Track List: npr 071220

Num.	Title	Artist	Release	Start Time	Duration
1	nonplussed intro	nonplussed		2020/7/12 19:53:39	06:31
2	Slomo	Slowdive	Slowdive	2020/7/12 20:00:06	06:44
3	Lick in Heaven	Jessy Lanza	www.electronicfresh.com	2020/7/12 20:06:39	04:29
4	Feel You	Julia Holter	Have You In My Wilderness	2020/7/12 20:11:01	04:09
5	Constantly hating (ft Birdman)	Young Thug	Barter 6	2020/7/12 20:15:03	04:27
6	Lean 4 Real (Feat. Skepta)	Playboi Carti	Die Lit	2020/7/12 20:19:23	02:57
7	I’m Only Sleeping	The Beatles	Revolver	2020/7/12 20:22:16	03:07
8	Luxury Vacuum	Total Control	Laughing At The System	2020/7/12 20:25:11	04:41
9	A Visit From Drum	Liars	Drum’s Not Dead	2020/7/12 20:29:44	04:10
10	Motown	Harvey Milk	Life… The Best Game In Town	2020/7/12 20:33:54	03:41
11	Too Many Birds	Bill Callahan	Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle	2020/7/12 20:37:33	05:27
12	Turquoise Hexagon Sun	Boards Of Canada	Music Has The Right To Children	2020/7/12 20:42:38	05:08
13	Marie	BLUE GAS	Shadows From Nowhere	2020/7/12 20:47:56	04:43
14	& It Was U (Elite Gymnastics Remix)	How To Dress Well	BIRP! February 2013	2020/7/12 20:52:32	03:52
15	Cars And Girls	Prefab Sprout	From Langley Park To Memphis	2020/7/12 20:56:20	04:23
16	Farewell Transmission	Songs: Ohia	The Magnolia Electric Co. (10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)	2020/7/12 21:00:40	07:22
17	The Apartment Song	Do Make Say Think	Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord Is Dead	2020/7/12 21:07:58	03:52
18	Millimillenary	Cocteau Twins	The Pink Opaque	2020/7/12 21:11:40	03:40
19	Parking Lot	Grouper	Grid of Points	2020/7/12 21:15:33	03:23
20	N.I.T.A.	Young Marble Giants	Colossal Youth (Deluxe Edition) (Disc 1: Colossal Youth)	2020/7/12 21:18:50	03:31
21	Arms Around You	Arthur Russell	Calling Out Of Context	2020/7/12 21:22:23	06:23
22	I Think There’s Something You Should Know	The 1975	Notes On A Conditional Form	2020/7/12 21:28:40	03:56
23	checking in with the old gang	default genders	main pop girl 2019	2020/7/12 21:32:31	03:36
24	Why, Buzzardman, Why	Alabaster DePlume	To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1	2020/7/12 21:36:04	03:52
25	Da Pacem Domine	Alea Saxophone Quartet	Arvo Pärt: Anima	2020/7/12 21:39:52	04:22
26	George Winston – 07 – Lullaby	George Winston	Summer	2020/7/12 21:44:06	03:25
27	Blue Sky And Yellow Sunflower	Susumu Yokota	Symbol	2020/7/12 21:47:22	03:57
28	The Present	Bedhead	Transaction de Novo	2020/7/12 21:51:25	07:00
29	Ever New	Beverly Glenn-Copeland	Keyboard Fantasies	2020/7/12 21:58:21	00:00

Track List: npr 070520

Num.	Title	Artist	Release	Start Time	Duration
1	nonplussed intro			2020/7/5 19:55:24	04:31
2	Watermark	Enya	Watermark	2020/7/5 19:59:51	02:26
3	turn on the summer	the rutabega	brother the lights don’t work	2020/7/5 20:02:13	12:14
4	King’s Dead	Jay Rock, Kendrick Lamar, Future, James Blake	Black Panther The Album Music From & Inspired By	2020/7/5 20:14:29	03:45
5	Wild Horses	Prefab Sprout	1990 – Jordan: The Comeback	2020/7/5 20:18:09	03:44
6	With Just One Glance You (feat. Scout Larue & Will Epstein)	Nicolas Jaar	NPR Music’s Favorite New Artists of 2011	2020/7/5 20:22:07	03:24
7	OMG	Autre Ne Veut	Autre Ne Veut	2020/7/5 20:25:30	02:23
8	Arrow Through Me	Wings	Pure McCartney	2020/7/5 20:27:43	03:38
9	Please Fall In Love With Me	John Martyn	Glorious Fool	2020/7/5 20:31:16	06:02
10	On A Neck, On A Spit	Grizzly Bear	Yellow House	2020/7/5 20:37:10	05:47
11	Midnight Women	Haunted Leather	In Her Golden Room ep	2020/7/5 20:42:50	05:15
12	Good Girl/Carrots	Panda Bear	Person Pitch	2020/7/5 20:47:55	08:18
13	Corporeal	Broadcast	Tender Buttons	2020/7/5 20:56:04	03:55
14	Somebody Else	The 1975	I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It	2020/7/5 20:59:56	05:48
15	Hounds	The Antlers	Burst Apart	2020/7/5 21:05:39	05:18
16	I’ll Not Contain You	The Microphones	The Glow Pt 2 Reissue	2020/7/5 21:10:59	02:51
17	Becalmed	Brian Eno	Another Green World	2020/7/5 21:13:41	03:54
18	Lovelier Girl	Beach House	Beach House	2020/7/5 21:17:28	03:03
19	Boo	Pinback	Blue Screen Life	2020/7/5 21:20:21	03:59
20	BRJ	Caroline	Dark Blue 7”	2020/7/5 21:24:00	04:06
21	Offshore	Early Day Miners	Let Us Garlands Bring	2020/7/5 21:27:59	08:10
22	Meanwhile	Shores	Coup De Grace	2020/7/5 21:36:06	05:20
23	I Am Not Willing	Moby Grape	’69 (Rem 2007)	2020/7/5 21:41:22	02:59
24	Mountain of Air	Ellen Arkbro	For Organ and Brass	2020/7/5 21:44:11	07:26
25	Separate Machines	John Roberts	Can Thought Exist Without The Body	2020/7/5 21:51:35	05:27
26	Almost All of the Time	People Skills	Former January Ending Through 52 Weeks	2020/7/5 21:57:20	00:00
27	Ooze Out And Away, Onehow	Harold Budd – Elizabeth Fraser – Robin Guthrie – Simon Raymonde	Moon And The Melodies	2020/7/5 22:00:29	00:00

Track List: npr 062120

Num.	Title	Artist	Release	Start Time	Duration
1	See More Glass	Total Control	Henge Beat LP	2020/6/21 19:51:04	04:53
2	nonplussed intro			2020/6/21 19:54:28	06:31
3	Jumbo’s	Protomartyr	No Passion All Technique	2020/6/21 20:05:19	04:28
4	Bonny (2007 Remastered Version)	Prefab Sprout	Steve McQueen (version définitive)	2020/6/21 20:09:37	03:46
5	Sketch for Summer	The Durutti Column	The Return of the Durutti Column	2020/6/21 20:13:11	01:01
6	Death	Viet Cong	Viet Cong	2020/6/21 20:16:49	11:16
7	Fetch the Bolt Cutters	Fiona Apple	Fetch the Bolt Cutters	2020/6/21 20:28:04	04:58
8	Blue Beach – Welcome to Your Beach	Steve Hiett	Down on the Road by the Beach	2020/6/21 20:33:03	04:16
9	Echo Lady	Wet Hair	In Vogue Spirit	2020/6/21 20:37:09	04:35
10	It Means I Love You	Jessy Lanza	Oh No	2020/6/21 20:41:43	03:45
11	Maybe	Kettenkarussel	2018	2020/6/21 20:45:41	06:11
12	Where is Home?	Traumprinz	Planet Giegling Tour EP	2020/6/21 20:50:56	05:53
13	In Your Mirror	Leafar Legov	Mirror	2020/6/21 20:55:28	06:12
14	dairyday4	Space Afrika	hybtwibt?	2020/6/21 21:01:31	01:44
15	From Gardens Where We Feel Secure	Virginia Astley	From Gardens Where We Feel Secure	2020/6/21 21:02:59	03:58
16	Oil of Angels	Cocteau Twins	Four-Calendar Cafe	2020/6/21 21:07:07	04:39
17	Yeah I Know	The 1975	Notes On A Conditional Form	2020/6/21 21:11:33	04:13
18	Phoebe	The Cat’s Miaow	The Long Goodbye: Bliss Out v.14	2020/6/21 21:15:38	02:35
19	Like A Child	Junior Boys	So This Is Goodbye (Special Edition) (CD1)	2020/6/21 21:18:01	06:07
20	Burning Part of Me	The Sound	Heads and Hearts	2020/6/21 21:24:00	03:27
21	Guy’s Eyes	Animal Collective	Merriweather Post Pavilion	2020/6/21 21:27:20	04:29
22	When You Feel the Mess	Starflyer 59	Gold (2001 Reissue)	2020/6/21 21:31:40	05:49
23	Vision of Serenity	Tom Kazas	Deliquescence	2020/6/21 21:37:25	03:17
24	15 Once – Joanna			2020/6/21 21:40:37	03:12
25	Platypus Corridor	Andrew Tuttle	Alexandra	2020/6/21 21:43:44	03:36
26	Love’s Easy Tears	Cocteau Twins	Lullabies to Violaine / Disc 2	2020/6/21 21:47:17	03:35
27	Untitled	Vanessa Amara	You’re Welcome Here	2020/6/21 21:50:44	03:34
28	Kensington Blues	Jack Rose	Kensington Blues	2020/6/21 21:54:15	00:00
29	I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times	The Beach Boys	Pet Sounds	2020/6/21 21:57:44	00:00

