Paul 101

First off, this is my 101th post. Hooray.

Also, it is very early in the morning, so prepare for eloquence!!

Well, in AWESOME news, tomorrow is my last day at work; and to celebrate I burned my work shirt. Armed with Latvian-endorsed “white spirit” (highly flammable), matches and a long repressed streak of pyromania I set that sucker a-burning. Unfortunately my camera isn’t as great as being there, cos it was quite pretty. All the synthetic fabrics burned different colours, so I got red, blue and green flame – and towards the end the outer shell was burnt out, but the inside was alight, so it looked kind of like waves of lightning under a cover of clouds. Was this immature? Yes. Do I feel better? Yes.

Before that, I had been out to a pub in West Hampstead to have drinks with Jay (relaxed part one of my three-part goodbye). It was a good time, we get along like two people who really get along. Anyway, we got talking about stuff and we both know a guy here who is really into a girl, and she not so much, which I believe is technically called unrequited love. Just watching everything play out (or more to the point, stay in a ongoing stagnant position) really bought back memories of me a couple of years ago, and I’m sure everyone can relate to some degree. You know, waiting around for someone to finish work so you can engage them in a few words of conversation; hoping they catch the same bus; just thinking about them all the time. It’s just a new experience for me to observe this behavior manifested in someone else, while I’m personally in a mutual, happy, healthy, fulfilling relationship, which is everything the aforementioned is not. It’s just so odd how one’s brain works in the middle of completely unrecipricated infatuation, because you convince yourself that it’s very close to eternal undying love; when it is really destructive obsession, or maybe even a subconscious manifestation of self-loathing. I have no hugely profound thoughts on all this, just thinking back to a couple of girls I pined after for ages from afar, and DIDN’T JUST ASK OUT ON A DATE. Maybe that is part of the fun of growing up.

Anyway, all of this does move nicely into this promised upload, “Walking Home”, as it is most consists of songs about girls who should have loved me, but strangely didn’t (the strong silent approach not so successful). This is a reasonably long-playing collection of demos and half-finished songs recorded between early and mid 2008, just before I got stuck into Max/MSP. At the time I had just moved into Knox St, and had experienced some pretty big changes in a short space of time – graduating, breaking up, moving out, moving in, changing jobs. I was working in the Dendy Cinema as a projectionist, and due to the woeful state of buses was walking home most nights. This is my main recollection from that time, and where the title comes from. Walking that solid hour between Civic and Watson, normally between 1 or 3 am, frost everywhere, possums, kangaroos, and normally listening to Sleepytime Gorilla Museum or Battles. It was kind of magical, and I would frequently write lyrics or sing to myself on the way, or mix when I got home. Some of these songs were very old by the time I recorded them (Lucent was written in 2005); some on-the-spot jams (Could). It is mostly interesting to listen to this collection, from the point of view of me coming to terms that I was not the next Robert Smith/Thom Yorke/Trent Reznor, and moving onto much more interesting music – this transition is much more obvious if I left the songs sequenced as recorded, but I thought it flowed much better bouncing between different styles.

DISCLAIMER:
This is a collection of half-finished songs recorded two years ago, and should be appreciated thus. Some parts I am proud of, some I loath. It is also full of first-take vocals/guitar tracks, which occasionally make me cringe.

UPLOADED SOON

BLAHBLAHBLAH

Well, another bout of not posting – and I really don’t have any excuse: things are about to get very interesting for Paul J Heslin. On the morning of the 19th, I set sail for Europe, with no immediate plans to return. I am now at work, enjoying my third last shift; or more to the point, enjoying the fact that it is my third last shift. This time feels different from other times I have finished a job. Normally there is a great sense of relief, a lifting of responsibility; at the moment I am just too tired to feel anything from just longing for the last day. As it has panned out I’m only going to have a day off before I go, so I’m going to make sure I get everything done – but I’m mostly sorted. Interrail pass, card loaded with my savings in euros (damn exchange!)…..I’m almost there!!

Another piece of news, which no longer affects me a great deal, is that the occupants of my house are now facing eviction. Although it is true that the owner of the house died many years ago, her daughter has made it over from Greece and wants the house back. Court hearing the day before I go (thought I might go see how it plays out), and the general consensus is that the eviction will likely be issued with something like a weeks notice to move on. Doesn’t make for the cheeriest atmosphere at home, but it sounds like everyone has at least someone they can stay with.

