..embers..

I read recently a dissertation from Paul O'Brien, a student that finished the BA Sound Arts course last year. I got to say that apart for being a well organized and thoughtful thesis, it was particularly pleasant to read and, without wanting to sound too lame or sentimental..well..here we go..yes..TOUCHING. Reading this brought me to his website Hearing Beckett, where I found more information on his work. What really got to me was how all his work through the course of his last year at school results so homogeneous and..here we go again..'clean'. 

'Solution Of Continuity' was his Final Major Project for his degree.

 It is an installation that does not use any sound..only dust as he argues. It kind of relates with certain thoughts on my dissertation, in particular the recorded voice of someone dead. And the value that piece of tape or vinyl or data on a hard disk can gain with time -commercial value or spiritual or sentimental or..who knows.. 

I know it doesn't make sense to you reader now but I'll try to make it more clear as soon is clearer to me but yeah! sound installations with no sounds! need to do some research on that! I leave you with some words from Mr O'Brien himself. I'm sure it'll make more sense.

"Solution of continuity is a silent sculptural work inspired by Beckett’s stage play, ‘That Time’. ‘Solution of continuity’ is a medical term defined as, ‘A division of bones or of soft parts that are normally continuous’. Beckett harnesses the term in his stage directions for the play to describe the constant flow of words from three ‘moments of the same voice’, proceeding ‘without solution of continuity’. This idea is turned on its head in the piece wherein the two ‘normally continuous’ spools are literally separated, thus there is ‘not a sound’, ‘nothing only dust’."

BA3 Show 2010 - Paul O'Brien - Solution of Continuity from Sound Arts & Design @ LCC on Vimeo.

Publish Post

..for the record..about him..

U turns took him to the 18th Century. He'll stay there for a while 'cause he just wasn't made for this times. He will take breaks too by sleeping for a thousand years seeking alternatives to prescription drugs that taste and smell too much like non-smokers' deaths. He also promises to stop smashing whatever he finds on his path and start gigging again instead. So yeah! stop sucking Satan's cock and book me! But don't ask me how many people I'm gonna bring or I'll make you kill yourself. Teleporting's so much fun..

Bunker's Bonkers..

I’m doing some research on WWII London’s bunkers for a sound installation.. it was pretty handy for this purpose visiting an exhibition set in a bunker not far from Café Oto in Dalston. Could be cool having access to the building and play some war sounds in the space itself and then to re-record them. I’ll probably need some LOUD speakers to play back sounds of sirens and spitfires and V2 rockets, and small radios or beaten up devices to reproduce Radio London dispatches and some background 40’s music. Winston Churchill’s voice is a must..

I’m drifting away from the idea of having it as a 8-channels piece, and moving towards something more visual which should utilize lots of sub-bass and infrasounds.. it also have to be a claustrophobic small and dark space.. basically the public should feel like BEING in a bunker for real. Need to get in contact with the imperial war museum and other related entities to see if I can get some funds or support of some kind..oh yeah!! I definitely need to get one of those metal portable sirens! If you live in the London fields area and you hear an alert for an air-blitz don’t panic. That’s probably me..signing off.

If Tom Araya is our Elvis then Zu must be our Beatles..

Ok..as the next blog is taking too long to get out of this mish mash slumbering mammoth moaning through the membranes of my brain I’ll give ya a taste of something related to it..don’t get too over excited though..more is coming..zoon..

From Zu to Zoo..

An interview to Zu by Luca Zoo Franzoni

With Jacopo Battaglia (Drums) and Massimo Pupillo (Bass)   

Brescia, 18^th December 2009

Zoo: I remember seeing you live for the first time in 2002 as support band for Girls Against Boys. It was at Leoncavallo in Milan on the 2nd of November …

Jacopo: Shit! The day of the dead!

Massimo: We played at 22:31 pm. I remember. If you want I can tell you the names of all the people that were there…

Z: I tell you guys, you ruined my night. After watching you, GVSB weren’t as good as I thought they would be. And I do love that band! Anyway…Let’s go back even further in time. I know you started playing together by working on theatre productions.

M: At the really early beginnings!

J: Even before making our first record. From ’97 onwards.

M: It’s been two years in which we basically dismembered Gronge, a band from the Rome scene of the 80’s, and then we found each other playing together in this new formation. We developed this musical madness, and one by one the other members left and here we are, the furious crazy three. So yeah, there’s been that period from ’97 in which we made music for plays, and in the meantime we worked on the first record.

