ubiquitous

u-he Uhbik is a suite of effects plugins with similar interfaces, which originally was released in 2007. I probably got it around 2010 or so at a nice discount. At the time, some of the effects it came with had very little competition, but (as with GRM Tools) other alternatives sprung up along the way, so it didn’t remain state-of-the-art forever.

But still, up through 2025 I have found Uhbik-Q (a parametric equalizer) useful. it displayed no spectrogram or Hz values anywhere, requiring me to tune it with my ears alone, and it just had a nice vibe as a companion to more surgical equalizers. And Runciter, which combines fuzz, overdrive and an enveloped filter, still sounded great. The flanger and phaser were a little bit eclipsed by other offerings but still worth using for their particular approach, and the reverb — on those rare occasions when I remembered it existed — also still had some life left in it.

u-he just dropped Uhbik 2.0, a free update for owners of the original. Updated interfaces, VST3 and CLAP support, built-in modulation, a new compressor plugin, more filter types for Runciter, another reverb model for the reverb, less cryptic names, a little fresher DSP code etc. The EQ does show Hz values now, but not a full spectrum and it’s still vibey. I still am not really a fan of the delay, but I have plenty of those. I could wish the visual feedback for modulation was a little more “live” as it is with Bitwig, but that’s a modest nitpick. It’s a lovely update.

While I’m on powers of 2, Joranalogue announced the upcoming Walk 4 module a few weeks ago, to be released sometime in the remaining quarter of 2025. It’s an interesting concept — a quad sample and hold which adds input voltages to a channel rather than merely replacing it, combined with an auto-reset feature to create steppy ramp modulation, a quad random source to create “random walk” steppy modulation, and a Constraint CV that reduces step sizes as they get farther away from 0V. Its internal clock tracks V/OCT, or each stage can be clocked externally.

This is one of those modules which doesn’t necessarily have a prescriptive use, but can do a variety of things. It’s not going to replace my Clep Diaz, which steps a precise number of steps per cycle, but it’ll do things in a similar spirit along with a lot of other stuff. I’m particularly keen to try processing other CV and audio with it, generating related variations, which should fit right in with Multimod, Just Friends, Silhouette, Nearness, Planar etc.

It’s replacing my Zorlon Cannon. I know, I liked ZC and kind of missed it after selling it the first time. But I have tools to generate similar shenanigans, and its flexibility pales in comparison to what I expect from Walk 4.

New Survey Finds Anti-Trans Ads Ineffective, Disliked by Voters

As it turns out, political ads that attack trans people are unpopular with not just Democrats but Republicans. Even the people who don’t care about trans rights are tired of the obsession with picking on trans people, likely seeing absolutely no relevance to the economy or any of the issues they actually care about.

Not only that, but by a 21% margin, voters would rather back a candidate who supports trans rights over one who opposes them. 74% of people say that trans folks deserve dignity and respect. 58% overall (and even 45% of Republicans!) say that the government should stop interfering with trans rights and health care.

But MAGA just can’t offer anything that will actually help — the only thing they can deliver is hate and distractions. Remember how T***p was going to fix the price of eggs and supposedly that’s why he had so much support? Oh ho ho ho. Here is data from those horrible woke socialists at… Harvard Business School.

Compare that to wages, with this absolutely dismal forecast…

Given their lack of an alternative, I think the MAGA types will just keep doubling down on the hate and lies until the entire movement totally stalls out and crashes.

But I sure hope Democratic strategists and the media are paying attention here. The survey data very much counters the narrative that dragged on all spring and summer about how Democrats lost because they were “too woke” on trans rights, which everyone apparently just pulled out of their asses (despite the Harris campaign barely touching on it at all, instead following the HRC’s recommendation to ignore political attacks on trans people.). Now we have Zohran Mamdani, who apparently really knows how to run a campaign, literally dedicating an entire video to trans rights and featuring the story of Sylvia Rivera, and getting praised widely for it. So, strategists and candidates, consider that in your calculations.

of hearts

Yup.

