john ingram – Page 34

Addendum

Good news, everyone! Sunday and Monday night I spent some time scouring the internet for public domain videos that I could swipe, hack and reassemble for the purpose of making a new video. The end result turned out to be something that I felt was suited for Nests of Disorder, so I beat it to fit one of the tracks from The Light Has Failed Us and sent it off to Joseph for feedback.

As it turns out, he liked it. So, without further ado, I present to you all the video for “These Shadows Grow Restless”:

http://www.intelligentmachinery.net/?page_id=540

Be warned that it does contain some graphic content, so if you have tender eyes, or share a room with someone who does, you may want to be careful.

Enjoy!

This is not my beautiful house

Strange as it may seem, I was true to my word last Saturday and actually spent the day being productive. I managed to capture only one live performance, which will likely be manipulated before showing up in either a Controlled Dissonance or Nest of Disorder track. After I finished that, I did some work on some other audio projects that I haven’t really thought about in a while – mainly to pad out the compilation project in the event that I get a few more entries, but not quite enough for a full release (yes – I may cheat a little on this project). I’m honestly hoping that these tracks never see the light of day: not because I dislike them, but because I would rather the compilation get enough input from other artists.

As alluded to in my last post, I got a page up for the new instrument. The Kvetchbox is pretty simple, and a tad lame, but it filled a need. The need was less for a simple and lame electroacoustic instrument and more for the satisfaction of having accomplished something. Sometimes I need to step back from a plethora of unfinished projects and tackle one simple thing to regain the motivation to finish up other projects. I’m hoping this will be that impetus and inspiration.

An old Controlled Dissonance track appeared in an ambient mix release this morning. “Filled With Stars”, from Convoluted Vol. 2, starts off the mix entitled “Explorations: Side Two”, available for download here: http://soundcloud.com/aim23
I haven’t had the opportunity to listen to any of the other mixes, but if they’re as good as this one, they’re worth hearing.

Alright. I think that’s all for now. Until next time, remember: caveat emptor, motherfuckers.

Let it whip

Since today is the first non-kid Saturday that I can remember in a very, very long time where I didn’t wake up with the sort of hangover that makes you pause to reconsider your life choices, I decided to make it the most productive non-kid Saturday I’ve had in a very, very long time. The first thing I did was sleep: a lot. Now this might not sound very productive, but it FELT awesome. After a quick breakfast of grits and fried eggs, I tackled the dishes piling up in the sink, then came upstairs to tackle the mess of tangled wires residing in that feared no man’s land where the common space of my work table, computer and music rig meet. Between the six wall outlets and two power strips in that immediate area, it had accumulated a veritable rats’ nest of jumbled wires that boggled the mind and complicated any endeavor set to take place in that particular region. This mission accomplished, I then moved over to the computer to transfer pictures from my phone and begin working through my list of songs I want to locate and download. After which, I am currently posting about said victorious achievements.

I plan on working on some new material today – either for Controlled Dissonance or Nests of Disorder. When I originally realized that I had no plans for the day and thought to spend the day noising, my goal was to dig deep and put myself in a bad place so that I could create something really dark. Of course, as fate would have it, I’m inexplicably in a really good mood today. So, I’m just going to set up some gear and run through a few live performances, and cull out the good stuff.

I’ve run across some interesting street art recently. One that keeps popping up around the city is this picture of a bloated and deformed fetus with a caption that contains the word “destroy” in some capacity. I managed to get these two pictures over the last few weeks:

Some other random pictures I just transferred over from the camera include this shot from Post Alley in Downtown Seattle. I took this picture while capturing a field recording that didn’t turn out so well. The other field recordings from that same venture were sent to Steve for inclusion in the Sounds Found library.

And, finally, this is a view of the portion of the Downtown skyline that I can see from my new office at work. I recently moved into one of our other buildings, to help expedite the project I’m on, and one of the big bonuses is this view from my desk.

Alright. Stick around for an update to the Instruments pages. It’s a cheap electroacoustic device I rigged up in an hour earlier this week.

Until then, etc. etc.

“And I’m proud to be an American…”

It’s Ye Olde Independence Day here in the Merry United States, and it sounds like a fucking war is taking place in Seattle. I hear yelling, buzzing of planes, sirens and explosions outside. Granted, the planes and sirens are a common fixture, and the yelling is not so uncommon as to be noteworthy, it’s just the combination of all of them, with the explosions of fireworks, that really set the mood.

I decided it was the perfect opportunity to give the H2 a proper field test. I still haven’t played back the recording, but I’ve got my fingers crossed that this was a worthwhile investment. Once I have some recordings under my belt, I’ll write up a proper review of the product, because I have some strong opinions on the physical presentation…

I discovered this scrawled on the back of a sign near my apartment:

It reminded me of this random graffiti picture that Joseph sent me a few months back. I hope there’s some worldwide movement starting, because I really want to see more creepy and negative graffiti gracing the flat surfaces of my city.

Get Hygienic!

I’ve been yammering about this for months, so it’s only fitting that I let slip a peek of the album cover. The cover is original artwork from one of the original founding members of the Mental Hygiene League, and it’s about as perfect a visual synopsis of the MHL as one could ever hope to find.

I finished up all the rest of the artwork and layouts tonight. I still need to normalize the audio from all the submitted tracks. Then zip it all up and send it to our esteemed Friend in the Netherlands for release next week.

My current random song obsession is “Veteran of the Psychic Wars” by Blue Oyster Cult. I hadn’t heard the song in 12 years when I started singing it last week. I had to track down a copy to get it out of my head. It’s a strangely awesome song, and not just because they managed to work the word “bereaved” into the lyrics.

Back to work.