I am doing everything I can to avoid working. Including wasting time here. But I had to post... the song "I want to Fall" by Single Cell Orchestra - which I haven't heard in years - is so incredibly bad-ass. Listen for when the melody starts coming in about half way through the track, after the tom break... holy shit. That is epic when you hear it on a soundsystem at a good party.

Kids these days... cocaine and emo got nothing on bad-ass tech-electro pounding out on a system in a dark club while you're out of your gourd on E. I like rock for hangin out and maybe drinking... but when I want to dance... I want 808s & 303s. And fuck all of ya alls.

One of the most intense and happiest memories I have is being at a UR party in detroit, in a pitch-black warehouse, with an incredible soundsystem, listening to Rolando play Knights of the Jaguar. And that is closely followed by playing a battle set with Single Cell Miguel at the Galaxy club about 4 years ago.

My good friend Raf came over last night, and brought over his Akai MPC 2000.

Years ago, I helped Akai redesign their operating system, and ever since, the MPC has been a tool near and dear to my heart. I've owned 6 MPC's total - the 60, a couple 2000s, and 3 2000XLs. They were my main tools for playing live, until I went computer based.

Now that I'm back in hardware land, I considered it again, but ended up with my E-mu Command Station instead. And I don't regret it for one second.

Anyways, we hooked the machines up, jammed out for a while, and came up with a track somewhere in between Drexcya, Flat Eric, and Brazilian Baile Funk. Unfortunately his MPC needs some love. Anyways - I am going to record it and post it, as it's quite the funky tune. 4/4ish 808 beats with swung out percussion, a low-down bass, and a snorty squelchy 303 lead. And the odd videogame sounds here and there.

I also recorded another jam last week - sort of a latin acid type of feel. Basically I just improvised for about 20 minutes. Here's a short excerpt you can check out: Latin Acid.

Tha's the XL7 (bass, kick & snare), Electribe EM-1 (acid), DX100 (lead), TR-727 (latin percussion), SP-12 (hi hats & rimshot), and lots of spring reverb.

I'm watching "Out for Blood", starring Kevin Dillon and the amazing Jody Lyn O'Keefe.

I seriously have the hots for her, ortherwise I wouldn't bother watching this movie. She's 5'10" and has some curves. Plus they made her look like a goth raver in this movie. :)





The movie is ABYSMAL.

Recovery continues apace. I had a bad moment earlier today after hitting the albuterol too many times... felt like I'd just done some bad speed, and got all dizzy. Really sucked! Can't wait for this to be over completely.

Anyways - worked in my office landlord's music studio today. Rick Dudum and his son Andrew run Dudum Records, a small independent record label. Andrew is working on a new full length album, and I have been engineering all the songs. The song we worked on tonight is actually cool - a nice Beatlesque piano-driven hip hop song, with marcato strings. I added some pizzicato and harp along with it, and a new snare track to really make it snap. It will be up on their site in the next few weeks.

I really enjoy engineering and producing other artists. It really lets me apply the skills I've developed over the years. I wish I could be disciplined enough to get back to working on my record regularly... but they pay me, and I can't pay myself. :)

I need to go out on a date this week I think. Female company has been lacking the last few weeks - between work and being sick... not a lot of time for balancing my yang with some yin!

only 5 more days until I can have a beer again. :)

The wonders of modern medicine. I'm feeling a lot better thanks to Doxycillin. Pneumonia is no fun, let me tell ya. Looks like my ticker is fine too... fluid and swelling seem to be going down in the ol' chest cavity.

So all of you that were eagerly waiting for my doom, no dice just yet. :)

I'm totally awake at the moment, and obsessing over cosmology. Particularly cometary formation, the oort cloud, and how that ties into the panspermia theory. A long time ago, on my Mac II, I used to play a game called Sim Earth. It was a planetary simulation where you managed an ecosystem, with the eventual goal of evolving complex life. One of the ways you could add volatiles and water to the atmosphere was cometary impacts. And sometimes, those comets had single-celled organisms in them that would colonize your otherwise barren simulated planet.

Dunno why that is floating in my head at the moment. I was trying to write some lyrics about future humans traveling in space, and I dug out some of my astronomy books.

Hmmmm... I think the codeine cough syrup has made me quite high. :)

Not fun. So I've spent the last 3 days visiting some of SF's finest health care establishments for the uninsured. So, somewhere along the line, my flu turned into Pneumonia. And I also developed pleurisy - which is an infection of the pleura, the membrane surrounding your lungs and lining your chest cavity. I have a chronic cough, and some pain when breathing.