Z: That record being Bromio.

J: Exactly. It didn’t even have a name at the time. And we never thought to arrive were we are now. Our aim was doing a gig out of Rome.

Z: I remember receiving from Wallace Records a copy of Igneo (Zu’s album from 2002) on 180 grams vinyl. Heavy!

M: Yep. Heavy…

Z: Ok. Talking about present days, you signed with Mike Patton’s Ipecap Records. Patton himself also joined you on stage during the tour. How was touring with someone like him?

M: It was great. We’re really good friends now.

Z: Any plan of working together again?

M: Yes. We hope. Well yeah! Definitely! With him we found ourselves in situations that we saw as enormous before.

Z: Ok…Stupid question. A Spinal Tap kind of question… Why at heavy rock and metal gigs the majority of the crowd is male? I was talking about it with a friend while watching a Lightning Bolts gig…I know…Dumb question…

J: Well. We like the pussy. Let’s make that clear. (laughs)

Z: You played with Lightning Bolts, didn’t you?

J: Yes, many times.

Z: In London you did that gig at The Astoria (R.I.P.) where you were introduced by Danny De Vito…

M: No! The Danny De Vito thing was in Rome!  At The Astoria we played with Fantomas and Locust. But Denny De Vito no…he wasn’t there.

J: I think we did the last gig ever there. Then they crashed it down to build a Shopping Mall. (laughs)

Z: Five days ago I saw Polvo playing in London. While having a chat with them, it came out that one works in a Museum and another is a therapist. So…how are you dealing with this crippled music biz.

J: We live of this. We don’t have time to be exploited by someone. We exploit each other with great pleasure. It took some years to arrive where we are, but… from when you saw us live seven years ago, everything, thank god, went better and better. This is our life. The chances at the time were working as waiters in some shitty restaurant in Rome or be penniless musicians. We chose the second. Ant until now we’ve been doing quiet well.

M: At the same time you make lots of sacrifices in your private life.

J: Well, me especially. He’s married, and the other got a baby. The only loser is me, talking about private life. (laughs)

M: And our families claim us back home.

Z: Talking about music formats, I’m not a collector of records, but I love to play the few I got, and usually I let them play from beginning to end. There’s a thing that I like to call “Skipping Track Syndrome”, referring to the habit of users of iPod and MP3 players in general of downloading loads of albums and songs, and then just skip them without really listening to any. What’s your point of view on this, how would you feel if someone would start skipping an all album by Zu.

M: He’s a piece of shit and he got to die. We like the 78rpm.

Z: Yes, the heavy black piece of shellac.

M: 78rpm and it got to be listened on a gramophone. In Mono.

Z: Yeah! Back to mono!

M: Back to mono! (laughs)

J: But if you think about it, ok, maybe you’re a bit younger, but the generation of the mid 70’s, is the last one that had a contact with that something that was before Internet. After that it went from the mid 90’s through the Noughties, where the digital downloading became massive. I still have a relation with the object, with the record.

Z: True. So, thinking about album covers, do you see it as part of the record?

M: Definitely.

J: Yes. Certainly.

Z: While with the digital all you got is a really small icon of the artwork…if you’re lucky.

J: There’s a completely different relationship with the music. Anyway music should be live only.

Z: Talking about mix tapes, did you ever do one for your friends or girlfriends?

M: We should go back to cassettes. Thousands and thousands of chicks conquered with mix tapes! Tapes where you had Mina (famous 60’s Italian singer) followed by Indigesti (80’s Italian punk hardcore band). (laughs)

Z: Any cover you remember designing for one of those cassettes?

M: No, I have always been pretty shit at that…

J: Me too, but I used to make photocopies of pictures. You know, giving an intellectual feeling. You’re sixteen years old in the suburbs of Rome, and you make a mix tape with a copy of an Escher’s paint as cover.

Z: If you could chose a souvenir statuette of an important building or monument, which one would be and to who would you throw it at? (Reference to the Berlusconi Cathedral-in-the-face accident)

M: I want to throw a Nuraghe (megalithic edifice found in Sardinia), but a real one.

Z: To whom?

M: Too many people…

J: Way too many people…

M: But, if I’m not wrong, there are 2400 Nuraghi in Sardinia. They might be enough.

Z: Radio. I love the radio. Unfortunately it’s not easy to find a decent radio channel.

J: But nowadays you can find them only on the internet.

