dead on the inside

some of you may or may not have noticed that little lst.fm widget over there on the left…

you may also have noticed
that I’m doing a whole lot of…
(you can call it research )
listening in the death metal genre

technically speaking
based on sheer speed alone
it should not be capable of being played with non-demon powered hands
[or an egg beater with a guitar pick or drum sticks attached to it]
yet it is people
playing drums, guitars, cookie monster impersonating

there is a cohesion
a unification of perfectly timed percussion and the other distorted drop tuned things (mostly guitars)

you’d think this would be an easy thing to emulate with machines.
It’s not.

with most electronic music that attempts to be more “aggressive”
it ultimately winds up coming across more ambient to my ears
you know what im talking about¹
as they are just “joyful noise”, the drums cease to exist
I stop listening to the percussion and focus on my ears on the backdrop.

note to electronic producers:
just because your percussion is above the 168bpm mark does not mean you are angry. it just means you are probably a little more disorganized than you should be. Admittedly it takes great skill to write anything above your standard 4/4 at 144bpm that doesn’t suck I haven’t been able to sucessfully do it and probably won’t ever.

There is no denying the intent of a decently produced death metal track . it is here to kick you in your teeth and take body parts as trophies.

So the real question as a producer is:
Now that I’ve identified a problem what should/can be done about it? how do I translate this into something useful?

• add distorted guitar? no definately not
• point my research towards gabber? no,… well maybe.
• drop 80% of melody and focus more on harmonic structures? hmmm theres a brainstorm waiting to happen

anyway
I’ll quit with the rambling
and leave you instead with some death metal gems that i recommend

In order of significance

• cryptopsy
• suffocation
• dead horse
• Necrophagist
• bolt thrower
• cannibal corpse
• borhen and der club of gore former death metal band gone doom jazz

enjoy

¹ noisy random drums with some ambient noise that slips in and out of the mix

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cockroaches

i love hacks
especially ones that involve some sense of the ridiculous like taking a robot and strapping a live cockroach on a trackball-esque interface to help it move around
hows that for science?
casts a short shadow towards survival research laboratories

Is this an “artwork”?
Not really. The term “art” can be problematic, and conjures up concepts of things that reside on a rich person’s coffee table or wall. In that sense, this isn’t an artwork. In the sense of attempting to engage in cultural discourse, yes: this project could be considered an artwork

bless the future of robotics

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hydergine journal pt.2

the final test of hydergine before i abandon its use altogether. the plan of attack is to slowly ramp up the dosage over a period of 3-4 days until im taking 8,9mg a day or 4,5mg twice a day. i do not plan on supplementing it. there may be a time when i begin taking incrementally larger doses of B-complex starting potentially as low as 25mg. i have just enough left over from the last experiment to make it about two weeks. i do not however expect anything significant as the previous test had less than noticeable results.

day 1:
^{dosage: 2.5mgx2 hydergine}
isolated head ache behind right eye. noticed an increase in ablility to recognize relationships between numbers. which i should note is uncommon for me.

day 2:
^{dosage: 2.5mgx2 hydergine}
so far no noticeble difference. hydergine cetainly is no piracetam where the effects were more apparent. i suppose that dendrite regrowth is not supposed to be a viceral process.

day 3:
^{dosage: 2.5mgx2 hydergine}
irritable. more than likely unrelated. but it seems every question is a stupid one today. every breath a wasted one.

day 4:
^{dosage: 4.5mg hydergine}
ironic that there has yet to be the same side effects as previously. over the weekend i began keeping myself awake by taking two numbers multiplying them then multiplying the sum. for instance, 1×2=2. 2×2=4 4×4=16 and so on. i made it all the way up to 4096 before i found it difficult to keep track. which if you follow computer hardware you prolly know the sequences already. the difference is i dont multiply in my head. i have a calculator and i know how to use it.

day 5:
^{dosage: 4.5mgx2 hydergine}
seems to be going fine so far. none of the same things as before. no weird typing. no head aches. perhaps some of those could have been linked to the dosage of piracetam i had been taking or the b complex. a non optimum dosage of piracetam will make your thoughts cloudy and difficult to hang onto.

day 6:
^{dosage: 4.5mgx2 hydergine}
noticed today that my hands havent hurt in awhile. which usually they start to ache a little after sitting at the computer for as long as i do. sometimes its really bad and i contemplate cutting my hands off at the wrists, use the wacom tablet with my teeth, but then theres the typing. ive been poutting in 16 hour days and not a twinge since over the next few days ill be adding small doses of piracetam.

day 7-8:
^{dosage: 0mg hydergine}
two days off.

day 9:
^{dosage: 4.5mgx2 hydergine / 800mgx2 nootropil}
little disconnected. no headaches. mild fuzzy thinking. mildy irritable. noticed poor use of home office / studio space, corrected the problem by switching the input devices from the roll out tray to the top of the desk. relocated midi keys to tray. had to make two trips to the hardware store cuz i forgot parts the first time.

day 10:
^{dosage: 4.5mgx2 hydergine / 800mgx2 nootropil}
again with the irritability. extremely mild headache. some mild intestinal distress. seems that i’m sidestepping all the positive effects and heading straight for the side effects. whee

day 11
^{dosage: 4.5mgx2 hydergine / 800mgx1 nootropil}
only four days till the experiment ends. then i will post the semi permanent judgement of hydergine. spent most off the day refining code on all the pages to validate as XHTML strict. as they were in disarray, no small task, even with the headache.

day 12
^{dosage: 0mg hydergine / 0mg of nootropil}

day 13
^{dosage: 4.5mg hydergine / 800mgx2 nootropill}
ok. thats it. i give up. it should be more than apparent to me by now that hydergine seems to have the exact opposite of the desired effect. now for the wrap up

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