Neo-Noir Quasar.

-  On Sunday I was this close to finishing off my record.  Then I realized my basement carpet was damp.  Ha.  The tribulations of going through MN winters, I suppose.  But yep… just about done with her.  She’ll be 21 tracks, running about 55 to 57 minutes.  Just short of an hour.  Self titled, because she will chronicle the section of my life that made me start doing this to begin with.  So it’s sort-of a “birth of…” thing, if you will.  But what… I’m gonna call it “The Birth Of…”??  C’mon, I’m an asshole but I’m not that pretentious.  Other self news: I’m leaving for Memphis Monday for my new job.  So I’m not sure I’ll be posting here much.  Course, this could go the opposite direction and I could be so bored with what to do with myself that I’ll be posting several times a night in my hotel room.  It’s looking like the release date should be in May; until then keep up with Black Lantern Music cause some really cool stuff is going to be coming out between now and then.

-  Sooo… this is only the second time in history we’ve discovered a triple quasar.  The easiest way to define a quasar is a “galactic seed, or nucleus”.  With double-quasars, it’s believed to be a result of two galaxies colliding.  In other words, there’s crazy shit going on out there… we’re not even specs of dust.  We’re specs of dust on one side of an electron only.  Here’s the article.

-  Years before Rian Johnson scored a moderately mainstream hit movie in last year’s Looper, he directed Brick.  A neo-Noir throwback to the crime, in over your head flicks and novels of the late 30′s and 40′s taking place in an American suburban high school.  It strangely works very well.  And I have a feeling it would have been taken more seriously if the film starred adults and not teenagers.  Anyways, yesterday The Onion’s AV Club posted an article about the opening sequence of Brick.

“There’s also sorrow in the juxtaposition of a slow push into Gordon-Levitt’s face, half-hidden behind hands clasped together in a classic thinker’s pose, with inserts of the girl’s lifeless body at the edge of the water. It was during this back-and-forth, as the camera measures Gordon-Levitt by way of his non-reaction to shoes, hair, and odd-shaped bracelets, that I mentally wrote the note “Dear Dear Wendy: Sorry.” Until then, though, I couldn’t necessarily articulate what made this sequence of shots seem so powerful. Watching it again, I belatedly realized something: Gordon-Levitt’s eyeline never changes. We see him ostensibly looking at different details each time, but that’s never cued by eye movement. And then I realized something else, which I can’t believe I never noticed before: Those inserts aren’t from the angle at which he’s viewing them. From where he is, her feet should be at the top of the frame; instead, they’re at the bottom, shot from her other side. The other two shots are likewise reversed. You could call that an error, I suppose, but coupled with the fixed eyeline, what it suggests (and I think this is what I always responded to, unconsciously) is that Gordon-Levitt can’t process what he’s seeing.”

-  Relatedly, Danny Boyle’s 7 film-making tips.

-  ARTIST OF THE DAY is M.S. Corley.  Here’s a commission he did for a “Blighted Druid”:

 

-Sonny

Scatter the Exoskeleton.

-  The Wildly Ambitious Quest to Build a Thought-Controlled Exoskeleton for the Paralyzed.

“This may sound incredible, but in recent years, research on using signals from the brain to operate machines has taken great strides. Scientists have developed brain-machine interfaces that allow paralyzed humans to move a computer cursor or even use a robotic arm to pick up a piece of chocolate or touch a loved one for the first time in years. Nicolelis has set his sights even higher: He wants to get paralyzed people up and walking around. If he succeeds it could be a tremendous advance. Right now he’s still developing this technology in monkeys. There’s a long way to go.

But Nicolelis was brimming with confidence in January when I visited his lab at Duke University to see how his work is progressing. “We’re getting close to making wheelchairs obsolete,” he said.“

-  I’m going to be working on music all day today.  In fact, I’ll probably hop to it after writing this.  I’m staring at three pages from my creativity book — one ripped out — trying to discover the natural succession of songs as they should unfold in relation to what the album is about.  What it means to me.  This is easily my most personal album I’ve ever done, as it vaguely (it doesn’t beat you over the head or anything) tells the story of the hardest years of my life.  So far.  But in a meta-way, this time… this experience, is kind of what birthed the idea and the sounds that would become my current musical persona to begin with.  It likely wouldn’t exist in this way without this experience.  So it’s all a little bizarre.  About halfway through I’m remixing the very first track I did officially under the pseudo-name, in an effort to recreate the frustration of what was happening boiling over and me finally going down to the basement and making this droning, Electronic beat.  So… I’m excited.

Also… help me out.  I’m becoming obsessed with THIS reaching 10 thousand downloads.

