pointless discussion about nothing

one: The audience is amazed by a spectacle. NO

two: The audience approves of a pleasing aesthetic. NO

three: The audience is presented with some unknown chaos in which they learn to find order. YES

It would seem that a member of audience three would actually be a member of audience two having a personal preference for the chaotic and disorienting, aestheticlessness as an aesthetic; but the members of audience three are also perceptive to finding orders despite their discomfort with tired genres, kitsch, hack, outsider, trendy, derivatives, corporate, etc. Personal preference is ultimately subverted and beautiful music is leftover.

chris harmon on bandcamp

www.chrisharmon.bandcamp.com 2 albums and one EP there. any donation is great or feel free to re-post on any blog

playlist for may 19 2010

honestly i wouldn't know good music if i heard it but here's the songs I like right now. http://www.megaupload.com/?d=K9Z6SM8O

i make a new playlist every couple of weeks so if anyone browses this, downloads and enjoys just comment i could make it a regular thing.

theres a very good reason they don't have a torrent for the entire jandek discography.

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Jandek

amateur and professional.

Amateur:
n.

1. A person who engages in an art, science, study, or athletic activity as a pastime rather than as a profession.
2. Sports. An athlete who has never accepted money, or who accepts money under restrictions specified by a regulatory body, for participating in a competition.
3. One lacking the skill of a professional, as in an art.

adj.

1. Of or performed by an amateur.
2. Made up of amateurs: an amateur cast.
3. Not professional; unskillful.

[French, from Latin amātor, lover, from amāre, to love.]

amateurism am'a·teur·ism n.

SYNONYMS amateur, dabbler, dilettante. These nouns mean one engaging in a pursuit but lacking professional skill: a musician who is a gifted amateur, not a professional; a dabbler in the stock market; a sculptor but a mere dilettante.
ANTONYM professional

WORD HISTORY When Mrs. T.W. Atkinson remarked in her 1863 Recollections of the Tartar Steppes and their Inhabitants, "I am no amateur of these melons," she used amateur in a sense unfamiliar to us. That sense, "a lover, an admirer," is, however, clearly descended from the senses of the word's ultimate Latin source, amātor, "lover, devoted friend, devotee, enthusiastic pursuer of an objective," and from its Latin-derived French source, amateur, with a similar range of meanings. First recorded in English in 1784 with the sense in which Mrs. Atkinson used it, amateur is found in 1786 with a meaning more familiar to us, "a person who engages in an art, for example, as a pastime rather than as a profession," a sense that had already developed in French. Given the limitations of doing something as an amateur, it is not surprising that the word is soon after recorded in the disparaging sense we still use to refer to someone who lacks professional skill or ease in performance.

Professional

adj.

1. 1. Of, relating to, engaged in, or suitable for a profession: lawyers, doctors, and other professional people.
   2. Conforming to the standards of a profession: professional behavior.
2. Engaging in a given activity as a source of livelihood or as a career: a professional writer.
3. Performed by persons receiving pay: professional football.
4. Having or showing great skill; expert: a professional repair job.

n.

1. A person following a profession, especially a learned profession.
2. One who earns a living in a given or implied occupation: hired a professional to decorate the house.
3. A skilled practitioner; an expert.

summer is here again.

I am going to listen to so much music. I will likely go insane, beautifully.

what are all the vinyl rip bloggers are on vacation?? im dying over here!

I haven't had an update in a week from my fav blogs. I've turned to soulseek and found some really cool compilations:

va - atomic shockwaves
va - messthetics
va -[[sf+la scene '76-80s)]]
va -homework 101 - us diy (1976-1986)
va - (2007) powerpop to the people vol. 1 (1970-1985)
va - 80s garage
va - homework #1½ us experimental american diy punkwave 75-84
va - the anesthetic's wearing off - vol. 10
va-diy - shake it up - american power pop ii [1978-1980]

something about it, sometimes there's some real song writing in those trash recordings. Also im a sucker for the abundancy of analog synths in the late seventies to mid eighties. A band that appears a few times on these comps, Bay of Pigs, they always use ring modulator on guitar, they have a really cool sound.

also the zambonisoundtracks blogspot is gone but they same guy(Ian)'s got a tumblr account. zamboni.tumblr.com and its just as good only no uploads of whole records. He pointed out this beach boys song, "all I wanna do" pure bliss, cant think of a better beach boys song. and to think its the notorious Mike Love singing!

