Status: Ice Cold on the Horizon

Get Bent should already have been released in its entirety, but since it is the last beat driven lesserdevil album for the foreseeable future I wanted to leave a lasting impression.  Although yet to be deleted from "Archive," the original A side has been scrapped.  With more than enough completed material available to simply push out one or two hours of music sitting on this hard drive (and on tape backup), holding off on delivering the payload is somewhat frustrating.  Looking back at the last few years of releases, however, it occurs to me that much of it would have been epic, or nearly so, if impatience had not won out over perfectionism.  Luckily I consider this album important enough to quiet the little voice in my thoughts that forever wheedles about how much more should have been accomplished by now, needs to be accomplished, before age and time makes accomplishment impossible.

Setting aside a significant amount of finished music, I initiated a side project to flush out the idea behind Get Bent and create something profoundly polished.  While I have compiled dozens of original instrument kits and soundfonts since 2009, I sometimes cut corners with the samples involved, editing existing sounds rather than creating them entirely from scratch.  From 2006 to 2009 I used no samples for drum kits, instrument kits or SF2's that were not absolutely a product of my own labor.  After the release of Empty Warehouses the difference in the quality of sound between those years and more recent years struck me as horrifyingly apparent.  Without going that extra mile the sounds involved fail to be staunchly impeccable, in my opinion, and do not satisfy my drive for brilliance.

At the current rate of production all of the homegrown instruments and beats should be assembled for use within a day or two.  Since I always say that and it is never as quick as promised, realistically it will be several days.  At that time the songs will be freshly arranged in the fashion that makes my best work teeth chattering, ice cold, frozen blue* mini-dynamos of beat motion.  That's quite a claim to make, but those people who understand what I just said know that it is true.

Thank you for your time.  There's nothing left to be said.  The next thing you find here will be what has been promised.


* Breaking Bad reference
** I do not get along well with deadlines.  They have the opposite effect. Get Bent will be finished when it is finished.  If not for the promised release date it would probably be out already.

Microphones and Alter-egos: How Not To Win Friends

☆★☆ Alternate Title - Humor: Doing It Wrong ☆★☆

"Tens of thousands of people in Mexico have been killed in a conflict centering on drugs. Throughout my life drugs simply held no appeal for me, until I discovered that casualties from the drug war are set to top 120,000. Everything changed when I got that news. So far 70,000 Mexicans died so that I can get high. I now feel that it is my duty as a compassionate human being to get high.

Every citizen of the United States should set aside their petty political beliefs and prejudices and snort a massive rail. Tens of thousands of Mexican mothers lost someone near and dear to them in order for yankees to get high. 70,000 people died so that you could get high. Don't let their deaths be in vain!"

- Josie "Calla" Vides

Preface to a Sociopath's Fever Dreams

Oh! Hi!

Someone dear to me from many years ago got in touch recently, for the first time in almost twenty years.  I was delighted to find that he never gave up on the sort of work that made him happy, even though his idealism regarding the work has left him a pauper.   We talked for a long time.  During the talk, as I perused this site, I mentioned that it sorely needed an introduction.  Somehow I found myself agreeing that it would be penned by me.

This web journal belongs to an author and a musician.  He spent the vast majority of his writing career dedicated to the artistic ideals of poetry and short literature.  The entirety of his musical career was devoted to the aesthetics of sound, both conventional and radical.

During the Bush era the artist became outspoken on political issues.  Symbols was launched to defend against the systematic destruction of the civil liberties of United States citizens and the political warfare waged against the left by the GOP.  It was also a celebration of the artist's uniqueness and nonconformity.  

Almost all of the political writing and political opinions from that period have been removed from the site and permanently deleted.  The artist deemed the opinions on government detrimental to his true calling.  Because of the large percentage of deeply entrenched conservatives in American society, the artist decided that insights into his personal life and rejoicing in social eccentricities would create biases and undermine artistic integrity.  Therefore, most autobiographical material was also destroyed.

The artist's opinions and personality have neither mellowed nor been watered down in the way this artistic diary has.  If anything, he more strongly believes all of the things he did before, almost as if gripped by calenture.  Furthermore, rather than reigning in his powerfully vivacious idiosyncrasies, Day reinforced his flamboyance and threw up defenses of all things individualistic.  He has simply chosen to allow the public only posthumous examinations of his personal life and character as he sees it (obviously no man or woman alive can stop gossip and speculation, and even trying to stop others from relating how they see things can have the opposite effect).

I decided to write this introduction in order to provide one for this journal based on objectivity and professionalism.   Day knows all too well his own tendency to boisterously and vociferously go on preemptive offensives against stodginess, closed mindedness and prejudices.  It was that attitude that led him to fundamentally change this blog (there, I said it, it is not a journal, it is a web log, a web log) in the first place, and regardless of my own thoughts on the matter I still respect his decision.  Because we both know he isn't very objective at times, and, as far as professionalism... well, perhaps I should end that discussion right there.

