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Long walks on gloomy days, evenings folding laundry, or staring at the ceiling, here’s a four song mix to accompany your journey. This one features Moss Moist Moth, Alphaxone, weglowski, and Sana Obruent, guarding you with a layer of comforting sound and static.
More of these Goodnight, Metal Friend mixes can be found here on Mixcloud.
I love this bit from Bandcamp, as they’re doing away with ranked lists:
The goal here is to change the Best of the Year from a math equation into a discussion.
Bandcamp
As I remarked on Twitter, it’s hard enough to rank athletes who deal in hard fast numbers like wins and points. Like, sports stars have a record of Championships, and even the one with the most is still debated as being the “best ever.”
Ranking sure makes bands, labels, management and the entire music machine happy (who doesn’t want to say they were an outlets number one album in 2020?), but I think the discussion of what albums just simply mattered in a certain year is important, too.
This post inspired by a lovely Tweet storm by Vince Edwards:
He’s talking about this live-streams that Marc Rebillet did today, on his way to one million subscribers on YouTube.
It’s easy to be a band and figure, okay, we want to do a live stream, so we have to just do a live performance and set up lots of cameras, and…
Well, yes, you CAN do that, but that’s a huge undertaking!
You can also just open up a live stream and talk about horror movies, or sports, or whatever.
Like, now is the time to connect and interact. Bands are competing with the The Madalorian and freaking COVID-19, like… do something.
I always think about all the shows I’ve gone to over the past 30 (?!?!) years – it’s the people. The people you meet at the show, in between sets, after the show in the parking lot, all that… that’s a part of the live show experience.
You can re-create that from your fucking porch with a decent WIFI signal and an iPhone.
Do you have to become a Loop Daddy? Nope. Do you have play guitar and videos games at the same time?
Nope.
Just do your thing, whatever that might be.
I’ve been thinking this for years – musicians need to collaborate with artists more often. Not just for music videos, but for stuff to get people to watch.
I’ve heard of Four Tet, but never gave them much of a listen. I think I found this video from a Twitter. The color caught me, the imagery. So I gave it a shot.
Like, in 2020 you’re just looking for a shot. As an artist, a band, a musician, a writer, whatever.
Appearance and branding and presentation really does matter. I don’t care how technically proficient you are, if your album art is sitting next to another release with better looking art, you lose.
Like, this is science. This is biology. Shiny objects get noticed.
So I left this video open for like 2+ hours the other day while working. Another hour today, and I’ll probably revisit a few more times.
And you know which artist I looked up today on Spotify?
Four Tet.
The final fight scene from the third Matrix popped into my head while on my run today, the part where Agent Smith asks Neo, “why go on? why keep fighting?”
Which sort of aligns with running, right? Why keep this pace? Why head out the door? Why go down the road to hit three miles when home is up ahead? There’s cake at home!
Why go on? Why do anything?
“I choose to,” replies Neo.
Choice, the big theme in The Matrix. It all comes down to choice.
Staying home and watching movies and eating snacks in a choice.
Heading out for a run is a choice.
Starting a podcast is a choice.
Ending a project is a choice.
I’ve been writing in public (as my buddy Dino puts it) since the early 90s. Like, coming up on 30 years or something. Zines, blogs, newsletters, social media – so much writing, spread out so many different places.
Some of that writing got me jobs, adventures, friendships, heart ache, whatever. Writing in public got me here. What I did is partly why I’m here.
So why write? Because it can lead somewhere.
Why run? Because it can lead somewhere.
Inaction is needed, rest is vital. To reinvigorate, grow, and expand. There’s a season for rest, and a season to move.
Objects in motion stay in motion.
From my recent Substack newsletter, ‘The Soft Run:’
So when you’re out of breath, slow down. Recover. Tearing down your body isn’t helpful when it needs rest.
You’re not failing, you’re recovering.
And slow just means more times outside, not looking at your computer, or reading emails.
Whew, Substack sure is a thing, but whatever, I enjoy writing a newsletter like that, without need a full website and all. Check out the full list of pieces I wrote here.
Five song mix, featuring Everly Pale, Seffi Starshine, and Laurie Spiegel.
