Apr 14, 2005

Should have mentioned earlier that Pearsall has been holding it down over at Riddim.ca while I struggle through the final stages (the part of where you have to write a lot of stuff that you're already tired of thinking about) of my MA work. His recent reviews include the forthcoming Virus Syndicate album (big up Attila and Mike for that one), Ruff Sqwad's "Guns n' Roses" mixtape, and L-Man's "Facts of Life." So 3 cheers for Pearsall.

I'll be doing a lot more over there come May, including a possible overhaul of the whole site and, hopefully, a lot of interviews. Intelligence sources tell me that the Steady Merkin crew should be watched in the next couple of months as well.

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In other news, mixed treats from DJ Gutter himself. Happens to be big.

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Apr 11, 2005

Thinking about the kode9 excerpt, psychoacoustics and recent rantings about cannibalism, I dug up this old piece that I made myself a few years ago, during a static period in my musicmaking and life in general. Nary a beat in sight here. Probably won't appeal to the vast majority of people.

At the time I was doing a lot of late-night listening to microstoria, number stations and EVP recordings. I was also completely fascinated with the nocturnal doings of snow ploughs. Ottawa has a uniquely efficient snow-removal system so, during bouts of insomnia, I became captivated by these dinosaur-like machines flooding the dark streets with their blue beacon-lights while carving grids in the blanket of whiteness. If this recording is representative of anything at all (I wouldn't count on it), it might be the seismic rumbles, indicator sirens and jostling steel of the ploughs.

The cannibal part comes from the fact that the piece is based on one sample from an odd source - the source code of Macromedia's Dreamweaver software (a pirated copy no less). I opened the program as raw audio data in SonicWorx cropped all but a tiny bit with nice harmonics amongst all the noise (the information was pretty dense, which I take to represent efficient coding. would be funny to test against a microsoft product). It was about ten seconds long. I time-stretched it to seven minutes, pitch-shifted it heavily and 'played' it back 'live' with a bit of jog-wheel manipulation and EQ-play.

mp3 - untitled

Apr 3, 2005

rip - King of the Jungle

Spoox killed Tarzan. Break nerds R r r roll da beats