Haven’t really made much “content” since shutting down Skull Toaster back in 2018. Got nearly 40 episodes into making a thing called “Later” in 2019 (archive of the audio available on SoundCloud), but that fizzled.
Now, though, I feel some good momentum.
Got a jolt to get working on Metal Bandcamp Gift Club again late last year. Moved the whole thing to an email list, redid the website as a hand-coded HTML site. The subscriber count is going up! Yay!
Started watching DJ sets on YouTube, you know, to sort of stay sane and experience people doing things besides just my cat yelling at birds. That inspired me to try my hand at the process, which led to making my own metal-leaning sleep mix called Goodnight, Metal Friend.
And now “Bandcamp Roulette” (at the top of this post) is a thing now, maybe?! I just really enjoy digging for and finding music, and it’s not that hard to set up. Two video shots:
- The initial Selling Right Now scroll, and the actual clicking around to listen to the individual band pages are captured with ScreenFlow.
- iPhone Xr on a tripod, which I then sync with the video captured using ScreenFlow.
I don’t have to prepare or research anything, as I’m picking stuff on the fly. I guess I might recognize some of the releases from time to time, but I’ve been writing about music since 2001, so I’ll be able to draw from that experience, and I love the free wheeling, spontaneous nature of this format. I guess it could even be live-streamed, maybe too? HMMMM.
These three things – running Metal Bandcamp Gift Club, making sleepy time metal mixes, and Bandcamp roulette have just been something nice to rattle my brain, and keep things fresh, and keep the curiosity stoked.