A few months ago I didn’t really know that “dark ambient” was a thing, but I’m really enjoying this new season of discovery. This only started during the pandemic, but also because I deal with heavy metal everyday, and have since 2008 or so. I’m not quitting metal by any means, but it’s my day job, I need to give me ears a rest.
It’s been fun learning a new piece of software, too; Serato DJ Lite.
I didn’t really know how to make a mix – I tried just stacking the tracks in Abelton Live, then ScreenFlow, but neither was very fun, since they’re not really made for that. Not a huge fan of Serato aesthetically, but it does the job.
The process of making these mixes is fun, too. Finding the music on Bandcamp, keeping track of stuff I find, downloading, managing those tracks, arranging each song, then the fade in and out, while recording the mix in real time to Audio Hijack Pro.
I’ve been making these on and off since May, and they’re a great distraction to *everything* that is going on these days.
If you dig this, I have more mixes here on MixCloud.
Christmas was always my favorite – the sights, sounds, smells.
What I realize now is there’s so much nostalgia, and seeing now how so much of that was crafted for me.
My parents bought the tree, played the Christmas music, bought the presents (SPOILER), put up the lights.
Young Seth was just along for the ride.
Even a few years back, when living in NYC, driving home for the holidays was something I went into knowing that mom would have candy dishes filled with Christmas candy, and lights would be up, and there’d be a big tree.
I walked into those settings, like the perfect movie set, every year.
Unless I craft them for myself, they don’t happen now, which is sort of a metaphor for life.
Don’t hang around all the athletic friends I did like in my high school days, which means I don’t do as many athletic things. I gotta start them… on my own.
Don’t hang around all the musician friends like I used to, so I’m not operating on the same wavelength anymore, feeling motivated to keep up with my peers and keep crafting. I have to start that each day on my own.
These days I gotta put up my own Christmas lights, buy some holiday-scented candles, put on some Christmas music.
Nostalgia is a wild thing. I don’t want to let go of those memories, and it’s impossible to know if currently, in 2020, I’m doing anything worth remembering in 10 years, but I if do nothing, the answer is pretty evident.
*** MANDALORIAN SPOILER ALERT ***
This part in the new episode (Season 2, Episode 6, ‘The Tragedy’) gave me all sorts of feels.
“We agreed in exchange for the return of my armor, we will ensure the safety of the child.”
“The child’s gone.”
“Until he is retuned to you safely we are in your debt.”
First off, Boba Fett. Here’s a character that I saw when I was a kid in the 80s. I had the action figure. Yeah yeah, that was technically Jango Fett, but still.
I even endured the horrible prequels to understand a bit more of the back story, but here we are.
It’s now 2020, and Boba Jango Fett is a menacing fighter, and a man of his word. Maybe it’s the state of the world we live in now, but seeing the culmination of decades of lore and mystery, it’s just refreshing to have a character not be a total shit bag.
“It never ends.”
That’s the thing that hit me a few days ago.
At the moment I got lost in the minutia of my work, in that it never ends (something I’ve know about working in and around music since 2001). It never stops.
I think that’s in parallel to life right now; the uncertainty, the mess, the chaos, the death…. it never ends.
Or at least, I don’t see how it ever gets back on track. I don’t know how I’m ever going to be in another basement show in the middle of summer, surrounded by sweaty shirtless dudes, in a room with zero air flow. Like, how?
When will I get back on packed bus bound for NYC, and sit shoulder to shoulder with absolute strangers again?
All of the normal things we’ve done, thing we did for DECADES… every day it’s further away, being stripped away. It never ends.
March feels like seven years ago, just as this morning feels like it happened last week.
As I write this, I just got off a video call with (technically) with clients, but really they’re fantastic friends, and I’m glad I got to share a bit of that on a Friday night.
I also wrestled with a flow of never ending work stuff a few hours ago, where it felt impossible to keep up.
But I also watched the new episode of the Madalorian.
And ran five miles.
A lot of these things used to be mundane, expected, nothing special, but now they’re like mile-markers, big events, in a life now void of major movements.
Thankful for the here and now. No idea how many chapters this weekend will have, but planning on accepting every second.
