8Sided Blog

the scene celebrates itself

  • 8sided About
  • memora8ilia

The Isolator

01.25.2021 by M Donaldson // Leave a Comment

img-0

Hello, Distraction, My Old Friend → I meant to take a two-week break with my email newsletter and ended up taking five weeks off. That surprised me. It also made me think about distraction. The holidays — during which I announced my ‘short’ hiatus — are always a considerable distraction already. And then, this time around, we’re also navigating a pandemic and a volatile news-scape.

The beginning of each new year is usually calm and reflective, and I assumed the first week of 2021 would be the same, allowing time to seize back attention. Nope. So far, this new year has been a crazy one, a worrying one, a hectic one, and, as it turns out, a not entirely unexpected one. All attempts to write and publish Ringo foiled and unraveled.

Distraction’s a problem, always has been. Things seem to be settling down a tad, in both the outside world and my personal sphere. Here’s hoping the political winds change, and distraction levels decrease, but I’m not holding my breath. Personal and professional occurrences are distraction enough. I’m on a Sisyphean quest to defy and deny distraction so I can more easily do things I want to do this year — like send out a weekly Ringo. 

Anil Dash recently posted about his Personal Digital Reset. This piece poses his alternative to New Year’s resolutions, a typically 2021 cleanse of one’s digital life. Many of his proposals make sense: a lot less (to no) social media, ingesting online news and information solely with intention, replacing FOMO with YAGNI (‘You Aren’t Gonna Need It’). Others, such as wiping your computer and reinstalling everything from scratch, seem drastic but might actually be a good idea. Honestly, getting bogged down for hours maintaining a computer sounds like another distraction to me. But we are recalibrating here, right?

Have you seen The Isolator? Here’s a helmet worn while working, to relieve the writer of all distractions. It even includes an oxygen tank, so you don’t have to come up for air. On the other side of the coin, there’s the TV Helmet — an enclosure that feeds the wearer nothing but distraction, uncontrolled and divorced from intention. Notice how similar these are in concept despite the dichotomic applications. Happiness is found somewhere in the middle, no headwear required. 

——————

Ken Burns’ Jazz → Noting this because chances are you are an Amazon Prime subscriber so you can get those dark gray vans to visit your doorstep frequently. Jazz is available on Prime’s streaming service at no extra cost right this very moment. This astonishing series from K-Burns was released in 2001. That was just in time, as I doubt many of the interview subjects were around much longer. This thing is massive — is it like 20 hours, maybe more? Well, the pressure’s on because I think it’s leaving Prime (as a ‘freebie’) on the first of February. You’ve got a week. At the very least, watch the first few episodes — the origins of jazz are compelling, instructive, and say a lot about US history. Of course, the history of any country is in the history of its music.

——————

Elijah Knutsen – Pink Dream → Elijah Knutsen is a regular occurrence on the blog, and he’ll continue to pop up as long as his ambient experiments remain so alluring. Pink Dream is his latest, the second in a promised series of ‘micro releases’ issued through Knutsen’s new Memory Color imprint. The showpiece is “Wonder How,” which opens the EP with cavern-drenched guitar chords and reverb-maxed plucks. Bonus birdsongs add to the heavenly atmosphere — one almost imagines a giant, glowing harp in luminescent clouds — and the overall effect neighbors the instrumental passages on Cocteau Twins’ seminal Victorialand LP. Other cuts are shorter but no less fascinating, especially the closing “Somewhere Knows.” An intro of gentle crowd sounds fade into a ballet of organ tones and swooping hints of melody as the light throng of people slowly returns. The tune doesn’t sound like anything else that’s recently hit my ambient inbox, which is about as high a compliment I can give for something in this genre. 

------------------

Related posts:

  1. Memory Color and Kankyō Ongaku’s New Age
  2. A Boy Can Dream
  3. The Road is Seductive

Categories // From The Notebook, Listening, Watching Tags // Cocteau Twins, Jazz, Ken Burns, Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

8sided.blog

img-1 
 
 
 
 
 
8sided.blog is an online admiration of modernist sound and niche culture. We believe in the inherent optimism of creating art as a form of resistance and aim to broadcast those who experiment not just in name but also through action.