I'm writing this from SF General. One of the nice ladies here let me use the computer, since I've been here all damn day. ALL DAMN DAY.

I have nothing but respect for the nurses, interns, and doctors that work here. The clerical staff is another story. Bitter, old, inneficient bitches. So what if you hate your job and your life, and your husband wacks off to 18yr old boy porn online? You're a hindrance to what is otherwise a decent system. And also the hospital PD - fuck you bitches.

I almost got in trouble for telling a cop to fuck off in the ER. He refused to let me in to see the triage nurse after I'd been sent there, told me to wait. I watched him, and he was just sitting there reading the paper. I looked over, and the nurse was chatting to a co-worker. I asked him if I could speak to her, and he very forcefully told me to sit down.

I told him he was an asshole, and not doing anything except fucking around when he should be trying to help people. The nurse noticed, and she yelled at him for being a dick.

Once I'd navigated the bullshit, everything was fine. I was taken care of very quickly and professionally, and was sent on my way to get x-rays taken. I now have x-rays of my chest. And I even have a printout! :)

Anyways - big relief to see that my x-rays were pretty clear. My pleurisy is mild, and the shots that I just got should help with it. The codeine cough syrup is pretty dreamy too.

So I get to sit here for about 7 more hours, with a little heart monitor in place. Just in case I have any complications. My heart has been acting funny the past few days, and hopefully its just because of the infection.

I brought a couple of books, and I had a few interesting conversations, so it's not as horrible as it could be. However, I do think that hospitals could dramatically be improved in terms of care - and probably reduce expenses at the same time.

This country really needs socialized medicine. And also to have some serious limits inposed on the financial gain of drug companies - along with the redirection of funds to pure, non-profit driven research.

More money is spent on research for therapies for baldness and impotence than say MS. Or MD. Or probably even cancer. And doctors are paid to prescribe drugs that aren't appropriate for patients. And even just the whole concept of hospitals and clinics, and diagnoses based on "baselines" is out of touch with what most people really need. There is an emotional component to healthcare that is completely neglected by western medicine.

Anyways, gotta go lie down and take more drugs.

I'm feeling a little better after this weekend. The pressure has been on lately - lots of work, lots of stuff going on. But hanging out with friends this weekend, and having a few cocktails deffinitely brought the stress back down to manageable levels.

I watched Battlestar Galactica, went out to the Mission on Saturday, and went to the movies today.

I saw Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor) today. It's a Russian horror/fantasy movie along the lines of Constantine. Definite thumbs up - it was excellent, despite some obvious choppy edits. Great example of how to make an excellent movie without an enormous budget. The best part is that it was the first in a trilogy. Can't wait to see the next movies in the series!

Was playing around with the XL-7 again today. Making some new sounds with it, and damn - I am so impressed by this box. I love being able to jump in and out of editing sounds, recording, editing sequences, etc. all in real time, without stopping. I'm able to start from zero, program in steps for a beat, play in notes for percussion from the pads, tweak a sound to fit better, write melodies, play along in real time - all in record time. No stopping and going through menus or clicking with a mouse. Very hands on, and really intuitive once you get the hang of it.

Why the hell did Creative Labs think it was a good idea to discontinue E-mu hardware? These boxes are going to be classics. I'd be very happy if they'd actually finished their OS development, implemented full midi over USB, sample downloading, and all the other features that the hardware can support. Would have been a dream. As it is, it still is so bad ass compared to anything else out there. Only thing that comes close is the Electribes, and this beats the electribes hands down in most departments.

I also recently acquired a Boss SP-505 sampler. Not quite sure about this one so far - the sequencer is crude, but useable, the sound is good, the effects are ok, it loads wav files from a memory card, has nice pads & knobs on it, etc. However, the midi spec is arcane, the OS is very slow, loading is slow, and has severe limitations with using loops. No pitch control either. I wanted a really simple sampler for live use, and this may yet fit the bill - but it might also go on the chopping block.

I've been experimenting with using detuned pulse waves in the XL-7 to simulate PWM (as on an analog synth). Interesting effects can be achieved by layering several versions of these, and crossfading between them. Not quite what a Korg Polysix or a Juno 106 would do, but still very useable.

I've also discovered how to get some really nice "video game" type of sounds. Or maybe Casio like - crunchy, buzzy tones that sound great in the mid octaves.

