NoAI LoFi

A couple of days ago the writer and my friend Andrew Dana Hudson sent me a YouTube link with the following note: “I’m obsessed with these youtubers who make “no AI lofi” but in doing so perform, with their live action bodies, the cozy archetypes of lofi beats station anime characters”

Like Andrew, I’m obsessed now too, because it’s really wierd example of where culture is at in the midst of the first Information Age Iconoclasm. It’s eating it’s own tail.

Everything about it is just so absurd, a culturally recursive symptom of our moment, a kind of high-concept emptiness that demands investigation.

The question I’ve been trying to answer is: why are they doing this? What the hell is going on?

Loop Culture

The answer of course spirals out of the Lofi Girl phenomenon. But before we can talk about her, I want to return us to the jurassic period of the internet, to a time when websites were destinations.

The first musical loop site I remember is Leekspin (or Loituma Girl) an anime girl spinning a leek, accompanied by a chopped up sections of the scat singing Finnish folk song “Ievan polkka”.

In the flat I lived in after university, we’d just leave it on in the background while playing videogames. The repetitive audio dissolved into habituated ambience; like the sensory adaption to the ticking of a clock in a room. Someone would eventually come home hours later and ask what the hell was going on and why were we listening to it.

Leekspin of course isn’t the only example of this, but it was the first I remember. The hamster dance in the late 90’s became an enormous cultural phenomenon. YTMND another, and of course HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA he-man video

All share the same early internet grammar, born from looped GIFS. They are relatives to the Dancing Baby and the Dancing Banana GIF form the 90’s that became paired with ‘Peanut Butter Jelly Time’. My first year at university is punctuated by the emergence of the Badger Badger Badger Mushroom Mushroom flash animation.

Thought the late 00’s and early 10’s the internets loop culture continued to evolve. Looped media reminiscent of the loop sites became durational works. HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA for 10 hours, or this visual loop of Gandalf nodding to the Sax Guy solo from Eurovision for 10 Hours, or keyboard cat.

Of course shorter containers were also available, and this mode of expression, the loop paired with music had become the default mode for music visualisers by the mid 2010’s

The most famous to my mind being Nyan Cat. Nyanners who I’ve written extensively about before, posted a similar visualiser for her 2014 cover of NIki Minaja’s I am UR Leader. Both are embedded below to demonstrate the form.

The looped Gif aesthetic is in these videos could best described as placeholders of motion, and netlabel micro-genres like chillhop and vaporwave ran with it.

I do for a moment want to mention Hyperpop. In 2014 Cultural terraformers PC MUSIC post the video for Bobby which apes the looped visualiser Gif aesthetic of the era, but it’s GFOTY as the looped subject.

For a bunch of reasons I don’t have time to get into right now, I think this song and video represents a really important moment in modern cultural canon.

Youtube first introduced live-streaming in 2011, but it wasn’t until the middle of the decade that netlabel produced 24/7 streams really took of, which because of YouTube video first posture, also adopted the looped gif aesthetic for their video element.

It was out of this visual culture that lo-fi girl emerged

Lofi Girl

Literally this week, as I was sitting down to write this 404 Media published a fantastic long read on the history and rise of the Lofi Empire which I’m really glad about so I can just link to that.

Key points of the article useful for understanding this NoAI LoFi are the following quotes:

The livestream, which is one of the longest running live broadcasts on YouTube, is often hiding in browser tabs, leaving the perpetually busy Jade (the Lofi Girl) to lazily take her notes behind whatever Wikipedia page or spreadsheet you’ve got open. But she is always there, the googly eyes stuck to her headphones wobbling as she looks up from her notes, to peek in on, to study with, or to chill to—the details of the music become secondary to the vibe.

ts music has largely dropped the hip hop. Lofi Girl’s music is now simply its own genre: lofi, where the soft, tonal consistency means it can be hard for the average listener to even see its works as distinct songs. The drum beats of the “chill beats to relax/study to” sometimes even take a backseat to the rounded, flighty melodies Dr. Jenessa Williams, a music and fan culture researcher at Stanford University, called Lofi Girl a “deeply valued background noise community.”

The New York Times, in 2018, declared that 24/7 channels like ChilledCow and Chillhop Music were “unlikely to have a broad impact on the music industry,” representing “an underground alternative to the streaming hegemony of Spotify and Apple Music.” They were wrong. Lofi Girl’s core audience might not be able to name a single artist broadcast during a livestream (even if it is driving listeners to Spotify and paying dividends for artists). They may not have even known Lofi Girl has a name. But Lofi Girl is hardly underground

In my opinion, the goal and place for Lofi music in the current moment is to be the auditory equivalent of a beige wall. Over time Lofi Girl sanitised itself into a “homogeneous sound” so palatable to the ear that is become audio wallpaper for the chronically online generation.

As one of its own collaborators aptly put it, this isn’t about artists expressing themselves anymore; it’s a record label curating a “functional” experience. The creative brief of lo-fi girl in 2025 is to produce something so predictable and “search engine-optimised” that its greatest selling point is that you hardly notice its presence.

This is important as it’s one of the things I think is insane about the NoAI LoFi couple.

Stylised stillness

The defining visual gesture of LoFi Girl is what in theatre we would call a kind of ‘stylised stillness’. She studies forever, a perfect, looping machine of productivity.

These “no AI” performers have taken this as a creative challenge: to become the animation. The human presence is insisted upon yet their performance is entirely within machinic-constraints, a stylised stillness as empty content, lacking narrative, or any progression. They are capturing a moment, a vibe.

Looped media has of course always meant to be lived with, not watched. Think of William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops, durational works defined by consistency and mood. Time suspended; attention cushioned rather than captured. LoFi Girl industrialised that and created a perpetual ambience machine.

The music itself is empty too. The same creative brief as LoFi Girl, calling it ‘low-effort’ is generous of me. Improvised guitar lines with predicable progressions that don’t go anywhere over chill hop beats. This genre’s popularity is another example of the smooth flatness of all media in our era that I’ve written about before. It’s lowest common denominator online ambience. Music made not for your ears, but for the cold, dead heart of the algorithm.

Let me be clear: I couldn’t sit on a picnic blanket in a park for an hour and noodle on a guitar without fucking up. But nor would I like to try, I would actually rather have AI generate it for me.

I genuinely find the spectacle on display in this video quite breathtaking: humans, desperate to prove they aren’t AI, performing as looping, predictable machines to create SEO-friendly wallpaper audio. Content and commentary fusing to absurdity. Presence over plot.

Of course this format thrives on YouTube. There are pragmatic reasons.

1. Watch-time incentives: they are long in duration with low narrative overhead.
2. Video compression: tiny gestures read well on small phone screens even if out the corner of your eye.
3. The lamps and contents of LoFi girl’s room, the couples blankets, LoFi girls rainy window all contributes to instant vibe recognition.

Agency Fetish

In their ‘super lecture’ Non-Player Dynamics: Agency Fetish in Game-World, Marek Poliks and Roberto Alonso Trillo of Disintegrator podcast talk about how “the commentariat is flushed with images of humans spending their time play acting as AI… this trend has gotten kind of weirder and more literal”

They use the example of Pinkydoll and the other NPC TikTok streamers. Performing canned phrases with repeated gestures mapped to gifts. They are in themselves real-time human loops; bodies as event-driven interfaces, like the human statue street performers of Covent Garden reimagined for the digital age.

When someone sits live on YouTube and performs the “study girl” loop, or when Pinkydoll repeats NPC gestures on TikTok, these people are adopting ‘machinic patterns of presence’; they become non-player characters in their own streams. The performance of the loop is a ritual of surrendering agency to platform dynamics, while simultaneously trying to reclaim it through human embodiment.

Their lecture argues that under “exocapitalism”, labour is less about production and more about representation work: stylised gestures, narratives, or symbolic performances that slot into algorithmic loops, and live-action gif loops are exactly that—representation of “studying” or “relaxing” as an endless gesture, consumed as ambience.

The performer isn’t producing knowledge or beats; they’re embodying a ‘node of affect’ in a network of platform aesthetics. They turn themselves into an interface.

In The YouTube Apparatus (2024), Kevin Munger describes YouTube as a dynamic feedback system in which creators, audiences, and infrastructure shape each other in real time. The whole thing is a a Supply and Demand Framework: creators produce, the platform quantifies audience response (views, likes, comments, watch time etc), and these metrics rationalise future production.

My poetic aspiration is that whenever you read the words “YouTube Creator” you think instead of “Audience Creation.” Social media does not create powerful Influencers but rather powerless marionettes, dancing jerkily to quantified audience tugs.

One of the important points Marek and Roberto share with Munger about the algorithmic environment is that whilst platforms deliver the feeling of agency; the actual capacity for action within them narrows. Performance on them becomes constrained by pre-given moves; dictated by platform, by human, and by algorithm. This couple’s “no AI” tag signals agency reclaimed, but in practice they are ceding their creative agency entirely to the platform and the algorithm.

They have become the human equivalent of that cosy fireplace video on Netflix.

Human Wallpaper

I’m sure the NoAI Lofi couple are lovely human beings, but I’ve just written a lot of words to justify why I don’t like something. Which is ironic considering the theme of last week’s weeknotes. But you can just not like stuff too I guess. Their loud signalling that there’s no AI is all very well, but then going on to produce work/art thats completely empty of meaning is to my mind insidious. Foregrounding your own humanity only to turn yourself into human wallpaper is baffling.

But I remind myself that most ‘creators’ on the internet are not creating things for viewers, or for me personally. The algorithm is always the primary consumer. Everyone else is incidental, including the audience. It might as well have been entirely produced by AI to begin with. Thats what people are hearing when they listen to this low effort gunk on Spotify anyway.

