Portable Sound Isolation Booth

I'm thinking about buying one of these as a solution to my need for a practice and recording space. There's no reason I couldn't sing and play my sax in one of these right in the middle of my living room next to the electronic equipment rack and computer table.

A Fist Full Of Hip Hop

Yesterday I came home from Aquarius Records with a bunch of hip hop CDs - some new and some just new to me.

Here's what's been added to rotation:

1) Dalek - From Filthy Tongue Of Gods And Griots
2) MIA - Arular
3) Busdriver - Fear Of A Black Tanget
4) El-P Presents: Cannibal OXtrumentals

So far, I can recommend each of these. Dalek in particular rocks my world.

The Tools You Use To Do The Job Define What You Build

It's Sunday morning, I've got 45 minutes before I need to head up to the city for morning meditation. I'm listening to 'Bootie 5.05' track 3 'Stevie Wonder vs. The Clash' and I freaking love it.

Mashups are a guilty pleasure of mine and San Francisco's mashup scene is a great place to indulge. Last weekend I attended Bootie SF, a monthly dance party featuring 'bootleg and bastard pop'. It was a *blast*, that I shared with an amazing mix of people who all seemed to want to dance. And dance we did, sweat dripping from brows all night long.

I am continually amazed and dumb struck by technology's latent influence on music. Having grown up studying music from a traditional and jazz theory vantage point and listening to new wave, industrial and hip-hop there was a big disconnect between the learned and the loved. Little did I know at the time that the chasm that lay between the two was the language of technology.

Bottom line, the tools used to create the music define the form and aesthetics of the music itself.

A Wikipedia search on 'mashups' redirects to the term 'bastard pop' and provides this brief definition followed by history:

"Bastard pop is a musical genre which, in its purest form, consists of the combination (usually by digital means) of the music from one song with the acapella from another. Typically, the music and vocals belong to completely different genres. At their best, bastard pop songs strive for musical epiphanies that add up to considerably more than the sum of their parts."

This form of musical expression wouldn't be possible without the advent of the MP3 file format, digital audio editting and mixing tools like Acid and ProTools and last but not least let us not forget the personal computer.

Suffice it to say, we're a long way from the harpsichord and Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier.

Damming The Energy Of Enthusiasm For My Own Sake

I think most people that know me would characterize me as a generally enthusiastic and excited person and I see myself as such too.

Enthusiasm is a great tool, but as I know too well, it's got a dark side.

Deployed without care, caution and discretion my own enthusiasm has pushed me down the infamous path of the 'less than ideal'. The 'less than ideal' is different from the path of 'the middle ground'. To qualify, middle ground exists between the extremes of a duality. In Buddhist teachings it is referred to as the 'middle way'.

When I refer to scenarios that I'd label as 'less than ideal' I think about instances within which I put my own needs, wants, ideas, objectives and/or inclinations on the shelf for some imaginary 'later date' as the cost of admission into the scenario and as opportunity for my enthusiasm to reign free.

So many times in the past I've made this choice as the alternative - damming my enthusiasm, walking away, saying no, sitting with the discomfort of having the energy of enthusiasm coursing through my system seemingly without an outlet - seemed so grim.

Lately, I'm going with the alternative as it seems to be a choice that leads to a more ideal middle path - one that reflects my intensions in real time as opposed to leaving them to manifest as a botched after thought. It isn't an easy thing for me to do. I think and hope this process will lead to satisfying creative results.

Making Art To Fuck With You

I had dinner with a friend from college last night. He and I are reacquainting ourselves after not seeing or speaking for some 10 years. This lengthy hiatus is a byproduct of some rather dramatic and bizarre social catastrophes that went down during the end of our college careers.

Details of the scenarios aren't important, the crux of all of them centers around a desire in people to exert control over their own lives by fucking with the other people around and close to them. I bore the brunt of some of this and as my friend said, "got the shit end of the stick".