You see, caring, especially about people you don’t know, is one of those terrible things that only leftists do. Even respecting other people enough not to be a total dick to them, is failing to be competitive and assert supposed dominance or the superiority of whatever in-groups you belong to either by accident of birth or by choice. It’s anti-capitalist and unmasculine. So is, apparently, wanting to live in a world that’s not starving and choked by poison… because I guess a Real Man ™, a true patriot, would just power through the smog and the pesticides and microplastics and let the weak die.

I kind of don’t want to go from there to talking about my cat, so let me first talk about GRM Tools Atelier. There has been at least a constant low-key hum of hype around it for several months now, ever since Superbooth at the very least. GRM Tools was once (apparently) an amazing and unique set of spectral effects plugins, from INA GRM, the other French audio research group that wasn’t IRCAM. The world caught up and somewhat passed them by. Then earlier this year they announced a new suite of tools and an apparently well-designed interface that unifies them. No exciting new types of effects really, just a nice wrapper for it. Of course I’ve long said that how creative tools feel to use, and the approaches they encourage, are often the most important factor. But also, I feel like I have things well covered with what I have, so I’m not convinced to spring for it.

As it turns out, the suite of available tools is really quite limited to start. They’re promising to add more modules to their system over the next couple of years (at no additional cost). The development team is apparently two people, so they’re going to have their hands full delivering on promises as well as dealing with support.

The bigger strike against them is… it’s Mac-only, at least until “early 2026.” And that sends up red flags for me. If you’re planning on a multiplatform release, but you don’t develop in a multiplatform way from the start, and plan to catch up later, with your small overworked team? It’s honestly not a great sign.

Look, I love some of what Madrona Labs has done, and the ideas behind most of their synths. And Aalto is certainly among my top favorite softsynths of all time. But with Sumu… it was announced in December 2017, to be released originally in Spring 2018. And then — in between sporadic “coming soon” and “taking longer than expected” updates, early 2019, fall 2021, and then “Early access release lacking a few features” in fall 2023, which actually shipped in May 2024. There have been 1.0 and 1.1 releases since then, but frankly the MPE is still fairly broken and it’s just awkward to use. It was a great concept, but it just did not come together IMHO. Part of that development hell was working on Mac first with a “semi-multiplatform” approach and then trying to port to Windows.

With GRM Atelier, from the reviews it sounds like they have an impressive interface, but again, it’s just Mac-only right now, with a limited number of plugins, and some of the plugins are really not best-in-class. They’ve also had an awkward release with complaints about discounts not applying correctly, PayPal not working, existing accounts not being recognized etc. I just have no confidence in it.

A couple of recent reads:

The Out Side, edited by The Kao. An anthology of short, autobiographical comics from a number of trans and nonbinary authors. Mostly uplifting and heartening, and kind of cozy. More of this feeling, please!

Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaw. One of the original books about nonbinary gender identity before it was even called that — in fact the community’s use of terminology has evolved enough that the author updated the edition about 10 years ago to make sure it wasn’t misinterpreted. Of course it was much more radical when it was written than it is now, and I kind of wish I could read the original version and feel how it would have hit people at the time. (I kind of find the history of gender theory over the last 100 years or so interesting, both in terms of the general public’s understanding more so the queer community. In Transit was really good for that.) Overall it was probably one of the better books on the subject, though I skipped over the plays at the end. (Theater is just not my thing for the most part, and I can’t think of much that’s duller than reading the script for a play, unless it’s reading a musical score.)

One thing they did which I thought was very cool, was in the intro to the Chinese translation, included a note that, when she dies, she’d like to be called upon by nonbinary people as an ancestor. My religion also has a tradition of ancestor veneration, and I’ve been unsure about doing that with some other figures from history. But I will be sure to do this (may that day not come too soon).

Okay, the cat. His urinalysis came back normal, which is great (the vet had seemed particularly worried about kidney issues). But in his bloodwork, what jumped out was a test for stress hormones that indicate stress in the walls of the heart, with a normal range of 0-100… his was 1500. I’m waiting on scheduling more diagnostics (EKG, x-ray and ultrasound). Very likely, HCM (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy), which tends not to show any signs until it’s progressed a lot, and about which “the outlook is extremely variable” depending on the cause. Hyperthyroidism is both a common and easier to deal with cause, but I guess there’s not been anything pointing strongly to that. So we’ll see.

