..oh.

In the center of this photo is my friend Huanita, surrounded by a few of her friends.They live in Rio- This was taken on the beach at 7am or thereabouts. What does this have to do with anything? Strictly speaking, nothing...but as I've been living the vampire nocturnal ivory tower existence lately, the sheer "otherness" compared to my current day-to-day almost shocked me somehow. Her smile speaks volumes. Apparently they had me in mind (I'm told) when this was taken. Hu, if you're reading this, thanks for the window into an alternate reality.

The future of the past is getting scary

Depending on how long you've been reading this...whatever-this-is, you may or may not know that I tend to collect vintage gear which gets used heavily in my work. Unfortunately, it is becoming harder and more expensive to keep some of this stuff running these days due to a combination of parts becoming scarce and/or obsolete, lack of skilled techs around who are versed in the care and feeding of these devices and a number of other factors. It's on the verge of becoming a crisis now though, and there are a lot of people using a handful of industry-standard "staple" pieces for which this situation is the case. Strange as it may seem, as advanced as modern software has become lately, the sound of these older hardware machines (from the 80s and beyond) simply hasn't been replicated by plug-ins, at least not yet. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, but for the moment it looks a bit grim.

Shameless, outdated self-promotion

I really, _really_ hate it when people use things like Facebook status updates to promote themselves. Wake up, idiots! It's not your website, and people aren't going there specifically to hear about your little career moments, so why annoy everyone? This blog, however, _is_ mine, it's about me and particularly since I never use it to "promote" anything, I figure an occasional me-related link falls firmly within the realm of the appropriate for a forum such at this.

This is old - from earlier this year - but I figured what the hell. The print edition was scarce (ironic, since I wrote for this mag for years and never had trouble finding it on newsstands until I'm finally in the damn thing), so for anyone that missed it and is interested, here you go.

Hit it

Laurie

Electronic music is a bit like sci-fi; The good seems modern forever, while the bad becomes laughable in a cruelly short time. So in keeping with the general intent of this "blog" (ick), here's a reminder of someone doing some great things over 30 years ago on a then-experimental instrument that still sounds fantastic. Watch the performance clip, then the interview- Laurie Spiegel is a thoughtful, articulate speaker and she crystallizes some important aspects of computer music that are still relevant today, 25 years on.

Performance

Interview