Z: Yes, but I love the idea of transmitting on airwaves

M: There’s Resonance.

Z: Yep. It’s great to have Resonance in London. But why’s so much rubbish on the radio!? I remember going around London with this old cassette walkman, and it had a radio on it. Unfortunately, most of the time the only thing decent was the classical music channel.

J: In Italy there isn’t any Radio phonic culture.

Z: Well, X-Factor is everywhere. No place is safe. Are you planning to go to X-Factor?

M: We’ve been invited this year! (laughs) We’re even in talks for “I’m a celebrity (get me out of there)”…

J: Yes, because Simona Ventura (Italian TV host) sells coke to our saxophone player. He got a really good deal. So now we’re all great friends.

M: While the Heroin we get it from Morgan (from the Italian X-Factor). Really good stuff. Actually if someone lives around Milan we can give him his number. Great quality stuff.

Z: Have you got a new tour in program?

M: No. We don’t tour. We stay home.

J: We spent the last ten years in the living room.

M: We watch TV…

The Ants are much more important than Us..

I went to a lecture by Sound Artist Max Eastley today and it was quiet inspiring.

I was especially stricken by his installations that in David Toop’s words are ‘sound sculptures that are as engagingly beautiful as they are technologically simple’.

The one in the picture consists of blocks of ice with stones placed within the layers. As the ice melt a miked metal surface captures the sound, which is then diffused through loudspeakers.

Answering to a question in regard of the meaning of the use of the stones, he replied –and here I’m paraphrasing- that is a view of the world, where the stones represent an unexpected event: we hear the sounds of drops hitting the metal surface and suddenly one of the stones falls producing a different and louder sound.

It made me think about my own sound installations, and it kind of putted me off on the use of pre-recorded loops. It excites me more the possibility of using a natural occurring event in the simplest and economic way possible so..yeah! Thanx a lot for today’s lecture Mr. Max Eastley! I thought your Arc mono string instrument was great too. Cross fingers for airport custom controls.

I also felt really touched by your digression on global warming and the fact that humanity would probably need five more planets to learn how to use them. And yes, the Ants are absolutely much more important then us people for Earth’s ecosystem. Signing off.

I promised myself to write a blog everyday, but extenuating circumstances got this to reach the web almost one month since the last word I typed..

I feel really bad about it, but the thing is that I’ve been sucked in a wormhole that puked me out in 18^th Century’s London. To summarize I’m working as an extra  (or “supporting artist” as some up-their-ass people insist on clarify) on the set of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean 4’: I’m in few words one of those blurry human figures that you see hanging on the background during crowd scene in movies.

It can be a fun job and it is pretty well paid for what you do –staying in your ‘first position’ till you hear ‘BACKGROUND ACTION!!!’ eating loads of food, reading lots of book and meeting loads of interesting people.

As I’m doing a Sound Arts course is also an interesting opportunities to see professional sound recordists at work, but in big productions like these it is hard to get a grip of what’s going on, and especially in this film case seems like the emphasis is more in sound post production.

Luckily enough the shooting was taking place mainly at Greenwich, next to the Trinity College of Music, and I had the opportunities to see amazing piano player rehearsing from one of the windows next to the set. I heard performances of Richter, Debussy, Satie and many others that I couldn’t pin down.

The best thing about this job is the network opportunity that gives you, as apart from some actors and performing arts students the rest of the extras wild bunch are persons coming from a musical background: I met three people from my same course, professional musicians, and elderly people of which some jammed with great players and composers such as Miles Davies and Keith Moon.

It is not always fun though: after the 3^rd day in the same ‘first position’ next to the same people dressed in the same way you feel a bit like Bill Murray in ‘Ground Hog Day’, and you wonder if there’s any way to get it right and get out of there.

Another thought I had, not being interesting in an acting career, is that I feel like we extras are sheep moved around the set by assistant directors that assume the role of dogs in this whacky metaphor. The personal assistant to the director is nothing less than our shepherd.

I almost had the job as Johnny Depp’s body double, and that could have gave me enough money to cover all my school fees and loads more. I still made enough to buy some material for a final project, like an installation or studio time.

So yeah! I think this is a great job if you’re a student and you want to make some money while having time to study.

Plus where could I have met someone so supernatural like Keith Richards if it wasn’t for this? Wild Horses...

Suicide VS SubBass

Back in school! Woohoo!! At the moment in the library writing this while listening ‘Strumming Music’ by minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine..