These live action videos are the non-player dynamic made flesh, and reveal how far the “agency fetish” has gone: we can celebrate creative self-performance, but what’s really happening is recursive modelling, the human becoming infrastructure.

The whole thing is a sort of Turing test in reverse. The artists are involved in a competition to see if they can be as flawlessly bland and algorithmically pleasing as possible to the machine.

In anyways this sort of thing is the apotheosis of ‘content’ laborious and artisanal production of work so seamless, so devoid of friction, that the only remaining purpose of it all that I can possibly see is to generate enough training data to then go on to automate the whole thing.

On The Blog

I’ve basically been sick all week. But I have been posting over on BYENNE

If the shape isn’t stewarded,

it collapses.

And the stories leak out.

You won’t even notice

until it’s too late.

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Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• 2 Calls.
• Working on the game launch.

Mostly been sick.

Terminal Access

Tracy Durnell wrote a fantastic piece this week called ‘Online feels truer than material reality’ its really worth your time. A bricolage of sources and thoughts from across the blogosphere:

Because most people online are funneled into a handful of websites, the signaling environment is competitive. “Status” isn’t like a leaderboard with direct rankings, but we can be high or low status within our taste world. Social media rewards our desire for status with attention and validation for treating every pursuit as an opportunity to signal. 

Reading

Not had that much time this week. Still reading The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America by David Whyte. And still reading The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe by Richard Rohr

I picked up An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence by Zeinab Badawi on Audible but I’ve only just started it. Badawi is fantastic at performing her own words.

Condemned to Torture – Must Kill

UK thrash metal band Must Kill have a new album out. It fucking rips.

Lead single Nightmares come to life is my favourite track:

Remember Kids:

The post NoAI LoFi | Weeknotes appeared first on thejaymo.net.

June 1, 2025

|

AI 🤖 | Music 🎶 | Permanently Moved 🔊

I have a new rule. Universally true: All AI outputs prompted by other people is subjectively mid. But all AI content you spawn yourself is objectively great, and interesting.

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2025/06/01/2512-overdosed-on-ai-music/

Experience.Computer: https://experience.computer/
Worldrunning.guide: https://worldrunning.guide/
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Overdosed on AI Music

Sloppy Intro:

This week, I stood at the Slop Machine, experiencing not the future, but the extreme present.

All day, every day, I’ve been listening to AI-Generated music. And this experiment has provoked some unexpectedly strong reactions in me.

The first is a reactionary whiplash, but not in the way you might be expecting.

Music is a deeply personal pleasure in my life. Half of my undergraduate was music. I play instruments, I’m in a band, I seek out new music constantly, and try to see it live whenever possible.

For all my life, when I’ve said to people that I love music, I’ve meant two things: Live performance, the direct communication from musician to audience, and secondly, my relationship with recorded sound: CDs, records, mp3s, streaming, etc.

This past week has troubled my relationship with the second definition.

Many, myself included a week ago, would expect this experiment to have driven me towards romanticising ‘human’ authenticity or creativity. Real recorded music, recorded by real people. But that isn’t what’s happened. 

Instead, something more unsettling occurred. The very seamlessness of the AI-generated material, the knowledge that its sounds were entirely synthetic, ‘engineered’, and it has cast a shadow over my perception of all recorded music. A kind of unease about the truthfulness (or untruthfulness) of any media that wasn’t live and unmediated.

I’ve developed a pervasive negative reaction to all of what I’m going to call “engineered sound.”

This umbrella covers everything: studio recordings, electronic music, and AI tracks. AI-generated or human-made, all recorded music now has this weird uncanny quality to me. It’s all just engineered sound and it makes me uneasy, ontologically. This unreality, this sense that the material is synthetic, has now tainted my experience of all recorded music.
Like I’m a modern day John S. Wilson calling the entire enterprise of recorded music suspect.

As a music lover, I’m concerned. Will this uneasiness dissipate if I stop listening to AI? I suspect I will need a break from “all music” – or rather, engineered sound – altogether.

My second realisation concerns my taste.

Listening to AI playlists all week, particularly from newer models like Suno 4.5, the experience is often seamless; an AI track can be largely indistinguishable from an unfamiliar one on Spotify—frankly, often just as ‘mid.’ You genuinely might have no idea. And as I’ve said, if it’s new to your ear, it’s simply new.

Now, hours of current AI music can be tiring due to hit-and-miss fidelity, causing ear fatigue, much like a badly recorded podcast or static-laden radio. But that’s a quality issue, not content-related, and it’s rapidly being solved. With SUNO’s fancier v4.5 model, or what’s next, audio fidelity is basically solved. It’s going to sound just like, quote, ‘real life.’ And I think this is bad.

I’ve long thought that AI-spawned music is best when it leans into itself as a medium. This week confirmed that: I don’t want endless, perfect pop simulations with hyper-realistic vocals. Just as the most interesting AI images are puppy-slugs, not photorealism, the same holds true for music synthesis. 

I want machine-dreamed music, not music dreamed up by a machine. I want alien music. 

In his superlecture ‘Nobody listened to music anymore’ Marek Poliks argues music is now a web of relations, a database taxonomy; Spotify is a platform of metadata, not music.

So new combinations of genres, tags, sounds – things that might previously have counted as new genres or innovation now already exist within the logic of the database. All potential creative acts now become recombinations of existing metadata, latent possibilities within both databases and AI models, waiting to be actualised. By humans or AI. 

Given my growing negative feelings towards any engineered sound, human or not, I don’t care if a human or an AI made that ‘classical/emo-trap/ambient/jazz’ track.

Which brings me to my last realisation.

I have a new rule, universally true: All AI text, video, and engineered sound prompted by other people is subjectively mid. But all AI content you spawn yourself is objectively great, and interesting.

All week I was prompting the Slop Machine to spawn songs like the intro, in the style of a manic pixie dream girl in a yoghurt advert. But based on the ancient Odes to Solomon. Unsurprisingly, no one around me is clamouring for New Age AI slop with 2000 year old religious lyrics. But I am, in a “This is my hole! It was made for me” kind of way.

Giovanni della Casa, in his 1558 etiquette manual Galateo, wrote, “One should not annoy others with such stuff as dreams, especially since most dreams are by and large idiotic.” 

Joan Didion also remarked that “Nobody wants to hear about someone else’s dream… nobody wants to walk around with it.” There’s little more boring than hearing someone’s rambling dream, and this is true of AI slop shared on social media.

In this period of Information Age iconoclasm, machine dreams are now endless, infinite, and can inspire. But raw and unfiltered, they’re sloppy.

A new social etiquette for sharing machine dreams is required. I’ll happily listen to your dreams over a beer, especially if they involve me. But in general, in polite company? You don’t share dreams. And perhaps people shouldn’t be so quick to share the raw dreams of the machine either.

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The post Overdosed on AI Music | 2512 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

Green Lung

I went to see Green Lung at the Kentish Town Forum last night, and wow—what a gig.

There’s something deeply comforting about being in a room full of metalheads. Big beards, battle jackets covered in patches, faded band tees from long past tours. A crowd that looks imposing but is, in reality, super polite and welcoming.

Strangers exchanging knowing nods, giving each other space when needed, a quiet but deeply felt camaraderie, rowdy in the right way, but never pushy, just people there for the music.

Loads of people commented made extremely positive comments to me about my Enya hat LOL

The venue was packed—shoulder to shoulder. You could feel the collective charge as the band took the stage, launching into their thing. Melodic stoner-doom assault, equal parts eerie folk mysticism and full-throttle Sabbath worship.

The venue was absolutely packed—shoulder to shoulder, proper sweaty gig vibes. The band sounded phenomenal. Huge riffs, ridiculous solos, all delivered with total confidence, I got what I went for. At one point, mid-guitar solo, full of pinch harmonics, and I had to stop and remind myself that this noise was coming from someone’s actual fingers, just over there on stage. LOL.

It’s wild to think their debut Woodland Rites only came out in 2019. A proper breakthrough record for me. One that instantly cemented them as a band to watch. But just as things were kicking off, the pandemic hit, stopping them from touring.

But since then, they’ve kept building momentum, and seeing them headline a venue like the Forum last night didn’t feel like a final destination, but a beginning. This band still has places to go.

Beyond the English folk horror aesthetic, there’s something more going on with Green Lung. It’s not just trading on a fantasy of a lost, rural England, but something that feels rooted in the real—a connection to culture that isn’t just nostalgia, white vans or football shirts.

I read Caroline Lucas’ Another England: How to Reclaim Our National Story last year and haven’t stopped thinking about it. Green Lung feels like they belong in that conversation. Another signal to add to the mood board. They played The Forest Church and Hunters In The Sky from This Heathen Land, and when the singer introduced the song as being abobut “about hunting aristocrats on Dartmoor” the crowd roared.

The whole thing was extremely my shit. I bought a patch at the merch table:

Permanently Moved

Desktop Publishing

https://permanentlymoved.online/

I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone seriously use the phrase ‘Desktop Publishing.’ Maybe the mid-2000s?

This episode explores the history of Desktop Publishing, its impact on DIY print culture, and how its ‘ransom note’ aesthetic was later echoed in early web design and why ‘brain rot’ videos feel like a return to folk aesthetics.

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2025/02/22/2503-desktop-publishing/

• Experience.Computer: https://experience.computer/
• Worldrunning.guide: https://worldrunning.guide/
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Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Had a meeting all day in London on Wednesday
• Nearly finished with a personal project
• Started another stupid personal project but confident i’ll be able to finish it
• Spreadsheets. Lots of spreadsheets

Terminal Access

O’l Buddy o’l pal, Paul Graham Raven was featured in / interviewed by Shelfies newsletter

I don’t really have a “favourite” shelf, because I’m a former library worker, and I shelve by category and format — albeit much more loosely than I used to. These are a few rows from my pocket-format paperback genre fiction shelves, the one section of the collection which is (pretty much) alphabetised. I was tempted to rig the game and plant some of my favourite books in this section — how could I miss out the tatty first-issue paperback of Bruce Sterling’s Involution Ocean, randomly found in the “get them out of our sight” basket of one of those basement places that you used to be able to find along the Tottenham Court Road?! But it would have been too obvious… and anyway I think it’s more fun to see what stories can be found in any given section. 