This morning while reflecting on last night's conversations I started to remember my own impulses and desires at play during that somewhat ill fated time. The role I felt a compulsion to play was that of the "earnest messenger"; I wanted to set things straight and get people to look at the truth of their actions and what was "really" going on - or what I perceived was "really" going on.

As this floated to the surface of my mind, I remembered one of my impulses for making art and music. I wanted to provoke through artistic expression. I get a sick thrill out of the idea of creating art that fucks with people's heads forcing them to face truths that they seemed to easily dance around that I couldn't possibly escape. I don't think I wanted to hurt people for the sake of hurting them; I never felt a purely malicious impulse but I was never afraid of what damage might occur as byproduct.

I always felt somewhat perverse around this desire in myself. Is my desire and expression of it through art any different from people actually fucking with each other and wreaking havoc in each other's lives?

The Sound Of Freedom

I love music and don't remember a time when I didn't. My love for it has become less specific over the last few years as these days have been a time of release from the extremes I used to conjure and declare.

This afternoon while working on a new project I'm listening to Tone396's new "indie disco" mix referenced on my pal Matt Hite's Beatmixed blog.

The mix opens with a vocal track that sounds like Damo Suzuki and segues into remixes of music by 'The Music' and 'The Killers'. There's a moment in the segue that's making my smile - it sounds like freedom - conjuring images of vast sky and the spirit of unlimited possibility. Hearing this I instantly remember why I love music.

Music is a guide to the world as vibration.

Creation From The Inside Out

As some people close to me know, I'm in the middle of an 18 month program centered around energy work through meditation - technically called 'Clairvoyant Training' - I assure you there are no crystal balls or flashing neon signs involved. Without going into the uber specifics I will say that for me, the bulk of my work in the program thus far is centered around becoming more aware and learning to work with my own energy.

One of the coolest things that's happened as a result of this work is a gradual shift and realignment between myself and my creativity.

A few years ago, I shifted my attention outside of myself to look for and bring other information in to apply it to myself and do what I'm not certain. Maybe become someone else? Maybe to get past blocks or frustrations that I didn't think I knew how to deal with? It was kinda of like being a brick building not knowing if it's okay to accept yourself as such so you go out looking for the right paint to coat yourself with in the hopes that by painting yourself you might become a construction made from wood instead of brick. It's a strange analogy but follow me it makes sense.

I was raised by people who believed in external validation and recognition above all else as a means for acquiring permission necessary to do what one wants. This is a *death sentence* for creativity. I remember trying to keep my head above water around this; I worked double time to make it okay just to be me and not get swept up in the need for value judgments from outside myself. Trying to just be *brick*. I was successful to some extent but there was always the lingering fear that something me be wrong with me as brick and eventually it would catch up with me.

Fast forward to the year 2001, things were falling apart left and right including somethings I contributed to the creation of and it scared the living shit out of me. With the fall of the towers in New York City I caved into the fear of my brickness and tumbled into submission. I relinquished my convincing efforts and decided to surrender to whatever and I do mean whatever. I was tired and desperately didn't want to fuck up anything else.

I've spent the years following somewhat numb to my creativity letting it thrive in small and confined quarters. Web programming has been a safe haven; a nice binary it either works or it doesn't. Certainly once you scratch the surface on that front we get into elegance, scalability and reusability of design but those too are far easier to quantify than the value of art, expression or music.

Meanwhile, I chose to engage in meditation practices in the hope of making peace with myself half way expecting that I'd arrive at a magical paint dispensing station where I'd be given the *right* kind of paint to turn myself into a full fledged wood based construction.

What's actually occurred as I go deeper into meditation and self surrender is a gradual casting off of the layers of paint applied by myself and others. As this happens, I'm turning inward again and realizing that creativity manifests from the inside out. In order to create *anything* one has to align oneself with oneself in order to direct their own energy - external validation and permission be damned.