new year's police state

Comments Off on new year's police state

Dampening the urge to celebrate over the weekend was President Obama's Dec. 31 signing of an indefinite military detention bill that violates every principle of freedom the US stands on. Our forebears fought for such protections as right to counsel, right to speedy trial, and habeas corpus proceedings requiring authorities to show cause for imprisonment. They believed in basic human rights. These might be limited or curtailed in "war" with respect to our "enemies" but while wars end, under the Obama detention law, cruel imprisonment does not. (Many of the Guantanamo prisoners have been locked up since the first Afghan war of ten years ago.)

Obama "promises" this won't be used on US citizens - ha ha ha.

found landscapes

Comments Off on found landscapes

Once a work of art has colonized your brain you see it everywhere. The landscape piece Duncan Alexander contributed to a recent Nicholas O'Brien-curated show at 319 Scholes has had that effect on me. Was surfing around the website of the Metropolitan Museum and spotted it on a Google cache page. See the red arrow in the screenshot below (not the black one):

landscapeDA_2

And then I found its original location on the Met website. It seems to have acquired a drop shadow but the style is unmistakable.

landscapeDA_3

"Crom and Bass"

Comments Off on "Crom and Bass"

"Crom and Bass" [mp3 removed]

This song has a message and the message is "I don't care." (Technical note to self: the main synth is the A-112 wavetable playing a sample of the Vermona Perfourmer and harmonizing with another Perfourmer riff played simultaneously with the same MIDI notes. The guitar amp-like vibrato is made with an ADSR envelope's control voltage plugged into the A-112's CV in.)

"Barney's Bag"

Comments Off on "Barney's Bag"

"Barney's Bag" [mp3 removed -- a revised version is on Bandcamp]

The song is kind of jazzy and the title is kind of a parody of a jazz song title from the '50s. This is a substantial reworking of a song I don't yet have the fortitude to post, with the working title "Barney's Bag (Chipmunks)," which features chipmunk-like vocalese made with live FM synthesis.
This version has the synth-bass-piano combo I've been working with in recent songs; I had to write some harmony to make this work. (Monk meets Glass in a robo-carwash.)