DEMAND JUSTICE FOR BREONNA TAYLOR

Track List: npr 061420

Num.	Title	Artist	Release	Start Time	Duration
1	Atoms Song	Teebs feat. Thomas Stankiewicz	Anicca	2020/6/14 19:48:12	04:58
2	nonplussed intro			2020/6/14 19:48:57	07:07
3	The Spangle Maker	Cocteau Twins	The Pink Opaque	2020/6/14 20:05:37	04:39
4	What’s It Gonna Be? (feat. Janet)	Busta Rhymes	Turn It Up! The Very Best Of [by Hillside]	2020/6/14 20:10:11	05:23
5	Flesh War	Total Control	Typical System	2020/6/14 20:15:32	04:41
6	Can You Play Drums?	Starflyer 59	Leave Here A Stranger	2020/6/14 20:20:10	02:56
7	Studie	Teebs feat. Panda Bear	Anicca	2020/6/14 20:23:03	03:37
8	Echo Boomed	upsammy	Zoom	2020/6/14 20:26:46	03:16
9	Solitary Flight	Theo Parrish	RA Poll Top 100 Tracks 2000-2009	2020/6/14 20:29:52	05:03
10	The Wires Are Down	The Blue Nile	Hats (Deluxe Version)	2020/6/14 20:34:52	05:20
11	A Walk Across The Rooftops	The Blue Nile	A Walk Across The Rooftops	2020/6/14 20:40:00	04:27
12	Sky’s The Limit (Feat. 112) [2014 Remastered Ver.)	Notorious B.I.G	Life After Death (Remastered Edition)	2020/6/14 20:44:23	04:11
13	Late	Medhane	Cold Water	2020/6/14 20:48:32	02:05
14	Drum Gets A Glimpse	Liars	Drum’s Not Dead	2020/6/14 20:50:23	04:03
15	Uncomfortably Numb (feat. Hayley Williams)	American Football	American Football (LP3)	2020/6/14 20:54:23	04:10
16	Dendron	The Hotelier	Home, Like Noplace Is There	2020/6/14 20:58:29	05:01
17	Botticelli	Lindsay Cooper	An Angel on the Bridge	2020/6/14 21:03:24	02:20
18	2 Bad (Metatron’s What If Madness Is Our Only Relief Mix)	Traumprinz	2 The Sky	2020/6/14 21:05:42	07:01
19	Mining for Heart	The Sound	Heads and Hearts	2020/6/14 21:12:40	02:45
20	Over Again	Russian Tsarlag	Gel Stations Past	2020/6/14 21:15:21	03:19
21	Fixation	The KVB	Fixation / White Walls	2020/6/14 21:18:37	03:15
22	Choke	Soft Kill	Choke	2020/6/14 21:21:45	05:37
23	Fever Dream	Death Bells	Death Bells	2020/6/14 21:27:16	04:29
24	Sun At 5 In 4161	Andrew Tuttle	Alexandra	2020/6/14 21:31:41	05:03
25	Another Thing	Homeshake	Helium	2020/6/14 21:36:41	02:51
26	Hiraeth	Lone	Levitate	2020/6/14 21:39:30	03:47
27	Laser Beam	Low	Things We Lost In the Fire	2020/6/14 21:43:21	02:55
28	Evangeline	Cocteau Twins	Four-Calendar Cafe	2020/6/14 21:46:09	04:32
29	Jackrabbits	Joanna Newsom	Have One On Me	2020/6/14 21:50:31	04:23
30	In Tangled Water	Tom James Scott	Mine Is The Heron	2020/6/14 21:54:42	03:10
31	Prospector’s Quartet	Jonny Greenwood	There Will Be Blood	2020/6/14 21:57:40	00:00
32	Pur	Cocteau Twins	Four-Calendar Cafe	2020/6/14 22:00:34	00:00

ALL BLACK

Track List: npr 053120

Num.	Title	Artist	Release	Start Time	Duration
1	Jane Doe from LA speaks truth and thanks angels amid 2020 US Racial Justice Protests			2020/5/31 20:01:23	06:22
2	Claire M Singer: Rionnag a Tuath	Various Artists	Touch Isolation	2020/5/31 20:02:07	06:23
3	Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck)	Killer Mike & El-P	Run The Jewels 2	2020/5/31 20:08:29	03:54
4	We The People….	A Tribe Called Quest	We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service	2020/5/31 20:12:23	02:52
5	Cuttooth	Radiohead	Amnesiac [Parlophone 97105 2 DLX]	2020/5/31 20:14:52	05:23
6	All Falls Down featuring Syleena Johnson	Kanye West	The College Dropout	2020/5/31 20:20:17	02:35
7	Love It If We Made It	The 1975	A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships	2020/5/31 20:22:37	04:13
8	Rip It Up	Orange Juice	Rip It Up	2020/5/31 20:26:45	03:49
9	Muted Shifting of Space	Big Brave	A Gaze Among Them	2020/5/31 20:30:34	08:35
10	Cranes in the Sky	Solange	A Seat at the Table ©2016 Columbia	2020/5/31 20:39:07	04:11
11	Licking An Orchid	Yves Tumor	Safe In The Hands of Love	2020/5/31 20:43:07	04:38
12	Lesson No. 1 for Electric Guitar	Glenn Branca	Lesson No. 1	2020/5/31 20:47:47	08:10
13	‘We are witnessing America as a failed social experiment’ – Dr Cornell West Full CNN Segment			2020/5/31 20:48:16	06:59
14	Suicide Demo for Kara Walker	Destroyer	Kaputt	2020/5/31 20:55:55	08:22
15	protests	protests		2020/5/31 21:02:29	05:24
16	lost	DJ Healer	lost lovesongs	2020/5/31 21:04:24	05:37
17	Soon	Low	Secret Name	2020/5/31 21:09:57	05:13
18	Over the Hillside	The Blue Nile	Hats	2020/5/31 21:15:07	05:04
19	I can’t escape myself	The Sound	Jeopardy	2020/5/31 21:20:03	03:46
20	History Lesson	Nicolas Jaar	Sirens (Deluxe Edition)	2020/5/31 21:23:46	03:44
21	One Most Memorable	Sonna	Smile and the World Smiles With You	2020/5/31 21:27:25	06:36
22	Saku	Susumu Yokota	Sakura	2020/5/31 21:33:34	03:54
23	After the Flood	Talk Talk	Laughing Stock	2020/5/31 21:37:16	09:09
24	just as the night was	Theodore Cole Schafe	just as the night was	2020/5/31 21:46:12	00:00
25	The Triumph Of Our Tired Eyes	A Silver Mt. Zion	Born Into Trouble As The Sparks Fly Upward	2020/5/31 21:54:05	00:00

Track List: npr 052420

Num.	Title	Artist	Release	Start Time	Duration
1	nonplussed intro			2020/5/24 19:55:42	04:46
2	Palo Alto (Remastered)	Radiohead	OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997 2017	2020/5/24 20:00:31	03:46
3	Collapsing At Your Doorstep	Air France	No Way Down	2020/5/24 20:04:01	04:12
4	01 Quiet Village – Victoria’s Secret	Quiet Village	Silent Movie	2020/5/24 20:08:01	03:23
5	Tonight (I Wish I Was Your Boy)	The 1975	Notes On A Conditional Form	2020/5/24 20:11:13	04:07
6	Origin	Studio	West Coast	2020/5/24 20:15:13	05:18
7	All Day Long	New Order	Brotherhood	2020/5/24 20:20:24	04:43
8	Baby Baby	Amy Grant	Greatest Hits 1986-2004 [Disc 1]	2020/5/24 20:25:04	03:45
9	Casino Café	Yonatan Gat	Director	2020/5/24 20:28:40	02:10
10	Pale Fire	Dead Leaf Echo	Pale Fire	2020/5/24 20:30:41	06:58
11	All I Need	Clams Casino	Instrumental Relics	2020/5/24 20:37:28	03:38
12	Unison	Bjork	Vespertine	2020/5/24 20:40:57	06:06
13	A Little Lost	Arthur Russell	Another Thought	2020/5/24 20:46:59	03:18
14	All I Wanna Do	The Beach Boys	Sunflower	2020/5/24 20:50:12	02:33
15	Worry Wort	Radiohead	Amnesiac [Parlophone 97105 2 DLX]	2020/5/24 20:52:37	04:38
16	We Own the Sky	M83	Saturdays = Youth	2020/5/24 20:57:13	05:03
17	Keith	Wilson Tanner	69	2020/5/24 21:02:07	05:11
18	Fall From A Height	The Honeydrips	Here Comes The Future	2020/5/24 21:07:10	02:35
19	Candy Girl	Trailer Trash Tracys	Ester	2020/5/24 21:09:42	04:04
20	Jim Cain	Bill Callahan	Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle	2020/5/24 21:13:38	04:39
21	House of Woodcock	Jonny Greenwood	Phantom Thread	2020/5/24 21:18:09	03:53
22	Don’t Have To Be So Sad	Yo La Tengo	Summer Sun	2020/5/24 21:21:57	05:50
23	Bay of Pigs (Detail)	Destroyer	Kaputt	2020/5/24 21:27:43	11:17
24	Into the Ether	Northern Picture Library	Alaska	2020/5/24 21:38:53	04:02
25	Balmy Night	Department of Eagles	In Ear Park	2020/5/24 21:42:51	02:53
26	The Horse Has Run	Aquarelle	Leave Corners	2020/5/24 21:45:14	05:57
27	A Kite of Night	Shugo Tokumaru	Night Piece	2020/5/24 21:51:07	02:21
28	Bagsy Not In Net	The 1975	Notes On A Conditional Form	2020/5/24 21:53:22	00:00
29	Surf’s Up	The Beach Boys	Surf’s Up	2020/5/24 21:55:48	00:00

Track List: npr 051720

Num.	Title	Artist	Release	Start Time	Duration
1	nonplussed intro			2020/5/17 19:54:26	06:31
2	Stereo Music for Yamaha Disklavier Prototype, Electric Guitar and C	Keith Fullerton Whitman	Multiples	2020/5/17 20:00:55	05:51
3	connel calls marianne processed			2020/5/17 20:03:51	01:59
4	Please Set Me Free	Sean Nicholas Savage	Bermuda Waterfall	2020/5/17 20:06:27	03:47
5	Never Heated	Suzanne Kraft	Talk From Home	2020/5/17 20:10:11	05:51
6	Broke	Modest Mouse	Building Nothing Out of Something	2020/5/17 20:15:44	03:19
7	Lotuseter	Haron	Wandelaar	2020/5/17 20:19:01	04:42
8	つづき (The Next Verse)	Hallelujahs	Niku Wo Kuraite Chikai Wo Tateyo (肉を喰らひて誓ひをたてよ)	2020/5/17 20:23:28	04:54
9	Heavy Metal	Cindy Lee	What’s Tonight To Eternity	2020/5/17 20:28:15	03:57
10	Chinatown	Do Make Say Think	& Yet & Yet	2020/5/17 20:31:59	05:10
11	protection spell	DJ Healer	planet lonely	2020/5/17 20:36:49	08:21
12	So Sad	Fields of Industry	Two Dogs, A Television	2020/5/17 20:45:04	03:30
13	ナイトクルージング	FISHMANS	‘98.12.28男達の別れ [Disc 1]	2020/5/17 20:48:31	06:24
14	Futura Free	Frank Ocean	Blonde	2020/5/17 20:54:50	04:47
15	New Hell	Greet Death	New Hell	2020/5/17 20:59:36	09:47
16	Sunflower	Low	Things We Lost In the Fire	2020/5/17 21:09:15	04:36
17	Raver	Burial	Untrue	2020/5/17 21:13:37	04:04
18	Cherry-Coloured Funk	Cocteau Twins	Otherness	2020/5/17 21:16:52	05:40
19	pillow	Fiona Dickinson	lp 2 unmastered	2020/5/17 21:21:54	05:15
20	Towers	Grouper	The Man Who Died in His Boat	2020/5/17 21:27:03	05:18
21	Damage	Yo La Tengo	I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One	2020/5/17 21:32:03	04:29
22	Floating	Julee Cruise	Floating Into The Night	2020/5/17 21:36:15	04:51
23	Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten	Arvo Pärt	Tabula Rasa	2020/5/17 21:40:40	04:53
24	Brass Logic	Aquarelle	Leave Corners	2020/5/17 21:45:26	06:55
25	Cloudbank	Julianna Barwick	Florine	2020/5/17 21:51:57	04:10
26	Limerence	Yves Tumor	[CO] Mono No Aware	2020/5/17 21:55:58	00:00
27	Built, Then Burnt (Hurrah! Hurrah!)	A Silver Mt. Zion	Born Into Trouble As The Sparks Fly Upward	2020/5/17 22:00:15	00:00

