On the Leslie/video tip, I’m enamored of this song she did for her “Back 2 Back Palz” project:

When I was an undergraduate, starting in 1976 people had beer and booze in their dorm rooms, and the dorms had sanctioned events that served alcohol every weekend. You could go to the Iowa Memorial Union and have beers at the Wheel Room. The implicit social contract was this: you show up for class and do the work, and what you did outside class was your business.

Now, under President Sally Mason, the Univeristy has made the private behavior of students an issue relevant to their education. The rationale for this is, on its surface, admirable: it’s a health and safety issue. But it means to me that students at the University — even 35-year-old graduate students — are no longer treated as adults. They are subject to sanctions for things that didn’t occur on campus, and that don’t pertain to their academic performance.

I would never assert that it’s a good idea for people to get pie-eyed drunk and behave in ways that attract the attention of the police. For some this is a symptom of alcoholism, which is a disease. For others it just represents a lack of good judgement. In either case, I think someone who gets arrested with a BAC of .2 has enough problems without worrying about being made homeless by the University.

Beyond the specifics of this policy, I object to the paternalism (or maternalism). There’s a whole panoply of ways the University now regulates the behavior of adult students. This marks a return to the In Loco Parentis philosophy that was in place until the 1960s. It didn’t work then and it’s not going to change behavior now. It establishes consequences for actions above and beyond the sanctions already in place in the legal code. And it means, effectively, that students no longer have private lives.

“…I cannot help but think that it is flat wrong to teach anyone that he or she should not read, or love, or identify with, any book he or she pleases.”

George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, originated a great turn of phrase — “”There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition,” and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy.”

Now unlike friend Fox, I’m not a Christian in the Supernatural Sky Father sense of the term, but I evaluate all art on whether it speaks to my condition. And that means that there are no boundaries: I can dig on Omar Souleyman, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Burning Spear, and Ferron. Even though I’m not a Syrian Muslim, an oppressed black man, a Rastafarian or a lesbian.

One of the things that makes them each great artists is that they can speak to my condition — their work is about the specifics of their condition, but there’s nothing narrow or specific about their ability to connect with an audience. I’m with Maria Bustillos on The Phantom Tollbooth. That book fired my imagination and I’ve always been an evangelist for it. In fact, when my brother Sean was still in grade school I gave it to him for his birthday twice the second time because I’d forgotten the first.

To paraphrase Norton Juster, our project should be to swim in the sea of knowledge and get wet. If we put blinders on for any reason no matter how well intentioned, we lose.

Download audio file (Chaircrusher-Expemsible.mp3)

http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Expemsible.mp3

The source material was a couple of samples downloaded from the Internet — a drumloop and a bassline. I added the phaser effect. So the original audio was on the order of 2 seconds long.

Anyway, as regards the “Love U” stretched version, there was some speculation that it was a hoax, and then some speculation that the ‘group’ claiming they’d made the track themselves was itself a hoax. I decided to investigate, and came to these conclusions:

• It was, in fact, produced using PaulStretch, perhaps even using my OS X port
• The actual slowdown was actually on the order of 10x
• It was pitched down a little more than a half-step.
• Either it was MP3 encoded at a low quality/bitrate, or slightly lowpass filtered. My version (which is encoded from the raw output of PaulStretch) sounds noticeably brighter.

Download audio file (JB-USmile-Stretched.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/xfer/JB-USmile-Stretched.mp3

The original:
J. BIEBZ – U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis

Anyhow, if you’re here looking for Paulstretch, get it from this post — the new build can actually load MP3 files due to a new version of one of the libraries it needs. If you’re still on a Power Mac, go here.

The build scripts are Here, but don’t even bother unless you are an actual programmer, because I can’t troubleshoot your problems for you. What I wrote worked perfectly from a standing start back when I wrote it, but library versions change, source code archive links get moved, and you may not have all the build tools on your machine.

Let the stretching begin!
EDIT: I listened again to the example I put up back when I first started playing with Paulstretch and I still really dig it. It’s the Bitone Troupe’s cover of Björk’s “All Is Full Of Love.”

Download audio file (BitoneTroupe-AllIsFullOfLove-Stretched.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/xfer/BitoneTroupe-AllIsFullOfLove-Stretched.mp3

I ripped the CD and resequenced them so that I could do a smooth nonstop mix. I’m used to entire genres inhabiting the same 5 BPM range so I had to play some Ableton Live tricks to get things to add up.
Download audio file (SarahC-Mix-Beatmatched.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/xfer/SarahC-Mix-Beatmatched.mp3

This is, (and correct me if I’m wrong), a vocal sound people make, which is more accurately sucking one’s teeth. You press your tongue against your teeth and by sucking make a ‘Tschioak’ sound. It’s an expression of impatience, or disapproval, or disgust.

There’s some information about this on the interwebs, as at Urbandictionary.com, and an academic paper on the subject. There are blog posts about its use in Guyana.

