In Brief…

Quick update. I moved. I am without DSL or phone service at home. I became everything I despise and bought myself a cell phone (If you need my number, e-mail me). I adopted a bike, which I’ve been riding daily. I’m busy unpacking and settling in, and trying to find the ideal setting on my combination fridge/freezer thing so that my ice cubes freeze but my milk doesn’t (This is a rather difficult process that i fear may cost me a fortune in milk).

Still remixing. Getting excited about working in my new music workspace (a sprawling, accessible area compared to my old setup). Getting excited about visiting Seattle at the end of the month.

Finally finished my months-long Salinger spree, completing Seymour: an Introduction the other night. Tearing through my DVDs of the first season of Arrested Development.

Need a bed. Preferably a futon. Preferably one that won’t destroy my back.

End of an Era

Did I mention I was moving? Well, I am. Soon. Like, this weekend soon, if all goes well. And so far it looks like it does, if a little slowly for my tastes. I have a place that’s 90% sure to go through, to be confirmed this weekend, and another place I just looked at that will be a damn fine backup if the first place doesn’t work out for some reason. Both potential dwellings are studios in Santa Rosa. More than that I can’t say for now, for fear of jinxing anything.

And speaking of moving, roommate, friend, musician, and actor extraordinaire Joey Trimmer has left this afternoon for a life of adventure in the great land of Seattle. Walking into the garage he used to call home when I got off work this afternoon was an odd experience. Seeing a place that was, until last night, the home of a great friend, filled with signifiers of excitement and life and creativity, suddenly emptied and barren, was a little affecting.

But, I’ll be making my way up to his new neck of the woods in a few short weeks, to spend some quality time and paint the town, and meet a bunch of other people I so far only know through miles and miles of ethernet and fiber. It’ll be a nice break, and a good time, I’m sure. And I’m planning a super secret fashion experiment for that week. Hush hush. No more details available at this time….

Plucking away at a very fun remix project at the moment…I’d say I’m about 1/3 of the way through it. It’s a great track by musicians whose work I enjoy and respect immensely, which is always exciting. More on that as it happens.

For now, I’m off to find some way to entertain myself in this house that’s slowly draining itself of life.

More later….

Odds and Ends

I’m officially busy for the next couple weeks. Like, leave me the fuck alone busy. I’m looking for a new place to move into within….oh, a little over 14 days. I’ve committed myself to some remix work which is due in the same timeframe (which I’m very excited about, but don’t want to talk about too much). And of course, the usual work and social business. But I’m feeling a little stressed.

On the remix topic…I got my first remix back from the Apparel remix kits, and mailed out the last two of about 14 that I sent. Now I just have to wait for them to trickle in. I’ll probably do up the first batch as a release for my Airliner website, complete with cover art, etc., and post the rest as they come in. I’m hoping to post those up in a month or so? We’ll see. I’d like to do it before I go visit Joey in Seattle, or shortly thereafter.

Did I mention that I played the first ever Airliner live set a while ago? I busted out my Ableton Live versions of Jacket and Skirt at North Light Books & Cafe’s open mic night. It went well…relatively well-received, considering the crowd consisted of everything from jaded indie rockers, college poets, old folkies, and bluegrass dudes. I still need to set up the rest of the songs in Live, but I’m not sure yet how I’m gonna do some of the drum tricks I’ve come to rely on in Buzz. But I haven’t really scratched the surface of Live’s abilities yet either, so I’m optimistic.

Picked up Flight Volume Two yesterday. I meant to grab it at APE (see previous post), but I’d all but spent myself out of house and home by the time I found out they were selling it there, and at that point, it was either Flight or my Cloonan original. I’m happy with my choice. I read through the book cover to cover last night though, and it was excellent. Over 400 pages of comics from relatively established and totally unknown artists, with stand-out efforst from Hope Larson, Kazu Kibuishi, Becky Cloonan, Jen Wang, Kness, Doug Holgate….jesus, there’s too much quality in this book.

Well well…more later, I suppose….

Comrades & Friends

Last night at Bottom of the Hill: From Monument to Masses, Tristeza, and Hood, featuring Why? from Anticon. One word: WOW.