There was only one requirement for this job.  I was asked to triumph brevity and caution in the writing of this little piece.  I will not carry out this task in the manner in which I was asked to.  I have decided to throw caution to the wind, and loose my tongue so that my testimony might be as long as the wedding gown I pined for my father to give me away to Day in, pink and scarlet though it may have been, and though it would have killed my father (and likely upwards of 65% of my extended family).

Day treats creativity as the son of God and art as His daughter.  I once made my tangibly lascivious vorstellungen of Day a wicked sacrilege of my own; confession and subsequent penitential prayers of the rosary only made the act more delicious. In return the rhapsodist merely used me to enliven his solitary orgy with copia verborum.  The jealousy drove me to crave his shibari crucifixion at the foot of my bed, and to yearn that the whole of his masculinity be immolated, myself the flambeau of that thing's undoing. Day exhibited a passionate devotion to words, melodies, and even paintings, a passion and devotion he made known to all the world.  At the same time he sequestered our union so resolutely the tomb of Akhenaten saw more sunlight than did our acts, and he silenced vocalization of our love with such draconian discipline even I, with my penchant for defiance of such dominion, dared not speak its name.  I never stopped wanting revenge, however, for being dumped -- er -- being forced to dump him.

I bore two offspring for the man:  obsession and vendetta.  Those strong feelings, the only children I am capable, forever, of bringing to term, balance perfectly.  Obsession eternally reminds me of Day's features and the pleasure of being so alive beside him. Vendetta demands that the world never be allowed to forget those things the man wrote and sought to erase, regardless of whether he is dead or alive.  Nobody could possibly know the joy I feel at being asked to write this introduction; finally I have the power to tell the truth so that all will know.

[Passage deleted by Symbols' Editor in Chief]

Having said those things, it feels grotesquely unfair that few people will know this beautiful man indirectly while it is possible to wreck the sculpted image of his aloof classical artistry, and precisely due to the image. Because of the pigheaded stubbornness with which he guards his lifelong love affair with "the mind's internal heaven," and the fanaticism with which he has decided to eradicate all traces of his humanity, truth may die the true death.  If such a thing happens, c'est la vie.  All these thoughts are as ignis fatuus.

Lily d'Antonia Buitrago
Miami, Florida
September 21, 2013

P.S.  It's all in good fun, Day.  And don't you dare bitch at me, bitch.  You told me to keep it brief so you could maintain the illusion of being humble, you fucking poser.  :333



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I can't believe I let you do this.
-lsr

At Last Qongrimoujie

From "Get Bent" - new album exploring lengthy non-repeating percussion arrangements at tempo often exceeding 250 bpm.  That's nothing earth shattering, just the sort of jam I have been into lately.  This album is essentially complete, I just have not released most of it. 

This will be the last beats oriented music I release for quite some time.  I am going back to avant, downtempo, chillout and experimental.  I miss it a lot.

Brain Shart

Get Bent

The posting of the A Side of "Get Bent" was a gigantic mistake. As I work on a project I usually save various notably distinctive versions of the song as it progresses. Currently there are five versions of side one of Get Bent. The most recent version is almost always the best version availble. What was posted here was neither the latest version, nor one with any saving graces. This is especially true with regard to song one (the first ten minutes of the album).

What got posted was a version that was the product of debauchery late at night. Listening to song one was very enjoyable at the time. Then, last night, I listened to it sober. That experience was mortifying.

The repetitive, uninspired nine minutes of "music" are like moldy chunks of hardened cheez whiz strings on a table with beluga caviar and the finest brie set out as teasing apertifs. I became nearly physically ill as the canned, droning beeps and boops went on for long minutes. The sound conjured a vision of a dying doe, riddled with bulles though none of them fatal, as it dragged its useless hind legs through the undergrowth. But there was no way to put the song out of its misery. I am sharing accomodations with a Luddite who really believes that the Internet is the work of the devil.

So here I am at a public computer, embarrassed and humiliated that the ~24 minutes of music I just released were tarnished to the extreme by my lack of attention to detail. Repetitiveness in electronic music is something I hate almost as much as I hate the smell of curdled milk. At least I sugar coated this critique of Letroxulae rather than discussing its shortcomings in detail.

Somebody told me "it's not that bad."  That phrase never reassures anyone.  It would be more honest to offer a phone number to a crisis intervention hotline.   All options for correcting Letroxulae are on the table, including euthanasia and self-immolation.

Meh, fuck it.  I'll fix it tomorrow.  Also, this post was not edited.

Get Bent UPDATED

Get Bent

I'd like to say this is all of side one, but I am certain I will add to it.  Sometimes I post new works just as a precaution.  I wouldn't want to die with my latest creations never having seen the light of day.  And it is always a good day to die.

Bent

New album.

sound

Screw You Guys, I'm Going Home

Letroxulae

Nevar Fer Got

Tired of being ignored the aging artist plunged headlong into the most difficult situations and positions socially possible, but then fought back; yet beaten, yet victorious, could never forget the reasons the war began in the first place.  Broken bodies crowded the corridors of the monasteries, exiled for being no longer of use, discarded because no longer attractive.  The tactical units needed psy of her ability in the domestic theater, and Lydia loved that she could dance her way through assassination after assassination for the realm.  Everything for the parent land.