Looking back through my posts, I’ve just realized that I haven’t mentioned Warp20: probably the highlight of the last few weeks. Not the line-up I would have picked (even Pivot would have been awesome again, let alone Autechre, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, etc), but all-in-all a good night. Started with a drone set by Broadcast, which was quite lovely; then Nice Nice, who were an AWESOME drum/guitar duo. Battles were a slight letdown, only in that the much hyped new songs are not (to my obviously biased ears) as interesting as the stuff the put out on Mirrored. Also worth noting that I ended up against the barrier for the whole Battles set, right in front of Ian Williams and John Stanier, which was good because my feet were killing me. I’ve noticed this at gigs lately, my standing tolerance seems to have decreased; although I suppose after a forty minute trip, and a couple of hours of opening bands it is understandable.

Today I missed my guitar. I’ve been longing to plug it into Max and do some crazy things for the whole year, and have frequently considered just buying the cheapest electric I could find. Something else that Battles inspired was my longing for working on DPLDCS (with the brothers Finnigan). This is increasingly becoming the main attraction of returning to Australia for me (sorry mum!), as I honestly feel a great deal of potential, and have just never felt the same way working with anyone else, musically or otherwise. Just all feels like we’re on the same page, same age, same direction, which is really the first battle of working with anyone artistically. Most of the bands I have been involved with in the past have fallen apart for this reason – different expectations.

Speaking of Max/MSP, I’ve been making some more inroads. Firstly, AGAIN inspired by Battles, I hit upon the concept of a small looping patch which uses the analysis of the input’s amplitude to determine when “something is happening” and the player wants to loop. It’s not perfect, but it illustrates the point, and would be a lot of fun to use with guitar (again, missing that guitar). I also achieved a bit of a personal programming “holy grail”, which is a logic patch which has evaded me being able to construct for some time now. The idea is very simple, to be able to open multiple instances of one patch and have some main hub identify A) how many copies are open, and B) in what order they were opened and assign that number to each. As I type this, I have a horrible suspicion that I could have done this much, much more easily with the “thispatcher” object, but I’ll look at that later – right now I’m proud of my messy send/receive gating method. This is the wonders of learning (it is also true of my French) that as you continue you learn how to refine and do things in much more eloquent ways. At some point I should go back to my very first patches and see how much useless code I can cull!! Anyway, just to finish off the Max update, I’m about to code up I think will end up being the “DPLDCS drum machine”, a complicated generative percussive environment (sounds fancy!!) which determines probabilities of a hit (which I have done previously as the “soldier patch”); but also velocity, rate, instep, and make it applicable to a sample, rather than sending it out via midi to ableton or BFD. I have really fallen in love with building percussion on the fly from the microphone, and want to continue and refine the idea.

ANYWAY, now that I’m leaving, I’m beginning to assess my time here, and am generally happy with how things turned out. I could have found a better job/been more musically successful/etc, but would I really want to be leaving then? As it is, I met some cool people, went some cool places, saw some AWESOME bands, played a gig, and saved enough to see much more of this continent.

Very last thing, thought I’d put this music up. I was doing a re-mastered version of First Handshake of Space for a proper DPLDCS website, and came across an old file of my music. Reminded me that early last year I got quite musically depressed, before You Hang Up; No, You Hang Up came along and gave me an outlet (playing live! GASP!), I would spend good chunks of a day in my bedroom, armed with microphone, guitar, bass & bfd; recording alt rock songs. This is an example, recorded in an afternoon. All the usual problems are there: weak vocals, lyrics, messy takes, but I still think it holds up as not too bad with almost two years between listens. A short time I actually put together an albums worth of material culled from that time, and I think I’ll stick it up next post with all the necessary “I know I can’t sing” and “I can’t play guitar that well”, etc etc.

Until then, this is called Don’t Look Now

Don’t Look Now (Feb 2008) by Paul Heslin

No Rest For Wikid + SUCKCESS + Apartment + Xs

I have yet again stayed up all night (it is now 7am). I’m not sure what is happening, although I have a sneaking suspicion it may be related to all the red bull I’ve taken to drinking lately. Hmmmm…might be time to cut down. Still I got plenty done tonight, mostly customizing my computer so I am now using a nifty Masters of Cinema Mac Icon Set and this rather AWESOME screensaver.