Now I’ve heard white folks from Iowa use the KMT sound, apparently in the same way it’s used in the UK, Jamaica and elsewhere. But I’ve never heard of it having a name; apparently it’s such a commonplace in the UK, that the acronym is instantly recognizable.

I have no insights about this at all; this is more of an Andy Rooney observation.

“Trisha” is on UK TV, and the joke is apparently that ‘she’ is Jamaican. This video makes it look as though “Kiss My Teeth” is one of Trisha’s catch phrases.

Well ‘lost my bag’ is incorrect. More accurately, through negligence they allowed it to be stolen. We had a tight connection in Denver — we would have missed the flight except the two flights were at adjacent gates. So our bags were put on a later flight. My bag did arrive at the San Jose Airport — it was scanned coming off the plane. But apparently the delayed baggage clerk just left my suitcase going round and round on the carousel until it disappeared.

I had to spend $800 dollars on all new suit, clothes and toiletries in order to be in the wedding.

I filed a claim for the lost bag upon our return, and United acknowledged receipt of my Claim on May 11th. I just today received an E-Mail saying that they’d given up looking for my bag.

I just got off the phone with the Service Center somewhere in India. They said now that they’d given up on my bag, they’re going to send me a letter saying what they’re going to do about it. I asked to be told in person what they’re going to do about it, and the guy can’t or wouldn’t say. I asked for a phone number for United Airlines baggage service in Chicago, and he said “there isn’t a phone number for the public.”

Leaving aside the fact that United has chosen to employ people in India instead of the United States to handle their customers’ problems, let me say this: It is reprehensible that they use the poor Customer Service Reps in India as a shield. They have designed their system so that no one here in the US will have to answer to their customers directly.

The people in India on the phone are, I’m sure, wonderful people with families to support. It isn’t fair to them that they’re the ones subjected to the anger and frustration of customers. It isn’t fair to their customers that they are prevented from speaking to anyone with the knowledge and authority to resolve their problems.

And most of all, it’s offensive to me that United Airlines doesn’t deal promptly with lost baggage claims. They know exactly as much about what happened to my bag as they did three months ago, but they wait three months because … because they’re United and they don’t give a fuck.

And never once have they apologized to me for their inability to keep my luggage from being stolen. Their attitude seems to be “hey, shit happens, and we’ll reimburse your for your loss … someday. Maybe. In the mean time talk to this nice man in Mumbai, or STFU, doesn’t matter to us, we’re not listening.”

Fuck United Airlines. I will never fly United again if there’s any other choice. I will pay extra to avoid giving those cocksuckers any more money.

Let me just say this: If you feel that way, I can guess some other things about most of you:

• You’ve either never been to New York City, or have only visited briefly.
• You reflexively dislike New Yorkers as too liberal.
• You really think there’s something sinister and threatening about Islam.
• You have never spent any time at all learning about Islam, not even as little as visiting the Wikipedia entry for the religion.

Which leads me to this conclusion: You are operating from a position of complete ignorance, and you need to stop watching Fox and spend some time learning about Islam. You know less than nothing because you know a whole bunch of things that are just not true.

As-Salamu Alaykum, dumbasses.

First off, as Harry Allen pointed out, “Racism has a sole, functional expression: White supremacy.” Read the whole essay, but my synopsis is this: Black folks might entertain overly broad stereotypes about white people — just as anyone might about a tribe/race/religion other than their own — but it isn’t functional; since they don’t have the same sort of power as white people, they can’t cause the same sort of harm to white people.

To claim there is reverse racism in the United States, to campaign against Affirmative Action, to fulminate with righteous anger whenever a black person, against all odds, succeeds where a white person fails, is not just wrong-headed. It is, in fact, the use of victimology and the appeal to atavistic tribalism to perpetuate White Supremacy. Just because you’re not wearing a sheet and waving a torch, yelling “DIE N***ER DIE” doesn’t change things a bit. You’re just being devious and subtle, or to put the most charitable interpretation to it, ignorant and misguided.

And those Tea Party people who are all up in arms that the NAACP called them racist? Please. The easiest way to tell when a white person is being racist is when they’re getting indignant about being accused of racism. Not only that, Andrew Breitbart isn’t dumb, he knew that he was consciously manipulating racism to whip up his base and discomfit the NAACP and Obama administration.

The root of the matter is this: If you are a White American, you are the beneficiary of White Supremacy and racism. Your government, on your behalf, is killing brown people on the other side of the world to make sure you have gas for your car. Your education system, news media, and entertainment industry does everything it can to reinforce in people of color the idea that they are inferior beings. You are the baseline, the norm, the default, ‘that guy,’ and that African American person over there is ‘that black person.’ The burden is on him, not you.

To deny that this is the case makes you, in a word, racist.

I’ve had co-workers, college room-mates and friends from Iran. Iran is a highly educated, literate, and in many ways progressive country. They are currently under the thumb of a toxic, criminal regime. But if you attack Iran, you’re not just attacking the government. You’re attacking and killing people who you want on your side, people you could be friends with, people whose lives are as valuable as your own. You’re making enemies out of friends.