Reading

I finished How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens this week. It’s a fantastic book, and really left me with a solid grounding on how i’m going to use Obsidian in future.

I also finished Anarch by Dan Abnett. The most recent and currently final book SIXTEEN in the Gaunt’s Ghosts seris. I’ve been reading these books on and off for 15 years. Bittersweet. I have 2 anthologies and 2 tie in novels and then i’ve read *everything*.

Violet Cold – Modular Consciousness

Been a while since I mentioned Azerbaijani Blackened Synthwave artist Violet Cold because some of the recent project have been in different directions. But Modular Consciousness is a return to why I started listening in the first place.

If your drawn to any of the following extremes—guttural vocals entwined with 80s-style electronic drum pads, piano lines dancing over lurching electronic rhythms—then this EP is for you. Driving disco beats are shredded by black metal roars, and digitally-tinged pop vocals teeter on the edge of chaos. Fan-fucking-tastic shit.

Remember Kids:

The post Green Lung appeared first on thejaymo.net.

Big Noise

In any case. the main new this week is that I went to see BOTCH at the Electric Ballroom last night. They were SUPER tight. Despite being nearly 30 years ago and the huge influence and legacy the band had on hardcore punk, the music still sounds raw and fresh. Like hearing it for the first time.

It was quite frankly one of the best rock and roll gigs I’ve ever been to ever. Their second and last ever UK show. Thought I’d never get to see them again.

They were supported by Seattle noise titans Great Falls. They were absolutely fantastic. I turned to my mate jess after they finished playing and just ‘That was a big noise‘ which is the highest level of compliment in my book.

Permanently Moved

New Noise

Permanently Moved returns for Season 11 in 2024! New creative goals require new creative endeavours.

Also, Issue #009 of my zine went out to paid subscribers via snail mail this week.

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2024/03/24/301-2401-new-noise/

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Subscribe to my zine
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Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo

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Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Several Solarpunk related calls!
• Novara planning
• Had couple of world’s calls – one for the book research
• Call with Imagination Spectrum founders
• Band practice
• Made this years theme for 301

Terminal Access

Fresh from burying himself alive …. in a suit of armour owned by Weta workshop’s Richard Taylor; last summer Wayne was buried alive again in Naples. This time by pal Debcha.

Deb Chachra, who buried me on this occasion, is the only person with direct phenomenological experience of what it looked like at the surface throughout. I was experiencing it from the other side of the dirt. Anyone else, minus the sequence of intermediary documentary evidence, will have to take our word for it.

Once you know I’ve been inhumed like that, the whole volcano – the whole Earth, in some sense – is made gravid with the possibility of me being inside it. Seriously, though. Wherever one stands, it does become harder to believe that somebody, something, some past present with potential for future presence, isn’t hidden there – just there – beneath the surface. Because, of course, it is.

Do click though! The whole article is great, especially the photos.

Dipping the Stacks

How changing the metaphors we use can change the way we think | Aeon Essays

Metaphors and analogies are not mere artefacts of ancient science but also vital instruments of the contemporary scientific orchestra. They help formulate and frame theories: political metaphors, not unlike those used by the ancient Greeks, are frequent in modern biology, which is rife with the language of ‘regulators’

jabel

Reframing my household as my workshop has helped rid me of the nagging feeling that I should be doing something else.

Road Verges – Plantlife

Britain’s road verges cover an area the size of Dorset and, if managed appropriately, can create a network of wildflower rich grassland. This is a vital habitat as the UK has lost 97% of it’s wildflower meadows since the 1930s.

Another Tetris World Record Completely Demolished! What Is Going On?!

It’s only been a little more than a month since a 13-year-old player named Blue Scuti reached the kill screen for the first time in history, a feat only performed previously by an AI. Now it’s been done twice more and the world record for points changed hands three times in three days.

Does What Happens at the Table Matter?

There is a tendency I have often noticed among nerdish men of a certain age to get defensive about particular hobbies – video games, heavy metal, horror films, comics, D&D, and so on. Having been told that these pastimes are variously stupid, evil, corrupting, a waste of time, sinful, and so on in their youths, such men have adopted a position at the opposite extreme, which is that it does not matter what media one consumes.

Reading

I read What is Narrative Therapy? An Easy to Read Introduction by Alice Morgan this week. A 2000 era book thats so 2000 it has its chapter titles and headings in comic sans! Though it does lend it a ‘this is a therapy book’ vibe to the whole ensemble. Narrative threapy a post modern approach to working with individuals and reframing stories. I’ve enjoyed the book immensely and had my own personal realisation reading it, which Eve joked the other night “Congratulations you saved yourself 1000’s of pounds of therapy” lol.

Also started reading Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams. This 1986 cyberpunk novel feels like the actual book that defined the genre – rather than Neuromancer which in my opinion, is a confusing mess of a novel. I can’t belive it it’s being made into a TV show. What a waste. Anyways, the opening sequences of Hardwired on the other hand are cinematic as hell – right there in the prose.

Teenagers Forever – DURRY

Middle aged pop punk band, pandemic era tiktok megastars, and borther and sister duo DURRY are back with a new single as a follow up to their 2023 album Suburban Legend. This track is about getting older yet being … a Teenager Forever.

I love dungeons and dragons
In the basement with my friends
But everybody’s got commitments
Now it’s getting hard to plan

LAMO. So true.

Remember Kids:

The post Big Noise appeared first on thejaymo.net.

On Thursday the 24th August 23 we played an EP launch show at the Lamb in Surbiton. It was lovely to see so many faces there. We sold a bunch of totes which was nice.

Listen On Youtube (Playlist)

Listen On Spotify

The post Forest Bed | Placeholders EP appeared first on thejaymo.net.

Time just seems to be slipping out from under me whilst I feel like I’m slowing down. I can’t belive it’s nearly September, christ.

Lots yet to fill the year with though.

FOREST BED – EP LAUNCH

The next big date in the calendar is THIS THURSDAY – 24th AUG in SURBITON, SOUTH WEST LONDON

That’s right.

My band is finally putting out our EP. It’s been a long time coming. But its all good.

If you are a fan of Americana, slow and sad, or cosmic country come to the show!

Also, Matt on the right there in his Levis shirt trying to look ‘well hard‘ in the photo was my housemate at university. Known the guy for 20 years. He just turned 39!

Alternatively follow us in either/all of the following places – it’ll help with the algorithm:

For now tho, here’s the title track from the PLACEHOLDER EP.

I’m extremely proud of this record.

Really looking forward to the show, and also going back in the studio in mid/late November to record a double A side of some of our newer songs. Nice.

Permanently Moved

The Book of Silicon

I think much of contemporary AI and Internet criticism fits into three categories, two of which are based on short stories by Luis Borges.

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2023/08/20/301-2328-the-book-of-silicon/

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Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Updated worldrunning.guide to V1.2 It’s now up to 18.9K words o_O
  • Added a Glossary
  • Added ‘Co-Play‘ podcast script
• Posted the first post in the rapid realms series. 2 more in my drafts
• Spent an evening making some vertical videos for my bands EP launch
• Started the design and layout of a piece of design fiction I’m working on with Rafa.
• Two trips to London 😮‍💨

Terminal Access

I enjoyed listening to Tobias Revell on the Comuzi podcast this week.
“Chat GPT is just the Bebo of social networks”

Dipping the Stacks

Monopoly maker exec imagines a future where board games sport “AI-driven game mechanics”

Xplored is the name behind Teburu, a platform that intertwines cutting-edge digital technology with the latest trends in tabletop gaming. Bearing the unfortunate “phygital” moniker, board games such as The Bad Karmas and Sword & Sorcery are signing bold checks to players by promising social features, MMO-esque connected worlds and, as mentioned in an interview with Dicebreaker, AI-driven opponent behaviors.

How Rick Rubin Lost 130 Pounds – Men’s Journal

Rick Rubin’s undulating face hair is just as famous as his body of work. In homage to the yogis he read about as a boy on Long Island, Rubin hasn’t shaved since he was 23. It’s long been his registered trademark.

Playing with Nature: On “Tears of the Kingdom” as Ecofiction

Ecofiction is all about reframing our ideas of story to look critically at our relationship with the environment. Both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom tell stories using their worlds, yet, more importantly, they treat the dynamic relationship between the player and the world—exploration, survival mechanics, emergent gameplay within a virtual nature—as a meaningful story in itself.

I’m never going to trust your news organization

I’ll speak for myself here but as an individual person, I have zero interest in a “relationship” with entities.

Are fans becoming too entitled? | Dazed

Whether it’s Bridgers breaking up with her boyfriend or Ortega smoking a cigarette, some fans seem to take it incredibly personally when a celebrity fails to meet their standards – it’s more like they’ve been betrayed by a close friend than disappointed by a public figure.

Reading

I *just* finished reading the Warhammer Crime anthology The Vorbis Conspiracy before I sat down to write my weeknotes. I love love how all the short stories revolve around the same event/plot point. The Anthology is such a fantastic container.

Someone Becomes No One by Ryan Shelkett

Quite by chance I came across this 2022 album by Ryan Shelkett. Sheklett was the singer in 90’s emo titans Cross My Heart, founding member of Blank + Dead Red Sea, and later front man of Liars Academy. Before being tour guitarist for almost … everyone .. in the deep elm/midwest emo stable scene.

