Author: john ingram

This iteration of John Ingram was created in response to increased demand in global John Ingramness. Previous incarnations were less suited to fulfill this need.

Destroy, Seattle, Destroy

Last summer I started noticing an odd trend of sticker graffiti cropping up around town, the common thread being a tag with either the word “DESTROY” or the phrase “DESTROYED LIFE”. Initially I thought it to be some manner of political statement, but as the trend grew, the political nature waned. I started taking pictures of the works, as I stumbled on them, and decided it was high time to compile it all in a post. What strikes me as the oddest part about this trend is that, being as rampant as it is, I can’t find any murmurings about it online. One day, however, I was taking a picture of one of the bits of graffito and was approached by another fan who was excited to tell me about a few of which I wasn’t aware. Unfortunately, they were gone by the time I made it to those locations, but it was heartening to know that I’m not the only fan.

In order of my discovery:

My personal favorite is the Paul McCartney as Lee Harvey Oswald, getting shot by Jack Ruby. Fucking classic.

As always, caveat emptor, motherfuckers.

I’m playing my jokes upon you

While there’s nothing better to do.

It’s that time of the month again. No. The other that time of the month. The day after the seventh, which means that we have a slew of new releases from Just Not Normal – and if rumors are true, this will be the last new batch for quite some time.

In lieu of my standard reviewing process, I thought I would listen through a few of the releases today and post some quick thoughts. This is partly because I actually have things to do this week, and partly because I’m feeling too lazy to think of 37 different ways to creatively describe noise.

Krabatof – Sea of Trees – The opening track to this album is deceptively minimal, and by minimal I mean REALLY minimal, but don’t let this put you off from the rest of the album, which, while largely minimal, has moments of pure genius in the form of some of the creepiest sounds I’ve heard outside of haunted house sound effect collections.

[Rating:4/5]

Buben vs. Anton Mobin – On The Different Side of the Object – A collaborative effort between these artists resulted in two sets of tracks. This album represents the more “experimental” tracks. We end up with a collection of well-produced noise tracks, culling influence from all corners of the genre – some minimal, a touch of drone, cacophonous electroacoustic and synth noodlings, all occasionally punctuated with walls of harsh noise.

[Rating:3/5]

Altocumulus – Household Apocalypse – Of today’s batch, this album definitely has the best title. Comprised mostly of field recordings – some manipulated, others clean – accentuated with minimal synth accompaniment, this album is remarkably restrained. Where a lesser artist may have overindulged, Altocumulus pulls together a disparate array of found sounds in a tastefully textured manner that often flirts with cacophony, without ever committing to the chaos.

[Rating:3.5/5]

More spam, more diversions

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s adventure, I decided to spend a little time this afternoon repeating the diversion, this time using a huge chunk of text culled from a large number of spam messages waiting to be deleted from my queue. I copied and pasted enough spam into Notepad to make a respectable .25 second long WAV file and using the plugin native to Audacity, stretched it out to about 15 seconds in length. I then proceeded to abuse it right thoroughly using a number of VST plugins, before dumping it into PaulStretch and performing the usual magic there.

Again, it’s not anything extraordinary, but at least it’s a time-consuming way to create some original beds of noise for studio endeavors.

Databending – More spam by intelligentmachinery