He’s 14, so a senior but he may still have a good few more years in him. Whatever time he has, I want him to be comfortable and happy.

coming apart and coming together

“The carpenter guy says he should be able to deal with our busted deck this week.“

This did not happen. Friday as we were going out to dinner, my spouse said “why don’t we look into doing this ourselves” and I said “I was thinking the same thing.” That deck is going to cause serious injury if we let it go any longer, and she’s already had some nightmares about it.

Demolition of a small, not-very-tall deck that’s already half-demolished itself is well within our capabilities. The fence/gate replacement can wait a little bit, since we can just leave the existing side railing and lattice in place for the moment. For the stairs, we found OSHA-certified prefab aluminum stairs, which from the reviews are popular with elderly folks who have mobile homes, for really not much more than what lumber, railings and hardware would have cost to build our own stairs (and I don’t trust my construction skills very much). So those stairs are ordered, and if ship time and weather permit, we can get this done next weekend.

I texted the carpenter to cancel, and he said he’d been in the hospital since Wednesday and apologized for not contacting me to say so. Probably that’s true. But his “I’ll get back to you to schedule that” failed to happen twice previously and it seems like random stuff just keeps happening with contractors and they don’t let their customers know. It’s frustrating.

Also frustrating: contractors who have websites but 100% ignore email and web contact forms. Auto shops that say you need to make an appointment online, but all it does is tell you you’ll get an email within one business day instead of being able to pick a time. (I had that last weekend with tires — instead of waiting for Dobbs to patch a slow leak, I made the longer drive to Plaza Tire and just got it done without an appointment. Unfortunately it was unpatchable, but I got a pretty good discount on four new tires, which was going to have to happen in a couple years or less anyway. And then a couple of hours after I’d finished with that, Dobbs emailed me to say I didn’t need an appointment and could come in at any time. Why doesn’t your website say that, then? :P)


“I’m taking a little bit of time to gather my thoughts on the next album project.“

Things just sort of started to mesh together. I’m blending the sequencer-based fun with the drone/texture beauty, and overall it has the attitude of “guy in a chicken suit in Portland when Kristi Noem was trying to find the alleged violent anarchists.”

Our cat Rico has a vet appointment at the unfortunate time of 7:30 AM Monday. One night last week he was lying there in bed next to me while I was reading, and he suddenly yowled like I’ve never heard him do before, startling the crap out of me. He had a look like he was startled himself, or angry or (more likely) in pain. He has done it a few more times since then… sometimes followed by a quick dive for the litterbox. His poo has been more squishy and stinky than usual lately (since he doesn’t bury it, these things are unfortunately SUPER OBVIOUS) despite no changes in food. Hopefully it’s something that can be easily cured.

Our dog Lady had her own vet visit not too long ago. She had some kind of skin infection (whether mites or something else, we don’t really know) and was scratching herself pretty badly and incessantly, some bare spots in her fur and some bleeding. A combination of anti-itch meds, an anti-fungal and an antibiotic, along with a flea-tick-mosquito shot and a heartworm shot, have helped enormously. But she did have a low number on a thyroid test which needs to be looked at again, because it may or may not have been affected by the infection.

reopen

Deep breath.

Okay.

I locked the blog down for a bit because the government’s crazy talk (and that of the fascist think tanks that are writing the playbook) triggered panic attacks. I am unlocking it again because:

  • The panic attacks stopped (pretty quickly).
  • The crazy talk has escalated from “designating 4 million Americans as violent extremists” to “designating 200 million Americans as violent extremists” and has gone from frightening to point-and-laugh ludicrous.
  • If anyone reads this and thinks I’m “nihilistic” or “violent”, then they’re so far disconnected from reality that it simply doesn’t matter what I do or don’t say. It isn’t that I hate the opposite of what the fascists hate, it’s that I am opposed to hate. It isn’t that I want to bully them for their views that I disagree with, it’s that I don’t want anyone to bully anyone and that’s 100% why I disagree with them.

You know what’s violent, nihilistic extremism? Federal agents breaking into an apartment building, trashing people’s homes and dragging zip-tied naked children — American citizens — into the street and into U-Haul vans. Right-wing talking heads saying that “a few school shootings every year are the price we pay for gun rights.” Renaming the Defense Department to “The Department of War” and gathering the generals together to tell them beards are not okay but war crimes are totally fine. Taking funding away from schools and hospitals to punish them for being inclusive.

