Zephyr_Nova

"I didn't realise that you actually have to pay creative people to do something..." Haha pretty much! It was really offensive. I think you will enjoy this. http://vimeo.com/22053820 Cool, I may check it out in full later. Sounds like there could be some good advice in there for me. I think for the most part since my clients are other creative people I don't generally have this problem. It's telling that the one time it happened was with a client who didn't create anything themselves, and the only client I've had that fits that description. Coincidence?

*high five* Not getting work is the best/worst. I haven't been working enough for... a long time, and I've been pretty productive as a result. The bank account's certainly seen better days though. I'd have one month left of the freewheeling life were I not able to draw from sources that still owe me money. Being a near-inept-and-patient-as-fuck business man does have its rewards in a weird way, provided I get clients that are decent, honest people --so far it's been the case in all but one instance. Now im curious about this "one instance" There was this girl who wanted to release a CD of Christmas covers for her friends and family. After she sang the songs, it was my job to arrange all the music -bass, guitar, keyboards, percussion, etc. She said to just add whatever I thought it needed. So I did, and when i told her how much she owed me she said something along the lines of "but I didn't realize I had to pay for that, I thought those would be like the finishing touches or something..." So she just ends up refusing to pay for all the work I did (around $200) and I'm stuck with all these shitty christmas carols. I did end up turning her cover of Silent Night into a noise track that made its way onto the 2011 watmm xmas comp. It was deeply satisfying mangling her vocals for that! I might release a noise EP of the rest of her covers this xmas.

*high five* Not getting work is the best/worst. I haven't been working enough for... a long time, and I've been pretty productive as a result. The bank account's certainly seen better days though. I'd have one month left of the freewheeling life were I not able to draw from sources that still owe me money. Being a near-inept-and-patient-as-fuck business man does have its rewards in a weird way, provided I get clients that are decent, honest people --so far it's been the case in all but one instance.

Yeah, depression is sadly (ha) a breeding ground for great art. When I've been depressed I've usually lacked the motivation to actually create music, but I find coming out of those periods is most fruitful to me because I have all that prior emotional drudgery to draw from.

Well for me it was definitely a lot more than being an angsty youth, as I swear I had an anger deficiency or something. Despite that though, there were moments on that album where the angst was resonating simply because he sang it with so much conviction, and it's satisfying to hear music from someone who believes what they're saying, even if it is a grossly exaggerated version of it from another's perspective (as it usually is in his case -don't let the "I I I me me me" fool you). At this point it just sounds like someone going through the motions of what worked for them in the past without the inspiration that made their early work great. TDS was a landmark album for me because it opened my eyes to everything production could be but usually wasn't: a creative tool as vital to the music as the musical elements which comprise it. He took production beyond merely complimenting the music and made it a part of the music itself. If you stripped most of his songs away to the bare musical components even his pre "Witha Teetha" compositions are pretty basic and unremarkable, but when it came to using the studio as a musical instrument he was a virtuoso. And one who did a lot of things with it no one else had done or have done since (he did take a lot of cues from Coil, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, etc. obviously, but for Broken, TDS and Fragile he took it to some new heights that only he could have brought it to). Anyway, in short all I'm saying is TDS prertty much is the reason I became interested in production. Up until then I had just thought of composition and performance as the only parts of music that mattered. The production was always "just there" until i heard TDS. Yeah, I can never really sink my teeth into PHM, though it does demonstrate his knack for writing pop hooks that resonate with the social misfit, Cure style. The songs are so catchy on that album that even when i first heard it i wouldn't want to hear it again for a long time because the songs were immediately remembered after one listen. They were too crafty as pop tunes to keep me intrigued on successive listens. If I'd heard it at the time it was released though it probably would have been fascinating to me due to the way he was dressing those pop tunes up. i think sometimes people forget he's a pop songwriter before anything else, and everything he approaches he approaches from that perspective. Even TDS is a pop album at heart. Also, definitely listen to TDS. Nail on the head (no pun intended). True about the first bit, though the delivery on PHM was a bit marred by him having a cold during its recording. You can really hear it in his voice. This probably appeals to a lot of people though because it makes it sound like he's on the bring of crying the whole time, plays on the emotions. I've always found it off putting. Down In It rips off the music from Skinny Puppy's Dig It in the literal sense, aside from the vocals, so perhaps Only is his weird way of acknowledging that - hey, I know I stole those industrial hooks off SP, but look I can steal the only original aspect of that song from myself! Also, perfect review of WT.

lol awesome. After my alarm went off this morning I fell back to sleep. There was a trail of pus leading along the pavement downtown, so I followed it. It lead a dead dear. Some scruffy looking hobo type also followed the trail. When he looked down at the deer he started kicking the shit out of it. Then I noticed there were dead animals lying all over the place, but the worst thing was this seagull that had a big chunk of its body cut off, but was still "flying" along the pavement in obvious torment. I deduced that the hobo dude was going around on an animal maiming/killing rampage. First and foremost I was concerned with putting that seagull out of its misery. So I yelled out to the nearby pedestrians for a sharp knife, as I was going to attempt to decapitate it, quick and easy. Some guy sitting at a cafe patio threw a knife my way like it was a goddamn ninja star, and I was like "WTF just hand it to me." Then my alarm buzzed again. /dream

I already mentioned it earlier in the thread, but since we're back onto TG, Christ and Satan off Giftgas are super tasty. Can't believe this was 1975:

i think Skinny Puppy's still managed to stay ahead of the curve in a lot of ways. I didn't care much for handover, but TGWOTR and Mythmaker were both really interesting albums.

