8Sided Blog

a zine about sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

#Worktones: Ralph Kinsella, epic45, M. Sage

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It’s been a while since I rounded up some #Worktones that are inhabiting the home office via a pair of strategically placed desk-top speakers. Here are three albums that provide a calming concentration in these frazzling times.

Ralph Kinsella is a Scottish guitarist hailing from Dumfries and Galloway, a region primarily known to some (me) as the filming location of The Wicker Man. He reached out to the blog with a ‘check out my music’ email. I do listen when emailed (unless I’ve been bcc’ed, in which case I don’t), but I rarely receive delightful surprises like what Ralph had in store. His Abstraction EP is a gorgeous 5-tracker filled with soft, layered tones and subtle shoegaze moments. The guitar is front-and-center but awash in reverb and delay and accompanied by electronics and atmospherics. I’d describe Ralph’s EP as bright, gentle, and optimistic — as if Sarah Records released ambient music. I’m especially welcoming this sort of music into my life right now, and I can’t wait to hear Ralph’s future efforts. The Abstraction EP is a free download on Bandcamp, so there’s nothing to stop you from grabbing it. [LINK]

Continuing with more UK-based guitar ambiance, I was happy to discover We Were Never Here, the latest release from epic45. Rob Glover and Benjamin Holton, who make up the core of the band, started this project in 1995 while still in their early teens. epic45’s discography is a dozen-plus strong, and, sadly, I’m not familiar with any of it. But I take it this beatless and vocal-free album is a slight departure. A limited compact disc version of the album came with a booklet of photos of “familiar suburban and semi-rural ‘nowhere places’ that exist between large towns and cities.” The music matches this description, as these songs evoke vast, stumbled-upon locations — not the intended destination but compelling nonetheless. The sound is lush and memory-inducing, and, in addition to the occasional guitar, a menagerie of instruments, textures, and field recordings float from track-to-track. We Were Never Here is music for movies you watch with your eyes closed. [LINK]

M. Sage is a #Worktones veteran, and I previously remarked on the ‘happy accident’ spirit and sense of emergence I picked up from his music. Cattails & Scrap Tactics is his “collection of fragments, sketches, environments, and atmospheres,” compiled for Bandcamp’s June 5 artist-appreciation day, with all proceeds donated to Chicago’s My Block My Hood My City organization. I can hear the sound of an artist experimenting and wandering, but these are hardly rescued discards. It’s an album of thought bursts, welcoming attention and standing still as a complete document of the creative question. And it’s often beautiful and filled with exciting ideas. You’ll spot a guitar here, too, alongside a bevy of unidentifiable and mostly peaceful sounds to tickle the eardrums. If you’d like a download, you might be too late — the album was only available for purchase on June 5 as a special one-off. But it’s still streaming on the site — and that might be only temporary, too, so listen while you can. [LINK]

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Marc Méan’s Collage: Imperfect in the Best Way Possible

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Long before Brian Eno dreamed-up the term ambient music, there was “Furniture Music.” Coined by composer Erik Satie in 1917, “Furniture Music” intends to “make a contribution to life in the same way as a private conversation, a painting in a gallery, or the chair in which you may or may not be seated” (Satie’s words).

There’s a story of the debut of “Furniture Music” (or more correctly “Furnishing Music” — ‘musique d’ameublement’). Satie performed it during the intermission of a play, and the audience was encouraged to mill about as they usually would during a theater break. Instead, and much to Satie’s frustration, the audience stayed seated and listened. 

Marc Méan is a Zürich-based musician who has found inspiration in Satie’s “Furniture Music” 100+ years later. It informs his fascinating album Collage, a set — and cassette — of two twenty-minute compositions that vibrate from ethereal soundscapes to lightly percussive sound design. It’s experimental in sound and process and, though “Furniture Music” serves as a launching pad, like Satie’s intermission music Collage leaves the listener more attentive than passive. 