-  I’ve got this in my headphones this morning:

That’s Doldrums new album, “Lesser Evil”, released yesterday on Arbutus Records.  Canadian (Toronto) -based Electronic music that isn’t trying to make you dance (though you probably could), but that doesn’t get weird for the sake of it.  There’s a hint of that new wave of Canadian electronics in here, the sounds we heard from Purity Ring and Grimes in 2012; those textures are supplemented with the more analog sounds of a group like, say, Black Moth Super Rainbow.  The vocals are surprisingly un-effected out (generally speaking), and there are nods of good old-fashioned storytelling inside some of these songs; but it is not afraid to use a voice as a pure and simple instrument in and of itself as well.  On top of that you’ve got these rhythmic, hypnotic back-beats that have clearly been recorded live, with a kit, in a large room with padded walls.  Definitely worth checking out.

Here’s the album in a variety of formats at Amazon.

-  I really hope Warren Ellis will be getting some amount of dough from Iron Man 3, if the movie is directly lifting his nanotechnology, biological modification, Extremis from his run on the character.

Speaking of Uncle Warren, he’s apparently been inspired by newspaper comic strips, and has been releasing single panel comics on his website of late… as part of a world he calls “Scatterlands”.  Here’s the latest:

-Sonny

Elemental Characters/Production Updates.

-  Wow… so you know how sometimes you hear the argument, “Wind power?  Wind??  Why on Earth would use hundreds year old technology to power anything in the 21st century?”.  Well I just read on Phys.org that new information from Australia states — obviously in certain regions — wind is cheaper and generates as much or more energy as traditional forms.  The study found that down under wind cost $80 per MWh (that’s “Megawatt Hour” or one million watts/hour), whereas it costs $116 for the same amount from a new gas plant, and $143 for the same amount of energy from a new coal plant.  Coal is much higher, however, because of the government’s carbon tax… but the article notes that even without any sort of carbon tax, Coal comes down to the Gas plant numbers (still not close to Wind’s $80/MWh).  Apparently this can be mostly attributed to the cost of renewables (mostly wind and solar) dropping hard in the past few years and the cost of traditional forms of energy continuing to increase.  The article also notes that, “large solar photovoltaic installations will be cheaper than coal or gas by 2020, and solar thermal and biomass systems will be at least competitive by 2030.”

-  I generally don’t like to talk about my life on here — me smart, doing this 2nd — but a little update on the current batch of tunes:

I have 22 songs, about 70% of which are “done” but not done-done.  Before you think “wait… that’s like an hour and 20 minutes worth of music”, most of the songs are between 2 and 2.5 minutes.  The first song, and two others (so far), are between 1 and 2 minutes.  And the last song will probably clock in at about 5 or 6.  Why am I doing this?  It was sort of sparked by listening to Kareem Riggins’ excellent piece of work last Fall, “Alone Together“.  The album is 34 tracks, only 8 of which break the 2 minute mark.  When I heard this album straight through for the first time it had been a few months since I’d wrapped an album I called “Hills Run Red“; a western concept album that had 3 tracks: the first two were 16.5 and the last was 20 mins.  So when I was getting to about track 23 on “Alone Together” I thought… “dang, maybe I should do something like this?”  At the very least it would provide a new challenge for me, and if people think a song sucks at least it’ll be over soon.  Ha.  And it isn’t like I’m self-imposing rules, saying “all songs need to be 2:15 long”, hence the minute long tracks and the much longer track.  I just was quite inspired by “Alone Together” (and, before I knew it, El-P’s “megggamixxx3″), how the song comes together, shows you what it’s got, and moves on.  Also, for as proud as I am of some of the arrangements and instrumentation on “Hills“, I was going to go back to a more sample based album anyhow, and you have to be really good (much, much better than me) at sampling to make 5 minute tracks and have them stay fresh and never get dull.  So yeah.  Also, I would say a good 80% of the samples (for the song foundation; I’m not counting using Dinah Washington or someone like that for vocals, which I’m doing a lot on this) are classical samples.  Mostly, from these two records:

But there’s still synths, too.  And I have a concept, but I’m not sure yet the level of how obvious it’ll be.  I dunno, I’M EXCITED.  I guess so, Rambles McGee.

-  Okay this is fucking awesome.  A student from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design designed cartoon characters based on the Elements for her senior thesis.  Here’s her official page including all of them.  I really like Copper:

-SonnyW. or D.Black or /\/\_/\/\

Cool Jazz, Theater Dreams.

-  COFFFFEEE!!  It’s been a minute since I’ve been here.

