Guys, don't forget to back up your files.

Two days ago I received an email from a client named Justin that I hadn't spoken to in almost three years. He was asking for a copy of a song from a session that took place in Fort Worth, TX in March of 2010 to put on a cassette to be released at his final performance. Somewhere between March of 2010 and April of 2013 I've moved to Austin, been across the country multiple times, and had two hard drives crash. Things are not looking good for this song. I combed through our emails and found a link(!) from the weekend after the session in 2010 that would have taken me directly to the track if it weren't for the fact that it was a link to megaupload, where nothing exists but tears and memories off all the free downloads with cheeky names that once were. The only thing left to do was to email the Electronic Frontier Foundation about maybe getting the file out of the hands of the US Government (or whomever has those hard drives). 

I feel a twinge of guilt about not being able to get Justin the song that he worked so hard to create. I find it very strange and melancholic that two people can work so hard on a project, putting in ten hour days and going hungry to complete a piece of art only for nothing of their work to exist other than the memory of whatever was created. I have a vague recollection of the desired song, a pounding floor tom reverberates through a microphone connected to three delay pedals and a loop station creating feedback that stretches out for what feels like an eternity. It's harsh and beautiful and I wish that it were tangible but for now it lives as a remix in only two pair of ears. Hopefully someone will come through and retrieve the song, I'd like to be able to hear it for what it is and send this unnamed monstrosity out into the world. If nothing else it's a lesson to always click save, drop your file into whatever cloud (or clouds) that you may pray to, burn it to a disc, and buy another external hard drive. If all else fails keep your memory sharp because that's all you really have. 

John Titor Heavyweight Championship

If you're obsessed with the same things that I am (time travel, multiverse theory, advanced storytelling, comic books, and professional wrestling) I suggest you check out the most recent episode of The Mandible Claw podcast and listen to two people put on their crazy hats. http://themandibleclaw.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/the-mandible-claw-chikara-special-1-21-jigsaws/#more-223

Someone get me my tinfoil hat!

Frustrated Incorporated

The music that you can download by clicking on the snuggly cat photograph wasn't supposed to be released until next week and instead of a quickly written blog post, a very small independent label that handles music in the style that I orbit was to type something up and send it out. I would probably just reblog their post. I don't know how that works. It doesn't really matter. Instead of that, I would rather put it up for free (or all of yr money if you're very wealthy) with my cat art and the mix that I like in lieu of something that I'm not 100% behind. I hate that this post sounds so cloak and dagger. You know when you make breakfast for someone and they say 'this is good but it could be so much better if you let me add some ingredients'? And you, being a mostly rational human being dealing with moderate to severe depression and probably a slight anger issue think 'No. Fuck you. I made this breakfast and we're eating it the way it was prepared or you can choke on it!' It's like that. 

One Week of Secret Daft Punk Shows

Welcome back, SXSW is over and everyone can get back to work and eat tacos without standing in line forever! Hooray! During the festival I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine about how so many people from the recording side of the music industry are beginning to get into the world of film. They seemed to feel that those of us that are making a move toward working production sound or post mixing (or art direction or whatever) were somehow jumping ship. I don’t think that my friend intended to throw shade at those of us who are trying to find work in an already crowded field but I got that feeling that they felt betrayed.  It would be nice if I had the opportunity to only work on the engineering projects that fall in the rubric of what I went to school for but it’s rare that anyone finds that kind of work. In fact, I know one person from the CVCC audio engineering program that is working at a studio. He’s probably one of the best engineers that I’ve ever met and I’m really happy for him. I’d like to think that I’ve had a less linear, yet just as enriching experience. I like that I can wear a lot of hats, even if they’re similar to the original hat that I bought (worst analogy ever).

Here’s a run down of what I worked on during SXSW:

I worked on the art department for a live episode of Comedy Bang Bang sponsored by Jash.com. You can watch the episode, featuring Michael Cera, Reggie Watts, and Tim and Eric here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeUC9ZLfG8Q

I caught my blood brothers in Diving playing in a parking lot outside of Buffalo Exchange; I’ll post those videos some time next week.