Those things very recently were considered extremely “Unamerican” but this is what they are trying to turn America into. I don’t think they’re going to succeed in this attempt, and neither do some of the hardcore fascist thinkers who are now afraid of “leftist retribution” in 2029 (again, that’s not our thing). But very real damage is being done right now, and more needs to be done to resist and reverse it, especially by those who are supposed to be representing us in government and those who are reporting on all of this.

Okay, so what else is happening? With me, not the country.

We have an official release at work, finally, after weeks of testing and fixes. The #1 priority now is to improve our QA/testing situation. We have a great deal of automated testing, but it by no means represents complete coverage of features and combinations of features. Anything that relies on the GUI (and there’s a lot of it) is either tested manually or using a third-party automation suite — and changes to the GUI by the development team have far outpaced maintenance of those tests by the perpetually understaffed and overworked QA team. I feel like it’s almost impossible to entirely untangle it, but we’re going to make what incremental improvements we can.

The carpenter guy says he should be able to deal with our busted deck this week. He didn’t name a specific day, and communication and response times have been a little lacking… so I’m crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. I was right on the edge of pursuing a partial DIY solution, because that old deck is more unsafe every week.

I’m taking a little bit of time to gather my thoughts on the next album project. While I’ve been getting really amazing beautiful drone textures lately (either with dual Mesmerisers, the new Dawesome Kontrast, or experimenting with Just Friends or Rings) and considered doing an album consisting entirely of drone snippets, I also have MD2 and Polyllop leading me into a sequenced/moving direction. Really though, I want this to be another album with a specific, let’s call it magical, intent. This won’t be the first time I have done that, but I’m just contemplating the mechanics/process right now.

Recent books:

Rowan Alexandria Bennett, Symphony of the Sojourn: a fantasy tale told by several members of an adventuring party (it’s not shy about being influenced by RPGs), it’s nevertheless a unique setting with some interesting characters… burdened a little by a few very silly character names. I enjoyed it quite a lot anyway, but I did prefer The Tightest Embrace Etc.

Maria Ying, The Moth of the House of Hua: a very short entry in the series about uber-rich lesbian sorceresses and monsters. Honestly, skippable.

Martha Wells, All Systems Red: so I had the idea that I was going to reread all the Murderbot books. Except, I don’t actually have all of them, some were library loans. Also, while I enjoyed it and had some laughs, it was better the first time around and doesn’t particularly need rereading, at least not yet.

Benedict Patrick, The Flight of the Darkstar Dragon: a weird fantasy setting and some likeable characters. Fun but not really a rock-your-world sort of thing, I’d say.

Benedict Patrick, They Mostly Come Out at Night: a grimmer fantasy setting. I only am a little ways in and I’m not super into it but I’ll probably keep going.

Gordon White, The Chaos Protocols: I read this a while back. It’s more or less about using chaos magic in the present day. The first chapter talks somewhat astutely about the economics of the world (slightly pre-Trump), and how things are not designed for our benefit. It says we need to reject the idea that those economics are our objective reality, and remember that the whole system is imposed on us. Okay, yeah. It mentions “the black iron prison” of that Philip K Dick book I started reading and gave up on… meh. Then there is a questionable interpretation of quantum mechanics and an insistence that there is no doubt that psi powers are beyond doubt, and I started twitching. Then a self-initiation ritual that syncretizes a bunch of stuff and I just had to nope out and abort the reread. This isn’t my path.

double vision

(Originally posted while blog was locked)

So this is a thing now.

The replacement pedal has the exact same issue as the original: the effect is mono. I tried several different cables, different inputs on my audio interface, plugging the bass directly in instead of from the audio interface, checking the drivers… most of which was redundant because Slöer was definitely working in stereo, as was the dry signal I was sending in.

I wrote to Maneco, commenting that I was still enjoying it even in mono and asked if I should send one of them back. The response was basically “that’s weird, I don’t know what’s going on. But please keep both pedals and have fun.”