“[Satie’s] approach fascinated me,” Marc says. “Before that, I was playing mostly jazz and improvised music, which required me to be active and personally involved as a listener and as a performer. It’s music where you have to be highly reactive to everything around you, where everything happens fast, where one prefers evolution to repetition. I wanted to find an approach to music where I could slow things down, where I could stretch time, be more passive, find simplicity.”

The inspiration came through the acquisition of an unusual electronic instrument. Marc explains, “It all began when I acquired Peter Blasser’s instrument the Ciat-Lonbarde Cocoquantus. It is a weird synthesizer-sampler that has a life of its own.” 

Originating in Portland and partly hand-crafted out of wood, the Cocoquantus is a sampler combined with looping delays and multiple analog synthesizer engines for modulation. Blasser himself describes the Cocoquantus as “not for the faint of heart: but once you speak its language, nothing else is quite the same.”

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“Peter Blasser’s instruments don’t come with manuals,” Marc says. “Nothing is labeled on the instrument, so you have to explore it yourself. And I have never been someone who likes to practice for the sake of practicing. I always need to work in a musical context to learn something new. So while taming this new instrument, I recorded all my experiments.”

The process developed into a creative game (or, as I like to say, a tiny accident). Marc explains: “I like the idea of organized chaos, of controlled randomness in my work. The more I surprise myself in the creative process, the more interesting the music will be to me afterward. In the end, I felt that the material had a strong unity because of the gear I used. The Cocoquantus has such a strong personality that it binds the recordings together.” These exploratory pieces were combined to form the backbone of Collage. 

The resulting album is a lovely and imaginative trek through experimental ambiance. There are haunting piano moments, teasing through snatches of melody transmitted from a distance. Distinctively electronic antics appear, manipulated bleeps and clicks that soon give way to luminous passages. For all of its digital manipulation, Collage is warm and organic sounding, and the two twenty-minute stitched-together compositions don’t sound stitched-together at all.

Though there are elements of ambient ‘drone’ music, Collage‘s pieces develop and subtly change, sometimes offering surprises for the listener. “I can’t help myself but to have things evolve and have some drama,” Marc says. “The two sides are designed as a response to each other. One doesn’t need to listen to both sides back-to-back, but I would recommend listening to each in its entirety.”

I get this impression even as I listen to Collage as a digital stream on Bandcamp. The nature of the tracks, their grainy sound, and 20-minute lengths make Collage imaginable in a cassette format. Marc embraces Collage on cassette: “I like when music can be tangible; when music pairs with an object. It grounds things into a reality in this era where everything is virtual. Also, analog tape was used during the recording to transform and give color to certain elements. So for me, it makes sense that Collage is available on a physical medium.”  

Thus Neologist Productions has issued Collage on cassette, limited to 30 copies. The artwork is beautiful and visually fits the tone of the music. And, as Marc points out, the cassette may be the best way to experience Collage: “Because of the physicality of the cassette the listening experience is different. Cassettes sound different than a digital medium. Cassettes are lo-fi in comparison, they wobble a bit, they age, they are imperfect in the best way possible.”

Listen to Collage on various streaming platforms or on Bandcamp (where you can also purchase the limited edition cassette).

#Worktones: Loscil, M. Sage, Dytomite Starlite Band of Ghana

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Here’s a trio of excellent musical selections that have been permeating the home office this past week. It’s the latest installment in a series that I’m calling #Worktones.

Before knowing the photographic inspiration behind Equivalents, I mentally described the sound of the album as ’the hum of weightlessness.’ I wasn’t too far off. Those photos are a series of black and white pictures of clouds, captured and decontextualized by artist Alfred Stieglitz in the mid-to-late ‘20s. Some consider this work the first intentionally abstract photo-art statement. Here Loscil (the Vancouver-based musician Scott Morgan) deploys processed piano in sonic washes and layers that can recall an imaginative session of cloud-watching. Many only see uniform clouds in the sky — an everyday occurrence — while the lucky ones stop to pick out distinctive shapes, implications, and gentle reminders. Equivalents welcomes a similar exercise, rewarding the deep listener with soothing impressions of an atmospheric terrain.

