away from work are healthy and serve as a mental clearing house of sorts.

The main fear is routine-interruption. I’m getting up later these days, though my definition of ‘later’ is 7 AM-ish, so it’s not too terrible. I only have an iPad with me, and I haven’t experimented with it that much as a remote work computer, so there’s some trial-by-fire happening there. I’m getting by.

Mainly, I want to keep writing daily which I can do in an iPad environment. I’ve got a bluetooth Mac ‘Magic Keyboard’ so I don’t have to type on the screen. I use Ulysses (via Setapp) as the place I write, synced across all devices. I tested many different writing apps over the past year and Ulysses is the hands-down favorite. It’s the only app that is outstanding on its iPad, desktop, and iPhone versions. So there’s no excuse to not write every day while cold chilling in the country.

I am surprised there’s not a solid WordPress editor for the iPad. I haven’t found one. The WordPress iOS app seems fine but it’s limited — for example, I couldn’t find a way to center the Deep Purple photo in yesterday’s Xmas post from within the app. I ended up opening the site’s dashboard in Safari and editing from there. Go figure.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to get into app talk in today’s update, though I am planning a future post about work routines and techniques — including software — that I’ve found helpful. But, before I get back into country life, I’d like to give you a podcast recommendation.

Reply All is a consistently fantastic podcast, a deft mix of the entertaining and informative. Today I listened to episode #130, The Snapchat Thief. It details an investigation into a listener’s hacked Snapchat account to determine how it was compromised. The hosts’ discoveries are fascinating and a little terrifying. They shed light on a hacker underground that you know is out there but is still surprising once revealed. Let’s just say I’m looking into using Google Voice a lot more.

If Reply All is new to you and you like what you hear, then your next step is to listen to episode #102, Long Distance. Highly recommended — what a wild ride.

I hear trains blowing in the distance as the sun begins to set over rows of pine trees. I could get used to this.

A Record Store Called Bad Mood

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Friend of the blog Hao Do (@noodle_packets) ran across this amusing record store review in an ancient (mid-90s) issue of the Valencia College student paper:

Little known fact: I used to own a record shop, and Bad Mood Records was the name of my shop. The review is a glimpse back in time, not only because of the artists mentioned but also the concerns of the reviewer. Cheap used CDs, selections that are hard-to-find (remember scarcity?), Sunday specials. Reading this I was thinking, “whoa, did I really give $2 off CDs on Sundays?” but then I remember how getting people in the store on a Sunday was practically a fool’s errand. Downtown Orlando used to be a ghost town on weekends during the day.

Running a record store was tough (as was starting my own business in my early 20s), but it did set me up for a life of self-employment and a DIY outlook. In a recent edition of his terrific email newsletter Sean Bonner wrote:

One of the fun facts about starting your own companies and working for yourself most of your life is that you become basically unemployable in any other context, so in a way I’ve kind of locked myself into this for the rest of my life. Which is equally scary and exciting.

I deeply relate to this and sums up the odd combination of fear and gratitude that I feel for how I’ve chosen to live my ‘professional life.’ As much as I denounce ‘the hustle,’ every day feels a little like a hustle.

If I have any regrets about the record store, it’s that I let the domain badmood.com lapse once the store shut its doors. I was farsighted enough to set up a site for Bad Mood Records but somehow didn’t think that domain had legs. Regardless, you can see what an Orlando record store website looked like in 1997 courtesy of the Wayback Machine. That spinning record is adorable.

Positivity is Resistance

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I woke up early this morning to a wild amount of fog over our lake. I had never really seen anything like it in the 2+ years we’ve lived here. Beautiful and eerie. Here’s a video I shot from our dock at around 7:30 AM:

I listened to Basecamp’s Jason Fried on The Chase Jarvis LIVE Show podcast. There’s a lot of great advice in this episode. Jason has a knack for ‘duh, that makes perfect sense’ statements that I hadn’t thought of before — or, at least, considered in that way. His fantastic book Rework is filled with this type of knowledge.

In the interview Jason touches on the benefit of a news deprivation diet, a gospel I’m always glad to spread. Says Jason:

I think {constant news} is a way, unfortunately, for negativity to get in your brain and to get you upset about things. I don’t want to be that way. That’s one of the reasons I don’t really follow the news. I used to be a news junkie. {But} I don’t pay attention to the news at all anymore. Almost nothing really matters right now. Everything’s breaking news 24/7; everything’s a hot story. But none of this shit is a hot story that matters right now. If you’re in the path of a hurricane, you’ll want to know that, but a lot of other things can wait. I’m more a fan of things that can wait than right now.

This is my feeling, exactly, and it does take discipline to reach this no-breaking-news state. There’s so much pressure to keep up, to know every little thing that’s happening. FOMO (fear of missing out). But Jason espouses an alternative philosophy: JOMO — the joy of missing out.

