Episyrphus balteatus on Red-Flowered Plant

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Our old friend, the mistaken bee.  I've got to be short with this one, because we're leaving soon for the second part of the Cynic, Live odyssey.  I reflected earlier today that I felt seeing them so soon again may be a detriment to the entire experience because the previous one hasn't really settled in, yet, but we're taking these opportunities where we can get 'em.  Who knows when we'll see them again?

Embarrassment Never Felt so Good: Cynic Live, One

C

an you believe it: your eloquent Narrator humiliated himself in front of Paul Masvidal.  The ever-flowery penner who has no trouble constructing pretty collections of words was caught in the trap of too-much-to-say-with-too-little-time.  So, instead of reciting the thoughtful lines I’d prepared all week, I, first, giggled like a shy girl, and then burst into a monolithic rant on Cynic’s musical history, without a hint of beckoning, and even less context.  Yes, I told Paul Masvidal what his own music sounds like.

I shouldn’t be allowed near my heroes.  No matter how much I convince myself I won’t look silly, I always end up looking silly.  I’m like a kid that refuses to let go of a piece of candy, even though he’s full and has had enough.  Cynic and Intronaut are my candy.  And enough is not enough.  See, I’m sitting in the corner of a train station as I’m writing this.  It’s dark, cold (no matter how much I prepare, I’m never ready for the agony train stations throw at me), a wind keeps blowing into my face even though the doors are shut, and after getting just a hair over two hours of sleep today, my body is ready to quit.  And yet, I’m having no trouble slinging this together.  But put me in front of Paul, and I go all googly-eyed.

The chemistry of a lifelong friendship.

In my defence, though, Cynic gave me a ton to talk about, because their set provided it.  For example, Paul’s singing was so subversive it was almost beyond surprising.  He would prolong certain notes, distort others, and ignore some choruses all together, all to the point that singing along required one to stay on edge because we quickly realised Cynic weren’t going to be taking the verbatim route.  It gave the show an improvisational feel, and in hindsight, makes absolute sense – even if no one was expecting it.

The songs, too, were distorted.  I’m a big fan of “Integral”, the remix of the masterpiece “Integral Birth”, and they did something so brilliant it was utterly logical looking back at it, but equally unexpected because no one would think they had the balls to try it: rather than play only one of the two songs (a shame, because I’d love to hear both, but that’s impractical), they combined them, with Paul playing “Integral” as an overture, before the band collectively jumped into “Integral Birth”.  It was a stunning amalgamation that fit so perfectly one could have assumed it was but a single song originally composed as such.

Young and Old Pine Needles

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Old leaves tend to be dark and rigid, while younger leaves are lighter in colour and softer.  Here, you can easily tell which is which (never mind the drying leaves giving it away). 

Cynic's Carbon-Based Anatomy finally arrived.  The expression on my face throughout my entire first listen was of speechlessness.  I'm not sure what exactly to make of it, so far, but what I do know is that Cynic are clearly going to take this as far as it can go, and I'm absolutely not ready to get off the wagon.

Links: Lefsetz Gets it; Newt, Part Tew

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In discussing the cost of music, Bob Lefsetz hits it squarely in the groin, pointing out that the gravy train of CDs and overpriced concert tickets was nothing but a temporary mirage that lulled artists into seeing dollar signs instead of the waning receptiveness of fans.  (Now, that's one sentence with too many metaphors.)  The "CD era" is, or was, not an upward trend, but a spike in the history of music that will have to, or has already started to, regress to the mean.

He finishes with:

The war is over. The price of recorded music has deflated.

And this is good.

This allows more people to listen to more music. Recorded music used to be for the rich. Most people could only afford a few CDs a year. Now you can listen to everything, for free. And there’s nothing the rights holders can do about this.

I have said before, here or elsewhere, that I wish artists could live for free*, the way Olympians would.  Of course, with the way the modern world is structured, this is not possible; but in a certain hypothetical universe or point in history, it is.  I don't think you can put a price on art, though people have tried, because ideas are not quantifiable.  We can tell when we like one thing more than another, but we can't say, in definable ways, why Cynic, say, is better than whatever over-produced schlock is on the magazine cover this month. It just is.