FMTM played some new material, and fantastic renditions of some classic tracks. The sound system was definitely on their side last night, after the guitar was brought up to the right level, and the crowd was amazingly enthusiastic. I think they got the most applause of the evening, which was kind of crazy, since they were opening. I picked up one of their new t-shirts, which looks great.

Tristeza….well, they were OK. They were certainly doing some interesting things, but there wasn’t enough variation in their set to keep my interest for the entire time. I found myself wondering if each song was going to be their last, which is always a bad sign. It’s a shame too, since they’re talented musicians and they sounded great…but something about the set just wasn’t there. Not enough dynamic or textural variation, I guess. Watching their Rhodes player play his volume knob like an instrument was fun though.

Then came Hood…I’ve been excited to see them for ages. I always think of them as a somewhat mellow band, and on record, they sort of are. They have a lot of drifting, almost ambient songs, and when they rock out on record, it’s a sort of restrained, distant rocking. But last night they put that image to rest. They came on stage and proceeded to rock the crowd with lively, dynamic version of their songs, mostly from Cold House and the newest album, Outside Closer. Many of the tracks were played along with a backing track of some sort, to capture the crazy textures, sampled parts, and of course that synth bass riff on “You Show No Emotion At All”. But they also brought along several unusual instruments (flute and melodica, most notably), to make several of the tracks truly complete.

And speaking of complete, they even brought Yoni Wolf (aka Why?) on stage to handle his backing vocal parts on several of the Cold House tracks. That was a pleasant and unexpected surprise. I’ve been loving Why?’s work with cLOUDDEAD, on his own, and with Fog’s Andrew Broder as Hymie’s Basement.

Hood’s drummer was the true show stealer though, with his insane drum work on “They Removed All Trace That Anything Ever Happened Here”, playing with hands blurred on two snare drums and several cymbals.

On a down note though, Hood was apparently robbed of all their tour money while on stage in Portland the night before. During their encore, the offered to play requests for cash, and managed to play some very amped up “White Stripes Style” versions of some old fan favorites. I bought their tour-only CD-R, and hopefully plenty of other people stocked up on the import CDs they brought with them, to help them get through the rest of the tour.

Anyways…new subject.

I mailed out the first batch of 10 remix kits today. They got sent all over the country, from the Pacific Northwest, to Southern California, to Texas, and New York and Massachusetts, among other places. It’s exciting to have this much interest in my EP so far. I’m still trying to figure out what I can do to drum up some more though. I have a few ideas that I’ll be working on int he next little while.

I also started trying to teach myself Ableton Live today, with the aim of getting together some live versions of some of my songs, so that I can start playing these songs out. If I can do that, I’d love to try to get together a brief West Coast tour-type of thing. I’m sure with my contacts I could set up a handful of shows over the course of week or so, and play up and down the coast.

And one last note…I finally turned off the comments on this blog. I was deleting 10-60 spam comments per day, easily, and receiving almost no actual comments. The comment system long ago ceased to be worth using, and besides, it was apparently causing a little too much stress on the PanicNow server. So comments are gone. If you want to talk to me, hit up the contact page.

More later…

Apparel EP Released!

The moment arrives! The debut Airliner EP, Apparel is now available for download at www.IHeartAirliner.com. Go, get it! Now! Hurry! This may be your only chance!

More later!

Home Stretch

I am soooo close to being done with this EP project. The website is about 85% there, the album “packaging” maybe about 40%, with more set to be completed tonight (I hope), and assorted odds and ends (like tagging and encoding the files) to clean up. I’m not going to give a firm date yet, because if I do, something will come up, and it won’t happen. But if I get everything done, then just announce a date and upload, everything should be fine. Go me.

With all of this going down, I’ve been thinking a lot about promotion as well. I’ve got a small audience at EM411.com, there will probably be some interest at Buzzmachines.com and of course there’s my friends, but I’m trying to come up with ways of promoting this release beyond that. I’m not talking about, like, spamming a bunch of forums that I’ve never posted at, or anything like that, but I’m just wondering what else is out there. I’m not opposed to taking out a text ad, or a banner ad on a site that it would be appropriate for (assuming costs are reasonable…this is a non-commercial release, after all). I might even make some flyers to put up at the local record stores. Maybe even put some up in the Amoeba and Rasputin when I hit Berkeley and/or SF next week?Of course, I’ll post myself to Del.icio.us, with the hopes of getting a handful of blind tag-based clicks. But what else can I do to make the most of all this effort?

