Glacial Communications

Lots of things going on of late. A quick recap:

1. Upgrading the FeedWordpress plugin ate a number of the PTB show descriptions from the last three months or so. I recovered some of them. The rest have the generic description again. Yay upgrades.

2. I’ve set up a Facebook page for whatever it is we do here(are we a label? do we build gear? A little of both and then some?), so if you’re a fan of whatever it is we do here and prefer Facebook to these ‘blog’ things, go become a fan there. I promise it won’t be a constant source of annoyance.

3. Expect some announcements of things happening in the future. For instance, I’ll be performing at Bella Dubby in Lakewood on August 21st, as a duo with my friend C. Randolph C. More details soon. Also be on the lookout for the forthcoming cassette released in conjunction with Everyone Else Has A Record Label, So Why Can’t I?, as well as more fun stuff on the horizon.

4. GoatTracker fans- here is a FAR better port of GoatTracker for Mac OS X than mine ever was. Seriously, it’s awesome. I’ll be going back and adding links to this one in my older posts.

5. A quickie on the DIY front – I’m moving right along on a MIDIbox SID. It’s just going to be a single-SID/basic control surface model, but it is moving right along. Hopefully usable & in an enclosure before August 21st…

On a messageboard I frequent, readers were asked to make a Summer mixtape for the impending Solstice. So, here’s mine:

Summer 2009 Mixtape

What’s on it, you ask?

Like any good tape, it’s divided into two sides: Past and Present. Past is songs I associate with past summers, and Present is, well, this summer.

Past
1. Depeche Mode: Enjoy the Silence – Summer of 1990. More responsible for making me the electronic music freak I am than any other song, ever. It was totally worth staying up late that one night to see the video. Strangely, MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” followed it, but it hasn’t had quite the same effect on me.

2. The Cure: Friday I’m in Love – Summer of 1992. I know. Give me grief, Cure-haters. But Wish was the soundtrack to the Summer of 1992, as far as I’m concerned, and this was The Jam. These days, my favorite track of the Wish era is Wendy Time, or the B-side to this (Halo),  but this was the tune of the day.

3. The Button: Examination Room – Summer of 1998. Yeah, a little self-promotion. Much of the summer of 1998 was spent recording this album. This was probably my favorite track to make, recorded in three passes (all instruments sans Theremin, Theremin later when Russ visited, and then the samples).

4. Guided By Voices: I Am A Scientist – Summer of 2002. During Studio-A-Rama 2002, a cute girl asked me out. Later, while GBV played this song, I kissed her. We got married three years later.

5. Swedish Rhapsody (from the CONET project) – Summer of 2008. Those of you who attended Scorched Nuts 2008 know. Besides, the set needed just a hint of noise.

Present
6. Lazer Crystal: Love Rhombus – Arguably the weakest track here (though I’m sure track #2’s or #5’s detractors will disagree). I mostly love the title, but it’s a nice downtempo-y thing.

7. Parallels: Vienna – This fairly new Toronto band is awash in awesome arpeggiation. Like thunderbolts and lightning.

8. Mount Sims: Escape Hatch – I sadly just discovered this artist/song. Anyone who has known about it since 2003 and didn’t tell me is On Notice. The chorus is the greatest I’ve heard since Curve’s Unreadable Communication.

9. The Juan MacLean: Happy House – This entire album(The Future Will Come) is the best thing the Human League isn’t going to release this year. Too bad I had to miss them at the Grog Shop last night. Yeah, it’s twelve and a half minutes long, but every single one is so damn…excellent.

10. Klein & M.B.O.: Dirty Talk – this 1982 slice of Italo-disco/electro hybrid has been routinely blowing my mind for the last year or so, but hell with it, it’s my favorite track of the moment. It goes in the mix. It’s made of magic. To make up for the length of the previous track, I chose the shortest version of this that I have, at a mere 3′48″.

After the flurry of activity earlier this month, things slowed down significantly – mostly due to preparations for PRIMER on Memorial Day weekend. I did make a concerted effort at building a modified proto-Klee sequencer the day before PRIMER (to have something to trigger the Sound Lab with), and had positive, but not quite fully working results. It’s still sitting on a breadboard, so I’ll get back to it eventually.

Last weekend I trekked to HGR Industrial Surplus in Euclid, and made some impressive scores:

• A box containing something like 60 of these Clarostat 100k potentiometers and maybe a dozen 2N3055 power transistors, as well as a number of AC inlets and other random parts.
• An interesting looking enclosure that will likely contain multiple sequencers and a joystick in the future.
• Some sort of dual industrial computer thing (I split this with a friend, each of us taking a motherboard – I got the enclosure and he got the cabling). It’s got a bunch of LM339 comparators, LF398 Sample-and-Holds, DG507 dual 8-step multiplexors (sequencer uses?) and many other as-yet-unidentified ICs – all socketed(!)

If anyone knows of a good inexpensive source for knobs for those Clarostat pots, I’m all ears (they’re 1/8″ shafts, about 7/8″ tall). I have some that would work ok if I were willing to cut down the shafts by about 1/4″, but I’m not sure I want to do that.

On the studio front, I found fitting, or close enough to fitting drivers for the monitor cabinets I picked up a while ago. I’ve now got crossover parts on the way. I guess I need to build an amplifier now too – I need no more than 50W per channel and don’t want to spend a lot of money – any ideas/suggestions?