Ideas are not copyrightable, they are not patents and creations.  The people (and other animals) that choose to traverse this road deserve to be commended, not derided.  And I don't say it because I'm one of those people, but because I think it's a genuine shame to find dazzling talent wasting away because the number of otherwise valueless sheets of paper collected in their wallet was never high enough.  Eliminating this need would allow us to witness an unprecedented era of creativity and invention because the people that do it best would be able to do so without having the politics of their industry slumping over their backs.

Eliminating it would also take away the bitterness many of the aforementioned dollar-eyed musicians must be feeling after reading that quote.  But I love it. Both because moving past the constriction of physical media has let me listen to what I want when I want (although, as previously stated, there are special cases in which I do like to have both), and now my decision to give away my mediocre music for nothing doesn't look so bad.

(Stick-tap Metalsucks.)

Long Shrub in Meadow

Cynic's Carbon-Based Anatomy is out tomorrow.  Originally, the idea was to buy the record at whatever show I go to when they come to Europe, but then my girlfriend slapped me with a dose of logic: if I did that, I wouldn't know any of the songs when I saw them.  Dang.  Of course, I could just download it and listen to it until I get it from the show. I'm not opposed to doing that, as I have several times. The band's going to be getting my money, anyway, right? What's the harm in cheating by a few days?

But, eh, not going through the ritual of oogling the sleeve while my ears meld with my headphones feels wrong.  Sometimes waiting for it is worth it - this was the case with Intronaut's Prehistoricisms, for example.  After making the mistake of getting Void in digital form (sorry, but getting the CD and then ripping it to my HDD in something like FLAC beats saving a couple bucks on average-quality mp3s, and I won't make that mistake again...  I hope), my rigid determination to get a CD version of Prehistoricisms meant that, at a time when funds were scarce, I had to wait for a long while before getting it (as a present from the person literally dozing next to me right now, no less).  I tried to rationalise downloading it before inevitably buying it, but, again, not having it in my hands when I listened to it for the first time just didn't feel right.  So, I waited, which sucked, but getting to peel open the case gave me a wonderful feeling of satisfaction for not succumbing to the temptation of cheating.

So, should I cheat or wait a month?  Fungible principles be damned?  Yeah, I never said I was a patient person (actually, I have, but I'm trying to prove a point here so let me fib), so I'm going to do neither and just pre-order it.  Not knowing the songs note-by-note be damned!

In conclusion, that's a long shrub, and it's in the middle of a meadow.

Links: Photographing War, Remembering Pat Tillman, Spying on Eagles, and More

Last week, the first link was an NPR interview; this week, it's another NPR interview.  Terry Gross spoke with two South African photographers that have seen the ugly side of covering a conflict.   Both Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva have suffered significant injuries while working in the field, and they discuss those experiences as well as many other things.

Just like the last one, this is an eye-opening interview; a must-listen for anyone that wants to understand the life of a photojournalist and especially budding photographers that want to hear the sound of true dedication.

Staying on this topic, R.I.P. Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, who were both killed while covering the war in Libya.

Zeitgeist, 2010

4129 words after the jump.  It can only be the 2010 Zeitgeist list.

Zeitgeist, 2009

In the spirit of the Hype Machine, here are some music-related lists...

Music: The Ocean and a Few Birds, Part Two

Woodland Birds Leyenda

Eu não disse que eu não posso falar Portugues? Não, espera, eu posse falar Portugues, só, eu não posso escrever muito bem. Agora... Inglês!

Music: Three, to Five-Thirteen

Please use good earphones, and make sure the volume is at a safe level.

Three, to Five-Thirteen

What's the difference between music and noise? Beethoven may have killed himself had he ever heard a Gorgoroth song, perhaps Gaahl would punch a little child in the face if Moonlight were to greet him.
How couldn't a heavily distorted guitar be considered similar to what my brother thinks is a pig being slaughtered (which it isn't; growing up in a family of farmers and chefs, I know the difference), it's noise isn't it? A growl or squeal played at different pitches.

Well, I don't know, I'm not an expert on such matters. But it takes a special ear to truly hear a great piece of music; the way, say (since it co-stars in a short story of mine), the winds dance with the strings in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, or all the intricacies and little variations that make up How Could I?, just one song out of Cynic's cumtastic masterpiece, Focus (and I'm just referring to the drumming, not Paul Masvidal and Jason Gobel's insane guitar work or Sean Malone's fretless bass playing).

Maybe it is all worthless, ear-scraping noise, but the soft melody sings to me. And it's the millions of little things, defiantly intertwined that make it, to me, more than simple, meaningless "noise".