Later that week I filmed the Sound Dessert Showcase at the Austin Ale House. I had a blast hanging out with my buddy Bryan Taylor (who was photographing the event) and watching bands like My Gold Mask, Emperor X and Hunting Club party hard in the middle of the day. Those videos will be up soon on www.sounddessert.com

Then I went up north to sound mix on an infomercial for the Tony Ngyuen Law Firm. The experience was completely new to me but I had a lot of fun working with Tom and Mike, my two new favorite dudes. On a side note, I finally got to shoot something on a GoPro and the shot looked good but I think if you’re not strapping one of those to an exploding shark riding a skateboard down the Statue Of Liberty you’re missing a trick.  

Making The Video

I recently agreed to release an album of ambient and semi ambient music with a net record label called Healing Chime Audio. For the majority of my musical career I've worked without a label asking me to do things or wanting to give their input on my art. Although, a couple of years ago I did release some music through the now defunct (I think) To Hip To Hop Cassettes from Australia, but largely they left me alone other than to answer my questions about Pizza on the other side of the hemisphere. I'm now dealing with someone who wants to talk about singles(!) and percentages(!) and music videos(!). To be completely honest, there's not very much being asked of me by Healing Chime, I'm just stubborn and nearly impossible to work with. When Noah told me that he wanted to release a couple of videos in conjunction with the new album I said "great!" and told him to get on it, but then that part of my brain that won't let anyone do anything for me kicked in and I wrote a treatment for the first single, Caterpillars Matter to Caterpillars. Once I realized that I wrote in a hole in the middle of my bed and a centaur I realized that I had to create those things. And now here we are. 

For the centaur I used my roommate, Drake, some jumbo cotton balls, brown spray paint a paper bag, and a pizza box. For the somewhat failed hole in the bed, John and I just extended the bed and made a hole and then I climbed through it. 

For the majority of the shoot my friend, and co-conspirator, John Shields handled directing duties so I could jump around with a bass, climb through a hole made of sheets, walk around in a field, and be moody for the sake of music videos. I don't know if I could have made the video without him. While I did make a shot list, he was the guy that made sure that we stuck to it as much as we could. Enjoy the video, check out the album whenever it comes out over at Healing Chime, I'm sure I'll let you know about it. 

Art Dept

This is how we do it!

shot list

john the director

drake the centaur

96 Bitter Something Something

I re-edited a CKY video to make a better video for a song of off Diving's split EP with Sixteen.

You can hear Diving's side of the split at http://diving.bandcamp.com/album/split-with-sixtee

Instead of Job Hunting

For the last week I’ve been putting serious thought into the motives and inspirations of film composers from the 70s and 80s, specifically the composers that worked predominately in the realm of science fiction.  More specifically, Alan Howarth, Brad Fiedel, Harold Faltermeyer, and Wendy Carlos.  There are a lot of other composers that I’m not mentioning (Vangelis, Michael Kamen, etc) because of their primary use of a full orchestra rather than synthesizers.  As I’m typing this I’m answering my own question that I haven’t even posed out loud yet. When did so many composers switch to working with analog synths rather than full orchestras?

My first music purchases were those 3 disc ‘Best of Science Fiction Overtures’ that came out in the early and mid 90s. For the longest time I didn’t know that the theme to The Terminator was entirely electronic, I guess it was less expensive to re-record entire songs with an orchestra than it was to license a song. Maybe they would have had to re-master every song. I don’t know. When I finally ended up hearing a lot of the songs from these compilations later in life I didn’t even know what I was listening to. Did Tron really sound like this? It all makes sense! It’s supposed to sound like a computer!

Maybe it was cheaper to compose on a Moog. Maybe it was much nicer to sit and have a cup of coffee in your den while you tried out different patch bays, or maybe (and probably) it was having to get dressed and commute to an expensive studio to wrangle around 70 people to get a song recorded that you could have finished by lunch in your afore mentioned den. 

I just remembered that this Alan Howarth MixTape was on Sound Cloud.

digital ghosts

I couldn't sleep last night so I constructed a bit of multimedia for you.

Production Sound Rabbit Hole

Last weekend I began my position as a production mixer on Monster Tails, a micro budget science fiction film that’s based in Austin, TX. I found this project through the Texas Film Commission and after a few emails everything came together quickly. Monster Tails isn’t the largest production that I’ve worked on but compared to the last three or four shorts that I’ve filmed, its Ben Hur. The fact that there was step up in budget from Meetings to MT (a 37,000% step up) it feels more constrained than anything I’ve done with my friends on no budget. The knowledge that we’re walking a tightrope every day that we film brings a level of intensity to the production that I haven’t ever felt.

