• the only preteen songs whose lyrics are meant completely sincerely are “one people over god” and “unapologia”. everything else is at least partially non-serious
• devin pointed out that modplug.exe on the first CD was 2 seconds shorter than “message from our sponsor”

and believe it or not, we really aren’t a shock band. we’re a “look at the things that we sort of ignore in our culture, they’re actually pretty screwed up when you think about it” sort of band.

some thoughts:

• came out more religious than we thought. that’s in a big way cause the popularization of the ‘weird’ that we like to look into. we had to dig a bit deeper than before, and the result was going into older sources. some stuff ages a bit worse, and there’s only so much communism we can put into a CD. religion is more timeless
• the verses on Black Block are sampled from an a capella by Utah Phillips. google him
• the beats date from between 2007 to 2011. the CD was assembled from separate piles of beats and samples, and into an album, mostly in the last week of February 2011
• boyfriend is a cover
• electrohead is not a cover
• the sample on unapologia is real and not taken out of context. we actually considered recutting it to try and get him to make more sense, since he likes to change what his pronouns refer to mid-sentence, but figured that it’d be best left alone
• this is our longest CD ever and savannah is our longest song ever
• “message from our sponsor” is our second shortest album song ever and third shortest overall. “uncanny valley (radio edit)” is 4 seconds shorter, “uncanny valley (extended)” is 2 seconds shorter
• “uncanny valley (radio edit)” is actually too short to go onto a CD
• savannah is too long to fit on any CD format currently in use. it could fit on a DVD-A though
• “flaming sanken seven stamp my tote” was the most renamed song on the album. most were different onomatopoeias for that first line
• “message from our sponsor” made the cut to be on the CD by about 2 hours
• “a prayer for the nation of africa” is not a complicated audio hack. the speaker really seemed to not have been clear on the difference between a continent and a country
• despite being in almost every live show, this is the first time that Steve contributed audio to an album. he wrote some of the backing audio in “savannah” and “hate and rockets”
• i think the only sampled statement in the history of the band that i genuinely can say “i agree with this entirely” is the opening alan moore line in “black block”: “Anarchy is, and always has been, a romance.”

Not perfect analogies, but the idea is there. Zoë understands classical music theory and that methodology, but rejects it in a conscious pursuit of what became called primitivism in painting (though i prefer Gauguin’s term ‘synthetism’). Her music is intentionally segmented, allowing for a greater tonal and stylistic contrast between the fragments, and these contrasts allow for the audio analogue to brighter colors than usually occurs in more traditional approaches. But it’s not a violent rejection, the classical is there in the background, but only as a launching board.

Kaki King on the other hand is to some degrees the outsider. She comes across as someone who is simply playing with toys, but who’s technical ability makes that playing a spectacle. She isn’t worried about showing the edges of her ability, and by exposing them they become a part of the performance, adding a more direct connection to the audience. Where Zoë is memorized, Kaki is always in part, if not wholly, improvised. It would be a disservice to call her music fauvist as it now implies almost an inability, but she isn’t afraid to step into harsher edges of tone and music when the performance takes her there.

Or at least that’s how a slight synaesthetic with slight apophenia sees it.

– -

must be a serious post, i used some capital letters.

tSS – this obedience (draft fragment)

30 seconds, includes the end of a verse, and a chorus. this “EP” is now at 7 songs i think. we suck at self-censorship

i disappoint almost 700 people per day. beat that.

with slight lyric twists

industrial’s not dead
it just deserves to die
it become another stale cartoon
a close-minded, self-centered social club
ideas don’t matter, it’s who you know
if the music’s gotten boring
it’s because of the people
who want everyone to sound the same
who drive bright people out
of our so-called scene
til all that’s left is just a meaningless fad

who played last night?
“i don’t know, i forgot.
but getting drunk was a lot of fun.”

so eager to please
peer pressure decrees
make the same old mistakes
again and again,
chickenshit conformist like your parents

what’s ripped us apart even more than drugs
are the thieves and the goddamn liars
flipping people off when they share their stuff
when someone falls are there any friends?

harder core than thou for a year or two
then it’s time to get a real job

that farty old rock and roll attitude’s back
“it’s competition, man, we wanna break big.”
who needs friends when the money’s good
that’s right, the ’80s are back.

