GLOBAL SEANCE TONIGHT

 

Northern Mirror published a short short of mine in their second issue, the first appearance of any fiction by me anywhere! I think it's okay, but I wish it was better of course. Read it online here, I think if you want to pick up a copy your best bet would be to email them for availability.

Time is, as usual, the secret villain of the piece.

Covered///Winter at Static Fest, 10-16-21, Seagrave Studios (photo by Brandon W)

The concept of the next Covered///Winter album, rather than dealing with the obvious follow up to Life and dealing with Death, will instead be an exploration of the aspect of life that reminds one most of being alive- Pain. For this performance, we used samples from a video called Managing Chronic Pain in Older Adults, although on the album proper I'd prefer to have interviews with some actual older adults. Most likely there would be fewer recordings to use, so the whole thing would have to be structured differently than Life. We'll have to see how it goes. Anyway here's the schematic for the show-

 

Lava-Proof Boots, Brief History

 I have no idea, now, when I started making electronic music. The earliest stuff, still unreleased, was made with Audiomulch before it had any sequencing ability, then using loops made in JeskolaBUZZ fed into Audiomulch for somewhat greater degree of control. The first 'album' was released under the name Dependable Skeleton, which was what I got from putting my name into an online 'Wu Name Generator' that gave you your very own Wu Tang member name, on my netlabel Lucha Libre Recordings, which was actually the third iteration of LLR (the first being a tape label my friend Brady D (Slum Pianos Foundation) made in high school, second being a CDr and cassette label in the early 2000s). I remember playing a burned CD of this for my friends while we sat in the Fryn' Pan restaurant on Main Ave in Fargo, when it still had a smoking section, recruiting them to help name the tracks.

Dependable Skeleton - Making Math Not Music (2005)

At some point I was contacted by a band who requested that I not use the name Dependable Skeleton, so I switched to Lava-Proof Boots, after a comment by Adam M (Manchester Bulge, Magnetic Jihad, 2 Player Guess What, Bird Flu, GhostHandPunch) about how someone he knew was so contrary that if you tried to play 'The Floor Is Made of Lava' with her she would declare that she now had lava-proof boots. The first album under the name was Youthtronics, which was mostly written on BUZZ in the form of loops, exported to Audiomulch. Tracks were sequenced through the automation of volume controls and effects, then exported to CoolEditPro for EQing, stereo effects and 'mastering' of a sort.

Lava-Proof Boots - Youthtronics (2006)

At the same time that this was going on, Adam M and I formed 2 Player Guess What, which was named after a hangman-type game on an electronic toy computer. The writing process was very similar to Lava-Proof Boots at the time, although all the sequencing took place in BUZZ, relying on more tracker-style programming than on IDM-style digital signal processing (which was all over Youthtronics). The album More Songs About Animals, Bugs and Vans was released in 2006.

2 Player Guess What - More Songs About Animals, Bugs and Vans (2006)

Around this time Jesse A (OKFox, USMilk, World Map Programmer) and John B (The Blue Fairy Godmothers, GhostHandPunch) and myself decided to make an mp3 CDr of 500 very short songs, 15 seconds each. We didn't reach the goal of 500 songs, but we did release the CDr (I think it had less than 400 songs total?). I wrote 101 tracks for my portion, which marks the last of the BUZZ/Audiomulch style tracks before moving to fully sample based tracker music.

At the same time as this and for a while after, Adam M and I worked on a follow-up 2 Player Guess What album, which was darker in sound and theme, focusing on sampled musical passages (as well as just drum breaks) and using film dialogue samples to convey meaning- I was very influenced by Bomb20 at the time, although the album doesn't sound anything like that. Although the album wasn't uploaded until 2009 to LLR, I believe it was finished closer to 2007. There were names for the tracks, but they were lost.

2 Player Guess What - 2 Player Guess What (2009)

Sometime around 2007 I began writing music on Impulse Tracker on a Windows95 laptop, with an eye towards playing live, this new setup being more portable than a desktop computer. Initially I wanted to be like Venetian Snares, as did everyone at the time, but it wasn't possible to achieve the same level of chaos without exploring odd time signatures, and I was too novice at tracker programming to attempt it, so I fell more to the chiptune side, without actually adhering to the chiptune rules.

Micro Boots was originally intended to be released on microcassette, with a zine included, although it never was. The zine is designed but not printed, and the microcassettes have been sitting for nearly a decade now. Why not just finish it? Why not indeed.

The last LPB release, so far, is the Gutter Tape Breaks EP, which was originally released on floppy disk. At this point I wanted to use the lowest fidelity, grossest sounds I possibly could (which had kind of started on Micro Boots already). To that end I recorded all the drum samples I had onto tape on a tape recorder with an automatic volume adjusting circuit, then re-recorded them back into the laptop at a very low sample rate. By keeping the sounds incredibly lo-fi I would be able to fit more tracks onto 1.44 megabyte floppy disks, as well as sounding absolutely disgusting.