-  Last night I had this amazing dream about my wife and I.  It kinda felt like a second honeymoon.  We were in this very 21st Century, borderline futuristic city… like Tokyo looking.  Except it wasn’t Tokyo because there was an abundance of white people and everyone spoke with a vague European accent.  Let’s just call it 2064 Kiev.  But we were frolicking through this city from a home-base of this beautiful penthouse.  We went to see this band play in an underground club.  Somehow we got to dancing at the side of the stage then the band invited us up to dance on stage and sing backup for the rest of the show.  After the show we went back to our place and got up onto the roof.  There was a small, traditional movie theater across the alley from us.  Even with the neons of the city the stars burned bright.  I found a piece of wood we used to walk across and get onto the theater roof.  We made our way inside and found the projection room.  We dug through reels and reels of film until we found an old, dusty copy of Inglorious Basterds (so yes, this must be a future occurrence).  I put it on the 35mm projector and got it working.  We brewed up some popcorn and watched the film all by ourselves in this tiny, historic theater.  Balcony and all.  When it was over we put the reels back how they were and darted out to the rooftop.  The sun was just coming up.

But enough about me.

-  The Longest Hunger Strike by Ann Neumann

“They came for him on October 23, 2008. Eight medical staff, corrections officers, and guards took William Coleman out of his solitary cell, down a bright hall, and into a medical examination room. The officers stood guard outside while a medical internist told Coleman to get on the vinyl-covered examination table. They were going to feed him. Coleman told them he did not want to be fed. But they weren’t asking for his consent; he had no choice.

It had been more than a year since Coleman had chewed anything.

He’s not suicidal; he’s in prison for something he says he didn’t do. Like 2.2 million people incarcerated in prisons and jails in the U.S., his body is not his own. The only way for him to protest his conviction, to exercise his first amendment rights, he says, is to stop eating solid food.”

-  ARTIST OF THE DAY:  Amélie Fléchais:

-  Cool Jazz and Cold War.

“In 1956, with the guiding support of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, the U.S. Department of State sent the nation’s finest jazz musicians abroad as goodwill representatives in a conscious effort to symbolize America’s commitment to freedom. The Jazz Ambassadors program was launched at the bitterest point in the Cold War to bring the best of American culture to the rest of the world. The program not only focused on Iron Curtain nations but also the Third World, where many developing countries were exploring Marxism as a possible political identity. The first Jazz Ambassador was trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and two years later Brubeck joined the ranks that would eventually include Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Benny Goodman and Miles Davis. These musicians reached audiences in the millions, not only performing but also meeting with heads of state as well as thousands of everyday citizens through the international language of music.”

I can’t help but think this would never be something we’d invest in today’s world.  Even with a surplus.

-Sonny

 

2013′s Secret War.

-  I’ve been getting really into a remix project lately, and will likely come very close to finishing on my days off work this week.  Seems like lately I keep having the same crisis: during instrumental breaks do I go batshit crazy with a guitar or with a turntable.  Obviously this depends on the song, but it’s still hard to be clairvoyant and know which one will work better.  So typically I will just record both and compare and contrast.  First World Producer Problems.

-  I think I’ve posted Ulises Farinas’ art here before, but it’s well worth a second mention:

-  Wired has a good article about how patents actually shackle innovation, not encourage it.  As is evidenced by the Apple v. Samsung lawsuits of the past year.  It’s a long article, but very enlightening.

The past three decades of wanton patent-granting have created a disastrous environment for innovation. Today it’s practically impossible to build anything without violating a patent of some kind—and risking a multimillion-dollar lawsuit for your troubles. Once intended to protect lone inventors, patents now form a kind of shadow tech industry, in which billions of dollars are spent on amassing huge portfolios. (A recent New York Times article noted that Apple and Google, companies that define themselves by innovation, now invest more in patent acquisition and defense than in research and development.)

Why are companies spending so much money on patents? First, as protection. “Patents are like bullets,” law professor Chien says. “They’re cheap to acquire but can cause a lot of damage.” But if you have your own bullets, would-be assassins are less likely to target you. That’s the thinking behind RPX (Rational Patent Exchange), whose clients include Google, Microsoft, and IBM. RPX amasses patents, it says, to keep them out of the hands of lawsuit-happy competitors, and it vows not to sue anyone over them.

-  I’m a massive proponent for not going to war with Iran.  The problem with my viewpoint is we kinda already are at war with Iran.  It’s just a sophisticated war, a secret war.