Dishes. Pruning fingers. Fuck.

That's more of a problem problem... hope you get a chance to see her. There really should be a serious problems thread. I've thought about starting one, but I feel like I should have a serious problem to get the ball rolling first. All my problems are insignificant, but I see them everywhere. As for right now: 1. I'm drinking alone 2. Every song on the new JT goes on for waaay to long, and their justification for it (no pun intended) is bunk. When Queen or Pink Floyd had a 7 minute song it was because 7 minutes was necessary to get the full ambition of their compositions realized. Their songs actually went on a musical journey, and the extra time was there because it needed to be there. Whenever a Timbaland production exceeds four minutes it's just so he can jam out on a bullshit remix that doesn't benefit the song in any significant way. 3. I finished the lyrics to that song I was demoing, but fucked something up in the rendering of said song not once but twice in my attempts to upload it to dropbox for my band mates to check out. So much fail. 4. Still haven't started my rogue planet track.

You're right about that. I did end up listening to the rest, and everything from Getting Smaller onward is actually pretty decent. Right Where It Belongs is a great closer. If the rest of the album followed in the footsteps of those last four songs it could have been a another classic... maybe.

I listened to The Fragile again for the first time in a few years, and damned if that album still isn't a masterpiece. Today I've been trying to get through With Teeth, and almost every track fills me with disgust. It actually makes me feel kind of sick to listen to it. Weird. I seldom react so strongly to...anything. Plz no one say that's a sign of good art. Seriously, don't say that. I don't think I'm going to finish my WT listen because it's too painful, but I will tackle Year Zero. I remember that album being a huge relief after WT, but I don't know if I liked it because it was just nowhere near as horrible as WT or if it was actually good.

I spent maybe two hours sitting in front of my computer determined to finish writing some lyrics to a song I was demoing tonight, certain that the eureka moment would strike at any moment... but the reality is that my brain had turned into sleep deprived mush and it was time that would have been better spent sleeping. So pissed at myself right now. Idiot.

my older cat used to do that. she was already deaf at that point, I think it was mostly a dementia type thing in her case. how old is yours? A year. It's some consolation that he only uses the bathroom and not the carpet... though sometimes a stray will hitch a ride on his fur and deposit itself that way.

My cat still shits on the bathroom floor. Except now instead of alternating between the litter box and the floor every 4 shits or so, he just uses the floor exclusively. AND he still tries to bury it. Instincts are stupid.

Oh shit --mega first world problems all around! Good luck with the glueage.

Cool man, did you end up watching it? I just released the studio version of it on bandcamp (free download or pay what you want): http://cthulhudetonator.bandcamp.com/album/a-casual-stroll-through-the-maelstrom

Just played my second noise show. Highlights include me inadvertently cutting my hand and bleeding all over my pedals in the second half.

All my evaporated milk expired in March.

But you put too much sugar in it! Success averted. I bought milk and can now enjoy cereal again.

Really?? That makes life so much easier! If only I had known that before I went through all my trial and error headaches... I'll pretend it was character building. Thanks Modey!

I used image size with the "bicubic sharper (best for reduction)" option selected. Intuitively I would think taking a big image and making it smaller wouldn't effect the quality if the program's intelligently designed, but I'm usually mistaken about these things. Anyway, I resized all the images individually and redid the text to minimize quality loss as much as possible. I don't really know what the standard is for digital album "covers" or if there is one... so I've got a version that's 4.75 inches, like a CD, and one that's over 16 inches (the original huge ass version I did). It was a pain in the ass figuring everything out, but worth it for the experience. I need to get more adept with this sort of thing, so fixing my own amateur mistakes is probably a good experience in the end. I'll hopefully learn more by fucking things up.

...I'm pretty sure I've got to redo all the text at the very least in order for that aspect not to look completely amateur hour.

Cool, thanks for the interest. I'll get it a bit closer to completion and then send you a preview. My current dilemma is that I used a pretty big image and did all the text etc. with the image at that huge size, and now I'm thinking it should be closer to a CD cover in size. I'm not sure how to reduce the size without it effecting the quality significantly.... know if there's an easy way?

Testing out album art for three different noise releases I've done over the last few months, and while I like some of it, I don't trust my own instincts when it comes to visual design. Fonts are especially baffling to me. If I like or dislike something to do with music composition/production I know exactly why and can give good reasons for it, but when it comes to visual design that stuff's all kind of vague. "That looks ugly." "Why does that look ugly?" "Because it looks ugly." I'd really like to get to a point where I can trust my own sensibilities for visual composition the same way I can for music... or at least closer to that point.