My equipment is comparably low fidelity to what I’ve seen on other film sets. I’m using an Azden 990 for the boom mic, a pair of Azden lavaliere microphones for close miking the actors, and a Zoom H4N to capture all of the sounds and then we’re dumping all of the takes from the day onto the director’s computer. Pretty standard stuff, I’ve been putting some thought into bringing a few of my recording pieces along but I don’t know if they would fit into the production and I hardly have enough room to move now so an addition of a small mixer would surely anchor me when I wouldn’t need to be.  

Since we’re only filming a few days a week I’ve had time to obsess about whether or not my set up was up to snuff with other sound mixers in the known universe and boy am I confused! From what I can tell on the internet and by just googling “production sound mixer” there is no perfect set up. People are using Zooms, they’re using laptops, and they’re using stand-alone mixers with recording capabilities. It reminds me of where audio engineering was about twelve years ago. I recorded some of my first demos on a precariously set up karaoke machine, then a Tascam four track cassette recorder (the blue one), and from there I worked with local guys who said that you had to either use Cubase or a digital multi track recorder (the portastudio is the particular model that I learned to hate). After that I went to school and found out that I was supposed to be recording onto DAT tapes and dumping everything into Protools for a final mix down. Seven years later I’m using my laptop and whatever other equipment I want to use to make records. On my snoop around film forums I discovered a new argument (that I’ve heard somewhere else) is bubbling up amongst location sound recorders: What’s the best way to record? If you do five minutes of research on B&H, Musicians Friends, etc, you’ll see that the same options that were being presented to audio engineers ten years ago are now being presented to location sound recorders (engineers? mixers? hard working sound guys and gals!) and I think that a similar juncture is going to be reached where engineers (I decided on engineers as I was looking at equipment) begin to use what suits them best. If you’re working on Game of Thrones and you have the ability and budget to have a desk top unit with a rack mount of pre amps and mixers then you should use those to the extent of your ability, but if you’re working on a micro budget film and only have a boom mic and a field recorder then you shouldn’t feel like your project isn’t as good as the film down the road with the bigger budget.  Do the best you can with the things you have and you’ll be happy with the outcome.

I’ve included a few shots of the equipment on the production but intentionally left out anything that includes the actors, most of the production stills are being kept under wraps until further notice. I’m sure that you’ll see plenty of actors acting soon enough.

You Are Your Sound

On my walk to work this morning I was listening to Marc Maron's interview with Dave Grohl to promote the upcoming documentary Sound City. If you don't know, Sound City is about a recording studio that contained a one of a kind Neve mixing board that's considered to be the best console constructed ever. Maron's opening monologue wages a philosophical war against any recording equipment constructed beyond the 1970s and the beginning of his interview with Grohl continues this train of thought. Somehow Grohl derails this conversation and they move on. I enjoyed the interview but the opening stuck with me. Why is there such a stigma surrounding the modern era of point and click production? I understand that with the advent of applications like GarageBand and Ableton Live the music industry has been blown open wide and anyone can sit down and make a record; this is a good thing. The conceit of Maron's opening aside seems to be that if you're not playing vintage equipment through the best, tubiest, board that  you can find in the nicest room around then you're not being honest and that there is no magic in the modern electronic era. Sending out a message like is irresponsible. He definitely has younger listeners who probably don't care about being the next Nirvana (or even the next Mumford and Sons), maybe their sites are set on trying to trump Animal Collective or Laurie Spiegel. Whatever the case it's misguided to think that good can only come out of something with tubes and three knobs. There are VST symphonies waiting to be written by someone sitting in their bedroom right now and no one can say that the magic, or truth, or whatever you want to call it won't be in that room when all of the pieces come together.

Last weekend I recorded vocals for a local experimental R&B artist who started writing music to "keep himself busy and stay out of trouble". Last August he got a copy of Ableton Live and some Native Sound synths and starting writing.  If inexpensive DAWS and VSTs didn't exist then I never would have met Ryan and had such a great time working with and getting to know him and he would probably be bored to death. When you listen to the songs you can tell that he's trying to work something out and I don't know if he ever got out what was inside of him or reached the zenith that he was hoping for but if he had no other option than to spend 10k on a board and even more on the synths to give life to his ideas I doubt that he would have even bothered.

While there is a charm to every fidelity and format , I don't think that there's truth in only one of them. Whatever you can get your hands on should be what you create with. If you only have a Tascam four track and an unamplified electric bass then go for it. And if you have access to every piece of equipment in the world then you go for it too. 