Someone Becomes No One was released last year and is Sheklett’s first solo work. The album is an extremely mature work. ‘Americana’ if I was going to pin a genre on it, but that does it a disservice. there’s a few tracks here and there that sound extremely Sheklett. The riff patterns couldn’t have been written by anyone else.

Damage is my fav track

Remember Kids:

The post That’s Right appeared first on thejaymo.net.

Permanently Moved

Speed of Thought

For me now, at this point in my life, writing and thinking are co-continuous. I type between 55-60 words per minute – the speed of thought. 

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2023/04/22/301-2314-speed-of-thought/

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Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Calls, so many calls.
• Updated worldrunning.guide to Version 0.0.8 15 essays now, 14.4k words.
• Two trips into central London. Meetings and workshops
• Research
• Dre was kind enough to mention my world runner job description over on design fiction daily

Terminal Access

Friends over at Furtherfield gallery have just launched their summer events program The Treaty of Finsbury Park the project looks absolutely wonderful

The Treaty of Finsbury Park is an immersive fiction that looks at what it would be like if other species were to rise up and demand equal rights with humans. What that means is you, as a human, can come and take part in the fiction only by playing for and as another species (so, like, NOT as a human ok?!). The project started in 2020 and it will run until 2025 when the Treaty itself will have been created and signed by all the species communities of Finsbury Park.

A massive immersive role-play event for park lovers. Explore the park as another species, with new eyes, ears and totally new priorities. The Interspecies Festival welcomes ALL human people over the age of 9

I posted more about it on solarpunks.net or you can check out the website here: treaty.finsburypark.live. Long time readers may remember I attended a prototype Multi-species LARP run by Furtherfield back in 2019.

Reading

I’m still reading all the same things I was last week, but I’ve added two more books to the list.

I have a problem.. I start reading books and don’t finish them for months. This is *everything* thats on deck right now 😬

• Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion by Harry Sword
• Storytelling in the Modern Board Game: Narrative Trends from the Late 1960s to Today by Marco Arnaudo
• Cybermapping and the Writing of Myth by Paul Jahshan
• Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry by Jane Hirshfield
• The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything by Matthew L. Ball
• The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity by Jon Peterson (Second Reading)
• Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It by Evan Davis (This book is centrist drivel, cant bring myself to finish it)
• Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation by Mark J.P. Wolf (Second Reading)
• Reimagining Our Tomorrows: Making Sure Your Future Doesn’t SUCK by Joe Tankersley
• Lucifer: Princeps by Peter Grey (Second Reading)
• What Is a Dog? by Raymond & Lorna Coppinger

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Lankum – False Lankum

Everyone’s favourite Irish doom folk band put a new album out recently; “False Lankum”.

The opening track is a modern interpretation of the Trad suicide ballad ‘Go Dig My Grave’.

The song is slow, doomy, droney and quite frankly HEAVY AS FUCK. All achieved without a single moment of distortion. The hypnotic repetition of the riff is what makes it so dark. Want to do this more with my band. Lankum are showing the way. 

Remember Kids:

The post Future Music appeared first on thejaymo.net.

A couple of years ago – October 2020 – I wrote about Early Access Artists. My first attempt to try and organise thoughts on the future of artistic practices alongside the affordances that a protocol based D-web (Web3 now I suppose) could provide.

I spent a long time talking about how music tracks in a digital format should be seen as a collection of Stems. The potential to be an ever evolving thing. This was months before Kaye released Donda in that format with that little music player.

I recently came across a tool called Track Club:

A subscription service / multisided market that connects Youtubes, Filmakers, Podcasters etc with with musicians and composers. The website also provides the infrastructure to sign/prove that the music is fully licensed.

Whats super cool about the service is that you don’t have to just pick a track, all the Stems are available in the web interface and you can mix and mute vocals, isolate bass-lines, fade out syth-parts etc and customise the track to fit exactly with the thing you are making.

This is 100% the future of not just Music, but Media distribution in general.

Now, i’m not sure about paying an ongoing licence. It would be better and more elegant if you could just select the stems, and clarify the mix/metadata and buy it as an NFT. Mixing and mastering tracks down to a single canonical MP3/FLAC file will be as significant artistic choice as choosing vinyl or cd as a medium.

I mean who’s to say how people are supposed to receive and consume music?

Over in the metaverse, millions of kids playing Roblox listen to pop songs though layers and layers of distortion – an aesthetic designed to defeat automated copyright enforcement – has bled over in to TikTok.

In late 2021 Roblox introduced new rules “Uploading distorted audio files are not permitted. Please make sure your files can be easily and clearly heard.”. Now users have to avoid both automatic content ID scanning , and aesthetic choices being imposed by the platform.

So remix has been the recent go-to workaround. Mossbot is probably the biggest Musican on Roblox right now, defeating automated content scans.

For millions Taylor Swift sounds like this:

‘Music’ as bundles/collections of Stems is a far more rich and comprehensive vision of the future than streaming MP3s thats for sure.

Permanently Moved

What the Hell Is Going On?

Steady state capitalist realism and cultural fracking has got so bad they are rebooting the damn moon landings.

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Finished up Nanowrimo
• Lots of calls with folks
• Worked on TWO essays that need to be finished up int he next 10 days
• Had two sessions of the New Centre Course I’m teaching this week
• Spent half a day tweaking all sorts of bits and bobs around thejaymo.net, maintenance was needed
• Received a text from someone I need to provide feedback on. First paid editing gig. wild.

Terminal Access

Terminal Access this week is concerned with Oklahoma writers collective Broken River Books.

Its cyberpunk season.

Birthday Boy, and buddy J David Osborne published Dying World. The first book in the Gods Fare No Better series: “blisteringly fast-paced cyberpunk novel in a ten-part series where magic and technology meet sex and violence”. It’s on my kindle. I started reading it last night. 10 parts! JDO what are you thinking!?

Not done with his mention last week, Edward Rathke has another book out: Howl is set in a desolate post-apocalyptic world where science and magic blend.

Lastly but not least, Kelby Losack has a new novel out Mercy. “A man trades his heart for a gun rumored to kill gods”

JD O and Kelby are the host of Japanese Anime/Cinema podcast ‘Agitator Pod’. All three authors above talk about their decision to shitpost cyberpunk novels together in this week episode. I should be clear – Agitator is not a film buff podcast.

Dipping the Stacks

House of a Thousand Knots – the Bentwood Architecture of the Orma Women Builders. – YouTube

This is a previously undiscovered African house, from east Kenya,. It is almost on the edge of extinction, with the tradition being preserved by one remarkable young woman, Ramadan.

Dirt: Drake’s deep fake / TikTok Hercules – Dirt

For a celebrity like Drake (and really, the scheme only works because of him), whose fame transcends the modern attention economy, the media circuit can be made into a mockery. The press needs Drake, not the other way around — or so he wishes for us to believe. Regardless, the crafted artifice of the spectacle affirms the rappers’ conceit. Self-promotion, real or fake, has to happen on their terms.

Tamagotchis are fashion’s hottest old-new accessory – From Game Boys to Pixel Chics, techcessories are everywhere.

Imagine a world in which your biggest worry is getting home from school on time to check up on your Tamagotchi. The words ‘metaverse’ and ‘blockchain’ don’t exist

The Rise and Fall of Cyberpunk – New Lines Magazine

Unlike cyberpunk protagonists, the typical post-cyberpunk protagonists are anchored adrift in the society in which they operate, leading lives much like your average everyday citizen.

Formats Unpacked – The Escape Room – by Hugh Garry

Each escape room usually has its own narrative world and players are fully immersed from the initial briefing—often done by some form of eccentric gamesmaster—up until they (hopefully) leave the room and return to the real world.

Reading

I’m still reading Non Violent Communication A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg. What a book. Honestly, one of the best books I’ve read in ages. Is should have read this years ago after taking part in the workshop.

I finished Courage and Honour by Graham McNeill. *maybe* I’m reaching the end of my 40k binge(?) if thats possible? 150+ books in one franchise/universe in less and 4 years is… a lot. That said i’ve just bought a bunch of models and play the game quite frequently so .. probably not.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Neil Young & Crazy Horse – World Record

I bought Neil Youngs new album. Not because its *that good* but because buying it is basically the only way to hear it. Because – rightly, he’s not on Spotify.

xNot that I’ve listened to all 42 Neil Young albums, because nobody got time for all that. World Record is I think, at its heart a Rock and Roll album.

Break the Chain

‘Break the Chain‘ is heavy as hell , drenched with distortion, but rocks, hard. It has the forward momentum of a classic rock and roll, backing vocals, and blistering guitar slide work. Awesome.

Walkin’ On The Road (To The Future)

Walkin’ on the Road sounds like a song that has just, always existed? Pump organ and harmonic make up the chord pallet and Youngs Vocals just unspool inside the harmonic logic of the track. It sounds like it could have been a folk song downloaded from 1960s America. This track is *very* American thats for sure. More so even than the song Chevrolet which is about a guy and his car. lol

Remember Kids:

The post Sounds Like the Metaverse appeared first on thejaymo.net.

Since I discovered this Pharrell and Rick Rubin interview I think I must have watched it 5 or 6 times in its entirety. I posted it to my Tumblr when I first found it, but its grown and grown on me.

There’s a bit where they are talking about the sub-genre of Funk – Go-Go. Pharrell, lists off all the areas of the country where you could find it being played in clubs.

It’s wild to me that I remember when genres and scenes were geographically isolated too – with hardcore punk. But Pharrell calls this phenomenon a ‘world’. He also makes reference to the song Rubin Produced LL Cool J’s Rock the Bells. “All the chains? and that music? You had no idea what you were doing to us in Virgina”.

I went to a 40th birthday over the weekend and for about 2 hours of the night it was wall to wall Jungle and Drum n’ Bass. LOL. Me and my friends were talking about how mass culture seems to have unravelled post internet. An argument I’ve made a few times my self.