The dramatic spike in suspected Iranian cyber attacks this year also has some in the U.S. distinctly worried. While direct denial of service attacks on U.S. banks – widely seen as retaliation for US sanctions and attempts to freeze Iran from the international financial system – were seen relatively simplistic, attacks on US allies in the Gulf were more complex.

The most worrying, experts say, were those on Saudi oil firm Aramco and Qatari gas export facilities. Last month, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta described the Saudi attack as the most sophisticated yet launched on a private company, effectively destroying tens of thousands of computers – although he stopped short of blaming Tehran directly.

-  And finally, Futurist Magazine Unviels Its Predictions for 2013 and Beyond.

-S.W.

 

Hills Run Red.

My new record is finally up and available!  It is my third full-length under the Mild Maynyrdguise, and I’m very proud of it.  Again, it’s called “Hills Run Red” (which is the name of one of the first spaghetti westerns, but I liked the “red” theme too).  I had been chronicling my process of concepting and creating it on this blog, but you probably didn’t see that… and I’m really awful at trying to describe it, so I’ll let the other guys in Black Lantern Music sell the concept for me:

“I know what you’re thinking, there’s not enough Wild West themed narrative sample based electronica concept albums that are as I just described but manage at the same time to not be cheesy in any way. Well the ever adventurous Mild Maynyrd, who hails from the other side of the pond so is very possibly a cattle rustling gunslinger himself (though I couldn’t confirm either way as I value my life), has cooked up ‘Hills Run Red’ for Black Lantern Music to remedy this! Its a peach, its a trip, and it tells a ripping yarn too.”

I thought that was pretty funny.  Anyways, yeah it’s a bit of a risk.  Of course.  Just trusting that people have enough patience to get through one track (they’re each longer than 16 minutes) is itself a risk.  But hey, I’m super proud of this thing and I think it’s very unique.  Though I know I can still do better.  This is the cover:

Here’s the embed:

It can be streamed for free, or bought for the price of a Gatorade here:  Mild Maynyrd Bandcamp

Thank you.

-Sonny

Homogeneous Delusions (and Free Music!).

- I received an e-mail today that read:

“I have a friend that lives in Hawaii.  He is of Japanese heritage.  My friend (Stacy Sakata) believes the reason his people behaved honorably (no looting, no crime) in the aftermath of the tragedy in Japan is because the Japanese people have not been tainted by other cultures / immigrants.“

I despise getting into anything remotely political with people over e-mail (or on THIS site)… so I didn’t respond to this.  Besides, there really isn’t much to say.  Moving on.

- I’m finally wrapping up this thing I’ve been working on for what seems like far too long now.  It’s a 14-track LP under the Mild Maynyrd guise which I’ll have on my Bandcamp page, and it’ll also be available for free download on Black Lantern Music.  I’m gonna go balls to the wall with this because there just doesn’t seem to be any good reason not to; I’ll be making (fairly) nice hard-copies at home, assembled from a variety of sources.  I’m not expecting many (or anyone) to want one… but it’s worth a try.  I’ll probably carry a few around with me at places like the Turf Club and First Ave. and the Triple Rock and Soundset.  So wait, does this make me a “backpacker” then??

- Speaking of Soundset, I need to snag a ticket one of these days.  I was really really hoping for some Aesop Rock or El-P (as that would foreshadow a new album this year from one of them probably)… but I’ll definitely take that line-up any day.  Plus, ya know, there’s always the skate-park and b-boys and production showcases and merch tents and DJ sets and more.

- The latest Black Lantern release is a haunting, sample-friendly disc from a project called Black Ceiling.  This thing will eat away at you, and you’ll slowly realize that everything around you that’s disgusting is actually very beautiful.  Make sense?  Makes me look like a fuckin hack; this guy knows what he’s doing (think this applies as “witch-house“).  LINK.

Have a disgustingly beautiful rest of the day/night/lifetime/eon.  Like this:

-Sonny

Long Due Disclaimer.

I’m not really quite sure what I do here at The Sonny Wilkins Chronicle, what I am.  I’m probably a sixteenth critic, and eighth thinker, a quarter hack, a quarter conspiracy theorist (when it comes to pop culture), I don’t even know what else.  But I can tell you what I’m not (are you listening any and all self-described “Jesus lovers” out there?): I am NOT a fucking JOURNALIST.  What I say isn’t always literal, or smart.  Haha.  Take a second and browse through my “Roaring N’ Red” posts, please.  Do people honestly believe that those are true stories??  Perhaps some of those things happened to me, or someone else, at some point in the 1920′s, but they aren’t all necessarily true.  I figured that simple notion would be pretty much common knowledge amongst anyone who’s spent even one browser click here; once again, I was wrong.  About a lot of things.  If I start a post off with some idea or allegory about something or someone, famous or anonymous, perhaps sometimes I’m using that idea as a stepping stone to what I want to write about?  Just perhaps.  And it might just happen that this idea/allegory/notion is real, it also could very well be fictitious.  If you can’t understand that, steer fucking clear… cause I ain’t got time for you.