I'm not angry at Marc Maron for having an outside view of an art form that I'm forever entrenched, but I can't stand it when someone says that a form of expression must be conveyed in a particular way. How do you do what you do?

Love Is Love/Reblog From Amanda Deibert

amandadeibert:

I’m thinking about projects that I worked on/created this year. My absolute favorite thing that I made in 2012 is “Love is Love.”

I wrote it as a way to express my feelings about NC passing an incredibly hate filled law and it ended up teaching me a lot about how much love there is in the world. 

It was amazing to direct this alongside my best friend, Alex Cason and to work with all my amazing and talented friends who gave their time for it: Rebecca Wackler, Julian Romero..and Heather Horton who I actually had the pleasure of meeting because she agreed to play the main character. And new friends composer Jacob Shelton and Make Up artist Lexx.  So much talent, so much passion and I am so pleased with the outcome.

My absolute favorite moment: when a high school Gay Straight Alliance decided to use this video as their “ad” to help them gain more members.

My second favorite: when MoveOn.org used it to help campaign for President Obama.

Yo. I got to e-meet and work with Amanda on this video last year and it's probably my favorite thing that I've had the pleasure to work on. Rather than write a ten minute ambient piece about pizza (truth) I was able to work on something that made someone say 

"I found this much more emotionally evocative than the original one. It's surprising because I thought it'd be easier to relate to the original "It's Time" video as a gay male. But then again, maybe not because love is indeed just love and the experience of sharing meaningful experiences with your significant other is universal."

How inspiring is that? And I just sat on my bed and played guitar and did stuff on my computer; Amanda, Alex, Stephanie, and the entire Cast and Crew did all of the heavy lifting. If I'm lucky I'll get to work on something as inspiring as Love is Love in 2013.  

The Diving/Sixteen Split has a release date

If you keep up with this site you'll know that I've been recording a lot of music with my friends Diving but no one was sure when any of the songs would see the light of day. This morning a pre order popped up from Texas Is Funny Records and now you can make the songs your own. I think you can listen to the songs over on the TIF site but if not I have a few of the tracks on my audio sample page. The guys are going to be out on tour with Costumes from January 3rd to the 12th, you can find the dates here. If you have the ability to catch one of the shows I suggest that you do. 

http://texasisfunnyrecords.bigcartel.com/product/diving-sixteen-split-cd-ep

new music by an old friend

https://soundcloud.com/mos_steph/warm-enough-demo

I met Stephanie three years ago (maybe four? ugh.) when I still lived in the metroplex. I don’t remember the exact circumstances but an old roommate invited me to tag along to a very cool bar* while they talked shop. I think they were hanging out because their respective bands were going to play a show or something. He was in kind of a U2 rip off thing and she was doing this thing called Fall of Snow that was very cool but I think that she got thrown on a lot of bills with bands that sound like (insert band here). Whatever. We ended up playing a show together and she came out to see me knock out a weird set in a really smelly club in downtown Dallas but after that I think that she started diving head first into some film work (I think. I only keep up with people via tumblr and instagram so who knows?), I slept in a van for the next three years and I didn’t hear much from her by way of musical composition. All of that is a lead up to say that I’m emphatically pleased to know that Stephanie decided to sit down and start working on music again. She has the ability to write pop music that feels confident yet frail but never timid. Think The Cocteau Twins meets Frente! or The Cure circa Wish. Does that make sense outside of my head? Anyway, I’ve got to go arrange a bunch of cables that I found in a closet and get some CDs ready to mail. If you like the song that I reblogged open Spotify and search Fall of Snow. 

*It may have been a normal bar, but it was kind of a hall with a bar on the side and a patio and there was art on the walls. Thus it was cool.

can't sleep, gonna remix.

I couldn't go sleep this morning so I chopped up the most recent Diving songs that I recorded and made a strange ambientish thing. I need to start working on new music.

12/19/12

A live set from Wednesday evening where some of my equipment bit the dust mid set. All in all it was a lot of fun.

Finishing A Song (or two)

Yesterday afternoon I finally got together with Jordan from Diving to finish working on their songs for a split due in early 2013 on Texas Is Funny Records. The music for the split has been finished for what feels like forever but it was probably closer to a month and a half, maybe two months. Thankfully, Jordan took the time to over prepare so he could knock these songs out of the park. 

