Monthly Archive for June, 2007

Mise En Abyme

Published on June 29, 2007 in Musical Endeavors. 3 Comments

Okay, so first order of busi­ness: Hot Dawgz rule the fuckin’ school!

Secondly, there are a lot of peo­ple that I really miss down in the SoCal crew. I’m not going to name ‘em all, and a lot of them are com­ing up to Portland to visit and I’m super stoked about that, but I owe a lot of hugs to a lot of peo­ple. Tons, in fact. Actually I owe a super huge hug, a deli­cious meal, a drink, a long talk, and then some seri­ous chill time to a lot of peo­ple. I really love you guys. This doesn’t always come off eye-to-eye or any­thing even close to that but I am really hurt­ing for some of that love. Just hear­ing Laura’s voice on the phone tonight made me feel like climb­ing into one of her adorable bear-hug embraces. I miss that. I miss know­ing where are all the cracks in the streets are. I miss late nights with Daniel and the Village Bakery and the euca­lyp­tus tree that smells like dill and park­ing really far from Azusa Gardens and…I don’t know.

I do feel really good about this new place — so good in fact that it’s tempt­ing to think about not leav­ing. I think often about the fact that I’m spend­ing another year, the fifth year, at school and that maybe there was some­thing I could’ve done, some class I could’ve worked harder at or some part of myself that I could’ve under­stood bet­ter to get “on track” sooner, to fin­ish in four and then now have the option, the abil­ity to run with the feel­ing I have now and begin. It’s hard to think about begin­ning this new excit­ing part of my life con­tin­u­ing on back at school. I’m feel­ing the heavy vibe of the peo­ple here and now with the drive, the pos­si­bil­ity to run. I sort of feel like when fall rolls around it’ll all be reversed into the same school year drone — and this time with­out most of my clos­est class­mates. Without a bunch the core homies. Now that ain’t no way to roll. Shit…

But a cou­ple of close bud­dies are gonna be back in the fall and my friend Kurt is one of them, a friend I’ve know since fresh­man year. This guy is music itself. He’s a timid fel­low, soft and full of light. He knows what’s hap­penin’ with music trends before it drops and he’s informed me about some­thing I’d like to pass along. It’s called Reactable and it looks a lit­tle some­thing like this:

Interactive through a camera-sensitive sur­face that com­mu­ni­cates with a mod­u­lar syn­the­sizer through objects placed on top of the “play­ing area”, it’s not a far leap from this graph­i­cal musi­cal envi­ron­ment called MAX/MSP made by Cycling ’74. I’ve been want­ing to tell ya’ll about this for a while — it’s super cool! MAX/MSP is an graph­i­cal envi­ron­ment for con­trol­ling var­i­ous mul­ti­me­dia objects, specif­i­cally designed for per­for­mance art. It can be used with light­ing schemes (make a door light up with a pur­ple hue when you walk through it at a cer­tain speed), inter­ac­tive audio pieces (read on), audio visual incest to the max kind of shit (let your mind do the math). Lucky Dragons explains it pretty well and uti­lizes it with a key idea: every­one is not only involved but shares in the unique expe­ri­ence of that exact moment’s energy. Basically, the sound is effected by peo­ple touch­ing strips of wire embed­ded into a tapes­try and when two peo­ple are touch­ing oppo­site ends — or even bet­ter, each other (!) — the fre­quency wave evolves by the ten­sion and flow of the par­tic­i­pants. The com­puter inter­acts by pro­vid­ing the sam­pling but the peo­ple act as the actual con­nect­ing wires that allow the music to be cre­ated. Together they bring the expe­ri­ence into exis­tence. Not with­out the other is this pos­si­ble. And speak­ing of metaphors, this is kinda how I feel, and I miss you…yeah, you.