So now I’m doing dual mono routing. This is a little more awkward, but it can sound really great, and it’s more flexible. Stereo? Mid/Side? Serial? Independent? Multiband? Spectral multiband, even? Sure, why not! All that routing power is right there in the DAW without switching cables around.

The FX1 loop is back to Dark Star -> Slöer. A mono Mesmeriser into Slöer did work well, for stereo enhancement and extra warble, but I can still do that or use software. The world’s my oyster. I seriously love this hybrid hardware/software approach.

Because these knobs aren’t my favorite — too hard to see which way they’re pointing — I’ve got metallic gold Davies 1900 clones on the way, plus some “Brutalist” blue knobs for the Slöer because of that glare. There are some knobs I want that are only available from Thonk, but they’re still working out how to cope with the Chump tariffs and aren’t shipping knobs to the US.

shower thoughts

Second post while blog is still was locked down.

Someone has pointed out that the Girl Scouts of the USA would most likely qualify as “Transgender Ideology Influenced Violent Extremists” by Project 2025’s standards. Teen Vogue definitely does. So does the American Medical Association. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The American Academy of Nursing. The American Academy of Pediatrics. The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. The Child Welfare League of America. The National Association of Secondary School Principals. Several more.

Everyone seems to be talking about this stupid Tylenol thing. There is no new, and no old, evidence that acetaminophen has any link to autism. But this sure has been an effective distraction, for better and for worse. Something the dumb people will buy, and the smart people will have a good laugh at.

I got a 3d-printed, 2-tier stand for the pedals (it’s not perfect but it’s OK), and reorganized the cable mess a little bit. It’s much better. There is room for one more small one…

Maneco shipped me a replacement Mesmeriser and it should arrive tomorrow. No request yet to send the broken one back — I wonder if he’s just going to say international shipping isn’t worth it. Like I said, there’s room for one more pedal 🙂 Or maybe the new one will have a return shipping label, we’ll see. I did have to pay a customs fees on the second one too.

And my Mimetic Digitwolis arrived yesterday. I played with it for a while without needing to look at the manual; then later in the evening I updated the firmware, hooked up MIDI and really dove in to try (almost) everything.

To really quickly summarize the features: 4 independent sequencer or quantizer channels; for each channel the length/dimensions and clocking/addressing can be individually assigned (to an input, internal transport, or one of the other channel’s outputs) and steps can be overwritten on the fly (with triggered commands, CV or MIDI). You can limit the quantization scale via MIDI in real time, like an arpeggiator with superpowers.

And all of this is in 10HP with a postage stamp-sized screen… but it’s so well designed this isn’t a problem. Almost everything is entirely intuitive; there are some button combos, but not a ton and they’re likely to become muscle memory.

It’s a winner for sure.

Mastering is coming along, albeit a little bit slowly because of a lack of focus. See the aforementioned stuff about pedals and MD2. It’s a little challenging too, because it’s alternating between heavy noisy drones (yet with a lot of subtle detail!) and highly dynamic stuff with a lot of open space and quiet bits. Trying to decide on levels, amount of compression etc. is a bit tricky but I generally don’t want to go overboard with it. Except where overboard sounds good, of course…

Recent/current reads:

  • Brandon Sanderson, Isles of the Emberdark: once I got acclimated I got more and more drawn in. As anti-colonialism stories go it was certainly better than Avatar. It was not entirely not derivative (hello Moana) but also original, and it fits into the Cosmere quite well. As for how “the Scadrians” wound up as space fascists: it’s because there’s more than one culture on the planet, as the Mistborn Era 2 books showed. It’s not about the revolutionaries and kind scholars turning bad at all.
  • Rowan Alexandria Bennett, The Kindest Embrace if Firm Enough Can Suffocate: this was recommended in a Kaz Rowe video my spouse was watching. A trans main character in an arguably cyberpunk story; really well written with compelling and relatable characters, and exciting challenges in an interesting setting. The long title is because there’s a poetry-as-resistance subplot. I’m really not big into poetry for the most part, but I appreciated the sentiment (creativity against tyranny) if not the actual verses. I liked the book well enough to also order Symphony of the Sojurn before I even finished. Bennett is herself trans and a therapist for LGBTQ+ clients.
  • Dex Anderson (formerly Dianna E. Anderson), In Transit: Being Non-Binary in a World of Dichotomies. I’m about halfway through and would say it’s quite possibly the best book on nonbinary identity that I have read. It deals with the author’s own journey and experiences — not just navigating nonbinary identity, but doing so as a fat person, which I especially appreciate since I am too. It also covers some history of the terminology, gender theory and queerness itself. It’s readable, down-to-earth stuff, not in the philosophical deep end even though the contributions of a few philosophers are relevant to the understanding we’ve come to. I even learned a bit more about Public Universal Friend, the most famous nonbinary person in early American history: one of the first court cases about separation of church and state was when PUF was accused of blasphemy, and the court said “we don’t do that here.”