Track List: npr 050320

Num.	Title	Artist	Release	Time	Start Time
1	East to West	Yonatan Gat	Director	05:09	2020/5/3 19:23:41
2	Gathering Dust	Modern English	Facing the Other Way (Volume One: 1980-1989)	04:23	2020/5/3 20:05:36
3	Desire	Ought	Room Inside the World	05:20	2020/5/3 20:09:38
4	Corridor of Dream	Cleaners From Venus	Midnight Cleaners	05:11	2020/5/3 20:14:31
5	Love My Way	The Psychedelic Furs	Forever Now [Bonus Tracks]	03:35	2020/5/3 20:19:41
6	Girls	Takagi Masakatsu	Coieda	04:37	2020/5/3 20:23:04
7	All the Time	Starflyer 59	The Fashion Focus	03:17	2020/5/3 20:27:32
8	Glow (V079)	Foxes In Fiction	Ontario Gothic	05:18	2020/5/3 20:30:32
9	Backyards	Broken Social Scene	Bee Hives	08:15	2020/5/3 20:35:38
10	Golden Hours	Brian Eno	Another Green World	04:01	2020/5/3 20:40:41
11	Solar System	The Microphones	Mount Eerie	03:39	2020/5/3 20:44:24
12	Universes	Federico Albanese	The Twelve (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)	02:54	2020/5/3 20:47:36
13	PPP	Beach House	Depression Cherry	06:09	2020/5/3 20:50:20
14	I Will Surround You	Stars of the Lid	Avec Laudenum	10:26	2020/5/3 20:55:55
15	Angelo Badalamenti explains how he wrote Laura Palmer’s Theme			04:28	2020/5/3 20:57:19
16	The Moment	Tor Lundvall	A Dark Place	04:47	2020/5/3 21:00:37
17	To Hold You, Drum	Liars	Drum’s Not Dead	04:05	2020/5/3 21:04:50
18	Holding Pattern	Big Brave	A Gaze Among Them	09:42	2020/5/3 21:08:36
19	Noon	Gareth Dickson	Quite A Way Away	04:39	2020/5/3 21:17:31
20	Tempest	Low	Double Negative	04:50	2020/5/3 21:22:01
21	Love	Mica Levi	Under the Skin	05:11	2020/5/3 21:26:46
22	Never Cursed	Jonny Greenwood	Phantom Thread	03:46	2020/5/3 21:31:46
23	[untitled]	Nuno Canavarro	Plux Quba	02:44	2020/5/3 21:35:49
24	Ekkehard Ehlers Plays John Cassavetes (Pt. 2)	Ekkehard Ehlers	Plays	09:58	2020/5/3 21:37:47
25	Stalled Boson	Olan Mill	Paths	08:13	2020/5/3 21:40:05
26	Memory	Charalambides	Bored Fortress	04:00	2020/5/3 21:44:49
27	The Horse Has Run	Aquarelle	Leave Corners	05:58	2020/5/3 21:48:26
28	Ondanata	500mg	Apocatastisis	05:11	2020/5/3 21:54:32

Track List: npr 042620

Num.	Title	Artist	Time	Release	Start Time	Duration
1	A Little Longing Goes Away	The Books	03:32	Lost and Safe	2020/4/26 20:00:28	03:31
2	The Helicopter Spies	Swell Maps	04:19	Swell Maps in ”Jane from Occupied Europe”	2020/4/26 20:03:57	04:18
3	The Hearttaker	Starflyer 59	04:07	Americana	2020/4/26 20:07:57	04:00
4	Otis	The Durutti Column	04:18	Vini Reilly	2020/4/26 20:11:49	03:46
5	Nowhere Near	Yo La Tengo	06:05	Painful	2020/4/26 20:15:30	05:52
6	Drain You	Nirvana	03:44	Nevermind	2020/4/26 20:21:18	03:44
7	Song to the Siren	This Mortal Coil	03:32	It’ll End In Tears	2020/4/26 20:24:54	03:31
8	I Talk To The Wind (2019 Stereo Mix)	King Crimson	06:03	In The Court Of The Crimson King (50Th Anniversary) CD1	2020/4/26 20:28:19	05:52
9	The Downtown Lights	The Blue Nile	06:32	Hats	2020/4/26 20:34:08	06:31
10	How To Draw / Petrichor	The 1975	05:50	A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships	2020/4/26 20:40:16	05:25
11	We Sell Soul	Spacemen 3	04:57	Forged Prescriptions	2020/4/26 20:45:32	04:49
12	cast a spell on you	DJ Healer	04:56	lost lovesongs	2020/4/26 20:50:14	04:55
13	It’s Getting Late in the Evening	Talk Talk	05:46	Besides	2020/4/26 20:55:02	05:40
14	Falling Into Your Eyes	Thomas Fehlmann	04:09	Gute Luft	2020/4/26 21:00:27	04:05
15	The Flat	Jóhann Jóhannsson	03:28	And in the endless pause there came the sound of bees	2020/4/26 21:04:26	03:27
16	How Do I Know	Akron/Family	02:31	Akron/Family	2020/4/26 21:07:45	02:25
17	Reflector	Bing & Ruth	07:21	Tomorrow Was the Golden Age	2020/4/26 21:10:06	04:03
18	Half-Gifts	Cocteau Twins	04:16	Twinlights	2020/4/26 21:14:03	04:16
19	No Relief	Fields of Industry	05:18	Fields of Industry	2020/4/26 21:18:11	05:18
20	Headache	Grouper	05:05	Paradise Valley	2020/4/26 21:23:52	04:52
21	The Manmaipo	Ben Bertrand	04:37	Manes	2020/4/26 21:28:29	03:54
22	Morpheus’ Arms	Jerkcurb	03:16	Air Con Eden	2020/4/26 21:31:58	03:15
23	Transient Life In Twilight	James Blackshaw	11:38	O True Believers	2020/4/26 21:35:01	06:36
24	You and Your Sister	This Mortal Coil	03:15	Blood	2020/4/26 21:41:34	03:14
25	Farewell	Polmo Polpo	05:05	Like Hearts Swelling	2020/4/26 21:44:43	05:05
26	Requiem String Melody	Stars of the Lid	02:47	Carte-De-Visite	2020/4/26 21:49:58	00:00
27	Exile	John T. Gast	07:43	Exile	2020/4/26 21:52:29	00:00

Track List: npr 041920

Num.	Title	Artist	Time	Release	Start Time	Duration
1	Broken Harbors, Part 2	Stars of the Lid	06:48	The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid	2020/4/19 20:00:20	04:17
2	intro		02:28		2020/4/19 20:01:20	02:32
3	Drumset	Fiona Apple	02:41	Fetch the Bolt Cutters	2020/4/19 20:04:32	02:40
4	Somebodies Baby	Tapes	02:26	Workshop 21	2020/4/19 20:07:09	02:25
5	Randomly	Lucki	02:09	Days B4 III	2020/4/19 20:09:28	01:59
6	Brittle Head Girl	Loop	04:31	The World In Your Eyes (Reissue)	2020/4/19 20:11:13	04:29
7	Oh Baby	Micachu and the Shapes	03:28	Good Sad Happy Bad	2020/4/19 20:15:34	03:27
8	Feel So Sad [Glides and Chimes]	Spiritualized	06:34	The Complete Works Volume One	2020/4/19 20:18:48	06:23
9	To Say That is Easy	Yves Jarvis	04:15	The Same But By Different Means	2020/4/19 20:25:14	03:49
10	Reitschule	Do Make Say Think	09:18	& Yet & Yet	2020/4/19 20:28:42	09:17
11	Harf Green	Andras	05:18	Joyful	2020/4/19 20:37:39	05:12
12	Tell Me If You Still Care	SOS Band	07:13	Tell Me If You Still Care	2020/4/19 20:41:16	06:57
13	Oh How I Miss You	Broadcast	01:18	Haha Sound	2020/4/19 20:49:20	01:17
14	I Lost Something in the Hills	Sibylle Baier	03:29	Colour Green	2020/4/19 20:50:35	03:28
15	Shame	Joshua Barton & The Brothers & Sisters	03:40	3-Way Singles Club, Volume One	2020/4/19 20:53:59	03:39
16	Bebey	Theophilus London	03:51	Bebey	2020/4/19 20:57:43	03:51
17	Cucurrucú Paloma	Caetano Veloso	04:02	The Best of Caetano Veloso	2020/4/19 21:01:32	03:59
18	Homesick 1972 Gibson from Los Angeles	Vashti Bunyan	01:02	Visionaire 53 Sound (Sides 1-5)	2020/4/19 21:05:27	01:01
19	The Slip	Leafar Legov	07:54	Mirror v2	2020/4/19 21:06:23	06:53
20	Piano Theme	Khotin	05:30	Rhythms Of The Pacific Volume 4.	2020/4/19 21:11:34	03:26
21	Soon-To-Be Innocent Fun / Let’s See	Arthur Russell	09:36	World of Echo	2020/4/19 21:14:56	03:56
22	Morella	Sir Richard Bishop	04:49	Salvador Kali	2020/4/19 21:18:49	04:51
23	50 Flower	nthng	05:09	Hypnotherapy	2020/4/19 21:24:08	05:07
24	Heart of Chambers	Beach House	04:26	Devotion	2020/4/19 21:29:08	04:25
25	Дом (с чердаком)	Dima Pantyushin and Sasha Lipsky	04:39		2020/4/19 21:33:33	04:39
26	Alone	Leafar Legov	07:03	2019	2020/4/19 21:37:28	03:59
27	Nocturne	Ann Margaret Hogan	04:14	Honeysuckle Burials	2020/4/19 21:41:24	04:13
28	Golden Hair	Slowdive	04:04	Just for a Day	2020/4/19 21:45:33	04:04
29	Shine A Light	Spiritualized	07:18	Lazer Guided Melodies	2020/4/19 21:49:20	07:17
30	Pillow	Adem	05:05	Homesongs	2020/4/19 21:56:30	00:00
31	botched outro				2020/4/19 22:01:46	00:00

best of 2019 (lol)

so i started making this list in the fall i’m p sure and have been terrible about finishing it. i knew i wanted to share my favs from 2019, but i didn’t know the best way: a spotify playlist? a numbered list? include write-ups of some records on the list? all the records? none of em?

so i decided to just fuckin go for it and include a little blurb for each entry on the list. the order is approximate and mostly meaningless. all these albums are great and i don’t have the energy at age 31 to nitpick about how they all compare. they’re all great and well worth your time.

john roberts – can thought exist without the body?

bandcamp /// spotify

this album came completely out of nowhere. i sorta kinda barely remember john roberts releasing a techno record in 2010 that got some buzz, but i couldn’t tell ya what it was called or what it sounded like. i heard about this album by reading a very middle of the road review from resident advisor that made it sound like something i would be into. sure enough, i loved it. and still love it. it’s an ambient record with movement, built from a beautiful palette of piano, strings, synths and trumpet. just incredibly sweet, pleasant, breezy ambient that i kept returning to over and over again.

american football – lp 3

bandcamp /// spotify

this album’s place on this list is confounding to me. i’ve always liked american football, ever since i was like 14 or some shit. but i never loved american football (sorry dan!) then i listened to this record and was totally smitten. it sounds like american football, but it more sounds like current-era slowdive or something. very pretty, sad and surprisingly catchy: “uncomfortably numb,” which features hayley williams from paramore, is a perfect pop song. best song of 2019 imo.   

default genders – main pop girl 2019

bandcamp

default genders is the solo project of jaime brooks (ex-elite gymnastics, ex-partner of grimes lol). while elite gymnastics received some blog hype for their breakbeat-heavy electronic pop in the first part of the decade, i’m willing to bet they slipped under most folks’ radars. anyway, jaime dropped a fantastic record in 2014 called magical pessimism 2014 that i got super obsessed with. for a long time, it appeared jaime had basically stopped making music: a handful of demos cropped up on her soundcloud stream over the course of like 3-4 years, then silence. then out of nowhere she announced this thing and released it like a week later. it features a lot of the hallmarks of jaime’s music to date: racing breakbeats, pitched vocals, brilliant samples, and lyrical themes of queerness, poverty, addiction/drug use, and relationships. however, this album is a big step forward for jaime in terms of songwriting ability. characters from her past records return on here, and new ones are introduced; the heartbreaking millennial romance of “checking in with the old gang” feels especially alive and relatable. jaime’s work is bright, bold, beautiful and moving, and it pulls from such a wide range of influences that most folks are bound to find something to love in all these songs.