Ive had a second thought on the new ariel pink record. I love it to death. as an album even. and I hate "albums". All the songs are good. especially the ones I didn't like on the first few listens. I will definitely see Haunted Graffiti when they come to DC this summer. and I will most likely transcend reality.

still waiting on the new DEVO record, I don't even know what to expect.

the new ariel pink record leaked on soulseek.

I'm still not sure who or if anyone is reading this or who will be reading this so excuse the tangent. I recently decided to rid myself of all drug use, alcohol, smoking, everything.well caffeine but im working on it. Now I remember why I drank in the first place, to shut up my thoughts. I can't stop thinking its too much. I don't beat myself up or think anything particularly negative but i just won't shut the hell up. Anyhow my one remedy has been to just download an assload of records. More records than I used to desire. It really helps control the thoughts.

music is really powerful like that, you know that cheesy as fuck movie "hi fidelity"? there was that one part where cusak looks at the camera and says something like "record companies put out and millions and millions of songs all about being completely in love or down and out heart broken, think they have any idea what that can do to a person?" im sure he wasnt the first to say that. And I wonder how related all that is to any of our lifestyle choices. whether or not you were gonna smoke weed in middle school or high school all came down to whether or not you listened to a sublime album or something. I find myself pitted somewhere in the middle as far as the classic trials on obscene music. On the one hand I DON'T think they should keep certain music away from kids but I DO agree that the music can plant ideas in your head, really efficiently actual, cause you're not thinking you're feeling. I really do think its possible some shitty music could have contributed to depression or murder or suicide and stuff like that, though there's no way to prove or study it. I think anyone should realize that music is affecting their mental/emotional state and take control of it.

then theres this other thing frederico felini pointed out, is that theres music playing in public places that should be regarded as dangerous. think about it, the radio is mainly leaving it up to hopeless romantics and drug addicts to supply the feelings for the public places you visit. not that i don't sympathize for hopeless romantics or drug addicts but how about we all dedicate some time to sit down and listen to some music of our own choice?


here's a list I got going for garage stuff:
messthetics compilations (so many volumes, so many hits, so much trash)
slampt records (so far I totally love the band golden starlet)
uncle arthur's pop parlor 1987<---- i relaly liked some of the songs on this one. get it fun while it lasted vol 1 and 2 brazilian guitar fuzz bananas and then I always meant to check out these people that died sparklehorse guru of gangstarr alex chilton joe reatard but mainly Ive been listening to Flying Lotus. but I really am trying to stop listening to things that the music media covers. As for the new ariel pink record: awesome, well you know, its about as good as any other ariel pink record: some gems, some headaches, utter boredom, another gem and then its over and you feel pretty good about listening to the radio. and then didn't anthologyrecordings.com used to have a whole bunch more records??? I checked the website a few days ago and there was only a couple dozen records available I remember it used to be a lot more than that. I wonder what happened. Shoulda grabbed em when I had the chance. I really want that Andy Goldner "infinity" record but it hasnt leaked anywhere. acting>feeling>talking>thinking.

onna 1983

onna 1983. there's three songs from a studio(the original release) and then there's another 40 minutes of live recordings. It's pretty cool, its like getting that "Bsides and rarities" experience but from an artist that only put out a single.




and if you are not paying attention to beck.com they got a really cool record going right now:

ZAMBONI SOUNDTRACKS> gone??

sad to see it go, it must have been some copyright issues because he'd upload a lot of major label releases. Ian of the zamboni blog was my go to guy for all the major label releases that are actually good! I wonder if he'll just put up another blog, what's stopping him?

listening to today.