It's also the online home of Michael Donaldson, a curious fellow trying his best within the limits of his time. He once competed under the name Q-Burns Abstract Message and was the widely disputed king of sandcastles until his voluntary exile from the music industry.

"More than machinery, we need humanity."

Learn More →

featured

3+1: danielfuzztone

Long-time friend Daniel Fuller took the lockdown era’s lemons and made ambient drone music. The result is a gritty atmosphere with more in common with Cluster, Suicide, and Klaus Schulze than contemporary signposts.

How a Factory Fire Underscores Vinyl’s Fragile Future

A factory fire in California has us asking broad questions about vinyl records — why do we love it, what are its alternatives, and do we really need it?

San Mateo: A Layer of Hiss

As San Mateo, Matthew Naquin makes the music of nostalgia, dreams, and expanding subterranean root networks. He’s given hints about his process. There’s usually mention of self-imposed constraints, of limiting the music-making tools he has access to, and how each new album has an intentional difference from the previous one.

Mastodon

Mastodon logo

Listening

If you dig 8sided.blog
you're gonna dig-dug the
Spotlight On Podcast

Check it out!

Exploring

Roll The Dice

For a random blog post

Click here

or for something cool to listen to
(refresh this page for another selection)

Linking

Blogroll
A Closer Listen
Austin Kleon
Atlas Minor
blissblog
Craig Mod
Disquiet
feuilleton
Headpone Commute
Jay Springett
Kottke
Metafilter
One Foot Tsunami
1000 Cuts
1001 Other Albums
Parenthetical Recluse
Robin Sloan
Seth Godin
The Creative Independent
The Red Hand Files
The Tonearm
Sonic Wasteland
Things Magazine
Warren Ellis LTD
 
TRANSLATE with img-3 x
English
Arabic Hebrew Polish
Bulgarian Hindi Portuguese
Catalan Hmong Daw Romanian
Chinese Simplified Hungarian Russian
Chinese Traditional Indonesian Slovak
Czech Italian Slovenian
Danish Japanese Spanish
Dutch Klingon Swedish
English Korean Thai
Estonian Latvian Turkish
Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian
French Malay Urdu
German Maltese Vietnamese
Greek Norwegian Welsh
Haitian Creole Persian
img-4
img-5 img-6 img-7
TRANSLATE with img-8
COPY THE URL BELOW
img-9
img-10 Back
EMBED THE SNIPPET BELOW IN YOUR SITE img-11
Enable collaborative features and customize widget: Bing Webmaster Portal
Back
Newsroll
Dada Drummer
Deep Voices
Dense Discovery
Dirt
Erratic Aesthetic
First Floor
Flaming Hydra
Futurism Restated
Garbage Day
Herb Sundays
Kneeling Bus
Orbital Operations
Sasha Frere-Jones
The Browser
The Honest Broker
The Maven Game
The Voice of Energy
Today In Tabs
Tone Glow
Why Is This Interesting?
 
TRANSLATE with img-12 x
English
Arabic Hebrew Polish
Bulgarian Hindi Portuguese
Catalan Hmong Daw Romanian
Chinese Simplified Hungarian Russian
Chinese Traditional Indonesian Slovak
Czech Italian Slovenian
Danish Japanese Spanish
Dutch Klingon Swedish
English Korean Thai
Estonian Latvian Turkish
Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian
French Malay Urdu
German Maltese Vietnamese
Greek Norwegian Welsh
Haitian Creole Persian
img-13
img-14 img-15 img-16
TRANSLATE with img-17
COPY THE URL BELOW
img-18
img-19 Back
EMBED THE SNIPPET BELOW IN YOUR SITE img-20
Enable collaborative features and customize widget: Bing Webmaster Portal
Back

ACT

Support Ukraine
+
Ideas for Taking Action
+
Climate Action Resources
+
Carbon Dots
+
LGBTQ+ Education Resources
+
National Network of Abortion Funds
+
Animal Save Movement
+
Plant Based Treaty
+
The Opt Out Project
+
Trustworthy Media
+
Union of Musicians and Allied Workers

Here's what I'm doing

/now

Copyright © 2025 · 8D Industries, LLC · Log in