EBM’s like a bad laxative
it just don’t move me, ya know?
the music’s OK when there’s more ideas than samples
do we rally need the attitude too?

shedding thin skin too quickly
as a fan it disappoints me
same old stupid sexist lyrics
or is Hellraiser all you can think of?

the more things change
the more they stay the same
we can’t grow
when we won’t criticize ourselves
as the clock ticks we dig the same hole
music scenes ain’t real life
they won’t get rid of the bomb
won’t eliminate rape
or bring down the banks
any kind of real change
takes more time and work
than torrenting more shit to pass time with

but that’s a tangent though. life is a performance, and as it is a performance there is a certain quality to it that we call authenticity. it’s hard to pin down, but i ran across a few things that got me to thinking about it

so let’s start by talking about alt-sex cause people love alt-sex or so i’m told. at the defcon jeopardy game (drunk social event for hackers) there was a girl there whose job was to basically dress up like a dom and hit people who answer incorrectly. she (and all the previous incarnations of her) did a great job, people had fun, cheering was had, but at the same time it was clear that she wasn’t a domina, not really, and i was wondering about why exactly.

it’s not a question in context in this case, i’m not speaking of attempting to subdue a room full of boisterous drunks, i’m talking about the reaction i had as she was still walking in before hand. it was one where the instant reaction was  ”aww, sweetie, i know what you’re going for and you certainly dressed the part, but you’re doing it all wrong. no idea how, but you are”

the dom thing isn’t attire or any physical action, in the end it’s something that’s an immediate emotional reaction. you either instantly understand upon seeing the person, or you don’t. if they don’t broadcast this authenticity in the first moment, there is no way to sort of back up and try again.

i guess i don’t mean in the first moment, but in the first moment it’s “turned on”. it is a performance and an act. keep in mind that those words don’t mean it’s “fake” to me, just that it is something we consciously choose to do. it’s fake only in the sense as our performance of being students, teachers, parents, or children is fake just because it’s possible for us to theoretically not act that way.

and i’m not saying that this is about some magical quality that comes from being in a culture. that’s stupid. it is absolutely possible to fake the performance with enough authenticity to make it real to anyone, but you would find that as you do so, you would no longer be faking it. yes, it’s catch-22ish. as soon as you pretend it well enough, you’re no longer pretending.

example 2: i was at a show not too long ago, 3 bands played. 2 of them were ‘normal’ to me, 1 of them the singer and frontman never felt like one. he dressed like a frontman, he spoke one, he sang into the mic, but at no point did i believe it. again, the authenticity wasn’t broadcast.

this is something i’m a bit hypersensitive to now that i’m fronting the band for real. the live show is a double performance, the band pretending to be the band, and the audience pretending to be the audience. if the singer can’t act like a band, soon the audience will feel stupid acting like an audience. there’s words that we use for it that vary from genre to genre, ‘energy’ being a common one, ‘feeling it’ is another, ‘getting us’, whatever. in the end it’s ‘we believed your performance, you believed ours, and we chose to have fun tonight’

another example: nerd core. yes, i’m taking, you kicking and screaming, from bdsm to geek rappers. let it go.

two rappers: mc chris, and mc plus+

mc chris:

mc++:

(what the hell, we don’t get pics of the girl dom but we get two nerd dudes?)

life’s a bitch, deal with it. btw, i originally wrote “pasty white dudes” but having googled him i now realize that mc plus+ isn’t very pasty. thanks for making me lose a great phrase.

so here’s the thing. i believe mc chris. and i don’t mean that i take what he says literally since that would include believing he owns a batmobile with a mcdonald’s inside, but the authenticity of his performance is there for me. i’m saying that when he talks about being a geek, i emotionally relate to him. i don’t feel it from mc plus+. and i’m not questioning mc plus+’s street cred, inasmuch as that term can possibly apply to someone who not only never claims to spend time on the streets but in fact claims to never leave their bedroom. i really believe he is a geek in real life, but his performance of being a geek doesn’t feel authentic.