I’m in such in a good mood that I borrowed all the books available on the sociological subject of suicide. I couldn’t find anything that explores the subject of suicide in relation to popular music but I found some really interesting e-journals. I’ll have a look at this one in particular:

'I'd Sell You Suicide': Pop Music and Moral Panic in the Age of Marilyn Manson

                              -Robert Wright-

I think this is the subject that really pushes my buttons at the moment..

A plan B for the dissertation was writing on the subject of Sonic Warfare, but reading the book of the same title by Steve Goodman I had little invisible insects crawling all over me while spreading boredom and sending me straight to Orpheus’ holiday camp.

No. Really.. Some of the chapters were actually interesting but half way through it became repetitive, and I really couldn’t see myself spending the next five months researching infrasound and sub bass. I’ll have a look at the last year Sound Arts students’ dissertation – which should be available in the library by now – but I think I’ll rather writing about something that really interests me. 10.000 words is not such a big deal, but if you don’t feel the subject they could seem like a million. Relativity theory all the way I guess..

Video Ideas for my band The Shit..

The Shit!!! Here we go..

This is my neighbour’s car. COOL FIRST CLASS MACHINE HEY!!!

I want to ask him if I can put it on some kind of bumpers –I don’t know what I’m talking about at the moment but it’ll come to me-

I want some huge screen around it with the projections of black and white images of the sun bursting crazy or other freaky alien images (check my link to Semiconductor -'brilliant noise' and 'Black Rain' videos- to see what I'm talking about)as the background visible from the windshields etc..

Marion -drummer- should sit on the back but leaning towards the front seats.

Leo -bass- on the driver seat and yours truly next to him.

When complete, I would love to have someone translating the song’s lyrics in sign language on a little box at the left of the screen – a bit like that one that you see on late night TV programs..

Think Tarantino's Death Proof..

ps in case something bad happens to me like death or something my last wish is a drive on the back of this evil thing.

memories..WHAT???

I've been thinking about memory all morning..mainly because mine is really bad and I usually tend to distort things..

Example: a friend of mine keeps telling me that he owes me money 'cause he sold one of my guitar to buy smack. well..really nice for him to do this – and then tell me .But the problem is that for what I remember I sold the very same guitar myself to another friend, who needed it as a tour back up for a similar one he has - by the way I'm talking about a sunburst Ampeg by Burns from 1963.
The only way in which I could find out what really happened would be by cross-referencing the different versions of the story consulting all the people involved, but one fact remains: something in my brain didn’t manage to store this information properly..

Another thing that intrigues me about memories is how they can be affected by the senses: a smell or a picture, a sound or a song could trigger images of past experiences or forgotten events..
This shamble of recorded data floating in my cortex’s membranes reminds me of my Tapegrinder installation – you can check it out on my audiovisual section –
I really want to explore this more and link it with my dissertation and the final major project of my course.

Glad I wrote it down you know..just in case I forget it.

Gum Takes Tooth.Dethscalator.Bad Guys drop The Drop..

As my bones drag their weight in autopilot towards the entrance of the club something reminds me of the 9/11 attack at the twin towers: that something is the security guy at the entrance of the building – Man! Chill out!! It’s only a door leading to a pub, not the Fucking U.S. custom! - ..

Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply. 20..19..18..

As I walk down the stairs to the club a heavy rock guitar solo hits my brains and then my eyes focus on the weird presence emitting that signal. Think of him as the replacement of Spinal Tap’s guitarist if the deadly curse had been cast on the axe player instead that on the drummer.

Between us is the sweaty crowd and his double neck Gretsch sparkly guitar. That’s PJ, and together with the other mischievous figures they’re the Bad Guys. The singer – who I’ll find out later plays a Nazi in a new Steven Spielberg film – is winding the crowd from down the stage, while Mark is beating the hell out of skins and cymbals and conceiving drum filling that could wake up Jon Bonham’s alcohol smelling rotten body from its sleep to engage in a drum duel with this bad-ass guy. On the far right of the stage there’s Dave, whose guitar riffs lock perfectly with PJ’s  hard-rock tour de force. I’m pretty late so I manage to inhale only the last three songs. The smell of the smell of 70’s rock impregnates the walls, and the flashes of light beaming from a 1965 180 Lend Camera captures the soul of the action on Polaroid films. I only manage to get out of the building for a fag and some cheap beers from the offie next-door when sudden catastrophe strikes: the manager of the pub cancels the gig because of noise complaints from the neighbourhood. WHAT!!!? Something stinks. And this time is not me..

