Between working, playing GBV songs for Bob Pollard himself, and playing way too much FFXI, this weekend I was able to churn out two new songs for my latest HCMJ project, known as 'POWERPLANT.' The album started as a massive concept album about a rotten corpse missing the lower part of his body, dragging himself one handful of radioactive dirt after another across a post-apocalyptic horrorscape. While I still hope the album is able to follow some sort of abstract narrative form, it has definitely started to deviate a little from the original intentions.
Most of the time I'll write the songs first, then watch as an album sort of 'finds' its concept. I'll listen to it all and think "what is this really about?" But POWERPLANT is the first time I went headfirst into making an album knowing what it was going to be about, what the 'story' was, and how some of the narrative would play out. But as I start recording more spur-of-the-moment inspirations and start laying down Julee Cruise-esque vocal tracks on some of the songs I've already recorded, I find that more and more it's becoming a vague expression of my own personal fears and insecurities.
And they aren't even played out in an exactly 'clear' fashion. No more of that "I will always love you" or "you are so beautiful" bullshit - now it's all about the twisted creatures crouching in the well lit hallways of my youth - and no matter how long I cowered in the corner, when I looked up it's right fucking next to me. Or the half-dead being, decaying next to me in my bed at night - back turned to me, facing the wall. It's all been just exploding these last few days, these new hyper-visual daydreams. The terror I hoped to capture before with POWERPLANT was almost superficial, more haunted house that actual gut ripping horror. Now I can see the album finally crystalizing into this depiction of the horror at the core of human insecurities - or my own personal insecurities at least.
This is probably coming off as extremely pretentious, but I swear my intentions are honorable. Maybe one day I'll actually finish the album and you'll have a chance to hear what I'm talking about. (lol)
Monday, June 30, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Escaping Velocity
So I played EVE Online for a few weeks. Jumping from system to system, getting bigger ships, blasting away NPC pirates, doing all of those great wonderful Escape Velocity things. I wasn't driven by the 'carrot on a stick' that drives me to play most MMORPGs - whether it's the Scholar AF gear in FFXI, or the full Season 3 Arena gear from WoW, most MMOs keep me hooked by the promise of mind blowing stats and unimaginable style.
But EVE was different. The long term plan I had formed involved me training a whole bunch of skills (training happens even when logged out - some skills taking days and days to complete), gearing up, then heading out to 'lowsec' or "Low Security" space to be a dirty rotten pirate. A long term goal like that, however, simply wasn't satisfying enough to keep me driven to play after things started to get repetitive.
At first, I was propelled to log in because the game was simply a blast to play. But after the initial "OMG this is Escape Velocity" shock wore off, I found myself grinding repetitive NPC missions with little overall payoff, and I never was really sure if I was truly "advancing" in the game. Maybe it was the lack of RPG levels, maybe it was the unobtainability of the more gigantic ships, or maybe the it's that an MMO with no cut-scene driven story line or hard level cap seems more like a pointless sandbox than anything else.
EVE just felt 'unfinished' somehow. The NPC content was lacking, and I never got around to ever doing anything that seemed worthwhile. Eventually, watching your ship jump between systems only to dock at one of 4 or 5 space station skins gets boring. Without that big fat beautiful carrot dangling in front of you, the urge to get out of the sandbox and work on something 'important' is overwhelming.
So I gave it a fair trial, but at the end of the day, EVE Online just wasn't for me. The drive for MMO grinding did, however, inspire a resurgence in FFXI playing. Phinn's Scholar level is now a comfortable 27, with Red Mage still hovering at 35. I was also able to convince our own Mike Kirkland to not only play again, but to make a whole new character all together. My other friend and faux-brother Matt also reactivated his content ID, which meant more Adventurer Recruitment Program items for me!
In other news, I went through a period of broken-tape-adaptor iPodlessness, which brought about another phase of DPR (Dayton's local public all-classical radio station) listening. Their website is totally revamped now, with their playlist finally fixed. This means that if I hear a song I feel like I can't live without, I just have to make note of the date and time I was listening, log onto their playlist, and there I can see exactly what was playing every second of the day.
This handy service helped me to identify a few songs that I've been a long time fan of, but just never knew exactly where they were from. One was a Chopin nocturne that I had originally discovered on the soundtrack to a Japanese SNES game. I thought it was just an amazing video game song, until I heard it once again as a demo song on Tech's Korg. When I heard it on DPR I was thrilled to finally discover what it was, and promptly downloaded it from the iTunes Store.
