Carnelian

Why is it sad? Mastodon is also still growing and seeing large sign up bumps.

When bluesky goes to shit in a few years, most people will jump on the next billionaire’s scam and fedi will still be right here

Definitely unneeded. The ending letter of the series of letters we employ to form words is especially useless, but to be honest the first is mostly superfluous too

He’s puking I think

Genuinely shocking to me how disgusting fast food places have gotten. But I’m also not sure if it’s just my perception

I believe their official stance is simply that any “expert who thinks they know better than the duly elected president” will be fired or ignored

Yeah I’m not prudish by any means, but could easily be put off if someone made an inappropriate joke at my expense. It would really be context dependent

Oh fascinating! Thank you

Can you tell more about approval voting? I haven’t heard of it

Not sure exactly what pushes one over the boundary but clearly for some people they are merely “the suggestions”

Oh yeah so I was engaged with lots of smaller in-person events and house shows, focussed on more experimental and improvised music. A mix of electronic and instrumental. Lots of groovebox and synth syncing. I got pretty into ableton, and purchased an interface with 5 pin midi so I could control older synths and also record the midi outs to possibly reuse later.

Some notable highlights include one occasion when we had four korg electribes synced up and did a set that way. We joked that perhaps this was the most that had ever been used together anywhere in the world lol.

Everyone was addicted to vaping at this point in time, back when the massive cloud producing box mods were still more popular than the smaller cartridge vapes. I mention this just because I have so many fond memories of sitting in these dimmed rooms, with the lights from all of our machines flashing and diffusing through the fruity smelling cloud we were sitting in.

That’s how small and irrelevant my “scene” was btw lol, that we could sit and fill these indoor spaces with vapor without issue. I wouldn’t want to give the impression that my experience is a part of something much larger than it is, if it were to in any way affect your research. As an experimental artist I believe in delivering music to the people in front of me, and bearing witness to experience of others no matter how radical their expression. Along the way I’ve been to and thoroughly enjoyed performances of circuit bending as well as both ambient and harsh noise, some of which I credit as being the most important and moving artistic experiences of my life. But a crowd of 30 people was something I considered “ultramassive” haha, like selling out a stadium for us. More often there would be only three or four people present who were not making music themselves.

A group of open minded and charitably-thinking people to say the least, so when the virus was getting going there was an immediate agreement not to risk any in-person events. Then we began experimenting with the process itself, via primarily online means. We developed a file-sharing structure for snippets to be uploaded and processed by others automatically, created a discord server where we met weekly to keep the element of socialization, did weekly themed events where we all worked on small projects to listen to. Many people used the time to invest in furthering their music knowledge beyond what they had grown accustomed to.

I myself during this time found a renewed passion for the guitar, and began writing and singing some more folk inspired things. It became somewhat spirit crushing to sit at my computer all day at work, then come home and do it again all night. So sinking into my couch with the guitar and closing my eyes and getting wrapped into the moment became a very powerfully relaxing and meditative experience. I found myself singing about things that were very therapeutic for me to process and put into words, and propelled me into a process of joy and healing.

A difficult point to make without sounding insecure to some haha, but for me, having access to this experience is the payment for my art. I can tell, because I am not delusional, that my 90 minute meandering soundscapes are not going to make a big influence on the wider world of music, nor frankly will my attempts at more traditional music. But they have changed me, for the better by far, and by extension they have in many small ways benefited and will continue to benefit the lives of the people who come to know me.

Anyway, apologies for so much rambling, the last few days have been very stressful and I’ve been reminiscing a lot. TL;DR: we would get together often to jam, transitioned to bouncing stems and producing more planned recordings during the pandemic, and have now basically continued on with that procedural shift while also bringing in the different styles people explored during that period of isolation we all experienced

Fascinating read, yeah I’m very interested in your work! I feel like my local scene changed a lot during covid, I know I absolutely got way more bedroom oriented personally during that time and have been bleeping away since then

Certainly hope we can