But then again… compare these two songs:

The thing that they have in common, is that they both came out within months of each other in 1996.

The Spice Girls were this huge cultural juggernaut, ‘girl power’ flattened everything in its path. They were the culture – the mass culture.

But at the same time Super Sharp Shooter with the Ganja KRU came out and to jungliests, Super sharp shooter changed their world.

Obviously there must have been some overlap between ravers and pop fans, but really they are literally, figuratively – worlds apart.

Yet both tracks to my mind are equally as influential as one another on UK culture, and music more widely.

I wonder if art/music/culture creates the world around it juts as keenly as it is created by the world that the art inhabits? We will recover, culturally from the shock of the internet i’m sure. All these people going about their lives living in different realities.

It’s probably closer to what pagan societies must have been like? Dunno.

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Working on the new show.
• Final lecture of part 1 of the new centre course with Wassim
• Been getting a lot of ducks in a row
• Been building a wall for ducks
• I finished the first draft of the BAYC litepaper overview – its just over 15k words. I think I might split it up across 5 posts and post one a day for a week.

Dipping the Stacks

Physical buttons outperform touchscreens in new cars, test finds | Vi Bilägare

The results speak for themselves. The worst-performing car needs 1,400 meters to perform the same tasks for which the best-performing car only needs 300 meters.

Adventure game graphics with DALL-E 2 – Et tu, Cthulhu

Point-and-click adventures make up a fairly broad genre with many different art styles. I’ve focused my attention on a sub-genre that hews close to the style of early 1990s Sierra and LucasArts adventure games.

An Oral History of Tim Curry’s Escape to the One Place Uncorrupted by Capitalism

How an unforgettable performance in Red Alert 3 became legend.

Why Japanese Iron Kettles Cost So Much

For centuries, Japanese artisans have made kettles by pouring molten iron into molds and hammering them out once they’ve cooled.

The Four Dirty C-Words of the Internet – Paul Jun

There are four c-words that have become very problematic: content, culture, community, and creator.

Reading

Still reading Wired Love: a Romance of Dots and Dashes. But I’m nearly finished.

Still reading The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself by Susan Bell. A passing familiarity of the Great Gatsby is required in the fiction editing section, but not necessary. Really good book.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Himera – Sharing Secrets

Really into this album. It has Hanna Diamond as a guest on it which is why I found out about it. Its a wild mix of hyper-pop, rave, and video game music.

The track Umbrella is a good example of what you’re in for.

This is the track with Hanna Dimond on:

The whole album is very sonically coherent and it sounds like complete sonic vision thats been delivered. Totally uncompromising. I really like it. It’s also super autumnal and despite all the electronics, it sounds like the forest and mushrooms and dreams and rain. Very cool.

Remember Kids:

The post Grown and Grown appeared first on thejaymo.net.

I recently stumbled in to a niche Archipelago of Youtube. On a map of the internet, I think it’s located just off shore of the ASMR peninsula.

The genre is called ‘In the other room’, ‘In a bathroom at the club’; ‘the other room at a party’ or ‘outside the club’ whatever.

Heres some examples:

Other Room Youtube

Youtube is absolutely full of these videos once you go down the rabbit hole. Some of the mastering is better than others but I think this genre is absolutely fascinating.

I think in part it must be driven by people listening on headphones. Playing one of these tracks though speakers on my hi-fi sounds terrible. But in headphones there is a certain ‘magic’ from the frequency manipulation. Some songs really do feel like they are coming though the wall or whatever.

There are also more creative sonic ‘locations’ out there too.

ASMR Outside Cyberpunk Club – Muffled Music, Ambience, Soundscape, NCM

The video above comes with a detailed description too:

You are on a busy street on Syenrori Port, a trading planet, not owned by any government officially, but definitely run by many seedy organizations. This particular street is where you need to pick up an order from your sketchy employer, hence this had to be one of the sketchiest streets on the port. While you are waiting for your employer to send the message that tells you where the pickup site is, you stand along the wall of a building directly across from a club. Other planets tend to do trading with each other in a legitimate fashion, but this planet forgoes all those pleasantries. Right now you are in Yevnov Territory, they definitely own that club, which makes you increasingly uncomfortable. However, you need to grab that order before you can go anywhere…

I’m absolutely blown away. I love the idea of the production of ‘sonic worlds’ like this.

No Minds Eye

Eve has one of those bluetooth sleep masks with headphones in. She wears them when the neighbours are being noisy etc. Frequently she listens to Headpaces’ ‘sleepcasts’ or whatever they are called. High quality audio captured from locations like a jungle pond at dusk in Bali, Clifftop at high tide in the rain etc. Field recordings.

Since I discovered I don’t have a minds eye I’ve been asking her all sorts of questions about what is actually going on when she’s listening to the soundscapes before bed. Apparently she’s laying there and picturing/visualising all the things she can hear.

Building a whole visual world in her minds eyes.

A few weeks ago she handed me her sleep mask and pressed play, offering no contextual information and asked me where I thought I was.

Not being able to picture anything I had to do ‘deep listening‘ on what I was hearing. I describe the experience as like spinning a mental rolodex, searching a memory bank of sounds I’ve ever heard before. After a few minutes of careful listening I said ‘It sounds like a man peeing into a bucket standing up next to a washing machine’.

The ‘correct’ answer was ‘A field recording of jungle cicada’s next to a stream’.

Unfortunately, my ‘man doing a pee’ description highly accurate. Now, despite knowing its Jungle Cicada’s, whenever Eve now listens to that soundscape all she can picture is a man peeing into a bucket in a utility room. I’ve ruined that particular recording for her forever. Like an audio version of a once seen, can’t un-see visual illusion.

She played me another field recording and I listened to it for ages trying to figure out what I was listening to. Eventually I said ‘It sounds like a bunch of pink and brown noise put though oscillators at 50/60hz or something’. Her: It’s a laundrette. Me: Oh yeah obviously. But it was essentially a bunch of brown and pink noise oscillating!

Another dessert cicada soundscape she played me sounded like ‘What it’s like to be inside of a TV tuned to a dead channel’. Then we had to stop playing the game before I ruined all the soundscapes in the app.

Sonic Worldbuilding

I’m pretty sure David Byrne in his 2012 book ‘How Music Works’ he talks about how the ‘sound of the room or venue’ effects the music you’re hearing. Punk and rock and roll always sounds better in a small room packed full of bodies.

None of this is new obviously. Back at university we learnt all about mixing and mastering, frequencies and how convolution reverb modelling works etc. How classic music and opera have been optimised for the concert hall, religious music is almost always optimised for the context it was to be preformed in.

Check out this performance of orthodox cherubic Hymn in Mode 1 performed with the reverb modelled from the convolution data from the Hagia Sophia.

Whilst we are on the subject of religious music here’s Psalm 50 (the video title is incorrect) performed for the Pope in Aramaic. It’s one of the most incredible performances I’ve ever heard. Not sure I’ve ever shared it on the blog.

Anyways, I’ve now super interesting in ‘room sound’ and the effect of the room on the production of sonic meaning.

Wagner went so far as to create the Bayreuth Festspielhaus to house his work.

CAR

Holly Herndon’s first release is called CAR from 2011.

CAR is a recording released in 2011, specifically for automobile listening. It was conceived of after being invited to release with ThirdSex in Chicago, upon which I asked the label owner to survey his customers to find out where they listen to cassettes the most frequently. The overwhelming answer was “in the car”, so I composed for that environment utilizing sine sweeps and synthesis designed to resonate my Toyota Matrix.

Best enjoyed while driving!

This is obviously a highly specific site for composition! Whats interesting to me this weekend is the idea of world building the site as well as making the audio.

I personally really don’t enjoy ‘clubbing’. I don’t like the experience of being in a huge dark room with 100’s of people dancing, all the lights and sticky floors. Maybe I don’t like being around people enjoying themselves. LOL. Lots of my friends would always ask me why the hell I went to breakcore raves or whatever if I hate it so much.

The answer is because I love hearing music in the context that it was created for. Pop music really fucking loud sounds 1000 times better in a club than on the radio. Techno and experimental club music always sounds incredible on a huge soundsystem that shakes your chest. Seeing Dreamcrusher back in 2019 at unsound is a sonic hilight of my life thus far.

Game Engines

Over the last year or so I’ve spent some time messing about with game engines, learning the ropes etc. One of the big updates to Unreal Engine 4.25 back in 2021 was real time spatial audio both – convolution reverb and ambisonic soundfield rendering.

Inspired by the idea of sonic world build I think I’d like to try making some music, or a sound installation and build the room, the environment it supposed to be heard.

The same way that artists and producers record to tape/analogue, our use sprung or plate reverb for its sonic qualities, I wonder what music ‘filtered through the metaverse’ sounds like?

Mentioning this idea to my friend Arthur earlier he said Not sure how “recorded in the metaverse” works with my ontology of sound.

If anyone knows of any sound artists doing this please let me know!

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Making this new show/podcast is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Nothing has been easy so far. It won’t be ready for Sep10 🙁
• Been enjoying not making the podcast
• Week 3 of the new centre course is over

Dipping the Stacks

Metaverse, NFTs, and Blockchain Gaming in 2022 | Newzoo Trend Report

The metaverse, NFTs, and blockchain gaming have transitioned from being largely unknown concepts to terms on the lips of every major brand or investor. This fast-moving space demands an understanding of its foundational trends.

The Twitterification of TikTok – by kate lindsay – Embedded

But now, this behavior has migrated to comments on TikToks, previously one of the funnier and purer parts of the app, and it’s particularly jarring to witness. 