big brave – a gaze among them

bandcamp /// spotify

speaking of big steps forward, this latest record from canadian droners big brave sees the band simultaneously tighten up AND expand their sound. how does that happen? is that possible? why am i here? who are you? recorded at machines with magnets, the same studio as one of my very favs from last year (you won’t get what you want by daughters), the record sounds incredibly raw and in your face. the drums are pushed very high in the mix and the guitars are earth-leveling. i legitimately think this record fucked up my car stereo from playing it too loud with the windows down this summer. it’s just kinda impossible to hear a song like “holding pattern” and not just keep turning it up louder and louder. robin wattie deserves to be recognized as one of the great women in rock right now. seeing her small figure on stage, just belting out these incredibly powerful songs about femininity and humanity, is one of the most striking and moving things. fortunately, that power and strength translate brilliantly from the stage to tape.

barker – utility

bandcamp /// spotify

i’m pretty sure every review of this album just says the same thing: gorgeous techno with the drums taken out. it’s a very accurate descriptor of this record but is also a very reductive reading imo. on utility, barker has created an entire universe that’s as strange and brightly colored as the hallucinatory cover art. i’ll admit, it took me kinda a long time to get into this record fully, but i’m glad i kept coming back to it. the brilliance of barker’s compositions doesn’t reveal itself quickly. however, the closing track “die-hards of the darwinian order” displays that brilliance prominently, resulting in a clanging, string-hewn, slowburning banger that makes nine minutes feel like four. plus it’s got drums!  

greet death – new hell

bandcamp /// spotify

so cool story: there was this heavy shoegaze band called pines that stepdad played with at hell’s half mile festival in bay city in 2014. i was super into them and tried to get coffin problem to play a show with them, but it never happened. flash forward to a couple years ago and pines, whom hail from flint, changed their name to greet death and kinda took off. jump to this year and they appear to have taken off .2 further. jk but this record is really good. the two best songs are the longest: “do you feel nothing?” and “new hell.” both found me right when i really needed them and i ended up playing the rest of the record a whole bunch too. i still wish coffin problem would play a fucking show with them. 

nivhek – after its own death/walking in a spiral towards the house

bandcamp /// spotify

this one was a pleasant surprise. nivhek is a new project from liz harris a.k.a. grouper aka my favorite ever. under this alias, liz takes the omnipresent muddy ambience found in her work as grouper and makes it the focal point. the result is a dank work of hypnotic beauty. liz’s voice is the first thing we hear, but after it drops out, it doesn’t come back for a good 20 minutes. the way the layers of her dense sound fold into one another is what makes those 20 minutes so striking.   

andy stott – it should be us

spotify

andy is a fucking mad man. dude just casually drops this nearly 50-minute ep (?) out of the blue while simultaneously teasing a full length due sometime this year. and then there’s the music: shit will twist your melon, man! he takes club music, picks it apart, drags all the pieces through the mud, then puts it back together all wrong. but it works! and can still be incredibly fun! the song “promises” sinks its hooks into you with its drum beat that just can’t quite fit into time…until it finally does and the track kicks into gear properly. the feeling of resolution and propulsion in that moment is hugely gratifying.

angel olsen – all mirrors

bandcamp /// spotify

i honestly don’t think there’s anything i can say about this record that hasn’t been said by a lot of other people. i will say though that i STILL don’t feel like i’ve truly sunk my teeth into this record, but the show i saw of her’s in royal oak in november completely sealed the deal for me. i’m looking forward to returning to this one when i’m ready!

jefre cantu-ledesma – tracing back the radiance

bandcamp /// spotify

this past summer, i drove out to grand haven on a whim. i was feelin a lil bummed and lonesome and a little bit sorry for myself. that classic summertime sadness. i laid on my back next to the little channel that all the boats go in and out of and watched couples and families as they passed by. i played this record while out there that day and it kinda pinned that feeling to my chest for good. this record finds jefre lifting off the heavy layer of grime and distortion that contributed to the charm of past records. in its place is lush, lilting, more traditional instrumentation. on the 21-minute “palace of time,” fragments of piano seem to reflect as if in a hall of mirrors, as a skittering brushed snare drum occasionally passes through the mix like tumbleweed. this record is definitely a highlight in jefre’s remarkably consistent discography. 

a winged victory for the sullen – the undivided five

bandcamp /// spotify

in the fall of 2013, i heard a winged victory for the sullen’s debut self-titled album for the first time. i was just about to embark on a six week long tour when i first heard it and i was immediately taken with its grace, beauty and melancholy. i started listening to it obsessively while on tour because it offered me this beautiful sense of solace. for the entire 45 minute runtime, i was transported somewhere much more tranquil than a shitty, smelly van in the middle of nowhere. the undivided five is the first album of original, non-commissioned work since their debut and it feels like a very natural progression from that record. their sound has gotten bigger, more complex and slightly less predictable, but still possesses the power to transport you somewhere tranquil and beguiling. 

leafar legov – never ending beginnings

side a /// side b

i decided to add this one at the very last minute because i found that i kept coming back to it. never ending beginnings is a cassette release from the great electronic musician, leafar legov. while legov’s work has always existed somewhere between danceable and drifting, never ending beginnings finds legov venturing a little closer to the drifting side of things. clouds of weightless synth chords float by slowly, gradually shifting shape and flowing into one another. it’s 10-minutes into side a when we finally hear a beat for the first time, though it’s function here is less propulsive and driving than it is a glue that helps hold some of these tracks together. never ending beginnings is the type of record you put on and get lost in for its entire length, as the line between the ending and beginning of these compositions is consistently obscured. this one helped me not lose my shit while grocery shopping stoned.

lol beslutning – destina & destine 

spotify

i just heard this record for the first time last night and was so taken with it that i feel like i have to include it. information about lol beslutning is frustratingly sparse. it seems they hail from copenhagen, denmark, and share members with/is born from the ashes of the danish punk band, synd og skams. destina and destine is described by their label as “a mythical teenage opera,” which seems to be accurate, though i don’t understand danish so i don’t know what these songs are about. if this is indeed an opera, it’s not the kind you can expect to see played out in concert halls: lol beslutning’s approach is far more diy and homemade than anything you’re likely to encounter in any space like that. this is fragile, beautiful, experimental music, driven by the power of harmony and vulnerability. an incredibly hard to describe record that i’m excited to continue to explore. listen to the very catchy, gorgeous piece “choices” to get a good idea of what you’re in for. 

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i suppose that’s all for now. hopefully more later now that i’ve finally got this blog in a consistently stable state.

wow.

it has been so long since i last posted. a lot has changed, a lot has stayed the same. in a lot of ways, i feel like i have just closed a chapter of my life and am just beginning a new one.

last week monday, i completed my finals for school. i ended up with an A in my bio lecture, B+ in bio lab, A in my anatomy I lab and a C in my anatomy I lecture. so i ended up with an A overall in bio and a B- in anatomy. not bad; i’ll take it. i’m not terribly stoked on my anatomy I lecture grade being so low. i have the same prof next semester for anatomy II and will have to work harder at finding an effective way to study for the course. until then, i’m glad as hell to be on break!

one of the more exciting things that has happened recently is that i put together a diy monome norns a couple months ago, which has had a profound impact on my creative process and has really expanded what i’m capable of doing with my current music set up. the norns is a really hard to describe digital musical instrument. at it’s core, it is a sound computer that is capable of generating sound and processing incoming audio. at any point in time, norns can be a looper, a sequencer, a sampler, a multi-fx processor, a digital four-track cassette recorder, and much more. it’s a machine that has confused and fascinated me since i first discovered it several years ago, but the $800 price tag was enough to keep me away.

enter one steven noreyko. steven is a musician, photographer, programmer, and an electronics tinkerer. in his spare time, steven created the fates dac board, which uses a raspberry pi as it’s core. the fates is essentially a monome norns that you can build yourself at home, which is exactly what i did! below are some pictures of the build process.

honestly powering this thing up for the first time and seeing the boot-up animation and hearing the startup sound was one of the most exciting and affirming moments. i got a huge grin on my face and immediately started menu diving, checking everything out. i lost a few hours fumbling through different scripts and trying to wrap my head around everything. frankly, i bounced off the thing pretty hard and realized i had no clue what the fuck i was doing.

i decided to approach it one script at a time. a script is a program that has a specific set of functions; think about it like an app, if that’s helpful. each script can do certain things, but you can only use one script at a time. their functions vary: loopers, delays, reverbs, drone synth, sequencers (including kinetic and euclidean!), poly synths, mono synths, melody generators…the list goes on. the raspberry pi 4 proves to be a capable audio processing workhorse in this particular application, and bugs are easy to squash.

deets for the freakz: norns can be thought of as a software ecosystem with a number of complete parts that function together. all audio is generated/processed by supercollider. supercollider is a music-focused coding language that can be used to do damn near anything related to music creation or audio processing. the supercollider scripts are controlled by lua scripts, which handles all the interfacing (encoders, buttons, display). audio routing is handled by crone, an engine created by monome. lua interpretation is handled by matron, again developed by monome. below is a screenshot of maiden, which is the browser based ui client.

getting the norns and implementing it into my setup has been pretty transformative for me from a creative standpoint. it’s been super inspirational and has helped me get back into the habit of playing music daily. i’ve been occasionally recording my little jams when i stumble upon something worth saving. i decided to throw them up onto soundcloud for fun and to share. it’s important to note that these are like really rough recordings and the performances are totally improvised, so don’t expect greatness.

this is all i have for now. i have lots more things to talk about, but it seems wise to spread it over a couple posts as opposed to doing one mega post.

we’re gonna finish the fiona dickinson record today. will report back how that ends up going!

i hope you all are well and have a beautiful holiday.

fall 2019 mix

about 4 or 5 years ago, my best friend dan and i started exchanging mixes at the beginning of each season. there’s definitely been some debate about when/why/how the whole thing began, but dan feels pretty certain that it was suggested over beers at harmony. i trust his memory more than my own. all i know is that at some point, i started making him cassette mixtapes to listen to in his car cuz he only had a tape player at the time.

as the years have gone on, the format has changed from cassettes to cd’s to streaming. it’s kind of funny to think about how much of a constant this little exchange has been in my life, how we’ve somehow managed to keep it going all these years despite how much change we’ve both endured in our personal lives. i’ve missed our loose deadlines pretty consistently because of shit going on in my life, and i’m pretty sure there were a few times where i just failed completely to deliver. regardless, we’ve soldiered on and i think for the first time ever, i’ve managed to complete and hand off my mix sooner than dan has.

i started putting this mix together only a few days after i handed off my summer 2019 mix. i was listening to “irresistible” by deafheaven on an unseasonably cool day and was unexpectedly hit with a heavy dose of longing and wistfulness, a slightly heartbreaking nostalgia for the summer of 2013 when sunbather came out and i was in my first serious adult relationship and things were fun and easygoing for me. listening to that song even then always made me feel some type of way that is kinda hard to put my finger on. it’s unabashedly sentimental and kinda melancholy. in other words, it’s extremely my shit.

it reminded me of the title of a john adams piece titled “naïve and sentimental music”. the title of adams’s symphony is a reference to an essay published in 1795 by friedrich schiller, titled “on naïve and sentimental poetry.” in this context, “naïve” and “sentimental” aren’t meant in the way we understand them in 2019. here they are meant to represent two opposing types of motivation for which an artist may create work: “naïve” meaning an artist creates solely for the sake of creation, while “sentimental” refers to an artist creating work that demonstrates a consciousness of other factors, such as the work’s place in art history or in reference to the artist’s other works.