The song 'Love,' which I posted a video made by Yam Lynn for earlier on this blog, is one of many unreleased tracks made after the Gutter Tape Breaks EP.

EPM VHS tape, released 2017 on Invocation Films

The first video stuff under my own name. The real first video stuff would be the videos for Still, I'll post those some day or another. This is all bugs, midwestern scenery, video feedback, glitches all over the place.

 

Acolyte

 

Another drawing for the grimoire, not entirely sure if I like it, but if you do then buy a shirt, why don't ya?

Miracle Man

Miracle Man, a mechanical pencil drawing for the grimoire, eventually someday. Buy it on a shirt in the meantime.

 

Slug Worship

In addition to all the other crap I'm doing, I'm making a grimoire for a non-existent cult. If you want this on a mug or a throw pillow, click here.

 

Sketchbook Page

 

Building a cosmology for a short story, just disjointed rambling at this point.

A Normal Drive In Fargo ND

 

Video made by shooting through the windshield with a SJCam GoPro knockoff, plus some extra footage shot in my bathroom. Audio is from tapes and tapeloops, some new and some old, plus some field recordings done just for this piece, including a creaky chair and coins spinning on a metal sign.

Daylight Haunting Of A Northern Minnesota Railway

Video taken from the window of a car while we were driving at about the same speed as a train. The original video for this, before all the mirroring and whatnot, was also used in the Edwin Perry Manchester VHS release from Invocation Films, which I stupidly never named. The audio is cut up from a couple different recordings, a Blast Fed Disaster improv, layered pedal feedback on 4 track, skipping records recorded with a nail and voice changer effect feeding back into itself. Most of the recordings are from April and May 2021 except the skipping record, that's from 2019.

Lava-Proof Boots - Love

 

Video for the Lava-Proof Boots song "Love"

Audio by me, video by Yam Lynn

Contact Yam about making you a video, why don't you?

Self Portrait, May 27th 2021

Ten minutes or so, mechanical pencil.

 

A Curse On The Motorcycle Marauder

Audio made from field recordings of a local motorcyclist making the neighborhood rounds, mixed with an older field recording of a dog's upset stomach, plus gurgling sounds and buried vocals. An audio/video curse.

 

Unwelcome Guest

Here's a photo from a diorama, I made this giant floor with the idea of putting all kinds of clutter in it but I liked the look of the floorboards too much to actually do it, plus the tv I had built for it was too large. I was originally thinking of a Rocko's Modern Life kind of house, which I still want to do. I also wanted a black border for an old timey effect but the border I got from Gimp is pretty meh, so I might have to build a little border for the camera itself, I probably should have in the first place. If you want a tote bag or something with this on it you can go here.

Here's a bonus photo from the same session, I wanted to see how it would look if something was peering through the window so I grabbed this doll, it's okay but I want a more orange quality to the light next time. I was also going to have fog or smoke in the photos, really diffuse like 1980s Twilight Zone kinda vibe but I don't have anything besides incense to make smoke with right now and that did not work out.

 

Black Eyed Monster

 

Inspired by a half-remembered drawing from a choose-your-own-adventure knockoff book about a haunted house or something. I don't think the original had any teeth, I think the mouth was looser looking, really more emphasis on the sagging skin, and the black liquidy stuff coming out of its mouth was more along the lines of a blueberry compote, as opposed to the cherry pie filling I ended up with.

You can buy stuff with this charming image at Teepublic.

Two Drawings

A Haunted Man

Two Tables

 

A Tower To The Moon

A pustulant rupturing moon is greeted by a tall tower from earth. :P

 

Consulting the Oracle

 

Some drawings inspired by an idea for a story where something that seems to be at the bottom of a deep deep well wants to touch people to experience their pain.

Some Pencil Drawings

 

The framed picture over the door is a bit cheesy I think but I needed something to distract from the true focal point I guess.

Caged Slime Monster & Jack O' Lantern

 

Both of these were drawn on "Hello My Name Is" stickers, which is why they're kinda widescreen. Using the Papermate for stippling. I'm not fancy.

Caged Slime Monster ended up being on a tv screen for a sticker I made, which you can buy here if you wanna.

Death

"Death lurks behind every living thing and inside every living thing, a shadow that is always with us, so we might as well as make cute pictures about it. A brush pen drawing, colored digitally." That's the description on Redbubble where you can buy this on a throw pillow, if you wanted to. For some reason that's pretty funny to me.

The auto-generated pictures of your design on a potential product just tickle me.