“how can you possibly come across inauthentic at being yourself?”. because yourself is an act. because this requires performing a swagger and not just being geeky. and because there is more to this bravado than simply stating it and having the balls to hold a mic in front of a crowd of people, and that something is enjoying it to the point where you forget you’re only pretending to be enjoying it.

fourth and last example, this guy:

tim minchin performing “if i didn’t have you”, at the secret policeman’s ball.

btw, that’s officially my favorite love song of all time now.

there’s a geek culture thing to this song, like him trying to explain the word special as he’s using it, those 3 lines have more honesty in them than pretty much all other love songs combined. not just in what he’s saying (cause for all i know whitney will in fact always love you and is just as truthful), but in how honest his performance of it is. it’s someone who first screws up by saying his girlfriend/wife isn’t special, then tries to dig himself out, then realizes that even more importantly he’s now being ambiguous about what he meant by the word ‘special’ and the best way to explain that is with statistical analysis.

this post probably would here go on to start talking about dimitri martin and his palindrome, and then finish on comparing the comics smbb and “the warehouse comic”, but at this point i finished showering and stopped pondering this.

oh, and also something about how our ability to detect authenticity being in part our exposure to the role at hand. i’m positive i have a different standard of authenticity of a domina than 99% of defcon, probably 95% one way, and 4% the other way. or thereabouts.

here’s a hacker jeopardy pic in either case:

i’m certain that you are just as big a fan of the new bands in the metalcore genre of music as i am, drawn in by many of its appealing factors, including:

• heavy use of autotune and vocoders
• whiny lyrics
• sissy-looking tight pants
• idiotic techno break downs
• tame as hell guitar

and many many others. bands like this one, brought to my attention by steve k:

thank you steve.

as so, internet, you might be surprised to learn that some older metalheads have a hard time taking this genre seriously and refer to it as Crab Core. i have made these original content gifs using the above video in order to help explain it. please use them wisely.

(mac users: my safari renders gifs too slowly. if the bouncy bouncy isn’t bouncy-ing as well as it should, use firefox)

atmosphere – fuck you lucy (youtube, lyrics)

reason: lucy is his alcoholism

common – i used to love her (youtube, lyrics)

reason: ‘she’ is hip hop culture

assemblage 23 – disappoint (youtube, lyrics)

reason: the song is about his father’s suicide

- -

tangent, i used to think the lyric in disappoint was “i stood on your shoulder’s while you drowned” which to me is an even stronger line

if you find yourself constantly striving to match a paradigm, back up. maybe you’re not really meant to work that way. do you have something that works for you?

keep in mind though, some people really might not have a method that works, in which case anything that involves structure might be beneficial.

one random example from my own life: my email. i spent a stupid amount of time attempting to stay on top of sorting email because i was told at one point that organized email is important. i tried tags, rulesets in the hundreds, smart folders, all at the same time, and the results were dismal. best part? i never used it. i never once said to myself “oh, i need this communication from the prime minister of ukraine, let me look under “prime ministers”, tagged “ukraine” “. no, i’d just go to the search bar, click “From” and type ytymoshenko@gmail.com. ta-da.

new solution? 4 inboxes (i have 4 mail aggregating accounts), total of 2 regular folders marked “important” and “not”, and 1 smart folder. the rule for the smart folder is:
- if the email is unread, or the email is in folder important, show it.

the only folder i look at is the smart folder. all unread emails are in there and disappear after they’re read (technically, they disappear after i close the window, which i do as soon as i’m done looking at mail), unless they’re something relevant in which case i drag them to the “important” folder. once they’re solved/answered, they’re dropped in either “not”. every blue moon i drag all emails from the inboxes to the “not” bin, just in case things go bad if the inbox gets too large.

that’s really all i need from email, it works with my actual work flow, and actually uses that CPU power this machine has. i imagine this would work even better with gmail, but at work we have lolexchange so eh.

different example of this: i have a bizarre music writing method. i work in these bursts where i write and record for about 5 hours straight, in which time i like to be alone with no one listening, then when done, i leave it alone for a week while sending it to half the people on my IM list to ask for opinions on what they think of it and where it should go

somehow the conversation process is what lets me mentally decide where it needs to go. it’s silly, but songs which i don’t talk about end up piling up as minute long fragments that never went anywhere. songs i do, end up growing into actual songs. well, not immediately. they go through a bunch of cycles of this. some more than others.

(btw, apologies if you happen to be on the “hey can you tell me if this works? what do you think of the cut up trumpet loop?” and are annoyed by it. just let me know, i wont be offended)

in any case, yes, don’t get obsessed with following footsteps of others, just set a similar goal to what they had and find what manner of movement works best for you. but don’t use that as an excuse to be lazy either.