while the essay by schiller definitely serves a purpose and is a valuable examination of artistic motivation, i prefer to interpret the title of adams’s symphony in a modern way. i think “irresistible” is a great example of naïve and sentimental music: naïve in it’s hopefulness and sorrow, and in it’s sentimentality, or it’s ability to conjure a sense of longing and nostalgia. so basically this kinda sad song led me to consciously misinterpret one artist’s interpretation of another artist’s interpretation of artistic motivation. and it was with that misinterpretation in mind that i began seeking music that fit that description, and this mix is a small collection of what i found.

click here to reveal spotify playlist and apple music playlist.

hope you enjoy it.

school, sleep, television

man, it has been too long since i wrote here.

life has been kind of insane since i last wrote. i started my second semester of school, have continued working on the fiona dickinson record, worked 32 hrs a week, went on some adventures, took some naps, watched some tv and tried to just make it through every day.

this semester, i’m taking anatomy and physiology I and intro to cells, molecules and genes, which is basically an intro biology class. both classes have a 90-minute lecture that meets twice weekly, as well has a three hour lab that meets once a week. so that’s 12 hours of school each week, plus whatever studying i do outside of class, which i have been doing almost daily since i started. the amount of material we’re covering in both classes this semester is kind of insane. i took an anatomy class in the summer of 2012, so i have like a very faint memory of some of the anatomy material, but it might as well be all new information at this point cuz i can’t remember shit and had no reason to use any of the information i learned during that 6 week course.

so far, school has been really good. i’ve been good about staying on top of my studying and am actually a little bit ahead. i really need to try to keep that pace going because of how much material we’re going to be covering. fortunately a lot of this stuff is actually super interesting. learning about the structure of cells and what each part of the cell does has been mind-blowing. i’m sure i learned some of this shit in high school, but learning it again as an old man has been really cool. the human body is insane. evolution is insane. the fact that life exists at all is insane.

in my anatomy lab, we’re going to be working with cadavers. initially i was pretty nervous about it. after just the first two weeks of class, that nervousness has given away to excitement and intrigue. let me at those dead ass bodies, i wanna see ’em.

before school started, i made something of a mad dash to do some fun things before my life got taken over by classes, homework and work-work. here’s some visual proof i did some things.

that’s all for now. maybe more soon when i brain is less mushy.

thoughts on sobriety

25-Jul-2019 9:45:39 AM

one of the primary motivations for starting this blog was to speak a little bit about my journey in sobriety. i particularly wanted to share what my experience has been like as a sober performing musician, because i feel like it’s somewhat of a unique position and i haven’t really found any stories out there that i felt like have reflected the truth found in my own experience. the 26th marks 3 years to the day since i quit drinking, which feels like kind of the perfect occasion for attempting to get some of my thoughts down about what sobriety has been like for me up to this point.

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i feel like it makes the most sense to attempt to summarize my drinking career to the best of my ability, as much for my own benefit as for anyone who might be reading this.

i started drinking when i was 17. it was the summer time and i will never forget the euphoria and complete lack of coordination i experienced when i drank for the first time. i was with some close friends of mine and we were at a friend’s house. he lived with his dad and sister, and i’m pretty sure they were out of town or something. we drank tequila and it tasted vile (what irony that tequila would become my liquor of choice at the end of my drinking days.) i don’t remember much other than rolling around on the floor and laughing a lot. i couldn’t walk up or down stairs for shit. i might’ve gotten sick at some point, i don’t remember.

when i first started drinking, it was a pretty rare occasion. the hangovers were completely debilitating then and the thought of suffering through one of those more than like once a month was enough to keep me away from the sauce. i was smoking a lot of weed at the time, and occasionally dabbling with pills, psychedelics, and basically whatever else would come along that wasn’t meth or heroin. nothing too heavy, but i was definitely toeing the line. besides my grades starting to slide a little bit in school and my dad finding a dime bag of weed that had fallen out of my pocket in the garage, i managed to keep my shit together pretty well.

over the course of 2006 into 2007, when my dad’s health started to decline rapidly and he eventually passed, my drinking became more frequent. somewhere along the line, it became something i did at least once every weekend, if not more. i did and said a lot of dumb shit (that statement pretty much summarizes my drinking career tbh), a lot of which is just incredibly embarrassing to think about now. from professing my unrequited love to female friends of mine, to stealing shit i didn’t even want or need, a lot of idiotic mistakes were made. i eventually had to kind of train myself to NOT do or say stupid shit while i was drunk so that i could avoid that sinking feeling in my stomach that i would wake up to when i immediately knew i had fucked up. that feeling and the crushing hangover headache still weren’t enough to keep me away, though. and it’s not like i just quit doing and saying dumb shit altogether, it just varied wildly in frequency and severity over the years.

i continued at this pace right up to age 21. i believe wholeheartedly that i was already an alcoholic before i was even of legal drinking age. the primary aspect of the nature of my drinking that leads me to believe this, is the way i would consistently turn to drinking as an escape. eventually the relief it gave me from my problems (the death of my father, struggles of my siblings, watching my mom date and marry, lack of money, the exacerbation of the deterioration of my own mental health, etc.) was significantly more valuable to me than the potency of my hangovers could dissuade.

turning 21 meant bars. bars meant spending money. not having a job meant i exclusively relied upon a credit card that my father had cosigned on with the intention of it being used to help establish some credit. i maxed it out pretty quickly, despite it having a $3500 limit. having no income meant no way to pay my credit card bill. it wasn’t long before it went to collections and i began receiving letters and phone calls. after i graduated college after 5+ years, i moved out and got a job. soon after that, i was served papers and then my wages started to be garnished. this whole ordeal tanked my credit and is something i’m still working to this day to repair.

my drinking became more frequent and dangerous after i had moved out. working at a brewery normalized and encouraged my drinking. being broke and sad fueled my drinking, which kept me broke and sad. i had no energy or motivation to get a different job. the ~5 years that i stayed at that job were the heaviest and most dangerous years of my drinking, and is when i feel like i blew past the point of no return with regards to my alcoholism.

in the summer of 2013, i joined the band stepdad. i wasn’t playing with any bands at that time after my last band, petals rang the bell, fizzled out during 2012. stepdad had a 6 week nationwide tour booked that they needed me to play, so i agreed. what a strange time that was. i drank pretty much every day. i played nearly black out drunk some nights. i think it was during that tour that i first felt the physical symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. it was an incredibly difficult time for me; being away from home for that long, in all new places, with people i had only just met, was just a really tough, alienating experience. alcohol and drunkenness were very familiar and comfortable to me, so i turned to them for solace during that tour. my mantra during that tour was “there’s nothing 2 beers can’t fix.” it never did stop at just 2, though.

the worst period of my drinking came in the winter of 2013-14. my relationship with my girlfriend of 2 years unraveled, yet i went on living with her for another month or so, sleeping on the couch in the living room of our tiny apartment. during that time, i hit the bottle hard. really hard. at one point, i was so drunk that i fell face first into the sidewalk and scratched my face all up. i did some heinous shit that led to my ex forcing me to leave the apartment and put some of my very close friendships in jeopardy. after she gave me the boot, i stayed in the guest bedroom of one of my coworker’s houses for a month. my drinking stayed at scary dangerous levels during this time. i became close friends with people who were on a similar path of self-destruction. we would go out to different events/bars together and just get completely blotto. i engaged in very impulsive, dangerous behavior that i had never taken part in before. i drove drunk constantly. hell, i got pulled over twice for drunk driving and the police let me go both times, once because their breathalyzer wasn’t working and once just cuz.

my coworker whom was gracious (and patient) enough to let me stay in her guest bedroom kindly asked that i be on my way after staying there for a month. without any other options, i moved back in with my folks. even though i was pretty fucking far gone with my drinking at that point, i was still able to recognize that maybe it would end up being a restorative experience for me, a chance to dry out a little and try to get my shit together. i drank only slightly less often, and i remember my close friends whom were also heavy drinkers actually expressing concern for me with regards to my behavior and the extent to which i drank around the time i moved back in with my folks. day drinking became my favorite. me and some friends would go out every sunday afternoon and end up drinking well into the night. we called it sunday funday and i think i blacked out almost every single time. i remember sitting in my truck in an arby’s parking lot at like 7pm on a beautiful spring day, the sun still shining and people going about their sunday evening business. i sat in my truck, drunk as a damn lord, trying to work up the courage to walk into this arby’s to order some food. i don’t think i will ever forget that time and just how poignantly sad that experience was. i can remember the way the air felt, the way the sun looked, the music i was listening to. it’s like imprinted in my brain as just a real low moment and i remember feeling so pathetic because i think i had drank alone for the majority of that sunday, just barhopping by myself. i was nervous to walk into my house because i knew i probably couldn’t walk straight and it was only like 7 or 8pm, so i knew my mom and stepdad would still be awake. i don’t know how i did it, but i somehow managed to make it to my room without running into them.

it was while i was living with my parents for those few months that i started agreeing to join every single band that asked me to play for them. it made sense in my head: i knew i was miserable partially because i wasn’t playing music, so maybe if i was just playing music all the time i would feel better. while it did undoubtedly give my life much more purpose and ended up being a net positive, it also gave me far more handy excuses to drink.

if you’re not aware of it by now, i’ve gotta tell you something: music and alcohol are inextricable. it’s rare to enjoy one without the other, and attempts made at doing so are awkward at best. i’m sure there are pockets of the diy scene that are able to pull this off with some success, but i feel like the vast majority of live music performances, especially ones that actually fucking pay the musicians, all involve booze. it didn’t really become clear to me until soon after i got sober that being a “performing musician” is synonymous with being an “alcohol salesperson.” your job is to get people to come to the show to pay a cover and to buy drinks so that you can get paid. it’s really that simple. shows that don’t allow drinking but still aim to be lucrative gigs have to charge significantly more for tickets, and even then promoters/venue owners/whatever are missing out on an opportunity to make significantly more money. places that can afford to do this either a.) aren’t trying to make money in the first place and are staffed by volunteers b.) also host shows that are 21+ and serve booze or c.) have dumb amounts of money to throw around. so you’re basically looking at community spaces and colleges/universities as places that consistently host dry shows. the only college in grand rapids that booked good shows was calvin, but they recently cut funding to their student activities office which brought some of the best national talent into the city. so that one’s out. so that leaves us with the house show scene and the daac, which has yet to reopen. i feel like “dry spaces” like the daac are really awesome establishments that provide new talent a chance to perform for people, but my experiences with places like that have been frustrating for several reasons. one being that the pa is (usually) shit. and two, no one comes to the damn shows cuz they can’t drink! and we all know that even if a house show is dry, people will still sneak in booze somehow. like how do you actually police that.

while my drinking career hit a pretty steady, somewhat functional stride in 2014 up until i called it quits in 2016, it was during this period of time that my social life became pretty much completely centered around alcohol, even more so than it had been previously. i had band practices several nights a week, which always involved drinking before and/or during and/or after each practice session. i had shows several times a month, which were always occasions where i got very, very drunk. and then there was all the normal shit: birthdays, weddings, attending shows, house parties, vinyl nights, dance parties, old friends coming into town, bad days, good days, shit even it just being sunny outside was a reason to drink. while i may not have drank every single night of the week during those couple years, i was most definitely wishing that i was drinking on those few off days that i had every week and was quite miserable and subdued when i had to abstain.