To record the vocals I ran a RODE NT1A through my art pre amp into a Traynor TS-20 and miked that up with my Starpower (I would have used the SM57 but it somehow bit the dust) and ran it through the board. The minimal amount of settings on the Traynor don't allow you to screw around too much with the sound; if you can't find something by adjusting the bass and treble then you must be doing something wrong. After adjusting master volumes, gain settings, and trying to find out where that feedback was coming from we were able to knock out the vocals in a couple of hours. The time that I had to mix the songs prior to recording the vocals provided the benefit of being able to mix the songs down immediately after we finished recording all of the extra oohs and ahs. 
You can hear a couple of songs over on my audio page and you pick up the split some time early next year. In the mean time you can always go to www.diving.bandcamp.com or www.facebook.com/diving  to get your noodly indie rock fix.

Starpower->TubePre->Traynow

Guy in Soccer Shirt -> NT1A

Today I Ordered CDs And I Feel Dumb

Placing an order for compact discs feels antiquated and a bit foreign in the modern musical landscape where you can download whatever you want, whenever you want; or, if you're averse to torrents and megauploadesque sites you can simply stream entire discographies through a multitude of platforms. The reality of the situation is that ordering a full album package (in this case let's say a full color four panel eco wallet with 1,000 CDs) is too expensive for someone that isn't going to sell  more than twenty discs. After shipping, the neato eco wallets with ultra cool, full color, silk screened CDs shakes out to around $1000, maybe you know a service that gives you a price break. I use discmakers and haven't entertained the thought of ordering more than one hundred CDs in six years. Last year, I self released an album, Blanket Arms, to yawns en mass. I wanted to make something special for the people that enjoyed my music enough to pay for it so I  bought one hundred CDRs* with neato printing on them and hand made the packaging from a fabric similar to burlap but that's a bit more soft. I still have about 80 copies of the album on a shelf in my room and a lot of fabric folded neatly in my closet waiting for the day when it will be put to good use. And that's OK because I like making things and I wasn't really put out all that much, the fact that I can't remember an actual number means that I don't really miss the money. If it adds up to more than $150 I'll be shocked.  Here's what the album looks like:

The art for Blanket Arms, which caused me to have an amazing callous on my left middle finger from nearly constant needle stabbing.

Last month, I released a digital version of an EP that I cobbled together over the last 18 months with the promise (threat?) of a possible physical release if there were enough orders to warrant such a thing. I received, literally, a couple of orders and decided to wait and see if I should order a few discs with some kind of artwork on them or if I should just send out CDRs with my chicken scratch all over them and a thank you note. I decided against this and ordered ten CDRs with weird art on it that discmakers keeps emailing me about (YES I WANT THE ART YOU GUYZ). On top of the apparently "too hot for CD" art I thought about how I should package the album, there's a familial theme running through the EP (music and art included) so I thought about doing something with that (and I still may) but I also thought that it would be fun to make separate album covers for each individual purchase. That way I could keep the familial aspect intact while making something unique for the people that wanted to help me out. As of now I'm looking at a RTF of album art ideas and I'll use my favorites until I run out of CDs and the rest will go in the trash. If I were selling more copies of the album I think this would be a hassle but as it stands now this is another way for me to say 'thank you' while exercising my artistic freedom (YUCK! I just typed that out). I know that it may be fiscally unwise to buy the materials to customize every album, and as I punch numbers into my calculator (get off my lawn you kids!) it looks like I'll break even if I sell each album and don't run in to any unforeseen costs (printing, extra shipping, etc...) but that's really not the point, if I can bring joy to someone for twenty minutes and get my artsy fartsy ya yas out my job is done.

If you'd like a copy of Niece, you can pick one up at my webstore. I'll post pictures when the art is finished and if I haven't sold out of the packages maybe you'll want to pick one up. If you have any experience with self made packaging or just have an idea to share, leave a comment. I need all the help I can get. 

*CDRs have the blue on the back and regular CDs have the silver back, I can't hear the difference and don't think that anyone born after 1985 cares about whether something was replicated or duplicated. 

New Software/What Is This "Professional" That You Speak Of?

