The Empire of Crime show

It happened! we performed Canto's 1-4 live tonight. It was a good show. the friend of mine who had offered to film our show flaked out at the last minute so there's no video coming but we recorded the audio and I will be making it available on soundcloud tomorrow when I go to the studio.

I had such a fucked up night. I played my very first live electronic gig in almost five years and then when I got home I decided I needed to unwind so I left for a walk. I hadn't had a great supper so I wanted to get a cornd beef sandwitch. I was on my way to the deli where they have these great sandwiches and it's 24 hours. I was almost half way there and I saw some dude shitkick someone across the street. I stopped and saw that it was a guy beating on a girl so I called 911. the Cops kept me on the line a lot longer than I would have liked. I really just wanted a sandwich I didn'rt want to be a "witness" and tried to assert my right to anonimity which almost got me arrested by this one dickhead cop but his good cop partner made to deal with me which is just as well because he was a lot easier to talk to than his buddy. ugh. so anyway enough about the pigs they did their job, they separated the dude from his girlfriend and got their statements, the shithead boyfriend had been beating up on his girlfriend if I'd had more courage I would have tried to nonviolently diffuse the situation without involving the cops at all but I know I didn't do the wrong thing and though I wish I could have done a ghandi on the situation there's a nagging suspicion in my mind that the prick would have just hit her again once I left. I hate the cops but I think I hate guys who beat women more, anyway I just wanted a sandwich...

once the "good cop" was done with me I contionued my walk towards smoked meat and garlic bagels. I got a sandwich and sat down outside but when I left the house I was wound tight by the time I got what I'd left the house for I was no less upset I took the scenic walk home along the beach and talked to God and sat and watched the waves and sang some blues to myself as I walked along the dark bike trail near the sand and now that I've been home a while and have had some time to reflect and write here I am glad that the show went as well as it did, musically it went off without a hitch and I'm listening to it now on my home computer I am very pleased with how it went. I'm also tired and I really want to go to bed. I hope that girl is ok and that her abusive shit head boyfriend gets his eyes opened to the fact that he was obviously messed up to hit a girl in the first place and I hope that he has a change of heart in his life that causes him to change the entire way he lives for the better, I also hope that she leaves his sorry ass and finds a man who won't beat on her or treat her bad.

I'm tired. soundcloud tomorrow.

News news news! and a cartoon!

As it turned out I was too weak most of the past seven days to do much of anything but I'm a lot better now. I did rough draft of Canto 26 tonight, that's the one with Ulusses and Diomedes and how they met their end.

I've got a gig performing Cantos 1-4 with The Empire of Crime tomorrow (or later today) it's at 7:15pm Friday (today) at Rhizome Cafee on Broadway and Kingsway in Vancouver BC it's pay what you can and I don't think anyone will be turned away for lack of funds. I should have posted about this a lot sooner but you know what with nearly dying I got a bit side tracked :P

One of my friends will be filming our set so it will go up on youtube and then up here at some point.

I'll also post pics of the live setup it was a real challenge seeing just how much stuff I could fit on a single pedalboard in the end I got it all on with room to spare! It's a very big pedalboard.

Smashing Guitars Ashville has finally got their website up and running and they are going to be shipping the first batch of Gristlizers on Monday. I got an e-mail about this great stuff and placed my order yesterday, they are really great folks to deal with and the Gristleizer is going to be right at home in my synth rig.