there’s one particular time that i can recall that really highlighted to me how much alcohol had consumed me. a girlfriend i had at the time booked us a hotel in chicago for a long weekend during valentine’s day of that year. she had a ton of things planned for us to do, including a beautiful, fancy dinner aboard a large boat that cruised out into lake michigan from navy pier. i remember the entire time we were there, feeling like i had to get drunk every night or else, in my mind, it would’ve been a waste. i drank quickly and sometimes stealthily during that weekend, as my girlfriend was quite a long ways ahead of me in recognizing my alcoholism and wasn’t afraid of calling me on it. how fucking unfortunate that she would go to such great lengths to plan this lovely trip for us to get away and do something special together, only for me to spend the whole time getting as drunk as i possibly could without starting an argument.

thinking back on that trip, as well as several others that we had taken during our relationship where my behavior followed an identical pattern, i am filled with an incredible amount of embarrassment and shame. how unfair and disgusting i acted. how awful that i could treat someone that way after they had tried so hard to provide us with fun, exciting opportunities and adventures together. while that relationship was certainly not without it’s faults even unrelated to my drinking, there was definitely nothing she had done that would justify how selfish and destructive i was during the time that we were together. fortunately for us both, she dumped my sorry alcoholic ass and told it to me straight up: she was leaving because i had consistently prioritized alcohol over her and our relationship. she wasn’t wrong and leaving me was the best possible thing she could’ve done for herself and for me.

the loss of that relationship was what led to me finally reflecting on my life and examining my relationship with alcohol in an honest way. i think that was the first time that it was really crystal clear and impossible to ignore that i was in fact an alcoholic. insanely enough, that /still/ didn’t lead to me stopping right away. i still drank heavily for another month and while i was a little bit smarter about it (i took ubers instead of driving, i didn’t act completely/ impulsively and destructively), i still didn’t really have any intention of stopping for good just yet.

right after that break up, i decided it was time to get myself back into therapy for the first time in 10 years or so. i had e-mailed a local therapist i found on psychology today’s website and told her my financial situation. she put me in touch with another therapist who was just starting out and was willing to work with me on payment (fun fact: that first therapist i e-mailed ended up becoming my therapist later on and i have been seeing her ever since. she is incredible and has been completely instrumental in my recovery!) i started seeing her weekly and basically pouring out everything i possibly could onto this poor woman in hopes that lightening the load i’d carried for so long might offer me some relief. she made it very clear to me from the first appointment that i did have a drinking problem and while she didn’t force me to quit, she definitely encouraged it. after building up a rapport with her, i felt a kind of obligation to at least try giving up alcohol. i remember the night i said was going to be my last time drinking. i told a close friend of mine who worked in the industry and i proceeded to get completely obliterated. he had to drive me home because i kept falling over. i was walking into my house and tripped going up a flight of 3 steps and very nearly landed on my face. what a mess.

after that night, i decided to stick to my word and go as long as i could without drinking. i made it two weeks, which was the longest i had abstained in probably like 10+ years. i relapsed one time on a friend’s birthday, when i basically just said “fuck it” and drank all day with my friends. i remember sitting alone on my front steps, drinking a heineken at like 3 am. i fucking hate heineken. i was drinking it and thinking about the day, how i had drank for over 12 hours and was STILL drinking. i was drinking this gross ass beer all alone after drinking all day. that is not normal. it was at that time that i decided that yeah, i am just completely incapable of having anything even resembling a healthy relationship with alcohol and that i had to just pack it in indefinitely.

i remember feeling terrified by the thought of never drinking again. it just seemed way too extreme. so i gave myself some like bullshit predetermined length of time, i think 6 months, and told myself that when that time was up, i would reassess. i knew alcohol just was not something i could have in my life right then. as time went on and i started to see improvements in virtually every aspect of my life, that set time of 6 months quickly flew out the window and i knew this had to be a forever thing.

---

the first couple weeks of sobriety were awful. just really, really harrowing. i also started taking zoloft and wellbutrin to treat the underlying depression and anxiety that i had been drinking away for the past god knows how long. the first couple weeks of antidepressants is also really awful. i remember feeling at the time like i had absolutely no control over my emotions. i would be perfectly fine one moment and the next i would be completely suicidal. i also remember feeling this constant undercurrent of anger. if you know me at all, you know that i am not an angry person whatsoever, so it was very strange to be feeling that so strongly. i remember feeling like i was being ripped apart from the inside out.

i think the first big thing i noticed was just the absence of hangovers and how much free time i now had to fill since i wasn’t drinking and nursing hangovers. the free time thing was legitimately really tough at first! weekends were spent alone now and i missed a lot of events because i just did not feel confident enough in my sobriety to make it out to those things. i had started running around that time, and that was like a huge self esteem boost. i was feeling good phsyically and beginning to become more stable emotionally, but i was just really alone. i was the only sober person i knew at the time. and that’s a really lonely place to be.

the biggest hurdle that i had to overcome during those very young days of my sobriety was being able to play shows sober. it was something i had so much anxiety around. i remember talking with my therapist at the time about what i could do at the show instead of drink, and trying to come up with a game plan with her about how i would go without boozing during the first couple shows i played sober. it was seriously hard as hell.

as a musician, you’re expected to arrive at the venue several hours before doors open to load in and soundcheck. after arriving, loading in and getting soundchecked, there is a whole lot of waiting around to play. you will likely be waiting several hours to play if you are not the opener, and only slightly less than that if you are opening. during those hours after soundcheck, i would usually start drinking. i’d keep it somewhat modest so that i could still play competently, but would begin drinking right after soundcheck all the way until the lights came up at the end of the show. then there’d inevitably be an afterparty at someone’s house where we’d drink until 4 or 5 in the morning. it’s just kinda what you do as a musician, or so i told myself, and it was my favorite thing at the time. suddenly i was a person that didn’t do that. i didn’t do any of that. i had to figure something else out. i tried sipping n/a beer, but it was disgusting and frankly quite triggering and also a total waste of empty carbs. i tried drinking tonic water and lime juice. i tried just drinking water. i tried sitting in the green room until we played. i tried a lot of different things and all of them were fucking hard and shitty and just not fun at all. it was actually really miserable! having to sit through bands you don’t care about while you’re stone sober is legitimately irritating. having to make small talk with a bunch of people whom you haven’t seen in awhile that came out to the show while you’re stone sober is fucking rough, especially if you have any kind of anxiety disorder. feeling like you’re just stuck in this loud ass venue while everyone around you is getting progressively more fucked up and you can’t leave because you’re going on stage soon is like…damn near torturous, especially for someone so early in their recovery!

it took lots of trial and error, but the only way i’ve found to play shows and not completely lose my cool is to go to load in and soundcheck, go home right after, do stuff around the house that i would normally do, leave my house late enough that i would arrive within 30 minutes of our slot and bring a bunch of la croix. after playing, immediately break down and pack up all of my gear, load it out into my car, say bye to at least one of my bandmates so they know i’m leaving, and then go home and get ready for bed. there have been times where i have legit made it into bed like 20 minutes after getting off the stage and it’s fucking beautiful. granted, this only works if the shows are here in grand rapids. if they’re out of town shows, things are much more difficult and i still don’t really have a rock solid approach for that. also: major props to team scheme at the pyramid scheme for always stocking some la croix in the green room whenever one of my bands is playing a show there. that is seriously the coolest and most thoughtful thing.

it’s been three years now that i’ve been sober and i think the thing i still struggle with the most is how sobriety has changed my relationship with music and with my friends. playing shows used to be my favorite thing in the world. i would look forward to them for weeks, sometimes months, and would always be so excited to see all my friends at the show, to play for everyone, and then get to just hang and party with everyone after. it was such a blast for me and those were some of the most fun nights of my life. now playing shows feels almost like a chore! it’s really very strange and i have been hoping all of this time that i’ve been sober that it would become fun again but it just isn’t right now. i look forward to the show up until the day of, then suddenly i’m like, “man i’d honestly just rather stay home and play video games” or whatever. it sucks. there are definitely exceptions, and i think the fact that playing shows has become so unpleasant for me has really led me to be more discerning about what types of shows i agree to play. i don’t think i should ever have to play mulligan’s or rocky’s for the rest of my fucking life. same goes for basically any bar like that. i did my time, i don’t have to do it anymore. like…my bands have all outgrown that. i’m done with that shit.

on the flip side, and this is only like a very recent development that occured within the past 6 months or so, i feel like my sobriety has led me to further explore music making on my own, particularly with hardware instead of strictly on a computer. in doing so, i have created kind of my own process and really found what things i like and what i don’t like, and have been slowly acquiring more gear to augment my vision. as i’ve been doing that, i’ve been working on incorporating it into all of the bands that i play in. it’s been kind of a slow and tricky process, but it feels like it’s becoming a little more established and like i’ve gotten more proficient with the equipment that i have. i’m now able to make a completely different sonic contribution to these projects that i have been apart of for years now and it feels really cool and rewarding. i love playing drums and i always will; it’s the most fun shit ever. but being able to contribue melodic and purely sonic elements to my bands has been such a cool and weirdly personal experience. each time it’s like i’m exposing this kind of weird, niche thing that i nerd out over all the time when i’m alone, and it still feels pretty vulnerable to share some of the things that i have come up with on my own. however, in opening up this part of myself and working it into the bands i play in, i have felt a slight rejuvination in how i view playing live shows. i’ve made it more interesting and challenging for myself and i think i’ve been slowly putting more on the line, which has made playing with my bands a little more interesting and appealing.

the weird part about sobriety is that you don’t just reach a certain point and it’s fine. it definitely does get easier as time goes on, but it never becomes completely easy per se. cravings still crop up regularly, i still romanticize my days of abuse, friendships that once centered around alcohol are still difficult to navigate, i still wrestle with leftover guilt and regret, i still struggle with social situations and often opt for isolation instead of putting myself in places that might be trigger my anxiety, and i still possess all the same thought patterns that fueled my drinking habits to begin with. after the initial honeymoon phase is over and you’ve really settled into your sobriety as a new way of life is when the real work begins, at least in my experience. that warm glow of pride, new found health and stability eventually fade and you’re presented with the kind of dull reality of your new life. it’s a strange thing. sobriety is just like many other aspects of life: it’s in a constant state of flux. it’s constantly evolving and taking on different shapes and manifesting itself in sometimes strange and uncomfortable ways within your life, ways that you likely never expected when you first vowed to live life in a new way. it’s true that everything becomes brighter, more beautiful and more profound. but it also becomes harder as you’re forced to cope with the harsh realities of everyday life without the aid of this wonderful, terrible substance you’ve come to rely on for so long.