Failure to Cope “Under Capitalism”

Capitalism, in this rhetorical strain, is not so much the object of analysis or a concrete historical phenomenon as an all-purpose gesture. “

Sometimes, paying attention means we see the world less clearly | Psyche Ideas

the idea that attention is a path to knowledge isn’t just part of common sense. It also has a long history in epistemology

To Control Your Life, Control What You Pay Attention To

Practicing attention management means fighting back against the distractions and creating opportunities throughout your day to support your priorities.

Reading

I finished the 40k book The Triumph of Saint Katherine. I like the format of the storytelling in this book. Usual for a GW novel.

Still reading Wired Love: a Romance of Dots and Dashes. It really is amazing. I think you could probably read the whole book in one day if you wanted. I’m only doing about 8/9% of the book a night as I’m taking notes.

I started reading The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself by Susan Bell on the recommendation of my friend Alex. It’s a very fun book about editing, and I recognise a lot of the states of mind mentioned in the opening chapters.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Martha Skye Murphy – Distance On Ground

I first wrote about discovering Martha Skye Murphy earlier this year.

This week I’ve been listening to this 18min, two track collaboration with Maxwell Sterling. Each song is named “86 km” and “93.3 km,” respectively.

86km feels like a long drive. Ambient drone and blurred visuals out the corner of the eye. 93.3 sounds like a very bad experience at an airport, followed by delays on the tarmac waiting to push back. Both tracks however capture a sense of forward motion, the momentum you experiencing sitting still, but travelling from A to B.

The projects website says this EP is the product of one improvisation session.

Like I said back in Jan really glad to have discovered Martha Skye Murphy’s work. Incredible musician.

Remember Kids:

The post In the Other Room appeared first on thejaymo.net.

This blogpost is the sort of thing I would usually post on my Tumblr. But it got a bit long so was upgraded to a blog post.

1. The Aliveness of Swing
   1. Time
   2. THE TIME
2. Songs are Worlds
   1. A Tale Is Alive in Its Telling.
3. Blurred Lines
   1. Living Worlds
4. The Future

A note to musicians and especially jazz fans: I did Music at undergrad level and have my Grade 7 in Music Theory. I am trying to explain things without resorting to technical or terms implicitly understood by people who make music. (The video eschews them too, which is why its so good).

The first 90 seconds of this video contains some of the best musical communication and education I’ve ever encountered.

Breaking down these 90 seconds has cracked open various thoughts I’ve had over the last few years.

The Aliveness of Swing

Time

We usually think about time time as being about the ticking of a clock, the date, the year etc. The forward momentum of past becoming the future. The present being the name for the bow wave along the flowing river of time that carries us along.

For all intense and purposes let’s call this Machine Time.

I’ve previously written about Clock Time, this sense of machine time, one-thing-after-another-time is known as Chronos.

In the case of the video, Time is described as in musical terms. A time signature, the number of beats in the bar.

At 0Ms 14Secs the bass begins playing and the host then counts of the beats out 1,2,3,4

You can hear the location of the bass notes in relation to the clock/beat.

1+3.

Chirillo process to play, you begin to feel a bouncy sensation. The rhythm is created by the interplay of bass and guitar.

All four beats are now filled by the two instruments.

The word ‘presides’ in the previous phrase above is a good term.

To Preside means ‘position of authority in a meeting or other gathering’ or ‘be in charge of’. These instruments preside over 1+3 and 2+4 respectively. They don’t own or control them. The musicians are merely stewards over these particular beats in the bar. They preside.

They are the rhythmic anchors of the song. Now that all four beats are filled they create the sensation of ‘Up and Down‘. Literally the Up and Down Beats.

The pianist begins to play.

Ignore the melodic nature of the piano and chords being played by all the instruments. Focus on the rhythm of all three instruments at once.

Listen carefully to how the piano dances around, across, inside of the 1+3, 2+4 rhythmic world established by the Bass and Guitar.

I hope you can still feel the ‘up and down’ sensation, but the piano re-shapes whats going on. All 4 beats of the bar are filled up but the rhythmic emphasis now moves and slides around.

You know what this shuffle is … you’ve heard it, I’ve heard it, we’ve all heard it million times before.

The ’tiss, tiss ta tiss’ on the ride cymbal.

The shuffle, also known as ‘The Spang-A-Lang’. Is the foundation of swing, the heart of Jazz.

Rewind the video and listen again.

The drummers entrance gives me chills every time.

The Spang-a-lang adds a new internal logic to the previous rhythms played by the previous three instruments. The rhythmic interplay between the three instruments is totally transformed.

The music has come alive.

It’s swinging.

THE TIME

The spang-a-lang introduces the swing. The song is now alive.

This is Kairos, THE TIME, or right timing.

Kairos is the product of resonance between interconnected intangible elements in the present. The feeling of things unfolding.

I hope that you can hear, but more importantly feel whats going on.

The bass and guitar have 1+3, 2+4 covered. The piano dances around.

But the spang-a-lang sits between the up and down motion of the rhythm.

It’s the beating heart, the internal logic of swing.

A set of rhythmic coordinates around which, the rest of the sonic world turns.

What an understated turn of phrase.

“The unlegislated devision of power”

No one playing here has control. No one legislates. Instead the musicians preside over different elements of the rhythm.

Between them there’s unspoken agreement, together the rhythmic interplay is greater than the sum of its parts.

Jazz is often called a social technology.

The use of unlegislated to describe the power dynamics within the ensemble should also bring to mind political relations too. They are free from legislation.

I don’t want to go into much detail here, but Jazz is the creation of an egalitarian worlds.

When jazz musicians talk about their experiences playing and improvising inside of their bands world you have to belive them.

Songs are Worlds

All songs are complete self contained worlds. Some are more alive than others.

One of my favourite podcast episodes I’ve made was about the sonic geography.

The goal of any artist or musician is to bring an idea, feeling, emotion, whatever, to life.

In the video above you can clearly hear the moment that the world comes alive. The moment the spirt of swing arrives.

Swing of course is a style, a vibe. It’s a living intangible thing. It’s hard to describe but you know it when you hear it.

Vibe of course is alive in many other genres of music, Reggae, Blues, Samba whatever.

The spang-a-lang doesn’t even need to be on the drums. Listen to this 1946 recording of Django’s Tiger by Django Reinhardt – you can hear it in the rhythm guitar. The swing nevertheless is alive.

A Tale Is Alive in Its Telling.

Swing is brought into existence by musicians. Whilst playing, they are all feeling and experiencing that alive thing – the sprit of the music.

It’s mysterious, miraculous even. Swing is conjured somewhere collectively between them.

In turn, that feeling is communicated – or a better – shared with the audience (if there is one). A recording captures and shares it too.

Again, all art seeks to capture and communicate a feeling, emotion, thought.

A similar thing happens with stories and narratives:

Whats the difference between a story and a tale? Here’s a quote from Huw Lemmey

Tell me a tale. Don’t write me a story. But tell: tell meaning to reveal, to divulge. In story-telling, the stories already exist; the richness, the innovation, is in the manner of their revelation.

A Tale Is Alive in Its Telling

Rituals also create worlds- they produce a kind of alive-ness that is felt and experienced. Rituals crate space and deepen our awareness of alive-time or THE TIME – Kairos.

And just as you can resonate with the characters in the sky, the positions of the characters resonate with you. You have agency in the cosmic story itself as you are part of that story in the witnessing. This is story as ritual. Alive in its telling. It has it sacrifice (being alive), meaning and resonance. 

This sort of alive time is the measure of experience.

It’s my belief that the Metaverse – the spaces we create there, and the experiences we have there – will be judged by their aliveness.

Blurred Lines

Any mention of Blurred Lines, at least in my circles always evokes a ‘fuck that song‘ response.

Regardless of what you think about the songs lyrical content, I really do urge people to have an opinion about its vibe – what it brings the song life – and the consequences its wrought.

The Blurred Lines lawsuit resolved back in 2018, was one of the most shocking copyright decisions ever.

Up until 2018, in the eyes of the law: everyone knew what a song was: Chords, Melody, Lyrics.

The Blurred Lines Lawsuit charged that Blurred Lines infringed the copyright of Marvin Gaye’s Got to Give It Up.

Yet, Pharell and Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines has diffrent chords, diffrent lyrics, a diffrent melody AND a diffrent rhythm from Marvin Gaye’s Got to Give It Up

They sound absolutely nothing alike apart from the share sonic pallet:

What they both do however is feel the same.

The Blurred Lines groove, its vibe, its aliveness, communicates the same feeling as Got to Give It Up.

So a case was put to the public, Pharell and Thicke were judged according to a jury of their peers. They lost. This was later upheld in their appeal to 9th circuit judges.

It was established that “Got to Give It Up” is “entitled to broad protection against copyright infringement liability because musical compositions are not confined to a narrow range of expression”

Pharell and Thicke infringed on the Gaye estates copyright because they made something that feels the same.

At university studying Philosophy of Arts, all I ever talked about and wrote about was copyright. If I was still in academia I’d be wondering what is it about the culture of late capitalism, the nature of our ‘reality’ that lead a jury to be convinced that you can copyright the intangible. I blame DnD.

Culture has been totally blown apart by this ruling.

What even am a song now? (As Gordon White would put it).

Living Worlds

Ian Cheng describes ‘Worlding’ as

The art of devising a World: by choosing its dysfunctional present, maintaining its habitable past, aiming at its transformative future, and ultimately, letting it outlive your authorial control.

A World Runner(s) job is to steer a world towards more aliveness.

Other Internet stressed the role of VIBES in their essay on Squad Wealth.

I think the musical demonstration above shows that the ensemble are very vibe rich indeed.

Moving on, writing about DAOs last year Kei Kreutler said:

DAOs are less technical protocols for governance and more high stakes game worlds that interweave.

We should aim for rough consensus and running worlds.

Rough consensus and running worlds.….

It’s interesting. Richard Bartle, the godfather of all online worlds, wrote in his book Designing Virtual Worlds back in 2003 about how one should judge an online world

You can only judge a world in its totality.

