(Source: themysteryremains)
If I had enough money, I’d donate a 4-track to you just because I love your music. Cool essay, btw.
hehe thanks man… maybe i should make the worlds most narcissistic kickstarter. ;)
(from magnusm.org)
I find there to be something inherently beautiful hidden deep within the wobbly and trembly and porcelain-like frailty of analogue tape.
Perhaps it merely hails from my fetish for dead media; I know that my opinion on the matter is colored by the fact that my four-track tape recorder is irrevocably broken and I really, really miss it. Not just being able to record songs on it, not just the joy of manually syncing tracks through the push of a button;
It’s the sound.
If you were to place an old cassette in your tape deck, one you’ve been foolishly storing next to a speaker element for half a year and thus demagnetising it, there lies this strange blanket of imperfection over any sounds it once contained. If you were to produce a clean digital sine wave on your computer, a pure hertz mathematical calculation and then record it onto tape there is some tangible hint of life in the recording. The sound is no longer clean, it has been altered by some manner of physical imperfection; dust on the tape head, magnetism in the air, and so forth. As opposed to music made entirely on a computer which tends to be processed and re-processed in a long cycle in order to sound perfect.
Throughout modern history music has been favoured more if it is played live. I believe this hails from the sensation of being in the room and feeling the music at a much greater level than if you merely were to listen to it on your iPod on the way to work. It brings human interaction to sound, complete with its false voices, awkward dancing and occasional broken string. Tape music thrives on this imperfection through its very nature. The unsynchronized wobbles, the wow and flutter, the hiss, the pop, the bleed.
It is something that digital audio cannot ever hope to reproduce even through the most mathematically perfect and true-to-life tape saturation algorithms.
Trust me. I’ve tried.
everything you do is fantastic, keep creating
I’m glad you like it and thank you! :)
Self-Portrait, May 20 - Ghost tapes, recording an EP
I’ve been working on a song for a collaborative EP with Jacob Stordahl which should be finished pretty soon.
You can hear an excerpt of the song I’ve been working on in the background. It’s put together by a bunch of found cassette samples I’ve found online, audio information from discarded cassettes people find in the street.
This particular one consisted of someone sampling birds and some french guy recording a piano/singing lesson sometime in the early 90’s. I liked it so I cut it up and made a song out of it. It’s called “Ghost Tapes 1”
Experiments with Ink by Paccastudios
(Source: celticsight, via gastelpoth)
I went for a long walk today on this overgrown asphalt road not too far from my apartment. It was closed a few years back because they built a new tunnel through the mountain and the old road was deemed too dangerous for traffic what with the huge cliff face looming above it and the huge pieces that fall down on the road occasionally… It has kind of a post-apocalyptic vibe… Nature is reclaiming it and there are saplings pushing their way through the asphalt some places.
I like it. It’s like my private little slice of the end of the world.
…and I saw a cool bird today.
Paul Sharits
Ray Gun Virus (1976)
MOMA Exhibit, 2010
I’ve showcased some other work by Sharits on my blog.
I think there lies within every individual some basic need to leave behind a legacy.
A man spends his life painting every day in order to one day hang his paintings in a gallery and have people tell him that the paintings are beautiful. A teenager practices the guitar in his room for several years in order to become good enough to become a rock star; to write a million songs about everything he cares about and have people listen intently. There are certainly some that are only out for the fame and the glory but I believe that in everyone there is this need to create something that will last.
I myself have tried for many years to find something that I feel I am good enough to make a living of and consequentially I have been too harsh with myself to the point where I don’t show people much of what I create. I’m an unmotivated perfectionist of the worst sort.
When I was younger I would write long discourses on what ever crossed my mind, vast and near-neverending trains of thought and poetry that I posted online and that were, to me, beautiful. I learned how to write decent English because of this and it gave me joy to see others enjoying what I had written. At some point it became trivial and boring and I feel that I have since lost the ability to write as freely as I once could, perhaps a result of aging or as a result of creative fatigue.
I was good at it and I quit.
I spent many years writing music for myself, for friends, for films, and so forth until the point where it has become almost a robotic maneouver; something I just do because I can and because it is something I know. I’ve never tasted fame or mass recognition because of it and all I have to show for it so far are a limited cassette release on a blog label, being mentioned in end credits of a few minor films and some pittance from digital downloads. Still, I enjoy it.
I was good at it and I still am.
I took up drawing for a few years, learning basic human anatomy from Youtube videos and PDF-files I downloaded from pirate websites. I traveled around Eastern Europe for a few months by myself and thoroughly enjoyed sitting outside cafès drawing people and painting skin tones with cappucino and wine.
I don’t draw much now but I am OK at it.
It has taken me 23 years to realize that I can never do anything perfectly and that I should be content with what I create and that I should be proud enough of it to show it to other people. Art is something I should just do, free from the restraints of views, statistics, criticism, galleries, vernissages, fame and pretense. It is something I should enjoy.
I’ve not yet found my masterpiece or even the means for me to begin working towards it but I will continue making these videos about my life and my thoughts for the rest of my life. They will be truthful and they will be an honest representation of an individual trying to create something that is his in a increasingly individually polarized world.
Perhaps, when I am 80 years old and on my deathbed my children will be able to view these videos in order that they may learn from them and perhaps even be inspired.
I have not yet found my masterpiece but I think I may have found my grand project.
just to clear up some things concerning my ongoing self-portrait series.
wow this is such a beautiful view.
it is! but it gets boring when you live here for 20 years