-Sonny

The Eternal Ticket Remains.

DESIGNING the perfect VIRUS for the perfect MACHINE.

Here I dispose, melting two separate eons together – trying to. Taking a torched blade to the throat of time itself. Opting out of reconciliation of any kind. No apologies. No excuses. It started with a conversation – like Charlie in the Rose Bowl. There was Ginsberg, a Dada and happenings artist from California, a journalist from New York, and a friend of a friend. In my head, I lapsed. Trespassed to the advertised ingenuities, the suppressed sexual identities, and the forever Earth changing expansion of this… place. Eyes – in – the – how and the hers. The slow meticulousness cried to the rafters for someone to stop it. Anyone. But no, we strapped in and rode that gorging cock to eternity; or so we thought. Something happened, just then. Just now? Don’t know anymore. The ground shook underneath all our toes, for the great watchful eye of the subterfuge was surely upon them. Marching to the front lines just in time to challenge what itself called the “syndicates of the Earth”; this was not for all to see, however. In fact, it took a special consciousness. Tarnished or temperate did not matter. And Ye He imposed unto Himself: “…There it is. There’s my name in the writing. Am I proud? Am I a proud of WHAT, exactly??”. Not the advances in biochemistry or quantum mechanics. Not the drug dealers and whores. Not even the rich history of the pen. Nobility equaled intestinal pulp in this man; it wasn’t necessarily his, or even their, greatness. Rather, it removed the staunch inseparableness in the daily, monthly, yearly drudgery of this terrestrial, possessive time. This allows every one of the fables to write, paint, speak, fuck how THEY wanted. Not anyone else. Thatchers fluffed their pillows under the silkened eyes of what would reanimate as Alan Moore. Atomics burned flesh in all directions; the mushroom cloud expanded until it encapsulated everything but these ghosts I refer to now. There’s a fire searing our very cells, inside me and you. How’d'we stimulate this clitoris of imagination? To be honest I’m not sure, but I know how we got it; we inherited it from the liberated minds [see above] of that time. Pre- malt shops. Post- War. Mid- artistic asphyxiation. Now and then; never and always. I ask here, different context: Am I proud? Of nothing but what I, what we, inherited even if we, or I, don’t know it.

SPECTRES of the NEVER-ENDING remain INTACT.

I am proud for one reason alone and I’ll make no bones, shit, or piss about it. This inheritance seeps through the pores and glands of our cultural skin almost continuously. Problem is, any one singular vision cone sees it as a zit, oozing puss, or a boil on the lengthening nose of our very existence. No. It, our birthright, in actuality is the scar that will never disappear into the rest of the unmarred flesh we so shamefully hide from one another for what reason I do not know. It is a birthmark on ALL our right shoulders. It’s funny, too – cause if you want to, you can pick it from the landscape just as you would a shiny golden apple on a vividly colorful Fall day. If life’s a “cut-up”, as He once put it, than surely we’re waist deep in the shredded episodes as well? We must be. For somewhere in the Young Liars, the New Death of Post-Modernism, the sleepless doctors, the wide-eyed boy, the road travels, the cyanide, it stirs in the darkness. Visible only to those with the sightedness to magnify nano-seconds themselves. More than Mickey and Ronald could possibly imagine. The modern Aesop defends it, like a hero of the round table. “Must not sleep, must warn others”. Hi-Definition Plasma TVs, small distant planets made only of ice and devolution, carpenters, stock boys and girls, Snake River Canyon, coffee and medication. Take no prisoners. That’s just one alone. Imagine the power of all these songs? An abandoned Son, shackled up in NY. A dramatization about neurology. The future in our glistening purple palms. Don’t you fuckin’ tell me treason and truth aren’t one in the same! The Internet Age of Enlightenment. Pah!! The world cut up like a strip of red-meat at a blue Ox parlor in Kansas. Dissection of the central nervous system. Abortion, and finally Northlanders. Crackling white ivory fences on the Houses of Raspberry Hills. Free of charge, with a salute from the pusher to boot. It’s coming. Can you feel it coming on? It isn’t giving in, it’s giving out. Breath now. Here I dispose, melting two separate eons together – trying to. Taking a torched blade to the throat of time itself. Opting out of reconciliation of any kind. No apologies. No excuses.

-Sonny