it’s quiet time

If you’re reading this, that means I changed my mind or else a WordPress plugin doesn’t work or you’re some kind of l33t h4x0r or whatever.

I have set my blog to private — likely a futile effort but it makes me feel a bit better at this moment — because the right-wing ninnyhammers who hold sway over the US government are pushing to declare trans people mentally ill and/or domestic terrorists. It’s 100% a fascist power grab, with all the statistics and facts standing against them. They just want to flex fascist muscles, and trans people happen to be the ones they think they’re most likely to get away with stomping on first.

Project 2025 has a new memo for what constitutes “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremists” and it includes everyone who thinks that transphobia is a threat to trans people. What the actual fuck? Also, a trans pride flag with “Protect Their Right To Exist” is shown as an example of a “violently extremist” slogan. Neither violence nor extremism is required for this designation. It’s just doublespeak.

For those who aren’t trans, just remember the Martin Niemöller poem. [EDIT: since I wrote that, Tr**p has decided that “non-Christians” (about 40% of the US population) are also potential terrorists and he’s pretty much accused the entirety of Democrats likewise. At this point it’s beyond absurd.]

As for me?

I’m against violence and against guns. I haven’t even played any shooters for years; Borderlands 2’s attitude really grossed me out in a world where schoolchildren get shot every week.

I believe in democracy — which only works when there’s freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, free and fair elections, properly working checks and balances, and the ability of the people to hold all elected and appointed officials accountable for their actions at all times. All of which are already broken, or under threat — and not from the left.

I am a leftist, perhaps somewhere between Democratic Socialist and Social Democrat. Capitalism as we have been exercising it is full of cruelty and unfairness. I believe that it can be exercised in a way that provides benefit for an entire population, but the problem with our capitalism is it’s concentrated far too much money (and thus power) into far too few hands. That concentration of wealth erodes democracy, and turns it into oligarchy (and in fact some of the people running our country right now believe that democracy is obsolete and nations should be run like corporations, by an authoritarian figurehead for the benefit of the wealthy elite). I believe that in a world where poverty still exists, there should be zero billionaires.

I believe in empathy, in “live and let live”, in treating others with basic dignity and respect. I believe in the equality of all people regardless of their genitals at birth, their gender identity, race, religion, citizenship, etc.

breaking news

That’s one of my skinny patch cables from Modular Addict. I noticed as I was unpatching my latest recording that the insulation is separating from the jack at both ends. None of my other roughly 70 cables from them have this damage at either end, but now I’m going to keep an eye on things and prepare to consider replacements.

The thing is, these cables are considerably cheaper than most, and have been pretty reliable. I’ve known some more robust-looking, more expensive cables with strain reliefs to fail at a much higher rate. So if I lost enough of these I might just put in another order of the same kind.

Also broken, both in terms of the sound aesthetic (intentionally and beautifully) and literally (unfortunately), is my Mesmeriser pedal.

