July 2008

"Scratch Ambulance," my CD with earcon (John Parker) is now available on amazon. Here is the mp3 download page. These were based on cassette recordings of tunes I did on the Macintosh SE computer (many in the 1980s), which John remixed and mashed using current software into a more gritty and industrial electro sound. More info on John's site.

Have been taking a slight break from almost constant music production the last three years, to concentrate more on drawing and animation. Three of my videos featuring my original tunes will be included in this year's Dallas Video Festival; am prepping for that now and more on it soon.

More from elsewhere: interview with Robert Haigh (via blissblog). Haigh was an '80s ambient/industrial/artrock/keyboards guy who became a '90s drum and bass star (as Omni Trio) and is now about to release a disc of solo piano works. Before Venetian snares there were renegade snares and that was Haigh.

Am also on hiatus from Twitter-posting. Have been really enjoying the group of people there I've been "following" (in Twit-parlance) and sorry I haven't gotten around to adding more "followers" to that list (damn, that term is awkward, making everyone with a Twitter account sound like Jesus). Unfortunately Twitter is so technically-challenged that they have disabled all archives older than 10 pages back. Which means every twit you write effectively "disappears" an older twit. Am just not enough of a Buddhist to live with that. If the archives return will come back.

From around the www:

This Recording on Sun Ra. Didn't know the story of Blount's conscientious objector status in World War II.

Paddy Johnson reviews the Jewish Museum's "Action/Abstraction...1940-1976" show at L Magazine. In the comments to her blog we're jawboning about critics Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg and how the museum presents the art in relation to their writing.

Also at Johnson's, a discussion of the merits of Oliver Laric's digital subtraction of everything but Mariah Carey from a video of Carey's (it's the one where the nerdy computer repairman shows up at her door in the classic porn scenario, but you wouldn't know that because he and her lavish crib have been "green screened"). Johnson takes umbrage at Rhizome writer Marisa Olson's phrase "she's asking for it"--as in, Carey's asking to be, you know, remixed. Olson claims no double entendre and blames Johnson for "sloppy reading." Oh, come on, you wrote it, you own it, unless you disavow it as a not ready for prime time post-feminist jape. I understand there is a lively discussion in the Rhizome threads, a wonderful, civilized place "where you proceed dialogically until you come to the crux of your disagreements," but I'm currently on hiatus from that hellhole.