I was thinking about this cartoon while I was filling the hospital toilet with blood from my ass:

stool sample:

"You can't get a drink at a bar while sitting on one and you should never try and give them away for free at the Supermarket... Stool Sample..." -William S. Burroughs

I had some bad pork for dinner last night and became violently violently ill, so much so that my wife had to call 911 and get me to a hospital where they loaded me up with Gravol, fluids, anticonvulsants and let me rest. I had thrown up everything to the point where I was puking blood, thank God for Gravol. Anyway it's a frightening thing to poo blood and puke blood and sweat like your dying. I'm better now and at home again. I've been given some real heavy duty anti-biotics which should kill whatever food born bacteria got the better of my GI tract. I've talked to two different doctors about this, one from the hospital and another who's a friend of mine and both agreed that it was the pork. I'll be visiting the deli I got it from and telling them so that this doesn't happen to anyone else. I really like that place and it would suck if they closed down over health code violations. My tummy has been really gurgly today but no more blood! I think I may have poped a blood vessel in my ass which caused that. anyway that's about the most excitement I've had for some time, I really thought I might die at one point. I've got my Dante stuff here and I hope I will be finishing off the first draft while I convalesse. My wife, Yvonne is so wonderful she's been taking care of me and stayed with me all night at the hospital.

I'm going to sleep soon but I wanted to upload a video I made a couple of days ago if you've been reading this blog for a long time maybe you remember me promising to put up video of my modular synth? well here's the first of what I hope will be a sporadic but increasing number of youtube videos featuring me rig. enjoy!



all sounds are coming from an Analogue Solutions Vostok the only VCO in use is clocking the sequencer at an audio rate so that it acts as it's own VCO the Envelope Generators are also acting as VCOs one is set to ADSR the other is in repeating Attack decay mode. The only external module in use is an MFB videoscope module which is displaying the wave shapes on my TV Set. The Percussive Sample and Hold rythm is a combination of the two LFOs and the VCF which is being used exclusively as a sine wave generator.

Appologies for the blair-witch camera work and my bad ribbon controller skillz I made this video primarily to show what this synth is capable of not what I'm capable of.

updates on progress

I did Cantos 4 and 5 second draft last night and have been making some great noise with my new modules, the Doepfer Quantizer is awsome so is the Phase Locked Loop module. My wife's computer came back repaired so I'll be taking mine back to the studio today where I hope to upload some sounds into my daw and get to work with the audio Mark and I recorded, I also want to upload some of the experiments I've done with the East Coast Beast (that's what I've named my modular).

I had to send my Evolver back to DSI to have them fix some problems I've been having with the encoder knobs. Aparently the Evolver Sequencer is the one that glitches out the least so they are all as curious as I am to find out what's wrong with it. I guess the problem is so rare on the sequencers that they've offered to fix mine for free even though I'm past my warranty by about six months. I popped it in the mail yesterday and now there's a small rectangular space in my setup where my synth used to be. It's kind of lonely looking but I'll be happy to have it back fixed I can't tell you how annoying it is to try and dial something in precisely when the knob just wants to jump around seemingly at will.

I might also have found someone to share the cost of the studio with! this will be such a bonus if it works out. It's a beautiful day outside so I'm going to go do some gardening before my wife gets home and then bike to the sound refinery. In the mean time here's some Klaus Schultz for you.

Klaus Schulze - Live 1977 from Ernesto Cardenal on Vimeo.

Dante Second draft thoughts and slow progress.

So I started the second pass on Inferno and I've done the first three Canto's over again. It's pretty amazing to read over what I left out and how much improved these are with the re-write. I'm gaining insight into Dante's overall poetic formula and for those interested I decided to drop the attempts at making it conform to any one meter. I think that it would sound cool in Iambic Pentameter for sure but it wouldn't be mine any more I think what's more important is trying to capture the essence of the work in my own words and that's what I'm trying to do.

I've been invited to perform part of my Inferno at a concert near the end of the month. I have to figure out how I will be doing that but I've got a couple of ideas. It's kind of exciting I've never performed with my modular before, I'll only be taking part of it with me so I'll have to record what I've got going on here first and then use it as a backing track which I can improvise on top of. Also I've only got ten minutes? I could easily trance out and use up the whole time without even realizing it. eep!

Today was my friend Delaney's birthday I bought him a CD by Big Black and then he came over for dinner, Yvonne made lamb... mmmmm lamb. Ok so I'm going to work on the next Canto and update The Christian Radical blog.