I have been on Twitter 14 years and I judge it to have failed in bringing an experience of something alive into this world.

What is brought into being, what is made alive by the component parts of the world? What is experienced by the user.

If the metaverse is a medium…

Can you copyright a world?

The Future

Strains of weed make people feel a certain way – Indica vs Sativa etc.

One makes you feel one way, another makes you feel a different way.

Currently you can’t own a strain of weed – or have copyright over the way a drug makes people feel.

But the 2018 Blurred Lines ruling says you can now own the intangible. Which means boy howdy are folks in California trying to change this state of affairs.

Imagine a world where one type of chocolate makes you feel the same way as another brand of chocolate. What sort of lawsuit madness are we going to get ourselves into? Imagine being able to copyright the feeling or difference between Rayon and Silk? No new shared cultural grammars would be possible.

This is a weird post I’ll admit. Going though 90 seconds of musical education brings us though Ritual, Folktales, Pop Songs, DAOs and Virtual Worlds and Weed, but it’s all connected somehow in my mind.

The big battle – the cultural fight that we are all participants in right now – will be about the aliveness of worlds. Both online and offline. We are still in its early stages.

The podcast I’m making this week is going to be about this subject, but the same lens will be on machine learning, image generation, copyright and AI models.

Can you own? copyright? control? a vibe? can you stake a claim on the ‘aliveness’ of a thing?

Can you own how software makes people feel?

The post How The World Alive, Swings appeared first on thejaymo.net.

I played a gig with Forest Bed at the Surbiton Village Fete today.

It was absolutely TIPPING it down. The tiny gazebo we were under on the stage wasn’t exactly the most comprehensive of shelters. Both our lap steel guitarist, and drummer got soaked by water running off the tarp.

At least the weather matched the bands vibe tbh.

Our next gig is on the 23rd of June at The Lamb, Surbiton.

I went up to Camden to see Pine Grove at the Roundhouse with the boys last night. I haven’t been to Camden in years. I was totally shocked by the extreme gentrification. There’s a box park like street food market, theres a huge street food market and new development by the lock/canal. The stables seems to be mostly street food now too. Not a bootleg Nirvana t-shirt or piece of hippy tat to be found. Shocked.

The gig was good.

Another Michael opened the show. I’d never head them before, but they were really good. Indie rock and roll. They had some fun lyrics and themes and put on a really good show. Their bassist had a sort of 70’s german footballer looking going on which was also super strong.

SOAK went on next. It’s a big ask, to stand by oneself on stage at the roundhouse and sing to a room full of people waiting to see the next act. But she smashed it. I can’t say I was the biggest fan, its was all a bit 6 music for me. But I stood and watched attentively. Because thats what you are supposed to do at shows.

Pinegrove went on about 9.30 and played right up to the very last second of their 11 o’clock curfuw. They played all the tracks of 11:11 thougout the set, and all the hits too.

They were *really* tight. Such a good live band. They do that midwest indie/emo/Americana thing so so well.

I was super knackered by the time I got home tho, plus the gig today I’m going to get an early night.

Photo 365

Post Normal

New Zine, Post Normal Fiction, A Brief History of Modernity, and our need to explore what’s beyond or after it.

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• I’m currently a ‘special lecturer’ at Camberwell College of Arts, on the Computational Art MA. I’ve been working on my two guest lectures and sorting out my diary to do the site visits, final performance, and crit.
• Gonna post about 3k words on the web2/3 Alms Race soon.
• I sat down this week and added about 2k words to the document I’ve been writing about mediation for 7 years. Re-wrote the introduction and smoothed out some of historical Jay’s idiosyncratic writing style.
• Posted all the zines to paid subscribers.
• Some great calls, couple of press interviews to boot too.

Dipping the Stacks

A Surprise Cave Finding Has Once Again Upended Our Story of Humans Leaving Africa

Last year, a genetic analysis of bone fragments representing our earliest known presence in Europe raised a few questions over the steps modern humans took to conquer every corner of the modern world.

The Classless Society in Motion – A New Theory of Communist Economy

We offer a return to a vision of a communist society based upon the abolition of wage labour, a position fundamental to the Marxists and Anarchists of the First International.

How to Overcome Instant Gratification [Actionable Guide] – Durmonski.com

The key is to keep your mind focused on the grand goal, even when there are small distractions. On the thing that you want to achieve and don’t let the small occasional whims derail you.

The Technium: 103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known

Today is my birthday. I turn 70. I’ve learned a few things so far that might be helpful to others. For the past few years, I’ve jotted down bits of unsolicited advice each year and much to my surprise I have more to add this year. So here is my birthday gift to you all: 103 bits of wisdom I wish I had known when I was young.

The Collateral Damage of Queen Elizabeth’s Glorious Reign | The New Yorker

The portrait of Elizabeth II that emerges from Brown’s book is of someone acutely aware of her multiple roles: as the ceremonial head of state, an empty mirror for the nation to gaze upon itself; as the C.E.O. of a rich, dysfunctional celebrity dynasty

Reading

I finished the 40k audiobook Throne Of Light. Another entry in to the Dawn of Fire series which is shaping up to be an epic chunk of 40k lore. The table top game is about 100 years ahead of the narrative, (and there are books set even further into the future than that). It’s really interesting the way GW decided to push the narrative forward – one more minute to midnight – and then took two steps back to fill in all the details. Proto-Permissive IP. So much to learn from this franchise.

I’m still reading The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution. It’s very well written and clips along. Been smashing though 7-8% f the book on my kindle every night.

I started reading The Lantern Men by by Elly Griffiths. Book 12 in a police/detective series I’ve never ever heard of. But a friend said it is ‘Norfolk Folk Horror’ and suggested I might like it, so I’m reading it.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

The new Ethel Cain album ‘Preachers Daughter’ came out this week. It’s fucking incredible. I want to listen to it a couple more times before write about it. (Previously on the blog)

Cate Le Bon – Pompeii

Art Pop legend Cate Le Bon’s newest album Pompeii is extremely fun. I saw her live about 10/11 years ago in the early 00’s and she was fantastic live

As always Le Bons song writing is wonderful. Difficult to place. “In the remake of my life, I moved in straight lines” she sings in the opening lines of Remembering Me.

Running Away is another great song, a sort of patchwork of catchy musical ideas that when woven together cause things to sound askew.

If you are a Bowie fan particularly late 70’s early 80’s period (think Low era) and haven’t ever heard of Cate Le Bon – You’ll love her out the gate.

Remember Kids:

The post Tipping It Down appeared first on thejaymo.net.

My band played its first gig on Friday at Leo Food’s Supper Club. I had a great time, all the other acts on the night were amazing too. The evening had poets, singer songwriters, a jazz band, and stand up comedians.

In a weird twist of fate, we were playing along side Esther aka Quiet Choir. We used to work together about 10 years ago and haven’t seen each other in about as long! Apparently she also lives with another colleague from back then too. LOL. It was really great to catch up and get to play alongside each other. Esther plays queer Ani DiFranco shoegaze on an acoustic guitar. Check her work out if that sounds up your street.

Leo also fed us all too, which was … amazing!

If you live local to Crystal Palace or near enough, keep an eye on Leo Food’s mailing list!

In other Forest Bed related news, we should be playing a bunch of shows in May and June, I’ll post about them obviously. Our 4 track demo/EP is still coming along. Mixing is in progress, second vocals still need recording but things are in progress.

Photo 365

Permanently Moved

Speed Barbie, Racer Knight

The New Barbie Movie, Cultural Fracking, my aphantasia and why Speed Racer is a much better movie than The Dark Knight

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Built some spreadsheets for Novara Media
• Planning meetings about my New Centre Course later this year
• Met up with Xin and had drinks along south bank. Super nice evening!
• A huge burst of productive writing that needs breaking up and ‘doing something with’
• Finished my next zine
• Lovely long chat with Sarah from Ignota
• Still seeking confidence 🙁

Dipping the Stacks

What does your narrative system need to do?

This is a question that comes up very frequently in the narrative design conversations. This post is a tour of some possible answers.

The Avery Review | Forest Governmentality and the Struggle for More-Than-Human Sovereignty

This essay explores three legal instruments of forest governmentality—the Charter, the Constitution, and the Contract—that offer an updated imaginary for the rights of nature and more-than-human sovereignty beyond property.

WATCHTOWER: a short story by Warren Ellis – WARREN ELLIS LTD

I crested the plateau and stopped for a moment, wondering if I were the first person to breathe the air out here….

Infinite Game Storytelling — simondlr.com

Conflict narratives hijack our brains to simulate conflict, and teaches us how to overcome change. This is evident from the absurd to everyday: lightsaber space wizards in a battle of good vs evil to class struggle in modern day South Korea.

Do The Thing! | Musings of an Aspie

Maybe my bullshit detection program wasn’t running in high gear. I’m usually pretty good at detecting when someone is trying to put one over on me. And at pushing back. Hard if necessary. This was a low stakes situation, though. Spending an additional hour doing something isn’t a very high cost.

Reading

Still reading Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age its fantastic. I’ve already recommended it to 2 people IRL. About half way through now. Really enjoying it.

I finished Scott Westerfeld’s Youngbloods a fitting end to an 8 part saga. I’ve seen grumbling on goodreads reviews about the ending but I thought it was … fine.

James Bridle’s Ways of Being is fantastic. I finished it this week. I recommend reading it back to back with Gordons Ani.Mystic for where we need to be heading in 2020’s. Plus it settles in nicely with the much wider ‘reading list’ like Thus Spoke The Plant, Sand Talk, Braiding Sweetgrass, Apocalyptic Witchcraft and a whole host of other books i’m forgetting off the top of my head.