Catch a Blessing is an adventurous album, in that it has the feeling of exploring unworn paths and venturing down overgrown trails. The album begins with the lively “Avondale Primer Gray,” hinting at randomness and an embrace of the ‘happy accident.’ But as things in nature experience emergence, the ensuing tracks, though sonically unconnected, appear to gather into themes that are just out of grasp. M. Sage, the artist behind this work, assists the experience with field recordings — such as the nostalgic fireworks of “Polish Triangle” — and guest musicians providing beautiful and exotic strings to “Window Unit + Three Flat.” But it’s the short but moving “Michigan Turquoise” that stands out, a lonely ballad complete with a looped guitar strum, seabird calls, and a mournful crooner transported by magic from a distant time.

It’s not all strange ambient music playing at the workspace. Some days (Monday mornings?) require an uplift, music that’s got some get-up-and-go. And I don’t know about you, but I can’t work alongside songs with words, especially when I’m writing. But there’s an exception for languages I don’t understand, especially when rhythmically sung in mesh with the instrumentation. This reissue of a rare 1982 album from Africa’s mysterious Dytomite Starlite Band of Ghana fits the bill. I say ‘mysterious’ as BBE, the reissuing label, doesn’t have much information on those involved. The songs are wonderful and instantly improve the mood and feature more than a few tight synthesizer riffs. I love listening to this stuff. I’m presently reading Rosewater, a terrific novel set in future Nigeria, so there’s some geographical synergy in my media consumption. FYI: BBE is quickly reissuing decades-old albums from the extensive back catalog of Nigerian label Tabansi Records and this is one of many in that series. The titles I’ve heard so far are consistently worth your time.

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#WorkTones: Mileece, Laraaji, Roedelius

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As I toil away in the home office, I often listen to quiet, experimental music from artists found on Bandcamp. I’ve started collecting and writing about these albums in a series I’m calling #Worktones. Here’s the 2nd installment:

It’s rare to hear something as simultaneously captivating and gentle as the series of staccato ‘pings’ found on Formations. Mileece — an artist who happens to be the granddaughter of the man who programmed the first computer-generated song — is fascinated by seemingly random processes in nature: the patterns of a snowflake, or the leaves of a fern, or rain’s gradual effect on a landscape. Applying this obsession to music construction creates rules within randomness, and we’ve taken to calling this ‘generative music.’ 2003 was an early time to purposefully dabble in generative electronics but Formations sounds seasoned, assured, and surprisingly organic. The album closes with “Nightfall,” revealing Mileece’s breath and soothing voice, reminding us of her guiding human influence on Formations’ otherwise arbitrary systems.

Laraaji, who of course we originally know from Eno-aligned collaborations, joins English musician Merz and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily for, in Merz’s words, “a type of music that could co-exist in sanctified temples and in city urbanism.” Dreams of Sleep and Wakes of Sound might veer close to that lofty description, blending unmapped sounds of a heavenly nature with the hustle-and-bustle of layered treatments and aural tension. Each of the three participants isn’t present on every track (Laraaji contributes to just a few) but the sound and techniques remain unified. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on a song, shimmering washes of instrumentation build and surround what was once a simple structure. Titles like “That’s Your Blue Home” hint at introspective inspirations, apropos of how the music often suddenly expands as if soundtracking an epiphany.

It was an honor to see the legend that is Roedelius a couple of years ago at Orlando’s wonderful Timucua White House. The music was experimental and quiet, not at all jarring, and serenely transmitted the artist’s feelings in a tumultuous world. After Roedelius’s reassuring performance we left the venue calm and satisfied. Lunz 3, his latest collaboration with the equally prolific Tim Story, is no different. It’s pretty, but not so pretty as to hide a subtle agitation underneath. But that’s what makes this music so comforting — the impression that there’s room for beauty and contemplation in spite of the burning hum that encircles us.