FACT: The Drop is a venue UNDERNEATH a pub.

FACT: There are lots of angry people asking for their money back as two bands still have two play – I actually don’t mind about the money but I make sure that they go to promoters and bands but NOT to anybody running the venue-

FACT: IF YOU ARE A PROMOTER OR YOU PLAY IN A BAND DON’T PLAY AT THE DROP IN STOKE NEWINGTON

So yeah! You’ll think that this is the end of it, but Tony –the man behind the 180 Lend Camera – proposes to move the gig to his warehouse up the road. The night is young and screams for more. The amps and the guitars and the drum kit sits impatiently at the front of the evil venue like junkies on cold-turkey waiting for a fix. Then the gear crawl slowly away from the pavement and disappear like magic in black cabs.. destination MAYHEM.

I’ll be honest. I hesitated. I was scared. But hey.. this story screams for more and I can’t let it die half way through.. It would be cold-blooded murder – also I made a MixTape for this special girl and both Dethscalator and Gum Takes Tooth are on it (sharing magnetic tape chemicals with Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights).

As I walk towards the warehouse more people join this procession from every direction, flooding like a blood stream going straight towards a black heart full of noise. I arrive at this huge black gate at the feet of Mount Doom – ok, it opens electronically.. No Trolls needed.

As the gate opens I know a ceremony’s about to begin. The bands arrived already and the gear is still cold sweating for more action and sitting in front of the gate. I grab one of the amps heads and take it to the building. I’m sure it is probably damn heavy but you can’t feel a thing when you understand the purpose of such weapon of mayhem consumption.

I receive a txt from a friend saying that she’s with Lydia Lunch down in Whitechapel and yes, would be great to meet her but all I want is a wall of noise to puke on my bones. The room’s pores taste of Daniel Johnston. There’s shitloads of the guy memorabilia all over the place. I suddenly remember that I’ve been here before, but that’s another story…

So yeah..as the crowd helps moving equipment and sorting out space for a stage I’m glad to know that Bad Guys will open with another set. YEAH! Then I freak out for a fraction of a second that seems a long time though..there’s a scary painting that looks like me. It stares at me while melting from the wall. Hey! I swear! I didn’t take any acid or any drug! Ah..well..whatever..

Anyway..the gig. I guess spending time talking about the bodies and the cans of lager flying around the place and on top of me can’t really give you a picture of what I suddenly find myself in. The wall of sound screaming from the amps blow me away. Then it blows itself up: one of the amps die and the gig stops.

Wandering around the place while looking for a place to wee I found a magic door that leads down straight to Lea Bridge Canal. Peaceful boats sleeping on the nasty water surface. Then a roar invades the space. I know what it is. I know that I’m doomed. This roar rapes the air..it’s mean..it’s beating slowly ..it grows..and I know it..It’s Dethscalator. Then it’s carnage happening in a surreal Daniel Johnston world. The crowd is trapped in the kinetic motion of the building walls and gravity decides to scrap its laws for a while and I think I never felt like this since my previous life. Millions of spiders climb out of Sound City amps and 4x12 cabinets while a primordial beat bounces my frail body against other bodies. I see friends passing over my head. Others underneath my feet. And yet this creates an ecstatic experience similar to the one that some religions call Heaven. Dan – the singer- is transported by a multitude of hand to a world far above and his weight don’t matter anymore. he’s like Stephen Hawking flying high in the sky experiencing absence of gravity. Then I loose it too and everything becomes black and nasty and..yes..it’s like Black Sabbath but two inches from your face. Dan tries to tell us something from the mic but everything is melted by delay effects - “DAN!!! YOU WHAT!!!??

It’s a short gig. Short but sweet and tasty and bloody. Matt –the guitar player- lost an amp tonight and that hurts..but yeah! The party is on fire and I want to see how Gum Takes Tooth pearls of wisdom on regard of Odontoiatric surgery will drill our cavities.