The other fruit of this evening was managing to finally set up a steady audio routing system throughout my computer – I’ve been trying to make Soundflower work for quite a while now, but it just seems utterly unstable. Sometimes it works like a dream, but most times (especially lately) I can’t get it to run at all. This is pretty depressing considering it’s using the same computer, the same copy of Live, and the same copy of Max, so god knows I could never trust it in a live setting. I have had success with Wormhole.vst, but that requires constant loading and configuring, which especially in Max is a pain. Anyway, tonight I had had enough, and once I realised I had reached the point of no return in terms of staying up, decided to persevere, which didn’t actually take too long. I had heard about Jackserver ages ago, but think I downloaded it and just never opened it (silly me), because it works like a charm which works. Not only that but the simplicity and power easily trounced my experiences with Soundflower or Wormhole, even on a good day. Now I’m sounding like a real nerd, so I’m going to cut this brief; my excitement at being able to run audio through any inputs/outputs anywhere (which is kind of a vital part of the SVO project). I was planning a stupidly complicated routing going ADC > LIVE > MAX > LIVE > MAX > LIVE > MAX > DAC just because I could (FUN), and ended up recording this instead. It’s not going to blow your mind, but if the mic input had been turned on you could have heard me jumping around the room, clapping my hands with glee: JACKJACKtest by Paul Heslin

Having completed this, I sat down between approximately 3.45 and 5.45 to watch The Apartment from 1960, and I think I have a new favourite film. Far better than the more famous Some Like It Hot, and if you haven’t seen it (as I’m guessing many people haven’t) track it down. Really good stuff, and I’m surprised there isn’t a remake with Jim Carrey yet – if he put on some weight he’d look damn close to J Lemmon.

At some point after this I got on Facebook, which is always a bad idea when one does not have one’s brains in gear, and ended up looking up the profiles of all the girls I’ve ever been involved with. I wasn’t trying to be creepy, pathetic, regretful, or any other emotion that is probably going to be ascribed to the last sentence; I was just curious as to how they are going. One of the things that struck me during my musings on death yesterday was the idea of shared memories. I’m an atheist; I don’t believe in any god or supernatural force outside of what we can see and hear, so any conversation/experience/anything shared between a small group (especially in the case of a couple) is only known to those involved (first hand anyway, I am discounting graphic descriptions to friends) so what happens if someone dies – or less dramatically: forgets? You become the sole keeper of that morning/day/afternoon/evening/night. Maybe this is why photos are so important, they provide a third backup, and one which will not be swayed by perception or damage. This is almost turning into poetry. Anyway getting back to my creepy spying on ex-girlfriends, they all seem happy. Which made me happy in a very odd way.

Godzilla + Voss + Chris + I need sleep

Ok, I’m going to work through this in order of title, and be brief because I need sleep very soon.

I just got back from seeing Godzilla Black in motion for the first time, which was fantastic (despite some technical problems). They really are forging in one of the directions I am interested in, and I consider myself very fortunate to have been involved with this during my time in London. I have already started making some big plans for this year (finish SUBJECT VERB OBJECT ep and gig) and next year, which mostly center around a Diplodocus record of some sorts (and obviously the worldwide fame that will follow).

When I got back from Paris I found a box by my door containing a couple of copies of Voss’ debut album, lovingly sent from Owen (Thank You! Thank You!). Really great stuff, and something I will really make sure to hold on to (with a couple of other very special Canberra DIY releases from over the years).

Today I started thinking about Chris for some reason. I suppose he has now been dead long enough to see the events from a different perspective, but it was maybe today that I really came to terms with the fact that he won’t want to hang out when I get back to Australia. I don’t know whether this is unfair, but I think the fact that only death could have removed him from hanging out around Canberra also amplifies everything. It is true that he lived life to excess; but this makes things no easier, it is still hard to believe he is gone, especially from halfway around the world. I typed his name into Google today, and found the results only made everything more depressing. I don’t know what I was expecting, but the lack of anything beyond some fleeting obituaries got me thinking about Death in general, what we leave behind, and what I want to leave as a legacy. There is also a Facebook group in his memory, which I find somewhere between touching and tokenistic. But It seems like even a funeral is such a small thing to mark the end of a life – a tiny full stop at the end of a novel. These are wider thought benefiting of a more eloquent brain than mine at the moment, but it did arouse some primal urges to reproduce; and also really focus myself artistically. This music is something I value and it is really time to spend more of myself with that than cracked.com, wikipedia or other diversions. Our lives can end at any moment.

Lastly, I need to sleep. Goodnight.