#WorkTones: Bana Haffar, Nicola Cruz, Ditherfix

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Rather than whistling while I work, I listen to weird music. Cleverly (?) labeled worktones, here are a few office selections from the past couple of days.

The venerable Touch label has issued a live set from Asheville synthesist Bana Haffar. Described as a Saudi-born ‘life-long expatriate’, Haffar has worked to distance herself from the musical discipline learned as a classical violinist and electric bassist, presently opting for the unrestrained dialogue of modular electronics. This release captures the 33-minute “Genera” as performed at AB Salon in Brussels. Haffar’s modular wizardry is on full display, accompanied by gentle field recordings to shift the listener’s imagined landscape. The result is adventurous, though also hypnotic and warm. I’m pleasantly lost in this.

Nicola Cruz’s Siku takes its name from an Andean panpipe and, if I’m not mistaken, you’re hearing it played throughout this promising album. These tracks are an example of ‘fourth world music‘1And ambiguous ‘fourth world’ music is my favorite kind of music, it should be noted. that not only blurs worldly genres but mixes these styles with contemporary electronics. Not completely liminal, the cuts retain an ethnicity and the electronic elements — mostly focused on the rhythms — often hover away from the primary focus. But the experiment is rewarding and there are moments when the collision is of its own category. The final track, “Esu Enia,” is the most intriguing, pivoting back-and-forth from traditional-sounding tuned percussion to dark, synthesized responses. Siku could have pushed further, but I anticipate Cruz will continue to explore these fascinating combinations.

Ditherfix (or [ d i t h e r f i x ]) is creating horror-movie drone ambiance mainly on iOS. That means he’s on an iPad — or maybe even an iPhone — conjuring these cinematic noises in settings that include “in the woods, on a train, at the kitchen table, a corner chair, or at times operating from an ironing board in the bedroom.” I love the idea of this mobility and it’s exciting to see iOS gain traction as a production tool. Just as the walkman changed how we listen to music, an untethered yet sonically capable portable electronic studio undoubtedly produces music directly influenced by the surrounding environment. In the case of the seven thunders, that must have been an incredibly spooky ironing board. (h/t Daniel Fuzztone)

Jogging House’s Lure: A Quiet Resistance

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A review of the album Lure, by hopeful ambient artist Jogging House.

There was this charming quality to a lot of ambient music in the ’90s — optimistic and melodic, far off from today’s dominating dark drones. It was a different era, and perhaps the sound reflected a rosy view of what awaited in the new millennium. But what we find in the 2010s are the hushed rushes of disconcerting noise and queasy clashing of synth lines, an ambiance of tension and uncertainty befitting our times. It makes sense — the world is an increasingly scary and debilitating place, and sometimes our music sounds like it. But optimism is resistance — it really is — and that’s what makes Jogging House’s latest album Lure so welcome, special, and quietly radical.

Jogging House — whose name is apparently a letter added to ‘jogging hose,’ AKA sweat pants — states the album is “about accepting the things we cannot change and finding comfort in uncertainty.” This philosophy is the pragmatism of the stoic, and it’s also not being paralyzed with helplessness when the world is out of control. Staying in motion and hopeful as an artist and creator rather than blocked and immobile in the face of hourly ‘breaking news’ and topical turmoil. That’s resistance.

I want to connect Jogging House to Brian Eno, but not to compare him to another composer working in the ‘ambient’ realm. Instead, I think Lure‘s songs closely reflect something Eno said in an interview: “One of the reasons one makes music or any kind of art is to create the world that you’d like to be in or the world that you would like to try. You would like to find out what that world is like.” That’s how I feel when I listen to “Tulip,” Lure‘s opening track. It’s transportive — light and playful, melodies as aspiration and reassurance that’s calm and kind. And it’s gorgeous, on the verge of sadness but not quite getting there. This is a world I’d like to try.

