This one has it all, including a buried 808 cowbell.
Working the Arturia Drumbrute into the setup.
A companion track to this week’s EP, which is really just an excuse to do a rambly remix, which is really just an excuse to wring some more life out of this batch of patches. It’s included in the download at Bandcamp.
The new EP is up at Bandcamp so you can pay me gobs of money for doing what I love.
Low-rent drum & bass for the weekend.
Tangerine Dream can be an insurmountable mountain. They virtually invented popular electronic music, and they’ve released over 100 albums. In the 1970s, they crafted left-field records like Phaedra and Zeit. In the 1980s, they made soundtracks for everything from Legend to Risky Business.
(They also did some stuff we won’t talk about.)
Needless to say, a band doesn’t exist for five decades without going through some changes. Their sound was always evolving, and so was the lineup. When founder Edgar Froese passed away in 2015, things were left uncertain. His widow Bianca provided the band with tape archives and software patches, and they’ve integrated some of that into the new record. The current roster consists of longtime music director Thorsten Quaeschning, violinist Hoshiko Yamane, Paul Frick, and Ulrich Scnhauss.
So, how is it? Well, it’s Tangerine Dream. And I’d say they’re in top form.
Of course, somebody’s going to mention that ‘You’re Always on Time’ sounds like something from Stranger Things or that the title track evokes Steve Roach. Continued...
Mostly because I haven’t done anything in a while.
Remington Arms has reached a $73 million settlement with families who lost relatives in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut. Their attorneys first brought this back in 2014 as a wrongful-death lawsuit.
Since then, Remington filed for bankruptcy twice. In 2020, it was broken up and the pieces were sold off to cover outstanding debt. Vista Outdoors bought the trademark, which they use to market ammunition.
My initial worry about this lawsuit was that it was an attempt to get around the PLCAA. Gun control advocates have been trying to do that through targeted litigation for quite some time.
But contrary to the headlines, Remington has not been found liable. That’s the whole point of a settlement like this. Chances are, Vista just wants to get out from under this cloud.
So the Ontario protests are over and the Ambassador Bridge is back open. I’m not sure what was accomplished, aside from causing a great deal of hardship to people who didn’t deserve it.
I’m a trucker. In short, my job is to move cargo. It isn’t to sit around burning fuel and annoying people. It certainly isn’t to keep other truckers from doing their jobs.
It’s not a job for everyone. Working conditions can be hard and the general public treats us like a nuisance. But that comes with the territory. I understand that the vaccine requirements for crossing the American/Canadian border are an issue, but those have been in place for over a year now. They’re not new, and plenty of other jobs have similar mandates.
If it’s such an existential crisis right now, maybe the aggrieved parties could contact their legislators or consider funding targeted lawsuits. These protests aren’t going to change policy. Continued...
Revisiting an older track that sounded a bit claustrophobic in retrospect.
Not sure if this should be shorter or longer, but here we are. The title is from one of my favorite Merwin poems.
Named for soft rain and written when I was in a much better mood than it sounds.
There’s a great deal of hand-wringing about the idea that there are secret gun-control provisions in Biden’s spending bill. Gun Owners of America have been spamming social media outlets in an attempt to use this for fundraising. Problem is, it’s a complete lie.
The relevant language starts on page 65. It proposes $2.5 billion in spending over a ten-year period for the following:
(…) to support training, technical assistance, research, evaluation, and data collection on the strategies that are most effective at reducing community violence and ensuring public safety
Notice there is no mention of guns or any kind of gun regulation. If the language about “community violence” sounds familiar, that’s because it is. This is Operation Ceasefire finally being implemented on a national level, and that’s a good thing.
The program was initiated in Boston in the mid-1990s, and it exceeded its stated goals in reducing juvenile homicides. Police unions declared it the Boston Miracle, and it was implemented in several other major cities. Continued...
Pushing through a bit of a drought while I figure out what to do next.
The Supreme Court will soon hear oral arguments in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a case challenging New York’s arbitrary and corrupt permitting system for carrying handguns. In Heller v. DC and McDonald v. Chicago, they held that the 2nd Amendment protected the right to own firearms.
But those decisions only applied to keeping a gun in the home. The question of whether it protects the right to carry outside the home remains open, and lower courts have done everything in their power to say it doesn’t. That question is central to the arguments in Bruen.
Now Amnesty International has seen fit to submit an amicus brief [pdf] in the current case that is just strange.
It makes three arguments:
U.S. courts should interpret U.S. law, including the Constitution, as consistent with U.S. obligations under international law.
I’m not sure what international law is threatened here, and neither are they since they don’t cite any. Continued...
A bit busier than usual.
We’re living in the late 1970s again. Inflation is on the rise, gasoline prices are spiking, and we’re seeing a dramatic rise in violent crime. We have a President who has no ideas worth bringing to the table, so he’s falling back on the old standby: gun control.
In remarks made today, he called for a reinstatement of the so-called “assault weapons” ban and crackdowns on gun dealers. Neither of these things will have an impact on violent crime, and the worst part is, he knows it.
His first claim is this:
For folks at home, here’s what you need to know: I’ve been at this a long time and there are things we know that work that reduce gun violence and violent crime, and things that we don’t know about. But things we know about: Background checks for purchasing a firearm are important; a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
Continued...
An attempt to capture swelter and heat shimmer.
New track for the week.
A quick single with the Deluge and a 606. Since it sounds retro and I stink at naming things, I went with nonsense 1980s titles.