First, what’s good: the overall sound. It is a specialist in the sort of vibe I’ve begun thinking of as “blissfully overwhelmed.” There’s a masculine-feminine aesthetic spectrum from Sunn O))) to Lovesliescrushing, where one side is dark, ponderous and massive, and the other is bright, joyous, sunlight-dazed… but no less noisy and powerful. Or earth vs. air. Or think of Gothic architecture: on the one hand, a quarter-million tons of stone at an oppressive scale, covered in gargoyles; on the other, vaulted ceilings, flying buttresses, stained glass. (Perhaps mine is a bit like the Sagrada Familia, a weird ancient/modern/alien blend…) A little more literally, it’s a stack of budget early-90s effects being creatively pushed beyond their limits, turning a guitar (and often, screaming feedback) into a mighty otherworldly orchestra. The darker side will tend to emphasize the low end more, sub-bass meant to be played loud and felt in the chest, while the lighter side often rolls off both lows and highs to some extent, like an old telephone, and finds resonances in the gear.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Mesmeriser does the latter bit. Lo-fi, 90s-style reverb and modulation and saturation and sample rate reduction. None of this is new to me, but this is a finely, beautifully tuned combination of effects meant for a specific purpose. In fact it’s probably meant for the deeper end of shoegaze, the slowest, noisiest, droniest, least pop-like, most texture-oriented you can get while still being loosely affiliated with dream pop. And it’s a beautiful thing.

Being such a specialist, I definitely cannot recommend it as a general-purpose reverb, or even as an “ambient” reverb (with some cautious settings and some post-filtering, you can use it for that, but there are at least two dozen more suitable ambient reverb pedals out there; I will heartily recommend Slöer any day of the week). For instance, the fixed predelay time is way more than I would want in a general ambient reverb — but I am not arguing with how well it works in its proper context.

Setting aside the history/genre and considering just the sound, it fits 100% with the sort of Strega-into-wavefolder shenanigans I like to get up to. The Eternal switch = instant drone. And it’s an absolute texture monster, without technically being a granular effect.

Now for the unfortunate:

  • Mine is… not stereo! The dry signal is passed through as it comes in, but the reverb, modulation etc. are exactly the same on the L and R channels. There’s supposed to be subtle differences in the reverb (and possibly the modulation) on the two sides, which contribute to the lushness and are really obvious when listening to Pedal Partner’s YouTube videos in headphones. Those aren’t happening.
  • Mine also has crashed a few times — the dry signal continues to pass through but there’s no reverb, the Eternal (freeze) and Mesmerize (effect on/off) stop doing anything, and the only fix is to power it down and wait a couple minutes for its internal capacitors to discharge before powering back on. I’m hoping this is a problem with this specific unit, not something that happens with all of them.

Even in mono it’s still gorgeous, and I can put a little light Valhalla reverb or Audiority Tube Modulator or something after it to give it a more stereo vibe. But those demos are more lush yet. So I wrote to Maneco to ask about it, and it sounds like they’ll send me a replacement. This requires building me a fresh one, since the second wave sold out. And hopefully the shipping/tariff situation won’t be too ridiculous.

  • This is on me, but the foam wedges I’m using as a temporary desktop pedalboard, combined with the cables I have, are just too awkward. A lot of the low-profile, right-angle guitar cables I have, have extra-wide heads and can’t fit next to each other either on the back of my audio interface, or on the pedals. Plus a bunch of right-angle cables start colliding with each other and lead to an omnidirectional spray of cables. So I’ve got a 3D-printed desktop pedal stand on the way, plus a few extension cables to tidy things up a bit, and another TRS to TS splitter so I can experiment with putting Dark Star on its own channel and then Slöer before or after Mesmeriser.

Something I observed when powering the Mesmeriser down, was interesting behavior as the power drained away. Probably what was going on there was, the DSP simply shut down but the analog saturator started to get funky at low voltage/current. I do have a variable-voltage “starving” power supply I might try with it.

With the Mesmeriser directly contributing to two tracks, I now have a total of 12, over 54 minutes. That probably means I’m done, but I’m going to take a good undistracted listen to the whole thing and make sure of track order/inclusion. I rejected a larger than usual number of recordings this time so I want to make sure what I’m keeping is worthy and the flow is coherent.

Mimetic Digitwolis has shipped (some lucky folks have theirs already), so I’m looking forward to that. Between it and Polyllop, there’s likely to be a bit more sequencing on the next album…

the times

This weekend, Marie, a fellow former priest and good friend from years ago, died. She was a regular at events in Chicago, and everybody loved her — she was just the nicest person. She used to call me “big brother” (*) despite being several years my senior, because I’d been in the temple longer. But I always valued her perspective and she was as much my mentor as I hers.