The album’s eight tracks share this gentle atmosphere, evoking a separate era. It’s the optimism of the past looking forward, like the mentioned-above ’90s electronic acts but also not too far from those pioneering the form in the ’70s. I’ll give in and sonically connect Eno anyway, as the beautiful “Weavings” wouldn’t be out of place on a Cluster album. Lure was recorded on 1/4″ tape, after all, using a variety of not-in-the-box gear.

But I emphasize this isn’t merely a throwback — it’s music fit for our times. These sounds are an encouragement to persevere rather than wallow; to foster hope and the imagination of something better for us all. You may ask, how can something so serene inspire action? It can, I respond. It really can.

What Am I Doing Now? (May 2019 Recap)

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  • I’m gearing up for a few days at MusicBiz 2019 in Nashville, starting on May 5. I’m expecting terrific panels, productive meetings, new contacts, seeing some old friends, and perhaps an announcement or two from my camp. If you are in Nashville for this conference, then feel free to drop me a line and let’s meet up.
  • The first Q-Burns Abstract Message release since 2011’s “Balearic Chainsaw” is out now on 8D Industries and it’s called AUDIOTOTEMPOLE. This is a special release, and it closes a loop of sorts. These are songs spanning the years. The one with ‘1997’ in the title is that old, and I completed the newest track three months ago. I think that I can now move on to new pastures, new sounds, new — and more frequent — Q-BAM releases.
  • Additionally, on the Q-Burns Abstract Message front, I’m breaking my DJ retirement for one night to play at the Phat N’ Jazzy 25th anniversary party. There are only a few things that would get me to DJ again and this party qualifies. Twenty-five years ago I had a weekly gig playing spacey trip hop records in the backroom of Phat N’ Jazzy at The Beach Club. It was my first residency, and it’s where I honed my DJ craft. I’d probably be in a different place today if the P’n’J crew didn’t trust me to command the backroom vibe. For the May 11 anniversary party I’ll be playing the tunes from that classic era, or at least the ones I still have on vinyl.
  • Consultancy: I’m currently working with Reza of Vexillary, Deepak of Hidden Recordings, and I’ll be advising Snax once again starting next week. A big thanks to my clients for being on board and receptive to some crazy (but effective!) ideas. I’m expanding the consultancy into special one-on-one workshops over the next couple months.
  • Soon you’ll hear me blabbing about music industry stuff on the This Is Orlando and Scotch and Good Conversation podcasts. I also did a long interview with the site MyMusicMoments that I feel good about. I’ll post links to all of these in the blog once they’re online.

Listening (music):

• Simon Scott – Below Sea Level
• Khotin – Beautiful You
• Mary Lattimore & Mac McCaughan – New Rain Duets
• Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990
• Helado Negro – This Is How You Smile
• The 180 Gs – Commercial Album
• Revisited Sonic Youth’s Sister and Mission of Burma’s Vs. in a big way.

Listening (podcasts):

• Cherie Hu’s relatively new Water & Music podcast is great. Stellar music industry commentary. Check out the episode with Amber Horsburgh for starters.
• On Russell Brand’s Under The Skin, I enjoyed the conversations with Douglas Rushkoff and Derren Brown.
• Bob Lefsetz’s podcast is back, and the episode with Billy Bragg is a lot of fun. I especially enjoyed the history lesson on skiffle.
• John Livesay’s appearance on Big Questions With Cal Fussman was super-insightful on the topics of marketing and developing stories.

Watching:

• Cold War
• Free Solo (inspirational)
• Silent Light
• We finished The Americans. I was unsure for the first couple of seasons but we hung in there which paid off … the show got really good (as I’m sure you’ve heard).
• And, sure, we’re watching Game of Thrones. And Gay of Thrones.