A Newly Looped Horzion Every Time

Published on June 26, 2007 in Musical Endeavors. 3 Comments

After read­ing Kyle Glann’s blog called A Truly Loopy Idea and talk­ing with exper­i­men­tal music guru Adam Forkner on a recent trip to Olympia, I’ve been think­ing a lot about the idea of dif­fer­ent length loops run­ning out of sync with each other and then return­ing later on with dif­fer­ent har­monies and unin­ten­tional col­ors. As I’m sure many of you know, Terry Riley has been a huge influ­ence on my recent musi­cal endeav­ours and he’s dealt with some abstract loops as well. This par­tic­u­lar loop of his isn’t char­ac­ter­is­tic of dif­fer­ent lengths, but is def­i­nitely a trip.

So the other day I com­posed a sim­ple three layer loop: 7, 8, and 9 bars run­ning sim­il­tan­iously against each other.

This is what the foun­da­tion looks like,

and this what it sounds like. The top-heavy melody shapes the core of the idea at first but, because of the lay­ered chords under­neath, it drones out after a while. While study­ing the unin­ten­tion­ally “cre­ated” har­mony, I dis­cerned that it locks up again — after the intro­duc­tion at bar 1 — at the 169th bar. This is an odd num­ber and I can’t fig­ure out it’s sig­nif­i­cance but it’s an inter­est­ing the­ory to study and can also be found in the incon­sis­tent plan­e­tary orbits found in our solar sys­tem. Sort of like an unex­pected newly-planned hori­zon every time, if you will.

(Throw On The) Hazard Lights

Published on June 25, 2007 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

This a music video for the song “Throw On The (Hazard Lights)” by The Dirty Projectors. This song can be found on the album Slaves Graves’ and Ballads which came out in 2004 on Western Vinyl. This is what they have to say:

Dave Longstreth is the man behind, or per­haps in front of, the music called Dirty Projectors. Longstreth wrote half of Slaves’ Graves and Ballads, the follow-up to last year’s critically-acclaimed debut, The Glad Fact, for a ten-piece cham­ber group called The Orchestral Society for the Preservation of the Orchestra. This first half, Slaves’ Graves, was recorded in a church in New Haven, CT. The Ballads were recorded with guru and quak­ing soul­man Adam Forkner of Yume Bitsu at Dub Narcotic Studios, in Olympia, WA. Witness Longstreth use GM tech­nol­ogy to restore maize to its orig­i­nal, feral genetic makeup, before the advent of domes­ti­ca­tion: this is clas­si­cal and pop music’s bodies-entwined, souls-commingled wed­ding! Their child doesn’t have one white eye and one Asian one; rather, he sees differently.

I shot most of the footage on a HP Photosmart L1822A dig­i­tal cam­era while on tour with The Righteous and Harmonious Fists. There’s not a whole lot of influ­ence from the mag­nif­i­cent films James Sumner made for the Dirty Projectors, but I really love a lot about this song and wanted to com­bine some videos that I shot in San Francisco and on the road trav­el­ing up the west coast. I man­aged to get some really long shots on the L1822A — the SF street shot was 20min — and some of them came out really great. Some also came out pretty weird — did you see the face??? Finally, this is the first time I’ve ever used iMovie to edit videos and I’m still fig­ur­ing out some tricks but I hope you like it!

Five Beers For Twenty-Two Years

Published on June 22, 2007 in Beer Reviews. 6 Comments

Welcome to the first install­ment of Beer Reviews From Complete Amateurs! To cel­e­brate Alisha’s 22nd birth­day, she and I got decided to get some deli­cious crêps at Le Happy and then head over to Portland’s Primere Beer Store and Biercafe, Belmont Station, which is home to over 700 bot­tled beers from all around the world. Picking five was dif­fi­cult, but we spot­ted a few we had been look­ing for and chose a few new­bies to try. These were our spec­i­mens:


L to R: Moylan’s Hopsickle Imperial Ale (Triple Hoppy), St. Bernardus Abt 12, Rogue Juniper Pale Ale, Unibroue’s La Fin Du Monde, Le Caracole’s Saxo

This was our rat­ing sys­tem:

1. La Fin Du Monde by Unibroue in Quebec, Canada (triple fer­men­ta­tion), 9%.
We chose a delight­ful beer to begin with and, at first taste, Alisha described it’s tex­ture trail as “fizzy then smooth”, to which I responded “uhhuh.” I added that it was very enjoy­able and, relat­ing it to one of my all time favs, added that it tasted “less yeasty than Delirium” and “golden”. Translated as “The End of the World”, La Fin Du Monde received may grain ref­er­ences and, although a bit incon­sis­tent, Alisha stated that it had a “light grain, very grainy” taste and reminded her of a “rice flour pan­cake”.
Rating: 7.5

2. Abt 12 by Brouwerij St. Bernardus NV in Watou, Belgium, 10%.
Although the build up was huge for this one, and we real­ized it was way more kick-ass than a Bud Light or some shit, the Abt 12 was unfor­tu­nately kind of a let down. “It’s like you’re in a luke warm bath and your lover walks in the door…” is what I stated, nail­ing the exact feel­ing we had: a hope for more, blue balls, just a tease, etc. Alisha orig­i­nally felt “all over the mouth sen­sa­tions” but added that there was “no after­taste — (just) a rush of fizz and fla­vor”. I thought it was kinda “nutty” and hit on the “edges of the tongue”. After tak­ing another sip I affirmed this thought, “yeah, it’s pretty edgy.” Up to this point we were drink­ing out of rim-chipped cham­pagne glass and I was wish­ing that we had real Belgium glasses and Alisha thought that we “may need to let it ‘air’” before try­ing it. This was a good call. We ate some cab­bage, muen­ster cheese, and sauer­kraut and let the Abt 12 breathe for a few min­utes and it opened up a bit. As I fin­ished my glass I stated, “it’s a belly ale for sure, though not super heavy.“
Rating: 7

3. La Caracole Saxo by Le Caracole in Falmignoul, Belgium, 8%.
The Saxo was a deli­cious Beligum Blonde Ale that I described as “less intense and a lit­tle more rounded” than the sim­i­lar Le Fin Du Monde. “Still sharp with a light, airy tex­ture”, I thought as I imag­ined that it could be the per­fect beer if served cold on a hot sum­mer day — espe­cially at the remark­ably low price ($2.99 for a 12oz. bot­tle). Alisha described this one as “sim­ple and sub­tly sour”, even going as far as say­ing it was “the whiskey-sour of beers (Jordan: “with less pucker!”).“
Split Rating — Jordan: 7, Alisha: 7.5

4. Rogue Juniper Pale Ale by Rogue Ales in Newport, Oregon, 5.2%.
“Whoa!” Alisha said after her first sip. The Juniper Pale Ale tastes earthy, leafy, woody, and Alisha pumped out the moun­tain ref­er­ences: like the “high desert moun­tains of New Mexico” or “breath­ing in moun­tain air” or “or hik­ing in a for­est and breath­ing deeply”. The juniper berries were very present but not too over­whelm­ing and the over­all taste of the beer is well rounded, “full, and sur­rounds your senses” — “it’s like a smell in your mouth!” My knowl­edge of Rogues vocally came out a-shining and, as the bot­tle neared empty, I stated that “it tastes like a Rogue. For sure.“
Split Rating — Jordan: 8.25, Alisha: 8.5

5. Moylans Hopsickle Imperial India Pale Ale (“Triple Hoppy”) by Moylans Brewery in Novato, CA, 9.2%.
I enjoyed this brew the best of all. I ini­tially thought “broad tan and foamy but­ter and sour potato (Alisha’s hand­writ­ing was a bit blurry by this time)”. Julie tasted this one and was reminded of a “sud­den rough awak­en­ing in a car on a road­trip.” Caleb chipped in that it tasted like an “old, long-dead tree branch” and Vicki threw in a “cit­rusy, grape­fruit” ref­er­ence. Alisha thought it was “rounded and fleshy”.
Split Rating — Jordan: 8.5, Alisha: 9

There it is…and here is our bel­lies full of beer:

Pre-Post Color Contest 2007

Published on June 19, 2007 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments Tags: , .

Before The Hop can become a cool place to come and chill I need a com­fort­able envi­ron­ment that gets the vibe under con­trol. I’m talk­ing about color.

These are the shades I’m con­sid­er­ing, tell me what you think and, with your help, we can all win: