2023-06

What I read

Volume 4 of Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha. It is so good!
Gene Wolfe’s The Urth of the New Sun. Like his Book of the New Sun, this book is good and thoughtful and very strange. BotNS stands on its own beautifully, and UotNS wouldn’t make any sense without the former, but UotNS is not excessive in any way. It deepens the questions that Wolfe is asking.

We watched American Born Chinese, which was really quite funny and sweet. I have been getting tired of pointless fighting and violence recently, but I make an exception for the beautiful and fantastic depiction of fighting in this series. Same goes for the brilliant Everything Everywhere All At Once.

This month I dove deep into French collectives making long-form music with acoustic instruments or amplified instruments and borrowing from their regional folk music traditions. Some of the records I really loved this month:

I went to Cork for the first time! It’s a really nice city with beautiful hills all around. I loved it.
On the solstice we had a listening party on bandcamp.com to celebrate the release of solstice, the live recording that me and my good friend Jonathan Downs made during the 2022 summer solstice in Maine.
Jonathan and I also performed the music for the wedding in Portugal that I mentioned in my last monthly recap. It feels so long ago now.
I got a Covid-19 booster shot! For the first time I didn’t get a fever from the booster, but I did have a couple days of really sore joints and limbs.
While in Lisbon, Portugal, I visited Patch Point, where I got to spend some time in their studio.

Figure 1: The 4U Serge system at Patch Point Lisboa

Figure 2: The BugBrand system at Patch Point Lisboa

I made some recordings while at Patch Point, using the BugBrand system mostly. I may decide to do something with them, though I am a tad regretful that I didn’t make a stereo recording! (In my excitement I didn’t end up panning anything going through the mixer, so it’s a fully mono recording I made :|)