I”m reading Herodotus’ The Histories now. For those not familiar, he was a 5th century Greek historian, “the father of history” according to Cicero lately. But these writings, themselves certainly a piece of history, are to history what alchemy was to chemistry. Not rigorous, and full of wild stories that are uncomfirmed, in some cases with an “allegedly” disclaimer and in many cases, without. So many events in these “histories” are suspiciously very much in the form of Greek tragedies. There are grains of truth, obvious tall tales, and probably quite a lot that’s somewhere in between. I suspect he got a lot of his stories from people who either made them up or didn’t know what they were talking about, and embellished them along the way.
And also, reading it is sometimes like reading the dullest part of the Silmarillion — lots of place names that mostly have no context for a modern reader, and lots of people with brief mentions that we never hear from again, making it hard to follow and rather dull. But I will endure, because it’s got some entertaining bits as well (whether because they’re wildly improbable/inaccurate or just good stories) and references that are still used to this day. And some history, whether originally true or not, repeats itself — Trump’s ill-advised attack on Iran, Croesus’ ill-fated attack on Persia, really not so different.
I’ve continued to be happy with the Stelo glucose monitoring, and signed up for a subscription. I may eventually decide to discontinue it once I’ve learned more, but there are still occasional surprises. Like the Oura, it’s also serving as a constant reminder to pay attention to my health. Fast feedback is easier to learn from than eventual consequences, especially once you’ve had a small taste of the latter to really appreciate the importance.
Music’s definitely going well — four tracks at 35 minutes so far, and a patch more than halfway ready to record after work today. Honestly, finding a mesmerizing drone texture and just sitting with it for a while, then building on it a bit is super easy, at least with experience. I’m thinking I will keep recording a ton of stuff for a while, then release the best of it.
It’s not really pure Éliane Radigue drone all the way, there’s some light sequencing, some shifting of filters to bring out different resonances in a way that suggests chord changes or melody, etc. But I would call it more drone than not, where XQSTCRPS was more not than drone. There are certainly stretches where there is just subtle variation to follow with the ears and heart 🙂
Superbooth weekend is nearly upon us, and new synth teasers and announcements have been flooding in. I, of course, still intend not to buy any more music hardware in 2026, and at most one software synth and two more software effects. So is this a test of my resolve? For the most part I’m finding it easy to say “oh, that’s neat and I don’t need it” and move on. A few things I’ve taken note of:
- In a blurry still from a blurry teaser video, Bastl seems to be doing something with a kalimba. Whether this is their budget answer to the Korg Phase 8, or they have a new contact mic or are just using it to demo an effect, is unclear. I’m curious…
- Expert Sleepers has a “temporal freeze” module called Forever, based on their algorithm from the Disting NT. Like a smaller version of the Blukac Endless Processor in some ways. It sounds pretty great, preserving the textures of sounds quite well without noticeable granular or spectral artifacts. Something I should look into in software probably.
- Neutral Labs has the Queen Elmyra. It takes the Elmyra/Elmyra 2 concept and just runs with it in a different direction, an 8-voice drone machine with higher sound quality, a ton of patch points, more DSP effects, tube saturation, etc. Out of my budget range, but I still think it’s a fun place for them to go.
- Buchla Ziggy. This is the biggest surprise — it takes the 208c concept (top half of an Easel), gives it MIDI and Euro-compatible control inputs, digital routing and no patch cables, and DSP effects, and (ugh) presets, and it costs about a third as much. I was immediately intrigued and thought “maybe I’ll plan to buy one next year.” But after some thought: it’d probably have to replace the Minibrute which is such a great partner to the Strega, and I think that’d be a net loss in my rig’s capabilities. I was momentarily dazzled by the Buchla name. I’m still looking forward to hearing some demos though.
- The new firmware for CVilization was just released, offering a quad oscillator as an alternate mode. It’s not like I need more oscillators…! But there are two modes I’m not using at all, so I might as well do the upgrade.
- Make Noise Plexiphon (someone ferreted this out a couple days earlier than the official announcement). My guess is spectral processing, but it could be some kind of dispersion thing like Arturia Efx Refract.
- Xaoc is teasing some stuff, and I find they’re always worth curiously watching.
- Komplete 26 was just announced… wait, actually I do not care about this at all, since I already got Absynth 6. (Which I haven’t been using very much, though it’s pretty decent.)