28-Jul-2019 8:06:20 AM

i know this post has really bounced all over the place, and i honestly never intended for it to become as long as it has. but the deeper i plundered into my past, the more i felt like i had to share or uncover. i definitely plan on speaking more on here about my experience as a sober person and in many ways i feel like this post completely failed at doing what i had initially intended for it to do. but i also feel like it has laid the groundwork necessary for future observations i might hope to make on this new outlet i have created.

i don’t anticipate many posts on here being as deeply personal as this one, so thank you for sticking this one out with me if you’ve decided to read this whole post. i’m trying really hard to keep in mind that this is my space to share whatever i want about my life and to not overthink what people’s expectations or reactions may be with regard to what i share on here. feeling like i wasn’t completely able to share of myself in a way that felt true was what led me to creating this blog in the first place, so i’m trying really hard to keep that at the forefront of my mind.

if anything i said especially resonated with you or you would like to speak to me further about sobriety, don’t be scared to give me a shout at the e-mail address i’ve made available by clicking the “contact” link at the top left of this page. i’d be happy to talk with people about sobriety. if sobriety is something you’ve considered and you’re having hangups about committing, definitely reach out and we can bounce ideas off of each other. as difficult as it may be, it is absolutely worth all of the struggle and potential growing pains. it is virtually impossible for me to imagine myself successfully living the life i have created over the past 3 years by any other means. i finally feel like i’m (mostly) on top of everything instead of buried deep underneath it all. if you’re bored of surviving and want to start living, give sobriety a shot. all you really have to lose is missing out on some shit hangovers and some nights at the bar where literally the exact same shit happens every single night.

what the hell

20-Jul-2019 10:38:45 AM

man, again…real strange past couple days. let’s start with the good stuff.

dan, fiona and i were back in the studio this past tuesday night to do some more tracking. i showed up a little bit later than everyone else cuz i needed a nap after work. when i arrived, dan had just finished trying out some lap steel stuff for “29,” and fiona and matt were setting up fi’s lever harp. after figuring out how best to mic the thing, fiona began tracking some different takes for an intro track.

this thing sounds gorgeous. fiona put down two initial takes, one with a real steady meter and one that was a little less structured, but still with a driving arpeggio-type progression pushing it forward. i suggested she try playing it even looser and expressively, taking advantage of the fact that it had no real strict meter and to add some feeling to it. she tried it several different ways, playing in a way that was more dynamic, emotive and playful. just as we were about to start a take, we heard the whistle of a train approaching. matt sighed and we all kinda shrugged and said “well, maybe it’ll be perfect.” fiona ended up nailing the take, just a really gorgeous, evocative performance on the harp. really moving and hypnotic. the train’s whistle seemed to sound in response to fiona’s playing. i don’t even know if the mics picked up the passing train, but it was just one of those cool, magical moments that only happen every so often. i’m excited to develop this intro track a little further.

one of our other goals for the day was to work on the beginning of “say it right.” when we play the song live, i do some finger drumming on the digitakt to help get the band in time and to create a kind of transition. it usually ends up sounding pretty cool and it’s something we landed on without much planning or talking about it. fiona always builds this little guitar drone during that live transition and will let it run throughout the song. we decided the recorded version really needed that little intro, with the finger drumming and fiona’s drone. so, we took a few minutes to bash out the little digitakt part and then fiona spent some time building a really lovely guitar and vocal drone to run throughout the song. oh my god, it sounds so nice. it adds this really subtle melancholy to the song that i just love so, so much. i feel like it really takes it to a whole new level. fiona described it as being like adding a subtle mint garnish to a cocktail: it’s like adding a very small element to a mixture that changes how the overall thing is perceived by the senses. it’s so cool.

the night before going into the studio, dan, fiona and i met up at dan’s house to share the ideas that we all had for overdubs and to just make sure there wasn’t going to be a whole lot of overlap with the parts we were all imagining. it was a really fun little workshop that we had in dan’s den. sweaty as hell, but really productive and fun. i shared with them some parts i had written for “say it right” on mellotron and organ and they both really enjoyed them, which felt really, really nice. to be honest, though, after fiona tracked that gorgeous underlying drone for that song, i’m not entirely sure the song needs anymore additional melodic content. i guess we’ll have to see how all of that ends up working together.

in my free time, i’ve been trying to put together some textures for “old body.” i’ve been super into like twinkly, pitch-shifted granular stuff, so i’m trying to make something along the lines of that. something that’s generative and isn’t tied to a tempo or a noticable pattern. for the planetarium show that we played back in the winter, i came up with this generative pattern on the digitakt that was based on samples of a dx7 celeste tone, all the samples tuned to different notes within the song’s key. i’ve been trying to use the same pattern but run through different effects in ableton, but i’m struggling with it. i might abandon that idea and try something else because i just feel like i’m not getting the vibe that i’m hearing in my head.

22-Jul-2019 8:50:06 PM

i was writing this post and put it away for awhile cuz i was at work and hadn’t been able to come back to it until now. as luck would have it, i finally landed on a combination of sound sources and processing chains that i really, really like for “old body” and i’m super excited about it. i told fiona today that it sounds like being underwater and looking up at the rays of sunshine coming down through the water. i’m excited to work more with fiona on developing it. i have like two more little ideas for it that i’m gonna try out and see what she thinks. hopefully she enjoys it!

i’m having a hard time remembering where this post was leading me, considering i had several days away from it and my train of thought was interrupted. i think i was going to mention how this past friday, i passed one of my kidney stones. it came out painlessly at like 8:30 in the morning. i was at home cuz i got cut from work for the day, thank god.

earlier that morning, i had dropped my car off at a mechainc to get my brakes looked at and fixed. they called me like a couple hours after i passed my stone and told me it would be $2,300 to fix my brakes and take care of some other things on my car. i was immediately in shock. i told the lady that i wasn’t expecting it to be that much, and that i had like $600 that i was able to throw at the repairs. she said that if they did the bare minimum, it would be $1,600. so i got off the phone and panicked and felt sad for an hour. fortunately my mom agreed to lend me some money to cover the remainder of the cost of repairs that i couldn’t afford. i feel super fortunate and grateful that she agreed to help me out, but i also couldn’t help feeling this like overwhelming sense of sadness and guilt about being 31 and having to ask my mom for help. it fucking sucks. y’know, for as much as i love to complain about my job and tell people insane stories about things that happen there, i really do love it. i think my job is hilarious and it’s given me some unique skills and i feel like it’s weird and challenging enough to never really get boring. but fuckin’ a, it sucks not making enough money to build myself a safety net for things like car repairs and shit. i’m like just scraping by as it is, like just barely having enough money to get me paycheck to paycheck. it sucks that i’ve been living like this for so long, like i don’t even know any different and i like fantasize about being able to afford really basic shit without feeling like an intense amount of insecurity and worry about digging myself into a financial rut.

on top of the car stuff, liv got really sick and was bedridden for several days. she’s on like day 5 of this stomach flu and it’s just been really crummy to see her suffering so much with it. we went to the med center on friday night and they weren’t a ton of help. i’m hoping that she will start feeling significantly better here soon. 🙁

fortunately i got my car back today after not having it for the weekend. it felt really good to get in it and have the brakes working just as they should. it felt like a whole new car for a minute! so at least i’m back on the road and making some headway on some things for this fiona record. i’ve been listening to the rough mixes a lot and it sounds so great. i already feel so proud of it and we still have several days of tracking left! i can’t wait to see how it all comes together. i think people are gonna really enjoy it.

Congas, Kidney Stones

& DSP

man, what a strange few days.

on thursday night, dan, fiona and i went back into the studio for a little while to get some more tracking done. they did a bunch of acoustic guitar before i arrived, and fiona knocked out vocals on a couple tracks that she wasn’t able to get to last time. it was really interesting witnessing the way dan and fiona work together. it was honestly really admirable the way they were able to communicate their visions to one another and the way they were able to offer constructive criticism and genuine encouragement to each other. it was just really cool to witness and made me feel really grateful in that moment to have them as friends and bandmates.

after fiona finished up the few vocal tracks she had left, i stepped in to knock out some auxiliary percussion stuff that i wanted to include. i did tambourine for a bunch of songs (i am a huge stan for tambourine) and did a little bit of shaker. after that, we set up some congas that fiona brought to execute this nutty idea i had for part of “danny’s dream.”

there’s this little breakdown part in “danny’s dream” where i’m just playing kick and snare, and doing a lil shaker. listening to the super early rough mix of the song, i kept hearing congas in my head during that part. like the kind of congas that are in a bunch of madchester shit like the happy mondays and primal scream. matt and fiona were good sports about it and let me bring my weird vision to life.

beforehand i went outside to smoke a cig and listened to the rough mix of “danny’s dream” on my phone speaker. a rhythm came into my head and i just rolled with it. we tracked it and after fumbling through a few takes, i got a really tight one. matt played it back in the control room with just the congas, shaker and drum kit and fiona started laughing so hard she was in tears. i don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. hearing it back was kinda nuts because it sounded like exactly how it sounded in my head. i danced to it a little bit and was legitimately so stoked on how it sounded. it’s in the song for maybe ten seconds but it just adds this tiny little unexpected funk to the track that fits the vibe of that song really well imo. i’m hoping we can kinda squash the congas with some heavy compression and get them to sit kinda low in the mix. i seriously fucking love how they sound, it’s so sick.

we finished all of my percussion stuff in an hour and ended exactly at 8pm, which is how late we had booked til with matt. hell yeah.

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flash forward to the next morning at 5am. i wake up like fifteen minutes before my alarm goes off to some pretty excruciating pain in my testicles. i had soreness there for a couple days prior but really thought nothing of it. if you’re a dude, you know that sometimes your shit just hurts and then it goes away. well, the pain i woke up to kept getting worse. and what a familiar pain it was: my first thought was “oh my god this better not be another kidney stone.” the whole ordeal i went through in 2017 was so brutal and unpleasant and just a huge mess and i just did not want to go through that again.

i go downstairs to use the bathroom and when i pee, my urine is like very dark red. i just go, “god dammit” in the most annoyed voice and contemplated what i needed to do. being the 31 year old man that i am, i called my mom to see what i should do cuz i was just like really frazzled and out of it. she said i should go to the same er i went to last time and get it sorted out. i sighed a bunch and thanked her and got off the phone. i called into work and just said “uh i’m not coming in today, i’m about to go to er for some extreme pain *nervous laughter* heh sorry so yeah” and then got in the shower. i was obviously in pretty intense discomfort and just felt so annoyed and burdened by the whole thing. i took my time getting ready and ordered a lyft. the woman that got me was really nutty and gregarious and frankly the most unhinged driver i’ve ever encountered. it was really surreal having this really loud, outgoing, kind of abrasive woman give me a ride to the emergency room at 6:30 in the morning.

she dropped me off and i went inside. i had been in this hospital before, but when i walked in, nothing looked familiar and i had to ask how to get to er. once there, the triage nurse that signed me in was right at the end of his night shift, like had literally 10 minutes to go until he was out. dude was loopy from a long, slow night and made really awkward small talk with me about tattoos after i told this dude i was having extreme pain in my nuts and was pissing blood. going from nutty lyft driver to kinda weird triage nurse was a hell of a one-two and made me legitimately concerned for how the rest of this hospital journey was going to go.

fortunately, the rest of the experience was quick, professional and helpful. the staff was great and the doctor came to see me literally moments after i had gotten to my room. he ordered a ct scan and a urine test. i gave them my very concerning colored whiz and went in and out of the huge donut shaped ct machine and was back in my room. they give me toradol and zofran in my iv. the toradol was a god send and brought my pain from an 8 to like a 3 or 4.

the doc looked over my tests and ct scan and told me i had two kidney stones, one on either side, both way up high, like just out of the kidney into the ureter. fortunately he said they were only about 3mm, which is half the size of the one i had in ’17, and that i should be able to pass them at home without going through the invasive (unsuccessful) surgery i went through last time. he prescribed me motrin 600, norco and flomax, and then sent me on my merry way. i walked home from blodgett cuz the weather was gorgeous and i was feeling so much relief after they got my pain under control.

since then, i’ve just been taking the meds as needed and drinking absurd amounts of apple cider vinegar and lemon juice mixed into water. the mixture is something i drank a ton of last time around and supposedly helps break down the stones in your ureter so they can pass easier. i have no idea if it actually did anything last time but it doesn’t hurt to do it again y’know. at this point, it’s literally just a waiting game until i pass these things. they want me to strain my pee every time i have to go and gave me like a comically small strainer to use, which sends my pee flying in every possible direction as soon as it passes through the dumb thing, which is obviously super sick and like a nice feature to have in a urine strainer.