I’m so far along on this that I’m already thinking of long-term, pie in the sky, plans. You know, making live versions, playing million dollar grossing world tours, t-shirts, action figures, breakfast cereals, net labels, vinyl releases, DVD-audio surround sound releases, television sitcom, etc. Because I’m so down to Earth that way.

So….soon. I know I keep saying that, but really this time. For reals.

I other news, I’m this close to removing the comments function from this site. To date, there are 39 legitimate comments on this blog, the most recent being from a month ago. Apart from that, my Comment Spam Blacklist has swollen to grotesque proportions, and hardly a day goes by that I don’t delete a good half-dozen come-ons for pill-pushers, pornographers, and assorted sundry small-time crooks and charlatans. Given the apparently putrid cost/benefit ratio of having comments here, I think it may be time to change. When I find the motivtion that is. So, if you have anything to say, say it now or say it by e-mail or IM.

More later. More soon.

Unseen Shows

Last night was the best debut show of an all-female punk band that I’ve never attended. No that wasn’t a typo. Siiiiigh. It was supposed to happen, but it looks like it wasn’t in the cards. Oh well. I guess I’ll have to catch the Laurie L’s (name change pending, perhaps?) at their next show, hopefully one that involves significantly less last minute schedule changing and general dramarama. Oh yeah, and maybe a little less not-actually-happening-after-all, too.

But still. It was the best show I didn’t see all year.

So a bunch of us ended up back at my place, strangely enough, with too much coke (of the cola variety, of course) and not enough Southern Comfort. my bottle’s almost empty, so it looks like it’s about time to change my newest sidebar section again. (Oh yes, there’s a new sidebar section devoted to my drinking habits. As if this site wasn’t insular and narcissistic enough as it is. Yeah, well fuck you, get your own blog).

So, I could be in San Francisco seeing my current musical obsession as I sit here typing, but I didn’t know about Joanna Newsom, her music, or her two sold out sets at Noise Pop until too late. But that’s not going to stop me from listening to her fucking brilliant, beautiful album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, and gazing longingly at the photo of her torn from the cover of the Bay Guardian currently hanging on my wall. I know, I know. Sad. But that should come as no surprise.

But seriously, when I say obsession, I’m not kidding. I listen to her every night when going to sleep now. And most mornings on my way to work. And most lunch breaks. And on random walks around Cotati at odd hours. And while blogging. Considering that I almost canceled the download of her album as soon I heard her voice for the first time, this is pretty amazing. At this point, there is exactly one song on her album that I don’t absolutely adore. I can’t remember an album that has captured my attention like this since maybe OK Computer, or one that has so perfectly filled an emotional niche in my life since Low’s Things We Lost in the Fire. Fucking amazing. Fuck. And once more for good measure. Fuck.

My EP has been mastered now, and it sounds phenomenal, if I do say so myself. Mad props to John at panicStudios for working his magic on my little tracks. Now It’s all down to me deciding on my website/packaging design, and it’ll be available and out of my life. In a way, the songs already feel like they’re behind me now, part of the past, and I can start working on something new. I even have a rough conceptual idea and a handful of partial/completed tracks for my next project, which may be another EP, or maybe a full length. I even have a working title that I’m enamored with at the moment, but we’ll see if it sticks. I’m not going to reveal the title right now, because I don’t want people to worry about me. Hehe…

Jesus, I always write more than I intend to here. I should try writing less, but more often. Or not. It’s not like there’s an audience out there slavering for my tender witticisms to fall from their bloggy branches like overripe pears. And that sentence alone should tell you why.

More later. We should shine a light on.

One Two Three

OK, so lots of stuff.

First: Domain names. I registered a couple. www.dylanabbott.com, purely for reasons of vanity. Right now it just redirects to this page, but I may do something else with it later on. I’m planning on at least putting up a placeholder page directing back here and to my other new URL: www.iheartairliner.com. This is going to be the site for my electronic music project, Airliner. So far, just a placeholder, but when I release my EP, I’ll launch the full site as well (which I’m still designing).