The iTunes store is wonderful for classical music, by the way, as you can simply enter the name of a song, and then preview the many different performances of it. That's the thing about classical music - just because it's a beautiful song doesn't mean the recording/performance of it isn't subpar. I've purchased a few classical CDs that have really disappointed me - whether it's that the piece is being played too fast, or if the recording sounds flat, there are so many things that can go wrong with a classical recording. So it's really a nice to be able to get that 30 second preview of the multiple performances of the more popular tunes.
That Chopin piece was "Nocturnes, Op. 9 \ No. 2 in E-flat" by the way. The other tune that I was amazed to hear was the "Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia" from the 1956 Aram Khachaturian ballet "Spartacus" (I don't like the faster speed of the performance I just linked to, but it's the only one I could find on youtube.) I was amazed to hear it, as it was one of my favorite songs as a kid - first hearing it in the Coen Brother's often-overlooked "The Hudsucker Proxy." All my life I always assumed that it was just an amazing film score - and I suppose that's not too much of a stretch as the ballet was from the 1950's, when sweepingly romantic film scores were the norm. It lends "The Hudsucker Proxy" a touch of authenticity, as its most haunting musical theme actually comes from the age it was trying to recreate.
But EVE was different. The long term plan I had formed involved me training a whole bunch of skills (training happens even when logged out - some skills taking days and days to complete), gearing up, then heading out to 'lowsec' or "Low Security" space to be a dirty rotten pirate. A long term goal like that, however, simply wasn't satisfying enough to keep me driven to play after things started to get repetitive.
At first, I was propelled to log in because the game was simply a blast to play. But after the initial "OMG this is Escape Velocity" shock wore off, I found myself grinding repetitive NPC missions with little overall payoff, and I never was really sure if I was truly "advancing" in the game. Maybe it was the lack of RPG levels, maybe it was the unobtainability of the more gigantic ships, or maybe the it's that an MMO with no cut-scene driven story line or hard level cap seems more like a pointless sandbox than anything else.
EVE just felt 'unfinished' somehow. The NPC content was lacking, and I never got around to ever doing anything that seemed worthwhile. Eventually, watching your ship jump between systems only to dock at one of 4 or 5 space station skins gets boring. Without that big fat beautiful carrot dangling in front of you, the urge to get out of the sandbox and work on something 'important' is overwhelming.
So I gave it a fair trial, but at the end of the day, EVE Online just wasn't for me. The drive for MMO grinding did, however, inspire a resurgence in FFXI playing. Phinn's Scholar level is now a comfortable 27, with Red Mage still hovering at 35. I was also able to convince our own Mike Kirkland to not only play again, but to make a whole new character all together. My other friend and faux-brother Matt also reactivated his content ID, which meant more Adventurer Recruitment Program items for me!
In other news, I went through a period of broken-tape-adaptor iPodlessness, which brought about another phase of DPR (Dayton's local public all-classical radio station) listening. Their website is totally revamped now, with their playlist finally fixed. This means that if I hear a song I feel like I can't live without, I just have to make note of the date and time I was listening, log onto their playlist, and there I can see exactly what was playing every second of the day.
This handy service helped me to identify a few songs that I've been a long time fan of, but just never knew exactly where they were from. One was a Chopin nocturne that I had originally discovered on the soundtrack to a Japanese SNES game. I thought it was just an amazing video game song, until I heard it once again as a demo song on Tech's Korg. When I heard it on DPR I was thrilled to finally discover what it was, and promptly downloaded it from the iTunes Store.
The iTunes store is wonderful for classical music, by the way, as you can simply enter the name of a song, and then preview the many different performances of it. That's the thing about classical music - just because it's a beautiful song doesn't mean the recording/performance of it isn't subpar. I've purchased a few classical CDs that have really disappointed me - whether it's that the piece is being played too fast, or if the recording sounds flat, there are so many things that can go wrong with a classical recording. So it's really a nice to be able to get that 30 second preview of the multiple performances of the more popular tunes.
That Chopin piece was "Nocturnes, Op. 9 \ No. 2 in E-flat" by the way. The other tune that I was amazed to hear was the "Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia" from the 1956 Aram Khachaturian ballet "Spartacus" (I don't like the faster speed of the performance I just linked to, but it's the only one I could find on youtube.) I was amazed to hear it, as it was one of my favorite songs as a kid - first hearing it in the Coen Brother's often-overlooked "The Hudsucker Proxy." All my life I always assumed that it was just an amazing film score - and I suppose that's not too much of a stretch as the ballet was from the 1950's, when sweepingly romantic film scores were the norm. It lends "The Hudsucker Proxy" a touch of authenticity, as its most haunting musical theme actually comes from the age it was trying to recreate.
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