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in other news…

as i have been reading more and more about synthesizers and music gear, i’ve found myself going deeper and deeper down kind of a weird rabbit hole. i have gotten to a point now where i am very interested in diy electronic music instruments and computers.

i’ve become particularly interested in what’s known as dsp, or digital signal processing. in the context of music and audio, it’s pretty simple to think about: basically any digital effect is an example of dsp. there are different ways of going about doing it and there are lots of contemporary programming languages that deal with audio dsp directly. max/msp, supercollider, pure data, and sonic pi are a couple that come to mind.

i feel like an ultimate goal of mine is to have a designated sound computer that i could use basically as a sort of multi-fx box. i would be able to program my own effects and would use it as an fx send/return on my mixer.

in an effort to learn more, i checked out a few books from the library and realized i was diving in too deep, far too quickly.

as a kind of compromise/way to get my feet wet without drowning, i purchased an fv-1 development board from spin semiconductor. the spin fv-1 is a chip that’s designed to carry out dsp processes. it’s most notable use is as a reverb producer. it’s used in a countless number of guitar pedals, including my very favorite, the particle by red panda.

the really beautiful thing about the development board is that it’s basically a dedicated fv-1 fx processor right out of the box. a eeprom chip is included to store your algorithms, a usb jack is present to transfer your algorithms to the eeprom chip to be read by the fv-1 and can also be used to power the board, it has stereo rca in/out to easily interface with a variety of sound sources, and it has 3 potentiometers soldered on to control the effect parameters and a rotary knob to cycle through the 8 effect slots on the eeprom.

the other fantastic part about the board is that spin semiconductor, the company that made the chip and dev board, has created their own software programming environment to create your own effects, and it can flash the eeprom directly from the software in a matter of seconds. though to be honest with you, i have virtually no idea what i’m looking at whenever i look at a piece of complete fv-1 code.

fortunately, yet again, some gentleman who goes by digitallarry online created a javascript-based wrapper for the spin dev software which features a very easy to understand gui. it’s known as spincad designer and features a modular layout very similar to pure data and max.

i haven’t had a ton of time to fuck around with the board but what i have been able to accomplish with it so far has been really promising. my goal with this chip has been to create some glitch granular delay effects. it’s a sound that i have been really obsessed with lately and i think it’s very “in” right now. there’s a lot of folks online that have created their own algorithms for this thing and have shared them on various forums for anyone to use and develop further. i’ve dumped several onto the eeprom and played with them and they’re really sick and some are unwieldy as hell. occasionally the whole signal will become just a series of beeps, chirps and sustained tones generated by the fv-1. straight up sounds like the chip is about to burst into flames. a lot of the algorithms are glitchy and sound really really dope, though none of them that i have found have been exactly what i’m looking for. i need to sit down and actually develop something in spincad designer that will generate the type of sound i’m looking for.

given the fact that the dev board is tiny and literally just an exposed pcb, i want to create a clear acrylic enclosure for it so that i can safely take it to shows and practice. i’m looking forward to making that my next little crafting project. before that, it’s time to dig into developing some algorithms for this thing! and maybe i’ll pass these damn stones sometime soon.

Recording with

Fiona Dickinson pt. 2

last night, we went back into the studio to record the rest of dan’s main guitar parts for the record, and to retrack some of fiona’s guitar parts.

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shortly after i arrived, it started down pouring outside. the rain and the evening light set the mood perfectly for working on “danny’s lullaby.” dan’s guitar parts sound more like a shimmery farfisa than an actual guitar. really, really gorgeous.

after he finished up his guitar for that song, he busted out his bass and added a really lovely, springy little lick in the intro and chorus. it sounds real vintage and lynchian as hell. *chef’s kiss*

after cruising through “danny’s dream,” “danny’s lullaby,” and “just sleep,” the sun came back out before dipping down below the horizon. the light looked really beautiful as it shone on the grand river, just outside the window of the control room at matt’s.

after dan finished up his main parts, he tracked a tiny little melody for the outro of “children” in one quick take.

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afterwards, the four of us sat around for a bit and talked about some ideas for overdubs and scheduled some more dates to come in and track with matt. which brings us to today…

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03-Jul-2019 3:08:32 PM

today we started recording fiona’s vocals. i know leading up to today, fiona was pretty nervous about recording her vocals. last night, she made dan and i promise that we wouldn’t watch her while she was recording. dan and i sat in the control room with our backs to fiona who was in the live room.

she started with “danny’s lullaby” and knocked it out in about 45 minutes. we moved on to “danny’s dream.” after finishing her first run through, we could faintly hear some shouting coming through fiona’s vocal mic. the next moment we heard “get your hands on top of your head” and realized someone was getting arrested outside. we rushed to the window and looked out and saw a cop with his gun drawn, pointing it at some dude out of our line of sight. there was a significant period there where i was worried i was gonna witness some dude getting shot. the cop kept yelling at the guy and telling him to comply. fortunately, what looked like two undercover cops in bulletproof vests got the dude handcuffed. they held him near the unmarked cop car and gave the dude some long swigs of his arizona iced tea. they got the dude in the car and were gone in a matter of minutes. very bizarre experience witnessing that, but i was super relieved that it ended without anyone getting hurt.

after settling back into our work, fiona finished up “danny’s dream,” adding some really lovely, bright harmonies to the choruses.

now fiona was on quite a roll. we moved onto my favorite song of ours, “forge.” she did quite a few takes of this one over the course of an hour, eventually tapping out after delivering some really hair-raising performances. despite the oppressive humidity, i still got chills on my arms and legs from hearing her nail the choruses of this one.

after cruising through “forge,” fiona tackled “old body.” this tune is just her voice and guitar. no help from the band on this one.

sitting in the control room, listening on headphones to fiona sing this song, was really, really special. i had never been able to clearly hear the lyrics before, and hearing them for the first time was a really emotional experience. fiona did three or four takes of this one and eventually had to stop; she starting tearing up while recording her parts and was starting to lose control over her voice. i think her emotion was definitely captured in the takes that we got and it was lovely being able to hear those get tracked. this song is a stunner and i’m so excited to be able to listen to it again.

“say it right” was next. this one is driven by a drum beat i programmed on a yamaha rx11. it’s a very bright and relaxed pop song, and is one of my favorites of ours. the recording is sounding really, really nice and fiona managed to knock this one out without very much trouble at all.

she gave “cabin song” a shot, but fiona was pretty spent from having cruised through 6 full tracks + harmonies. i was super impressed with fiona’s stamina and how much she was able to accomplish in one day. it was really stunning. how she was able to nail such controlled and evocative performances, just one after another, is completely beyond me. true mvp status.

we booked another couple days with matt for recording. off the top of my head, i know we have a few vocal harmonies to record, as well as the main vocal parts for “cabin song” and “just sleep.” after that, i know we’re going to do some auxiliary percussion and possibly some more guitar. after that, we’ll likely get deep into the weird stuff, which i think will be vital in giving this record a sense of identity, uniformity and just really help make each song something really special. matt has done some very light mixing while we have been tracking stuff, and it’s already starting to sound sooo good. i can’t imagine at this point how it’s going to sound once it’s been properly mixed. i think this record will be a stunner and i just really hope it ends up resonating with people and is able to stand out.

going forward, i plan on writing more about personal projects and less having this just be a recording journal. but, recording this album is like my main personal project right at this moment, so it only makes sense to me to talk about it and try to document it to the best of my ability.

Looping State

of Mind

i woke up yesterday with some kind of demon cold that has evolved from your ole run o’ the mill sore throat, to like a full blown Cold™. fortunately i was only at work for three hours yesterday before they sent me home cuz they didn’t need me anymore. i sat in front of my a/c and let the sickness do it’s thing while i got this wordpress set up. oh my god it was so frustrating. if something is broken…i’ll probably fix it at some point. bear with me.

after getting some rest/screaming at my laptop, i went over to fiona’s to record some bits and pieces to use for our record. after waiting forever for logic to analyze all of my plugins, we were able to record some cello, guitar, vocals and kalimba.

fiona kicked it off with a gorgeous like fifteen minute drone that she built with cello, vocals and guitar. she could probably just release that and people would be stoked. 😂 we’re gonna chop it up and probably use just a small piece on the record.

she also recorded some really sick cello effects and some lovely, breathy vocal stuff.

while we were setting up, fiona and i were talking about how we both miss being in the studio, even though it’s only been a week since we were at matt’s. it was really fun getting to work on some stuff with her and i’m looking forward to sitting down and chopping it all up and fucking with it. doing this kind of stuff is like my favorite part of music production and i haven’t really been able to do it for any of the bands i play in. i’m really excited to see what we can turn all this stuff into! i’m also very happy to have the opportunity to shape the sound of this record in a significant way. i’m honored that fi trusts me and i’m feeling less anxious than i did during my previous post.

gonna rest my poor, sick ass now.

Recording with

Fiona Dickinson

fiona dickinson band entered the studio this past weekend.
i tracked all of my drum parts on saturday and sunday (6.15-16). it was honestly fucking hard. i realized that i had done a pretty good job of writing parts for these songs that are just a tiny bit outside of my comfort zone. fiona spoke about that yesterday while we were in the studio, about how the most fertile place to be with regards to personal growth is just one step outside of your comfort zone. i think she’s absolutely right. for better or worse, it made recording some of these songs really challenging physically and mentally. i think some of the challenge came from this really bizarre stress/anxiety that i have around the production of this record.

i noticed that while in the studio, or even while discussing any aspect of recording this record, i feel this really lovely, positive excitement that’s all tied up with this weird tension and anxiety.

i realized pretty early on when we started talking about recording that we all had pretty specific, yet different ideas about how we want this record to sound, and differing opinions about the processes by which we’ll go about acheiving our ideal results. after having more experience with production, i feel this kind of gross desire to control the mixing/editing process of this album. i think it makes sense considering i have a pretty clear idea in my head of how i want things to sound and feel like i have enough experience to know how to end up at that sound, but it still sucks to feel that way when i know full well that everyone else involved has ideas about how things should sound that are different from my own. not to mention the fact that they are all more than capable of realizing their vision from a technical/production standpoint.

dan and i talked about this a little bit today over text.

after our chat, i felt a little more comfortable with the idea of letting go and just trusting everyone involved and the process. i know that all four of us are really, really excited about this album and we all want it to be the best that it can be. i think maybe we just have different ideas when it comes to defining what that ideal end product looks like, and i need to work more on letting go and trusting that the end product will be a great labor of love by all of us. everyone involved is so incredibly talented and just the most lovely people. i have to trust that the culmination of our collective spirits will result in something far more beautiful than anything that any one of us could create on our own.

last night, dan ripped through 6 songs in about 5 hours. it was impressive to watch him work. he maintained a sense of humor throughout and was willing to compromise with matt and fiona with regard to his tone and the complexity of his parts. i think dan’s parts are brilliant and they’re like the special sauce of these songs. fiona’s songs are beautiful and strong enough to stand on their own two feet without us three bozos, but dan’s guitar parts just add this really pleasant shine to them. ✨

after four days of recording, we have drums and bass finished, fiona’s main guitar parts for all the songs (i’m p sure,) and dan’s guitar parts for six of nine tunes. so, the tracking of the “meat” of the record is almost done, then we get to move on to the fun, weird shit. fiona and i are going to meet up between now and the first week of july when we re-enter the studio to create some of our own string samples and weird loops and stuff. i know this record is going to be really special and i am so excited to be able to just jam it in my car with the windows down.

welcome to nonplussed cultural resource center. 

nonplussed cultural resource center is:
a non-profit platform for cultural development.
a hall of mirrors.
a vanity project.
a series of unidirectional relays.
a reliquary of gallows humor.
an exercise in active listening.
the production of sound sculptures.
without purpose or direction.
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one step of the grieving process.
an exercise in radical acceptance. 
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