Let me repeat:

If you attack Iran, you’re not just attacking the government.

Sure the government is a bunch of assholes, but in the long run, being assholes isn’t a sustainable strategy for governing. The Iranian people will figure out how to fix their country; anything we do will just make things worse. Killing innocent Iranians make the United States no better than the Basij. And at least the Basij have the balls to do their dirty work up close and personal.

I’ve been accused of having a crush on Cooly G. Why wouldn’t I? She’s talented, beautiful, and even cursory internet stalking on-line research indicates she’s got a bubbly, charismatic personality.

But my real crush is on Cooly G’s talents as a producer. Along with Roska, she’s one of the most visible faces of UK Funky. And she’s gained her prominence having only a single label release — Narst/Love Dub and a track on the Hyperdub 5 compilations. It’s easy to say why those tracks were great — the combination of her vocals, floating in and around the bass heavy beats — but hard to say how she does what she does. Using the tools all modern dance producers have, she seems to come to completely different conclusions.

UK Funky is marked by beat patterns that vary between traditional House and Soca rhythms. Cooly’s beats seem to fit into that same headspace, but they rarely drop into that same repetetive groove. Most producers get a groove going and then throw in change-ups every 4, 8, or 16 bars. Cooly’s beats seem to be all change-up, without losing their own particular quirky groove.

Alongside Cooly G’s DJ’ing and her Hyperdub releases, she’s also been releasing a series of digital-only “Dub Organizer” EPs. They’re only available only for Paypal purchase and announced at her Myspace and Facebook pages. The Dub Organizer tracks are cut from the same cloth as her Hyperdub release, but are arranged more simply — a spare synth line, maybe a sample and beats. They’re straight-up DJ tools, similar in intent to most of Roska’s releases, but a lot less repetitive.

The latest Dub Organizer, #7 in the series is 4 tracks. “ic db” is a driving rhythm that is a sophisticated, layered cousin of funky’s trademark Soca beat. This is quite literally a ‘riddim’ with the only tonal material being a drum sample being bent up and down. And yet it sounds anything but minimal, with different drums coming in and dropping out; the space in a track normally taken up by pitched melodies or chords is full of relentless percussion variations. “well mi seh db” is similarly spare, with only a very occasional trombone stab joining the percussion. “darn db” is based around a repeated synthesized female chorus loop and novel ‘kick on one & four” rhythm.

The star of the EP for me is “full ah sensi db” which is a brilliant re-imagining of dub reggae built around heavily echoed dub samples. In a sense it’s a dub of Dub — it reconnects the half-stepper beat of Dubstep with the original dub reggae sounds, leaving (if it’s possible) more space for sounds to echo in than in King Tubby’s productions. One of Cooly G’s favorite words is “dramatic” and on “full ah sensi db” the drama arises from a low-fi woodblock ‘clok’ sound reverberating darkly. Compared to the maximalist “echo soup” of the (also brilliant) Echospace album Liumin it amounts to approaching the dub template from the opposite hemisphere.

My minimix hits all tracks in this order: darnn db, ic db, well mi seh db, full ah sensi db. I wanted to give you an idea of how they sounded, but encourage you to follow up and support Cooly G by buying the release. Hence it’s watermarked with a robot voice saying “Cooly G Dub Organizer 7.” If you like what you hear, represent!

Here is the track independent of the mix:

Download audio file (Chaircrusher-IowaEvening.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-IowaEvening.mp3

This is actually done in 4 tracks — 3 different recordings from different spots, mixed with one of them processed with Granite.

If you really are into Cicada sounds, I can also offer this:

http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/2010-07-22-Cicadas.flac

Which is 18 minutes from my back yard tonight. It’s a large file but there’s lots of good sound in there.

And speaking of which — a great investment if you do any sort of location recording — a wind muff! I got this one and it made everything I record outside sound better. I even use it indoors, because it seems to damp all air motion around the microphones, with the result of less ‘dead air’ self-noise.

To satisfy this need for humidty I’ve assembled a mix out of things I’ve bought in the past few months. This comprises what I’m listening to when I’m walking the dogs late at night.

Thanks for promos to: Lenny Burden (Octave One) & Stefan Robbers (2Junxion). Drop me a line if you want to send me promos — chaircrusher at gmail dot com.

ALL OTHER TRACKS LEGALLY PURCHASED. Except for the Chaircrusher ones, which I produced.

Download audio file (Chaircrusher-Summer2010-Mix.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-Summer2010-Mix.mp3

Track List

So I decided to write that book, and fill it with as many lies and as much misinformation as I could muster.

Today I took all the scanned images and stuck them together in Word and made a PDF file out of them, the better to print out or browse through on a computer.

http://www.cornwarning.com/xfer/AmericanStates.pdf

Lucy's Favorite Page

It’s still available as individual images on Flickr.com.