i saw someone else do this and thought it was cool. just posting stuff I'm listening to at the moment



twelve cubic feet- straight out the fridge (click this or the picture for download)



autechre - oversteps
charlotte gainsbourg - MRI
beat happening- all albums... crashing through box set
Bernard Parmegiani - De Natura Sonorum

oooh this is nice... fairlight(early sampler) nerd art music

from my favorite blog, mutant-sounds. these are by no means good coherent "albums" or anything new but Im currently loving these uploads of David Fulton and "History of Unheard Music" (which I'm pretty sure in band name not any kind of academic installment) they are mainly built around fairlight synthesis, its got that lovely awkward 80s antifunk thing to it at points which is really fun and stupid but i really like it for other moods it contains and the vocals in "history of unheard music" is great

2009 top ten lists. please stop it.

Please I don't know who Is reading this but whenever I read a list of top ten or best albums of the year, it really diminishes something. Things should just be what they are. For example, this was the funniest joke of 2009... and now anything I type here can NOT be funny.

Stop it please.

I find the 1-10 ratings amusing cause its so stupid. But please keep doing this because it adds something like a new I-also-like-this-cause-my-parents-hate-this feeling to the songs that get low scores. Except you're not my parents. You are some random person on the internet who I can say or think anything about without consequences. And isn't that what the internet is all about?

more topics no one cares about. tape vs. CD

listen im not gonna tell you cassette is better than CD, CD has obvious advantages of adding no extra noise or change in the frequency spectrum. my boombox will not play CDs past 50% volume else it skips... tapes can go full volume. home recording on portatudios is a different story. the upper level portastudios go at double normal cassette speed, (and hopefully theres a pitch control you can go an extra 16% faster) which sounds beautiful. which begs the question why did they chose to make the official cassette tape speed so low? There are cassette tapes widely available that hold 90mins, and even 120mins at "normal" speed whereas most officially released albums barely clock in at 45, (42mins for most the good ones ive noticed). They couldve run doubl the speed they chose and actually had a competition for vinyl. then again who cares?

in case you are not sick of him yet

click his face for exp etc's uploads of like 30 or 40 of his albums.

Kurt Cobain in Spin, October 1993. “A Jandek record is next. On the cover there’s a very blurry photo of a man sitting in a lawnchair. ‘He’s not pretentious,’ Cobain says, ‘but only pretentious people like his music.’” http://tisue.net/jandek/
its as though the jandek guide website is proud of the quote but then again you have to consider how cobain always pitted himself against the magazines. just two years previous to the interview spin magazine named jandek as one of the top ten on "the most important artists of the 80s" in one of their infamous 1-100 rankings. The media really found the general disrespect cute, remember cobain on the rolling stone?

good god. check out this music blog roll...

go to http://thethingonthedoorstep.blogspot.com/ and check the sidebar for all the links.

snotty opinion alert: tone matrix synth

matrix synths are a somewhat recent fad, youve probably seen one it looks like this, you press the black squares to make em white and whala sudenly youre a minimalist composer. theres a few brands of physical controllers available at music stores. and I HATE THEM. its HATE. it fails in so many ways. its like combining a super limited sequencer environment and limiting that to loops only. its not that i take music so serious but i can think of five music toys that are a lot more fun that this. lets go.
1) kaossilator.... its a pocket kaoss pad with built in looper and headphone jack. actually makes some pretty crucial noise beats and was available two christmasses ago so i bet its out there on the used market
2)yak-baks member those things? i freakin loved the pitch changer and reverser effects also not having to answer yes-or-no questions
3)LSDJ you can probably steal this on the internet by now right? 8bit tone generators with a full equencer. its less of a toy really youll need a day or two to figure out how to program it but yeh.. you play it on gameboy or a gameboy emulator.
4)one of those voice morphers i had one with a playskool tape recorder you could choose alien robot robot two woman man child. it was awesome. i bet theres a lot of other versions out there.
5and finally the HOBNOX audiotool which is free (and actually has a tone matrix inside it haha) has a tr808 drum machine simulator eh?


listen i have no one else i want ot share this with so for everyone that types matrix synth into google ill make sure you are instantly alerted. tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth tone matrix synth