Not sleeping tonight

I got home from Paris at 7pm, went straight to work, drank four cans of red bull to stay awake, went home at 3am (house still in possession of squatters united!!) and started coding. So now it is 6am, and I figure I might as well just stay up until dawn/the next day.

fun.

Thought I had plenty to write about, but the early morning has slightly dulled my thought.

I’m going to spend tomorrow recording. I promise I will upload something interesting tomorrow night/tonight.

It is now three weeks until I leave the UK.

I am almost finished a new patch called “MUD”: a graphical link between the KORG nanopad and triggering specific sections from a sample and constantly recording (hence the title) and allowing for a number of different grooves. Anyway, should be one of the funnest things I’ve rigged up in Max/MSP, put an end to my near constant re-development and re-evaluation of different ways to approach the same idea – any easy and flexible way to access and manipulate found-sound specifically for improvisational use.

All good things are in the process of coming to an end.

Well, yesterday was eventful. I was stopped by the police for riding my bike while wearing headphones, which they gave me a verbal warning for, and more importantly (but completely unrelated) the owners of the house I live in showed up. Apparently they are going to issue us with an eviction notice, so what exactly is going to happen in the next few weeks I’m not sure; either way it should be interesting.

fully sick

Right now I am sick in bed listening to Rammstein’s new album. I have been working a lot as always, and applying myself to recording and French in my spare time (as recently frequent). I have been drinking a lot of orange juice. I have developed an unhealthy habit for watching United States of Tara, even though I recognize that it is far from well-written. My list of things to do, programs to learn, ideas to explore in Max, 3d modeling, seems to grow constantly and is having the unfortunate effect of making me just want to sit on a couch and eat ice-cream for a month. I think I need to start breaking things up. Rather than attacking five different subjects at once, instead: until the end of this year concentrate on French and this EP. Other things can wait; I have also consciously decided to not try and combine travel with any sort of learning – well, maybe a bit. I just don’t want my memories of Spain to be sitting in some room working on a max patch.

The latest in a long line of visitors was Josh and Coops, who dropped by for a few days on their way to a month of hiking through Turkey. Great to see again, and also wonderful to be able to talk to them about issues that have been weighing on my mind lately – should I go to film school? should I try and get into editing in a TV station? should I try and work as a projectionist in Melbourne?

Karell also stayed for two days about a week ago, which was lovely as always. It also broke up my time out of Paris nicely, and my next visit their has slightly snuck up on me – I believe it is only a week away now.

When I get back I’ve decided to head into a studio to record vocals tracks, more to be by myself and forced to focus than any other reason. There’s a cheap one out in Camden, which should allow me to just lock the doors for a few hours and go nuts.

gig

So, last night I played my first gig in a long, long time, armed only with laptop and playstation controller. I’ve never regularly gigged before, so the same thing always happens when I play – I get really nervous before, have a great time, and then am just really eager to do it all again!

Really inspiring to FINALLY get this solo joint up and running.

It was a pretty weird sound, as the four of us had never played together before, but when it worked it sounded pretty fantastic – and thanks to the line-up (two laptops, two drummers) pretty damn different. I also had the misfortune to be seated right between the two drummers, so will not be able to hear properly for the next little while.

SOME QUICK POINTS

Only six weeks until I finish working at the cinema (including one week in Paris again) and start exploring Europe. About time!

I just got back from seeing Tanya Tagaq play as part of the London International Festival of Exploratory Music. Just incredible; this time she played with drummer and violinist, and was slightly more restrained (Kings Palace is a bit more snobby than Cafe Oto) but still quite extraordinary. Hope she comes through Europe again before I leave.

I have discovered I like Sandman. #6 was one of the most brilliant things I have ever seen done with comics.

First gig in London tomorrow night! I’m playing as part of a last-minute experimental ensemble with John and co. I’m not sure how it’s going to pan out, but it will nice to be back on stage again.

I am sick. I have flu.

Paris & Eggs

Last night I got back from a rather wonderful week in Paris. I was lazy, didn’t go to any shows, barely did anything aside from eat great food and play chess with my girlfriend.

I had made plans to spend the week intensively recording, but when I got there it seemed stupid to spend the week I had with my girlfriend recording, rather than doing that the weeks we are apart.

Anyway, this is how I spent my morning, which is a concept I’ve been wanting to perform for a while. It’s using a slightly customized version of my real-time beat-indentifier, and a couple of eggs. All the processing is in real-time, and the only sound source is the sound of eggs hitting the wall!!