Like My Avatar? Get Your Own!

As many of you know, I don't make a whole lot of money as an I-I semi-volunteer graphic designer. To cover my living expenses, I've had to chase various freelance leads, along with a one-month stint as a karaoke DJ (long story). Given how much time I spend talking to people online, however, I figure why fight it? Why not make an aesthetic contribution to the social aspect of the Internet?

With that in mind, I am offering a new service -- custom-designed avatars! All you have to do is email a photo of yourself to artisticavatars@gmail.com, and for a nominal fee, I'll recreate your image as a way-cool vector image. Best of all, because it's vector art, it is scalable, meaning you can use it for anything from a buddy icon to a Zaadz profile to a 2'x3' poster and beyond.

I've already done them for Casey and Dan, with more on the way. Let me know!

The Obligatory Gafni Post

I am apparently incapable of the normal sincerity which comes so easy to other bloggers. Instead, I have to go and write something like this. You my not think Houellebecq has anything to do with Gafni, but I do.

My Last Review for Urban Pollution (for now)

Not that anyone's tracking this, but here is my final contribution to Austin's UP (at least for now), this one for BritPop wannabes The Situation. There wasn't a falling out or anything, I just don't have time right now.

Analog Ambient Dreamscape Thingie

Sorry for the lack of posts, lots on the ol' plate. Anyways, check out one of our more recent experiments, this one consisting solely of four tracks: three for the cheap keyboard (each with its own filter in Garage Band), one for Chris's drums (with added influence by me twisting the reverb speed knob). Come to think of it, everything on here is basically Chris, with me on post-production. Nice work bro. Check it:

"Untitled #4 (dream)" - mp3 1:44

And while we're on the subject of post-Wiki psychedelia, also check out Ghost Box Records, who are just absolutely brilliant at the graphic design / atonal juxtaposition / weird nostalgia thing. Example here.

Garage Band as Photoshop for Audiofiles (experimental noise)

The Salamone Bros. experimental noise ouvre just gets weirder and weirder. This time we basically played a "hit" of some sound or another on every fourth beat, did it 6 times over using different instruments (including our new favorite: the reverb speed dial), then jumbled the track alignment so the hits wouldn't fall at the same spot, and applied a few filters in Garage Band to create the final result. Is it music? That's not for us to decide. Think of it as an exercise in contemplative timbre: the only way to find it entertaining, after all, is to appreciate each moment in its uniqueness, rather than searching for a pop hook or melody to metastisize it's way into your life.

"One, Two, Three, Four" (mp3 - 1:43)

Special thanks to my Zaadz pal Jason for his helpful observations re: Detroit noise et al. Note: comments are now enabled for all users, not just Blogspotters. We'll try this for now. Clear Void, what's up?

My First Video on YouTube

Here it is, a live reading (if by "live" you mean "recorded in the dining room with the neighbor's dog barking") of an old blog post entitled "Destroy Everything So That All That Remains is Naked Intuition". I used an iSight camera to capture it with QuickTime pro, then uploaded to YouTube. Now it's your turn.

New Music Review: Gram Rabbit's Cultivation

Another shorter one for Urban Pollution, click here. Gram Rabbit is a pretty solid keyboard-soaking pop act, fronted by a woman, with occult/desert overtones. Not a bad listen, and it was free!

Audio: Calliope Djembe Reverb

Fluttering, fluttering...

"Holding the Holy Breathe" 2:32

Basically, we recorded drums and guitars with the "speed" knob on the reverb twisted up and down manually, which is where the weird distortions come from, and then threw on the cheap keyboard run through Garage Band's "Helium" filter. I don't know what any of this means, or how obnoxiously elitist it might be, but damn it is fun to make. LL Cool Jase, if you're reading, drop me a line. I need the noise expert's feedback.

Today This Blog is One Year Old

A year ago today, The Boulder Anti-Apathy whatsit was born. Here's the very first post. The idea was to build enough of an audience that I would feel like I was letting them down if I didn't write something every day. At that time I was not writing every day, and really needed a venue to expose my ideas, and the blog was intended to force me to do it. Over the last five months or so, as other priorities came to the fore, I slipped up on the daily posts, and with that probably lost half my audience (or more). All the reader action now, in fact, is over at my ILP blog. While I like the idea of posting music or art every day as I've done so lately, I'm not sold that there is an audience to appreciate it. That, or I need to work better to find one. So in the future, expect some sort of overhaul of this blog or the creation of a completely new one. I'm tooling around with WordPress as we speak, we'll see what happens.... Special thanks for everyone who's kept up with it thus far. If you have an idea for the future it could take, drop me a line. Seacrest, out.

Free Noise Insanity!!!

Here we are, The Salamone Brothers, making a first attempt at multi-tracked noise insanity:

Noise Improv #1 (4:24)

This ain't quite No Neck Blues Band or Black Dice, but we had fun. It consists of five separate tracks, four for instruments and one for vocals (that's Chris on the water-drop noises). Mostly drums and guitar, with a broken acoustic being slammed against my chest, a screwdriver running up and down the neck of a Fender Squire, the bass pedal hooked up to hit a snare, random effects on the $20 keyboard, and plenty of reverb. Listen with an open mind.