It starts with a mantra of a delay saying “Thank You” to the people who didn’t let the night drop dead at The Drop. Then Synths and Drums drilling my skull and everything is interrupted by a guy screaming “Hey!!! I found my glasses. Can you believe it man!!!!’ – he disappears in the moshpit and that’s the last thing I see of him. Between the “Thank You” and the specs boy is just a mass of sweat that like The Blob engulfs the space and spreads and melts on the red linoleum floor. All the above glides of orange revolving flashing lights that whisper something to my brain like “jump on the damn sweaty thing or leave this room as soon as you can!!!!” Synth master Yussy is floating high and Tom is in control of drumsticks and triggers even while holding a can of polish beer on his third hand. Space/time continuum fail to make sense and it’s murdered by electronic sounds triggered by the drums. Than “Thank You Thank You Thank You” and the song from their last 7” “Young Mustard” kicks in. Hell brakes loose and we dance and scream and brake bones like the chimp from 2001 A Space Odissey. The sonic blast ends. I leave the place and run for a bus trying to carry myself to the court of Lydia Lunch down in Whitechapel. My heart collapses at a frequency of 27Hz that makes it drop towards my stomach. Neon lights signs with missing letters resemble something of me that I can’t figure out just yet.

There's something menacing crawling out of my speakers every time I play Raw Power. As Search and Destroy kicks in, the pressure on air particles becomes unbearable.. As Nick Kent puts it - 'still the meaniest-eyed, coldest-blooded tour de force ever summoned up in a recording studio.'
The version I'm listening to is the legacy edition - which was remastered by Iggy Pop himself: at -4db it is the loudest heavy-rock record ever to be released. This is the second time Iggy tried his hands on the recording's tapes: the first time was in 1972, but he had to subside to record labels pressure and let David Bowie remix if he ever wanted his baby to be available in shops for public consumption. Not that the label was expecting to make any money out of it..but at least they wanted the last word on content listenability and packaging design. The Iggy Version can be described in his own words: 'Look!That's not in the red, why isn't that meter in the red? That should be over there in the red with the rest of those meters!'
Many critics hated the new release, citing digital distortion throughout the record. I'm not usually in favor of heavy mastering and I think all this discussions about loudness war are going nowhere: a track needs to breathe and a sound wave representation shouldn't look like a long homogeneous tube - unless that's what you're really looking for, or like Merzbow and other Noise Artists, who sometimes during mastering look for digital distortion on purpose.-
I got to say that I'm really enjoying this version in spite of all the above critics, but I'm looking for the Vinyl of the original mix for comparison. I also found out that there's a new legacy - doesn't legacy usually means what someone is remembered for? ..Forever? - 2010 edition of the David Bowie mix. I'll leave you with Iggy's point of view on this messy mixing epic: 'I don't think you can beat David's mix,it's very creative. But this is just a simple, straight band mix of a powerful band'.

If you want to know more about Raw Power, the best way is just blasting it off your speakers! ..whichever version of the record you've got!The LOUDest the BETTER. If you don't have it..
A someone stOOle it from you..
A something pretty big escaped to your aural senses

B you've never heard that something called ROCK landed on our little planet sometime ago.. bringing some good things and.. lots of bad things. well.... 

                      RAW POWER GOOD!!!

..so YEAH! HI!
My name's Zoo and this is my blog!

This should have been written two months ago but then summer descended violently on me..

You’ll notice that I sometimes tend to use two dots at the and of a sentence instead of one or three.. I KNOW it is wrong.. that’s WHY I’m doing it..

Another thing you’ll probably need to know is that this page has been set up mainly for academic reasons – need to keep a kind of diary of my research and thoughts during my last year as a Sound Art student -otherwise at this precise moment I would be scribbling in an incomprehensible calligraphy inside one of my personal diaries..

Anyway.. summer descended violently on me with the smell of punk-rock and the sound of a young girl’s voice with promises of love in her tones. These two accidents had me reflecting on how my life has been steering on all directions in the last two years from when I got back to school.

I learned new ways of listening, new ways of composing, and above all I developed a different understanding of the word ‘SOUND’ itself. It had also got me thinking of new ways of recording and spatialize my compositions. THANKS CONTACT MICS! BEYOND STEREO ALL THE WAY!!!

So what’s next..? Well, I’m pondering on my dissertation – working title “The Commercial Value of Suicide in Popular Music” – and reflecting on something that music journalist Nick Kent wrote on his biography.. something about finding your own voice. I really need to find the connection between screaming your lungs out while holding a classical guitar connected to six pedal distortion through two huge amps and recording a laundry room with huge MS mics and stereo contacts.. there’s something there but I’m not completely sure what it is yet.

Another question keeps coming back too from when I woke up this morning though.. why The Stooges’ Raw Power has been blasting off my speakers all day? But most of all.. why can’t I turn it off??