Finally, I heard The Gossip for the first time. Wow! I actually really liked them! Also, I like the fact that their singer (Beth?) is a cute big girl - not a skinny "perfect" girl. And damn, she has a great voice. She can really belt it out, and has a pleasing "rock n roll" grit to her.

I keep having these moments when I just question everything that I'm doing. Why the hell am I working so hard? Why do I try to run my own business? Why do I bother to write music? Why not just give it all up, and become a complete slacker hippie, like so many people I know?

Grrr.

This image popped into my head of life as a bridge that crumbles behind you as you walk across it. There is no going back.

I used to live on a remote third-world beachside village. In a palm frond roof shack, with sand floors. I used to go hunting doves and iguanas in mangrove swamps with a sling. My grandfather taught me to swim when I was three by throwing me from his fishing boat while out in the open sea. I lived through a civil war where we had to pile sandbags and matresses to cover the windows. My dog got killed by shrapnel from a grenade, and I remember the first time I saw corpses on the street after a firefight. My mother was addicted to heroin and cocaine, and my father still is addicted to Jesus.

And here I am in the US, in San Francisco, making web pages for a living. I'd much prefer to be doing something else.

Another Pop Roxx on Saturday. As usual, had a great time. Shook my ass, downed the G&T's, and hung out with the posse. Woke up on Sunday with a massive hang over. :) Oh yeah, that's real rock n roll right there. 2 advil, a soy chai, meat lasagna and a green salad later I was feeling more human again. Went and ended up hanging out at cafe Abir with the other Gustavo, and had the usual meandering conversations about music gear, building stuff, women, and ranting. Work is a little overwhelming at the moment. Hopefully things will calm down soon. Right now I'm cranking out code and watching Napoleon Dynamite out of the side of my eye.

Funny how much crap I got from all my dj friends for linking Goldfrapp. :) Ok, let me break it down - speaking as a producer, musician, engineer, and music listener. Pop music is music that is created for mainstream consumption. Music that you can go to walmart and buy. Music that people will hear on the radio, and sing along with. Very rarely is pop music instrumental. There usually are lyrics, a verse-chorus-verse arrangement, a "hook", and generally the instrumentation tends to be fairly straightforward, in the sense that it isn't the focus of the track. Underground music doesn't have to meet any sales figures, and it can appeal to a very narrow market. So that means that anything goes. Just because something does well as an underground track doesn't mean that it will be successful in a pop context - Kraftwerk despite several excellent releases, never managed to chart in the US top 40 charts since 1975's Autobahn. But Coldplay takes a Kraftwerk song, plays it on guitar, bass & drums, and adds some vocals - and you instantly have a hit. Pop music is inherently not challenging. It's made for consumption. It's not made to push many boundaries, or to express anything but the simplest emotions. This is a blatant generalization, but take a look at what's popular on the top40 charts, and it becomes apparent. Unfortunately, the simplicity of a lot of urban music, combined with a irresponsible and greedy record industry, along with music technology that makes production ridiculously simple to produce high-quality tracks, is killing the quality of pop music. No artists are given the opportunity to develop as song writers - everyone is grist for the mill. One album is pushed out, a tour is arranged, the second album is out within 6 months, and then the record label drops the artist based on poor sales. Same thing happened with rock a few years ago - remember all those grunge bands? No? My point exactly. We're in a musical doldrums right now. Rap is a gold-encrusted bloated genre, stuck in the same bling bling and gangsta talk rut. Mainstream rock is revisiting all those places Bon Jovi visited in the 80s. Trance is fucked. Dancehall is trying to be Rap with a twist. Don't even get me started on "emo". I hung out with my friend Brian, who I haven't seen in a while today. He played me his new record. It was awesome - meticulously recorded, well produced minimal techno. But we both agreed that it wouldn't ever get him on the radio. It was just music that he enjoys, and he put a lot of effort into recording it. And it shows. I told him it came close to LFO's Frequencies - which for me is the epitomy of techno albums of all time. I've been rocking out in this weird acidhouse-meets-sisters of mercy vibe. Simple guitar powerchord riffs, and percolating synth bits. With odd latin percussion elements thrown in - not like tribal, but more a 80's Chicago style. Anyways - I have no illussions of ever being a star by any degree. I make music because I have to. I play shows because there's no point in writing without performing for me. And I hope in the next few years, the music industry implodes from its on weight, and other channels evolve for people to get the music they make out to their audience. Who's coming to Pop Roxx this weekend with me? ;)