Reading:

• Finished Bobby Fischer Goes To War which was fantastic, though it did wind down a bit mid-match (and 3/4 into the book) once it became apparent that Fischer would win. I wholeheartedly recommend it, though. One big complaint: the book mentions throughout that Bobby Fischer often listened to ‘rock n’ roll’ while preparing and practicing, but there’s no mention or clue as to the records of bands he liked. I want to know!
• I’m now halfway through Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash after multiple people coincidentally recommended it to me over the same few weeks. Confession: this is the first fiction book I’ve read since 2001. No idea why I gave up on fiction, but I’ve meant to get back into it. So far so good — I’m enjoying Snow Crash, though I still am not sure what it is about the book (or me) that inspired various friends to point me to it.

Misc:

• I started using Focusmate over the past few weeks. I’m using it right now. It’s a game-changer — expect a blog post about this soon. In the meantime, here’s the article that convinced me to give Focusmate a try.
• Civic Minded 5, my favorite concert promoters, hosted the trio of Nels Cline/Larry Ochs/Gerald Cleaver a couple of weeks back. A mind-blowing show. There were two sets — the second half of set one was explosive and set two was at times drone-y and Krautrock-y. So good. Again, I’ve never been disappointed by a Civic Minded 5 show and am grateful they are here in Orlando. Your city should be jealous.

Sun Ra Exotica

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There’s an effort to make the entire Sun Ra catalog available online, and that’s no easy task. The inimitable jazz artist’s catalog is vast and perplexing, and previously unknown recordings are unearthed on a regular basis. Admittedly some of his work is impenetrable to the uninitiated, creating an impression that Sun Ra is a cacophonous weirdo. That would be a misunderstanding. Irwin Chusid, who is managing the reissue series via Sun Ra LLC, had this to say in an interview with Bandcamp Daily:

He is an institution. He is a cosmic force. He is a genius. He’s one of the great neglected composer-musicians of the 20th century. There’s no question what this man created is singular. There’s no one like Sun Ra. […]

I think 75 percent of Sun Ra’s sprawling catalogue is accessible … Is it slick? No. Is it smooth? No. Is it mainstream? No. But it’s fun. It’s musical. It’s engaging. It’s adventurous. It’s diverse. And a lot of it is jazz.

Diving into the catalog is daunting but rewarding, and it’s not difficult to find starting points. That Bandcamp Daily article suggests many good intro albums. This piece in Vulture has some excellent recommendations, too.

I’ve been going down the Sun Ra rabbit-hole, exploring the extensive catalog available on Bandcamp, and ran across the compilation Sun Ra Exotica. I do love the strange ‘50s genre of ‘exotica,’ exemplified by the likes of Martin Denny, Les Baxter, and Arthur Lyman. The style, in a way, is a precursor to what Jon Hassell coined ‘fourth world music:’ a blending of different traditional styles with Western music to create a previously unimagined sound.

I had never thought of Sun Ra in the context of ‘exotica,’ but it makes sense. He was, after all, an exotic dude. And his oeuvre is so expansive that contextualizing groupings of his compositions under a theme, like ‘exotica,’ reveals something new about Sun Ra’s work.

From the release notes to Sun Ra Exotica:

Was Exotica kitsch? Did it represent “cultural appropriation”? Was it a dilution of indigenous art? Who cares? Music should be enjoyed on its own terms. … Exotica has roots, but those roots are uncopyable. What emerges is something derivative, yet original. Here you have Sun Ra, of African-American extraction, influenced by Les Baxter, a Caucasian from Texas, who was in turn influenced by primitive jungle rites. It’s a cultural feedback loop, best enjoyed by leaving politics out of it.

Sun Ra Exotica is a terrific starting point for those unfamiliar with Sun Ra’s spaceways. It’s also a pleasure for this longtime fan, the 25 tracks fitting together effortlessly in Ra’s cosmic sonic puzzle. It’s the soundtrack for my weekend.

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.