Dougald Hine was kind enough to send me the draft 0/first draft of his first book. He talked about writing it briefly on season 4 of The Great Humbling podcast recently. Last time we spoke earlier in the year he was just winding up to write the thing. As of writing this I’m about 1 evening away from finishing it. I think it’ll be a book that sits alongside the previously mentioned reading list upon release.

I picked up the audio book for the new 40k Dawn of Fire series book Throne Of Light yesterday. Havn’t started it yet, but John Banks is narrating, so it’ll feel like good company.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Music For 18 Musicians (Steve Reich) by Erik Hall

Released in 2020, Erik Hall performed every part himself, using instruments he had on hand. He recorded one section a day, one layer at a time in live, single takes, painstakingly cobbling together a loving interpretation of Reich’s 1976 masterpiece of minimalism.

This trailer for the album gives a taste of the the experience is like:

I actually performed part of this Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians whilst at university. Section I has always been my favourite chord in suite of 11 sonic/tonal explorations, and remains so with Hall’s s rendition.

I’ve listened to this album 3/4 times this week, in diffrent contexts and states of mind. Whilst we might now be in the era of post-post modernism, Reich remains one of the most influential artists in my life, ever since a 6th former named Tom gave me a mix tape that contained Music For 6 Marimba’s when I was about 15 and changed my life forever.

Remember Kids:

The post Other Acts appeared first on thejaymo.net.

Super long day yesterday at Lonesome Dog Studios with the lads from Forest Bed.

We recorded 4 tracks in 10 hours (including load in, studio set up etc all that jazz). We still have vocals and synths to record in a few weeks but they can be done from home. It won’t be long until we get our demo out, which hopefully means we should be playing some gigs soon after.

I first recorded in a studio … 20 years ago 😩. At 36 I now appreciate that the time spent there is all work not play. I experienced yesterday as non stop ‘paying attention’.

It’s about focusing on your own role, and performance. It’s listening, It’s being respectful of band mates time and the fact they’re doing their own thing to the best of their own ability too. Fucking up is totally human. Besides you probably played it correctly in another take, so don’t sweat – copy and paste instead.

The all concentration required was definitely tiring, but rewarding. I’m really happy with how everything is sounding. It’s also nice to hang out in the company of friends/dudes working towards a collective endeavour.

If you live in SW London our experience at Lonesome Dog was awesome and reasonably priced. If you’re looking for somewhere to record. Check Em Out.

Prasheen Naran engineered us – super nice guy!

Heres some photos:

Photo 365

Permanently Moved

From Penny Theatre to Social Media

TikTtok is like an algorithmically weaponised talent show from the 18th century

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Call with Ross planning our New Centre Course later this year
• Had a nice call with MPF, about possibly doing something together with his students
• I’m glad I got the coordination vs governance podcast out – unlocks a lot of other thoughts and writing
• Part 4 of the writing course I’m taking. starting to put the novel plan together
• Spreadsheetin’
• I’ve filled 6 pages of my notebook this week with ‘plans to finish’

Dipping the Stacks

Building Expansive NFT Universes: CC0, Fidelity, & On-Chain Bundling — simondlr.com

NFT creative universes are undergoing an exciting phase of wild experimentation: emphasising free IP, new economics, and remixing. As these universes develop, there’s three key components that can help foster success:

The Billionaire’s Bard | Rob Madole

Neal Stephenson might be the most influential novelist among business tycoons since Ayn Rand. What does he believe?

Meet me in the metaverse | New Humanist

The metaverse promises to connect everyone and everything. Should we fear its impact on intimate relationships?

“Time spent on app” and what it’s doing to our minds

What screenlife and “time spent on app” is doing to our brains. Also: Vampire capitalists, St. Patrick’s Day in New England, suspense vs. surprise, and more.

Who Is ‘That Girl’ And Why Is TikTok Obsessed With Her?

The ‘that girl’ trend is promoting an unrealistic version of perfection.

Reading

This week I finished Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta for the second time. Its such an important book. I’m glad I did the close re-read. Deeply engaging with its content, meaning etc transforms its content in to a whole other book entirely.

I blasted though Steel Tread by Andy Clarke. A claustrophobic Warhammer 40k novel about a tank crew trapped in dire circumstances. The ending was a bit too upbeat for me, I think everyone should have died. But hey ho, thats just where I am with fiction at the moment.

At the time of writing, I’m about 35% of the way though Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games by Matt Barton on my Kindle. It’s really inspired me to go check out some really old CRPGS. I know my friend Costas many years ago was getting in to the old Apple II Ultima Games. Need to catch up and get a beer lol.

I’m alternating Desktops with The Elusive Shift by Jon Peterson its a book about how the early Dungeons & Dragons community grappled with the nature of role-playing games, theorising a new game genre. Whats interesting to me is how concurrent it is with CRPGS and the history of computing.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Mabe Fratti – Será que ahora podremos entendernos?

I continue to be drawn to music that is ‘sculptural’ it seems. Será que ahora podremos entendernos? (Will We be Able to Understand Each Other Now?) is an album with that feeling. Each of its 9 tracks feels like a sonic instillation. Vocals float over synths, field recordings, held together by Fratti’s deeply emotional cello performances.

Originally from Guatemala, Mabe Fratti found her self locked down in the artist compound La Orduña, outside Mexico City during the pandemic. This album is the result of that experience, there are many collaborations with musicians who were with her during the Mexico’s isolation period.

This is one of the most beautiful albums i’ve heard in a long time. Wonderful. Check it out.

Remember Kids:

The post Studio Day appeared first on thejaymo.net.

I’ve posted some photos previously but I’ve had band practice almost every other week for my slow sad country band since late September.

It has become one of the highlights of the week. I don’t think of it so much a social event though. Of course we chat and catch up in the 10mins we’re setting up and packing down at the end, most of the communication that happens is about ‘the project’. Most of it is also non verbal.

We started practicing together just before the first lockdown and then didn’t again for 18 months. It’s only just in the last few weeks that I think we’re getting into the groove playing together. Listening to each other, picking up on subtleties of whats going on musically, rhythmically etc. It is in many ways a more-than social experience. I dunno, I just really like doing / creating something together with people in an environment where we’re all super comfortable with each other and bonus – doesn’t involve alcohol.

Anyways, I’m really enjoying myself. Been playing my bass and SMC150 though this 4×10 orange cab thats in the practice room. Playing slow and sad means there is no a lot of room to hide when you play a wrong note, and there’s sometimes a lot of time to wait until the next note comes along!

Its ficking awesome. It adds a really warm tone my bass which can be quite bright at times. I wonder if the warmness from the cab has something to do with the BEAST of a Peavey amp its normally plugged into. Most of the folks that use the practice room are noise/metal bands.

I have my 4×10 Laney cab under my desk right now. I haven’t actually used in about a decade 🙁 Been lugging it from flat to flat, in move after move and its just been taking up space. Giving off ‘I used to be in a band’ vibes. I can’t wait to play a gig with it soon.

I’ve been trying and failing to get old mate who runs the practice space to let me keep my cab there but so far he hasn’t caved.

I’m thinking about modding my Trace Elliot head too. I want to change the pre-amp from 10K ohms down to 4.7k ohms to improve the pre-amp responsiveness – if anyone knows a good amp – tech in London let me know!

For the second year in a row, Ignota books asked me to list my books of the year. Head over to the site, in addition to my suggestions, there are picks from Jaya Klara Brekke, Federico Campagna, Hannah Gregory, Pam Grossman and more.

Permanently Moved

In The Edit

Lack of copy editing is extremely transparent to a reader. Editing on the other hand is invisible to the reader, but transparent to the writer

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• FINISHED NaNoWriMo!!! Every year I say never again, and then promptly forget.
• Finished essay for Solarpunk magazine
• Looked over some really interesting materials I got sent proposing mechanisms for ‘swam consensus’ in chat channels.
• Sekret project

Dipping the Stacks

Alisha Bhagat unpacks what history can teach us about the future, in conversation with Dr. Nandini Pandey and Nour Batyne – The Futures Centre

We have a moral imperative to stop passively experiencing the future, and to deeply understand it so that we can better act.

This webcomic made it okay to be sad online. Then its artist vanished.

The nerdy obsessions — video games, digital devices, perhaps even webcomics — are all about focusing on something, Paul rants, “that isn’t the crushing vacuousness of their lives.”
Setting an air-thin laptop on fire, Paul the Ghost looks at his silent debate partner: “nerds do not redefine adulthood they waste it.”
A pause.
“i am not telling a joke. you are terrible.”

Yesterday Once More — Real Life

Breaking down both the products and consumers of culture into data has not only revealed an apparent underlying formula for virality; it has also contributed to new kinds of formulaic content and a canalizing of taste in the age of streaming.

Conspiracy and Social Struggle • Ill Will

Wu Ming on conspiracism, the Green Pass, and the shape of social rupture to come.

“Invasive species” has a harmful nativist bias – Vox

From California to Chile, scientists are rethinking a paradigm of environmental policy as animals move to survive climate change.

Reading

I started reading ‘For the Love of Soil: Strategies to Regenerate Our Food Production Systems’
by agroecologist and systems thinker Nicole Masters. It’s a really introduction to the topic. I reckon if you googled every single person she interviews or quotes though-out the book, you’d get a fantastic self education.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Astra King – Silver

PC Music adjacent Astra King has a single out . It’s catchy, spacey, weird. Love the way the track develops from its casio drums and vocal hook opening. Demenstrating one of hyperpops most important rules – got a good hook? Just do that! over and over!

Tor Lundvall – Drowning

My mate sent me this and thought I might like it. And.. yes yes I do.

I honestly don’t know anything about Tor Lundvall, but i’m going to find out and probably buy the album. The is a wonderful soundscapey track with vocals that drift over the top. Watery.

Remember Kids:

The post Slow And Sad appeared first on thejaymo.net.