Yesterday I woke up, felt only a little bit blah but sleepy enough to burn a sick day. We had severe thunderstorms morning, afternoon and evening. Our house was within a tornado warning zone once, and my parents’ place was in one three times. That third time we got a lot more wind, some hail and heavy rain, and then the power went out at about 7:20.
About an hour later we rescued some groceries from the fridge and brought it to my parents’ place, since they still had power (and a generator besides). We were joking about how the notification that power was restored would come right as we pulled into their driveway. Nope — 11 hours later and we have no power and no estimate.
I didn’t sleep very well, and wound up going in to the office 45 minutes early for the comfort, phone recharge, and blogging.
I recorded my first track for the new album, and had planned to do a second one yesterday but the weather killed that. I feel like getting back to more of a drone style with this one, since I strayed so far from it with XQSTCRPS.
Those replacement ear tips I ordered were WORSE than the stock ones for getting stuck in my ear — it happened pretty much on the first try and the stuck one was more difficult to remove. So that’s a no. Poking around online I saw several other complaints about the Samsung Galaxy Buds2 Pro having that issue. I decided to retire them, though I liked them a lot aside from this (serious) problem. Figured I’d try over-the-ear wireless headphones, and settled on the new Anker Space 2. They are super comfortable — I fell asleep with them on yesterday morning — and the sound isolation and active noise cancelling is extremely effective. The battery life also goes way beyond wireless earbuds, but that’s to be expected. What I don’t like as much is the actual sound quality — it’s a bit meh, and though the Soundcore software offers more options than Samsung’s (*), no amount of monkeying with the EQ quite fixes it. Also, like their Bluetooth speaker, I feel like the max volume is way too much and so the volume control at the range I want (handled entirely on the phone) has steps that are too big. But I’ll stick with them a while and see if this is just a “get used to it” thing — and how I feel about them when going on a brisk walk. I might end up springing for some open earbuds (the kind where you don’t stick a silicone or foam tip in your ear canal at all). On the whole, those tend to be less good at noise cancellation and bass response though, so I don’t know whether I would be happier with the sound or not.
(*) it also has more notifications and feels more “in the way” than Samsung’s. They’re very obviously trying to build up brand loyalty and sort of gamify the whole thing and I don’t like that.
Something my spouse observed is that the in-between-size, on-ear rather than over-ear, wired headphones that were super common with the Walkman, Discman etc. and their clones just seem to not exist anymore. I wonder why that is — I think a lot of people would prefer them for everyday use rather than over-ear cans or in-the-ear buds. Isolation isn’t great but sound really wasn’t bad, and they’re light, cheap, and can be fairly comfortable.
After bailing out on that last book, now I’m reading Claire North’s Slow Gods, which is a strong candidate for favorite fiction of the year. I’m reminded of Ian Banks (especially The Hydrogen Sonata, which is my favorite of his) and Anne Leckie. They say science fiction is almost always a critique of the present — but in some stories it’s much more intentional and pointed and obvious, and this is one of those stories. The Shine is very much an unflattering but brutally honest mirror of the modern USA.
I’m listening to Wendy Carlos’ Digital Moonscapes this morning and realized… the appeal of her music to me, especially on this album and somewhat on the TRON score, is the kitsch. The Bach covers? Also kitsch, but I feel like there’s something about the way she composes that just can’t get away from it. There’s some appeal there and a personal style but… the kitsch is very strong here. The way the brass lines so often have that cartoonishly stereotypical dun-da-da-dunnnn fanfare, the overuse of whole tone scales, the way that melodic lines are passed between instruments including tympani that are played like a bass guitar and have extremely robotic 32nd-note rolls, the 1984-era General-MIDI-ass synthesized orchestra instruments. (*) I’d be curious to hear a real orchestra perform it to see how it changes the experience.
With Tomita… I grew up loving his stuff and I can still very much appreciate some of his sound design work and the overall, get-lost-in-the-music vibe he has sometimes. But the more kitschy aspects are somehow more cringey and less fun than with Carlos.
While I’m name-dropping electronic music pioneers, Jean-Michel Jarre has become a shill for AI. For me that’s an instant ticket to dismissing them as an artist (aided by my not really caring much for anything he’s done in the past 40 years). Equinoxe, Oxygene, and Rendez-vous had their enjoyable bits and Zoolook, which primarily was powered by abstract vocal samples and Marcus Miller’s slap bass with some help from Laurie Anderson chewing scenery in a fake language, is still kind of fascinating. Kitsch was certainly an element in those too.
Tangerine Dream though? I don’t feel like they were particularly kitschy until they went full stride into their digital age with Optical Race. (Another album I appreciate for its goofy earnestness.) Hmm.
(*) Actually the Crumar GDS, a rare additive/FM synth similar to the Synclavier but with no sampling, and the almost equally obscure Digital Keyboards Synergy which was a cheaper version of the GDS. Not awful machines for their age, just… they sound like a Sound Blaster card or a Playstation 1 when you try to recreate most acoustic instruments with them.