I wrote an email the other day to a creative friend in Europe distressed by all that’s happening in France. I hoped to reassure with these words:

All these horrible things that are happening are ultimately a reaction to the way the world is changing. And it’s positive change these awful people are reacting to: inclusiveness, justice, expanded freedoms for everyone. As one can’t stop change, things will get better. But it’s going to be a rough ride for a while. It always is, as it always has been.

Our best way to make a difference in these times is to be productive, create, and do our best work. We can’t do that if we’re constantly distracted by ‘breaking news’ and all this mess. And, in my opinion, the people in power right now purposely create distraction and outrage to keep us from doing our best work — it’s intentional.

We can’t control any of this. But we shouldn’t feel defeated, as it was never our battle to begin with. Instead, it’s wise to concentrate on what we do have control over and brush off the rest. It’s not a head-in-the-sand attitude — it’s still healthy to be concerned and to engage in activism — but our preoccupations should be on what we can influence, whether it’s our work, our family and loved ones, or our local community. Positivity is resistance, and our work and change have the power to reverberate as we show our peers that we care enough to create rather than wallow, worry, and complain.

On another note, it looks like I’m going to SXSW next year. I’ll be there supporting Monta At Odds who are playing a couple of showcases. I’m excited to see and meet with a bunch of old friends and eat as much as possible of that fantastic food Austin has on offer.

Appreciation for the Moka Pot

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Last August Caroline and I ventured to Ravello, Italy, for her nephew’s wedding. We had booked a reasonably priced apartment via Airbnb with the critical feature of a panoramic view of the Mediterranean. Upon arriving and surveying the scene, we were flummoxed by the presence of a Moka pot as the sole coffee-making device. We love our coffee (and I was a happy Aeropress snob for a while), but the Moka was new to us. Our morning brew was mandatory (especially with jet lag) and this Moka thing didn’t seem like it would deliver the goods. We weren’t even sure how to work it.

I know what my European readers are thinking: so typically American of us.

But there’s a fairy tale ending. After a few days trapped to the Moka, we fell in love with it. The look of it, the ritual, the sound it makes as it’s brewing, the anticipation. And the final product — delicious, thick espresso. Upon our return home, we immediately located and purchased our own Moka pot and now have the daily ritual of an early-afternoon espresso pick-me-up. The bonus is we’re reminded of our fantastic time in Ravello every time we rev it up.

It’s with interest and delight that I happened across this Atlas Obscura article on the history of the Moka pot. ‘Humble Brilliance’ indeed. Did you know its design is featured in the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum? I think it’s fascinating that design and function were combined in a popular product so early in the 20th century. Take that, Apple.

There are many other great tidbits in the piece, such as:

Alfonso Bialetti’s son, Renato, came back to Piedmont in 1946 to take over his father’s shop and decided to stop making everything except one product: the Moka Express. The newly low price of aluminum and coffee, and a growing middle class of people who could buy products like this, made the Moka pot a perfect device for the time. Renato was also a pretty shrewd businessman; in 1953, he commissioned the drawing of the company’s logo, L’omino con i baffi, “the little man with the mustache,” which has since been inseparable from the Moka Express. The Moka Express was “the first way that Italians could realistically make coffee at home that was some approximation of what they could get outside,” says {Specialty Coffee Association’s Peter} Giuliano.

Renato Bialetti ended up buried in a replica of a Moka pot. I don’t blame him.

The article mentions that — thanks partly to the international popularity of those infernal coffee pods — the Moka pot has hit hard times and the Bialetti corp is just hanging on. Thus I’m glad that, late in the game, I discovered the Moka and now advocate on its behalf. And advocate I will: if you have a coffee-aficionado friend who might enjoy an early-afternoon routine, buy him or her a Moka pot for Christmas. Or tell a loved one to get one for you if you’re the coffee fiend in question. Mokas are cheap, they’re fun, and they make great coffee.

So, that’s the 8-Sided holiday gift guide: buy everyone a Moka pot.

On a musical note, I’ve been working to the Ambient Arrivals Archive playlist. The curator recently included a cut from our artist More Ghost Than Man which clued me onto this. It’s a mostly beat-less collection, drone-y and spacey, the kind of thing I like in the background while writing and doing ‘deep work.’ That said, there are some distracting songs in there — including, by mistake (I hope), an AC/DC song — so I suggest copying the tracks into your own playlist so you can delete anything that will interrupt your flow state. But I’d say at least 90% of the 200+ songs are suitable.

Ending today’s post with festive gratitude: if you had told me when I was 22 that I’d someday end up with a beautiful woman who blasted “Venus In Furs” while making holiday cookies, I think my head would have exploded.