I wish I had kept up with her, and other friends from the temple, better when I left it. This is a definite downside of being shy/introverted/socially anxious. It’s probably silly but it seems like an awkward, difficult chore to email someone just to say “hi, how are you doing?” Part of it was, many of us were on social media and still more or less in contact for a while anyway… but there was a lot of drifting away from that over time as well.

(*) before I realized I was nonbinary

I have been doomscrolling over this Chirk thing, because of concern for the tyrannical fallout from it. From the very beginning, the MAGA crowd has been trying to blame leftists and especially trans people, whether or not that has any relevance. While, of course, simultaneously claiming the left are “politicizing a tragedy” (the same thing they say after every school shooting when someone suggests gun control). One of them even said “this is our Reichstag Fire” — they don’t even bother to use dogwhistles anymore, do they?

It seems if you’re not appropriately mourning the dead asshole, you’re “Unamerican,” and can get fired from journalism and education careers. They’re even talking about revoking passports. This from the supposed “free speech” advocates who whined about cancel culture. This from people who wanted to pardon Nancy Pelosi’s attacker, who couldn’t be bothered to give a shit about the murder of Melissa Hortman and her husband in June, who complained about the flags flying half-mast for former President Carter. Trump didn’t even want to lower the flags for fellow Republican Sen. John McCain. And now the Vice President — emphasis on the word vice — is threatening to “crack down” on all kinds of left-wing groups under the utterly farcical, absurd, pretense that they promote violence.

But despite all of the performative grief, Trump decided to skip the vigil for Chirk at Kennedy Center, to go play golf.

Apparently, I am still able to be amazed by the depth and breadth of MAGA hypocrisy, despite everything. But I’ve certainly had more than my fill of doomscrolling. Let’s hear more about Trump’s friendship with his other good buddy Epstein instead.

On the lawn mowing saga… our second lawn guy, who I thought was going to be really good, is now fired. His truck broke down and he didn’t contact us about it. GreenPal notified me that he was late, and its bot was going to automatically nag him 3x a day about it. A few days later, he texted me to say his truck was back, and he was locked out of the app until he took care of our yard, so when would we like it done between then and Friday? Anytime is fine, I said.

Friday went by, and nothing happened. Saturday night, GreenPal notified me that the guy had “gone out of business” and automatically started seeking bids again. This time, the service that my mom uses and is happy with came up, and I pounced and signed up. I texted the other guy, and he said his truck had broken down again (and he didn’t notify me again), but keep him in mind for next year. Yeah probably no.

Fixing the Doefper switch was easy, and there was no damage beyond the one obvious burned-out chip. Of course it would have been easier if there’d been one little diode or even one little stripe preventing the need to fix it in the first place…

I’ve broken my failure streak with recordings, and finished two good tracks this weekend. And now that the album has got more than enough material for a release, now my Mesmeriser pedal is finally about to arrive… maybe. I see it’s “on hold” again but in the nearby DHL office, with no reason given. I already paid the @$#%! customs fee (plus the extra fee DHL added for collecting the fee) so this could be something as simple as “it didn’t arrive in time to get on today’s delivery truck but it’ll be delivered tomorrow” (DHL is really kind of lame sometimes).

Mimetic Digitwolis is supposed to ship this week too, but that probably means it won’t arrive until next week.

I had an alert set at Plugin Deals for 510k Polyllop, a polyphonic version of my favorite sequencer plugin Seqund, and it just went on sale so I grabbed it. It’s got 4 lanes for gate/pitch/length/velocity/hold which run simultaneously, with independent lengths and directions and some common controls. Should be fun on occasion for polyrhythmic/polymetric/whatever sequences.

Somehow I missed Brando Sando’s 5th “Secret Project” book, Isles of the Emberdark, up until this weekend. I’m still not sure what I think of dragons in the Cosmere, and the world of First of the Sun isn’t one of my favorite settings of his, but the story is pulling me in.

I really want to know how the Scadrians got such a reputation among the other worlds once they mastered space travel, and what the heck Kelsier is up to. It seems like there was a face-heel turn there somewhere when we weren’t looking. But I don’t expect to get answers to that until the next Mistborn era books come along.