Democrats have thrown a few feeble pitches with gun-control legislation this session, but those were never expected to get far. This is the one they’ve actually been gearing up for. They’ll sell it as a “moderate” measure, and they’ll probably use the phrase common sense quite a bit.
It’s actually quite dangerous. This is the relevant language:
not fewer than 10 business days (meaning a day on which State offices are open) has elapsed since the licensee contacted the system, and the system has not notified the licensee that the receipt of a firearm by such other person would violate subsection (g) or (n) of this section, and the other person has submitted, electronically through a website established by the Attorney General or by first-class mail, a petition for review
Right now, if you try to buy a gun and your background check gets delayed, the government has 3 business days to review it. Continued...
On Sunday, the White House released a statement by President Biden calling for new gun-control laws. Predictably, he claims this will “end our epidemic of gun violence.” There is no such epidemic. Homicides with firearms are the lowest they’ve been since the early 1990s.
The actual proposal?
(…) requiring background checks on all gun sales, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and eliminating immunity for gun manufacturers who knowingly put weapons of war on our streets.
None of these measures has ever been shown to have any effect on homicide. None of these measures would have ameliorated the tragedy at Parkland, which he seeks to exploit here. In fact, he personally admitted that just a few years ago.
So, I’m confused. No, really. The thing is, this guy traditionally gets stuff done on gun control. He wrote the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which we know as the “assault weapons ban.” Continued...
The new EP is up at Bandcamp. It took longer than usual, but a few happy accidents fell into place, and here we are.
Slow and steady.
So we have a new President, and he has a history with gun control. He was instrumental in the writing and passage of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, and it’s safe to assume he’s going to bring his clout to bear on the issue.
As such, it’s understandable that people are worried, but we don’t need to go jumping at shadows. Case in point: Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee’s annual gun bill. It’s a grab-bag of bad ideas and ludicrous restrictions on lawful behavior.
It’s also doomed to failure. Notice the complete lack of cosponsors. Now go back to the same bill from the last session. No cosponsors there, either. It never even made it to committee. Jackson has a history of drafting preposterous gun bills to enhance her personal brand, but they never go anywhere.
Why? Because she’s just not a player on the issue. When it’s time for the Democrats to give a serious push on the issue, it’ll carry the endorsements of Schumer, Durbin, and Feinstein. Continued...
“You measured and cut so all the maps fit together. You laughed and forgot, and teased and remembered, and you grew so big you defined the entire world.”
–An Explorer’s Cartography of Already Settled Lands, by Fran Wilde
An EP of remastered ambient tracks, performed on the bass guitar with post-procecessing.
Not really inspired by the Jupier/Saturn conjunction but written during the time. I haven’t done anything in 5/4 for a while, so here you go.
Getting a few more tracks in before the holidays.
It’s always fun getting 7/8 to work.
Dust and scratches.
Let’s just call it at this point. Joe Biden is the next President. It doesn’t matter that only 98.4% of precincts in Nevada have reported in. It doesn’t matter that someone claims a couple hundred votes got misplaced somewhere. There’s no feasible path to 270 electoral votes for Donald Trump.
Do some yelling if it helps. Deep breath. In. Out. Now, jazz hands. All better? Good.
Now let’s look at what it all means. First, this wasn’t a landslide for Biden by any definition. It looks like six million more people voted for Trump than did so in 2016. He can’t dismiss that.
Second, Republicans are keeping control of the Senate. Despite the promises (and several hundred million dollars in spending), Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and Susan Collins all held their seats without breaking a sweat.
Third, Democrats still control the House, but Republicans gained more seats than expected. That number will increase in the 2022 midterms. Continued...
So, two weeks after the release of SIGN, Autechre have dropped another album. It’s different in some ways and similar in others.
The first question that comes up is whether or not this is a distinct album or a very long EP of reworks and leftovers. They’ve certainly done album-length EP’s before. However, the catalog number begins with the WARP prefix denoting as a proper album (EP’s generally use WAP). A very smart guy on Reddit also has an interesting take on the actual numbering that seems to confirm this.
The problem is, this feels more like a collection of tracks rather than a cohesive album. The sequencing is odd, and I’m not sure how it fits. Instead, it reminds me of the relationship between Oversteps and Move of Ten. I’m hearing some of the same patches from SIGN, but this record feels friskier and less formal.
The second question is, does it have beats? Continued...
So, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything on Autechre. I still adore their work, but damned if they haven’t made it hard to write about these last few years.
If you need catching up, here’s a guide I wrote to their earlier work. They’ve been around for three decades now, and the whole time, they’ve been at the bleeding edge of electronic music. While other experimental artists may trade in academic rigor, Autechre’s friskier tendencies have always been tempered by their roots in 1990s hip-hop. While they can certainly get difficult at times, there’s always a guidepost, even if it’s not evident on first listen.
The problem is, those guideposts have been spread pretty thin the last few years. Their last proper “album” was Exai in 2013. Then they released 8 hours of live sets. Then came the 4-record, 4-hour collection elseq. Then came another 19 hours of live sets. Continued...
Oddly enough, Facebook tagged this for “misinformation.” I suppose it has something to do with the title.
Not really about the Bluffs. Not really inspired by the Bluffs. I just had the picture laying around, but OK.
Mostly a hodgepodge of leftover patches looking for structure.
Written and performed entirely on the Synthstrom Deluge.
Percussion samples by Iain Edye, who recorded them by banging on a combine harvester. The track can be downloaded here.