From day one of my audio engineering education I've had the word 'professional' ringing in my ears and I'm still not sure what it means. Every new project that I begin usually carries the weight of the artist saying that they want their album (EP, single, etc) to sound "professional, but not too professional" and the meaninglessness of this statement never ceases to give me a headache that lives right behind my eyes. I've touched on this topic before (I believe that it had to do with preamps at the time) and I'll doubtlessly talk about it again but for now I wanted to address DAWs. A DAW is a Digital Audio Workstation, and there are two types, an integrated DAW or a software DAW. I don't know why I even brought up integrated DAWs because I haven't seen one outside of a pawn shop in ten years (get off my lawn you kids!). Since 2006 I've done all of my main tracking and mixing with Garageband, a streamlined DAW created by Apple Inc that comes with the iLife package. Within ten minutes of opening your brand new Macbook you can write and record a song. If you're a fan of the democratization of art this is a wonderful tool to have at your fingertips. I've also experimented with Audacity, and JackOSX but I've always stuck with Garageband because of it's user friendly interface. Since 2009 I've been implementing AbletonLive and Reason into my recording set up as necessary and the workflow has been working out fine for me. But as I said, the "professional" bug started buzzing in my brain and wouldn't let up so I bit the bullet and got a copy of Logic Pro, I made the decision based on it's similarities to Garageband and the high praise that it received from peers. As of this posting I haven't recorded any new projects in Logic, I've only been playing around with the software and trying to relearn all of the functions that I can apply so quickly in other applications that I've had more practice with. So far my results have been mixed. I've only spent a couple of days recording and I'm having fun with the software but I'm not completely sold on the "must have" factor of the pro app. I appreciate the advantages of having a near godlike level of customization inside the box, but at the end of the day if the song's not there what does it matter? I came to this conclusion long before I acquired Logic, but I'm happy that I made the switch because there's no harm in learning something new. If you're someone who's thinking of working with me and you'd prefer to work in one program or the other just let me know and I'll start a tally. Or if you have your own home studio let me know what you prefer working with, I'm interested in hearing another engineer's take on the subject. 

Beverly Hills Cop

It's been a few weeks since my last update on The Thief short that I filmed with Trevor and John and I finally got a chance to do some foley work on a few of the sounds that were either muffled or not all that they could be. I popped over to Trevor's apartment earlier in the day and helped set up an AKG 214 and an MXL 991 (so much work!) that we ran into a Zoom H4n. The sounds that we needed to collect were rather ordinary and we probably could have just gotten them online if it weren't so fun to make the sounds ourselves. In order, we needed the sounds of books being stacked, a gun falling to the ground, records being pulled out of a shelf, records being stacked, a conversation through a thick wall, and shoes walking across a tile floor. Most of these we were able to recreate with myself performing the operations on the floor while Trevor gave me directions. 

When going about work in this fashion you  have to think about what the sounds you're looking to achieve will sound like before you make them, sometimes a gun falling on a floor doesn't sound like a gun falling on a floor. In this case we were lucky in while a gun falling on a floor sounds nothing like a gun falling on a floor, a gun falling on a rather thick book does. The same could be said for footsteps across a tile floor, I tried for a good five minutes to recreate the sound of walking by mimicking my footsteps in the film to no avail and we ended up finding the right sound by clapping the soles of the shoes together as if to say "good job on discerning what noise this is".

Every day that I work on something new in the spectrum of film I discover that nothing is as it seems and I become even more intrigued with the sounds that I hear in my day to day life. Have a great week, I'm out the door with my ears open. 

interior dialogue

Yesterday I sold a song to a company that I have sold six other times in the past four months. I'm not in an existential tailspin over making money ( a very small amount of money in the grand scheme of things) off of a song that I wrote while sleeping on a friend's couch three years ago in order to fill out the time on a cassette that would only see a limited run in Australia, rather I don't know how to keep the momentum of this style of songwriting from disappearing. The dissipation of my artistic capability isn't something that I fear, I believe that artists are in a state of constant flux. Stylistically we change with every  intersection met and can't help transforming over long periods of time. My reticence is that I don't know how to do what I did before. Was I able to record a song in 2009 with an aloofness that I've lost somewhere in the last three years or am I over thinking a simple fluke? Last night I stayed up until around one am working on a new song written in the number in question's style and when I was finished the track felt empty, devoid of any meaning other than a personal pissing contest. I've listened back with the ears of someone who isn't fighting sleep and beating themselves up for not being able to  write a song that encapsulates the necessity of synergy in the modern office and I think there's something there but I don't know if I'll be able to cast a second spell of repetitious electronic majesty.