Which brings me to number two: The EP. I finished the final mixes of all 6 tracks yesterday, and uploaded a 320Mb .rar file (yikes!) for the multi-talented JDG to master for me. Airliner: Apparel will be released online sometime in March, for free, in both Mp3 and FLAC formats. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. It’s a way of compressing audio files in size, without sacrificing any audio quality, like you do with Mp3 at any bitrate. So there will be literally CD quality tracks available for download. There will also be a .PDF of the cover art included. I’m not planning on doing a physical release yet, but I’ll probably burn a few one-off CD-Rs just in case. Eventually, I might do a small run through Disc Fu.

Thirdly: Del.icio.us. I’ve known about this site for a while, but the full implications of what it does just struck me this week. I can’t even explain it. Remember back in the late 90s sometime, when Wired magazine was all about PUSH technology on the internet, and everyone laughed at them? Well, maybe there was something to it. Read this article to get an idea for what’s so hot about “Social Bookmarking”. Oh and by the way, my link feed is here.

Um….yeah. Goodness. I don’t know what else to talk about, so I’ll just leave you with that. More later….

The Life Neurotic

Whoo hoo. After a bit of a break from this sort of thing, I played at North Light open mic again last night. I ran through the Magnetic Fields’ “Come Back From San Fransisco” and Track Star’s “Feet First”, with reasonable levels of success on both. Go me. I was thinking of doing Bowie’s “Life on Mars” (prominently featured on the soundtrack for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), but that song really doesn’t work on guitar alone. It really needs the stomping grandeur of the huge piano chords and sweeping string section to really make it work. Well, it needs something beyond a sparse acoustic guitar/vocal arrangement at least. Ah well….

Speaking of The Life Aquatic…what an odd movie. I enjoyed it. Immensely. It was not Wes Anderson’s finest hour though. In many ways, it was a mess, a cacophonous sprawling thing that overreached and spread thin, revisiting areas that have been played to perfection in his previous films. In other ways, it was spot-on perfect in small ways, small moments. Massively entertaining and also somewhat frustrating.

I’ve read a little bit of the critical response to the film (which has been somewhat lukewarm), and I’m surprised nobody mentions how…meta it gets in places. It’s essentially a film about a filmmaker, transposed into an exaggerated oceanographic setting. From the opening film festival scene onward, Murray’s character seems to work as a stand-in for Anderson in some ways. Was this intentional, light-hearted self-deprecation, or some unintended, subconciously revealed side-effect?

The scene the really drives this point home to me is the scene that takes place in the cutaway-view set of the Team Zissou vessel, the Belafonte. This set is introduced early in the movie, for a brief fourth-wall breaking scene describing the contents of the ship, but the set is used again briefly later on in the film, for a scene following several of the characters through the ship during a conversation. The dollhouse-nature of the set is exaggerated and pointed out repeatedly, to great comic effect, and in high contrast to the rest of the ship-bound scenes, which are filmed on and inside the actual vessel. The culmination of the scene is a pulled-back shot, with several cutaway-rooms in the frame, and characters looking over and around the cutaway walls as Bill Murray’s character proclaims “But this is a documentary! This is really happening!” The dissonance of Murray’s claims to veracity against the obviously fantastic set piece was one of my favorite moments of the film. And, coming from a filmmaker who has been criticized before for his obliquely absurd and stage-like production design, this scene can easily be read as a jab at his critics laments of lacking realism.

Anyhow. That was longer than I thought it would be. But at least it pushes my drunken motivational speech down the page a bit….

Still working on my EP…the mixing process is going to take a bit longer than I’d thought, although I’m definitely making some progress there. Joey just picked up some new speakers that I’m gonna do a little mixing on. Mixing on headphones isn’t exactly ideal but it’s been the best I could do until recently. And it’d be nice to have as accurate and widely listenable mix as possible before I send it off for mastering. I’m somewhat stalled on the artwork, as I decide which of 3 directions to take for the cover…

More later. Blah de blah…

New Music – Jacket

Yes kids, there’s a new Airliner track available over at Em411. This is the final piece of my long-in-the-works clothing EP. I still have a lot of work to do to actually get it in release ready shape, but all the composing is pretty much done now. I’ll definitely post more here as I work on the final parts of the project.